"You're awfully late, Phillip," my mother said as I threw my soaking overcoat across the armchair sitting directly inside the door to my quarters.
I ignored her at first, sitting down to untie the laces of my wet boots and slip them off. "Why are you in my room, Mother?"
She came forward from the shadows and her extravagantly long, dark hair swept the ground beside her. "I came to awaken you for breakfast, but it seems I was late. An early morning or late night?"
"Which would make Her Royal Highness happy?" I asked as I lounged back in the chair, my arms crossed behind my head.
"You saw her again, didn't you?" She sat on the bed, fanning the skirts of her dress out beside her before turning her heavy gaze into mine.
I studied my fingernails, which still held the dirt of the forest underneath them. That always happened when we met there. I always returned home a little too dirty for a royal. It wasn't like that would stop me, though. None of this would stop me. From the moment I first saw Rosalie, I knew I never wanted to live without her. We were just children, but even children have a way of understanding those things. It was pure. It's still pure. But now, the feelings have shifted from the love of best friends to the love of the betrothed.
If only my father could put aside his petty differences with the Western Kingdom without my marriage to their princess. If only I was free to love Rosalie how I wanted—how I needed—to love her. Yes, there would still be complications. I don't know how to get to her when she is awake, and this losing sleep most nights has taken a toll on me. But we could figure it out. I know we could.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
The fire in her eyes raged as she sat forward. "Phillip, do not lie to me. I am your mother."
"You," I said, standing and putting as much distance between us as possible, "are the Queen of the Eastern Kingdom. Your duty is not to your son but your people."
She walked forward, the hard line of her face set. Despite her small form, her large presence pinned me in place in the corner like a small child. "As should yours be. You cannot continue this. This peasant girl of yours—fictional or real—is just a distraction from your calling. Mother Fate does not make mistakes."
"If you are done, Mother, Gourmand will be here soon. I would like to get ready in peace." He may have been the only person in this Kingdom who understood what I was going through, the old scholar. He never once doubted me, not even as a small child rambling about the strange girl I met in the woods. He believed in her as much as I did and our lessons, although fruitful for my eventual reign, often turned to discussions of finding a way to get to her while she was awake.
"Gourmand is employed by the Court. He will wait if we need him to wait." But she was already moving to the door even as her air of insolence filled the room.
She gave me one last untrusting glance before she shut the door behind her and I let my shoulders relax.
Duty.
Responsibility.
Rule.
Those words, and the ideals behind them, had been forced upon me since birth. Since that old hag Mother Fate opened her mouth and cursed me to a life that wasn't my own.
Staring out of the massive windows, I took in the full view of my future kingdom. The smell of the baker's bread as he prepared his stock for the day, the children laughing as they walked to school, even the clacking sound of horseshoes against the cobblestone—it centered me. Grounded me.
I loved Rosalie. It was the truest fact I'd ever known. But I loved this place too, and it's people. I didn't want to rule them. I didn't want to be seen as above them. I wanted to be a part of them.
I wanted to swim in the river just beyond the castle walls with the other boys my age, to shop in the open-air markets and haggle with the dealers, to feel the sun burn my skin as I worked alongside them in the fields.
It was futile though, those wants. A future King would never allow for such a breakdown of the perception of power. To dwell among the peasants would be viewed as weakness. It would shatter the all too fragile illusion of our control.
But my mother and father controlled nothing. I knew it. The people at court knew it. But their subjects did not, and that's what mattered. As long as they believed their benevolent King was on their side when they needed him the most, they remained in happy ignorance, sheep being led to the slaughter.
It was why Mother hated Rosalie, or even the notion of Rosalie, so much. They needed me to marry this stranger. This girl I'd never met. This girl none of us had ever met.
Gourmand burst through the door, nearly spilling his scrolls in the process. "Sir, I apologize for my tardiness."
He kneeled in front of me, and I scoffed. "Get off the floor, Gourmand. It's just us here."
His wary eyes darted around the room before settling back on me. "I—they said the Queen was here."
I gestured to the surrounding room. "And yet she is not."
He walked over to the desk in the room's corner and spread out the worn scrolls. "Thank—I mean, I am glad we can dive right into your lessons. I have some things to show you."
Old maps, much older than me or even the separation of the Kingdoms, laid on the table before me. A bubble of hope formed at the pit of my stomach and I squashed it as quickly as it rose. For years we'd be searching with little results. "Have you uncovered something?"
"Only that before the land was divided, it was believed that the very same forest you meet her in every night was to be the land of the mystical." His wrinkly old finger pointed to a spot in the center of the map where lines diverged in a fractal pattern. "Here. This is where all the ley lines meet. These are thought to be the source of all magic. This is supposedly the place where Mother Fate brought the Sisters to life."
