The halls are decorated, I am decorated. I'm a doll in this castle. And tomorrow, I will be given away, like a jewel, to be worn by someone else.

The only thing, the only person, out of place is the woman kneeling in front of the dais. In her ragged clothes and her easy smile and her fearlessness. In a way, she is the most pathetic and yet the most beautiful thing these luxurious halls have ever seen.

Kneeling is the love of my life in front of me, and today is perhaps the last time I will ever see those lips quirk up. Tonight is the ball for the princess' wedding, and tonight is the execution for the woman she had tried eloping with, hoping against hope for a world away from what was hers. The woman who stole her heart. My heart. 

It is – always has been – my fault; she does not deserve this.

"Do I not get a last wish?" She asks and my heart tears apart and shatters into a million pieces and I can't bear to look at her. Her voice is not filled with dread, nor is it grief-stricken. It has a strange sort of amusement I can't seem to wrap my head around, like she's mocking the tears that do not escape my eyes. She must've been asking about the weather; I surely have misheard.

"The woman dares to speak!" The king's counselor screeches– his voice is a mixture of disgust, shock, ridicule, and I want to twist his face into the hideous smirk he hides behind that scowl. I want to watch him bleed out under my fingers.

"Silence!" The king's voice booms, then turns back to the prisoner, "Speak, woman. What wish you ask for? Be grateful for my generosity after you tried to drive my daughter away before the day of her union." The king is a pompous man I hate to call my father. He emphasises 'daughter' like he can't bear to call me his blood, does not wish to call me his family. He stakes his claim on me like he knows he has all the power in the world when I am merely but an object he'll trade to a knight for an alliance.

"Well. . ." She starts and tries to move her hand, realises that her hands are bound, changes her mind. I would've laughed, I might've. "The ball, I wish to attend it. It's the first and last one I'll ever see and I want to see for myself, an event of the royals. If they're as prestigious as the rumours say."

The council breaks into a frantic murmur and I can't help the pride blooming in me. She speaks like a man, like she has nothing to lose, none to gain. Gentler than the summer breeze, yet fiercer than the boar left to trample the golden fields. I love her and every intake of breath makes my bones ache, my heart burst. I wish, I wish, I wish I didn't.

"The woman is a witch, that's what she is!" The counselor howls again and I wish I could speak. I wish I could say something, anything, in the woman's favour, but I know I can't. I know my place. I know that my father's generosity can only be so flexible before I'm lapping in flames of what is his anger.

"Take her away." The king's grave words shred my weak heart til I'm heaving with sobs, not shedding a single tear, spinning in my head. I swallow my cries as she's roughly pulled away and I can feel the chains that are digging into her ankles and wrists. Every single inch of my skin is on fire, every tendon screams, but I don't move, don't cry, don't breathe.

I'm escorted away, back to my chambers. The maids are wary of me, they don't speak to me. I probably disgust them, fascinate them; I am perhaps but a strange creature to them. 

I sit on my bed, very very very still. The sun makes its way to meet the horizon again, while I don't even cry. I can't, I'm too pathetic to. Maybe if I stay rooted in this place, the time will freeze over. The ball wouldn't start. She would be safe. I would wake up.

A maid, then two, and more come and ask me to wash and ready me, for the ball must be starting. I nod, they scurry away to run the bath, all while the silence coats my lungs and I dare not to move. Maybe this curse will be broken if I don't.

In an hour, I'm dolled up again, wearing the fanciest of ball gowns. Smile, they tell me. I do as I am told. I smile a smile I do not even feel. My ears are ringing far louder than the music in the walls.

The hall is bustling with people; the king likes showing off his wealth. Nobles gawk and bow at me when I descend the stairs, my gaze too unfocused to really make out shapes and faces, my father is beaming bright. He is showing me off, like another one of his wealthy possessions.

The music is jolly and sweet and beautiful. It reminds me of her. Everything here reminds me of her and I hurt inside. Hurt so much, I lose hope that it will ever stop. Everyone circles around and starts dancing. I don't want to. They flow like a river, changing partners and tapping their feet with the rhythm. I watch from a corner, watch them dance around. 

The king's hard stare in the back of my head makes me stumble forward, into the arms of a man I do not know. He wants me to dance with him, perhaps show my happiness to be married. I hate hate hate him. I hate him so much, it's ridiculous to think that any love might exist in the universe that surrounds me.

The man is also sent by him – he takes my waist and steers me away. He doesn't care if I don't want to be touched, no one does. The king will probably let him have me too, if he pays. He's not gentle while he sways me, not soft with the way he handles my waist around his palm, and I can only ever imagine how different Aheliya's touch would've been, how tender she would've held me.

We used to go out in the fields after sundown and dance to the wind's music. Our feet tapped the grass wildly with no rhythm and I used to feel alive, so alive. We used to swim in the river, strip down to our underwear and laugh til rose was falling off our faces. She was rebellious and knew of every place in or out of the castle. A commoner's pub, a bakery, everywhere I was forbidden to step into, she took me there.

The noble lets go of me and I'm dancing with someone else. We all have masks and I can't see his face but the way he holds my waist is gentler than his predecessor. His palm on my skin commands purpose.

I gasp when his hand cups my chin and tips my head up, and I'm a fish out of water when he smiles. When she smiles. "Miss me, my lady?" I can't speak, I can't breathe, I can't do anything but look at her, drink the sight of her in – alive and unharmed –  and stare at the mischief swimming in the pools of her eyes. Bathe in her youthfulness.

