Destined Path

Chapter Two: Destined Path

I felt like a butterfly pinned to a board, being inspected by everyone in the room. One in particular. She wouldn't stop gawking at me, her faultlessly fined eyebrows cocked over large, doe eyes gloomier than night. Her skin was so fine and smoothed, I could see the branching veins underneath. Her eyelashes were abnormally lengthier on the top than on the bottom, and her eyes were finely accentuated with kohl, extending out the sides to make her eyelashes seem so much longer. Her lips were petite, although I didn't know if they were like that or were thin due to her tightening them in critical analyzation of me. They were coated a dark red, almost burgundy. Her hair was once naturally a browner shade of blonde, like her sons', but I had heard she had taken vanity to a Saxon hair treatment to lighten your hair. I would say hers was nearly as pallid as my own. Her hair was pulled tightly into a creative arrangement of braids and buns; I thought it looked pretty but must be quite excruciating on her scalp. The blinding crown threaded somehow into it, burned my eyes every time it met the sun's rays.

Her gown was a brilliance of scarlet, it streamed about her effortlessly. She looked every morsel the regal queen sporting it as she was. It flourished off her shoulders, cinched at her tiny waist to flare out in a dramatic exhibition of lustered fabric. It was trimmed with pale fur at every seam and sparkled with beads, jewels and ornamental embellishments all over. The remarkable ensemble made me feel like an insignificant larva in contrast. In my loose dusky cobalt gown I looked more like a Roman servant than a monarch. My hair held a single braid down the centre of my back leaving the rest loose. The gown adhered to my body, as it draped loosely, the sides of my breasts were bare and most of my back except what the steam of encrusted sapphire beads covered before it broadened into the skirt. I was sure the opaque fabric covered everything but it didn't mean that the shape of my body wasn't still visible. Show it off, my mother had said. By the look of the future king's, my apparent soon-to-be husband face I was unquestionably presenting something. I half expected him to ask me to take it off from how much he eyed. And if I read him distinctly enough, he ether didn't want to admit that he peeked my way so much or he didn't know he was doing it. One look at his mother and I knew what she believed of my appearance. Her eyes spat 'whore' all over me.

Her daughter, Alexan's older sister, took pity on me. Making sure I was comfortable and that I was involved in conversations when everyone spoke their language I didn't understand. Princess Emery was a sweet natured woman. It was my older brother Erik, who pointed her out to me when my family escorted me to the larger than life meeting hall. She was what every future queen should look like; kind, gentle smile, formally, pinned up hair the same dark blonde as her two brothers. And her eyes were the same too. Bright in the core and darkly rimmed a deep blue. She wore a very modest, dainty emerald gown, yet it suited her wonderfully. I smiled timidly at her and she beamed radiantly back. Well, at least I have a friend. I won't be completely isolated and abandoned.

I didn't know why I was 'asked', more like summoned, to take greetings of the morn with them. I was unaccustomed of the food, and entirely disregarded or spoken over. If, they bothered speaking tongue I understood. I just sat, drank some water since I rebuffed wine, and nibbled on whatever it was I was being fed.

It took me a while, but I began to be increasingly aware that the King hadn't taken his eyes off me. I peered up and received those pale eyes, narrowing my own in a silent threat to stop gawking at me. The wrinkled man's face curved with an amused smirk. For someone who appeared so antediluvian, I didn't think he was relatively old. His sons, the twins, Alexan and Jaymen, were both the manned age of eighteen. And Emery couldn't be more than twenty or just over. I wouldn't say he was out of his forties. I frowned into my cup; I had noted that the second son was rarely seen. It was said that when they were born into this world, that Alexan was born an infant blessed by the Gods with the spirit of a stallion and the regal pride of a lion and power of a silverback. But the brother born after him was purpled, with the fear of being a changeling. One was born lucky, the other lucky to be born.