Prince Jeffery's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Prince Jeffery climbed the rope ladder up the tall redwood and settled into the hollow near the top. From there he could see the flower house, and the small wooden shrine he had built at its edge. Candles flickered inside it. Her picture sat at its center. He waited for Rosalind to step outside and notice. One true word from her was all he wanted. She did step outside. But she walked past his shrine without slowing. Instead she stopped at the large bowl of muffins set on a stone near her gate. Jeffery's chest tightened. He had not left that bowl. Someone else had. That someone stood at her fence. Prince Shelldon, the turtle prince, spoke in short, plain sentences. Jeffery could not hear the words, only the calm weight of them. Rosalind lifted a muffin and almost smiled. Jeffery gripped the bark. He had read her quiet kindness toward him as love. Now he watched her give the same quiet kindness to another man, and he could not tell them apart. Then a third shadow moved at the tree line. Frocklin the cold stood watching them both. Her face was still. Two princes at one gate. She had not been counted in any of it. Frocklin turned away into the woods, already planning. From a higher branch, a second figure watched too — a girl who looked like Rosalind but was not Rosalind. A sister, unseen until now. She studied the cold one's retreat with careful, knowing eyes. Jeffery climbed down slowly. His shrine still glowed by the path, unnoticed. He understood now that he had been reading the wrong signs. Whatever Rosalind felt, she had not shown it to him alone. The contest had just begun, and he was no longer the only one losing.