Chapter 5 - The Final Modification
The rear courtyard of the palace was shielded from the main roads by high stone walls, but the distant, low roar of the media trucks outside the iron gates was still audible. A black sedan with tinted windows stood with its engine running, two royal guards waiting by the rear doors.
Rachel stood beside the vehicle, wrapped in a simple wool coat that the palace staff had provided. Her wedding gown had been packed into a plain canvas bag and thrown into the trunk like common luggage. Her face was scrubbed of makeup, her eyes red and swollen from a night of crying.
When I walked out onto the gravel path, she turned to face me. The rage from the council chamber was gone, replaced by a cold, hollow desperation.
"Are you happy now?" she asked, her voice flat, drifting away in the morning mist. "You got what you wanted, Emily. I’m ruined. Every client I had in New York is already dropping their contracts. The charity boards are releasing statements distancing themselves from me. I can’t even log into my social media without seeing thousands of people calling me a fraud."
"I didn't want any of this, Rachel," I said, stopping a few feet away from her. "I wanted to see my sister marry a man she loved. I wanted to sit in the back row of that chapel in my uniform and be proud of the girl I used to share a bedroom with in Ohio."
"You couldn't have just stayed in Virginia?" she cried, her voice rising, cracking against the stone walls. "If you had just told the guards you didn't know me... if you had just stayed away for one more day, I would have been a princess! I would have had the security, the money, the life I’ve been working for since I was twelve years old!"
"And what about Mom and Dad?" I asked, my voice dropping into a hard, unyielding register. "Were you going to keep them dead for the rest of their lives? Were you going to forbid them from ever seeing their grandchildren because their clothes didn't look right in the palace courtyard? When does the editing stop, Rachel?"
She didn't answer. She looked away, her jaw tightening as she stared at the black sedan. She still didn't get it. She still thought the problem was the discovery, not the lie itself.
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"Go home, Rachel," I said, turning my back on her. "Go back to Ohio and look at the father who spent thirty years fixing boilers so you could go to college in New York. Look at the mother who worked twelve-hour shifts so you could buy the designer dresses that got you into those charity rooms. Look at them, and see if you still think they’re an embarrassment."
I walked back toward the palace doors, the sound of the sedan's tires crunching against the gravel signaling her departure. She was leaving the kingdom, not as a royal bride, but as a cautionary tale of high-society vanity.
