Chapter 4
Where am I?
I gradually emerged from the mist engulfing my senses, as if waking from a dream I couldn’t remember. Gradually the shaded world that had been nothing more than a dark, blurry outline filled with color as the barely discernible details emerged from the thick nothingness that had previously engulfed me.
I blinked and slowly took in my surroundings, struggling to determine where I was and remember how I had gotten here. I tugged on the threads of my memory, trying to recall how I had ended up here, but my recollection cut off after a certain point.
Even midst my hazy memories, the corridor where I stood contained an air of familiarity, even if the recollection felt out of reach, drifting farther away from me. Wisps of details faded in and out of my mind, impossible to grasp despite my vain attempts, like trying to cling to fog.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been here; time had no meaning—without form, similar to my body. Instead I was nothing more than a consciousness that seemed to be part of the air itself, allowing me to float anywhere I pleased. I explored the hallways, searching for any meaning I could hook my lost memory to.
I seemed to be have been aware until a short while ago. From the forgotten fragments I could piece together, I had arrived to this unknown place with someone, but upon their departure I seemed to have lost a part of myself, as if it’d left with them. I wandered the twisting labyrinth of dark stone, searching as much for this mysterious person as I did the answers that eluded me.
From the ornate ornamentation adorning the vast structure, I surmised I was in a palace. Though I couldn’t remember my identity prior to my mind submerging in this confusing fog, I couldn’t escape the sense of inadequacy that made me feel like the last person significant enough to find herself in such a grand location. How had I gotten here, and what was my purpose? Despite my invisibility I found myself shrinking against the wall, as though even in my disappeared state I didn’t deserve to take up space in such an imposing place.
Occasionally servants or prestigious officials bustled by without a glance, not even granting me the attention they might a piece of furniture or a decoration, as if I wasn’t even there. I searched each face for the person I seemed to be seeking in hopes I might recognize him when I saw him again, but their features were as foreign as the rooms I meandered, leaving me as lost as when my awareness first returned to me.
Midst my confusion, I managed to piece together enough clues to surmise that my memories had disappeared, swallowed by whatever force must have consumed my body, leaving me no knowledge of who I was or what I was doing in such a strange place. I felt trapped in a state of in-between—of being here and yet not.
Was this the fate of all who had succumbed to the disappearing curse?
I blinked when that errant thought suddenly penetrated my confusion. Disappearing curse? Something about that knowledge felt familiar, even as I couldn’t recall further details. Whenever I tried to grasp them, pain throbbed my temples, forcing me to cease my efforts and allow the glimpses of memory to slip away.
My wanderings eventually led me to a study where three officials conversed. The elderly man appeared to be an advisor, while the other aging man was dressed in the fine regalia of a king, and the handsome young man…my breath hooked the moment I recognized him. His name filled my mind, the only clear recollection midst my broken reminiscences.
Lucien.
My memories returned in a rush—the fate of my traveling entourage en route to my arranged marriage, my fiancé’s sudden arrival on the scene, his dismissal of my fate with immediate plans to replace me. His determination to immediately move forward had been painful enough when I’d heard of his intentions shortly after I had disappeared, only for me to stumble upon the very meeting where he sat deep in the process of his betrayal, as if fate had lured me here to cruelly toy with my already fragile heart.
Why had I been frantically searching the palace for a man indifferent to my disappearance?
Discussions of potential alliances to rescue the land from the worsening curse faded in the background, my entire attention eclipsed by Lucien’s expression—hardened as it always was, still without any hint of the heartbreak I desperately yearned to glimpse, evidence of my deepest fear come to fruition that he had never cared for me.
Time passed in a daze during their discussion until the king and the official finally left, leaving Lucien alone. Even after their departure he didn’t move, staring at the closed door until all at once his rigid posture faltered and he slumped in his seat with a weary sigh.
“Lisette.”
It took me a long moment to recognize the word that penetrated my heart as my name—the longing with which he’d spoken it made it sound almost foreign, as if belonging to another person entirely. I sorted through my scrambled memories but couldn’t recall Lucien ever addressing me so informally and personally, let alone using such a tone when he spoke to me.
