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Chapter Eight

Author: E. Jennings
last update Huling Na-update: 2026-01-22 10:17:17

By the eighth time I passed the eastern corridor that evening, I knew I was lying to myself.

I told myself I was only doing my duties. That the candles there burned low and needed trimming, that the windows caught the damp night air and must be shut before the cold crept deeper into the stone. I told myself it was habit, nothing more. That I knew the castle’s rhythms better than most, and sometimes my feet wandered ahead of my thoughts.

But I had already tended those candles. I had already shut those windows.

Still, I returned.

The alcove lay quiet when I reached it, tucked away as it always was—half-shadowed, narrow enough that two people would be forced to stand close should they share it. The ivy outside the high slit-window had crept further in since last week, its leaves dark and slick with rain. I noticed things like that now. I noticed everything here.

Because it was ours.

Not in any way that mattered. Not in any way the world would ever allow. But it was the one place in the c
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  • What Was Never Mine   Chapter Fifteen

    Summer did not leave us all at once.It slipped away softly, like silk drawn from the fingers.If I close my eyes even now, I can still feel those days — golden and endless, humming with a secret no one else could hear.By daylight we were what we had always been.He was His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Roman Davenport of Avelaine.And I was Edith Wright — maid, unseen, obedient, small.We moved through corridors as though strangers. When he entered a room, I curtsied with the same precision I offered any noble. He addressed me with the same formal courtesy.Yet beneath it all, we had built a language that belonged only to us.A certain wildflower left upon a windowsill meant tonight.A phrase spoken in passing — “The roses fade early this year” — meant I miss you.If he paused beside a particular tapestry in the west gallery, it meant wait for me.No one noticed. No one ever would.We were careful.We had to be.The castle breathed routine. Servants scrubbed, polished, stitched. Lord

  • What Was Never Mine   Chapter Fourteen

    It was three nights before I saw him again.Three nights since the willow and the moss and the world that had existed only for us.The castle swallowed us whole the moment we returned. Duties reclaimed me without ceremony. Roman was summoned to council, to training yards, to audiences that stretched long into the evening. We did not seek each other at once — whether from caution or the unspoken need to steady ourselves, I cannot say.I only know that I felt his absence like a bruise.The first night, I lay awake in the attic chamber assigned to me, staring at the sloped ceiling, replaying the feel of his hands, the weight of him, the way his voice had softened when he said my name as though it belonged to him alone. My body remembered what my pride would not allow me to dwell upon. I pressed my thighs together in the dark and scolded myself for it.The second night, I convinced myself I had imagined half of it. The castle had a way of reducing miracles to foolishness. By candlelight,

  • What Was Never Mine   Chapter Thirteen

    I awoke before the sun.For a fleeting instant I felt only warmth — warmth at my back, warmth along my thighs, warmth beneath my ribs where something new and quiet pulsed like a secret.Then memory returned.The willow. The moss. His hands. My own voice — trembling, breathless, no longer the voice of a girl.I lay very still.Roman’s arm rested around my waist, his palm splayed lightly against my stomach as though it belonged there. His breath stirred the hair at my neck, slow and untroubled. He slept as men do — unburdened by what morning brings.I did not.The light filtering through the willow branches seemed almost accusing in its gentleness. I felt… different. Not broken. Not sore in body, though there was that too — but altered in some deeper way.Woman.The word came to me without ceremony.Yesterday I had been a maiden, as the church so fondly named us. Today I was something else. Something known. Something claimed — though not by force.By choice.That should have comforte

  • What Was Never Mine   Chapter Twelve

    The carnival came to us as though the world itself had decided to be kind.I remember thinking, as we crossed the final hill and the lights first appeared below, that I had never seen so many colors gathered in one place. Lanterns hung from poles and wagon wheels, glowing amber and rose and soft gold, swaying gently in the evening breeze. Music drifted upward—fiddles and flutes and drums beating a rhythm that felt older than the road beneath our feet. Laughter followed it, bright and unrestrained, the kind of sound that belonged to people who believed themselves unseen.Masks were everywhere.Silk and velvet, painted porcelain and carved wood, feathers and ribbons and glimmering thread. Faces hidden just enough to loosen the world’s grip on propriety. I tied mine on with hands that trembled—not from fear, but from the thrill of stepping into a version of myself that did not bow or avert her gaze. When I turned to him, I hardly recognized the man beneath the dark half-mask.Not the cro

  • What Was Never Mine   Chapter Eleven

    Time did not move as it once had.It slipped instead—quietly, indulgently—through hidden corridors and shadowed alcoves, through minutes stolen behind tapestries and hours borrowed from sleep. Days passed without marking themselves, and I only noticed their leaving by how easily Roman’s presence fit beside mine, how natural it felt to lean into him as though I had always belonged there.Our secrecy had softened into something dangerous.Kisses were no longer accidents, nor moments seized in haste. They had become familiar greetings—his mouth finding mine in silence, his hand settling at my waist as though it knew the shape of me better than I did myself. Touch lingered now, unhurried, reverent. Fingers traced my wrist, my jaw, the curve of my back with a tenderness that made my breath falter every time.I had stopped pretending my body did not respond.The castle had its rhythms, and we learned them well. We knew when the western gallery lay empty in the late afternoon, when the chape

  • What Was Never Mine   Chapter Ten

    Distance, I learned, is not a thing you create by stepping away.It is a thing you carry in your chest and pray will harden before your heart betrays you.I woke that morning resolved to be careful. Not hopeful. Not foolish. Careful. The kind of careful that keeps one alive in a palace that devours girls like me without ceremony.I avoided the east corridor where I knew he took his morning walks. I lingered longer than necessary in the scullery, hands red from soap and water, listening for the sound of boots I knew too well. When his name was spoken by another maid—casual, thoughtless—I pretended not to hear it. When I was assigned to the western wing instead of the royal library, I thanked God for small mercies and told myself it was a sign.This was what I had wanted, was it not? Space. Silence. Safety.And yet my body moved through the day as though something vital had been removed from it. Every corner felt wrong without him appearing in it. Every breath felt borrowed.The kiss

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