Jenny Knipfer–Author

I thought I’d share an excerpt from my upcoming fairy tale novel, The Regal Pink, which I am releasing just before Mother’s Day on May 12th. Though the story contains romance for the young and the young at heart, it is also very much about a mother and a son, so I thought a Mother’s Day release would be meaningful.
💕👸📚✍️

Daniel
In the 20th reigning year of King Roderick III Evermoor 1451

She tried to kill me in my dreams.

The vision of it rested as real in Daniel’s mind as the clock on the mantle, which he heard striking midnight. As the clock chimed for the last time, he envisioned Diana hovering over his chest with a raised knife, her eyes wide and wild and her cheeks flushing as brightly as the bloom of a clove-pink. The dream had caused Daniel such terror, his heart still pounded thinking about it.

He sucked in a breath and shivered on his pallet by the hearth, which had now gone cold. Daniel stretched the rough, woolen blanket up to his chin. His eyes searched the small room of what passed for his home, expecting Diana to jump out at him, but no one appeared.
Hopefully, she rested better than he did. Her bed sat behind the muslin curtains sectioning off a corner of the room. The curtains hung suspended like a ghost in the moonlight shining in through the window. The fabric fluttered, brought to life by the draft under the door.

Dwelling on his dream, Daniel understood that it wasn’t the idea of dying that had frightened him. No, it was the fact that his friend, whom he had come to love, had held the knife.
What manner of alarming premonition is this? Daniel couldn’t understand how his mind had fabricated Diana taking up a weapon against him. Surely not!

Uncle Aldrich, Daniel could see. He did not care for Daniel. He only kept Daniel because he proved useful to him.
Daniel grew tired of working his uncle’s wishes. He dreamed of leaving the hovel they lived in, but he didn’t know where to go. Daniel couldn’t comprehend why his uncle had not wished for a life away from this place. Something surely kept him tethered to such a humble abode, or Uncle would have forced Daniel to lay a path of wishes that led to a richer life.

Daniel rolled onto his side and thought about his parents. He wished he remembered them. Uncle had told him little over the years about them except that they’d died in a fire when Daniel was a child. Uncle Aldrich said he had rescued Daniel— which Daniel would always be grateful for—but Daniel had no memory of a fire or its smoky fury.

Instead, when he closed his eyes and concentrated, he remembered the sound of splashing water, a garden edged with peachy, sunset-hued clove-pinks, several of which he’d clutched in his hand, and something red, staining the white, pebbled path. That was Daniel’s last memory of his life before he had come to live with his uncle.

Thanks for reading! J