The Future's Call

Chapter 4-The Revelation, Part 2

"Oh, I can't believe I'm finally meeting you! You look wonderful! Was the journey okay? They fed you well? You look exactly like your sister," the queen exclaimed, none of which seemed to penetrate Esther's brain. She was too daunted by the fact that she was looking at a real queen.

"Excuse me your Majesty, but I don't know what you mean," she broke in politely when she could speak again. "My sister is nothing like me. I've always been very different from the rest of my family. Could you explain more thoroughly? What's going on?"

The queen looked surprised for a split second. "Hoshea didn't tell you? Well, I suppose you should come in so I can explain." The queen took Esther's hand in a way that seemed almost motherly, leading her into the room.

The throne room was huge, bigger than Esther's own room, with polished marble tiles for flooring and paintings decorating the walls. There was a soft scarlet carpet that led from the door to the raised platform on the other side of the room. On either side of the carpet were five or six towering marble pillars, and on the platform there were three expensive looking thrones. The biggest was on the right. Made of solid gold and carved with an intricate pattern, it looked like something out of a fairy tale. The one in the middle was the smallest and looked far more feminine. It was carved to look a bit like a flower, with petals splaying gracefully outward from the seat, which had a velvet cushion on it. The one on the left was also clearly made for a woman, with sweeping curves and colorful gems set into the sides. 

"You were small, just three months old," the queen said when they had settled themselves in a pair of straight backed chairs. They sat facing each other across a surprisingly simple wooden table. "You were ready to get your wings, but something happened about a week before they were done: one night someone broke in and took you. To this day we don't know who. Joachim was able to track them to an orphanage in Brazil, but by the time we got there you were gone and the person running the place wouldn't tell us who had taken you. Of course we kept looking but without much hope. I think the reason it took us so long to find you was because they changed your name."

Esther's first reaction was confusion. Who would steal a princess just to give her away immediately? The queen had said they had changed her name. Why? What had her name been before?

"I–if my name isn't Esther, then what is it?" she asked.

"Your given name was Dinanatha, but if you would like people to keep calling you Esther, that can also be arranged."

Pictures from her life flashed in her head. She was looking at a photo of the Daren family, all of whom had dark hair and gray eyes, and she stood out like a sore thumb, with her blond hair with red undertones and ocean colored eyes. She saw the way her parent's treated her, as if she wasn't their daughter, just a pretty wallflower. They'd hit her before they hit any of her siblings, and now she knew why. She saw all the soldiers on either side of the red carpet on the way to the ship. She saw all the attention on the boat. They had treated her like royalty.

Because she was. The revelation sank in, and suddenly everything made sense. Denisha kept calling her "your highness". She should have figured it out a long time ago.

God she was so stupid!

Words that Hoshea had said to her only just three days ago came back to her now: ...if I lost you again–

"Was Hoshea the one who lost me in the first place?" Esther asked. She hadn't realized he was that old.

"No, Hoshea was only about ten years old when you were taken," the queen answered.

Oh. Apparently he wasn't that old.

He'd probably been talking about how she'd been stolen in the first place and the queen would get mad if she got stolen again, not that he was directly involved.