Chapter 1
Tears streamed down Eleanora's face as the soldiers dragged her out of the car and up the stairs of the looming palace, she had long ago lost her voice and had no strength left in her to fight her way out of the situation. She had lost the will to do anything about when the soldiers had forced her to leave her father in her childhood home and come with them. The soldiers had arrived in the middle of the night, she knew they would, she had heard the stories about how they took girls like her when she was younger from all the women that had survived contest. At first she had blatantly refused to do what the soldiers had wanted her to do, , however this had resulted in the cold hearted beating of her father- leaving him bruised, bloody and unable to stop them from taking the only family member that he had left, the only memory of her mother, his true love. So for the protection of her father, she had decided to come with the soldiers to the palace, albeit not quietly, loudly proclaiming that under all circumstances and with no exceptions, she would not fully participate in the contest. Elanora had ridiculed and laughed at the contest for years, knowing it was just an excuse for the crown prince to get the girls and do what he wanted for 2 years before ascending the throne. It wasn't like this was the first time a contest like this had been done, the previous king had found his wife and fathered his son through a similar contest, ignoring the scorn that came with his arrogant behaviour throughout the contest.
The 'contest' was more formally known as the 'Contest of Ascension', as whoever won the contest would immediately marry the Prince, who would then with whoever won, ascend the throne and become King. Elanora didn't even know why she was picked to be a part of the contest, she was the polar opposite of royal material- she hung out with guys every day (the girls had long before deemed her as the tomboy and refused to hang out with her in case they caught boy cooties from her), she refused to wear anything but pants and shirts, and she constantly belittled the monarchy and refused to abide by the rules that they had given the nation to live by.
As the soldiers frog-marched her up the enormous set of white stairs that led up to the palace, a woman wearing a long, matronly white dress which looked quite tight and uncomfortable, hurried down to them and grabbed one of the soldiers. The woman started talking in angry whispers to the soldier that she had grabbed whilst gesturing wildly to Eleanora, the expressionless face that the soldier has on his face before the woman ran up to them changed to a look of horror as he was listening to what the unknown woman was saying, and as he stepped back over to Elanora to grab her arm again, the woman pushed him out of the way, stiffly walking over and scrutinising her with a displeased expression on her face. The woman had started talking to her, but Elanora wasn't listening, she was too busy staring at the group of giggling teenage girls that had just walked out of the main doors and down the stairs…
"and you will immediately need to go to hair and beauty when you go inside as you will be meeting with the prince and his parents very soon… Lady Elanora! Pay attention, did you even hear half of what I have been saying?" Elanora gave a groan of disgust and turned back to the woman, whose name she still hadn't learnt, and didn't want to bother to learn.
"Why should I care what you said to me? You haven't introduced yourself, you came over and just started talking.? For all I know you could be a member of the PATRS. Also I prefer to be called Nora, nobody has called me Elanora since my mother died." the woman spluttered and grabbed Nora's elbow so that she could attempt pull her the rest of the way up the stairs. The woman started talking again, this time a decibel louder, so that she could be sure that Nora was actually listening.
"If you had been listening to me the first time you would have found out all that you wanted to know. My name is Maureen Thomson, but you will either address me as Madam Thomson or Ma'am when speaking to me and I am the Queen's lady in waiting, and as I was trying to tell you earlier, right now we will be going inside this door to prepare you both physically and mentally for your meeting with the Royal Family. You will need to be polite otherwise you will be kicked out of the contest right away." Nora smirked, the first time that she had allowed herself to even begin to smile that day.
"And what if I want to be kicked out right away? What happens if I don't even want to be a stupid royal who has to wear dresses and makeup every day? I have better things to be doing with my time, such as looking after and providing for my father ". Madam Thomson gasped in shock at the absolute horror of somebody not wanting to be a Royal.
"Young Lady! You will stop talking like that immediately, this contest is compulsory for all the young women who were chosen and there are horrible consequences for backing out of it!".
