Prologue
The explosion radiated.
It hit her hard.
Slammed her into the white.
Everything hurt.
And the white was everywhere.
It captured her.Carried her.
"It was trying to kill you," came the dark voice.
Imperial Princess Caoimhe London Montgale Bron woke with a start, her hand on her chest.She felt the explosion this time.The heat.
Climbing out of her bed, the princess crossed to her refresher room to splash some water on her face.Get a sip to cool her mouth.She could almost taste the heat from the dream.
Explosions erupting right next to a person tended to be remembered.
She woke with nightmares about her mother's death almost daily, for the last decade since she'd died.
Since her mother was killed.
She glanced at herself in the mirror and brushed her dark hair away from her face.
She sighed and ran her hand over her face.
"A princess doesn't falter," she said.
And attempted to erase the emotions from her face.
Because it was the only way she was going to survive--if she was perfectly emotionless.
As the feelings started to back off, she woke up, and her mind was ready to work.She wasn't sure what she was going to work on, but there had to be something.She was a princess, after all.There was always something that needed to be done.Some correspondence she could answer or some such.
A hand-lettered note from the princess was always considered the highest regard, and Caoimhe liked doing it.When she had time, of course.
The only time she seemed to be able to do it was when she woke from one of those bad dreams.They put her mind at ease, the hand lettering.
She logged herself into her computer and opened her private digital letters.Everything had been through rigorous filters before it came to her, so she was not wasting time on unnecessary missives.Of course, she had daylight hours to do these things, but she also enjoyed doing it at night, when everyone was quiet and asleep.
It was all the usual things--would she attend this event or that event.To perform royal duties or represent the royal Empire in this particular ceremony or that.
Nothing particularly worthy of a hand-lettered note.
She pulled out her calendar and started booking the events into her log so that everything could be accounted for.Some she would have to run by her father.Others would be Bianca, her governess.There were others she needed to handle personally.Her charities for children who had lost parents in the war required her endorsement for a few things.
Normal royal duty.
One of the digital notes referred to a previous version that she didn't recall receiving.Caoimhe checked her backups and her archived files.No, nothing there.So she opened her trash.
There was the initial missive.She returned it to the main folder and glanced over the other trashed files.
Near the bottom was a letter from a sender she did not know.
She received very few communications that were not from someone she was at least mildly acquainted with.The layers of security that went into all the letters were quite astounding, and her private contact channels were monitored carefully.So very little got past the walls of protection, even if it was sent directly to the trash.
