Osten and I parted ways from the library around 4 to go back to our rooms to get ready for dinner. We spent the afternoon with him showing me all his favorite books in the library as well as his favorite spots to read. We discovered too we had so many shared favorites and that books truly were an escape from the world for both of us. Even though we had grown up in such different worlds, we had traveled into the same places through the pages of books to find escape.
"It is amazing that something so personal as the escape you find in a book can become part of a shared experience with someone else in another part of the country, of the world," he had said as he passed me a worn copy of Lord of the Rings.
" I never would have expected the Prince Osten I knew from meeting to be a frequent traveler to middle-earth," I said, grinning at him.
"Oh the Prince Osten you thought you knew definitely isn't. The one you are now coming to know has a vacation home there," he said as I laughed.
We just GOT each other. We got each other in a way I had never realized it was possible to get another person. Was it just because I had closed myself off from the world for so long that I had never given another person the chance to get to know me? Or was it because truly, Osten was the person I had meant to find, and this somehow fate or God or the powers that be had allowed us to find each other?
I walked down the palace hall in a bit of a daze, very uncharacteristic of me, and when I rounded the corner and nearly bumped right into Katherine.
"Watch where you're going!" she snapped, her hands forming into fists at her sides.
"I could say the same," I said walking past her. I wanted to get away from her as quickly as I could, both for the lies she had fed me about Ashlyn and Osten and because she had snapped me out of my happy daydreaming. But, she was determined to follow me.
"I'm sorry that was rude," she said, trying to keep up with me. I turned around and glared at her.
"You're right, it was rude, and now that I know you were lying about Osten and Ashlyn, I really don't think I want to spend time talking to you when I have had an otherwise lovely day," I said.
"I am not lying," she said, her amber eyes cold. "Besides, even if you are right, you are smart. You should know we cannot trust these people."
"What are you even talking about?" I asked. I could feel the annoyance and anger rising in me. I had been unsure about Katherine from the get go, but I was really starting to not like her. She was as slippery as a snake.
She grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me into an alcove in the hallway. As she did, she looked around to make sure no one was within earshot.
"The Schreaves, Zara. The Schreaves are not good people. This whole Selection process only leaves people broken and in shambles. Sure, one girl comes out on top and gets to become royalty, but it leaves everyone else brokenhearted," Katherine said, the least composed and most frazzled I had ever seen her. "I have seen firsthand what this process and this family do to people, and it is not pretty. It is time someone put a stop to it."
"You've seen people? Like who? Who could you have seen?" I snapped.
"Like my mom!" Katherine blurted. Her hands immediately going to her mouth.
YOU ARE READING
The Spare: Prince Osten's Selection
RomancePrince Osten Schreave of Illéa has grown up hearing stories of how his parent fell in love during his father's Selection, watched his older sister find love in her own Selection, and seen his older brothers find love on their own, but finding true l...
