Page 16 of A Royal’s Soul (Soul Match #3)

Persephone Flores

“I heard you got kicked out of dinner like a badly behaved dog the night before last. What’d you do, beg for scraps or something?” Katrina said, stepping in line with me.

“What?” I asked, stopping and turning to her, shocked.

“I said, I heard you were kicked out of dinner, the night before last, when the Ardens councillors were here,” she said.

“That’s none of your business,” I replied.

“I think it is,” she said.

I didn’t respond, simply continued walking. I was trying to get the lay of the mansion. It was larger—larger than the mansion that held our home while at the academy—but it wasn’t castle-sized. Still, I wasn’t familiar with the place yet, and I wanted to be.

“She can’t put on such a display in front of us and you expect no one to talk. Then she followed it up with what I’m told was a very steamy spanking.” She slapped her hand against her thigh for the dramatic effect of the sound.

I spun to her. “What is your problem?” I asked her. “Why are you behaving like this? What have I ever done to you?” I questioned.

Her face soured and she pursed her lips, looking away from me, but still walking beside me.

“I don’t know. I think… I just don’t like the way she treats you, and that you let her, is all,” she replied after a moment, and she sounded sincere. “You shouldn’t accept treatment like that. It’s not right,” she continued, looking up from the ground to make eye contact with me.

“It’s not what you think,” I told her.

“How is it then?” she demanded. “It’s pretty clear from what I see—and what everyone else sees.”

I bristled. I had been here only a few days and already the servants disliked me.

“She doesn’t treat me badly,” I defended. “I was rude,” I added. “I behaved disrespectfully and was punished,” I explained.

“Like that Lady Aquilae was punished? For speaking her mind?” Katrina asked.

“No,” I said. “She would never hurt me,” I told her. “Lady Aquilae was different. You weren’t there. You didn’t hear what she said or how she said it,” I defended Selene’s actions.

But truthfully, I hadn’t even thought about whether she was right to kill the woman or not—not until Katrina had brought it up.

“What, so you have the privilege of questioning her, and you get a sore bottom, but the rest of us get chucked in the maze? Is that difference?” she countered, spite in her voice.

“Look, Katrina,” I said, turning on her again. “I don’t know what you want from me. It was a different situation. She’s fair, and just, and she treats me well.”

I tried not to be overly concerned with the talk of my bottom—I didn’t want this girl to know how much it embarrassed me for fear it would become a taunt.

“Treats you well? Do you hear yourself? From what I heard, you were offering to help Clifwind—a village that’s almost starving, offering to do what your kind are meant to do, what they did for centuries—and she wouldn’t let you. And you weren’t happy with that. Why would you be? You want to help people, right? You care if people are starving and would do something about it, if you could, right?” She asked.

“Well, yes, but it’s more complicated than that—"

“But not miss princess, no. She doesn’t care. All she cares about is having her toy with her. That’s you. You’re the toy, in case you’re too dense to realise it. And she’d rather have you to play with than care to lift a finger to help her people—by House and by Kingdom—from starvation,” Katrina finished, her mouth rising in disgust and her nostrils flaring.

I opened my mouth to reply.

“Don’t even argue it—not if you can’t give me, or even yourself, a proper excuse,” she said.

I shut my mouth.

It sounded all wrong, the way Katrina put it. It made Selene sound like a monster. But that wasn’t the way things were. Selene didn’t refuse because she wanted me as a plaything. She refused because she cares for my safety and needs to keep me close, and there is a schedule, and the Royal Conference, and there just wasn’t time.

But that doesn’t sound good enough—not to anyone that doesn’t know I’m not just a pet, that I’m Selene’s soul match, that it’s dangerous for us to be apart.

“It’s more complex than that. I know how it must look. But I’m not her plaything and she cares deeply about the kingdom and Ardens,” I said eventually.

Katrina scoffed.

“Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. And here I thought you were something special,” she said, and began to walk away from me.

I reached out and took hold of her wrist.

“Hey, what do you mean by that?” I asked her.

She looked away from me and huffed.

“Look, we’ve all heard of you. The nobody who the queen-to-be fell for. The loved slave,” she laughed. “It sounded like a fucking fairytale. I just thought—I don’t know—I thought you would be different. I thought you would be something more. I thought you would use your place at her side to help people like us.

But maybe you’re just as bad as them. The nobles. Taking what they want, higher and higher taxes, not caring if we have jobs or a future or if we starve to death.

