Ladies, Lords, & Liars

Chapter Thirty: The Beginning

   Odette was waiting for him. The sight of her was the physical manifestation of relief. She was his savior, his angel. She was going to be his deliverance, after so long. He'd been doing nothing when he could have been doing so much to escape.

   Today would change that. How soon would he be home? Tomorrow? The day after?

   Two months. He'd completely wasted the time. He hadn't learned anything and he hadn't done anything. His mother would chew his head off before she immediately began scheming again. This time, he wouldn't allow it. He would take some sort of precaution... he wasn't going to fall victim to any more craziness.

   This was the end, and it all started with Odette, her dark hair gleaming in the dusty library light. Her eyes lit up when she saw him, though he wouldn't say it was with happiness. Her mind was churning, he could see.

   She liked the challenge, the excitement.

   He took just a second to look at his thoughts, spinning so fast, and he realized that he liked it too. However, he liked it for an entirely different reason. With this one, last hurrah, he would finally be starting the rest of his life.

   He would break free of his mother, maybe even find his own home, his own job. Maybe he would travel, maybe he'd settled down. The possibilities had somehow become open wider than they ever had, and though Aeric knew that it had been building up for a while, he couldn't help the thought that Odette had been the cause of it all.

   He pulled out a chair and sat down, his heart hammering. A burning swarm of butterfly-like nerves and excitement pooled in his stomach like acid. So many things could go wrong, but now, he found that he wasn't thinking of those possibilities quite so much.

   He only saw the future. The bright future.

   "Tell me." Her eyes were almost their own sources of light. Her hair had changed since he'd last seen her, and now sat loosely around her shoulders. She probably had half a dozen handmaidens to tend to her.

   "Tell you what?" his mind was stuck. The letter. They were writing a letter, which would be a letter from his 'family' and also his ticket out. Urgent business at home... a sick family member?

   "The whole story!" she burst out. "I want to know it all. This is the first... thing that's ever happened to me! Sure, pianos and painting and suitors are great and all, but they get old after a while." Her eyes still shining, a musical laugh.

   So he told her. The words, untainted by the accent he'd been chained to for so long, felt just as musical as her laughter. The story flowed out of him like water from a dam that had finally burst. He even found himself spilling other tales of her useless plots out of sheer frustration.

   She didn't interrupt. Her eyes gleamed as she watched, chin resting on her fist, elbow propped on the table.

   "I never thought she'd go to such lengths. I always assumed she'd find the end of the rope and stop. I guess she just made her own rope, though." he made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "I can't believe I want to go back."

   "It's familiar. I would probably want the same in your situation. But I must say... your mother doesn't sound like the most pleasant person. Is your father the same? Do you have siblings? No, no. You would have mentioned them." she shook her head, a smile rising to her mouth as if it had a mind of its own.

   "So how are we going to get me out of here?" the letter, he knew. But how would they accomplish that? He'd always considered himself smarter than he was dull, but that didn't change the fact that he knew nothing of politics and wouldn't even know where to begin with the technique or wording to use with what had to pass as royal penmanship.