I'm No Cinderella

Chapter 23

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I Promise

I didn't need to avoid the prince after our time in the sitting room, because suddenly he had made himself very scarce. So scarce, in fact, that I didn't see him at all for several days.

"He's in meetings with the King's Council," Evelina informed me one night at dinner when she caught me staring at his empty seat to my right. "Gian is very young for his position, so the cranky old men are dragging their feet on making their decision."

Their decision on what? I wanted to ask, but held my tongue. Evelina had become a sort of ally among the castle dwellers, but I still wasn't sure that I could rely on her for everything. She had been nothing but kind to me for weeks, yet still, I couldn't help but remember the way she had treated me before. The disdain in her eyes.

Had she changed her mind about me, or had her brother simply scolded her to be nice? I might never know the answer, but the uncertainty was enough to seal my lips shut.

"He'll join us again soon," Evelina had continued, noting my silence. "In fact, I'm sure if he knew how much you seem to be missing him, he would make sure to visit after they retire for the night."

I'm not missing him, I wanted to correct her, but couldn't get those words out either. After all, what else could be causing that sinking feeling in my gut each night that passed without word from him. If I didn't miss him, then why else did his seat at the dinner table seem so incredibly empty? It felt as though something were off. Wrong.

Not seeing him for even three nights felt wrong.

I tried not to think about what that would mean for me at the end of the year, when our deal was fulfilled, and hopefully, if all went according to plan, I would return back home. Some nagging voice in the back of my head warned that even if he allowed me to physically leave, that a part of me would forever remain in the castle. That I would return incomplete, only a shell of what I was before.

After all, it had been mere days without his presence, and already the loss of proximity was having such an intense effect on me. Physically and mentally.

I was restless in a way that I had never felt before, as if there was a part of my very being missing. If this carries on much longer, I thought to myself, then I may go mad from it.

Luckily, I didn't have to test that particular theory.

The note appeared under my doorway the night after the princess had noticed me observing the prince's empty seat. I wasn't foolish enough to believe that it was only coincidence. I only hoped that she had been a touch more discreet when explaining it to him than she had been at the table in front of Matteo and Sienna

If she had told him how much she had noticed me missing him, the note gave no sign, asking simply 'Will you have dinner with me tonight?' in his swirling scrawl.

I nearly scribbled down a hasty 'Yes' before I thought better of it and contained the excitement that flowed, unsolicited, through my veins. 'No council meeting tonight?' I asked instead, forcing myself to cross slowly back to the door to slip it underneath to his side.

'No, not tonight,' he wrote back, then lower on the page, in slightly smaller writing, as if he were unsure if he wanted to write it at all, it said, 'If I told you that I wanted to eat in my foyer, just the two of us, would you agree?'

I shouldn't have said yes, I knew that much. I wasn't even sure why I had agreed, other than the fact that I was feeling the effects of his absence like a physical force. That, and I couldn't stop thinking about how he had caged me against the shelf in the sitting room. I hated to admit that I yearned to find out what he might dare to do next. And if I would let him do it.