She couldn't go in.
Delilah stood in the entrance chamber shaking like a leaf, furiously willing her legs to move and failing.
There was definitely something wrong with her. She tried to conjure the ice-cold clarity she had felt after saving Kiri from the river, tried to focus on what being strong would get her: the crown. Do it for the crown. Go in for the crown. Play your cards right and you might not have to marry him...
For the crown.
When she went deep inside herself, stripped away all the outer layers to find the very core of herself, she hit molten ambition, the stuff that had fuelled her and driven her all her life. Where had it come from? Tiberius? Had he really been the source of all of this, placed it inside her when she was so young she could barely remember? No, she refused to believe something like this was her uncle's doing.
Old sounds and sights enveloped her.
*
The five-year-old toddled along on chubby legs, trying to catch up to her older brother. He was always faster than her, but she knew that if she just kept running, she could beat him somehow. The two children tore through bushes and wound around the paths of the garden in the height of summer, relishing being alone, because no courtiers came out when the sun was so high and scorching in the sky.
Suddenly the little prince stopped, and the princess tore ahead of him with a shriek of delight.
"Wait, Lila!" he called, but she ignored him. She never won! Only when he let her, and she could tell when he was pretending. She wanted to win for real. "Lila, we can't go that way!"
She had found an open door at the end of the path, assumed that was the finish line, and ran over it so fast she felt like her toes barely touched the ground. She hurtled into a cool room, dark compared to the brightness of outside, and before her eyes could adjust, her foot caught on a loose flagstone. Crying out, she went tumbling head over heels into the middle of the room.
Grown-up voices halted and papers shuffled as she rolled before hitting the ground with a loud smack. Delilah looked up and realised she had run right into the middle of the Forbidden Room, where Father went to conduct his daily work which they never told her about. Sometimes Marko went with him, but they had never let Delilah in yet.
Stuffy-looking men sat at tables lining the room, frowning at her, and a sense of importance charged the air. It smelled unfamiliar to her, dusty with vellum. Delilah stood up, scanning for Father. There he was! He always was given the best, most finely-carved chair, and a crown of pure gold sat on his head.
"Daddy!" She stumbled towards him, forgetting the pain of her fall immediately.
That most beloved face closed off like shutters had been drawn over it, and he turned his face away as if... embarrassed. Other men tutted and muttered things that did not sound pleasant. A strange feeling washed over Delilah, something she picked up on even if she did not understand it. Why didn't Father run to her with open arms? She wanted nothing more than to hug him, enfold herself in his bear-like embrace, bury her face in his chest and breathe his smell. She wanted his strong hands to hold her and his kiss to graze her head. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had done that, and the desire for it burned through everything the terrifying Governess had ever tried to teach her.
But he still looked... embarrassed. Why was her face heating up, why did she get the sense that she did not belong? Her throat began to constrict. Didn't he realise, hadn't the Governess told him, that she was constantly escaping her tutors and running through the palace just so she could find him? Just so she could get to him before he disappeared behind the Forbidden Doors? Why did it seem like he didn't love her?
Then she noticed a figure robed in blue, flanked by two white individuals, the central one's veil hanging over its face. She recognised the Anloch colours.
She changed direction, wondering if there was anyone familiar beneath the veil, any love that could come pouring out. She couldn't remember her mother's face, but she had a vague memory of it as a baby... She'd come back! She was going to take Delilah away from this hot and closed-in place and take her to her watery dreamland, the place they'd told Delilah she had come from and then so mysteriously returned to. She hadn't forgotten about Delilah at all, or stopped loving her, like the courtiers' scary children always told her when they saw her. Her mother had come back because she loved her child, and finally Delilah was going to get what the other children sneered about: a mother.
"Mama?"
Chairs screeched as they scraped against stone and people moved.
"Get her out of here," Gaol said in a low voice. "We cannot let anything disrupt the peace treaty with Anloch."
"If they remember how badly your marriage to the queen ended, sire..."
"Go. Now."
Someone hoisted her up, hands around her middle, and Delilah screamed and thrashed. They squeezed too hard, it hurt.
"Mama! No! Mama!" she cried, but the person was big and strong and easily able to carry her away...
Where the door slammed in her face and behind her loomed the unforgiving horned shadow of the Governess.
