Two Worlds

Chapter 2 🌶️🌶️

A/N No smut but some parts may turn you on. For those who wish to skip there will be an emoji before and after the explicit content. Otherwise, enjoy! 😊🍿🥤

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Sitting at the dinner table with my father and brother. You could cut the tension with a butter knife it was so quiet. My father, King Orson, sat at the head, regal and imposing, his sharp eyes watching me with that calculating gaze I had known all my life. My older brother, Andreas, sat to my right, his expression unreadable, though I had already accepted what was to come.

I had heard their hushed conversation an hour earlier. I already knew what was about to be said, and yet I wasn't ready.

How can I be?

"Leah, it's time for you to fulfill your duty as a princess." He paused as if weighing his next words carefully. "I have arranged for you to marry King Ignatius of Juvelia."

I clenched my hands beneath the table, forcing my face into a mask of calm. The words I had dreaded hung in the air. I had known this moment was coming. I had overheard their conversation, but hearing it spoken aloud made it all the more real.

Marry King Ignatius? A man I had never met, a man with a reputation for cruelty and excess, someone far older than me. My heart pounded against my ribs, and I could feel a knot tightening in my throat. But I said nothing. What could I say? As a princess, my fate was not my own. My life was about duty and sacrifice, not personal desires or dreams.

I stared at my plate, the food suddenly tasteless, as if the very idea of marrying him had drained every bit of flavor from my life. Silence stretched between us.

Am I expected to smile and thank him for deciding my future for me?

"Leah," Andreas whispered, pulling me out of my thoughts, "do you even want to marry Ignatius?"

I lifted my gaze to meet his, and for a moment, my mask slipped.

Do I want this? No, of course not! But wanting had never been part of my reality.

"My duty comes first," I replied, my voice steady though inside I felt a storm raging. "As a princess of Sylvanar, I must make choices that benefit the kingdom and our family. This is what it means to be royal."

I wanted to make my father proud. But the cost—oh, the cost.

With every word, it felt like I was killing a part of myself. The free-spirited girl who had once dreamed of adventure, who had once believed she could choose her own path, now felt trapped by the gilded cage of the crown. Was this what it meant to be a princess? Was this the price of duty?

My father nodded approvingly as if he had expected nothing less. "Good," he said, his tone final. "You understand."

I nodded, my stomach twisting. I understood all too well. There was no escaping my father's decisions.