The Flower Crown Princess

Part 4

Maridi walked into the hall at half- past nine disheveled and tired- looking. Her eyes were puffed up and red from crying. That didn't surprise me a single bit, seeing as she had been crying for the past hour and a half.

Finen saw her almost immediately, going over to her and saying something I couldn't hear over the fiddlers. In response to him, though, she pointed at me.

My oldest brother started to edge his way around the ballroom - towards me. I left my father's side and took extra ladylike steps to meet him. I
must have had a worried look on my face, because he told me to calm down. Or his eyes did at least.

" What's wrong?" I began to panic. Maridi was still looking at me.

" Nothing is wrong, Nivh," he said, calmly, as he always is and always will be. " Princess Maridi would like to speak to you."

Curious, I demurely walk over to my almost sister in law, trying to hide the fact that I'm incredibly intrigued by why she wants to speak to me. I feel both Finen and my father's gaze as I reach her. I drop a deep curtsy. She is my equal, but she is also royalty.

"You-"

"Not here," she hisses before I can finish my sentence. She keeps her facial expression passive and she starts to walk from the room. "Follow me. I need to tell you something."

A minute later, I was upstairs in her chambers. She closes the door. My heart began to race. What if she wasn't the Princess Maridi Mysdatter of the River-People, but an imposter? I'd heard stories of murderers and kidnappers and torturers, what if she was one? I began to back slowly towards the window, ready to break it and jump down from the two-story height into the hydrangea bushes below.

"It's alright," states the princess, and I see that she's no more than a scared, red -haired sixteen year old girl who has fears like everyone else, who is human. Suddenly I'm not scared.

She sits on the bed and slowly begins to speak, one brown eye releasing a tear that slides down her cheek. "Once upon a time, I wasn't a princess. Maybe by birth, but not in my mind. In my mind, I wasn't ever Princess Maridi, I was just Maridi. My parents let me run free with the children of our capitol, Aibrean. I'd play in the rivers and the streams with them all day, almost every day, until I was almost ten." She draws a deep, harrowing breath and continues. "When I was ten, my friends figured out that I was not the simple village girl that I had been to them. Don't ask how they took nearly seven years to figure that out. I had never lied to them, nor had I told then that I was from the village. They just- assumed. They started to leave me, and by the time I was eleven, my royal responsibilities had become impressed in me. I couldn't meet with the few of the that were still there for me. Soon, though, I figured a way to meet with the one remaining friend- I'd meet him at night, once a week."

I gaped at her for a moment. Him? A boy?

She ignored my gaping mouth and went on. "I met with him as often as possible. He never left me like my friends did. They didn't want to get on my bad side because my father would have done horrible things to them. This friend became a suitor of sorts when he was fifteen and I was fourteen, but my father didn't know about him or our secret nighttime meetings. Then a golden plate was stolen by one of the servant women- my friend's mother. She was only trying to feed their family. She was with child, and was desperate." Another few tears drip from her eye. "My father is a cruel and unjust man. He did unspeakable things to her- torturing her over the course of months in awful, violent ways, until she gave birth in the castle dungeon. He made her labor for hours without a midwife, all on her own. It took two days, and nearly killed her. He then killed her newborn daughter in front of her. The grief, added to the weakness of her torture and childbirth, drew her to her death."

"All this over a plate?" I am horrified. Maridi nods, and I see that she's horrified too. I see the horrors replay in her brown eyes.

"My friend- I guess I should reveal his name now. It was Eann. He turned bitter towards the crown, even to me, until he saw how upset I was over the ordeal. He found a rebel group whose goal was to establish democracy- where the people elect their own leaders, instead of risking a leader like my father. This group wanted Eann and I to join. We did. They were sending us here, to the hills, to do just that." Her tears flow freely now, and she doesn't bother to wipe them away as they drip off her chin and onto the floor. "We were going to run away together. Get married. Forget that I was royalty. We were going to be happy. Then my father found us out- or he found me, but Eann was unfound. My father told me that if I wanted to go to the hills, the heir to the throne of the Hill-People was unbetrothed, and their kingdom was far larger than ours. That's all a girl is good for to him- a pawn. We're made only to have sons and more political pawns and make a good alliance. To earn him extra armies and more land." She is sobbing now. "Here I am now, father dearest, are you happy?" she cries through her sobbing.

"That's high treason," I told Princess Maridi, shocked that she'd told me and flabbergasted that she would consider such a thing. "You could be executed, or tortured like your forbidden suitor's mother."

Maridi sighs angrily
"Why do I try to talk to you? I knew perfectly well how high of treason it was. I see something in you, Nivh. I'm not sure why but I want you to join me."

Picture at top is Nivh