“I don’t understand,” says Manchineel, standing there.
Acacia holds out her arms, her fingers touching the wall on either side of herself. “What isn’t there to understand?” she asks.
Manchineel stares as she always does, half lost between her reality and actual reality. Dreamily, she turns her head. “Where’s… the door?”
“Behind you,” replies Acacia.
“No, I mean. The door into your home. Why are we in a servant’s closet?”
Acacia drops her arms, staring at her sister. She looks at her bed, which she’s standing against, and then back at her. “This is my home, Manchineel,” replies the basement princess. “There is only one door. I don’t have any servants,” she explains, not recognizing the presence of Junis — the elf is standing behind her with the back of her legs pressed against the nightstand.
Acacia’s sister stares at her, the woman’s eyes glazing over by the second. Acacia snaps her fingers sharply. “Let’s go home, Acacia,” says the woman, pulling out of her daze before it sets in.
“Manchineel,” warns Acacia, causing her older sister to sigh.
“Okay. Okay. I understand,” replies Manchineel, sighing. The door opens behind her, with a knight in golden royal armor holding it open. “But I will leave you some of my regiment here.”
Acacia shakes her head. “You and your men are all leaving,” she explains. “I bested you in combat. Do not tarnish our family’s honor by disavowing the laws of the duel, Manchineel,” says Acacia, walking toward her sister, which isn’t exactly that much effort as it only takes a single step to reach her, given the confines of the tight room.
“…But who will make your bed?” asks Manchineel, as Acacia’s hands push her out of the door. Manchineel, being taller, looks over Acacia’s shoulder toward the duck rug, almost curiously — neither of them even seem to recognize the existence of Junis, who is just quietly standing there.
“I will,” says Acacia, doing her best to ignore the elf, who is standing behind her with her hands folded over her front, her head bowed.
“Who will cook your food?” asks her sister, worried. “You’ll starve!”
“I’ll buy it at the market,” replies Acacia, pushing her older sister out. “Or I’ll tell Sir Knight to get it for me,” she says, still ignoring Junis, who has a bag of shopping down at her feet.
“When will I meet him?” asks her older sister curiously, looking down at Acacia as she pushes her up the little staircase toward the back alley, which is oddly colorful and bright as a host of a hundred, and then some soldiers in golden armor stand there, having cleaned the entire thing in a matter of minutes. Old trash that had been collecting there for months, crates full of dead rats that fell in one after the other and never managed to crawl back out, and barrels full of rainwater that had been breeding insect larvae have all been put away. The alley has been swept, scrubbed, and washed with a fervor that has never graced it since the days of its accidental creation. Even the little staircase doesn’t even smell like urine anymore, as some unfortunate soldier feverishly scrubbed it clean with exotic soaps in the flash of an eye while the door was closed behind them.
“When I come knocking down the palace gates,” replies Acacia, shutting the door behind herself and not listening to the tired sigh that comes from the person she closed off inside the room.
“Your anqa doesn’t even have a stable master, Acacia,” says her sister, looking at the black, large, bi-pedal bird that seems very content to stand there and be brushed and groomed by a troop of royal workers who are doing everything from clipping its talons to pulling out loose feather fluff. “I’ve never even seen one so stringy and lean. Is it from the south?”
Acacia puts her fingers between her lips and whistles.
Immediately at the sound of the sharp tone, the full regiment of soldiers falls into stiff formation. Boots striking the ground as they salute, forming row after row of men. “Leave my city and take my sister back to where she belongs,” orders Acacia as a line of knights creates a tunnel through the alley all the way out to the market square, which is full of oglers. The entire city has come to a halt at the news of not one but two royal princesses being in their midst. Worst of all for Acacia is that these people know her and the life she was living here.
Manchineel didn’t kill her body, but she did kill her life. There’s no going back anymore.
Acacia walks down the row of knights, essentially shoving her sister toward the procession of carriages like a host trying to get rid of a guest who has long overstayed their welcome.
“I think this is a mistake, Acacia,” remarks Manchineel. “Your revolt is going to cause anarchy and cost endless lives,” explains the woman. “We’re already at war. And for what?” she asks. “So that you can sit on the throne?” Manchineel shakes her head. “You saw what that power did to our brother,” says the older princess, in worry.
