Chapter Two #4
A stray thought floated through my head that this faeman was insane. What kind of addled, self-important lunatic believed taking me away to do whatever he was going to do to me, was a grand act in service of the war and kingdom?
The thought crossed my mind and evaporated, unable to summon the shouts, biting retorts, or kicking and slaps that it would if he hadn’t bound my free will as easily as they did my magic, all those years ago.
The staircase released us into a space grander than Kirwan’s home could ever boast. Tinkling chandeliers reflected dancing rainbows on crème walls flecked with gold.
Portraits gazed down on me, the borrowed images of queens past who couldn’t help me, and a grave and disapproving look as though they wouldn’t even if they could.
Kaelan stopped before double doors and knocked.
“Enter.”
Fear and disgust tried to push through. He brought me here for someone... or he brought me to share. Why couldn’t I run? How would I get away?
Kaelan got behind and shoved me inside. I tripped over the corner of a rug and dropped to my knees where I stayed, my body refusing the command to stand up.
My eyes rolled in my head, taking in as much as my stiff neck would allow.
We were in a room the likes of which was ten times the size of our modest hut in Gutter Galley.
The finest of furniture stood upon ancient and expensive rugs. I felt their history pressing into my knees. Tapestries climbed the grand windows, allowing the barest sliver of moonlight to grace a bed of silks and downy pillows.
A figure rose from the blankets, concealed in shadows.
“I found her, my love.” Kaelan dropped beside me and bowed low till his forehead touched the rug. “The right height and build. Even better, she’s a nobody. Nothing. Just another war wife desperate for some coin, and not the child of anyone important. No one will notice her absence.”
“Is that so?” A light, almost musical voice floated out of the shadows. “How did such a perfect find land in your lap?”
“It is Meya,” he breathed, raising his head. “She sent her to us. Just when we’d begun to lose hope. Our actions are blessed by the All Mother herself. I know it.”
“As do I, my love. It is as you say. This meaningless waif was sent to me in my time of need by Meya herself. This is her will.”
She stepped out of the shadows, and not a speck of recognition lit in my eyes.
No, wait...
It came to me. Painted flyers in the square. Model figurines in the shops. A name on everyone’s lips.
Princess Emiana.
Hair so red it rejected the moonlight fell around her shoulders and brushed the bottom of her bodice.
To say she was lovely was to insult her.
So simple a word did not begin to describe the beauty of her emerald eyes, bee-stung lips, rosy cheeks, and jewel-cuffed pointed ears.
Robes like angel wings floated around her form, revealing more than it concealed.
I instinctively averted my eyes. A finger under my chin drew them back up where she trapped them in her green pools. I would’ve cringed if my face would’ve allowed it. No one had ever looked at me with such contempt before, and I endured Kirwan’s hatred for years.
She halted in her tracks. “She’s moon-kissed. How—? She’s disgusting,” Princess Emiana spat. “If only Meya had seen fit to send us a comely girl. It sickens me to think I’ll be wearing this face for the foreseeable future.”
Confusion wafted through my mind and dissipated, not allowing the questions it brought to my lips to come out. What in the name of the All Mother was she talking about?
“Disgusting, my love? I wouldn’t say so,” Kaelan spoke up. “She has a certain fairness about her that I thought worthy—”
“Don’t you dare question me.”
The snap closed his mouth.
Irritated, Emiana threw my face away harder than she needed to.
“She may be the right height and build, but she is wrong in every other way. I shall be as cursed as her for what we do here tonight. Punishment for dabbling in the unholy arts, but...” She blew out a long breath. “That is how it must be.
“Stand her up.”
Kaelan stood me on my feet, gentler in his touch than she was.
“Undo whatever magics you performed on her.”
“Your Majesty?”
Emiana spoke to him, but looked deep into my eyes. “Her magic is no less bound than mine. There is nothing she can do to fight back against us. No need to restrain her body and mind too, unless she gives us reason.”
Her compassion surprised me for the brief moment I felt surprise. Largely because she was still sneering at me.
Coolness spread down my head and flowed through my body. In the space of a breath, control was mine again.
I lurched back, tripping over my feet and nearly dropping on the carpet. “What is this? What am I doing here!”
“Hey! You address your princess.” Kaelan advanced on me. “You will hold your tongue, and speak only when spoken to.”
“Fuck you!”
