Stigmata

I am not Backing Down

"Announcing Her Majesty, Pheobe Albrecht."

All of a sudden, there were way too many people in the room. It was a large room, with altogether too much space for its supposed purpose as an office, but the instant the queen stepped over the threshold, it seemed almost minuscule. The queen herself wasn't a large woman. In fact, she was short and petite, with a long swanlike neck and slender, dainty hands. She looked like an antique doll never meant to leave its box, lest its porcelain face shatter from the slightest handling.

An expensive doll. Her red hair was artfully arranged atop her head to best display her long neck, a pearled crown nestled among the curls. The clothing she wore was made of vibrant blue fabric trimmed with white fur and exquisite embroidery. The amount of labor put into the bodice alone...

Obscene. That word resounded in my mind on repeat, sticking to everything I saw. Yes, she was a queen, but there were children starving just outside the palace gates. How could she stand to dress like that, in a building like this—just one of many!—while knowing that? Wasn't she the Iron Queen? The one who ruled Acan while her adulterous husband led an army against the Demon King? Surely, she was aware of the suffering just outside her door?

I took a moment to close my eyes against the wealth on display around me. My outrage was justified, but I knew it wasn't fair of me to blame the queen like this. She was just the last of many straws piling onto my growing hatred for the class system. The disparity of wealth wasn't nearly so obvious in the monastery, but that was on purpose. Now that I was out in the real world, I had no choice but to accept the glaring truth. Theophania—and now me, I suppose—was a member of the 1%.

Aiyah~, why are you wearing such fancy clothes in front of the child who spent her childhood stealing from the kitchens? Are you trying to make me hate you? It's working!

When I opened my eyes, the people in the room had rearranged themselves. My aunt and I still stood where we were, but Freddy and my uncle had moved away from the office door and stood off to the left against the far wall. The king and his squirrelly assistant stood on the right with the large, grossly ornate desk between them and my male kin. And me. I was between them.

Aiyah~, could they be any more obvious?

My aunt curtseyed lowly to the queen as the other woman stepped toward us. She didn't try to pull me down with her, as a queen technically ranked lower than a king, but I bent my knees, anyway. I lowered my head and placed my hand on my chest in a priestess' bow.

It lasted less than a second, but it was still more respect than I had shown the king, my own father. It was also less than I wanted to give, but my position was precarious, balancing between both sides of my family as I was.

The queen smiled at me, the expression bringing warmth to her brown eyes. "Ah, Theophania. So, the day has come for you to return to us."

"I'm relieved to hear you say my name, Your Majesty." The smile I gave her in return was genuine. "I was starting to fear no one in the palace remembered it."

Haha. The glare she sent to her husband over my shoulder was delightfully striking. Such a tiny woman, and yet she controlled everyone else in the room. Well, almost everyone.

"I should hope that I remember it. I am the one who gave it to you." Truth.

If I didn't know better, I'd think we were on the same page. Why else would she blatantly announce that her husband, the king of a nation which valued the relationship between parent and child, hadn't even named his daughter? Sure, she'd also made it clear that my mother hadn't named me, either, but my uncle already told me not to expect anything from her.

"Yes, I thought as much." I furrowed my brows and smiled as sadly as I could around the leaping joy in my heart. The queen was so kind and generous, giving me the chance to grind down my father's reputation like this. I should give her something in return, right? Wouldn't want her coming to me later claiming I owe her. "Clara is lucky to have a mother like you to take after."

How was that? I praised you and your daughter's beauty while also disparaging my own mother, calling attention to our lacking relationship. I did good, right? Praise me!

The corner of her full lips twitched upward. "Why thank you, you are too kind to praise her after the foolishness she got up to at your Coming of Age." Translation: I didn't tell her to do that.

"Oh, not at all! I was happy to have someone from the palace attend! I was afraid no one would." Translation: I got something good out of it, don't worry.

Her eyes widened and she covered her mouth in a pretense of shock. "Oh, my! My apologies, Theophania, I would have come myself if I had known." Translation: I have no idea how she found out about the party when even I didn't know.

I raised my hands and smiled apologetically. "You flatter me, Your Majesty. I am undeserving of such care." Translation: You would have stopped her if you could.

She smiled sweetly. "Not at all. You are also my daughter, after all." Tran—!

Wait, what?

My mind reeled from being pulled out of constructing and deconstructing double speak. How...exactly was I meant to interpret that? I was her daughter? Surely not. If she thought of me that way, I wouldn't have spent so many years in the monastery, struggling to feed myself. She said she named me, so could that mean she used her power as a wife to claim a concubine's child as her own? That didn't make any sense either. In the novels, it was clearly stated that the queen was the one who arranged for Theophania to be sent away. She was the one who told the world she was cursed, so why...

Unless, she wasn't.

That information—indeed, any information at all—was given to Theophania by her father. Why would he tell her all of that? Having met his wife, I can hazard a guess.

King Theodore Albrecht I wanted to control Theophania.

Why, I had no idea, but isolating her from her siblings, her mother's family, and even his own wife through lies and manipulation made it abundantly clear he didn't want her relying on anyone but him. Did he have some grand plan in motion that was interrupted by the Demon King's horde?

Whatever. I wasn't going to just sit back and let him run amok, regardless.

I had my own plans.

"The years Your Majesty served as regent are the best this nation will see for generations."

The office rang with the echo of my words. The queen looked at me with genuine surprise, no doubt caught off guard by the abrupt end to our word game.

"Y-y-you dare!"

I turned around to look at the king's assistant. He was red in the face from the force of his shout.

"Ah, I forgot you were here."

His face turned purple.

Hands tugged at my arm and I looked down at my aunt's strained smile.

"Theophania," she said pointedly. "How could you say something like that?"

"Because it's true." I turned away from her to look my father in the eye, daring him to contradict me. "You should listen to her more often, Your Majesty."

"I do listen to her." Lie.

"You wouldn't be in this position if that were true."

I was just fishing around, but it seems I struck a nerve. The king sighed and leaned heavily against his desk. His attendant began to flap around him like a bird performing a mating dance, squawking at the servants to get a physician. The king waved him off with a grimace before leveling a glare on me, then the Duke, then his wife. Rude.

"Do whatever you want," he said with a growl. "I'm done here."

And with that, we were all kicked out.