“I don’t care,” remarks Acacia plainly as they reach the procession. A man grabs the carriage door, holding it open and bowing. “This nation will be mine, Manchineel,” explains Acacia. “You go back, and you tell our brother that I’m coming,” she says, lifting a finger and pressing it against her sister as she pushes her back the last few steps toward the carriage. “And if he doesn’t abdicate his crown to me, I’m going to pick it up off of his head as it rolls past my boots.”
Manchineel gives in, sitting back down on the seat of the carriage with one leg still hanging out as the procession of royal soldiers gets back into formation. “You couldn’t even kill me when it came down to it, sister,” says Manchineel. “You’re all talk.”
Acacia stares at her sister, waiting for her eyes to glaze over before she slams the door of the carriage shut behind her. But somehow, her sister seems to remain in reality now. Perhaps the shattering of her delusions that came to be was simply too much, at least for now. She has no doubts that the woman will return to her patterns soon enough. The youngest princess looks around the area, at the city square full of thousands of people. Everyone from this city has taken off from their work to ogle the rarity of this spectacle. After glancing over them and meeting their eyes, she looks back toward Manchineel.
“You think me a fool, sister?” asks Acacia. “Your popularity with these people is beyond the norm,” she explains, gesturing to the crowd on the marketplace. “If I had killed you, they would whisper against my name.”
Manchineel blinks, tilting her head. She taps her chin with her finger. “Ah. How convenient,” she says, smiling. “That I should be so lucky,” remarks the woman in a knowing tone as she pulls her second leg inside the carriage.
“Don’t count on it to last forever,” replies Acacia, flicking a finger through the air. The doorman closes the carriage. “Goodbye, sister,” says the youngest princess as it shuts. The man climbs onto the back of the carriage. A horn blows, the royal guards creating a path out through the market square, and then, after a moment, the carriages lurch into motion, taking with them her sister, her host, and the last remnants Acacia had of this ‘normal’ life she had been clinging to so desperately, having become fond of it in a way she had never imagined.
Being a princess was always fine.
But living by herself in this little corner of the world, this was… who she was for so long that it’s become her favorite way to be.
She watches as the carriage rolls away.
But the way someone is can never really last, can it? Eventually, life will reach you no matter where you hide and force you to move on to a new place to become a new person.
Acacia, the princess in the royal palace, is dead.
Acacia, the girl who lived in the back alley as a poor recluse, is dead.
Now, Acacia, the woman who must shatter the world in order to chase after her ambition, stands here within the gaze of some odd few thousand people.
The secret princess is dead. Long live the queen to be.
As the royal golden knights march toward the gate, their golden armor still catching the eyes of many, what most fail to see for a flash of a second is that their shadows below them begin to drag and distort. It’s as if they became stuck in place and were stretching afterward in pursuit of the bodies that keep marching toward the capital. They grow longer and longer, and then, after a pinnacle of distance is reached, their shadows snap like threads pulled too strongly and begin to grow in the vertical direction. Emerging out of the ground in their place is a single black-armored soldier with tattered, battle-torn capes billowing in the contrastingly bright spring wind, made out of ebony thread.
She can’t go back to living this life anymore. Manchineel killed it. Now that she has been revealed as the youngest princess of the nation, every pair of eyes in this city will be on her day and night. She can never be the girl who just goes to the park on a sunny afternoon; she can never be the stranger browsing around an open marketplace.
That was a fun life. It was good. She was happy that she got to have it.
But now it’s time to grow up, as much as her heart had confusingly wished for the opposite.
Acacia steps forward and out of the alleyway into the sunlight that shines down over the market square. People step back as she steps forward — a sight she admittedly enjoys. But despite moving, she instead begins to rise instead of walking toward them.
By the second — as if copying her sister’s conjuration magic — one brick after the other, made out of inky shadows, manifests itself below her boots as she rises up a staircase that is created out of thin air. Acacia's cloak billows behind her as she reaches the top, looking out over the crowd, which falls silent by the second as her eyes drift over them. One after the other, the shadowy soldiers kneel, one hand resting on their hearts and the other on their weapons.
A heavy thunking comes from behind her as a giant makes his way up the staircase toward her.
