Paper Rings Part II

31 December 2994

New Year’s Eve was the only night of the year that the doors of Martinez Palace were open to everyone. Even if they would always be separated by the invisible barriers of hierarchy, everyone was, at first glance, entirely equal; for once, money and station didn’t matter. 

The night was always a busy one in the market, as the festivities spilled out into the streets, which always served as a perfect excuse for Marie to skip the party. All she really wanted was to avoid spending her birthday dancing with strangers at the palace when she’d be much happier in a place she was familiar with, but this year, for the first time in forever, she had finally given in to the pressure put on her by her older brothers to attend. She was seventeen now; it was time to explore a life outside of the one she was comfortable with.

One last time, as the upbeat tune they’d been dancing to came to an end, she spun her little brother around, and they made their exit from the dance floor. They moved to join their parents, seated at a table nearby, each with a drink in hand and smiles on their faces as they spoke to one another in hushed tones.

They were beautiful together, Marie thought, and they looked happy. She had never known them to be anywhere but at each other’s sides—Max and Flora against the world. It was all she wanted for herself one day, to have someone she could lean on like that and who loved her unconditionally.

Archie dropped her hand and bounced over to their father, a wide, toothy grin plastered across his face. His blond hair tumbled into his eyes, as he climbed into the chair beside Max, swinging his legs under the table. 

“Maximilian.” Her mother eyed her father as he slipped Archie a cookie, the little boy taking it eagerly, his blue eyes wide. “You know how he gets.”

“Oh, he’s fine,” Max said, as he ruffled his son’s hair. “It’s a special occasion. A little extra energy isn’t going to hurt him tonight.”

Flora rolled her eyes and looked up at Marie, who was lingering at her side. “Are you going back out there?”

Marie shrugged. Getting herself to attend the party was one thing; actually participating in it was another. She was perfectly content spending the entire night with Archie, but something told her that her parents were about to take him off her hands. “Eventually.”

“It’s almost midnight.” Max slipped Archie another cookie while Flora wasn’t looking. It was a smooth, natural movement as if he’d done it many times before. “You don’t have much time left to wait for ‘eventually.’”

She wanted to talk about something else, anything else. If her younger brother wasn’t enough of a distraction, maybe her older ones would be. They were the ones who had pressured her into being here, after all, yet they were nowhere to be found.

“Where are Theo and Flor?” she asked. She tried to make it sound like she was just curious and not trying to distract them like she actually was. It was fruitless and she knew it, but it didn’t hurt to try. 

“Right there.” Flora pointed her chin in the direction of the drink table. Tall, blond, and making themselves at home amongst a group of girls, they were difficult to miss. It was what she should have expected. “Have you talked to anybody yet?”

Marie’s eyebrows raised involuntarily. “No.”

“Well…” Flora drew out the word, buying herself time to consider her next words carefully. “Have you found anyone you’d like to talk to?”

“Mom.”

“What?”

“You should get out there,” her father chimed in. “Take some risks.”

She had thought they would tell her she needed to go make new friends, not this. They wanted her to go find someone to dance with in a more-than-friendly way. They wanted her to find herself someone to flirt with, an idea that was supposed to horrify them. 

She fought back the urge to laugh at them. “You are not serious.”

They looked at her, and Archie giggled.

“We just want you to meet some new people,” Flora said. 

Marie scoffed. Another song was starting, and she could see Florian and Theo moving onto the dance floor with their girls, drinks still in hand. She wanted to roll her eyes. The last thing she wanted was to go out there and get cornered by someone like them. Nothing about becoming the object of someone else’s desires for one night and one night only sounded at all appealing to her. 

But her parents were still watching her, waiting with expectant eyes. They just wanted her to have fun and be happy. It wasn’t their fault that the idea of spending an extended period of time with anyone in the room was about as attractive to her as losing her fingers to frostbite.

She caved.

