Inequable - The Lost Princess

Prologue

TRIGGER WARNING: This book contains depictions and mentions of graphic content such as sexual assault, assault, scars, executions and other brutalities. Reader discretion is advised.

Three books of hand-sewn leather coverings rested on top of carefully braided copper-red curls, rocking as the five-year-old moved. Two more rested on each shoulder, the loose copper curls rained down her back. The colour was striking against her golden beige dress, the decadent silk brushed against her linen shift undergarments.

"... after all," the young girl continued, as she walked around the enormous library lit with candles and torches in iron sleeves on the wall. Her stark, unmarred white shift peeks out under her billowing silk sleeves, gliding through the air as she turned in her dyed leather shoes. "I am the first daughter of my age to be named apparent."

"It's that reason we're telling ourselves for this?"

Where the girl spoke with clear, carefully enunciated words, the boy, not much older than her, spoke with lame pronunciation. Much like his difference in speech, the clothes he wore were far less nice. A long woollen blouse that reached past his knees is riddled with holes and of a pale colour discoloured by age and stains. The dyes used are cheap compared to the dyes used in the girl's dress. Dark woollen leggings covered his legs in the same well-worn, aged and dirty material, his feet covered by wrinkled laced closed cloth shoes.

His curly dark blonde hair is limp, weighed down by natural oils, lacking the nourishment from the expensive hair products the redhead had a surplus of. His freckles are unlike hers, where hers is a light peppering across her delicate features, like a soft dance, his are dark and few, speckled across his face without a pattern.

"What other reason is there?" The girl quipped, swayed and turned, careful to keep the books balanced on her shoulders and head. The boy scoffed, dragging his leg back, and leant his back against the edge of the carved table. "And," she bragged, making the boy roll his eyes. "I was the first in the ancestors of the land to be named apparent at such a young age."

The boy laughed, his crooked grin showed his discoloured teeth. "And first to break a royal sculpture."

"That was your fault!" She bellowed, whirling around to glare at him. The books toppled to the floor.

As she turned, her long, curly copper hair shifted, a flash of the royal seal marked behind her right ear stark against her pale skin. She bent down, picked up a novel with her left hand, a similar etching inked permanently on the base of her thumb. No matter how she turned her left hand, the royal seal will always be visible.

The redhead tossed the book at her friend, still glowering. "And you know it."

He ducked out of the way of the hurled book. "I..." he emphasised as she picked up the remaining books and repositioned them on her shoulders and head. "... wasn't the one wielding the catapult."

"That is not quite how I remember it."

"Of course it's not," the boy laughed, rounding the table carved with the same royal seal ingrained and inked into her skin to pick up the thrown book. "It's also not how'd you'd remember Ozuro bridge or the horse incident."

This time, it's her soft, melodic laugh that filled the quiet, lonesome library. "Well, I will accept fault for the horses. The bridge; I do not suppose you remember the name of whom it was who came up with the idea, do you?"

"Okay, okay."

"Deryn... something or other."

Deryn, the boy, walked up to her with her hurled book and plonked it on top of the two balanced on her head as she continued to pace past him. "How many okays must you hear before you'll accept I've relent?"