Ritual

Chapter 11

"Alexios," Esmee said, with a shocked look on her face, and deliberately pushed Aizrill away.

"Your Majesty," Aizrill said, his eyes burst with self-satisfaction and smugness, and clenching my fists was the only way to prevent me from hitting him in the face. He didn't even look like he was worried.

"You're coming with me, Esmee," I said.

She hesitated for a moment, exchanged glances between me and Aizrill, and finally went back inside. I faced Aizrill with an angry face.

"You stay away from my sister," I told him through gritted teeth.

"I did, Your Grace," he said, and the arrogance in his voice pushed me to the brink of no control. "But she was the one who wanted me so badly."

I grabbed him by the collar, and just when I was about to slam my knuckles into his face, I thought for a moment about how my next actions would make me look, like a newly crowned king hitting someone in the face on his coronation day. So much keeping a good image.

Instead, I looked at him in the eyes and just let my anger do the talking. We remained that way for seconds, and my grip on his collar loosened over time until I decided to finally let him go.

He brushed himself off and fixed his grey hair that fell tousled all over his hair from what she and Esmee had been doing just now.

"Shall we go back to your party, Your Majesty? Let's put this behind us," he said and offered me his hand to shake.

I rolled my eyes. "You can find yourself out as soon as the party's over," I said, and left him hanging, leaving the back door open.

As I roamed the castle floors, most people had their eyes on me, from the visitors to the castle keepers, watching my every move. Now that I'm king, I'm always the center of attention and interest of everybody. I shifted my mood, which was hard to do, and forced a bright face despite the annoyance growing inside me.

I searched for Esmee at the party, and once again, I couldn't find her anywhere. I grunted in annoyance, and went towards the grand staircase to the upper floor and looked for her there.

My hands gripped the banister as I ascended the steps, and I reached the second floor where I could see the entire party, and I still couldn't find her. I looked for her in the bedrooms, and in the other rooms, the library, the great hall, the solar room, the study, but she was nowhere to be found, not even in her bedroom or mother and father's room.

I tried the third floor, which was just full of other empty rooms that I've checked, and I took the next flight of stairs to the attic and the roof of the castle.

The clutter of boxes and crates seemed unnoticeable at the night, and the big windows only let in a small amount of light from the street lights below. I could still hear the party from here, because the celebration reached the streets where people danced and caroused throughout the night, singing songs and laughing and blathering to no end, so lively and cacophonous that I could feel the exhilaration of the party from up here.

I went looking for Esmee there, and I saw her perched up on the battlements, looking over the dark view below. I sighed when I saw her because as much as I wanted to, I hated myself for being so harsh and humiliating her in front of Aizrill. I've never seen her so in love with someone before, and what I have done must have left a mental scar on her first romance.

I walked slowly towards her. She couldn't see me, she gazed wistfully out in the wide open air, and I looked in the same direction she was looking, and there wasn't much to see except for darkness and the lights and the festivity below.

"I know the way I acted was out of line," I said, and she jumped at the sound of my voice.

"You scared me!" she said.

"Sorry," I said, and stood beside her. The world below us seemed so small, and the party seemed inconsequential, but the stream of things happening there was so big. Someone could have been having their first alcohol, someone might be realizing their own life to a huge degree, someone must be having the time of his life, or someone might be having their first romantic experience.

I looked at Esmee, and she didn't look too crossed. Instead, she looked at the party so longingly, as if it's something she's always wanted. Maybe that was the reason why she kissed Aizrill, maybe she was lost in the euphoria of the party, and kissed someone she claimed she fell in love with in a matter of days. I asked myself why I couldn't have just given her what she wanted.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"You don't have to be. I suppose now that you're king, you can have anything you want at the snap of your fingers," she said, not looking at me.

"It's not that. I just don't think he's right for you. And you're rushing things."

"Oh, so now you're going to control my life?" she scoffed. "Even father wasn't as tight."

I fell silent and didn't speak for a while, just looking down at the hypnotic party below us. "I didn't even get to know who he is," I said.

"His name is Aizrill, that's all you need to know," she said.