My brow furrowed as I stole a glance at him and then back down to the map. "The missing Sisters of Nature?" How strange that I'd just spoken about them earlier, after not thinking about them for... well, since Gormond's lesson about them.
The pointed red-velvet hat nearly slipped from his head and his gray curly hair escaped from under it as he nodded vigorously.
I crossed my arms over my chest as I looked at him with confusion. "So, you think Rosalie is one of the Fairy Sisters?"
"No, no." He opened another scroll and set it on top of the map. This scroll had no images, just script in an old forgotten language. "According to this, there are only three sisters."
"How do you mean, three?" I knew of the Sisters of Nature. But that only accounted for two—one for the plants and the others for the animals.
"Ah, yes. You would forget her. You are so young. She's been hiding. Up there brooding on the mountain for as long as one could remember. Come, child. Walk with me. You still have lots to learn before becoming King."
As we walked down and down the old spiral staircase, the lights became dimmer, the air became colder, and if I wasn't mistaken even Gourmand became a little more nervous with each step leading us underground.
"When your parents and I were just babes, the war between the Kingdoms had raged so long that we were all feeling the effects. People were dying of hunger, our troops were few, and our problems were many."
His torch threw shadows on the stone walls as the last of the natural light disappeared. Something scuttled by at my feet, but I couldn't see the source—just a blob of darkness running by.
"Your grandfather, the warrior King that he was, enlisted the help of the third Nature Sister. Raphella, the Sister of the Cold Bloods."
He whispered her name like it was a long-kept secret. Like the very mention of her would draw her down on us.
"I am assuming things did not go as planned."
"I have taught you well then. Raphella did not just give advice and aid as the other sisters did for the Western Kingdom. She joined the battle, and she brought her children with her to do the same." He titled his torch towards a large tapestry hanging on the wall. A large, winged reptile was embroidered in golden thread at that center, his head nearly six times my own. Destructive fire blazed from his nostrils and drenched a stone wall in flames.
I ran a finger over the scene in front of me. "What are they?"
"Dragons. She called them dragons. Her most precious creation. They laid waste to the Western Kingdom. Burning their crops until they could never be fertile again. The serpents and other venomous creatures in her domain didn't stop at the soldiers, they killed everything they could find. It was as much a slight to her Sisters as it was the Western Kingdom."
"So, she's not exactly a team player."
He chuckled, but it sounded flat, as if the fear was choking his laugh before it could ever form. "She never has been. Her domain isn't the most popular, you see. Everyone wants their plants to grow. No one minds the adorable chipmunks. But you let one snake into a party and see what happens."
"So why would my grandfather work with her?" I asked as the walkway ended abruptly in a circular room filled with discarded artifacts of war. More canvases depicted scenes of slaughter. Thousands set aflame or poisoned. "When he knew what she would do, why put his people, or any people, through that? To kill all of those people."
Gourmand looked at his pointed shoes instead of directly at me. "He was desperate. Desperate people do stupid things."
I shook my head in disbelief. Even without holding the title, I knew this wasn't something I'd ever do as King. "There is always another way."
He placed his weathered hand on my shoulder, a little of a reach for him because of our height difference. "I'm glad you understand that. He did not."
"I've seen enough," I said, shaking out from his grip and heading back for the stairs. "What does this have to do with Rosalie? If she isn't a Sister of Nature, why would I see her in the forest?"
"It is possible, unlikely but possible, that Mother Fate has created her to test you."
I spun on him, the narrow staircase making the movement awkward. "Gourmand, you cannot be serious. I thought you were the only one who believed me that she isn't some illusion. She's real. I'm just not sure where she is real."
"I do believe you, Phillip. But Mother Fate could very easily make you believe something that is not true. She is incredibly powerful. Let's go over it again." He placed the torch in a metal frame bolted to the stone wall and leaned back, settling in for a long conversation. "We know she visits the forest a few nights a week, but not all. She seems to know nothing of our Kingdom or your status. You are the only one who has seen her, but yet anything of hers you try to bring back disappears with sunlight. Does she tell you nothing of her village?"
"She is from Atlanta, but you know that our search for that village in any of the kingdoms has come up fruitless. She plays a musical instrument known as a guitar, but again, I have found nothing like this in our research. It's like she's not even from this world."
The old man's eyes seemed to glimmer. "Lessons are over for today. I have some studying to do." He ran up the stairs, all signs of aging erased with his excitement.
"Where are you going?" I shouted after him.
He didn't even slow his pace. "To the fountain of eternal knowledge, my prince."
I tried to speed up, but it was still dark and he had taken the only torch. "Should I accompany you on your quest?"
"The library, good sir. I am only going to the library," his voice echoed down from somewhere far above me on the stone spiral staircase.