Emilie of the Royal Heart

Chapter 64: Sunset

There was nothing. Nothing at all. Not even when Emilie checked the central Codes twice. Not even three times. Analeigh could find nothing. Cedric barely knew where to look. Aurora was practically ripping out his hair and trying to hide it, though his longing stares at Emilie were quite obvious. Rebecca did her fair share, but she had a baby to get home to. She left early.

When the sun started setting, Emilie cursed the blazing star and started to look places there certainly would be no answer. It felt beyond silly to be looking in the Code of Sportsmanship for a way to cancel out her banishment, but there was an hour left before she was forcibly removed from Tilzen. She was desperate.

A knock on the door. Everyone looked. The door creaked open despite the lack of invitation. It was Zuli who stepped inside. There was a hard expression across her face. Analeigh seemed to know what this meant first, but Zuli explained it to the room.

"I'll be escorting Emilie to the border. I'm here to collect her."

"You can't," Cedric protested, "the sun hasn't set yet!"

"Is everything else prepared?" Aurora asked.

Zuli nodded, "yes, my prince."

"Then we'll work until the light disappears. I know you can't hold the Keepers back more than that," he told her with a grateful nod. Zuli stood post at the door.

And still there was nothing. When the lights inside started to illuminate more than the sun, Emilie stopped reading the words on the page. She still pretended to look. She pretended for him. Aurora was tearing his books apart searching for a way to keep her.

The dark descended upon the study and Analeigh covered Emilie's hand with her own, teary eyed. Emilie peered up at Zuli. The knight nodded. It was time.

Emilie rose with as much dignity as she could gather around herself. She brushed off her skirts and her bodice in an attempt to brush away the thousands of words that failed her today, coating her like dust. She inhaled slowly. Why did this feel like voluntarily walking onto Tiago's knife? She stirred up a melancholy smile as she turned to the Countess.

"Thank you, Analeigh," she began softly, "for the wonderful home you gave me when I had none. You... hold a very special corner of my heart. I hope you know what I mean."

"I would've liked to have tea at least once more," Analeigh wilted.

Emilie wrapped her arms around her and the Countess brought her elegant hands to her back. After a bittersweet squeeze, their embrace disintegrated and Emilie stepped across the floor books to Cedric.

"I'm afraid most of your beautiful gowns will stay in the back of my closet," she sputtered, trying very hard not to cry in front of him.

"You'll have to take them out for a spin, then. For me. You could make a holiday of it. Dress Day -once every year," Cedric declared with a strangely taut mouth.

"You have been such a close and dear confidant to me, Cedric. I still have your pawed handkerchief and it will remind me of you always."

She embraced him with a running start. She needed to hide her face. Cedric's long arms draped around her loosely as though he couldn't bear to try and hold onto her anymore. Emilie understood and only hated him a little bit for it. Even still, she wished she could stay in his arms forever because the thought of moving along to Aurora was enough to cripple her and she didn't want Zuli to have to carry her like a crying toddler to the carriage.

Soon enough though, Cedric couldn't be her scapegoat anymore. He let go of her, arms dropping at his sides. Emilie leaned back and pivoted to her Prince.

Aurora cried. If she had never dared to look at his face, she would never have known. His breaths kept even. He stood tall, his posture just as it always was. Hands in his pockets. Though his head hung, he could've merely been in contemplation. But when Emilie stepped up to him, craning her neck just enough to look under the tilt of his head, his eyes betrayed him so spectacularly.

Eyes glowing reddish-pink where there once was pure white and the earthy brown of his irises turned to mud puddles in the rain. His tears followed the paths she once created with her touch. The droplets trickled across his umber skin and ran into his contusions. Emilie expected the colors to bleed across the canvas of his face like a devastating watercolor painting.

She opened her mouth. And nothing came out.

Anything she said would live in their minds forever. She couldn't think of something that wouldn't hurt as deeply as leaving him. She didn't know anything she could tell him that would make him feel better. Emilie couldn't stick to one word or two or three or seven hundred. If she let one word pass through her lips, she would have volumes of words to say to him and she would be stopped before she could get through it all. She didn't want to leave in the middle of a sentence.

Emilie stared back at him with teardrops in her eyelashes obscuring her vision. Her lips quivered. Her throat clenched tight. She couldn't let it all through. She couldn't. For both their sakes.

She rested her hand on his shoulder and leaned in to kiss him. It was barely a brush against his lips. Their mouths chastely pressed together, trading teardrops until Emilie tore away from him to cover a sob with her hand.

Her feet absently drifted backward. Suddenly Zuli was right next to her.

"We have to leave now or else there will be chaos," the knight explained strongly, though not unsympathetically.

Emilie kept her hand over her mouth. She squinted her eyes shut, pain turning her soul to stone inside of her body, but she nodded and let Zuli take her hand. However much she wanted to look back at Aurora one last time, she knew once more was a lethal dose. She attached her gaze to the floor until the floor became gravel road and then became the bottom of a still carriage and then became a moving carriage that was no longer sitting in the courtyard of the palace, but traveling swiftly to the Fellen border.