Earning the Love of a Princess-Chapter 303: Violet: Exhaustion

"No, I won’t be. I never wanted to marry him. Leo and I barely get along." Violet said with a frown.

"Well, then. What was it you wanted out of all this? Truly wanted, I mean. And don’t just say it was to be happier than me. That’s not a proper answer. What does Lady Violet Thierre truly want from her life, irrespective of what other people say or do?"

Violet thought long and hard about what Ilse was asking but came up blank.

Had she ever really stopped to think about what she wanted? Or had she simply been too busy reacting to what everyone else around her had?

"I don’t...I don’t think I really know, Ilse." Violet dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. Funny how even in a dream, the dampness of her tears felt so real. "Maybe I’ve never known. What I do know is that I’m so unhappy. I’m lost. There’s no one who cares about me. Not one person. Whatever happens now, I’m stuck facing it alone and I’m scared."

"Ah, sister. We were the only two people who ever really cared about us, weren’t we?" Ilse said quietly. "Even Leo, for all that I trusted him, didn’t really love me. He’ll say he did if you ask him but it wasn’t the kind of love I wanted."

The stupidity of having turned on and driven away the only soul who’d ever loved her, made Violet’s heart hurt. "Mother and Father wrote to the king and they’re taking me back to Westerhaven. We set off tomorrow morning."

"To parade your belly in front of Their Majesties?"

"Yes, exactly that. Not that I have much to show at the moment." Violet’s child hadn’t even been born yet but it was already a pawn, a mere tool in the hands of others.

"Did you really expect anything different from our parents?" Ilse smirked. "Especially Mother?"

"No. But I still don’t want to be paraded before the king like some prized cow in calf."

"Get used to it, I’m afraid. You’re carrying an heir to the throne. Your body is not your own anymore." Ilse absently twirled a lock of hair around her fingers. "If I were you, I’d be praying day and night for a son."

Violet looked at her, then down at her own still flat belly. She’d never thought of the sex of her baby. To be honest, she’d never thought much about it at all, beyond it being an unwanted parasite that would’ve forced her to leave court at some point.

"What if it’s not, Ilse?" Violet whispered in a thin little voice. "For all the trouble and uproar it’s caused, it has to be a son doesn’t it? I can’t imagine going through all of this strife, only to find out I’ve failed at the very end."

Ilse shrugged. "Let’s hope so. Though I’d love to see our parents’ faces if you have a useless girl, as Mother so charmingly calls us. You need to eat lots of asparagus. That’s known to make a boy, isn’t it?"

"Asparagus?" Violet gave a hollow laugh. "Where the devil am I supposed to find asparagus? Our parents have a hard enough time putting any kind of food on the table, let alone delicacies!"

"Well, let’s hope all of Mother’s scheming pays off and you’re able to marry Leo. Then you can have as much asparagus as you want. The maids will probably serve it to you every day and with every meal until you’re completely sick of it." Ilse’s voice was brisk. "Then your boy will secure the line of Devon succession and Leo will have to respect you as the mother of his son."

"How wonderful. Respect but not love." Violet said in a peevish voice.

"Oh Violet, just stop it for once! Please!"

Violet jerked her head, startled at her twin’s suddenly sharp tone. It was the first time in a while that Ilse had sounded upset. She usually sounded so serene in her dreams.

"Why do you care if Leo loves you or not? It’s not like you ever loved him, is it? Well, did you?" Ilse prompted impatiently when Violet hesitated in replying.

"No but-"

"Then having his love isn’t important, so stop acting as if it’s suddenly important to you!" Ilse gave her a long, thoughtful stare. "Before you get angry about not having something, ask yourself if it’s truly something important to you or not. Not just about men but about anything in life, really."

"W-what do you mean?" Violet had a distinct feeling she wasn’t going to like her sister’s next words at all.

"You’ve always been jealous if someone had something you didn’t. Even if you didn’t really want the thing for yourself. You want to hoard everything for yourself but at the same time, you’ve just admitted you don’t really know what you want. How do you ever intend on being happy with that kind of thinking? Do you even want to be happy?"

"What kind of question is that, Ilse? Of course I want to be happy! Who doesn’t?" Violet bristled.

"Then start acting like it! Why don’t you focus on cherishing things for yourself, not just on taking them from others?" Ilse berated her. "You only ever wanted Leo because I caught his eye and you couldn’t bear to see me happier or more prestigious than you. Now you have him, you’ll get to be his wife and eventually his queen. You’ll be the most honoured of women in the country. So what do you do? Start complaining that he doesn’t love you!"

Violet tried blinking away her tears, angry tears now. Why did her sister have to be so cold and judgmental?

Why did she have to be so brutally accurate?

"There’s never any pleasing you, Violet. It’s exhausting just to hear you." Ilse said in a softer voice. "I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be for you to live that way."

"So what would you do, Ilse?" Violet asked in defeat. "If you found yourself where I am now?"

"In your position...I’d do the best I could to find contentment in the things I have. Try to be a good mother and a good wife." Ilse spoke firmly. "As a princess and later as queen, you’ll have the ability to help people from your position. Use it to aid the less fortunate and try to find satisfaction in that. Try to have a peaceful relationship with your husband, learn to live and rule alongside him."

"What if Leo’s not a good husband to me?" Violet couldn’t imagine the spoiled, selfish man changing his ways for anyone, let alone for her.

"It doesn’t change your responsibility to be a good wife to him, does it? Or to be a good queen for the service of your people." 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Violet grimaced. She didn’t much like the sound of royalty being described as a role of service. She briefly remembered the endless stream of altar cloths and shirts Queen Celia had made her ladies stitch.

"Imagine. For the rest of your life, every woman in Islia will look up to you with nothing but awe and envy. Little girls will dream of being a future queen like you." Ilse’s lips quirked as she tried to suppress a smile. "How could you ask for anything more?"

Every word Ilse said was nothing but the truth.

So how did she manage to make a victory rather empty?

"What about you, sister? Are you envious?" Violet simply had to know. No matter how childish and petty the question was, she simply had to know.

At that, Ilse threw her head back and laughed long and hard. "Oh Violet! That is so typical of you! I’m in a place where past animosity and jealousy now mean nothing. Yet you still think to ask a dead woman if she envies a live one!"

- - -

With a startled lurch and gasp, Violet opened her eyes.

Ilse was no longer in front of her in her ivory dress.

Pushing herself up on her elbows, Violet peered at her dim surroundings. From the shape of the shadows around her, she saw she was back in her childhood bedchamber. She was in Thierre Manor and no longer in Magdaline Castle.

The earlier rain seemed to have stopped, judging from the leak in the roof no longer dripping in the bedchamber’s corner.

All she could hear was her own laboured breaths tearing out of her lungs. She touched her cheek and realised it was damp from tears.

Sancia mumbled sleepily at her to not be so loud, then rolled over and went back to sleep.

Violet lay back down quietly, trying to calm her pounding heart. It was just a dream, she told herself over and over. Just a vivid dream. She turned to glance at the space next to her on the bed just in case, terrified of what she might see.

The space was empty, of course.