Of Thorns and Ruins

They said Aurelith had two suns. One hung high above the white marble city, fierce and gold and indifferent. The other lived inside the Briar Palace, behind walls of glass and vine, and she smiled. Her name was Seraphine Lysandra Vael, and on the morning of her nineteenth birthday, the entire kingdom had come to see her shine. "Princess! My Princess! Look here!" "Sun bless you, Princess Seraphine!" "Golden Princess!" The voices rose from the lower courtyard like a tide. Seraphine stood on the high balcony of the Sunward Wing, her hands resting lightly on the warm stone balustrade, and looked down at ten thousand faces turned up to her. Nobles in silk, merchants in wool, children barefoot in the dust, all of them crammed together because a rumor had spread that the Princess would appear at noon. They were right. She always appeared. Behind her, the great doors sighed open. "You are making them wait," said King Edric Vael, the Sun-King of Aurelith. He did not raise his voice. He never needed to. "A princess should never be late. It teaches the common folk that their time is as valuable as ours." Seraphine didn't turn. She smiled down at the crowd, and a fresh cheer erupted. "I like making them wait, Father," she said softly, so only he could hear. "It makes the cheering louder when I finally show up." Her father chuckled. That was his favorite kind of answer — clever, a little cruel, princely. He came to stand beside her. He was a handsome man still, his beard more silver than gold now, his crown a simple band of sunsteel. When he placed his hand over hers on the balustrade, his palm was warm, dry, and heavy with rings. "Look at them," he murmured, surveying his people like a man admiring a prized horse. "They love you. Truly. I have seen queens twice your beauty who could not command this kind of adoration. The Priestess was right the day you were born." Seraphine knew the story by heart. Every child in Aurelith did. When Princess Seraphine was born, she did not cry. The High Sun Priestess took her from the Queen's arms, held her up to the light streaming through the temple dome, and said: This child is Sun-Blessed. All who look upon her will love her. All who know her will worship her. It had been a prophecy. It had been a burden. It had been a cage made of golden words. "All who look upon me will love me," Seraphine said, watching a little girl in the front row wave a crown of wilted daisies. "That's what she said, wasn't it? She never said anything about whether I was allowed to love them back." "Seraphine." "I'm joking," she said quickly, turning that famous, radiant smile on him. It was a practiced thing, bright enough to make the court poets weep, and her father relaxed. "You look beautiful," he said, finally really looking at her. "Just like your mother." She was beautiful. Today, intentionally so. Her gown was not the heavy, embroidered velvet the court ladies favored, but a river of cloth the color of liquid sunrise, held at her shoulders with two simple golden pins shaped like suns. Her hair — that famous hair that poets compared to spun honey and molten gold — had been left almost entirely loose, falling past her waist in soft waves, only two thin braids pulled back to keep it from her face. On her head, not the heavy state crown, but the thin circlet she loved, delicate as a whisper. She looked like what she was: nineteen, golden, untouched by war or winter or unkindness. A princess from a storybook. "Where is Lucien's envoy?" she asked. "I thought Prince Lucien would send a gift by now. If I'm to marry the man, he could at least send better jewels than last time. That last necklace made me look jaundiced." Her father laughed, a real laugh this time. "Lucien is sailing from Valedore as we speak. He will be here for the engagement ball in seven days. And then, my love, you will be not only Princess of Aurelith, but the future Queen of the Northern Seas. Our two kingdoms, united. A golden age." Seven days. Engagement. Queen. The words settled over her shoulders heavier than any crown. She looked back down at the crowd to avoid her father's gaze. That was when she saw her. Near the palace gates, where the guards were trying to hold the line, an old woman had been knocked down. Her basket had overturned, apples rolling everywhere across the white stone, being crushed under eager feet. No one stopped. Everyone was too busy looking up. Without a thought, Seraphine gathered her sunrise gown in her fists — a fortune in silk that her maid had spent three hours steaming — and ran. "Seraphine! What are you—" King Edric hissed, but she was already gone, her bare feet slapping the cool marble as she tore through the antechamber, down the spiraling stairs, past startled guards who didn't dare stop a running princess. She burst into the courtyard in a flash of gold, and the crowd gasped as one, like a single creature inhaling. The Golden Princess was among them. Silence fell, then a murmur, then a roar. But Seraphine wasn't listening. She knelt in the dust, her beautiful gown pooling around her, and took the old woman's hands. Her hands