“For a year now, I, Acacia Odofredus Krone of the royal family, have lived with you as a shadow of your world,” says Acacia, her voice carrying over the silent crowd, some of whom knowingly look at each other. She lifts an arm, gesturing toward the market. “I’ve been to your shops and your homes,” says Acacia. “I’ve been struck, tormented, and spat on by your cruelest,” she says. “— For which the responsible should be lucky to be sentenced to a swift death,” remarks Acacia. “If a man were to strike my brother, his city would be razed, every man killed, and every woman and child sent to servitude at distant markets.” The crowd doesn’t stir, and the paleness on many faces that she recognizes in their mass is visible like bright stars on the dark canvas of the night sky. Acacia would be lying again if she said she didn’t enjoy the sight of the frozen-terror on the expressions of some of the youngest she knows well — girls and boys from the academy — who had gone far out of their way to make her miserable. “If one were to pluck a hair from the head of either of my sisters, a legion of soldiers would hang every soul you see around you now from high towers made out of nothing but the bones of their families,” proclaims Acacia from her podium, surrounded by dark soldiers, as Sir Knight reaches the top of the staircase and stands behind her. Acacia watches the crowd, looking at the fear in their eyes as they begin to realize that the party is over and the trouble that some people here have perhaps gotten all of them into.
Her threats aren’t without warrant. Insulting, degrading, or even harming, a noble like a baron is one thing. But to come close to doing any of these to a true royal amounts to more than generational suicide.
Acacia calls to them. “…And at the same time, I’ve been graced by the gifts of your city’s most generous and kind,” she explains, lifting her other hand to balance out the first, which she still holds out — like a pair of bowls on a merchant’s scale. “I’ve been fed and made a guest; I’ve been welcomed and treated as a friend by many,” she says, her left and right hands balancing themselves out. “I’ve seen the beauty your homes have to offer, as well as that of your spirits, from those lives who were lost saving others during the enemy’s many attacks on you to the joviality you had to show my now-departing sister.” She shakes her head, staring out into the crowd, who look her way with the faces of a man in court standing before the weight of a judge’s coming proclamation of his sentencing.
Acacia watches the silent world for a while, looking around the crowd and toward the many open windows of many houses, out of which people watch stacked over one another.
“The difference between me and my family is that I know you all,” says Acacia. “I know you better than any noble or royal, as I am one of you,” she explains, receiving not much sympathy in the expressions of the many who don’t seem to agree. “The cruel Baron Ersteig — a curse upon his grave,” starts Acacia, receiving many to silently nod as she says what many have thought for decades now. She looks at them. “I had him killed for his transgressions against your families,” says Acacia. A violent murmur bursts through the crowd.
This is a lie, of course. She did no such thing. The truth is that the agents of the royal family — Chicory and perhaps some others who are in this very crowd — moved against the baron as he was plotting to force Acacia to become his bride.
But the people don’t need to know that. The dead baron can make himself useful one last time.
“The traitorous Holy-Church, who guided the enemy of the nation into your walls,” says Acacia. “I had them expunged and harshly punished for their wretched ways,” she proclaims, lifting a hand to gesture toward the cathedral that is still being reconstructed. Her hands clap together. “And your sons and daughters who once would die adventuring in the dungeon at the hands of monsters every week, I have had them saved time and time again through the efforts of my legion and its master — The very same black knight of your grandmother’s legend who serves not my brother, not sisters, but me alone,” says Acacia, throwing her arm back to gesture to Sir Knight, who is standing there with a small cushion in his hands behind her. The crowd talks, stirring. Everyone knows Sir Knight. He’s gone beyond the status of local celebrity at this point, and the same can be said for his soldiers, who are running around the city and dungeon day and night. “I did all of this in secret for the past year, because I know you; I am you,” repeats Acacia, stepping forward toward the edge of the platform and receiving much more approving looks at this second utterance of her affirmation. “Unlike the capital, which has forgotten you in its self-absorption, unlike the loveless nobility of this nation, who see you as nothing more than cattle from which to harvest your gold and the bodies of your youngest, I see you as my people,” proclaims Acacia. “I am Acacia Odofredus Krone, royal ascendant to the throne of this nation,” she calls out, her voice carrying across the crowd as the kneeling soldiers rise up one after the other. “And I have come to lead you and this nation to glory,” she says. “I have come not as your master who lives in an untouchable golden palace, but as your leader who shares in squalor here with you,” says Acacia, gesturing behind herself to the old alleyway. “With the same caked blood below my nails as yours and the same mud on my face as yours, I’ve finally come to you to stake the worthiness of my claim.”
