Paris

46

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Four years ago...

Alya's P.O.V

"Straighten your posture!"

   "Is that a hair out of place? Fix that bird's nest at once!"

   "Smile like you mean it! Your looks mean everything along with your wealth and reputation."

   "Do not speak unless spoken too! Men despise dominant women, who think they know it all."

   "You call that a curtsy? Disgraceful is what I call it! Keep doing curtsies until your muscle memory embraces the perfect one each time without failure."

   It has only been a week since father had taken me to the exiling. Mother has done nothing but endlessly train Nora and me to be proper ladies. Mother continuously slanders us for our "incompetence" so she says.

   She wants us to join the Ladies of the Court since we were late in joining the wealthy class. It would be a good way of getting to know the rich families and finding a potential husband (more of it would be him finding his trophy wife).

   I pitied Nora. She has to deal with mother more than me since she has to find a husband quickly. She is the oldest, after all.

   Luckily, our lessons had ended around half an hour ago. It was time for bed as night had fallen over the sky. I could feel my eyelids growing heavy.

   My body begged for me to sleep but this was the only time I was free. The only time I could breathe without mother putting more and more weight on my shoulders.

   It has been nothing but lessons, criticism and visiting households to build our name. The most of a break Nora and I would get during the day was to eat or have a bathroom break. Even then, it was not enough.

   I was worn down and could not help feeling an icy blanket wrap around my body. Everything tasted bitter and my mental stability was slowly cracking.

   "This is all absurd," I muttered, smoothing out my nightgown. There was an ache in my heart instead of a fierce lion's beating.

  "I despise this place," I hissed, walking out onto my balcony, "I have felt nothing but pain ever since arriving. They say it is a city of love? Ha! Paris is nothing but a city of misery! I was doing just fine living in Italy without this...this...madness!"

   I let out a frustrated growl.

  I am forced to be perfect and will have to find a suitable husband. I am being trained from early dawn to late dusk to be a proper lady.

   Is this what my life has come too? Is my whole future set in stone?

"Maybe, this is a good thing. Living a life of poverty and disgrace sounds even worse than the life I have now," I thought.

If I mess up, there was no going back. I would be sent to the poor section. I would be all alone and trying to scrape by day by day. I probably would not be able to survive for very long and die a horrible death.

Everyone will only remember how shameful I was to my family's name...or forget that I even existed at all.

   I placed my elbows down on the railing and hid my face in the palms of my hands. I let out a long, stressed sigh while rubbing my tired eyes.

Just thinking about the burdens of a rich life and what would happen if I broke the rules made my back physically ache. Either that, or it was from constantly trying to keep a straight posture.