Beneath the Hawthorn

Love makes fools of us all.

I know that sounds dramatic.

It is dramatic.

But I had been dead for approximately...I had absolutely no idea how long...and trapped in the body of a twenty-two-year-old princess for less than a day, so I felt I had earned the right to be a little dramatic.

Besides, it was true.

Love could make the strongest man weak. It could bring kings to their knees and turn queens into willing servants of their own hearts. It could make intelligent women suddenly forget they had common sense, dignity, friends, hobbies, careers, and apparently...in the case of the woman whose body I was currently occupying...a basic understanding of pharmaceutical measurements.

Every world seemed to romanticize it.

Every generation wrote songs about it.

Poems.

Stories.

Wars had been blamed on it.

Kingdoms had supposedly fallen because of it.

People loved saying love was the most powerful weapon in existence. What no one seemed particularly interested in discussing was what happened when that weapon was pointed directly at you.

I had loved a man once.

Really loved him.

Enough to become stupid.

Not the cute sort of stupid people laughed about afterward. Not I drove two hours because he forgot his wallet stupid. The kind where you woke up one morning and realized your entire life had slowly rearranged itself around another human being, and somehow you hadn’t noticed yourself disappearing.

So perhaps I shouldn’t have been judging her.

Perhaps there was something deeply hypocritical about sitting in this ridiculously enormous bed, wrapped in sheets softer than anything I had ever personally owned, reading the private diary of a dead twenty-two-year-old woman and repeatedly thinking:

Girl.

“Use your fucking brain”

Unfortunately, she couldn’t.

Because she was dead.

Which made the criticism feel slightly cruel.

I turned another page.

My eyebrows climbed higher.

No.

Never mind.

Criticism reinstated.

Because, dear God, Evangeline had been pathetic. I stared down at the elegant handwriting covering the cream-colored paper.

The penmanship alone annoyed me.

Every letter was delicate. Perfectly curved. Feminine enough to make my own handwriting look like something produced during an earthquake.

And apparently she had used all that beautiful handwriting to document nonsense.

His Highness looked at me during supper tonight.

That was the entire first sentence.

I read the next one.

I believe he looked at me three times.

Three.

Not four.

Not two.

Three.

Apparently this was important.

I adjusted myself against the mountain of pillows behind my back and continued reading.

The first time was while Lord Renard was speaking with me. I believe His Highness was displeased. He did not smile.

I frowned.

Okay.

Maybe there was something there.

I kept reading.

The second time, Lady Amelie was speaking to him, but his eyes wandered toward me. I knew then that he was only entertaining her because court demanded it.

My frown deepened.

That sounded less promising.

The third time, our eyes met.

A large section followed describing the third look. The angle of his head. The expression in his eyes. Whether his mouth had twitched. Whether he had looked away reluctantly. Whether the music had somehow changed after their eyes met. Whether fate itself had been trying to tell her something.

I slowly lowered the diary.

“Maybe he was checking whether you were still staring at him.”

The empty bedroom offered no defense on her behalf.

I glanced toward the ceiling.

“If she can hear me, I apologize.”

I paused.

“Actually, no. She needs to hear this.”

If ghosts existed in this world, I wasn’t emotionally prepared for that particular development. Reincarnation was enough for one day.

I returned to the diary.

There were five more pages about the dinner.

Five.

I knew because I counted them.

Page two contained a detailed description of what the prince had worn. Page three analyzed why he had chosen blue. Apparently Evangeline believed blue reminded him of her eyes.

I had looked in the mirror.

My...her...eyes were definitely not blue not even close. I stared at the page for several seconds.

“Interesting.”

Maybe fashion symbolism worked differently here. Maybe she was colorblind. Maybe love truly did destroy brain cells.

I turned the page.

The next entry began:

He smiled at me today.

I stopped.

There was an entire page beneath it.

Then another.

I flipped ahead.

Two and a half pages.

About a smile.

“Good Lord.”

I covered my mouth.

Not because I was horrified. Because I was genuinely trying not to laugh. The girl had almost written a dissertation on this man’s facial muscles. Maybe the smile meant he missed her. Maybe he had finally forgiven her. Maybe he had been jealous because another nobleman had escorted her into the ballroom. Maybe he wanted her to approach him.

Maybe...

“Maybe he was just being polite .”

That apparently had never occurred to her.

My sympathy began developing structural damage. I put the diary down on my lap and looked around the room. The bedroom was enormous. Not rich person enormous. Not luxury hotel suite enormous.

This room had the kind of square footage that made me wonder whether medieval or whatever era this was royalty simply hated being within shouting distance of their own furniture.

