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You’re Not A PrincessSomewhere Northern Italy 1987The chirping of blue birds outside the window is what nineteen year old Olly woke up to in early July. Yawning and blinking open his hazel eyes to scan the room and finding that unfortunately everything was still the same bitter truth.
Living his miserable life miles from any human contact in the same tower alone for seven years, trapped for nineteen. The nanny his parents, the King and Queen, sent with him to the tower just shy of two weeks of age had left when the boy turned thirteen.
Yes I hear you, why has he been here all his life? Well he was supposed to be a she and as far as the kingdom is concerned. He who they believe to be a she is well, dead. In nineteen years Olly had a lot to think about but never concluded why they would keep him and faked his death. “Un giorno” was what his nanny had mumbled to him anytime he brought it up, but he could see it in her eyes that it was so much more than a simple story for “One day”. Nothing was simple to Olly. Simple was his plain blue curtains that hung in the only window available that overlooked the wide vast of nothingness that surrounded him. His only means of escape was to find a way out of the window and not die on impact and that's assuming he can make it in the real world. Sighing and finally pulling the covers off for another day full of more nothingness he drags himself out of bed and over to the mirror hanging on the north wall. He sighs again, something he's picked up with age and he wonders, what would a regular human look like?
May, the nanny, occasionally stopped by with some more food though he wasn’t sure how she got up there, he would just wake to her setting down food and mumbling about a growth spurt and how I had to slow down if I didn’t want to starve. I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks and the food was low, not gone, just lower than May let it go. It reached mid afternoon when Olly heard the tapping. Unsure of what that was and hoping it was a bird perched, maybe even a squirrel, maybe even some type of owl, did they come out during the day? He moved to the ledge and peered over. He wasn't met with a type of fluffy animal he was expecting but rather what looked like a person. Climbing.
Stumbling back until his legs hit the end of the small table placed in the open dining area he brings a hand to cover his mouth. How? Who? How had he been found? Whoever it was knew his location and he was quickly running out of time.
He heard more tapping and finally a head of sun bleached blonde hair popped up through his window followed by the landing of feet on wood, green eyes meet his brown and seemed just as shocked to see him as well. His confused expression turned soft and he spoke with an edge to his voice.
“Well.” The stranger appeared dazed.
“You’re not a Princess.”
It was Olly’s turn to act confused.
“A what?”
He laughed. It rang out like bells.
“That explains it all.”
Olly didn’t like having no answers considering he wasn’t the intruder in the room.
“This is why I shouldn’t eavesdrop. I heard May talking about you but I guess Prince and Princess are easily confused in this manner.”
He tilted his head.
“I thought you had to be recused, a damsel in distress they call it, but you. You’re not a Princess like they said all those years ago.”
Olly finally understood.
“You’re from the kingdom?!”
He smiled, a single dimple showing and in that moment, Olly finally took in his appearance.
He had shaggy blonde hair that was slick with sweat and sticking to his forehead with a single bead of sweat running down his cheek and into the dimple that sat on the right side of his tan mud streaked face.
Now that he was looking, he noticed most of the visitors clothes has streaks of mud as did his arms and legs, like he had been travelling for some time. He was tall, not much taller than Olly himself but enough that he had to look up to the visitor.
The visitor from the kingdom.
Olly blinked when he was met with the biggest pools of green eyes looking at him the same way he was looking the stranger.
The stranger broke the silence.
“I’m Rin.”
Olly blinked once again to break himself from the daze this mysterious man had on him.
“Olly.”
Rin stuck his hand out and Olly tentatively shook it.
Rin smiled and Olly felt the strangest sensation in his stomach, shaking it off as pain from not having yet eaten.
They spoke at the same time, both muttering the same words.
“Why are you here?”
Olly grimaced.
“I asked first, and this is my house.” He wanted answers.
