Chapter Twenty Six

26•••

      "Why did you do that?"

You must have lost your mind. Lost what little you had of control and it's misconception and let it twist your morals- bend your emotions and desires and for what- "I don't know" you hit her. It is nothing like you. Doesn't feel like you- you do not get angry. You don't, yet you slapped her across the face like your father did you—

"What has gotten into you, Rosie?" She sits hurt and confused and still in tears because you are undoubtably worse than your father- put your mind over heart, lust over love, and disturbed demands over trust- oh god you even— "Well?"

You shake your head because you don't know what to say— too scared to admit it and you are hating yourself all over because she has all right to demand an answer from you.

Through your tearful eyes, it pains you to look at Jennie. She still longs for you to answer her- provide a logical explanation for how intractable you have become and how quick it was for you to be so out of control.

But you don't have any excuse, nor reasonable justification for forcing yourself down on her the way you did. You shake your head again and choke on your tears and a hapless sorry falls off your lips, only to be scoffed at by Jennie.

She tremors as she pulls herself off the floor— your instincts jump to your feet and rush to help her— "I'm fine" she crosses her arms and maneuvers to the couch, away from you.

Your legs buckle in place and your mind scrambles to say something- spit out what you can of your sincere apologies and guilt because silence interprets a thousand unspoken words to be miscommunicated. So just say anything damnit.

Stronger winds rattle the windows as night has loomed over in time. Jennie sits on the far end of the couch, seemingly in scattered thoughts as well.

You slip your jumper off and reach it out to Jennie.

She looks at it, and you for a brief moment, before refusing.

You insist, "You'll get cold"

"You will, too" she mutters.

Your eyes sting harsher. Even in your most underserving moments for her care, it is overwhelming "I-It's fine, Jen, just—"

Something short of a grumble escapes her lips, and she snatches the jumper from your hands to wrap around herself. It is an ounce of relief in the hundreds of pounds weighing you down.

You stammer to the door, "I-I'll go fetch you some water and- and would you want a valium?" you've caused for great distress on her and the least you could do is offer tranquility in a capsule.

"No, Rosie just—" Your steps fall short just before the door and you are frozen in place. Behind you, she releases a sigh of tension, then her tone softens, "Could you please just sit down" though firm in giving you no inclination to disobey.

You let go of the knob and settle your rattled bones on the sofa chair, not overstepping your place in proximity with Jennie.

She keeps her arms crossed and gaze low ahead with furrowed brows for thought. Her eyes are still rimmed with red and tears glaze her disposition, threatening to fall any moment.

Your shame is loud and forceful inside you. A massive knot being pulled at both ends in the gutless of you. It makes your chest close in and throat struggle through gag reflexes on dead air. You sit silent in your misbehavior, as if the animal in you has been collared and caged in and you are so outraged with how you let yourself go untamed that you wish to decay and be left for the parasites to eat you from within.

"We forget this ever happened," Jennie speaks with authority. She lifts her chin and dries her eyes in a blink, "understood?" like she could forget it all just as quick.

"Jennie" you don't think you can. You can't forgive yourself for this—

"You will apologize to me in the only way I will accept."

And what is it, you ask her immediately, because you will do it tenfold.

Jennie turns her head to you with a serious look, "You will tell your father to cut ties with the North."

It is strange to you. You expected her to ask for something heartfelt of you, and profound in endearment- something to prove your pardons and solidify your devotion to her.

But politics, "W-Why—"

"The Northern council suggests it. They worry that the economy would suffer if our kingdoms continue alongside one another. Our rules are just different from yours." she says, emphasis on her words like insults. "My dad appears not opposed to it at this point, especially with what is currently at hand after what's happened to Sehun and Lisa. He just hasn't allotted any time for concrete thought to this proposal because of how upset the Northern people are." says it all thoroughly clear, that she is not opposed either. This ought to be doing her father a favor.

Perhaps her words are meant to be hurtful, but you feel no offense. You are jaded in your remorse and still itch to apologize in ways other than doing as she says, but you hold back. Because you will do anything she says- you dig for who you really are within yourself and you drag and drag and drag her up to the light- who you are best with Jennie.

