Ladies, Lords, & Liars

Chapter Eighteen: The Princess, Finally

   They stayed at the waterfall for what felt like too long. Everyone but Aeric had been soaked through, and they laughed and joked as they had been doing all day, and continued to do so with a tireless determination as they mounted their horses again and started on the trail back to the palace. If he wasn't already beyond befuddled by everything that had happened thus far, he would have gotten entirely too caught up on the fact that their unfunny jokes seemed inexhaustible and far too humorous.

   He waited until everyone had trooped out ahead of him before he kicked his mount lightly to urge her to follow, and he almost immediately closed his eyes as tightly as he could. It wasn't being high up in itself that sent his mind spinning and his stomach convulsing. Something about the wild, sheer expanse of all that space beneath him...

   Behind the safe confines of a balcony railing, or holding onto the banister of a steep set of stairs, he had his anchor and the fall ended in a very tame, flat surface. Was it the landing? Or falling? Or neither?

   He'd only experienced the dizzying sense of being so untethered and open to anything the world had to throw at him once before. There weren't exactly any mountains or even high hills on the relatively flat plains he had been raised on, but there were plenty of trees.

   He never would have climbed the tree if he hadn't been dared to do so, but as soon as he reached the point where the branches began to bend under his weight, the sense had hit him in full force. Something about the absolute lack of control. Anything could happen and he was powerless to stop it.

   Falling from his perch in that lanky old tree had only solidified that dormant, unknown fear. Now the phobia itself had been revealed, but it was still just as unknown as it had always been.

   He hated not understanding exactly why it bothered him so much, and that was probably the reason he despised the palace. Nothing made sense and he had no say in what happened or what didn't.

   Was he that desperate to control what happened to him?

   His mother, he knew, would live in a swamp if it meant getting her hands on a fancy title and a sack of cash. But he was by no means his mother.

    Her desire was simple, something he could understand. But maybe it wasn't understanding that he wanted, because he hated his mother's lust of power and title more than he hated the palace or the fall beneath him, and he knew it inside and out. Every plan and scheme had revealed another piece of the puzzle and chipped another blot from the carving.

   Was he just as insane as she was, but in a different way? The selective fear certainly seemed irrational enough to fit into the same category as her mind-rotting desire. Just as crazy, he simply wasn't as far along.

   Before he knew it, the ride was over, and he was handing over his damp, tired horse to the stable hands. He returned to the palace and finally got the nerve to ask someone to draw a bath. He felt dirty.

   But almost as soon as he'd finished getting himself clean, someone arrived to fetch him for dinner. And things continued to move too quickly for him to process. He was swallowed by the blur too completely to ponder it.

   The days passed in rush, as if time itself was hurrying him towards the end of summer, where his fate would be decided for once and for all.

   Sometimes he was taken on rides like the one to the waterfall, and there were days spent entirely inside, doing things like taking tea with various nobles that he would never remember and playing games that he learned from the younger lords and ladies, only for them to vanish from his mind again right away. He was engaged in conversations both dull and interesting, but all of them seemed to turn transparent in his memory. He could tell everything was there, but he couldn't properly grasp ahold of it.