Forever Tied: The Knight’s Princess (Commission)

A commission for last_of_workers!  Part 2 of 3 (Princess's perspective)

That day at the arcade will forever remain in my memory, even though I’ve since died and been reborn in another world. It was the day I lost the person I loved the most in that world, my best friend Sato.

The building the arcade was in had collapsed, and like always Sato somehow realized there was danger a split second before it went down. He had grabbed me and shielded me from the falling debris.

I believe he died not long after he was hit with the debris, and I was forced to lay there for days with his body holding me as I cried and waited for help. We were eventually found, and I was brought to a hospital.

I learned that a massive earthquake was the cause of the collapse and that several other buildings had also fallen killing people. Then I was giving worse news. Despite Sato’s sacrifice, my body still got hurt, and it wasn’t likely I’d live more than a few more months.

Honestly at the time I didn’t care, without him I really didn’t want to be alive, I couldn’t wait until my eternal nothingness, but fate had other plans for me. I was reborn in another world as an elven princess.

From the day I was born, I was pampered like a princess and spent my days being taught etiquette and how a proper princess was expected to act. Of course, I was the seventh-born princess, and my father's twelfth-born, so I wasn’t really important.

My eldest brother would become king one day, and the rest would take over different important positions in the kingdom. As for my elder sisters, most of them plan to marry princesses from other kingdoms, but as of right now, there are only six of them.

Honestly was great for me, they all think I’ll miss out, but I’d prefer not to be married off to a random man. I know I could never love anyone here, my heart was for Sato, and I don’t think that’ll ever change.

Instead, from the day I was fourteen I decided to focus on studying this world, specifically the plants and flowers. They were so different than the ones I used to study in my old world. From what I could tell, they have real magical properties, and no one in this world uses them.

So every day once I made an appearance in the dining hall for breakfast, I would head to the library grab some books and some empty papers, and head into the castle's massive garden. Unfortunately, it didn't take long to realize they only keep pretty plants in the garden.

Some of them were still useful, but I needed different things. I tried to ask my father to add more, but he was always busy, and I wasn’t allowed to leave, so I ended up paying guards to bring me different plants when they showed up for their shifts.

When they brought me them, I would find a spot way in the back of the garden to plant them, so they would continue growing. By the time I was eighteen, I had my own little part of the garden, and I was quite good at making elixirs and healing gels from them.

I was in the garden one day when a woman approached me and knelt down in front of me. She told me that from that day forward she would be my personal guard and servant. I knew there was a night training for this, but I had no idea it would be a woman.

I tried to tell her there was no need to be so formal, and I went back to my plants ignoring her. The first few weeks were awkward, she’d just follow me everywhere. Somehow though, as much as I didn't want it to happen, she grew on me.

She always knew when I needed help with something, and she was always asking me questions about what I was doing, which caused me to go on and on about it. I knew she likely didn’t understand much of it, but she always tried to.

I really don’t know what it is about here. I’ve been here eighteen years, and not one person has broken through my defenses like this. It was almost like she knew me. Maybe she does, it would make sense as her part of training.

As weeks turned into months, I found myself excited to see her every day. I even started to pick flowers for her, and she would let me weave them into her hair. For the first time since Sato, I didn’t feel alone.

She was always there for me, even when her monthly day off came around, or when I was attending balls or family meetings. None of my sibling's personal guards do this, so I don't think she does it out of a sense of duty.

I’ll be honest the more I was around her the more I thought of her, I even started having dreams of the two of us leaving the castle and having fun, even exploring the plants outside of the castle, but alas, my father would never allow me to leave.

Despite not really paying attention to me, I'm the only one he keeps trapped here. I knew better than to even try to ask, so instead I just slowly started to feel miserable. Even worse, for the first time, Swetyne took her monthly day off without coming to visit me.

That day I felt awful, I felt as though I had done something to upset her, and I spent all day waiting to see her to apologize. To my surprise, she was waiting for me in my room with a gift for me. She handed it to me and I opened it.

Inside was a small red dress that I’d seen commoners wearing. Along with it a matching red cloak with a hood. I asked her what was up with the dress, and she told me to get changed into the clothes.

I did so, and put the cloak on afterwards. When I looked back at her. For some reason, she was standing on the windowsill. She reached her hand out towards me and asked if I wanted to sneak out for a night of fun.

She was going to sneak me out of the castle? I was about to tell her how much trouble she could get in, but she grabbed my hand and pulled me out the window. We took a very sketchy path along the outside of the castle, and I nearly fell a few times.

Of course, she was there every time to catch me, and we got into the courtyard without any trouble. Then we snuck around the patrols and we were out of the castle. For the first time, I got to look at the town from inside the town.

Swetyne took me to all kinds of places. We went to the night market and I got to see all the cool things that they sell. Most of the things we had fancier more expensive versions at the castle, but there was a ton of stuff they’d never allow to step foot inside.

Luckily I brought a bit of gold, so I was able to buy Swetyne and myself souvenirs of our trip. I bought two little key chain characters, one was a princess and the other a knight. I gave the princess to Swetyne and kept the knight. She seemed to really enjoy it and attached it to her sword.

After that, we went to the stables where they store the knight's horses and she introduced me to the horse she learned to ride on. She pulled him out saddled him up, and helped me get up on top of him, then she jumped up behind me.

I was so high up that it was amazing. I’d never been on a horse in either of my lives and with how boring my current one could be, this seemed like the greatest thing I’d ever done. She handed me the reins and began to teach me how to ride. I was awful at it, but we both had a ton of fun.

Swetyne took over and we rode out to the forest near the town. Immediately I noticed a ton of flowers and plants that I’d only ever seen in books. Swetyne helped me off of the horse and I started running over to inspect them, and of course, slipping some of them into my bag.

I asked Swetyne how she knew these were here. That’s when she pulled out her little book, she showed me some sketches along with words she had written down that I had said, and she used them to find them.

I looked at the book, it was actually really good, the sketches were amazing, and she had gotten every fact I had said about them written down next to them. I flipped through the book, and almost every page was filled out in the same way, except the last ten pages.

Those pages all had sketches of me, and in all of them we were in the garden and I was smiling. Her face turned bright red, I guess she just remembered these were in here. I closed the book and told her she did a great job, and I was so overjoyed at her gifts.

We then walked around collecting more plants, some of which I only needed leaves to start growing in the castle. The whole time we were both smiling and talking as if we were regular people, I loved it and I didn’t want it to end.

Alas, all good things end, and while I was picking leaves off of a bush, Swetyne jumped in front of me and pushed me onto the ground. When I looked up a whilg wolf had jumped out and bitten her arm. I sat there frozen and scared.

Then something strange happened. Instead of Swetyne, I saw Sato standing there. He smacked the wolf on the head jamming its teeth into his arm to get it stuck, then he pulled out a knife and stabbed it.

He removed the wolf, then turned around and walked over to me. He reached his uninjured hand out and asked me if I was alright. Then Sato vanished and revealed Swetyne, who was smiling despite being injured and bleeding heavily.

What was that? Why did I see him? Was it because she was just like him? Was it a sign? Was it because I love her? Oh my... I love her... I love her just like I loved Sato, have I been ignoring my feelings up until now?

My heart is racing and my mind is racing, but I think Sato might have been giving me a sign, telling me it was okay to love her. I wanted to figure it out, but she was bleeding and I needed to act fast or I’ll lose her.