The Nine Princesses Novel

Chapter 4: The System

It didn't take long to write the reply. Not by Maelyn's standards, at least. An hour might have seemed long to someone else to produce a few lines of writing, but it was the shaking of her hands that troubled her most. She hated herself for being afraid of him.

She always had been. Her mother had told her things, not shared with her sisters, that so repulsed Maelyn she'd been almost angry at her mother for telling it. "As the next queen, you must know what he is," her mother had said. "I pray you'll never have to contend with him alone."

So much for her prayers.

Maelyn stood up from the writing desk and glanced around the library, comfortably cluttered with padded reading chairs, miniscule tables, and towering shelves of books. Her sanctuary. She had only a few minutes before she must reappear, calm and confident, before the world. A woman, a near-queen. But at this moment, she felt herself to be exactly what she was: just a girl of eighteen who was desperately needing the reassurance of her parents.

A shallow wooden chest rested on a shelf midway up one of the bookcases. Maelyn crossed the room and unlocked it. From the box she removed a worn and tattered journal, lifting it with reverent fingers. She settled into the nearest chair and opened to the first page. Her smile softened at the firm handwriting, comforting as the face of a friend.

Once there was a king so enchanted by his beautiful bride that he named his realm anew, calling it Runa in her honor.

The king gave his precious queen all her heart could ask, but one. She longed for a daughter. Nightly the couple prayed, but for several years the nursery sat as empty as the queen's arms.

In their fifth year, a terrible fever struck the realm, bringing death to nearly every household. In desperation, the king journeyed to nine distant kingdoms in hope of finding a cure. But like a filthy cloak, the fever covered them all.

Before turning back, the king chanced upon a small child, the sole survivor of her village. An idea sprouted in his mind. He could not cure the fever, but perhaps the hole in the queen's heart.

Months later the king returned home and presented his astonished queen with not one, but nine baby girls. "One from each kingdom I visited," said the king. "They are orphans."

The queen wept joyously at the row of cradles, each bearing a sleeping infant. After bestowing a kiss on each child's forehead, she said, "Now they are princesses."

Maelyn returned her father's journal to the chest. She'd been the oldest baby in that row of cradles – about three years of age when Father found her outside her village. Arialain had been less than a week, frail and born too early. Nine girls from nine kingdoms, orphaned by nameless strangers. Suddenly they became sisters, bound not by blood, but by their parents' love.

She raised her eyes to a large portrait of King Dellan hanging on the wall above the desk. It had been painted only a few years before his death, and Maelyn wanted to bless the artist for capturing so perfectly the intensity of her father's eyes.

"You never saw us as orphans," she whispered, addressing the image of her father. "You called us 'hidden princesses.' Born in other lands, waiting for you to find us." She smiled weakly. "But Father, many do not see us this way. I never knew how many... until you were gone."

*********

This was not the messenger she had expected. Uncle Jarrod always sent the same one, a stocky man of middle age, with thick hair, low on his brow. Dull and non-threatening, which Maelyn liked.

"Where's Rowan?" she asked.

"Red Fever took him. Quite recently," said the messenger before her throne. A tall, blonde man who'd introduced himself as Willow. He looked to be about the same age as Maelyn.