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She sits for hours, the chilled stone warming beneath the daylight. Closing her eyes, Elara imagines that time might grant her one more moment beside her mother. She fancies she can hear a soft step on the stairs behind her, prompting her to turn and meet that beloved smile. Queen Aline would sit beside her, stroke her hair, and they would talk until the shadows lengthened. It remains so clear in her mind that she expects to find her mother standing there when she opens her eyes.

Her gaze wanders across the garden once more. At its center lies a stretch of barren, dusty earth, the sunbaked soil wide enough for a royal family to cross in solemn procession. On either side, shaped paths curve around the castle, bordered by finely cut grass dulled beneath a veil of dust. Green is scarce, overwhelmed by soil and neglect.

The desolation reminds her of King Eric’s wrath on the day the garden died. Dismissing her child’s pleas as useless, her father lashed out at her, treating her tears like an insult to his crown. Her mother, he declared, would never see them again. Elara is certain her father forgets that the roses existed because of his own hands. She witnessed his devotion when she was a child. He abandoned his royal duties to kneel in the dirt, wearing his fine velvet robes, and pressed each rose seed into the earth, heedless of soil or decorum.

What began as a surprise became a ritual. He returned every morning to tend them, proving his love through consistency rather than words. Since her mother’s passing, that man has faded. Whatever humanity once softened King Eric is gone. His warmth turned to cruelty, aimed at Elara. He acts to this day as if her mother’s passing remains her fault.

The sunlight strikes her eyes, a command to end her mourning. It is time to don another suffocating gown with a skirt that sweeps her ankles, pin her chestnut strands into a tight bun, and place the golden crown upon her head, heavy against her brow.

Turning away, she forces her weary legs up the long stretch of stairs toward the massive white entry doors. Slipping inside, she pulls the heavy wood closed, letting the familiar solitude of the castle wrap around her and accepting the white and gold once more. They are colors that gleam with purity, offering neither comfort nor warmth.

Along the grand hallway, crystal pots hold stiff, artificial silk replicas of foliage. Not a single living plant remains; this fortress has no use for things that are real. The walls are pristine white, the arches traced with gold, intricate patterns coiling along the ceiling like frozen vines. Crystal chandeliers hang unlit overhead. Tall windows soften the morning light into a pale glow, gold detailing at every joint.

The corridors are vacant. She continues down, passing closed doors and unused chambers, until she reaches her chamber. The silence feels heavier, as if the sound itself is unwelcome. Golden sconces line the walls at measured intervals, their glow unable to warm the space. Her bedchamber rests near the very end, positioned beside her father’s.

To others, the placement appears honorable, a privilege befitting a princess. To Elara, it feels like a reminder. Though the doors stand side by side, their two worlds could not be further apart.

Elara steps deeper into her quarters, the space cold and white like the rest of the castle. She walks toward the bed, the only place in the chamber she truly cares for, and runs a hand over the tousled sheets. Here is where she and her mother once lay, whispering stories and humming songs until sleep claimed them.

It is here that she now occupies so many sleepless nights, reliving the memory of snapping at her mother in a childish fit of temper the day before Queen Aline passed away. The guards and her father claimed it was sickness that took her, but Elara knows the truth inside her heart. She carries the conviction that she broke her mother’s spirit and caused her death. The blame belongs to her alone, even knowing she was a child. She fears she had overburdened her mother, pushing her beyond the limits of what she could endure.

Perhaps she had been more exhausting than she ever understood at the time. Perhaps her father’s harsh treatment toward her is justified because of it.

The death of Queen Aline was the exact moment Veyrenn began to feel like a prison. For as long as her mother had lived, she had served as a quiet shield, holding back the dark, volatile mindset of the King, but with her absence, his long-suppressed cruelty was fully unleashed. His grief twisted into an immediate tyranny meant to break his own subjects.

The serene quiet of the fortress dissolved beneath the relentless clank of golden armor as King Eric ordered the expansion of his guard. Knights swarmed the lower provinces to enforce sudden, unbearable laws, nailing heavy sheets of parchment onto every white-painted brick wall as permanent threats.

