“My Queen, Princess Lucy is here to see you.” Julie bowed her head with respect.

Queen Grace replied, “Tell her to come in, I don’t want to waste more time here than we need to.” She rolled her eyes. Her daughter was a naïve, selfish woman; how could she be of the same blood?

Lucy strolled in, her typical posse of bodyguards nowhere to be found. “Mother.”

“Hello, Lucy. Have you come to gloat?”

Her daughter scoffed. “I’ve come to make an offer, actually.”

Grace sat a little stiffer in her throne. “Well then get on with it. I do not have all day.”

Lucy cleared her throat and clasped her hands behind her back. She looked incredibly rigid in her three-piece suit, with velvet navy fabric and gold chains. “As you may know, the settlement I have developed outside of Rowan has flourished. So much so that we are expanding every day.” She paused, letting the Queen’s raised eyebrow suspend in silence. “I’ve come to ask for an official declaration to declare Greenfeld its own kingdom.”

The laugh Queen Grace let out boomed through the throne room. “You cannot be serious! You? A queen? You know NOTHING!”

“Mother, I’m not a child anymore! And I refuse to let you treat me as such!”

“My dear, let it be known that I will NEVER allow Greenfeld to stand on its own. It is part of the Empire.”

The former princess stared at the shimmering tile floor. “Please, mother. Don’t make me do this.”

“No. Now get out of my castle.”

Lucy shook her head, rage and sadness bubbling out of her. “Fine. Have it your way. Captain!”

From behind one of the marble columns, the Captain of the Greenfeld military propped a crossbow on his shoulder, and fired.

“GRACE!” Jamie cried out from the corner, rushing to where the Queen had slumped over in her once glorious throne. When she arrived and saw the state of her friend, Lucy and the Captain had already disappeared. “Guards! Hunt down the traitor, and bring them back to me alive!”

You didn’t say it. When you left to go to the bar. When you went to take our dog on a walk. When you slammed the door behind you. You cursed my name. I thought you an evil, Evil man.

But then you were gone.

Desolate, I called you every night. But you couldn’t hear, For you were already Six feet under.

She was silent. How foolish was she to think that their summer would be frozen in time. That the leaves would never turn brown. That their Special Spot by the pond would never freeze, trapping all its fish and creatures underneath. Time doesn't stop, it doesn't wait for you, it takes and it takes and it takes. And now, it's taking again.

"Baby..."

"Don't." She was short with him. She knew it wasn't his fault. She knew that none of this was his fault. But she still hated him, she hated him for doing this.

His body pulled back, tensing up on the picnic blanket. She didn't look at him, her eyes locked on the sky, its pink and orange blending into a beautiful, complicated mosaic.

"You know we can't make this work, not with me across the world." His voice was soft, and gentle. She noticed it was almost the same voice he used with his younger sister, the "I-don't-want-to-hurt-you" voice.

"...You're fiddling." He gestured to her hands wound loosely in her lap, the fingers dancing against each other with anxiety.

"...I can't help it." Her voice cracked on "help," the tears smashing through the hard wall she had been keeping up the entire night, the entire past week. Before she could pull them back in, she was crying, sobbing, even.

He pulled her to him, shushing and cradling her against his chest, "It's okay, it's okay."

It wasn't okay. None of this was okay. The love of her life was leaving her. Her person was leaving her. Your person isn't supposed to leave you, they're supposed to be with you until the end. That's how the story goes. It's how their story should go, but it ends here.

"You really can't...can't visit?" She whispered between the tears.

He held her tighter, "Even if I can, is that really worth it? To see each other for a day once every other year?"

She didn't answer. He didn't care as much as she did. Perhaps, she wasn't even his person.

"Can we just...pretend? Just for one more night?" As she had done a hundred times before, she pushed her problems down, down, down into her.