Royalty Check

15 | YOUR REPLY ENCLOSED

"𝓙ames," I shout, chasing after him. "Wait!"

I can hear people calling my name, attempting to minimize the damage from the disastrous reading.

As soon as James had finished, the Reddings left in a fury. The caterers had to quickly pack up the food, as clearly the event was ending early. And the crowd began to loudly discuss how I had called the prince spoiled, his parents blind, his sister vacant.

But I can deal with all of that later.

Right now, I just need to find James.

I speed through a tunnel of columns leading away from the courtyard. I've only come down to the village plaza a few times, but I know this links up with the castle gardens at some point. Maybe James is waiting there. Fuming, I'm sure. But wanting to talk to me? Hear me out? I can only hope.

It's not until I can hear the garden fountain a few minutes later that I see him, sitting along a low stone wall. He doesn't look up as I sit next to him.

"Hey," I whisper.

He doesn't say anything.

"James, you have to know, I didn't write that."

"It sounded like you," he says.

I hesitate.

"You're saying you didn't write it?" he says.

"I did. But not for this!"

"So this is for your book then? The prince has turned out to be a drunk...what was it," he pulls the paper out from his pocket, "'shell of a man'?"

"No!" I say, panicking. "I wrote it when I first got here. Listen..."

"I have listened. I have listened as you asked me questions," he says, seething, "I have listened as you got me to open up to you."

"I opened up to you too."

"And now I can see why!"

"Please," I say, tears falling down my face. "I don't feel that way."

James looks at me with icy gray eyes. "Then how do you feel? Or am I to believe that you still don't know? It seems you had no trouble coming up with words to describe all the rest of us so well. How is it that you cannot come up with words for that? Or is that you do have words but are don't want to say them, don't want to say that you don't feel anything?"

"No," I whisper. I want to say that I feel like I've never felt before. That I feel alive, that I can take risks and fail without losing anything that actually matters. And that's all because of him.

But his cold stare freezes my words.

James scoffs. "Honestly, Hannah, it's not even your fault. I had the feeling when you arrived that you were here to get material. But instead of trusting my instinct, I fooled myself into thinking that you were different."

"It's not like that."

"It's OK. You don't need to pretend anymore."

"I was never—"

"Enough!" he says loudly.

Silence.

I open my mouth, but I can't say anything. All I can do is watch his back as he walks away into the night.

Slowly, I realize that this is over.

His friendship, our relationship...if you could even call it that. Gone with one paragraph.

How did this happen?

"Oh dear," Olivia says, emerging from the shadows of the garden. "That did not go well."