His lips met hers, and he had a sickening flash of kissing a corpse. When Prince Abhorrent pulled away, his eyes traveled down her elegant body searching for some sign of movement—twitching fingers, the flutter of eye lashes. But sadly, her ethereal figure remained unanimated. Feeling his knees beginning to give out, he slumped against the cold stone wall and let his head fall into his hands. Like so many before her, the beautiful maiden remained imprisoned in her tomb, even as he tried to resurrect her. As with all the others, he had followed the manual precisely—riding his trusty steed hundreds of miles, fighting dragons and monsters, protecting the kingdom, and finally rescuing her from her imprisonment. Too bad the princesses never wanted to be saved by him, not by someone with such a repulsive name. Even the desperate ones would prefer to keep sleeping than have to entertain his love. He wasn’t an ugly prince—at least not as far as he could tell. He was just shy, especially when it came to kissing women he didn’t know. Sometimes he wasn’t sure he had even touched their lips, because he was shaking so tremendously.

After regaining the strength to stand, he leaned his head out the window and gazed down from the doorless tower at the surrounding thorns that he had fought his way through—honestly, what gardener decided thorns were a good complement for cold, grey stone? After fruitlessly scaling towers, taking abuse from thorns, arguing with little men and pursuing single-shoed, mute or lifeless princesses, he was beginning to wonder if there was a deeper problem. Was he was a bad kisser, or was the Princely life simply not his thing? Maybe he would make a good carpenter or fishmonger. Sometimes it felt like fighting Dragons was easier than finding love. Especially when his competition was so damn charming—literally, Prince Charming; now there’s a loser, but very popular with the ladies. If there was any justice in the world, they would all realize how many women he was actually living happily ever after with. Prince Abhorrent, on the other hand, had none of his brother’s charisma, his je ne sais quoi, just all the family compassion and honesty—and nobody seemed to fancy that. Welcome to the real world. It sucks.

All he really wanted was a love free of poison apples, evil stepsisters and conniving brothers. Wasn’t there a nice, sweet princess out there who wasn’t frequently facing peril? One who would like to go out for a pint of ale with a Prince, even if he wasn’t very good at being Charming?