Rin laughed and pulled out a chair from his small dining table and turned it around, sitting, no, straddling the chair. Propping himself up on his elbows and smiling at the boy still standing by the wall.
Olly decided to take the seat across from him.
Then he started to talk and Olly found himself drawn in.
“For starters I’m Rin, Prince of Evlage. Just across the sea from Vilia where you’re supposed to be. Nineteen years ago the King and Queen were expecting a child when I was the age four. Royal rules demanded that the child had to marry me to conjoin our kingdoms but no one expected you to be a male, they knew what that would cause in the end. Sometime around June we heard that the baby died during birth and that was were it ended. There was a funeral with a baby girl but now that I think of it they must have found a mother that lost her child in the village and sent you off to here. I can see why. If they knew you were male the kingdom would go into hysterics.”
He paused to laugh a little and run a hand through his hair. Olly was completely captivated.
He started again.
“I heard May talking to the Queen just a few weeks ago about needing more supplies to bring the princess. I stayed outside the door and well they aren’t very secretive. Figuring out how to make it here I planned for weeks and finally set out to rescue the Princess but, well-”
He motioned to me with his back hand.
“You know how that went.”
Olly felt his face heating up, what was this foreign feeling?
“I’m not sure what to say Rin, Where is May? She’s late.”
His face fell.
“May was talking to the Queen-”
He stopped and coughed a little, then continued.
“-Your uh, Mother. She was mentioning getting to old, that the trip was too much. That she just couldn’t venture anymore. They um-”
He stopped again and put his head in his hands, Olly couldn’t take this anymore. A whole life of not knowing and now here comes a stranger with answers and he was taking far too long to give.
He found himself letting out nineteen years of anger in a few short minutes.
“Rin, damn it we don’t know each other but I have been here for nineteen years and I don’t know a thing about this world. Suddenly in pops this beautiful prince that I was supposed to marry and he’s here to save me? Why save me? I can stay here and wait for May. I know you’re disappointed I’m not a princess, it’s okay if you want to leave. I don’t need rescuing. I like my small life here considering the world thinks I’m dead and clearly my parents don’t love me.”
Olly finished and noticed the man across from him looking more troubled and suddenly this feeling of guilt washed over him and he found himself frantically apologizing but stopped when he noticed a small smile on the man’s face. What was so funny?
“What is so funny about my troubles?”
Rin smiled wider and that butterfly feeling sunk into his gut.
“You think I’m beautiful.”
Olly felt the blood rush to his face and realized in all his rambling he did in fact call the man beautiful. He wasn’t wrong, the man peaked his interest from the start, but he would turn him away and once again he would be alone in this tower.
“Off topic Rin, Why are you here?”
The air grew stiff once more.
“May isn’t coming back. Uh- No one is.”
His face fell once again and the sudden realization of his visit hit him, May was very old.
Then he was rambling again.
“May couldn’t come anymore due to age and clearly my own parents didn’t care enough for me to send anyone else, none the less themselves. And you this man, this prince! Came to save me! Well you came to save a princess meaning you too will leave, because well-”
He motioned to his body, unaware that Rin was already looking.
“- I’m not a princess.”
He felt the tears rolling past his chest and realized he was crying. Standing up abruptly he saw Rin jumped at the movement and sent a worried glance his way. For once the Prince’s positive demeanor faltered.
Olly turned and followed up the stairs that led to the small room he uses in times he feels to overwhelmed. The place he discovered from a young age where he feels he isn't coped up in a small tower with his own thoughts which often led to contemplating why human existence is here and why he was chosen for this path. The room was used a lot as Olly had a lot to think of being as alone as he is- well, was.
He heard the shuffle of feet behind him and sat near the east side of the wall.
The room was his favorite. The roof was glass paneling and always had the best views at night when the moon shone and the stars glimmered, or of the golden sunrise and sunset. Right now the dark clouds overhead that threaten to spill over reminded Olly of the way he was feeling, built over time just looming overhead but unspoken until his contents spilt into the ground below.
