[🌻Something Ive been working on. Trying to write a novel, feedback please! Enjoy!🌻]

In bed I twist and turn. In my head, I watch the fire burn.

I'm in some weird dream. In front of me is an enormous campfire. It looks perfect - so perfect its fake.

3 boys sit around the fire with me. It's almost impossible to see whoever is sitting across from me, only their hair - almond brown hair fluffed up in the front - and part of a snow white forehead is visible from where I am.

The boy to my left is unfamiliar, he looks almost like the one across from me but his hair just tasseled around instead of sticking up. He is also much tanner.

I can't see his face even though the fire isn't blocking it. A shiver runs down my spine, his face is blurred. I'm horrified when I look to my right to see the third boy with the same blurred face. The third boy is vaguely familiar. This one's a blondie, his hair a little matted, like he hasn't had his hair properly washed in awhile. His skin is a warm honey tone in the fire light. I'm more worried about why their faces are blurred than who they are.

~*~

I wake up to the maid pouring me tea as usual. The warm scent flows up my nose, pleasing my foggy morning brain. With a tired sigh, I sit up and stretch, happy I'm awake instead of in whatever bizarre dream that was. Rosie - my maid - gives me a small curtsy.

“Good morning, Your Highness.” she lifts up my teacup, “What would you like in your tea?” she says softly, eyeing my messy bed hair. She would’ve said something if she wasn’t a maid. If she said something remotely rude sounding, she could be fired.

Only if a guard heard. I would never get her fired. Rosie was basically the only friend I had. She’s a good listener. Although, she kind of has to be.

“I tell you every morning!” I say exasperated.

She shrivels back afraid. “I’m sorry.” she mumbles.

I close my eyes and throw my head back as I inhale deeply. When I’m done I turn my head to her and open my eyes.

“I’m sorry. I’m just…frustrated.” I speak calmly this time.

She adds two sugar cubes and a spoonful of honey into my tea. Just how I like it.

“Why are you frustrated dear Princess?”, she asks softly, “After all it is only 10 in the morning.”

I want to tell her the real reason I’m frustrated but I can’t. If anyone knows about me and Adrien… I don't know what would happen to him. To us.

I grab the tea off the table and take a sip while deciding what to say. I had that big essay to write but I finished that in no time. I do have to prepare for the upcoming ball.

I gulp down another mouthful of tea, finally deciding to say: "I'm constantly in and out of dresses, trying to please Princes from all different kingdoms. I don't want to marry any of those snobs who barely know who I am. They only remotely care about me because they think I'm pretty. I want a guy who cares about me. Like…like-" I let out a dramatic sigh and slouch back down.

Like Adrien.

Rosie shakes her head, "I'm afraid that's just royalty works. A marriage with another prince-"

"- would form a great alliance with another kingdom." We finish together.

"I know, I've been told millions of times." I mutter with an annoyed tone.

“I’m sorry.” she says calmly, walking over the my bathroom door probably to prepare my shower.

I shake my head and turn the other way, “Stop apologizing.”

“Sorry-” she starts. I roll over to talk to her but instead, I smash my hand on my floral china teacup on the table beside me.

When I look at the table, shards from the teacup are everywhere - a few of them even have blood on them. I flip my hand over, surprised to see several scratch-type wounds with blood trickling out of them.

The door is thrown open and the door guard runs straight to me. Rosie must've seen my hand because she ran out babbling something about getting the doctor.

“What happened?! Are you ok?!” he snaps looking me up and down.

I wipe my messy hair out of my face with my not-bloody hand and eye the door, surely more guards were on their way if they saw Rosie sprinting down the halls.

"I'm fine," I answer, "I accidentally hit the teacup when I turned." I look down at the back of my hand (which was basically covered in blood) "It's no big deal." I finish with a shrug.

He looks at me like I'm dumber than dog dirt.

"So that", he points to my hand, "is no big deal to you?"

I roll my eyes, "Well it's not killing me, is it, Max?"

"No," he pulls out a handkerchief and wraps it around my hand, "but we need an heir to the throne."

"So your attitude is what makes you a good guard I guess." I mumble under my breath.

He chuckles, "That's the 37th time you've said that. And…" he squeezes my injured hand, "if I recall, you were the one with the attitude."

I scoff, "So Romeo's been counting?" He obviously had a crush on me. We've been friends since we were 10 and my parents let me try out public school. Well, more like I begged them and said it was all I wanted for my birthday. All the boys swooned over me, the popular girls gave me disgusted, jealous looks, and the others girls died to be my friend. Max was the only boy who treated me like any of his friends, just hiding what the other boys couldn’t. I admired it.

