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“Aren’t you going to eat breakfast before you go?” I said. “You’ll get very hungry.”
“We want to get an early start,” Bianca said. “Catch the sun as it rises above the forest. It should be pretty spectacular.”
Anything would be spectacular with you by my side.
“It sounds like it,” I said. “Maybe you should take a guard with you. I’d feel a lot better if you did.”
“We’ll be fine,” Bianca said, waving her hand dismissively. “We won’t go too far.”
“By the amount of food you’re taking with you, I thought you might be gone all day,” I said.
“We’ll see how we go,” she said. “It’s never a good idea to plan too much. It sucks the life out of everything. Much better to be a little spontaneous.”
She focused her attention on me. It was an open challenge. She wanted me to be spontaneous, to ask to join them on their day trip.
And I wanted to. I wanted to go with them.
Then why was it so difficult for me to ask?
The moment passed and she nodded her head, her disappointment evident on her face.
I was disappointed in myself too.
I took a sip from my coffee and tried to suppress it.
“Let’s go,” Bianca said.
She took Cleb’s hand and led him away. Cleb danced and hopped as they crossed the room. I’d never seen him so excited. They passed through the door.
Bianca didn’t even turn to look back at me.
The servant shut the door behind them. It banged and echoed in the large, empty hall. I sat my cup down and it clicked loudly on its coaster. Even the other chairs had their backs facing me. The dining room had the same problem as my bed last night.
Far too big.
And cold.
And empty.
I scooped up my coffee cup and grabbed some of the cinnamon rolls.
“I’m going to eat in my study,” I declared to no one in particular.
“Very good, sir,” Waev said.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” I said.
I marched down the hall to my office and stepped inside. I shut the door behind myself and pressed my back to it, relieved to have reached a safe place. I immediately felt relaxed.
I was in a place under my control. I was king in this space. No one could tell me what to do.
I crossed the broad open plain of the rich red carpet. Each step I took seemed to take me less than half the distance I thought it would.
Had the room always been this big? And more than that, I’d never realized how much space the desk took up before. It took oceans of time for me to move around it and take my seat on the other side. I put my feet up on the desktop and leaned back in my chair.
See? I could enjoy myself too. I can relax when I want to.
I peered at the paperwork in my overflowing in-tray and the empty out tray. Organizing the following day’s workload was always the last thing I did each evening before heading to dinner. I needed to get through it all before I considered it a productive day’s work.
