I wake, my eyes already wide and bright, sleep as faded as night in the golden sunlight that warms my bed. My mind is on last night’s dream.
Three years these dreams have followed me. Sometimes nightly, sometimes weekly, sometimes less, but they’re always about the same thing.
Him.
The prince. I’ve never met him, but I know he’s real. There is a voice in the dreams, and it tells me he was doomed to sleep for a hundred years but one day I will find him and awaken him, saving him from another hundred years of sleep by the touch of my lips.
I dream of him, over and over again. I read every book I see him reading in my dreams of him. He clearly wants to be an excellent ruler. So, I do too. I have three cats because he seems to love them. I am in love with everything he does. What I love most about him isn’t even the deep blue eyes he has, or his thick blonde swoops of hair that he loves to push back. It’s the way his eyes crinkle, his whole face crumpling into the biggest, sweetest, happiest smile. Whenever he laughs, whenever he sees me in my dreams.
Last night, I dreamt that today was the day I would break the spell. The voice told me how to find him.
I tell my parents and maids I am going on a ride, and I do not bring any food or water along so they do not suspect it will be more than a simple outing. I dress in my finest gown of lilac silk with the flowered neck and draping sleeves.
Through a cool green glen I ride, one that smells heavily of the sweet, indescribable clover smell of enchantment. Finally, I draw my horse to a halt as I face a tall gray stone wall, each edge of stone crumbling with ancient decay.
It melts away as I ride through, and I dismount and walk into the castle and into my prince’s chamber.
There he lies. Every bit as handsome as my dreams.
I moisten my lips and close them, press them down gently on top of his.
A thrill flutters through me. His eyes blink open, sky-blue depths meeting mine.
“My prince?” I whisper, my voice catching.
His face lights up in the most beautiful smile. Eyes crinkling, grin dimpling, he smiles right at me with gratitude. “My lady!” he exclaims, sitting up instantly on the bed, looking me in the eyes. “You woke me from my cursed sleep and saved me from another hundred years of slumber!”
I bow my head modestly.
We introduce ourselves. He is Prince Aurelius, and everything goes by in a blur as we sit down and talk about ourselves. I ramble on about how devoted I am to my three kittens. Then he says,
“That’s just how my fiancé is. She loves cats.”
And suddenly I think he just punched me in the gut.
His fiancé? It’s like I’ve forgotten the meaning of the word and, instead of my heart sinking, it stops beating right in the place it’s supposed to be, my world snapped shut like a still-life portrait.
“Your – what? I beg your pardon?” I inquire, my face losing its rapt smile.
“My fiancé,” he repeats, matter-of-factly. Just then, a beautiful princess enters the room. I must have awakened her, along with the rest of the household, when I kissed the prince.
“There you are, my love!” he exclaims, and, as though I were just another fixture in the room, his eyes dwell on her. They rush towards each other and embrace in an intimate clasp.
I stare at them, conscious of my heart in my chest, now thumping frantically like a bird beating its wings against a cage, desperate to be free.
How does he have a fiancé? He’s mine.
The beautiful smiles on their faces, the elation as he looks into her eyes—it stabs my heart deeper than the sharpest thorn and I can’t even muster a smile as I excuse myself and speed-walk out of the room, oblivious to everything around me. I rush down into the gardens, where I finally find a small, dirty space beneath a forgotten cluster of rosebushes. I have scarcely crumbled to the ground when the tears run hot out of my eyes, streaming like a river gushing down.
I can’t describe the feeling I feel. Everything I had hoped and planned and dreamed for so much of my life – three whole years – just melted beneath me like the ancient stone of the magic wall. I had thought – I had known that I would fall in love—that we would be the happiest couple ever.
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts, cursed demons, it hurts!
He was never an option. Never available. He was taken, betrothed to another from the start.
I am painfully conscious of how tangled my hair is, how small my eyes, even how large my normally small body seems in comparison to the petite fiancé’s. The sunburn on my nose, the dirt on my slippers. I’ve always thought I was decently pretty, but I was never stunning, and right now I feel endlessly inadequate. Of course he loves her more. She’s sweet and beautiful. I bet she curtsies beautifully too.
I don’t know which is worse. The humiliation at how foolish I was in front of him, so that I cannot even walk away with dignity, or the humiliation I feel deep inside, for having built my entire life around my marriage to this man, who never even cared a hair about me. Or simply the stinging knowledge that he doesn’t love me and that nothing I can do can change that.
A night of shivering in the cold, sleepless, not even tired, with icy cold gnawing through the marrow of my bones, unshakable chills, and I feel the uncomforting warmth of dawn lighten the sky with shades of pastel pink and blue. I’m still heartsore and trying to make sense of it all when I finally ask myself the question honestly. What left do I have? What can I do?
And the answer comes.
I have myself.
It’s true. Myself is not perfect. I’m not stunning. I’m clumsy at the worst of moments. But I’m all I have, and I know that I will always be there.
Even though it’s obvious, it comforts me somehow to know that I will always be there for myself.
I remember the hours I spent reading books on how to be the best ruler.
Well. I will be the best ruler.
No husband. No king. I couldn’t love again, anyway, not with three years of yearning just destroyed.
I will be the Queen of Cordilis. And never, not since Queen Corda herself, will there ever have been a better queen than me.
The shame, the tears, the pain, they don’t go away. They all come together, solidifying in my chest like a stone. Heavy. Heavier than the crown. A burden I will always bear. My heart may be stone. But when you don’t feel anything, nothing can hurt you.
A Queen cannot be vulnerable.
I lived for my prince these past three years. But I learned my lesson. I will not make that mistake again. From now on, I live for no one else’s sake. I live for myself.
I will be kind to others. A good ruler. The best. I will be good and kind and wise and just. Because that is who I am. Who I was created to be. Because it is right.
I stand up straight and walk with grace and dignity, out of the courtyard, ignoring the hundred stares that I imagine boring silently through my back.
Through the forest, the brambles gone. Dove awaits me patiently. I mount him with grace and dignity, my dirty, red, swollen face lifted high in the air.
My back is still straight with the regality of a queen when I ride into the courtyard of my own palace that afternoon.
My parents pester me with questions. I apologize to them with grace. I do not explain myself much, merely say that I fell into a strange enchanted forest (which is no falsity) and broke an ancient curse before finding my way back home. They’ll hear about the broken curse anyway, so I might as well be honest. Everyone will know it was me. A pit forms in my stomach as I imagine what the gossip will be.
But I will take it standing up.
I am royal. I will be a queen.
Most of all, I will be true to myself. I will live for goodness and never lie to myself again or hinge my hopes and dreams on another. I will be myself’s best friend.
Because I only have myself and I will always have myself.
No one can take that from me.