Carefully he begins to look up at the boy wandering around the room, touching the old oak bookshelf on the west wall, then the curtains that hung over the south, then dragging his fingers across the north walls chipping paint, as if looking for something. He finally spoke.
“I don’t regret coming here.”
Olly sighed and answered with a bland tone.
“You’ll still leave. There's no pretty princess waiting for you. Just me. With my plain brown hair and mud eyes, not to mention the freckles that litter all over my face and make me appear like I’m fourteen. May always did say I resembled a child! And these stupid curls-” He grabbed a fistful of his curls that resembled broccoli and tugged slightly. “- Aren’t helping at all!” Olly was ranting more as the time went about all the things he couldn’t stand about himself.
What he didn’t notice was Rin stood against the north wall, watching him with a grin.
Rin was not expecting this day to go like this. He comes to save a princess having accepted his fate that he couldn’t be with the one he wanted. Happy that Olly hadn’t asked why it took him weeks to make a decision about coming here. The normal human would go sprinting to the Princess locked in a tower for nineteen years but Rin wanted to weigh his options. Go to the tower and find her, be married immediately to the one he doesn’t want.
Then he stumbles into the tower and the minute he saw the cute boy in the far corner watching him with careful, confused doe eyes, Rin knew he made the right choice. The boy had his mother’s eyes no doubt and quickly things made more sense.
He spent the last half hour or so studying the boy, as he was doing now while he rambled on and on about all the things he hates about himself, every single one of them pulling Rin further into his already existing feelings.
Olly was what he wanted.
The boy wouldn’t want him. He had never seen the walls outside this tower and knew he would make him leave, yell in his face that he was a mistake and send him on his way.
He noticed that the rambling had stopped quite some time ago and Rin was simply staring into his eyes with an unmistakable look that even Olly seemed to understand, lust.
It was Rin’s turn to blush and look away.
He composed himself and looked back to Olly, only to be met with the same gaze he had just been giving him a few moments ago.
Gravity seemed to move the two closer until they met in the middle of the room. Afternoon light shining in enhancing their features. Green on brown. Two humans sharing the same want for the other, both with secrets of their own.
Olly could feel the tension melting away off his shoulders when he looks into the pools of green and even if he couldn’t name the feeling running through him, he knew it was what he wanted.
He didn’t lean closer however, unsure of how to act on his feelings. Rin didn’t seem to have any hesitation and leaned further until their lips met and right away he felt warm, invited into a house of candy and warm baking smells in the air, he felt safe.
Time melted into itself and what felt like hours later the two pulled apart with wide grins. For once it was Olly who spoke first.
“Was that alright?”
Rin smiled and kissed both sides of Olly’s cheeks.
“Perfect.” He murmured against his lips and leaned back in.
The hours melted into each other full of soft kisses, Rin teaching Olly about the world, helping his explore to find out what he wanted but never pushing the boy. Soon they found themselves lounging under the stars of the glass panel and softly falling asleep, one of them blind to the trouble around the corner.
Every morning for years Olly has woken to the golden glow of morning and never once has he appreciated it as much as he does now. Waking up next to an actual Prince just inches from his face has made Olly realize he was never really living, not until now. He smiled and looked at the features that were now far from a stranger. The sun bleached blonde hair that fell just above his eyes. Oh those eyes, like looking into a Peridot and getting lost in the way they catch the light, his freckles splashed across the his cheekbones and down his tan skin. He was captivating.
“Prince, I know you could stare at me all morning but I’m starving from travelling here.”
Olly laughed and tried suppressing the blush from his cheeks when those green eyes finally opened and met his.
Olly opened his mouth with a witty answer but was cut short at a crash.
He felt the hand grab his waist before he could even process the footsteps and then he was behind a bookshelf, those green eyes shone with a seriousness that he had seen when he told him no one was coming back for him, or the night before when he constantly asked if what he was doing was okay. He spoke fast.
