Pink. Her room was pink, and she had pissed herself, a little anyway.
Rina sat on the edge of her bed, brooding over it: It was a fancy thing, all satin and ribbons, soft pink and robin’s egg blue. It looked like something a little girl would have, a baby.
And she had had a nursemaid for as long as she could remember. Sure, they kept getting fancier and fancier titles, her latest, an ancient woman in her forties, was all the way up to ‘lady in waiting,’ but they’d all had essentially the same job.
The maid was quietly stacking the presents Rina had received that afternoon for her sixteenth birthday. Songs, she was practically a woman, just one more year and she’d be of marrying age, and yet she still lived like a child.
That boy, the one who’d taken her home, Liv had called him ‘Rafe,’ had gotten out of the carriage he’d hired just before the palace gate. He’d told her, ‘You’re home now. I’d go with you, but I don’t want to get blamed.’ A part of her, the practiced part, knew she should have ordered him to stay, another part, the child, wanted to scream and cry and break down until he went with her. Instead, she’d gone on in a daze.
She hadn’t even stepped out of the Bastard’s carriage. She’d waited, frozen in place, until the palace guards carried her up to her room. Like a baby… a baby that had pissed itself.
Her door opened, and her stepmother, Crown Princess Adelaide, stepped through. The woman was tall and confident and always wore purple and gold, the crown’s colors. They didn’t talk much.
“Oh, Alexandrina! Poor dear,” Adelaide spoke in her concerned voice. “I came as soon as I heard. Are you okay?”
The maid gave a nervous glance. Rina hadn’t spoken all evening.
“I’ll be all right,” said Rina, surprised words had come at all. She’d half expected she’d gone mute.
“Did she hurt you?”
Rina looked at her wrist. Where the witch had grasped her, there was a bruise.
“Oh, how terrible,” said Adelaide, this time using her—very concerned—voice. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now. She won’t be doing that again.”
“Good.” Rina nodded.
“How was the party at least? Sorry, I couldn’t attend.”
Something must be wrong. She never used that word: ‘sorry.’
“It was fine, just lovely.”
“Good.” Her stepmother smiled. “Next year will be the big one. I hear Prince Hugo of Orleasia will be looking…”
Oh, finally to the heart of it. Adelaide was worried about ‘the princess,’ not Rina. Prince Hugo was even older than her father.
Adelaide walked over to the neat stack of boxes, all wrapped in soft pink and blue, just like Rina’s bedroom. “Didn’t you even get a chance to open your presents?”
“No, there was a scheduling conflict, what with the kidnapping,” said Rina. The rhythm of the words had a bit of that smart mouth her stepmother hated, but her voice sounded hollow.
“Well, here.” The future queen pulled a large box off the pile and held it out.
Rina didn’t feel like opening presents, but she didn’t feel like talking to her stepmother any longer than she had to, so she lifted her hands and let the woman place the box into them.
“Go ahead.” Adelaide nodded.
Tearing at the paper, Rina carefully split it the way she’d been taught, then loosened the ribbon and pulled the top off the box. Inside lay a torso-length sheath, reinforced with whale bone and stitched with rose gold wire: a training corset.
“I hope you like it,” said Adelaide, “You might find it a bit small at first, but it’s strong. I had my own personal tailor make it, in lieu of the dress he was going to make me. But for you, it was worth it.”
Rina thought herself skinny already, twig-like actually. She didn’t want to deal with this. She just wanted this woman to leave so she could cry in peace, so she forced the words, “I love it! Thank you ever so much!”
“Do you, do you really?” Adelaide said in her flattered voice.
“Yes! It’s perfect. It’s a great comfort to have such a loving stepmother.”
“Do you want to open more?”
Rina tensed up. This could go on for hours. She forced herself to appear relaxed. “No, I think I need my rest.”
“All right then, so glad I could help. Your father said he’ll check on you when he can.” And with a nod and a smile, she left.
The nurse maid, lady-in-waiting, watched nervously as Rina got up, walked over to the dresser, and retrieved a pair of silver scissors.
She went back, plopped down on the bed, drew the corset lengthwise against the blades, and squeezed.
They only cut a fraction of an inch before failing, stopped dead by the wire stitching.
“Should I… go?” asked the maid.
“Please.”
As soon as the door closed, she’d expected to start sobbing. That image, looking back from the carriage, burned in her mind: Ulbrecht decapitating the horses. That’s when she peed herself. What had he done to that witch? To that girl, Liv, the one she was so sure was going to be her friend.
