Emilie of the Royal Heart

Chapter 29: The Princess-to-Be, Looking Ghastly

Once back at the palace, Emilie was too disturbed by Tiago's poking through her past to spend any time at all with Aurora. She couldn't even give him a good reason when she blew past him that she didn't want to see him. She went outside as the dusk was setting in over the palace grounds.

There was a forest out toward the village and Emilie let her feet carry her there. Her dress was going to be in tatters after this because there was no trail through this part of the forest and she was walking over and through high grass and brambles. She didn't care. She needed to be alone somewhere only the animals would trespass on her.

Among the sounds of frogs and insects and the sheer amount of noise she made crashing through the woods in a petticoat, Emilie could make out the bubbling of a stream. She quickly changed her direction and picked up as much of her dress as she could hold before racing toward it.

When she found the creek, she stumbled over to a half dead tree lying in the water and bunched her skirts up so she could sit down. The moonlight peeked through the divide in the trees created by the creek running through. As she stared down at the water, she let go of her skirts. Her eyes expanded in a flash when she realized she dropped her dress halfway in the water and halfway in the mud on the bank.

Emilie groaned in exasperation, letting her face turn up to the sky as the sound rumbled out of her mouth.

For months now, she had been convincing herself she wasn't feeling any stress. Because she knew what stress was like. Stress was hiding in a shrine for two days with no food while a group of nomads camped outside the forest nearby. Stress was leaving every book or piece of clothing or belonging she'd ever touched behind. Stress was having to disguise herself and walk directly through the nomads' camp to escape.

She refused to admit that she couldn't handle her affairs right now after going through all of that. She couldn't do it. Her path was a glass bridge and if she let herself believe traisping around palaces or mansions with servants and sometimes the royalty at her hand and foot was anything less than the most fun she'd ever had, the glass would shatter. She would fall deeply down into an unfamiliar void and she didn't want to go there.

But two minutes later, she was crying. How was she supposed to enjoy any of this? She had to be the fiancee to a Prince and with that came pressures she could hardly count. Tiago put something in her drink! He was going to expose her background to the court and to Aurora. And on top of that, she had to continue to impress members of the court and the Keepers of Tradition in order to be approved as the next Princess of Fellen -with implied consequences if she failed!

Oh, she could run away with Elias, but there was little improvement where pressure was concerned. Emilie couldn't imagine the path to becoming an Empress would any easier than that of becoming a Princess.

She wished she had never left the Countess. Things were easy with her. There were no expectations. After all, Analeigh picked her off the side of a street, her dress in rags and her face dirty. How could she have any expectations? Analeigh took her in and reminded her what it felt like to have a home - to not be fearing for her life every second.

Tiago would have never poisoned her if she had been taking tea with Analeigh.

Emilie hung her head. She peered at her dress and thought it couldn't matter in the scheme of things. She jumped off the tree and waded through the water.

Now that she was close with the Emperor, she didn't think she would have any trouble securing passage back to Zuhia. She didn't need to persuade him, she only needed to ask. Though, in the back of her mind, she worried that if she decided to go through with the marriage to Aurora, his brother might not be so inclined to give her traveling privileges. Even so, she thought Elias wasn't as petty as that.