I’m going to be twenty years old in two months. The Prince is going to be twenty-three in one week. Everyone is preparing for his coming of age ceremony. Everyone is lathering him in more attention than he could possibly know what to do with, except he does know what to do with it, and the entire kingdom is in a giddy frenzy. The joy of the Imperials is almost tangible in the air, and the whole Home Planet, which is definitely not my home planet, is preparing for the celebration. 

This means of course that everyone needs extra energy to prepare for the upcoming celebration. A celebration that will span across the entire galaxy. And that, of course, means that all my people, all the people of the lower planets, are having to spend even more time giving their magic to power the technology of the Empire. The effects of the Prince’s coming of age are being felt all across the galaxy. And Arji has not been having the time to talk to me for the past month. I know that she’s suffering. I’m suffering too. 

I’m lonely. So very lonely. I feel like a small child again, all alone and surrounded by Imperials, surrounded by abusers, surrounded by enemies. I’m older now, but it doesn’t really matter. Whenever I look at the Emperor’s family, even if Arji is here, I feel once again like I am a cowering child, silent and afraid and absolutely unprotected. Any time spent under the family’s looming glares brings back all the terrible memories of my childhood, so that they’re fresh in my mind, and creates new terrible memories all on their own. And now that I cannot talk to Arji, all of this is even worse than before. 

I hate this family. I hate it so much. But at the same time, I cannot help myself from feeling some strange, writhing, twisting sort of affection towards them. I cannot help myself from feeling a disturbed sort of attachment. I love them. I hate them. I hate them with all my heart and I hate what they are doing to my people, but I cannot help but to love them at the very same time. For they are the closest thing to a family that I have ever had. They have been the ones around me for as long as I was alive. 

I will use this love to my advantage. I will wield it as a weapon, and I will manipulate it as a lock pick, and I will use it to pick the locks that are keeping all my people in chains. But for that I have to be subtle, sneaky, and absolutely untraceable. No-one can know my plan. No-one can guess what it is that I am about to do. The pressure of everything that’s about to happen sits heavy inside of me, and I cannot let anyone know the burden which I carry. 

Except for the resistance of course. 

The palace is alive with people from all over the Home Planet, commanders and officials and dignitaries that are here to greet the Prince and wish him a merry coming of age. The activity all around means that I have to be especially busy during these weeks, attending to the guests and meeting all of their needs. This means that I have less time to plan, and less time to execute the plans that I make. It means I have to be on my feet and think on my feet. And there are more eyes all around me. There are more eyes I have to hide from. 

I also have to give my magic far more frequently during these preparations for the Prince’s coming of age. I have to hook all the wires into myself and stand there, in burning, hot agony for hours and hours, multiple times a day. I have to thread the wires around my arms and legs and chest, through the holes around my lips. And I have to let them suck the magic from me, suck the power from me. Suck the life force from me. It hurts. It hurts so very much. But I am almost grateful for the physical pain. For the physical pain is a small, partial escape from the emotional pain that colours over my entire life. It lets me forget, for half a second, how surrounded by enemies I truly am. 

But I won’t be here for much longer. I won’t be surrounded by enemies for much longer. I won’t even be a slave for much longer. Soon enough, sooner than any of us know, sooner than I can comprehend, I will be a free person, surrounded by forces that love me and only forces that love me. I almost can’t believe it. But I know that I have to believe it. I know that I have to put faith in it in the same way that I put faith in the fact that the sun shines and the rain cleanses and storms are not forever. Storms are not forever. And the storm that is my life, the storms that have ravaged my life, they will not be forever. 

———

I am standing in attendance to the Prince while he is going over his wardrobe, picking clothes to wear. The different flowing and shimmering outfits fly off their places on the shelves and arrange themselves before him. All his clothes are so grand. They are so incredibly grand. Metallic and colourful and shining and lustrous. They glow softly and catch the eye beautifully, all of them designed by top fashion designers and made out of the best, most expensive materials. The colours and patterns swirl and change and shift, as do the fantastical shapes that the material is made into. 

