Lisbette had never been in this part of the castle before. It was strangely unfamiliar, yet recognizably part of the palace Zenith. The walls were the same rich, silver stone and the floor was lined in beautiful marble tile and luxurious rugs. Tapestries and art lined the wall in similar styles to those found in other parts of the castle.
But it was all new—just so subtly different in a way that felt strange.
She felt strange. Her palms prickled with anticipation, and she clasped them together before her to stop their trembling.
She checked her reflection in the mirror opposite the entrance hall, but couldn’t see anything out of place. All the nerves were on the inside. The only image in the mirror was that of a tidy, stoic Northern noble awaiting her entrance announcement for her first social gathering. Her face was placid as a frozen lake, opaque like frost. It reminded her of her mother more and more as time passed.
The dress was no longer the child’s cut she had worn previously. Now it was a full length gown, with red and black panels laced together to form the bodice and extended through the skirt, giving the illusion of depth without the added weight and bulk of multiple skirts. The dress was in fact made of the lightest fabric possible while still being capable of bearing the structure of the dress, though the cage of the skirt bore most of the weight of the fabric. With all the jewels and baubles sewn in place, it was nearly thirty pounds. Layers and layers of delicate lace and silk organza fabric plumed at the bottom of the dress, all dyed charcoal black. Crystals glinted in the folds and swirls like little twinkling stars in the night sky. A train of fabric extended from the collar to the mid of her back—a little cape in the shape of her family crest, which was itself embroidered on the dark red cloth.
It was a symbol. The whole dress was a symbol—of her position, her maturation. She was now considered a full person under imperial law, still subordinate to her guardian’s judgement, but with rights and privileges all her own. For nobles, the age of reason marked the point at which a child merely born into a family with power now wielded that same power and authority.
This ceremony would cement her place as her mother’s rightful inheritor, and invest in her the power of her position as the Heir Royale.
Ideas and plans percolated in the back of her mind. A part of her was chomping at the bit, straining against reason to take off running. Independence was exhilarating.
Part of her was… not exactly scared. Unsettled, perhaps. It felt strange. She didn’t feel any more grown up. She hadn’t suddenly attained enlightenment. She was no wiser or more powerful now than the day before.
This day marked the halfway point between the time Liz’s memories returned to her and the time that they foretold: the awful fate awaiting her in the future.
Her hand tightened into a fist, and she squeezed her wrist with the other hand.
“Six years,” she murmured.
Six years past, six years hence.
Halfway through, she thought, and what have I accomplished in the past six years? Not nearly enough. Nothing, in the grand scheme of things.
She had learned and grown, and that was something. But was it enough? Is it to salvation or to downfall that the path now lead? Or some hidden fate she could not foresee?
“Your Highness,” Tibitha murmured behind her, peeking through the curtain draped between the hall and the ballroom. “We’re almost ready. Her Grace is starting the ceremony.”
Bette rolled her shoulders back and straightened her spine.
It’s time.
“Are you nervous?” Tibitha whispered as Bette came to stand beside her. “Feeling sick? You look pale.”
“I’m always pale,” Bette told her in a low tone.
“Hm, that’s true. It’s not too late for me to distract everyone. Depending on how I do it, I can give you five minutes or three weeks.”
“Mother will chop off your limbs if you set fire to her favorite ballroom,” she said, guessing what the latter plan entailed.
“She’d have to find me first.” The grin Tibby offered glinted in the faint light filtering from beneath the curtain. Bette snorted and coughed, choking down the laugh that threatened to bubble up within her.
Thank you, Tibitha, she thought, reaching over to squeeze her cousin’s gloved hand with her own. She was trembling, Bette noticed. Nervous or tense or even excited. It could be all three.
“Don’t worry, Bette,” she told her, squeezing her hand back. “We’ll be right by your side the whole time.”
Bette dropped her hand and fell back into the poised, precise posture that had been drilled into her since she was a toddler. She could hear her mother, faintly, as her lines led up to her cue.
“…flesh of my body, daughter of my blood, First and Only Daughter of the North, Lisbette Drakuhl.”
Her voice carried, stern and proud.
Bette’s eyebrows twitched, but she schooled herself immediately and strode forth. Tibitha pulled the curtain aside, bowing slightly as her mistress passed.
‘And Only’ was not in the ceremonial rites. Someone must have pissed her mother off enough to make her change to emphasize it. That was impressive given that the ball had really only been going for fifteen minutes.
