𝚂𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚍 ✔

Chapter Twenty-Five

"Have you been feeling alright, Emma?" Cordelia curiously eyed me as she served the two of us some tea in the receiving room of our apartment.

My stomach dropped. "Has my rather tumultuous thoughts, as of late, been that obviously plastered on my face?" I wondered, as I shifted in my seat to get comfortable.

I had thought that I had been doing quite a good job of hiding all the stress and gnawing anxiety I had been gathering during our stay at the palace. But with her abrupt question, she made it rather clear that I had been wrong in my assumptions.

"I am fine, though what makes you ask?" I really was quite the opposite, however.

I had not been able to sleep since my entanglement with Thomas, two days prior. That was no fault of his own, but of mine. How I had so foolishly come to feel so strongly about Henry after all the droning on and on I did about wanting to only be friends with him, I did not know. But I was, frankly, rather annoyed and upset with myself.

I was nothing more than a hypocrite. Pushing Thomas away because I was insecure of mine and his relationship, all the while using me not being the only one he had been courting as an excuse to justify my lack of confidence in myself. When in fact, I had been doing the same thing and with his brother no less.

And when looking back all the times I had spoken with Henry, it was obvious that I had been friendlier than I should have. Yes, dancing with him at the ball was completely out of my hands, however I, despite knowing it was wrong, continued to entertain him on more than one avoidable occasion. Even fed my minuscule feelings until they grew into something untamable.

I had become fully aware of the fact that I was not ready to court a man, let alone a prince. I had, like many of the others, gotten swept up in all of Thomas' complements and flatteries, so much so that I allowed him to take control of the reins. Now he was the one seducing me, and I had been helplessly allowing him to do with me as he wished.

Yet I had the audacity to judge some of the others who had given in to his seductive ways much sooner than I had.

I was vastly too under-prepared and grossly too ignorant to have actually thought that I was a match for a prince. A prince who had, most likely, never in his whole life been told no.

I mean he was well known for his flirtatious nature, amongst other things, yet for some reason I thought joining him in his game would have ended in me winning. However, it was clear, I a novice had been pit against the likes of that of a master and I was severely outmatched.

The sound of one of the teacups softly colliding with its saucer pulled me out of my drowning thoughts.

"You have just seemed distant, as if you are elsewhere in your mind. Though, I do not blame you. With everything they have you doing, I too would be exhausted, mentally and physically." She sat down on the love seat across from me. "Going from being locked up in that dreary house almost every day since you were born, to leaving the room daily to converse with people that almost certainly have ulterior motives, would drive anyone mad. But you are also trying to prove your worth, all the while doing what you can to win the love of a very confident and touchy prince who could, at the end of the day, simply choose someone else."

Hearing it come from her somehow hurt more than when I had said all of those things to myself. I usually just brushed away those kinds of thoughts, deeming them as nothing more than my nerves talking. But having someone else say them out loud, someone that I knew only had my best interests in mind, did nothing but make me feel worse.

"What I am trying to say is," I could tell she noticed how much her words had affected me, so she tried to salvage what was left of the conversation, "that if you would like to give up, for the sake of your health and sanity, then I would understand."