Page 19 of Will You (Not) Marry Me

“I’m surprised the queens didn’t just have only one prepared in some weird ploy to have us bunk together,” Eva said bitterly.

“Frankly, so am I.” Finn laughed with an agreeing tilt of the head, sounding a little annoyed at the truth of it himself. At least he knew they were being manipulated and wasn’t completely oblivious to it.

“You’ve been in a good mood today,” Eva said, poking at him, fully embracing a scowl.

C’mon, she thought.Fight back.

But he just shrugged. So calm. So annoyingly affable. “It’s good to get away from the palace. And I really would like to get to know you better.”

Eva glared at his innocent expression. “Sure you would.”

With that she stalked off down the hall, chose the room on the left at random, and slammed the door behind her.

Things were no longer going to plan.

* * *

When Eva emerged from her room forty minutes later—an appropriately rude amount of time to seclude oneself in their room—Finn was sitting at the dining table scrolling away on his phone. He looked up and smiled kindly at her as if everything was just fine and dandy.

It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and Eva felt herself slip into true anger.

“Why are you acting like you’re having the time of your life all of a sudden?” she said, almost loud enough to count as shouting.

Finn blinked, surprised, butstilldidn’t rise to the bait. He thought about it for a second.

“Do you want the honest truth?”

“For once, yes! Someone be honest with me. That would be great.”

He analyzed her for a second, seeing the anger and hurt in her all coming to a boil. But still infuriatingly gently, he answered.

“I had a talk with my friend Tobias… the one who likes to read. I was confused about the way you were acting. Hurt by it, I suppose, even though you didn’t know me from Adam and really had no reason to be nice to me at all, now that I think about it. I told him all this, and his suggestion was that I should be kind to you.”

Well. Didn’t that feel like a punch to the gut. After a week of being treated like nothing better than a chess piece in a convoluted game… that hit just a bit too close to home.

“So, what?” Eva said, trying to patch up her rapidly disintegrating persona. “You’re being nice to me because your friend told you to?”

“That,” he said. “And I noticed that no one really seemed to include you in the conversations that were going on.”

It was true. It was always true. She was the least important of the royals in most rooms, especially the ones they’d been in the last few days. But it still hurt to have it pointed out. It was like she was in a boxing ring, frozen and unable to move, getting hit again and again.

“So?”

“So I think that’s unfair, especially when you’re meant to be the guest of honor. And yes, you’ve maybe not been the most… agreeable of guests. But it’s not your job to be agreeable, is it? It’s certainly not your job to make yourself more palatable to save my feelings. And you were right, after all.”

“About what?”

“That if this is going to work, then I need to get to know the real you. Not the plastic princess version the world wants to see. That your family, I’m sure, expects of you.”

Too close… it was all too close to the truth that it was honestly scaring Eva. She stormed back to her room, grabbed her camera, and made a beeline straight for the front door without a further glance in Finn’s direction.

She walked out into the frigid air with no idea where she was going, just needing to beaway. Away from Finn and his sudden breezy attitude, that calm smile she wanted to wipe off his face. She wanted to get away from any reminder of why she was here in the first place. Away from any sense of being royal or important or responsible. Just… away.

The fresh snow squeaked and crunched under her boots as she trudged down the path towards the neatly kept woodland, trying to focus on the sounds around her. The whisper of wind making the bare tree branches creak, a random bird singing a lonely song, her own footsteps offering a steady beat.

Eva came to the edge of the frozen lake and let herself stop. It was a startling shade of electric blue, with cracks of white towards the edges that made her think of lightning. Everything else was dusted with white, giving the landscape the odd effect of looking both soft and brutal. This was the sort of thing she’d missed. Nature wasn’t both dangerous and beautiful like this back in New York. It got plenty cold there, sure, but the snow soon turned to brown slush in the gutters, with pedestrians weaving every which way and car exhausts billowing discolored clouds into the air. This was different. It was vast and wild and beautiful. Crisp, clean and the freshest air possible to breathe, even if it did freeze your throat as you breathed in.

The shadows were beautiful, casting shapes over the ice and snow. She took another deep breath and just looked out at it all for a little bit. She let her mind wander, looking over everything no matter how small, allowing her eyes to start seeing images around her. Then she turned her camera on and started snapping.

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