Two weeks before the day I would be able to claim my freedom and leave in happy disgrace, a famous travelling troupe from Bespin came to the Capitol, and they were invited to the palace to perform over a period of five days.

The whole morning of one of those days was given over to all the women and children in the harem for a private show. The roster of acts and exhibits was to include giant kites crawling with acrobats, hawks that intercepted arrows mid-air, a new machine that could make paintings in the sky, and other impressive things like that. Everyone attended the day with excitement and impatience and wouldn't stop talking about it.

I declined to go, but I charitably gave my girl-servant, Rose, permission to join them.

That morning, I dallied in bed for an hour after waking, then, rising, I dressed myself and did my own hair, and left my room with the most ebullient step. For the first time in months, the harem would be empty of my peers, and I relished the opportunity to be alone. I had spent almost a year keeping my head down and pretending to be dull and spiritual, and that was tiring work. I wanted to be alone, to feel free of the burden of pretending; to be me.

I was the only concubine who chose to stay back but there were still a number of remaining slaves and servants within the harem. Once they saw me, they came up and respectfully begged to help me with my toilette. So, they thought I looked dreadfully untidy. Fair enough.

"No, never mind that," I told them, and ordered them to under no circumstances bother me. I would call on them if I needed them, I said, and unless I called, they were not to let themselves be seen by me. They readily agreed and scurried off.

The Harem's gardens, the geographical heart of the Harem, were truly enchanting, if I must be truthful. That day, in happy solitariness, I found them to be even more so.

After I had also chased away the gardeners and attendants there, I walked around the empty gardens and courtyards in my own company.

I crossed the bridges and looked at the fat fishes wiggling in the shade, and I crouched by the flower beds and plucked the choicest heads and tried to affix them to my hair. I had not the skill of the servants, and they wouldn't stay on, so I tried to make wreaths out of them to garland the statues with, but I was even worse at wreath-making.

When I got bored of the flowers, I went to the miniature lakes and pushed the little wooden sailboats across it, along the way stopping to heckle the argoras in their tall cage. Those pretty cerulean-feathered birds are supposed to bring good luck on whomever they descend upon, and the ones kept in the harem were so greedy and so tame that they would alight on anyone who stood immobile for long enough. I never go in their cage. I think birds are filthy.

I was enjoying every scented breeze and every tinkling drop of water on the pools and every swish of tree branches feathering in the wind.

I was in such high spirits. I was feeling so happy and so at peace with the world.

For a few hours, I could be me, Rey. Not Her Holy Highness the Princess Rey of the Holy Lands of Jakku, or Princess-Concubine Rey, or Rey the invisible bug, but just Rey.

My stroll became a little prance and then a waltz, and soon I was dancing and leaping and twirling with all my might.

I jumped and touched the rows of hanging lanterns under the lattice pavilions, making them swing. I leapt on stone walls and ran up and down their lengths, balanced on the tips of my toes. I imitated the argoras and soared from the height of the mossy boulders, catching myself on one leg with the other leg upraised, and I flung my arms out and made wide jumps like a deer. Wide, impossible jumps and impossible leaps and impossible landings. I was hanging suspended in the air for seconds! I touched the ground like a bird!

I was using the mysterious force within me to help me do these things, and the more I used it in my dance, the wilder, and the happier I became.

I was beginning to perspire a little and my hair was coming loose from all the poorly fastened pins and ribbons and pearls, and I didn't care. I shook my hair out and freed it of all the heavy ornaments. That felt even better! I laughed in my heart, and I laughed out loud, and a stream of joy flowed within and through me, and it felt that all the world was joyful with me.

I landed once more. I turned and turned and turned and I contorted my body and sent my limbs flying, and my hair sweeping the ground like the branches of the weeping trees, and the many layers of my skirts fanning out like the petals of an opening flower.

I thought briefly about asking one of the servants to bring a lyre and play with her back to me so I could have music to dance to, but I was too lazy to walk all the way back.

I contented myself with humming a song I was working on for the cello. It was a ballad composed for a play in which the title character, a Zeltron nobly-born woman, is tricked into giving her hand in marriage to the cruel and treacherous General that had her beloved killed.

I didn't really care for the story - I'm not interested in tragic romances - but the song was full and different and dramatic, and I liked the tempo change.

I closed my eyes and hummed and danced uninhibitedly, something I had not allowed myself to do for years. For years and years.

