Her Pampered Princess Pt 01

ONE

"Virginie!"

"Henrie? I thought I heard..." The princess looks up from her book in surprise and sees her little sister running across the room, her bare feet pattering like a wolf against the centuries-old parquet. And before she can put down the volume, the young girl has her enveloped in an almost suffocating embrace.

"Did you miss me?" The young girl asks, while sniffing her sister's perfume like a little critter.

Frankincense and sandalwood.

Her sister has been wearing the same perfume for almost a decade now; to her, this is what home smells like. Then she revisits her shoulder: the porcelain skin that can put the real thing to shame; the graceful indentation at the base of the neck, behind the collarbone; the trapezius that needs massaging... Finally, she lets her go, after kissing her on the neck a few times, drawing a string of lovely laughter.

Not really letting her go. Henriette's hands are still on her shoulder, pinning her playfully against the sofa. The little princess spends a few seconds taking a good look at her sister, nods to herself and sits down on her legs.

Virginie shakes her head at this ardent gesture and notices how her wild little sister is in her riding breeches. The white garment is caked with mud, and the odour of leathery tack and horses wafts from her as she moves.

"Why aren't you at school, you rude little beast?" She questions the girl, smiling adoringly despite herself.

"I knew you'd forget it! I have a duel to fight at the Capital!" Henriette pouts prettily, trying her best to suppress a grin and look wounded. She has been practising the lie the entire flight, but as soon as her eyes met with Virginie's they gave her away.

Without warning, Virginie slips her hands under Henriette's pullover and digs her thumbs into the girl's sides, where her sister is ticklish. "Liar!" she accuses with mock sternness as she watches Henriette squeal with surprise and then collapse into helpless laughter.

"No- HAHAHAHAHA, I'm not lying!" Henriette squirms, desperately trying to fend off her sister's playful attacks. She could easily overpower her, being almost a head taller and far more athletic, but she doesn't dare. Not right after her lie has just been so effortlessly dismantled. Not when she has very good reason to fear Virginie's wrath, considering the news she must break to her.

"You think that I don't know your rencounter with the vicomtesse Anna Mikhailovna is still a month away? That's two lies in a row now, little princess."

As a warning, Virginie changes tactics and begins squeezing her sister's tummy. It makes her sister double over giggling. Breathless and screaming, Henriette struggles free and runs to the other sofa, picking up the enormous tapestry cushion to shield herself. Her emerald eyes peer out from behind, feigning innocence. "I could have sworn it was the day after tomorrow! It's an honest mistake!."

But Virginie has no intention of letting her off so easily. She marches before Henriette's little refuge and crosses her arms, her gown of damask rustling as she moves.

Alarmed, Henriette tucks both her legs under her immediately, fearing that Virginie might grab them and tickle her feet. She is not ready to spill her secrets yet, but she might have to if Virginie starts clawing at her bare soles.

"Wait! I'll tell you the truth, I will!" She curls behind her cushion and pleads, turning on her coquettish charm which nearly all find irresistible, "But can I get a plate to eat first? I'm famished!"

"A plate at this hour?" Though not her sister.

"I was out riding all day before I flew here! I can eat whenever I want!" And she regrets saying that immediately because Virginie's pale blue eyes grow angry. This is the middle of the week, and she was supposed to be in class from morning till afternoon.

"You are skipping classes again! Henriette! You are eighteen years old! Would you start acting like it?" Incensed by her waywardness, Virginie is about to demand Henriette put down the cushion and tickle her some more, but relents at the look of fear on her sister's pretty face. Then her anger thaws into an unsurpassable smile when she hears the girl's stomach rumble.

Knowing Henriette's habit, if she had been out riding all day she probably had nothing except some tea and scones. And she hates eating during FTL flights.

"Poor girl." Virginie gestures for her sister to walk with her. "Come, I'll let the garde manger know to make you a sandwich."

"Can I have chicken and brie with lots of jams? Those they have at school are horrendous!" At the first sign of her sister having softened, Henriette leaps down from the sofa and clings to her arm, the fearful look evaporating from her face as completely as the morning fog before the sun.

Virginie sighs in resignation, feeling she has just been duped.