You don’t care. You just keep repeating it’s more complicated, she’s does care,” she repeated in a sickeningly high, mocking voice.

“Bullshit! It’s all bullshit—unless there is evidence to back up your claim. You’re nothing like I thought you’d be,” she told me, and pulled her wrist easily from my hold.

I was struck speechless and watched as she stormed away.

What had just happened?

The whole interaction had been tense and insulting, and it left me feeling anything but calm. I didn’t know if I was angry or outraged, or sad, or scared.

What she said wasn’t true, was it? I did care about people, and so did Selene. I mean, sure, Selene was harsh and strict, but that didn’t mean that she was cruel and careless.

We were different—different backgrounds, different people—so we both cared, we just showed it differently.

Why did it bother me so much that I had let someone I didn’t even know down? Why did someone I didn’t even know have expectations of me in the first place? Why did I have to be responsible for helping other people? Why was that my duty? Why had she placed it on me? Did others expect something more of me? Was I a let down to everyone?

I continued to walk down the corridor and stopped at the first set of double doors I found, seeking daylight. The corridor I was in was dark and shadowy, lacking sunlight, and I wanted a window. I needed the light to clear my head, as if the sun would also brighten my sudden dark mood.

I pushed open the doors and was surprised to have found a library. Ceiling-high bookcases lined three of the four walls, and a ladder attached to a bar at the ceiling allowed access to the top shelves.

Smaller bookcases filled the centre of the room, along with two separate study desks, and a couple of old green armchairs sat under large windows at the back of the room.

The library seemed to be in good condition. I ran my finger along the edge of a bookshelf and found no dust.

Even though it was midday, the sun was already beginning to dim, yet it hit the windows at an angle to create a solitary beam of warm light, and I stood in that light, basking like a cat.

I missed the spring and summer.

I wished for winter to hit fully so that it would pass and bring with it the growing warmth and brightness of spring. Everything wouldn’t seem too bad with spring’s colours.

Spring was nature’s joy, the birth of the new. But the old had to die first.

After I had absorbed as much sunlight as I could, and the beam lost its heat, I moved to one of the armchairs, curling my feet under myself.

My mood was still low. Katrina’s accusations repeating in my head.

I hated it.

I hated that someone wanted anything from me. I wasn’t anyone to offer anyone anything. I was just me. I was just a nobody. She said so herself.

I didn’t have power. It wasn’t fair to expect me to try and—and—I didn’t even know! To try and control Selene? To try and affect her decisions? To do what?

What did she even want from me? I was just one person. I wasn’t even a pureblood. And even if I was, I was a Flores witch. I was so harmless that others laughed at me.

Only… only that wasn’t true.

I wasn’t harmless. And it wasn’t because I had the protection of Selene behind me.

In the grove, at the academy, I had used my power to protect Mhairi and myself.

I used my power to cause harm.

For the first time in my life, my magic had hurt a person.

I felt nauseous at the realisation.

I wasn’t harmless. I wasn’t powerless. Not really.

It upset me.

Being of no particular harm to anyone was a kind of safety and easiness. Safety because others didn’t see me as a threat, and easy because it meant I had no real responsibility. No one could truly look to me for help in a fight. Sure, I could grow food and medicine, but I couldn’t throw a punch, couldn’t harm anyone.

But was physical strength really necessary to cause harm, when I could kill the ground you lived on?

Mother Demeter, what had I become?

It wasn’t right—my new ability. There was something wrong with it.

Selene took her name from the moon goddess, but my namesake spent half the year in the underworld, the reward for eating forbidden fruit.

Was my new ability a deathly reward for having succumbed to Selene—for accepting a mate so opposite to everything I once was?

My head ached, my heart beat painfully, and my hands gripped the armchair tightly—and it was only when wetness splashed against my thigh did I realise I was crying.

All I wanted was for Selene to accept our bond—for a love like those only found in stories, a happy ever after.

But what had I gotten?

A soul match that accepted the bond but refused to let it develop as it should. My story might contain love, but it was also death and violence and fear.

Happy ever after might have just been a lie—nothing more than a story.

Maybe all stories told were never quite so wonderful in reality. Like childbirth. I’d helped in three deliveries at home. The women screamed, and bled, and cried, and cursed their partners, but afterwards they forgot the pain. And even if they remembered—when they retold the stories, the pain they endured was nothing more than a minor note.

I curled up more in the armchair, despondent, unsure of myself or my future.