Page 47 of Seasons of War
She stumbled to the restroom and caught a trash can just in time to get sick. Holding her stomach, she turned on the faucet and rinsed her mouth, spilling water onto the ground and counter. Her hands fumbled as if they weren’t really attached to her.
Miya met her reflection in the mirror. Beneath the mascara streaking her cheeks, it looked like her mother stared back at her. Not just because of how much Miya resembled her, but because of that look in her eye, that message screaming soundlessly.
Run.
Her mom never complained to her or let Miya see how she felt like a captive in the palace, but Miya saw it now when she looked back through time. She saw how badly her mom wanted to choose her own life. Needed Miya to do the same.
Pain pinched her chest. She looked away and, as she did, her long hair cascaded over her shoulders. She saw her mother again. Dancing in the garden. Reading onthe bed. Staring out over the palace walls like her mind alone may carry her away. Miya imagined the wind whipping the heavy skirts of her dress in the courtyard, as wild as her heart had been.
She held up her hand in the light, looking over the black mark on her ring finger. Her mother had worn an alexandrite stone passed down to generations of queens. In the sun, blue and green filled its core, but the incandescent light on her mother’s vanity brought forth a red glow from its depths.
“Steady for the public and fiery under heat. This is how a queen must be, you know.”
“What would you say, Mama?” Miya’s mark remained black as she rotated her hand. The color never changed, no matter the light. “Are we as different as we seem?”
It hadn’t been her mother’s choice to marry her father. In the palace or on the streets, the two of them were destined for the same life. No escaping it. Her mother died living out men’s dreams without finding her own. Just a body. Hardly more than a signature on a treaty. In a marriage like that, her ring might as well have been a mark.
Why should Miya pity the king? He’d not simply jeopardized himself in his antics with Krowe’s estate, but his entire kingdom. He must have known the Phaedra would retaliate to such an insult. As hard as Miya worked to forget him, she wondered from time to time: would he play with their lives if he knew his daughter walked his filthy streets?
He’d care if the captain put a gun to his head. He’d care if he watched his kingdom get ripped out from beneath him. Miya couldn’t be the one to do it. She was getting too close to everything. But maybe, just maybe, it would be better for all Caspador if the captain did put the king out of his misery.
Once again, Miya looked at herself in the mirror. Long ago, a different image met her, but so much had changed that she wouldn’t recognize that young palace girl. Gripping the cold countertop, she banished thoughts of that child long gone and scrutinized the woman who had risen from her ashes.
“He’s not your father anymore,” she whispered. “Your name is Miya, and you don’t owe him a thing.”
If she chose to run, then she'd run. Miya did not have to save the man who never saved her. But if she wanted to fight the captain, that was her choice too. These men couldn't force anything from her anymore. She had everything she needed to flee across the ocean if necessary.
She straightened her dress and reentered the room with her head held high, sitting beside the captain.
Her mother would want her to make her own life, not enslave herself to her father’s agenda, or to the futile quest to save Caspador, and not to these men who gladly used her up until nothing remained.
Wasn't that a half-truth, though? No matter what happened, her mother always returned to her people to care for them, even when it one day cost her everything. No, her mother wouldn't want Miya to return to the abuses of the palace. She'd want her to protect her siblings, though. Their children. She'd want Miya to fight for the innocent people caught up in this war.
Her senses cleared, her muscles back under her control. She wasn't running from this captain before hurting him. And tonight, she needed to stay ahead of him. If he learned the king's eldest daughter didn't really die, that she bizarrely lived as a spy and marked woman, he'd whisk her back to Ciondo.
“Why did you stay at Rafferty?” he asked.
Good question. Did she understand the answer? “I ran a few times at first. Aiden always brought me back. I never ended up anywhere better. I know how to get by at Rafferty…” Her shoulders slumped. She drew her knees to her belly, blue flames blurring in her unfocused eyes. “I realized I didn't need to lower myself to them… I could take power for myself… I can still take more… with you…” All true. Miya would take more. She’d play the captain, and when she finished, she'd finally escape from them all. The boss. Aiden. Her father. This war. At the end of this, she'd decide she'd done enough and leave Caspador behind.
“What else? What are you really doing at Rafferty?”
“I hate them.” Miya smiled. “I'm going to ruin them one day… I save the girls from them… Hide them away… There's a woman who will take my place when I'm ready to leave… But I'm not done yet… They haven't bled enough.”
Miya might not have become who she once planned to be, but she didn't waste her life. Even if she couldn't save Caspador, she'd saved so many girls from her fate. That made it all worth it.
“Who does your boss work for?”
She curled her toes. He’d asked her so many times. “No one.”
Non-stop questions.
The blue flames in the center of the room danced closer and closer.
Her father married her mother for a treaty between himself and Caspador’s religious tribes. Those villages didn't used to be so bad, not until Bale took over.The lust for power took root anywhere, the most resilient of weeds. He basically sold her mother off. And why her of all people? Her beauty. Her body. Nothing more.
“How did you end up at Rafferty?”
A curse passed from mother to daughter. Eyes closed, she had a feeling of falling, weight hanging from her ankles, dragging her into emptiness.