Sir Knight holds the cushion out, a broken, bent, and jagged crown of dark metal resting on it.
— If one were to turn the cushion so that the crowd could see it, they would see the pretty ducks embroidered into the fabric. But for the sake of the seriousness of the situation, she appreciates that he keeps it somewhat obscured.
“By right of my blood,” says Acacia. “I wish, but do not proclaim, for this city to now be my rightful domain that will no longer serve the unjust capital of this nation,” she proclaims, taking the crown and holding it up into the air for everyone to see. “By the right of my possession of the first crown of the first king to come before all kings, I also do not decree the full succession of this territory from the falsely-ruled nation that has all but abandoned it,” says Acacia, looking at the confused crowd. “These are what my family would do,” she explains. “But instead, I ask these things of you, as those people who actually live here,” she says, lowering the crown down onto her head. “What do you say?” she asks, her voice carrying over a tense silence so tightly strung that it could cut flesh like a wire.
Standing there, the wind blows through the city, carrying with it so many feelings as it drifts from body to body, moving over the heads of the crowd, pressing in through every open window and door of the city, having carried her words to all of them.
Acacia spots a little movement in the mass of a thousand bodies — a young vildt boy, whom she recognizes as being the employee of the tea-shop she likes so much. “Long live the queen!” he shouts, cupping his hands by his mouth.
Smart boy. He knows how to help a business.
The call, shattering the silence like a rock through glass, creates a falling cascade as one person follows after and then another. Two become four, and four become eight, until the cries and cheers reach an uncountable measure. Acacia stands there, holding out her arms to them as the city accepts her plea and her will. Thousands of chants of her name and of her title carry around the mass.
“Then let us celebrate together for one more day!” says Acacia. “Every person’s wages will be paid in full by myself,” she decrees, knowing she has to at least out-do her older sister a little in order to steal the fondness of the memory that had grown for her coming here. It won’t do if she herself isn’t the favorite amongst her own people. “All costs of production lost will be covered by myself!” she says, lifting a hand. “And all costs of drink and food are mine as well!”
The crowd erupts into an explosion of cheers and chants as her own soldiers begin moving around, distributing wealth by the hundreds as she stands there, waving to the celebrating crowd as they begin to diverge and flow apart. Vendors run in a hurry to the stalls they had been in the process of dismantling, and bards and drunks run around as fast as they can to find the implements of their obsessions.
Sir Knight leans in down toward her side as Acacia continues to wave from her podium. “…We have money. But we don’t have ‘national-holiday’-money, Your Majesty,” he says quietly into her ear as the people below begin to tear into a new party that is starting. It promises to be a very lively spring.
Acacia, still waving, smiles and turns her head toward him. “I suppose you should get down into the dungeon straight away then, Sir Knight,” remarks the nation-princess and regional queen as she turns, her black cloak flowing behind her as she begins to walk back away from the podium with a satisfied, proud expression on her glowing face. “Everyone is celebrating, so you will have it to yourself.”
She did it.
It’s really happening.
“Her Majesty’s black heart is cruel beyond compare,” says Sir Knight, dissipating apart and floating as a shadow next to her — like a miasma. “Don’t I get to join the fun too?”
Acacia smiles, lifting a finger and swirling it around the dark smoke. It twirls around her finger, like oil floating at the top of a stirred glass of water. “What could be more fun than serving your queen with blood and toil, Sir Knight?” she asks happily.
“You tell me,” he replies, his voice growling in her ear.
Acacia shrugs. “I wouldn’t know,” she replies, walking back down the alley. A pair of soldiers come to block it off behind them; like royal guards, they cross their halberds and seal the alleyway for anyone who wants to follow them, which many onlookers certainly try to do. “But I think I’ll take a well-deserved nap now,” she says, covering her mouth with the tips of her fingers. “It’s been a long day,” she yawns. Acacia stops and looks around the pristine alleyway, looking at it almost as if bothered by its clean and whole state. Everything is fixed and polished. It feels so… different. She’s not sure that she likes it. “Pile some crates back up here,” she orders, pointing to a spot. “I liked it more with some clutter.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Acacia nods. “And go join the party for me, Sir Knight,” she orders. “It’s good for us to show our presence among the people.”
