Nothing had happened. At least, that is what I told myself. Yet the black box in my hands would not let me rest in such thoughts. Its weight pressed against my palms like a secret—far too heavy for its size, as though it were filled not with metal but with meaning. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps it was everything.
Then the carriage halted once more.
I drew the curtain aside, my irritation veiled with composure. "What is it now?"
"Please, remain inside, Princess," Simon's voice called, measured as ever.
But I am no ornament to be hidden away. I stepped down into the clearing, the night vast above me. Two moons crowned the sky, locked in opposition—one vast and orange, molten like a coin fresh from the forge, the other pale and white, a shard of cold fire. Their rival lights cast the grass in wavering silver.
"What is it, Simon?"
"There appears to be someone—hey, you there!" His hand snapped toward the driver of the carriage. His hand lowered to the hilt of a sword he had taken from one of the carriage compartments.
I tilted my head to look over the clearing. And then I saw her.
A girl lay upon the earth, unclothed, her body curled in upon itself. Her black hair spilled like ink across the grass, her skin pale as carved porcelain.
So unlike myself.
I, with silver hair that gleams under torchlight, with eyes of bright blue that mirror the sky, skin touched with a luminous glow, and cheeks colored in the warmth of life. She was night; I was day. She was shadow; I was sun.
She stirred.
"She wakes," Simon said, watchful as a hawk.
Her lashes flickered, and with the smallest of movements, her fragile form shifted, like a newborn creature unused to its body. Her lashes parted, and I beheld eyes unlike any I had ever seen.
I had expected gray—soft and quiet, the shade I had seen so many nights in my dreams. Yet when her eyes opened, they were not gray at all.
It was wrong. Unfamiliar. And yet, in that very strangeness, my heart recognized her all the more.
At first glance, they were black—deep and polished as obsidian, a darkness that drank the light whole. Yet even in the pale glow of the twin moons, I thought I glimpsed something else: a faint shimmer, a secret fire smoldering beneath. I knew then, with an instinct that prickled through my veins, that when the sun touched them, they would not be black at all. They would bleed red, like garnets catching flame, as though her very gaze was forged from hidden embers. Her face was small, delicate, and strange, and around her clung a beauty that was not gentle, but mysterious, unsettling, and magnetic.
"I have not seen her before," Simon murmured.
"She must be Oriental," the driver suggested.
"Eira." The word slipped sharp from my lips.
Simon turned to me, his monocle glinting like cold judgment. "What did you say, Princess?"
"You are wrong. Both of you."
For I had seen her before. In the shadows of my dreams. Her form always lingered there, a silhouette against strange visions I could not name—vast towers like crystal spears stabbing the heavens, glowing beasts that moved without flame or hoof, and seas of faces, countless, ceaseless, never bowing, never curtsying, yet walking in endless currents. They were images too strange for parchment, too wild for reason, yet she was always among them, her eyes turning toward me through the haze.
Artemesia, the dreams whispered as she calls my name. My own name, clear as a tolling bell, always bound to her presence.
And now she was here. Not phantom, not figment, but real. Flesh and breath. A mystery too great to dismiss.
Was she pulled into my world? Or—dread pricked my chest—am I the one who does not belong, dreaming myself into a cage of silks and crowns, mistaking the stage for the truth?
The thought nearly made me tremble. But I straightened, for I am Artemesia Silveria, and a princess does not falter.
I looked upon the girl again, this pale phantom of beauty so unlike myself, and though I masked my excitement with poise, my heart quickened. The courtly ball had been hollow spectacle, the prince mere gilded ornament, Mr. Cato a fleeting chance—yet this…
This was revelation.
Eira Yelan