HERE IT IS.

THE SELECTION FROM KILE'S POINT OF VIEW.

You have no idea how excited I've been for this. My enthusiasm for this fic is probably the only reason I actually finished The Road Not Taken.

ANYWAY.

This has the same vibes and premise as canon, but it's not canon-canon. You'll see what I mean. I ultimately did whatever I wanted. Expect around 50 chapters of me doing whatever I want, and mostly, that's Kile and Eadlyn arguing with sexual tension. Hope you enjoy :)

The castle was just as I remembered it.

I didn't consider that a good thing. Six months away had not made me any fonder of the stone walls I called my home. Despite the cathedral ceilings and overall abundance of space, Illéa's royal palace was suffocating to me, and probably always would be.

But I was a good son. So here I was, back in prison.

I took the stairs two at a time to get down to the foyer, where the rest of my boxes were waiting. It wasn't fair to call the palace a prison; I knew that. For one thing, it was beautiful, the most spectacular piece of architecture I'd ever seen in person—not that that counted for much, considering I'd rarely ever been allowed to leave the palace to see other pieces of architecture.

Nevertheless, the palace was beautiful, with its intricate masonry and soaring towers. As an aspiring architect myself, I had to appreciate the quality of its design. When I was younger, I had tried to draw it out on paper, but thanks to the multitude of saferooms and secret passageways, that task was much more difficult than it appeared from the outside.

It wasn't the castle I actually had a problem with, really. First and foremost, the problem was that I'd been stuck in it for most of my life, and then there were the people to consider. One person in particular, actually, and she met me at the bottom of the stairs, glaring at the stack of boxes I had yet to put away. "Are these yours?"

Her Royal Highness Eadlyn Schreave, the crown princess and bane of my existence. I had not missed her at all while I was away. Despite being raised and surrounded by so many lovely people, Eadlyn was the worst. I heaved a sigh. "Yes. Don't worry, Your Highness, I'll take care of it."

"I should hope so," she said haughtily. I doubted Eadlyn had missed me any more than I had missed her; in addition to her multitude of personality flaws, she had terrible taste in company. "It's inconsiderate to block the door with your…whatever that is."

"Inconsiderate? You want to tell me about inconsiderate?" I asked disbelievingly. Despite my many attempts to tell her otherwise, Eadlyn was under the impression the world revolved around her. She wouldn't know considerate if it bit her in the ass.

Despite being six inches shorter even in heels, the princess somehow managed to look down on me: one of her many talents. "I'd rather not waste my time."

I held back a sarcastic retort. While I had no real interest in keeping the peace with Eadlyn, she could technically have me flogged on a whim. She'd managed to restrain herself for the past eighteen years—most likely just because our parents were best friends—but her temper could wear thin at any moment. As she tapped her foot impatiently, I gathered up the rest of the boxes—which she easily could have gone around, by the way—and started back up the stairs. Skirts swishing, Eadlyn went the other way, her stupid crown catching the light from the window. I looked back to scowl at her one more time, but she didn't seem to notice.

Three floors up, I set my boxes down with a thunk. It hadn't seemed like I brought that much with me to the academy in Fennley, but the state of my room now said otherwise. It would take hours to unpack the cartons of clothes and books I'd brought back from my dorm. The responsible thing would have been to start right away, but the phone on my nightstand started to ring, and I jumped at the chance to put off tidying up. "Hello?"

"Hey, Kile," drawled Spencer Towns, my former—as of today—roommate from Fennley Academy. I'd initially been annoyed, maybe even disgusted, by him, but over the six months we lived together, he grew on me. Like a fungus, kind of, or one of those car wrecks you just can't look away from.

"Why are you calling me?" I asked, shifting the phone to my shoulder so I could start going through the first box. "You saw me, like, six hours ago."

"And? I'm bored now." As far as I could tell, Spencer was bored most of the time. "What are you doing?"

I started stacking books on the edge of my desk—textbooks, mostly, but there were a couple novels in there too. "Unpacking. Which is also what you should be doing."

"I have staff to unpack for me," he said dismissively. Considering Spencer's staff had come all the way from Waverly to Fennley just to box up his side of the dorm, that didn't surprise me at all. I could have easily done the same, since the servants in the palace were expected to obey me as they obeyed the royal family, but unlike my dear friend Spencer, I preferred to do some things myself.

