Date: 1188 E.Y.

Told as witnessed by Stella herself

That night, having made it safely back to her bedroom, Stella dreamed of strange things. Upon waking, she could feel the memories of whatever she had dreamed already slipping away from her, leaving behind faded images of monuments to nearly-forgotten goddesses, strange voices, and strands of hair drifting in the wind. The bright summer sunshine fell on her face, and in it she thought she saw the face of someone unfamiliar. But as she blinked and struggled to draw herself out of sleep, she felt someone gazing at her, and unfortunately, that feeling was all too familiar. Before she even saw her mother sitting across the room, she felt her presence.

Lady Cecily Fennel sat on a small chair by the wardrobe, as far away from the patch of sunlight that streamed in through Stella’s window as possible. Her cold gray eyes glinted at Stella from the shadows.

Stella was already wide awake, startled straight out of her drowsiness.

Upon seeing her eyes open, Lady Cecily’s frown deepened. “It’s about time. Look at the sun, Estella! A pig could hardly sleep more than you do.”

It was already a bad day. Stella could feel it. Her mother had a habit of destroying Stella’s potential, whether it was her potential to have a good day or her potential in life. One of Lady Cecily’s greatest talents was her ability to pull something dire out of anything, no matter how small. To her, the tiniest flaw was a signifier of a character so horrific it was catastrophic.

“You and your habits,” she went on. “Where is your discipline? I swear to Her Lady Estra herself, I did not raise you to be like this.”

Stella wanted to protest that she was far more disciplined than other person she had ever met, that she joined Geller in a secluded grove every day for hours and hours of lessons in swordplay, that she read her tales of chivalry and texts on weapons and armor to pieces, and that she took her horse, Ravenna, on more trots than probably was necessary for a trail horse, thinking that perhaps, one day, Ravenna might be sufficiently trained to get her out of a tight situation the way all the horses in the tales do. In this way, Stella was exactly how her mother had raised her to be—focused, determined, and, most importantly, entirely, one-track-minded. She only really wanted one thing in life. And she was disciplined enough to work as hard as she could for what she wanted even when no one was there to tell her what to do.

But what did it even mean to be disciplined when the thing she worked and strived and lived and breathed for was an impossibility?

Perhaps disciplined was not the word for what she was. Obsessed might be better. Or desperate.

Hopeless.

“Men are fools, but they aren’t duds,” said Lady Cecily.

“Are you sure about that?” Stella said.

She immediately regretted it, expecting her mother to get angry at the interruption, but apparently Lady Cecily’s loathing for men overruled her temper. It was one of the things that had always confused Stella about her mother; she insisted that Stella exist to suit every possible societal expectation of a lady of status, and such societal expectations were, of course, all designed to suit the needs and whims and pleasures of men. And yet, she expressed nothing but disdain for men. “No, perhaps I am not certain,” she said brusquely. “Men and their foolishness surprise me every day. But I think any man would take one look at you and know that you are not suitable to be his wife.”

“Good,” said Stella. “That sounds accurate.”

Lady Cecily bristled, but today, for some reason, she must have trying extraordinarily hard to restrain herself, for she did not deign to grace such an answer with a reply. “This week you shall have to be at your very best, Estella,” she said sternly. “I have just received a letter. It seems we have a guest arriving in the next few days. A very wealthy man, who belongs to a merchant family from the South. His grandfather is an old friend of my father’s.”

Ah. Another suitor. So that was what warranted all of the self-restraint this morning. This happened every time Lady Cecily caught word of a visitor. Just last night she had been screaming herself hoarse. But now that an established visitor from a big trading city was bound to arrive, she was suddenly the perfect picture of a dignified, distinguished lady with her head on her shoulders and her family under control.

If it were not for these occasional shifts in temperament, Stella never would’ve known that Lady Cecily was ashamed of the way she treated her daughter. Either that, or she was ashamed of the way her daughter made her behave.

“How old is he?” asked Stella.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

Stella waited.

“He’s twenty-one.”

“Not bad!” Stella exclaimed, unable to stop herself.

Her mother scowled. “As long as he is wealthy and young enough to produce children, it does not matter much how old he is.”

