Princess Moments

Dawnbringer

By Cora McLean

I hate the color red.

Red is autumn leaves dying in a final blaze of glory. Red is the last of the sun’s fiery rays stealing across the horizon into the night. Red is sour wine with a bitter aftertaste. Red is passion, consuming a person from the inside out and overwhelming all rational sense. Red is war-torn lands, ravaged by merciless enemies and watered with the blood of their own people.

I have known far too much red in my life.

So it is with a grief-laden heart and suppressed loathing that I let the heavy dress settle on my shoulders. It is red, too—though my people would call it scarlet, or the witches, crimson. The scarlet of unholy death. The crimson flame that purifies.

Purges, more like. The witches have no empathy for any whom their sordid master bid suffer.

I fasten the cloak, a noose about my neck. Stifling. Choking. Binding my life to this dark fate. What a frightful burden it is to be born of both worlds—loyal to one while bearing the telltale taint of the other. Red glinting too bright in my hair. Red blazing too fiercely in my eyes. Red flowing too thickly in my veins—just like everyone else, but somehow worse.

I shudder when I look in the mirror, my visage drowning in red, red, red. I look like one of them.

It is what is necessary. It does not make it easier.

“Your Highness?”

My spine stiffens, but I don’t jump. A lady of the crown never jumps, even when startled out of a nightmarish reverie. I didn’t even hear the door.

“Yes, Lili?” I ask when I am sure my voice will be steady. Even now, I can’t look away from the mirror. I cannot deny how striking I look, all my natural reds highlighted where I have only ever tried to mask them before. In a strange way, I’m beautiful. Captivating in a manner only something truly terrible can be.

Lili steps forward into my periphery. She’s moving cautiously, timid in a way I have never known her to be. My maid doesn’t walk on eggshells around anyone or anything. My ghastly outfit has shaken her, too.

At least it’s convincing. I smile mirthlessly and watch the stranger in the mirror do the same. With my tightly controlled expression and my witch’s garb, it looks as casual and cruel as they do. Careless and sinister and on the edge deranged.

Lili can’t quite hide a shiver. Yes, it is very convincing.

“It is time,” she says softly.

I smooth the horrid fabric to hide the tremble in my hands. “So it is. Thank you.” I finally tear my gaze away from my warped image and face her.

As soon as I do, Lili bows low. “It is you I should be thanking, Princess Carmine. We are all in your debt.”

Even my name is a harsh reminder of how the red binds me. There is no escape.

I swallow my disgust and bow, too. “I am simply repaying all of your kindness.”

We rise together. I hold her gaze, exuding a leader’s surety as I have learned so well. “Until we meet again, Lili.”

“Until we meet again,” she echoes faintly. An impossible promise.

She follows me down to the stables. All the servants go silent and bow as I pass through the halls, something they have only ever done out of requirement before. Never so deeply, and never with such honest deference. I couldn’t fault them for their previous skepticism when I shared the same hatred of my heritage. But now, as I finally return to the horrible people they have always cursed in the same breath as me, they realize what my sacrifice means.

My revulsion softens at their newfound sympathy. This is what I have been striving for all these years. I would do this without their compassion, for their well-being is my utmost concern, but it’s a beautiful feeling I had never thought I would find. Their acceptance and acknowledgement of all I have given moves me. My people make the red bearable.

My heart swells. I can do this. I can save them.

My father meets me at the stables, the reins of my horse clenched tightly in his fist as though he is trying to hold on to what has not yet left. His breath catches when he sees me, and his grip loosens. “You are beautiful, darling,” he says, hushed but sincere.

I frown, taken aback. Of all the things I expected him to say, that was not one. Certainly not so truthfully. “Perhaps so, Father, but I look like our enemies.”

“But you do not,” he says, and it is so earnest, so pure and free of any vile reservation that I believe it. For a moment, I forget the horror mapped over my body. “You are beautiful, Carmine, in a way they are not. They are the flame of destruction. You are the fire of life.”

My stoicism falters. I’m pretty sure I stop breathing, because the world is fuzzy, and my head is dizzy. How is there no guardedness in Father’s gaze, no disgust buried in his voice?

He smiles at my amazement. “You will bring the dawn back to our people. Of this I have no doubt.” He drops the reins and pulls me into a hug.

I wrap my arms around him, first numb in shock, then gripping him tightly. Tears prick my eyes. How can he so unabashedly embrace me like this? There’s not a scrap of doubt as his daughter prepares to join his worst enemies—under false pretenses, yes, but looking every ounce like one who has already become them.

Lili folds her hands over her heart and smiles at me over my father’s shoulder. It’s not shaky or wary, just gentle and sure. I bury my head in my father’s coat, breathing in the familiar scent of leather and lavender in a fruitless effort to stifle my silent tears. I’m too overwhelmed by Lili’s support, by the people’s reverence, by my father’s unfaltering trust and care, all as I am drenched in the color of the witches. The warmth of love, of life, of courage, swells within me as it never has before. Tentatively, I allow myself a moment to marvel at the strength of the sensation.

Red can be a color of warmth, can’t it?

My father holds me longer than he should but shorter than I want. I give my eyes a quick swipe as he releases me. His smile radiates all the warmth flooding my heart, and he passes me the reins. “Ride for the dawn, my dear. Our faith is in you.”

Something within me stills, the kind of calm that can only be known when perched on the edge of a precipice—the moment before lightning shatters the sky, the breath before blades clash in battle, the sense of weightlessness before the plunge.

I swing up into the saddle and give them a decisive nod. “I won’t let you down.”

Twin smiles adorn their faces. “I know,” my father says.

I snap the reins and ride into the night, not slowing until I reach the witches’ camp. The Crimson Sentinel at the fringe salutes with his hand over his heart. He does not look beyond my robes any more than I take in his dark armor and dismiss him. Just like that, I am granted access to the heart of the witches’ army.

I enter the sea of red sitting up straight and strong, surrounded yet secure, wearing the warmth of my people as a shield. I do not belong to the witches’ scarlet. It cannot touch me, cannot change me. I bear a kind of red they will never know, a kind that will deliver my kingdom. I will be the first beam of ruby sunshine on a new horizon for my people.

I will bring back the dawn.