Paper Rings Part III

6 January 2995

When it was summertime, and the sun was scorching her skin, all Marie wished for was the cold of winter, but when that dreary weather finally came, she always found herself eating her words. Handing change back to a customer with her fingers numb even beneath the thick wool of her gloves, she fought the urge to curse the version of her that lived in warmer weather. She didn’t know how lucky she was.

It always got worse when it got dark, and the sun was starting to set on the horizon, the sky turning from the blue of a sunny winter day to a mosaic of pinks, purples, and oranges that would soon welcome the night. Luckily, it would also welcome closing time, and she could go home and wrap herself in the warmth of the blankets on her bed for the remainder of the night.

“You’re Marie?”

She turned. She hadn’t noticed the man approaching, but he was there now, leaning on the side of the stand with an envelope in his hand. He looked familiar, although she knew they hadn’t met.

“Can I help you?” Something about him, about the intensity in the way he observed the world around him made her stomach flip. She didn’t think he was a threat, but he wasn’t someone to let her guard down in front of either.

None of her brothers were there, and her mother was busy trying to sell a teenage boy a bracelet for his partner, but she could feel her father’s eyes on her, staying back but not so much so that he couldn’t get her out of whatever this was if he had to. That knowledge was the only thing that gave her the courage to continue making eye contact with the man in front of her.

He was clearly aware of her unease, and he straightened himself so he wasn’t quite so close to her. She wouldn’t say it, but she appreciated it.

He held up the envelope and set it on the counter. “This is for you,” he said.

She stared at it, hesitant, and then looked back up at him.

“I can’t leave without some kind of response from you,” he said. 

Reluctantly, she took the envelope and started to tear it open. He watched her the whole time. There was no way that this was his job. With his intense gaze and his broad, brawny form, she didn’t believe that he was a messenger. Even just looking at him, without having to exchange a word, she could tell that he was not only a charming man but an authoritative one, the blue of his eyes somehow managing to be both sharp ice and a calm ocean. He was no servant, that much she knew for sure.

“You know, while I’m here, do you have some necklaces that I could look at?” the man asked, directing his gaze at her father as she removed and unfolded the piece of paper the envelope contained. “I’d like to see if you have something that my wife might like.”

“Sure,” her father said in the same light, unnatural tone he used with every customer he helped. He reached under the counter and brought out a box, setting it in front of the man and beginning to explain what each piece of jewelry was made from. Marie tuned them out, happy to slink behind her father to read her note without anyone looking over her shoulder.

She hardly had to read the first line of scrawled words to realize why the man before her seemed so familiar. He was the same man she and her brother had seen talking to the Prince, Caleb, at the palace’s New Years Eve party less than a week earlier. 

No, she thought, definitely not a servant. He was a noble of some kind and, possibly, military too. It was no wonder his presence felt so big.

Marie,

I’m not sure that I’ve ever enjoyed talking to someone the way I enjoyed talking to you the other night. I felt that it was a crime for our time to be cut short like that (apparently I needed to be dragged away because I “wasn’t behaving like a real prince,” according to my mother, whatever that means), so if you’ll let me, I’d like to make things right. 

I’d like you to meet me tonight, by the fountain in the market. Then, maybe we can have a proper conversation without any stupid “propriety” rules standing in our way. 

I can take no for an answer, but I’d rather not, so I hope you’ll give this a chance. Either way, give Colonel Dove your answer sooner than later because he’s not allowed to leave without one, and I don’t think you want him following you around all day. 

I hope to see you soon.

Caleb

For a moment, all Marie could do was stare at the paper in her hand, her eyes scanning its words over and over again. She could see that her father and the man, the Colonel, were completing their transaction, and that meant she needed to come up with an answer. Did she want to meet up with Caleb? Her gut instinct was to say yes, but reason told her not to jump at the opportunity so fast. The Prince didn’t need her. She could become a toy to be played with and discarded all too fast, and then she’d be left to clean up her own broken heart. 

But what if she was wrong?

She refolded the paper along the perfect creases Caleb had created and slipped it back into the envelope before pocketing it. She stepped up to the counter, just as her father was handing the Colonel a small, neatly-wrapped box. They both looked at her, the Colonel with a twinkle of anticipation in his eyes and her father with an eyebrow raised, his mouth set in a thin line. 

“Okay,” she said. “Tell him I’ll meet him in three hours.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The Colonel was smiling, as he gave her father a nod and turned to leave, calling back over his shoulder, “And thank you, sir!”

