The Cookies on the Floor

To think a thought like that still lingers in me. Why am I so foolish?

Of course, I did not give it the dignity of speech. Saying it aloud would only sour his mood, just as it had a moment ago.

For a time, silence filled the office once more.

Within it I slowly looked at the clock. I had thought a good while had passed, yet I had not been here even ten minutes. In that suffocating quiet, only the tick of the second hand reached my ear. Ordinarily it would have been too faint to notice; now it seemed to whisper against my skin.

You can do this, Isabel.

The silence was exquisitely painful, but there is a saying that time is a remedy, and even this stretch of it was beginning to grow familiar.

"All right, then."

I cut through the taut quiet.

"Even if I die tomorrow, I'll still hold a tea party. You know me far too well, Alpheus. We must have known each other a very long time."

I said it with a soft, scoffing laugh, and he looked at me as if I were shameless. The more he did, the higher I lifted the corners of my mouth. After glaring at me for a long while, he let out a hollow breath of laughter, as though he could scarcely believe me. His face was sick of the sight. He must have thought me utterly brazen.

In truth, I was nothing of the sort.

However leisurely I appeared, I had only just managed to break the silence, and my palms were slick with sweat. The corners of my mouth trembled.

"Is that so."

He answered in a voice thick with mockery and gave a short laugh. I caught the expression that threatened to collapse and forced a smile.

I was smiling brightly on the surface. Inside, I was burning black with tension.

"Of course. I am the Empire's one and only princess."

I smeared shameless across my face, to hide my true expression and my true feelings.

"I'll be going now."

As I said it, I stole a glance at the time. Whenever I visited this office I stayed at least half the day, but today I meant to rise far earlier than usual.

Leaving early will be better for both of us.

He seemed unusually irritable, perhaps because he had so much work. Even so, I could not simply go straight back. I was wary of my father's eye.

I'll stop somewhere else on the way and kill some time.

I decided to leave the ducal lands and wander the outskirts until enough of the day had passed, and I turned toward the door.

"Princess Isabel."

Alpheus called me so suddenly that I could not open it. When I looked back, he was watching me in silence.

Has something happened?

I braced myself, certain the usual barbs would follow, but the silence only lengthened.

Why did he call me? He summons me and then says nothing.

Just as the strangeness of it settled over me, I noticed my small bag resting on the sofa.

Ah. My bag. He must have meant to tell me I was leaving it behind.

Awkwardly, I went to fetch it. Bag in hand, I turned and thanked him.

"I nearly left it. Thank you."

Even as I spoke, he only gazed at me, wordless and unblinking.

"Well, then."

I inclined my head again and made for the door, only to hear behind me the discordant scrape of furniture striking furniture. Bewildered, I turned. Alpheus had risen and stood stock-still.

And what is this?

Why get up in the middle of his work? His face so rarely changed that I could not read his intent at all.

"Alpheus, is there something you need?"

As if my words were a fuse, he faltered, then came toward me quickly.

Is he thrown because I've never left this early? I thought he'd be glad if I cleared out sooner.

It was I who was thrown. He disliked sharing a room with me. I had expected him to brighten and nod, pleased to be rid of me. And yet, now...

Does he regret my leaving?

It felt as though he were sorry to see me go. I shook my head at once, calling the notion absurd, and in the same moment he spoke.

"His Majesty."

I barely smothered a hollow laugh. Sure enough, the words that followed proved me right.

His Majesty. His Majesty. His Majesty. It was Father again.

He's worried word will reach Father.

Of course. I would never escape my father's shadow, not until the day I died.

If I returned to the palace early, Father would notice at once. Then he would very likely ask—of me, or of Alpheus, and in a tone of reprimand—why the visit had been so brief. The closer my relationship with Alpheus appeared, the more easily the Emperor could seize the Aristocratic Faction and bend it to his will.

"Alpheus, I know what you're thinking, and it's all right. If I stop somewhere else on the way, His Majesty won't know. Don't worry."

I was glad, this time, that I had expected nothing. I smiled as I said it, but Alpheus's expression showed no sign of easing.

Why is he still looking at me like that? Ah. Perhaps it's that.

"Are you worried someone might talk?"

