"You will do well to remember your place, Lady Faryn." Loki drawled, his legs akimbo as he leaned back tiredly in the High Empress' throne, the great cold steel of it was not built for comfort as an empress was not made to lounge.
Outraged, I gestured wildly at him in my mother's chair, "How can I forget it, when you're sitting in it?" I sneered, chin lifted as I rose to my maximum height, shoulders thrown back.
My father's Grand Advisor spun his wine tankard around his finger, playing with it as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be sitting on the throne. If my Uncle or cousins were to hear of it? He'd be dead on the morrow's setting of the moon. "Faryn, you are an orphaned child and I am your Guardian. As your short-sighted and horribly indulgent father failed to secure your hand, you will be as a mere ward of the court, if and until I decide you are of the wisdom and fortitude to be crowned heir."
"If it were not for your war-mongering I would have been wed already! Van-"
The swine had the gall to cut me off, as if I was nothing, tossing his words heedlessly at me as if we were comparing which wine went best with pheasant. "Vanir is dead, Princess. The sooner you come to terms with it—"
"Yes! Because you advised that he and my brother go to war. That was clever, send the future Empress' Consort to die, and kill off the only other heir to the throne. Wonderfully advised, Your Grace." I bowed, mocking him, I could do nothing but hate him and it frightened me. I stayed away from the steps to the dais and the throne, careful to throw my anger at him. One did not rule with hatred in their heart, my father always said, speaking of my mother's famed temperance and refusal to let her anger ever reach how she ruled. You rule from heart, and there you must always be in control.
"Our people were attacked, if you fail to recall, Princess. Now—"
"My people, not yours, were attacked by a band of radicals. And in retaliation, you killed thousands of their people causing outright war." I slowed my speech down and calmed my anger to something far more controlled, "You think yourself a king, yet you have not the slightest idea of what it means to rule. I pray for all of us that you learn."
I picked up my skirts, angry for the ten thousandth time that day alone that I had to wear them, and nearly ran to my new accommodations more "befitting the station allotted to orphans". I was reduced to one hand maiden, not that I needed more than one. I could make do on my own and I often preferred to, but ever since Father held my brother's lifeless body and died himself, everything went wrong.
I untied my outer gown and shifted awkwardly onto the new bed I had been allowed to have, and sank into the pillows, sighing in relief when I found a rolled sheet of parchment hidden there. My one friend, and sole confidant.
I did not know who it was, the writer of letters that came when I was gone, but whoever it was, they were my only friend.