A/N: Behold! I live! As always, thanks for all the patience from folks, and I hope this chapter was worth the wait. Hopefully I'll have another chapter done before Christmas, but I will be vanishing during November, due to my stellar decision to attempt NaNo this year. Enjoy!
ooOoo
Chapter 16: The Flower Returns
In the Cat Kingdom, Haru ran her hands over her dress.
It was unlike anything Haru had ever worn before, and not just because of its origin. The material was as golden as her hair, with flowers embroidered into the fabric in such excruciating detail that Haru couldn't being to imagine how many hours the seamstresses had sunk into it. The skirt blossomed out in multiple layers, yards and yards of fabric designed for the sole purpose of shaping her gown just right. How many dresses could have been fashioned from that unseen material alone?
Feline and floral motifs were decorated into the headdress and, as the maids assigned to her appearance fussed over her hair and wove it into intricate patterns, Haru couldn't help feeling like a princess.
Except, surely princesses were meant to be happier than this. Not trying to ignore the swirling storm of sickness and undirected dread building up within her heart. She fiddled with the hem of her sleeve and noted how, while the eternal sunshine made her hair shimmer, her skin seemed all the paler for it. Even her veins, usually a faded blue, seemed almost green.
She glanced over her shoulder at the cats' handiwork – pawork? her mind wondered – and noticed that even though they were braiding it, they were being very careful to keep it as long as possible.
"Isn't that going to be inconvenient?" she asked. They gave her confused looks, and she specified. "I mean, isn't my hair going to trail if you leave it like that?"
"Of course it will," one of the maids trilled. "That's the point!"
Haru frowned, but her thoughts were derailed when all three maids abruptly dropped into low bows.
"Looking good, babe."
Haru spun. Oh. Him.
Truth be told, Haru hadn't been exactly sure what to expect when she heard there was not only a Cat King, but that he wanted to meet her – but noble and dignified had been the two main adjectives that had risen to mind. She should have set her expectations lower.
His long grey-almost-purple fur stuck out at odd angles, as if he hadn't yet discovered the purpose of a comb and no one had found the courage to tell him, while his eyes had the disconcerting ability of wandering – usually in opposite directions. She had quickly learned to pick an eye and focus on just the one. He did, however, have a crown. Or, at least, that was what she assumed the singular purple gem situated atop his head was, and even that had the uncomfortable habit of blinking in time with his own mismatched eyes.
To his side was Baron's brother, the man who had introduced himself as Auberon, and whereas the Cat King seemed built up of consuming smiles and slightly chaotic enthusiasm, his smile was wane. Confined. "Is everything to your liking, Miss Haru?"
Haru rose out of her own hasty bow and self-consciously felt for her tiara to ensure it hadn't slipped. Her mind flashed back to the crown she had bought Baron's temporary loyalty with, and she flinched, her hand dropping sharply away. "You've been so generous, how could it not?" She moved her hand to her hair, lingering at the elaborate braids. "My only concern is my hair."
"Is it not fancy enough?" the Cat King asked. "We can have that fixed immediately–"
"No, no it looks beautiful," Haru was quick to assure, "but isn't this welcome ceremony going to be busy?" She consciously tucked a strand of golden hair back behind her ear. "If it's left this long, it's going to get trodden on?"
"Is that all?" The Cat King looked confused by her concern. "Don't worry, babe; your maids will help you to your seat, so there's no danger of tripping."
Haru frown. "Yes, but I'm surely not going to stay there for the entire celebration, am I?"
Auberon seemed to notice her waning enthusiasm; the Cat King did not. "It's just for this evening," he supplied. "Your hair is so beautiful, it would seem a shame not to show it off at least once."
"I guess…"
"Then it's settled!" the Cat King cried. He looked incredibly smug over something he seemed to have planned very little of. "Time to go–"
"Can I see my mother first?"
The Cat King faltered. "Why?"
