The Rebel Prince (The Season Series #3)

Chapter 12

My footsteps echoed along the marble steps of the painting gallery. The curtains swam across the walls, the paintings a blur as they danced past. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the muffled sounds of a struggle, the cold neck of a whiskey bottle between my fingers.

My feet took me exactly where I knew I was going, glassy eyes taking in Dorian Fletcher pinning Adelaide Winters to the wall. This was the part where I shouted, but my voice wasn't working. I tried again, my throat closed as Adelaide struggled. The air was as thick as if I was underwater, Adelaide's blonde face crumpling with sobs as Dorian vanished, the colour from the paintings leaking out from the walls into the air, swirling around us.

"Don't leave," Adelaide sobbed, standing before me now, in that dress so dark a grey it was almost black, the one she'd worn to Andrew and Libby's engagement ball. The colours swirled around us as I took a step towards her, only for the cold winter air to bite at my skin, the paintings fading into the darkness of the ballroom terrace.

"You can't really be leaving," Adelaide repeated, her face just as crumpled and tear-stained as it had been that night in the gallery.

"I don't have a choice."

The words left my mouth like a slap, Adelaide's perfect eyebrows creasing as she blinked her teary blue eyes up at me.

I knew what came next and I wished it wouldn't.

Her lips on mine were as cold as the stone of the terrace around us. I should have stopped her before she got that close, but I hadn't, my reflexes slowed from the alcohol I'd been guzzling all night to fight the numbness creeping over me.

Or at least that's what I'd told myself.

"You don't want this," I said finally, pushing her away more cruelly than necessary, "You wanted a crown. You lost. I'm no one's consolation prize."

The words had their desired effect. Adelaide's eyes filled with hate before she turned away from me, rubbing her arms against the cold.

"You once wanted me,"she said to the dark gardens beyond the railing.

"That was before you threw yourself at my brother for his throne," I fired back.

"You never wanted me again after the gallery," she countered, her voice threatening tears again. Crocodile tears, because she and I both knew that I'd made no secret about wanting her, even after the gallery.

But after the opera outing, watching her lace her fingers with my brother's and whisper sweet nothings in his ear...

"You never wanted me to begin with," I snapped, once again wishing I could bite back the words. But it was already too late. What she said next was still coming, no matter how many times the scene replayed itself in my head.

"I didn't love you to begin with!" she protested, rounding on me.

Right there. That was the feeling I wanted to obliterate, to claw out from my mind and rip free from my memories.

The hope in my chest, the wish that maybe, just maybe, the girl I'd idolized since I was old enough to realize she was a girl actually felt the same way about me.

"You don't know the meaning of the word, Adelaide."

"Promise me you'll come back for me," she said, her fingers dainty little icicles as she knit them with mine.

"You know I-"

"I know that you're clever and that you love me. You will find a way," she said.