Royally Kissed | ✓

28|2; the prince's deception

—twentyeight—

{ part two }
the prince's deception

THE SHIP SAILED midair in a sweeping motion.

Paige could still rather see the ride from here in the car as she lingered outside the park; there were arms up above the clouds that were attached to the bellowing mouths underneath in sheer mirth. The curve-shaped wooden vessel pointed towards the sky like a tease to the mix of colors as if they were wrestling for transcendence.

On the other side of the world, the sun began to shine through; and then it took her a good ten seconds to realize that she'd been immobilized for far too long already.

Paige refused Owen's offer to take her home as she always drove her own car, anyway. And even though she hadn't got one, she would've done the same exact thing−turn him down. Her mind was wandering through everywhere right now and she needed some time alone to process everything she knew.

"Everything alright?" he'd asked her when she got out of the grand ballroom and found him smoking another stick. Paige knew it took him to drag few other ones before she got there, considering that the talk with Archer wasn't equaled to one cigarette alone. "How did your talk go over?"

Letting out a sigh of resignation, she'd developed a tic that was originally a sign for him to go along with her, and let the silence between them span for a short while. And only then it stopped when Owen broke into a coughing fit.

Quite frankly, she didn't know how to start−or if he should know, in the first place. Owen shouldn't, she belatedly decided. Because if the information she had acquired were stored in a classification of documents, this would be 'confidential' or, say, 'top-secret'.

Or was it, really?

But Paige felt like she was going to burst all over the place so there was no certainty here if she would remain mum.

Owen was keeping up the pace alongside her, meant to wheedle her into getting it out of her lips. Not able to hold it back anymore, she whirled apace to him and he blinked in surprise at the haste as his steps faltered.

Paige ran her fingers through her hair. Screw it, she thought. "Archer's an illegitimate child?"

"Paige," he hissed, his eyes widening and then looked around rather precariously. "Keep it low."

She couldn't. So frustrated was she, almost bordering on fury, at the challenges Arthur possibly had to face way before he knew he had a half-brother in the form of Archer West.

Owen darted her a pointed look, gesturing his hands for her to calm down. Two hands mid-air, then down to her shoulders.

"Owen, Archer−he..." her tongue swept across her lip, shaking her head, "his father took Arthur's mother away from her husband. Isn't that right?"

"What isn't right is for us to even talk about this." He almost immediately shook his head at the wake of the flickering motion in his eyes. "That's not my story to tell, okay?"

"Owen," she pressed, her eyes soft but eager. "Please. You, at least, know something−"

"Course, I fucking know something. All of us know each other's secrets. I mean, not all, but you know what I'm trying to say here."

Paige caught his wrist. "I won't tell anyone. I promise."

He held her gaze for a moment. They both weren't going to back down just yet, but when Paige showed him how much she actually cared about all this, his shoulders sagged heavily. "Why're you so stubborn?"