"Only the gods know how we have spoiled you rotten." Her hand slips underneath Henriette's pullover again, tracing arabesque on the girl's tummy. "You better start working very hard when you get back to school. You know very well what would happen if you fail a class again."

"I won't! I swear!" Her knees weak from the touch, Henriette hurries to assure her sister with feigned conviction. She snuggles close the way she used to as a child, hoping it would stop Virginie's exquisite torture.

And when Virginie is not looking she bites her lips with a frown.

How should she tell Virginie that she has just been expelled from school? How should she tell her about all the other secrets she has been hiding?

TWO

The nights are getting cold. Henriette winces as her bare feet step on the marble floor of the smaller salle-à-manger used for casual occasions. When they sit down at the table, she lifts her feet off the floor, lies her head contentedly on Virginie's lap and lets her sister stroke her hair until the servants bring before her tea and a large sandwich.

They chat about the most mundane things: the whereabouts of her socks, her hatred for slippers, the weather, mom and dad, her pet wolves... And Henriette has not been so happy in months just listening to her sister's voice, with her head against her tummy and her hands around her waist.

"Are you going to eat your sandwich?" Virginie pats her gently on the cheek. "Your stomach doesn't lie, unlike you."

"But I want to stay like this forever."

"Is this how you seduced your other girls? Doesn't seem very effective, curls upon them like a cat and refuses to go."

She teases her, but with all her heart, Virginie misses her sister dearly. After Henriette left for school again at the summer's end, the vast château had suddenly grown a bit too hushed and colourless to her liking, whereas with Henriette around there was no escaping her clamour in its hundreds of acres of grounds.

And Henriette's heart skips a beat when she hears those words, even if she knows her sister speaks in jest.

Nothing spoken is without meaning, their philosopher-emperor father likes to say. The words of men are as prophetic as those of the gods.

Seems like a good omen.

But she can't resist the sandwich any longer. Even though she wants to lie there until the death of days, she is too ravenous, and the chef garde manger knows exactly what she likes: thyme chicken doused in honey, with brie and apricot jam from the château's own orchard.

Virginie smiles lovingly as she watches her little sister wolf it down, a riotous little barbarian when she bangs the silverware together telling the chef to make her another.

She dabs at Henriette's cheek with a napkin, wiping away the specks of jam hanging there like jewels.

"Slow down, Henrie! I ought to place a mirror before you as you eat!" Virginie chides, but her eyes are soft with indulgence. "Perhaps it's finally time to find you a very strict puritan for governess, so you might learn some manners before you go up next year."

This is a threat Virginie has been hanging over her sister's head for years, but not cruel enough to follow through. It would be an impossible position for mortals to fill anyway. Her own saintly nun of a governess nearly died of a heart attack when she had to watch Henriette alone for half a day. And that was when the little fauve was not yet twelve.

"You have been looking for that strict puritan for so long, you've become one, Vira." Henriette drops several cubes of sugar into her milk and pours some tea into it, all the while grinning impishly at her sister. She knows that it is unwise to be naughty now, but she just couldn't resist ribbing Virginie. "What's the point of being a princess, if I can't do whatever I want?"

"Who told you that you can do whatever you want?" As Henriette is about to take a sip of the deathly sweet concoction she made, Virginie snatches it away from her and gestures to the servants to throw it down the sink. She pours for her sister a glass of warm water instead and places it before her.

"Finish this glass, you never drink enough water." She orders.

"Can I have a soda afterwards if I do?" Henriette asks, putting on her adorable pout again.

"No." Virginie scoffs. "And for a little girl who shows up at my door unannounced in the middle of the night, and who has clearly been very naughty at school, you sure make a lot of demands."

Henriette sticks out her tongue and makes a face at the rebuke, then starts nipping the water with great reluctance as if drinking poison, grimacing all the while.

Virginie cannot help but laugh at the show her sister makes over a glass of water. "Hurry and finish it, darling, the servants are about to turn in for the night." She ruffles Henriette's hair. "And then you can tell me all about your new adventures at school."

A nervousness flickers across the little princess' brow and her sips become infinitesimally small. Her eyes dart up as soon as they meet Virginie's "I... I'll need to take a bath first! I can't tell you anything smelling like a saddle!"