“I thought I was supposed to go to the dungeon?” he asks.
Acacia tsks, shaking her head. “You are.”
“…This seems like a lot of work for one person,” replies Sir Knight.
She shrugs, looking his way as, from behind them, the music of the festival starts up in rampage. “Also, feed the anqa, make sure Chicory and the royal agents aren’t causing me trouble, and while you’re out there, grab me one of those sweet rolls from the bakery,” she says, making a vaguely roundshape with her hands. “You know. The lumpy ones with the crunchy thing on top and the little red things inside.”
The shadow floats around her in a half circle. “Am I getting paid to do all of this?” asks Sir Knight. “I’m starting to feel somewhat taken advantage of here.”
She smiles. “What else have you got to do?” asks Acacia, looking at him with a playfully raised eyebrow as she brings back the line that had gotten them into all of this together to begin with.
“…Maybe I want to nap too?” he asks.
Acacia waves him off, walking down the stairs. “You don’t sleep, Sir Knight,” says Acacia.
The shadow watches her go into the little room before looking around itself. “…Don’t I know it…” he mutters to himself, making up a plan on the spot to do all of these things at once. It’s really not that bad. He’ll just summon a few more soldiers to handle the errands while he goes into the dungeon to fill their rapidly draining savings. A festival of this scale will easily cost, in layman’s terms, ‘a lot’.
He better get to it.
But first.
The man remanifests himself into a corporeal form, walking over to a stack of bricks that covers a crumbling hole in an old house’s back corner. A heat pipe runs down along the wall, through into the ground. Checking that the alley is clear, he looks back to the stack of bricks and waves his fingers through the air.
“Wanna see a magic trick?” he asks nobody before reaching in and grabbing hold of something that lets out a terrified yelp and bites him — which isn’t really a bother.
Sir Knight pushes the bricks away, pulling out a terrified girl attached to a pair of rabbit ears that he’s holding. “OW! OW! OW!” she fusses, hammering against his arm as he pulls the thief he’s been chasing for weeks now out of her hiding place like a man pulling a ferret out of a burrow. “Let go!” she barks, kicking against him.
“You know,” says Sir Knight, looking at Hase, the thief. “I’m almost disappointed that this is where you’d try to hide after all of this time,” he says, shaking his head. “After all the trouble you gave me chasing you.”
“Shut up!” she yells, lifting her hand toward the crumbling wall next to her, where a small finger had scrawled a trap-sigil in preparation for just such an occasion. She’s such a crafty little creature.
— His finger pulls a scratch through the drawing, breaking its fine lines.
The magical glow it was releasing, almost ready to explode to allow a distraction for her escape, fades away as it dissipates into the air. She stares, her face going pale, as she looks back at him.
“You need some new tricks,” explains Sir Knight. “Not falling for that one twice.” He lets go of her ears, and she drops to the ground. “Anyways, it’s safe now,” he explains. “The guards are gone,” says the knight, rising back up to his feet — perhaps just for the sake of standing, or perhaps to gain some distance from her, since she smells very strongly of… well, a back alley behind a tavern, actually.
In the second he looks away, a flash of movement indicates the escape of the creature down below his waist. She runs away with remarkable dexterity, slipping between him and the wall without touching either or slowing her movement. Hase runs through the alley, stopping half-way as the last time they were here, gauging to see if she’s being chased.
Sir Knight stands there, thinking. “You need money, right?” he asks.
“I’ll sell every bit of you for scrap,” she threatens, pointing back at him. “Just you wait. This isn’t over!”
Hase turns to run away.
— She collides straight into the massive suit of armor face first, stumbling back down. Confused, she looks at him standing there in front of her and then back to the corner where he was only a breath ago.
“I have a job,” explains Sir Knight, reaching into his cloak and pulling out the language she speaks — a coin. “And I just so happen to need a thief.” Hase gets up, her eyes looking not at him but at the coin that he’s slowly waving back and forth. Her vision is locked onto it like someone under hypnosis. Money is life. Money buys food, shelter, and clean water. In this world, money is no less essential than the breath she’s taking in.
The small thief watches for a moment before breaking from the spell and looking at him.
“We’re enemies,” says Hase, making her position clear. “I hate you. You lying, scheming thief!” accuses the lying, scheming thief.
