Prologue


    “Camille”


    Word Count: 2940


    You know what’s interesting?


    Life.


    Life sure is something.


    Just imagine, a single seed, barely sizing the tip of my finger, can grow into a behemoth of a tree so fast. It may take a few years, but looking at its meager beginnings right now, it’s hard to fathom just how much it’ll have to go through to become that tree. Days it spent hiding from the jaws of creatures ten times bigger than it. Its spirit steeled as it withstood the cold spells of mid-Vernal. It had a past, it’s living in the present, and it’s moving towards a bright future.


    That kernel has stories to tell.


    Now consider every other form of life. Imagine every elephant, every dog. Every. Single. Bug. Just stories upon stories. A number uncountable. An end unreachable. Growing towards infinity with no limit in sight.


    And yet.


    Though I too am a living being.


    I feel as though I could sum up the entirety of my life on one hand. At this point in time my stories add up to only three memories, but at least that will make this a quick tale.


    So hello, my name is Camille D''Alembert.


    I am seventeen years old, but I will be turning eighteen by Junius of next year. Living in Kalveris City in the nation of Aurelia-Fields, I spend each and every day with my family.


    My father, Antoine D''Alembert, is the head of our unit. My mother, Odessa D''Alembert, is the keeper of the house. My brother Damien, older by one year, is my father’s favorite company. And I am my mother’s assistant.


    As a daughter of the D''Alembert bloodline, I am incredibly fortunate to have my position. The estate my father bears is large, his contemporaries praise him heartily, we see visitors each and every week, and never have I gone hungry.


    As a family of high standing, every single one of us has a role to play. Mother, Damien, I… as members of Father’s household, our goal is to bring him even greater glory.


    Mother will clean the lodge meticulously everyday and cook for the family before nightfall when Damien and Father return home. Damien will study his schoolbooks, grow his strength, and practice his story-telling for when Father’s colleagues come over before finally marrying higher and taking over Father’s estate. I will maintain my beauty and learn a woman’s duties before my eventual marriage into another family.


    Yes, it’s all very wonderful.


    Just like cogs in a grandfather clock all working together to tell the time. And when the hands strike twelve, we will know that all of our hard work is complete and Father will finally be strong and satisfied.


    I actually often think about my marriage; in fact, I sort of long for it. Not because of the fanciful wedding or even the man I’ll be wedded to. No, instead because maybe I’ll be able to see the sky in its entirety. That day I’ll feel the wind on my skin and just perhaps… feel soft blades of grass sliding past my ankles. Even if it was only for the hour that the ceremony would take place, those moments would just be perfect.


    Ah, I now realize that you may not be Aurelian. Please allow me to elaborate.


    When a man marries a woman, she becomes his property since he is the head of the household. Although lax in other places in the world, in Aurelia-Fields women are not allowed to leave the house under any circumstances; not even step out into the estate’s yard. After all, it’s unbecoming to see a woman leisurely going about when there is always work to be done in the house.


    Every single day, since the moment of my inception, I have been sheltered within these mansion walls. Never once has an inch of my body passed through any crack that leads to the outside.


    And it all makes great sense, of course.


    Imagine how silly it would be if the refrigerator wanted to take a break and sunbathe outside. Imagine if the television just up and decided to go for a walk? My complacency is needed by my father, it’s rewarded in fact. Instead, I’ll settle for all the books in our extensive libraries. There are thousands of worlds in them, even more fantastical and special than the one I live in. Many girls don’t even have the books that Father permits me to read.


    It’d be foolish if I wasn''t grateful.


    I am grateful.


    However, yes, there was a time where I was less wise and didn’t understand why I couldn’t leave the home like Damien. I was young then… too young to reason correctly.


    I remember the long nights I spent as my family slept, scorning and cursing my body. Staring in the mirror, I twisted my face with my hands trying to find where feminine began and masculine ended.


    Searching for the difference, searching for an answer.


    Back then, I resented my fate and wished to be male like Damien. I wanted to go outside and touch the grass at my own discretion. I yearned to feel the warm sun fall on my skin and flood through my eyelids instead of through the scattered curtains of the main house. But as all sourceless fires do, time squashed those unruly feelings.


    But while time in general did the trick, time in the cellar was… the most effective.


    Today I know that Father did what he had to in order to save my future. I’m actually quite ashamed of my behavior from back then. And either way, staying inside isn’t bad at all, in fact it’s very comfortable and it protects me. As Mother has said, if I were out there in the sun all day I’d lose my pale skin and be a less valuable bride. Then where would Father be?


    Oh, but I’m rambling.


    We were talking about life right? Such a beautiful thing, it is.


    But then, of course, we have its flipside.


    Death.


