I faintly heard the ringing of the evening bells from the city.
“My task for the day is done, so I’ll be taking my leave now, Your Highness.”
“Wow, that’s a saint for you! You work fast. I guess I’ll head back to the palace too. See you later.”
I bowed to Prince Eric, then I got in my carriage and headed back.
He said “see you later” like he was going to come here again tomorrow… Things really have taken a strange turn. Since Eric had watched me work the whole time, I was much more tired than usual. All in all, today really was a series of troublesome events. I wonder if my father already got word of my broken engagement.
I was exhausted enough as it was; the thought of receiving a lecture when I got home made my head pound. It truly was a pity that I couldn’t cure my headache with magic.
“Welcome home, my sweet sister! I hope you had another lovely day, doing the Lord’s work.”
I entered my house with a mounting sense of dread, but Jill greeted me with a warm smile. Everyone who knew her said she had the smile of an angel, but I regret to inform you that, to me, it looked like the grin of a devil.
“Jill, you told Lord Philip that I was abusing you, didn’t you?”
“B-but why would I ever say anything bad about you to Lord Philip? Oh! Oh! Y-you’re too cruel! Oh, Leiaaa, you’re just so meeeean!”
Jill’s eyes instantly welled up at the mention of that cock and bull story she told Philip. Ahh, there she goes again. Crying shall commence in three…two…
The speed at which she turned on the tears was extraordinary, really. In a way, I was impressed. And the swiftness with which she turned on the waterworks correlated positively to the degree of trouble it caused me.
But the real trouble always came after, because whenever Jill cried, she would always make an appearance.
“Leia! You yelled at poor Jill again, didn’t you?! Why can’t you be nice to your baby sister?! Just look at how scared she is!” My stepmother, Catherine, stormed down the stairs.
My birth mother died when I was little, and Catherine was my father’s second wife. She was Jill’s mother, and she harbored a grudge against me for some reason. Meanwhile, she loved her precious baby Jill to death, so whenever Jill cried, she was quick to blame me. When I was chosen to be a saint and Jill failed, she stormed into the church and threw a fit. I also got an earful from her, making the day I became a saint a more troublesome than happy memory.
All in all, my relationship with Catherine was even rockier than my relationship with Jill.
What upset me the most about Philip breaking our engagement was that I might have to continue living here now. Nothing felt worse than living in a home where two of the people who lived there hated you.
“Oh, Mother, please forgive poor Leia. Lord Philip broke off their engagement, and she’s awfully distressed about it.” Jill had a smug look of victory on her face as she came to my defense. It was vexing, the cunning way she omitted the fact that she was the reason Philip broke off the engagement in the first place.
But I know how Jill’s mind works. I know she’s genuinely convinced herself she had nothing to do with my broken engagement.
I was angry…but I had resigned myself to my fate. I knew all too well just how powerful her self-delusion was.
“I don’t blame Lord Philip for falling out of love with a cold, heartless girl like you. If only he had chosen Jill from the very start, we could have been spared this trauma.”
“If only he had chosen Jill from the very start? So I take it that Lord Philip has already—”
“Yes, of course! Lord Philip was gracious enough to ask if he could marry our sweet Jill and protect her from all the harm that comes her way. He added that he doesn’t want to have a thing to do with you and your rotten personality anymore.”
As Catherine detailed Jill’s engagement to Philip, it was clear that he had feelings for her. After all, this was the guy who ran to Prince Eric in tears, pleading for justice. He wouldn’t have done that for a girl he didn’t care for—even Philip wasn’t that weird.
But proposing to a girl the same day he broke an engagement with her sister? I don’t think he could be any more unprincipled than that. And Philip called me capricious? He’s one to talk! That guy moved on way too fast.
Various feelings roiled inside me, but before I could put any of them into words, my stepmother’s scolding began.
“I hope you’ve learned your lesson, Leia. I don’t care how talented you are as a saint, if you’re rotten as a human being, you’ll never be happy. A heartless girl like you is destined to marry a scumbag.”
It was the sort of free-floating hostility that would make anybody lose their temper. But if I fought back, I could already hear my words being twisted and exaggerated against me later. It would result in nothing but added stress.
So all I could do was ignore her. I had long since given up on getting her to understand me. And to make things worse, I still had the same lecture from my father to look forward to later. After all these years, I had no doubt that my father’s words wouldn’t hurt me, but that confidence didn’t make it any easier. The whole thing just made me feel so hollow.