"If it must be done, then so be it." you ought to decipher this to the last detail of assets and liabilities had this motion been brought up in a different circumstance.

But these are the cards you have been dealt with, and you've played the wrong hand.

"I will relay this to Ms. Choi and we can structure the proposition to your father together." Jennie stands and walks past you to the door.

You are stationary. Clouded in the mind where all you wish to say is misted behind your eyes, and you are tongue tied. You are unmoving and deadened.

You hear the knob twist from behind and you remain to relieve Jennie that you won't follow her. Then for a moment, as she has yet to open the door and you are intimidated to look why she hasn't, you both listen to each other's stillness.

Chills prickle the back of your neck in the condense atmosphere and an unprompted gasp for air has your chest contract and you feel like bawling for every terrible thing you've done.

In the next second, you think you just might, but Jennie comes around and she catches your salty tears between lips in a tethered kiss.

It's unexpected and short that you forget how she feels right when she pulls away.

Jennie is tearful as she stares at you, and you have no other choice but to look at the hurt you have caused straight in the eye and let it pierce you with the fact that pain comes with loving you.

"I'll be damned for how much I love you Rosie." she says, and you are left with the truth that all you deserve to feel is you are unmerited for her love.

•••

      In the irony of not talking, your mouth has run dry and throat gone sore. While Jennie and Ms. Choi discuss the strengths and weaknesses of unbinding alliances between North and South Marcadia to solely self-govern for themselves, you have been sitting, listening, shredding yourself to pieces like the memorandum you could imagine your father ripping apart once you hand him the proposition to close the trading ports.

You have no substantial opinion toward the economic split, nor have the mental capacity to understand the jargons being tossed between Jennie and your mentor, but you register 'frugality' and 'resources' and 'downfall' and you know your father will go berserk.

You don't really know what to think of any of this. And it hovers a thick cloud of shame pouring down on you because if anyone should be distraught it shouldn't be you. It is Jennie who was wronged by your ignominious manners, yet she has gathered herself together with such grace and poise and she holds herself highly like in the world you two have built, one of its bridges hasn't been knocked down by your uncontrollable hands.

She indulges in unemotional conversations with Ms. Choi like she has truly crossed out what happened earlier out of her mind and she remains headstrong.

Meanwhile, your brain feels broken. Your thoughts are scattered and in every direction. Your dirty deeds, Jennie's kiss, Lisa's condition, whatever is left of your father-daughter relationship- if his schedules haven't been so taxing and time consuming, then he would be harrowing you with punishments of his own for your behavior. You ought to imprison yourself after the proposition conspiring before you once you tell him.

The proposal that would separate the kingdoms- god your miserliness is striking you to believe that this must be in favor of separation between you and Jennie. The perfect leeway to planting more distance between you and perhaps the most perfect coincidence of all.

"Say something, will you?" Jennie snaps you out of your pressing thoughts. She has her head cocked at you and Ms. Choi looks to you longingly for insight.

You gulp down the lump in your throat and dry your clammy hands on your jeans.

From what little you've gathered from their discussions, Ms. Choi has provided more cons than pros, but for whatever's worth, wether your mentor solely agrees or disagrees, you will always side with Jennie.

"I stand with King Tae-oh and Jennie's decisions. I will uphold playing my part in telling my father." your voice sounds tied in the restraints you wrap yourself with. You will do nothing but concede and obey to everything you are told.

Ms. Choi sighs through pursed lips and stands from her chair to tuck it in, "I shall find a moment's worth in his schedule for you two to discuss then. Jennie, I requested for the maids to arrange your room and turn down the bed earlier."

When Jennie utters a thanks to Ms. Choi, it occurs to you that she means to stay. That she hasn't changed her mind and she won't be returning to her kingdom tonight, "I better get my belongings settled." she excuses herself from the library, leaving you in the grand space. And in the silence of her decision to not step foot out of this palace after giving her much reasons to, you might just burst in tears all over again.