She could tell her father wanted to laugh, as he looked at her, eying the envelope sticking out of her coat pocket. “So who are you meeting with?”

“Just someone I met at the party,” she said without making eye contact. It wasn’t the truth, but it was close enough. 

“You met someone?” Her mother had appeared at his side, grasping his arm with a hopeful look on her face. 

“Maybe, Mom.” Yes, she had met someone, but she couldn’t be sure if she had met someone in the way that her mother meant it. More than that, she couldn’t allow herself to admit that there was nothing she wanted more than for the answer to her mother’s question to be yes.

———

The windchill was aggressive as ever, as Marie made her way through the streets of the village, all the way from the warmth of her home back to the market. It had been more than three hours since the Colonel had left the jewelry stand, not too much longer but just enough to make Caleb wait, assuming he was on time. That was how she wanted it; she wanted him to wonder.

There was always some activity at night, although, away from the few bars and clubs, there wasn’t ever much. She only passed by a few people, each with cheeks and noses as pink as she was sure hers were, their breaths creating hot puffs in the air.

The fountain was off—it always was in the wintertime, sad and empty as the branches on the trees—and she approached it cautiously. A man was sitting on the edge of it, wearing a dark coat with the hood up over his head. The outline looked like him, but she couldn’t be certain, not until she saw his face.

An unevenly placed brick in the street tripped her up, and though she managed to keep her footing, she didn’t manage to do so without making an exceptional amount of noise, as her shoes slapped against the concrete.

The man turned and got to his feet. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, an amused smile on his face. “You okay?”

“You didn’t see that,” she said, “and you didn’t hear it either.”  

“Okay.” He was standing in front of her now—two steps and they’d be chest to chest—his green eyes almost blue in the yellow glow of lantern light. It was him. “The memory’s gone.”

“Thank you.”

A silence passed between them, and her stomach fluttered.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Good,” she said, unable to meet his eyes. Her cheeks weren’t quite as cold anymore. “How are you?”

“I’m great now.” He held out a gloved hand. “Come with me?”

Her soul detached from her body, she placed her hand in his and allowed him to lead her away. His grip was strong, firm, but not aggressively so, and his shoulders were relaxed despite the way the hood of his coat stood as a protective barrier between him and the world. She wondered if they were truly alone. It wouldn’t be smart for him to go anywhere without someone to keep an eye on him, even if it was from afar.

She managed to keep herself from asking, albeit reluctantly. She didn’t want to pry or remind him of how abnormal his life was, and more so, she didn’t want to seem too much like she wanted to be alone for any reason, be it to hurt him or otherwise. 

“Where are we going?” she asked instead. She recognized the area of houses they were cutting through, but she couldn’t yet tell exactly what their destination was. 

“You’ll see,” he said, seeming to take pleasure in keeping her guessing. She supposed it was only fair; it was what she’d been doing to him when she showed up late to their meeting. 

Luckily for her, it wasn’t much longer before it became clear. He was leading her to a path on the village’s edge, the path that led down to the docks.

There were no boats in the water—it was far too cold for that—and that meant the docks were all but deserted until the warmer months returned. It was quiet, and despite the fact that they were entirely out in the open, she felt like there was some level of privacy between them and the rest of the world. Under the dim light of the moon and the stars, she could pretend nothing else existed.

“So,” she said, as the dock’s wooden planks creaked beneath their feet, “you had a military officer be your messenger?”

Caleb grinned, looking at his feet. “Yeah, well, I consider him a friend. I wrote his title in the letter because that’s what I’m supposed to call him, according to my father… Colonel, Colonel Dove… But I just call him Vance just like he just calls me Caleb.” He glanced up, his eyes settling on Marie. Flurries had started to fall from the sky, passing like dust between them. “There aren’t many people I trust the way I trust Vance. He’ll be a general one day, when I’m king.”

“Quite a promotion.”

“It’s well deserved.”

He brought his hood down, as he sat on the edge of the dock, guiding her down with him. His dark hair was wild with waves that could be curls if he treated them properly, and the snowflakes landed in it like sprinkles of sugar. He had an angled face, freshly shaven with skin a soft shade of olive-like brown, and when he was on his feet, he was tall but didn’t tower over her, with a sturdy build that was broad but not extremely muscled, just enough for her to notice the tone. 

She didn’t want to stare, but it was difficult not to, and he was staring right back. It made her skin tingle in a way that was unfamiliar to her. 

