Chapter 16:
Ciestine van Rordpier
HOW DID I GET MYSELF INTO THIS? MELODY pondered how her actions had birthed this consequence as she and Ciestine faced one another on the ballroom floor.
The princess was quite tall for a girl, and she had to look down to meet Melody’s eyes. She still wore her trademark handsome grin. “There’s no need to be nervous,” she said. “Dance as you would with your partner.”
“Y-yes, Your Highness.”
A commoner could not deny a princess, and so Melody found herself in the arms of royalty. Lectias and Beatrice, Maxwell and Milliaria, and Christopher and Luna joined them. The girls would finally get to dance. Plus, Lect’s lord had technically ordered him to engage partners other than Cecilia, so the arrangement worked out in his case, though he could not deny his curiosity regarding Ciestine’s intentions.
Luciana and Anna-Marie insisted on lending Milliaria and Luna their partners, as it would have been a tad awkward to send Beatrice out alone.
Ciestine regarded the trembling girl before her with satisfaction. A commoner. Uneducated. Pretty, granted, but that card’s already been played. And her partner’s only a knight. This will be easy.
Disquieting thoughts, to be sure, but Ciestine bore no ill will toward the girl herself.
She’ll be a stranger to me after tonight. The perfect tool. A quick dance is all I need to get a read on the Theolan peerage.
The princess was well aware of the commotion her dress had caused. She stood out. But aristocrats cared too much for propriety and appearances to voice their true thoughts regarding her peculiar tastes. In public, anyway.
Not that I’ve any need for someone brutish enough to shout their opinions from the rooftops.
If Ciestine wanted to learn the truth, to see their true faces, to discern friend from foe, she had to hear the voices they thought she could not hear, peek where they thought she could not see. A dance offered the perfect opportunity for her to scout for potential allies. Should they exist, she needed to rally them quickly, for her goal would not wait for them to reveal themselves. Cecilia happened to make the perfect tool toward that end since, as a commoner, she would be easily handled and easily forgotten, especially since she didn’t attend Royal Academy.
No one would look twice at a commoner. Ciestine would take the girl for a quick spin, accomplish her objective, and continue on with her night. Simple.
I do feel sorry for the girl, putting her on the spot with a princess, but I have no choice. You are but a stepping stone on my path to crushing him. Count your days, Schroden. They’re numbered!
“Congratulations. Another princess for the imperial family.”
Fifteen years prior, in March, a troubling yet successful delivery yielded a baby girl thanks the emperor’s third-favorite concubine, Albedira.
“No. No! You mean a prince! It was a boy I carried! Don’t lie to me!”
“I-I’m sorry, Mistress, but it is a girl. A beautiful girl.”
“Guards! Take her away! Cut her lying tongue from her mouth and feed her to the blight beasts! I’ve given birth to a prince! We have a prince!”
Albedira was an exceptionally driven woman. Long had she held ambitions of one of her own ascending the Rordpier throne. So blindly did she chase this dream that she only dimly realized the emperor’s consort had already produced a son, and just yesterday had produced another. Not even the fatigue of childbirth could quell her passion.
The midwife disappeared, but not to be de-tongued nor fed to monsters. She had done no wrong.
“My son. You are my son. You must be. The throne will be yours, my son.”
Being born to Albedira was the first of many misfortunes to come for Ciestine.
From the start, the emperor displayed little interest in the baby his concubine carried, already having sired two princes. When it became known that he was not to receive a third boy, his apathy hardened. Ciestine’s upbringing and education consequently fell entirely to a mother who refused to accept who she was.
Thus, the princess was raised as a prince. Every feminine mannerism, every potentially womanly inclination was swiftly and harshly corrected. From her vocabulary to her wardrobe, Albedira meticulously controlled her daughter’s childhood in the hope that she would realize the truth: She was, in fact, a boy. But Ciestine knew. She knew from the moment she knew her own name. She was, and wanted to be, a girl.
