I was summoned to heal a broken heart (Part 1)

It was midnight again. I decided to venture out of my chamber, back to the rooftop of the tower, where the dragon prince usually sat.

He sure had to feel lonely, being here only with Korvan and Vesna. Korvan was a nice bird, but he was still just… a chicken. As for Vesna, I was not sure what their relationship was. She was not a very pleasant companion to me. Was she behaving the same in the presence of His Highness?

I climbed up to the rooftop, and there he was again, sitting and looking up at the stars, his mind wandering around.

“Do you want to be alone, or can I join you?” I asked him.

He sighed and looked at me. “You really have no shame,” he said.

I was dumbfounded by his answer. I was not expecting the confrontation in the first sentence he would say to me today. On the other hand, I thought he would kick me out of his castle. Talking was fine with me. That meant there was still room for negotiation, right?

“I thought you would cry and run away, cursing this unfair world, and yet you put your foot down firmly and reprimanded that arrogant bird. I never saw a woman scolding him that much. And I never saw him apologize. You handled that in a very mature way. I was not expecting that.”

“How do you know? I thought you were flying outside during the day.”

“I was near the castle when all that fuss happened. I could hear all of it.”

“Oh,” I laughed, relieved. “And here I thought I would have to prove to you that Radovan was lying.”

“You have been here for only a few days, but I know that you do not like Radovan that much. I saw many ladies being charmed by him, and they were behaving differently towards him. I also don't think you would be lying.”

“It is not my forte,” I said. “I was never good at lying. And I don’t like doing that. So I hoped that if it comes to that, you will give me the benefit of the doubt. In the worst-case scenario, I would give you the crystal magic bead to assess the situation and make a judgment.”

“I am not sure if it can detect lies. I never tried that. It detects evil, that is for sure, but lies… I… I don’t know. People… are sometimes telling lies to protect, not to harm. That is not evil.”

I looked at him curiously, but he did not elaborate. Instead, he was looking up at the sky again, quietly. I was not sure how to reply. But I thought that he was right.

I shifted on the rooftop and hugged my knees. Looking up at the sky with him, I could feel a strange calmness spreading through my body. Being summoned here, sacrificed, and then taken by a firebird prince, life here was pretty hectic during the day. But at night, the whole world went quiet.

No cars were honking there, no drunk people fighting or yelling. I could hear only the night insects chirping. And the sky. Oh god, the sky was beautiful here. Not polluted by light and tall buildings with blinding neon signs and advertisements, I could see each star glowing in the sky, blinking at me. I never realized that stars could have different colors. I thought they were only milky white, like the moon. But here I could see that each of them was unique, shimmering with a multitude of colors from blues to reds.

I breathed out slowly, relaxing my shoulders. I still felt like an alien in this world. But here, in this moment, I found a piece of calmness.

“The sky… is so beautiful here,” I said.

“Does it not look the same in your world?”

“I… suppose it does.”

I hesitated at first. I was not sure if I should mention to him things about my world. But on the other hand, he did not curse me out for the incident that happened this morning. He was quite open-minded, considering he was a nobility. If I don't open the door to my heart first, I will never be able to get to his. I decided to risk it.

“In the world I came from, people defeated the darkness,” I said. “There are hundreds of lights burning the whole night, until dawn comes. They can never get out of wax, so they will always shine brightly. Some of them can even light up with different colors. They can blink. You don’t have to blow on them if you want to extinguish them. Some of them you can even control remotely.”

“That sounds incredible.”

I sighed. “There are so many things you can do in my world, but there is no magic there.”

“Is that so? When you described it, it sounded to me like there is much more magic in your world than here. Here, the magic is slowly dying out… only curses persist.”

I felt a pang of pain in my chest after hearing him say that.

He went quiet again, and an awkward silence grew between us. I did not want to probe into his private life too much. Unable to find another conversational topic and sit still, I had to find something to do with my hands.

So I took the small wooden box out of my apron pocket and opened it. The magical crystal bead was glistening under the soft moonlight glow. I held it in between my two fingers, and I moved it near my face. I closed one eye and looked with the other through it, straight to the moon.

I gasped.

A myriad of colors filled my eye, spilling through the magical bead onto my face, like a caleidoscope. It looked like the brilliant petals grew out of the crystal and felt around me as if I were in the middle of a spring field.

“Wow, it looks so pretty,” I said cheerfully. “I was not expecting that out of a small bead. Do you want to see?”

Surprised by my sudden childish enthusiasm, he reached out to me, and I gave him the magical crystal bead. He looked through it to the night sky, and I could see moonlight shining through, spilling over his shoulders, breaking into different colors. His eyes brightened, his mood lifted.

“See?” I grinned. “It is beautiful!”

He turned to me, bead still in his fingers.

Then… the light in his emerald eyes dimmed. I realized too late that he looked at me through the bead and had to see something.

But… what?

I could feel a lump forming in my throat.

His Highness' chambers…