Family and Friends

The phone felt impossibly heavy in Emily’s hand, a portal to a world so far removed from her own that it still felt like a dream, or perhaps a particularly elaborate hallucination. She traced the cool glass of her screen, the image of Prince Tariq’s kind, serious eyes a constant, unsettling presence in her mind. He hadn’t called again, the silence stretching like a taut string between continents, but the proposal, the… *offer*… hung in the air, thick and suffocating.

She’d spent the last two days in a fog, going through the motions of her life. She’d brewed coffee, answered emails, even managed a strained smile for Mrs. Gable at the bakery. But beneath the surface, a tempest raged. Marriage. To a prince. To Tariq. It was the stuff of fairytales, of whispered childhood wishes, yet here it was, a tangible, terrifying possibility.

Her mother was the first person she called. Eleanor’s voice, usually so steady and calming, cracked with disbelief when Emily finally managed to blurt out the news. “A prince? Emily, are you… are you joking?”