“The Ugly Ashbourne! The Ugly Ashbourne approaches!”
The sing-song chant erupts from a cluster of second-years as I round the corner toward the breakfast hall. They scatter like startled birds when I glare, but their laughter echoes.
By dawn, the name had spread through the Academy like wildfire. Whispered behind fans, scrawled on parchment, giggled between curtsies. The Ugly Ashbourne. As if I were some mythical beast from a cautionary tale.
“Pardon me, miss,” a girl with copper ringlets blocks my path, her voice dripping false sweetness. “Might you step aside? You’re casting rather a… substantial shadow.”
Her companion—a waif-like creature with sharp elbows and sharper eyes—covers her mouth in mock horror. “Evangeline! How dreadfully rude! She cannot help her… enormity.”
They dissolve into giggles, skipping away before I can form words. My hands shake as I smooth my wretched uniform—the same cursed garment that bunches at my hips, strains across my chest, and announces my difference with every labored breath.
“Good morning, Lady Leviathan.”
Prince Henry’s voice cuts through the Political Theory lecture like a blade through silk. I freeze in my seat, my quill splattering ink across my notes.
“Your Highness speaks out of turn,” Professor Whitmore declares, but his tone carries amusement rather than reproach.
“My apologies,” Henry drawls, not sounding sorry in the least. “I was merely expressing admiration for Lady Helena’s… commanding presence.”
The classroom erupts in barely suppressed snickers. Henry leans back in his chair with feline grace, his perfect lips curved in that infuriating smirk that makes my traitorous heart stutter.
“Perhaps,” he continues, his voice carrying to every corner, “she might share her expertise on maritime warfare? Given her obvious… seafaring heritage?”
“Your Highness!” I whirl in my seat, my cheeks blazing. “You go too far!”
“Do I?” He rises from his chair like smoke given form, all lean muscle and predatory elegance. “I merely seek to learn from one so obviously… buoyant.”
The class explodes in laughter. Even Professor Whitmore chuckles behind his spectacles.
“Enough!” I slam my books closed and surge to my feet. “I shall not endure another moment of your vile—”
“Sit down, Miss Ashbourne,” Professor Whitmore commands sharply. “His Highness was merely making conversation.”
But Henry isn’t finished. He approaches my desk with that liquid grace that makes me want to both flee and draw closer.
“Forgive me, Helena,” he murmurs, loud enough for all to hear. “I forgot how… sensitive sea creatures can be to changes in tide.”
The dining hall becomes my daily crucifixion. I claim a table in the farthest corner. No one joins me. The very chairs beside me might as well bear plague warnings.
“Look how she devours that bread,” a girl hisses from across the hall. “Like a starving beast!”
“Mother says such appetites are unseemly in a lady,” her companion replies with theatrical horror.
I set down my roll, my hunger dying. Around me, perfect girls pick at their meals like delicate birds, their slender necks arched with practiced grace. Every morsel I take feels like ammunition for their cruelty.
A shadow falls across my table. I look up to find Henry standing there, a vision of masculine perfection in his Academy blazer.
“Dining alone again?” His tone drips false concern. “How… fitting.”
“Leave me be,” I whisper, my voice barely audible above the hall’s chatter.
“Oh, but I couldn’t possibly.” He slides into the chair across from me uninvited. “It would be ungentlemanly to abandon a beached… I mean, distressed lady.”
Every eye in the hall fixes on our table. Conversations halt. The very air seems to thicken with anticipation.
“You are no gentleman,” I hiss through gritted teeth.
“And you are no lady,” he replies with devastating calm. “So we are perfectly matched.”
He leans forward, his voice dropping to an intimate whisper that somehow carries throughout the silent hall. “Tell me, Helena, do you ever tire of being the academy’s favorite spectacle?”
“Stop,” I breathe, my hands trembling in my lap.
“Do you lie awake at night, wondering what it might feel like to be… normal? Desired? Beautiful?” His words slice through me like poison-tipped arrows.
I shoot to my feet so violently my chair crashes backward. “You are despicable!”
“And you are enormous,” he replies without missing a beat.
The hall erupts in gasps and nervous laughter. Henry rises with predatory grace, his smirk widening as he drinks in my humiliation.
“Sweet dreams, Lady Leviathan,” he calls as I flee toward the doors. “Try not to flood the dormitory with your tears.”
In Mirelle’s chamber, I find her arranging her golden hair before her vanity mirror. She looks like a princess from a fairy tale—delicate, ethereal, everything I will never be.
“They torment me daily,” I sob, collapsing onto her bed. “They have given me a name—The Ugly Ashbourne. They mock my every step, my every breath!”
Mirelle’s reflection meets my eyes in the mirror. “What did you expect, Helena?”
The coldness in her voice stops my tears mid-flow. “I expected… I thought you would—”
“What? Defend you?” She turns to face me, her perfect features arranged in mild annoyance. “Against royalty? Against the very people who will determine my future?”
“You are my dearest sister!”
“I was a child!” She stands, her silk nightgown flowing around her like water. “We all were. But childhood is over, Helena. This is the real world, where appearance matters, where connections matter, where—”
“Where I don’t matter,” I finish, the words tasting like ash.
“Finally,” she sighs with visible relief. “You begin to understand.”
She moves to the door, her hand resting on the ornate handle. “I suggest you find your own level, Helena. There are servants who might welcome your… companionship.”
The door closes behind her with the soft finality of a coffin lid.
I flee to the library, seeking sanctuary among the ancient tomes. But even here, there is no peace. A group of third-years huddle around a table, their voices carrying in the hushed space.
“Did you see her at dinner? The way she fills that chair!”
“Mother says such… abundance in a woman is unseemly. Unnatural, even.”
“I heard the prince has taken to calling her Lady Leviathan. How deliciously cruel!”
I press myself against the shelves, hidden among volumes of ancient poetry, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“Perhaps we should organize some charitable endeavor,” one of them suggests with false sweetness. “Help the poor creature find… suitable employment. In the kitchens, perhaps?”
Their laughter cuts through me like broken glass.
Then, like a dark angel of torment, Henry appears at the end of my aisle. His eyes find mine through the gap between books, and his smile is sharp as winter frost.
“Found you,” he murmurs, moving closer with that liquid grace that makes my traitorous body respond despite everything.
“Please,” I whisper, backing against the shelves. “No more. I cannot—”
“Cannot what?” He cages me between his arms, his body a wall of heat and masculine power. “Cannot face the truth of what you are?”
“I am a lady of noble birth—”
“You are a mistake,” he cuts me off, his voice soft as silk and twice as deadly. “A grotesque parody of femininity. A cautionary tale mothers will tell their daughters about the dangers of excess.”
Tears spill down my cheeks, but I cannot look away from his face—so beautiful it hurts, so cruel it destroys.
“Do you know what the most pathetic part is, Helena?” His thumb traces the curve of my wet cheek with mock tenderness. “You still look at me like you want me. Even now, even after everything, you still burn for the very man who finds you revolting.”
I shove past him with desperate strength, my sobs echoing through the sacred silence of the library. Behind me, his laughter follows like the sound of my own destruction.
***