Curtsy
Title: Curtsy
Prompt #32: "It's such a shame to let you walk away. (Ashes And Wine - A Fine Frenzy) "
Word Count: 248
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG
Fandom: Alice
Pairing/Character: Duchess, Jack
Timeline: Post series.
Author's Note: Written for prompt_in_a_box : Round #23
Before the queen, Duchess was cold. Jaw clenched, eyes smoldering, all but boiling beneath her pale skin. She was a pawn, an unlikely chess piece chosen to keep the prince in check, and she was keenly aware of it. The queen regularly degraded her, mocked and patronized her, reminded her how worthless she was without her position as fiancée to the prince. So she kept her mouth tightly shut and her words short to keep her head, with a bow here and a curtsy there and always the most dutiful behavior in the presence of the court. Had the queen been more perceptive, less wooed by Duchess’s calculated flattery, she would have beheaded the girl for her subtle insolences.
Jack was little better than his mother when it came to humiliating her, and she genuflected to him much in the way she did before his mother. The prince turned king was conscious of her lock-jawed answers and eyes ablaze and derisive curtsies. But her blood did not boil in his presence, and behind her detached obedience was an air of defeat and the faintest hint of grief. Her fondness for him was common knowledge, so it was not without regret that he informed her that their engagement would need to be thoughtfully reconsidered.
“Your majesty.” On that day she curtsied with clenched teeth and damp eyes; with her familiar airs of grace and disdain and perhaps, he thought, a little more sorrow than she had intended to reveal.
Prompt #32: "It's such a shame to let you walk away. (Ashes And Wine - A Fine Frenzy) "
Word Count: 248
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG
Fandom: Alice
Pairing/Character: Duchess, Jack
Timeline: Post series.
Author's Note: Written for prompt_in_a_box : Round #23
Before the queen, Duchess was cold. Jaw clenched, eyes smoldering, all but boiling beneath her pale skin. She was a pawn, an unlikely chess piece chosen to keep the prince in check, and she was keenly aware of it. The queen regularly degraded her, mocked and patronized her, reminded her how worthless she was without her position as fiancée to the prince. So she kept her mouth tightly shut and her words short to keep her head, with a bow here and a curtsy there and always the most dutiful behavior in the presence of the court. Had the queen been more perceptive, less wooed by Duchess’s calculated flattery, she would have beheaded the girl for her subtle insolences.
Jack was little better than his mother when it came to humiliating her, and she genuflected to him much in the way she did before his mother. The prince turned king was conscious of her lock-jawed answers and eyes ablaze and derisive curtsies. But her blood did not boil in his presence, and behind her detached obedience was an air of defeat and the faintest hint of grief. Her fondness for him was common knowledge, so it was not without regret that he informed her that their engagement would need to be thoughtfully reconsidered.
“Your majesty.” On that day she curtsied with clenched teeth and damp eyes; with her familiar airs of grace and disdain and perhaps, he thought, a little more sorrow than she had intended to reveal.