The Exiled Gem

The Merciless Pang

Master George glared at her for a second. 'Are you sure that is a lie?' He questioned, a hand reaching his chin, like it always did when he was thinking hard. The sentence made her feel light-headed with panic. She could have said anything - but she had to be a bigmouth and nudge her toe out of the line. 

She took a deep breath. There was no way he could know. There was no way anybody could know - and if they did, Liam had to start counting his days. Alexandra plastered a cheery smile to her face. She gave a weak chuckle.

'How can it be otherwise, Master George? I am no princess - do I look like one to you?' She asked. It was best if she made the teacher answer his own question, to remove the sapling of doubt in his head before it grew into a tree. A flowering tree that could spread its pollen to others' heads.

'Ask me to be honest about it - and I will say yes. But ask me to be practical - and I will say no.' He replied, dipping her in panic once again. Did he mean to say that she looked like a princess? Half the people at Doveland didn't think so, four years back - when she had been one. And now, all of a sudden, when she was supposed to be a runaway rogue - somebody was telling her "yes, honestly you do look like a princess."

At least he still considered it practically impossible. Master George was a practical man - he went with his brain.

'But alright, that was a commendable way to lie - I may go so far as to say - that you did fool me, with it.' He accepted. And she heaved a sigh of relief, a sudden weight rolled off her - Alexandra didn't need more trouble. 

Master George moved on to the next person. At the end of the class, he declared all of them as "liars and cheats". It was little tough to know for sure if the declaration was a praise or just an utterance of his heartfelt opinion of them. 

 'As a reminded, you all shall also proceed with combat training this year - so that your skills remain agile and don't catch rust. Mabel,' He then suddenly turned to Alexandra. By now, his gaze didn't frighten her. It had become a scary need: if she wouldn't see it for a day, something would feel missing.

'Yes - sir?' She asked, still hoping this wasn't time for another demo.

'Do you have any family member? Any blood relatives?' He shot at her. 

'Why?' Alexandra demanded, panic catching her jaw. After the last ordeal, panic had seemed to risen from its original habitat at the pit of her stomach, to her diaphragm. It was sitting there, calmly, waiting to rise up to her neck as soon as the need arose. First Princess - now blood relative - nobody had come to claim her, had they?

Master George looked at her for a second, he then said. 'You are twenty, girl.' As if that explained everything under the sun. She gave him a bored expression that said, you think I don't know? but remembering that it was the Master and not Watson or Kane, she wiped off the look hurriedly. And instead, replied with -

'Ye-es sir, I know that...'

'But you don't seem to know the law,' he continued, shaking his head. 'Blood relatives can get proposals for you - if you have a brother, or a father, or a mother - they can even fix your marriage tomorrow and neither I, nor you, shall have any right to oppose it.'

Alexandra did know that law. And it angered her to some extent - did life only mean marriage and settlement? No adventure? No love? No friendships? And even upon that, why wasn't anyone - Liam, to be more particular - changing it?

This was not the first time she was thinking on these lines. Earlier too, she had - and she had come upon the conclusion that maybe he couldn't. That there would be a civil unrest if he did. Men, even women who were mothers, or grandmothers - they would never accept that they couldn't fix their daughters' marriage of their own free will. Such huge cultural changes would have to be done slowly - steadily, yes - but slowly...