"I know the bloody consequences of not competing in this horrible contest and I don't care. I just want to go home and attend to my father who was beat up by your stupid thug band of soldiers because I refused to quietly come with them". Madam Thomson put a hand to her forehead looking faint, "I just don't see how you don't want to compete? It is a wonderful opportunity for both yourself and your family because not only do you get to compete for the Prince's love, your family gets paid large amounts of money per week just to cover the cost of you not working!" "It's not that I don't want my father to be paid to cover the costs of me not working due to me competing in this contest, it's that I don't want to compete and win just to be given to a person like a gift for them to just play with and throw away once they have gotten what they wanted and they are bored!"
A new voice spoke up behind them "So you think that is what I am going to do with you if you win?" Both Nora and Madam Thomson spun around on the staircase to see the Prince grinning at both of them. Madam Thomson drew into a low curtsey and pulled on Nora's arm urging her to do the same, however she refused taking turns to glare at both the Madam and the Prince.
"As I was saying I refuse to be here and now that I am in the, oh so pleasant company of his Royal Highness himself, I am requesting that you discard me from this contest right here and right now! I refuse to be in a contest to win the heart of a bigoted and arrogant bastard" The Prince laughed,
"You really think that I would discard you at this point in time? You are the most amusing young lady that I have met today, you are the only person who has made me smile so far!".
Nora shook her head and snorted, refusing to laugh properly in a situation like this, "Either you let me leave on my own terms or I will run away eventually".
"Darling you will stay, and even if you do try to run away either my soldiers will find you or I myself will go out and stop you. In fact, I will be trying my hardest over the next few weeks to keep you here, and make you want to stay here with. If I tell you my name will you be more inclined to stay at this point?".
This time Nora properly laughed, cracking up with her hands on her knees trying to steady herself so she wouldn't fall down the large staircase. "Trust me Prince Arrogant, even if you did tell me your name or tried to stop me I would still find a way to leave".
The prince smirked suddenly, an idea coming to him, "My name is actually Gale Lennox thanks for asking, and if you are really that inclined to leave as soon as you can, how about I propose a deal?" Nora jerked her head back up to look at the supposed 'Gale Lennox', "What sort of deal? I will not be doing anything that any young, unmarried woman wouldn't do." Gale grimaced, "First of all that is a disgusting sort of deal and I will never lower myself to the standards of those who have joined the PATRA, I was going to suggest a little competition deal between us. If I can get you to willingly kiss me before the end of the year you have to stay until I choose to let you leave, however if I cannot get you to kiss me willingly before the end of the year, you can leave of your own freewill. This means that you will have to stay for a whole year and will not be allowed to attempt to run away or hide when it is time for the inter-contest competitions."
"Deal" Nora stated smirking, "however it will be a lost cause for you as I have never willingly kissed anybody and never will want to kiss somebody like you". "Then it is a done deal my lady, I look forward to formally meeting you in…" he looked down at his watch and fake gasped, "one hour, I guess now you won't have much time to princess yourself up, although looking at you now I don't think you will need much done to you Miss Eleanora, you look perfect just the way you are " he spoke, winking at her as her turned around and jogged back up the grand, winding staircase, disappearing through the main doors of the palace. Nora thoughtfully looked at his retreating figure, seemingly wanting to say something until Maureen lightly coughed, gearing up for an un-forgetful, and unforgiving speech.
"You really are one of the most disrespectful young women I have ever had the displeasure to meet, why would you treat the prince with such disrespect? He is soon to be the leader of this country and you have just spent your first encounter with him disrespecting his every word!"
Nora rolled her eyes, knowing that nobody would ever convince her to change her behaviour. She almost chose to turn away and start walking up the stairs, when a thought struck her,
"Maureen, how did he know my name?"
In return, Nora was surprised to see Maureen roll her eyes before choosing to respond to her.
"He knew your name because he was on the council who were choosing the young women for the contest, they also had photos to go with each name, and for the last god forsaken time you are to call me either Ma'am or Madam Thomson". Nora started walking to door where Madam Thomson was directing her to go whilst huffing and giving her grunt of disapproval for being told what to do,
"Yes Madam Thomson".