“Still, I would prefer someone young,” said Stella.

Lady Cecily stood up suddenly from her chair, her long legs extending to their full height. At nearly six feet tall, Stella had certainly inherited her height from her mother, even if she had not inherited a figure even remotely resembling Lady Cecily’s willowy frame. To Stella’s vast surprise, her mother came and sat down beside her on the bed. For a moment, Stella thought maybe her mother had come near her for a rare moment of intimacy—a tender exchange of words between mother and daughter, or even an embrace. Perhaps there had been a time in Stella’s childhood when such moments occurred, but if there were, she had long forgotten.

Alas, Stella’s hopes were short-lived, as she probably could have expected. Lady Cecily leaned over, putting her face close to Stella’s, and said in a low voice, “Estella, you must understand how critical this visit is going to be. Your new suitor is extraordinarily preferable to any of the other suitors we have entertained, in class, wealth, reputation, and, frankly, taste. The only drawback is that he comes from an entire mercantile background with no noble connections of any kind. But seeing his family is very much like mine, I cannot be too rueful. To be entirely candid, I doubt he would entertain any thought of marrying someone of your…unique background if it were not for the close relationship between his family and mine.”

“I—”

“Don’t interrupt. If you fail to impress this man, or at least to pique his interest, I may start to consider sending you to a temple, because other than this, that seems to be the best opportunity to live a decent life that you’ll ever get. So if I were you, I would not fail, because I know you aren’t particularly interested in the way of the priestess. I don’t want to hear one word from you about knights, or fighting, or international politics—national politics, too, for what it’s worth—or horses, or any of the foolish romances that you read. I don’t want to see you shoveling your food into your mouth or sitting with your legs sprawled out or laughing too loudly. You are polite. You are a lady. You are the daughter of both age-old nobility and esteemed , and most importantly, you are everything I have raised you to be. Do you understand?”

Stella’s jaw was open. The way she took it, she wasn’t allowed to laugh. Or eat. Or sit, for that matter.

“Must I repeat myself? Do. You. Understand.”

Stella nodded.

“Good.” Lady Cecily stood up brusquely. “And, more importantly, you need to stop tormenting me and everyone else with your silly little preferences. I don’t want to hear anything more about how young he is, or how handsome, or how intelligent. Your feelings are your feelings and nothing more. They shouldn’t have any bearing on what occurs because, frankly, none of this is about you. So don’t act like it is.”

It happened every time Stella spoke with her mother. Whenever she thought she was already baffled enough, there was always something new to blow her mind. “Who is this about, if not me? It’s my marriage.”

Lady Cecily, already turned toward the door, cast an irritated sidelong look at Stella. “It’s about all of us, Estella.” she said. “And the future of our family. I know you’re not foolish. I would’ve thought you known that. You’re my daughter, for heaven’s sake, not just your father’s. Now, it’s about time you get out of bed. Good Estra, look at the sun! I hope to see you downstairs and dressed by the time the noonday meal is ready.” She swept toward the door, her skirts rustling around her.

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“You know, I read in—well, in one of my books that there was a time when—well—” The words were pouring out of Stella’s mouth almost of their own accord, yet she had no idea where they were going. “I don’t know. I suppose what I mean to say is that once, a long time ago, things might have been different. People didn’t have to…do these things to survive. They had choices.”

Lady Cecily faltered in the doorway but did not turn around. “There you go again, on and on about your precious fairy tales. Why don’t you read some real history books? Perhaps they’ll give you a sense of how the real world works.”

The door slammed shut.

Stella sat in her bed for a few quiet moments. Then, with strangely, precise, well-rehearsed movements, she rose and crossed the room to a chest that she kept tucked in a discrete, unassuming corner. She threw open the chest and retrieved an armful of books, only to return to her bed and collapse on it once again. She curled around her pile of books and closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of the old pages.

Stella had no scholarly aspirations. She had never been the kind of student her mother wanted her to be, nor did she really enjoy reading books that were not strictly fantastical. Nor was she a person of particular artistic, musical, literary talent. Words escaped her, as did both sounds and sights. But she loved these books to pieces—they were quite literally starting to fall to pieces from such heavy use.