There was a look in the green of his eyes that made her wonder if this was where he was going to say the cliche thing and tell her that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. 

“I’ve never seen anybody with eyes like yours,” he said instead. “That’s natural? The different colors?”

Marie nodded. One was blue and one was brown, uncommon but not unheard of. She’d been born that way, and on some days, she was proud of the fact, while others, she wished she just looked a little bit more normal, whatever that meant. On those days, her father’s voice always crept into her head, saying as he had been since she was a little girl: The prettiest things are the ones that we notice because they’re different. They’re more precious because there’s nothing else like them..

“They’re beautiful,” he said. His hand started to rise from his lap, as if to reach out to her, but he stopped himself. “They’re unique… I kept thinking about them after… Well, you know. After I got dragged away from you.”

After I kissed you. She hadn’t expected him to be too shy to say it.

His smile looked almost as if it belonged to someone who had been drugged, loopy and oblivious. She knew there was no way his parents would approve of him choosing a random girl from an average family of no note to have any form of relationship with, which made her forbidden to him. Choosing to dance with and kiss her while he ignored everybody else had gotten him in trouble, but instead of steering him away from her, she could tell it had made him like her more. Going against what was expected of him was something he found exciting. But even as he kept his gaze steady on her eyes, she knew the question she needed to be asking herself was how long it would take him to get sick of her. How long would it be before he got bored?

“So—” Caleb shook his head, managing to neutralize his dopey grin— “your parents sell jewelry? Vance showed me what he got for Amy.”

“Yeah,” she said. “They started it when my oldest brother was a baby, so they’ve been doing it for a long time.”

“That’s cool. It sounds like it could be a fun job.”

“More fun than controlling a kingdom?”

“Yes.”

Caleb’s answer was quick, unexpectedly so. Marie knew that sitting on the throne was no picnic, but she hadn’t taken it for too awful of a job either. It seemed to her that the King got to sit around and hold his rank over everybody else while he polished the crown atop his head. He weighed himself down with fabrics and signed executive orders that decided the fates of dozens, hundreds, thousands, sometimes even millions of people. Sure, the world was in his hands, but the trade off couldn’t possibly have been that bad.

But then again, Leonidas Martinez was not a popular man. He was known for his careless decision making that often placed his people in danger, serving himself and no one else. When he didn’t get his way, he found somebody to blame and had them punished in any number of brutal or deadly ways.

“I mean, do they enjoy it?” he asked. “Do your parents enjoy what they do?”

Marie nodded.

“Believe it or not, my father hates his job. That’s part of why he’s so insufferable. He’s taking out his own anger, boredom, irritation, you name it on, on the world around him. Unfortunately, he happens to have enough power for his actions to have significant impact.” At the look on her face, he gave her a weak smile. “He’s my father, but I’m not oblivious. I think he is capable of loving and caring, but the older he gets, the less of it I see. I think my relationship with him would be better if he had literally any other job.”

“I’m sorry,” Marie said, her voice barely a whisper. “I’ve never thought about him like that.”

Caleb shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said. “I wouldn’t have expected you to. A lot of people hate him, even if they don’t say it, and I wouldn’t blame you if you did too.”

“I don’t.” It was true, although she wasn’t sure if she would have told him otherwise if it wasn’t. She knew the King didn’t have the best history, but she didn’t know enough about him to feel hatred toward him. Nothing he’d ever done wrong had ever affected her directly either. She was lucky enough to be living comfortably, even under his reign.

Caleb didn’t seem to believe her, but he didn’t question her. Instead, he looked out at the lake, the aqua water appearing dark under the light of the stars. It was cold but not cold enough for such a large body of water to freeze over entirely, and the snow disintegrated as it fell onto its surface, merging into the water as if the individual flakes had never existed. 

“I want to be better.” His voice was quiet, but it was also strong. There was no question in it, only certainty. “I want to come up with a system that works better. I want to make sure everyone’s voices are heard and that everyone has access to food, water, medicine, you name it, and I don’t want to hurt anyone the way my father has. The dungeons in the palace are packed with people who have done or said things he doesn’t like or who haven’t done anything at all other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time and becoming the targets of his wrath. Sometimes he has people tortured or executed; I don’t think I was even ten years old when I figured out why I could hear people screaming sometimes. And he drinks so much, as if drowning his own sorrows and guilt is somehow going to help the people he’s supposed to protect. I don’t want violence or war… I want a renaissance, Marie.”

