Maybe Tomorrow

Chapter 11 - Alexandra

TW: implication of self-harm (the act is not described). Please read at your own risk because even if it is implicated, I do not want to harm anyone with my writing. Take care of yourselves and your mental health, my loves.

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I am tense. And nervous. I am very much tense and nervous. More than I usually am.

I dread going down the stairs and into the dining room. We are supposed to eat with Charlotte. It has been planned before today even happened with her.

Under normal circumstances I would have excused myself and I would have told Agatha to get the food brought up to me. Only if my stupid big brother hadn't opened his mouth and said something idiotic like he did when we passed the library I could have done just that.

I could have gone forward in my life without his interference. I could have asked anyone in the palace I wanted for help because surely someone might have known the system in which they put their books. But out of everyone in the whole world he had to remark something about my problems here in front of the woman who has been going through my mind every hour of the day for the last many weeks and the owner of this place herself.

As soon as the words fell out of his mouth, I knew she would take on the opportunity to go somewhere with me where it can be just the two of us alone. It happened in the music room and it happened when she saw me riding on a horse. An idea just comes into her mind whenever something is mentioned and she immediately acts on it. And this was the exact same exact situation.

Now I am dragging my feet down the set of stairs after I have washed the sweat from fencing off my body with a rug and got dressed into more formal clothes. Agatha is behind me, escorting me as she always does, and I am more nervous about the confrontation that could come about what occurred on the bench between us.

What happened wasn't anything too special. Our hands merely made contact for not only a full minute but it felt like eternity in that moment. It felt like something a lot more between us and a lot more than we should be feeling towards each other. I am the one who made the first move of my hand. Something that I have never done before and it felt...exceptional. Like I was meant to be there at that moment just so our hands could touch. Only one light brush of a finger.

And I knew she felt it too. The shiver of her hand when our hands brushed against each other. The excitement from one single touch. Or I believed she must have so I wouldn't be the only one who felt it everywhere in my body and that her body reacted to me and not just to the weather

But then the nausea came after I heard that voice again and had to pull away.

Everything was complicated, to say the least.

When I finally make it into the dining room, I take a seat beside my mother, an exhausted breath leaving me. Not from physical exhaustion but from an emotional one.

Or perhaps physical as well from walking down this palaces' set of stairs.

"What is it, kóri?" My mother's worried tone brings me out of my spiral, her hand closest to me rubbing my back in comfort.

"Everything is alright, mamá. I am only tired after today's fencing hour with Nicholas," I assure her, knowing she will believe my little lie as this happens all the time back home after our fights.

"Are you sure it was an hour? I heard it were almost three, *korítsi mou. You should have stopped much sooner than you did. And Her Majesty had to be there for most of it, which at least one of you could have realised she might not want to spend her afternoon watching the two of you," she scolds, her hand gently slapping the back of my head.