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E s m é r a l d a A l b y
"Esméralda!"
Laura's shriek of horror stopped my steps in the kitchen. I kept down the peeler and the potato, following her voice upstairs. My knock barely resonated before she was swinging the door open, almost as if she wanted to pull it off its hinges.
My gorgeous step-sister held a blonde strand of hair between her fingers, the one that managed to fall astray from her up-done bun. "Do you not want me to be a Countess?"
"I do," my words stumbled out. "Why would you even say that?
"Because I want to be perfect today. This—" she almost shoved the stubborn curl in my face, "—is not perfect."
I tried to smile. "A little bobby pin would do the work."
"You did that intentionally, didn't you? Isn't that why you're smiling?" She worked her jaw. "You know an Earl marrying a mere merchant's daughter is once in a blue moon opportunity and because that daughter isn't you, you want to snatch that away from me, don't you?"
My lips fell back into a straight line, maybe curled a little downwards. "No, no. I'd never do that to you, Laura. I'll fix your bun as new."
"You better."
She slumped in front of the mirror, huffing with arms folded across her chest. I quickly aligned the strand with the rest of the bun and secured it with a bobby pin, hiding it under her hairs so that no metal upholding her golden bun was visible. "See? Done. Perfect like you."
"Tighten the corset," Laura straightened her back.
Instead of her, I stopped breathing at that thought. "More tight?"
"How do you tighten something by doing it less tight? Stupid."
"How would you... breathe?"
"I've worn a corset like a corset all my life. You're the only one who wears it just to stop your nipples from perking up through your gown."
More like a cloth and less like a rib-crusher—it was fine with me.
Laura shrugged her gown to her waist once I had loosened it, waiting for me to pull the strings that might disrupt the arrangement of organs inside her body. I gulped, pulling a stubborn string by the small of her back. "Is it enough?"
"I don't want to carry disgraceful flesh on my stomach like you do, Esméralda."
The roll of her greyish-blue eyes was reflected off the mirror as she stood up. We shared the colour of our eyes with our father, the only similarity between us. I took my mother's auburn tresses while she adopted her mother's blonde. I sometimes wished I was as pale as her but my skin was a natural tan, another thing that I took from my father. It was now darkening more under the hot sun of Aezira. Summer had always been particularly harsh at our kingdom capital.
"Tighten up a notch under my breasts. They must look fuller," Laura said.
I glanced down at my breast, and my tiny-winy protruding stomach stared back at me. Maybe what my step-mother and step-sister said was true after all. I didn't have a body that was desired and that was why no man had ever asked for my hand in marriage, even though I was treading the last years, months, of the usual age the females marry at.
Shaking my head, I focused on the task at hand. I pulled all the strings Laura asked of me, and when she was done forcing me to choke herself to her heart's desire, I tied her corset along with the multiple strings on the back of her navy gown.
"How do I look?" Laura twirled in front of the mirror, scrutinizing herself.
I put a smile on my face despite the efforts it took. "Like the wife of an Earl."
"I'll probably appoint you as my handmaiden once I marry Lord Ellington."
That idea caused me to glance at her warily. "I'll probably marry soon too."
She stared at me for a moment before bursting out in laughter. I squirmed under her gaze, unsure of the funny part. Her laughter died almost as soon as it emerged and a dirty glare was directed my way. "You seriously think anybody would willingly marry you?"
I tried not to let the harshness of her words pierce my heart. "Uh, yeah. Someone will." It was an assurance more to me than her.
"Keep dreaming," she snorted, and even that was elegant. "Now get going and finish preparing the lunch. I can't have you ruin this opportunity for me."
I exited her room, closing the door behind me. As I worked in the kitchen with Isabella, my step-mother, painstakingly barking orders at me, I couldn't help the sadness that began to run through me thicker than blood. Laura was going to have a husband at eighteen, a person to call her own. At twenty-one summers, the only thing I could call my own was a small pendant that my mother left me. It didn't hear and it didn't console, but I talked to it anyway.
