Her Rightful Place

6: The Decision

"Mireille?" Xavier calls, stepping cautiously into the cottage, not completely certain that the dark robed figure had in fact been the young woman.

"Yes, Xavier?" Mireille asks, stepping out of her bedroom with a last bundle of her personal belongings. He smiles at the sight of her but then immediately turns serious again.

"The Queen would be most appreciative if you would come outside and lift the enchantment from the weapons immediately."

Mireille arches an eyebrow enterprisingly. "What compensation be I offered for this favor?"

"The job she has already offered you."

"That's asking another favor, not offering compensation."

"Not to her mind."

"I believe her mind is diseased, Your Highness. You can tell her that if lifting the enchantment from those weapons results in my leaving my home to work for her, then the magic shall remain until she finds a way to break the spell herself."

Xavier grins. "You drive a tough bargain."

Mireille smiles grimly. "I learned from the best."

"You know the Queen will refuse your logic."

"So?"

"She will probably set your home afire."

"That'll really infuriate all the magic left in it."

"What about you, Mireille?" The way he says her name rouses feelings and desires in her that she finds so foreign that she quashes them immediately, forcing her mind onto more important matters.

"I'll escape. You know Christelle and I have been moving me out. Look around. Everything of importance to me is gone already. I'll be all right, thank you." He nods and bites his lip, wanting to discuss the matter of Princess Mireille of Vyrunia again but unsure of how to go about it. "What is it?"

"Where will you go, Mireille? Have you given the Vyrunian Palace any more thought?"

She shakes her head vehemently. "There's no way I'm a princess, any princess. I'll admit that I may be Vyrunian, and I'll probably end up in Vyrunia after all this is over, but I can't be a princess. Listen to me. I sound like any other village girl. Look at me. I'm--"

"Beautiful, and you look just like Queen Généviève of Vyrunia did in her prime." She is so shocked by the word 'beautiful' that she just stares at him like he has completely lost his mind. "And it is no wonder that you speak as a villager does. You have lived nearly your whole life as one. Once in a palace, your true colors will shine." He switches to Vyrunian, a continuation of testing his theory. "It is possible, Mireille. Anything is possible."

"I'm no princess," she insists stubbornly, but in Vyrunian. As soon as the words leave her lips she falls to the ground in shock, one hand over her mouth. Xavier approaches her and offers her a hand, which she regards as though it is diseased.

"Where in God's creation did that come from?" she asks carefully in Mordalcean, too stunned to move.

"From the same place your dream about the Palace of Roses did, I warrant. The same place that inspired you to recreate it in thread. And you have heard what the Duke of Pelanshire and I have already mused about, how you look like the monarchs and are of the right age.... Everything seems to fit together, Mireille. Why can you not be a princess?"

"I don't remember anything. That's kind of a big deal. You'd think even a small child could remember that she was a princess." She finally, hesitantly, takes Xavier's hand and he pulls her to her feet. Neither notices that their hands maintain contact thereafter.