Chapter Text
You press your back to the door behind you, shutting it softly as you feel like the floor is slipping out from under you. To your left, Nille looks torn between helping steady you and punching the wall in rage. It’s a sign of her affection for you. She’s a bit of a hot head, prone to losing her temper. For her to stop and worry about you means a lot. Even as you feel cold and detached from shock, her affection still means something.
You slide down the door and sit upon the ground. Your remaining eye has trouble focusing. You place your hand on your chest and focus on breathing. Nille slides down beside you and does the same. A silence falls between the two of you as you simply breathe. It only breaks when your companion finally speaks up.
“They can’t do this to you,” she growls. You know she would be shouting if not for the fact that the meeting lasted until nearly midnight and Bonnie has long since gone to bed. They probably tried to stay up, but their little preteen body is too used to a proper sleep schedule to manage it. You’re glad. You don’t want them to see you like this.
“They already did.” Your voice is quiet. You’re always been quiet, but it’s little more than a whisper. Nille, used to your softness, can hear you easily enough.
“What about, if we tell them you’re already bonded? You and me. We could probably pass off as a bonded couple.”
You snort, even though it’s not funny. “If that was going to happen, it would have happened years ago.”
If anything, that was half of the reason why many of the other Remnants hate Nille and Bonnie. When you were first recruited into their fold, promised a place where you would finally find answers for that nagging emptiness inside of you, they let you bring Bonnie and Nille along because they thought that Nille was your partner. Lots of Remnants had Vaugardian partners, though not all of them stuck around after the King insisted you all move out of Corbeaux and into a little compound outside the city. However, Nille has no connection to your people aside from being like family to you. Bonnie, they assumed, will at least learn.
(But your still healing eye reminds you that Bonnie isn’t treated with the same attentive care as the other children here.)
The Bambouche siblings are outsiders, people who should just leave. They can never understand your people’s loss. But they’re your family, and you would leave if they did. Nobody wants you to leave. Because you’re special, you’re one of them. But you aren’t stupid. You know the house you were assigned to is really only big enough for one person, or a couple. When the harvest came and everyone was taking home their share, you know you were only given one person’s worth despite the fact nobody worked the field harder than Nille. You’re welcome here, your family is not.
Nille goes silent. “Do you think they picked you, because of us…?”
“No.” You’re quick to assure her. You know that she feels guilty for the ways in which you’ve been punished for refusing to abandon them. “I was just the only one in the right age range. It was either you or me-”
“And they’d never pick me.” She sighs. “Some great honor, ‘the Prince of the Remnants’. Think anyone’s actually going to start calling you by it?”
“If the princess doesn’t accept the offer, they’ll probably just pretend it never happened.”
She rolls her eyes. “So much for following the Universe’s will or whatever…”
You close your eye. You know she doesn’t mean any harm by it, but sometimes when she speaks ill of your belief, it burns. You know when only does it because she hates the way that the King uses it as an excuse for doing whatever he wants. You don’t care for the King. You don’t feel much of anything for the other Remnants. But, that doesn’t mean you’ve rejected the Universe. It, and your beliefs, are still a part of your, even though…
“I’m going to have to convert to the Change belief, I guess.” You try to sound optimistic, but based on the way that Nille looks at you, you failed to trick her.
“There’s no way that the princess is going to pick you anyway. She’s going to get offers from all over the world. I don’t know what the crab King is thinking, but this was a long shot anyway.”
It does make you feel a little better. “She’s not really a princess, you know.”
Nille scoffs. “Trainee Head Housemaiden, same thing.”
With Vaugarde ruled the way that it was, with each town and city being largely independent and connected to only by the overarching system of the Houses of Change, it left the country as functionally a theocracy. Each House had a Head Housemaiden, but the absolute head of the religion was the leader was Euphrasie, the Head of Dormont’s House of Change. This was an upset of some kind, but you didn’t follow politics enough to remember what it was. All you know is that Head Housemaiden Euphrasie has recently announced that her protegee, Mirabelle, would be her successor.
“You’re gonna have to learn the terms, if I get picked…” Suddenly guilt pools in your stomach. “I… I can talk the King, leverage my new title-”
“Crab on that, you know we’re coming with you.” She doesn’t give you time to think otherwise. “Hey, look at my arms.”
