A Pearl Of Wisdom (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 23: Spilling My Guts

"Anise are you ready?" Jack says as he comes in.

I breathe a sigh of relief and explain that Maris had come to see me and that she almost caught us!

"Well, we will have to be very careful not to get caught then!" Jack says. Jack then leads me through the hallways, and we do the best to be as quiet as we can. When we finally make it to Prince Ren's room, I feel a bit excited as I had never seen inside his private room. I knock on the door and he replies with telling me to come in. I walk in and take notice of the beautiful interior of his room, it seems more feminine then what I thought. Ren is sitting at his desk working.

"I am sorry to bother you while you are working, but I wanted to see you since I have come back" I say apologetically. Ren turns around in his chair and it seems to take him a while to recognize me.

"Oh Anise is that you? Right you have come back from your brother's wedding, that is good you are back" Ren says with zero enthusiasm.

"Yeah that is right I came back with the time limit you gave me" I say confused with his response.

"Oh did I do that? Well that is fine!" Ren says and then turns back around in the chair and goes back to what he is reading.

"Yes the wedding was beautiful and  I was so happy to see my family again" I say trying to get more of a response.

"Mmh okay! Do you need anything? if not then you should leave" Ren says.

"Oh, okay then, good night" I say happily even though I start to feel very distressed. I walk out of the room and turn back and see that Ren didn't even look to see me leave. I feel very hurt, now I know that for sure Maris has something over him for his to act this way. Even when he was busy he would come to see me and take advantage of every minute he had with me. Even with the all the other girls he never treated any one of them this way. I have to think of some way to save him or she may even just get rid of him and all of us once she becomes Queen. I walk back to Jack and find him pacing anxiously.

"What happened? What did he tell you?" Jack asks.

"He acted very strangely, there is something really wrong with him, I just don't know what" I explain.

"You think it is Maris? Is she feeding him some poison or something for him to act this way?" Jack asks.

"I don't know? that could be a possibility? I will have to investigate more!" I say.

The next day I decided to escape from everything for awhile and decided to go visit the gardens. I was curious about the place since I read the letter from my mother. I wondered if I would be able to remember anything about being there or my parents. I head over to the grounds and walk along the beautiful paths. I touched some roses and wondered if these were planted when my parent's were still alive. I walk along the paths and see a house on the edge that looked abandoned. I wondered if this was the house that I lived in. I open the door and walk into the different rooms. As I stepped into the living room someone came from behind and covered my mouth.