Heartglass

Heartglass 32: Coronation

AZALEA

"I now bind this curse to start. With my death, the curse is done..."

This line repeatedly haunted my dreams after the hunting competition. Maybe because I was anxious about what was waiting for me after becoming the official Crown Princess. When I came here, it never occured to me that I was capable of being a queen, even denying the possibility before, but everything was different now.

There was no turning back even if I broke my fragile heart.

Yumi dressed me up after serving breakfast in my bed. I was now alone in the Ruby Palace and the whole place felt a little empty. All the candidates were gone and I was the one who survived.

As for the matters with the Admiral Duchy, after their dark schemes were exposed, they resisted against the Royal knights who were sent to capture them. Thus the Duke, Duchess and their son met their cruel end. They died fighting and the army they secretly raised and prepared for rebellion were immediately disbanded and some of them were punished and put to jail.

To show mercy and some consideration to Lady Candice, she was freed from prison but her title was revoked, becoming one with the commoners now. She was sent to the countryside, away from the capital, to start her new life.

Losing everything was without a doubt devastating but it was admirable that all these tragedies were not even enough to break her already breakable heart.

Though I could still feel her lingering heated gaze, full of hatred, which was directed at me before she left. Perhaps, hatred was the one thing that kept her going, that kept her alive. Hatred could also be a driving force to survive.

Prince Dion and the second Prince, Prince Grey, dealt with all the chaos. It had been days since I last saw the Crown Prince and somehow, my chest was constricting from this strange feeling of longing and yearning for someone. All the warning signs in my head were clear, whispering that I might end up with a broken heart if I failed to suppress these feelings, making me doubt all the decisions I made for a second but it was a blessing in disguise that Queen Adriana was giving me personal lessons about etiquettes and some royal secrets only the queen should know. That was why I could keep myself away from these destructive thoughts for a while.

Oh, how can love be this destructive? Maybe I am loving the wrong way.

I never thought that love was something this uncontrollable. My feelings were growing as days passed and I was hurting just by missing someone. It was a complicated feeling how I could miss a person when I actually thought I was already used to being alone. Maybe humans were actually not meant to be alone.

I heaved a breath when I entered the queen's drawing room, wearing an elegant blue ruffled dress with my red curls tied in a loose bun, leaving some strands wandering in my pale freckled face.

Queen Adriana was having tea with a distant look upon her face as she stared at the full bloom garden of red roses. The garden's vibrance was the opposite of the dead garden in the Ruby Palace. Her cold and beautiful face looked ethereal under the sunlight seeping through the gigantic glass windows. There was a mysterious glint in her blue eyes that I couldn't quite discern. Sadness? Longing? I couldn't quite tell. In the first place, I didn't know anything about the queen.

It was always like this since the king fell ill. Perhaps, she was worried about her husband's health but I might be wrong. The king's illness could no longer be hidden from the court and the nobles so they decided it was already time to pass the crown to a new ruler. Maybe the queen was worried about that too.

There were no longer peaceful days in the palace as the preparation for my wedding with Prince Dion was hastened. The servants paced back and forth to clean and decorate the halls and throne room. The seamstress got my measurements to prepare dresses for different occasions—for the wedding and for the days when I officially became the new queen.