"Now Lady Elanora, we only have 45 minutes to get you ready for your meeting with the rest of the Royal Family as if you walk in like that you will embarrass yourself even more than you have already," Ella's eyes widened in shock at the beauty of the room that they had started walking into, there were mirrors everywhere with many dresses hanging off the walls that looked like they were fit to be worn by anybody but her.
"I don't want to go inside Madam; I don't want to embarrass myself even more than I have already today, especially in front of a TV crew. I mean, Madam Thomson are you sure that the council meant to choose me? First of all, I am nothing like the other girls here, I hate dresses, makeup and anything to do with love! Second of all, I am not even pretty like the other girls, which means I have no chance of being chosen because the prince will most definitely choose someone with the looks of somebody who will look great on the front cover of all the magazines and on the weekly TV news report."
She took a shuddering breath sounding close to tears but as she opened her mouth to talk again Madam Thomson cut her off, "Darling, I know that you may not be like the other girls that are sitting in this room right now in terms of your looks, however you have something that barely any of the girls in the nation have. You have courage," Ella barked out a laugh,
"Courage, me? I think you may be talking about the wrong girl right now Madam, I mean a few seconds ago I didn't even want to walk into this room due to the fact that I don't have enough courage to be myself and not care about what others think of me." Madam Thomson gently smiled at Ella and pulled her inside the room, Ella struggled only to be pushed down into a chair by one of the big mirrors. Starting to tear up with all the faces staring at her, Ella closed her eyes to block everything out only to jump when a masculine voice called out her name,
"Elanora, darling. What beautiful hair, what I would give just to have beautiful scarlet hair like yours," Ella blinked quickly to get rid of the tears that had begun to build up and turned her curious, baby blue eyes towards the source of the voice.
What met her eyes was quite a peculiar sight, a man quite not like any man that she had ever met before. He had a sense of style that was unique, but not unique enough to be questionable. She jumped again when he stuck his hand out to her face, obviously expecting her to shake his hand. Ella slowly raised her hand up and shook his hand tentatively looking unsure, as she was shaking his hand he introduced himself, speaking in a smooth, seductive voice, one that sounded like he had practiced introducing himself to strangers many times, "My name is Gale Martin and I will be your personal stylist over the course of your stay at this palace. Now look at me and don't move."
Spencer took the hand that had only just recently shook Ella's and grabbed her chin, tilting it in many different directions, looking as if he was deeply analysing her and trying to figure out all of her deepest secrets. His eyes were dark and mesmerising and as he was analysing her she stared into his eyes, not even really thinking about anything just staring into the dark space that were Gales' eyes, she was so mesmerised that she didn't hear him speaking to her,
"… and I don't think that we will have to do much in terms of polishing you, just a little bit of makeup to accent your natural features and bring out the blue of your eyes. Now your hair, that might be a little more difficult because it's so long…" Ella tuned him out again and looked around the room, not being interested at all in makeup or hair styling, whether or not it was being done to her, now if he had suggested cutting her hair, that might be a little different because of her emotional attachment to the length of her hair- her mother's long hair was one of the only memories she had of her.
There were many conversations going on in the room, many of them discussing Spencer and his good looks. She guessed it was kind of true, Spencer did have really good looks and she would be more inclined to compete properly in the contest if it were not for his bloody arrogant personality. Although, he didn't seem that bad when she was just talking to him for the first time. But maybe he was just trying to make a good impression and make her stay by being nice to her and then would show his true colours later in the contest to the girls that he didn't like or the girls that weren't 'pretty enough' for him.
"Elanora!" Suddenly there was loud clicking right in front of her face and she snapped her head back around to stare at him,
"I hope you were listening to anything that I was just saying otherwise you might be in for a shock when we are finished," Ella smirked again, this time less seductively than the time when she had smirked at Gale,
"I really don't care what you do to me, unless you cut my hair, and if you cut my hair I will be severely disappointed in you," Gale grinned, "Alright then, let's get started".