She didn't have Ashryver eyes.

The first time she opened her eyes, they were shocked. Her mother was holding her, having just given birth. She started as pine green eyes seemed to be looking just past her head, not quite able to focus on objects yet. When her father saw her eyes, he started to laugh, saying that maybe their daughter would take after him instead, which earned a snort from her mother.

When her mother's cousin found out, he wilted a little.

"Fae genes," he'd muttered, but quickly warmed up to the little fae.

When her hair started to grow in, it was a striking platinum blonde. She took after her father in almost every way; she had his magic, his hair, and his eyes. The only part of her that was her mother's was the structure of her face-something so minor most people failed to notice it.

She was loved when she was little, Ashryver eyes or no. The people, her court, her parents-everyone. She had a speech impediment as little fae (which she grew out of at around age nine), which caused her voice to be adorable to listen to, and to add to her cuteness, her face scrunched up with frustration when she couldn't get the words out.

As she reached double digits, her parents struggled to know what to do with her. She was sick of the castle, only allowed to leave once a month or so. Her magic would flare up and wreak havoc, knocking down bookshelves and statues alike. Eventually, it was decided that she should be allowed to travel with her parents to Rifthold.

As a teenager…

Well.

She had to leave the castle, do something, be something before her time ran out.

It would run out eventually. She couldn't keep pretending that she wasn't the princess for much longer. She knew it was selfish for her to think this way, but she wanted to have the power to make her own decisions.

She wished to choose her future. She would trade her crown in a heartbeat to be able to choose her profession, or to choose who she would marry.

She never told anyone. She acted the way she was expected to around her court and around her parents. After all, she had no choice.

She did want to be a good queen, didn't she?

A knock sounded at her door, causing Myshette Whitethorn Galathynius to lose her train of thought. She caught the ball she had been throwing in the air while lying on her bed.

"Come in." A blond head poked around the corner.

"Get dressed, Lil' Rowan. You've got training." Myshe rolled her eyes at the pet name Aedion had given her when he first saw her pine green eyes. "Your parents are already outside. They sent me to get you. Get dressed; I'mma head back before they start making out." Myshe made a gagging noise, and Aedion smirked. "Enough motivation for you to get to the ring?"

"More like a deterrent," she snorted, but Aedion was already gone.

Myshe got out of bed and put on her training leathers. She grabbed her sword from where it hung on the wall and shoved it in its scabbard. She hated training. There were so many better ways to spend her time; as the princess, she always had a group of guards surrounding her.

"Good morning, Your Highness." Delano Tysid, Myshe's personal guard, bowed to her as she exited her chambers.

"Morning, Sir Tysid." Sir Tysid was a middle-aged man of few words, and whatever did come out of his mouth was always some formality. Myshe quite liked him. She found chatty guards to be a nuisance, and younger ones to take too much interest in her.

The training ring was on the other side of the castle. She spent the duration of her walk pretending she was somewhere else.

When the choruses of "Good morning, your Highness" rang out from the guards, she simply nodded. When she was younger, Myshe would make a point of having a conversation with each and every one of them every time she addressed them, but she no longer had time for such things. Myshe had big plans that were about to start.

Today was the day. She'd been doing this for years, but today, she'd be doing what she wanted to since the beginning but had never found the courage to go through with. And everything would be ruined if she wasn't left alone for an entire afternoon. After weeks of thinking up a plan, she finally figured it out.

She would act like an especially perfect daughter for several months in order to make her family think she could be left alone, but the duration of the façade would be long enough to drop their suspicions of ulterior motives.

Check.

She would begin to study for her lessons for extended periods of time so that she was ahead in her studies.

Check.

She would sneak out of the castle one afternoon during time which she had been given to study in her rooms.

Today. It would happen today.

The stench of sweat, blood, and dirt reached her nose. Myshe's heart thudded as she approached the training ring.

Fighting had never been a favorite of hers. She liked the footwork, and that was about it. Myshe was a bit of a figure skating prodigy, and had been since she was a little fae. It required elegance, precision, focus, strength, and balance. She loved competing, and the people loved watching her dance across the lake. Skating was one of her favorite things in the world.

But not fighting or sparring. It was too unrefined.

"Hey, Highness," called her mother.

Plastering a fake smile on her face, Myshe stepped into the ring. Her parents were sharpening weapons in the shop.

"Training to be a warrior is so much more than learning how to throw a punch or swing a sword," Rowan had told her once, when she was still a young fae who didn't understand the dangers their world held. "There's dirty work, too. A dull sword will get you nowhere." He hadn't listened when Myshe tried to explain that she was a princess and didn't need to learn how to be a warrior, much less a correct one. At that, her father had laughed. "Everyone needs to learn to fight, Myshe. Learning to defend yourself is learning to empower yourself." She hadn't known what "empowered" meant, so his words had fallen on deaf ears.

