The Chosen One (The First Book)

Chapter 1

Aurelia’s POV

Five months ago…

The proclamation arrived on a Tuesday morning. By noon, every unmarried woman between eighteen and twenty-five in the kingdom knew the Crown had called for them. By sunset, half the kingdom was talking about nothing else.

I was chopping carrots when my mother came through the kitchen door with a piece of parchment clenched in her fingers, and the look on her face told me enough before she said a word.

I set the knife down. “What happened?”

“They’re choosing wives.”

I stared at her. “For the princes?”

She nodded, and I waited for the rest of it, the part where she told me this was some other family’s problem. It didn’t come. So I laughed, because there was no other sensible response to give.

“They won’t choose me.”

My mother didn’t laugh with me. “They’re not asking whether you want to be chosen, Lia.”

That made me stop.

She held the parchment out, royal seal pressed into the wax at the bottom, and I didn’t need to read all of it. I’d already heard enough on the road, every woman in the village required to register, eighteen to twenty-five, unmarried, healthy. Two princes. Two marriages. One Selection.

I handed it back. “No.”

“No?”

“I have work.”

“You can work at the palace.”

“Mother.”

She folded the parchment slowly, not quite looking at me. “You promised me you’d try. I know it isn’t fair to hold you to it. I’m holding you to it anyway.”

That, at least, was honest.

I looked past her, out the kitchen window, where the fields stretched toward the forest still silver with morning frost. Three baskets of laundry waited outside. The hens needed feeding. The roof over the east side of the house still leaked, and there was flour enough for maybe another week if we were careful.

The palace was several days from here. The idea of me standing among the daughters of dukes and counts was almost funny.

“I’ll be eliminated immediately.”

“Probably,” my mother agreed, and shrugged like that settled it. “Then you’ll have kept your promise.”

I sighed. That was how, three days later, I ended up standing in a line of women outside the royal registration hall, wondering exactly how my life had gone so wrong so quickly.

The looks on their faces almost made me laugh again. They stood straighter than usual, dresses pressed, hair pinned and braided as though a prince might round the corner at any moment and fall hopelessly in love with them on sight. Every instinct I had was telling me to turn around and walk home.

The line moved slowly. Women from every village in the district had been gathered here, packed together under the cold morning sky like this was some kind of lottery. Maybe, in a way, it was.

Every one of them had a reason for being here. For some it meant silk and a place in the palace. For others it meant food on the table, a warm house through winter, a life without counting sacks of grain before the first snow. I understood that better than most of them probably guessed, looking at me. I just didn’t want it for myself.

I took another step forward. I didn’t know their names or their stories, but I could see the hope in most of their faces, and I didn’t blame them for it. Some of them might really be chosen. Might go home with enough gold to save a family from a hard winter. It was a good enough reason to stand in a cold courtyard at dawn.

I just wanted to go home, finish chopping my carrots, and if I had any say in the matter at all, never see a prince in my life.