By the time Lord Ellington and his family arrived, and the sun took its spot high in the sky, I had finished cooking and cleaning the kitchen. I heard the incoherent voices from the living room as I busied myself with setting up the lunch table. I was used to conceal the sadness that overwhelmed my heart everytime I got introduced as a family maid, an orphan they adopted and sheltered, instead of a daughter of the family. I did the same today yet I still stared at my father with hopeful eyes to meet futile results. I told myself it was alright, that was how it always had been but by the end of the day, my chest felt hollow.
Once again cleaning the kitchen after dinner, I dragged my aching feet to the attic which was given to me as my room. Before Mother died, my room used to be the one Laura lived in. Now it was a room I only visited to clean and to assist Laura whenever she needed me.
"Esméralda thinks she'll marry soon."
It was Laura's laugh that paused me before I passed her room. Isabella's voice soon followed. "Delusional punk. We're not about to ship her off to some man and actually pay for a maid."
What?
"What happened to the Chevalier who had asked for her hand?"
I was told I never was asked for.
"I told him she never bled. He isn't looking back."
Isabella didn't. However they were, they couldn't do—they did.
"A few months more and no man will ever look at her," said Laura, "no more problems."
Why?
I breathed heavily to control my hiccups that were shaking my core like an earthquake.
"Yeah, except those willing for a second marriage. They might prove to be a problem, but that's for later. Now you sleep, my daughter," Isabella's said. "In a few days time, Lord Ellington will convey his answer and by the way he acted today, that man is smitten."
"Countess Laura Ellington has a ring to it."
I heard no more of their giggles as I stumbled downstairs, out into the crisp night air with only my tears to dampen it. Cold hit me immediately. I kept rubbing my forearms to warm me up as my feet thoughtlessly took me to Mr. Clark's shop situated at the heart of the Aeziran market.
My tears ran dry by the time I reached the closing market, alight with few lights and fewer people.
Mr. Clark's boutique was bolted shut even though I'd hoped against it, making me long more for his fatherly embrace. I sat in front of the seamster's shop, watching the moon rise higher in the sky.
I had never complained, never thought I would. I stayed quiet when my father remarried, gave Isabella my mother's place. I silently watched him shower Laura with his love, hiding and waiting behind the wall for him to come, wipe my tears and embrace me. I muffled my cries when he took his name away from me and made me a stranger in my own home. I tolerated Isabella's and Laura's every wrongdoing and sealed my lips shut when he never stood up for me.
But how should I stay quiet now when they were all taking away my only hope to freedom? Throwing away the only key to my cage?
I always fancied myself with the tales my mother used to tell me—of brave princes sweeping away the love of their lives into a fairytale. I never did wait for a prince, but I always longed for a fairytale, of a love that brought joy.
To think of a life of loneliness, it carried fresh tears to my eyes but the whimpers that I hear aren't my own.
I blinked, easing away the blur from my vision. When I stood, I had to take the support of the locked door of Mr. Clark's shop to stabilize myself. Wiping my tears and exhaling a shaky breath, I followed the whimpers. They were low and inhuman, perhaps of an injured animal.
I was proven right when I ducked under a closed makeshift shop; the dwindling lights of the marketplace reflected off of a small ball of dark fur. The puppy whimpered loudly when I pulled his small body out, too weak and too scared to put up a fight. My heart ached for him. With the gentlest of touches, I picked him up and carried him under the firelight, laying him down on the roadside.
The market that didn't allow one to step a foot during the day now only spared me a few glances, none too eager to help. I sighed, inspecting his body for injury. I felt a pang in my heart when I saw how his ribs poked out, too harsh for the eye as if he barely had food since he was born. The little dog couldn't be older than a few weeks with how small he looked. Was he separated from his pack? His ebony body shivered with pain and cold but his right front leg was the one that was quivering the worst. Blood glistened on the upper part of his leg despite the darkness of his fur.
