Paper Rings Part XIV

October 2995

It had taken every ounce of self-control Marie possessed to resist the urge to interrogate Caleb about everything she’d learned at her first court luncheon the second she saw him again. But now, it was all she could think about. 

She hated the way the thought crept into her mind. Over and over again. Even as he kissed her, her back pressed up against the trunk of the royal garden’s willow tree. 

She drew her hands down, out of his hair, pressing her palms firmly into his chest and pushing him gently back. He paused, lips red, staring at her with a question in his eyes. Why are we stopping?

She shook her head. “We can’t,” she said. “Not in broad daylight, Caleb.”

It wasn’t really broad daylight. Rather, it was peak golden hour, the sun sinking slowly in the sky, but it was still bright enough for him to accept her excuse without question.

She didn’t think he really heard her anyway. He would have taken any excuse she had given him because he didn’t want to stop. And he wouldn’t, not unless she asked him to.

The truth, though, was that she wanted to talk. They needed to talk. She didn’t feel like they’d had a real conversation related to anything but their wedding in weeks. It was time that she got answers to the questions that had been eating away at her.

So, where to begin?

Only a week ago, this same garden had been overtaken by a long table decorated with an insulting amount of food and finery. Only the best for the court’s luncheon. Now, it was quiet—empty, save for the two of them and the occasional bird or frog—and serene, a beautiful scene Marie could never have imagined beyond paintings and sketches. 

She watched him with pursed lips as he stepped back, allowing her to separate herself from the tree. There was tension in his shoulders as he looked out over the garden pond, not outwardly obvious but enough that she could feel it standing beside him. They’d had a romantic moment, but it was over now. They both knew it.

“You didn’t tell me you were supposed to have an arranged marriage.”

She hadn’t meant for it to sound so much like an accusation, but Caleb didn’t flinch either way. Although he wouldn’t look at her, his eyes trained instead on a monarch crawling across a lily pad. “It wasn’t relevant,” he said, voice flat.

“No?” Marie resisted the urge to scoff. “I feel like it’s pretty relevant.”

Now, he did look at her, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Well it’s over now. It was over as soon as I made it publicly clear that you would be my wife instead—”

“Except that it’s not over, Caleb.” Her throat burned as she swallowed. The last thing she wanted was to cry, not now. Not over this. “Maybe it’s over for you, but not for me. They look at me like I’m a villain for swooping in here and stealing away their prince from the perfect bride he was supposed to have. Like I’m bringing my filth into their world by force.”

“No, they don’t,” he said, but his voice was unsteady. He hadn’t missed the hitch in hers.

“Yes, they do. They don’t show you what they really think because you’re the Crown Prince. But when you’re not there… You don’t see it. You don’t hear them,” Marie said. “They don’t respect me, and they’re never going to respect me.”

“You mean Olenna, right? When you say them?”

“Of course I mean Olenna. She could destroy me if she really wanted to.”

“No, I’ll protect you. Mae, you’re safe.” Caleb took her face in his hands, calloused from training with his sword, and brushed her hair back from her eyes. He looked worried—terrified, even—his eyes bright and focused. “I promise you’re safe. I don’t care what they think—”

“And that’s exactly the problem.” Marie looked up at him but brought her hands up to grip his wrists, guiding them away from her face. “You don’t care because you don’t have to. You’ve never had to because you’re the one with the power. But some of us do have to care. We can’t all be born with crowns on our heads.”

Caleb stepped back, bewildered, the lines in his forehead deepening as he frowned. It was as if she had struck him. “That’s not fair.”

“I didn’t say it was your fault. But it is the truth, and I need you to understand that. Because you say you’ll protect me but how exactly do you intend to do that if you don’t even understand the risks that come with being your wife, especially when my family has no power of its own in this world?”

Caleb looked down at his shoes like a shy child. His voice came out small, nothing like that of a future king. “I didn’t think of it like that.”

“Well you need to start.”

Silence passed between them, tense and thick. Marie hadn’t realized how angry with him she really was until they’d started talking, but now, the heat in her chest had started to reach its boiling point.

She knew he hadn’t had a choice, but she still couldn’t help but feel as though Caleb had abandoned her that day. He had promised to be her sword and shield and left her to fend off the wolves alone. Of course, she’d had his mother, and if she hadn’t stepped in, things would certainly have gone worse, but it wouldn’t have been as big a problem at all if Caleb hadn’t left in the first place. The Queen only had so much power when it came to Olenna. That much was clear.

