Chapter 163: Endless Loop
Rose’s heart was still beating wildly as she got to her room. What was that? She didn’t get the chance to look closely or confirm what she saw, but it was pretty clear. The scars on the crown prince’s back were almost like the one on his right calf, as though the skin had stretched to close up the gap. Why did the crown prince have such scars on his back? How had she never noticed?
She knew why; he was rarely completely naked in her presence. He always had his robe on. She had never seen any opportunity to see his back.
Rose shook her head. She wasn’t curious. The crown prince’s scars had nothing to do with her. Her predicament was completely different and separate from his.
Rose pushed herself away from the door and walked to the bed, throwing herself on it. She would try to get some sleep, which shouldn’t be too hard—she was exhausted from all the thinking and trying to remember, not to mention the anger she felt from failing continuously.
The crown prince was a sore winner. Almost excessive. At some point, Rose was almost certain he was trying to get a rise out of her, but to what purpose? However, she had learned not to put reasoning behind the crown prince’s actions. She couldn’t predict him. Half the things he did didn’t make sense to her.
Rose fell asleep fast and hard. This time around, her sleep wasn’t without dreams. Rather, she was stuck playing games with the crown prince, an endless loop, and just before she woke up, she saw a flash of his scars.
Rose jerked awake, an ache in her shoulders. She groaned as she moved to a sitting position, trying to stretch to ease the pain, but that didn’t help much, and she winced as she tried to apply pressure to her shoulders.
She wondered if it was all the slouching she did the night before while playing with the crown prince, or did she perhaps sleep wrongly? Rose grunted in pain as she got out of bed. She felt so stiff, and the stretching wasn’t working.
She yawned as she got out of bed, her eyes catching the chessboard still near the fireplace. She had fiddled with it the day before, and that was when she had noticed the pieces for the first time. It didn’t take her long to drop it when she couldn’t figure it out.
She had intended to keep it with her for as long as she could until she figured it out, and if she didn’t, she still couldn’t ask that it be taken away because she felt bad that Mister Henry had gone through the trouble of getting it for her.
She walked toward it and was quick to pull out the pieces, arranging them on the chessboard as the crown prince had shown her the night before. Altogether, there were about nine missing pieces: the two queens, the four horse heads—she had since learned were called knights—one rook, and two pawns.