were legendary. Soft, pale, unscarred by work, the hands of a Sun-Blessed child. The old woman's were dark, knotted, stained with years. "Are you hurt?" Seraphine asked, breathless from running. The old woman stared, her mouth open. "Princess— you— your dress—" "My dress can be washed. Your knees cannot. Come." She pulled the woman up with a strength that surprised even the guards. With her own hands, she began picking up the bruised apples, not caring that dust was sticking to her palms. The children nearby, after a moment of stunned silence, dove to help her. One little boy, no older than five, solemnly handed her a squashed apple. "For you, Princess," he whispered. Seraphine took it, and because she was nineteen and loved being loved, and because she knew exactly how stories were made, she lifted it and took a loud, exaggerated bite, juice running down her chin. The children shrieked with delight. The crowd exploded. They cheered until the palace walls shook. "Sun bless her!" "Our Golden Princess!" From his place high on the balcony, King Edric watched, and though he had scolded her, a slow, satisfied smile spread across his face. Yes. This was why they loved her. Not because she was perfect, but because she knew how to perform being perfect so well they believed it was real. She would be a magnificent queen. Seraphine laughed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, a completely unprincess-like gesture that made the people love her even more. And then she felt it. A prickle on the back of her neck. The feeling of being watched, not with love, but with something cold and assessing. She looked up, past the cheering faces, past her father's balcony, to the highest window of the Black Tower — the tower where no one lived anymore, where the High Enchantress kept her private studies. A woman stood there. Dressed in black from throat to toe, despite the summer heat. Her dark hair pulled severely back. Her face beautiful, but beautiful like a knife is beautiful — sharp, cold, made to cut. High Enchantress Isolde Vael. Her aunt. Her father's younger sister. The woman who had been passed over for the throne because the law said a Vael king must be a king, not a queen. Isolde was not cheering. She was watching. Her pale hands rested on the stone sill. Her mouth was a thin, flat line. When Seraphine's eyes met hers, Isolde did not look away. She tilted her head, just slightly, and smiled. It was not a nice smile. A chill went through Seraphine despite the sun. Then a familiar voice broke the spell. "You’re going to ruin that dress, and Mara is going to kill both of us." Seraphine spun around. Leaning against a pillar just inside the colonnade, arms crossed over his chest, dust on his boots and sun in his dark hair, was a boy — no, not a boy anymore — in the leathers of the northern campaign. Kael Draven. He was supposed to be at the northern warfront, freezing in some mountain pass. He was supposed to be gone for another month. He was taller than she remembered. Broader. A thin, new scar cut through his left eyebrow. His sword, the plain, unadorned one she had watched him oil a hundred times as children, hung at his hip. But his eyes were the same. Grey, steady, a little amused. "Kael!" The apple, the old woman, the crowd, Isolde in the window — everything vanished. Seraphine hitched up her ruined sunrise gown and ran at him. He had time to say "Sera, don't—" before she collided with him, throwing her arms around his neck, apple and all. He staggered back a step, laughing, catching her automatically, his hands big and sure around her waist. The court would later whisper about it for weeks. How unseemly. How improper for a betrothed princess to embrace a bastard-born commander-in-training. Seraphine didn't care. He smelled like horse and steel and pine, like childhood. "You’re late," she whispered into his neck, her famous composure cracking for just a second into something real, something young and relieved. "You promised you’d be back for my birthday." "I rode for six days," he murmured back, his voice low enough that only she could hear over the crowd. "You owe me a new horse." She pulled back, beaming, her hands on his shoulders. "You look terrible." "You look like the sun." It was such a Kael thing to say — blunt, honest, without poetry — that she laughed again. High above them, the sun beat down on the white city of Aurelith. The crowd cheered for their Golden Princess, for her kindness, for her beauty, for her perfect, blessed life. In seven days, the same crowd would watch her touch her fiancé's hand and watch black roses bloom from his throat. In seven days, her father's warm hand would order guards to drag her away. In seven days, Kael would be sent back north before he ever learned the truth, and the high window where Isolde stood would be empty, its owner gone to prepare a second ritual. But on her nineteenth birthday, Princess Seraphine Lysandra Vael, beloved by all who looked upon her, stood in the dust in a ruined gown, hugging the boy who had promised to always protect her, and she felt utterly, completely invincible. She was wrong.