The Long Way Back | ✓
The Riverton House dorm's common room felt charged, a palpable tension prickling my skin. I stopped dead in my tracks, frozen as if by some invisible spell. Prince Raphael's voice, smooth as silk yet sharp as a blade, cut through the quiet. "I know you. You and the mask you are always wearing. It often slips off when you think no one is seeing, but I always see you, Johanna."
My tongue tied itself in knots. I wanted to deny, to deflect, to say anything that wouldn't confirm his terrifying pre-conceived knowledge about who I was. But what could I say? Johanna wasn't even my name. Still, it was the pseudonym I was supposed to hide behind.
"Oh, it is you, Your Highness," I finally managed, my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands. "What is the occasion, a prince talking to a peasant like me?" The sarcasm was deliberate, a shield I'd perfected over years of dealing with entitled arrogance.
He smiled then, that devilishly handsome, intimidating smile that the other girls at Kingston Academy found charming, but which alerted every instinct in me to run. This was going to be a long night.
