Mystery? In a Royal Court?
What price do you pay to protect someone? What cost to yourself do you pay to make sure tender dreams are not crushed?
There are no dragons (not on this planet, everyone is glad about that). Dungeons are generally fo...
Emme feels confused. There is so much being done, and she appears to be the focus.
They cast spells around her with increasing exasperation by the mages. Just what is it that they are trying to dispel?
I have been keeping my eyes down since I do not want to offend royal protocols. I have to listen and let my hearing tell me how they are. Is Yva all right?
Her father is speaking to the King of the Central Kingdom. I only catch fragments 'unexpected' 'separate matter' 'find seams of the spells' 'rotate into alignment' 'reach in'
Nothing makes any sense.
Minutes later, the mages touch me on the back of the neck. Everything falls away off me. Everything that was Emme. The body that was me. It slips off like cake batter and slips to the floor like a large gown.
I.I. am back. Back here. Wearing a simple long slip and standing for everyone to see. A smallish woman with a thin build.
I run my hands over my face. Yes, the deep scars are still there. Down my head, an eyelid healed but still torn, across my throat and then continued along the other side down waist and thigh.
I tremble and lift my hand to my right side. Pushing in against the slip hesitatingly , then I stop. It pushed in enough to know (to remember something I had forgotten). The large bite on her side (a large wound where flesh is missing). It is still there.
I must speak!
A raspy frail voice with an odd gasping tone (from the old wound at the neck) causes most in the room to shudder.
"K.K.Kinsman... h.hear. my plea! Kins... w.wait.... You a.are King now."
"R.Royal Ruler.r h.hear my plea! I petit..."
King of the Central Kingdom: "Lady Violet. You must rest. Know this. I will consider the matter. I can guess. Rest some and give your statement to the scribes."
They bring a covered chair for her to sit on. She looks up to see Yva. Yva is looking back (a child-like smile with caring adult eyes). No one else in the room looks at me.
In a while, Yva's mom puts a hand on Yva's head to divert Yva from looking back at me. Decorum. My wounds. They all look away.
They take the house of Annovae out this room across to a room on the other side of the hall.
The king smiles and leaves.
The historians and scribes get settled.
I start with the first crime (my participation in sedition against the King of this Land). I hid myself in an advanced combination of spells. So, I might flee and be healed by others. So the healing might happen on terms I wanted.
They did it in a way so I never met the mages that did it. As my new self, Emme, I only met a mage that had planned to take me away, far away from here. That mage died unexpectedly.
I confess. I did not want the process that had been ordered.
I did not want them to permanently remove my ability to feel emotions. To become so dull to feelings that my heart beats would become stable.
I still do not want that. Even though the orders of (even previous) Kings are irreversible.
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