Her Journey Beyond the Script novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wine Cup
At the Midsummer banquet Aveline wakes inside the doomed villainess with the wine cup raised, refuses to throw it, and hands the betrothal ring back to the prince before the court; he closes his hand over it and says the betrothal stands.
The wine cup was already in her hand when she woke up.
It was heavy, silver, and cold to the touch.
Red wine shivered near the rim.
A hundred nobles in jewels and silk were staring at her.
Nobody breathed.
Across from her stood a girl in a white gown, with honey-colored hair and big wet blue eyes.
The girl was crying.
Aveline knew her face from the book.
She had read it on the 7:40 train every morning for a month.
The Lily and the Crown, chapter two.
The foolish, jealous betrothed throws her wine in the heroine's face.
The prince turns away in disgust.
The whole court laughs.
In sixty chapters the foolish betrothed loses her head on Gallows Green.
Aveline's own head, now.
Her heart slammed so hard she felt it in her teeth.
She was wearing a green gown laced so tight she could barely breathe.
Her hand was tilting.
The wine was already sliding toward the lip of the cup.
The body knew the scene.
The body was about to throw it.
"Go on, Aveline," said a soft voice from the dais.
The Queen sat there in grey silk and pearls, smiling kindly.
"Don't be shy, child. Tell Lady Perdita what you think of her."
Aveline looked at the cup.
She looked at the girl, who flinched exactly on cue.
She looked at the prince, who sat at the Queen's right hand with his chin on his fist.
Crown Prince Torin Deincourt.
Black hair, grey eyes, a face like a closed door.
In the book he never once looked at his betrothed.
He was looking at her now.
He was looking at the cup.
Aveline made up her mind.
She straightened her wrist, and the wine settled.
Then she set the cup on the nearest table, gently, and let go.
A noise went through the hall.
"I have nothing to say to Lady Perdita," she said.
Her voice came out steadier than she felt.
"She's done nothing to me."
Perdita's mouth fell open a little.
That was not in the script either.
Aveline pulled off her left glove.
On her third finger sat a ring with a square grey stone, heavy as a coin.
The betrothal ring.
This body had worn it for three years.
She twisted it free.
It left a pale ring of skin behind.
She walked the length of the hall with a hundred pairs of eyes on her back.
Her slippers hissed on the marble.
Nobody stopped her.
She climbed the three steps to the dais and stopped in front of the prince.
Up close he smelled of cedar and cold air.
He had a long scar down his left forearm, white against his skin.
She held out the ring.
"Your Highness," she said, loudly enough for the back tables.
"I release you from the betrothal."
Someone gasped.
A glass broke.
"You've been put to shame by my behavior for three years," she went on.
"I won't do it any longer. Find a wife who deserves you."
She meant it with all her heart.
Every page of that book said the same thing.
Stay near the prince, and the axe comes.
The Queen's smile had thinned to a line.
"Aveline," she said. "Sit down."
"No, Your Majesty."
Aveline did not look at her.
She kept her hand out, palm up, with the ring in the middle of it.
Torin did not take it.
For one long moment he only looked at her.
Something crossed his face that she could not read.
It was not anger.
It was more as if he had walked into a wall in the dark.
Then he stood.
The whole hall rose with him in a rustle of silk.
He reached out and closed his long fingers over her hand, ring and all.
His palm was warm and very hard.
"Lady Aveline," he said, in a voice that carried to every corner.
"You mistake me for a man who accepts a gift he did not ask for."
He folded her fingers shut around the ring.
He did not let go.
"The betrothal stands."
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