Along with the raging skies, the hope was only slowly crumpling like a soggy piece of paper, tethered on the sides and falling into spotty foldings of snow-like littering.
It had been two days since I had last seen Anwar, and despite my constant pleas to return back to the stables, it seems both the weather and Ruby, were battling each-other on who could be the greatest deterrent to my wishes.
The weather was out of my hands and along with everyone else's, so it was easy for me to not scold the sky nor punch at the windows where the water falls like autumn's petals alongside it.
But Ruby? She made my blood boil and my fists tighten whenever I was around her, because it seemed as if during the last two days, she was constantly finding tasks or teaching lessons in order to discourage me from having any-time to see the stables – It was almost as if in some twisted and sick fate, she new who Anwar was and what he meant to me.
Ruby asks questions in vain about Kylo Ren, wondering how he and I are getting along, and using her own gift that she had brought to me the day I had gotten here, I lied – Telling her that things are well and things are progressing in the fact that he surely has no idea about the royal deceit, leaving out the fact that my heart beats for another man, when I consider for a fact, that he may love the Princess that I imitate.
During those long and treacherous days, where I spent longing for the man who was so close, yet too far away, I relished in all things golden, boasting in the memory of his golden hair that I should return to, any moment now when I find the chance to flick away Ruby, who sits by my side in the library, shifting through a collection of dusty novels or historian books that I may be interested in – Though, I always shake my head at whatever title she shows, returning my gaze back out the window, shortly after.
Row after row of neatly lined up books with their spines facing outward, the library was a grand space, where paintings lined the walls and pastel etchings of chubby babies and God's wrapped in silk, lined the roofing. The books wait to speak their words upon the thousands of wooden cases, their ink on papery leaves that will always stay, even though centuries may pass as the King's collection was entirely off keeping to the public, only a handful of people in the Kingdom were allowed to indulge in their letterings.
But even now, Ruby and I were the only people in here, sitting on a long oakwood table where the chairs on one half were plush, and tucked into the other-side of the table, was only a long stretching of seating with cushioning upon the wide windows that looked over the fields.
Gazing out to the tiny paddock and stable from up here, my soul whispers professions of love and schemes of felicity, but the pain of separation, however, is only alleviated upon my heart as I constantly fight back asking Ruby, for the thousandth time today, if I can go to the paddock.
Though, it seems my tongue was still capable of slipping past my grinding teeth, "Can I please go see my horse? I won't be long and I will wear a coat."
I turn back to Ruby and watch the way she sighs to a new title, glaring at its lettering instead of me, "I have told you that you can't today, the King and Kylo Ren are to be meeting us in here soon."
The pang of disgust and mixed apprehension sunk into my esteem as my shoulders dropped slowly and so did my hopes at the mention of seeing the King.
"Why are they both coming? And why must we be here?" I ask, my voice flat and bored as I let my eyes rest upon the ginger locks upon her head, which in this dark weather, seemed to flatten with her liveliness.
Her steady countenance that she laid bare into the long paragraphs of the novel she clung tightly onto, faded with the foreseen impatience in my snide and when she finally glanced to me with those icy blues, her mouth pursed into a thin and straight line as she flicked her gaze upon my features, particularly the birthmark.
Then tearing that gaze away, she turns back to the book and begins to read over the introduction for a third time as she says, "I have told you, the King has requested that he creates a bond with Kylo too – After all, Mr. Ren is going to be the future King of Jorkhan."
My stomach swirls in an unsatisfactory manner and all the nerves in my body spike to attention in a way that also brought the hair on the back of my neck to stand, purely at the addition of the next in line for the throne.
Swallowing down my sandpaper mouth, I struggled with the tying of my dry tongue, but eventually found the strength to ask the blunt girl,
"Has there been any news with the Princess' whereabouts?" I say, glancing around the empty library once but still bringing my words down to a whisper, "Are you any closer to finding her and returning her home?"
As well as me.
It was not often that I had seen Ruby sprung off guard, stripped off of her hard exterior and armour of distant eyes, scowling features and high shoulders, and with my questioning, I didn't assume it to result in her dropping her greatest weapon... But it somehow did, as she sucked a sharp breath inwards and closed the binding of the book in her hands, not even marking her page before it was lost with the other hundreds.
Swallowing sharply and blinking over my question, a heavy but brittle tension forms in the air between us, almost staining my hands with belts that she gave with the harsh colouring around her eyes. Ruby shakes her head, "No – There's been nothing." She says softly, and I part my lips to speak, but she cuts me off and leaves the conversation bare, "And I don't think they will find anything soon either."
My heart plummets to the deepest ends of Jorkhan, mixing in with the lava and hardening to a damaged crisp, "W-What?" I stutter.
