Ivana
I blurted out his name by mistake. I wished the ground would open up and swallow me. How I wished a meteor would simply drop onto the palace and burn me to the ground. Fuck it, I made a mistake. I slowly shut my eyes.
"You know him?"
My eyes opened as the pretty blonde from earlier that had been all over the king stepped closer to me.
"Yes, Mr. Lucas White," she said with a being smile stretched across her face.
"Of course I know him," I mumbled, thinking of a lie right on the spot. I'd seen his face countless times in magazines and the likes. I patted myself on the back mentally. "He seems like such a family-friendly face at this point, isn't he? Leicester Lucas, cuz?"
I quickly covered up my nervousness without a lie but felt the king's eyes on me, on the list, and a shiver ran down my spine. I hated the way he looked at me—the way he always seemed to be reading me like a book. He always did that, even when we were younger. Even 15 years ago, they always seemed to be more fascinated by me than others. All the other servants would rather look down and avoid me. I always seemed to feel as though I was more like—if you get them—an actual human being, he had once said.
I simply rubbed my 15-year-old mind, hardly comprehending the true meaning of his words.
"While you're the prince," I had said, and he responded, "And that's with their toes."
And you? He leaned closer, causing a southern Russian blush to my cheeks, my ears, my everywhere. My eyes widened and my 15-year-old mind had effectively melted to nothing. And here he was doing it again.
Perhaps I made a mistake by simply being myself, simply looking at him rather than away, simply looking at the floor, as would have been better—but I suppose it was great he didn't mind. I would always look at him. He was too beautiful to look away from, otherwise.
Lucas, however, had other ideas. Lucas cleared his throat, I mean, briefly, and then looked at the king.
"I don't believe I've had the privilege of meeting you, miss?" Lucas stretched out a hand towards me.
"Gray," I said quickly, thrusting my hand into this familiar, large, warm one.
"Of course," he said before he turned back to the king, behaving as if I didn't exist. But I could understand.
I soon excused myself from the conversation that didn't concern me and headed to the restroom. Except that I didn't go to the restroom, in fact. I headed about Ganier—I remembered going there when I was younger, not so far from the greenhouse and then the other greenhouse that would be used mainly as an orchard. The balcony was there and I knew it served as an escape for the prince when he was younger. Yet somehow, my feet led me there.
The scent of apples and peaches filled my nose, nearly bringing me to tears. I remembered almost confessing that I loved him. Of course, my 15-year-old heart could hardly comprehend the true meaning of the word, but even now I felt it still tugging in my chest—the need to comfortably say that it was me, the me to beg him that I wasn't the one who tried to do it, but I wasn't the one who nearly killed him. But he wouldn't listen. And in his eyes, I might as well have been a fugitive.
"What are you doing here?"
My eyes widened, my breath caught in my throat, my feet glued to the ground, and my body stiffened by a sudden summer ghost of a breeze that threatened to freeze me on the spot.
"Grace Kelly," he said, drawing out the name as if he knew it was nothing but a lie.
"What are you doing here?"
He stepped closer until he was beside me. Suddenly, I felt a heavy object—warm fabric—on my shoulder.
He had placed a jacket over me, warming me, and now instead of freezing, I was effectively melting on the spot. That was his scent.
"I'm not doing anything here," I said. "I was just walking and I got lost." I mumbled my flimsy excuse.
"But it seems nice here. I wouldn't have thought the palace actually grew its own apples, am I right?" I laughed it off, waving even and somehow picking up the cuff of his jacket and playing around with the buttons.
He looked down at my fingers, then up at my face.
"I can't help it. Too familiar to do that," he said.
"There's only one person I know who likes to play with my buttons," he said, slowly moving closer to me.
"But there's no way you would be hurt," he said. "If you were, it would have you arrested and thrown in prison for a time—for murder and treason."
I chuckled nervously despite how breathless and bloodless I felt. My limbs were like spaghetti. I would have fallen if not for the railings of the balcony I gripped with my dear life.
"Oh goodness," I chuckled. "Me? Oh my, perhaps I should leave." I reached for the jacket around my shoulders.
"No," he said. "There's no way you would be here. There's no way she would let you foot here ever again. At least if she wanted to live."
His voice was low, heavy, and strangely intimate.
"Whatever did she do to suddenly win your hatred?"
"Treason. That seems like a movie crime to play somebody."
I laughed it off once more, downplaying perhaps the significance.
"She tried to kill me," he said.
"Until so, she's one of the only people that knew of my secret—and you use it against me, Purity. Isn't that treason?"
"Or perhaps we work differently, Purity."
"No, I should come ahead. It would mean a similar thing. But believe you me, maybe if I do encounter this woman, I would need to quietly point to you and hard direction, deal?"
He said nothing there. He simply leaned back and looked forward into the orchard.
"The pathway is complicated," he said. "Very. You would have to go up through a specific exit."
He was picking his words carefully, allowing them to roll over his tongue, sketching me—and he knew it.
"You would have to go through the first greenhouse, and then it would get here. So the opposite end from the ballroom."
"No one would think twice about coming in."
"I personally request that it be carefully limited, save for the gardeners and those tending to the apples. Only those closest to me now know of this place."
"Now tell me," he leaned closer, "how do you know this place?"
I was dead, and I knew it. It was going to kill me, and it was fine.
I opened my mouth, but just as I did, there was a sudden flash and then a sound, as though the world had ended right next to my ear, and the force sent me towards the door. Just then, the world went black—and then came the heat that was too hot to be a human body.