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She froze, her back to me.
“Thank you, Mr. Ambrose.” I nodded at him, and everyone began to take their leave. I waited until it was both of us, alone, surrounded by ornate furniture. Taking a deep breath, I stepped close to her. “Sophia—”
“They are doing this so the press will stop reporting that there is some sort of malice between us.”
“I, more than anyone, know the press is lying—”
“No,” she snapped, turning around to look at me, glaring furiously. “I hate you.”
I was stunned. All the polite words I was working on saying vanished from my mind. And fight mode immediately activated. Pulling my face together, I did my best to stay calm. “It’s a little strange hating someone you don’t know, don’t you think?”
“I don’t want to know you.”
“I am trying very hard to be nice right now.”
“I don’t care,” she snapped back. “I do not care about how nice you are. I do not care about how hard you are trying or how viciously you are attacked. I do not care. You know why? Because nothing you are going through can ever come close to what I am going through. In a day, I lost everything. My life, past, present, future, shattered all over this whole nation! And you want me to feel sorry for you? To help you? To welcome you? Your existence is slowly erasing mine. All my dreams, all my hopes, all Arthur’s dreams, and hopes, are dead. And everyone is running around trying to make sure you can handle it. Just because he is dead, just because I am no longer going to be queen doesn’t mean we just fade into the night. So, don’t bother being nice. I won’t care. I won’t help. Too many people are already doing that. I’m going to do what no one else seems to care to do anymore, which is keep what is left of Arthur’s dreams alive.”
With that, she spun around to leave when I cut in.
“It was Arthur who caused me to be here,” I said, and she froze, so I went on. “I didn’t get to know him, but I wish I did. He seemed to be an amazing human being. And I am grateful to him. I get that you are hurting. But I have to also ask, does keeping Arthur’s dreams alive mean that everyone else has to hurt with you? Is that what you think he would want?”
She stood there for only a second before walking out, not bothering to look at me.
And what else could I say?
Even with everything she said, I didn’t hate her.
I couldn’t imagine what it was like to work to be queen one day, and the next to be moved aside and seen as a gloomy bother to everyone else. It wasn’t her fault. But it wasn’t my fault either.
Ring.
Checking my phone, I smiled. “How did you know I needed to hear your voice?”
“You were pulling on my heartstrings?”
“Cheesy.”
He laughed. “I knew you would say that. Where are you?”
“Where else could I be? Where are you, more importantly?”
“I just came back from visiting the new solar wind farms, and I’m now on the plane heading back.”
My heart sank to my gut, hearing he was on the plane. “I thought we weren’t supposed to use phones on flights.”
“Commercial flights. Is that concern I hear in your voice?”
“Yes!”
“Good, I like it. Distract me. What are you doing? No class?”
“I was given a speech to study.”
“A speech?”
“They didn’t tell you? Sophia and I will be giving the commencement speech at Royal University.”
“You and Sophia?”
