The Silenced Speaker

Chapter 35

Reflexively Roxanne drew her hand back, but the tight grip of his hands gave her time to think outside her reflexes. He was the Prince, a superior; she had no right to disobey him. Above all, he was her fiancé.

Fiancé…

Roxanne’s head hurt dully with the words echoing in her head. Impassiveness, annoyance, disapproval… whatever emotions she had towards the word, she forcibly suppressed them. Her mind was in turmoil, just in the one second after his words slipped out from his lips, but her hand’s struggle ceased. She commanded her mind to return to the same peace.

Prince Trenton smiled wryly, seeing no emotional change present in her expression. “I’m sorry,” he withdrew both hands, hurt flashed briefly in his blue eyes; “I said I have a present for you, didn’t I?”

His hand reached inside an inner pocket of his dark jacket, and drew out a sparkly object.

Roxanne narrowed her eyes, observing it. Trenton held it close to her, and dropped it on her palm. She closed her fingers around it, and examined carefully.

It was a delicate ring made of clear crystal, a beautiful ice blue colour. The surface of it was smooth and flawless. Tiny tears of sapphire were set along the outside of the hoop, a chased floral border outlined the sides, intricate but not fancy. At one point a piece of larger sapphire was set, with a perfect diamond shape, shining with icy quality. Roxanne thought she saw a faint ‘E’ in the glow, but it vanished as soon as she took a closer look.

This ring suited her perfectly! It was her first thought. She liked its colour, its design, even just holding it; she knew it was made for her. The crystal was still ice cold despite her holding onto it for a while, its temperature affected by none of its environment.

She examined it somewhat reservedly, as she would at display in the museum, something that no matter how much she liked, would never belong to her. It was a gift from Prince Trenton, but she didn’t see it as hers – as she had never seen anything that the Royal family had given her as her own possession.

Though soon, they’d be her family… Family. The word seemed as remote and untouchable as ever.

She would become a Princess of Elrtiv. Elrtiv… That must be what the ‘E’ stood for.

“Do you like it?” A soft enquiry by her ear struck her heart like unexpected thunder; a shock pulsed through her, and left her ears ringing with loud silence. A cold sensation spread. This ring…?

Not seeing the alarm in her eyes as she stared at him questioningly, Trenton continued with pleasure, “It’s our engagement ring. I ought to have given it to you when you were still in Elrtiv, but it was still in the process of creation then. Father and I thought we should announce our engagement with Tathy and Alexis, so we had to announce it without a proper ring. You’re not angry, are you?”

Stiffly, she shook her head.

“Rox –”

“No! – ”

The sudden scream cut off Trenton’s sentence. He rose from his seat immediately; Roxanne was already gone from his side, leaning by the bleachers, looking down at the tennis court.

They were both familiar to the scream.

Tathiette.

Trenton glanced at the ring, still clutched between Roxanne’s fingers, sighed inaudibly. Roxanne must have heard it, though; her head tilted his direction slightly, but didn’t look back, her fingers were occupied with drawing invisible runes in air, urgent yet still calm.

She threw multiple charms at the court at once, glamour, sound insulation, everything that she could think of that might help. Why did Princess Tathiette scream? It was quite loud, especially considering the number of audience here. It didn’t help that the spectators were murmuring amongst each other already.

“…Did you hear that?”

“… Did the scream come from Roxanne Lynwood?”

“… I thought she was mute…”

“… It might have been Natasha…”

“…Natasha had just won the match.”

“… What’s wrong with Roxanne? She couldn’t even respond to the most basic shot!...”

If there was anything Roxanne had learnt from these comments, it was that the glamour around Tathiette was fooling nobody. Sooner or later people were going to be suspicious enough to do more than just sit and watch and gossip.

The first thing to do was to erase the match before, or at least just the scream and any suspicion, from the spectators’ minds. Doing it one by one was tedious, but she didn’t have any more choices. She picked a random girl from the middle, and penetrated her mind. Tracia Seol, from a rich Korean family, had learnt tennis for five years and would be playing in the tournament. For someone who had as much experience in playing tennis as her, Tathiette’s amateurism was shown with distressing clarity. There had been a few obvious faults, more unremarkable mistakes, none of which were justified. Confronting the Asian girl’s puzzlement in her mind, Roxanne knew something was out of place, immediately.

“Tathiette had confounded the umpire.”

Roxanne nodded, fingers tapping against the railing. Back in the Palace, she had to endure Tathiette’s whatever requests, but rarely had to clean up after her. This time, here, Tathiette was the Princess only to her. Mortals wouldn’t tolerate her mistakes because she was the Princess of a place they had never known existed.

How troublesome.

A hand reached her shoulder; Roxanne held back her cringe, knowing who it belonged to. She withdrew her own tapping hand from the railing, trying to hide her discomfort at someone standing so close.

Trenton strolled to stand beside her. “Allow me,” he nodded once towards her, and chanted softly, familiar words flowed from his lips, forming an unwavering command.

Roxanne exhaled softly in relief. She had recognized the memory chant; installing a fragment of memory was much more an easier task compared to deleting memories. Whereas the latter had to be performed individually, the former could be done to a large group in an instant.

The Prince finished off with a wave, creating a glamour. Roxanne could see exactly where it was; on the bottom row, a lone girl with ordinary appearance stood abruptly, scurrying away as if extremely discontented with what she was seeing. Her long hair obscured her features, and there wasn’t anything else remarkable about her.

In fact she didn’t exist at all.

Roxanne invaded Tracia Seol’s mind again.

She doesn’t have any manners! Tracia thought, her vision focused on the disappearing figure of the girl for one second, and moved on. The results are indeed disappointing… I was expecting more drama than this. Only I wouldn’t scream out so loud like her, were this going to be more unsatisfactory.

There. Roxanne left her mind tracelessly, turned to the side and met Trenton’s gaze gratefully.

“Don’t say thanks,” Trenton said, before she could put the word on paper. “Tathy’s my sister. I ought to have taught her better than doing this. It is my responsibility totally, not yours.”

It wouldn’t have happened if I had tried to stop it.

“No, Roxanne, I know you would never say ‘no’ to her. She’s your Princess.” Trenton shook his head and turned to face the court, his eyes fixed on his sister. “This needs to stop. Do whatever you need to stop her.

“It’s an order.”

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