This caused her no small amount of distress. She was a smart girl, an observant girl. She knew she could not protest as her mother put her in trousers and suits when she would have preferred dresses. She was also a fearful girl and lacked the courage to look to her servants for help. The emperor, though perfectly aware of the situation, did not care for her plight.
Ciestine was alone.
She did have a brother, however. A real prince, born just a day before her, and to the empress consort herself. Ciestine wished she did not, because Albedira despised the boy and everything he represented. The siblings were enemies, whether Ciestine wanted to be or not.
Ciestine was sharp, far more given to learning than her mother. She breezed through Albedira’s curriculum effortlessly, and all of her tutors spoke highly of her development, much to Albedira’s pleasure and Ciestine’s relief. Few things brought her mother pleasures, but even this one was short-lived, because Schroden was a genius as well, even more so than Ciestine. He was also stronger. And faster. In every measurable aspect, he surpassed her, and what she struggled with, he overcame with ease.
Worse, thanks to Albedira’s insistence that her daughter was a prince, the siblings were constantly compared to one another. Ciestine became Schroden’s shadow, always haunting his steps but never matching his stature. A silly princess playing at prince. For all her talents and accomplishments, it was her inability to live up to the masculine role ascribed by her clothing that defined her.
Albedira shunned her just the same as the others. Always, Ciestine came up short, try as she might to satisfy her mother, to live up to a standard she could not meet.
Ciestine’s only reprieve, her only avenue of acceptable self-expression, was her rivalry with Schroden. Only in the context of that reprehensible prince did Albedira allow her to speak her mind. So Schroden became her punching bag, Ciestine’s oppressive muse. It certainly helped that the prince was easy to hate. Thankfully for Ciestine, his scoffs and smirks provided the perfect targets for her repressed rage.
If only hatred and success were positively correlated. As she neared her fifteenth year of life, Ciestine drew no closer to usurping him.
And then, in April, the news reached her.
“Schroden’s missing?”
“Yes, Your Highness. It’s highly confidential, but the imperial court is in chaos as we speak.”
The princess had amassed quite the support network during her short life—people to keep her apprised of events and methods by which she might outdo her brother. She’d mastered the art of schmoozing.
“Do we know why? Or how?”
“It’s unclear, but last night there was a secret council. Both princes attended.”
“Hmph. Cut out the princesses. Typical.”
The informant said nothing. Rordpier’s laws stated women could succeed the throne just like men, but its traditions told a different story. Not once had an empress ruled the empire, and in all likelihood, one never would unless it became the only option. Princesses simply held less value than princes, regardless of the legal line of succession.
“Find out what that meeting was about. And where my brother ran off to,” Ciestine ordered.
“It will be done.”
Months passed. The council guarded whatever they’d discussed closely indeed, so it took some time before Ciestine learned the truth.
“They wanted Schroden to study abroad in Theolas?”
“As per his plan, he was to infiltrate the kingdom, sow unrest, and prime the nation for its downfall.”
“Interesting. And I’m sure he could have seen it through, all but securing the throne for himself. So then why did he vanish?”
“I’m sorry to report we’ve nothing more to add on that front. He left only the one letter.”
“Then it wasn’t a kidnapping. But if he left of his own accord, again, why? His plan had been approved. It baffles the mind…though it does present an opportunity.”
“An opportunity?”
“Why, it brings a tear to my eye, the thought of my brother’s carefully laid plans going to waste. If only there were someone to take up the torch and champion them in his stead.” She smiled at the informant. “Loath as I am to play with his scraps, it would appear I’m the only one qualified to do so.”
“So it would.”
Ciestine laughed at herself. She’d spent so long studying that boy and chasing after all his endeavors that she’d inadvertently become an echo of him. That suited her fine in this instance.
With some difficulty, but hardly anything beyond her talents, Ciestine convinced the emperor to use her in Schroden’s place and secured her ticket to the Kingdom of Theolas.
“I’ll never understand what drove you to abandon all of this, dear brother, but I’ll gladly clean up your mess if it means the empire will know me. And it will know me.”