Dark Paradise

Chapter 14: You Wouldn't Expect It~

Chapter 14: You Wouldn't Expect It~

We were taken back to the kingdom after the confession I made to those guards. I swore to them on my princess's honor that I did nothing to hurt Roma; but that she did it to herself on her own free will.

We arrived at the palace not even ten minutes later and the Queen instantly requested an audience with us. I requested we washed up in order to look presentable for her majesty. She agreed, and sent us to her daughter's closet, which was a whole separate room, and the princess agreed to help up with our outfits of choice.

Upon arrival, princess Lee-Ann looked like Victoria. I smiled at that; it was nice to see Victoria in a dress for the first time.

She wore a lengthy royal blue gown. By the way her feet tipped along the tile in her closet-room, I could tell she went barefoot. Her long brown hair and distant hazel eyes were unmistakably Victoria's.

"You don't like palace life, do you?" I asked her, sitting on a chair against one of the walls. My legs were washe up and Lee-Ann was fixing a dress onto Celeste. She sighed for a moment before commenting, "Okay, Celeste, you're done."

Lee-Ann looked at me and smiled, motining for me to follow her to my size range. We talked about colors and lengths for about five minutes before we picked out a deep purple gown with black lace and black lace gloves. I washed and dried my lace up boots and was about to fit them on my feet when she said, "No, I'll give you a pair."

She fit black heels on me that had buckles going around them. She slipped the dress on me over my head, and began to tighten up the laces in the back. "Not necessarily, no," she said after a long pause.

"What?" I asked, staring at her. She responded, "It's not that I don't like palace life, it was just the way I was brought up." I continued to stare at her. She sighed and continued to lace up my dress.\

"I wasn't always an only child." she told me. "I had an older brother named Roman, and he was quite the adventurer. All he wanted to do was be outside and around all the townspeople to show that they weren't lesser than him. He was a skilled archer and horseback rider. Simply put, he wanted to be everything he wasn't.

"One day, he went into town and didn't come back. My mother sent me down into town to look for him." she paused and sucked in a breath. I knew she was crying.

"When I got there, people were gathering around something. I went to look, and I saw my brother's body, dead at sixteen. I was only eleven. Imagine a small, eleven year old girl leading a vigil of townspeople up to the castle to tell my mother he had died."

At that one moment I turned around and hugged her. She sobbed into my damp hair. "It was terrible," she said. "I was wearing a white dress that day, and his blood got all over it."

I hugged her harder. Never have I ever had a friend who looked at her brother's bloody corpse and had to carry it all the way home. I pet her head and pulled away. "Come on, let's get you fixed up."

She finished my dress and did my makeup: black eyeliner with purple eyeliner under the eye, and a fair amount of midnight black mascara. She tied a ribbon around my waist, and helped me slip on the lace gloves.

I then helped her fix her makeup. She ended up with a natural look and a lot of mascara and eyeliner. Lee-Ann got up and walked over to Lydia, telling her to pick out a dress.

"After that night," she said to me suddenly, starightening up her makeup. "My mother kept me from leaving the palace grounds. She refused to let me out of the palace, unless it was in the backyard. I was a free spirit confined to a large palace."