Gazing into the mirror, she expected to see a wretch of a face staring back, but she saw only dry eyes, the eyes of an adult.
After waiting an hour for her father, knowing full well he wasn’t coming, she was surprised to hear footsteps from down the hall. Not the steady stride of her father, but the triple beat of two feet and a crutch. They stopped in front of her door and stayed silent so long she thought she’d imagined them, then started again, this time fading down the hall.
She stripped off the silver gown, the one she’d worn to the party, and reached to the very back of her wardrobe.
The black dress she now held in her hands had been much too large the first time she’d worn it. It had been made in haste for the funeral, after her mother’s sudden death. She’d caught the same fever as Marco, but had not been so ‘lucky.’
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Trying it on, Rina found it fit differently now. The sleeves were too short, leaving her forearms exposed, but the waist fit better, and where it had dragged before, the skirt stopped above her ankles, giving her a freedom of movement she wasn’t used to.
When her mother died, she’d thrown fits, refusing to eat, refusing to sit, or talk, or do anything properly. She sighed at what a stupid little girl she’d been, wondering if she was any less stupid now.
The day after the funeral, she’d run out onto the roof, giving the entire palace quite a fright. She used to go out there at night, when all the good little princesses should be sleeping, dreaming good little princess dreams. She usually went there just to be alone, to think. But that day had been different, that day she had wanted to be seen, to scare them.
Rina found herself opening the window, and the cool night air fluttered through her dress. She breathed it in and stepped outside.
Her bedroom window stuck up from the roof, making egress easy, and the roof was so gently sloping that there was normally little chance of falling, but with the blanket of snow, she wasn’t so sure. Carefully, she shifted her weight to check her footing. If anything, the snow added grip and made a pleasant crunching noise as she stepped onto it.
The air was chill, but there was little wind, so it wasn’t immediately unpleasant. She stepped to the outer edge, to where the city sat below in miniature. A carriage ran down the street looking like a child’s toy while lights shone through front windows of a row of townhomes, reminding her of doll houses.
She shuddered, wondering why she’d ever stopped coming out here. Oh yes, it was the bars her father had installed on her window after she’d thrown her fit. They’d only taken them down last year.
Walking to the inner edge of the roof, Rina gazed down at the courtyard. In the distance someone was laughing. Not a jovial or good-natured laugh; it sounded painful, forced. It was hard to pinpoint where it was coming from, but down on the ground, a guard was looking up at the building opposite her, cowering.
“Out of the way, fool!” a voice boomed, the king’s voice, her grandfather’s.
A bottle tumbled from his balcony, and the guard jumped back just as it hit the ground, shattering with a spray of booze.
The forced laughter started again, and a minute later, another bottle launched from the king’s balcony made it halfway across the courtyard.
The roof of the palace made a complete circuit around the yard, and Rina started following it over to the king’s chambers, bottles smashing against the ground as she went. As she closed in, she heard no other voices, no sounds of argument. He must be alone.
When she got to the final bend—
“I see you foul spirit!” the king bellowed.
Glass cracked as a bottle shattered against the edge of the roof, and a spray of alcohol misted Rina’s face.
“Stop, it’s me!” she cried.
“Me, who?” The king sounded equal parts surprised and drunk.
“Me, Rina.”
“What the Songs are you doing out there?” he asked.
She stepped to the edge so he could see her. “Going for a walk.”
“Where to?”
As she neared his balcony, he opened a side window, which normally kept his chambers closed off. She slid through, landing next to him.
Any hint of anger dropped from his face. “I thought you were him,” he whispered, though his whisper was about as loud as anyone else’s speaking voice.
“Him, who?”
“Ulbrecht. Creepy bastard always gives me the… creeps,” he spoke so innocently, so genuinely, Rina felt herself smile.
“I don’t normally walk on the roof. Not anymore. I just needed some air.”
The king’s face filled with guilt as he looked down at the bottle clenched in his fist. “I don’t normally… throw… well, make an ass of myself. I just needed a drink.”
“Did it help?” she asked.
He held out the bottle. “Give it a try.”
Cautiously, she took it and, leaning out, looked for the guard below. She took a deep breath and hurled it at the ground, intending to miss the man completely. The bottle, however, had other ideas. It breezed past the guard’s head, shattering at his feet.
When she looked up, her grandfather had gone pale.
“Sorry! Sorry!” he called down, then turned to her. “I meant take a drink. That was the good stuff, thirty sovereigns a bottle.”
“I’m not old enough. Father won’t let me.”