    Death sure is something too, huh?


    One day you’re sitting in the eating corner with your mother listening to your father and brother recount tales at the large table. Next, you’re at a funeral as they lie six feet below in the ground.


    This is the second story I can tell.


    It’s been seared into my brain and I suspect that these memories will never leave…


    Anyway,


    Damien was bright. His energy, robust. His charisma, unmatched. I could swear he had thousands upon thousands of friends. No one on Earth seemed immune to his smile. Not even Father. He loved Damien very much, and although it wasn’t proper yet for Damien’s age, he became Father’s right hand man at eleven. His shining example, the great culmination of the next of kin Father had raised. Yet, even with all his accolades, Damien was not without his imperfections.


    And one of his shortcomings was his hatred of schoolbooks and class. Undoubtedly, he still scored high marks but, his intelligence was sort of a natural one that came from experience rather than dedication or focus.


    Coasting through school on basic, undeveloped, traits, his disdain for studying never once proved to be an issue. In fact, he was number one in his graduating class. At that moment, everything felt like it was falling into place for all of us. Absolutely perfect.


    Yes, perfect—until he was rejected from St. Reginald’s Academy.


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    It happened two years ago.


    St. Reginald’s is the best Academy in the entire country of Aurelia-Fields. Anyone who will be anybody attends St. Reginald’s and therefore it was Damien’s next stepping stone in our goal to bring glory to the D''Alembert bloodline.


    It was always a guarantee.


    And yet suddenly it wasn’t.


    A storm had arrived on the quiet pond we were so accustomed to floating on. And without warning it felt as if everything had been thrown horribly off-balance.


    Maybe the wind was off that day, maybe the corner Damien sat in was unlucky, perhaps the person he sat next to breathed just slightly too loud. No matter what it happened to be, the bottom line was that he missed the minimum mark needed to pass his entrance exam. St. Reginald’s Academy was gone.


    And it was irreversible.


    I saw Father’s love for Damien disintegrate the moment the rejection letter arrived. The smile falling from his face as it twisted into a livid grimace… it plays over and over in my mind. Damien gained admission to Valorian Academy, the country’s second-best school, yet we all recognized that to Father, coming in second was nothing short of failure.


    Yes… it would be a harrowing twenty-four months as Damien tried to rectify his mistake. Father’s constant cold stares, the stifling silence of the night, the shadows of the corners becoming stronger with each passing day… it was as if Damien had fallen from the highest tower of grace.


    One night when I was poking around the house to grab a comforting book from the library, I turned a corner and saw him there. A dim orange light encroached on the walls against the surrounding darkness. The murmurings of tiny creatures stopped dead in the room. The candle on the work desk trembled wildly as if frightened by a monster in the night.


    And there he sat.


    Hunched over the mahogany with heavy dark bags forming under his eyes as he muttered repetitious words to himself scrunching and releasing his hair in stress. He refused to blink, red eyes forced open to read the same line over and over as hair follicles littered the pages around him.


    A living ghost.


    I remember the feeling of cold chills enveloping my skin, forcing me to give up my quest and run away. No sleep came that night.


    But at last, two years after Damien''s disappointing entrance exam to St. Reginald’s, a spark of hope finally surfaced. After an obscene amount of bribing and negotiation with the head of St. Reginald’s Academy, Damien was finally allowed a second chance to retake the entrance exam.


    It wasn''t as final as we had thought—at least not if you had the right check.


    As his life hung in the balance, Damien successfully passed his second entrance exam to St. Reginald’s Academy. While he would be enrolling two years late into the four-year program, the family''s life plan was, at long last, back on track.


    That night when the acceptance letter arrived, I saw Damien nod his head up, a tired smile on his cracked lips as he looked towards Father for approval.


    And yet… the cold stare remained.


    It felt like daggers were being shot through my heart even though I was just a bystander. Meekly shriveling back like a mouse, Damien retreated to his room. It would be a long while before he could earn Father’s trust back… if ever.


    Two months before the start of the new school year, Father left with Damien for our capital, Caelum City where St. Reginald’s Academy resides.


    I was asleep when they left or at least that’s what Mother said. Waking up to find them gone, she told me that Father left on this trip in order to meet with the principal to discuss Damien’s late integration into the academy. According to the correspondence letter that was later sent to our home, the meeting went well, yes, however, it appeared that the D''Alembert household’s brief spell of good luck was about to run dry.


    Written on the following letter we received, we learned that while returning to Kalveris, their plane’s engine malfunctioned, ignited, and in a cruel twist of fate, the emergency landing gear failed all in the succession.


    The aircraft burned up as it hit the ground taking all of its passengers’ lives with it.


    It was just a few hours away from Kalveris.


