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My prince: Did Sasha finally chain you in her basement?

My prince: If you ran off with some cheap bitch, I hope she bites.

My prince: Don’t piss me off.

Nothing.

Not one message.

Not even a smug little “miss me?”

Which is frankly offensive. It also feels personal. I tell myself I’m annoyed, not worried.

Let’s stay serious. I’m not worried about him.

So, in a very rational and emotionally mature response, I sneak into his studio.

Yes. His studio.

The place is dark when I get there. The building still looks like an art museum for rich serial killers. Covered sculptures looming like secrets with draped sheets over their heads.

I make my way inside. Everything smells like him.

There are brushes in jars, charcoal laid out in neat little trays, pencils arranged by type, blades, cloths, stretched canvases, and too many white sheets covering too many things.

Part of me immediately itches to lift them. To see what he’s been hiding and to see who he’s been looking at.

I wonder if Alya’s face is under one of those cloths.

Or some other girl’s.

Or ten of them.

And that exact thought stops me cold.

Because if I uncover one of those paintings and find my sister smiling back at me, I’ll lose my mind right there on his floor.

And if it’s not Alya?

If it’s some random girl with soft skin and a prettier mouth and Kento’s obsession painted all over her face?

That might be worse. So I don’t look.

Which is a miracle, really. Proof that some tiny thread of self-preservation still survives in me, wheezing and underfunded.

Instead, I do the next best thing.

I start breaking everything.

A glass jar catches my elbow, skids across the table, and explodes against the floor in a spray of shattered glass. Pencils splinter one after another beneath my hands. Charcoal crumbles into black dust between my fingers, staining my skin. A tray of carving tools crashes to the floor with an obnoxious clatter, and I kick it beneath a cabinet out of pure spite. Then I grab something sleek and undoubtedly expensive, bend it past the point it was ever meant to go, and listen to it crack in half.

I’m now breaking what I’m pretty sure are special sketching sticks, or maybe artisan demon-taming wands. Whatever.

A few canvases wobble dangerously when I shove past them, and I freeze, staring at the white sheets draped over them like ghosts of problems I absolutely don’t need tonight.

No.

Not touching those.