Intense dismay, becomes the embers of my burning sorrow in that same lava that my heart scorches into. Ruby doesn't think they will find her soon, what does that even mean?
Panic also builds quickly. I can't stay here any longer, the wedding is almost four weeks away!
Ruby doesn't answer. I bite back with another question, my fists curling tightly beneath the table in which she sat across from me, "What do you mean?"
Ruby contemplates for a moment, her eyes flickering all around my features and then the room, as if she was trying to find an answer around. I furrow my brows and become perplexed in her sudden silence, but when she sees the expression forged on my face, she fakes a tight smile and says,
"The rains, they are making it hard to search for her lately." She explains, as if it was the first thing that had come truely to her mind – But it so obviously, wasn't.
That smile. It was all so fake. The type of fake smile that I had seen her give to me a thousand times before, only in those cases, she was using it to mask the bitter words she was spitting.
Suddenly, I realise something.
Whilst her defences had been stripped bare, I was somehow able to look through her words and she the truth that her weary body portrayed.
She was hiding something.
I stared into Ruby's eyes, silently and determined not to look away first. I was certain that she was trying to hide something behind the clarity of her blue orbs, but still she was determined to fool me as she blinked away the glassy layer and narrowed them.
"W-What?" She stuttered, much like I had a couple of seconds before this deceitful one.
Ruby then, contorted her lips into an awkward, toothy smile, but her cheeks were not so compromising as they paled so much, the freckles looked like ink. I could almost feel her reluctance to be moulded falsely as she straightened her back even more against the back of the chair when it was clear I wasn't going to respond.
When Ruby finally averted her gazed, the smile fell lifeless, allowing her face to return to its usual, cold hard gawk.
I saw it in the scolding. Almost with as much clarity as Kylo Ren can read my emotions.
It feels like a welded knife is being twisted in my abdomen and is injecting coal into my bloodstream. The agony I was subdued to, was everlasting waves that crashed upon my untouched soul to unknowable depths, thrashing upon my skin and staining its grip there as the realisation becomes a raging tsunami to my fire.
"You know where she is." I mutter in sudden and bask understanding, not saying it in a questioning tone like before but rather a phrase that seeped into the thick tension like acid and cut it in half crisply.
Ruby gasped low below her breath, her pale lips trembling as she shakes her head, almost too quickly.
"No." She tried to deadpan, but it was too late, I had already caught her and she knew, the crimson that began to rage around her neck was only another, dead give-away.
"You're lying." I spit, narrowing my eyes and flinching.
"I'm not." She continued to shake her head, whilst her hands began to grip around the oakwood table, the fingernails grazing lines into the gloss.
The torture throbs in my gut, deep and warm, but slicing at the same time. It feels like someone has their hand in there and is squeezing my insides first gently as a warning and then as tightly as they can.
She knew where the Princess was! And yet, I am still here.
Why?
Now mimicking her, I shake my head in disbelief of my own realisation. It just didn't make any sense, but it was potently true.
"Yes, you are!" I snap, the anger building in my chest like the lightening in the clouds behind me. I slam my hands upon the table and the contents above it rattle as much as my voice shakes my heart violently, "Where is she? Why am I still here if you know her whereabouts?!"
With red burning skin and hair of dying fire, Ruby shrunk in her seat and glanced with terrified eyes to the doors, "Keep your voice down, the King will be here any minute." She held a finger out to silence me, but it shook and paled before me.
Anger boils in my system as if it is the vexing of my burning soul. Like the rushing of blood to my reddening cheeks, my veins feel as if they could explode any moment if I don't let it all out in an act of violence. I had never been a violent person, but as I breathed in and out, the air wouldn't enter my lungs.
I wanted to hit her. I wanted to tug on her hair and sob more tears than the skies did. I had so many questions like, how long had she known, how long did she expect I would stay here? But starved for air, my heart only raced at tremendous speeds, and my lungs shallowly rose and fell in time.
I want to scream.
"Fuck the King!" I succumb to my burning desire, "You know where the Princess is and you aren't telling the King, why?"
I stand to my feet, forgetting about the calming sight outside the window and lean across the table to prove my anger as it resembled the way it had the day I almost laid my fists against her in the dining hall, across from empty plates – But this rage was a full course meal, and although I had been starved my whole life, this was something that I could peck upon for years.
Ruby shook her head, glancing away as gloss began to glaze over her eyes and she pursed her lips tightly shut, locking them away it seems. I only continue, thinking about all the reasons that could be deserving of risking your life to hide-away the Princess, her best-friend, and there was a lot. But one came to my mind before anything else.
"Because you don't want her to marry Kylo Ren?" I snap, my chin beginning to wobble also, "Well guess what? I don't want to marry him either, but it seems I don't have a choice!"
