Royally Rebelling - A Goldric Story

The ball

The next few days were uneventful, I would walk around a bit, go into town and talk to the very few people I knew.

I had almost completely forgotten about the ball Edric had mentioned until my uncle pulled me aside one day and talked to me about it.

I was walking out of my room just as he was, I turned to walk to the other direction but he grabbed my arm and yanked me back. "There will be a ball tomorrow, you will be there".

The look on his face showed that there would be no arguing about it, but I was fine with that, Raine and Edric were going to be there so it wouldn't be as awkward as the occasional festivities at home. I nodded and walked off.

I was now sitting on my bed, trying to sort through the different outfits I had picked out. Half an hour passed and I had only eliminated two of the five options, the remaining suits were dark green, deep magenta and a plain black.

It took twenty more minutes until I finally decided on the magenta one. I quickly pulled on the pants and and added a dark purple belt with a golden buckle to add to the outfit. Next was a light red shirt, I threw on the jacket and adjusted the sleeves and struggled to tie the tie for a few minutes.

As some final touches I put some round black stud earrings in and pulled on a pair of black fingerless gloves. I examined myself in the mirror for a few seconds, I didn't look nearly as bad as I expected, the only thing to fix was my hair.

I combed back my hair and put a small amount of gel in so it stayed that way. I turned my attention to Flapjack, who was busy eating a strawberry and flinging the remains of it around the room.

I contemplated putting him back the cage while I was at the ball, it felt like the responsible thing to do but for some reason I felt sympathy for the bird. It had felt like I was trapped in a cage my entire life, isolated and miserable.

If this was the little bit of freedom I could give him, I would. I gave him a small pat on the head and whispered "bye Flapjack" before putting on a pair of black shoes and exiting my room. I followed the loud sound of voices until I was standing in front of the large open doors of the ball room.

I took a deep breath, preparing myself, and walked in. The room was surprisingly not as full with people as I thought it would be, I surveyed the room and it looked like only ten families spread out around the room.

I glanced over at the tables and saw the maid girl, Luz, setting food down while chatting with princess Amity. She was dressed in a black suit and had on the biggest smile I had ever seen, one Amity seemed to mimic.

Amity was dressed in a long purple dress, decorated in small silver stars. It had puffed up sleeves that traveled down her arms. She leaned slightly on the table and gazed at Luz like she was the most interesting person in the world, although from what I could overhear she was just talking about a book she loved.

I looked at them for a bit until I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jumped and whirled around to see Darius Deamonne, a family friend. I inhaled sharply, trying to figure out what to say when he spoke, "nice to see you again, little prince".

I internally groaned, he had been calling me that ever sense I was a child, and it had gotten old fast. I threw out my hand in annoyance, "do you really have to call me that? I'm sixteen!"

He chucked and ruffled my hair "just as fiery as ever, I guess it runs in the family". He looked around for a moment, "well I must go, I sadly did not come here just to chat, see you, little prince".

I did not hide my eye roll as he walked away, his purple cloak flowing and white boots clicking against the floor.

I looked around again, this time looking for a certain boy with dark green hair. That's when the music began, I caught my uncles eyes from halfway across the room and he nodded his head towards the right, I followed his movement and spotted Emira.