"Did you just call me Romeo?" He asks with a disgusted look, but I could tell he was blushing.

“No, don’t even try to pretend! You’ve obviously liked me since we met. You barely knew me and bought me a birthday present. You probably used up all your money on me then, not to mention the other 5 birthdays.” I smirk, waiting for a response. I’ve been wanting to have this conversation for many years.

I give him a minute to think of a response.

“Well - but - I mean - you are the Princesse of Bristole. I was just… giving my future Queen a birthday gift.” he fumbled multiple times in the two sentences.

“Ooooh,” I let the ‘Oh’ last awhile, “Okay Romeo, it makes sense now.” I grin.

“You know L-” he starts but is immediately cut off by my father, several nurses, a doctor, and Rosie storming in. The nurses were rolling a stretcher into the room. Why on earth would I need a stretcher if I have a cut hand? I might need a couple stitches in my hand, not in my head.

No, the weirdest part isn’t that my father is only wearing pants.

The weirdest part is Max is still holding my hand.

Max drops my hand like it's on fire.

"I checked her hand! Might only need stitches, if anything." He blurts.

I have to catch my breath before I speak again, “Thank you Officer Max,” I start, pulling my covers off, “You are excused, you may head back to your post. I am thankful you came to check on me.”

“Yes, your Highness,” he stopped to exhale, but with how close I was it sounded like a sigh, “Just doing my job.”

I almost feel bad, he gets shoved around all the time. The guards have big friend groups, but Max has been a loner, talking to very few of them. He was an hour from home - not that far - but being a guard is a 24/7 365 job. He quickly speeds out the door and you could see in his steps that he wanted to stay. My dad gave me this look that said ‘You can tell me what that was about later.’ as he rushed over.

“Sweetheart, what on earth happened?” he asks looking at my hand.

“Long story short; I was talking to Rosie and when I turned I hit the teacup with my hand.” I state quickly because, even though I acted tough, the cuts hurt so bad.

He looks around frantically for Rosie and when he is staring her straight in the eyes he almost yells, “Why was the teapot right beside her? Don’t you know that it could spill and burn her?! Or do that!” he points at me furiously.

Rosie stands there, stunned and tears form in her eyes. My father could be so hard on people sometimes.

“Are you gonna answer? You know I could have you out of here with a snap of my fingers!” He booms, inching towards my maid whose eyes are never ending waterfalls.

“Dad,” I practically shout, “I’m fine, I’m breathing, see? Let it go, you would’ve made the same mistake. Rosie isn’t leaving. In fact, she can go to her room while I’m taken care of. I can get dressed and bathe on my own, when I need her I can call her.” I nod to Rosie, signaling her to leave and she does so.

My father takes a few breaths to calm down, “Yes, most important thing we do now is get that fixed up, your ball is tomorrow and we need it to be perfect.”

With those words I’m being surrounded by nurses and doctors, poking and prodding at my hand.

~*~

I have lunch sent to my room since my hand still aches from the 8 stitches I got. The silver bowl covering the porcelain plate teased me - not only because I was hungry but because I was waiting for a note from someone. As soon as my maid left, I picked up the cover and searched for a little index card, folded up post-it note, something like that but I couldn’t find anything. I searched hopelessly for what felt like hours until I gave up and picked up my fork and poked at my pulled pork. I lost my appetite from searching and thinking about tomorrow, my pre-coronation dance. I wasn’t quite ready to ascend up to the throne, but my father decided he wasn’t doing a perfect job at running the country. After all, I didn’t think he was doing the best either.

My father was devoted to the army. My grandfather had trained him hard and since he had a 5% chance of ever getting the throne since he was the youngest of three, he accepted it and earned the name General Bristole at the age of 17. That was until his older sister left, afraid of being Queen. She did everything she could to hide her identity. Changed her name to Addy, shaved her head, stopped wearing makeup, and all. After George (the middle kid) became king, he sent out search parties all over Bristole. It took 2 years to find her. She was dragged into the palace and placed before George. For abandoning her duties as Queen, she deserved treason. Of course, George wouldn’t do that, so instead he banished her from Bristole.

No one was happy about that.

My father’s brother got hated on for it for the year and a half he was king. Yes, a year and a half. He was assassinated in a parade.

You could see my father had every right to be scared since his family's reign had been wacky, but here we are 16 years later. I’m finally old enough to be handed the crown if the current reigning ruler wants to give it to me that is.

