with me…my blood ran cold just thinking about it. Something that just a few days ago, had someone told me I’d feel that way about seeing my own brother, I would’ve found foolish.
My heartbeat sped up: something that had happened to me more times than I’d like to admit since I’d come here. And I didn’t like the feeling. Not for a second.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. It didn’t work.
I let it out, thinking that my heartbeat would slow down a bit. It didn’t work.
I repeated it, again. Still, no use.
“Sign the fucking papers, you selfish bitch!”
“Princess?” I felt a hand brushing mine, and automatically I flinched away, holding my hand to my chest and staring at him with eyes that were tingling with uninvited tears, tears that were fighting with me to be shed.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a low voice, his eyes pitying me; it was so obvious.
I hated it.
A tear falling was my answer.
The prince got up, motioning to Mona with his head to leave, which she did after a nod of her head. Then he knelt in front of me, his green eyes full of concern and never-ending shades of sadness.
It was the same pose my brother had taken when he pleaded with me to sign away my soul to the…prince.
“You’re so fucking selfish, Marie. I can’t even find a word for your selfishness!”
“Princess, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” the prince said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper.
He knew what I was thinking. He knew the thoughts in my head were eating away at my soul. He knew I was disturbed by the request Mona had just delivered. He knew that it wasn’t something that I wanted to do.
But, it needed to be done. I’d have to meet with him sooner or later. And I knew I’d better do it now.
“It’s seems like it’s all I’ve been doing lately,” I told him, and he waited for me to continue, so I did. ‘‘Everything that I don’t want to do.”
He hung his head, the tenderness that he had just been looking up at me with now gone. For some stupid reason, I wanted to move my hand through his hair, and remove that look I saw flashing in his eyes when I spoke, and the words along with it.
I didn’t do it. I only wiped my tears away, held my head high and then I announced, “I’m going to meet with my brother.”
The toughness with which I tried to fill my insides was nothing but a fake dream that I couldn’t force to come true, no matter how hard I tried.
I was a shaking mess.
Still, I knew I could do it. I just had to do it. Maybe he was here because he knew of his mistake and the wrong he had done me. Maybe he was here to offer me a way out. Maybe he was here to take me back home.
I hoped.
“I’ll be in the sunroom,” the prince informed me once I was ready to see my brother.
I nodded hesitantly, but once he turned around to leave, I felt as if the room was spinning. I stopped him, “Wait!” and he did.
“I, uh, I don’t want to meet with him in here,” I admitted. “Please, I know it’s too much to ask, but I c-can’t.” My voice was shaking and my lips were trembling, unshed tears tingling in my eyes and hitched breaths caught in my throat.
I couldn’t imagine myself meeting with him here again. It brought back one the darkest memories in my whole life, the memory of my brother holding a gun–a gun that was pointed toward my head and ready to be used.
I couldn’t breathe normally.
“Hey, hey,” the prince whispered after he hurriedly took the two steps that parted us and stood right in front of me. It seemed like his hand was just about to caress my cheek, but he thought better of it and moved it away immediately, maybe thinking about how I had shrugged the very same hand away not ten minutes ago. Little did he know that I was desperate to feel anything a nice caress on the cheek would offer, any of the warmth and tenderness I knew that–strangely–his touch would make me feel, anything to replace the fear and panic that were filling my heart. Anything. Anything at all.
“It’s not too much to ask, it’s not,” he told me. “You won’t see him