Suddenly, Ruby's eyes turn cold and harsh, but there's still a sadness brewing beneath her next words that smack me across the face with the brutality of them,
"Would you for one second – Just act grateful for anything we have given you?!" She stands, pushing the books off of the table and to the floor. I flinch, she only continues, "To say that you were born from nothing, you sure act like a spoilt brat!"
My face fell, but hardened quicker than the time it took for shock to seep into my veins.
My mind was a surging perplexity, whilst her words hit my burning skin like a thousand of needle pricks being thrown against me. I blink in shock, my perception distorted.
Only then, I huff a small laugh and shake my head shortly,
"Well, it sure is a good thing that you won't have to be seeing me anymore..." I say slowly, giving her a sad but sarcastic smile.
She furrows her brows.
"What?" She asks, giving me a daring glare.
I swallow my anger curtly, replacing it with a much more sinister emotion – One that I hadn't learnt from her, but someone much crueler. Kylo Ren.
The man who had constantly threatened me and hung things laced with guilt over my head to get me to do the things he wanted. And for once, I was grateful that it was him who had shown me something so dangerous.
"I'm telling the King that you're keeping secrets." I threaten her, my words dipped in acid and spat upon her with downturned lips.
There's a delicious second where everything goes quiet as she lets those brutal words seep into her veins and I bask in the dumbfounded shine of her face. But then, all at once and suddenly, she erupts into a ferocious boast of laughter.
I suck a sharp breath in, becoming completely taken aback in her reaction.
"Why are you laughing?" I snap.
She only continues to chuckle. Loud and boisterous, the same type of laughter that would come out of her when she was intoxicated by rich wine and interlocked around her even richer companions. I swallow nervously, me now falling to become the dumfounded one.
When her laughter finally withdraws, it doesn't fade away like most laughter does, but instead, just cuts short. Stopping all at once, as she rests a glaring look upon me, hooded eyes and a twitching smirk at the corner of her thin lips.
"The King won't believe you." She cracks upon my heart, the same way a whip would lash upon my flesh back at the orchards, "Why would he believe you – A peasant girl, who's only job is to lie? Over me, the most trusted person with the Princess?"
I scoff.
I seem to hate a lot of people in this kingdom, but Ruby had just shot to first place.
I know the hatred only guarantees more enmity, more pain – But the hatred is all I can hold onto like a dark flame, burning cold in my chest as I will never be able to do anything about it. The hatred is only a mask for my emotional trauma.
"I don't know," I tilt my head to the side and try to contain every little piece of strength I had left, balling them together and packing them into my punching words, "Why is it that you keep her tucked away so secretly? Actually – Save it. You can tell him why yourself."
She chuckles shortly again, standing up and circling around the table to meet me. I only cower away, but when I find myself resembling a predator's prey, I cling onto that ball of strength and confidence and close the distance, this time making her create more as she backs away and spits,
"There's no point in you snitching, you won't win this battle, no matter how hard you try."
I chuckle, the same way she did. Forgetting about the King's and Kylo's soon arrival, and only letting her fall into my point of view.
"And why not?" I ask cooly, biting the inside of my cheek to not just smack away the smirk upon her pale face.
She tilts her head too, letting her red hair fall over her shoulders as her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip, as if she was a snake, licking her lips before she consumes me – The mouse.
"Is it really worth the risk, telling the King about something so ludicrous?" Ruby draws slowly, playing with her meal, "After all, I am sure he will believe my reasoning for your outburst, rather than your own words." She narrows her eyes, holding a hand to her heart and faking a pity for me.
I bite so hard, down onto the already, torn flesh of my cheek, soon tasting the metallic of blood that only fuels the anger within me.
"And what is your reasoning?" I clench my nails into my palms, ready to pack a punch onto her if needed, "Spit it out – Enlighten me."
Ruby bites onto her bottom lip, the apple's of her cheeks turning a light pink in her content. It's as if she was never scared, only seconds ago – Our emotions slowly and torturously, swapping in this power-move.
"Don't you think that it is a bit unfortunate that the moment you are begging to go home to the King, you will only begin to spit your lies about me upon the throne, the very week that you find your lover from home has been moved to the palace? A righteous coincidence, I say..." She laughs, her eyes demanding a protest in her victory.
All anger that once raged in my body, fell as flat as my face did.
My heart sprung for saviour. My skin crawling like a million of fire-ants are biting upon it and nesting into the cooling blood below.
Tears burst forth, out of my eyes like a newly sprung leak, unknowingly, even though I hadn't yet blinked since she finished her snide.
