Everything’s foggy. Not like “ugh, too much wine” foggy, but milky, glowy, wrong. Like the world forgot to put on its face. Sounds are slurred and too loud at the sa ti—shouting, maybe? Screaming? A crackling noise, like soone’s trying to roast a city.
I’m small. I an, really small. Arms like noodles, fingers like soft worms. I can’t talk. I can’t even sit up. I’m just… there. All wrapped up in sothing scratchy, stuffed into a basket. A basket, seriously?
The basket rocks. Not gently. More like it’s being jostled by a drunk goat. Water sloshes underneath. River, probably. What else rocks like that? A ship? No, too quiet for a ship. No sailors shouting about tits and tar.
It’s dark. But everything glows red. Not candle red. Fire red. Like sothing is burning behind . I can’t turn. Can’t see. But I know it’s fire. I know it started when I was torn away—lifted? thrown?—and soone said sothing. A word I didn’t understand. A na, maybe. Not mine.
There’s a woman, blurred and too far to reach. I feel her more than see her. Warmth. Then gone. Just the sll of smoke and whatever they wrapped in—lavender and panic.
A shadow leans over . Not a face. Just the shape. No eyes. And then I’m floating. Not in the basket anymore. Just drifting upward, like steam off a piss pot.
I try to cry. I think I do. But it sounds stupid. Wet and squeaky. I hate it. I want to complain. I want to swear, gods damn it, but all I do is flail my stubby little arms and hiccup.
And the river takes .
No control. No choices. Just floating in a basket soone didn’t even bother to na before shoving into.
Typical.
I wake up with sunlight stabbing through my eyelids like it’s got a grudge. My tongue feels like a rug, my head is stuffed with cotton and bad decisions, and sothing is squinting louder than it should.
I crack one eye open. The sky’s too blue. The sun is smug. And the Dragon is already watching with that long-suffering, judgntal look—like he’s seen the whole sorry show.
“You drooled on my wing,” he says.
I grunt and pull the blanket—his tail—up over my face. “Had a nightmare.”
He snorts. “You had one too many last night. I counted four cups of that cheap rosé you stole from the inn down the road. Then you started singing about goats.”
“I hate goats,” I mumble into scales.
“Didn’t stop you from slow-dancing with one in your dream,” he adds, way too pleased with himself. “While calling it ‘Prince Buttercup.’”
I groan. “Shut up. No, this one was different. I was a baby. In a basket. Floating down a river. There was fire. And screaming. And I think soone left behind.” I pause. “I couldn’t even swear. It was awful.”
He shifts, stretches, does that insufferable yawn where he flashes every gold-crusted tooth. “You’re mushing up legends with your own half-baked backstory. That’s just a cocktail of Seebulban myth, leftover trauma, and poor wine quality.”
“No dream is just a dream,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “Maybe it was a ssage. I don’t even know who I really am.”
He flicks his tail—my tail-blanket—off with a dramatic sigh. “You also ate an entire wheel of molten cheese last night with your hands, and then tried to sell to a barmaid for a honey cake. The only ssage here is: ‘never trust a whore with dairy.’”
I pout. Deep, soulful, lip-jutting pout. “You’re a terrible therapist.”
“I’m not your therapist. I’m your getaway driver.”
“And blanket.”
He grumbles, but doesn’t pull his wing away when I snuggle back in.
Just saying—terrible therapist. Excellent blanket.
He exhales like he's just aged another century. “Fine. Alright. You win.”
He rolls onto his side with the dramatic weight of soone composing a deathbed confession.
“You’re a long-lost princess,” he says, deadpan. “From Lolika. Born under an ominous cot. Cast adrift in a golden basket last ti the city got raided by flaming centaurs or whatever. Raised by kindly dockside harlots who taught you their sacred ways—mainly how to pick pockets with cleavage. One day, your true lineage will be revealed. You’ll reclaim your throne, ride griffons sidesaddle, and sentence your enemies to mildly inconvenient punishnts involving lace and sarcasm.”
He glances at sideways. “Happy now?”
I pout harder. Chin-jutting, lip-wobbling, utterly unreasonable.
“I could be,” I grumble. “Why not? What’s so impossible about that?”
“You? Royalty?” he scoffs. “You once ate a ruby because you thought it was a candied cherry.”
“It looked candied!”
“And you passed it two days later, screaming about demons in your lower intestine.”
I cross my arms. “Still counts as treasure.”
He sighs again. “Saya, gods know there are more ‘lost princesses’ out there than fleas on a minotaur’s crotch. Every inn wench and turnip peddler thinks they’re secretly heir to so forgotten sapphire throne.”
“Exactly!” I snap. “Statistically speaking, one of us has to be right.”
He raises a scaly brow. “And you think it’s you.”
“I have the cheekbones for it,” I say, with dignity. “And I look excellent in gold.”
He stares at , long and hard. Then mutters, “The terrifying part is, that actually is solid princess logic.”
“Thank you.”
He closes his eyes. “I’m going back to sleep. Wake if you inherit anything.”
I flop down beside him and mutter, “I’ll rember this when I’m Queen.”
He murmurs, already half-asleep, “Of course you will, Your Radiant Basketness.”
He falls asleep, the smug, scaly bastard. Snoring like a furnace with bronchitis. Wrapped around himself like he didn’t just stomp on my dreams with both talons and a tail slap.
I sit up, arms around my knees, pouting into the rising sun like so tragic ballad heroine abandoned by fate and fashion both.
Why does nobody ever take seriously when I say I might be a lost princess?
I an—look at . I’ve seen princesses. Two of them, definitely. One slled like rosewater and sadness. The other had a pet ferret in a jeweled corset. Neither looked half as good in silk as I do. One of them had a lazy eye and a nervous twitch whenever soone said “velvet tax.”
I could absolutely fake it. I have faked it. The way I sip tea when soone else is paying? Regal. The way I throw a tantrum when cheese is substandard? Dignified outrage. The way I deliver a speech about betrayal while stealing soone’s coin purse? That’s pure courtly drama, that is.
So what if I wasn’t born with a tiara? Maybe I was—and soone stole it. Maybe I got basketed during a raid and floated all the way to Seebulba on a current of flaming destiny.
And it’s not like I’m asking for an empire. I’m reasonable. A tidy little city-state would do. Sothing coastal. Warm. Maybe with olives.
Or a duchy. I could duchess. Grand duchess, even. I’d be good at it. I already have the snobbery and the sexual history. What more does nobility even require?
I don’t need a crown. I just think I’d wear one very, very well.
Is that so much to ask?
The Dragon grunts in his sleep and mutters sothing about cheese again.
I scowl at him.
Maybe I am a princess. Maybe he’s the one who got dropped in a basket. Or maybe a chamber pot.
I lie back down and stare at the sky, waiting for fate to get its act together.
User Comments
0 comments from readers