Helena's Legion (EDITING)

ONE

"Your Majesty."

Helena pulls herself out of her slumber and towards the warm hand on her shoulder. Several blinks reveal General Noreen at her side, withholding a grimace as he watches her. She jerks her head from the chair arm, wincing at the strained muscle in her neck. Her toes reach for the floor, taken aback by the cold stone. Behind her, a log splits in the slow-burning fire.

Helena stands and stumbles across her room, bracing herself on one of the four posters of her bed frame as she pulls her dressing gown from the tangles of the quilt. Her brain screams against her skull, and she wipes her nose against the back of her hand.

General Noreen inspects the side table beside the armchair, where a pestle sits loose from its mortar, covered in a white substance. He looks up at his Queen, bent over at the end of her bed, and places the grinder back in its bowl. Helena pretends to not know what he's thinking.

"Couldn't you have gotten one of the maids to wake me," Helena says, her voice scratchy from dehydration. "Or did you want to see me in my undergarments?" She shuffles to the water jug on her nightstand and pours herself an icy glass. It burns on her cracked lips.

"Sorry, Your Majesty."

Helena tiptoes to where her dress lies beside her dressing table. She shivers as the robe comes off, as though she's been dipped into an ice bath, and drags the dress on. General Noreen pulls a curtain open with a snap behind her. A glance in her mother's mirror reveals long tangled white hair, which she tugs a brush through, pausing to trace a finger on the mirror's silver detailing. Ice blue eyes watch her from her reflection, from a face she's grown to despise; a face that isn't meant to be hers, with its stern bones and cold-blooded veins. She looks away and tightens her corset, watching her second in command, her right hand, as he politely looks out the leaded glass.

She joins the General at the window and squints down at the snow-covered stone of the castle, the snow-covered gardens, the snow-covered city, the snow-covered river, the snow-covered mountains.

"Let's go, Marcus," says Helena, forcing her eyes from all the blinding whiteness. General Noreen bows his head and gestures to the door.

They descend the endless staircases to the Great Hall, where the slender floor to ceiling windows throw the eternal winter sun onto the grotesque gathering of courtiers. Two maids rush up behind Helena before she enters, one draping her robe, ice blue like her eyes, around her shoulders, and the other running a brush through her hair before placing a simple band made from chrome atop her head. It is cold and tight on her forehead, turning the throbbing behind her eyes into a pounding ache.

General Noreen enters the bustling, murmuring Hall and steps onto the dais, where three thrones of light oak, laden with furs, sit facing the room. The General calls the attention of the Hall, which falls silent.

"Please welcome Her Majesty, Queen Helena Harp of Eala." The Hall roars.

Helena inhales shakily and walks out of the room and onto the dais. She approaches the middle throne and sits, leaning heavily back in the seat. The applause dies as Helena looks at the two white-haired children in the chairs either side of her. Rowena smiles at her, her hair in a long braid over her shoulder, and little Christopher marvels at the armoured guards standing either side of the stage, his legs barely reaching the ground.

General Noreen begins the list of Royal queries. He calls forward quarrelling neighbours, landlords and tenants, courtiers with requests, suitors presenting themselves to the young Princess Rowena, sometimes to the even younger Prince Christopher. No one dares to present themselves as a suitor for the Queen. The last time someone did that, Helena had them chained in those frost-biting dungeon cells for a month.