Sir Knight nods. “That’s why I’m paying you,” he explains, holding out the coin. “And not asking you for a favor.”
Tentatively, she reaches out, snatching it from his finger with a sharp movement and then holding it against herself as she steps back on the defensive, ready to run in the blink of an eye.
The rabbit girl studies him with a narrowed gaze and deep suspicion in her voice. Hase trusts no one. Everyone is an idiot except for her; everyone is out to get her; everyone is out to use her; and then throw her away to the dogs.
But money is money.
“What do you want?” she asks suspiciously, trying to bend the coin with both of her hands to test its realness. It seems to pass the test, although he’s not actually sure she could determine the validity of a coin this way or if she isn’t just mimicking something she has seen stronger and more experienced thieves do.
Sir Knight looks at the wretch of a creature, tattered, filthy, and covered in the cuts and bruises of the life she lives. He looks back out, behind himself, toward the festival. “I need you to break into a bakery,” explains the man.
“…What?” asks Hase, confused.
He turns and walks toward the city, the vildt girl walking after him for a second as she listens to the details of the job.
The thing is that he’s in quite a predicament. He has a variety of orders given to him by Acacia — joining the party, earning money, and so on. However, one of her orders involved him procuring a specific type of sweet roll, which, on a normal day, wouldn’t be a problem. However, given that she herself sent the city into celebration and closed nearly every business in the place at once, the bakery certainly isn’t open.
But he knows the sweet rolls are made in advance days before.
They’re just locked up inside a bakery with shuttered windows and closed doors.
So, as a good knight, he must fulfill her every wish and whim through some means or another. Well, as luck would have it, the universe brought him a thief — one that he himself created, in a manner of speaking.
It’s funny how life works like that sometimes.
He vanishes, pulling himself into his cloak, and the thief lets out a terrified scream that is quickly muffled as she disappears into it too, both of them reappearing on another side of town where he drops her off at a bakery's back door, before vanishing again a second time to somewhere else as he takes care of one other job on the list.
Stretching herself out, Acacia yawns loudly as something explodes outside. She assumes the people are getting into the swing of things. Good. She’s going to need a lot of energy from them in the months to come. Declaring separation from the nation will lead to conflict sooner rather than later. Time has begun to race again for her now, not just because of her illness.
She will need to arrange a carriage in order to travel onward from here. She will need to visit other cities and towns in order to gain them under her dominion. Every city offers her more soldiers under her control, more coinage for her coffers, and more voices who can holler her name — she likes that. The chanting of it off in the nearby distance brings a smile to her face as Acacia rests her head on her pillow. After a moment of lying there quietly, Acacia opens her eyes and stares at the wall. “Junis. My duck.”
“Uh… yes,” replies Junis, still standing literally next to the bed as there is nowhere else to go in the tiny room. A second later, a hand reaches over her and sets the stuffed duck down onto the bed that Acacia grabs and pulls under her blanket.
She closes her eyes again.
The room is silent as she tries to fall asleep.
“…Should I… um… go?” asks the elf in a maid’s uniform, standing there awkwardly in the tiny underground space.
“No,” replies Acacia. “Stay there,” she says. “Exactly there. Don’t move from the spot until I wake up,” she commands. “Not a step.”
“Uh, okay,” replies Junis, unsure. “Do I, ah-? Am I supposed to call you ‘Your Majesty’?” she asks.
A smug smile grows on Acacia’s face. “You’d better,” replies Acacia in a chipper tone so cold that it is perhaps threatening, feeling her head grow heavier by the second as she, despite her strong dislike of Junis for the transgressions of the past, does manage to find some joy in her new subservience. It’s good to be in charge.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” says the elf. Acacia nods. “When you’re done resting, Sir Knight instructed me to tutor you in your bookwork,” she explains. “Even if it takes us all night.”
Acacia eyes shoot open again. She rolls her head, turning to look back over her shoulder at Junis.
The dark-haired elf is standing there, holding a heavy textbook open and pointing into it. “The academy exams are coming up soon, and Sir Knight has told me that you’re simply not ready for them,” she explains. Acacia’s eyes twitch. “It won’t do for a royal to flunk questions that are this easy,” remarks Junis, looking down at Acacia’s very own textbook, which is full of struck-through answers that she had written down. The elf shakes her head. “Especially now that you’re in the public eye.”
