After FOREVER, I’m continuing the fairy tale that I found which I wrote in Czech and started translating into English in short bits just for fun! If you want to start from the beginning, the first part is here: The Proud Princess and the Masked Mage. Otherwise this is part 3 but maybe you can just plunge right in. Keep in mind it’s very tongue-in-cheek and breezy and simplistic, unlike my usual darkish romantic fare.
For updates on my books, life, new book trailer videos, and overall mental craziness, you can skip to below.
The intruder had dark hair and black eyes—‘Villain,’ his appearance whispered, as villains are wont to whisper as they appear in the tales, and—this was an unfortunate event, Damarishka vaguely thought, since her mother had always warned her to fall for a man as fair as the sun and with eyes as blue as a summer sky (‘Be cliché; be normal,’ Mother’s voice reminded her. ‘No magic, no…’ No, Damarishka thought, surely Mother hadn’t mentioned magic).
But, well, Damarishka had always secretly been partial to men with dark hair—men with pasts as murky as moats a-fester with monsters.
And where had that thought popped out from?
It matched the thought that maybe this newcomer was a wicked wizard who had usurped her prince’s story and stridden into her life in the prince’s place.
What an odd notion!
But in his hand he held the most perfect rose she’d ever seen, clutching it in the most languid and romantic way a man could, and he proffered it to Damarishka with a low and indolent bow.
She accepted it with the distinct impression that she was somehow making a very bad deal with him (and somehow, maybe she thought she deserved it?). Her legs were shaking—although fortunately her dress concealed it, for she must not succumb to embarrassing exhibitions of public trembling. Trembling was for lily livers. And her liver was not made of lilies, at least as far as she knew. (This was also a danger of shutting off one’s mind; one became stupid, prone to stupid thoughts. And was she babbling in her own mind?)
“Who are you?” she asked to cut off her inner prattle. Also, he kept staring at her, and she didn’t think she was improving any under his regard.
And lo! At that moment, the king waxed dramatic. He leaped from his corner, his dagger unsheathed, and hurtled himself in a wildly savage manner toward the guest. “He wants to take you, Damarishka! We must kill him!”
The cloaked man casually lifted his hand and clipped out a curt, almost severed word, at which the king was suddenly writhing mid-air.
“I’ll destroy you!” the royal personage bawled, swirling madly and helplessly brandishing the dagger. “I’ll pluck out your eyebrows!”
Damarishka was about to sprint toward her father, to tug him away from his undignified flogging of the air, but the masked man seized her arm and forcibly held her back.
“Let him down!” Damarishka cried. “Now! This instant!”
“That is hardly a course of action in my best interest,” the personage drawled, “as he obviously harbors intentions of rendering damage on my person with that dagger.”
“That,” Damarishka sniffed, “is a lot of words to use to say ‘no’.”
“Some people,” the intruder had the temerity to sniff back, “need a lot of words to understand ‘no’. Not, of course, meaning you.” He bowed, the motion studiously correct.
Damarishka, studiously glacial, shook off his hold and stepped back. “Why does my father want to kill you? Who are you?”
“Your bridegroom.”
“But you’re not blond.”
Well, now that was a stupid answer, she thought, but to be fair, his assertion had been a stupid statement.
Still, she should have said, ‘You’re not a prince’, but unfortunately she had been thinking of her mother’s words about finding someone fair.
“Do you want me to be fair, Princess?” the intruder pressed, and with a sweep of his hand, his luscious black locks flared into a shine like liquid gold. “In the end, though, it matters not how I look, for your father signed you away in marriage to me regardless of appearance.”
“That’s not possible.”
Naturally, other kings gave their daughters away in marriage all the time (well, generally only once), but, well, the king’s face was showing absolute loathing despite his being trounced by the air.
Damarishka ventured, “He doesn’t look like he agrees.”
“A man may have regrets. Nevertheless, he signed the contract.” Another sweep of the villain’s hand veiled the sunlit shine of his hair again with the black of a starless night.
“Contract?” Dumbly, Damarishka struggled to keep her tattered remnants of reason together while her entire kingdom looked on her royal cluelessness. “Why don’t I know about it?”
“It did not happen under the light of day.” The deep voice of the man in the golden mask echoed throughout the hall. “But at night, the bargain was struck.” He stepped closer. “The bargain for—”
DUN DUN DUN! The next part is here.
LIFE UPDATES!
Editing Heiress of Secrets is taking FOREVER! I LOVE most of what I’ve edited so far, but the parts I’m at now need a lot of help and I want them to be good already, dammit 😀
I still have no job. I am in no state to try to get a job, since anytime someone suggests it, I feel like they’re telling me to go back into a physically abusive relationship. And getting therapy to go back to work would be like teaching me how to endure physical beatings. Unfortunately, no one understands this because apparently no one else feels like a dayjob is an abusive relationship? Like, I enjoyed the work, and the people were wonderful, and that job was probably the only one I could have endured for 20 years, but it was still like slogging through life while letting everything I could potentially be waste away. The idea of going back into that for the rest of my life terrifies me so much.
And, you know, all my life, I thought having to go to work was this debilitating for everyone. Only recently have my friends told me that most people don’t feel like I do when they go to work. They don’t suffer crippling mental effects from it. They don’t start eating less so they can work fewer hours and still pay bills. Ever since I was 7, I’ve always wanted to just write stories and illustrate them and have others find joy in the things I write, but obviously I’m worth nothing to this capitalist society if I’m not churning away my life in a job that is making some huge corporation money.
Okay, I’m done with that. I’ve done new videos! From my favorites to my least faves…
I like this one on tikTok but I’m not sure the embedding will work here. If not, you can see the youtube version below although it has different music and imo doesn’t work as well.
Here is the youtube version which I just laugh at :-D:
Also WHY DON’T MORE PEOPLE LIKE THIS ONE? I find it mesmerizing but, nope, no one else seems to find magic in it.
Also why does no one like this one? I am sadz. I like the creepiness of it lol
Here is another I find mesmerizing (lol yep, I reuse stock video footage!)
This one did better; it’s for the upcoming Heiress of Secrets.
This one is OK, but the tikTok version of it (below it) I think is better
Here is the tikTok, though, again, I’m not sure if the embedding will work…
I’m not too impressed with this one:
OK, that is all! I hope everyone out there is doing okay. Be kind to others this week! You never know what battle they’re fighting.
And if you want to support me, you can:
- read my books and yell about how great they are EVERYWHERE lol
- OR sign up to my ARC list if it’s still open at the bottom of this page
- OR if you want to throw money at me, you can ‘buy me a coffee’ via buy me a coffee
- OR support me regularly via the patreon (though I never post anything there cuz I suuuuuuuuck). However, the funds from this regularly feed me when I run out of money, so if you want to help me financially, this is probably the best way.
When I was twenty-two, I ran away to Prague, where I now sing to my black cat (who collects dustballs in her whiskers), eat chocolate for breakfast, and have lemon tarts every Thursday.
Sonya Lano 
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