“Fine,” she said, ignoring her father’s whistle for her as she turned around and plunged back into the crowd. 

They would never know if she chose to duck out on the other side of the room and avoid everyone from there, but there wasn’t any fun in that. She’d enjoy the night just as much if she sucked it up and at least tried to look like she was open to socialization.

The room was loud, but the noise wasn’t as bad as it sometimes was in the market. There, it was mostly disorganized yelling combined with chaotic movements. Here, the music and the shouting balanced each other out, and there was a steady flow to each move that was made.

But now, as the song that was playing faded out and the room fell into a silence, waiting for the next one to begin, there was a strange silence. Only when the main doors to the ballroom swung suddenly open did it become clear why.

Surrounded by a fleet of guards was a tall man, with hair such a pale blond it was nearly white and a face that was all angles, sharp as the blade of a knife. A thin band of gold sat atop his head, a black diamond positioned in its center like a third eye, and his clothes were nice, the silky purple fabric across his chest adorned with medals. The King.

At his side was the Queen, her long, dark hair tumbling in waves down her back. Like her husband, she wore the midnight purple color of the Empire’s flags, and her tiara was silver, decorated with black diamonds. She was followed by their children, all three of whom bore a strong resemblance to her, with their dark hair, olive-toned skin, and softer facial features.

Princess Anastasia was the youngest, somewhere between Marie’s age and Archie’s, Prince James was a few years older than her but still younger than Marie, and Prince Caleb was the eldest, the one who was destined to one day wear his father’s crown. Marie suspected that was what most people thought of when they saw him, but when she set her eyes on him, she saw something else.

Her heart dropped down to her toes, as she did a double take. She hadn’t allowed herself to think much about the identity of the boy she’d met on the dockside months earlier—she hadn’t allowed herself to think about him much at all—but still, she wondered how she hadn’t made the connection sooner. The boy who couldn’t tie up a boat on his own, who wore clothes too nice to have a place where she was from, who wore a black diamond necklace with a chain of real silver and gold, and whose weightless presence suggested he was someone who had the luxury of being able to ignore every care in the world wasn’t just anybody. He was Caleb Martinez.

She was painfully aware of how stupid she looked with her jaw practically on the floor. It was embarrassing to be out in the middle of the room, so close to him, knowing she wasn’t the only one looking at him like that. He was the Crown Prince, he was highly attractive, and he had just turned eighteen. All of the pieces were falling into place, and everybody knew it. Soon, it would be time for him to get married.

By the look on his face, the fact didn’t please him. He was trying to smile, but she didn’t have to be face-to-face with him to see that it didn’t reach his eyes. She doubted anyone else would even notice. Had she not seen him up so close—had she not seen him so bright and bubbly—she wouldn’t have noticed either, but by comparison to that day, he looked weighed down. By what, she couldn’t be exactly sure. Most likely, it was the pressure of his position. Surely, it would beat the light and carefree nature out of him eventually.

“Good evening, everyone.” The King’s voice echoed through the room, magnified by a mechanism Marie couldn’t see. He spread his arms out as if to embrace them all, making himself bigger. The smile he wore was wide, and though she knew it wasn’t real, it reminded her of his son’s. “I hope you’re all enjoying your evening thus far.”

He waited patiently for the cheering and applause to die down before continuing. “The food, drinks, and music are our gift to you for the new year,” he said. His arms had come back down to his sides, and he was using them to gesture wildly as he spoke. Marie didn’t see how the Queen could keep from flinching, standing so close to him. “The ballroom and our gardens will remain open for about an hour after midnight, which is quickly approaching. Thank you all again for coming, and happy New Year!”

The room erupted in applause again, and the King turned his attention away from his guests and toward the members of his court surrounding him. He was quick to immerse himself in conversation with them, the Queen by his side. 

Their younger two children managed to slip away, each headed for different groups of kids, but when Caleb tried to do the same, his father grabbed his arm without affording him so much as a glance. Even from a distance, she could feel what the hand was saying: You’re an adult now. Act like it.

