Elaina woke the next morning In her hastily setup room. The bed's sheets still smelled a little musty, but the white dust covers had been pulled off the well appointed furniture of the room.
The sun had long since risen and the rays were blasting through the curtains that had been hastily cleaned before she had retired for the night.
Without someone to wake her up earlier she had slept till late in the morning. Blinking, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and sat there, trying to put herself together.
“I need to talk to Vincent... clear the air between us.” Elaina said to herself, before slowly clawing her way out of bed.
Elaina was halfway through changing out of her bedclothes when she heard a knock at the door.
“Lady Planhaften? Are you awake?” Said a young sounding female voice.
“Yes? Who is it?”
“Your ladies in waiting M'lady. I am Nadia, and my sister Lysa is here as well.” the voice responded.
“Ladies in...” Elaina said to herself, suspicious. She cracked the door and and looked out.
Outside waited two young women, a little younger than Elaina herself.
“Who are you?”
“Excuse us M'lday” Said the one with light brown curly hair. “Your fiance hired us yesterday to take care of you while to stay here, to serve as your ladies in waiting.”
“Yesterday, when... How...”
“Near nightfall. There were uniforms here for us... I am sorry to say neither of us have been maids before, but the head maid said she will train us. Also I have heard that ladies in waiting are more attendants and general helpers than anything strict... at least that is how Lord Vincent described it.
Elaina was taken aback. Even after last night Vincent had gone out, even though he had to have been exhausted, tracked down and hired people to help HER. To make HER feel better. This only made her feel worse about how she had acted before.
“Would... would milady like us to help her dress?” Nadia asked. Her sister seemed to be the strong silent type.
“Um... yes please. My hair is... a lot to handle on my own.”
With that Nadia nodded to her sister and they both bustled in, and Elaina went to sit down in front of the vanity, and Lysa immediately moved to grab the brush Elaina had been using and began running it through her hair.
“So... This is all very sudden.” Elaina said as Lyssa began going through the dresses from her luggage, still packed away, and began laying them out where they could be easily seen.
“It was sudden for us as well.” Nadia said, smoothing out a pretty sea green dress onto the bed.
“I apologize for that. I think Vincent... my fiance and I had a bit of a fight, so I think he rushed out to hire people to make me feel more at home. I'm sorry if it disrupted your lives.”
Nadia looked up at Elaina.
“Oh... oh not m'lady, I meant sudden in a good way. Me and my sister were sleeping on the streets with our mother when Vincent found us. Refugees from the front line of the war. We... we ran out of money to afford a place to stay weeks ago. This is the first time we've gotten a chance to clean ourselves, fresh clothes in... Well I'd rather not say how long. And food that wasn't scraps people threw us for begging or... or that we had to take.”
Elaina could see in the mirror Nadia beginning to tear up, and Lyssa smoothly walked up and took the brush from her hand and kept up brushing Elaina's hair so smoothly that if she had not been paying attention to the mirror she would not have noticed. Nadia went and sat down on the bed as she covered her face with her hands.
Elaina closed her eyes and let her powers flow out of her to where Nadia was sitting, whispering to herself 'See' as she felt for her thoughts.
Elaina got flashes of screams, the oppressive feeling of hiding under floorboards as blood dripped down onto her face. Running, her legs aching, as she left everything she had known behind. Crying, sobbing so hard it hurt into a shirt, the only thing she had left of her dad. Working up the courage to stuff a half rotted hunk of meat into her mouth, to silence the horrible hunger pangs that had been eating at her, only to have a half a hunk of bread pressed into her hands by her sister, who hadn't spoken since she watched your father die.
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Elaina blinked as she came crashing back to herself, gasping and breathing heavily.
Lyssa tapped Elaina on her shoulder and moved to look into her eyes, her gaze filled with concern.
Elaina reached her hand up to cup Lyssa's cheek. “Oh you poor things... You've been through so much.”
Lyssa looked surprised, then it seemed like a light came on in her face as she realised something.
“How... how did you...”
Nadia's voice spoke up from over on the bed.
Lyssa raised her hands over Elaina's head and wiggled her fingers, causing Nadia to look at her sister with a questioning look.
Lyssa changed her motions to make it look like she was holding a sphere, and then pointed at her.
Nadia looked back and forth between Elaina and her sister.
“Oh! I get it now! You are... um... magic that can see things... D something.”
“Ah, yes... I can use Divination magic. I just... I wanted to see what you girls had gone through.”
Elaina huffed, and began the apology she had been using since she had first started using divination. “I'm sorry for invading your privacy.”
Nadia blinked, and looked at Elaina.
“You... are not what I thought a princess of planhaften would be like.”
“Oh? What did you expect I would be like?”
“More stuck up? Treating those of lower station than you as if we don't matter? That's what the rumors say.”
“Ah... Yeah... My nation's nobles are... Pretty stuck up.”
“The rumors we've heard have them really laying into their subjects, who have no real recourse.”
Elaina fidgeted in place. “My nation.... It has become very prosperous due to the work of our nobles, but it has resulted in some issues with them and anyone they view as inferior. My father taught me very early that this was not acceptable behaviour, and royals must be above such behavior. To be honest most noble's shouldn't even have a leg to stand on acting that way, we abolished the concept of serf's before I was even born, but many still act like the people are part and parcel to the land the noble's own.” Elaina admitted.
“BUT! All citizens have legal protection, if any noble pushes things too far he risks losing a massive fortune, maybe even his family holdings, so really it's all bluff and bluster. If a lot of it. The worst they can do is make a citizen's life unpleasant.” Elaina added with conviction.
“By Citizen, do you mean peasants?” Nadia asked, getting clothes arranged on the bed.
“Citizens, my father says calling people peasants is derogatory.” Elaina said.
Nadia humphed, cleaning the tears from her face, then held out one of Elaina'as day dresses. “What do you think of this one Lady Elaina.”
“That one is nice. I should probably get dressed and... go see Vincent.”
“You don't sound overly enthused by that idea m'lady.”
“We... I...” Elaina sighed.
“We had a disagreement. I'm... I'm not used to how brutal things can be here. I had just watched Vincent cut down a man, a traitor, who was speaking to the empire, and he was.... he was torturing a man that, now that I have had a chance to think on it, was obviously in on the whole thing. The mayor of this town, who, from what he said, had quite obviously had the previous mayor killed under the pretext of a duel. Vincent was torturing him to try to get him to talk, and I just... I just broke, I couldn't watch it anymore. I told him to stop. And now Vincent is going to have to go talk to him in prison, and he'll have had a chance to get his story straight, so Vincent's job is going to be harder, and now I have to see him at breakfast and apologize, but I feel like if I start apologizing I won't stop for the rest of our relationship... but if I don't apologize this coldness between us is going to grow. So...”
Elaina felt a sleight hand take her left and looked down as the quiet sister Lyssa took her hand, kneeling next to her and looking up into Elaina's eyes.
Nadia put her hand on Elaina's opposite shoulder.
“I think... I think you may be overthinking it a little, m'lady. Come, let's get you dressed, and take you down to Lord Vincent.”
Elaina nodded numbly.
Lyssa and Nadia both shared a sneaky grin.