[September 27, 2042]

Aina looked down at the chessboard, her mouth open in disbelief. “I don’t understand.”

It was the first thing she had said after staring silently at the chessboard for five minutes. Cal, who had been scratching his nose with boredom, sighed heavily. “To be honest,” he said, “the sequence of events doesn’t seem that complicated to me. I told you not to move that rook.”

“Hush, peasant! Let me figure this out…”

“There’s nothing to figure out, it’s clearly a checkmate.”

“Impossible.” Aina shook her head in anger. “No, there’s a way out. I only need to concentrate… ah ha! Here. If I move my king in this way…”

“We went over this already,” Cal said, “you forgot about my bishop on the other end of the board. It’s cutting off that path of escape.”

“Hush, I said! Do you ever listen to your betters?” Aina irritatedly tapped the side of the wooden chess board with a fingernail, and a dull noise reverberated in the entry hall. “I just… need time to think.”

At first, Cal thought about poking fun at her obstinate behavior, but something in the lines of Aina’s face made him pause for a moment. She was bent close over the board — all sense of dignified posture forgotten — studying it as if she were trying to read fine text engraved upon the pieces and the alternating dark and light wooden squares. There was a determined look on her face, an intensity he hadn’t seen before, which transfigured the typically soft contours of her face into something that seemed stronger than usual. Her eyes were different too. When he looked at her green eyes before, all Cal had been able to see within them was arrogance and infuriating thoughtlessness. They were beautiful, yes, like two shining emeralds, but the sight of them before beneath her red bangs had always made him angry in the past. It was like seeing overly ostentatious jewelry adorning a finger, high-bred and rare, but no less useless or superficial.

There’s a durability in her eyes at this moment, Cal thought to himself as he watched her, a certain strength or vocation. Pretty emeralds changing into toughened jade. It suits her, somehow.

Aina glanced up from the board for a moment to adjust a lock of hair and caught him looking at her. “What is it?” she said sourly, though seemingly more because of her impending loss than because of Cal’s stare. “Is there something on my face?”

“No,” Cal replied, “I was thinking about how green your eyes were. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He expected her to shout at him or call him a conceited peasant, but it was as if she hadn’t heard him at all. Her attention had already returned to the chessboard. However, after another minute, she replied to his comment. “Yes. It’s a sign of my belonging to House Cormac. If you ever saw all of us at court, you would see that all my brothers, all my sisters, my parents and grandparents, all have the same color hair and eyes. Well, I suppose my dear grandfather is pretty gray these days.”

“Must become difficult for the king and queen to tell you all apart.”

Cal meant for this to be a lighthearted answer, and was surprised when Aina’s eyes darkened.

“Oh, you could say that.” She muttered to herself. And then: “It’s your victory.”

“What?”

Aina leaned back in the leather chair, crossing her legs and resting her head on the backrest. She seemed tired all of a sudden — all previous determination gone. “I said it’s your victory, peasant. Are you hard of hearing?” She spoke gloomily. “You have defeated a princess of Luvinia with nothing but your wits. Well done.”

“Oh,” Cal had forgotten about the match. “Well, good game.”

“Was it?” She arched an eyebrow. “It seemed that you had little trouble disposing of my pieces. And I blundered beside, throwing away my queen because of my impatience to hasten your demise. In the game, I mean.”

Cal shrugged, as if this was unimportant, and began to clear the board.

“Wait!” Aina’s voice had a note of desperation in it. “Don’t… I want to play again.”

Cal shook his head. “Sorry, dinner is coming up soon, and I should start preparing. We can play another time, if you want.”

“Cal, please.”

Cal looked up sharply, uncustomed to hearing her use his name. Aina was staring at him, leaning forward over the board in his direction, as if trying to express her wish with the posture of her body. She had stood up in this motion, her lovely dark blue dress falling around her ankles. Her gaze was magnetic in a way, and Cal found himself unable to look away or deny her easily. In fact, it was one of the first times he had come to realize he was in the presence of true royalty.

Her competitive streak must be even greater than I imagined, he thought.

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“Fine, one more quick one.” Cal said, beginning to set up the game again, “but then I really have to get started.”

Aina smiled contentedly and sat back down. “Thank you.”

“By the way,” said Cal, replacing Aina’s lost queen on her starting square, “what was that book you were reading when I came in?”

“Ah, a lovely tale,” Aina said, nodding in approval to herself. “A fine piece of Luvinian literature by one of our most celebrated authors. It is about a young woman who is turned into a tree, and can only be restored to her human form by a true love’s kiss.”

“So it’s a romance?”

Aina’s eyes sparkled and she glanced over at the book which had been left on the table. “Yes, indeed. A lovely romance with a fantastical twist. I’ve been reading it all day. I’ll have to tell my fiancé about it when I return to court. He likes to hear about the books I read.”

Cal frowned in confusion, though not at her last comment. It made sense to him that a princess of a powerful nation would need to be married off to increase the strength of alliances or ties between different bloodlines. He had heard about that thing often in fantasy stories and in history. What gave him pause was her comment about reading the book all day, because when he had entered the entry hall earlier, it appeared to him as though she had only begun the novel a short time ago.