"It hurts, doesn't it, Little One?" I whispered to myself, a tear tumbling down my cheek. "Wounded and alone, it hurts so much."
I wiped my cheek with my sleeve before reaching under the folds of my kirtle to tear a stripe off the fragile fabric. I managed to rip off the entirety of the perimeter in the form of a long stripe, then quickly pulled it apart into two, one to clean the blood and the other to wrap.
I was halfway done wrapping up his leg when I heard a voice addressed to me.
"If you wrap it like that, it will continue to bleed. Furthermore, it'll heal at an wrong angle, mostly leaving him handicapped for the rest of his life."
I slowly kept the puppy's leg down, earning a tired whimper in return. I turned my head in the direction of that instructor. It was a tall man, perhaps a head and a half taller than me, with a cream-coloured shawl around his broad shoulders, and only a loose-fitting shirt to protect his lean build from the cold of the night.
My eyes scanned my surroundings, and a sigh of relief left my lips when I noticed enough people around to gather help if he turned out to be a bandit. I didn't have anything worth to be stolen on me, except for my mother's pendant, but it was hidden behind the rough fabric of my kirtle.
When I looked back at him, he was crouched beside me. The light from street lamp made the smooth skin of his face glow, causing him to appear like a statue carved of marble. I almost gasped at how beautiful he was. With hair black as night and amber eyes sparkling golden in the orange hue, his beauty could easily rival the Prince's. Plump lips and straight nose, one would fail to find a flaw.
My lips parted, then I snapped my gaze back to the wounded pup. Taking a deep breath, I turned back to the stranger. "Can you help him?"
He nodded, his calloused hands gentler in action than I'd figured they would be when he lifted the bleeding leg of the pup onto his palm. His loudest whimper yet reached my ear when the man angled his leg to where he believed it to be right. I patted his small body, his whines quietening down but his eyelids were barely open. The man wrapped up his leg, then after a moment, the pup closed his eyes, probably of pain and exhaustion. If it wasn't for his body falling up and down, I'd have thought he didn't make it.
"Thank you," I whispered, bowing my head as a gesture of gratefulness.
"His wound is deep. It needs to be sewed," his voice was smooth and masculine, unlike my hoarse and cracked whispers.
"I can't afford a medic."
"I can take him to the pal..." it took him a moment to clear his throat before continuing. "To the palace."
"The palace?" My brows shot up. "Are you pulling my leg?"
"No. The medics there can actually treat him properly."
"Do you work there?"
"Why does that matter?"
"They don't let commoners in, unless it's a worker, or one with a complaint."
Silence resonated before his nod. "I do work there."
By the built of his form, I would consider him to be a Chevalier, but his attire put him in a lower ranking, the one that of maids and servants.
"Then you must know that's not allowed," I shook my head sadly.
"What if I told you I'm a man in position?"
I scoffed too loudly at the absurdity of his words. "Any person of position seldom leaves their high chair to step a foot on these dirty roads. Somehow if they ever come out, they never step down their fancy carriages. All people like us get to see are their expensive robes and jewels that could perhaps feed every empty stomach in their kingdom. And not to forget, the entourage that surrounds them, guards and handmaidens and all."
I waited for him to reply but he didn't. His eyes remained on my face but the look in them told me that his mind was far away from here.
"Moreover," I continued, snapping his attention back to me, "the rags we wear—" I pointed to his clothing and my own, "—they would never let 'em even touch their skin. If it ever did, I can almost hear them screaming allergies that I never could imagine to exist."
"Isn't that a harsh conclusion?"
"Mr. Clark is the royal seamster, a man I've known all my life," snorting, I gestured to his boutique a few yards away from us. "I barely ever touch his products, unwilling to ruin them, but one time as a child, I was marvelled when I saw the Prince's coat. It was as if Mr. Clark had sewed magic and I'd hearts for eyes when I'd skimmed my fingers over the fabric. I could only compare it to how touching the clouds would feel like."
"You're right," he averted his eyes away, a glazed look in them that I remained incapable of pinpointing. "I'm no man of position but a mere servant at the palace."