Marie wanted to go to him. As he shook his father off and resigned himself to socializing with the “important” people around him, she could tell he was agitated. There was tension in his shoulders, and the line of his mouth was rigid. But even if the guards let her talk to him, she doubted he would remember her. Why would he? He must have met countless people over the years. She was just another girl he had met on another day as a very important person. She wasn’t anybody. She had nothing real to offer him, and she knew he didn’t have to get to know her to know that. 

She turned her back on him and headed back toward the other side of the room, where she knew her brothers would be. The music hadn’t started back up yet, so she knew she had a chance to grab them before they got so distracted that there would be no pulling them away, not even for an emergency. It didn’t matter that they would be annoyed with her; she had to talk to somebody.

Florian and Theo weren’t far from where she had left them, and though they tried to argue when she grabbed them by their wrists and tugged them away from the girls they’d attached themselves to, she didn’t stop. 

“I’ll be fast,” she promised. Whether or not she meant it, she wasn’t sure yet. She would make them stay with her as long as was necessary.

“This had better be good,” Theo said. The music had returned to full volume, and the dance floor had returned to full activity along with it. As Marie pulled them against the wall, he kept looking anxiously back at it. “We’re making progress.”

Marie rolled her eyes. “You’re gross,” she said, “but, yes, I think you’ll think this is worth your time.”

Eyebrows raised, Florian motioned for her to continue.

“Okay, so, months ago, over the summer, I went on a walk to the docks, and I met this guy.” Now she had their attention. “I helped him tie up his boat, we had a short conversation, he walked me back up to the market, and that was it. I didn’t even get his name, and I never saw him again.”

A smirk had made its way onto Florian’s face. “Is this the part where you say ‘until tonight?’”

Marie stared at him.

“So go talk to him,” Theo said. “You clearly want to.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s him.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the area where she knew he was with the King and Queen. There was no way her brothers could be expected to know what she was referring to. “I am ninety-nine percent certain that it’s him.”

“Who?”

Marie couldn’t get herself to say his name. It was ridiculous, and her brothers were sure to make fun of her for it. She didn’t know what she had thought telling them would do to help her feel better.

Florian’s eyes narrowed. They sparkled in the dim light like tiny blue lanterns. “You don’t mean him?” he asked. His voice was higher than usual, almost as if he couldn’t believe himself. When she didn’t say anything, he scoffed. “Caleb Martinez?”

She nodded.

Theo sputtered, though his eyes were wide. “No way.”

“Yes way.”

“Liar. What was he doing down there?”

“I don’t know.”

“And weren’t there guards around?”

“Not that I saw.”

Theo continued to question her, the motions of his hands getting wider and wilder with each inquiry. She fielded him off as best she could, knowing she had created the circumstances for her own interrogation. Yet, in a way, it was helpful. With each question he asked her, she became more certain that she wasn’t crazy. The boy from the dock really was Caleb.

“Just go for it,” Florian said, cutting off Theo in the middle of his sentence. He was staring off in the direction of the royal family, his arms crossed over his chest and a considering look on his face. “I’ll go with you, and we can find somewhere in that general direction to linger and try to get him to at least get a glimpse of you. If he recognizes you and reacts, great. If not, that’s okay too.” 

Marie wasn’t sure that it was—she would rather assume that he didn’t know who she was and accept it without testing it than be proven right—but she knew that, subconsciously, this was exactly the reason she had come to her brothers to begin with. She wanted not only their advice but their support, and she had it.

Florian held out his arm, and she took it. Her hands shook, her stomach doing somersaults. He’s not going to remember, she told herself over and over again. Don’t expect anything.

“What am I supposed to do?” Theo whined as they began to move away from him. Any hint of the annoyance he’d directed at her moments earlier was gone. 

