How Can This Be Right?

Don't tense your muscles; the ink won't set correctly."

The servant's touch is feather-light against my skin, her voice just as delicate. While she scolds me, her tentative tone betrays how unused to advocacy she is. Just like all the servants her. And yet annoyance edges my mind either way. "It's not as if anyone will notice."

"Milady," the maid warns, her voice tense. Her nimble fingers swipe across my face a final time before she turns the mirror towards me.

No.

The color that fringes my eyes, the paint that streaks my hair, is a color that I hoped never to wed myself to. But each way I turn, it engulfs me -- accenting my ears, highlighting the bridge of my nose.

It is the green. The green of--

And my Court's monarch rests their hands on my shoulders. "Princess Xanthe, of Yarrow. You are engaged to Princess Vellia, of Celadon."

---

This isn't real. It's just a trick, a test, a game. A Dance.

I wander through my own wedding ceremony in a daze, my mind cloudy. Everything is beautiful. Too beautiful. My betrothal gown is of shimmering white silk, threaded through with the pale green of Celadon. My veil matches it, and I bear a gleaming Cordisite necklet for Vellia. My fiancee. The one who lingers along the most powerful in the room, her expression smug as she watches the chaos around her. Her dress matches mine, as its opposite.

And she looks beautiful in it. Too beautiful to ever be trusted, too calculated to be anything but cruel.

I refuse to meet her eyes. But she is a presence that commands stares. All I see is a million shades of green, of Celadon, of Vellia.

The Vision's mouth seems to be forming words. They are likely beuatiful words, words about how she and I will forge a powerful alliance, through our forever-entwined futures. Despite their beauty, I hate them.

When I must say my vows, I recite them perfectly. I follow the path that the decadent darkness of the ink has forged into the thick paper, bleeding into the edges of the words. But my voice is hollow, just as I am hollow as Vellia's fingers entwine with mine. We are wed.

And I realize that this is reality.

---

We are wed. We move into a home together -- a dwelling fit for princesses. Maids attend to our every need.

"A message, Miss." I turn around in my seat, locking eyes with a newly-hired courier boy. He blushes a deep red at my gaze. "Your Highness, I mean," he laments, clutching the envelope close to his chest. He drops the letter in my lap and flees, anxiety evident in his step.

I rip open the seal to the message, and my heart drops. Another meeting. Nothing but tedium -- and really, princesses aren't needed at the meetings. We only exist to form relationships with other courts, to broker deals at Dances. We are needed for nothing more.

I open the door to my quarters, only to find a Heart Rose crushed beneath my bootheel. Strangely enough, they've been appearing throughout our manor since Vellia and I were first wed. I can only assume that it's the work of a servant in a desperate hope for recognition -- or a raise. But a Heart Rose is the flower of passion; whether love or anger, it depends on the context. I struggle to believe a servant feels such a strong passion towards either one of us.

I throw it back into my bedroom, where it lands in the middle of my unmade bed.

As I make my way outside, something is off. The typically stationed servants are missing, no one there to pester me over my hair, or my water consumption. The gates are slightly ajar. I purse my lips, and I'm about to call inside my confusion when I no longer have the capacity to call. A gag. Hands pulling my arms behind my back. The cold steel of a cheap knife pressed close against my neck, just below my betrothal collar.

I've heard of princesses being kidnapped before.

I just never thought it would happen to me. And that is my last thought before I feel the sharp bite of the blade slicing into my skin.

---

Blood.

I lie in a bed of my own blood, soaked through with the crimson substance. My body aches. My vision blurs, only to refocus again.

But this is not my bed.

This is Vellia's.

Alarm claws at my mind, apprehension seizing me. "Vellia?" I manage, my throat burning at the effort. Pain.

The girl I hate sits on the edge of the bed that I'm bleeding over. This is not Vellia -- this is not the girl I thought I knew. "Meeting... Knife... Necklace..." Agony rackets through my body with each word. But my thoughts are cut short when I notice something.

There is a Heart Rose woven into my betrothed's hair. "Vellia..." I whisper, my already weak voice dropping a register. Shock.

"Thank me later," Vellia says, a smile pulling at her lips. "I ask just one thing."

"What?" I murmur

"Will you marry me?"

---

Months Later

"I love you," I say, my voice muffled. I can taste Vellia's smile through her lips.

"Took you that long to figure it out?"