The bed sat against the center of one wall beneath an intricately carved canopy. Heavy ivory curtains hung around it, embroidered with golden vines and flowers so detailed I had spent several minutes earlier staring at them simply because my brain needed something harmless to focus on.

Across from me sat a fireplace.

Calling it a fireplace felt disrespectful.

It was practically a small cave with flames in it.

Two upholstered chairs were positioned before it with a table between them. Beyond that stood three enormous windows stretching nearly from the floor to the ceiling, each covered by pale curtains and heavier green drapes tied back with gold rope.

Everything was beautiful.

Painfully beautiful.

The sort of room I might have paid an unreasonable amount of money to stay in for one night during my old life.

And I wanted absolutely none of it.

Mostly because approximately eight hours earlier I had opened my eyes in this bed and discovered twelve strangers staring at me.

I had been busy trying not to scream. That was something about myself I had always appreciated. When something terrible happened, I rarely panicked outwardly .

My panic was punctual.

It arrived afterward when my adrenaline has worn off. During the actual disaster, my brain tended to become annoyingly practical.

Car accident?

Check yourself for blood.

Emergency at work?

Solve the emergency.

Boyfriend gives you an ultimatum after almost five years together?

Pack first.

Cry later.

Apparently waking up in another woman’s body followed the same rule.

I had opened my eyes.

There were strangers.

So instead of screaming, I had stared at them.

They had stared back.

Nobody looked particularly happy. Which had been my first clue that whatever situation I had awakened into was going to be unpleasant. There had been an older man beside the bed with two fingers pressed against my wrist.

A physician, I learned later.

An older woman stood several feet behind him.

Beautiful.

Elegant.

Her hands had been clasped so tightly in front of her that her knuckles were nearly white.

There had been a man beside her.

Older than me.

Perhaps my father.

I still wasn’t entirely sure.

Two young women in servant uniforms stood near the wall.

One had red-rimmed eyes.

The other looked at me with such carefully hidden disgust that I almost admired the effort. Several other people lingered near the door.

And then there was him.

The handsome young man standing slightly apart from everyone else.

I hadn’t known his identity then.

I knew now.

The crown prince.

Naturally.

Because apparently God...or whichever divine authority handled reincarnation...had a sense of humor. He had watched me with an expression I couldn’t quite understand.

Concern, maybe.

But not grief.

Certainly not relief.

More like someone examining a problem he had assumed would resolve itself. I remembered looking at him and thinking:

He is attractive.

Then immediately after:

Why is everyone dressed like this?

Then:

Why does my chest feel weird?

Then, most importantly:

Where the hell am I?

The physician had spoken first.

“Your Highness?”

I had stared at him.

There had been silence.

A long one.

Then I had done what any sensible woman who woke surrounded by unknown people would do.

I asked a question.

“Where am I?”

The older woman had made a sound that immediately made me regret asking. The physician leaned closer. “Your Highness, can you hear me?”

“Unfortunately.”

Everyone froze.

I hadn’t meant to say that.

Well.

I had.

But apparently Evangeline did not make jokes while recovering from almost dying. The physician blinked.

I blinked back.

Then the handsome man across the room had spoken.

“Evangeline.”

That name had meant absolutely nothing to me.

I looked at him.

His face tightened. There was something strange about the way he’d said it. Possessive might have been too strong.

Familiar.

Expectant.

As though my attention belonged to him and he was mildly offended it had taken me so long to provide it.“Do you know who I am?” In retrospect, I should probably have lied.

Instead, I had been concussed, confused, apparently resurrected, and lacking the emotional energy required for deception.

So I studied his face carefully.

Dark hair.

Expensive clothes.

Pretty eyes.

The posture of a man who had never been told to move out of anyone’s way. Then I answered. “No.” The room became so quiet I could hear the fire.

His expression changed.

Only slightly.

But something definitely changed. The physician had immediately started asking questions.

My name.

The year.

My age.

Where I believed I was. Whether I remembered what had happened. I answered what I could. Which was almost nothing. I did not volunteer the part where I remembered being twenty-eight. Or another world. Or cars. Or airplanes. Or microwaves. Or the fact that the last thing I clearly remembered from my old life definitely did not involve four-poster beds and people calling me Your Highness.

I was confused.

Not suicidal.

There was no reason to announce something that would have gotten me locked in whatever passed for an asylum here. So I played the role of a woman whose memory had been damaged. That explanation had presented itself almost immediately, courtesy of the physician himself.

“Memory disturbances can occur after an incident such as this.”

Incident.

Interesting word.

Nobody said suicide.

Nobody said overdose.

