me back to where I was standing and not in the land of wondering, guessing and hoping.
“Come in,” I called.
Mona entered the room, the box that the king had given to me in her hands. “I will put this with the jewelry, Princess,” she said, her face sad and her eyes even sadder.
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
She went on her way to the dresser beside the window where all of the boxes of gifts I’d gotten in the past few days lay, and I went to sit on one of the armchairs, not really knowing what to do with myself.
When Mona was finished putting the box away a minute later, she came closer and asked, “Would you like to eat now, Princess?” Her usual soft smile was long gone, leaving sad features in its place which caused her to age ten years.
“Do you think I can find any appetite to eat now, Mona?” I asked softly, not really questioning it, but just telling her I couldn’t.
“I only do what you order me to do, Princess, not what I think,” she replied just as softly. I didn’t know if she meant my order for her to leave when I was about to flee or not, but I still felt bad about it.
“Okay,” I murmured. “No, thank you.” And she was gone after saying her usual, “Call my name if you need anything.”
I rested my body and my head back against the armchair, allowing myself once again to get lost in my thoughts. They were mostly about Janna and her destiny, the worrier in me wondering if maybe he didn’t kill her but someone else had? Because what would explain her dried blood on the inside of his elbow other than that?
Just the thought of her being killed made my stomach twist and turn, so scared that she had faced this horrible fate at all, let alone because of me.
God! Why, why did I go along with it? Why? I was such an idiot; none of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t done that. At the very least, I wouldn’t have been this worried and the questions in my head wouldn’t be killing me this way.
Time went by, and the prince didn’t come out of the bathroom. I wondered if I should check up on him because it’d been a long time since he’d gone in there, but I thought better of it.
After a while, I heard another knock on the door, Mona coming in after I called for her to do so. She informed me that the prince had requested for her to tell me he would be spending some time alone in the living room, disappointing me with her words, for I had been waiting for him to come out, even though I had no clue what I would tell him when he did.
She suggested preparing me a bath and I agreed. She picked me something comfortable and I wore it. She dried and brushed my hair and I didn’t say anything. She asked if I needed anything and I told her no. And when she left, the thoughts remained present.
Sometime later, I heard the faint sound of a door closing, and I wondered what the prince was doing or where he was going, or if it was Mona. I walked around the room for a bit, then decided that I’d just go and sneak a peek from the secret door that lead to the living room where Mona had said the prince was, hoping that I wouldn’t be caught doing so because it would be so embarrassing.
I opened the door as slowly as possible, only parting it enough for me to be able to see inside of the living room. I scanned the place searching for the prince, only to find him sitting in one of the armchairs across the room. The sight of him…broke my heart. Just broke it.
He had his head in his hands, and his shoulders hunched down and his posture screamed miserable. Knowing that I had everything to do with it broke me even more and I couldn’t help tearing up, saddened by what I was looking at and my hands’ doing.
He had changed, and his hair looked slightly damp. In front of him stood Mona; she was speaking to him, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying from my spot. He wasn’t replying, and she would stop talking and then talk again, and though I couldn’t hear her, I knew that she was trying