They say palace life hardens you—tempers, manners, even the heart. I do not think it has hardened mine. I only know that since the day we returned from that boutique, Her Highness has been looking through people as if she were reading a letter written in a language nobody else remembers how to speak. She stares at the air and sometimes smiles at nothing, and sometimes her hands tremble as if she is holding the world in them and trying not to crack it.
At the boutique she said she would keep an eye on Princess Aquila. It was said as casually as one might promise a trifle, but I watched Princess Zuleika the whole time: the way she watched, the way her gaze slipped to the door when Princess Aquila arrived, like a moth drawn to a pale flame and already knowing the risk. I would be lying if I said I did not feel something like dread then— Princess Aquila is the face of an Empire that has taught me my place is to bow and to be small.
I am a commoner's daughter. I know the weight of being invisible—how a bowed head becomes a shield and a lowered voice a prayer. I have seen nobles toss words like bread crusts and call it generosity. I learned early how to swallow anger until it tasted like nothing.
So when I first met Princess Aquila I felt what one ought to feel: resentment. She is regal and silver-eyed and wrapped in a world that does not see us. I resented her because she inherited a throne I would never touch, because she was taught to look down where I learned to look up, because the rules of our lives were written by hands that would never feel a blister.
Then came the night Zuleika returned in pieces.
She came home at midnight with her skirts smelling faintly of river and smoke and fear. She had been to the commoners' street again—she always goes when the moon is fat and the city sleeps—and she came back with tears she did not try to hide. I found her trembling in the little sitting room, hands clutched as if to hide something raw beneath her palms.
She spoke in the softest of voices, the kind a mother uses at a fevered child, and told me the names of people I had never met and should not have known. She told me of laughter and bread and of children bright with the future. Then she said: they were killed. And the words broke open a place in her where I had never seen pain before.
I did not expect my mistress to be brittle. She is a Princess—poised, sharp, an heir who paints the ocean and shoots hawks and refuses the easy path. But the truth is this: Zuleika's strength does not come from indifference. It comes from choosing kindness when indifference is easier. Where others hold privilege like armor, she wears it like a promise.
She believes that being given much is a charge, not a right. And so when she saw faces on the commoners' streets—faces that did not belong to nobles or banners but to mothers and bakers and children—she refused to turn away. That refusal is what makes her dangerous, and what makes her beautiful.
You could not have painted a crueller contrast than the way she treats the world and the way the world treats her. In her hands, palms callused from sparring and soft from holding brushes, she cradles dignity like a fragile bird. She speaks to a street vendor as though he were an old friend and to a duke as though she were measuring the weather.
She refuses titles when the matter at hand requires a person, not a rank.
When she wept that night, I wanted to both shield her and tear the men who hurt her from the earth. It is odd how loyalty multiplies. In that moment I remembered why I had sworn to serve her: not for the gold at the hem of her gown, nor for the reflected privilege of her name, but because she sees people.
She sees them the way I have always hoped someone in power would—clear, unblinking, with a steadiness that makes a frightened thing believe it might survive.
So I know when something is wrong with Princess Zuleika—there are always small, telltale things. That afternoon in the boutique, Princess Aquila left first with a faint smile pasted to her face; she glided straight to the head maid while I watched, expression carefully neutral. My eyes flicked back to the dressing-room curtain. I was about to check on Zuleika when the fabric shifted and she stepped out.
At first I smiled—because of course I smiled—but it died almost at once. Zuleika moved like someone who had been surprised by her own heartbeat: a faint, sudden blush warmed her ears and the apples of her cheeks. She glanced toward Aquila as the other princess spoke quietly with the head maid, then let her gaze fall back to the couch. The change was subtle, but I have served her long enough to read the small storms.
"Are you okay, Your Highness?" I asked, trying to keep my voice level. She startled, as if she had forgotten I was there.
Her crimson eyes found mine. She made a soft laugh, the sort of laugh that tries to steady a thing that has been shaken.
"Yes, I am okay, Cess," she said. But then I saw it: a faint smear of color at the edge of her mouth. The lipstick was the wrong shade—warm, slightly mauve—something I had not seen on Princess Zuleika before.
My hands went cold for an instant. I watched her sit, watched her lift the teacup with a tremor I could not hide. Instinct made my gaze slide to Aquila. The head maid had already returned to her duties; Aquila stood a little apart, composed and unreadable.
When our eyes met, something small and private clicked into place. The color on Zuleika's lips matched Aquila's lipstick exactly.
It was a small thing: a cosmetic match, a moment of two women's colors aligning. But in that afternoon hush it felt like a folded message, sudden and precise. I did not speak. I simply poured another cup of tea and waited—because that is my work, and because some truths are best tended quietly.
After that day at the boutique, when we returned to Princess Zuleika's chamber, I found her seated on the couch, her gaze lost in the balcony's view of the night sky. She did not notice me at first. I stood quietly, watching as her fingers brushed against her lips, lingering there for the briefest moment—as if recalling a memory she could not set down.
Only when I placed a cup of warm milk on the table did she stir, smiling faintly and thanking me. Yet, though her words were soft, my eyes caught what her lips would not confess—the small details that betrayed her.
The following day, during the noon meal, Princess Zuleika attended a tea with the Crown Prince. Beforehand she had begged me for excuses, searching for reasons to decline, but duty prevailed, and so she went. At that table, she wore the perfect mask. To anyone else, her eyes might have seemed warm, her smile sincere, her every gesture carefully graceful.
But I know her. Her gaze was polished glass—beautiful, yet cold. There was no warmth, no flame. I thought then, with certainty, that she would never give her heart to the Crown Prince, nor to any soul in Feltogora… or so I believed.
When the tea ended, I walked at her side. Her face showed the weight of her charade—the strain of smiling falsely, of speaking words that were not born from her heart. But then, she stopped.
Her expression shifted as if sunlight had broken through a storm. I followed her gaze. Across the far garden, Princess Aquila stood among the flowers, her hands brushing petals with quiet care.
"Cess, you may rest. I will head to the garden," Zuleika said, her voice lighter, her lips curved into a smile so genuine it startled me. The exhaustion of moments before had vanished, replaced with something tender, radiant.
"As you wish, my lady." I bowed, watching her drift toward the garden as though drawn by a force beyond her will.
Left behind, I exhaled deeply, my eyes narrowing against the truth unraveling before me. My gaze flicked to the old tree beside me, its roots deep in the soil of this empire.
"Looks like King Stewart will have a headache once he learns of this…" I whispered, half in disbelief, half in resignation. For I could see it now—an affection that was both bitterly sweet and dangerously forbidden. A thread weaving itself between the Princess of Nexus and the Princess of Feltogora… a thread too fragile to endure, yet too strong to sever.