The landing beyond curved into a gentle stairway, carpeted in the sanguine red of the Drakuhl line. Along with its twin to the left, this staircase was almost exclusively designed for grand entrances. It let Bette walk leisurely and take in the crowd as she descended to the dais below. It emphasized the grandeur and majesty of her house and the elegance of her bearing.
She’d walked up and down stairs like these ten thousand times in the past six years, most of which had happened in practice for this very event. She wasn’t scared of tripping and falling. She could do this in her sleep.
The surprising and stupefying thing was the crowd. There was a sea of glitz and glamor sparkling beneath the magelit chandeliers like waves beneath the setting sun. There were more people here than she’d ever seen in one place in her life and that included Market Way. Nobles of every stripe had come to see her crowned.
And to think, she thought faintly, this is the private ceremony.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
It made sense. This ceremony was for those Drakuhlian nobles who didn’t have to wait for the melting snow like the guests from the southern nations. The people of the Northern territories were spread out and sometimes isolated for months at a time in the dead of winter. They had a bevy of barons and counts and marquesses whose houses protected their little fiefs in the name of Drakuhl, even when the territories were beyond their reach.
Even so, there should have been some who couldn’t make it, she thought, feeling a little desperate. It looked like every obligatory invitation had been answered and every plus one applied.
The faces gazing up at her made her want to turn around and march right back up those stairs. The fact that Tibitha was descending after her, only a few steps behind, was the only reason Bette didn’t hesitate to move forward.
Well, that, and the fact that Lycrarose, swathed in navy blue and silver finery, was standing at the landing, waiting to take her hand. She would rather throw herself into an active volcano than leave her mother standing awkwardly in front of her whole dukedom.
Was her mother what Tibitha had been referring to when she said ‘we’? Somehow that seemed wrong. It wasn’t like Lycrarose would stay with her the whole night. She had her own greetings to make. Bette didn’t have an opportunity to ask. They reached the end of the stairs and Lycrarose extended her hand to help her the last few steps.
She placed her hand in her mother’s, glove in glove, and together they moved to the edge of the little stage. Clapping had followed her down the stairs; it only grew as she turned to face the people below. Her people.
She recognized some.
Here and there, knights in dress uniform dotted the crowd, doing double duty as both nobles and guards. Though every knight in the royal guard was raised to nobility, not everyone was comfortable with this kind of display. It didn’t shock her that most of the guard were conspicuously absent from the main ballroom.
Denever had told her weeks ago that she would not set foot on the ballroom floor unless it was to fight a horde of monsters.
Bette respected that.
The Carroll County was out in full force. She spotted three of her older cousins already working the crowd, weaving through the throng like wildcats. The Countess Constance sat at the back of the room in her modified wheelchair, watching her grandchildren like a hawk. She’d met the woman only once, at Tibitha’s coming of age ceremony, and she had left the impression of a grizzled war veteran who baked cookies in her spare time.
It wasn’t hard to see where Tibitha came from.
Others were less familiar: people she thought might be members of her mother’s cabinet, or her counselors; and still others who had probably never been to the capital city of Drakuhl, whose relationship was mostly taxes sent twice a year on the solstice and disaster aid sent back.
For some of them, Bette’s was probably the first ducal coming of age they’d ever seen. She would be their ruler, not the previous liege but the one they grew alongside, the one to whom they entrusted their livelihoods.
What do you see when you look at me? She wondered, gaze sweeping over the crowd. Am I larger than life? Am I smaller than you thought? Have you made up your mind about me or are you still deciding?
Deep down, she asked, is it the dragon you really see?
She swallowed, forcing the thought away. It didn’t matter what they saw. It didn’t even matter what they thought. It was her job to change their minds. She was Lisbette Drakuhl, first and foremost. They would judge her and only her, on her own merit.
“…So shall it be,” the Duchess finished the endowment, holding both their hands high.
So shall it be, she echoed.
They let go.
Her mother gestures for someone to step forward. Bette looked first to Tibitha, who would have been the logical choice to bear the crown. But no, Tibitha was standing placidly a few feet behind, hands folded demurely before her.
A movement on her other side caught her attention. She turned to see a figure emerging from the unlit shadows beneath the staircase.
