Page 45 of The Cinderella Prince

“I hear the opening of the World Literature exhibition went well,” Élodie said.

“Perfect,” I replied, frustration rising in me. Was this what we would speak about? Agendas and weather and all this mundane bullshit? “Have you ever broken any rules, Élodie? Ever run away from home?”

Élodie gasped and smiled. “I don’t believe I have ever run from home, Cedric.”

“You must have had some rebellions that only belong to you,” I said.

Her face seemed cooler than ever. “If I have, I must have forgotten them.”

“What amazing lives we live,” I mused.

I was certain that the temperature around us grew lower by the sheer power of her emotionless gaze. “Forgive me, Cedric, but it seems you find me rather boring.”

I waved my hand off. “Not at all. We are going to be married. I would like to know more than what’s on the surface.”

“Perhaps I am not as willful as Your Highness,” she said, the same little smile never going away from her face. We might as well have been talking about the weather for all the press could tell. “Perhaps I have never run to the United States to spend my days in a bar and my nights with a stranger. But please don’t mistake my lack of adventures for complete emotionlessness. I am perfectly capable of loving and hurting just like everyone else.”

I heard the wave of shutters snapping louder, faster, closer, and I realized it was my face that was contorting with embarrassment and cringe. “Forgive me.”

“I already have,” Élodie said.

“This…arrangement bothers me, and I never thought that it might bother you, too,” I admitted.

“Our kind functions by the rules of another stratosphere, Cedric,” Élodie said. I might have heard a touch of friendliness in her voice at long last. “And we simply have to make the best of what we are given. Now, laugh, but not too loudly. I’ve just said something terribly witty.”

I didn’t miss a beat. Laughter welled from me, and I shook my head, eyes sparking with joy that I could spend such a fine afternoon in such interesting company. “You’ve had much more practice, it seems.”

“It could very well be a natural talent,” Élodie said without a trace of melancholy.

“You sacrificed your heart for this,” I pointed out softly, the smile on my face a sharp and painful contrast to the subject we discussed. “I’ve known you for years, and I never suspected.”

“He was not someone I would have chosen had I been given a chance,” Élodie said. “But such things simply happen whether we want them or not.”

I remembered standing on the top of the Empire State Building, looking into those big, brown eyes, leaning in with the burning desire to kiss him and never stop kissing him. I hadn’t wanted to fall for him. I had fought it long and hard, but he was a whirlwind of passion, and he made me feel alive when nobody else could. “It seems to me that you and I have a lot more in common than I had suspected.”

“If nothing else, we will understand each other well,” Élodie agreed.

I cleared my throat. As quietly as I could and with awaning smile on my face, I filled myself with the courage to tell her this. “You should know, if we truly do this, I will not object…”

“No,” Élodie said politely and chuckled as if I’d made a very clever joke. “Let us not discuss this.”

Some wild, crazy hope that I might reach an arrangement with Élodie, go back to New York, explain it all, and claim him as my lover died at the firmness with which she closed this discussion. It was irrational. I could never go back to him. I had broken him for his own safety from scandals. But I had also sealed him from my life forever.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I wondered if my suggestion sparked the same sort of uncontrollable hope, the absence of which left you devastated.

We exchanged a sweet, long hug before leaving by our separate cars. A journalist shouted after me, “Your Highness, what was the joke the Marchioness told you that made you laugh so much?” And as the door closed, I wondered why on earth anyone would ever care.

You are not a person to them, a voice reminded me.You are a symbol, and you live your life as a symbol.

Back in my apartment, I undressed myself and put on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie from my last year in college. I picked up a copy ofThe Song of Achillesand prepared myself to cry. I had read it forward and backward. I knew it inside and out. My bleeding heart hardly needed more pain, but this was, at least, a way I could control the pain. I could direct it. If I wept for Patroclus, it had nothing to do with me and the tragedy of Tristan Lawson. It was a safe kind of pain, distant and someone else’s.

The knock on my door was followed by the turning ofthe knob. The sitting room was empty save for me, filled with subdued lights and deep, sorrowful shadows. Sophia, dressed brightly for the evening and only a little disgruntled, slipped inside and shut the door. “I can’t take it anymore.”

“Can’t take what?” I asked, looking up from a passage that described a wonderful night at Chiron’s cave.

“It’s a mistake,” Sophia said, her voice higher than usual. “All of this. But Alexander is furious with you, and he won’t speak about it.”

My sister crossed the sitting room and took a seat on the ottoman against the wall. On the small, ornate table between her ottoman and my armchair was a pot of tea, a blend of soothing herbs built around nettle at its core. I was about to offer it, but Sophia continued speaking.

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