RESCUING HER HEART

was something magical about gardens that I could never fully grasp. Maybe it was the colorful butterflies with their delicate wings shimmering in the sunlight or the melodious voic

back to reality. “What do you mean I can't? You got to leave! You left me here for five years to go study at Harvard. Why do you get to leave whenever you want while I am forced to stay here getting education from tutors almost as old as father!” I could see he was struggling to stop himself from laughing, maybe he could see I was really hurt or maybe he knew if he did, there was no one here to save him from me. It was probably the first option. My whole life was unfair. Being a princess wasn't fun or maybe I was just born into the wrong kingdom. All my life, I've been told my duties and obligations to the kingdom were more important than anything else. They always came first and everything else? A far second. To the world, I was princess Anastasia Lorelei Windsor of Valoria -a small European kingdom- but to one person, I was Anna. Only my brother, Arthur, who was four years my senior, was the only one I could let loose and just be Anastasia or Anna, as he likes to call me. You might think I am an ungrateful human, after all, being a princess was the dream life right? Well, it is not. Since the day I learned to walk and talk, my father, King Xavier, had made sure everything I did was perfect. The way I walked, spoke, interacted, ate, everything! It had to be perfect. We are in the twenty-first century for Pete’s sake but in here? I felt like a brigerton character. Trapped by obligations. Arthur had it worse. He was the next in line for the throne thereby making his training more intense. He and father were never on good terms, it was always one argument after the other and one day, Arthur couldn't take it anymore. He left. Five years passed without hearing a word from Arthur. I was so close to believing he would never come back until last year, when he drove in like he hadn’t just disappeared for five years. Father didn't speak to him and it's been like that since he returned. King Xavier has never been a father figure to either of us. He was simply our king. And my dearest mother, Queen Ophelia... Mother’s spirit was broken years ago. My brother and I watched her slowly become our father's shadow. She was always seen but never heard. “Father says I am lucky. He says I should have already been marr