Chapter Two - Tristan
Meetings were always the worst part of the day, and this one was worse than usual. I was so bored I felt itchy like even my skin wanted no part of this. I sighed loudly, crossing my arms and scrolling through my phone as my event manager droned on, filling me in on details I was supposed to care about but didn’t.
“The girls will then perform a dance,” the event manager said. “They will still not be able to see you.”
“Thrilling,” I said dryly. I never cared for events, for engagements I had to keep, parties I had to attend, rooms full of people my parents had hand-selected. It was all so outdated, not my style. This festival only increased that feeling.
“Sir, this festival will help you choose a bride. It is important to the future of the country,” the event planner said, giving me a pleading look. He was older, his face red and round. He was the third planner I’d spoken to this week about the festival. I’d given up trying to learn their names or figure out why they cared so much about whom I married.
“I don’t need all this. I don’t have any trouble getting girls to dance for me all on my own,” I said. The whole thing was ridiculous, the idea that I needed an elaborate festival to get a girl to fall for me, like I couldn’t just walk through town and pick one, couldn’t go to a bar like a normal guy and come home with the prettiest girl there. I wasn’t actually allowed to do that, of course, but I’d done it more than once anyway. A prince can’t stay locked in a castle all the time.
“This is for life, not a night,” the event planner said. He sounded reprimanding and I scowled at his tone and his words. I had no interest in a wife. Not right now, anyway. I had heard people say, while I was at bars pretending to fit in, that the festival was unfair and terrible. Beautiful girls who took university classes and didn’t care for royalty talked about the festival with disgust in their tone. I honestly didn’t blame them. In fact, I agreed.
It wasn’t fucking fair to me either, though, something no one ever brought up. I didn’t want to get married. I did not feel at all ready. I would have preferred several more nights sneaking away to bars, several more dark dances with girls, several more early mornings leaving hotel beds. I certainly did not want to marry some girl based on the events of the festival. But I didn’t have a choice. The laws bound me, too.
“Your job is to plan events, not make comments about my life,” I said, frowning. “Do it again and you won’t have a job anymore.”
“Of course, sir, my apologies,” he said, bowing his head as he started to talk about the details again. I shook my head and went back to my phone, trying to ignore him.
The Facebook messenger notification blinking at me made that much easier. I swallowed down a grin, keeping my face neutral as I opened the message from Christa, the fascinating woman I’d met months ago on the site. I’d never thought of myself as the kind of person to have any sort of online relationship, but she had caught my attention right away and held it tight. We’d been talking every day, and I’d found myself looking forward to it. She was intelligent, witty, kind, clever, and sexy. I was intrigued by everything about her.
She knew me as Frederick, a fake profile I’d created mostly out of boredom one day. I didn’t even have the password for the official Prince Tristan of Ladoria account, as there was a social media manager for that. I had no idea the fake profile would lead me to Christa. Part of me thought I should break it off, stop this communication, especially now that I was about to get married to a stranger, but I couldn’t make myself say goodbye to her. We talked about everything, from ideas, books and philosophy, to the best restaurants in Ladoria, to sex.
We talked about sex almost every day, actually. Christa had a way with words and had taken to telling me her fantasies. She would paint these gorgeous erotic pictures of the things she wanted, and I was hooked on them. Even thinking about them, about Christa, made me stiffen in my pants, turned on at the things she said, the things she wanted. Often, as she typed about the things she’d never experienced but wanted to, I would jerk off, touching myself while we talked, wanting so badly to be the one to do those things, to give her those fantasies.
I shifted in my seat a little, opening her message.
She had been selected for the festival. She’d received an invitation. Suddenly the itching in my skin was more a low pulsing in my veins. Excitement. Maybe this festival wasn’t such a waste of time. Maybe I could help her live out those fantasies after all.
“Where is the list?” I asked, straightening up and looking at my event planner again after typing back to Christa. He startled, jumping, and frowned.
“The list?” he asked. He’d probably been talking about something else. I didn’t care.
“Of selected women. I want to read the list of names,” I said. He frowned and looked like he was maybe about to remind me that an hour ago I’d yelled at him that I didn’t give a fuck about the names on the list. Luckily for him, he seemed to decide against that and shook his head.
“Of course,” he said, reaching into a large red folder and pulling out a list. It was handwritten, in scrawling ink, old-fashioned and ridiculous like everything about this. I grabbed it out of his hand impatiently and scanned the list of names.
There was no Christa listed. I frowned, thinking. This must mean she had been using a fake profile, too. I felt even more intrigued by her than before. That I would be seeing the girl I’d fallen for over social media at the festival had my mind spinning.
Suddenly, I found myself looking forward to something I’d been dreading for most of my life.