Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
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.
“The streets certainly are quaint,” my mother said.
“I think what I saw was Berrydale,” Emma added. “Oh, it looked so wonderful. In Beloria, I don’t often get to see anything like it.”
My heart pounded in my chest.
“I would love to take you to visit Berrydale,” I said before my mother could interject. “I’ll have Xavier drive us down this afternoon.”
My mother’s lips were a thin, pressed line. “Of course,” she finally said. “Sebastian will take you down today. He spent some time in the village as a child. Sebastian, you’ll show her the fountain, and the rink, and maybe the dinky little Ferris wheel you loved so much as a child?”
I nodded, swallowing another bite of scone. “I’d love to show the Princess around the village.”
My insides already felt electric at the idea.
Because going down to Berrydale meant that I could indulge in my favorite secret—and secrets were all I had, these days.
I’d never been good at keeping secrets as a kid. Which was funny, in the kind of sad, not actually funny at all type of way, because keeping secrets was just about the only thing I did as an adult.
There were the small secrets, like the brief window of time between age eighteen to nineteen that I’d sustained a smoking habit, swearing my assistant Genoveve into secrecy about the imported European cigarettes I’d have her order. I’d take them up to the balcony attached to my piano room, huddled alone, smoking late at night or all day during the weeks my mother was traveling. Always looking up at the sky, rain or shine or day or night. Never looking down at the villages below.