Deep down, Anastasia was afraid. Frightened out of her wits.
She dare not confide her fears to the two closest people in her life, her fiancé and her sister.
With a week to go before her big day, she was afraid of everything going wrong. But even more so, she was afraid of being precisely the kind of mother her own mother had been to her.
Cold, distant, hypercritical. Too busy with matters of state to bother with her own children.
When Anastasia wrote letter after letter begging to come home from Smuggsworth after being mercilessly bullied, the silence was deafening. She received no response. She was forced to continue with her studies there, even though she hated it.
And, as she watched the snow continue to fall and the drifts pile high outside her window, she began to wonder if all she was doing was all worth it.
Was she getting cold feet? Was she even sure this was what she wanted?
As she picked up her new Persian, Duchess, a pre-wedding gift from Lucian, and stroked her, it was clear that she'd have to hold her nerve just a little while longer.
In the midst of her reverie the phone rang. It was the city planner's office.
Anastasia had had her run ins with the city planner, who like all the other government officials in Hidden Springs had been hand picked by her mother. "Hello?" she asked.
The city planner on the other end of the line waited patiently. "As you well know, Your Highness, tourism is the life blood of this town's economy, and the recent snowstorms have put quite a damper on that. We're hoping to revitalize the industry, and we've decided that a facelift on the old Redwood Heights Lodge would be just the thing to start with."
"What are you saying?"
"We've heard of your architectural abilities, Highness, and we'd like you to handle the job."
"Me?" she asked, with a mixture of glee and disbelief.
Gulp.
"If we can put a facelift on the lodge, we can bring the tourists back."
If Anastasia accepted the new job, would she have to postpone her wedding? And what would she tell Lucian? How would she even approach him?
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