He hadn’t spoken to me since, and I likely never would talk to him again. But he had known me better than anyone.
That life had ended long, long ago.
Sebastian was in there somewhere, roaming the halls. And yet I’d never felt further away from him.
When I saw Sebastian’s face my heart skipped a beat.
I’d only been back in Berrydale for a few hours when I saw it. Not in real life, but looking out at me from the front page of the Berrydale Bugle front page.
I squinted as the afternoon sun reflected off of a bank of snow on the sidewalk nearby. I’d come into the center of town to pick up groceries, but the newspaper outside the front door had caught my eye.
My instinct was to ignore it. Sebastian had always been embarrassed when royal family news was covered in the village paper. He knew it singled him out. He knew that half the time, the news was wrong, or just silly gossip gone awry. Every time I tried to pick up a paper and read about something his mother did, he’d bat it out of my hands.
But that was a long time ago.
My chest tightened as I picked up the paper. It was a picture of Sebastian at some sort of fancy dinner in the castle.
Ambrose Royal Family Hosts Belorian Diplomats, In Talks to Join Families
A tightly wound spool inside me unraveled in an instant the second I let my eyes focus on the photo of Sebastian.
It was the first time I’d let myself look at a picture of him in years. For so long, I couldn’t stand to look at anything that reminded me of him. So much desire and so much anger welled up in me every time I tried, until eventually I stopped trying at all. I treated Sebastian like a locked box stuffed somewhere very deep in my heart. A box I never opened. A box I’d die with.
In this photo, he was standing next to his mother. Three other important-looking people flanked him on the right. One of them was a young woman with golden blonde hair, in an elegant deep purple silk dress.
In the picture Sebastian looked… every bit a prince. He was dressed to the nines, in a suit perfectly tailored to his body. His dark brown hair was in a perfect swoop on top of his head, perfectly manicured to look effortless.
He’d grown into his body like I’d known he would. He’d been a little gangly as a teen, but he had filled out his tall frame, lean and well-postured.
His face was the problem.
It was arrestingly beautiful, to be sure. But his eyes were haunted. He didn’t even look like he was trying to smile.
Like he couldn’t even fake a sense of joy for the split second the picture was taken.
I started skimming the article even though every modicum of good sense in my brain was yelling at me not to.
“The Ambrose Royal Family makes an international splash again … Prince Sebastian and Princess Emma Janssens of the European Kingdom of Beloria were said to be cuddled up by the fire, rekindling a romance that’s been smoldering for years … Queen Charlotte is hopeful that a marriage isn’t too far off!”
I shoved the newspaper back onto the stand, taking off down the street. The clouds had shifted again, covering the sun and casting the small street in a grey haze. It was a short walk back to my mom’s house—my house—and by the time I got back, I had worked up a sweat under my flannel.
My heart pounded as I closed the front door behind me.
As a kid I’d always been so scared of ghosts, but now the things that haunted me in real life were so much scarier.
Sebastian haunted me. No matter how hard I tried to forget him. It was like a piece of his soul had ended up in me that night, so long ago, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I still needed him, somehow. He’d been my first kiss. My first love, to be sure.
I tried to tell myself I didn’t fucking need him now. At all. The thought of going anywhere near the Ambrose Royal Family made my stomach turn like I’d had sour milk. But Sebastian was an integral part of that now, proud and assimilated.
I had a packet of instant noodles somewhere in a cardboard box. I didn’t need to think about fresh groceries today. Tomorrow I could even go out and try to forage for some acorns, if the squirrels hadn’t all gotten them by now.
My life had been simple back when I lived here as a kid, and it had gotten even simpler when I lived in the mountains virtually alone. There was no reason I had to fuck up the years of work I’d done just because I’d seen Sebastian’s eyes in a goddamned gossip rag paper. I wasn’t a part of his life anymore, and that had been decided a long time ago.
I was going to keep to myself.
Simple.
Easy.
Fix up Mom’s house, sell it, and be on my merry way, moving thousands of miles away from here as fast as I could.
And I wasn’t going to look out the living room window at that damn castle.
2
Sebastian
I took a bite of my plush, still-warm cinnamon scone as Princess Emma took her seat across from me.
“Good morning, Princess Emma,” my mother said, sitting at the head of the table with perfect posture. My mother always sat up straight as a rod, watching everything around her like a creepy painting that follows you with its eyes.
“Good morning,” I added, wishing the drink in front of me was a little less fresh-squeezed tangerine juice and a little more champagne. We were in one of the fancier breakfast dining rooms, one that was reserved for when we had important guests.
“This breakfast looks beautiful,” Princess Emma said, her eyes scanning the table in front of us. Scones, bacon, pancakes, liege waffles, sausage, eggs, biscuits, three types of fresh fruit. My mother always insisted on a lavish breakfast, but when women were visiting me, she made her servants go all out.
Princess Emma Janssens was Beloria’s most beautiful potential wife, and that’s all my mother saw her as. Beloria was a small kingdom near Belgium, and my mother had been fond of their royal lineage forever.
And my mother had been trying to force our marriage for years now. Princess Emma was about as enthusiastic about it as I was, it seemed.
“You can take whatever you’d like, Emma, of course,” my mother said. “Natalia—please—”
Her voice was clipped as she snapped her fingers for Natalia, one of the kitchen staff, to come serve Princess Emma her food.
“I am happy to serve myself—” Emma started.
“Nonsense,” my mother interjected, glaring at Natalia as she rushed to serve the princess. “We have hired help for a reason.”
I made a mental note to give Natalia a bonus check and a ticket to a sunny island later that night behind my mother’s back.
“What are your plans for today, Sebastian and Emma?” my mother asked.
“Oh!” Emma exclaimed, her face brightening for the first time this morning. “I wanted to ask Sebastian if we could take a small day visit to one of the villages of Frostmonte Kingdom.”
My ears perked up immediately.
“One of the villages?” my mother asked, her brow furrowing. “Oh, they aren’t much, Princess.”
“Yes,” Emma said, smiling. “But I have seen photos online of such—how do you call it—quaint village streets?”
Emma’s English was almost perfect, but she still had a mild beautiful accent.