I suppose that once, during the arrest of the Empress Arta, I had let myself be momentarily free, but that experience paled in comparison. That had been someone else's emotions.

I remembered the sound of the boots and how they echoed throughout the broad hallways, and the delicious fear of the Empress that zinged the very blood in my heart.

Now I was dancing to my own heart, and my heart was content.

I slowed. I made my movements longer. Fuller. More graceful. I tried to evoke the dark romance of the ballad.

But I still heard, as though my imagination was bringing it into existence, the anxiety-inducing echo of boots. Not multiple echoing boots, but the heavy tread of one pair of boots.

I frowned and opened my eyes, and there was the Emperor in the garden with me. Coming to me. Crossing the bridge.

Immediately, I dropped into a curtsey. Immediately, I withdrew into myself and became Rey the bug. Immediately, I began spinning the web of invisibility.

I heard the slow and assured step-step-step of the boots, and then they came into view of my downcast gaze, followed swiftly by long legs and torso. He was in front of me. I watched his arm bend at the elbow; and then the Emperor's hand was coming to my face, and his fingers grasped my chin, and I was forced to look at him.

I was looking right into his face, nearer to him than I had ever had cause or should ever have cause to be.

There flashed in my head the image of a cocoon. I saw it with an ugly hole in it, like a child had come, and chancing upon the hard shell, snatched it up and poked a stick through it to get to the unlucky bug.

At the same time, I had a rather incongruous and impersonal thought: that our Emperor really was cruelly handsome.

"Ah," I said to myself, "I see what they mean, these Sisters of mine. That scar does look rather attractive on him."

His dark eyes scanned my face. His eyes weren't black as I initially thought them, but actually a very dark blue with specks of silvery grey. They looked like those paintings of the galaxy I'd once seen in my father's library and thought very pretty and then very boring, once the master-librarian confused my admiration for scholarly interest and started lecturing me about gas or something.

The Emperor's eyes were boring into mine. His pupils wavered as he studied me. "I remember you," he breathed, sounding wondering and a little perplexed. "You're the priestess."

I had the wild thought that I should deny it. I could claim to be a servant, a mischievous servant who had been allowed to borrow her mistress's clothes for an hour. Maybe he would believe it and let me go.

And if he didn't and decided to execute me for lying to him? What if he chopped off my head immediately? That would be terrible. But what if he did believe the story and let me go? What if-

"You live in my harem," he said. He still sounded perplexed. His brows were beginning to draw together. "You're one of my Concubines…"

"Yes, Sire," I said, abandoning my half-witted scheme with great sadness.

At length, he let me go.

"Where is everybody?" he asked sharply, looking still at me, as if he thought I would disappear were he to take his eyes off me.

"They're watching a performance outside the Harem, Sire," I replied, "by your leave." I tried not to look at him accusingly, but I felt that he should have known that no one would be here, having his own self approved the reason for their absence.

"Then I have come at the wrong time," he said to himself, scoffing for some reason.

I was silently and morosely agreeing with his observation.

The Emperor curled his mouth into a piqued sneer as he continued holding a conversation with himself. "The one time I oblige myself to unpremeditatedly visit my children, they are not present. Am I expected to remember what my household is doing at all times?"

I noticed that he held a lacquered box in his other hand. It had big-bodied insects in bright, primary colours painted all over it. A gift for a child.

"Why are you not with the rest of them?" he asked suspiciously. His head twitched as though he desired to turn his head to look around us, but his eyes remained trained on mine. "Why are you dancing here alone in such a state of dishabille? Where are all the servants?"

"If it please Your Imperial Majesty, I will call for them," I said. I was wishing with my whole heart that I had not sent them away.

He stared at me for a bit. Finally, he said, "I asked you three questions, and you answered none." He laughed shortly, his voice descending in tone. "Yes, I do begin to remember you. The Holy Princess."

I wished people would stop getting my title wrong.

"Yes, Sire," I murmured. I was wondering what he found so funny about this horrible meeting. It was a horrible, horrible meeting.

He tilted his head slightly, scanning me. "What is your given name?" he asked.

"Rey," I answered. I did not enjoy the way he was looking at me. "Let me go directly and call the servants to attend you, Sire."

He nodded. "Do that… Rey."

I curtsied and walked very slowly backwards away from him with respectfully lowered eyes until I was sure I was out of sight, and then I turned tail and ran.