Trivial offenses meet with public floggings, and excessive tithes strip the common laborers of their livelihoods to fund his expanding military lines. Shouts and the distant echoes of weeping replace the usual order of the palace, while the workers who remain inside murmur their terrors in hushed, hurried tones near Elara’s door.

On her morning walks through the upper corridors, her gaze lingers upon the heavy oak doors of what had once been the royal library. The vast collection of literature rests stripped from the shelves by her father’s command, leaving the space hollowed and reassigned as guest quarters for visiting foreign envoys. To pass that threshold is to feel the sting of her deprivation, knowing that the simple act of reading a single page now constitutes a severe betrayal of her crown. Workers and guards no longer greet her when they pass, their eyes lowered and their voices distant.

Worst of all, a royal decree deems women lesser than men, declaring their intellects unworthy of cultivation. Elara faces these same restrictions, forced into garments she never wished to wear while the remnants of her education remain locked away. Her father’s laws ensure that she obeys the oppressive rules imposed upon the women of Veyrenn, alongside the additional expectations that confine royalty further.

She hates her father with an intensity she cannot deny. Her fingers curl against the fabric of her gown. He should never have worn the crown. Yet even after his neglect, every cruel word, and every rough hand laid upon her skin, he remains her father. She tells herself he sinks under the weight of sorrow, that his harshness is born of grief, that love remains beneath his hardened exterior. She clings to these excuses, knowing she lies to her own heart.

She has lost the person she loved most, along with the simple joys that once sustained her, such as reading, painting, and the fragile hope of friendship. The few people she had attempted to reach during those rare excursions beside her mother had kept their distance, whispering their resentments just loud enough for her to overhear. They assumed she was a spoiled child mimicking the ordinary customs of her people, viewing her through the lens of a wealth she had never requested.

There was a time when a girl from the outer district had approached her with the promise of friendship, only for the illusion to shatter almost immediately. The girl had demanded that Elara use her royal influence to compel the palace tailors to craft a specific, costly gown so that they might match, her patronizing tone carrying a transparent greed that had nothing to do with true companionship. The betrayal had left a lasting sting, proving that to the world outside her gates, she was either an object of scorn or a tool to be utilized.

A breath escapes her while she leaves the mattress, moving across the floorboards to seek the deeper sanctuary of her bathing chamber. Entering the adjoining space, another stretch of marble greets her with its familiar chill. She unties the fastenings of her gown, setting aside her heavy garments onto the stone bench. She avoids her reflection in the glass above the basin, unwilling to look upon the stark evidence of her sleepless nights and lack of appetite.

Stepping toward the sunken marble pool, she monitors the steaming water that the servants carted into the basin to fill the bath. She dips a finger beneath the surface to test the heat against her skin. Satisfied, she lowers her frame into the water, allowing the warmth to surround her while she prepares to face another day of silence and emptiness. She performs the role of a princess within a castle that has forgotten what royalty was ever meant to be.

It is another day of watching the garden die outside her window, and today will be no different.

Unless she makes it so. If she can.

II

THE PROCESS OF ADORNING

E

The bathing chamber’s damp fog fades once the door opens.

The heat of the bath fades while soothing oils sink into legs that must soon endure the weight of royal fabrics. The humid air clings to her skin, the damp edge of a towel trailing beneath her knees when she opens the door. Her footsteps falter at the sight of Walker asleep on the edge of the mattress, her caregiver’s head resting against one of the white corner posts. Time disappears unnoticed in the steaming waters, or exhaustion has claimed the older woman at last.

The exhaustion upon the smooth chestnut skin reveals a weariness that words could never capture. Wavy strands of hair escape her tight bun, framing her forehead like ripples above her long white sleeves and muted beige bodice. Walker occupies this protective role since the dawn of Elara’s life, when Queen Aline lay too burdened by royal duties to cradle her own child.