Their footsteps echoed throughout the hallways. One of the guards escorting them held the tip of his spear to her back, making her feel it's edge even through the thick fabric of her winter attire. She glanced at her attendant from the corner of her eye. Yvette hadn't said a word since they left the princess's quarters. 

Where are we going? 

She had never been allowed this far into the palace. 

They e last corner into a hall that ended in a door so big an elephant must have been able to pass through it. Not that Luciana had ever seen an elephant, but she'd once asked Yvette what the strangely named animal in one of her Arabic books was like. Very big with funny, floppy ears and a nose like this, the woman had said, holding out her arm in front of her face. Bigger than my tower? Lux had asked. Yvette had hummed, tilting her head. Not as big as your tower, but maybe as big as the weapon shed. The weapon shed was big enough to hold twenty horses- maybe forty if they stood on each other's backs.

"Vuelva a la Tierra, Su Majestad."

Lucy blinked once, twice, digesting the phrase. It was so familiar, yet it sounded so wrong. Usually, Yvette would call her Luca or Lucia; even when scolding her, even if she was mad, she was the one person who would forgo honorifics. Come back to Earth, she would say in her native tongue, snapping her out of the trances that would come when she got too involved in her thoughts. And come back, she would, if only for her nurse's sake. 

However, that day, everything felt wrong. Even though she was a, no, the princess, she had been confined to her tower her whole life. She had never met her mother, who she had learnt was dead; or her father, who she supposed despised her; or her, perhaps multiple, siblings, who might have even been confined as she was. But she doubted that. She'd heard enough snippets of hushed conversations to know her case was different. 

"Please."

Yvette's hushed, accented English succeeded in bringing her attention to the real world this time. As if it weren't enough that her attendant had spoken in anything but Spanish to her, she had sounded desperate, almost scared. Emotions Lux had never heard in the tone of voice of the woman who had single-handedly raised her. Of course, she hadn't