Black Keys (The Colorblind Trilogy #1) - Rose B. Mashal Page 0,84
of my eyes, then asked, “What time is it?”
“A bit after four.”
Huh!
“I slept for too long,” I sighed, moving a hand through my hair and stretching a little with a small yawn.
“Not that much, you went to sleep at almost seven,” the prince said. When I looked into his eyes, I found that something had shifted in them, something I had no idea what it was.
“Yeah,” I replied in a low voice, my eyes searching his for answers to questions I couldn’t even place for myself.
“Were you having a bad dream?” he asked in a voice that was barely louder than mine.
I swallowed thickly, wondering if I’d been talking in my sleep. And though I didn’t want to answer him, I still found myself doing the opposite.
“A nightmare,” was my reply. A memory, was the truer answer.
A moment of silence filled the room, and I assumed he saw that I wasn’t going to say anything more about it than that, since he asked no more questions. That moment was followed by the prince taking a glass of water from the nightstand beside me and handing it to me. “Here,” he said. I took it from him with a ‘thank you’ and started drinking, thoughts of the, uh…thing we’d shared last night–or in the very early hours of today–consuming me. What I’d said to him earlier this morning almost caused me to blush in embarrassment, only because I’d said what I said and, yet, he was still being kind enough to offer me water and…those warm looks.
When I was finished with the water, I placed the glass back on the nightstand, noticing that small box I’d seen last night when I woke up from my little nap. I picked it up and examined it.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Um, it’s for you, why don’t you open it?” the prince replied. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said there was a bit of bashfulness in his looking-away-from-me-and-focused-on-the-box eyes.
I frowned slightly, confused by that certain look and why it was there, then opened the small box in my hands. I drowned in shock right away.
I couldn’t do anything except stare, but even that was interrupted by the blurry vision caused by my teary eyes. A wave of mixed feelings and a rush of a hundred questions hit me hard, paining and curing me at the very same time.
I blinked the tears away and let out the breath I’d been holding, still staring and still too shocked to speak. It seemed like all I was able to do was gawk. Ogle. Shake my head slightly. Press my lips together hard. I was just…I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“I hope those tears are not because of how bad the design is?” the prince’s voice brought me back from my shocked state, his tone urging me to say something. Anything.
“It’s- it’s…beautiful,” I breathed out, wiping my tears with the back of my left hand, my right one clutching the small box for dear life.
The grin that dominated the prince’s beautiful features when I said that was almost blinding.
And infectious.
“Thank you so much,” I said with gratitude filling my every sense and a grin decorating my face. I had no idea if he had any idea how much this meant to me. I couldn’t even tell how much this meant to me. So much. More than so much.
“You’ve very welcome, Beautiful Princess,” he said with the smile still living on his lips.
“It’s so beautiful,” I said in awe as I stared at it some more.
“Beautiful princesses should only get beautiful things,” His words expressed sincerity and it made my chest swell at the sound of it.
It wasn’t the amount of diamonds that were placed in the piece of jewelry that he’d just gifted me that made me so in love with it. No, it was the jewelry itself and what it resembled, what it meant and what it felt like to realize all of those things.
“When did you buy it?” I wondered. Because this beautiful thing in my hands wasn’t something you could just pick up from a store, and mine only broke last night. Of course he would have had to search for it or so…I just couldn’t get when would he buy this, nor where.
“Last night when I went to see Salma, I asked one of the guards to go to the family’s jewelry designer and get him to do this for you. I gave him