The hope in his voice made her stomach flutter. His image of the future was one that would help everyone, noble or not. It was as much a dream for people like her as it was for people like him, if not more so. It was a world where people who were essentially powerless might be able to take control of their own lives. It was a world where people like her parents could do what they loved without having to work so hard just to keep their heads above water.

The twinkle in his eyes was bright, and talking about the things he wanted to do as king only made it brighter. The idea of taking his father’s place was something he must have thought about a lot, maybe something that he’d contemplated as he lay awake at night. His frustration clearly ran deep, deeper even than hers did. After all, he saw the injustice up close in a way that she never had.

“I have people who I know will back me up when I try to change things,” Caleb said. He was looking at her again, his eyes meeting hers with an intensity she had never faced before. “Vance, of course, is one of them. And my brother and sister. James and Ana may be young now, but not so young that they’re stupid. They can see most of what I can; they can see that it needs to change.”

Marie didn’t realize she was reaching out to him until her hand was over his. Though it was numb with cold, her face went hot. She couldn’t pull away now.

She cleared her throat. “You’re close to them?”

Caleb looked back up at her from where he’d been staring down at their hands. “What?” He shook his head. “Oh, you asked if I was close to them? Yes. Yes, I’d say I am,” he said. “I get jealous of them sometimes, though. I do my best to keep them from seeing things the way I have to, and I like to think I’m doing an okay job at it. I’m the Heir, and they’re lucky enough to be further down the line of succession. They should get the privilege of not knowing everything.”

“I know my brothers do that for me too, the older ones, and I know that all three of us do it for my little brother,” Marie said. “It’s obviously not the same exactly, but it’s similar. I know I’m grateful to have them to look out for me. I’m sure your siblings are grateful to have you too.”

She wondered if Florian and Theo ever talked or thought about her the way Caleb was talking about James and Ana now. She knew she thought about Archie like that all the time, and she didn’t see a world where he would ever be anything but a baby in her mind. But, while she was an older child, she wasn’t the oldest like Caleb was. In her family, that title belonged to Florian. There were times when he could be overbearing, but maybe Caleb could help her to get an idea of what he may be thinking in those moments.

“I want their futures to be different from mine, but I also want mine to be different in some ways,” Caleb said. “I want to be different from my father, and I want to do things differently from what’s expected of me.”

He had turned his hand to lace his fingers in hers, and he looked at her, his gaze measured and serious. “I’m looking for something different.”

It was vague, saying just enough for her to think she knew what he meant but not enough for her to know for sure. 

She met his eyes, consciously willing herself not to look away despite the rising speed of her heart. “What do you mean?”

“I think you know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“You want me to say it?”

“Say what?”

“That I like you.”

“Like me how?”

Caleb laughed half-heartedly, shaking his head at her as he broke eye contact and turned to stare out at the water. She was only half-joking. He couldn’t let her infer anything; he needed to tell her exactly what he meant. He was a prince, but that didn’t mean she was going to play games with him. He was serious or he wasn’t, and she wasn’t going to let him be both.

A silence passed between them, not awkward but not quite comfortable either. She stared at him, as he stared out at the water, the wind ruffling the dark strands of his hair. The snow had picked up, and it was starting to stick on the dock. Caleb didn’t seem to notice, even with cheeks just as red as she knew hers must be. He was deep in thought, his consciousness somewhere between the real world and the one of his creation.

Finally, he took a breath and said, “Let’s just say that I’d like to get to know you.” He looked at her, his eyes pleading. “Don’t you think that maybe you happened to be the one who was here to help me that day for a reason?”

“What?” she asked, glancing down at their intertwined hands and then back up at his eyes. “Like fate?”

Caleb shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Do you believe in that?”

“I didn’t.”

“But you do now?”

“I think I just might.”

They were sitting in the same spot now that she had knelt to help him tie up his boat months earlier. There was no reason for her to have been there, but she had nonetheless, compelled to wander down to the water when the noise of the market became too much. Maybe he was right.

Marie couldn’t help but feel like she was going to get hurt, but in the end, that didn’t stop her. Maybe it was worth the risk, and she would never know if she didn’t give it a chance—if she didn’t give him a chance.

———

Over the next month, they continued to meet, primarily at night, when Caleb’s disappearance was least likely to be noticed. They would walk around and talk for what felt like minutes but always turned out to be hours, their meetings becoming more and more frequent the longer they went on. It was good, and she was happy, just as she knew he was too. Eventually, she even started to believe him. Maybe fate really did exist.

To be continued…