She knew she had won, cocking an eyebrow up and chuckling some more as she ran a finger along the oakwood table, keeping her gaze upon me,
"What was his name again? Anwar?" Ruby licks over, pronouncing his name wrong but it didn't matter, she still knew exactly who he was, and that was dangerous – She proved this to be true, as she continued, "I am sure the King would be delighted to string him up along the walls of the Kingdom with the execution of trying to kidnap the Princess – I mean, that is a better reason than stringing you both up for trying to frame me for something, I clearly haven't done."
Ruby saw the shock register on my face before I could hide it and a small smile played on her lips.
With the picture of Anwar hanging so brutally and undeservingly against the side of the walls, his blood seeping to the ground upon the people's heads, I am left feeling so incredibly hurt by her words – Harsh like knives, coated by poison in an extraordinary sort of passion, but she delivers them in such a sinister way, offering a smile afterwards as a reward.
She was as evil, if more, than Kylo Ren.
She scanned my face for a reaction, and the silence in the library hung in the air like a suspended moment before a falling glass shatters on the ground. She expected me to crumple, wail or succumb into a sloppy mess of tears and I wanted to, but I did none of those things.
I am stuck here forever. I was too numb to dwell.
"You're a monster." I simply say, she shakes her head.
"I'm not a monster, I am just trying to keep Jorkhan the way it is."
I shake my head, sniffling and letting my voice croak in this awful heartache, "The First Order will bring death to Jorkhan." I mutter, knowing the Order's plans with the people of Jorkhan, but she didn't care for my people, she clearly only cared for the richest, who would be least affected.
She gives a shiny smile, her teeth gleaming even brighter than the jewels upon my crown – Which, I fret will be my crown forever.
"Well, at least the Princess and I will always know, that it was not her fault." She says, licking her lips again and ending it with, "It was the dirty-slum girl's."
My chin trembles. I was lost to understand from where this defence purely comes from inside such a timid and frail body, but it seemed beneath the pale flesh of her's, was the devil himself. In this indifference and authority, she made sure not to let any power reside in me, whilst also not giving any information away of satisfaction, in which I could steal.
Closing and then, opening my eyes, my surroundings had shifted into a darker haze and everything suddenly changed, I could still hear each of my seething breaths, rasping just the same as when I would run for too long, but my heart wasn't beating fast in tiredness but rather defeat, as if I was only withdrawing for the saving of my thin life, and now, Anwar's too.
There was hope before. But Ruby Mayse, had stomped on it and let it crush beneath the heal of her boot into tiny, little pieces, which I could never glue together to completion. I was nothing, and even now, she brought me down to nothing as she continued to remind me,
"You know what they say about the peasants of Jorkhan..." She begins, but I have already had enough – Cursing to the soon, arrival of the King and my true betrothed and sobbing upon the realisation that I will never be the person I truely am, ever again.
I shove passed her and make my way out of the library as the sadness builds inside me.
"– They are the dirty fingerprints upon the world's golden glory." Ruby only calls out to me, letting her shoulders fall comfortably as she brushes her skirt casually and sits back down, saying one last thing to me, before I push open the exit's doors and wail in my intense sadness as the rains only cry harder, as if it was a competition.
"So go on, run to your little, grimy boyfriend!" She laughs sickly, "For if you truely are ignorant enough to tell the King anything, I am sure today will be your last moments with him... Forever."
It is my tears that keep my soul alive in the furnace of this pain. They cannot extinguish what has been, yet only carry me forward to a place that my heart truely needs. The searing pain of Ruby's last words, hit against the glass of the library doors, and it is distant enough to forget more than remember, and maybe erase itself from my eternity of fears, but I know this realisation has just shifted my destiny in such a demolishing way – As if I was a fish in a plastic bag and she was the little girl who shakes me till I die.
The clouds that gather, a silver-fade, from the strongest of grey to soft whites, have command of the skies today and will for the rest of the week it seems, killing the soil just as evenly as my soul had just been buried.
It sloshes past my feet and sinks into my boots that sprint across the grass, as my hair sinks and flattens along my face and skin.
I sob harder. With no mercy or kindness, a single and final sentence would burn my hollow soul into a being of nothingness. Within those eyes, I only saw the figure of a saviour, who proved the kindness of my world, no matter how violent it could be to me.
Anwar drops all the tools in his hands, to the muddy soil of the paddock and looks at me worried, not yet noticing the tears that mingle with the rain.
He calls out to me and when I am close enough he asks,
"What are you doing h–"
But I cut him off, falling into his wet chest, wrapping my arms around the soulful beat of his heart, which I am determined to keep alive, despite the torture.
And then, I press my lips to his forcefully and passionately. Sinking into the feeling of his warm and soft mouth against my own, it was something that I had dreamed of for years.
And yet, as I did it, all I could still picture was him hanging along the Kingdom walls, dead.