Hands move quickly to pull up the long, sandy hair, smoothing over the top of her head to make sure nothing was sticking out or looking lumpy. It’s been a while since her hair has been pulled up instead of braided, causing her hair to appear wavier than normal.

“I don’t understand why you don’t just cut your hair. Or, better yet, bring your own hair bands,” the annoyance in her voice isn’t as harsh as it would be if she’d meant it, but conveyed her emotions well enough.

“That’s why I have you. You should be thanking me, you know. With your hair usually pulled up in two and the sunburn you’re getting, people would confuse you for a pig,” her response is just as light hearted, though there is a clear challenge in her words.

The elder sibling pulls her hair up quickly, and carefully tucks it under a hat. Combined with her loose, ratty clothes, her hair hidden under hat gave her appearance of someone a part of the help rather than a princess. Cass always assumed she wanted to look like that, but every attempt at asking had been shot down.

It was harder to pretend it didn’t hurt than one would think; she told her sister everything, so why couldn’t it be the other way around? It wasn’t like she was a snitch, she always kept her sister’s secrets. Maybe it was just a matter of her sister being ready.

Cass was too distracted to notice her sister mounting her horse and drawing her sword, and it was no surprise to Addie when she was able to trip up the younger girl, drawing the weapon across her chest. Fortunately, the sword was fake, made only of wood. So instead of brutally murdering her sister in cold blood, Addie simply knocked the wind out of her and snapped her from her thoughts. Not one to be out done, Cass is quick to mount her horse and chase after her sister as she rides off laughing.






---

“Married?” she can’t help the amount of shock that flows into her voice as she calls out. Of all the things her parents could do to her sister, this was, by far, the worst. “What kind of contest?”

“They’re letting me decide,” the response is quiet, like it barely registered with her and struggled to pass her lips.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen Addie get like this, and she’s sure it won’t be the last. While the older sibling was calmer, harder to annoy, she was the quickest to overwhelm and often shut down when she couldn’t handle the information she was presented with. This was worse than the other times, though. She’d merely broke down and cried when the stable cat died, locked herself in her room for a few hours when her conditioning grew more frequent , but she’s never locked up and become so unresponsive before.

It’s almost hard to look at her with the way she’s curled up on the bed, so Cass avoids doing just that as she paces back and forth.

“Is this about your hair?”

Recently, Addie had taken her sister’s advice to cut her long, dark hair off, leaving her with a choppy, uneven version of one of the servant boys from the stables. If Cass had to guess, she would say Addie actually went to him and asked for his hair cut in exchange for some extra pay and a promise of anonymity. While she was thrilled to see her sister so happy, their parents weren’t thrilled with the tom boy appearance of their oldest. With only a couple of months to her birthday, it was about time for her to find a husband.

“I’unno,” the response is more of a hum than a word, and it’s only accompanied with a small shrug.

Cass takes a deep breath and lets it out as a heavy sigh. She didn’t know what to do in a situation like this. When they were younger, they’d run off into the woods to cool off and think for a while, but Addie didn’t seem like she was up for moving any time soon.

“It’s probably not, they’re not that-,” she stops herself there, shaking her head lightly, “well, they are that superficial, but that can’t be the reason they’re doing this. They’re probably going through another quarter-life crisis, like last year.” Unlike her sister, Cass tended to talk a lot when she was nervous about something. Addie remains quiet, looking out the window like she’d forgotten her sister was even in the room. In truth, that was probably the case.
Most of the time, she trusted her parent’s judgment. Even if she didn’t like the decision, it would benefit the greater good, she knew that much from having it ingrained with each lecture, but something like this was too much. How could they expect her sister to willingly marry some stranger that won her in a contest? Even the thought of that made her sound like less of a person.

“You could run away,” is the only solution Cass can come up with at the moment.

“That worked out so well last time,” Addie’s response is quiet, but there’s a small flicker of amusement in her voice. That was a good sign, at least.

“Why don’t you just go along with it, then? Pick a hard challenge that not just any loser could win?”

“Or, I could kill myself, and it would have the same effect,” The remark is sarcastic, but it gives the younger sister an idea.

“Or you could pretend to kill yourself. No one will look for you if you’re dead,” Cass’ response is far too cheerful to be ignored, and Addie can’t help but look up in a mixture of confusion and concern for her own well being. “It’ll be so easy! We’ll just fake your death, and you can run off and be someone else. It’ll be like those boring novels you always read.”

“First of all, stop going through my things,” Addie snaps quickly, rolling her eyes at the tongue that’s stuck her way. “Second, why do you think that’ll be easy? And how do you expect me to just start over?”

“Because you’re always overdramatic about stuff like this. Don’t interrupt me, I know that I’m right, and you can’t change my mind,” Cass cuts her sister off before she’s able to retaliate. “And it’ll be easy, because you can use all of our costumes to run off.”

Dressing up was a large part of both girls’ lives. It’d started out as good fun when they were younger, but they’d often use their costume and cosmetic prowess to disguise themselves. A princess couldn’t just walk down the street to get a new book, after all. And maybe scaring the staff was more fun than either of them would admit.

“All my costumes are for men, though,” Addie comments, though she doesn’t sound nearly as upset as she should.

“So what?”

“So, I don’t want to be a guy for the rest of my life.”

Cass has half a mind to make a jab at her new haircut or the way she dresses, but this is serious, so she keeps her sass to herself. “So don’t be. Just be a guy long enough to get out of town.”

“But where will I go?” Oh, yeah. Where would she go? Come to think of it, what could she do once she was free? And more importantly, what would Cass do without her older sister around? “And you know they won’t call off the contest just because I’m not here. You’ll be next in line for the throne.”

Addie brought up a good point. Even if her sister escaped (wow, it was weird to think of themselves as being held hostage), she would be condemned to the same fate. It wasn’t so bad, Cass thought, she could do what was best for the kingdom. “If only we had a guy on the inside to win for us,” she comments absently.

Both sisters pause for a moment before they lock eyes, and identical smile shining on both of their faces. If everything went smoothly, they’d have just that.