Role

Chapter 2

Over the next several weeks, Lady Cordasia's eyes began to take on a new cast, one that reflected frustration and a sense of being hunted in equal measure.
Not a day went by where Apsalareia did not inquire about the death she had seen. In her chest, that spark de manded an answer, fuel for a fire that had yet to fully mature.
Always those pursed lips, always that avoidance of the topic, as if it were a viper. It was no business for princesses, delivered in a chastising tone.

It was perhaps the thirty-ninth time that she finally received her answer, though not as she had expected.
"Lady Cordasia, why did you call them fools?" The question was delivered smoothly into the silence as they sat before twinned mirrors, constructing appearances for a day at court.
The sound of glass shattering was shocking, and Apsalareia turned sharply to see her mother's hairbrush tumbling to the ground amidst a shower of glass shards.
Lady Cordasia's lips were not pursed now, they were thin, and her perfect nostrils flared with anger. "They were fools for abandoning our gift," her mother veritably shrieked.
"They are fools for leaving. All we must do to achieve victory over the dark is stay safe! We will outlive them all, do you not understand?! We must simply outlive them, and so little elven blood will be spilled! They waste what we were given!"
Apsalareia was stunned, but felt her mouth move, almost of its own accord. "I don't think that's foolish," she began, but her mother cut her off before she could finish the thought. "OUT! OUT!"

She moved in a daze throughout the palace halls, her manners alone keeping inquiries at bay as she returned nods and curtseys with absentminded grace. She had never been banished from her mother's presence before...
When Apsalareia blinked to focus once more, she found her wanderings had left her before the great doors of the palace library, a place she knew well from her studies of history and poetry.
Slipping between the doors, the young noble moved silently through the towering shelves, settling at last at a table with a single lamp. Rather than read, she simply planted her elbows on the surface, and let her face rest in her hands.
Undoubtedly it was smearing her cosmetics, ruining them entirely, but her mind was awhirl, her heart aflutter, and her stomach rolling uncertainly. Propriety, for the moment, evaded her.