The first day without a letter, Drizella told herself it was nothing. Couriers were late sometimes. Roads flooded, storms came, horses tired.
The second day, she paced the garden paths, glaring at the gate as though sheer willpower could summon Henry's words to her hand.
By the first week, she snapped at Anastasia, slammed her chamber door, and spent nights awake by candlelight with blank parchment in front of her. She would start a letter, stop, tear it to shreds. What if he had stopped caring? What if he had tired of her insults and laughter, of her face, her very self?
Her pillow hid his last letter, the one where he said he missed her fiercely. She clutched it in the dark until the parchment softened at the edges.
"Idiot," she whispered, but her voice cracked. "Stupid, stubborn idiot."
And still—no reply.
Far away, Henry sat in his chamber, staring at the pile of unopened, empty days. He had written three letters in a row, each more desperate than the last.
The first had been gentle:
Drizella, have my words offended you? Forgive me if they have. Tell me how to make it right.
The second was firmer:
Your silence wounds me. If you mean to end what we have, at least grant me the truth.
The third he wrote in anger, his quill biting into the parchment:
Do you truly despise me so much that even ink is too great a gift? Say it, then. Tell me you want nothing to do with me. Do not leave me to rot in silence.
Each time, he sealed the letters and sent them. Each time, no answer came.
Cinderella held those very letters in her hands. She sat at her vanity, pale dress gleaming in the lamplight, and read Henry's words with a smile as sharp as a knife.
"He misses her," she whispered, voice laced with venom. "He would choose her."
One by one, she fed the letters to the flame of her candle. The paper curled, blackened, and turned to ash.
By morning, she was all sweetness again, all smiles and gentle sighs. When her stepmother asked if she was going to the royal ball, Cinderella merely blushed and said, "If His Highness still wishes it."
Drizella, meanwhile, sat at her desk, parchment untouched, quill dry. She had no words left. She hated him for abandoning her, hated herself for believing him loyal.
Yet in her chest, something fragile still clung to hope. Each dawn, she listened for hoofbeats. Each night, she told herself tomorrow. Tomorrow, the letter will come.
Tomorrow stretched into weeks. Weeks into months.
And Drizella's heart grew heavy with silence.
Henry, too, felt the weight. At the final banquet of his journey, he raised a goblet but tasted only ashes. When courtiers laughed, he heard only the echo of her voice calling him buffoon.
When he finally boarded the ship home, his chest was a hollow ache.
"If she truly loved me," he whispered to the sea wind, "she would have written."
And so, he returned, carrying both hope and despair.