The Vampire Prince

Chapter 6: Family

I awoke when the sun was setting and the maids and butlers were all waking up, and I laid there until I heard Jack's usual knock on the door to wake me up. I rose from my bed and walked over to my wardrobe. Jack opened the door and I heard it quietly creak. "Hello." I said before he was even in my room.
"I'm terribly sorry, Your Highness, did I disturb you?" He asked.
I shook my head and chuckled. "Oh, no. You didn't."
He sighed in relief and went back outside my room to let me get dressed. I quickly, very quickly, got dressed. I went outside my room and closed the door behind me, looking at Jack.
"Your father wants to see you." He said.
I sighed softly and smiled at him. "What for?"
"I'm not sure, Your Highness. You'll have to find out." He replied.
I walked down the hallway and, as usual, my stomach twisted just at the thought of my father. What did he need me for? Was I in trouble again? I had to admit, I hated my father with every bone in my body, and sometimes I wished he wasn't my father. I liked to believe that Jack was my actual biological father. I hated my mother as well, but only because she'd seen what my father and Joel did to me and didn't do anything about any of it. But according to Jack, she used to physically abuse me when I was a baby, and I just hadn't remembered any of it. I didn't know if it was true or not, but Jack swore it was true.

When I reached my parents' thrones, I bowed to them and tried to shoo my nerves away, but I couldn't. "What did you need, Your Majesty?" I asked my father.
"I've spoken to the Queen of Rylin Valley, and she has told me that she and I are going to find some way to punish you. There will be a meeting between us next week." He explained.
Immediately, I thought, how were they going to punish me? Would they keep me in my room for a year? Would they keep me in the dungeon? Would they kill me? Before I said anything to my father, I knew what he'd do after thinking about it for a few seconds. They'd punish me by doing something to Jack. Most likely they'd send him to the dungeon or fire him from his job as a butler.
"Please don't do anything to Jack." I said. "I'll do anything."
My father chuckled. "Even if I was doing anything to Jack, how could I listen to you?"
Anger filled my body, but I didn't say anything else.
"Do you know how important he is to me, Your Majesty?" I questioned.
He chuckled once again. "Well, he's not important to me. That's all that matters." He replied softly.
Is he stupid? At that point I was thinking, has he ever known what it feels like to love? The only love he'd ever felt was his love for my mother, but of course, she's all he wanted in life besides power. Maybe if he wasn't the king he wouldn't have so much power. Mary had told me how much my mother mattered to him, and that he'd go mad if she was lost. "You may leave now." My mother finally said.

I stormed out and bumped into Mary in the corridor. "Oh, Your Highness, I apologize." She said carefully. She was afraid of me, and I knew this. I knew this because she was afraid of all royalty, and that if she did anything wrong around me or my family, she'd lose her job. And I knew she didn't want that because she needed money to support her father.
"It's fine, it's fine." I mumbled.
"You look upset." She commented.
"I am. It's Father again." I sighed.
She'd known how much I disliked my father, but she'd never said anything about it before. Once again, she was afraid of me.  She looked down and slightly smiled at me. "Can I show you something?"
I nodded and she led me to one of the spare rooms that Jack and I had recently painted together in. She sat me down on a chair next to the window and stood in front of me. She opened an old box and took out an old, dusty notebook. She blew off the dust and handed it to me. "Read it." She demanded as I took it. I opened it to the first page and read at the top of the page, Prince Ethan, April 22nd, 1815.
It was a notebook my father wrote in when he was 15. I looked through the rest of the book and noticed that only one page had been written in. "What is this?" I asked Mary.
"Your father wrote this after his mother and father passed away." She sighed.
I read the page that had been written in.