I ran indoors and called loudly for the servants in a panicked voice until they all came hurrying out as though I had been screaming that there was a fire. "The Emperor is here!" I hissed accusingly. "Did you not hear him come?"

They stammered their nervous excuses. They hadn't heard him. The eunuch-guards who had let him in had not informed them. And they'd shut themselves in their quarters like I'd told them to.

"Well, what are you doing yammering at me for!" I cried. "He's still here. In the gardens. I left him by the Amaranthine Bridge. Go to him. He wants you. Go. Go!"

They picked up their skirts and ran as if from a fire.

I stopped one of them. "Collect my pearls and ribbons for me. I dropped them everywhere in the gardens. Everywhere, you understand? Wait. You will find a long ribbon in velvet with a diamond at its centre by the argoras' cage. I remember definitively that I left it there. I was using it to tease the birds. You will also find a string of grey pearls near the Amaranthine Bridge. Find those two first and bring them straight to me, they were gifts from my favourite brother." And to another servant, I beckoned. "You come with me and do my toilette."

She hurried after me to my room.

"How shall I fashion you today, Your Holy Highness?" she asked.

I shook my head distractedly. I kept looking towards the door. I hated that none of the doors in the harem locked.

"Do you want to keep this gown, Ma'am, or would you like to change out of it?" pressed the servant.

"I don't know. What time is it?"

She answered, "Half-eleven. Would you like to change for lunch?"

I nodded.

While I was sitting in front of the mirror in a pink tiered gown, having my hair brushed out, there was a rap on the door.

It was the girl whom I'd directed to pick up my things, and she was accompanied by my girl-servant, Rose. I could hear, in the hallway behind them, the swishing of skirts and the light clicks of sandals on the marble; women laughing and chattering excitedly. The happy showgoers had returned.

"Is he gone?" I asked sharply. "The Emperor, is he gone?"

"Yes, Your Holy Highness," quaked the girl.

I slumped down with relief. "And my hair ornaments, you found them?"

She deposited, on my commode, the grey velvet ribbon with the diamond, as well as some of the other ribbons she had found, and gold hair pins and pearl-tipped hair pins, and slim strings of ivory pearls.

"And my grey pearls?" I asked, scanning the pile with a keen eye as Rose began their organisation.

"The Emperor took your grey pearls, Ma'am," said the girl, quaking visibly. She was looking at me fearfully. No doubt she knew how preposterous her excuse sounded.

"What?" I snapped. I was quite insulted that she would tell me such an obvious fib. "What would he want with my pearls? If you're lying to me, I'll make sure you lose a hand."

"Please, Your Holy Highness, your servant would not lie to you. I saw your pearls in his hand. He saw me looking and he knew what I was about, and he smiled to himself-like, and said aloud that he was of a mind to return the lady's pearls himself."

"Oh, yes?" I said laconically, leaning back in my chair. I was beginning to quite enjoy this foolish story. "Did he also offer to help you hunt for the rest of my pearls and pins? Did he say that he was in the mood to sweep the gardens? What other chore did our illustrious Emperor charge himself to undertake?"

I laughed as I pictured the Emperor Kylo doing those menial things. He didn't seem so scary anymore.

Just then, someone else rapped on my door.

"Did you hear that?" I exclaimed delightedly, clapping my hands, "Someone's asking to be admitted. Why, it must be the Emperor, come to return my pearls."

The servants paled.

"Oh, you utter nincompoops," I sighed. "How could it be him? You told me yourself that he just left. Rose, you go and open the door and see what they want."

Of course, as I was saying all this, my heart was starting to fill up with itching doubt. It couldn't be him, could it?

It wasn't, but it may as well have been. Rose came back with a troubled look, and a eunuch in tow.

My heart fell to see him and fell further to see what he was bearing:

A fretwork tray, on which was a little golden casket.

Dazed as I felt, I rose from my chair.

With his arm out, tendering the tray with its casket, the eunuch-messenger said, "I am commanded by His Imperial Majesty to extend to the Princess-Concubine Rey the red invitation."

I reached out with a trembling hand and opened the casket and removed the scroll that was within. Then I placed it on the commode and sat down and let the servants finish my toilette without saying a single word more, and when I was alone, I took up the scroll and unrolled it.

Blank.

As blank as my mind.

It was blank.