Overjoyed at the breakthrough, I’d collapsed into bed just after sunrise and fallen into the best sleep I’d had in a month.
But now there was more work to be done.
I stood, stretching, before I spotted a dark square of marbled black on the floor of my parlor. It looked like an envelope, pushed beneath my door sometime while I’d slept.
Someone had left me a note.
The exterior of the envelope had been left bare, and its paper was thick and impossibly fine, the nicest I’d ever felt. I broke the wax seal at its back and slid out three sheets of black parchment. Swirls of golden ink popped out in surprising relief from the dark background, shimmering across the pages.
Just Hazel,it began.
Leopold had written me a note.
A novella,I amended, scanning the long missive. His words filled nearly every inch of each page.
I brought the letter with me to my favorite armchair and settled in for its reading.
Just Hazel,
I’ve begun this letter half a dozen times so far, but couldn’t quite find the proper opening or nail the exact tone I wished to convey. My primary goal was to rant at you and take you to task for ruining what should have been a most enjoyable evening. Vincent-Eduard Gothchaigne’s soiree was full of all the very best things—beautiful women, good food, and even better drink—but I spent an hour in the most uncomfortable misery before deciding to quit it entirely.
Your words, healer, have burned their way into my skin, sinking in deep, deeper than you surely believe possible.
I know you think me nothing more than a shallow,entitled little waste of a human, but I am human all the same, and your assessment of me was most grievous.
I want you to know that.
And I want to respond in equal measure with some scathing and witty retort that would absolutely eviscerate you and make you rue your callous and hurtful words.
But I can’t.
I can’t, because I find myself agreeing with you.
This is the first letter tonight that I’ve been able to admit that, to put pen to page and write it out.
I agree with you.
I’m not surprised to find I take up so little space in your thoughts. There truly is little about me to think upon. Nothing I do makes me particularly memorable. Nor words I say. Certainly no actions. I am a prince without purpose. A handsome figurehead.
I can hear your sigh, reading those last lines, but—for the first time in perhaps the whole of my life—I’m being exceptionally honest with you…and myself.
If I didn’t have my looks or charms, I would be wholly unremarkable, completely and miserably forgettable.
It’s true.
You know it.
I now know it too.
And…
I find myself questioning whether that’s what I want my legacy to be.
…It’s not, if you were wondering.
It’s not. It’s not. It’s not.
I thought that by writing out the truth so many times,inspiration would come to me and I’d suddenly know what to do, what course of action to take to change everything. But there is no one right answer, I suppose. There are only many, many small choices that will (hopefully) make up the whole of one good, long life. A life worth remembering, Ihope.