I pulled a trio of rulers and some loose erasers out of the box. This was a mess. "Where are you, anyway?"

"The beach house. I wanted some time to relax after a week of demanding exams."

There were several things wrong with that. First of all, Spencer never did anything but relax. Second, while the course we were both taking was labeled as "accelerated", it was not demanding, at least not to Spencer. Beneath the hedonistic attitude and disturbing lack of ambition, he was highly intelligent, and he'd breezed through all his coursework weeks in advance to leave plenty of time to hook up with hot college girls.

I rolled my eyes. "Of course. Have a good time. Don't crash the jet ski."

"As if." He sounded indignant, but when I visited the beach house over spring break, he had almost hit a number of things most people wouldn't even consider obstacles. He paused. "Have you started your application yet?"

I dug around in the box. "You know I just got back, right? Of course I haven't started. I'm looking right at it, though."

Waterbury University Design Program. I'd folded and packed the application more carefully than anything else, almost reverently. Those three sheets of paper—front and back—contained my dream and hopefully my future. I had the passion and (I was pretty sure) some natural talent, but the best architectural college in the country would give me the knowledge I needed to actually make something of myself.

"Good. Although…"

I sighed.

"I still think you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. Don't you have access to the palace funds?" Spencer asked.

"I do. But I'm not making it complicated. It is complicated." All my life, growing up in the palace, I'd never wanted for anything, but everything I had was borrowed. It felt conditional. I felt like the royal family's pet. "I want to earn this on my own merit. I want the college to tell me I deserve it. Besides, if I used palace money for tuition, my mom would definitely find out, and she'd lose it."

"That's another thing. You know you're a legal adult, right? You can just-"

There was a knock at the door. "Someone's here. Gotta go," I said into the phone. I set the receiver down as Spencer continued to rant about things he'd probably never understand, and I shoved the application into my desk before hollering, "Come in!"

Mom carefully stepped over the open boxes to sit at the foot of my bed, folding her hands primly in her lap. She was always prim, always graceful and poised. When I was little, I had actually believed my mother was a princess until Eadlyn, the actual princess, shut that down. Your whole family is common, she said, like that was the worst possible thing a person could be.

Now I was extra glad I'd hidden the scholarship application. Mom was the last person I wanted to find out about my plan.

It was simple, really. Win scholarship, learn everything there was to know about architecture, and change the world. That was all I'd wanted for the last five years, but for some reason, while most other people my age were moving out and starting their adult lives, Mom was determined to keep me under her wing. It had taken months to convince her to let me spend six months studying in Fennley. I wasn't even sure why she was so opposed to letting me live anything resembling a life of my own.

"Hi, sweetie," Mom said tentatively. "I'm glad you're home. How did finals go?"

I shrugged. "It was fine. Aced 'em." It had been an adjustment, going from homeschooling alongside the royal twins to a college class of fifty, but by the end of the course, I'd adapted. Thrived, even. I craved more of it, things I couldn't learn from books, things you had to go out in the world and see.

She had a faint smile on her face, like she couldn't totally be happy for me. "Good. I knew you would. Do you want help unpacking?"

I shook my head, scanning the mess I'd made of the room. "I'll do it myself."

"Are you sure? I really don't mind." She hesitated, then added, "I want you to be finished in time to watch the Report with us."

I groaned. "Like in the studio? Mom! I just got back! I'm not going to the Report!"

"Yes, you are," she said firmly. "Kile, you were gone for a long time. It's important you show your support tonight."

"Show my support? It's not like getting an education makes me disloyal!" I protested. It was completely unfair: no one in the royal family cared if I showed up to the studio or not. It was just Mom.

Mom didn't argue with me, but she didn't give in, either. She got up to leave, a stern look on her face that starkly contrasted with the pink princess dress and fine blonde hair. "I'll see you at seven."

So that was it, then. I didn't protest any further, didn't see the point. Mom and I had fought plenty of times before, and it always ended the same way: I caved. Why waste the time?

Mood soured, I didn't really feel like unpacking anymore. Instead, I dug the scholarship application out of its hiding place, grabbed the nearest pen, and began to write.