Paper Rings Part X

September 2995

When it wasn’t filled with people—talking and laughing beneath colored lights, music distorting their voices, and the smells of sweet and savory food mixing with the unmistakable scent of alcohol—the ballroom felt like a gaping chasm that could swallow her whole. Yet, it was closing in on her.

Every second, they inched closer to the event that would either make or break Marie’s identity in the eyes of the court. That was, if it wasn’t too broken already. 

It was a miracle that she had kept her footing as she’d made her way down to the ballroom with Caleb and Ariana. The heels on her shoes weren’t outlandishly high, but they were more than she was used to, and her legs felt like jelly beneath her. Any second, she kept thinking. Any second, I’m going to fall flat on my face and make a fool of myself. Any second, I’m going to end this before it even starts.

She already knew she didn’t belong in the palace, and the foreign feeling of her clothes and accessories only confirmed it. Even her ring felt out of place, despite being a gift she knew Caleb had spent a lot of time having made for her. He felt guilty, she knew, for proposing to her with a ring that he had made hastily out of a strip of paper. Princes had more forethought than that. And more money. But she almost preferred the paper. It was fragile enough that she couldn’t actually wear it—now resting in a tiny glass keepsake box her mother had given her, displayed on her nightstand—but it was the most genuine thing she had ever set her eyes on. 

To her, the gesture Caleb had made with the paper ring spoke volumes, conveying more to her than words ever could. When they were alone together, he wasn’t a prince at all. He was just a young man fresh out of boyhood, and when he looked at Marie, he didn’t see where she came from. He saw a girl, a young woman, whom he loved. 

He was used to people showing each other their value with outrageous jewels, but he didn’t need anything of that sort to tell her how he felt. She wanted to think that she was helping him see beyond the world he had grown up in. The world he had assumed was normal. She wanted to think that she had shown him something real.

When they had entered the ballroom, the rest of Caleb’s family had already been waiting. Ana’s face had lit up as she’d greeted Marie with a tight, excited hug. They hadn’t yet gotten to spend as much time together as Marie would have liked, but she knew Ana was the most excited out of everyone, maybe even Caleb, about the engagement, reveling in the prospect of finally having a sister.

James had greeted her awkwardly, with something halfway between a nod and a bow. Caleb had smirked at him. “You’re a prince,” he had said. “If anyone is supposed to be bowing, it’s not you.” James had only stuck out his tongue at his older brother, the action followed swiftly by a light whack over the top of his head from their mother.

Leo’s greeting had been so blunt it was hardly existent. It was hardly a king’s greeting, simply a short acknowledgement of her existence before turning away from her again. His eyes were far away as he stared at the ceiling and yanked at his fingers, twisting and shaking out his hands. He was clearly somewhere else, something stirring the gears in his head. His lips moved slightly as he muttered words nobody could make out under his breath, the rest of his face off-puttingly blank.

Caleb had frowned but told her not to worry about it. This was how he was sometimes, in the rare moments when he was free of the expectations of the public. Still, all Marie could think was that the King must have hated her.

Now, they were moving outside, through the ballroom doors that led out to a garden. Leo looked normal again, a bright smile plastering itself across his face the moment his wife had put her hand on his shoulder and taken his arm. Marie tried to breathe past the weight strangling her chest as she and Caleb followed close behind them. The feeling of his arm hooked with her own was all she had to ground herself.

Attention was not something she had ever known or desired. She had always been perfectly happy slipping under the radar, managing to attract little more than the attention of her own family and the occasional teenage boy. Never had she imagined that her presence would one day capture the eyes of the entire royal court.

But the moment the doors opened, the garden went silent. Anyone who hadn’t made their way to the long table set up between the willow and jacaranda trees started toward it, and anyone who was already seated got to their feet. 

Everyone was dressed in visibly expensive fabrics—the necks, wrists, and ears of men and women alike adorned with jewelry. There were even a few pieces that Marie was almost certain had been designed by her parents, both of whom had a unique eye for design.

It took only a split second for their eyes to go from focused on the entire family to focused on her alone. The outsider. She could hear her pulse in her ears as her heart rate skyrocketed, and she couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t starting to hyperventilate.

Caleb kept his grip on her firm, tightening it when he felt her tense. It was a reminder. Of her conversation with his mother less than an hour earlier and of the many conversations that had occurred between the two of them, in which she had expressed her fears about standing in front of the court and he had told her how he handled the attention.

Stand up straight, and look like you believe you’re the most important person in the room (with the exception of the King, of course). Remember to breathe, and pretend you’re someone else. Remove yourself from the situation, as if you’re a spectator, watching from above. Put on a show. None of it is anything more than an act. Keep it up in public, let your walls down in private.