“Keep them entertained,” Florian said, gesturing toward the girls who were now dancing with each other in the middle of the floor. “I don’t want to see that you’ve driven them off when I get back.”

Theo’s face brightened, and he hurried back to them, pleased with his assignment. Marie had to laugh at him, even as Florian steered her away. “Is that seriously your whole plan for the night?”

“Obviously,” he said. “You know how Mom is. She keeps telling us we need to meet people, and she’ll stop doing that once we bring people home.”

“Right, because you’ll have given her what she wants.”

“It’s not like it’s too bad for Theo and I either. Seems like a nice deal to me.”

He led her to the other side of the room, taking her farther than she had expected. They were so close that Marie could hear the conversation Caleb was having with a tall, brown-haired man who looked like he must have been a high-ranking military official. It didn’t look like a forced conversation resulting from courtesy or propriety; they were both smiling, Caleb laughing as the other man told him about something his young son had done the day before. 

The smile, the laugh, the voice. There was no longer any question about whether or not the Prince was really who she thought he was. This was him.

“You need to bring the boys back down here soon,” he was saying. “I want to see them again before they forget who I am.”

At that, the man laughed. “Of course, I will.”

Standing off to the side with Florian, Marie waited for Caleb to say something else, but he didn’t. Her back was to him, and she turned around to see what the cause of his silence was, expecting to discover that he had moved on to another conversation. 

He hadn’t moved. Rather, he was staring at her.

“What’s wrong?” the man he’d been talking to asked. Marie couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the concern in his voice. 

Caleb shook his head, said something to him that Marie couldn’t hear, and started to walk directly toward her.

Florian’s voice was soft in her ear. “I think it’s safe to say he remembers you.”

Caleb stopped in front of them, his hands clasped behind his back and a somewhat flustered look on his face. He was rocking back and forth on his feet again, just as he had done when he’d stepped out of his boat and onto the dock, and when he smiled at her, her breath hitched.

“Hi,” he said.

She exhaled, forcing herself to breathe. “Hi,” she said. “I don’t know if you remember but we met at the docks. It was a while ago…”

“I remember.” With what seemed like conscious effort, he stopped rocking. “I’m sorry I didn’t really introduce myself then. It was kind of rude of me.”

“No, it’s okay. I… I really don’t blame you.”

She hadn’t thought she would mean it, but she did. If she were him, she wouldn’t walk around advertising who she was either. She would want people to see something other than a throne or a crown. She would want them to see her, just as she saw him now.

“I’m Caleb,” he said, as if he needed an introduction anymore. “I’m Caleb Martinez.”

“And I’m—”

“—Marie.”

She smiled. “Yeah, Marie Jonas.” He remembered her. Did he just have a good memory? Or had she really made that much of an impact on his day? She glanced back up at her brother, who was standing cautiously behind her, and willed him not to let her move too fast. “This is Florian,” she said.

“Her brother,” Florian clarified. “And it’s an honor, really, but I’m going to have to excuse myself. I can’t trust a certain other brother of ours on his own for too long.”

Marie felt her eyes widen, as Florian and Caleb both chuckled, somehow understanding each other despite having practically nothing in common. “Wait—”

“I’ll see you later, Mae,” Florian said, winking at her as he started to walk away. She wanted to protest, but she couldn’t, not without making herself look desperate and terrified—which she was—in front of the Prince. He was leaving them alone on purpose.

“So…” Caleb held out his hand to her, as a soft, pink flush spread across his cheeks. “Would you like to dance with me?”

She hardly felt herself move as she brought her hand up to take his and allowed him to lead her out onto the dance floor. There were guards nearby, and she knew at least a few people, including the Queen, had taken notice of Caleb’s decision to dance with her, but for once, she didn’t care what anybody thought.

Everything seemed to happen at twice the speed of normal time, as if her timeline could somehow skip beats like her heart could. She wished it would slow down so that she could feel it more, but she knew it was probably best this way. The faster the time passed, the less time there was for her nerves to creep back in and get the best of her.

