“You’re the most radiant person I’ve ever seen!” The once cataract cloudy eyes of the boy were now clear and soft green, sharp in their new colour. Hazel flipped through her spell book frantically as the prince stumbled off his makeshift bed.

“No no no, it was supposed to be cure for blindness, not love is blindness!!” She looked over her ingredients, scanning the list for the love spell to find matches in every one. But she had said the incantation for the blindness cure Martha had taught her, the title said right there… How had this…?

Gently shoving the prince back onto his bed, he sat with a petulant huff. She retreated, avoiding his invitations to sit beside him. Setting the weathered book down hard upon her wobbling off balance desk, she inspected the seam between the two pages. Someone had ripped the middle page clean off!

So while it said in small print ‘Love is Blindness’ above the ingredients list, on the other page it said in bold ‘Cure For Blindness’.

What had she done? This was an illegal spell. A very VERY illegal spell. That she had just casted upon the son of the ruler of the freaking country! There was no way they wouldn’t notice, he was… she turned around to where the prince sat, eyes nearly crossed as he stared intently at her. He smiled wide at her attention, a great grin that split his princely pink lips. His eyes sparkled as he beamed dumbly, and she found she couldn’t get used to their new colour.

She was so SO screwed.

Unless…

“You want to know what you can do to prove your love to me?” He nodded solemnly like a child and sat forward from where she had pushed him. “You have to ignore me”

“How could I—No please Hazel, if you—“

“Wait wait wait” She had to be smart about this, royals could only stand being denied or distracted for so long. “Not forever, just until the…” She looked around the room, frantically searching for a far yet close date that would seem auspicious. “Until your sister’s coronation”

“But why dear Hazel? Is it me? Am I not enough?”

“No!” She exclaimed. She needed to handle this delicately, a failed love spell was worse than a successful one, and if he caught wind of her lack of feelings he would enter into a broken sleep. The sleep of unreciprocated feelings, while usually painfully but harmless, when brought on by a love spell… she feared it would kill him. “I wouldn’t want your sister’s great moment to be over shadowed by this… really… awesome thing… I need time to… process—adjust, to this… fortune”

“Oh Hazel, why had I never told you sooner?” He continued crooning, comparing her various feature to that of nature, she barely stifled her eye roll. “Oh, Hazel, my heart, my soul, would you—“

He yawned widely, a hand still stretched theatrically toward her before collapsing backward onto his bed.

Sudden as lightning her world had become dramatic. All because of one failed spell.

She would have preferred mucking the moth stables to this, dancing around a spelled princes feelings over threat of his death and her imprisonment. She wondered what horrors a witch who pulled a mind manipulation spell would face after her trial…

No, no, she couldn’t think like that. She would figure this out, she would figure this out. First she had to…

She tucked the blankets at the foot of the bed over the prince. If he truly believed he ‘loved’ her… perhaps she could use this to hide his supposed ‘love’ itself. Used the love to hide the love. Without a thought for another plan she began haphazardly pulling out her stationary.

‘Dear Prince Hyacinth,

You cannot tell anyone about your feelings for me, nor about the things you said here today, you must play completely indifferent whenever you see me or I am brought up in discussion, I fear it is a matter of my life.’

She wasn’t technically lying.

‘You must push me to the very back of your mind until I can contact you to tell you I am safe, I fear that those who would plot to cull your feelings for me will stop at nothing short of my death. You must act as though you despise me if you are to keep me safe from harm.

With emotions, Hazel.’

With a shuddering breath she sealed the letter and left.