Perhaps I didn’t see properly, or maybe she’s just a slow reader.

Determining that it was ultimately unimportant, Cal sat back down in his seat, ready to begin another game of chess. This time, Aina put up a fight. She played more carefully, without the haste of overconfidence, and managed to hang onto her queen for longer than before. However, the trades of pieces she attempted were sloppy, and slowly but surely, she began to lose pieces at a greater pace than Cal. After a brave effort, and lots of her king fleeing, Aina eventually conceded defeat.

“So I have been beaten once more.” Her expression was soft, but a little sad. “Two in a row, that’s no mistake. No mistake at all.”

Cal didn’t do much to celebrate his victory, though he did begin to reset the board for the next game, whenever in the future the chess set would be taken out again. He watched Aina’s face, trying to understand her strange expression. Contrary to expectations, she didn’t seem to be much of a sore loser. Instead, it was as if she were thinking very hard about something.

As Cal stood to leave, Aina called out to him. “May I ask a question, Cal? You wouldn’t happen to be a sort of chess prodigy in your world, would you?”

Cal smiled, shaking his head. “No. I’m reasonably good, but nothing special. There are many people who are much better than me in this world.”

“I see.” Aina nodded, stroking a lock of her red hair absent-mindedly. “You know, I wasn’t joking earlier, or trying to make myself look impressive. I truly had never lost a game of chess before, except to my grandfather, not since I was the age of six. I have defeated servants, my maids, my brothers and sisters, my fiancé, whoever I could make agree to play with me.”

She paused, but Cal decided not to say anything. Aina seemed to be having trouble expressing her thought, and he assumed that interrupting would throw her off her groove.

Aina tapped her fingernail on the side of the wooden chessboard again and chewed her lip. “I suppose I never admitted this, but I was a little proud of that. My skills at the game. It’s a little silly, I understand that, especially for a princess, but yes, I took a little pride in that. I have always been told I was superior to others — how could I not be? — for I was a princess, and here was a skill of mine that reinforced that belief. Besides Bridget and my darling sheep, it was one of my few comforts. My true comforts, I mean to say.”

She smiled, though it seemed quite mean-spirited. It twisted her entire face, like a knot being pulled. “Perhaps the game of chess has so far advanced in your world that even an average player is insurmountable for a prodigy like me, hmm? Or… the more likely solution.” Aina focused her jade-green eyes on Cal. “Tell me, peasant. You know of my personality and position, and now you’ve heard my silly story. You are a neutral party. Lay it before me honestly… they all let me win, no? It was an elaborate, tacit agreement, to boost my ego or just to keep me content. You could even call it a prank.”

For a shameful second, Cal considered lying. He didn’t even particularly care about sparing Aina’s feelings as he had no great attachment to her, and he wasn’t the sort of person to be dishonest to protect the feelings of others. But there was something so pathetic about the image of the girl sitting before him that he thought laying out the reality of the situation for her would burst any sort of self-confidence in her skills. However, he took a hard breath.

“I can’t be certain of the circumstances that surrounded you, of course,” he said carefully. “But if I had to say… yes, probably.”

Aina’s face didn’t move at all, though one of her arms came to rest across her chest, as if protecting herself from something. She leaned back further in the chair and stared tiredly at the chessboard. “I see. I suppose that makes sense, in a way.” She waved her hand dismissively at him. “Begone, peasant. I’m weary of your unrefined company. Don’t let me keep you from your meal preparations.”

For once, Cal obeyed her command without comment. But he paused, and let his eyes rest on the beautiful princess in the lovely blue dress, sitting by herself in the entry hall. It was like he was viewing some great work of art, hung up in a prestigious museum.

“For what it’s worth,” he said warily, “while you’re certainly no prodigy, you’re not bad either. When you slowed down and concentrated, you gave me a tough time. If you keep at it, you could probably become a rather skilled player.”

Aina didn’t do anything to indicate she had heard him, so Cal quietly disappeared into the hallway.

Aina rested her head on the chair, listening to the sounds of Cal preparing food in the kitchen down the hall. She supposed she should read, but couldn’t mind the energy to cross the room and pick up the novel. This realization made her head hurt even worse than when she tried to focus on the blurry letters, and so instead, she did nothing at all. She looked out the window. She cruelly ignored Ram’s awkward greeting when the shy girl came down the stairs and crossed into the kitchen. She played with a lock of her dull red hair, wondering what her parent’s reaction would be if she returned to court with all of it cut off. Would they care? Would they notice?

Aina sighed aloud.

I wonder, she thought to herself, why do I feel this way? I am a princess, with infinite power and infinite resources. Why do I at this moment feel like the most silly and pathetic thing in the wide world?

Aina closed her eyes, hoping that the darkness would alleviate the throbbing in her head. She wondered when Bridget would return, and then realized she didn’t want to talk to her either. Her breathing slowed, and the tension in her body relaxed.

She dreamed.