Princess of Flames

Chapter 2- Puddles

The scene around them changed, though she was still sitting on the ground with his head in her lap, a sly smile still present on his pale face, his cheek bones defined even through his grin. Still so handsome, she thought.

He raised his cold hand to her cheek, lovingly touching her face. She slapped it away.

"Enough, Julien. Things haven't changed," she snapped coldly, pushing his head off of her lap, letting it slam against the hard floor.

She rose from the floor, pacing. "Where have you taken me?" she asked, gazing at her surroundings.

Tall frost-covered windows hid behind a diamond throne, making it seem frozen. The high ceiling, complimented by tall, blue and white draperies that stretched all the way from the ceiling to the floor, each one bearing the Ice's Kingdom's crest: a simple snowflake with a banner saying fortis in aeternum.

"The Ice Kingdom," she breathed, struggling to take in the vast incredulity of the Kingdom. She had never ventured here before, forbidden from her father, The King of Flames, who irrevocably hated the King of Ice.

"I never knew why you ask so many questions when you tend to answer them all on your own," Julien remarked.

She began to fall into it all again, the calm and assuring presence that was Julien.

"But where is your father?" she asked.

Silence. Julien stood up now, staring at her with a grin. "Julien?" she asked.

"Sorry, I was waiting to see if you were going to answer that too," he laughed. She raised her eyebrows to go back to the question. "Dead," he remarked quite nonchalantly.

"Dead," she repeated, taking in what this must mean. "You are the new king," she told not him, but really herself.

He smirked, dramatically taking a seat in the diamond throne. Everything Julien did was for show, to deepen the mysterious veil of mystery that he so desperately clung to. Sera saw right through him. To her, there was no mystery to Julien. She knew him better than herself. All of those secret affairs under the moonlight, talking for hours and hours on end, tend to make people closely acquainted.

"King Julien, Father of Ice," he sneered.

She rolled her eyes at him. "Then where is your crown, oh Father of Ice?"

He shrugged. "'Messes up my hair," he traced a hand over his dark hair, tightly pulled into a ponytail.

She laughed aloud, falling back into her old ways, of loving Julien and succumbing to the burdens of her life.

"So then, if you are King Julien, Father of Ice," she mocked, "is there peace between our kingdoms?"

His expression stiffened and his smile faded. "Worse than ever," he breathed, refusing to make eye contact. "When you left, I went to your father, pleading with him to find you. I gave it all up. I told him everything, about us, about... the fight. I was blamed and violence began. I thought he would understand, that he would—"

He stopped, placing his face in his hands.

"You went to my father?" she yelled. "You, the spawn of his enemy, went to him and told him that you joined with his daughter and now she's ran away because of you?"

His shoulders stiffened and drooped. He brought his face away from his hands, a look of horror on his face. "You ran away because of me?"

She was angry, at herself for almost slipping back into the love of his sarcasm and brilliance, and him for now playing the role of a heartbroken, helpless fool.