It was a windy day, the sharp air whipping up fallen leaves and making it feel at least ten degrees colder than it actually was. Caleb’s face was flushed, the whites of his eyes pink as the wind tousled his dark hair. He always stood up straight—it had been drilled into him since birth; posture was part of presence, and if he was going to be king, his presence needed to be commanding—and Marie willed herself to do the same. 

All she wanted was to hunch her shoulders over and lean into him, but she couldn’t. It didn’t matter how warm he was or how good he smelled, and it didn’t matter how safe she felt cocooned in his arms. She needed him to understand why she was upset and how his actions had played a role in the situation.

She was about to say something, to try and explain how lost she felt, when he opened his mouth again. 

“Last week, right after the fact, I asked you how it went,” he said, eyes narrowed. “You said it was fine.”

“And what was my tone like when I said that?” Marie asked, remembering how flat her voice had sounded. “Did you really believe I meant it?”

Caleb paused, considering his words carefully. “I wanted to.”

“You were clearly worried about other things. I didn’t want you to have to worry about me and the court too,” Marie said. Her stomach was cold, and her head felt as if it had detached from her body and flown to another universe. “So yes, I did say I was fine, but I didn’t really mean it.”

It wasn’t fair, she knew, to expect him to read between the lines and guess how she really felt. But he knew her, and he loved her. He was putting everything on the line for himself and his family just to be with her. So was it really unreasonable to think that maybe, just maybe, he should have been able to tell when her heart wasn’t in her words?

When she thought about it, though, while he had asked her the question, how interested had he really seemed in the answer? Ever since his father’s questionable speech at the beginning of the luncheon, half of his mind had seemed to be somewhere else, and still, he wouldn’t let her in, wouldn’t tell her what was going on.

“I don’t want you to do that,” he said. “I don’t want you to feel like you can’t say outright how you really feel. I don’t want you to feel like you have to keep things from me.”

Like you’re not keeping things from me? Marie wanted to say, but she kept her mouth shut. Lately, she’d had to wonder if he really trusted her as much as she’d thought he did. He hadn’t exactly been raised to be open.

When she didn’t say anything, Caleb frowned and looked back in the direction of the pond, his eyes fixating on a willow tree looming over the water. His black diamond necklace glinted in the warmth of the orange sunlight.

“It was never official,” he said, and she could have sworn she heard a crack in his voice. 

She looked at him, willing him to meet her eyes again, but he didn’t move. Her voice was quiet, hardly a whisper. “What?”

“The marriage. To Camilla.” Caleb pursed his lips. “It was never officially arranged. There have been talks between my father and Camilla’s parents since we were both little, but nothing was ever solidified. They never came to an official agreement.”

He drew his eyes away from the tree, but he still didn’t quite look at her, his gaze focused more behind her instead. “I had kind of accepted it… And then, one day, I wanted to be alone, so I took out the boat. And when I got back to the dock, I met you.”

Regardless of how upset with him she was, Marie couldn’t help the tingle in her toes when he spoke. The sky was pink and purple behind him now, the dark waves of his hair blending with the colors of the coming night. His skin looked soft, and his green eyes stood out, their brightness stark against the rest of the world.

“Our engagement didn’t break any agreements. It only ended the possibility of one.”

It was her turn to look away, fixing her gaze on his shoes. “That’s not how Olenna sees it.”

“Olenna’s a bitch.”

“Caleb.”

“What? She is.” Caleb scoffed. “When I proposed to you without my father’s permission, I offended the Ahmads, especially Olenna. I know that. She even tried to convince my father to end our engagement by force so that she could still get what she wanted.”

When Marie finally found it in herself to look at him directly again, he was staring dead into her eyes, a slight hint of panic crossing his face. The Prince’s mask of indifference was nowhere in sight. “So why didn’t he?”

“Honestly? Because he’s so preoccupied with his new ideas about creating some war with the Northern Lands for nobody knows what reason. He gets in these moods where that’s all he focuses on. Like somehow he’s some god or some hero. And more and more, Mom and I have to cover everything else…” 

“He’s not happy with me. He’s not happy at all, but he’s distracted,” Caleb said, and Marie could tell by the furrow of his brow that he had told her more about the King than he’d meant to. “There’s a nonzero chance that now she’ll end up married to James, as some attempt at conciliation, but the Ahmads want her to marry me so that she can be queen and her children can succeed me.”

“My father wanted to give them that because they’re a very rich family, the only family that could realistically threaten the Dynasty and have a chance at winning,” he said. “And having them as allies through marriage would help him if he really does take the army north. But I don’t think they’ll settle for my brother. I think it’s me or nothing. Unless they have other plans.”

