Chapter 38 — The Princess’s Bedroom
Alexander had seen Amara as a prisoner, a fugitive, a fighter, and a princess.
He had never seen her as the girl she had been before any of it happened.
That changed the morning after their arrival.
“Come with me,” Amara said.
“Where?”
“My rooms.”
Alexander raised an eyebrow.
“My childhood rooms.”
“That clarification was probably wise.”
Amara rolled her eyes and led him through a quieter section of the palace.
They passed two guards, climbed a wide staircase, and entered a private corridor overlooking the gardens.
At the end stood tall double doors.
Amara stopped.
For the first time that morning, her confidence disappeared.
Alexander noticed.
“You haven't been inside yet?”
“No.”
“Since we arrived?”
She shook her head.
“Why?”
Amara looked at the doors.
“I don't know.”
Alexander did.
Opening them meant confronting the exact moment at which her old life had stopped.
He offered his hand.
Amara took it.
Then she opened the doors.
Nothing had changed.
That was what hurt.
Sunlight filled a large sitting room decorated in pale fabrics and polished wood. Books remained on shelves. Paintings hung exactly where Amara remembered them. Fresh flowers had been placed on a table, but otherwise the room looked as though she had left yesterday.
Amara stood motionless.
“My mother kept everything.”
Alexander said nothing.
She walked slowly toward a desk.
Several books lay there.
Amara touched one.
“I was reading this the week they took me.”
Beside it was an unfinished letter.
She recognized her own handwriting.
Alexander watched her read the first lines.
Then she stopped.
“I was complaining about a diplomatic dinner.”
“To whom?”
“My cousin.”
“That sounds serious.”
Amara smiled faintly.
“I thought it was.”
She folded the letter again.
“It is strange.”
“What?”
“The woman who wrote this had no idea what was about to happen.”
The bedroom was beyond another set of doors.
Alexander followed her inside and stopped.
The room was elegant but surprisingly personal.
Books were everywhere.
Riding gloves lay beside a cabinet. A collection of maps covered one wall. Jewelry boxes stood on a dressing table. Near the window was a small desk piled with notes.
Alexander walked toward the maps.
“You really did study all of this.”
“You thought I invented my education?”
“I thought you occasionally exaggerated.”
Amara looked offended.
“Occasionally?”
“Frequently.”
She threw a cushion at him.
Alexander caught it.
For a moment, she laughed.
Then her eyes landed on something near the bed.
A pair of riding boots.
Her smile vanished.
“I wore those the morning I was taken.”
Alexander slowly lowered the cushion.
Amara approached the boots.
“I changed into another pair before Lela and I left. I remember being angry because these were still wet from riding the previous day.”
She touched one.
“That was the problem occupying my mind.”
Alexander moved closer.
“Then everything changed.”
“Yes.”
Amara opened a wardrobe.
Gowns filled it.
Formal dresses.
Riding clothes.
Coats.
Shoes.
Everything had been waiting for a woman who had never returned.
Until now.
Alexander finally understood the magnitude of what had been stolen.
When he first met Amara, she possessed almost nothing.
He had known intellectually that she came from wealth.
But wealth was not what affected him now.
It was continuity.
These rooms contained a life interrupted in the middle of an ordinary day.
A book left unfinished.
A letter never sent.
Clothes chosen for events she never attended.
Plans she never completed.
People had not merely stolen a woman from a road.
They had ripped her out of an entire existence.
Alexander looked around the room.
“I didn't understand.”
Amara turned.
“What?”
“How much they took from you.”
She closed the wardrobe.
“They didn't take this.”
“They took you away from it.”
“Yes.”
“Your family. Your home. Your position. Everything familiar.”
“For a while.”
Alexander looked at the boots again.
“I met you after all of this was already gone. I thought I understood what you had lost.”
Amara came closer.
“You understood what mattered.”
“Did I?”
“You understood that I was still me.”
She led him toward a balcony.
Below them stretched the palace gardens and, beyond the walls, part of the capital.
“When I was a child, I used to stand here and imagine traveling everywhere I could see on maps.”
Alexander joined her.
“My father said I would change my mind after my first uncomfortable journey.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Of course not.”
Amara smiled.
“I wanted adventure.”
Alexander looked at her.
“You may have requested too much.”
“Possibly.”
They stood quietly.
Then Amara said, “When I was on the ship, I used to close my eyes and come here.”
Alexander listened.
“I would imagine this balcony. My bed. My mother's voice in the corridor. Sometimes I imagined breakfast.”
“Breakfast?”
“I was hungry.”
“That makes sense.”
“I promised myself that if I ever came home, I would never complain about breakfast again.”
Alexander smiled.
“And?”
“I complained this morning.”
“There she is.”
Amara laughed.
They returned inside.
Alexander noticed a portrait on a small table.
A younger Amara stood between her parents, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old.
She looked happy.
Untouched by anything that would come later.
He picked it up.
“You look different.”
“I was younger.”
“Not that.”
Amara understood.
“Innocent?”
“Maybe.”
She took the portrait from him.
“I can't become her again.”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
Amara looked at him.
Alexander continued, “And you don't need to.”
She placed the portrait back.
“For a long time, I thought surviving meant returning exactly as I was.”
“And now?”
“Now I think surviving means accepting that I came back different.”
Alexander took her hand.
“Different isn't necessarily worse.”
“No.”
She looked around the bedroom.
“Just different.”
A knock sounded.
Queen Nalia entered.
She stopped when she saw her daughter standing inside the room.
For a moment, mother and daughter simply looked at each other.
“I couldn't change anything,” Nalia said quietly.
Amara's eyes filled.
“I know.”
“I kept thinking you would walk through the door and complain that someone had moved your books.”
Amara crossed the room and embraced her.
Nalia held her tightly.
Alexander quietly moved toward the balcony to give them privacy.
After a moment, the Queen called him back.
“Captain.”
He turned.
“Thank you for bringing her home.”
Alexander shook his head.
“She brought herself home.”
Nalia looked at her daughter.
“Yes,” she said. “She did.”
After the Queen left, Amara sat on the edge of her bed.
Alexander remained near the door.
“You may come closer, Captain.”
“I was attempting to behave respectfully in a princess's bedroom.”
“That would be a fascinating change.”
He sat beside her.
Amara looked around once more.
“I thought coming back here would make everything before the kidnapping disappear.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
“Are you disappointed?”
She considered the question.
“No.”
She rested her head against his shoulder.
“These rooms belong to who I was.”
Alexander took her hand.
“And who are you now?”
Amara smiled.
“Still deciding.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“For you, probably.”
He laughed.
Outside, the city continued beneath the morning sun.
Alexander finally understood that the kidnappers had stolen far more from Amara than freedom.
They had stolen months with her family.
Her safety.
Her certainty.
The ordinary life she had once taken for granted.
But standing inside the room where she had grown up, Alexander understood something else as well.
They had taken Amara away from her world.
They had not succeeded in taking her world out of Amara.
And now she had come home to reclaim it.