Kaelan’s brows blew up his forehead. I suspect it wasn’t often a Gutter girl spoke to him like that.
“Kaelan,” Emiana said, raising a hand. “I will handle this.”
Falling silent, he snapped to the side—ever the obedient soldier. Emiana gave her first change of expression since I was brought into the room. She smiled.
“Fuck you indeed.” Her voice was a soft, light brush.
“You’re angry. You’re scared and worried, but just because you stand in my presence, you’re ordered to hide what you feel.
To lock it away and put on the face of a happy servant.
Faemen...” She slid a look to Kaelan. “Cannot understand what it is to live bound by such chains. You may even believe that I don’t know either.
“I, Princess Emiana, live in a grand castle high above your problems. How could I ever relate to someone such as you?”
I lifted my chin. “Not to be rude to Your Eminence, but, you can’t.”
“That,” she said, turning her back on me, “is where you’re wrong.
You see me and think I have wealth, but is that the case when every coin I spend is under the control and permission of others?
You think I have power, but is it powerful to sit silently in a room of advisors and rulers, waiting for a single person to ask my opinion.
You think I have freedom, and I ask you, what woman in Lyrica does? ” she hissed.
“My magic was bound at ten, same as you. My choices were taken from me, same as you. My father sold me to warm the bed of a brutish man, just like you!” She whirled on me, stiffening my spine. “In the end, we are all the same to them... whores.”
I said nothing. What was there for me to say? To compare our lives was to live in a deluded fantasy. True, I knew nothing of the troubles of a princess, but I doubt she knew what it was to go days without food, weeks without a bath, or a lifetime with no dignity.
“I haven’t convinced you,” she said, reading my expression easily. “You don’t believe we’re all the same, no matter the station? Then, this is all I need to say to convince you.
“The royal line passed through my mother, not my father, King Salman. Try as they did, my grandparents were not able to have the son they wished for, leaving my mother to shoulder her birthright. But did they allow her to?
“No.” The skin around her eyes tightened. “At ten years old, they bound her magic—the only and rightful heir to the throne—and they married her off to the outsider who sits on her throne. The sickness took her when I was five. The earliest memories I have of my mother... are of watching her die.”
Hard and steady eyes beheld me. “You share the same fate as a queen, little whore. What more proof do you need?”
I did not react to her name for me. “Why am I here? You did not bring me before you to tell me I share a queen’s fate.”
She shrugged lightly, padding across the room to the grand window.
“As it happens, I did. You see, a year ago, my father’s advisor sat me down and told me history would repeat itself.
I would not be allowed to rule the kingdom that is my birthright.
As his only child and a female one at that, my father was marrying me off for the good of the nation.
“I expected this,” Emiana said softly. “I was raised by tutors and nursemaids. An advisor had to tell me about my impending marriage because my father couldn’t be bothered to untangle from the limbs of his harem to tell me himself.
Someone who never had a trace of affection to show me, would not grant me the throne.
I knew it was coming, but I never expected the name he uttered next to be Alisdair Shadowsoul. ”
I threw a subtle look toward the door. How close could I get to it before Kaelan struck me down?
“For days, I was in shock,” she continued. “I had been ready to do my duty until I heard that name. The truth of him is in the title. King of Wind and Wild. Shadowsoul is little more than a beast. An animal. He will rip me to shreds with the same blood-dripping claws he used to sign the treaty.
“Well, I say no.”
I inched toward the door. Kaelan was too fixed on Emiana to notice.
“The one thing they haven’t taken from us yet is the right to defend ourselves and fight for our lives,” she said to the fallen stars. “That is what I do this night.”
I reached behind me, feeling for the wood.
“I would ask your permission, but I do not need it. I would ask your forgiveness, but I do not care for it. My actions are blessed by Mother Meya and I— Stop her!”
Throwing the door open, I ran. “Help! Someone, help—!”
My knees locked. Scream trapping in my throat, I fell face-first onto polished stone. My nose snapped—spurting blood on the floor and in my mouth.
Kaelan dragged me back into her bedroom. He was not gentle that time.
“Forgive me, my princess.” He threw me on the floor. “She will not get away from me again.”
“It’s fine. I did just finish saying it is still our right to defend ourselves. The girl has some sense of instinct.” Emiana left the window and knelt down beside me. “She knows she should fear what is coming next.”