At first, she didn’t recognize them. They looked so different in a shining navy and blue uniform with polished silver buttons. Bette felt her eyebrows twitch and fought to keep her face steady.
For once, their dirty blond hair had been brushed and braided. It hung down the front of the guard’s uniform from the shoulder it had been artfully draped over. On the other side, the cloak clipped securely to the sash, and a sword belt was attached to the sash at their waist. The belt carried a standard short sword in its sheath, decorated with a knitted root in characteristic silver.
They were, of course, taller and thicker now than they had been when she first laid eyes on them, just as she has grown. Their eyes, however, were still the eerie golden eyes of a predator with mirth shining through.
Windale was dressed in the navy and black uniform of a royal guard.
They approached, bearing a pillow with a silver tiara and pendant perched atop. As they neared, Bette spied the insignia on the breast jacket pocket.
Not just a royal guard. A personal guard.
She tried to communicate her confusion without moving her face, eyes flicking between the Duchess, who radiated smugness without any movement, and Windale, whose face was not nearly as disciplined.
In the corner of her eye, she could see that Tibitha was also smiling knowingly. An ambush! Conspiracy on all sides!
Et tu, Tibbs?
How they had managed to keep this from her, Bette had no idea. Surely if Windale was training with the regular knights, Bette would have seen them when she visited their early morning practices.
They finally grinned when they were in arms length. Their face said they knew exactly how she was reeling at the moment and was not feeling contrite.
She wanted to reach out and smack them. All those times they dodged her when she was asking after their plans! The nervy little cur! The outrage warred with the relief that her guard would be someone she knew. Someone she trusted.
Her mother was saying something, probably declaring Windale as her daughter’s guard to the people, but Bette was more focused on the way the crowd shifted and murmured. Her political maneuvering would have a new dimension now.
Leave it to Duchess Lycrarose to throw a curveball at Bette. Already, she was recalculating her approach. She needed to present a coherent message about who and what she was.
The most important thing about tonight was image. She needed to show them who she was and make it stick.
Windale offered the pillow to her mother, and the Duchess lifted the pendant first. The chain was long, long enough that it could be placed over her head even with the baubles and ornaments adorning her hair. It glimmered in strange ways when it caught the light. Tilting it subtly back and forth she saw that the plating for the gem was inscribed with runes. When she focused her senses, she could feel the pool of mana slowly filling within it.
A magic necklace? What did it do? She wanted to take it apart and examine the runes for herself.
“That’s from your uncle,” Windale informed her from the side, sotto voce. “And this is from me.”
They pulled the sword from the sheath at their side and held it out horizontally as they knelt before her.
“To her Highness Lisbette Drakuhl, my friend, my liege, I swear upon this bond forged in fire and the life you helped save— I will serve you faithfully. I will be a shield at your side and an arrow in your quiver.”
A knight’s oath.
She touched the necklace, thinking for a moment.
“I accept your fealty, Windale. Serve me faithfully and guard my back. Pray accept the surname Drake as a token of your loyalty to the crown and take your place as a Knight of Drakuhl. Now rise, Windale Drake.”
They did so, replacing the sword in its sheath as they did.
“You fool,” she told them with a bloodless smile. She widened her eyes and raised her brows. “You should have run when you had the chance.”
“Well, they feed me here, ye see,” they whispered back.
Some things were clicking into place.
So her Grace had gotten Windale an apprenticeship as gratitude for their actions on that day in Closkill. That was the reason they hadn’t left yet. It was why they were so busy lately. What nerve. What a marvel. They’d even spoken like a noble for the oath. Someone really worked them over.
The Duchess stepped forward then and Bette leveled herself. The cool metal of the tiara settled into her hair among the other adornments. She felt her mother’s fingers carefully arrange bits of her hair before she pulled away.
Bette turned to face the crowd. She had considered what she wanted to say for a long time, agonizing over the right words. They were a prelude to her political career, and they would show the people of Drakuhl what kind of ruler she wanted to be.
“To be presented and honored before my kith and kin of the noble North is the greatest gift that can ever be bestowed. It is you and yours, your storied houses and the people of your lands, that make this nation truly great. I swear to uphold our laws and protect our lands so that the steadfast spirit of the North will never fade,” she called out over the crowd, voice rising in tone and emotion as she did. “Long live Drakuhl!”
“Long live Drakuhl!” Her cry was echoed from every corner of the room. The knights and military types saluted along with their words.