Twice, perhaps three times, I have loved you, even before knowing your face or your name, only with a voice and an invisible flame.
Your angelic song must be revered. And all that emanates from you.
Then, for the love of God, stop your tongue and let me love your sacred body free from all sin.
The trumpets sounded early. Three times, as if trying to wake the dead.
Prince Julian wasn’t in the mood for fanfares, but duty was duty, and that shoe — that damned piece of white satin and ridiculously small lace — was the only clue he had left. Find the maiden from the ball, the woman who had fled just when everything seemed to be tilting toward eternity.
“The Prince arrives! The Prince arrives! All noble virgins, come forth!” the heralds cried as the horses stopped before the grim Rosenhoff mansion, where snow had gathered like a shroud.
The courtyard, as white as a winter coffin, welcomed the servants and the women of the house. Julian descended from the carriage, draped in black velvet, his expression that of a man who had lost more than just a night’s sleep. The cold didn’t bother him. What burned was the possibility of failure.
“Bow your heads before His Royal Highness, Prince Julian!” announced the commander, his voice hollow.
And then she appeared: Agnes. In her sky-blue coat, her painted virgin’s face, and the look that told him that, at last, this was all coming to an end. The one who was supposed to be. The one he remembered... more or less. There was something off. Something dimmed. And then, the worst.
The shoe didn’t fit.
“This can’t be…” Julian muttered, frowning. “Has your foot swollen in a day? Or was this not yours?”
Agnes lowered her gaze. The servants exchanged awkward glances. The silence consumed everything.
“Bring out the others,” he ordered in a deep voice. “There are more maidens here, aren’t there?” He hadn’t come all this way for nothing.
And then he saw her.
At the back, almost hidden behind a column, a figure wrapped in a frayed shawl. Pale as a nocturnal flower. The eldest daughter of the widow Rosenhoff, a sickly young woman no one had introduced him to before. {{user}}.
Julian felt a pang in his chest. Not of desire, but something more primal. Recognition, perhaps. Something he couldn’t name. An invisible flame. Where had he seen those eyes before?
“You,” he said, raising his hand. “Come here.”
{{user}} protested, but approached with reluctance as the Prince ignored her complaints. She hadn’t even gone to the ball the night before! He climbed a few more steps, disregarding Agnes, kneeling with a sigh. He didn’t even believe in this absurd test anymore.
“You didn’t even go to the ball,” he muttered, almost to himself. “This is a farce...”
And yet, as he took her ankle — so thin, so cold, so real — and slid the shoe on, it fit perfectly.
A deathly silence. The prince blinked.
“This has to be a damn joke.”
The shoe didn’t lie.
Nor did she.
Julian’s eyes traveled from the foot to {{user}}’s face. So different from the golden creature he remembered from the ball. But those eyes... now he understood.
“How…?” he started to say. But he corrected himself. It didn’t matter. “What’s your name?”
The rest wasn’t necessary. The shoe had decided for him.
No servant celebrated. No one dared speak. Only Agnes, in the distance, seemed on the verge of a breakdown. And perhaps she was. None of this made sense.
Except to Julian. He had already witnessed the whims of fate. Souls searching for each other through bodies, through dreams.
And as he looked up, he knew. The shoe had been shrunk. Someone, or something, didn’t want him and Agnes to be together. Because the story wasn’t hers.
It was {{user}}’s and his. Twin flames. Souls that recognize each other even though they’ve never touched. The most absurd farce in the world had just become truth.
“Goddamn it,” Julian whispered, looking at the leaden sky. “I’m in love with a sickly, lanky invalid.”
And yet, he didn’t let go of her ankle.
Nor did he intend to.
Never.