      The brittle night air keeps you from doing that. The cold serves as a distraction from the mess inside of you, directing all your senses to the shivers and the numbing of your body as you stare out into the landscapes of the South from the vacancy of the balcony.

A thick layer of fog looms over the mountains and it has covered Mount Park Major from view.

In the grand scheme of things, you really haven't given mother much thought. This is the most disconnected you have felt with her, and it feels as if your heart had been vacuumed of her and left you an empty shell.

Even as you have the sky's space to fill with the thoughts of her, your mind pictures stars in every twinkle of Jennie's entity. How long ago it seems that you were both standing on this balcony, just as Princesses of different kingdoms, estranged to one another, and had no prevision that her hand on yours would be the beginning, one of the many, to what has become the best thing to ever happen to you.

You still remember the way her fingers curled under your palm, and the tingles up your arm, through your chest and down to the pit of your stomach. You didn't know what it meant. You were uncertain of Jennie because you were uncertain of love, and what it felt like, and what it looked like, and what it would do to you.

But look at all that Jennie has given to you. Shared with you in stolen stares, soared with you on dirt courses and marbled ballroom floors, grew with you in forest trees, and basked with you between the sheets.

You had never been in love before Jennie. You didn't know how to love, but you learned. It was like sewing a blanket sleeve to shelter you from the coldest of winters and it was seamed with Jennie's perpetual love for you, stitched over and back to cover all the holes.

If only you knew how reckless you would become to tarnish it.

The longer you look outward to the night, the more benumb become. You can't feel your fingers grip the railing and you ought to endure the pain that will come later with thawing your bones. You stay a little while longer to puncture your body with pins and needles until you feel nothing at all.

When the door opens, you look to see Jennie and she comes to stand beside you. You take it as a sign to defrost, "I'll let you be. Come in when it blows too cold." you tell Jennie with a faint smile and turn over to the door.

She stops you. With her hand on your shoulder, draping down right at your heart like she holds its fragility in all her care. "Stay" she says softly, and with hope that you will.

You meet Jennie's eyes and they are unreadable, but the hesitancy and the gloss in yours are evident, you are certain. You don't think the brittle wind is enough to numb your heart.

You face the view as you did and stay.

You don't know what it is with silence, but its pressure bids tears to sting your eyes every time it is with Jennie.

She speaks cooly, "We are to forget that it ever happened, remember?"

While your voice trembles to finally say what she needs to hear from you, "It's not that simple" it shakes, but you've found the voice, "I hurt you, Jennie. I've been hurting you. In one way or another, whether my incompetency as Princess or my ego or my behavior- I kept things from you and-and I said things I shouldn't have and I-I hit you and god I went too far—" you choke on a breath, be it your stifled cry or the thin air. Though, you ought to stop with the excuses after all. Unlike confessing your love for Jennie face-to-face when you did before, this confession is one you are immensely sorry to say out loud, "You're too good for me, Jennie" With tears threatening to fall from her eyes, and yours too overwhelming to suppress, Jennie cups your face and turns your chin to her. You admit it, and you cannot forget it so easily "I made a mistake"

"Yes, you did" Jennie states frankly but with a great sense of acceptance, wiping the stream of your salty tears with her thumbs, "And I will not lie that there were other days I wished you had done some things different, but neither you and I are a saint, Rosie." she enkindles a solid flame, pressing it into your skin and to your frozen bones to thaw, "Nor will I pretend that it feared me to see you act the way you did yesterday, but it scares me an awful lot more- so bad that it kept me up all night- the thought of never feeling you again. Never being with you again, it is unthinkable." she brings you in close, alienating you both from the world and giving absolute no regard for those who might witness this. Witness her hand shaking against you and tears falling between.

She tells you she loves you. She brushes it on your lips and she seals it in a kiss.

Jennie kisses you, profound in all the ways she knows how and she makes you feel it so powerfully and it mends blind faith and broken thoughts to believe that you are forgiven- that you are loved.

