Princess Spoken For

8 ~ Lonely

Late that night, long after the tea party had ended and all the guests had retired, Ariella found herself rushing to her room. Natti helped her out of her heavy dress and into a sheer, light nightgown before heading back to her own room.

The party was fun. Xavier, Edric, and her had played a few more rounds of Snowquet before the lunch was brought out by many servants. The feast was awkward – as was most of the get-togethers – but Ariella, quite frankly, had more fun than usual. However, it was finally time for her to meet up with her new friend to tell him all about her day! She did owe that ugly frog a story, after all.

With a soft smile playing on her features, Ariella opened up the balcony doors as she hummed, loudly. "Hops?" She called out to the silence.

There was no answer.

A thick, unsettling feeling nestled deep within the princess as she gracefully placed herself onto one of the outdoor benches, watching the dark clouds roll across the moon. I hate being alone. . . she thought with a sigh. Her mind raced with uneasy excitement as she went over everything that happened again.

The surprise of her brother at her door, her mother calling for her to sit with her, the fun games played, and the delicious food served, but most of all, her mind dwelled on one particular thing. . . the subtle flirting with Xavier.

Her face heated up as her thoughts began to fill up with the small teases shared between the couple. The soft smirk that pulled one corner of Xavier's pink lips higher than the other branded itself in her memories. Shaking her head to rid it of troublesome feelings, Ariella began to think of her kingdom. It was something that she used to do to pass time away, though now, it was more like a hungersome vermin, ready to gnaw all the meat from her bones.

The more she thought about her kingdom, the more the guilt grew. Are they struggling to stay warm as they sleep? She thought, causing her stomach to drop. Whilst I curl up in a plush bed, warmed by coal heaters? What hit her most, as if an iron fist plummeted into her gut, was her next thought. Why should I truly care. . . ? Intrusive and vile, the thought was a plague. Once it was there, she couldn't shoo it away. Forgetting the feeling was impossible as reasonings sieged forward to defend it. I am merely entertainment for them. They soak up my anguish like a dry sponge, ready to start a nationwide gabfest at the drop of a Serling coin. . .

"Yet why do I still care?" she asked herself aloud as if someone were to answer. Silence yet no one muttered a squeak.

Another sigh escaped her lips. The northern princess found herself doing so more often than not these trying days. If she lingered on it, Ariella would probably discern that the guilt started the moment she knew she was going to be the next article of gossip. The wedding that she had tried so hard to forget was now public knowledge. It wouldn't be so easy to get out of it now. . . and yet, as if it couldn't get any worse, all the northerners saw her as an adulteress, and why?!

For the Herald sang it so!

Letting her head fall into her hands, Ariella groaned, long and loudly. She'd be lying if she said she didn't feel a bit better afterwards, but her problems were apparent, still. "I don't want to marry him!" she cried out as if it was her last chance at changing her inevitable future. Tears stung her eyes as the loneliness hung solely in the air, choking her. "Why me?!" She asked again. "Why?" Again. "Why?!" And again.

Broken sobs muffled by her palms filtered through the air, squeezing between Ariella's silent companion. They seemed to echo from their volume, a cacophony of notes to her deaf subjects. "If death were the only escape. . . I'd happily embrace it," she whispered. Her voice cracked from her tolling weeps.