Diane slowly opened the door.
The room was small, with a singular desk and a chair surrounded by so many books that the shelves swallowing the room were not enough to hold them all. Behind the chair was a balcony, and though the open door entered gushes of perfumed wind. Only one person was inside, just like she had expected; her father stood facing the garden. She could see his silhouette, dark due to the light that shone onto him. For a moment she hesitated. She knew why he wanted to see her, and she wasn't sure if she was ready for that conversation. But the instinct outgrew duty once again.
“You should get that treated,” he said, without looking at her. “Go see Isaac later.”
The blood was washed off and the memory of pain sewed shut by skilled Florian doctors. There would be no scars this time, they promised. Still, the unholiness of the bandages now covering half of her body irritated king Brandon; she was not a God, only a little girl who couldn't find her wings.
“Don't you find it a bit dangerous? Using his abilities for every little scratch?” the princess asked, now more irritated than her father. After all this time, the only thing she could see was his back.
As he turned, the King of Stone looked as furious as his expressionless face allowed. “You just have to stir trouble wherever you go, don't you?”
“I am your daughter after all,” she smiled bitterly. “And you didn't answer my question. What do we do if someone finds out? How do we explain that a Florian, who is supposed to control nature, has a power not even a Crystalian can have?” Diane was shaking. All her life she had dreamt of the moment it would all begin, but now that the end was perceivable, she wished she had never been born. “Despite the common belief in our circles, people are not toys, father.”
“No, they are not. But you two are not exactly regular people, are you?” Brandon leaned over the desk in the middle of Jeremiah's small office; it was more a hiding spot than an office, for Jeremiah was not the kind of king people feared enough to confide in.
“So, I am a tool?” she yelled, not knowing why. The stress and fear were slowly climbing up her spine and swallowing her flesh. The two were too much alike to ever come to an agreement.
Brandon sighed in disappointment. “Stop it, Diane. Go have Isaac heal you. It is an order.”
“I am a Raven! I don't take orders from you!” When she slammed her hands on the desk a few papers shot up and, due to the wind, flew right towards the door. She was looking at her father in disbelief, colored by emotions she didn’t know how to hide; she was too naked under all those bandages.
Brandon could feel his daughter slip through his fingers more and more with each passing day. He wondered if sending her off to Lewtown so soon after the accident had been a mistake. Then again, five years is a long time, especially for a Raven. He, of course, never thought it could be his lack of interest that constantly provoked her. “Are you opposing your king?” he asked in disbelief.
“Yes,” Diane answered confidently.
“Why?”
“Because you are wrong.”
What it meant to be wrong, Brandon didn't know. He was only ever told that he was right. So, what was he to do in such a situation? Well, it didn’t matter what he wanted or did; as long as she did her job, it would all be worth it.
“I am going back to Lewtown. Alone,” the princess stated, leaving no room for argument.
He nodded. “Yes, I believe that to be for the best. Leave the Flamer here until he heals. I will tell my guards to prepare your luggage. Do three days sound long enough for you to get ready?”
“Yes.” She bowed carefully and made her way towards the door.
“Crystalians are all afraid of you. How do you plan to rule a country that hates you?” Brandon asked, now sitting in Jeremiah’s chair.
Diane gripped her fingers. “I guess I have to fulfill my legacy. How do you think you got the nickname 'The King of Stone'? It surely wasn't because you are kind.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“But unlike you, I know how to be a good king,” Brandon responded.
She snorted. The hypocrisy of the man who called himself righteous was unbearable. “Tell me,” she said, her voice shaking, “when exactly did you decide that the Browns were an inconvenience? Before or after you found out that I was in love with their son?"
Brandon's hand twitched. “After you killed his father and left me to clean the mess.” He didn’t like how the words came out, so he sighed. “You may not be the one who swung the knife, but you know very well that it was your stubbornness and bad decisions that ended his life,” he continued.
“Well, don’t you just know everything?! Listen, father, while you and your little friends were out there shivering in fear of what people would think, I was fighting for what I believed in!”
“Oh, and how did that work out for you?” Brandon replied calmly. “Now you can’t even remember what that was.” Brandon chuckled at how tense she was. All he had to do was tell her the truth, like any good father would; but he was a king first and foremost. “Even if he did forgive you and moved on, would Meredith have done the same? I protected you. You might be the Dove, but you are not invincible.”
“Meredith is dead!” Diane screamed. “She is dead because you decided that you didn’t like keeping Demons inside your castle anymore! You threw them out like… like garbage when you knew how much I cared about them!”
“You are pointing fingers at the wrong person. Wasn’t Meredith your responsibility?” Brandon replied with a small smile on his face. “She was in your unit, captain. And don’t talk about things you know nothing about.”
“And why don’t I know anything?!”
“Because you chose the path that leads to deceit.” Brandon rubbed his face, expecting Diane to storm out of the room. But she didn’t. She stayed sinking, beneath the floor, the castle, and the mud. “My honest advice to you, as your father, is to stop acting like a child and start being an adult. There is much more than your life on the line here. Are you willing to sacrifice it for some…silly ideas?”
Diane felt so sick she almost cried. Her head had been hurting constantly since she had arrived in Lewtown and there was nothing she could do to ease the pain. It seemed that the more she found out about her past the sharper the pain became. “They are called ideals, father.”
“Anomalies. Nothing more, nothing less. You are miserable, Diane.”
“And you think pushing my conscience aside would make me happy?”
“All I know,” he said, weirdly sympathetically, “is that this is not how it used to be.”
“Because I was whole.”
“Nothing is stopping you from feeling whole again. Have you forgotten how you felt when you woke up that day?”
Short and sharp pictures briefly replaced Brandon’s face. “Never.”
“Do you remember what you told us then?”
“That I will stop at nothing.”
“Then why are you stalling? Did you forgive Him?”
“No.”
Brandon leaned forward. “This is more than just some mission: it is your revenge. Once this is over, and it will be over, you will have your entire life ahead of you. Do you wish to spend it in regret?”
“No.”
Brandon smiled. “Then the answer is clear.”
And clear it was. In theory. But at the moment, for some strange reason, tranquility Diane had never experienced before whispered that there was much more to life than a sense of self. That could wait, a golden thread hinted; it was high time for the princess to try and understand the king.
Will I ever become a queen?
Diane quietly closed the door behind her. She hated to admit that her father was right, and that made her hate herself even more. Why did she have to live up to the rumors of the people who had never caught a glimpse of her, to become the monster they were all afraid of? To fail miserably enough for them to whisper about her when they had no idea how much of herself she had sacrificed for them? She brushed past a few aristocrats, all stripping her with curious glances. They wanted to rip her open but knew better than to utter a syllable. She was the fear that kept the world intact. If only they knew she didn't exist anymore. The glorious Diane Hunster couldn’t tell anymore when her own father was lying to her face, letting her accuse him of things that never really happened.
Father is right. I have to stop thinking about these things. If I don’t, all the sacrifices I have made will be for nothing. Swallow your pride, Diane Katherine Hunster. Living in deceit is better than not living at all. I will complete this mission without a blunder and make them all bow their heads like they used to.
Florus was too beautiful a country for demonic thoughts. The gardens, the air that smelled like magnolia, the conciliatory people that once bit off the limbs of her kind. She wished she would never have to leave that place, but three days was all she had. She would spend them idling around the castle and listening to Isaac talk about flowers. Thomas would be well healed, but she would not talk to him. Her goal would be to empty her mind before starting to deal with the mess that the past had left behind when it changed seasons.
There is nowhere left to run.