The Golden Cage

[Omi]

"Apologise?" parroted the princess, a certain edge to her tone that hadn't been there before. No matter how she looked at it, Charlotte could hardly make sense of the situation she found herself in. "Incident?" The anger was welling up again, stronger than before but tempered with fear. Enma's voice had softened towards the end, but the authority behind it had not gone anywhere. Was this just another, longer-term trap? The room, the reappearance of old faces, this new individual sent to represent 'the Nacion' - the shift was too much. All these people had done before now was to torment her mentally and physically, back when she had been a nobody - now, they seemed content to put her in a gilded cage, like an exotic bird kept for display. They might be calling her 'your highness' now, but nothing had really changed. The first impressions had already been made, and to Charlotte the attempt at covering up the barbarism and depravity under the surface had entirely the wrong impression.

The realisation didn't help her feel any better, though. She forced herself to smile as graciously as she could, though the gesture never reached her eyes. The corners of her mouth curved up, but her gaze was still shot through with the horrors of before. Charlotte had no idea what the Maltese thought of her, but they had already outmanoeuvred her once. Her attempt at joviality wouldn't even have fooled a toddler, but it was the effort that counted. They wanted her to play their game, wanted something from her before they broached the next stage of her captivity. Where would she be in a week's time - Bretonia, perhaps? The possibilities were both endless and almost equally unappealing.

"I don't- you don't have to do anything like that," she said. It took every ounce of willpower she had to force some semblance of cordiality into her voice, but she managed it somehow. If she had been honest, the fact that this was what passed for an apology seemed almost like a sick joke. Nothing could ever undo the harm they had already done, nor could they ever take away the knowledge she now had of what they truly represented. She wondered if they had actually expected her to accept. The sentence hung awkwardly in the air, a half-finished olive branch that she hadn't even wanted to hold out. What more could she even say? It didn't matter what she thought, didn't matter what she might ask for - they were still keeping her here, and that was that. The best thing she could do now was go along with the script and make things easy on herself. It wasn't much of a plan, but in light of her previous attempt at getting smart with these people, it looked to be the only feasible one she had.

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