My dad is more than ready to hand it down.

He’s had his ups and downs while ruling. The highest up was when he married my mom - my father went on his second blind date and instantly fell in love with her. The worst was when my older brother died, he was only 4 when he was diagnosed with dreadful leukemia. He died 2 years later. My only memory of him is him playing dolls with me when I was 4. It was the year he died and all I remember was his muscles were so weak he could barely move the doll's frail legs. My parents were mortified by his death, my mom even became a germaphobe and anytime someone said the word ‘cancer’ she would almost have a heart attack. Most people in Bristole just saw it as me being the heir to the throne now, but to my family it meant so much more.

After eating half my pork and my loaded baked potato I gave it to a maid to take away.

I eventually gave up on trying to ignore all the little things I had to do that were nagging at me and grabbed a piece of paper to design my dress. My art was horrible, but I needed some idea of what I wanted to wear to the dance. I eventually ended up with a tight, strapless top and a bottom that poofed out so much it would be 3 feet away from my thin legs. I added some fluff to the edges of the bottom of my dress and at the top all around by wear the straps should be. At the bottom I added a note asking for the main color to be a pastel purple since I asked for the main colors at the dance to be pastel, the prettiest shade of any color.

I sat in my room, bored. I wanted to have a conversation with someone, a friend, even though I had to prepare so much for tomorrow and the following days. While “on my way to

plan for the dance” I “accidentally” bumped into Max outside of my door who was sitting there twiddling his thumbs.

“What a fine day to be bored, isn’t it Officer Max?” I say sarcastically as I approach him.

“Good evening, your Highness.” he gave me a small bow and turned his head towards me, his eyes slowly drifting down to his pocket.

“My, my, it’s the evening already? Time does fly by quite quickly. You have to prepare for something so big.” I smile, but he still doesn’t make eye contact.

Nothing.

“So,” I attempt at starting up some small talk, “How’s your day been?”

There is a long pause before he mumbles, “Standing here has been exciting.”

“Well if you don’t enjoy standing there, would you mind escorting me to my office?”

He silently offers me his elbow, which I grab. Since my room is on the 5th floor, we have 2 flights of stairs to walk down so once we reach the stairs I start talking again.

“What’s wrong with you?” I snap.

“What?”

“You’re acting weird.”

“It’s nothing.” he sighs.

“C’mon, you can talk to me, Max.” I plead, stopping.

“Doesn’t matter.”

I grow frustrated and raise my voice, “What is wrong? You can talk to me, Max!”

He throws his arms away from mine and turns to me, "Ok, fine! I got a not from home, my father is in the hospital, is that what you wanted to hear?"

He turns on his heels and starts to storms of but I grab his arm before he can get to far.

"Go," I declare, "Go visit your father, I'll have another guard fill in for you."

There is a moment of thought and he looks down at me solemnly.

"No, he wouldn't want me to do that. Besides, if he's in the hospital we need the money." He pulls his arm from my grasp and keeps walking back to his post.

~*~

After sampling wines, desserts, and other foods for the dance, I head to dinner. My younger sister (10 year old pest), Victoria, was already sitting at the table in my designated seat.

Our dining room table is huge - it could seat about 50 people - which is very necessary during parties or when other royal families visit. The table is dark oak brown with blue glass flowing through the center like a river and the padding on the chairs was the exact indigo blue that the glass was. I honestly loved the design.

I approach Toria and grab onto the back of the chair, shaking it around while all the butlers and guards stop to stare. She drops her spoon in her soup with a clatter and a splash, then lets out a little gasp.

“Ugh, L.” she whines, gripping onto both sides of the chair for dear life.

I stop shaking her chair and instead tip it to the side, slowly tipping it farther and farther down.

“You know this is my seat and that I am almost Queen. I could have your head for this.” I finish sarcastically.

“You wouldn’t cut off my head, you wouldn’t even banish me from Bristole like George did to Aunt Baddy.” she giggles.

We call my brother’s sister “Aunt Baddy” because:

A: Her original name was Brittany and she changed it to Addy.

B: Running away from the throne was a bad idea and savage.

C: It was just funny.

“You still didn’t answer the question.” I tease, tilting her chair over more.

“Mom and Dad have a video call with the South African Prince, so I assumed you wanted to sit in the leaders throne. ” she said slyly, pointing to dad’s huge chair.

“Ah, awfully generous of you,” I breathe, making my way to the large chair, “It was made for a fine ruler like me.”

