The Royal Quest of Floravera

🔜 Chapter Seven 🔚

By Arabella:
[December 4th]

"Never listen to your heart, or your brain. Your gut is what really matters when making a choice; go with what feels right." - Arnold

A Orangeish pink hue shines over the horizon, the clouds cover the sun just enough not to blind me. I stare out at them. The water below us I hitting the rocks is peaceful. I'm still leaning, well I should say hiding behind Milliani's statue, still watching the sun slowly set behind the mountains. I've been out here for maybe an hour now.

I take a puff from my cigar. I could be getting drunk like everyone else but that isn't wise to my safety, or Floravera's as I have the wand on my finger. I shrunk it down to twist into a ring, it sets on my ring finger, the branches hold the stone like a true ring. It's beautiful.

"Are you seriously hiding from your own celebration?" I jump, the cigar falling from my hand and landing on my dress slightly burning it. I pick it up fast and brush off the evidence.

I look up to see who just disturbed my peace, of course. It's Liam again. "I am not hiding. I'm just watching the sunset."

He stands beside me, looking out at the view. "You're hiding. Wanna know how I know? Cause this is what I used to do when my mom died." He turns to look at me again.

"Okay fine, maybe I'm hiding. So what, it's not like I'm needed in there." I look right back at him, well up at him.

"You are needed. Your people are getting drunk, and here you are hiding behind your great grandmother's statue smoking a cigar." He lets out a breath. "No one should be celebrating alone."

"I don't wanna celebrate my mother's death. You of all people should know what it feels like to have your whole world taken from you, and in the process of it you have to take on something even greater." A breeze of air comes through, and I wrap my arms around myself. "She died less than 48 hours ago, and people are already drinking. Her funeral hasn't even happened yet."

He grabs at his sleeves, then slides his  jacket off of his arms. "I know. I know exactly how you feel. Your heart was just ripped out, yet there's no evidence of it so people just keep piling, and piling, and piling onto the wound. I get it, but you can't just hide out here. You aren't gonna heal if you isolate yourself from everyone."

He wraps the jacket around me, then continues talking. "My dad did that. He isolated me. Himself. Everyone, and well you know how that's going so far. So don't do it. You aren't gonna heal by hiding out here."

His words hit deep. He's been through this, and lived with the grief longer than me, he speaks as if he's healed from his mother's death but there's still pain in his voice. I shed a tear, I actually feel for him. I actually feel something for once in days, weeks even, and that first feeling is understanding.

"Thank you, for the jacket and the advice." He reaches up and wipes my tear away.

"Oh come on, if they aren't happy tears then they shouldn't be shed on your coronation day." His hand stays on my face, slightly cupping it, making me look up at him.

"You're right. It should only be happy tears." He removed his hand from my face.

"Come on. I know how to get you shedding the happiest tears." He holds his hand out for me to take. I raise an eyebrow. "No buts. Take my hand."

I slip his jacket on fully, then take his hand. He guides through the back doors of the castle, then back to the ballroom. "One second." His hand leaves mine. As he walks through the crowd, disappearing.

The crowd is a bunch of people, some royals just dancing around to some classical music by the pianist, and his band. Instrumentalist? I don't know. There's a piano, a few violins, and a trumpet plus a few other instruments that I'm not familiar with.

My eyes move to the right as I see a man walk up to me, he's maybe 40s? He's got grey hair, no beard, well shaven. He doesn't look to be a royal, however. Maybe a high class civilian? "Your highness! I'm so glad to meet you." He bows, as he yells over the music.

"It is nice to meet you as well, Mr.?" I hold my hand out for him to shake.

"Mr Windsor, your highness." He shakes my hand. Windsor... he is a royal. Not one I've seen at least. Windsor family is royals to GrandVille. GrandVille is Grand village, or Grand Kingdom.

When naming Kingdoms we tend to name them after their characteristics. Like Floravera is Floral Valley for our magic tree. KettleVille is Kettle Village/ Kingdom as it used to be our main crop grower for kettle corn. GrandVille is grand village for it's grand time.

Honeymoons are famous there, as well as husband/ wife getaways. I think you can guess what they do there to have a grand time, and no they aren't playing crocket.

"Nice to meet you Mr. Windsor." Suddenly a song starts playing, one I know all too well. The song me, and Liam were forced to dance to by our parents. when we were younger my mother, and Liam's father would have royal meetings at least a few times a month, so me and Liam became best friends over the time we spent together, from playing with toys, to playing pranks on everyone in the castle.

As punishment for the pranks our parents forced us to dance together like a ball room couple. Then once we had learned it well, they made us have a dance recital in front of the whole town. To this very song that is playing now.

"It is such an honor to see you again, Ms Valente." He chuckles. I've met this man before? "You must not recognize me with the beard gone."

I look closer at him. I gasp, "Burty Windsor! How did I not notice you?" He chuckles at my realization. Burty is the King of GrandVille.

"You're not the first to have done that tonight, shockingly." He chuckles some more, then stops. His eyes shoot up to something behind me. "Mr. Kelvick, I didn't believe you were actually here."

I tilt my head back to see where he's at, the top of my head hits his chest. I can see the scar on his chin, he looks down at me, his green eyes piercing into mine. "Yes I'm actually here Windsor. Got a problem?"

His eyes don't leave mine for a second as he speaks, I can feel my breath being caught in my throat as old feelings start to arise of my old crushes and obsessions of him as a kid.

"No sir, I don't have a problem." I raise my head away from him, and blink a bit then stare at Windsor who seems like he's looking at a ghost.

Liam seems to ignore Windsor, as he doesn't answer anymore. I feel a tug on my arm, then suddenly I'm turned around to face Liam. "Care to have this dance with me again, Ari?" He has that smirk on his face again.

He holds his hand out for me, and I take it. "Happily."

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Hello, I just realized that one. WATTPAD isn't showing any of my photos at the top to anyone. So I will be adding a few throughout the story to give like an example of everything. Some of them may be poor ai photos 😂

Two. WATTPAD also isn't giving me any notifs when someone comments, so... it may take a while before I see them