    My father.


    My brother.


    Only Mother and I were notified about the details of the accident; the neighbors could only assume what had happened when Father’s casket arrived a day later.


    I remember Mother going as white as a ghost, hands shaking, and tears dripping from her eyes as she read the dreaded letter.


    Father was dead—truly and unmistakably—when his body was recovered from the wreckage.


    Damien''s body was lost, but he was presumed dead as well.


    Wracked with emotional turmoil, we watched every single thing we had been working towards our entire lives disappear into dust in a single afternoon.


    Mother wouldn’t leave her bed for days after the funeral. During the ceremony, despite the fact that I had yearned for the vast open sky for years, I couldn''t find a single hint of joy in my heart. The sun instead felt duller than ever, the grass lay lifeless like my kin, and the wind was a painful reminder that I still drew breath while they did not.


    Tainted with grief was my first experience of the outside world.


    And yet, that suffering was only the beginning of our struggles.


    As women, we were unable to inherit Father’s estate or property. The D’Alembert line had no surviving family since both he and Mother were only children and my grandparents had passed away long ago so we were left with nothing and no one. That meant that everything he owned would be confiscated by the government of Aurelia-Fields and we would be displaced after the allotted three month grieving period.


    No well-standing friend would willingly welcome two women into their home, especially a widow. Not only was it seen as bad luck, but rumors would spread like wildfire about that person''s own family. It would take a saint and that was a miracle we couldn’t rely on.


    From the day of the funeral, the neighbors only knew of Father’s death, but Damien was still regarded as missing. And without a male to take the reins of the estate, we would have no chance of survival.


    But we didn’t need just any male.


    No, not anyone would do.


    We needed a rightful heir.


    We needed him.


    We needed Damien.


    And so.


    I would become Damien.


    Ah… and so we come to my third memory.


    It was Mother’s idea.


    In a whirlwind of hysteria, just a week before Damien was to begin at St. Reginald’s Academy, she jolted me awake in the middle of the night, breathlessly spilling her chaotic, feverish plans. She prattled on saying that Father’s spirit communicated with her in a dream and there he told her everything she needed to do in order to save the D''Alembert legacy.


    The glossy look in her eyes told me that any hope she had dared await for was swiftly fading. Each letter she sent out begging for refuge from Father’s old connections returned unanswered. And with each day of silence, her mind splintered like dry straw, until it now hung on by the thinnest of threads.


    This was her desperate gamble.


    Frozen under my bedding as she ranted and raved, my skin felt clammy and my stomach weak.


    But what could I do? What could I say? Who could I call?


    No one.


    I was powerless.


    Now a worthless, rusted cog in a broken grandfather clock, the reality set in all at once. We were alone in a house filled with ghosts, abandoned by everyone we once knew.


    I needed someone to direct me.


    And with Father gone, Mother stood next in the hierarchy of power. What choice did I have but to follow her instructions?


    We had no time to waste.


    If ‘Damien’ didn’t ‘return home’ by the time the government’s grieving pause concluded, we would be promptly cast away from the estate. So as soon as morning came, scissors were put to my hair and it was cut just in the way Damien liked it—short and curled at the tips.


    Warm brown strands fell to the ground and gathered at my feet as Mother fussed, obsessively staring at his old photos trying to pull out every feature from his face like it was a black lagoon.


    I remember my chest feeling tight as mother binded it with cloth. It felt so wrong and yet I kept my eyes on my reflection as I slowly watched myself disappear. Only when she cut my hair, threw me into his clothes, and tanned my skin with dyed herbs did I finally see something in the mirror.


    I saw him.


    I saw Damien once again. Living in me, there he was.


    As if he never left.


    Camille had vanished, yes, and Damien would make a triumphant return.


    I could serve him and Father, even in death.


    Amid Mother’s incessant ramblings, it appeared she still clung to a thread of rationality by recognizing that we couldn’t maintain this fa?ade forever. Then after another night led to “correspondence with Father,” she told me the next part of her plan.


    I would only pretend to be Damien for this school year while she planned ‘Camille’s’ wedding to a great family.


    Once I was married, my persona as ‘Damien’ would mysteriously disappear, but we would be guaranteed a spot with another strong family and merge our wealth.


    It was all so crazy.


    It was foolish.


    It was sick.


    But, I knew my purpose.


    With Father gone, my allegiance lies with Mother.


    Whatever she demands, I will attain.


    That is the role I was born to perform.


    So, here I am today.


    I stand before St. Reginald’s Academy—clean uniform, polished loafers, a leather bag at my side.


    Ready as it’s finally time to carry out this scheme.


    So, cheers for Damien.


    And cheers for Father.


    I will serve them well.