Page 93 of Love & Letter Charms
But she was shaking her head, stumbling away from him, overwhelmed by the enormity of this revelation. He reached for her, trying to grasp her hand, but she’d already stepped beyond his reach.
He couldn’t be R. He couldn’t be R. And yet … ofcoursehe was. Of course they were the same person! How had she not recognized it before? She felt suddenly, overwhelmingly foolish. They had the same teasing, affectionately provocative personality. The same kind, genuine heart.
Ryden. R. She pressed her fingertips to her temples, squeezing her eyes shut as she struggled for breath. Of course the prince remembered every dare on the list—he’d written the darned thing!
And he must have known that she was L since … oh, stars above, since the day she’d first arrived at Solstice Hall! She remembered standing among the roses, thoughtlessly repeating his own comments back to him, completely naive as to his true identity, and he’d … something had happened. He’d recognized her, and then his magic had surged beyond his control. She remembered now—the darkness in his eyes, that strange shimmer in the air.
Her thoughts tumbled, tripping over one another, landing on snatches of letters, phrases, half remembered words.
I found myself gazing at the Silver Swan tonight too.
One guest in particular seems to have packed all the warmth among her belongings when she departed.
That supposedly charming ‘warmth-burglar’ she’d been so jealous of—he’d been writing ofher.
“How?” The word escaped her as barely more than a gasp. “How … how did this happen?”
The prince … Ryden …R… was watching her with careful wariness. “Ellian created the enchanted letter boxes. The one I possess now was originally his. The one I’d initially used, years ago, was lost. I had no notion of where it had ended up. Until the night you sent your first letter, neither box had been used in years.”
Aurelise found herself pacing back and forth across the terrace, breathless, flushed, her thoughts spiraling faster than her feet could move. It was as though her mind were determined to retrace everything—every letter, every dare, every glance and stolen breath in the prince’s presence—reassembling it all into an entirely new picture.
“That … that night you discovered me here—on this very terrace—with the dare list. That was deliberate. Planned. You … you wanted to involve yourself with the dares.”
“Well … yes.” He had the grace to look slightly abashed. “The dares were meant to help you find your own courage, but also to give you the chance to knowme, as I truly am. Not the prince everyone else believes they know.”
“And you made it appear … accidental. You deceived me.”
“I … withheld the truth.
“How could you?” Her voice rose, cracking slightly on the words.
“You did not like me!” The words burst from him with surprising desperation. “Not at all! You were entirely set against me the prince, and you had refused to meet me the correspondent. I had to convince you gradually, as both versions of myself, or you would have fled immediately.”
She continued pacing, shaking her head, music crashing chaotically around her as she attempted to process this sky-shattering revelation. She’d believed she’d made the right choice—the safer one—because the alternative was simplyinconceivable. Aurelise Rowanwood could not be aprincess. Could not beCrown Consort.
But now both choices had collapsed into one. R was not dwelling in some distant, mysterious land, waiting to travel here to meet her. He was alreadyhere. He had danced with her, held her, laughed with her, threaded his fingers through her hair and pressed his lips to her neck and?—
“No, no, no,” she breathed again, palms pressed against her burning cheeks, because this was all too much. This time, it truly would pull her under and drown her entirely.
“Aurelise—”
But she was already turning and hurrying for the terrace door, fleeing, this time, from both of them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ryden pacedthe length of the sky garden terrace, his footsteps echoing against the stone with a hollow persistence that seemed to mock his restraint. Every instinct screamed at him to follow her, to explain his motivations properly, to make her understand that this revelation—badly delivered though it had been—changed nothing of what lay between them.
He kept replaying every word, every gesture, every shift in her expression as understanding had crashed over her like a wave. The way her voice had cracked on “How could you?” The betrayal written across her features. The sound of her footsteps fleeing across the terrace stones.
He should not have revealed it like that. The thought circled through his mind again and again. He knew her—stars above, he knew her better than he knew almost anyone. He knew that she processed difficult emotions best in solitude, that she needed the safety of distance to examine her feelings without the pressure of immediate response. He should have written it in a letter, should have given her the courtesy of privacy for her initial reaction. Then she might have been less overwhelmed while her world reorganized itself around this new, impossible truth.
But no. He’d been swept up in the moment, in the soft rose silk of her gown, in the intoxicating feel of her in his arms. And the addictive taste of the words ‘my princess’ on his lips—stars above, what he wouldn’t give to be able to whisper those words into her hair, night after night, for the rest of his?—
Fool.
This was precisely the problem. He was so caught up in imagining the rest of their life together, while she was still trying to process the fact that he was the same man she’d been pouring her heart out to on paper for the past year.
Well. It was done now.
