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“—bends itself to suit me,” the girl murmured, holding down her orange hair as the wind tried to pick it up and flutter it behind her.
The beautiful young woman stood in a grassy field, studying a grave site built in the shadow of some trees. The marker bore the name Prisca Benedict. The name of a member of the Volakian Royal Family who had died in battle. The girl gazed at it, her crimson eyes creasing into a smile.
“Princess, you’ll catch your death if you stand out here in the wind,” someone said from behind her. It was an old woman, dressed in noble garments that she wore as easily as if she had been born in them. Several servants stood behind her, their appearance signaling that the woman was everything she looked to be. It was equally obvious that the young lady to whom the old one showed such respect was in a more august position than hers. “Princess,” the old woman repeated, “please listen to me…”
“Enough with your ‘princess.’ It’s foolishness. Prisca Benedict is dead and in the ground. And that being so, it cannot be right to call me princess. I’m supposed to be your precious granddaughter.”
“ ” The old woman bowed her head. The girl’s attitude was awfully self-important for a granddaughter.
The girl could sense the gesture of submission behind her. “Hmph,” she said and looked back at the grave. Those who had died in the Rite of Imperial Selection were not usually commemorated with such things. There was no mercy for the defeated; such was the way of the Rite that the losers were typically reduced to ash, leaving not even corpses. So this grave marker for one Prisca Benedict was out of the ordinary. So was the fact that a girl’s body lay interred beneath it.
“She looked so much like me… To think that she would serve me twice.”
She thought of the body double who’d sacrificed herself against the assassins sent just before the Rite had begun. A girl with the same orange hair as the princess whom she had successfully protected. Her body had been treated respectfully, sent back to her family along with suitable compensation. But even in the grave, she was not left in peace; she had been given a new role. She would play the part of Prisca Benedict, in death as she had in life.
“A valuable thing,” was all the young woman said, and then she opened the scarlet folding fan in her hand with a crack. She’d taken it from her repulsive older sister—and now she fanned herself with it as she turned toward the old woman and the servants waiting behind her. And finally…
“Princess…”
“How many times must I tell you not to call me that? The princess who bore that title died pathetically. Tragically, perhaps, but it was only what she deserved for her inability to leaven the anxieties of her followers. The one before you now is… Hmph. What was it again?” The girl tilted her head in curiosity.
The old woman closed her eyes, and after a beat, she answered, “Priscilla.”
“Yes, that’s it.” The girl nodded slowly and closed the fan with a snap. Her older sister always used to tuck it away amid her cleavage—and the girl couldn’t do that, but perhaps in the near future, she might become able to. For she was alive. And as long as one was alive, there was a future. In which case…
“That means we can continue. After all…”
She looked up at the sky. Hovering in the almost disgustingly blue heavens, the sun burned so bright, it nearly seemed scarlet. She reached out a hand as if to grasp it, and she could still feel the warmth of the Bright Sword against her palm.
Comforted by the heat, the girl—Priscilla—smiled and said:
“…the world bends itself to suit me.”
<END>
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