“Snob.” she says in a hushed giggle.

“”That’s your head you’re giving away!” I tease.

I take off the cover on my food and stare in awe at the tomato soup, cheese crackers, and margarita pizza before me. Now what kind chef would have prepared my favorite meal? I lift up the flatbread pizza to find a folded piece of paper underneath. Unfolding it, I read the card to myself. It says:

You’re still coming at 10:30 sharp, right?

I know you’d never turn me down.

♡Adrien♡

What is going on at 10:30? He’d never said anything about that time, ever. He didn’t send me a message a breakfast or lunch and now at supper he thinks we have plans? Perhaps he accidently forgot to put the note in earlier, maybe he slid it under my door, or gave it to a butler to be sent to my room? I need to know what is happening at 10:30!

I shoot out of my chair and run for my room.

“Forgot something, I’ll be right back!” I shout behind me, already halfway down the hall.

I quickly navigate my way to my room, a few lefts, a few rights, ad some running up stairs. When I reach the final turn to my room something unexpected happens.

I turn the corner to see a frail, neatly dressed boy with 2 trays of food. I gasp and put out my hands to try to prevent smashing my head into him. With a loud crash and a few clangs, I crash into the butler. At the last second I realized that using my stitched up hand to stop myself from headbutting into him wasn’t a good idea.

Both of us sit there shocked in a puddle of tomato soup and pizza. My hand stings from tomato soup getting inside the cuts. Since my dress is already ruined, I crumple into a ball and lay on my side.

“Owww…” I groan, holding my aching hand.

The butler doesn’t even speak, just stares in pure, horrified shock. That’s because he has a 99% chance of being fired and if this is his job, his family probably needs the money.

I feel horrible, my gut twists into all sorts of knots and I feel entirely guilty.

“Don’t let them know it was you,” I half hiss, half whisper, “I’ll say I was trying to carry them, RUN!”

He just sits in the puddle of red, chunky soup with wide eyes.

“Hurry, I command you to run!” and he finally listens and darts to the stairs.

Soon enough two guards came to assist me and I convinced them that I had asked to take my parents their dinner and simply bumped into the corner and fell. Of course, they believed me. They basically aren't allowed to tell me I'm wrong, but after 5 minutes of explaining I start to hear a boy pleading for help down the stairwell. His cries echoed throughout the palace, growing closer and closer, and soon enough, more guards were standing all around me.

"No, I didn't do anything wrong, let me go! Please, I was told to, ask her!" The boy cried.

Oh no. I got him in more trouble.

Two guards dragging the butler I told to run came into view. He was a mess, covered in snot, tears, and tomato sauce. Nevermind the fact I looked no better than him, my hair matted and plastered to my body from crying in a puddle of tomato soup. He wails up until he sees me.

“She told me to! Ask her, ask her, please!” he shouts.

One of the guards drops him with a grunt, “Did you, your Highness?”

I sit there for a moment staring at these guards who work for me. To be honest, I’m slightly ashamed of telling him to run, but that was my mistake, and I won’t allow him to get fired.

I burst, “Yes I . . . I told him to run. And I regret it, but I know the law, he could be fired for crashing into me.”

“Yes, he could be. And he should. Even with your command, he should’ve at least helped you up.” on of the guards with jet black hair and bright yellow eyes states.

And he is true, but I yelled at him to run. If the demand was to run, he should run like I told him to, right? My thoughts are coming and going like fast moving clouds and my heart beats 10 times faster than usual. Will my parents be enraged? Will I not be Queen because of these?

I take a few deep breaths. Surely I am overthinking it. This boy can’t get more than a stern talking to if I beg my father to give him mercy and not fire him. I feel terrible, horrible, and sorry.

“He’s not wrong.” another guard with dusty blonde hair and big muscles points out.

He looks like he was born to be a guard - he’s tall, strong - he looks like a stereotypical guard.

I look down at my stained dress, my face turning cherry-red embarrassment.

“Well, you’ve got to respect how much she cared for the butler. Stereotypically, a princess would get the butler fired, not tell him to run and come up with a story to protect his job.” Max’s voice says in the crowd.

Oh yeah, I should’ve realized Max would be here since my room was right around the bend. I look up into his approving eyes and I can’t help but feel a spark of joy.

A fizzy feeling erupts inside of me and I suddenly forget all about Adrien. I finally know that he’s a piece to the perfect puzzle I call my life. I love Adrien and Max. How do I choose?