It was an odd mixture of relief and extreme anxiety. On the one hand, the charade was over. My loyalties were clear, and though my lifelong- bred court mask stayed in place, the court was able to see that I did have a head for more than clothing. On the other, I was now trying to figure out how to run a kingdom and to clean up the enormous mess Galdran had left behind. It was no easy task. Any other man, I'm sure, would have found this daunting enough to devout his full attention to it. Though I'd suspected it a long time, I knew something was wrong with me as I realized that, despite the work at hand, I could not focus.
"Does she have any idea?" Russav asked me one night, as we sat talking after a long day of looking through documents.
"None at all," I said quietly. "At least none that I know of."
Russav was the only person I'd told, partly because he could tell I was distracted, and largely because he had far more experience in this field than I did.
"Do you want her to know?" he asked me.
That one was hard. "No," I finally answered. "I don't think I could shoulder her hating me more than she already does."
I tried to dismiss her from my thoughts. I didn't even truly know my own feelings for her. Did I love her? Russav assured me that I did, but I doubted myself. I never had before claimed to be in love, naive as it sounds, and I realized I was unsure of what it should feel like. Shouldn't being in love feel like a good thing, not a weight, a burden? I told myself that she only haunted my thoughts because I couldn't figure her out, and I normally found people so easy to read.
Despite my fervency in declaring these statements to myself, I could not turn down Count Branaric's invitation to come with him and his new fiancee, my friend Lady Nimiar, to Tlanth.
I couldn't turn him down, even though I was aware my presence there probably wouldn't be to her liking. Shameful though it is, I found a bit of pleasure in realizing that my arrival would put me under her skin, at least to some extent. It was only fair, seeing as she was constantly in mine.