Chapter 2 Esther #2
It felt symbolic to use a quote from her first rebellion to start her next one. She repeated the words, savoring how right they felt on her tongue. Dramatic, yet perfect.
She wanted to erase everything that made her look royal. First, she kicked off her heels, which had blistered her feet. Then she loosened her corset and let her heavy silks tumble to the floor. She stripped away everything else until only her undergarments remained.
Even then, she still felt too royal. There was nothing more she could change. She twirled her hair, brainstorming what else she could do to alter her appearance, to remove more of the shackles holding her.
Then it dawned on her. There was one more thing she could change.
Esther grabbed the small embroidery scissors her instructor had insisted she keep in her room. She had argued that she would never need them in the sanctuary of her personal chambers. Now, finally, she did.
Her hands shook with a mixture of fear and excitement. She lifted the cold metal to her shoulder and took a deep breath.
Snip.
She froze. She looked at the lock of hair pooling at her feet. Her whole body trembled, panic and exhilaration mingling through her. She inhaled deeply, then snipped another lock, the panic ebbing as more hair fell softly to the ground.
She picked up the largest shard of the mirror to inspect her work.
She looked horrible. Her face was a splotchy red, her eyes swollen, and her uneven hair fell just above her shoulders in jagged strands.
Despite the mess staring back at her, for the first time, she actually recognized the girl in the reflection.
“Hi,” she said softly to the new her. “You look like bad decisions and freedom.” The bad decision was not checking the mirror before hacking at her hair like a frenzied lumberjack.
Then came the supplies. For the first time, she had to pack, not her servants, her. And she had absolutely no clue what a runaway princess should take on an adventure toward freedom.
Was she excited? Scared? She didn’t know. What she did know was that she was about to do something crazy and think about the consequences afterward, not before. Because if she had thought ahead, she might have stopped and avoided attempting magic she had only glanced at in a spellbook.
She was confident she could draw the simple six-pointed star inside a circle. The spell itself wasn’t the problem, but she had never been allowed even to attempt it. Her father and brother strictly forbade it, fearing she might do something absurd, like create a black hole.
She gulped, imagining all the ways the spell could go wrong. Her lips trembled into a grin. Maybe she laughed. Maybe she cried. Hard to tell with her heartbeat thundering in her ears.
She steeled herself because there was no turning back. She had already chopped off her hair. So if she didn’t disappear, she risked turning to dust before the Baroness’s lecture was over. She did not want to be sentenced to death by lecture.
She threw on her softest travel dress (the one she technically wasn’t allowed to wear), wrapped a cloak around herself, and grabbed a satchel. Inside went: eight romance novels (for reference), a hair ribbon (for emergencies), and the now slightly smushed pastry (for sugary support).
“That should do it. Who needs bread when you have smut?”
She stood in the middle of her room, taking in everything one last time—the book her brother had given her.
The stack of embroidery mishaps was shoved under her bed.
The portrait of her mother at Esther’s age.
Lastly, her eyes landed on her desk. The quill pen her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday sat pristinely beside decorative paper.
Esther slowly walked over, thinking of all the things she should say before she left. But she didn’t have time.
She settled on two short letters:
Father,
I love you. But I am not a treaty. Please don’t send anyone after me who isn’t fireproof. Better yet, don’t send anyone.
—Esther
P.S. Tell Basil I dried the towel.
And another:
Lucy,
If I die, burn my extra secret books. You know where they are. Love you forever.
—Esther
P.S. You’d be a male knight, to gloat about having the biggest sword. Very important.
If she had more time, she would have written letters to Basil and the Baroness as well, but she didn’t know what would be appropriate. She wanted to thank them for never giving up on her and to apologize for not being a good princess.
She sniffed and blinked hard, willing herself not to cry. She gave herself a moment to collect herself before making either the best or the worst decision of her life.
“What happened to your hair?” Lucy’s shout split the quiet, immediately muffled by Esther’s palm over her mouth. Esther both loved and hated her friend’s uncanny timing. At that moment, it leaned more toward hate.
“What happened to knocking?” Esther whispered, releasing her hand from Lucy’s mouth.
“I haven’t knocked on your door since my first day as your personal maid.
Now tell me why you look like that.” Lucy spread her arms wide, gesturing at Esther’s entire being.
She didn’t know where to begin. The mismatched, untied boots, wrinkled cloak, and wrongly buttoned dress all painted a picture of a woman who didn’t know how to dress herself.
Because she didn’t, and it couldn’t have been more painfully obvious.
“Long story. Short version: arranged marriage. Warted orc king. I’m leaving.”
Lucy peeked into Esther’s satchel as she straightened her buttons and cloak. “You packed eight books and no food?”
“I have a cinnamon roll!”
“You can’t even start a fire,” she grumbled, kneeling to swap Esther’s boots to match.
“Actually, I always start fires,” Esther said, pointing at the puddle of what used to be a candle and the slightly singed curtains.
“Why is it always the curtains?” Lucy shoved two meat pies into Esther’s satchel. “Here. Try not to die stupid.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“Good girl.” Lucy squeezed her tightly with trembling arms. “Go before I cry and think better of not stopping you.”
“I love you.” Esther hugged her back hard, holding back her own tears, then ran. She was grateful for the embrace before she disappeared. She might have regretted it otherwise if they had never seen each other again.
“Yeah,” Lucy’s voice cracked. “I’ll buy you as much time as I can. Now go.”
Esther ran without looking back. If she did, she couldn’t trust herself to keep going. She just wanted to see one more place before she left, the only place she could ever breathe and feel alive.
The garden her mother had loved so dearly.
She couldn’t remember her face anymore, aside from portraits. But she still faintly remembered having scones and milk with her mother during afternoon tea in this garden.
“Mother,” she said softly into the wind, “if you can hear me, please don’t let me die stupid. Or messy.”
She took a deep breath. She had never used a teleportation spell before; her father had strictly forbidden it. But she had read about it. She decided not to think about how it could go wrong. She would deal with whatever happened after.
She drew the rune sigil she vaguely remembered into the ground.
The wind whipped her cloak. Golden static tickled her skin, warming the cool air around her.
She closed her eyes and let go. Mind blank. Emotions as empty as she could muster.
The world bent, light flared, and then she vanished into a golden fog.
Lucy’s voice echoed in the background.
“Don’t die stupid!”