“Listen Prince, I didn’t tell you what they decided to do with you. It’s too risky to just leave you here. I came here because I wasn’t sure how to act on it, Princess or Prince I had to save an innocent life.”
Olly had never been more confused.
“Rin.”
What does he say?
“Rin, you will tell me later what my mother ordered, but right now we need to find a way out. I have never found my life until now and I am not about to lose this.”
There would be a later. Until then they had to leave. Rin finally spoke in fast hushed tones.
“May! I remember! I know how she got in, she told them how to find you-”
The piercing pain of knowing May ratted him out was killing him but suddenly he had to focus on not dying.
He grabbed Rin’s hand.
“Let’s go Prince.”
Rin smiled and then he was being pulled to the north wall, the one he had leaned on the previous night before the one he had leaned on during his rambling and realized he loved the boy.
He dropped Olly’s hand and feeling around the north wall, pushed until there was a click and suddenly the wall was turning just as the steps finally figured out there had been more stairs after what sounded like trashing the place looking for Olly.
Following Rin into the space that appeared to be an addition to the tower there was a spiral staircase leading from the ground up and lit with more glass panel that seemed to extend from the room. Rin maneuvered the wall back into place just as he heard the door open and footsteps charge in, they could have been seen. He pulled Olly by the waist and close to him, snaking his arms around him, both completely still and waiting, for what? They didn’t know.
With each throw of Olly’s only possessions the boy flinched in Rin’s arms.
Rin grabs the sides of Olly’s and tilts him to look up from his frozen face buried in his chest. In the softest tone as to not give away their position Rin speaks.
“Prince, I’m gonna get you out of here. I know a village far far away that no one can find us in. They have a wonderful King and Queen that I have personally met whom after seeing the way my father treated me told me I would always have a sanctuary in their kingdom for me or anyone with me. Cinderella is her name and my love, you’ll have never been happier.”
They both had tears prickling the ends of their eyes when they were reminded of the life they could finally leave behind for bliss.
“Rin, will she tell who I am? What if she gives us up? What if she finds out and has us kil-”
He was interrupted with a pair of soft lips that seem to say what their minds couldn’t.
“Olly, Ella knows about who I like, and she knows my life back home and she would never betray me. Ella is all about second chances”
Olly nodded.
“Okay, but will you tell me what it is you’re running from as well?”
Rin sighed.
“In due time Prince.”
The clattering came to a halt and both Princes froze once again at the sound of voices.
“Boss, clearly Erin has already gotten here and tipped off the Princess.”
A gruff voice intervened.
“Prince, my son was a Prince.”
Olly felt his world crash down and if not for Rin holding onto him for dear life like a child refusing to give up their favorite toy, Olly would have collapsed.
Rin shook his head no, knowing what Olly had yet to say.
“R-Rin, thats my father. I have to go out there.”
Olly had tears streaming down his face.
Rin grabbed his face and kissed his eyes, willing the tears to stop and cleaning them with his lips.
“Prince, he will kill us. I know you want too but the man on the other side of that wall is a stranger and is here with intent of ending both of our lives.”
Olly nodded. Letting the tears fall silently.
The gruff voice started once again.
“No doubt they are days away by now, they could be across the sea. No one will believe the boy if he dares tell a soul, he would be smarter than that from what May tells us. He won’t step foot in our kingdom. Lets go boys.”
Olly sighed in relief and listened to the footsteps die off, along with all his hope of a loving father.
Only moments later the two had stepped out of the wall and looking around noticed the mess.
“Good thing I hate everything here.”
Rin snickered beside him.
‘Everything?”
Olly rolled his eyes.
“Nineteen years is a long time.”
After selecting few things and placing them in a knapsack, the two had just been ready to leave for Ella when something set on the table grabbed his attention. A piece of paper.
Folded in half with neat writing across the top addressed to himself.