The king started coughing, following it up with a burst of laughter, genuine this time. “You had a birthday today, didn’t you? What are you, eighteen?”
“Sixteen…”
“Ahh, close enough. And there’s always more where that came from.”
He opened the door to his private parlor. A billiards table, covered in empty glasses, dominated the room, but off to one side along the wall sat a bar counter.
“Coming?” he asked.
She sat down on a barstool as he twisted the cork off another bottle. He slapped a shot glass in front of her and filled it halfway.
She eyed it.
“It’s fine. Your king has decreed the drinking age for all princesses shall be sixteen—for tonight.”
Rina lifted the glass, knocking the liquid back the way she’d seen men do. A raw burning ran up from her stomach. She wheezed and gasped.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Coughing, she pointed to her glass. “A little more?”
The king gaped and grunted, then filled the shot glass to the rim.
She knocked it back. This time, if anything, it was worse. The burning reached her eyes.
“Okay… that’s… enough,” she croaked, noticing a warm, pleasant feeling pooling in her toes.
An awkward moment… What could they possibly talk about?
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “I mean besides being kidnapped by a witch?”
“Yes, besides that,” she nodded. “Nothing, everything. I feel like a child. Like a baby.”
“And yet I’m the one throwing my private reserve out the window in a fit.”
“Okay, so what’s wrong with you?”
“You mean besides having my granddaughter kidnapped by a witch?” he asked.
“Yes, besides that.”
“Everyone thinks they know best. Your father, the Church, the wizards.”
“That witch? She said she was just trying to save lives.” Rina looked at her feet, unsure of confronting him.
“I’m sure she did. But which lives? Everyone knows what’s best for themselves and pretends it’s for the greater good. Even me.” He drew in a long breath. “Do you believe her? The witch, about wanting to save lives?”
“I don’t know. I thought she was going to kill me, but I’m not so sure anymore. I think she might be a… ‘good person.’”
He let out a low, grumbling sigh. “Pity that.”
She gave him a curious glance.
“Pity because we can’t have ‘good people’ kidnapping princesses every time they disagree with me.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“What can I? Everyone thinks I can do whatever I want.”
“Can’t you?”
“I am king only so long as people are afraid not to call me so. Angry people lose their fear. I am a servant of the mob. And besides she is an insolent little… I’d have her flogged publicly if it were up to me.”
“Well, I’m a princess. Nothing is up to me.”
“Exactly!” the king agreed.
That annoyed Rina, and as the king recognized his mistake, he looked on her with sad eyes.
“Tell me, what would you be, if you could be anything but a princess?” he asked.
She opened her mouth to answer, but clamped it shut, catching herself.
“Oh fine… and we were having such a nice…” He motioned to the bottle. “Drink.”
“A witch,” she blurted out.
The king’s eyes went wide, his face drawing sour, and he mocked a gasp before breaking into a gentle grin. Then his eyes went wide again. “Wait, have you got a spark?” he asked.
“No,” she said, brooding. “Is there a way to get one?”
The king’s face fell, his eyes looking to his glass. He poured himself a drink and gulped it down.
“I had a spark once,” he said, and for the first time ever, his voice sounded weak to her. “It wasn’t a great spark, not a wizard’s spark, but it was mine, back when my brother was to be king. My parents kept it hidden, told me not to talk about it, but they never gave me any shame. They even bought me books, a whole collection.”
He started to pour himself another drink and then, seeming to think better of it, pushed the cork back in. “You can still find them in the palace library if you know where to look. But I can’t stand the sight of them.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“This.” He touched his head where the crown normally sat. “My brother died in battle, and then I was to be king. My parents told the Church about me… about my spark.”
“And…?”
“They made me let it die.”
“How?”
As he averted his eyes, she saw a tear. “They told me I had to. Drilled it into me. And I, like a fool, believed them.”
There was nothing. Nothing she could say, nothing she could do, to fix that.
“I peed myself tonight,” she whispered.
He brought his eyes back to hers. “If only we could cast spells with piss and tears.”
“But you did something,” she said, “You made the Church stop hunting them. Noria’s become a haven for mages.”
“Trying to make the king feel better?”
She thought about the corset her stepmother had given her—given the princess. “No, grandpa, just you.”
“Thank you.” He patted her on the back. “Now, I think you’ve kept this old man up long enough. I need my sleep.”
And at that, her grandfather walked to the balcony, opened the side window, and let her onto the roof.
Halfway back to her room, the alcohol started kicking in, and she decided to crawl the rest of the way for fear of falling.
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Which of those colors do you think of as "pink" (pick all that apply)
