#queenstrial

“Evangeline and her parents came two days early and ate lunch with the Queen,” one hushed gossip babbled to two others. They all feigned shock.

“That’s not fair! No one else got an audience with the Queen.”

“Oh, please, they picked her two years ago when we all came to Summerton for the August feast. Remember the tea set she pulled together for the Queen? Made it out of that old suite of armor and Elara was smitten. Well as smitten as a snake can be.” The triad laugh and suck in long breaths at the end, falling silent while they all thought of the next thing to say.

My mother rolls here eyes and continues to stitch blue ribbons into my braids. The woman may be stating the truth, but what bothers my mother is that they already know it. In fact, at least two of them had the same exact conversation just fifteen feet further down the hall an hour age. Why they bother pretending it’s something new to say is beyond me and well beyond my mother. She’s never been one for gossip to begin with and certainly not making it for gossip’s sake. And since we left Paracove, the ancestral home of the House of Iral, she’s been nothing but terse and to-the-point. We aren’t here because we want to be and if I were to bet, none of them are either. No one’s here because they think they actually have a chance at their daughter being picked for queen, well, except House Samos. We’re all here because a sentinel showed up carrying an official invitation to enter the contest and would only leave with our agreement.

I watched my father thumb the edges of the note card and scrape the corner through his beard for fifteen minutes, pacing in my Grand Mother’s parlor. The silent sentinel stood in the hallway just inside the door and waited. My father sighed, nodded his head at my grand mother, and then returned to mumble his regards to the King. Only then did the Sentinel carry our commitment back to the palace.

“Heaven help you, my girl,” he sighed, one hand on my cheek.

“Evangeline Samos will be picked.” My mother patted his arm, but her assurances fell short of bringing the doom off his face.

“I know that. I’m not worried about their pick for their first born. It’s that witch’s son I’m concerned about.”

That conjured shivers up my spine. Our house was barely cordial with the palace, but our armies and our intelligence capabilities are invaluable in a country deep in a perpetual war. My Aunt, everyone calls her the Panther, had been instrumental in gaining the only ground in the last fifty years. Her work as an agent, a spy, had given Norta the upper-hand and because of her, the boundary in the Choke advanced over a hundred yards. But something else had happened when King Tiberius took his new wife, Elara Merandus. Something about an uncle of mine disappearing off the battlefield and, according to the whispers I overheard when I was young, my grand mother believes he was interrogated and murdered by the kin of our Queen.

Around me, maids rush and mothers preen daughters with no possible claims. But at least they are a distraction from my mother’s fingers tugging on my tender roots. We’re all safe from actually competition with Evangeline Samos, but you wouldn’t know it from watching them scurry and burst into rages. Red maids and tailors dash out of the way, some not fast enough. I watch Wren Skonos heal one caught by a pair of scissors in her arm. At least one of these girls might be bearable for the festivities that follow selection. We’re all expected to remain at court for the entire month. I plan to find the library, or a cozy nook on the roof. Maybe an open window will serve me well in unlocking the fate of whoever will be stuck with the witch’s son, as my father put it. For myself, for my house, I’ll put on a show of our abilities, just enough to let them know we’re still skilled, still strong. But I don’t intend on doing anything spectacular or revealing. Someone else will have to light up the stage, I won’t be drawing the queen to our door. I have no intention on every becoming a princess.