Nobody said you apparently swallowed enough medicine to kill a horse because some man ignored you. That information came later.

From the diaries.

At the time, I had simply nodded.

Memory loss?

Perfect.

Convenient.

Medically plausible.

Far better than:

Hello, everyone. Your princess is dead. I am apparently occupying the vacancy. So I leaned into it.

Not dramatically.

Just enough.

“I remember... pieces.”

That caused everyone to visibly relax. Except the crown prince. He continued staring at me. I had disliked that immediately. Not because his gaze was threatening. Because it was assessing. He looked at me like something wasn’t sitting correctly in his head.

I understood the feeling.

Nothing was sitting correctly in mine either. Eventually the physician had ordered everyone out. The older woman resisted. The man beside her quietly persuaded her. The servants left without looking at me.

The prince remained longest.

Of course he did.

He stood beside the door after everyone else had gone and watched me.

I watched him.

He seemed to be waiting for something. I had no idea what.

Tears?

A confession?

Apology?

Perhaps this body had previously launched itself at him whenever he appeared. Based on the diaries, entirely possible. Finally he said, “You frightened everyone.”

Interesting.

Not you frightened me.

Everyone.

I was too tired to analyze that then.

Now?

Now it felt important.

I remembered simply saying, “Sorry.” His eyebrows had drawn together. Apparently even that was wrong.

Then he’d approached the bed.

I’d tensed.

Not dramatically.

Just enough that he stopped.

Again, his expression changed.

“Rest,” he said eventually. There had been something almost commanding about it. I had nodded because arguing required energy I didn’t possess.

Then he left.

The door closed.

And for the first time since waking up, I was alone.

That was when I panicked.

I checked the room.

Checked the windows.

Opened drawers.

Found clothing I had no idea how to put on.

Found jewelry that probably cost more than all my student loans combined. Found letters addressed to Princess Evangeline.

Found a portrait.

Then I found the mirror.

That had nearly done me in.

I had approached it expecting

I didn’t know what I expected.

Myself, I suppose.

Instead, a stranger stared back.

I remembered gripping the edge of the vanity.

The woman in the mirror did the same.

Her face was strange. Beautiful in a delicate, aristocratic way that made her look like someone artists would enjoy painting. Dark thick brown hair spilled around her shoulders. Dark brown eyes stared too widely from beneath thick lashes.

Her lips were dry.

There were shadows beneath her eyes.

Still beautiful.

Annoyingly so.

I touched my cheek.

She touched hers.

I lifted one hand.

She copied me.

“Okay.”

My voice shook.

“Okay.”

That was a lie.

Nothing was okay. But screaming at a mirror seemed unproductive.

I soon found the diaries.

Seven of them.

Seven.

All hidden inside a carved chest beneath the window.

At first, I had felt guilty opening them. Then I remembered I was currently wearing their owner’s face. Privacy felt like a bridge we’d already crossed. The first diary contained childhood memories. The second introduced the prince. By the third, I wanted to reach through time and shake her. By the fourth , I understood why everyone in that room hated me.

And now I was halfway through scanning through number five.

I looked down at the page again. Evangeline had loved the prince for years. Love might actually have been too generous a word. She had constructed a religion around him. He was the first person she thought about in the morning. The last person she wrote about at night.

She catalogued everything.

What he wore.

Who he spoke to.

What he ate.

Where he sat.

Whether he smiled.

Whether he frowned.

Whether he looked tired.

Whether he noticed her dress.

Whether his fingers lingered when he kissed her hand. She remembered dates.

Exact dates.

The first dance.

The first flower.

The first time he called her beautiful. The first time he told her she embarrassed him. That entry lasted thirteen pages.

He said I behave like a child whenever I become jealous.

Below that, several lines had been scratched out.

Then:

Perhaps he is right.I should learn to control myself. He dislikes women who make scenes.

I stared at that.

Then leaned my head against the bed frame.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

There it was again.

That feeling.

Pity mixed with annoyance.

Because Evangeline had been awful. I couldn’t pretend otherwise. She had used her title to punish women who got too close to him. One lady had been publicly humiliated because the prince danced with her. Another girl’s engagement had nearly been ruined after Evangeline spread rumors about her.

A maid had been dismissed.

Another slapped.

A servant boy punished because he delivered a letter from a woman Evangeline disliked. There were entries where she described those things with frightening casualness. As though everyone around her existed merely as scenery in the great tragedy of her love life.

That bothered me.

Deeply.

Whatever had been done to Evangeline did not excuse what Evangeline had done to everyone else.

Every time she became angry enough to distance herself from him...

Something happened.

Flowers.

A dance.

A compliment.

A private conversation.

