The Mirror Shows My Future
If a variable crept in, the future I longed for might never come to pass.
That was also why I had lived among their betrayal and deception without ever noticing—because I had never once doubted their kindness, their devotion.
"It's different now. From here on, I will think of nothing but my own future."
I had no power to destroy anyone on my own, so the answer was simple: I would borrow the authority of someone far stronger.
Ridiculously enough, I had learned even this method from the Duke.
The future I desired? There was only one now.
"I'm going to break all of it."
Antoni, Selena, Gemma—people who spat on my goodwill and returned it with malice. And the King himself, who took my mother and then coldly looked away.
To bring down those exalted names, so bloated with rank and honor—
"I'm afraid I'll need help from the outside."
There was no one in this country who would stand with me. A witch's bastard. A barren woman. Now, a divorcée. Nothing but a wreckage of ugly notoriety.
I swallowed the sigh that rose again and, through the mirror polished to a flawless shine, began to sketch the future I wanted.
According to my mother, ordinary magic required a powerful faith in some transcendent being—usually a god—and a talent to match.
The being whose power I borrowed was a spirit who lived in a distant land across the sea—my mother's homeland, she had called it.
During the long days she lay in her sickbed, my mother had told me so very many stories. Thanks to her, imagining that spirit had never been difficult.
"The special mages of the temples can use prophecy too, can't they?"
My eyes gleaming, I stared hard into the mirror.
That self-important prophecy of theirs—I'll give you one as well.
The rumors everyone used to bandy about, that my mother's gift was really a curse—perhaps they hadn't been entirely wrong.
After the foolish greed of dragging other people into my future, I had ended up with a fate like this.
Even I found it cursed enough.
"Attilenta. What comes next matters more. Steel your heart."
A woman who sold out her own kingdom. I would wear that infamy gladly.
"Antoni, you said I was a threat? Then I'll teach you what a true threat looks like."
In that moment, a faint light settled into the mirror. Just as my mother had described it, green light rippled outward through the glass like a spreading wave.
The mirror was showing me the face of a man. A man with mysterious violet eyes that no one born in this country could possess.
I knew him. The Second Prince of Bwendowska, the kingdom in the north.
"...Henrik, if I remember correctly. How could someone like him serve my future?"
I recalled a newspaper I'd read long ago. It said his epithet was the Black Dragon of the North—that he had carved his name into the battlefield so brilliantly he could stand beside the legends themselves. A thought flashed through me like a spark.
"I'll wield him like a weapon."
The battlefield, after all, was the one place I knew better than anywhere. Finding someone from beyond this country's borders so quickly was a clear stroke of fortune. Through the mirror, I began to draw a future that belonged to me alone.
If their design was to bind me forever as a powerless princess—
"They should have just left me alone."
Instead of planning to work me like cattle.
I couldn't hold back the laugh that slipped faintly between my lips.
'Attilenta. Are you ready to return their malice?'
It was because I had finally understood the true meaning behind the smile my mother left me, like a last testament.
"Princess. You have a visitor. Come down, please."
Despite the maid's chilly tone, I knew at once who had come.
I shuffled out of my room, still dragging my numb, aching legs.
As if even the smallest supporting hand were a luxury I hadn't earned, the servants attended only to the guest in the drawing room, flawless in their courtesy.
It was Selena.
"Attilenta! Have you been well? My, you've grown even thinner."
I barely held down the hollow laugh that threatened to burst out of me. As if food could go down your throat, with a conscience like yours.
"I'll tell the head maid to see that my meals are handled better."
Selena patted my shoulder. In those eyes famed for their beauty, gentle as a doe's, there was nothing but tenderness.
I knew exactly why she had come. She'd heard the tutor had struck me, and now she was here to soothe me—here to brainwash me with 'I'm still on your side.' So that they could keep using me however they pleased.
"Is your bed uncomfortable, perhaps? You look so pale..."
I wanted nothing more than to glare at her, and I fought with everything I had not to.
Selena had known about my 'ability to read the future' since we were children.
I wished she had kept it secret from the very start, but that had never been easy—rumors that my mother was a witch had already spread too far.
Young as I was, with Selena clinging to me day after day, wheedling 'what powers do you have?'—I couldn't bring myself to lie.
"Selena."
With one thought fixed in my mind—revenge—I had already decided exactly how I would treat her today.
I had to look cowed, obedient, weak. Like a lowly maid beaten into submission.
"Selena. Why are you only coming now?"
This sight—this was the Selena I was supposed to show her. I didn't need to ask the mirror my mother had left me to know it. This much, at least, was certain.
"I'm sorry I'm late, Attilenta. I've been so busy lately... Mmm, well, you have too, so couldn't you understand, just this once?"
Long ago, you stood at my wedding and asked me why I'd been so busy of late.
"They say I'll be marrying the Duke soon... I told you before, but it was an order from the King, so I had no say in it at all. My parents must have worked behind the scenes too. Even after I begged them not to, they went ahead anyway... Is it all right, saying such things? We're close enough, aren't we, Attilenta."
Like a puppeteer working the strings, I moved my mouth and tongue.
"At the banquet, none of that came up. It almost seemed like what you wanted."
"Mmm, well, with everyone watching, I had to be careful, didn't I? Even if I had defied them there, it would have changed nothing."
"...I wish you had told me beforehand. If it was for the Dukedom, I would have understood. Selena."
As Selena heaped up excuses too flimsy to bear their own weight, I had no choice but to play along, just enough.
"I'm sorry, Attilenta. I was so worried about you that I meant to come right after that day, but I kept getting called out to one engagement after another... There was nothing I could do. Please understand. Okay?"
Utterly shameless.
How can you be so brazen?
My resolve for revenge would never waver. And yet at her fake apology, the fury I had swallowed surged up all over again, blazing like fresh flame.
Come to think of it, Selena had always been this way. In public, she built her reputation on impeccable conduct; in private, she was tender with me—while demanding my understanding on her terms.
In the end, I asked anyway.
"I was a bother to you, wasn't I? Selena. There must have been a better way than locking me away. Yes?"
If I meant to land her a single devastating blow, I knew I shouldn't do it like this.
But I bowed my head at once all the same. She would grasp what I meant instantly.
If she'd been so worried my power posed a danger, she should have simply killed me. Selena.
"Oh my."
The water was already spilled, no matter how I masked my expression. I hurried to smooth it over.
"Selena, you don't hate me, do you? Do you? You don't, right?"
Like a child who had mistakenly believed itself unloved, I clung and whined, begging for affection all over again.
"I love you, Attilenta. If you felt otherwise, then that must be my fault. I'm truly sorry. I'll be more careful from now on. Your health and happiness are what the King wishes for—mine too."
Ah. So you intend to use me to the very end?
You've already wrecked my heart and my life, and still.
"You are still, and forever will be, a princess of our kingdom. You're my friend. Yes? Attilenta."
I know exactly what you mean, Selena. And I'll use this wretched status of mine just as thoroughly, right back at you.
Choking down my rage, I forced a smile onto my face—barely.
I wanted that doe-beautiful Selena to collapse into ruin. Exactly as I had.
"I understand. Selena. I wanted to hear you say that you love me."
Beaming, Selena took my hand in both of hers and stroked it. I clasped her hand in return.
"I'm so glad we've cleared up the misunderstanding, Attilenta."
I carved that radiant Selena deep into my eyes, and held her there.