From the details I was able to rescue from the foggy forgetfulness, Lucien rarely noticed me outside his duties as my intended, nor had I never witnessed him possess such an un-regal composure. I stared at him hunched over the desk with his fingers burrowed in his hair, a position where he remained for several minutes before his head suddenly snapped up, his gaze locked on me.
I startled. “Can you see me?”
As before no sound broke through the vanishing curse. How ironic that I had so often chosen silence when I had a voice to use, and now that I needed to speak I found myself incapable.
Even though he couldn’t answer a question he hadn’t heard, Lucien stared directly at the place where I stood before blinking several times and sharply shaking his head. “For a moment I thought I saw…I must be going mad.”
His white-knuckled grip clung to the edge of the desk as he slowly stood—as if needing to hold something in order to remain grounded—and stumbled towards the window to stare out across the descending darkness. I followed. Though his gaze remained riveted to the view, he stiffened at my approach, his head tilted slightly to follow my invisible movements, as if he could sense me even without seeing me.
I dismissed the errant thought the moment it appeared. Even though I could barely sense myself, I couldn’t seem to let go of my yearnings to be noticed. But no good would come for wishing for the impossible—if no one had been able to see me before being struck with such a curse, there was no way anyone could part the curtains of true invisibility, let alone an indifferent fiancé already making arrangements to replace me. And yet I couldn’t shake the sense that some subconscious part of him was aware of me.
I took a deep breath, trying to feel the body I knew had once been there. Air entered my lungs, moving my shoulders upwards and sending sensations down my arms and legs. Though I was unable to see myself, I felt assured that I wasn’t gone completely.
Puzzlement furrowed his brow as he cast frequent glances towards wherever I stood, as if his mind rather than his eyes followed my invisible movements, the most notice I could recall him ever giving me from the snippets of our failed courtship.
I had no reason to linger, but now that my aimless wanderings had led me back to him, the draw that had first compelled me to follow him to the Brimoire palace intensified to keep me riveted to his side, as if the engagement contract binding us hadn’t broken with my vanishment. Even when my hurt over his indifference towards me shifted to frustration that I couldn’t leave, part of me feared that without him I would lose the last connection binding me to the visible world.
Eventually he moved away from the window to return to his desk in an attempt to work. Though I was in a room of towering bookshelves that contained potential information regarding the devastating curse afflicting me, I couldn’t pull my attention away from him.
I learned more about him in the hour I spent unseen by his side than in all of our years of courtship. Small and seemingly inconsequential details stood out, each of which acted as a dark smudge to the perfect princely portrait I’d come to know—from the impatient way he fidgeted with his quill as his attention on his stack of documents faltered, to the way he burrowed his fingers in his hair, leaving it rumpled to match his increasingly haggard appearance. Yet while all these insights chipped away at the model of rigid perfection I’d always seen, I found myself appreciating him all the more as I caught glimpses of his humanity.
Every few minutes he would look up from the work that the lack of his usual diligence prevented him from accomplishing in order to search the room. Each time his gaze settled on whichever spot I currently hovered; his look remained unseeing…yet I couldn’t shake the wishful hope that he could somehow sense me.
His lack of notice served as a continuance for the way it’d been between us since the very beginning. My memories drifted back to the day I learned of our engagement, created even before our first meeting. Prior to the event, Crown Prince Lucien had been nothing more than the name of a neighboring kingdom’s future monarch—until the contract that had bound us was arranged by my father without any care for my consent.
In an instant my world shifted, and the name Lucien took on greater meaning beyond any other word. I began my frantic search for any mention of him in the royal records detailing recent diplomacy, during which I discovered he already played a crucial role in politics as he trained alongside his father for the mantle he would one day inherit.
Devotionand loyalty were the first two traits I’d come to associate with my future husband, ones I cherished with the hope that he would extend them beyond his role as a father to his nation to becoming my beloved husband. I looked forward to our first meeting with great anticipation.
When the long-awaited day finally arrived, I checked my mousy appearance several times in the mirror to ensure every hair was in place. Though beauty had failed to accompany my engagement, I hoped the goodness I had come to associate with my imaginings of my fiancé would allow him to see beyond everyone else’s disappointing perception so I could at long last be noticed by someone.
