3 The bird trapped in a cage (1/2)
(Ashley's POV)
The first emotion I experienced was loneliness and jealousy, I did not understand why my life was so different from that of my siblings. We had the same hair colour, we had the same eyes but the treatment could not have been more different.
While they laughed and played around the garden, I was locked up in a cottage overlooking their happy faces. All I had were books to accompany me as even the servants would only stay long enough to bring me a meal and then depart. I told myself if I simply acted like how they did, I would experience same level of love and care . No matter what I did. No matter how I would act.
It was never good enough.
It was only later through the eavesdropping on one of the servants outside that I learned the truth. I was simply an unwanted child. The Duke having been away from his household due to business ended up getting a minor noblewoman pregnant during one of his many affairs.
Originally the child would simply be born a bastard and abandoned but the noblewoman's family intervened, and the Duke reluctantly brought the child into his house. I never saw the man known as my father up close and his features remained a mystery in my eyes. My mother died during birth, but I can still recall a soft gentle hand pressing down on my head and a kind voice singing to me.
The duke's first wife was not pleased at an outside woman's child in the house but was afraid of incurring the wrath of her husband, so she simply banished the child to the edge of the mansion and kept her alive. In reality she was simply overthinking, the duke having fulfilled his end of the bargain to the noblewoman's family and no longer concerned himself with my well being.
I was asleep when the fire started, the air turned smoky and hot. I remember hearing screams and noises as the night suddenly lit up with a roaring inferno below. I panicked and ran outside the cottage door to see the mansion engulfed in flames. The family I had never known was now dead, there were many suspicious points about the fire but at the time I was too much in shock to contemplate them.
A dark emotion flashed briefly in my heart and I turned without a second thought and ran outside the gate to safety. A gatekeeper saw me running and brought me to the imperial knights sent to investigate the incident. I was then brought into the palace where I was told a decision would be made in two days to decide my fate.
It hardly matters, I don't care anymore.
(Main Story)
At first Ashley was afraid when the stern muscular guards escorted her from the room into a wide chamber. She saw more people than she had ever seen in her life, they wore the strange luxurious clothing that only her sisters and mother wore. Each stared intensely at her as she walked slowly through the chamber.
Their gazes felt unpleasant and made her skin crawl, every face she turned at looked at had traces of greed hidden behind their calm looks and gentle smiles. She was led to the center of the room and a strange man on a throne spoke a command and suddenly there was a line in front of her. Ashley could not understand everything that was happening but recalled a conversation she overheard the maids having outside her room in the palace.
”Ah I feel sorry for the girl, her whole family was killed, and she is the only one left poor thing”
”Rumour has it there's going to be an adoption held at the royal assembly tomorrow!”
Maybe this time she would get a loving family that she always dreamed of; Ashley quickly had a smile flash across her face but as she looked at the line her smile faded just as fast. Each of the men and women in the line had the same emotion in their eyes.
Greed.
The first group of nobles to approach the child were her relatives, one of them a balding middle age man flashed her a gentle smile as he spoke softly,” Ashley dearest, do you remember uncle? We visited your family very often”.