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I shrug away from him, glaring at his pink smirk and marching straight back to my room, but not before flipping him off. His chuckle in response causes chills to rise on the back of my neck, and I only despise him more because of them.
How is it possible that this is my fate? This vile human being who takes pleasure in my pain. A masochist with a mission to make my life a living hell. He’s no husband of my choosing, that’s for damn-well sure.
Luckily, we don’t see him the rest of the night, and Barth made it back with food. It’s more food than we need, but it will do. I think it’s mostly Russian food. All of it is good, but then again, anything tastes delicious after not eating for nearly an entire day.
Somehow we finish everything and retire to the bed with full stomachs.
“We should watchBreakfast at Tiffany’s.” Olive suggests as she grabs her laptop off the nightstand.
“Mmmm.” I stall, not wanting to watch that movie for the thousandth time, but not having the heart to tell her no. “Okay.” I whisper, and she giddily opens the laptop, going right to the movie and clicking play. We don’t even make it halfway through, and she’s beginning to close her eyes.
It’s freezing cold in this room and I’m beginning to see my breath so I nudge her and her eyelids fly open in shock.
“Hey.” I whisper and she turns her head to me with a sleepy smile.
“Hi.”
“Are you cold?”
“Freezing.” She nods and I look around the room, noticing the blizzard picking up outside.
“We should light a fire in the fireplace.” I suggest, and she slides out from under the covers. I follow and we walk together towards it. There’s already wood in it, but I don't know what type of fireplace this is. It’s enclosed, so it could be gas. Olive crouches down and fiddles with the glass and I look for some sort of switch. The one’s in our house back home are gas-lit, so if this isn't one of those, and it’s probably not given my recent luck, we’ll have to figure something else out.
“I don’t think this is a gas one.” Olive determines just as I find the switch and flick it on. The blue fire ignites until it licks up the edges of the wood and a soft yellow light floods the surrounding area. “Oh!” she claps and I let out a laugh and help her up.
On our way back to the bed, I grab some fur blankets off the chairs facing the fire and we quickly sprint back to the bed, shivering and squealing like little kids. We shiver under the sheets and I close the laptop, quickly setting it beside the bed and tugging the blankets over us both.
We’re quiet for a little, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the fire crackling and the wind howling as the storm picks up.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Olive pokes me with her cold toe.
“Dude.” I poke her back with mine and she giggles.
“It reminds me of the time we played that game. Do you remember? The one where we were orphans living in a snowy castle.'' I burst out laughing at the memory of our well-off little selves in expensive dresses imagining we were poor and depraved.
“You wore your ratty old blanket wrapped around your head and we pretended that we were snowed-in and we had to bundle up.” I turn on my side and she laughs as she turns on hers.
“We actually had the most dramatic play time as kids.”
“We did.” I smile softly, reminiscing. She smiles back, her eyes fluttering more than before and I get scared because I don't want to be alone just yet. “Hey Olive.” I whisper, poking her little nose that I swear hasn't changed since we were little.
She opens her eyes. “Yes?”
“Can we pretend, just one more time?”
“What do you mean?”
“I just want to imagine that we’re not here because we were forced here. Or that just across the hall is a monster of a man that I'm meant to marry…”
She reaches for me, drawing my eyes back to hers in the dim light of the fire. “Yeah.” she nods.
“We’re princesses, our parents are both living and just upstairs in their rooms. There’s a storm, but we aren’t scared.”
I shake my head. “No, not one bit. We have each other.”
“And we always will.” She whispers back and I pull her close to me, letting her nuzzle her head into my chest like she did when we were little and I had to convince her to turn what she was afraid of into something funny right before bed. As her breathing deepens, I kiss the top of her head.
“Goodnight.” I say, though I know she’s already asleep.