There was no other way, as far as he was concerned, to survive this type of life. His family had been handling themselves like this for centuries, parading around as people they weren’t to keep the court in their hands and the crown on their heads.

She remembered not only his words but the seriousness of his voice and the intensity of his gaze as he had said them. She managed to shake only a minimal amount as they made their way from the doors to the table, steadied by Caleb, who seemed to know everything she was thinking without her having to say it.

As soon as he reached the head of the table, Leo gestured for everyone to sit, waiting for the scraping of chairs and the rustling of dresses and suit jackets to stop before beginning to speak. Ariana and Caleb took seats directly to his left and right, respectively. Marie sat on Caleb’s left, with Ana on her other side. James was directly across from her. Aside from Vance Dove on the table’s other end, Marie was familiar with no one else. 

Still on his feet, Leo cleared his throat. The dark purple of his military uniform, weighed down by medals just as Caleb’s was, stood stark against his skin, so pale it was nearly translucent. It seemed to sparkle in the warmth of the sunlight, the white-blond of his hair doing the same. For the first time, Marie noticed that it was starting to gray.

“Welcome, everyone,” he said. His tone was cheerful, not even slightly resembling the man who had offered her only a rude greeting just minutes earlier. He clasped his hands together, watching as servers began to set food out on the table. “Thank you all for coming to celebrate the end of summer with us today!”

Marie was not experienced with court smalltalk, but even she knew that the translation for what Leo had just said was, I’m pleased to have another excuse for a fancy gathering! I’m glad you could all come to partake! 

But for a moment, as a plate was placed in front of her, she stopped listening to the King, no longer looking for the hidden meaning in his words. Instead, her eyes travelled from her own food and drink to those of everyone else, and suddenly, she felt nauseous. 

She had seen large amounts of food at the palace before, but only when she had been there for the New Year’s Eve party. She had assumed they only brought out that much for large gatherings, but she supposed that was naive. 

Meats, breads, soups, fruits, cheeses, vegetables, and even desserts. Expensive wines and whiskeys, and not only regular water but water with sliced lemons or cucumbers. The food before them was enough to feed a whole family like hers for at least a week, likely longer if it had to, even when her brothers’ large appetites were accounted for. 

She felt wrong even being in the presence of such an outlandish display.

Trying not to gawk at the food, she looked back up at Leo. He was the brightest she had ever seen him, his demeanor bordering on bubbly. Saying something about the latest class of army recruits graduating from the capital’s military academy, he was waving his hands around in wide gestures. He spoke fast, as if he had a time limit to adhere to or he couldn’t keep up with his own thoughts. 

It was very different from how she knew him to be. In the minimal time she had spent around him, he had been standoffish, unwilling to grant her even the slightest of smiles. But maybe that was just because she was a stranger that he didn’t like for his son. For all she knew, even if she was here now, everyone was just waiting for Caleb to realize his mistake and throw her back to the curb where they thought she belonged.

“This summer has brought about great things,” Leo said. His sharp, angular face gave him a mean look, even as his thin lips curled into a wide grin. “My son is engaged to Marie Jonas, who is here with us today.” She felt her cheeks go hot as all eyes shifted to her, but it didn’t last long. Leo moved on to his next order of business in a heartbeat, not focusing on her longer than he had to. “More than that, we have made progress at the northern border, and in the months to come, we will only make more.”

Despite his thinning frame, he maintained a commanding presence. He wasn’t unusually tall, but he was still taller than the average man, his shoulders naturally broad even without much muscle. As the only one still on his feet, he towered over them, his energy like that of a giant.

“Since the start of the New Age, the Magicis Empire has been the standard for civilization!” he proclaimed suddenly. His eyes were sharp as they swept over the table, ensuring he had their attention. “Hundreds of nations make up this world, but ours… ours is superior.” A fire burned within him, and for a moment, Marie almost thought she could see it. “The Northern Lands continue to resist. And every country that we border does the same… all at their behest.”

Leo leaned slightly forward, the afternoon sunlight catching the medals on his chest. He was almost snarling now. “We’ve tried to reason with them… we have… I have, my father did, my grandfather did… No more. They will learn our ways, and they will be grateful for it. We will remind them that we—we are the strongest.”

Marie couldn’t help it as her lips curved down, her eyebrows knit together. She glanced at Caleb, hoping he would feel her eyes bearing through the back of his head and acknowledge her, but his gaze remained fixed on his father. When she placed a light hand on his leg under the table, he tensed, but he still didn’t move.

Leo’s sudden change of tone had rocked the atmosphere of the garden like a flash flood ripping through a river valley civilization. She wasn’t well-versed in the details of the Empire’s political relationships with the lands surrounding it—the education options in the village weren’t nearly as good as what she knew the court had access to—but she didn’t think that was the reason she felt so lost. 