"She's… she's sick," Haru haltingly reminded him. She appealed to Auberon. "You said that it was my hair making her sick because it couldn't draw from the Cat Kingdom sun, right?"
"Right."
"So I'm here now and it'll make her better now, right?"
The Cat King and Auberon exchanged a look that Haru couldn't decipher. "A single song shouldn't do any harm," Auberon said carefully.
The Cat King nodded. "Just make it quick. Don't want to keep the Kingdom waiting, babe."
Haru smiled wanly. Where did they think she'd be running off to? "Sure."
ooOoo
Her mother seemed so quiet nowadays. Maybe it was the sickness catching up with her.
Haru sat in the grand room that was now hers and tried to imagine living there. But all she could picture when she thought of home was the tower.
There were other places she would have liked to call home – places she could imagine leaving a little of her heart at. The city streets, with their bustling, rambunctious, joyful crowds. The inn; even as full of thugs and ruffians, Haru had still somehow felt safe under Hiromi's care. The cottage, bathed in sleepy moonlight and stardust.
The world. To have every corner she turned, every forest path she walked down to be a new place, shivering with untapped potential. To have her world no longer mapped out by a handful of steps, but by a thousand, thousand steps. To lose herself in a way she could not when she knew every brick and every inch in the confines of her tower.
Maybe she could still have that. Maybe the Cat Kingdom would open up more doors, not fewer, than her original dreams.
She finished the healing spell and her hair dimmed back to its usual background glow. Her mother had said not a word throughout the entire process, even if her skin was now flushed with fresh life and her eyes brighter than Haru could ever recall, and something still sat uneasily within her.
And so she sat in the bedroom fit for royalty – her bedroom – and watched the time tick away. Before long, Auberon or some cat would come to escort them to the welcoming ceremony and this moment of just the two of them would be lost. After that, her new life in the Cat Kingdom would begin.
"It was the right decision," she said, as much to fill the yawning silence between them as anything else. "He was right – my magic was making you sick, and I couldn't just sit back and watch you die. And it would have happened eventually," she pressed on. "So please don't be angry with me, or whatever's going on, because I did it for you. I want you to be okay."
She fiddled with the cane that she had brought with her, the cane that had unwittingly been dragged along on the biggest adventure of Haru's life. She turned it nervously over in her grasp. In the bright Cat Kingdom sunshine, it took on an almost golden hue. "Maybe it'll be better this way, you know. Maybe now we don't have to hide, we can have a proper life. You've given up so much for me, now it's my… turn…"
Her voice trailed off as angular markings in the cane caught the light. They were faint, faded through time and use, but they were too sharp, too purposeful to be mere scratches. She twisted it around, directing it so the sun cast long shadows into the man-made dips. Three letters could just be visible just below the hook, just where her hand normally rested.
EvG.
Edmund von Gikkingen.
Coincidence.
It had to be. In all the world, in all the families, those initials had to repeat.
And yet.
She looked up at her mother – at the woman she had known as her mother all these years – and the unseen similarities between the von Gikkingen brothers and her… her mother leapt out at her. Her blue eyes, so akin to Auberon's; the nose, an echo of both siblings; the accented lilt of the voice that Baron and Auberon's still carried echoes of, after all those years…
A name fell together on her tongue. An almost hallowed whisper.
"You're Louise von Gikkingen."
Something in the air snapped, and her mother – Louise – blinked as if seeing the world for the first time. Her breathing eased, but only momentarily; seconds later it gave way to harried gasps as she catapulted across the room and grabbed Haru's shoulders.
"Haru, we have to go–"
Haru jolted Louise away, fresh confusion flooding into her eyes. "You're… Baron's mother," she stammered, voice nearly giving way beneath the realisation and all the baggage that came with, "and that makes me… the lost princess."
"Yes. I'm know, I'm sorry I never told you, but we have to go before Auberon comes back–"
Haru shook off Louise's hands again and stumbled back. "What… the… hell? I'm the lost princess? Me? I'm… I'm…"
"Princess Haru," Louise supplied.