When he spun her around, she laughed, unable to contain the joy building in her chest. She told herself she was imagining it when he smiled in response. There had to be something, anything, other than her that was making him happy.

He drew her back to him until their bodies were pressed up against one another. His voice was soft, as he murmured in her ear, “Are you having a good night?”

“I am now.”

“Well, I’m glad.”

“Are you? Having a good night, I mean.”

“I am now.”

Any tension she’d seen in his shoulders from afar was gone, replaced by relaxed muscles and a straightened spine. His eyes, green as the grass outside, twinkled with his wide smile, the lines around them and his lips deep and pronounced. His movements became bouncier, and it was almost as if his feet hardly had to touch the ground to hit each mark of their dance. Dancing was never something she had been good at, but he made it look easy and his lead was strong, so much so that she almost forgot she was following him at all. 

One song passed, then two, and then three, but he gave no indication that he wanted to move on, though she was careful to watch for even the slightest of signs. As much as she wanted him to stay with her forever, she knew this would end at some point. It couldn’t last forever. He had other responsibilities.

“Caleb—” she said but stopped herself. “Can I call you that?”

“Of course, please do call me that,” he said. His hand tightened around her waist, as they maneuvered closer to the center of the floor. “It’s my name.”

“Okay, Caleb, it’s getting close to midnight, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“I have a feeling that you’re supposed to be mingling.”

“I am.”

“I mean with other people. With lots of people, important people, important women.” She avoided his eyes as he looked down at her, focusing instead on the golden lapel pin of his jacket, designed in the shape of the Empire’s seal, the Martinez family seal. Her cheeks must have been bright pink. “I’m not any of those things.”

“Why not?” He rested a hand on the bottom of her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “What if I think you’re important?”

Nervously, Marie laughed. “You don’t even know me.”

“But maybe I want to.” The song had ended, and they had come to a stop. They were only a minute away from ringing in the new year. “I’m a prince, I know. I’m the Heir to the Throne, and that means I have responsibilities and that, yes, it is rude of me to choose only one person to dance with the entire night… But I think tradition is stupid, and there are so many things that I want to change when it’s my turn to wear the crown. So, I don’t really care what I’m supposed to do or what anybody says. I’m happy right here, right now, with you.”

Butterflies danced in her stomach, and her grasp on his shoulders, broad and firm, tightened. She wasn’t foolish enough to think she was the only girl who had ever heard those words from his mouth, but as much as she tried to remind herself of it, her excitement won. Nobody, prince or not, had ever spoken to her like that. Nobody had ever managed to make her feel this way before.

Even as the room began to count down the seconds to midnight, Marie couldn’t convince herself that her feet were still on the ground. Even as the clock chimed, the sound sharp in her ears, her skin tingled like it was made somehow of water and flames. And even as he leaned down to kiss her, she kept willing herself to wake up. All the hope she felt, all the fire in her bones, couldn’t possibly be real.

It wasn’t until he was pulled away from her that the world came back into focus. 

A woman had taken hold of Caleb’s arm and yanked him away from her, dragging him with her before Marie realized what was happening enough to stop her. It was the Queen, her knuckles turning white as she gripped her son. 

“You know you can’t do that,” Marie heard her say.

“Do what?” Caleb nearly tripped as he stumbled after her, glancing back at Marie. His gaze was pained and apologetic, almost desperate. “Have a life?”

“You know what,” the Queen scolded. “Your father will throw a fit, and it’ll be my problem.”

Marie could see that they were still arguing, but they were too far for her to hear now. But somehow, it didn’t matter. All she could feel as she brought her hand up to touch her mouth were his lips on hers. It was only the beginning, the start of something that could either be nothing or everything. They had brushed the surface of an ocean, and she wanted more. She wanted to dive.

To be continued…