*
Shaking with excitement, the girl stood outside the grand doors as older men filed in, none of them sparing her a glance. She had been stuck alone with the terrifying masked Governess for so long, and finally, they were letting her in. This was all she had ever wanted.
Her brother was last in the line, tall and straight-backed, a circlet upon his burnished hair, looking every bit like the young prince.
Delilah ran to his side and giddily grabbed his arm on the way in.
"Don't cling to me," he chided. "Don't walk with round shoulders, either."
"Why not?"
"Don't embarrass me in here, Delilah."
Delilah, not Lila, he'd said. He was treating her like a child, like he was superior, and heat shot through her.
"Why would I embarrass you? What do you mean?" She tried and failed to swallow the whine in her voice.
"Leave me alone - they'll judge me."
Why would anyone judge the perfect prince?
They filed in and Delilah watched the men taking their places, lingering by the walls when they finally let her over the threshold last. Of course she had to be the last in line, as the only woman in the room.
"Stand to one side," a councilman ordered, "and don't say anything. This is important business."
"All rise for the entrance of His Royal Highness King Gaol Coppin of the Fire Throne, Flame of the South, Sovereign of the Sunbeam Nation!"
When the meeting started, Delilah drank in every word greedily. Trouble was brewing in the south... A famed explorer had gone searching for the Lost Mirridian Baths and been captured by the Kahnti Tribe, who were interrogating him for news of the north and none too kindly... The citizens of the Yumin Peninsula feared invasion from their wilder neighbours, the Sohmneta, and they were clamouring for aid from the crown, but if the crown responded they may make enemies of the Sohmneta, who were growing ever more powerful... Worst of all, King Vallahan had refused to show up for a peace embassy led by Empress Lin of Terra, and Lin had contacted Gaol out of concern because trade shipments had started going missing in the north...
Her feet cramped, bringing her out of her own head, and she realised over an hour had passed.
"Fetch me water, girl," a grizzled-looking man sat nearby ordered.
Did he really think she was a servant? She stared, amazed. The water jug wasn't that far away, and she was the only one on her feet...
"Marko, what do you think?" Gaol asked his son.
"Water, girl," the man snapped, and Delilah missed Marko's response.
Delilah's ears began to burn as she moved towards the jug, very aware that she was heading to the centre of the room without being invited, with more and more eyes landing on her, and hating it.
At the same time, she felt a downwards twisting and tugging at her insides. It was so sudden and violent, like a blunt blade ripping through her, and she almost dropped the jug, catching it at the last minute and shakily putting it back. The pain knifed into her back and between her legs.
Everyone in the room was looking at her.
She looked down at her dress where a scarlet stain was spreading through the fabric. This morning the Governess had dressed her in white. Not now, she begged and pleaded internally with her body, why now?
Someone hissed something, a prayer to Kane, perhaps.
Someone else muttered something indistinct that reminded her of when she was a child - the last time she had been in this room.
Humiliation threatened to engulf her, and she had never felt so eaten alive by eyes before as she stood shivering in the centre like a newborn calf. She was too fragile and young to have all these eyes on her, all these judging stares. She wanted to disappear, sink beneath the floor, but another side of her reared its head. How dare they keep staring? She was the princess! Wasn't the royal family supposed to carry weight? Why did she feel none of Marko or Gaol's assuredness? They would have shouted at the insolent starers, punished someone, but here she was, shaking. Embarrassed. Weak and vulnerable, and she thought that they knew it. What could they see, or did they want to see, beneath the bloodied dress? She wished her throat wasn't in a knot so she could scream out some of the building emotion inside her.
"Women shouldn't be in here," someone said. "The ancestors wouldn't approve."
"Blood in the council room is a bad omen."
"Does it mean Vale will move against us soon?"
"Someone get her out of here."
"Yes, before the bad luck spreads."
What was she, an omen?
"Enough," Gaol cut through the talk. "Uruhai, please escort the princess outside and then we can continue with the meeting. Scribe, strike the most recent few lines from the records, if you will."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
For the second time in her life, Delilah was escorted unceremoniously and quite roughly from the council room. What was wrong? Had they never seen a woman in their lives before? She knew what the blood meant, but why did it have to be now, of all times? Did her own body's mechanisms hate her, did her confines of flesh wish to sabotage every glimmer of hope for some meaning in her life?
