And When the Empire Began to Fall

And I won't let you choke on the noose around your neck

Note: Pretty sure this is the shortest chapter so far, so enjoy

Star was awake when the knocking on her door came.

She sat up in bed, slightly confused as to who it could be. All of her friends were probably asleep, and would not knock. Was it somebody fetching her after her fit today? Was she in trouble? Anxiety made her heartbeat pound in her ears, and it was suddenly very hard to swallow. 

"Come in," she announced loudly, stepping out of her bed and onto the cold, hard floor.

The door opened, revealing Arlen standing in the frame, shrouded by the darkness of the outside corridor. He was dressed the same way he had been when Star had previously seen him, despite the late hour. Did princes not sleep? Or did they just have a charging station they plugged up to for five minutes every day? 

He had something in his hands, but Star couldn't make it out in the darkness. She squinted, reaching for the lamp on her bedside table to provide some light. 

"What are you doing here?" she questioned, slightly standoffish. She angled herself slightly away from him, subconsciously ready to run if it turned out she was in trouble. 

Arlen stepped into the room, reaching behind him gingerly to close the door. The items in his hands became visible. A box and a book. Star's eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. 

"To apologize," Arlen said smoothly. "May I sit down?" He angled his head toward the bed. 

Star nodded, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched him take a seat at the edge of her mattress, crossing his ankles. He stared at her, green eyes observing the tight pull of the corner of her mouth and the slight twitch in her jaw.

He thought about his words for a moment before saying, "I shouldn't have put you in that situation." 

"You said your mom wanted it," Star replied, trying to keep her feet firmly planted on the ground. She had a tendency to walk around in circles when faced with a conversation she didn't want to be a part of, and she was desperately trying to avoid giving into the habit no matter how much her toes twitched, aching to move. 

"Yeah, but I didn't attempt to fight it," Arlen admitted. "I figured it'd be good for you and her."

Star expected a surge of anger, but she stayed calm, level-headed. She ran her hair through her fingers absent-mindedly, curling it around her knuckles. She didn't know exactly what to say to Arlen, not because of a lethologica, but simply because she didn't know what she was feeling. 

Arlen seemed to realize that she wasn't going to say anything. "When I was talking to Glori—wonderful girl, by the way. She knows a lot of... colorful words—I asked what you liked to do in your spare time. She said you liked to read dictionaries." Arlen ran his tongue across his teeth, pondering. "I thought she was joking. I mean, what teenage girl reads dictionaries, but of course, you weren't present, so I couldn't ask."

He handed her the book then. It was heavy in her hands, the feeling of the leather—beautiful and glittering in the dull lamp light— smooth against her hands. It was beautiful, aged but not tattered. It looked like it was in perfect condition. The spine wasn't even cracked, even if the pages were slightly yellowed. She opened it, and the smell of an old library hit her in the face, comforting and familiar. Her eyes fell upon the first word she saw. Elysian. Adj. Relating to heaven or paradise.

"Wow..." she said hoarsely. The dictionary dwarfed her hands. It was much bigger than her one back at home and much prettier. "Thanks. It's beautiful."

"One of them also mentioned that you were wearing men's shoes, and I decided that I couldn't let that happen." He handed her the box, trading her for the dictionary. He set it gingerly on the bed beside him, the weight of it causing the mattress to dip slightly.