The King's Children

Hors d'oeuvres

Boat bought to rest on the docks, I look at the ship resting far into the sea.

We'd laid anchor there some time ago, and our belongings unloaded onto a sturdy but small boat right after. We were rowed to shore quickly and dropped off even quicker. I stayed seated on the boat the entire time, the further we got from the ship, the closer we got to shore, as our little items were thrown onto the docks, and right until a hand stopped in front of me to help me off the boat.

Then I stayed stood, watching as the boat rowed further away, and the ship began moving, and the royal flag etched atop the mast disappeared into the fog. Then I slowly turned around and the two of us made our way even slower, past the country people and village, past the curious gazes and loud noises, and towards where we'd been assigned to live.

It was a prison. And some would say of my own making.

I pull my hairpin free. At least I had the emblem on it.

A symbol of who I was. A reminder of who I was stripped of being. A mockery of who I've been forced to become.

"This isn't so bad," Ara is positive. She always has been, and always will be.

I didn't help her as she struggled with the two bags we came to the countryside with, all the way to our new home. That's all they allowed us to take. And helping her would not be befitting of my former title, the shadow of which would always loom over our heads and separate us.

"You must be kidding. It's a shit-hole." I can speak how I wish now. There you go, that's a positive.

Ara's mouth opens wide at what I say. I can tell she's about to remind me to watch my language. 'Walls or not, ears are around everywhere on palace grounds', she'd said to me once.

But we're no longer on palace soil.

We're in the farthest of the country villages, thrown on it like we were banished which is no less than what they did to us, and refined to this existence of living in a small, worn down hut, wearing bland, drab clothes, and rationing our food, and awaiting the day we are inevitably executed or die of nature.

Can't come soon enough I suppose, I couldn't live this life. It wasn't living, it was a joke. I was a noblewoman. I always will be. This could not be my fate, only the cruelest of detours before I made my way back to my destiny.

Back to the palace.

Back to the inner court.

Back as Queen.

And this time, I will reign.

Trust me, I will.