See Me for Me

Life Upon the Wicked Stage

Queen Atossa stared at Lavinia. "What do you mean Amir is not here?"

"I'm not sure I can make it any clearer than the last ten times I told you," she replied, words beginning to drone.

"He has to be!" the eastern queen insisted. When Lavinia didn't respond (she was too busy rubbing her temples like Atossa was giving her a headache), something seemed to dawn on her. "Wait-- where's your son?"

That seemed to snap Lavinia back to attention. It had been a while since someone called Rupert her son in front of her. "Isadora seems to have run off for the same reason your son has."

Atossa blinked. "Sorry, who?"

Chamberlain was, frankly, fed up with this behavior from the queen. He stepped in before she could say anything else. "Rupert," he corrected, keeping his tone strategically cool. "He left for the forest in the middle of last night."

The Queen of the East nodded solemnly. "Then it's finally happening."

"It appears so, yes."

Lavinia's eyes flashed with anger. "Isadora is not a part of that ridiculous prophecy," she said, rising from her chair. She turned to Atossa. "If your son wants to risk his life fighting against the forest, so be it. But don't bring my little girl into it!"

"Let me get this straight," Atossa said, understandably confused. She spoke slowly. "Your child is--"

"The prince." Chamberlain looked his queen right in the eye. "He's told you time and again that he's the prince. And if that's not enough, the prophecy has told you that he's the prince. Your son is a part of it, and no matter how hard you might try, no amount of denying that will protect him from whatever fate is waiting for him in the Hollow of the Kings."

For once, it seemed the queen was at a loss for words.

"So the prophecy is in motion," Atossa finally said, breaking the silence. "This is worse than I feared. I have gravely misjudged the situation."

Lavinia scoffed. "I'll say."

"I'd always believed that, despite our differences, it was possible for our two kingdoms to stop the forest, if only we could work together," she said. "When Amir disappeared, I'd hoped he had made his way here, to attempt some sort of alliance--"

"And when he didn't come back, you assumed I'd thrown him into a cell and sentenced him to a fate worse than death?"

The eastern queen raised an eyebrow. "Well, given history, can you blame me?"

"You always did think the worst of me."

"And you rarely proved me wrong," she countered. "I loathe to think of what might have happened to my son if I treated him the way you treat yours."

"Isadora is not at all the same as your--"

"Your son is more similar to mine than you might think." The Queen of the East straightened herself up. "Sit down, Lavinia. If you disrespect your son, you disrespect mine. And I won't work together with someone who is more concerned with tradition than the safety and well-being of both our children and our kingdoms."

"You think I don't care about my own child's well-being?" she asked, sounding on the verge of tears. "Everything I've done, I've done to protect--"

"The prince," Chamberlain cut in again.

Lavinia looked at him helplessly. When she saw that he wasn't going to back away from this, she let out a long breath. "Yes, I suppose so. I did it for Rupert."