I stared at the handsome young man and I bit my lower lip as I wondered how I would get through this without getting into trouble. He stretched out his hand, but then I was hesitant to take it.
“I’m Prince Alucard, brother to the Emperor. By the way, I take it you’re Princess Elinor?”
I nodded slowly and looked from left to right, waiting for the guards to come and tell me I had overstepped my boundaries and would be punished.
“You can rest assured I won’t hurt you, and I suppose… Neither will my hand,” he said with a raised brow that bordered on amusement, but I couldn’t have been sure. I barely knew the man.
Realizing what I had done, I looked down at his outstretched hand and shook my head. Too caught up in my anxiety and fear, I had forgotten that it was there, waiting for me. I shook his hand briefly and waited for him to tell me my punishment for disregarding the Emperor’s orders.
“Here, let me lead you back to your bed chambers. I know you’ve been locked in your chambers for a while. So I take it you aren’t out and about through legal means.” He looked down at me with a charming smile, and I nearly fainted.
He was dead handsome, and my fear was intruding on my stability of mind and body.
“But don’t worry,” he said, reassuringly.
Although he had asked me not to worry, I couldn’t help but still fret as we made our way to my bed chambers.
Maybe it was my fear that came with doing what I did that night, or perhaps it was being in the presence of the Emperor’s brother, and it all but gave me enough anxiety to wet myself. The walk back to my bed chambers felt like an eternity.
“Not much of a talker then?” Prince Alucard asked and I wondered how he expected me to even manage to converse with him in a situation such as that, or how he even expected me to try and converse with him at all.
“Not in situations like this, I suppose,” I said weakly. He laughed, a quiet tinkle that escaped his lips that caught me off guard, but I wasn’t trying to be funny.
“I suppose I understand what you mean,” he said. I felt his eyes on me, but I didn’t dare look up at him.
Where in the castle was my room? Had it taken that long to get to the kitchen earlier? I questioned internally.
He didn’t say much after then and I couldn’t help but wonder if he would tell his brother of our little encounter. If he did that, I was going to be in so much trouble. For it was his brother’s orders that had me locked up in the first place.
But I was in no position to ask him to hide my secret. Wasn’t it enough that he hadn’t scolded me for wondering? Wasn’t it enough that he was walking me back to my room to keep me out of trouble with the guards?
But then again, I didn’t know him, and neither did I know his full intentions. So I had no idea what would come next. I could only hope and pray for the best.
“Your Highness.” The guards chorused when we finally reached my door.
“Leave her be. I ordered that she be brought to me,” he said in a tone of finality.
“No matter, Your Highness,” one of them said and opened up my door.
‘So it could be that easy?’ I mused internally.
Alucard looked at me and smiled.
“Have a goodnight, Princess Elinor.”
I managed to smile back, but my lips trembled, giving me away that I was still nervous, still weary, and alas, I walked back into my room.
“Prince Alucard,” I whispered to myself and wondered if he could indeed be trusted. But he had just saved my life, had he not?
~•~
I woke up to the sound of the birds chirping. Refusing to move a single muscle, I lay there, contemplating everything that had happened the night before.
Within my heart, I was very aware that things could have gone so very south the night before, from the letting down of the rope to being caught by Prince Alucard.
But he had been kind, had he not? He had walked me back to my chambers and had told the guard that he was the one who bade me to come out, protecting me from any form of trouble I might have found myself in if he had not been there.
But being grateful did not have to mean foolishness. And the truth of the matter remained, that I still did not know if Prince Alucard was someone to be trusted. However, the fact remained that he had not given me a reason to believe that he could not be trusted, at least not yet.
I squeezed my eyes shut and whispered a prayer of desperation because I truly felt my life was on the line.
I got up and walked to the window and my mind wandered to thoughts of the Emperor. The day we met still marred in my memory. No one had made me more afraid.
He hadn’t even said that much. He had asked me to join him during breakfast, and I flat-out declined. How could I have accepted, when the man made my throat dry, when he literally made me want to pee on myself?
He was terribly handsome, and maybe it ran in the family, but being handsome was not enough to make me go out of my way and get killed!
But that was the man I had been forced to marry. The man I had begged my parents that I did not want to have anything to do with, the man that now owned me, confined me in the four walls of this room whenever he felt like it. He looked at me like I was the worst thing that could ever walk the grounds of his castle.
On the other hand, his brother smiled in a way that could stop a heart, and if I wasn’t as cautious as I had become due to the tears gone by, then that smile of his was all it could have taken to make me trust him.
I pressed a hand to my forehead and sucked in a breath.
I couldn’t say if I liked the man, but I knew I didn't despise him.
I also couldn’t avoid him, not when the prince was as much a part of the castle as the Emperor was.
But I made up my mind that the next time I saw him, I would have to beg him not to tell his brother about my ‘little expedition’.
That was, assuming he hadn’t already talked to his brother about it, and the next time we meet wouldn’t be the end of my life.