"Very well. And I should join you." Virginie leans back and tilts her head a little to the side, amused by her sister's childish stalling for time. "I'll make sure you scrub your little feet very clean."

Henriette blushes furiously at those words.

Being expelled from school is just one part of her secret. The other is that, since the last time they parted, Henriette has fallen madly in love with her own sister.

Her big sister, her best friend, her guardian angel and her refuge. They changed clothes before each other and bathed together, slept on the same bed, snuggling close with nothing but underslips on, and thought nothing of it for all these years.

Then, without a whimper of warning, everything was different.

It happened on the last day of summer, as she was leaving for school.

She chatted happily with Virginie all the way from the château to the spaceport. It would be a brief parting of less than four months, nothing she was unused to, and then they would celebrate Saturnalia together somewhere warm and quiet.

But when the parting happened, when the battlecruiser Empress Juliana slipped its orbital mooring, the imperial naval ensign unfurled and ready to escort the princess to her school worlds away, she suddenly started to cry.

She couldn't bear the sight of Virginie's yacht slowly backing away as the cruiser's Alcubierre Drive ramps into action. Her sister was waving at its helm, a speck of dust in her white gown against the true black of space.

She ran to the bridge like mad to order the captain to stop, to shut down the drive and take her back, but it was too late.

When she burst through the door, wailing, to the shock of all the handsome officers aboard, the cruiser had already contracted the vast blankness of space before it to smaller than a millionth of an atom and entered FTL flight, stealing her away from her Virginie at the speed of two lightyears a second.

On that day she finally realized what had been gnawing at her heart the whole summer.

Love.

At first, she was terrified and confused. But in a few days, her confusion and terror had turned into a single-minded and ferocious longing. So what if they are sisters? The gods wed brothers to sisters. Their imperial ancestors did too. So why couldn't she love her Vira?

Besides, she and Virginie are not even blood sisters. Virginie is born in the purple, and she is the child of the Emperor's mistress and her ex-husband.

Since this epiphany, she had lost interest in all of her lovers and started to toy with them in increasingly heartless ways. Lost whatever little interest she had at school, lost a lot of money at the card tables, lost her duel against the Baroness H., and couldn't care less.

Instead, when she is not tormenting the girls in her little harem or fencing with her bodyguards, she has taken to riding cross-country to dull the ache for her Vira and praying that her sister's naked form would enter her dream every night.

And when everything finally came to a head and the headmistress expelled her for her increasingly scandalous escapades and constant absence, she merely nodded, told the servants to pack, and boarded the Juliana for home.

Towards her Vira.

"Nothing, Vira! Why are you questioning me like you are Sophie?" That's her mom, but Henriette never calls her that, just Sophie, that woman Sophie.

Her cheeks burn still hotter when she sees that the servants are peeking at her with interest.

She just wants to get in the bath with her sister, have Virginie scrub her feet, steal a touch of her breast and maybe tickle her back. She wants to be alone with her, not answering all these unanswerable questions before the servants.

But Virginie has interpreted her sister's mortification at the impossible situation as anger. She pulls back a little, hurt that the girl she practically raised has started keeping secrets from her. Why did she escape school? She knows that her sister has taken lovers there, do they have anything to do with this? Has one of them hurt her? Those questions fill her with anxiousness, especially with Henriette in this unreasonable mood.

She decides it's perhaps best to give the girl some space.

"I should be waiting for you at the bath, Henrie." She says. "It's alright if you need a minute..."

Sensing the strangeness in Virginie's tone, Henriette suddenly realizes that her words must have hurt her sister's feelings.

"Vira don't go!" Her impulse having taken over, she jumps up from her seat, clasps Virginie by the waist and then sweeps her off her feet. Grinning with mischief, she starts carrying her to the bath like one would a bride, ignoring the latter's flustered orders to be let down. And as Virginie finally settles into a silent scowl, half burying her head in Henriette's arms so the passing servants will not see her reddened face, she almost couldn't resist kissing her right here, consequences be damned.

"You are impossible, Vira. I said I will tell you later, didn't I? Yet you throw such a tantrum." She starts to tease her. If she can't kiss her, at least she should make her smile.

