Chapter 36

Iwas walking over to the glassblower Thomas’s shop to deliver a letter he had requested to be translated. It had been a particularly difficult project. In his original letter, Thomas wrote to an Avivian glassblower asking about a new technique he had heard about, and there had been many technical words I had to search through dictionaries to find to ensure that I was translating them correctly. I entered the shop and waited behind two middle-aged women gossiping away happily. I distracted myself by looking at the blown glass trinkets that decorated the shop.

Thomas, the only glassblower in town, was very talented. It appeared that he could make anything out of glass, any shape at all. The only complaint anyone ever had about his products was that they would break, but what would they expect when an object is made of glass? The technique he had asked about in his letter was to help him resolve that issue. Supposedly, this Avivian craftsman had developed a way of making glass stronger. As I waited for Thomas to appear, a bit of the conversation the two women were having floated in and broke through my musings.

“Yes, word is that the older prince broke off his betrothal to that foreign princess. Quite an ugly affair, I heard. The king insisted that the younger prince take his place.”

Were they talking about Hubert and Curtis? Was Curtis engaged to Aria? I peeked over at the women, eager to catch every word.

“Oh, really? And what will the older one do now? Isn’t he due to take the throne soon?”

“Well, word is that he will choose a commoner! Wouldn’t that be a spectacle to see?”

“No, really? That simply isn’t done!”

The first woman dropped her voice conspiratorially. “Gertrude, you know my Hilda is one of the serving girls at the castle, and she told me that when she was dropping off food to the Council, they were discussing having a ball so he could choose a commoner well-suited for him. Imagine! A prince marrying one of our own daughters!”

“Excuse me.” I approached the ladies, fighting the urge to lift my fan to cover my face as I usually did when introducing myself.

“Yes, dearie?”

“You said that the older prince is no longer betrothed?”

“That is what I heard, yes! But his younger brother, Curdy I think, is betrothed to her now,” she turned back to her friend. “Honestly, all this fuss about that princess marrying into the royal family. I personally would favor keeping Avivians in Avivia.”

At that point, the glassblower’s apprentice asked if he could help me, which was fortunate. If I had stayed and listed to the conversation any longer, I may have fallen over. I handed him the letter with instructions to deliver it to Thomas and left in a daze. All this time, I had been so sure that Curtis would move on, find someone else. But now that he had, I couldn’t believe it. For that one glorious year, I thought we would be together forever. Somehow, I hadn’t ever thought that Curtis would love anyone else. I felt like I had lost him all over again. I stumbled back to our manor and fell heavily into a chair.

Why did I feel so betrayed? I had no claim on Curtis’ heart. I had deserted him, fled miles away, then had written that absurd letter. He owed me no loyalty. There was no reason for me to expect anything other than that he had moved on with his life. He should move on. He was a prince; he had to do what was best for the kingdom. I should be happy for him…

But I wasn’t.

Selfishly, I wished that his love for me had never faltered and that one day, he would find me and declare his undying devotion to me.

Again, these were silly girlish fantasies. I would never see him again. And didn’t I have Mother as an example? She had been married to Father for decades before he passed away, and within a year she had remarried. Surely if someone would remarry after twenty years of marriage, a year-long teenage romance didn’t have a chance of withstanding the test of time.

I couldn’t get any work done that day. I tried to pay attention to the words before my eyes, but they wouldn’t focus. I kept imagining Aria in a white dress, walking down the aisle toward a beaming Curtis.

“Truly?”

I tore my thoughts away from royal engagements and weddings. “What?”

Cynthia opened the door. “I was just wondering if you could make the dinner tonight. I wanted to go out.”

I sighed. I had accomplished nothing yet that day except for the brief errand of delivering a letter. The news about Curtis had completely distracted me from the mountainous pile of documents waiting to be translated. “I don’t think I can, Cynthia. I’m sorry, but I have so much work to do.”

“I figured as much,” she sniffed, and snapped the door shut. Great. Now my stepsister was mad at me too. Again. Could I never get anything right?

I had to focus, I had to! I couldn’t keep dwelling on past relationships and hypothesizing about what ifs and where we would be now if Father hadn’t died. If the attack had never happened. Curtis and I might have had a future together. My chest ached with the knowledge of what I had missed out on. What good would it do to dwell on hypotheticals? The reality was that I didn’t belong with Curtis anymore. I needed to move on. I bullied my brain into meticulously copying out a business proposition, but with each stroke of my pen, Curtis’s face, still so perfectly etched in my memory, floated to the forefront of my mind.

For so long, I had trained myself to forget my past life. Now, I couldn’t think of anything else. Why was it so hard to let go of what would never be mine?