Short Story; The Empress' Daughter

Kate Immersfeld liked nothing better than a good book.

Her mother, the Empress of Gravaga, Dark Lady Thalia Immersfeld, high necromancer of all yada yada yada, was rather supportive of her interests, and had gladly provided her with access to a library full of every imaginable sort of book.  Books about fairy tales, faerie tails, spelling books and booking spells.  The non-fiction section could have filled a battleship, and it paled by comparison to the reference section.  But the section Kate liked to spend her time in the most was fiction.
Fairy tales were fun, full of mystical magics and witty heroes.  Stories of chivalrous knights who rescued the princess from horrible fates, sometimes with the aid of the horrible Fates, were the ones that she always loved best.  She liked entertain the fancy that someday a handsome knight might come along and rescue her from the monotony of the palace.  They would ride off on his white stallion, she would wear white and they would rule a quiet corner of her mother's kingdom in peace and harmony.  Haelio perhaps, with its tranquil gardens; or maybe Calcifron, she would certainly like to spend time in a library of her own there, where it always seemed to snow.

Kate sighed and returned a few of the worn tomes to the shelf, each one exactly where she'd set it so many times before.  It wasn't as though there was a lack of things to do on Gravaga.  The palace was always bustling, preparing for the coming of the next band of heroes or the comings and goings of her mother's chosen villains.  In only a few hours she would be expected to make an appearance herself.  Be the dragon to her mother's menace and humiliate the hero.  They'd be back of course, and she was already preparing the spells that would make her defeat seem more real, but today she would win and send them searching out her father, the one the populace called 'old cloaky'.  She often considered what would happen if she just killed them, or even if she threw the fight early.  It would make her parents annoyed at the least, but it would definitely give her more time to read.  It was just a question of whether or not it would be worth the trouble.
She picked up her staff and marched off through the door.  It didn't even take her an invocation to make the door bring her out in front of the marauding party of heroes.
"Where did you think you were going?"
"We're here to put an end to the dark lady's reign of terror!"
"Yeah, don't even try to stop us!"
"Oh, is that it then?  Alright, go on."
They stood there staring at her blankly.  She could feel the warriors behind the camera's hidden all around them flipping through their copies of the script, trying to figure out what was going on.  It made no difference to her whether they took up her offer or not, her mother would defeat them if she didn't.  More likely than not, they'd find the throne room empty.  Kate had it on reliable account that her parents were, to put it simply, enjoying their marital privilege.  If that were the case then they would simply wander around the palace for a while until Sarah came home and either ran them off or screwed with them, possibly without the 'with'.  There was really no way of telling which Sarah would do this time.  If they were really unlucky though, they'd find Cyssie's lab.  If they lived through that experience, they'd never adventure again.  Not that Cyssie would ever purposefully hurt anyone, just that her particular brand of science and magic tended to leave little room for mortality.
"Don't do it, she's trying to trick us."
"I don't know; maybe she's the other sort of princess.  You know, the not-evil kind."
"She's Thalia's daughter, of course she's evil."
"And I'll bet she's just the sort of person who would try and trick us."
"She can't be evil, she's pretty.  Evil people have to use magic to be pretty."
"What if she's using magic?"
Bit of an interesting turn there, most of the time they went out of sight to discuss her appearance.  She always heard them of course, but this group was a more bold than most.
"Can any of you use magic?  You could just try and dispel my enchantments, that would get rid of any illusions I might be using."
They stopped and stared at her.  Kate knew she was pushing the envelope now.  She was being outright friendly with them by her usual standards, it'd have people talking for weeks.  Her parents would probably have to rewrite scripts over this.  She had to suppress a smile at the thought of her father up to his elbows in edits.
"How do we know this isn't a trick?"
She plucked a flower out of the air.  It seemed like a flower anyways; she'd actually just simultaneously formed a flower from frost and enchanted it to be incredibly difficult to destroy.  She'd always found that hard to destroy actually turned out much more durable than merely indestructible the way most enchanters did it.  Indestructible had loopholes, durable was just really tough.  It would also keep it from melting, something that would have taken indestructible an extra spell.  Kate leaned in and set it on his armor, letting the ice adhere the flower to his left breast, where the pocket would have been had it been a shirt.
"You can't.  But if you're smart, then you should leave now.  My mother isn't here anyways, she's reviewing the armies on Negath.  My favor will grant you passage through the Empire without question, and grant you access to all but the most clandestine of locations."
The staring never seemed to cease today.
"Go, run before my sister comes.  If she sees you she will surely kill you all.  Good luck fair hero, I will watch your adventures with great interest."  She opened the door to the library and glanced back for a moment before delivering a final line.  "Great interest indeed."

Kate closed the door and collapsed against the wall laughing.  She felt so horridly wicked for having toyed with them like that.  But the rush that came from defying her parent's plans was like nothing she'd ever done before.  Maybe now they'd think twice about making her just a gatekeeper to the palace.  Now maybe they'd let her play the part she really wanted, now she could be a princess.