Faith had been a princess once. She’d been beautiful, once. Part of her would always feel like that part of her life should have meant something. After all, Princesses were the ones people wrote stories about. Fairy tales, where they had magic and lived happily ever after. But the truth was, any chance of her life being a fairy tale had ended on her sixteenth birthday. Her father, King Titus of Azgeda, had given her over to his brother Roan in payment of...some debt that she’d never really had explained to her. After all, she was property to be traded and property didn’t need to understand why.
And Roan had broken her. In every way that she’d imagined a human being could be broken, and in ways that she’d never dreamed existed before that moment. For two long, unending years she’d been beaten and abused for every petty violation of Roan’s equally petty rules and guidelines - and also simply when he felt like it would be amusing to hurt her. Which also happened often. Over time Faith became a patchwork collection of scars, both inside and out, and she all but felt the beauty people had once seen in her wither up and die like a flower left too long without water. When she was collected by two of her father’s guards shortly after she turned eighteen, the shell of a girl that they carried through the hall and into a waiting caravan bore little resemblance to the beautiful young woman she’d once been. In her place was a servant, who’d abandoned her own dreams and her own life to serve the will and whims of another.
She was cleaned up as best she could be, dressed in pastel colored finery that felt foreign after two years of rags, and even her hair - dark brown, gone flat and lifeless during her captivity - was done up into something resembling a proper style. She was roughly gagged with a piece of cloth, hands bound behind her, and marched into an unfamiliar palace with smartly dressed guards who looked at her with eager grins. Bringing her before the throne they kicked her leg out from under her, leaving her no choice but to kneel. “Stay on your knees, whelp,” the guard instructed. This part, though, Faith could do. Head down, gaze directed at the floor, offering nothing but subservience. She’d had more than enough practice.
“Queen Ainsley,” one of the guards announced. “Your delivery from King Titus has arrived. I apologize for the state of her, but there’s very little that one can do to clean up such a sad specimen. I fear that her father might have been less than honest when he promised you a Princess - this girl is no Princess. Barely passable as a servant.” He spat at her feet and Faith flinched for the first time, hoping that her transgression could be forgiven.