"I don't recall anything about a tantrum. You must have me confused with yourself, sister." Virginie retorts coolly.

"Oh Henriette, I would understand if you need a minute..." Henriette starts mimicking the way her sister speaks, just exaggerating the tone enough so it sounds ridiculous. "This is you throwing a tantrum. You never say what you think."

"You have not the making of a thespian, Henrie." But a smile begins tugging the corner of her mouth involuntarily, even when she is annoyed by Henriette's mocking impression of her.

'Then why are you smiling?"

"I'm not!" Virginie turns to look at the ceiling, her mask of anger visibly faltering.

"I know what you were thinking." Henriette presses her advantage, "Oh, my little Henrie is all grown up, she is keeping secrets from her big sister now, she doesn't love me as much anymore, I feel so sad." Her eyes gleam with mischief as she observes her sister's trembling lips and knows she guessed right. "If you bite your lips you lose." She adds, and watches Virginie do her best to release her lower lips from her immaculate white teeth without bursting into laughs.

"You little beast, you are exactly the way you were at ten years old, only taller..." Virginie tries with all her might to not give Henriette the satisfaction of winning so quickly, but she just can't help but snort out a giggle. "You are hopeless, Henriette."

But before Henriette can gloat, Virginie starts grinning. She rarely ever grins, but when she does she is the most bewitching. "Instead of trying to make me smile, you should perhaps spend some time getting your stories straight. You still haven't told me why you aren't at school."

At those words, there is that same nervousness again on Henriette's brow. But Virginie is not as concerned now. At least her sister seems to be brimming with energy again, and as long as she is healthy and happy, everything else is secondary.

And she certainly seems healthy. Virginie marvels at how fit and strong her sister has become. Virginie might look slender, but that is mostly because of the way she dresses and the way her figure naturally is - long and slim-waisted but with somewhat plump hips and thighs. Yet Henriette can carry her all the way from one side of the château to the other, descending the long flight of stairs leading down from the piano nobile to the rez-de-chaussée as if it is nothing.

As she relaxes into her sister's embrace, she recalls how last year for her birthday, she somehow swindled the Emperor into buying her a modified prototype ultra-hypersonic interceptor from the Imperial Navy as a "commute vehicle". And when they went out to test fly the beast of a jet, both Virginie and the Emperor ended up puking their guts out after they landed, while Henriette merely looked at them with gleeful mockery.

"What a petulant princess you are, Vira. And they call me difficult!" Henriette snorts with feigned indignation, "Now you are happy all of a sudden, why?"

"Did you forget? This is exactly how you carried me from the hanger to our car last year, after you nearly killed me and Dad with that stupid jet."

"You dare bring that up, traitor! That was so unfair!" Henriette cries angrily at the injustice done to her, real this time. "I know what I'm doing! And I can't believe you agreed with Dad when he took away my birthday gift!"

It is true. Henriette certainly seemed to know what she was doing. Virginie has never been as proud of anyone as she was her sister when she flew the jet. The machine's power was so overwhelming and Henriette's take off so smooth, Virginie and the Emperor didn't even have time to scream before she slingshotted them to the edge of the atmosphere. Even with the anti-gravity array fully engaged and clad in their armour-like flight suits, Virginie was on the edge of blacking out the whole time during their quite literally blinding ascent.

And the cacophony in the cockpit was almost like a hallucination: every light blinking with crimson warning, ground control frantically begging the princess to consider landing the craft RIGHT NOW, the computer screaming "STALL STALL STALL PARAMETER PARAMETER PARAMETER AIRFRAME AIRFRAME AIRFRAME".

But Henriette seemed unperturbed by it all. Amidst all the chaos, she calmly manoeuvred the thrust engines to execute a loop, levelled off the nose, turned the modded scramjets into overdrive and pushed them to Mach 27.

The Emperor mothballed the jet the moment they landed.

At the tense dinner afterwards, neither Virginie nor the Emperor touched the plates before them, still naueous from the flight. But Henriette ate like the little glutton that she is, though with eyes still red from the loss of her toy.

And the crowning incident of that outing was when a hapless general made the unfortunate compliment that Princess Henriette could be the best test pilot the Grand Fleet has ever had.