The dining hall falls silent like a tomb. One moment there’s the usual clatter of silver and chatter, the next—nothing. Just the kind of stillness that precedes execution.
I know that silence. I’ve lived in it before.
“Shall I read another passage?” Calla’s voice cuts through the air like poisoned honey. She stands at the head table, my torn journal pages spread before her like a feast of shame.
My blood turns to ice. Those words—I know them. I wrote them in the darkest hours of night when I thought no one would ever see.
“This one’s particularly illuminating,” she continues, raising a page high enough for the entire hall to witness. “‘Sometimes I dream of being someone else. Someone thinner. Someone who belongs in silk sheets without apologizing for breathing.’”
Gasps ripple through the crowd. Some faces turn away in embarrassment. Others lean forward, hungry for my destruction.
But Calla isn’t finished. She flips to another page, her smile widening. “Oh, but this is my personal favorite: ‘I hate how Prince Henry looks at me like I’m a problem to be solved. But I hate even more that part of me wants him to keep looking.’”
My blood turns to ice. Those words—written in a moment of brutal honesty at three AM when I couldn’t sleep—hang in the air like a death sentence.
“And here,” Calla continues with vicious delight, “‘He’s beautiful in that devastating way that makes smart girls stupid. I want to slap that smirk off his face almost as much as I want to know what it tastes like.’”
The dining hall erupts in scandalized whispers. I feel every eye boring into me, cataloging my shame, my desperate attraction to someone who’s made it clear I’m beneath his notice.
“Such vivid imagery,” Calla purrs, holding up yet another page. “‘Sometimes I think he sees right through me. Other times I wonder if he sees me at all. Both possibilities terrify me equally.’”
Gasps ripple through the crowd. Some faces turn away in embarrassment. Others lean forward, hungry for my destruction.
I surge to my feet, my chair scraping against marble. “You stole that from me!”
“Stole?” Calla’s laugh tinkles like breaking glass. “Darling, you left it lying about. I simply… rescued it from neglect.”
“It was in a locked drawer!”
“Locks are merely suggestions for people with proper connections.” Her smile widens, showing too many teeth. “Besides, I thought you’d appreciate the audience. Don’t you write about wanting to be seen?”
The room holds its breath. I feel Henry moving beside me before I see him—a wall of barely contained fury stepping into my peripheral vision.
“Enough,” he says, his voice cutting through the tension like a blade.
“Oh, but we’re just getting started!” Calla’s eyes glitter with malice. “Listen to this gem: ‘I wonder if anyone will ever look at me and see something worth keeping instead of something taking up too much space.’”
“Stop!” The word tears from my throat, raw and desperate.
But she doesn’t stop. She never stops.
“And my personal favorite: ‘Maybe if I were smaller, quieter, less of everything they hate, someone might actually love me.’”
The silence that follows is deafening. I can feel every eye boring into me, cataloging my weakness, my shame, my desperate need for acceptance laid bare like a gutted fish.
But then something shifts inside me.
“Read the rest,” I say, my voice steady as steel.
Calla blinks. “What?”
“If you’re going to perform my private thoughts for entertainment, don’t be a coward about it.” I step forward, my presence filling the space between us. “Read the part where I wrote about finding strength in being underestimated.”
Her perfect composure flickers.
“Read the part where I said their cruelty revealed more about them than it ever did about me.” My voice grows stronger with each word. “Or are you afraid they’ll recognize themselves in those observations?”
The hall goes dead quiet. Not the silence of anticipation, but of recognition. Because how many of these perfect creatures have written similar words in their own secret moments?
I reach across the table and snatch the page from her manicured fingers, tearing it cleanly in half. “These were mine. My thoughts, my fears, my private battles. You don’t get to weaponize them just because you’re bored.”
Calla’s mouth opens, but no sound emerges. She expected tears. Expected me to shatter like spun glass.
Instead, I gather the scattered pages—every piece of my soul she’s laid bare—and hold them against my chest like armor.
“Did you really think this would break me?” I ask, loud enough for every corner of the hall to hear. “That exposing my struggles would somehow diminish me?”
I turn to face the watching crowd, these princes and duchesses who’ve never questioned their right to exist.
“Yes, I’ve doubted myself. Yes, I’ve wished I was different. Yes, I’ve felt like I didn’t belong.” My voice carries to the furthest table. “But at least I’ve had the courage to examine those feelings instead of projecting them onto others.”
Henry steps beside me, his presence solid as a mountain. “You shouldn’t have had to face this alone.”
“I wasn’t alone,” I reply, meeting his eyes. “You were here.”
Behind me, chairs scrape against marble as people begin to move again. The spell is breaking. But something fundamental has shifted in the room’s atmosphere.
Across the hall, Mirelle sits frozen, tears streaming down her perfect cheeks. Our eyes meet for one devastating moment before I turn away.
She made her choice long ago. Tonight, I made mine.
Later, in the sanctuary of my chamber, I spread the torn pages across my bed. My handwriting stares back at me—evidence of every midnight doubt, every whispered fear, every moment I felt too much for this world.
But I don’t feel shame anymore.
I feel power.
Because they tried to use my honesty as a weapon against me, and I turned it into armor instead.
For the first time in my life, I don’t want to disappear.