The Blossoming Willow

Chapter 1: The Slave Girl

Mary felt sick to her stomach as she climbed the stone steps up to her tower room. Matilda, the palace housekeeper, had informed her that she had caught the prince's eye. Tomorrow, she would be his for the day.

She knew it was an inevitability. Any of the female staff who had reached her sixteenth birthday could be called to serve the prince. And Mary was now nineteen. It was a wonder she had managed to avoid it for so long, considering she had been a palace slave since age fourteen. Five years as a slave to the royal family of Framingham!

Some days it felt as if her childhood had been a dream. Could she really have been born the princess of another land? Where even was her homeland?

After the raiders had come, they had packed she and several other kidnapped children from the fishing village onto a ship. Then they had made a long voyage out to an island where the children were trained to serve the elites of society. Those who did poorly in their training were quickly sold off to presumably worse fates. The others were kept to fetch a higher price.

Mary had had an advantage over her peers because she had been a princess. She understood the culture of the well-to-do. Things like a tea service and how to read and write. Though it had been strange to become the one who was serving the tea, instead of being given the tea.

When she was old enough to fetch a good price, she was packed onto another ship and began the months' long slave trip voyage, eventually ending up in Framingham.

And now she was to become Prince Steven's personal slave for the day. That only meant one thing: he wanted to take her to his bed. Many of the palace maids felt it was a great honor. Even a slave was relieved of her usual tasks when the prince asked for her. But it also meant giving your body wholly over to him to do as he pleased with. There were rumors of the things the prince asked for.

She shuddered as she thought about the stories she had heard. Some said the experience wasn't that bad. Others claimed that it was much better if you had lost your virginity before the prince got ahold of you. It supposedly made things easier.

Mary had yet to lose her virginity. A small part of her still clung to her fairytale-like past. Before the Invasion, her parents had begun interviewing suitors for her eldest sister Sylvia. Even though Sylvia couldn't have married until she was at least sixteen, her betrothal would have led to an alliance with a neighboring kingdom.

As part of this process, Mother had had a serious discussion with Sylvia about the importance of not losing your virginity until your wedding night. It was a gentlewoman's duty to save herself for her future husband. It proved to him her purity and assured him that any child she bore was truly his heir. After the conversation, Sylvia had lectured her sisters on the topic, though the details had been a bit vague.

Now that Mary was a full-grown woman, she understood things a little better. Though some things were still unclear to her. Like why it was so important for a well-bred woman to keep her virginity when it seemed like the palace maids all wanted to get rid of theirs as quickly as possible. She had tried to keep as many of her royal mannerisms as she could over the years. Protecting her virginity until she married – if she ever married – was one way she could stay connected to the person she had been.

But was it really worth it? There wasn't any chance that she would ever stop being a slave. Slaves didn't earn any kind of wages, so they could never save up to buy their freedom. She would never see her homeland again.

It had been ten years since she had last seen her parents and sisters and eight since she had seen her brother. She knew her parents were dead, and she assumed that Peter was as well. What kind of fourteen-year-old could survive joining an army? Their foe had been those responsible for the conquering of their kingdom and their parents' deaths. There was no way some small group of loyalists and a cocky lad could take back the kingdom.