Rosalyn Osborne was a criminal, so they called her. Six years in prison changed her. No matter what others thought of her, she always knew her true self. She wasn't a criminal in her mind, but there was a public uproar when she was chosen for the Se...
I wait on my bed for the guard to fetch me for lunch. My maids dressed me up looking fairly nice for just a meal. My hair was curled in gentle waves and my dress was a simple kind of beautiful.
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I stand up when I hear a knock at the door and open it to reveal a kind looking guard.
"I am here to take you to meet Princess Rho for lunch." The man tells me. I nod in response and he sets off down the hallway and up the stairs. I follow him, walking quickly to keep up with him and he stops in the middle of the hallway for me to catch up. "She should be right in there waiting for you."
"Thank you." I say with a nod. I push open the door and see the princess standing by her window. When she hears me come in she turns and smiles.
"Lady Rosalyn." She nods to me with a smile. The study was absolutely beautiful. The ceilings were high with a beautiful nook in the corner with comfortable seating. There was a small table set up for a meal and shelves lined the walls with beautiful objects and elegant books. "The food isn't ready quite yet, but there's tea."
"That sounds good." I say with a smile. She leads me to the nook and pours the tea on a small cart and then rolls it slightly toward me.
"You can add whatever sugar or milk you like." She tells me. As I prepare my tea, Princess Rho stays quite, but when I take a sip of it she speaks up. "I'm sorry about North, Lady Rosalyn. I could tell you loved him."
"Just call me Rose." I tell her with a forced smile and when it fades I decide to respond properly. "You said 'loved'. Past tense. I never stopped."
"Then you must just call me Rho." She tells me. "And I know. I'm not as close to my siblings as some of them are with each other, but North is my closest sibling. He understands that I'm different and he doesn't care. Sometimes he comes and talks to me about things because he knows I have nobody to tell."
She seemed to look back on some sort of past life. When she looks back up at me she just smiles sadly.
"The first day he met you he came and told me you were the strangest girl he'd even met because you seemed completely uninterested in the palace or him. You wouldn't believe how bothered he was." Rho laughed.
"That I wasn't already in love with him?" I laugh with her, my heart already feeling lighter.
"Yeah." She sighs. "But most of all he was intrigued by you. You see, all of the princesses and such that we've met here are all the same. All of them— especially the ones who are not in line for the crown— are interested in kingdoms where they could be a queen."
"Are none of them interested in love?" I ask her.
"It's not that they aren't interested in it, it's just that it isn't their first priority." She shrugs.
"What are you most interested in?" I ask her.
"Happiness. Wherever I'm to find it is what I want." She decides. "I haven't visited other kingdoms— I get sick too easily. There is almost no chance of me finding a husband, so I search for happiness in other places."
"Like?" I ask.
"Books. The more I read, the more fake happiness I have and maybe it's not my own, but I get to read about other people's and it's almost the same." She smiles sorrowfully and sets her tea down.
"Why don't you have your own selection?" I ask her. "Maybe it's never been done for a Princess, but who's to say it couldn't?"
"I don't like having company here. I don't even like when our cousins come, nevertheless so many people here to try and court me." She shrugs.
"I think you ought to give it a try. It wouldn't be fair to yourself if you never gave yourself an opportunity to be in love." I tell her.
"I don't think that would work, Rose. You see, it doesn't matter whether I've found love or not, it just matters if there is someone suitable for me to marry. It's just tradition." Rho seemed trapped and I felt bad for her, but I was still confused.
"Are you saying you think you've already fallen in love?" I ask, surprised. Rho looks away and out the window.
"I think it could happen with one of my dear friends, but it's not allowed." She responds.
"How do you have friends that aren't suitable to be your husband?" I ask her.
"There are many men in this palace that people would laugh at if I were to marry." I pause when she says it. I think for a moment and then I realize what she means.
"A guard?" I ask. Rho smiles sweetly.
"I don't talk to many of them, but one night I was walking the hallways when I couldn't sleep. I have an extreme distortion disorder that I've never completely cured. This was years ago when I was probably fourteen. I began to have an episode where the things around me started to grow and shrink." Rho used her hands as she talked which seemed so wrong for a princess, but I loved it. "I screamed and started to cry. All I remember is two arms wrapping around me and holding me tight."
She picks up Her tea and takes a sip. She looks back out the window as if I wasn't even in the room.
"When I finally started to see clearly, I look up and it was a guard I'd never seen before. He was young— probably the youngest guard I've ever seen at the palace." Rho looks at me for a moment. "I was confused at first. Guards aren't supposed to become that close to the royal family like that, but it didn't even bother me. We became closer after that as he walked me back to my room and I realized he had a sister who had similar episodes like that. He's been one of my only friends ever at the palace, but my family doesn't know. They probably never will."
"Why don't you ask your parents about marrying him?" I ask. "Do you really think they would keep you from happiness?"
"I don't want to put them in a position where they have to. It would be selfish of me to make them feel like that." Rho tells me.
We are both quiet for a moment. Rho had spoken of her illness like my maids had, but she didn't seem plain to me at all. If anything she seemed more interesting than I'd ever imagined.
We were both so similar in a way too— both knowing where happiness is, but not allowed to reach out to it.