Marie didn’t need him to say what she knew he was thinking. James would never be king, and his children would never sit on the throne. That was, unless they found themselves in one of three circumstances: Caleb abdicating, Caleb dying childless, or all of Caleb’s children dying. 

She had only met Olenna once, but she wouldn’t put it past the old woman to make any one of those things happen. She’d do it with her own hands if she had to.

“You put me in an unfair position, Caleb,” Marie said. She didn’t want to blame him, but he needed to see that this was, at least to some degree, his fault. All of the emotional exhaustion and uncertainty she’d felt as she’d replayed the luncheon over and over in her head could have been avoided if he had just told her the truth. “I knew that this wouldn’t be easy. I knew there were risks and that people wouldn’t be inclined to like me. I would have figured that out whether you had warned me or not. But you left out a lot of really important details. I deserved to hear the full truth from you before I was attacked by that viper of a woman in an environment that is entirely foreign to me.”

She waited for him to defend himself, but he didn’t. There was only the rustle of leaves, the howl of the wind, and the occasional clink of armor as guards shifted at their posts. They were both breathing deep and uneven.

She inhaled sharply and took a step back. “It’s difficult for me to defend myself against things I don’t even know exist.”

“Mae, I’m sorry—”

Marie held up a hand. “No,” she said. “You made it sound like the only issues with our relationship were our ranks and the fact that you went behind your parents’ backs. But, as it turns out, one of the biggest issues actually seems to be that apparently you had been promised to somebody else. This whole time! You say that your father doesn’t care enough, but I still don’t really understand how and why we aren’t just being separated. How do you know that your parents won’t just tear us apart in favor of some wannabe queen?”

“Hey.” Caleb’s voice was harsher than she’d ever heard it before. It was pitched low, his tone commanding. Like he was scolding her. “Camilla doesn’t have a choice either. None of this is her fault. Olenna’s behavior? That’s on Olenna. Camilla losing the future she was raised for because of my choices? That’s on me.”

Fire flashed through Marie’s chest and across her cheeks, and she took another step back. He was defending her. As if he cared about her. It was all she could do to bite her tongue, knowing how she would sound if she said any of the hundred thoughts racing through her head.

“I should have told you,” Caleb said, although he sounded more angry than sorry. “I didn’t want you to have to find out that way. But honestly, I didn’t want you to find out at all.”

“And how did that work out for you?” She cringed at the crack in her voice. “It’s fine. I get it. She’s a part of your world. She always has been. She knows your world, and she understands it. She fits in. And I never will. So fine, right, make excuses.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Neither was putting me in that position to begin with.”

He flinched. She hadn’t raised her voice, but she thought that for the first time since she’d brought up the luncheon, he was really listening, really understanding what she was saying. “I didn’t think that anyone would dare to attack you like that.”

Of course he didn’t understand. How could he? She couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice, heart sinking. “You're still making excuses.”

“What do you want me to say?” Caleb made a wide flailing gesture, and for a moment, with his voice raised and his eyes wild, he looked just like his father. “You’re my fiancée. You’re going to be my wife. I love you. So they need to understand that you deserve their respect.”

“And that’s exactly the problem. You think that your love is some magic, impenetrable shield, and it’s not, Caleb. You love me. You respect me. You see my value. But that doesn’t protect me. Just because you’re their prince, doesn’t mean they see me like you do.”

Caleb tried to take a step forward, toward her, but she shook her head, stepping back. “I should go.”

“No, Marie, wait,” Caleb said, his voice breaking, but she was already turning and grabbing her bag up from where she had dropped it in the grass earlier, when he’d started kissing her. How far they had come. “Marie!”

She ignored him.

She didn’t cut through the palace—which was the faster way to the front gate—but went instead around the side of the palace to the front courtyard. Save for the warm glow of torchlight, it was dark, and nobody could see her but the guards along the walls, standing masterfully still, trained to pretend not to see her. 

The risks and the problems in her relationship were not new, but she felt, somehow, as if she were seeing them for the first time. She had bitten off far more than she could chew, and the world was closing in around her. The walls of her dreams were coming down, and she could finally see the ugly reality that lay ahead of her. It didn’t matter if he was the love of her life, her soulmate. Their life together would be no fairytale. His world would all but assure it.

Caleb kept yelling after her until she was too far away to hear him anymore, his voice lost to the wind. Only then, when she was sure he couldn’t see or hear her, did she allow herself to cry.