"We're just cleaning the equipment today," her mother told her.

"Great," she replied, trudging into the shop and plopping onto one of the stools.

"How'd you sleep last night?" Aelin asked, concern lacing her words. "Any dreams?"

Any nightmares? was what was really being asked. Myshe shook her head to mean no, which wasn't a lie, but wasn't the truth, either. Lately, her dreams hadn't been bad, just...strange. Last night, she dreamt that she had bat wings, flying through a camp with other man-bats. Like with the rest of her dreams, it felt like a hazy memory.

Rowan wasn't an idiot. He glanced at Aelin. She raised an eyebrow at him that seemed to tell him that she was trying. Myshe still kept her eyes cast carefully downward.

"You're sure?" Aelin asked softly. "Listen, you can always talk to us about any-"

"I know," Myshe said quickly. She turned her lips up into a quick smile that looked more like a grimace. Rowan had been noticing little things, like how his daughter's smiles never seemed permanent, or how her laughter didn't come from the same place it used to. Over the past couple of months, she had been more distant.

When Myshe was younger, Rowan and Aelin had always tried to raise her directly. They tried to take nursemaids and servants almost completely out of the equation. Feelings had been discussed often, and the relationship between parents and daughter was strong. But now, addressing feelings directly was a risk.

Rowan was willing to take that risk.

"I don't know what's been going on with you recently, Pinecone."

The three of them had once gone to a cabin for a weekend during a winter when Myshe was about five or so. She couldn't quite control her magic, but it was still quite obviously there. There were so few trees in Orynth, and none were pines; this was the first time she'd ever seen pine trees.

"They smell like Dadda," she'd said. Rowan had grinned, which had caused Aelin to swat at his chest and kiss his cheek.

The first night, Myshe had a nightmare and her magic had caused wind to beat at the pine trees. The next morning, the yard was littered with them. That little episode, along with her pine green eyes, had earned her the nickname.

Upon the use of said nickname, Myshe's lips twitched upward. "Dad, I'm fine." Rowan relaxed a little. "Father" was for stiff, formal events, but "dad" was a reminder of the family that they once were. The family that they could still be.

When training was over, Myshe's plan was ready to be put into action. All she had to do was ask to be left in her room for the afternoon, undisturbed, in order to work on her lessons.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Aelin said as the three of them finished hanging up their weapons, "Aedion, Lysandra, Lorcan, Elide, and some other nobility are coming to the castle for dinner. Some holiday I didn't bother to remember the name of. Myshe, I'll need you to help me today with some of the preparations. Your father and I have an important council meeting that'll take up most of the afternoon. Do you think you could handle everything?"

No. This couldn't be happening. While preparing for guests was technically one of her main official jobs as princess of Terrasen, and normally Myshe didn't mind contributing to the castle work, it just couldn't happen today. How could she have forgotten? They'd been planning this visit for weeks, and the princess's scheme came crashing down because of her inability to remember simple dates.

But her mother couldn't know this. So she instead said, "Sure. But don't expect me to try to be courteous to Lochan." Aelin only laughed at the mention of Elide's son.

On the inside, though, the should-have-beens raced through her mind. She was going to sneak out. Not like all of the other times, when it was late at night and no one was in the city. Not when she just walked barely outside of the city walls, just to see if she could.

Myshe wanted to see the marketplace during the day. She wanted to meet the citizens, and she wanted to be someone different.

She had already created the identity for herself. She would be Mireya Aegwa.

Well, that was as far as she had gotten with the identity. But a name was a start, right?

A name held you down, but it could also set you free. Her name was Whitethorn, which tied her to the fae and kept her from being a normal human girl. Her name was Galathynius, which tied her to the throne which her mother sat upon.

But her parents chose to name her Myshette. It wasn't a family name. She could have been named for someone who died in the Valg wars, or perhaps even long before them (Nehemia). She could have ended up like Dorian and Manon's child, stuck with the name of a martyr in the war (Asterin).

"It's a blank slate," her mother had said once. It was a nice thought, but Myshe could never be a blank slate so long as her name was still Whitethorn. So long as her name was still Galathynius.

Her name could be Mireya, the name of a peasant. Her name could be Aegwa, a made up surname that was an actual blank slate. It was such a lovely dream. What a pity it would have to wait until tomorrow.

AN (I would make this a separate chapter, but I'm scared of the guidelines):

I'm just going to point out real quickly that this chapter is kind of like a pilot chapter (if you will). I might change it completely and re-upload it. I kind of want to write the entire fic before posting it so that I can read through the whole thing and make sure that it makes sense, but let this be a little snippet of what's to come.

It might be a while before I update again, it might not. I've had this story in my head for at least a year now, and there's a definite plan. Please stick with it-there will be more to come eventually.