Lovely (Ruby x Dyrroth)

fifteen

Ruby was roused from sleep the next morning by the sound of the door creaking. Frustrated, she blinked the sleep from her eyes.

Who was it and why the hell were they interrupting her sleep?

'Goodness. You just woke up?' muttered a very familiar, very infuriating voice, and from her still-blurry vision Ruby could make out a slender woman with smooth pink hair peeking into the room from behind the door. 'How many hours do you sleep?'

Ruby gritted her teeth. 'Can you not judge me?'

She remembered all the stuff she'd thought of yesterday, about not making an enemy of Selena. Now she was thinking furiously, what was wrong with me and how could I ever think it would be possible for me and Selena to get along?

'Why're you here?' Ruby asked sourly.

Selena mirrored her look of unpleasantness. She sauntered into the room, not meeting Ruby's gaze. She looped a few strands of her pink hair around her finger and twirled them idly.

'Dyrroth asked me to apologize for trying to strangle you yesterday,' she said with a slight sneer. 'So yeah, whatever. Sorry.'

Ruby was speechless. She hadn't been expecting an apology, but Selena's words were so blatantly fake that Ruby didn't know what to say. It's alright?

'I shouldn't have done that to you, it wasn't a nice thing to do.'

Well, that was slightly better.

Selena stared intently at her fingernails for several seconds before muttering, 'I'm done.' She turned, tossing her hair over her shoulder, and walked out of the door.

Ruby still didn't know how she should react. If Selena thought she could simply forgive her, she was crazy. That near-death experience would haunt her forever, the way her grandparents' deaths had stuck with her for years and would probably stick with her for eternity.

Though maybe, even if Selena hadn't meant that apology, she wasn't such a bad person at heart. Ruby hoped it was true.

---

That night, Dyrroth visited her again. Ruby, who'd been dozing off, jolted awake when she heard the clinking of keys. She immediately perked up when she saw Dyrroth in front of her cage, looking fatigued.

'Hi,' she said quietly.

Dyrroth raised his head at the sound of her voice. 'Hi,' he responded, sounding tired. Ruby wondered why. Usually he was full of charm, but today he seemed oddly depleted of energy.

Being a prince is hard, I guess.

Appraising him with her single emerald eye, Ruby asked, 'What's up?'

He dragged a hand through his hair with a ragged sigh, and Ruby found herself hopelessly transfixed by how gorgeous he looked. 'Nothing. Just the burdens of being a prince.' His jaw tightened. 'I don't think I'll ever get used to them.'

'You will.' There wasn't an ounce of uncertainty in Ruby's voice, and she was surprised because she hadn't contemplated the words before speaking them aloud.

Dyrroth didn't respond. Ruby couldn't see his face in the near-darkness of the room. After a few seconds of nothing but silence, he prompted, 'You wanna go for a walk again?'

His voice was strained, and Ruby could tell he wasn't in the mood. 'Nah,' she said. 'You seem tired.'

He sighed again. 'I am,' he muttered under his breath. 'God, I wish I wasn't the Prince of the Abyss.'

Here we go again, Ruby thought, but not in an annoyed way.

'Everything is about making plans to dominate the universe. It's not even necessary. It's just that my crazy people want me to do it, and Alice makes me do whatever they want. I don't even have a say in it. How is that the way to treat a prince?'