She lowers her feet and presses her side to the door, her ear in the opening between the door and frame.
“The servants received the warning, Your Highness. Anyone caught speaking to her will find themselves strung up by their thumbs for a week if not put to death immediately.”
“Good,” her father’s voice answers. “Princesses do not consort with servants. She needs to learn to make friends with the ladies of court rather than the staff.”
“I couldn't agree more, sir.” His chief advisor, Lord Byron Dolomite, sounds enthusiastic.
“See to it that her toys burn, too. I want her to focus less on running amok through the palace and more on her readings. She is to become the Queen of the Ridge someday.”
Avina backs away from his office and the library. Tears well in her eyes as she flies toward the eastern tower—the Queen’s Wing.
Here, in her mother’s old chambers, she sought regular solace by sitting beneath the lovely portrait of her mother, Viktoria Redwood, with her warm eyes. Avina often wonders what words of wisdom she would have given her daughter.
However, her mother’s portrait no longer hung proudly above the door to her old chambers. Avina’s world is cracking at the seams. First, her friends, then her father cutting off all of her happiness, and now this.
Her eyes focus on the empty space on the wall where her mother’s lovely smile looked down on Avina for as long as she could remember.
No, it must be here somewhere.
Avina desperately searches for the portrait, leading her into the late Queen's dusty chambers. Her tiny feet ominously creek along the tower's wooden floorboards. All the furniture remains draped in sheets and covered in a thick layer of grime, as it has been since her death when Avina was born.
But there is no portrait.
Avina collapses in a corner. Her feet tug close to her chest, and her arms wrap around her knees.
I can hide here forever until a prince rescues me.
Crack.
Avina shifts in time for another loud crack to echo dangerously. At the third crack, Avina screams as her tiny body plunges to the floor below.
“Ouch.” She stretches, having landed on a moth-eaten rug covering a floor of more wooden squeaky floorboards.
The new space is much smaller compared to her mother’s sitting room, with lower ceilings and only slits for windows. Unlike the grand furniture above, this room is for storage, with chests shoved against nearly every movable area. Avina climbs over a large square container to clutch the handle of the singular door.
She twists, and her chest constricts. “No. No!” Someone locked the door from the outside.
Avina rocks back and forth, clutching her chest as the feeling of being smothered sets in, and she gasps for air as she cries. Her teetering sets her on the edge until she crumples upon the floor in a heap of tears.
Does anyone care about me?
The setting sun casts an orange glow in the tiny circular room. Avina has slept most of her time inside the storage room and awakes to the evening sun twinkling in her eyes. As the evening light descends into the western sky, she is hunting for candles.
Avina coughs as dust assaults her senses. The lid of a small chest lays against the stone wall, revealing a collection of papers and one pillar candle.
She dives for the matchbox and candle when she catches parchment bearing her name scrawled in her father’s handwriting. Settling back on the balls of her feet, she withdraws a piece of paper with the words ‘Marriage Alliance’ blazing across the top.
Her eyes drink in the declaration, and she quickly realizes she is reading a marriage agreement between herself and a prince of Treland. Scrawled between her name and a torn edge is the future wedding date: her twenty-third nameday.
Avina flops onto the rug in the center of the room and reads over the document. Her father's scrawling hand is at the bottom, along with someone else whose name is illegible.
Is that a ‘T,’she wonders,or a ‘U?’Did King Urien from the TimberProvince or King Thord of the Salt Province promise one of their sons to wed me?
“Princess Avina will hereby be wed to Prince…” She reads the testimony only to realize the Prince’s name is missing—not struck out or crossed off but chewed off the page by a mouse. That side of the page also bears marks of a province seal.
She lay alone in the dark room, staring at the marriage contract between her and her mystery prince. She hugs the paper, imagining his identity. Does he like animals, too? Would he love her in a way no one else ever would?
“Shadow? Shadow?” A young man’s voice calls from above.
