章 1: A Powerless Princess
Lorelai looked at her reflection in the large, round vanity mirror and could not help but sigh.
She did not look like a happy bride; she looked like a ghost of a bride, a mere shell of a woman dressed in white.
Her soft skin, her blonde hair, even her bright green eyes seemed to have lost their color and blended in with her perfectly white dress, and she looked as if she was consumed by her attire, leaving absolutely nothing of hers.
Having lived her entire life like a mindless puppet, today was the day she turned into a true porcelain doll only to be broken to pieces by the man she was about to marry.
A powerless princess. An empty frame.
Lorelai was incredibly nervous, but she could not tell exactly why.
Perhaps she was scared to face the old man who was her groom. Whose disgusting face always made her gag while the rotting stench of his fat body made it impossible to even imagine being close to him for more than a few seconds without feeling sick.
Or maybe she was afraid of what would happen even if she did endure the wedding ceremony.
The wedding night.
Just thinking about it sent a cold ripple through her entire body.
She did not even care that she would have to spend the night with the most disgusting man in the whole Erelith Kingdom; she was scared of how that night might end.
But perhaps it still would be better if it would truly end. The things the old pervert might do to weak and pure Lorelai would terrify even those with the strongest of hearts.
She did not even know who that man was, yet she hated the mere thought of him.
There was no helping it. Just like always, all she could do was grit her teeth and endure everything.
Luckily, she did not really have to endure it all that long.
"Your Highness, the carriage is ready."
Marianna, Lorelai's personal aide, peeked into the princess' bedroom, narrowing her gray eyes at the sight of her lady's appearance.
Lorelai nodded without turning around and answered quietly, "Alright. I will be out in a minute."
The woman nodded too and left the room, closing the door behind her. It was not right to let the bride spend so much time alone right before her wedding, but Marianna loved the princess like her own daughter and always cared for her needs above everything else.
She knew all too well what kind of a person Lorelai's groom was. She knew that even the strongest woman would need time to gather the courage to face someone like him.
Lorelai sighed once more and opened the top drawer of her dressing table. Her long, thin, gloved fingers dived inside, retrieving a small glass bottle filled with muddy red liquid that looked almost like blood.
It was a fitting color for something that was supposed to kill her.
The princess' hands trembled and she almost dropped the bottle on the floor while trying to open it, but thankfully, the little wooden cork finally gave in and Lorelai was instantly hit with a poignant smell of something woody and herbal.
Poison.
If the Gypsy woman that had sold it to her was not a fraud, this was her only salvation. With this, the only thing that man would get on his wedding day would be his bride's cold, dead body.
Lorelai's heart raced inside her chest, the trembling in her fingers intensifying. She was truly scared.
But who would not be? Ending one's life at the precious age of twenty-one was not an easy task.
Scared that her shaking hand might spill or drop the poison, the princess took a deep breath to compose herself, then let out a long, heavy exhale, and gulped the ominous red liquid in one go.
The bitter, almost sickening taste made her frown in disgust, but she swallowed it all, shifting her pale eyes back to the mirror to see whether it stained her lips.
It did. Her colorless lips now looked bright red like a blooming rose.
'I will not wipe it off. Perhaps the old pervert will still try to kiss me. Perhaps it will kill him too.'
With a slight, yet somewhat melancholic smile, Lorelai placed the sparkling platinum tiara on top of her blonde head and pulled the front part of the lace veil over her face, sheltering herself from the miserable glare that reflected back at her from the shining surface of the mirror.
Now, it was really time to leave.
As she walked through the halls of the royal palace, accompanied only by her personal aide and the maid assigned to her quarters, the young woman refused to look anywhere but straight ahead. What was the point? Her heart was already too weak for the useless sentiments.
Once she was finally outside, walking solemnly to the luxurious white carriage prepared to take her away, she knew that her stepbrother, the Crown Prince, was looking down at her from the window of his bedroom. She knew that her stepmother, the reigning Queen, too, was standing in the shadows of the expansive bedroom, stretching her thin lips into a smile of utter satisfaction.
But Lorelai did not need any of that. Before she left, if only she could, she would have preferred to erase their faces from her memory altogether.
Standing before the large gilded carriage, Marianna offered her lady a final friendly hug, silent tears rolling down her cheeks.
There was no time for hearty goodbyes; she knew that the princess had to leave right away.
Although unwillingly, she opened the door of the carriage and helped Lorelai get in, closing the door the moment her long white dress disappeared into the darkness of its interior.
The coachman shrieked something incomprehensible at the horses, hitting their backs with the whip and the carriage began to move with a sudden jerk.
That movement seemed to have finally brought Lorelai back to her senses.
She was leaving. She was truly leaving. For good.
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