𝒜 𝒟𝒶𝒾𝓈𝓎 𝐹𝑜𝓇 𝐻𝒾𝓈 𝒬𝓊𝑒𝑒𝓃

Valentina: 10

Luke leads me up flight after flight of stairs, and I start to wonder if he's stalling.

"Are we actually going somewhere?" I ask, skepticism leaking through my words with every syllable.

"Yes." Luke grunts, and it's unlike him to be this evasive.

We finally reach a heavy wooden door with dark brown knots intertwined in the planks.

"I'm sorry to waste your outfit on a trip up to the attic instead of a proposal, but I figure the fakeness of it was sickening you too." He says, jiggling a key in the black steel lock.

"What are you talking about!? Of course I was prepared to be shoved into a tight corseted dress and fake proposed to in front of a bunch of photographers in the middle of my afternoon tea just before being led into a creepy attic where anything could happen. It's the moment every little girl dreams of!" I gasp with sarcasm.

Luke chuckles.

"Well, as much as I'm sure you've dreamed about it, I have to make this decision with you. I'm not alone in this, and your future is in the hands of this scheme too." He opens the heavy door with a hard, gravelly creak, and a warm, vivid light shines over his golden locks.

He lets me enter first, and I cautiously step into the attic room, and take a look around at the room. Artwork covers the slanted in roof of the attic, and there is an oil paint kind of smell to the room. Easels clutter the side of the room, and a floral printed couch is rested at the back, facing a window. The evening light is glorifying, and the little golden leaves of the flower print on the couch glint off of it in a comely manner.

"Take a seat." Luke nods towards the couch. "You've been on your feet all day."

I don't know what to say to that, so I just follow him as he sits down at the couch. I take a seat tenderly, tucking my skirt under me, and notice up close that the sofa is quite worn down and sat in.

I turn to Luke, and the sunset golden light fading onto his face is a memory I know I'll never get over. His golden locks sweep over his eyes, making his tan freckles look as though they could be glowing.

He turns to me as well, and nods towards the window we sit in front of.

"My mum and I used to sit here. Just for hours, she would paint at her easel, and I would sit here, reading whatever my heart would desire. Nothing to disturb us, just the calming silence in comparison to the heat of the outside world. I would tell her words, words that only my logolepsy induced brain could comprehend. All the words so pretty, and some weren't even English. Most were Greek or Latin, and they had the best words. Words for sensations, not things. She would paint pieces based on my words. All of these paintings were hers, that she painted for me. Gorgeous, aren't they?" Luke glances around the room in reminiscing joy.

I hesitate before rising from my position, and indicate towards the paintings.

"May I?" I don't want to impose, but he nods carefully in his true, measured form.

I step up to the first one. At the bottom right corner, it's titled 'Solivagant'. A silhouette of a boy, holding a torch and walking in the dark with monsters surrounding him. Their red eyes glower down at him, but he's not cowering.

"Solivagant." Luke says from over my shoulder, and I jump, wondering how he got so close to me without my acknowledge. "Meaning a solitary wanderer. Someone who ventures alone."

"Beautiful." I breathe. I want to touch it, but just like any other painting, I wouldn't dare. These are special to someone, and I believe they mean the world to Luke.

Slowly, I move to the second one. It's a painting of the stars in pastel colors, with a flowered hill at the bottom of the canvas.

"Novalunosis." He follows my path as I view a painting of a grassy field beneath a starry sky. "The state of relaxation and wonderment experienced while gazing upon the stars."

Knowing I don't need to say anything, I drag my eyes and feet to the next piece.

"Antiscians. One of the inhabitants of earth, living on different sides of the equator, whose shadows at noon are cast in different directions." He whispers.

The canvas is filled with gradient colors across the space, with two silhouettes reaching out to each other, shadows in opposite directions. Warm colors shoot from one side, cool from the other. Golden light suspended between both.

I move to the last piece on this wall, and it entraps me. I gasp at it's beauty, not because it's surprising, but because it's absolutely breathtaking.

It's a heart, the kind in your body, and it's in the rib cage that's made to look as though it's being protected. There's ripped dictionary pages, all around the heart, artfully displayed. The words that were ripped from the dictionary are all words such as fear, panic, terror. But there are words like love, devotion, or compassion etched into the heart.

"My mum made that piece just for me. Philophobia. Fear of falling in love. You can't break your way through my barriers and into my heart because I'm protected and caged in." Luke's voice hitches. "My dad exiled my mum years ago because she wasn't 'fit' to be a queen any longer. That bastard had what was coming for him. All I have left is her gifts."

I stand in awe of the piece, and just how much it means to him. How perfectly his mother and him were able to be in sync and share a mind in order to come up with such wonderous images.

"Luke." I gasp, turning to face him. "Why are you showing me these?"

"Because," He peers down at me. "We may be enemies, or something of the sort, but I want to learn how to break these barriers myself. I want to let people in. My mum is gone, and now I have a hole in my heart gaping bigger than before. I don't know what happened back there in the hall, but I want to let you in. It doesn't feel like we're enemies, not to me."

His arctic blue eyes glow brighter than the stars, and my heart breaks in two seeing this person cover up loneliness with smiles and laughter.

"It really doesn't." I agree.

We don't speak after that. Don't ruin a good thing, as they say. So we sit and peer out the window, and it finally occurs to me why he took me here.

The sun sets over a field of daisies that stretch on for miles from the castle.

"Thanks for letting me in."

"You stumbled in yourself, My Queen."