Narine – Third Week After the Announcement
I don’t know when the thought first crept in.
Maybe it was in the quiet moments between shifts, when the hum of the coffee machine faded and I caught myself staring out the window longer than necessary. Or maybe it was in the nights, after I stopped crying, when all I could hear was my own pulse pounding with questions I didn’t want to answer.
Should I go?
Should I dare show my face at the ball?
Even the idea felt laughable and delusional. The girl who walked out on the King, who humiliated him with her silence and her absence, now waltzing back into his world like she had a right to?
Did I?
I swear, sometimes I still felt him. Not just in memory, but in the empty space beside me when I walked home at night. In the warmth I reached for in s