The door shut and she stared at it with her mouth agape, unable to believe it. She'd been looking forward to finally being let in for months, as soon as she got wind of it from Marko.
Tears filled her eyes as the twisting pain grew worse, and she doubled over, her spine unable to straighten as her back muscles spasmed. Blood began to drip slowly onto the floor.
"This is a curse," she gasped. "Maybe it will bring them... bad luck. Not me. Them." Then in a fit of rebellion she levelled an evil eye at the doors, wishing she could reach in like the almighty Kane and strike those who had said bad things about her. Why hadn't Gaol or Marko stood up for her? Tiberius hadn't been here, but she doubted even he would have said anything.
It wasn't fair.
The Governess's heels announced her presence like a horse, Delilah thought venomously.
"What are you doing outside? Ah. It's your time. Why are you just standing there with your mouth open? Princesses do not look so unseemly in public! Quickly, now, to your chambers. We cannot have the court see you like this..."
Once again, she had to do things for the sake of other people, never for herself, and the black fog of resentment was growing ever stronger.
*
Seasons passed and the Governess loved to declare that Delilah was finally blossoming into a woman, while Marko's frame filled out and he grew ever more involved in their father's affairs. Delilah stood by the door of the throne room and watched as everyone in attendance fell to their knees before the king, bowing their heads as he towered over them, a shaft of sunlight striking the crown and turning him into Kane himself, the ancestor of all their ancestors. The absolute power he wielded cast an aura in the great hall that was almost tangible. It took her breath away as she watched the complete and utter deference to this man... this man, who did not show her the love for which she so desperately searched.
I want that, she realised.
She wanted to be the one standing over everyone else. Never again would they throw her out of a room for bleeding. Never again would she be shunned or boxed in or trapped behind doors, never would she be kept from anyone she loved - like her own mother - or have her life dictated. Her future was to be a wife, a shining trophy, she knew that now. They had nothing else planned for her. But she itched to take up the sword and bow like she saw Marko doing. She itched to understand the conversations behind closed doors. There was a spark within her, something she'd never seen in her brother, and she just knew she could fan it into a flame if she followed these ideas.
Already, it leaped at the treacherous thoughts slinking through her mind. The danger they carried with them was tantalising, so much better a feeling than following the rules all the time. Part of her loved running from the Governess - not the punishments she received but the thrill of the chase, the unpredictability of her actions, knowing that for a short time, she was the only one in the palace who knew her own whereabouts. This was a similar feeling, but stronger.
The only way she could have everyone defer to her was to rule just like Gaol. For the first time she realised she no longer wanted to make Gaol proud. As she was a child of a failed relationship it was as if that luxury had been taken from her. No, she would never make him proud. She had to do something else - be better than him as well as her brother.
She knew she was not able to get the crown by birth, that had been drilled into her by her tutors. No matter. She was the Princess of Pelenu, the most advanced nation in Avalon, and if it was not within her power to change the rules - no, erase them, rewrite them - then who could?
Delilah's mouth was filling with saliva at the very thoughts running through her head. She could change everything. She could change... the world.
She swayed on her feet as everything fell into place around her. She'd been searching for a purpose her whole life, not just marriage, and here it was. She wanted love - she could make them love her when she stood above them, like Gaol with his court. She realised she hated this world's rules because they hadn't been kind to her - but she was royal and her teachers had given her the complex she needed to believe she could break them. She just had to try hard enough.
She wasn't going to be a forgotten princess in the history books. She'd finally located the spark of ambition inside her, the thing that flared up sometimes that she'd never been able to name, and finally, finally, given it some tinder. Already, it hungered for more. Her Uncle Tiberius's strange, secret lessons were beginning to make sense, and not only that, but she realised she could use them for herself.
Never again would she be escorted from a room for existing, never again would she feel so vulnerable and afraid in her own home. Never again would she tolerate those who knew what was happening to her and turned blind eyes. Her spark threatened to be snuffed while it was struggling to even grow, but she could not let that happen. She wouldn't. It was a race against time, between her inner self and these outside rules and influences threatening to dominate her. If she threw herself into Tiberius's lessons, read more books, learned to be subtle and stealthy and squirrel away secrets... She'd find a way to rise to the top.
Then she would make them all bow to her at their rightful places: her feet.