The Wisterian

Chapter 3: Sanctity

Stol's harsh words echo as Briar slams the door to his office. The hinges squeal in protest.

Her father had loomed over her, somber, stern, and disappointed, stating his case clearly and concisely as if she were a mere subject in his kingdom and not his own daughter. Just another problematic peasant. His tattoos rippled with every emphatic gesture, his cheeks reddening as she refused to answer any of his tedious questions.

She stood there, allowing him to rant, silently yielding with her arms held rigidly behind her back. Until he went too far.

"You are too much like your mother!" He rumbled.

Briar's hands unclasped, shaking with magic. "I wouldn't know, would I?" Her voice cracked in all the wrong places. "You never talk about her."

She left him, visibly deflating, twisting his wedding ring around and around his index finger. His eyes a thousand miles away.

Stomping away, she lets out a long frustrated noise, glaring at the tapestry-covered floor rather than meeting the judgmental stares of nobles who don't know how to mind their own damn business.

If they think she's dramatic, they haven't met her father during one of his pedantic rants. He's always irked about something. So she took Leaf to the market unsupervised, so what. She's nineteen, not nine. Leaf would have gone with or without her. They can literally disappear anytime they want.

Not that Stol notices, not that Leaf would confide their growing magic to him. Why can't he understand it's safer for her to follow them? If Leaf stops trusting her. If they ran off without her...she would never forgive herself.

All Leaf wants is for someone to pay attention to them. As much as they disappear, trying to fade away into someone else, it's all an act. Their parents have been too selfish and their grandparent too preoccupied.

She tries her best for them, to listen, to love them, to keep track of them. Stol has no idea how easily lost they could be. How often they dream of running away. Maybe it would be different if her mother had stayed. Maybe he wouldn't be so damned bitter, so unrelentingly stubborn.

Briar's only seen her mother in paintings, happier times captured skillfully by gifted artisans. She can't recall what Bryony sounded like. Her brother always said she was even-keeled. That she kept their father fair and calm. But he also said they used to bicker, dividing the nobles with long debates regarding the laws, codex, and hoods.

Her mother wanted Stol to change the laws and move into more modern times. Resist their Kustarnik oppressors and free the kingdom from those ancient and terrible laws.

Her father refused to listen to reason. He clings to the memory of his conservative father, Aeonium. And although his heart may be in the right place, his world is too rooted in tradition for meaningful change.

More than anything, he fears provoking another war, like those he fought in his youth, desperate for his father's favor. His whole life cunningly guided by conservative men placed on the council by his father, and by Archeron, the Conservator, an official sent by Kustarnik to uphold the treaty.

Her mother hated Archeron, would never deign to share the same room as him, possibly the same wing of the castle.

So she left, because of the laws or not, or for some defect in her father or herself, no one can say for certain.

There are rumors her mother never meant to leave forever, that Stol closed the road after she fled for Blight and was unable to return. Other rumors insist Bryony's father was a pirate king and that she left to rule by his side.