"How are you here?" The words tumble out of my mouth. I am shocked and happy and much too excited, so excited that my heart is two fists drumming on my ribcage to get out. I stumble and grab hold of her arms, my father's eyes are burning into my back. I need to calm down.

"The guards are searching for me as we speak. A noble is knocked out in the bathroom. I know I won't escape but I wanted to have this dance, Mariya." She whispers and I melt. Her voice, I never want to let go of it. I want to bottle it up and get drunk on it every single night. Her name from my tongue, I want to taste it and inject it into my blood, feel the warmth of the messy string of letters spoken from her forever.

"Whatever do you mean? You can escape now! You can go out and live your life!" Our feet dance on their own accord as the music becomes wilder, faster. We have danced together so many times, there is no need for even the music. 

"While you marry a stranger and live your life in practical imprisonment? A life without you is no life for me, Dewdrop." Her hands snake up my waist, lift me up, twirl me, set me down. But I don't even feel it as my eyes brim with tears, trying to reason with the crazed woman who was my woman. 

"But–"

She interrupts me with an urgent hush. I can hear footsteps and my heart drops down to the pits of my guts. They're here, they're going to take her, they're going to kill her. The lights dim and I seize her hand with my life. The music becomes faster and we dance, dance dance dance til nothing else matters anymore. If this is our last dance, make it worth every tear.

I see the guards through my peripheral and I'm choking, I'm taking control of our swaying. Twirling her, going faster than the useless melody that plays around us, trying to keep her out of the guards' eyes.

"Mariya–" She starts, I hush her. Time is cruel and it's slipping away like the tears from my eyes. The world has narrowed down to the two of us and the guards are searching for her quietly, trying not to disrupt the whole ball. A ball that seems like a distant, foreign memory because she is the most vivid of them all.

"We can escape together. Run away, somewhere far away." I gasp out in a desperate breath. "Aheliya, I beg you!" 

I'm insane, crazed, out of my mind. We can't run away. The guards outside have their eyes on me, the maids do, the king does. I can't escape because I have lost my chance to. But I cannot see that, because all I can think of is how to help her escape, save her, her her her.

"Mariya. . ."

"You can get out of that door and I'll follow behind you."

"Mariya–"

"We can both escape!"

I'm cut off when a guard shouts, "There she is!" The music is cut off abruptly and I'm being pulled to gods know where. All I see is the dark and I'm compressed between the wall and a body I know is hers. I would recognise her scent even in madness. I realise that we're behind the tapestry, where we used to play, and where we shared our first kiss and let go of the customs that bound us afar.

She's out of breath, trying to get me to listen, exasperated, "Mariya, listen to me."

"Aheliya–" She plants her lips on mine and my skin is on fire, all my senses are aflame. I simply kiss her back and savour her taste and embed the feeling of her lips on mine. It was pure bliss and I was pure insanity, I had no sense of time. I wanted to kiss her, kiss kiss kiss her until the world destroyed itself.

But the moment didn't last.

"Mariya, listen to me!" She emphasises breathlessly. "Hand me in yourself."

I must've not heard her right. "Excuse me?" She's kissing me again as if soothing the sting of her words with her lips, trying to explain what she meant without words. I hear her this time, I understand what she is asking from me and I'm in denial, I can't do it. It's too much, she's asking me too much, I don't want to.

The guards' footsteps are getting closer and I pull back because I can't think. I don't need to, she has it all planned. I realise that when I see her taking out a dagger from her sleeve. I realise too late what she is doing and my eyes are two moons when she slashes her shoulder mercilessly, hands the knife to me. I'm shivering and tearing up and my hands want nothing more than to cover that wound on her skin, to stop the blood that seeped out of the divinity that she is.

"When the guards come, hand me in yourself, Mariya. Or else, you will be killed." Her voice has an edge of urgency, alarm, and never in my life do I want to lose her. 

"Then death is better–" 

"Don't let me die in vain, Dewdrop. I love you."

I stand there, dumbfounded. My fingers wrap around the grip of the dagger. Our dagger, the one we used to hack at the ivy that concealed behind the beauty that was the cave in the forest. All of it seemed so, so far away, I feel that I had dreamed it all.

The guards approach the tapestry. I hold her hand, intertwine our fingers, while the tapestry is moved aside. "I have her, I have the prisoner." The words sound bitter in my mouth, they don't want to roll off my tongue because my tongue is nothing but hardening clay. My tone is of someone who suddenly has been crushed by a grief akin to one of a thousand mothers watching their sons die in war.

They're not human by the way they seize her, haul her up, shove her away. I want to scream at them to handle her with more compassion. I do no such thing. 

My world bleeds to grey when she's out of my sight and I'm on the floor, crumpled to pieces and I'm sobbing. My wails haunt the hallway, my cries agonise every soul that listens to them.

They make a show of executing her and I'm forced to watch the woman in ragged clothes when the life drains out of her once mirth-filled eyes. She doesn't cry, I do.

The very next day, I'm being wed. I don't remember the man's face. I don't remember what he says. Smile, they tell, Smile. I do just that, but no soul would believe the horror that were my eyes. I bear children I don't remember the names of. I watch the days and years pass and nothing can ever, ever be memorable. Nothing could come close to the light that she was.

Life flashes my eyes when I die. My son's surround me, yet my treacherous mind shows her face when I fade into oblivion. Her smile, her laugh. If this is my life, I can only imagine death to be kinder. Perhaps in the afterlife, we will escape. We will dance again.

After all, what are two women in a world of men?

________