"I trust you, Rosie" she says as she looks at you intently, "You are not your father. The virtues are inside you and you will find it, I know." her words are a ripple effect of granted resolution to try this all over again, "There is goodness in you and I know you wouldn't do anything to hurt me- or anyone on purpose." to try your best to love her all over again, "You have the bravest heart, love." she is the reason for it. Despite all, it is always Jennie.

"You are everything to me, Jennie" you say through gratified tears. You can't encompass the fact that you had a life before her, and with the new one she has given you. So bright and alive, without her it would be painful, and wretched, and scary.

How unfair it is to be so inevitable.

You don't want to see the end of this. The last morning of endearment, the last buoyant and blithe conversation with sunny laughter, the last crunch of the earth under your feet- under god's color palette of choice, the last swing of Jennie's hair as you walk behind her- admire her, paint her, love her. You don't want the end of the confidence in her encouragements, the passion in her perseverance, the beauty mark just below her eyebrow, the gleam of hazel you love in her feline eyes, the way she looks at you, the way she tells you- shows you she loves you, and all things in between.

You love too much of Jennie. How could you ever bare the day after the last?

"Baby" she rests her forehead against yours, and breathes you in, "Stop thinking, darling" as if she hears your worries and takes them away for you. She knows she is the only one who can ease your mind. After everything, it is still Jennie.

•••

      The following few days are unpredictable in emotions and heart over mind. On the surface, you are calm and collected. You are attentive in coronation plans and conversations with corresponding organizers. You appear grace under pressure, but you are absolutely high-strung to the core. With the people, the discussions to have with your father, and to be candid, your actions with Jennie.

You are over-analytical of your gestures. You do not want to single part of you to resemble who you were that night. Your cautions for debate go irrational as far as asking Jennie if you could fasten the button of her undone polo. And she scolds you for the most irrational of the lot, but she sees you are trying, and she always makes it a comforting point to tell you. She does it in the way she kisses you, so tender and forgiving every time, and the thought of your underserving of her love fleets in replacement of overflowing gratitude and blessings that you cannot fathom.

Jennie sees through you like cellophane. You wake up one morning, a thin film of blue transparency with dejected recollections of what happened to Lisa and Sehun, then the next day, you are a sheet of green guilt for every wrong deed you have done thus far, then on another, you are just a clear slate, drained of all color and too tired to really divulge in anything particular.

When your face goes pale in the middle of a conversation with Ms. Choi or a member of the organization committee, and all the words you have to say swarm in your head instead of spill out of your mouth, Jennie pulls you aside and, "Come back to me, love" she says, reaching right in to pull you out of the dark of your own head, "It's just us here, you can talk to me" she doesn't leave you lost in your self-deprecations for a second longer when she finds you out of direction.

And every time, you are at loss for words to thank her in the moment, but when your world sizes to the space between the sheets and you envelope Jennie in your arms, you whisper your appreciations and what blessings she has brought to you again, day after day. You plant them on her skin with soft kisses and quiet I love you's.

And you find yourself giving your love to Jennie in so many ways, other than what you knew of stolen kisses, and sweet talk, and hot sex.

You find love in all things with Jennie.

In the simplest, like the hold of her hand, the brush of her hair from her face, the tying of her laces, the witty banter, and the reading between bookshelves. It is vastly beautiful on the moonlight walks, visits to Lisa, courtyard lunches, rounds at the course.

Day after day, a new piece of this love is connected in your hearts and it feels like you are falling in love for the first time all over again. Holy and blissful.

"You and me, Rosie" there are still moments that the slippery slope of overthinking resurface, and Jennie is still there to ease you for every one. "One day at a time, love" she reminds you, as meetings get longer and days become shorter in approach to the coronation.

It is mere fifteen days away. The 3rd of August is the most anticipated day of the year. Or rather, the most since your father and King Tae-oh's coronation. Perhaps, it is even grander in its event as the people have never been in more favor of dethroning the King. Past their revolts against particular laws, they await change and they are hopeful for it.