I caressed the small body of the injured pup with a sigh. "I wish I could help him."
"You're right about that too. I'm not allowed to take him to the palace," his hand rested beside mine, softly scratching the pup behind his ear. "But I'm well acquainted with a nurse. She won't breathe a word."
"Isn't that a risk to your job?"
"I'll manage."
"Are you sure?"
He nodded.
A gust of wind brought with it the coldness of the night in a ferocious manner. I wrapped my arms around myself, running my palms up and down my forearms. I looked down, clamping my teeth on my lip to stop the memories that brought me here. Would I be able to run away this time? Or will the patrol find me once again before I make it out of Aezira? Am I ready for what is bound to come next if those guards dragged me back home?
Lost in my thoughts, I missed the stranger's movement until something warm was wrapped around my shoulders. My breath hitched at how close he was. The smooth porcelain of his chest was right in front of my face, peeking out through the first two undone buttons of his shirt.
He straightened back to his original position, leaving my cheeks warmer than the shawl he gave me. When I glanced up at him through my lashes, his mouth was pulled up into a soft smile. "You were shivering."
"I-I—" I found myself at a lack of words, his earlier proximity clouding my thoughts until I noticed the thin weave of his shirt. I quickly shook my head, speaking as I shrugged the shawl off. "I've more layers of clothing than you do, kind sir. Please, I cannot accept it."
He shook his head. "I don't get cold easily. Besides, I'm heading back to the palace. The long walk warms one up enough to not want a shawl. And with the way you're quivering, you'll catch an illness. Please, keep it."
When a shiver raked my form, I took back any further attempts to refuse, and wrapped the warm wool around me. It was soft but not so much as the weavers weaved for those who belonged to the upper class.
"Thank you." I said.
He got up, forwarding his hand for me with a grace I had not yet witnessed in men. Blood rushed to my cheeks for a reason I knew naught. I chose to keep it aside and slid my hand into his warm palm, trying to be as graceful as Laura would while getting back to her feet but I ended up being me, the unladylike Esméralda.
I could have bet the red in my cheeks was embarrassment if he hadn't lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. "May I know your name, beautiful lady?"
Not beautiful. Not even a lady.
"Esméralda," I said, momentarily forgetting what I was told all my life—a Gorgon housing reddish snakes, because as I stared into the captivating golden hue of his eyes, I almost believed that he meant his words when he called me a beautiful lady.
"Lovely," his lips twitched to form the hint of a smile as he let go of my hand before it began to feel creepy. "Shall I walk you home? The night isn't young anymore."
Home. I wondered if I ever had one.
"No. I'll go," I answered, realising he was still a stranger I shouldn't be trusting. "Just heal Arthur, please."
"Arthur?"
I looked down at the bony body of the pup. "Him. I didn't know I was going to name him until I did."
"I will bring him to you once he's healthy."
I took my eyes back to him. "Find me at Mr. Clark's shop at around eight in the morning."
He picked up Arthur, and carefully settled him in the crook of his muscular arms, his eyes meeting mine again. "At Mr. Clark's," he said. "Until then, goodbye, Lady Esméralda."
I had no energy left to correct him that I was no lady.
He took a step ahead, gaze still holding mine. "The next time we meet, I hope your cheeks carry no streaks of pain."
I only blinked as he moved away from me, turned around, and began walking away in the direction of the palace. I watched him diminish into a smaller and smaller version of his with each footfall while I subtly marvelled at the grace he carried for a man so large.
When his retreating back appeared to be half his size in the distance, I did the most unladylike thing that might cause Laura to faint. I shouted the loudest my throat allowed, turning heads to me. "Hey, stranger! What's your name?"
He stopped, turning around with Arthur sleeping comfortably in his arms. His lips were pressed into a thin line for the brief duration I received no answer in. Then, they curved upwards into a soft smile, his reply being of equal rigor. "You may call me Eirik."
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Word Count: 3470