If Acacia didn’t know better, there was a hint of coy smugness in Junis’ voice as she said that just now.
However, this commoner’s insolent transgression is quickly dealt with as the plush, stuffed duck hits Junis’ face, causing her to make a sound not quite unlike that a real duck would have made under the same circumstances.
Despite her grand displays and speech, perhaps in truth it really is the case that the dark heart of the wicked queen-to-be knows no mercy.
The carriage rolls down the road, the marching of boots coming from all around together with the rolling of many wheels as the procession makes its way back toward the capital. Manchineel sits there with her hands in her lap and her eyes closed.
One of the doors opens, and someone climbs inside.
The third princess opens her eyes, looking at the woman she recognizes from her flimmering around in the shadows of the royal court. She’s an agent of the royal family.
“Acacia’s Knight,” starts Manchineel, looking at the blonde-haired woman with tanned skin and bowing her head. She’s wearing the robes of a priestess. “Is he real?” she asks. “I had wished to see him for myself.”
The priestess nods. “Yes, he is,” she explains, not lifting her head.
Manchineel tilts her gaze, curious for a second, as something catches her eye. “Is he strong?”
“Yes, he is,” replies the priestess simply.
“Strong enough to protect our nation from the enemy?”
The priestess nods. “Yes, but he won’t,” she explains. “His only goal is to bring Her Majesty Acacia to the throne,” she says. “Whether the castle and the kingdom around it burn as they get there is irrelevant to him until she orders otherwise.”
Manchineel places her elbow on the door’s rest, leaning her head on her fist as she stares at the royal agent quietly for a while. Her other hand lifts up, playing with a loose string of hair for a moment as she looks. “Tell me, Herr Ritter,” says the third princess, Manchineel, her words somehow not echoing within the small carriage, as if they were being swallowed and consumed in a way that hadn’t been the case only moments ago. “Why Acacia?” she asks. The carriage is silent as it continues to roll down the road. “Why have you returned for her and not for me? For us?” asks the older princess. “What makes my little sister’s soul so special?” Manchineel reaches out, leaning forward and lifting the priestess’ chin with a finger.
Two black, hollow eyes stare her way from beneath the hood that had been obscuring them. “Come with me,” asks the princess, looking at the face she’s holding. “Serve me instead. I could make you a god who walks the world,” she offers, turning the firm face from side to side, as if to study its features and realness. It’s quite the trick to have fooled not only her guards and assessors but also herself for a time, until he gave himself away by referring only to Acacia as Her Majesty and not herself as a real servant would have done.
Those black eyes look at her. “Monsters stick together,” replies a deep, growling voice that does not fit at all with the body it comes from — the voice of the black-knight.
She watches as a hand reaches up, pulling her wrist away. “Will you kill me now, good Sir Knight?” asks Manchineel, watching as the body before her begins to melt — fabric and all. It falls together, lump into lump, heap into heap, as the illusion begins to break. “So that I might no longer be a threat to my young sister?”
“No,” replies the voice, matter of factly, as the presence across from her begins to drip like a sludge as it falls off of the seat and toward the floor. “But I want you to know that even if Acacia is too kind to deal with you, I could have done so now,” he explains. “When you walk at night through a loose shadow and feel a tingle on your neck, when you’re covered in the darkness below your blanket and feel a pinch on your back, when you find yourself waking and your closed window is open at night and the winter air comes for your breath — I want you to know that it might just be me,” warns the voice that speaks from a melting mouth, the movement of the lips of which is entirely incoherent with the words being spoken.
Manchineel watches as her own hand no longer holds anything, as the full shape of the person before her simply dissipates and falls apart. She pulls back to her seat, leaning her head back onto her arm as she watches the shadow drip through the cracks in the wood. “A kind monster?” she asks, perhaps having day-dreamed over most of the threat and only having heard the first part.
She doesn’t receive any response to her clarification of the situation.
Turning her head, Manchineel looks back out of the window toward the horizon in the distance as the carriage continues to roll on, now with only herself inside of it once again.
What an interesting quality for a monster to have — protective kindness.
Princess Manchineel’s eyes glaze over as she watches the sky, daydreaming a pretend story of what a life with something like that by her side would be.
