The Prince's Songbird Slave ✔️

Blame

Thought around time of publishing - still in disbelief about having to jump a barrier at the train station.

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My eyes flew open and I was looking up at the ceiling of my room in the lodge. I flung an arm out, searching the space next to me on my bed. When I found it was empty I relaxed.

The things I thought I'd seen and heard were nothing more than a dream fuelled by my uneasiness and doubts. I laid there silently for a few minutes.

It had been a disturbing dream, and I was glad to return to reality.

I let out a deep sigh.

"I'm afraid the clarity of hindsight is a bitch," a voice told me.

My stomach lurched like I'd just been punched in the gut, and I sat up abruptly, looking over towards the voice.

Now I was looking at more than the ceiling I could tell that this wasn't my room – the furniture was different and arranged in different places. There was a large wardrobe, it hung open, exposing the short black, red and blue dresses it contained.

After scanning the room my eyes settled on Freya, who was sitting in a chair at the corner of the room, her face hidden mostly in the shadow, but her red hair that was draped over her shoulders was unmistakable.

She was wearing a simple black maxi dress, her legs folded over each other underneath the long skirt, arms crossed over her chest.

The covers fell away from my chest and landed on my lap, quickly I pulled them back up to cover myself.

She snorted derisively.

"It's far too late for that," she said, sitting rigidly in the seat, and giving me a minute to let it all sink in.

"I-", I said, choked.

"Yes. I never thought you'd actually go through with it. The whole time I was waiting, expecting you to suddenly pull out of it, to remember your sweet little Eve and run off back to her."

I felt sick.

Part of it was because of the mistakes I'd made, and the other part was at hearing Freya mention Evelyn's name. I couldn't decide whether the twisted, knotted, feeling in my stomach came from what had happened between Freya and I, or whether it came from Evelyns' name itself.

A wave of nausea and pain swept over me as I remembered with a crisp clarity how her voice and laughter had sounded. A voice I never even knew she had.

"You've royally fucked things up Nate," Freya snapped.

"And what are you being so bitchy about," I snapped back, pain, self-loathing, frustration, anger... A toxic mix of emotions boiled over and I lashed out verbally, the emotional onslaught lowering me inhibitions.

Freya was silent, and after a long pause and deep breath she spoke, her voice had a slight tremor to it.

"I have a bad attitude but that doesn't make me evil," she said so softly I nearly missed it.

She seemed to find her confidence, and I could feel her eyes glowering at me. "I enjoy beating all those no-good guys at their 'game'. I mess around, turn the tables on them, but that's hardly different from what the rest of them do to us girls. You are the one who made me 'evil'. In your attempts to justify your feelings for Eve you twisted the situation and made me into a villain."

She laughed bitterly.

"You only saw what you wanted to see, based on my outward you judged me and made assumptions. You took my confidence to be arrogance, my freedom of expression to be forcefulness, you and everyone else out there. That annoyed me."