Olly
Olly carefully opened the note, unsure of what would meet him. Answers? Could he handle that?
He wasn’t sure.
Son,
We didn’t care if you were boy or girl. We loved you no matter what. All we ever wanted was a family. Giving you to May with no hope of ever seeing you again killed both your mother and I. However we made sure there was an entrance for May but knew she couldn’t tell you in fear of you finding your way back here.
I know you’re still here and that the Prince Erin must have found you and as destiny will have it, there is a connection. I always knew he would be better off with someone he could really love instead of his poor excuse of a family. You deserve the happiness he can, no, will give you.
I never want to harm you son. In a bag at the top of the staircase you will find enough to get you both far from here and free to live your lives. I am sorry I took yours from you for so long but as stupid as this will seem, we did this to protect you. The law says you two be married no matter but our kingdoms would be ash within minutes and all life would be lost.
Your mother and I love you, I wish you the best Olly. In another lifetime it would be our happy family.
Best of luck my son,
Father.
P.S.
You have your mother’s eyes.
Olly was speechless, tears once again streaming down his face and at loss for words as to how his father had seen him and known he was there.
He felt Rin moving beside him and then he was gone. Clearly going to check the staircase for said money.
Olly felt his feet moving quickly to the window that overlooked the forest and saw it. The back of a man with hair colored as his own and in front of him stood at least six men all ready for didn’t look like fun if Olly had indeed run out of that room.
The back turned, the men did not.
He met blue eyes that shone with unfallen tears and a loving smile like those in the books. He simply held his father's gaze and mouth two words
“Buona Fortuna.”
The smile that met his was unexplainably his own. The back turned once more and Olly felt the presence of another beside him once more.
“Olly. You need to see this.”
He followed Rin up the stairs and found at the top a bag spilling more than enough money and next to it sat a crown. Different from Rin’s but simple with swirls adorn with red jewels all around, the silver of it glimmering in the same sun it sat for nineteen long years, waiting for it’s rightful owner.
Olly gasped and let Rin pick it up, his own crown hanging from his belt loop worn from the last 24 years, the blue jewels and wildflowers long lost their shine.
Rin placed the crown on his head and smiled at the way it sat on his mess of curls, courtesy Rin’s hands in them the night before. He spoke again.
“Mio Principe.”
Mere hours later the two found themselves finally ready to venture into the world. Rin still describing life outside the walls as they walk down the staircase.
Olly stopped.
“Prince?”
He stood blank. Then spoke softly.
“What if you leave?”
Rin shook his head.
“Olly, before we go let me tell you about my life. I will answer more on the journey but for now love I need you to know that I have been searching for you my whole life. That no does to me what you do. Its you and I Prince.”
Sitting the step just in front of the door Olly listens. Listens as Rin tells him about what his father would do, how his kingdom treated him. How everything was normal before he met the village boy that was sent by his own father that had broken his heart and outed him at the same time. How he lost his mother at young age and never saw the world in colors after that. Olly listened to everything and when the time came, kissed the tears away as they fell in front of someone for the first time since his mother. His mother who never resented her son for who he wanted to love.
“She was all that was pure in this world Olly. I see her spirit in you.”
How many times would this man make him speechless in twenty-four hours?
Olly stood and extended his hand to the Prince who grabbed on with no hesitation and let the boy pull him to his feet. Hands interlocked, standing face to face, the evening sunset casting golden purple tones across their faces.
Olly broke the silence.
“Funny, you came to rescue me, but in the end I would say it is I who also rescued you.”
Rin flashed a smile and leaning in, spoke softly, his breath hitting Olly’s lips.
“The rescuer becomes the rescued,”
The light touch of lips leading them to seemingly forget the world waiting for them.
Olly is also the first to pull away.
He turns, pushing open the door and takes Rin’s hands in his, stepping into the doorway.
“Together?”
Rin steps beside Olly.
“Always, Prince.”
The End.