I will lose all sense of me if I do not get out of this bed. So I force myself to rise, and begin the day.
Ethan frowned as he finished the poem. “It’s beautiful. But it’s so sad. It bothers me that you’re experiencing such pain.”
“It’s just a poem. Don’t look so far into it,” I said, jaded.
I didn’t expect Ethan to get it. If he understood the amount of agony I dealt with on a daily basis— ifanyoneunderstood just exactly what kind of horror my body put me through— it’d be unimaginable to him how I could live that kind of life.
Yet I did. It came naturally to me now, because I’d been dealing with it for so long. Most of the time it was manageable, but at other times... it was agonizing. Especially at night, with the jolts in my joints and the ache in my tendons keeping me awake. During daylight hours, I remembered the writhing that accompanied the fire burning through my muscles. The pillows and soft mattress felt far too often like spikes scratching and tearing at my fragile paper skin.
Touch— even Ethan’s— sometimes became something sheerly unbearable. It almost felt like pinpricks running over me instead of fingers, needles drawing blood, except I knew the blood wasn’t there and my body was just going haywire.
Ethan knew, yet he didn’tknow. He knew what it was like to be different, but not this different. I didn’t think he’d ever pulled himself across the floor and rifled through pill bottles that doctors had prescribed looking for some kind of relief, but found none, like I had in the previous weeks in Krakow.
Sometimes I just wanted an escape, a careless morphine to drag me away from the agony. To be free of my body and in someone else’s for one day would be a rare gift.
I lived a good life. I was happy, for the most part. But I knew in my heart I’d be like this, or worse, for the rest of my life, and though I hadn’t given up hope, it was troubling sometimes pretending to smile day in and day out. I never wanted to be normal, because normal was boring— but once I got diagnosed I felt like I was alone, doing this all by myself. I didn’t think Ethan knew the isolation I felt, and what kind of pain that isolation brought me... to be sick enough that no one could do anything about it. I was in a prison I couldn’t escape unless I escaped it through death, and that was enough to drive anyone mad.
Maybe my illness would get in the way of Ethan and I, and I’d bring our relationship to a brutal and bitter end.
But then... I remembered his missing leg, and wondered if any of this would be relatable to him at all. And maybe once I opened up, that prison of isolation would stop.
“Just... take care of yourself, okay?” Ethan’s eyes knitted together in worry as he pressed his lips to my forehead. “I’m concerned about you.”
There seemed to be a lot of that going around.
He caressed my hair, and the feelings that welled inside of me were like a cold winter’s day about to set upon summer. I took a shuddering breath. “I’ll be fine. I have to go, though. I have class.”
“So do I.” He gave me an affectionate smile, and my heart started.
Before he could walk off, I said, “Hey, do you want to get dinner? Maybe we could hang out tonight.”
I was asking him out. I was shocked I had the balls to do it, but dammit, I missed him, and I wanted us to spend some time together as a couple. Time that wasn’t ruined by obligation, or rules or expectations. Maybe we could just be a regular old boyfriend and girlfriend, for once in our freaking lives.
Ethan started— it looked like he was going to say yes, before something crossed his mind and his expression dropped. “Sorry... I have a prior commitment.”
My stomach jolted. “Oh. What’s going on?”
“Just— royal stuff,” he stuttered. “Nothing entertaining by any means. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
He didn’t have royal duties anymore, not since he lost the Contest. I knew what was going on. He was too busy playing superhero to even take me on a date. “Oh. Okay.”
Ethan waved his hand. A white rose appeared out of thin air— one of glass, sparkling and crystalline, a fanciful illusion. It was a beautiful work of magic. He handed it to me with a slight bow before he kissed my hand. “I’ll see you soon, Emma.”
He always had to be prince charming, didn’t he? Frustration grew in my gut as he turned away. My breath came out in a whoosh. “Yeah... see ya.”
As I watched Ethan walk away, I had a thought. Life is never the perfect picture that we imagine it to be. Our relationship was like this crystal rose— shatterable. Though Ethan and I were together, I sometimes wondered if what we had was going to last.
I knew he loved me. Over break, I’d tried so hard to stop loving him, so I didn’t hurt him again, but I couldn’t.
I observed the glass rose in my hand, and felt sick. Roses were seen as a flower of love, but I saw them as a flower of hatred—luring you closer with their intense beauty and striking colors, only to prick your finger with their thorns and laugh as they left you heartbroken, leaving their blissful prettiness out of reach.
It was a sick metaphor for Ethan and I. What we had seemed perfect, yet fragile. So pristine to look at from a distance, but easily broken if you made the wrong move— like Stefan and Delmare. She was so worried about breaking what she could have she ran from the beauty before the thorns could cause her to bleed.
But not I. Ethan was worth the risk. No matter the circumstances, I viewed him as my king— and I would be his queen.
The relentless charging into the dark night against something you knew— or hoped— would never end... that was the beauty of being with someone you longed for, but couldn’t really have.
Not without secrets getting in the way.