Quickly scanning the table, she could see that everyone else was as confused as she was. Still, they kept their mouths shut and their faces as neutral as possible. The occasional person even nodded along.

“Anyone who dares to question the authority of my empire—” Leo shook his head, lips pursed. He was almost snarling now. “Well, they will simply have to die.”

His glee was gone, replaced by something Marie couldn’t place. It was something strange, an odd mix between anger and euphoria as the sparkles in his eyes danced with his mysterious grandiose vision.

Caleb covered his face with his hands and muttered something under his breath. The muscles in his shoulders were visibly tight, even beneath the thick fabric of his uniform jacket.

With a deep, labored breath, he looked back up at his father and cleared his throat, the tone of it not commanding but confident. Even when his father’s eyes darted to him—wide, with dark circles resting beneath them—he kept his back straight and didn’t look away.

Only Marie could see his hands shaking beneath the table.

Leo smiled again, back to the jolly attitude he had started with. “Enjoy the food,” he said, and plopped himself down in his seat, likely much faster than he had meant to.

At first, there was only quiet, tense murmuring as Leo started to slice the meat on his plate in a somewhat aggressive manner. But after a minute that felt like years, people started to speak to each other in regular tones, seeming to ignore whatever had just happened. She didn’t understand how they were able to do that. Was this normal?
Marie could still feel the lingering charge of his words crackling in the air, like static before a storm. She looked over at Caleb, who had his neck bent and his eyes trained on his plate. “Caleb, what—”

He shook his head, dark hair falling into his face. He still wouldn’t make eye contact with her. “Don’t.”

Snatching a bottle of wine from the center of the table, he filled his glass to the brim. It overflowed, and he muttered a string of curses, his tone dark, almost even hostile. 

“We don’t talk about it,” he said.

Marie narrowed her eyes at him, as if somehow doing so would allow her to see through his soul. “Talk about what?”

Caleb closed his eyes, seeming to take himself somewhere else. Without opening them, he said, “He gets like this sometimes. He says stuff like that, but he usually gets over it. We just have to hope that happens before he acts on his whims.”

Marie knew that Leo wasn’t the greatest king, not even by a long shot, but she had always assumed that he at least acted with certainty and composure. She had assumed that he had a level head, but the evidence suggested that the reality was far from that. 

They weren’t speaking quietly, but Leo, preoccupied by his food, didn’t appear to hear them. He looked like a normal man now, if she ignored the crown on his head. He didn’t have special powers, just money and the right family name. He was just as human as she was, and that meant that he was also subject to emotional turmoil and instability. There was no telling what thoughts raced through his mind on a daily basis.

She knew she shouldn’t, but she wanted to push Caleb more. Maybe he would give in to the pressure and tell her something. But when she said his name again, he whirled on her, his eyes nearly as wild as his father’s.

“Just stop,” he snapped.

Marie flinched involuntarily, leaning away from him. It wasn’t her that he was truly upset with, but his agitation directed at her was still unnerving. In a way, Leo’s energy seemed to be rubbing off on him.

He hadn’t spoken loudly enough for anyone to hear—with the exception of his mother, who was glaring at him across the table—but his voice had been sharp enough to cut without much pressure. He set down his fork and sat back in his chair, breathing deep and muttering something to himself under his breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said, finally looking at her. He was cautious when he reached out, covering her hand with his own. He was scared. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t talk to you like that. That’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Marie managed. She meant it, and she needed him to believe that she did. She knew that he was on edge and that she shouldn’t have been pushing him to begin with, but she couldn’t help it. Her heart fluttered as she asked somewhat timidly, “Can I ask one more thing?”

The look he gave her was hardly short of a glare, but she didn’t let up. Clearly, she didn’t learn from her mistakes. “Please.”

Caleb rolled his eyes but said, “I can’t promise I’ll answer it.”

It was enough for her.

“You said there’s been more pressure on you,” she said, searching for the right words. “They’re getting you ready to rule. Does this have anything to do with it?”

Was it at all possible that there were questions about whether or not the King was fit to rule?

His eyes told her that the answer was yes, but his words told another story. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, drawing his hand away from hers. “I’m just coming of age. That’s all.”

That was not what he had told her before, when he had worried that he was being prepared for the throne because something was wrong with his father, because he was sick. Then, he had confided in her, but now, he was shutting her out. 

He turned away from her, emptying his glass of wine and pouring himself another before starting to work on his food. This time, Marie took the hint and, apart from some side conversation with Ana, ate her meal in silence.

All the while, she couldn’t help but wonder how she was going to handle the judgment of the court if she couldn’t even get her own fiancé to be honest with her. Time would only tell. The luncheon wasn’t over yet.

TO BE CONTINUED