They are looking to a new heir, one that will prosper the South and govern in accordance to the people's necessities of livelihood and strife. They are looking to you.

"I-I didn't realize this was so heavy" you stammer in a cold throat, the jitters creeping up on you as you stand in shaking poise with the sceptres and orb in hand.

"The crown in much heavier. It is three pounds, you know."

Your jaw slacks at Ms. Choi as she straightens your back and other awkwardly positioned limbs on the practice stage of the ballroom. You look down to Jennie in front and she shrugs, having not known herself.

"And how long must I stand here like this for?" these mere seconds have already felt like forever.

"A minute or two should suffice. Perhaps, three. Goodness, Your Highness, it would be your monumental first appearance as Queen." Ms. Choi emphasizes, and you suppose it is more to tell you an extra effort in looking divinely presented is needed for the history books.

It marks a historical event in Marcadia's story. A documented breakthrough of the monarchy in the last thirty years of King Mason Park's reign. Not to mention, the South will be having a Queen after three consecutive rules of patriarchy.

There is plenty to be expected of you. What good will the sovereign bring in line with the changing times and revolutionary developments in industrialization, and trade, and the economy— how much good will the crown uphold after all the bad that has befallen—

"Eyes up, Rosie" Jennie catches your attention, drawing you away from your declining thoughts once again. She smiles kindly at you and breathes in a deep inhale, a gesture for you to follow.

Through the rundown of your role in the coronation, you take every chance you have to glance at Jennie and her assurance. Ultimately, you are able to process the procedures and points to remember for the actual event. And out of the ballroom and down the corridors, Jennie listens to you recite the schedule of the ceremony for good measure and retainment.

"You've got it perfect, darling." she chuckles after your ramble of nerves and what ifs. It is a sweet sound, like honeydew, that coats your worries in a warm blanket. She takes your hand in hers and pulls you toward the staircase, "Why don't we lay down for a rest" she suggests.

You furrow your brows, "I thought you wanted to walk the trail".

"Let's save it for tomorrow," Jennie smiles and takes you to ascend the stairs, "Come lie down with me" she says, and a rest with her is what you need after such a long day. 

When you both retire in the bedroom, your bodies fling on the mattress and you decide you won't be getting up for the rest of the afternoon. You have an ache everywhere and you feel every mass of you sink in the bed. You feel drained and burnt out.

Jennie must feel the same, as she sighs heavily and closes her eyes. You lie on your side to admire her features, like you haven't done so a couple thousand times. So refined, yet soft and subtle, like the rise of her chest as she breathes.

You lie like this with Jennie for quite some time and she joins you on her side with a kind toothless smile. She scans your face and questions, "Have you been staying up whilst I'm asleep at night?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Your eyes are red"

"Just dry, I suppose"

"You've been anxious, and thinking an awful lot these days. If there is something keeping you up at night..."

"I've been having the best dreams, love" you assure, giggled at her adorable pout, "I am safe and sound with you, baby, there is nothing wrong" you brush her hair behind her ear and watch her concern thin to ease in her expression.

For a moment all you do is stare at each other, taken by the presence of beauty and harmony between the both of you.

You trace her plump lips with your thumb and this precise moment elicits the whispers of your heart to voice out, "Thank you for staying," you thought to apologize first, for giving her a reason to leave, but know too well that she ought to not hear another sorry out of you, "Thank you for loving me, Jennie" the imperfections, the scattered mind, the sea of emotions, all of you.

Her gummy grin plasters on her face and she shakes her head against the sheets, "I am just so happy that I get to love you, Rosie."

And loving you, she does so, so generously and compassionately in everything enthralling and empowering.

"It is the greatest thing," Jennie says, and with honesty, "that I could ever do."

______________________________________________

Hi, everyone!

This chapter is shorter than the usual, but I hope it has relieved you after such angst in previous chapters ;)

Apologies for updating later than expected. I've been caught up in the holidays and used the break to enjoy with loved ones.

Cheers to the new year! I am sending you all my best wishes for 2021. Let us strive for better together.

Wholeheartedly,J