These books were, for all she knew, nothing but wishful thinking, but to her, they were an alternate reality—a hope that the world was something other than what she experienced. Not just something other, but something greater, bigger, better, more beautiful. Her books contained stories of the most fanciful sort—dragons, fairies, wars, wizards, damsels, and, of course, knights. They told of chivalry, of love, of the very greatest emotions that the world had to offer and the very worst. Everything and everyone in this world mattered—even smallest, subtlest decisions and the smallest, weakest people. They opened a gateway into a world where Stella did not have to feel trapped. She could make a difference. She could be the difference.

Stella sighed, and sat up. She felt renewed, but not, perhaps, as much as she might have once. These books had always been her shield against utter helplessness, the things that kept her strong. But it was becoming more and more difficult to fight the feeling that they really were just fiction. She kept hearing her mother’s voice in her head: “This is the real world, Estella, not one of your precious fairy stories.” She didn’t want to accept a world that was anything like what her mother said it was, and so again and again, she came back to her books. But what if her mother was right? What if the world was every bit as bleak as she made it out to be.

Perhaps her mother really was finally getting into her head. Every time Stella fought with her, she lost a little more motivation to keep resisting. Even though she had spent her whole life failing to be everything her mother wanted her to be, she was starting to wonder if perhaps she should have tried harder to comply with her mother’s wishes. One day, she might have no choice but to comply.

Today, though, was not that day.

She had not planned to sleep so long into the morning, and she was now due a lesson with Geller. Well, not exactly due just yet—she was about a half hour early. But if she had lunch with her mother, her mother would keep her much longer than half an hour, and obviously she could never tell her mother she needed to leave early, much less tell her the reason why.

Of course, a large part of the motivation behind this decision lay in Stella’s desire to not. She knew it would anger her mother, but now, when Lady Cecily was too concerned about approaching visitors. Stella would certainly feel her one wrath after the visitors were gone, regardless of how the visit went. But Stella was never over to look too far into the future. She had trained herself not to, for if she did, she knew she would not like what she saw. As a result, many of her decisions were impulsive, to say the least.

And so Stella resolved to go see Geller immediately. It was just what she needed at the moment, really. It didn’t have that much to do with the fact that she wanted to get as far away from her mother as she could, and he was the only person she really liked in this town.

Her boots and the plainest, most hardy dress she owned were on in no time. She bound her thick, curly hair—as frizzy and messy as it ever was after a long night of sleep—into a long braid that would (hopefully) stay out of her face. It looked terrible, she knew, but she didn’t either bother to look at the mirror and fix anything. She wasn’t necessarily against beauty—after all, her favorite love ballads would hardly be romantic if the lovers were not described to be devastatingly beautiful. But she never bothered to make herself because, pettily, she knew it would her mother would gloat. Long ago, her mother had tried to force her to learn how to fashion her hair elegantly and apply strange pigments to her skin and squeeze herself into dress that surely could have been meant to fit girls as large as her. Stella had stubbornly resisted until her mother gave up, which was a feat in itself considering how stubborn Lady Cecily was in her own right.

Not wishing to risk another encounter with her mother, Stella took the narrow staircase in the back of Fennel Manor down to the ground floor, where she stole through the kitchen and grabbed a quick bite to take with her. The cook saw her but made no comment. He was one of only three servants in the household, the other two being Sir Stefan’s “squire” (Stefan was hardly what any modern-day Evermoran might consider a real knight, so his squire more resembled a manservant than anything else) and Lady Cecily’s maid. There was a small chance that the servants would get in trouble for letting Stella’s little rebellions slide, but it was more likely they wouldn’t. Lady Cecily was cold to almost everyone, but most of the time she saved her cruelty for Stella. One bailful glance was all she got from the cook, and then she was out the door, on the road.

Town was a mere five minutes’ walk down the hill upon which Fennel Manor was marched. Stella strode confidently, completely accustomed to the fact that she was oddity and would probably draw attention to herself from the townspeople as an object of fascination. They all had observed her for years, and could often predict her behavior sooner than Stella could herself, but even after practically watching her grow up, they never ceased to be fascinated. Stella didn’t care much. Why would she, when she was already such a disgrace to her own mother?