You do so, and watch as she slowly links elbows with you. You shudder. You’re not used to touch. Even though Nille and Bonnie go out of their way to help you get over your aversion to touch, having to deal with Nille’s own complex relationship with it makes it difficult. It was hard for Bonnie too, when they were young, to learn both of your different rules. You always felt guilty about that. Still, Nille linking arms with you helps you feel considerably more at ease.
“You don’t get rid of family that easily.” She smiles at you. “You’re family as much as Bon is. The three of us are gonna stick together, no matter what.”
“No matter what.”
She leans against your side, and the two of you relax against the door together. “I don’t know how we’re going to tell Bon. They only just got settled in here…”
“Here isn’t good for them,” you admit. You feel immensely guilty for dragging the two of them into this with you. It was better, when you just lived in a little one bedroom apartment in Corbeaux together. It was about the same size as this one person cabin you got saddled with, but you were freer there. You never should have listened to the King’s honeyed words…
“You think Dormont will be any better?” Her own unease creeps into her words. As you grew distrustful of your own people, the same was true of Nille and hers. There was a reason she was willing to uproot her life in Vaugarde and move into a compound with you.
“I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s better than this. …We aren’t safe here.”
You almost feel her eyes burn through the cheap medical eye patch you were wearing. “No. No we aren’t.”
“Then let’s make the most of this. Worst case, we can ditch the lousy princess and run off to Poteria together!” She manages to cheer herself up.
You, on the other hand, feel your stomach sink. You know it’s stupid, even after how they treated you, how your family is treated, you feel an obligation to the other Remnants. You don’t want them to lose their home again. Never again. So, you need to do this. Still, you play along.
“Why Poteria?”
“Cause you like their plays, duh!”
You love your family. As long as you have Nille and Bonnie, you can make it through anything. Even being traded away for a political marriage.
Three weeks later, you’re summoned to the observatory, which serves as the town hall in your dingy little compound. It's where most of your people's budget went. Buying so much Crafted glass was expensive. Since it cost so much to put together, the town made good use it it, holding most major events here. Today is different though. It’s not another town meeting. You would have heard the signal if it was. No, this is some private matter. It’s not the first time that the King has pulled you into a private meeting since your ascension to “royalty”, but something feels off today. The way his sycophants have been running around in the last few hours. You asked a few of them for details, but they were unwilling to answer you, prince or not.
They probably don't want to upset the King. You wouldn't either.
The King had strong opinions on… Everything, really. He was someone you never wanted to get into an argument with. Once he gets something in his mind, he stubbornly pursues it til the end. That’s how this whole compound thing happened. Apparently, it struck him that your culture was degrading because you lived among Vaugardians, instead of all together. So he basically demanded you all move out of your homes, in some cases leave your families, to move to a half built plot of land a bit outside the city walls. Anyone who refused was choosing to betray your history.
You don’t like the King. You did once. Once he promised you answers to the questions gnawing at your heart. Once you thought he was like you. Once you thought he understood you. But the more you get to know him, the less you want to be like him.
He stands before you now, his smile just barely peeking out behind his long, untamed hair. “Bright One…”
“Siffrin,” you correct. You hate that old nickname, from before you settled on a name for yourself.
“Prince Siffrin,” he corrects further. “Have you been settling well into your new duties?”
“Not really? On account that nothing has changed?” Originally, you were supposed to take over some of the King’s work load, handling the administrative dealings of the commune, but it was determined that it would be too disruptive when you married out.
…You don’t understand why he just assumes that things will go the way he wants. That’s one of the things you hate most about him, the way he just assumes things will go how he wants. The more it happens, the most smug and convinced he gets that his will is the same as the Universe’s will. It’s almost as if he can control the way things turn out. At first you thought he was using bribery, but it happens in games of chance too. It’s almost as if he did something to control the odds. Some Craft, something to call on the Universe’s power…
It hurts your head to think about it.
“It is unfortunate that we did not have time to teach you proper administrative duties,” the King muses. He almost sounds guilty, but you aren’t sure that he’s capable of that. Not a man like him. “However, it is much too late for that… The trainee has made her decision.”
Your heart freezes in your chest.
“Be grateful, Prince. The Universe once again smiles on us.”
Ah.