Princess Cyra is recovering from a failed engagement, a lack of friends, and possibly inheriting a kingdom when she meets High Prince Halewijn, who is set on making her his bride. When it is revealed to her that he is actually her assailant's son, t...
The rain descended upon the palace that night and didn't relent the next morning.
Cyra tinkered with the final cylinder on her night table, softly singing some words to a song she used to know as an item rattled inside. The door clicked open in the semi-darkness, and Mirabel entered quietly, holding a book in her hands. Cyra instantly recognized it as the book whose spine she had broken the day before, so she reached out to examine it. When Mirabel placed it in her hands, however, the book's spine felt sturdy and repaired.
"Your groom-to-be repaired it last night," Mirabel answered, grinning. As soon as the words left Mirabel's mouth, a crack of lightning and the following thunder crashed across the sky. "He's still in the library if you want to share your thanks..." She suggested, shrugging as she took a seat on one of the ottomans.
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The door to the library was heavy, but Cyra managed to squeeze through it. It remained one of the three entries in the palace to be unguarded as a symbol to all people that knowledge was for everyone. She dusted off her merlot silk gown before looking around the wide expanse of the room. The vast library held all kinds of books: historical records, poetry, music, classic novels, even some self-published findings of her own. The smell of the room - an old smell that either came from the books or the antique paintings, no one could quite determine - enveloped her, and she inhaled the scent of her teenage years. She spent many days and nights in the library, devouring any book she could before the sound of her mother calling her name began. The sweet haven had become less and less available to her, simply because she could no longer spend as much time reading about whatever she wished. Now she spent time bent over foreign policy and treaties, not fantasy novels and poetry.
Cyra began her task of searching for Halewijn on the left side of the library, peering through bookshelves and the desks along the back wall. When it was apparent that the left side was empty, she traveled over to the right side, almost immediately coming upon him, sitting at a desk with a book in his hand. At the sight of her, he took in her attire. Unabashedly, he let his eyes travel from her feet to her eyes in a lazy roam, then he straightened up from his hunched position, still dressed in his nightclothes. Glue and a sharp stick sat to the right of the book on his worktable.
"You fixed my novel." She spoke softly, the rain resuming its beating on the windows as lightning flashed. "Thank you." Halewijn tipped his head forward slightly in a slow nod, his eyes still transfixed on hers.
"Your lady could've brought your thanks." He whispered, his gaze unwavering.
"I suppose she could have." Silence. A deafening thunderclap. The windows rattled.
"You wanted to see me for yourself." His gaze returned to the book suddenly, and he picked up the glue, running it along the crease of the book page methodically. Cyra could not confirm or deny that statement. But her visage in the red dress with her hair cascading around her shoulders - like her mother's - told him all he needed to know. She opened her mouth, but nothing would come out as she watched him mend the book, then pull another broken book from an unseen stack.
