The Nine Princesses Novel

Chapter 2: Throne Princess

Maelyn sat on the side of her mother's bed, the unrolled parchment dropped by her foot. She raised her hands and pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes.

Uncle Jarrod was coming.

He'd heard about the servants. Of course he had. What amazed her was that she had managed to keep it secret for so long. She wondered who had told him. Any of the nobles in Merridell would have done it with pleasure. They had always hated her – hated all of them.

She turned her head to look at the crown resting on the pillow. The sapphire crown, so called because of the night-blue gems bedecking its points of white gold. Her mother's crown. It had lain on that pillow untouched since her death and would go on the head of the next queen.

Four years since the death of her mother, Runa. They said it was Red Fever. Barely two years since the death of her father, Dellan. Maelyn wished – she knew it sounded callous – but she wished he had clung to life a bit longer. If she had been in her twentieth year when he died, she would now be queen. But that day was over a year off and much could happen.

Uncle Jarrod could happen.

Maelyn heard the faint wang-wang of the bell, calling her and the others to breakfast. She wasn't ready. Perhaps she should not have come into this room, but the aura of her mother's presence always gave her solace. Her mother had been so proud of the idea that Maelyn would one day be queen of this realm – Runa Realm. Rechristened in her honor many years ago.

Light footsteps trailed along the corridor, just beyond the closed door, and she heard a ripple of cheerful conversation. They weren't worried, her sisters. Grieving for their parents, of course. Confused by what the servants had done. But none of them seemed to question the solidity of their future or imagine their way of life could ever truly be threatened. Yet the threat had come, in a few sentences of black ink and a royal seal stamped at the bottom.

She would have to tell her sisters.

Sighing, Maelyn scooped up the parchment and hastily rolled it, crunching the center with her fist. She left her mother's room and walked at a sharp clip back to her own chamber. Arialain had surprised Maelyn with the message that morning, and Maelyn had not even finished putting up her hair.

In her bedchamber, Maelyn dropped the crumpled parchment onto her writing desk and lifted her hands to her hair. As always, she twisted the thick waves of brown into a swirl at the back of her head, stabbing in several pins to hold it in place. She only used the mirror to make sure her crown was straight, and to fasten her earrings. Barely two hours remained before she would have to appear in the throne room.

She heard the wang-wang again, harsher now. Heidel was getting annoyed. Maelyn hurried through the corridors and descended the stone steps of the main staircase, steering around the sprawling cats who did not so much as shift a paw to allow her passage. The cats had never been her favorites.

Her morning tarnished, Maelyn would have preferred to crawl beneath her coverlet and not face the day at all. Incredible, how one note from Uncle Jarrod could crack the thin shell of her confidence. She now anticipated with distaste the hours she would spend in the throne room and hoped the visitors would be few. The peasants she did not mind so much. It was the nobles who offended her with their frosty eyes, telling her with each disdainful blink that she wasn't real.

But in some ways, they were right.

Maelyn was not the queen. Not even a real princess.Dellan and Runa had not been her real parents. And the eight sisters she was about to join for breakfast were not really her sisters at all.