My clothes are incredibly plain compared to them, made of cheap cotton of a poorly-spun fabric. My clothes are usually frayed and worn, and even when I have new clothes, they are simple and drab and cheap. When I was young I used to be so sad about it. I used to think the Prince so beautiful and myself so plain and ugly. Now, now I am still upset about it, don’t get me wrong. But my sadness has turned into anger. Anger towards all the petty little inequalities that colour my life. 

Still, I cannot spend much time focusing on that anger right now. I have a job to do. A job I got from my people, a job I got for my people, not a job I got from and for the Empire. 

“May I have permission to speak?” I ask the Prince, breaking the very pregnant silence around us. 

“Sure,” he replies, smugness in his voice. There is always smugness in his voice. And in his face and in his body and in his demeanour. 

“Do you believe I am just like all the other monsters? That I don’t know my place? Your Highness.” I make sure to keep meekness and submission in my own voice. The carefully-crafted, precisely-acted meekness and submission that I keep in there always in order to keep myself and my loved ones safe. 

“Do I what? What kind of question is that?” The Prince has always been a little aloof and disinterested. It should come as no surprise that he didn’t understand or believe what I said. Still, for some strange reason it hurts anyways.

“Do you believe that I am just like all the other monsters? Or do you believe that I am somehow different from them, your Grace?” I make sure to end all my questions with a dignifier, so that he is sure that I know my place. And to stroke his ego. If this plan is to work, his ego will need to be stroked. 

“You’re a monster, boy. All the monsters are the same. None of the monsters are different from each other. Why should I believe that you are different from all the rest of them? You all have the same blood flowing through your veins.”

“But, your most esteemed Majesty, I grew up here with you. I grew up here with you and I learned much of the same things you learned. You Highness.”

“Are you trying to imply that you know as much as me? You may have been hanging around, but there is no way that you got the same education that I got. And any education would be wasted on a monster like you.”

“I’m sorry, your Excellence, you misunderstand. Of course I am not educated as you are. But I have learned about the glory of the Empire. I have learned about the benevolence of the Empire. I learned about all the great things that the Empire does to keep the peace and how it protects and takes care of all the Lower Planets. I know that the Empire is great, your Majesty.”

“Of course the Empire is great. It wouldn’t take any brains to know that. Everyone who can learn about the Empire and how it keeps the peace between the planets would know that it is great.” There is a sneer in his voice. That’s okay. He doesn’t have to like me. He simply has to think that I am mentally unstable and I’m trying to prove myself. 

“I am not like the other monsters who hate and resist the Empire, your Majesty. I love the Empire and all of its greatness and all of its glory. I trust the Empire with my life and even with my death, and I want what is truly good for the Empire, just as you do. I am trustable. I am loyal. I am faithful and I am grateful. I am so very grateful. Your Highness.”

“Okay,” he replies, lightly perplexed, “it’s good that you’re loyal to the Empire, but why are you telling me all this information? Why do you think that I would care where your loyalties do or do not lie?” 

“You don’t have to care, my Prince, I just wanted you to know. I just … I’m just tired of everyone looking at me as if I am an unexploded bomb. I am tired of people treating me as if I am a danger, a wild thing, a traitor. I want to serve you. All I want to do is to serve you well. And I am willing to do anything in order to prove that. I’m willing to do anything to prove that I am loyal. I’m willing to do anything in order to serve the Empire.”

“Okay. And why should I care?”

“You don’t need to care, your Excellence, I just wanted you to know. I’m grateful, and I wish for my gratitude to be acknowledged. It hurts, you know, being seen as a danger when I in fact pose none.”

“You should toughen up and deal with it, boy.”

“I am trying to be tough, your Grace. But it’s hard sometimes. It is really hard sometimes.”

“The most important things are the hardest.” He echoes back what he has heard his father say. I know that he would not normally give his father’s advice to a slave. I understand that the walls between us have been broken a little bit, and he is letting the tiniest bit of camaraderie into our relationship. 

“Thank you most kindly, your Excellence. I will try to remember. I appreciate you and your words of encouragement greatly.”

“Okay, boy.” He looks away from me and goes back to looking over his outfits. On the outside, I don’t show it, but on the inside I am smiling. A sly, sparking, smirking smile. This conversation went exactly according to plan. Hopefully all the next conversations after this also all go according to plan.