The only sound was the creaking of the carriage, the rumbling of distant thunder, and the hiss of her labored breaths as she fought to maintain composure between stifled sobs. Her damp blue eyes were transfixed upon a point just outside the window to her right but registered nothing of what she saw - her focus was turned inward upon the vast, swirling array of emotions which unprecedented recent events had elicited.
Sold. Her father had sold her. She was little more than a slave now when once she had been born royalty.
They had kept her locked away from the world since her sixteenth year, a time when she should have been preparing for initiation into womanhood - lessons in elocution and manners, invitations to balls and dinner parties…and yet twelve years later, her only memories contained images of a dark, windowless room and brilliant, limitless, hateful rage.
Her jaw clenched almost to the point of pain as she slowly turned her head and looked determinedly forward at the drab crimson cushions directly across from her. A man was seated nearby but she paid him no heed. Orcs were of little or no consequence, even if he had just assumed ostensible ownership of her.
At present, she was attired simply - her parents had stopped giving her the elegant, fashionable gowns to which princesses were surely accustomed years ago, and her copper hair hadn’t been arranged in anything but natural, loose curls since the tragic day of the explosion (the first one, that is) - an ugly, grey, ankle-length dress without even stays or a corset, and shoes which barely fit.
At last she turned her burning gaze upon her would-be betrothed, fixing him with an expression which surely communicated all of her ire and distaste for him. Her voice when she spoke was low and trembling beneath the weight of her emotions, “Where are we going?”