Haru began to pace, her hair leaving a golden trail behind her. "You stole me away from my family! You left Baron and his brother, and for what?" She spun back to Louise and gestured sharply at herself. "For me? I don't – I don't understand–"
"The Cat King was going to steal you away, trap you here forever, and Naoko is – was – my best friend. I couldn't just let her daughter be used like that, not after her husband had already died. I thought… I thought I could delay it, find a way to undo it, but…"
"So what Auberon told me was true?" Haru asked. "My parents really did bargain me away for a flower?"
"Yes. But only to save you and your mother. Your father had no idea the cost would be so dear and when he discovered it was all for the magic imbued into your hair, he tried to cut it off."
Haru's hand went to the lock of dark brown hair tucked behind her ear. She recalled the story her mother – Louise – had told her about her absent father. "It killed him."
"It killed him," Louise confirmed.
"But why keep it a secret?" she pressed. "Why not tell me? You had the time!"
"And tell you what? That you were the lost princess, fated to be endlessly pursued by the Cat King as payment for an old debt unsettled? You would have hated your life in the tower, resented it for the future that had been stolen away from you. So, yes, I lied. I lied because I thought it was kinder, kinder to not know what you had lost before you had even been born… But all is not lost. If you get out before sunrise back in our world–"
Haru jolted away. "And do what? You heard Auberon – it's my magic making you sick! You think I can just return and become a… a princess when I'm a walking biohazard? Or was he lying?"
Louise faltered and the harsh truth went unspoken. "He… We'll find a way–"
"You've had 18 years to find a way. I don't want to make people sick, and I don't need to be a princess to be happy! I just want you to be okay, and to see the world – and can't you see? Now I have that. True, it may mean I now mostly live with cats, but that doesn't matter, what matters is–"
"If you stay, they'll never let you leave!" Louise shouted.
Haru halted. "What? But they said–"
"They lied. Your parents made a deal – they agreed to give you away, even if they didn't know it at the time. If you stay past sunrise, the deal will be fulfilled and you'll belong here. Trapped. Can't you see? They only want you for your hair, and once they have that, you'll become just another possession."
"I… I can escape–"
Louise shook her head. "You can't break a fairy promise. One way or another, the promise will bind you here once fulfilled. Do you understand? You have to leave now or you never will."
"Will you now?"
Both women froze.
Auberon leant against the open doorframe, top hat idly spinning in his gloved hands. He glanced over, the smile sharp and unkind. "Well, well, I see the time for pretence is over. Such a shame; I quite enjoyed being in your good graces – it's so much easier to control someone when they trust you."
Haru bunched up her skirts and marched towards Auberon. "If you think I'm going to do anything you say, you've got another thing coming," she snarled. "Let us go."
"Go?" Auberon echoed. "Go where?"
"Home."
"But, my dear, you are home." He leant in with that satisfied smirk. "This was your home from the moment your father made that fateful deal, whatever my mother might have thought on the matter." He glanced up at Louise, and the hatred was palpable. "Are you proud of yourself, Mother? After everything you put your family through, after abandoning your own sons, you still fail. You might as well have just stayed, instead of running off to save some pathetic, mewling princess."
"Send us back to the Human World," Haru snarled.
"Or what? You don't have any bargaining chips."
"Neither do you."
"On the contrary," Auberon clicked his fingers and guards appeared, "I think I do." He looked up to the uniformed cats. "Gentlemen, my mother has decided that she'd like to stay here during the welcome ceremony. Please make sure she doesn't go wandering during the celebrations." He looked back to Haru with a smirk and drew close. "I don't care much for my mother but you, I'm guessing, do," he whispered. "One of the risks of being raised by a mother. Now, unless you want any harm to come to mother-dearest, I suggest you don't go getting any hasty ideas about escaping. Do I make myself clear?"
She looked back at him with open hatred. "Crystal."