evangeline of house samos is eighteen years old, standing in an arena of nothing but ruins, competing viciously for a crown she was made to want. “get in my way and I’ll kill you slowly… little lightning girl.”
she shows off for a group of teenagers while training to kill, parlor tricks for empty admiration, a queen bee in a big-kid’s popularity game. she is followed by empty smiles and emptier promises everywhere she goes, young nobles hoping to win the favor of their prince’s betrothed. mareena titanos makes her run, blows her spiders to shards in a training arena.
evangeline (lady of house samos, princess of the rift, betrothed to tiberias calore vii, flame of the north, heir to the burning crown) was trained to kill, trained to fight, raised to strength, to power, to death. she wore her ability every day, jewelry dripping with gems and metal, rippling gowns of chromium and mercury, metal talons on her fingers and steel shrapnel in her silver hair.
she softens for elane haven, the shadow girl that hears everything but is never seen. no, evangeline, steel does not break, and it does not bend, but it can be melted and reforged into something new, something stronger.
she finds the strength to turn away and step down, a different strength than the one that carried her through a hundred battles at court and on the front lines. she finds the strength to let go, to let her father the king fall from the bridge. to turn away from her gilded life of crowns, silk, and power, to turn to a country where her blood is no longer superior.
to turn away from a war and a throne to live life as a commoner. to sit in a garden tended by a careful greenwarden and his husband the premier. to leave behind the smoking ruins of the place where she grew up, to lay in the grass in a gray wool sweater.
evangeline turns twenty years old as evangeline of montfort. heir to no crown and no titles and no wealth. beholden to no one.
theartofmadeline
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