I hovered in Father’s shadow as he led the way to the reception room where the crown prince and the king of Brimoire awaited. The doors swung open to admit us. With a wavering breath, I pushed through the shyness ducking my head to lift my uncertain gaze to meet his deep grey eyes staring at me. My breath hooked as I took in his appearance—handsome, serious, and with a royal confidence I hadn’t seemed to inherit with my own title.
For all his impressive appearance and regal bearing, unfortunately the interest I yearned for above all others seemed entirely absent. His stoic expression didn’t falter when he saw me for the first time, save for the slight widening of his eyes…before he hastily averted his gaze, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me. The gesture created the first crack in my hopes that in our future together I would find something different than the past I desperately wanted to leave behind.
Agony marred the remainder of the evening. Several times during the long dinner Lucien turned to me with clearly rehearsed questions on my health, interests, and the affairs of my kingdom, but my anxiety compounded by the distaste I’d observed earlier crippled my tongue and I blundered through the briefest of responses. I sensed him withdraw slightly more with each interchange, and though I desperately wanted to reverse it to capture his attention and see interest and approval in his eyes, I was powerless to stop my hopes from slipping through my fingers.
Even worse than the interminable meal was the celebratory ball that followed. The newly betrothed couple was naturally expected to dance together, but as Lucien took one of my gloved hands in his and reached his other towards my waist I flinched, hesitant to be touched by a person who seemed to view me with disdain.
The prince paused, his brow furrowing slightly. After a moment he reached out again but kept his hand a fraction away from my side, his fingers just brushing the silk of my dress rather than applying any pressure, though I was acutely aware of his warmth against me.
Filled with shame at my own awkwardness and his resulting effort to maintain distance from such a fiancée, I kept my eyes trained on my feet throughout the dance. We survived the waltz without either of us making any effort at conversation and finally parted ways.
I took refuge near the edge of the floor, where I watched him for the remainder of the evening as he moved among the guests, envying his effortless ability to converse and wishing he’d shown as much interest in me as he did my kingdom’s Minister of Finance or Steward of Agriculture.
I gradually came to the painful realization that while Lucien had accepted me as his future queen, he had not chosen me to be his companion; it was clear that his interest lay solely in the alliance between our nations and how that could benefit his home country. My dreams of connecting with him as a soulmate and a friend withered as I realized I was destined to continue my existence of being ignored when my title wasn’t needed. From that moment on, no matter how many awkward meetings we endured, our relationship never improved, any romantic progression blocked by my shyness and his own determined distance.
Now that I was beholden to no one, I knew that I needed to finally let go of the duty binding me to him so that I could create a life of my choosing for as long as I had remaining before the curse took full effect and erased me. But stronger than my fear of disappearing was my regret in the one unresolved purpose I wasn’t quite ready to leave behind.
I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t disappeared, especially when my life up until this point was not one worth clinging to. Yet part of me was still willing to fight in order to find meaning in what had been broken, a yearning that strengthened the fragile thread connecting me to a man I scarcely knew. I wasn’t certain whether I could find the answers to the questions I couldn’t express, or why my vanished state seemed to fade whenever I was around him.
It felt as if my memories were beginning to fade, as if the act of remembering caused them to drift away. The more I recalled about Lucien and the failed relationship we shared, the deeper the regret that shadowed each remembrance, causing the sense of nothingness surrounding my consciousness to gradually begin to fade, leaving room for my buried longings to slowly emerge. Despite the broken relationship that had been woven with threads of duty rather than genuine affection, I wasn’t quite ready to let it disappear, any more than I would allow myself to vanish entirely.
A thought occurred to me and I stretched out my invisible hands, wondering if I could touch anything in the corporeal world while in this state. I brushed my fingertips along a bookshelf, concentrating on a small book that I tried to tug free; the volume remained stubbornly in place, not even shifting the slightest bit as my vanished hand failed to grip it.
With a sigh, I drifted to the desk and attempted to brush a piece of paper off it; again my invisible hand merely passed through it. I huffed impatiently and startled—while not a true exhale, somehow my movement had stirred the air and caused the candle to flicker. Lucien’s head lifted to frown in its direction before glancing around again.
Hope momentarily stirred and I leaned forward, willing him to notice me. I wanted to be seen, not just by anyone but by him. As if this silent yearning possessed power, I felt my consciousness slowly take a more tangible form to become a faint shadow. By Lucien’s sudden gasp, it was just enough for him to finally be able to see me.