“Fine,”I moaned, lifting my chin. “I’ll resist. For you.” But anxious, I touched the crown woven across my head.“Do I look alright?”
“Your mother’s mirror.”
Elías leaned his back against the corridor wall near an old oil rendering of the King, and I entered the room alone. The study was mostly books, some stacked in towers at various parts of the chamber, others used as weights to pin the corners of maps against their surfaces. My father loved maps.
“Your Majesty?” I asked quietly.
He was scribbling in his journal, his emerald plume scratching back and forth distractingly. At the end of his thought, he took a jagged breath and paused, perhaps a sigh for my interruption. Then, he looped a final word and dotted his punctuation before looking up from it.
“That rusty suit of armor said you were waiting on me,” he said.
“Who?” I asked.
“The tall one,” he replied.
“Ser Willoughby?” I asked. He nodded. “Does he have red hair? I thought it was more blond.”
“What?”
“You called it rust… Nevermind. Good morning, sir,” I said.
“What is it that you need?” Father asked. He took another painfully deep, painfully obvious inhale.
“You’re tired,” I said. He ignored the comment. “You are. No surprise there. You’ve been burning the candle at both ends, Your Majesty. You should rest.”
Very plainly, he replied, “I will rest when I’m dead, Svana. However, I have too much work to do. So, on with it. What do you need?”
“But–”
The leather groaned as he sat back in his chair. “Should you not have left by now?” He gestured toward the window with his quill. “It’s nearly noon.”
“Aye, yes. It is nearly noon, but,” I stopped, then suddenly had to clear my throat. I glanced at his book.
“Would you like to know what I'm working on?” he asked.
“Some sort of reform?” I guessed. I tried to remind myself of Elías’s advice.
“It’s far more important than that,” he said.
“Your Majesty, I have some concerns.”
“About the trip?” he asked. “Or the quorum?” He set the pen down to steeple his hands.
I was scared of him, of his opinion, of saying stupid words and being labeled as their equal, of the eight and ten years that had come for me, and of the fact that no magical veil of confidence had accompanied them. I had been convinced it would, but it hadn’t, and I was petrified by what that meant.
Iron does not shatter, Svana,I thought.Stupid queens are still queens.
My prayer did nothing to ease my worry. I began to wonder how he might dissect me in the moment. I thought to illuminate my own faults before he could, acknowledge that I had no wager I’d do well at within my journey. Father cast his gaze over me, then commented on my frock, an outright attempt to fill the screaming void.
“You’ve started quite the trend here in Ísfjall,” he noted. “With your pastels. One of the debutantes was in a similar color the other day. The Foster girl, what’s her name?”
“I,” I frowned. “There’s five of them, sir. I wouldn’t know where to start guessing…. What did she look like?”
“Like the other four,” he said.
“Uhm,” I stammered. “Uh, I thank you for your notice,” I said. It was quiet. “...I do find yellow invigorating this time of year. This is called canary. It's quite simple to obtain. At least, I hear it is. I don’t actually dye the linen myself. But it is popular in town to do so. To… dye… one’s clothes. Fabrics, really. There’s a stall sometimes at the faire where you can see the process.”
“I think I’ve seen it.”
