Maid For You 4

Chapter 53

I had a boyfriend in college my sophomore year. Jayce. He once texted me the classic "can we talk?", and in my gut, I knew that it wasn't just a friendly chat about the weather. I knew he had something serious and probably unpleasant to say, and as much as I didn't want to hear it, my stomach had been twisting itself into such knots that whole day that I was more anxious about not hearing it. I just had to know what he had to say to me. I needed to know like I needed to eat.

Because maybe I was wrong.

Or maybe I was right, and I needed to let the ball drop. Then, I at least wouldn't have to suffer the doubled pain of anxiously watching it loom over me and the crushing blow itself. So I had met with Jayce as soon as I could, and now I threw on a robe over my penguin pajamas and walked over to Calista's room to ask her if she thought she'd marry Nikolas. I needed to know like I needed to breathe. Just because she didn't marry Nikolas didn't mean that he'd be with me—I would still be just a peasant in the eyes of Nikoto—but it did mean that there was a spark of hope. A chance. Maybe I could change his mind, somehow. Maybe I could prove to him that I was equal to the task, that I was good enough to stand by his side.

I blinked away the tears once again forming in my eyes, and tried to draw in deep breaths. I'd given myself thirty minutes or so after Nikolas had left to try and compose myself, and I figured that this was as good as I was going to get for a while—and I needed to talk with Calista. I stood outside her door for several seconds and felt my heart pound against my chest before knocking on her door.

"Calista?" I asked. I waited several seconds, and wondered if she was perhaps asleep. I could always talk to her tomorrow after a sleepless night, though maybe if I let myself cry hard enough, it would knock me out enough so that I could fall asleep.

The benefits of crying, I suppose.

I turned to walk back to my own room when her door opened, revealing Calista still in her lilac chiffon dress with red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

"Calista?" I asked once again, my eyes widening. "Are you okay?"

I saw her pretty little face crumple before she covered it with her hand, and I put my hands on her arms. "Hey, you're okay," I said, watching the tears slip out of the corners of her eyes. "I'm going to come in, okay?" I stepped into the room and shut the door behind us, and watched her thin shoulders shake as she began to cry even more. "What happened?" I asked her, suddenly feeling distressed at watching her cry.

She still didn't say anything, but began wiping the tears streaming down her face with the back of her fingers, revealing her quivering lip and her eyes shimmering with tears.

I scanned the room and found tissues sticking up out of an ornate, carved wooden tissue box. I ran over and grabbed a couple and gave one to Calista. "Come on, let's sit down," I said, placing a hand on the small of her back and guiding her to the couch. I took a seat next to her, placed my hand on her shoulder, and waited for her to talk.

She blew into the tissue, and when she'd composed herself enough to speak, she told me, "Prince Nikolas—I mean, King Nikolas—asked me to marry him."

I knew that was why she was upset, and yet it still landed like a soft blow to the stomach.

"I didn't expect it at all," she said, her voice nasally and stuffy. She gave a hollow laugh. "I had no idea that he was planning to—to propose." She shook her head. "It didn't even feel like a proposal. I don't know what it felt like, but it wasn't really a proposal. More like proposing a business deal than marriage." She laughed again—hollow, cold.

"I didn't expect him to propose to you either," I said quietly.

"I said I'd give him an answer in three days," she said. "About whether or not I'll marry him. He told me that it was completely my decision. He'll even tell my mother that it was his idea to not marry me."

I wanted to form my words carefully. "And you're upset, because you don't know how to answer him?" I asked.

"No," she said, clutching the tissue in her hand more tightly. "I'm upset because I do know how to answer him."

And for all my anxiousness to just know whether or not she would accept Nikolas's proposal, I suddenly felt that I didn't want to know. I liked my sliver of hope, and I wanted to keep it for just a little while longer. "Do you?" My throat felt dry.

She nodded. "I will..." her lip trembled again. "I will marry him."

I started taking a series of quick breaths, anything to try to avoid the impending tears. "But..." my voice cracked for a moment, and fortunately she wasn't looking at me blinking rapidly. I took in yet another deep breath. "But you don't love him." I decided to whisper—it was safer than using my vocal chords at the moment.

"I know," she said. "And he knows, too. But it's, it's not about love." She bit her lip. "You didn't grow up like us. You wouldn't understand."

I closed my eyes and dug my nails in the palms of my hands. Calista was just a sixteen-year-old girl, having to make and incredibly hard decision that no sixteen-year-old girl should have to make. She didn't know the way her words stung me.

You didn't grow up like us.

You wouldn't understand.

You do not and cannot fully comprehend what the choice is.

You don't understand the ramifications. I do.

You would be miserable.

The crown would crush you, Cassie.

"You say that," I started, choosing my words carefully. "And yet, you are clearly distraught about the situation." Distraught that she had to marry Nikolas, of all the people in the world. Lovely, kind, good, handsome, generous Nikolas. "I know enough to see that," I said quietly. "Ever since I've known you, you've expressed your distaste for Nikolas, told me and everyone that you have no intention of marrying him. So why—" I stopped for a second, trying to rein in my emotions. "Why would you marry him? You're right. I don't understand. I don't know why you are planning to marry someone you hate."

"I don't hate him," she said quietly. "Not really. I just—I didn't like that I had an arranged marriage. It was, it was my way to rebel. And I don't like him, not really, but...but I know he is a good man. And he gave me a choice. He gave me a choice when no one else did."

"But, but just because he gave you a choice doesn't mean you have to marry him."

"It's not that," she explained.

"Then what is it?" I asked.

"It's because it is my destiny," she told me, her voice growing a little stronger. She turned and looked at me with her piercing green eyes, brightened from the tears. "It is my destiny to become the Queen of Nikoto. It always has been. And I tried to outrun it, yes, but ultimately, this is what was always going to happen. It is more than just my duty to my country—it is what I owe to myself. I was always going to marry King Nikolas, wasn't I? I just didn't want to accept for a time."

I watched her, and saw the determination on her face.

"But," she began. "It doesn't make it easy."

I thought back to college, and remembered meeting Jayce in his dingy dorm room. He broke up with me that night, and the peace I thought I'd get from knowing for sure hadn't come at all.