Chapter Seven
WELL, I CAN’T SAY I didn’t see that coming.
But it’s all good.
I’ve got You, and life will go on.
Right?
I’m laughing and crying as I get into one of those hackneys for hire that are all over Foxtown. The driver waiting at the rank doesn’t ask questions when he sees my face. He just lowers the step for me, and waits.
“H-Holborn, please.”
He nods once and clicks his tongue at the horses, and we pull away from the curb at the slow Foxtown trot that the park enforces, and I close my eyes against the seat back.
The hackney rolls. Outside, Foxtown is doing what Foxtown always does—couples promenading along the pavement in their finery, a flower girl somewhere calling out about violets, the chime of a clock from a distant square—and none of it touches me.
It’s all happening behind glass even though there is no glass.
I know...
I know in my heart that there’s not a single word I said that was untrue. I know I’m going to be okay. I know everything will be okay. Someday. And I guess that’s the part that has my heart breaking to pieces. That someday feels so, so impossibly far.
Because right now—
God, oh God.
Was this how he felt that night?
Thinking that you’ve found the girl of your dreams, and you’ve even started planning an entire future with her, and just when you’re about to ask her to be your wife—
The girl of your dreams turns out to be an idiot who likes to waste kisses on almost-drunk frogs.
A weird sound escapes my lips. It’s like this sound between a laugh and a sob. But I just don’t have the energy, just can’t make my brain work to come up with a new word to describe it.
All I know is that I’m hurting so, so bad—
I can’t stop seeing it.
His lips against another girl’s lips.
God, it hurts so, so much.
Please make it stop.
Please.
I’m so sorry for being a coward, but I just want to stop remembering—
“Tiara!”
Or maybe I should start praying that I stop hallucinating—
“Tiara!”
The hackney driver glances at me over his shoulder, the brim of his Regency top hat catching the afternoon light. “I think he’s talking to you, miss.”
What—wait—he can hear it, too?
“Tiara!”
And I don’t even have to look around because Arkane is right next to our hackney, running flat-out alongside it on the cobbled street, and I.
..I don’t even know how that’s possible.
Was he marathoning when he was young? Or had he been Hyroxing in the past six years?
Granted, our hackney has to stick with the park’s speed limits, but—
“Will you listen to me?”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. There’s no—” My words end in a shocked gasp because Arkane’s—okay, I’ve figured it out!
Parkour is his secret sport because that’s the only way for him to be running on the sidewalk one moment, and then he’s swinging right up onto the running board and right into the hackney next to me.
“Stop the car,” I cry out. “I mean carriage!”
But I forgot who I’m up against—
“I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you keep driving until I tell you to.”
—and he’s so, so unfair.
The driver doesn’t even pretend to think about it. He flicks the reins and the horses pick up to the fastest trot Foxtown allows.
He turns to me, I try turning my face away, but—
No no no no no no
Arkane hauls me into his arms, and his embrace is the worst possible cage because it’s the kind that I want to be imprisoned in forever.
God, I really am an idiot, aren’t I?
He tucks my head under his chin. His arms tighten around me. His chest is rising and falling fast against my cheek from the running, and I can hear his heart going hard, and then he starts to speak—
“I get why you don’t want to look at me.”
—and he’s just so, so unfair.
Why does he keep saying things that make it hard for me to forget I’m not the only one who’s hurting?
“And I know I’m asking for something I don’t deserve to ask...because it’s something I refused to do before. But I’m asking you all the same. Will you listen to me?”
I shake my head against his chest even though we both know it’s for show.
This close, trapped in a hackney that won’t stop for a thousand dollars, I’m as good as his slave, and so if he wants me to listen—
The hackney rattles over a rougher patch of cobble, and his arms tighten to keep me from being jostled, and he doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s done it.
“You’ve got your stories crossed.”
I’ll listen...even if he’s not making sense.
“Sometimes, it’s the other way around. And princes—”
No no no no no.
“Especially princes like me who was so damn desperate not to make a mistake—”
I don’t want to hear him talk about that.
“That when I did end up making another one, I just couldn’t let it go.”
I try shoving out of his embrace, but it’s no use. His arms are bands.
“So this sequel?”
I can’t bear hearing Arkane talking about things that matter to me matter to him, too—
“Princes can turn into frogs when they hurt the girl they love.”
Can’t bear hearing him talk like I still matter.
“And I love you.”
No no no no no no.
“Always did, always will—”
He finally lets go, but it’s only so he can torture me some more, his large hands cupping my face as he makes me look into his eyes that never ever lie—
“Will you forgive me, Tiara?”
“I do,” I choke out. “But it’s not—”
“Will you love me again?”
“You don’t understand—”
“Yes or no.”
Oh God, I’m so, so scared to mess this up. And even more, I’m so, so scared to mess him up all over again.
“Will you love me again? Will you marry me and be my princess?”
Give me a sign, God.
Please.
I want to do things right—
“We already know what it means to live apart, Tiara. Don’t you think it’s time for us to taste forever?”
And I start to cry because that right there—
It was God answering both my questions in one.
For everything there is a season, and this time now...
I cup his face with still shaking hands. “Yes.” I’m crying and laughing, and so is he, because this time...
It’s a time where we mend and heal, a time where we choose to love.