Basil’s favorite catchphrase surfaced as she looked at the previously flawless mirror. The beautiful golden frame remained perfect, as if to mock her, stunning on the outside, empty and broken on the inside.
She had never seen such a perfect symbol. Seeing it ignited something inside her.
Ambition.
She didn’t want to sit around and accept everything as she always had. She wanted to taste freedom, even if just for a moment.
She glared at the glistening shards of glass and made up her mind.
She recited a quote she had read at least a million times. “She’d never been allowed to choose a single thing in her life,” she whispered to the shards. “Tonight, she’ll choose freedom… even if it kills her.”
It was from chapter ten of Love, Lust, and a Locked Tower, the first forbidden book Lucy had ever smuggled to her when they were teenagers. It had been Esther’s first taste of secret rebellion, reading books unfit for a royal lady.
It felt symbolic to use a quote from her first rebellion to start her next one. She repeated the words, savoring how right they felt on her tongue. Dramatic, yet perfect.
She wanted to erase everything that made her look royal. First, she kicked off her heels, which had blistered her feet. Then she loosened her corset and let her heavy silks tumble to the floor. She stripped away everything else until only her undergarments remained.
Even then, she still felt too royal. There was nothing more she could change. She twirled her hair, brainstorming what else she could do to alter her appearance, to remove more of the shackles holding her.
Then it dawned on her. There was one more thing she could change.
Esther grabbed the small embroidery scissors her instructor had insisted she keep in her room. She had argued that she would never need them in the sanctuary of her personal chambers. Now, finally, she did.
Her hands shook with a mixture of fear and excitement. She lifted the cold metal to her shoulder and took a deep breath.
Snip.
She froze. She looked at the lock of hair pooling at her feet. Her whole body trembled, panic and exhilaration mingling through her. She inhaled deeply, then snipped another lock, the panic ebbing as more hair fell softly to the ground.
She picked up the largest shard of the mirror to inspect her work. She looked horrible. Her face was a splotchy red, her eyes swollen, and her uneven hair fell just above her shoulders in jagged strands. Despite the mess staring back at her, for the first time, she actually recognized the girl in the reflection.
“Hi,” she said softly to the newher. “You look like bad decisions and freedom.” The bad decision was not checking the mirror before hacking at her hair like a frenzied lumberjack.
Then came the supplies. For the first time, she had to pack, not her servants,her. And she had absolutely no clue what a runaway princess should take on an adventure toward freedom.
Was she excited? Scared? She didn’t know. What she did know was that she was about to do something crazy and think about the consequences afterward, not before. Because if she had thought ahead, she might have stopped and avoided attempting magic she had only glanced at in a spellbook.
She was confident she could draw the simple six-pointed star inside a circle. The spell itself wasn’t the problem, but she had never been allowed even to attempt it. Her father and brother strictly forbade it, fearing she might do something absurd, like create a black hole.
She gulped, imagining all the ways the spell could go wrong. Her lips trembled into a grin. Maybe she laughed. Maybe she cried. Hard to tell with her heartbeat thundering in her ears.
She steeled herself because there was no turning back. She had already chopped off her hair. So if she didn’t disappear, she risked turning to dust before the Baroness’s lecture was over. She did not want to be sentenced to death by lecture.
She threw on her softest travel dress (the one she technically wasn’t allowed to wear), wrapped a cloak around herself, and grabbed a satchel. Inside went: eight romance novels (for reference), a hair ribbon (for emergencies), and the now slightly smushed pastry (for sugary support).
“That should do it. Who needs bread when you have smut?”
She stood in the middle of her room, taking in everything one last time—the book her brother had given her. The stack of embroidery mishaps was shoved under her bed. The portrait of her mother at Esther’s age. Lastly, her eyes landed on her desk. The quill pen her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday sat pristinely beside decorative paper.
Esther slowly walked over, thinking of all the things she should say before she left. But she didn’t have time.
She settled on two short letters:
Father,
I love you. But I am not a treaty. Please don’t send anyone after me who isn’t fireproof. Better yet, don’t send anyone.
—Esther
