Unkissed. (Rated R)

53.👑

Crisp and clear outdoors, a ray of sun brilliantly bestowing down to the soldiers, I watch them march outside from above. They aim their guns to the commands of the chief, from behind my window their boots hitting the ground were thunderous, marching in sync and rhythm in a straight line. My mind brimming with a thousand words, the skin of my eyes ringed with exhaustion, and I found it difficult to keep a steady composure. So much so I continuously zone in and out.

I slipped out of my room last night for answers and came back with more trauma than before, and more disturbed than before. Through the slits of my eyes, I absentmindedly peer out to the scenery of a cloudless bright sunny day and moving figures. Regrettably so, I step over boundaries I could not come back from. Camps and organizations that lie within acres of my queendom. Dices of tension steadily roll down my shoulder and I slumped from the heavy exhaustion, planting my temple to the window, sighing as my pores stretch to the warmth that radiates from the window.

When three knocks on my door jolts me, and the raspy voice of Patrick in the distance calls me. "My queen."

Slightly startled by the sudden sound, I twist my head to his formal stance aside my door. "Good morning." I weakly smile.

"You were not at breakfast?" he says. His tone ladened with suspicion.

I suppress the need to spill too much info, or what I learned, and settled with a gulp. "I heard that cry again." I nearly muttered. As my words run across him, the apathetic mask he wore dissolves, and a tension releases from his shoulders.

"This is why you always sent me away isn't it?" I continue, my voice nearly a nasal whisper.

"Tiana-"

I cut him off, from the way he says my name I could see this conversation meandering towards another direction. Shifting from the point I am trying to make, "There is evil being done in these castle grounds". I now face him, reading the hesitation in his orbs. "I have always had this feeling; I have always felt strange occurrences, and that faint rancid smell of iron that would be hidden under the layers of cleaning supplies."

"My queen-"

"And I have always felt as though there were more to these secret meetings that are being held within the walls. But never -" I breath gusts from me in a flash, as if even my body refuses to believe it, and sudden exhale leaves me breathless. "Never did I expect it to happen right under my nose."

Patrick remains stiff by the door, his chest risen high as if he holds in a bubble, and from the way he is in capable of keeping an expression he eventually releases his composure with a nod. "I could not have protected you from everything." He speaks. "Eventually, you would have found out."

"And that's why this time, you did not make any preparations."

He nodded stiffly, basking in the knowledge I conjured, before he steps inside and closes my door. "How did you find out?" he asks.

My gaze guides back to the window, peering downwards beyond the marching soldiers to the young blonde that stood in between the men.

*Flashback to last night*

"My Tiana. I am Charlotte."

It begun a new chapter, and the start of a new friendship, my emotion sails on a smooth surface of a river, joyful to a new friend who was my age.

Charlotte mirrors my smile but beams even more brightly than I her sharp blue mellows, "Yay, besties." She claps her hands together squirming herself on the stool. "We need to do more things together, omg where should we start." Her eyes trail up to the ceiling in thought. I could almost hear the words scrambling in her brain.