Royally Flushed

Careful

~Malia~

My mind was still reeling from the knowledge that Louis was none other than Prince Louis, heir to the royal throne.  I wanted to vomit when Lizzy finally made me connect the dots, and she could tell how badly it had thrown me for a loop. 

"Are you okay?  You look a little green..." 

I had a little giggle at that and she smiled in relief a bit when she saw that I had relaxed enough to laugh at her joke. 

"I'll be fine, I just need a second to digest this...news."

"Totally understandable.  I mean, I'm sorry for telling you like that.  I thought you already knew..."

Flashes of his strong, muscular arms and tall physique swam through my mind in that moment and I had to force myself to shut off the mental picture before I drove myself absolutely insane with all of the things I'd said to him, and the things he'd said to me. 

It made sense, then.  All the things he'd said and done since I met him.  The incident in the hallway earlier that day rushed through my mind and I remembered how he had cornered me up against the wall and demanded what I wanted from him. 

I almost empathized with him, then, wondering what it must have felt like having to look over your shoulder anytime you had a new best friend, wondering if they only wanted to hang out with you because you were a royal. 

At least I had gotten a somewhat normal childhood; until Daniel and my mother passed away I had been relatively happy.  Of course, I had wondered who and where my birth father was, but with Robert being a good enough substitute back then, I had a father figure that I could look up to. 

But all of that was in the past.  That all changed the second my mother's heart ceased to continue beating. 

"You still with me?"

I shook my head and realized I'd gone off on one of my inner monologue tangents, not paying attention to anything else happening around me. 

"Yeah, sorry. What were you saying?"

"I was just asking if you knew who your real father was," she said and I shrugged my shoulders, hoping that she wouldn't press the issue. 

"Why?" I asked her, curious why she even paid that much attention to that small detail at the beginning of my grueling story. 

"Well, your mother was practically royalty.  What if she got with someone of equal stature enough to challenge the throne today with their child: you?"

"That's ridiculous.  I was born out of wed lock or something right?   Doesn't that make me a bastard or something?"

She snorted in laughter. 

"Hardly, the rules aren't that extreme nowadays.  If you were born of two of such strong noble descent, you could have a pretty clear path to the throne."

I rolled my eyes. 

"As if I would ever want that.  It's the last thing I'd ever even think about, let alone put enough thought and action into it that it would actually become a reality.  No, Prince Louis can take that throne and all of the fun that I'm sure comes right along with it," I told her with as much sass and irritation as I could muster. 

"Okay okay, I was just saying that it'd be pretty cool, that's all. I wasn't telling you that you should do it.  Now come on, I'm hungry."

I followed her into the kitchen and we chatted on and off for a few hours after we ate about our favorite things that we enjoyed: tv shows, movies, books, everything under the sun.