Page 41 of Façade

Though her smile was contagious, I couldn’t return it, not with the confusion pressing against my thoughts. “But…how?Do you normally recover so quickly?”

She scrunched her forehead in thought. “It’s admittedly strange…unless what ailed me was simply boredom. You tend to have that effect on me; your presence along with the formal dinner must have been too much for me to handle.”

“How could you have possibly been bored with our little game?”

She managed another smile upon recollecting our spontaneous amusement of poor manners. “I suppose that was rather fun.”

“It was,” I murmured.Far too much so.

For a moment we stared at one another, wordless conversations passing between us that I was afraid to decipher. She was the first to sever our gaze with an alluring blush tinging her cheeks, and the spell was broken.

Her hands shook slightly as she reached for her mussed updo. “If I can persuade you to cancel your spontaneous second formal dinner, can I finally take my hair out now?”

Without awaiting an answer, she began removing the pins. Without considering thewhyof my actions, I reached over to help her…and immediately regretted it upon discovering how soft and silky her hair was, something I had no reason to notice about my wife. I yanked my touch away and, for want of something to do, awkwardly fluffed her pillows. But the distraction did little to lessen my impulse to caress her hair again, one that took great effort to resist.

Don’t look at her, I commanded myself fiercely, yet she lured my gaze anyway…and then I couldn’t look away. Finally free from its prison of pins, her light brown hair cascaded messily around her shoulders, yet somehow the look suited her perfectly. My breath caught. The longer I stared, the more fiercely my heart pounded, each beat painful against my ribs.

Considering our arrangement, I had no business noticing such things as herhair…yet somehow it eclipsed my entire focus, making everything rather confusing…a dangerous reminder that I needed to sever myself from her as soon as possible before my resolve to fulfill my duty for the sake of my kingdom faltered completely.

Yet despite knowing it was necessary, in that moment, sitting so close to Evelyn after having just spent an evening enjoying her company, worrying about her, carrying her in my arms, and glimpsing her true self she no longer kept hidden…I felt a twinge of regret that she wasn’t the true princess after all.

CHAPTER14

EVELYN

Sleep remained ever elusive as the night stretched on, my mind far too consumed with what had transpired during dinner for me to have any hope of sleep. My sudden illness following the mystical light’s appearance had delayed my giving the phenomenon the proper consideration, but now that I was alone, memories from my time as the heiress of a magical throne rose to the surface of my thoughts to confirm what deep down I’d already suspected.

Magic.

I could still feel the heated sensation against my suddenly tingly palms, feel the energy as it forced its way free as a bulb of golden light, impossible to contain. While it’d thankfully escaped the attention of the easily distracted court, unfortunately it hadn’t gone unnoticed by my enemy husband, so attuned to any form of the power he coveted. Though he’d dropped the matter far more quickly than I could have hoped, his awareness promised he’d eventually broach the unpleasant topic.

I glanced towards the connecting door dividing our rooms. He’d stayed with me most of the evening until he’d been assured I was well enough to be left alone. Before he departed, he’d instructed me to seek him should I need him with an earnestness that made my heart swell, an unfamiliar sensation I wasn’t accustomed to. His thoughtfulness warred with the distrust I still harbored against his ill intentions, a fight I was no longer entirely sure which side I wanted to win.

No matter how generous the invitation, it’d be dangerous for both me and my kingdom to seek him out if my brewing power was truly the magic he needed. I’d do my best to ignore him, no matter how persuasive his seductions against my faltering heart.

My wonderings forwhymagic simmered beneath my skin kept me up for hours. As I tossed, turned, and made a tangle of the blankets, theories whirled through my mind. My current understanding was that magic possessors in Estoria remained exclusive to the royal family…but if these powers were truly magic, that likely wasn’t true. Perhaps my heritage came from an ancient magical line outside Estoria’s borders, but with my parentage still a mystery, I had no way to know for certain. There was also the doubtful possibility that these powers were something other than magic…yet what would they be instead? Countless possibilities, all of which left me no closer to discovering which could possibly be the truth.

Eventually a restless sleep claimed me, but I hadn’t slept for long when I startled awake at a hint of noise—footsteps, barely muffled by the night. My eyes shot open but I didn’t move, remaining still as I slowly took in the room. It was impossible to see anything through the shadowy darkness, but it wasn’t thick enough to smother the feeling of someone lurking nearby.

My chest seized up with fear. At first I wondered if it might be Ryland, but despite all his faults, he didn’t possess the sinister aura currently emanating from deep within the shadows.

Heart pounding wildly, I quietly slid my hand beneath the pillow, where I kept the knife I’d acquired from the man who’d chased me in the alleyway several weeks prior; more than that incident, sleeping so near the man bent on exploiting my kingdom had kept me on my guard.

My shaking fingers curled around the hilt and I waited with bated breath, searching the darkness for any further sound. Similar to the night of the ball when I’d been able to overhear Ryland and Prince Lucian’s conversation even from so far away, once more my ears tingled, magnifying the sounds of the night that otherwise might have been indiscernible. Unlike before, I now had a better understanding on how this could even be possible, the same one that explained the sudden light at dinner and the shifting colors of the fountain in the garden:magic.

With considerable effort, I wrangled my wandering mind into submission to better focus on searching the darkness. The quiet footsteps that had awoken me had stopped, and the only other sounds were that of my pounding heart, the flutter of the curtains blowing in the evening breeze, and the tick of the clock on the mantle. My eyes gradually adjusted to the blackness thanks to the silvery moonlight tumbling through the open door leading to the balcony…

My breath caught. That door hadnotbeen open when I’d gone to bed. Shock rendered my thoughts silent, but before I could puzzle out a less ominous explanation, the footsteps sounded again, drawing closer, until the presence was near enough for me to hear his subtle, nearly indiscernible breaths.

There could be no mistake: an intruder was in my room, and he was coming for me.

I opened my mouth to scream in order to summon the guards standing just outside my door, but as if sensing I was awake, the intruder suddenly ceased his quiet prowl and closed the distance between us to press his grimy, muscled hands firmly against my mouth, smothering my emerging scream to trap both it and my strangled breath in my throat.

He kept one hand there and slowly snaked the other up to pinch my nose, blocking my last airway. Fear cinched my heart even as my lungs already burned, aching to breathe but without reprieve. The knife had slipped free from my grip, so I frantically clawed at my assailant with my nails, desperate to pry him away to capture a much-needed pocket of air…but his grip was unrelenting as he pressed painfully against my mouth with the intent to kill.

My body flailed as I tried moving my head side to side to wriggle myself from under his grip, but his weight pinned me down, preventing much movement. Spots danced across my vision and my lungs screamed; the darkness was rapidly closing in, but unlike the surrounding night, this one curled around my consciousness to slowly pull me under to a place where I’d never emerge.

Somehow I managed to stir just enough for my fingers to search blindly for the knife. I couldn’t immediately find it, but then the air suddenly tingled to guide my hand upwards and slightly to the left. I found the blade…and brought it down on the man’s hand pressed against my mouth.

---