Because I Love You✔️

Chapter 29: Upon Thine Lips

"That's not true!" Amelia scoffed, giving her a stunned look. "Ella, you've left Chisago a great many number of times! For great distances, too, if I recall."

Ella rolled her eyes.

"True, very true, but those trips were always to the settlements my father governed, and all of them were nothing more than humble farming towns."

"What about the time you went to Capital Central?" Gus casually asked, removing his saddle for the evening and feeding his horse an apple, a bucket of oats, as well as a couple of carrots. "Didn't you visit the king's castle in Astaroth?"

"Yes, and it was impressive, but sadly," Ella murmured, "we went through another mountain pass much farther to the west of here, so I didn't get to see Ordin."

"Speaking of that trip," Amelia suddenly drawled, "I heard that the Crowned Prince himself proclaimed during his first meeting that he wanted you for his wife and attempted to ask for you hand while you were there."

Ella's shoulders shivered violently right around the same moment that Xaphile's ears flicked. Slightly turning his head, he started paying more attention to the conversation.

"That was not a false rumor, actually," she cautiously noted, removing her own saddle and beginning to unpack her things.

"Ehhhhh?!" Amelia squealed, whirling around in shock. "It really happened?!"

"Yes."

"Why did you turn him down?!" Gus choked, eyes wide. "You could have been this country's queen and started changing everything for the better!"

"I don't want to rely on someone else's position to have the right to change things," Ella snapped, then swallowed uneasily, "but if I must be honest, I rejected him because he frightens me."

All of them paused, giving her a look of incredulity.

"You're scared of the crowned prince?!" Amelia laughed, looking stunned. "But... but... why?! He's a mental ox, my lady! He's not... erm... intelligent. At all. In fact, he's kind of famous for being obnoxiously mental."

Ella shivered.

"I don't particularly think he's as stupid as everyone assumes," she grimly muttered, shaking her head. "There's something... not quite right behind his eyes. He looks rather mad and definitely more than a little stupid, by all rights, but if you observe him closely you can clearly see that he's... well, strangely... calculating."

She seemed to be struggling with her words.

"I never thought a day would come when you would actually admit a man scares you," Gus noted, giving her a perplexed frown. "Just how badly do you fear the prince?"

Ella scowled, shrugging off her cloak and folding it up. She was silent for a few moments.

Then...

"I fear him more than any other human on this continent."

"Why?"  Gus scoffed.

Ella shivered violently for a moment.

"After I turned down his marriage proposal," she quietly explained, "he had his guards publicly torment some petty thieves he was keeping locked in the dungeons, and he found an excuse to make me watch."

"That hardly seems like a reason to fear a man."

"That's not all. He also had a family of halflings tortured and whipped in front of hundreds before burning them alive, and while they were screaming, he was smiling."

Xaphile shivered.

"Sounds a little familiar, if you ask me," Amelia dryly noted. "Surely such a thing shouldn't bother you."