Page 18 of Revert
My fingers stilled on the porcelain cup, uncertain whether I’d heard him correctly. I waited for him to continue—hating the part of me that secretly hoped for a compliment—but he said nothing more. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to.
It took me a moment to find the strength to lift my gaze, but he wasn’t looking at me. His expression, if I dared trust it, held the faintest trace of shyness as he studied his scone with great intent. Surely I imagined the emotion, but it unsettled me all the same.
I stood too quickly. He rose with me, as etiquette required. My hand brushed his as I passed him—the contact brief and unintentional, but the jolt it sent through me was anything but forgettable.
His gaze met mine for a single breath before flicking away. No words passed between us, but he took a half-step forward, as if to speak…only to stop himself. “Thank you for your time, Princess.”
It was the first time he’d ever thanked me for my company, another puzzling deviation. Though the response fit the script protocol demanded, I couldn’t shake the sense that it wasn’t what he’d meant to say.
The riddle consumed me so fully that I barely registered his movement towards the door, until he paused on the threshold, just as I had at the beginning of our meeting. He stood there without turning, trapped in another prolonged silence. From the tension in his posture, I sensed another unspoken battle, an inner wrestle between his desire to speak and inability to do so. At last, he gave up the fight and departed without a backwards glance.
Time blurred as I stared after him before I finally managed to stir. With a silent curse, I yanked the elegant bun loose, letting it fall in golden waves around my face.
That prince. I found little solace in the onslaught of verbal attacks I hurled at him in my mind, nor in the scowl cracking my poise that he would never see. Several deep breaths steadied my escalating emotions enough to focus on how to move forward.
I couldn’t afford to fixate on Castiel’s unpredictable whims. Rather than waste any more time unraveling riddles that couldn’t be solved, I would focus on the mysteries within my control. If I wanted to progress my mission, I needed to adapt, and quickly.
I left to retrieve my secret journal from its hiding place and begin mapping the differences between this timeline and the original thread. I’d already lost too much time this week—no doubt, that had been Prince Castiel’s doing as well.
But my plans were thwarted prematurely. En route to my room, one of the king’s messengers stepped into my path. “His Majesty has summoned you.”
I froze, my blood turning to ice. Whatever composure I had managed to stitch together unraveled in an instant. “The king?”No amount of strength could have stilled the tremor in my barely audible voice.
Though I had done my best not to stray too far off course so soon, from the moment I’d woken up screaming my behavior in this timeline had been different—a seemingly insignificant change at first glance, but in Thorndale anything even slightly suspicious warranted a thorough investigation…as I was about to discover firsthand.
The messenger nodded, then turned to lead the way to the throne room, knowing I had no choice but to follow. It took every ounce of effort to force my feet forward.
With shaking fingers I twisted my hair back up as I walked, not into the elegant chignon of earlier but an unassuming bun; I would give the king no reason to think me anything but the quiet, dutiful woman who’d lived in his home for half a decade, waiting to marry his son and serve Thorndale. Each reluctant step dragged as slow as I dared, a futile effort to buy time to think, but my thoughts twisted and tangled as if caught in a storm.
Confusion gave way to wariness, wariness turned to terror. This had never happened before in either timeline. I tried to remember the last time I’d even been in the king’s presence and could only recall Princess Lisette’s farewell dinner months prior before she departed to marry the prince of the kingdom plagued with a vanishing curse, an event that had felt more like a last meal than a celebratory feast.
I’d always done my best to stay out of His Majesty’s way, and other than the veiled threats to remind me who held the power, he’d seemed content to ignore me in return, leaving his son to manage me while he retreated in his world of gold, secrets, and relentless ambitions, like a dragon guarding its hoard.
All the previous subtle deviations in this timeline were nothing to this. What accounted for his unwanted notice? Theonly possibility I could conjure was that that Prince Castiel had informed him about my forbidden wanderings, or that yesterday he’d deliberately led me to a book I wasn’t meant to see.
No amount of time would have been sufficient to prepare me for what awaited behind those doors—a meeting that began on ceremony could end on an execution.
The throne roomwas empty of courtiers and councilors, save for the rows of guards lining the vast chamber like statues carved from shadow. A single throne sat raised on its dais beneath a vault of arched stone, an executioner’s seat disguised in polished wood and velvet. Darkness pooled like waiting predators, columns loomed along the walls like watchful sentinels, and narrow windows—more slit than glass—filtered in blades of grey light, too thin to offer warmth or welcome, leaving only the torchlight’s ominous dance.
The king’s formidable presence saturated the chamber, thick as smoke, coiling through the air with the slow menace of panther circling its prey. Gilded light caught the sharp lines of his hardened countenance, the edge of his smile too controlled to be kind. His stillness was deliberate, rehearsed, a lion waiting for the perfect moment it chose to strike…with me as the quarry.
Each step I took echoed sharply in the suffocating silence, a countdown I could neither stop nor escape. I lowered my eyes in a deferential nod.
Only when I drew closer did I notice Prince Castiel, standing just behind his father’s throne. Gone was the guarded softness I thought I’d glimpsed during tea, the fleeting intimacy exchanged in the hidden library. Here he was every inch the crown prince—cloaked in regal authority, armored in indifference, standing as if steeled for battle, though no blade had yet been drawn.
I froze beneath the weight of his silence. Whatever answers I had hoped to find in his gaze were denied me; he stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed above me, as if I weren’t there at all. His indifference hurt more than I expected, almost as much as the dagger once pressed to my heart.
He offered no help, his face unreadable, cold and distant, leaving me to drown. Yet I saw the cracks—the rigid tension in his shoulders, the way his gaze never quite settled on mine. A rush of hatred surged, but I forced the emotion down, locking it behind a façade of calm I couldn’t afford to let crack, composure my only key to survival.
It would be premature to assume the prince had orchestrated this unexpected summons. Though I had no reason to trust him, blaming him too hastily would only blind me to the greater danger. The king had eyes everywhere—any whisper of suspicion or disobedience, any flicker of deviation from the expected script, would have been enough to drawn his scrutiny. In the end, it didn’t matter who had reported me—only that despite my best efforts to avoid detection, the king had noticed an alteration to my behavior…and was now probing.
“My dear future daughter,” the king greeted, each syllable of his silken voice steeped in false civility. No amount of unsettling warmth could disguise the venom coiled beneath his words. “What a pleasure to see you again. I trust you are enjoying your time in our grand kingdom.”
I curtsied, spine rigid, barely suppressing my tremors. “Your Majesty is most gracious.”
“Forgive the sudden summons,” he said. “I thought it long overdue that we spoke properly. I’ve found it wise to…periodically touch base with those soon to carry Thorndale’s future.”
The thought of any alignment with his throne turned my stomach, but I kept my expression neutral. “I am humbled by your generosity. It is my greatest honor to join the kingdom of Thorndale.” I bowed my head in a show of respect, as well as to hide any unwanted expression of faltering emotion as the words tasted like poison on my tongue.
