Mirrors ✔️

Chapter 11: Trap

Renee

I'm still on the bed, buried in Princess Valarie's dark, magenta coverings. The light has leaked through the window, letting sunlight spill into my eyes no matter what I do to block it. I'm still here. Still trapped.

Only when Valarie was prisoner here- and yes, I realize that's what she was, now- she had me. Me to make sure she didn't die here, starving and alone. Me to keep her safe from herself. Who do I have, exactly? The cheerful bluebirds that chirp and fly outside the window? They pay me no notice, used to the girl inside.

But I'm not her! I want to scream. Let me out!

It scares me, what I've contemplated since being put in Valarie's place. What if I become her?

I push myself up into a sitting position, making sure the blankets stay on top of me. I can't see far past the red- it's not blood I refuse to think like that I refuse it's not its not its not- velvet hangings that drape over the sides of the bed, but I don't need to. I have a good view of the window, and of the door. I wonder if that's intentional, before scolding myself. Of course it is. Either the King did it, to taunt Valarie, or the Princess did it to calculate escapes when she was supposedly weak in bed. Or maybe it was both of them, using it to their own purpose.

It gives me chills, just how many deeper meanings I can find in every single thing here.

I carefully swing my legs out from under the blankets so they dangle over the side of the bed, letting my toes brush the cold stone floor. My dark, wood-coloured shoes rest beside to the door, both in separate places from when they'd been thrown in anger at the wall during another failed attempt to find a weakness I could use to escape.

There is no way out. No weakness in the door unless it is already open. And Valarie knows that. So do I, despite my attempts to lie to myself. There is no way out.

Then how did Eva get in to take the Princess? Or, if Valarie was telling the truth....how did Valarie sneak to meet her?

My eyes are drawn, again, to the window. But her tower is so high up......

I stand up fully and shuffle over to the ledge. Outside, I can see far, far below, and for a moment the height makes me dizzy. All the way to the grassy meadow- now full of other servants with baskets and younger boys holding letters- and over to the tall stone wall that rises almost as high as where I am now. There is a single yellow daffodil that still waves in the breeze, resisting the trampling feet.

I can also see a small thorny bush that is almost as out of place as the pretty flower.

And the rope ladder that extends down towards the ground.

How could Valarie have forgotten this when she was trying to escape? The window is loose, too, and I lift it up with no difficulty. My fingers are used to it.

Barely containing my newfound excitement, I run to collect the two abandoned shoes and slip them on before forcing myself through the narrow space. For a second, half of my body is waving in the breeze outside and the other half stuck in the room. Then I manage to get all the way out, grasping desperately at the ladder only to have it give way beneath me on strands of rope almost all the way frayed.

The king set one last trap for the Princess, is the last thing I think before I begin to plummet through the air.