Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 117920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
I can’t ever forget that.
Even if I were to try, I couldn’t.
It’s a part of me now.
The guilt.
The yearning for mercy that I’m too proud to ask for.
I wear it like my crown.
Deep down, I know I don’t deserve to feel happiness. Perhaps I never did. Maybe that’s why it eluded me for so long. Maybe it’s why my own parents were so cold and cruel in their own challenging ways. Because they knew.
Helena knew too. That’s why she went for me, hounded me, pretended to throw herself at me. She knew what I lacked. She knew what I was eager to have, sucking it in like oxygen.
I was told to never believe it. And like a fool, I did.
Fate has made me the lost King, encased in cheap armor that only keeps up appearances, forever fighting a battle he will never win.
And yet, looking at Clara and Freja, sleeping soundly, I feel that happiness snake around me. I am both happy when I am with them and devastated in my guilt, and I don’t know how to live with both feelings at once. Yet I keep on doing it. Because my love for them can’t be contained, even if grief comes along for the ride.
But then there is Aurora and … I don’t know where she fits in all of this. The only guilt I feel when I look at her is knowing that I shouldn’t be looking at her to begin with. I’ve spent the last month managing to keep my distance from her and putting up barriers and walls, to keep things strictly professional. She’s an employee, I’m her boss. She’s not even a friend.
And yet, back when Ludwig worked for me, I lamented that he wasn’t a friend either. Just an indifferent staff member. I had wanted, needed, someone to turn to.
Yes, I have my aunt and my sister and I’m grateful for them. But I’ve never had someone that wasn’t obligated to me by blood. Someone who would choose to be by my side.
But to consider Aurora a friend would be ridiculous. I hardly know her. She’s a paid subordinate. Her loyalty, if there is any, is bought.
Yet, the more I’m around her and the more I see her like she was tonight with the girls, caring for them as she does with her big, persistent heart…
Is it fucked up to want that?
Is it even more fucked up to want that from her?
It is fucked up, I tell myself. You think you’re deserving?
There’s a light rap at the door.
I don’t know how long I’ve been standing there, mind spiraling into the abyss. I open the door and see Aurora on the other side, holding up a bottle of aquavit. She’s smiling at me like she’s fucking won the world and it makes me feel the same. She’s infectious with her joy and I’ve been resisting feeling it for so long.
“Where did you get that?” I manage to say.
“I have ways,” she says slyly, and I know I should tell her I’ve changed my mind, that I’m just going to bed, that she can keep the bottle, when she sashays her way into the room.
And I move out of the way to let her.
I close the door behind her, softly, and follow her.
She pops into the bathroom and comes out holding two glasses and then goes over to the bed with the princess pink covers on it and sits down. She takes off her boots until she’s in her grey tights and then sits with her legs together and tucked to the side.
For a moment I can’t breathe again and there’s a foreign heat building in my limbs.
I say foreign because I can’t remember the last time I felt it.
This.
Good old-fashioned lust.
I immediately sit down in the pink chair, needing to compose myself, needing to douse any feeling that isn’t indifference.
It’s another battle that I have to win.
“Here,” she says, having poured me a glass. She’s on her knees now on the bed and leans forward as she hands me the glass, and her blouse is dipping low enough that I can see her breasts and the lace of her bra and her hair is falling over her face and…
I train my eyes on hers, hoping she can’t read what’s burning inside me.
I put my hand around the glass, and her fingers brush against mine and she doesn’t let go.
“You’re not a mean drunk, are you?” she asks, scrunching up her nose warily as she pulls the drink slightly away from me.
“A mean drunk? No. I don’t think so.”
She releases her grip on the glass. “Good. Because I can handle your mean ass when you’re sober. I don’t think I could do it if you were drunk.” She raises her glass. “Here. Cheers. Or skål, right?”
“Skål,” I say absently as I clink my glass against hers. I take a sip of the liquor, letting the warmth swirl around my tongue with just a touch of guilt over her comment. “You know, I think I need to apologize to you.”