Chapter 6
1363 Words
Chapter 6: The First Encounter
Eira had never been good at standing still, especially when she knew she was being watched.
The ballroom thrummed with life—string instruments swelling like waves beneath murmuring nobility, the light from hundreds of candles glittering across silks and jewels. Eira stood at the edge of it all like a miscast shadow in her own story. Marion and Mira flanked her like loyal sentries, their eyes ever-darting toward the crowd as if anticipating danger. Or perhaps embarrassment.
Probably both.
“I feel like a marionette in a dollhouse,” Eira muttered, fidgeting with her gloves.
“Don’t slouch,” Mira chided gently. “And try not to speak like that in front of the prince.”
“He’s hardly likely to come talk to me,” Eira said, scanning the grand hall. “Isn’t he always surrounded by people?”
“He chooses who surrounds him,” Marion murmured. “And you’re a Valenhart. Tonight, that means something.”
That word again—Valenhart. It didn’t feel like her name. Not really. It belonged to Selis. A noble lady with beauty and decorum and a spine forged in court politics. Not Eira Vaughn, who used to fall asleep on her biology textbooks and binge-watch period dramas at 3 a.m.
Yet here she was, cloaked in crimson velvet, her lips painted, her hair wound into regal coils. Pretending. Endlessly pretending.
A ripple moved through the ballroom like wind through reeds. Conversations faltered, and heads turned subtly toward the grand stairwell. Eira followed their gaze.
There he was.
Crown Prince Alric descended the stairs like the air bent to carry him. Midnight blue formalwear carved to perfection, his cape embroidered with silver flame sigils that marked him as heir to Velandria’s eternal fire. A circlet rested lightly on his brow, but it might as well have been a sword—he wore it with the tension of someone who never forgot the weight of duty.
He was beautiful in the way frost was beautiful—sharp, elegant, and distant.
And when his eyes found hers across the ballroom, Eira stopped breathing.
Their gazes held. Just for a second.
Long enough for something ancient and bone-deep to flare between them.
Then he turned away.
The moment broke.
Eira blinked, her pulse rabbiting. “That was—”
“He saw you,” Mira confirmed, almost reverently. “He’s coming this way.”
“Don’t faint,” Marion warned.
“I won’t,” Eira whispered, which was a lie.
Crown Prince Alric approached with all the unhurried certainty of a man who had never once doubted his place in the world. His retinue melted behind him like shadows yielding to firelight. He came to stand before her, not speaking immediately—just studying her.
“Lady Elyanora Valenhart,” he said at last. His voice was low, smooth, clipped. The voice of someone raised in strategy and steel.
“We have not spoken before.”
She curtsied automatically, her limbs remembering etiquette even as her mind flailed. “Your Highness.”
“I understand you were ill during last season’s selection introductions.”
“Quite,” Eira said, praying he wouldn’t press for details.
Alric’s gaze was unreadable. “I had wondered what became of the sharp-tongued girl who once challenged my cousin to a duel in the rose garden.”
Eira stiffened. “That doesn’t sound like something a noble lady would do.”
“No,” he said, his mouth quirking faintly. “It doesn’t. Which is why I remembered it.”
Her heart sank. That must’ve been Selis. And she was already failing at mimicking her.
“I… fear I’ve changed since then,” Eira managed. “Sickness leaves its mark.”
Something flickered behind his eyes. Interest? Suspicion? Recognition? She couldn’t tell.
“Change is not always a flaw,” Alric said. “Velandria itself is changing. The old peace crumbles at the edges.”
“I’ve noticed,” she said before thinking.
His brow lifted. “Have you?”
Eira hesitated. “Only whispers, of course. But whispers often know what screams do not.”
Alric regarded her a moment longer, then nodded, as though confirming a theory.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “how much of the Lady Elyanora I once knew still remains beneath this new façade.”
There was no hostility in the words, only curiosity. But they hit like a dart to the chest.
Eira opened her mouth, then closed it. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t who he thought she was at all. That the girl he remembered was gone, perhaps forever, and that the body before him was borrowed.
But she said none of it.
Instead, she drew herself upright and met his gaze evenly. “Perhaps your memory of her is sharper than she ever truly was.”
Alric didn’t smile, but something loosened in his shoulders.
“I’m glad you came tonight,” he said, and extended a gloved hand. “May I?”
Eira stared at it. “Dance?”
“Yes.”
Every part of her screamed to refuse. But Mira made a tiny noise behind her, and Marion cleared her throat so subtly it was practically a threat.
She placed her hand in his.
Alric’s grip was warm and firm. Reassuring, somehow. He led her to the dance floor, and the crowd parted for them like an eddy around stones. A waltz began—elegant, restrained, steeped in tradition.
They moved together, her hand in his, the other resting lightly on his shoulder. Their bodies in motion, yet the world stood still around them.
“Do you believe in fate?” Alric asked as they turned.
The question startled her. “Why?”
“Because it seems the fates have made you a contender once again.” His voice was cool, but his hand pressed slightly firmer at her waist. “Do you intend to win?”
Eira blinked. “Win… your favor?”
“My throne,” he said. “Whichever comes first.”
She faltered in the step. He guided her back into rhythm without missing a beat.
“I—” Eira swallowed. “I don’t know what I intend. This world is still unfamiliar to me.”
Alric’s eyes darkened slightly. “You’ve changed your tone. A year ago, you would have said you meant to remake the court in your image.”
“Perhaps I’ve learned humility.”
“Or fear.”
Their steps slowed into a half turn. His words weren’t cruel. Just cuttingly accurate.
“You’re not like the other ladies,” he said quietly. “They pretend. You… conceal. There's a difference.”
Eira felt cold bloom in her gut. Was she that obvious?
“And you,” she said, matching his tone, “watch like a man who’s afraid of being surprised.”
That drew a reaction—a soft exhale, almost a laugh.
“Well struck,” he murmured.
The music drew to a close, and they paused as applause trickled through the ballroom. Alric bowed slightly, still holding her gaze.
“I hope this won’t be our last conversation, Lady Elyanora.”
Eira dipped in a curtsy, her limbs trembling. “Nor I, Your Highness.”
He stepped back, but the imprint of him lingered—on her hand, in her chest, behind her ribs.
As he vanished into the crowd once more, Marion sidled beside her.
“You were brilliant,” she whispered.
“I was terrified,” Eira replied honestly.
Mira smiled. “Then you concealed it well. Which, I suppose, makes you a better noblewoman than you thought.”
Eira didn’t respond.
Because her thoughts were still spiraling. Not just around the prince, or the dance, or the strange familiarity in his eyes.
But around the way his presence had awakened something inside her.
Something ancient.
Something that whispered: He knows.
Not the truth, perhaps. Not yet.
But a part of him sensed the lie she was living.
And a part of her—small and terrified and undeniably real—longed to be known by him anyway.
- Writer
