Princess Charming

Chapter One: Maybelle

maybelle pov

"Do not play host to fear, Princess, for your Prince will be here soon to rescue you. We will inform the whole kingdom of the contest for your hand in a half hour. Goodbye, Princess Maybelle."

    "You can just call me May," I grumbled to my mother, trying to keep my voice firm and annoyed. "That's what Novel calls me." Yet, weaved throughout my tone was my underlying fright. What if no prince ever came to rescue me, and I was locked in this tower forever?

    "Why, that hardly seems proper. I am the Queen of Rifft, as you know, and the King and I treat everyone with respect by addressing them by their proper name."

    "Well, I would enjoy it more if you called me by my preferred name! Anyways, it is not like there is anyone in this tower to hear you call your daughter by anything short of her proper, given name." 

"Princess..." The Queen of Rifft warned in a tone that said back down. I shrunk against the cold, stone wall of the tower, afraid of aggravating my mother. All of the times I did... well, the scars were on my lower back, so if I wore a low hanging dress, no one would notice.

The Queen of Rifft smiled at me on the floor, curled up into a tight ball, defensive ball, as if she was proud to have raised her daughter to fear her own mother. Reverence must first blossom out of fear. She said whenever she asked a servant to carry out one of my punishments. As if she could justify her actions by saying that.

"I assure you that your stay here will not be mundane and not at all long." The Queen reassured me. "Unless of course, the kingdom has deemed you undesirable..." The Queen clicked her tongue at me, already disappointed in my performance of being a flawless symbol of a desirable body. "I bid you luck." She dipped her head to me, bobbing it just a few inches down. She made to leave before she swung back, suddenly, her eyes wide and her mouth open.

"I almost forgot!" The Queen kneeled down in front of me, her hand out. I scooted farther up the wall as she moved closer to me. The Queen brought her hand down to my eye level and opened her clenched fingers. In her palm lay three small objects.

"A pin." She held up a small, bronze pin with chipped silver paint coated around it. The symbol engraved on it was the crest of the goddess Uunchi, goddess of Luck. The crest portrayed a wavy line, with wisps of smoke leaking out of the edges of it and little notches cut above. Birds. That was what the notches were supposed to symbolize. The crest was inside of a deep circle engraved on the pin. The Queen leaned forward and pinched a bit of the fabric of my dress in between two of her fingers. "May Uunchi bring you Luck, along with a fine suitor."

"Beads." The Queen placed a small drawstring bag on my lap. It was lumpy. I rolled it under my wrist and realized that it was filled with small cylindrical objects. "Take the drawstring out of the bag and string the beads onto it. In whatever order you wish. For, once you marry a fine suitor, you will be a woman, and you will give yourself your own orders." I thought this to be very ironic. Once I married, I would have a lot less freedom. Not only would I belong to a man, who would write my life like a bad, boring novel, but my mother would also still live in the palace, and would remain there until she died. She would still order me around like a simpleminded servant child and whip me like a horse.

I stared in contempt at the last object in my mother's hand. It was a corner of fabric from my birthing blanket. A tightly weaved bit of wool that I was born into, and was swaddled in as a baby until I grew too large for it. "So you always remember where you came from." My mother explained. I held back a snort. I would still live in the palace for the rest of my life. I was not going anywhere.

The gifts weren't great, but I still wiped away any ugly expressions that my mother would deem inappropriate for a Princess, and put on a blank face that caused no wrinkles. I forced the corners of my lips to curl up into a small, polite smile. "Thank you, Mother."