His brow drew tight. So that had been it. I waved the concern away.

"There's nothing to worry about. The people who came with me are ones I chose with care. They know how to keep their mouths shut, so it'll be fine."

He must have feared that if I returned early, my maids and the knights of my guard would carry the tale to Father. But they were my people, and they had known for a long time that I was being treated coldly. They would keep silent gladly.

"I'll see you next week."

Of course his brow tightened, as it always did, at the words next week. I pretended not to notice, hitched up the bag that was slipping, and made to go.

If only he had not spoken.

"You mean to leave without the dessert."

Dessert?

The sudden mention puzzled me, and I looked at the table where I had been sitting. Because I had risen early, it remained almost entirely untouched.

Was something wrong with it?

I had barely eaten, and what little I had managed I had swallowed in a knot of nerves, so I could not have said how it tasted. Still, I did not think anything had been amiss. I looked from Alpheus to the dessert and back, and understood nothing.

Surely he isn't telling me to eat more before I go?

Impossible. The Alpheus in my memory was not a man who offered me anything. The one exception I could name was a glass of wine at a social gathering. That was the measure of what passed between us—especially of what he ever gave me. Nothing.

"Is there something wrong with the dessert I ate?"

Was there some secret hidden in it?

It isn't poison, is it?

The unease was foolish, but I was staring at the dessert with a grave face when Alpheus, who had been watching me in silence, suddenly tilted his head and spoke.

"Your Highness, if the dessert had fallen so far beneath you that you could not eat it, you might have said so."

I blinked, not understanding. He went to the table where what I had left still sat. At first I had been flustered because I could not read his intent. Now I was flustered in an entirely different way, and I froze with my eyes gone round.

Is he scolding me for leaving the dessert?

He swept every cookie I had left onto the floor.

"What are you—"

I had begun in alarm, but his next words froze the rest in my throat.

"You mean to leave early because you are angry that the dessert was beneath your station. Is that not so?"

He seemed to believe I had left nearly all of it because it tasted poor. I liked dessert. When I visited the ducal house I usually ate until nothing remained. Today I had only risen early because he looked to be in a foul mood. It had nothing to do with the dessert.

"That isn't it. You looked so busy that today I thought I'd go on ahead—"

"If I dismissed every wretch who made this, would that satisfy you?"

I doubted my ears. But he went on with a face I could not read—or perhaps with a face that was faintly angry.

"The charge of having served a princess trash for dessert should be reason enough, should it not?"

"What... what did you say?"

Alpheus had never once stopped me from leaving, and the shock of it had stolen my words. He misread my face. He seemed to think I was sulking because the dessert was not to my liking.

"Alpheus! You would dismiss people over a few leftovers? Don't say such things so carelessly!"

A misunderstanding had its limits. To sneer about resignations over dessert—now I was growing angry.

"Yes. Better that you shout than say nothing at all."

He laughed shortly and looked at me. At the hostility burning clear in his eyes, I could not hide the hands that shook, and I clutched my dress hard.

"Then, for the sake of our noble princess, this lowly man will gladly indulge your whims."

He seemed to move for no purpose but to wound me.

How did it come to this?

Just then a breeze slipped in from outside, stirred his hair, and blew on toward me. The scent of him came with it.

Unfamiliar.

I had known him for years, and still his scent never grew familiar. Outside of balls and gatherings of the nobility, I had never once been held in his arms. Aside from a dance, or an escort across a ballroom floor, I had never even taken his hand.

How different we are.

I looked at Alpheus with sorrowful eyes. If there was anyone the distance between us would not close, no matter how I tried, was it not my fiancé?

When our eyes met he shut his mouth at once, and for a moment he looked as though he had let something slip that he had not meant to say.

No. He meant it.

Everything Alpheus said to me was sincere. Because he disliked me.

I drew a slow breath, steadied myself, and barely managed to speak.

"If you're asking why I looked like that..."

He said nothing.

"It was only that you've never offered me anything before, and it startled me."

I had no courage to see what expression my words put on his face, so I lowered my head and bit my lip.

"I'll be going now."

To keep the rising grief from spilling over, I walked toward the door as if I were running. It would not open easily. I shoved it hard and went out.