just fall | ✓

31.

The following few days were my own exquisite sort of hell, everything hurting from the memory of that stupid kiss. I knew that we shouldn't have kissed. I knew that it was wrong. But there was absolutely nothing you could've said that wouldn't have made me want to do it again.

Alexander and I didn't speak over these few days, and I half-wondered if he thought that I didn't recall what had happened. He wasn't anything other than stiffly formal like he had been since he'd arrived, so I guess he thought that if he pretended it didn't happen, I'd never recall it. Joke's on him, I was never irresponsible enough to drink to the point of blacking out, mostly because Salvatore was an expert drinker and taught me how to find my limits. I almost wished I'd been blackout drunk so that I couldn't recall it, because it made any free time a living hell. All I could think of were his strong, familiar arms around my waist and his lips on mine and god, it was the worst because it was all I wanted. I wished he would just leave.

I was able to avoid the Illéans at every time except meals; they were self-sufficient enough to not need my help, and the most contact I had with them was after the captain of the guard explained to them why he would be having them more closely guarded. They had thanked me at breakfast, and that was all.

Aquia was insistent that we get coffee or something together (and that we do it away from the palace), so we walked to a relatively close café that wasn't one of my favorites. I wasn't all about being her best friend or whatever (not after the past two years of her spending most of her letters trying to convince me to return and marry Alexander), so I was taking her to one that I generally took royals I wasn't familiar with to. 

I came to that particular café with royals enough that the waitstaff didn't even bat an eye, simply putting us at a table by the large, open windows and handing us each a small menu. When a waiter approached, I spoke with him for a few moments before giving him our order. I hadn't seen him in the café in months, and learned that his wife had recently had a daughter. Aquia didn't seem to understand any of this conversation, and I had no inclination to repeat it to her or switch to English for her benefit.

She toyed with her water glass for a few moments before speaking. "You seem to be doing well," she said. "You never looked so happy in Illéa."

"That's because I wasn't," I said bluntly. "I had too much bullshit to worry about."

She didn't exactly flinch, but she made an odd movement when I cursed. I wondered if they didn't do that in the palace back in Illéa. I'd never heard anything of it, but then again, I hadn't exactly been around long enough to find out. Her voice was soft when she said, "I'm sorry."

"For what?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Believing her. Celine, I mean. And for trying to convince you to first stay and then to come back."

I didn't know whether or not to forgive the apology, so I decided to not acknowledge it yet. "Are you still friends with her?" I asked. "Celine. I've heard that you all still speak with most of the Selected." I'd been genuinely curious for a while about that.

Her expression told me plenty before her words. "Yes," she said slowly. "We confronted her a week after you left, and she confessed and apologized. She was publicly removed from the competition, but we kept in touch with her. She was extremely apologetic and has been wanting an opportunity to apologize to you for years, but you denied her calls every time."

"I didn't even know she was calling," I said. "I wasn't given clearance to accept anything from Illéa."

She made a humph sound and said, "That figures. They've been keeping you from us for years."

The waiter returned with our coffee. I thanked him pleasantly, forcing my spine and shoulders to relax. "They haven't been keeping me from anyone. They've just given me more important things to deal with than some prince throwing a fit because he made a mistake."

"So why is it so hard for you to forgive him then?" She demanded. "If you can acknowledge that it was a mistake, then why can't you forgive him and move on? You love him and he loves you, it's not that complicated."

"Because I'm not going to dedicate my life to a spoiled child that wants to keep me locked up in his pretty cage," I said, my voice getting colder with each word. "Prince Alexander is 23 years old, and he was 21 when he made his mistake. He was more than old enough to think the situation through rationally and handle it better than he did, yet he chose not to. It is not my job to forgive every single person that makes a mistake, and I do not have to forgive every person that has ever hurt me. I am allowed to be angry if I choose, and I am allowed to be indifferent."

An uncomfortable silence settled over us. This was an impasse, and the moment that I realized why I had never been able to feel as close to Aquia as I had wanted: she was in firm belief of the disgustingly sexist Illéan idea that at the end of the day, a woman is meant to forgive all of a man's flaws and take him as he is for some toxic, watered-down infatuation that they lie and call love. Love isn't so toxic or so one-sided, and I hadn't realized that his was the textbook definition of an Illéan love until I sat across from him as he coldly accused me of having an affair with Salvatore. He couldn't have forgiven me for that sort of a mistake, a "mistake" that I wasn't even given a chance to explain or defend, but I was supposed to forgive him for destroying everything I thought we had on the word of someone that he knew would try to sabotage me? If that was love, I decided that I didn't want it. 

She had sipped her coffee in silence for a few moments, and she put it down and nodded her head, once. "I suppose you do," she said stiffly. "I guess I just thought that perhaps you'd put love first."

"I made that same assumption when I fell for him," I replied coolly. "And look where it got us."

She didn't respond to that, and I didn't blame her. What could you possibly say to that? There was nothing that could be said that would change either of our minds, and it was like we both had realized that our paths officially parting and going opposite ways. It was sad, sure, but I couldn't find it in me to be sad.