Blooming Stars

Chapter 10

We were interrupted when Vanessa found me. She came around some tall bushes, saw the prince, and curtsied. "I apologize if I'm interrupting, Your Highness," she said, "but I've come to take my sister back to our rooms. She caused quite a stir at the gathering, as you saw."

He looked annoyed with her. "Everything is all right."

"Oh. I..."

The look he gave her silenced her. I worried for Vanessa then, that she had angered him.

"I was just having a private talk with your sister," he said to her. His eyes landed on me once more.

"I see," said Vanessa. She fidgeted, not knowing what to do. I didn't know what to do, either.

"I am well now, Your Highness," I said. "There's no need to worry about me." I bowed my head. "Please excuse me, but my family is waiting for me."

He made a sound as I walked past him, one of surprise or perhaps confusion. Maybe I was being rude by leaving without being dismissed. But I still found his reaction a bit curious.

Vanessa hissed as me as we hurried away. "You should've waited until you were dismissed."

"I know..."

"He'll think we're ill-mannered. And you can get in trouble if you don't wait to..."

I stopped listening. I thought about what the prince had wanted to ask me. How stupid that I just ran away without waiting for him to ask! But I was just so embarrassed by what happened at the table with the other ladies.

But when I thought about what he said to me, my heart warmed. He didn't see me as ill-mannered like Vanessa feared. Rather, he saw that I stood up for someone I cared about, and it seemed he praised me for it. I didn't think it unusual to defend my cousin. It made me wonder how his world was so different from mine.

━━━━━━❁♥❁━━━━━━

It would be a few more days before we readied ourselves for the trip home. I was exhausted. After the incident at the tea party, I was not invited again by the other young noble ladies. What they thought was a snub was actually a blessing for me.

The blessing came in the form of visiting the imperial library. My parents were cross with me for deciding to go at the last minute, but I insisted, saying that it may be my only chance to go. I may not visit the imperial palace again for a long time. So, I went, accompanied by one of our most trusted maids, Minerva, as my parents didn't want me wandering around alone (they heard about my encounter with the prince that first day).

The library was larger than I had imagined, big enough to be the size of the emperor's palace. I thought how fortunate our empire must be to have such a vast collection. There were five stories with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, countless tomes that it made my head spin thinking about how many there were. But out of the thousands upon thousands of books and documents and scrolls and other materials, I had only one area in mind. It pained me that I had little time to spend there, and today was my first chance since we arrived at the palace.

With my maid beside me, someone from the library staff led us to a section on rare plants, and my jaw dropped at the sheer size of the section. There was no way I could go through everything in time. When I asked the man if there were any specific books on Ghost Stars, he said no. My heart fell. I had only a few hours to search.

Minerva helped me. We sorted through the first shelf, one among possibly a hundred. I wanted to find information on Ghost Stars that I didn't already know, but when I gazed upon the number of shelves we had yet to search, I realized I would need to return to the imperial library in the future.

"Miss," said Minerva, "this one mentions Ghost Stars." She handed me a book with a thick green cover. I set it on a pile of four other books we had collected.

"Minerva," I said, "keep looking. I'm going to start reading."

As I did so, I kept checking the time on my little pocket watch. It was already noon. Books completely covered the table I was using, and so far I had gone through five, none of which were useful. Minerva came and went, dumping more on the table until I told her to stop and help me.

Another hour went by. I had used only two pages from my notebook. I wasn't finding much information that I didn't already know. It seemed there was very little about Ghost Stars overall.

"Miss," said Minerva, looking up from the book she was checking, "perhaps the section on magic would be helpful? Ghost Stars possess magical properties."

I hadn't considered it. I instructed her to keep looking through the books. In the meantime, I headed for the section on magic, which was vast considering all the different subjects within it.

I didn't know where to begin, so my eyes scanned the shelves for the first interesting book that caught my attention. A book with a green spine on a high shelf drew my eye. I brought over the ladder and went to grab it. Standing on the ladder, I read the spine but couldn't read the language, but there was an image of a leaf with it. I opened the book.

After skimming the first page, I lifted my gaze and realized I was no longer in the library.