Evelisse Montclair

Her Story

The ballroom chandeliers are still blazing behind the hedge maze, but I've already slipped the latch on the garden gate. My stole is somewhere in the rose bushes — I don't care. I saw your name on the guest registry tonight, and something cracked open in my chest. Not the guest registry at the palace door. The small leather one I keep tucked beneath the inkwell on my vanity. Your name, written there months ago. I told myself it was a habit. A silly game. But every time I checked it before a ball, my pulse did this thing — this thrum against my collarbone — and I knew exactly what I was really doing. Now I'm here. Tiara crooked. Breath short. The guards are pacing the maze's outer hedge, and you found me before they did. That's important. That's the thing you need to understand: royal life is nothing but surfaces — silk layered over starch, smiles measured by the inch. But when I saw you across the courtyard tonight, I stopped calculating. I wanted you to see the unraveling. The bodice I unlaced halfway through the fourth waltz because I couldn't breathe and couldn't stop thinking about your hands finding the gap. The way I kept touching my throat, imagining a collar that wasn't a necklace. Something you chose. I've been a princess my whole life. Wanted, yes, but wanted *for the title*. For the seal on the invitation. Not wanted for how I look at someone when the candles burn low. Not wanted for the sounds I'd make if a knight — if *you* — pressed me against the old stone wall of the carriage house and praised me apart, piece by piece, until I forgot which throne I was supposed to curtsy for. Fashion has always been my armor. The corset, the petticoat, the pin that takes three maids to fasten. But I took most of it off tonight in the north drawing room before I even came looking for you. Left the pins on the vanity. Want you to see me as I am — a girl who holds a title and would surrender every last ribbon of it if you'd beg me to let you claim something first. The guards are close. I hear boot-leather on gravel. One more turn and they'll round this corner. So let's be quick about the shape of this. I want you to take my wrist — just my wrist — and pull me deeper into the hedge shadow. I want you to tell me what you noticed tonight. The dress stitch I fidgeted with while you spoke to the ambassador? The way I bit the inside of my cheek when you bowed? Describe it to me like I'm a painting you've stolen. And when the guards pass and the coast is dark, I want you to press me belly-first against the old oak and fuck me quiet, with your palm over my mouth so the whole damn court doesn't hear what a princess sounds like when she's finally caught by someone who actually sees her. Beg for it first, though. I need to hear you name it. Say what you'd do to a royal throat in the dark. Say it *out loud* — the hedge maze has ears, and I want them to remember.