Of Summer and Winter

I. The Last True Silence

Elaair twists my thick, brown hair around a cylindrical hairpiece. I gaze at my reflection in the mirror, toying with the idea that maybe, just maybe, I could cover up that scar…

“You look stunning, your majesty,” Elaair smiles, reading my mind perfectly. Her dark eyes, however, are filled with nothing but concern and glimpses of the dark past we had both seen and shared.

“Elaair, please don’t lie. I’ve got too many liars surrounding me already, what with the court and their cursed games.”

“Consider my lies practice for today. You have delegates arriving from all the Isles.” This time Elaair speaks sincerely, not out of false emotion given only to calm and comfort.

I nod numbly, hoping she won’t see the war between my thoughts. It was your scar that made you so bitter about life, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t you just be born without it? Would it ruin some great plan of the gods?

“Done!” Elaair exclaims, pulling me over to a larger mirror. I stare at the dress, fascinated by how such things were even possible to design, let alone create. The skirt is composed of several curved overskirts resembling the wings of a monarch butterfly, Zyle’s royal emblem, each one stitched with twinkling orange gems. They are draped gently over a gauzy underskirt the color of the stormy sky to match my simple bodice. Elaair has somehow piled half of my hair into an intricately braided roll at the top and left the other half down. Zyle’s royal diadem is worked into it, a golden headdress with thin chains swooping around my head.

I try to forget the scar that ruins the illusion.

“If only your mother were here to see you now, not only a woman but a queen, too.”

“Yes, she would have,” I muse, hit by a thick wave of nostalgia. My mother’s warm hands and soft smell, her worn, kind eyes, how she refused even the idea of a nurse and raised me herself, how she would hold me close after Lunnd was done flinging mockeries at me fill my head. How she had still looked beautiful when laid in the tomb next to Father and Lunnd, after being mysteriously found dead in their beds. I remember celebrating until I heard my mother and father had died.

A blessing and a curse.

“Queen Opa was a remarkable lady. You were fortunate to have her as a mother.”

If only she’d lived a little longer.

Madok enters my room with a flourish, bringing with him the high amount of addictive energy that always seems to surround him, weaving into his bright blue eyes, almost identical to mine and Rhoyn’s.

“All hail Queen Legannia of Zyle!” he trumpets, bowing with a gallant flourish and a jaunty grin.

“And what troubles my brother so that he would break into a lady’s dressing room?” I inquire, raising an eyebrow in mock prudishness.

“You’re late.” he says, dropping the cheery facade like a crashing boulder.

“Good luck receiving the delegates, milady,” Elaair says, all too familiar with my boredom in such events.

Madok offers my his arm. “I’m quite excited for this affair,” he confesses as we walk down the halls of Summerhall.

“What, how we’re going to fight a war against magic of ice and snow?”

“No, how you’re going to host a ball for all the royal beauties attending the grim council of war.”

I tense internally. “Madok, a woman’s treasure lies not in the face but in the heart. We’ve been through this before.” And indeed we have.