Still, she remembered that fateful day three years ago, when the worst delinquents in town had ambushed her outside her own home. Although she was as courageous as could be, she could never help but feel a small tinge of fear and a larger tinge of disgust whenever she crossed paths with any of the boys who socialized in those circles. That was why, as she made her way toward the center of town—where Geller lived with his partner, the town baker—she could not help but glare a little bit at some boys who were playing dice in an alleyway. They glared right back at her. They didn’t like her. No one really did.

No one except Geller, and, she supposed, Ned the baker. He always gave her free rolls when she was begrudgingly running errands for the household—an occurrence that, surely, Lady Fennel would object to for a distinguished knight’s daughter like Stella if it were not wholly necessary.

Geller’s modest little townhouse lay on the other side of Town Square, the center of activity of Rowan. Stella was prepared to barge right through the usual midday chaos of errand-runners carrying huge woven baskets, farmers driving mule-pulled carts of produce, and boys milling about, having spitting competition. But just as she drew nearer, she heard a sound she was well accustomed to but had never heard here. It was the sharp whack sound of wood hitting wood.

She had completely forgotten that Geller had a side job—he was paid a modest sum by the Village Council to teach the local boys how to fight. She usually tried to steer clear of those lessons because she knew that a few of the boys who were learning were among those who had ambushed her years ago, and even the thought of them having the privilege to do something in public that she was forced to do in private made her feel a pure, unbridled kind of rage that was difficult to control. But now that she was here, she could not help but hover at the edge of the square, watching the lesson from the shadows. She was fascinated—captivated, even—by the sight of the boys waving their wooden practice swords heedless in the air and stumbling over each other. Her first reaction was to feel even more enraged than she already did. She could best each and every single one of them in a fight with ease. As quickly as it had arisen, though, her anger switched into pity; most of these boys spent the bulk of their time working, and they probably didn’t nearly have as much time as she did to practice. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so quick to judge.

Geller called out something to the boys, and they congregated around him in the center of the square. Stella leaned as far forward as she could without being conspicuous, straining her sharp ears to pick up what he was saying. His voice was raised; he was irritated.

“Where in the name of Estra is Taron? And where are Reed and Jon?”

The boys all shrugged.

“Well, I suppose they’ll miss my announcement then,” said Geller gruffly. “Too bad for them.”

An announcement? Stella listened even harder.

“Our lessons have been lagging, in my opinion,” said Geller. “And, no, Elden don’t make that face. You know it’s true. I’m not seeing the enthusiasm I would expect from a group of young men who, to be frank, would not survive two days on the road. Well, if safety and responsibility are not enough to motivate you, perhaps competition will. I’ve decided to hold a tournament. You can all take out your rage on each other—safely, of course—and only one man will emerge victorious. How does that sound?”

The crowd broke out into an excited buzz. A tournament. Stella could hardly contain the buzz of excitement within herself. Not that she actually had any right to be excited. It wasn’t like she could even compete. Or perhaps she shouldn’t be so hopeless. Perhaps—

“What’s this we have here?”

Someone shoved Stella, and she fell forward, stumbling as she barely managed to find her balance.

It was the three boys she’d seen playing dice in the alleyway. They leered at her, like she was the most comical traveling jester they’d ever seen. Stella realized she’d been foolish; these three boys, whom she had recognized from the start, were the ones Geller had been missing—Taron, Reed, and Jon.

“Spying, are you?” said Jon. “How very suspicious. Is there someone you’re interested in over there?”

“If you ask me, I say she’s always had a particular interest in Elden,” said Taron. The boys laughed.

“You mistake her for a common woman,” said Reed in a mocking tone, the smartest of the three and by far the most adept at getting under Stella’s skin. “She’s different. Too good for anything like that. Or, at least, that’s how she would have it. But I think there’s something else happening here. She wants to be one of us! Don’t you, my lady? Well, what do you think, men? Why don’t we let her join the fun?”

And before Stella could even perceive what was happening, Taron and Jon had grabbed her by the arms and were dragging her into the direct noonday sunlight of the square.

“Geller! Look what we found!” Reed shouted.

Everyone in the square turned to look at Stella.