"He has been back for three days, three days-- and I have not known-- he has not come to me. I counted each moment he was gone, and I spent the seven days my mind had generously alotted for his leave-taking in carefully-contained composure, bearing the pain and the endless amount of questions. It is too much-- it is too much to ask to treat me this way and go-- but I bore the seven days, and at the end of them I was on pins and needles with torment, absolutely certain that he too must be feeling this uncertainty even to the smallest degree-- and at the very least-- at least would have seen me, would have regarded me. See, he is in the next room-- look, these exchanges we have had-- this semblance of friendship. It is dust. My mind is rattled. I am mistaken-- I hallucinate-- I pretended friendship where it is not. I have arrayed myself beautifully, and what a parade of stupid nonsense I am."
I dreamed in darkness, cold and alone. Phantasms shifted around me, frightening me, but I was powerless to escape them or even move, as I was sealed in a casket. I thought of the Queen, my Stepmother, and tears dripped from my eyes as I considered the quasi-poignant moments we had once shared, when we might have been considered to be close, when the Queen had nearly been a mother to me, and the face of love had shone radiantly upon me, before eclipsed again by the storms of Venus. I thought of the huntsman, stung to consider that my only friend had been poised to betray me, to kill me, and again in my mind I felt the horror of his shadow, of waiting while he came behind me, knowing there was no escape for me from a death he would inflict. My heart lifted as images of the Prince entered my mind, his grace atop a white-maned horse, always out of my reach, just beyond the words I longed to speak. If only there had been more time for us to fall in love. He might have saved me from those...