Heartbreak

From the moment she was first admired for her pleasing face, her mother told her she must look after her heart. “Protect it fiercely,” her mother would say. And so, for years, she kept it safe, hidden from harm inside a gilded box, lined with the finest duck-egg blue silk from Lyon.

But, despite her care, her head was one day turned by a handsome prince with a silver tongue. He promised he would keep her beautiful heart safe, if only she would let him hold it for her. And so she opened the gilded box and let it be so.

But the prince was not a man of his word. And so, before long, the princess found herself alone, clutching the broken pieces of her beautiful heart.

But this was only the beginning of her story.