Anya

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

   "Anya! Wake up! Anya!" Anya turned over onto her stomach, she was not quite ready to get up yet, she had been dancing with Dimitri and just laughing with him until the early hours of the morning and judging from the tepid sunlight she could feel on her back, she doubted that it was not even nine o'clock yet and she was too tired.

   It was another perk of not living in the palace, she could wake up later if she chose to. In the cave she woke around nine in the morning, but just the fact that she did not have to and she was choosing to wake up at that time gave her a smile on her face as she went about cleaning up the few bits that had been left around the night before.

   "Anya!" The voice sounded tired so she gave up fighting and sat up, stretching her limbs, rubbing out the sleep from her eyes and letting out an almighty yawn.

   "What's with all the shouting?" She frowned, not catching the worry and alarm in Darya's own face.

      "Shouting?" She raised her voice, "I have been trying to wake you up for the best part of half an hour!" Her friend shouted.

   Anya pulled Darya down onto the bed with concern, "I am sorry, I did not go bed until late. What is the matter? Has Dimitri said something?" She could not imagine he would have done, he saved her life for goodness sake, he would not say anything nasty now.

   "I am sorry," Anya told her friend while rubbing her hands up and down Darya's arms, trying to warm her up. She was freezing cold!

   Darya shuffled up closer to Anya and clambered under the covers with her, the fisherman's cabin may have had three bedrooms but it was tiny, in the room was a single bed and box full of ice in the corner and a bedside table with three candles all at different heights on it, the wax joining together and keeping the candles upright.

   The cabin had not been used much over the past month so the smell of fish was only a lingering, passing smell that Anya had become used to pretty quickly, besides she ate fish that much at the palace that she had come to enjoy the smell somewhat.

   "What is wrong?" Anya asked now that the two girls had settled down and were more comfortable.

      The grave look on Darya's face had not removed itself, it only deepened. "It is Dimitri," and with that she placed a letter folded up neatly onto Anya's lap with her name on the front. The lettering was a little sloppy, the letters not the correct size but she did not know what it meant.

    "What... What is this?" She whispered, her eyes refusing to move off the letter.

      Darya gulped, "I think he has gone, he is not in the cabin. I only saw that letter on the table in the sitting room." She replied. "I have not read it."

   Anya knew that she would not have read it, she was too good of a friend for that and she knew that Anya enjoyed her privacy, in her old life of palaces and pretty dresses the privacy of her thoughts were the only things she could truly control.

   Her hands were shaking, she did not know what to think. Why had he left? What had she done? The questions were endless and they refused to stop infiltrating her brain as scenario after scenario of them flashed through her mind.

   She thought that they had a good time last night, they danced and were finally getting somewhere in their relationship of sorts, she was truthful and admitted to her true identity... wait, is that why he left? Because she was a Princess? She could only hope that that was not the reason. She could not handle another man in her life leaving her because of who she really was... not Dimitri.