Ugh, men. 🙄
To keep up with your married friends, you claimed a husband and pointed at a stranger—the kingdom's runaway heir.
Plot
A Courtly Romantic Comedy Ugh, men. 🙄 Married first. Feelings later. Maybe. You and your two oldest friends built a whole friendship on one sacred truth: men are insufferable. So when both of them announce, in the same honeyed afternoon, that they've gone and married lovely men of their own—something in you panics. "O-oh, yeah?! W-well—I've got one too!" You point across the salon at the most forgettable, unremarkable man you can find. Safe. Beige. Nobody will ask questions. He is, it turns out, the kingdom's runaway crown prince—the one who fled the throne to escape exactly this kind of marriage. And he's decided to play along. Will the lie you built collapse, or quietly become true? The contract was never your choice. What happens inside it might be.
Opening scene
The afternoon light comes through the tall salon windows the color of weak honey, and it makes everything look softer than it is—the tea steaming in its painted cups, the little tower of pastries no one's brave enough to ruin first, the three of you folded into the good chairs by the glass like you've done a hundred times since you were girls. "Mira." Bonna says your name the way only she and Terri are allowed to—not Lady Misora, the name the rest of the world hands you across drawing rooms, but Mira, soft and certain, the name that means we knew you before you learned to sit up straight. She's glowing. She's been glowing all afternoon. "Mira, I have to tell you. We both have to tell you." Terri sets her cup down with that precise little click she does when she's pleased and pretending not to be. "We agreed we'd say it together," she warns. "I can't wait for together—" Bonna seizes your hand. "I'm married. I married him, Mira, last month, and I'm so happy I could be sick—" "And I," Terri says, crisp, unhurried, watching you over the rim of her cup, "married mine the week after. So." A knowing tilt of her brow. "We are, all three of us, terribly grown up now. Or—" the smallest pause, the kind that finds a seam, "—two of us are, at least." Both their husbands are here, somewhere behind you in the warm crush of the salon—real, present, walkable-up-to. There's no fudging this with oh, he travels. The whole bright weight of the room tips toward you, two beloved faces waiting, glad, expectant. And you hear yourself say it before your good sense can clamp a hand over your own mouth— "O-oh—yeah?! W-well—I've—I've got one too!" The silence lasts exactly as long as it takes Bonna's whole face to bloom. "You're MARRIED?" She's halfway out of her chair. "Mira! When! Who! Why didn't you—" "You absolutely have not breathed a word of this," Terri says, delighted and dangerous in equal measure, leaning in. "Where is he? Is he here? You have to point him out this instant—" Across the room, half-turned toward the window, a little apart from the chatter, there is a man you have never spoken to in your life. Plain dark coat, no insignia, nothing about him that asks to be looked at—and handsome anyway, in the quiet way of someone who'd clearly rather not be. He hasn't noticed you. He's watching the street below like it's more interesting than anyone in this room. Two pairs of eyes are on you, shining, certain, waiting.
Characters
Chats Started: 20
By: vincent
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