Cut the strings and set me free

Part 4- if the strings snap will you let me float away?

"Very well. I shall see you at the altar. I'll tell the ladies to give you quarter of an hour, until the clock chimes for half past for you to compose yourself. For you to get a grip, and for you to remember and remind yourself just why it is you do this. For you to know that selfishness and greed is never befitting a princess." She says, each word a blow that makes more blood gush from the wound in my heart, tearing my soul a bit more.

I don't bow, don't nod, don't show any indication that I've heard.

Instead my eyes go to the clock, to the time. 

If all was timed well, if it all came down to the final moment to this, then any second now a figure would be approaching Jungkookie's wing, would knock on his door and provide him with the letter sealed with my crest.

And would explain everything.

It had been all a matter of time.

Because when I'd woken when dawn broke, it had been with resolve, with determination, with knowledge that whatever happened, whatever this world had ordained for me I would not follow, I would not bend.

That for the final step, the final decision, the final journey it would all lie in my hands, that it wouldn't ever be anyone's decision anymore.

Not the Queen.

Not the nation.

Not my advisors, even as their advice burned through my mind guiltily.

Not Jungkook's who was equally bound, equally compelled.

No-one's but my own.

I look in the mirror, see my bare throat, see the delicate chain and heart pendant no longer rest there.

Feel the fine delicate work of the metal beat as if it had life, be warm as if it was alive, and now gone. No longer there. Because before my chambers were disturbed and the privacy shattered, in the final moments of peace I'd ever get, my hands undid the clasp, the heart falling to rest on the white sheets. Resting there, sitting there- without its wearer to let it live, without a throat to grace and proudly show the world who it belonged to, to whom I'd entrusted mine to.

I look at myself in the mirror and see under the elaborate guise, the body, the face that is still mine. And once I've adorned one of the heavy nondescript cloaks over me, hiding the glaring siren the white, I draw the hood over my unbound hair, seeing the lifeless eyes, the unsmiling lips flicker with the lingering remnants of life, with the lingering trails of me.

And as I slip out of the window, climbing down the knotted nightclothes and linen sheets, I thank for an umpteenth time that my wing is in the deserted parts of the palace grounds, that as a princess this was one freedom I'd never taken for granted- the endless green through which I could slip away to the stables.

And once I draw myself up to sit on my horse- a large mighty horse that had been my faithful steed since I could reach the stirrups, skirts spilling over his shiny coat, I lean to brush my hand through his shining coat.

"One last ride Spirit. One last ride together." I whisper before drawing myself up and taking control of the bridle, galloping away from this. From the burdens. From the ones I loved and the ones I couldn't bear to see a final time before departing.

And as the wind rushed through my hair, pushing the hood back, as Spirit trotted through one of the hidden nooks and paths out of the palace, I found that when I left the palace behind, when I could no longer see its imposing, intimidating spires and towers as I turned- it brought a lightness to me that I hadn't ever experienced. An elation that made my spirit soar even as I continued on to what I was going to do. Even if this was the first ride to my freedom, the first ride to liberation, it was my final ride on the very grounds and land that had raised me.