Prologue
How I, Grymley of Evans Shire, Became a Reaper
There I was, minding my own business. Okay, I wasn’t minding my own business. I never minded my own business. It’d always been a bit of an affliction. You might call me nosy, but I preferred the term curious. And besides, I wouldn’t have gotten to see Prince Jasper’s naked backside if I hadn’t been so curious about seeing it.
I might have been a lowly stable boy shoveling animal shit, but I wasn’t dead. At least not yet. My death came a few minutes later.
Prince Jasper looked left, then right, as if he were afraid of being caught. As if I hadn’t stripped in that very spot a thousand times before the prince broke the rules.
The king held his sons to a different standard than his servants. I could swim wherever I wanted, even in the river just outside the walls. Clearly, Jasper could not.
The prince had been up to something when he demanded that I saddle his horse. “Quietly, stable boy.” The prince had been stiff with tension and hid behind his horse as if that would beenough to keep the king from noticing him if the king arrived at the right moment.
So I followed Prince Jasper to the river and hid behind a bush. The prince never turned my way, giving me the view I’d been waiting for up to that point in my life. I’d since seen plenty of backsides, some far nicer than Prince Jasper’s. His backside was perfectly round and a little bouncy as he stepped into the water, dipping just a toe in.
I fantasized about how his ass would bounce against my touch, though I could never get close enough to the prince in real life. It was just a fantasy. One that made my cock hard. I was happy with the fantasy alone, especially since the prince was such a proper prick of a boy, anyway. But he was a pretty little thing, except for his sharp tongue.
He waded into the water with no small amount of caution. He was up to his waist when the current swept him off his feet. He flailed just before disappearing beneath the surface. He reappeared a moment later, further down the river. While everything about him was dainty, his scream, when it left his lips, was anything but. His cry for help followed, but it came between bouts of submersion.
I had a choice. Either I let him drown and pretend I was none the wiser, that I hadn’t been there watching, or I saved him. If I chose the latter, everyone would know I’d peeked at him during his private moment, which might not have been a big deal if it were anyone else, but I, being a lowly servant to the king, would certainly pay a high price. They’d hang me for sure, especially since I wasn’t a good liar.
Did weighing my options longer than was proper make me a bad person? Yes, but in the end, I stripped off my tunic and ran to the water’s edge. The right thing might get me killed, but dammit all, someone needed to enjoy the prince’s bouncy backside. Perhaps they’d shut him up with their giant cock. Imight watch it all from my ghostly perch outside his bedroom window. That was if ghosts were real, of course.
I might be a little obsessed with backsides, especially the bouncy ones. And with shutting up the prince with giant cocks.
The prince wasn’t an amiable person, but he deserved to be saved as much as anyone.
The current had already swept him downstream. I’d always been a capable swimmer, even in a river with a strong current, but I was too far behind him to catch up.
“Swim toward the rocks!” I shouted, then picked up my pace, using the current to my advantage.
The prince tried to speak, but he went under before he could finish.
I was so focused on the prince that I didn’t notice the person standing on the shore at first. It wasn’t until I heard a feminine voice whisper in my ear that I searched for the person it belonged to. I wasn’t sure what drew my gaze to the woman. She was too far away for me to have heard those whispers, and I could have sworn the person who spoke was right next to me, inches away at best, not several feet away on the shoreline.
“Grymley of Evans Shire.” I heard her voice as clearly as if she were in the water with me. “You aren’t meant for this life.”
It was as if she grabbed my face and turned me toward her.
Her mouth never moved as she spoke again. But her eyes bore into me as if she were seeing my soul. Perhaps she was. “You will destroy the living realm and be happier for it.”
What did that mean?
The current picked up, sweeping him further away from me. I remained in place. Something held me there, suspending me despite how hard I swam.
The woman disappeared from where she stood on the shore, reappearing next to where the prince had gone under, as if she’d teleported herself from one spot to another.
She seemed to wait there for quite a while, as if she could see the prince beneath the water’s surface. When the prince popped up again, his body floated face down, and his arms bobbed on the surface beside his head.
By some miracle, I could move again and swam toward the shore. I lay on the bank, trying to catch my breath. When I could, I stood and stormed over to her, ready to give her a piece of my mind. But I was brought up short at the sight of none other than the prince standing beside her. He was as naked as when he’d gone into the water, but he didn’t seem to mind. If anything, his forehead crinkled with confusion.
It was the oddest thing, but his body still floated in the river. It was as if there were two of him. Two were far too many, in my humble opinion.
When the prince met my gaze, he sucked in a breath. Then, his gaze went to something in the water.
I was a curious creature, so of course it got the better of me, and I turned to see whatever had him so shocked.
I couldn’t breathe when I saw myself, partially above water, floating much the way the prince was. My bottom half was submerged to the point that I could not see it beneath the surface.
