Dancing on Strings

Queendom

"You bring out an ugly side of me, Fang Mai-Ling," Reve said, using one of her full names that she never heard anymore.

Mai narrowed her eyes at him. "That ugly side showed itself long before I came along," she said, "And there is not a face pretty enough for you to steal that can hide the ugliness below it. Though I hear you've tried. This face doesn't suit you, you should give it back."

Reve shot her a nasty smirk. "You think? How about this one then?"

In the blink of an eye, Reve's blonde features were gone and were replaced by the easy, dark charm of Griffin's face, without his clockwork.

Mai wanted to strike him but her hand down by her side.

"No? Too raw? How about this?"

The next second, her brother Etienne looked back at her, bright eyes and self-assured smile turning on her.

Mai almost screamed at him, her fingers balling into a fist.

"Aw, you don't like it when I change my face? Maybe you shouldn't suggest it then," Reve sneered, changing back the face she knew.

"What did you mean about my mother?" Mai said.

"Why can't you just leave things be, sit back and be good?" Reve shot back, once against ignoring her. "Weren't you raised with any moral grace as a princess?

Mai raised an eyebrow, setting a hand on her hip. "Let me tell you something about being a princess, prince. The expectations of a royal lady are that she be lovely and meek and mild. She does as her masters tell her and plays pawn in the games of court."

She took a step towards him, her brow lowering, eyes darkening.

"Let me tell you about the realities of being a royal lady. The ones who are likely to survive sit in the shadows. The ones who are likely to succeed will pick their battles and fight until they win or are destroyed. You are looking at a princess who has ignored conventions and rose to become a principle dancer in the kingdom's leading ballet company. Do you have any idea what sort of an achievement that is? Do you have concept of the tenacity one must possess to dominate court as The Princess Royal and still be in the dance studio, every day to train and practice and rehearse before getting up on that stage before your court and pretend to be someone you are not in hopes they do not recognise you and thus destroy your reputation?"

Reve opened his mouth and her words rolled straight over him.

"Do you know what it is like to be raised as the daughter who ruined the crown? The child of the woman who shattered the expectations of the kingdom and led the country's strongest king down a wayward road that resulted mistresses and bastards and a rebel that could not be moulded? To grow up with no mother to guide and protect her daughter from the vultures that circle the 'whoreson' mongrel child while her siblings lived safe behind their mothers' skirts? Do you know what it's like to stand beside your half-twin brother, born a mere half hour before you with 'pure' blood in his veins and thus have to watch as people simper and fawn over him, licking the very ground he walks upon before they turn their eyes on you and silently pray you learn your place, which is apparently under their boot? Do you have any idea what kind of person I have been moulded into? Do you understand?"

For once, Reve didn't have anything to say. He just looked at her, eyes dark and cold.

"No, you don't," Mai said, leaning back and shaking her head. "You don't understand it at all. Well I shall tell you. They wanted to call me a mongrel. Well then I'm like a dog to a bone. It has bred a person who is built to survive and fight until she gets what she wants. What I want is to send my sisters home, return Dalton to his kingdom and keep Kazimir alive. I decided that would be my end goal the day I fell asleep for the last time. I cannot be swayed with pretty jewels or god-like powers. So no, I cannot just leave things as they are. You chose the wrong opponent when you brought this fight to me. I know you underestimate me and I know you think all I have are my words when I tell you I will destroy you and that I will take the role as Queen. But when I was conceived, I was being born as a future queen. It was nought more than luck that my brother was born premature and that I was born late and that it resulted in him arriving minutes before me. He won that race and my father's kingdom is his to rule. But I am still owed a queendom and you have offered up your land."