I'm scared, I'm scared. They've died. Mother and Father are dead. Someone assassinated them. I'm so scared, I don't want to be king. It's going to put so much stress on me. What am I going to tell Jane? I can't force her to be my queen and go through all the stress with me. But I love her. I love her so much. Why did it have to be me? Why did I have to be the prince? Why couldn't they have stayed alive a bit longer?  I wish someone else could be the prince. I wish I had died instead. I wish everything would be okay.

"Your father was nearly in the same mental state as you. He didn't want to be the prince either." Mary explained, taking the notebook out of my hand and putting it back in the box. "Did he have a good father?" I asked.
"He did, and the two of them were inseparable, sort of like you and Jack." Said Mary.
I was so confused. My father didn't want to be king. Where did he get his personality from? How did he become so cruel? What happened that made him selfish? I shook my head and stood up. We heard a knock on the door. "Is his Highness in here?" Asked Jack from the other side of the door.
"Yes!" I shouted. He opened the door and smiled at me.
"Mary, what are the two of you doing in here?" He questioned, chuckling a bit.
"I was showing Prince Vincent his father's old notebook." Mary explained.
"Well, I was just wondering if you'd like to paint with me, Your Highness." Jack mumbled. My face lit up and I felt excited. Jack and I were going to paint together! We'd painted together since I was very small, so it always made me happy when he offered to. "Of course!" I exclaimed.
Mary quickly left and Jack got out a set of old paints. "These are from when you were only two years old, Your Highness. They're very old paints, but they still work!" Said Jack.
Jack and I painted for a long while. We actually painted for the rest of the night, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was spending time with my father. My father figure.

Most times, I wished Jack was my biological father. But he wasn't. When we were finished painting, he placed his lips on my cheek. "The sun is rising, you'd better go to sleep."
"I will." I replied, standing up and putting my paint set away. He stood up after me and smiled at me. "Sleep well, my little boy." He whispered. I smiled back at him and left. Before I went to sleep, I began changing into my sleepwear. I yawned and tried staying awake as I changed. I took my crown off and placed it on the pillow on my dresser.
Suddenly, there was a knock on my window. It was rather windy outside, so I thought nothing of it. A few seconds passed, and there was another knock. Another knock, and another knock. I opened my curtains and gasped at what I saw. Charlotte was sitting at my window. She wasn't wearing a dress. She was wearing what I'd normally wear, and her hair was in a low ponytail. Her crown was on her head, but it looked a bit crooked. I opened my window slowly, slightly smiling. Why was I happy that she was at the castle? I should've been upset. Had she followed me?
"What on Earth are you doing here?" I asked.
She sighed and crawled into my room. "I took a boat to get here."
"That doesn't matter, why are you here?" I angrily said.
"I just wanted to see you!" She said.
I blushed a bit. She just wanted to see me. At that moment, I finally realized I had romantic feelings for her. Just the thought that she traveled all the way to my kingdom from hers just to see me made me smile. Jack was right. I loved Charlotte.
I moved out of the way so Charlotte could have more room. She brushed herself off and smiled at me. I smiled back nervously.

"You just wanted to see me?" I questioned. She nodded and said, "Of course! Why wouldn't I?"
I sighed and wrapped my arms around her into a hug. She smelled of fresh lavender, and it made me imagine us together in a flower field, making flower crowns for each other.
"Oh, but Charlotte," I said, letting go, "if you're caught, we'll both be dead."
She shook her head and put her arm on my shoulder. "I'm sure it'll be alright."
She leaned up and gently kissed my cheek. I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn't find the right words. She grinned. "Charlotte, please." I begged. "You know we can't love each other. It's forbidden for a vampire to love a human."
My eyes began to water. I did truly love Charlotte, and I wanted to be her lover, but I just couldn't. My father would've been enraged.
"It's love, Vincent. It doesn't matter if it's forbidden. As long as we stick together, we'll get what we want." She explained.
At that moment, I had realized how much I did fall for her. She was gorgeous and kind. She was perfect to me. She loved me the same, she wanted to be my lover just as much as I wanted to be hers. I had fallen for a human.