A touch.

Never enough to clarify what they were. Just enough to make her hopeful again.

I flipped forward.

Same pattern.

Again.

Again.

Again.

I sat very still.

“Oh.”

That was worse.

Much worse.

Because now I understood.

He knew.

The crown prince knew exactly how much she wanted him. And whenever Evangeline became exhausted enough to consider walking away, he gave her just enough affection to restart the cycle.

Not commitment.

Not love.

Hope.

Hope was cheaper. And apparently far more effective. I exhaled through my nose. “You’re an asshole.” I wasn’t sure whether I was speaking to the prince, the diary, or men collectively.

Possibly all three.

I turned another page.

There was a pressed flower inside.

White.

Dry.

Fragile enough that I was afraid breathing too hard would destroy it.

Beside it, Evangeline had written:

The first flower he ever gave me.

I stared at it for several seconds. Then closed my eyes. Because that was the problem with pathetic women. Sometimes you understood them. I had never kept a flower for years. I had never followed a man through a ballroom. I had never threatened another woman for speaking to my boyfriend.

And I had absolutely never taken sleeping medicine to frighten anyone into loving me. But I had rearranged my life. That counted for something.

At twenty-three, I had been with the same man for almost five years. Five years sounds much shorter when you say it quickly.

It isn’t.

Five years is birthdays.

Christmases.

Thanksgivings.

Vacations.

Jobs.

Friends.

Plans.

Five years is long enough to build routines so deeply around another person that you stop noticing which ones are yours. I had stopped seeing certain friends because he didn’t like them.

Not directly.

He never said, You can’t see her. That would have been too obvious. He said things like:

“You’re different after you hang out with them. But I suppose that’s what they wanted.”

Or:

“I thought we were spending tonight together. Clearly, being with me isn’t as important as it used to be.”

Or:

“It’s fine. Go. I’d never ask you to choose between me and them. I already know who you’d pick.”

So eventually going became exhausting. It was easier to stay. His friends became my friends. His family got every holiday. His favorite restaurants became ours. His hobbies somehow became weekend plans.

And mine?

Later.

Everything I wanted came with that word.

Later.

We’d travel later.

Buy a house later.

Get married later.

Move somewhere better later. Later was a beautiful country we were always planning to visit and somehow never reached.

I had believed him.

For years.

Until the job offer.

I could still remember sitting across from him at our kitchen table. My hands shaking because I was excited.

Terrified.

Proud.

The salary was ridiculous.

Nearly three times what we made together. The position was everything I had worked toward. Everything I had quietly postponed. I thought he would be happy. He wasn’t.

We would have to move.

That was his problem.

Not permanently.

Not even somewhere terrible.

Just somewhere inconvenient to him. And for the first time in almost five years, I asked him to rearrange his life around mine.

He refused.

Then gave me a choice.

The career.

Or him.

I chose the career.

He looked shocked.

That part still made me laugh.

Not because it had been funny then.

It hadn’t.

But in hindsight?

The audacity.

The absolute confidence of a man who had watched me compromise for nearly five years and genuinely believed there was no possibility I might finally choose myself. Six months later, I saw him again.

Married.

Wife pregnant.

Living in a house remarkably similar to the ones I had spent years showing him online.

For a while, that destroyed me. Not because I still loved him. That part was almost gone. It destroyed me because The man who wasn’t ready to marry me had been ready for someone else. The man who didn’t want a house had bought one with someone else. The man who wanted to wait for children had apparently gotten someone pregnant almost immediately.

I had gone home that night, opened a bottle of wine, sat on my kitchen floor, and cried so hard my neighbor eventually knocked to make sure I wasn’t dying.

Then I got angry.

Angry was better.

Anger moved.

Anger packed boxes.

Anger applied for promotions.

Anger booked flights.

Anger called old friends and apologized.

Anger looked at the five years I’d wasted and said:

We are not wasting five more.

I rebuilt myself.

Slowly.

That part mattered.

People loved telling stories about women leaving bad relationships as though they immediately became glamorous.

New haircut.

New apartment.

New life.

No.

For the first few months I didn’t know what to do with weekends because every activity I knew involved him. I didn’t know where I wanted to eat because I had spent years automatically thinking about what he liked.

Traveling alone terrified me.

Making decisions without asking anyone’s opinion felt strangely selfish. I had to learn myself again.

But I did.

By twenty-eight, I liked my life.

Not every part.

Life wasn’t a movie.

But it belonged to me.

That mattered.

Which was why sitting here reading about Evangeline felt like watching a younger, much more dramatic version of myself walk toward a cliff while refusing to hear everyone screaming behind her.