FFXIVWrite Prompt 9: Fair
Rating: T
Word Count: 453
Warnings: Mentions of familial abuse
Summary: Valeria gets ready the morning after the ball, nursing an injury.
Master Post
Valeria touched her face gently as she looked in the small hand mirror. A large, mottled bruise over her eye marred her fair features on one side where her stepmother had struck her when she returned home the previous evening. It throbbed with a dull pain as she pressed at the edges, a quiet hiss escaping her.
“I told you, you were to stay home!” the woman had snarled at her as Valeria clutched her face, expression twisted into a grimace as she desperately held in the tears building from the pain of the blow. “Now not only have you disobeyed me, but now you’ve broken into the royal palace and may very well bring the wrath of the Emperor himself down on our heads!”
Valeria rubbed a salve into the bruising carefully. Honestly, she couldn’t care less if her stepmother took the brunt of her recklessness. If anything, it would be her just deserts. No, she was far more concerned that her family wouldn’t face repercussions. That Valeria would be the only one bearing the brunt of her night out.
She began to brush her flaxen hair, staring into space as she tried to tune out the sounds of movement from below as the house awoke. Wasn’t it worth it, though? The ball had been beautiful, the music and food and watching couples twirl about on the dance floor and…
In another world, another life, maybe she would have attended as actual nobility. Maybe she would have been able to tell the Emperor her true name when she accepted his help up when she stumbled. Maybe they would have danced and talked late into the night and maybe she would have received a request for her hand—
No. She stopped her imaginings there. It was more than she had any right to even think about. She would be lucky to get even a lowborn husband with the way her stepmother treated her. Or, more likely, she would be basically sold off to some rich and distasteful man who couldn’t attract a partner on his own. She’d be trapped in an unhappy marriage with no resources to escape it.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about the kind face or golden eyes of Emperor Solus leading her confidently in a dance unfamiliar to her, the way her heart felt like this was right, the way she’d gotten so lost in it all that she’d forgotten she’d needed to beat her family home. Yes, it had been worth a black eye for an evening of pretending she could have better than she was destined for.
She heard a knock at the door below, and wondered who that could possibly be so early in the day.