Chapter 4: My favourite place
After hours of dancing, I had finally managed to slip away. My legs were hurting so bad. After the opening dance, there was the couples dance, nobles dance and general dance each lasting an hour or more. I personally have no idea why we had so many dances in our tradition. It was like our ancestors couldn't live a day without dancing.
Practically everyone was in the ballroom so it was quite easy to escape. I entered into my room and sighed, relieved that no one was inside. I slid open the glass door that took up almost a whole wall of my room and entered my garden. My garden was very special to me because it's a gift from my mother and it became my favourite place in the Palace because of its unique flowers and beauty.
It used to be alot bigger when I got it but Angelique wanted part of my garden and so stepmother had a wall built which separated my side and Angelique's side of the garden which was alot more than half. I walked towards the center of my garden. At the center of my garden was my white swing.
It wasn't very big and can only comfortably contain two people and flowers were arranged to form an arc around the swing. I sat down the grass in a knee bent position and picked up a lily rose sniffed the fragrance for a few seconds before putting it in my hair. Lily roses are my favourite type of flower. They look like a lily but have the fragrance of a rose and they have blue stripes spreading from the center to the petals.
I laid my head down on the swing careful as to not make it rock. It had been a long time since I'd been able to come here and staying here especially on that day made me miss my mother more than ever.
Never in my life did I ever imagine that I'd have to live without my mother. Everything felt so wrong. My body shook as tears poured out of my eyes. "Oh mom!" I cried clasping my in my hand.
"If you were here, none of this would be happening ... God why did you take my sweet mother away, she was the kindest and purest of heart. What did you leave me mom?" I said sobbing more and more with each word. I could feel my muscles caving with exhaustion but I just couldn't stop. I sat in that position for a very long time crying my eyes out. When I finally stopped crying and was able to catch my breath, I was exhausted. I struggled to stand as I stumbled towards my room.
I leaned on the door of the garden, wondering what to do next. It'd be a while before I had to come and see the guests out with Damien and tomorrow will be my gifting ceremony.
I finally decide to write a letter to Zeke, the stranger I had met on my fourteenth birthday. I pour my heart out to him in the letter, knowing that it would be the last letter I will ever write to him and I can't help but remember what it was like when I met him for the first time. Our meeting was anything but ordinary and it just so happened to take place on the happiest day of my life.
5: A proper introduction.
Chapter 5: A proper introduction.
My name is Alyssa Elise Vasquez. I am the fourth child and youngest daughter of the current king of Darinton, Edward Vasquez . I have an older brother, two sisters and one younger brother.
My father and mother met at a carnival and my father who was just a prince at the time was infatuated with her beauty. She had dark silky brown hair and blue eyes- her hair brown like yummy brown chocolate and her blue eyes dazzled like the sea itself. Her lips the shade of pink that everyone woman strived to attain, her legs slender and waist slim. All of which are features I inherited.
My mother was a commoner which is why my grandfather despised her. He gave my father an ultimatum to choose between my mother and the throne. But in reality, he had no choice; my dad would have inherited the throne either way because he was the only descendant left of the royal family. And my father knew that, he choose my mother and continued to court her despite my grandfather's wishes.
Shortly after, my grandfather died in war and my father became king. Not long after he and my mother got married with the most lavish of ceremonies. My brother and I were born shortly after with a 3 year age gap and everything was perfect. I was fourteen years old when I went to visit my cousins and Zeke in Aragorn for a few weeks and when l returned I was met with the news of my mother's death.
Apparently exactly five days after I had left for Aragorn, my mother fell ill. She was sick for another five days and died on the sixth. My mother died. My mother died but no one had bothered to tell me.
No one considered it necessary. And that wasn't even the worst part. It wasn't even up to two weeks since my mother died before my father got married before my father got married to a general's daughter.
Arriving back in Palace I learned that not only had I gotten a new mother, I also had two older sisters. Veronica, who is two years older and Angelique, who is a year older than me. I also have a younger brother Raymond, who is three years younger than me. These children were all from her recent previous marriage to a sergeant who also died in war.
My life in the palace wasn't easy. My two older sisters love to bully me. My stepmother the queen does everything to make my life hard, always taking my sisters' side in everything and joining them to plot cruel jokes against me and cheat me out of my rights.
My father the king suddenly became indifferent towards me. Also my new grandfather hated me and my brother because unlike my other siblings, we weren't born from a noble family- our mother was a commoner. That's what he says but I know fully well that is not his only reason. Us not being his daughter's children a definite cause of his hatred.
The only ones that were good to me were my younger brother Raymond, who always plays with me during my free time and Luke, my older brother and my handmaidens. Luke, however, was always busy. Everytime he'd be sent out to war by Veronica's grandfather or he'd be off in some other place unbeknownst to me.
How a general could command his prince is beyond me, Luke is always vague when I ask him about it. I feel it's because he feels obligated to obey his grandfather out of respect.
Four years passed by and living in the Palace as the third princess did not get any easier. Suddeny, I had faded into the background and become the black sheep of my family. The people of the kingdom of Aragorn don't know much about me where as even the poorest of commoners from the most remote of towns in Darinton can list all of Angelique's favourite foods.
I used to be a center of attraction in the kingdom, the beautiful princess that everyone loved. When I'd make my rare occasional appearance at one of my fathers little meetings or balls, everyone would gush and whisper at how beautiful I am and how much I looked like my mother. But now... now, I was the ignored, forgotten child.
The only whispers about me are nothing but snickers and distasteful words insinuated by my sisterss.
I never left the Palace (not much a change there), never attended parties and balls with my family, never got the education I deserved, never got the quality lifestyle I deserved as a princess. Instead, I served as a servant to my sisters and step mother.
Becoming a servant to others however painful, made me realise just how bad I was at being a princess. At first I lamented on all I'd lost and all I missed but then I realised that wasn't the whole point of being a princess. I didn't even like that part. I hated it all those times when my mother had me dolled up and 'princess up' like she called it.
Then I realised why I actually cared about those things in the first place and I truly wonder how blind I was to have not seen it before. It was because of her. I wanted those things because I thought that that was what she wanted for me. But I know my mother and I know that a life worrying and striving for material things is not what is she wants for me.
She would want me to be kind and helpful and caring and nice. 'Being the right amount of kind is the best quality one can possess. If you can attain that, only then can you worry about what to polish your physical appearance.' She'd say.
I never understood what the right amount of kind is bit either way, I strive to be kind. When the sisters maids would bully me, I'd smile and show kindness. When the cook would detest me and throw hot food that would scald me, I'd smile and show kindness. When I'd sweep and mop the halls only for the sisters to come in a dump mud everywhere, I'd smile and show kindness.
After I'd go and cry out my frustration in the arms of my handmaidens because afterall, if kindness isn't a good reason to behave, being killed for treason is.