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About the Author
For me.
* * *
That’s right, this story is dedicated to me. I’ve spent too long suffering through a strange, depressive state where I disconnect yet function just enough to get the bare minimum done, even though I don’t want to, where I put on an okay front but actually feel like a failure at almost every turn, or feel nothing at all, and somehow fear everything, where I’ve lost so much faith in myself and think the world would be better off without me that it’s downright scary. But if I truly want to take care of the people most important to me, then I need to learn to care about myself. Heck, I have to downright love myself.
* * *
So, yeah, this one’s just for me.
* * *
Don’t ever forget you matter. You’re important. It’s true.
* * *
Love yourself, too.
“And then, one not-so-very special day, I went to my typewriter, I sat down, and I wrote this story. A story about a time, a story about a place, a story about the people. But above all things, a story about love. A love that will live forever.” —From Moulin Rouge
1
Farrow
I’d witnessed the birthing process enough from growing up in the brothel where my mother had worked to know the queen’s babe would be here soon.
Low, distressed moans and heightened murmurs of encouragement filtered from her royal bedchamber and out into the corridor, echoing down the hall to me like shards of haunting memories that pelted me with visions better left forgotten.
Pain and blood, and too often death, mixed in with the new breath of life; I’d seen it all. I knew exactly what was happening in that room.
Biting my bottom lip, I stole an inconspicuous glance around the corner and watched the assortment of men gathered outside her door, waiting for news, men who knew nothing about the process transpiring on the other side of that portal.
Among the ignorant, the king sat gruffly in a padded chair that someone had brought for him as he glared at the chamber’s entrance and impatiently rolled his signet ring around his pinkie. Even in the middle of the night, he wore his gold crown embedded with rubies and sapphires and long leather cape with the fur collar.
Ever the pompous ruler.
Tonight, however, he seemed more zealous than he had during the last four times one of his wives had given birth. More restless. More attentive. And infinitely more irritable.
Then again, the last four times a queen had borne him progeny, he’d already had a male heir.
But Murdock was nearly five years in his grave now, and King Torrance’s remaining four issue were all female, thus preventing any of them from assuming the throne after his reign, per Far Shore custom.
Or maybe I should say, his four remaining legitimate children were all female.
A bastard like me didn’t count, of course.
“It doesn’t matter if she births a boy or not, you know,” a voice, thick with a royal’s elitist pragmatism, announced directly from my left.
Flinching in surprise because I thought I’d been alone and hidden rather well, I spun to find one of the king’s legitimate offspring standing beside me in her nightgown.
“What’re you doing out of your bedchamber this late?” I hissed.
Twelve-year-old Sable blinked at me from solemn gray eyes. “My rooms are just there. And honestly, who could sleep with all that caterwauling going on? It’s absolutely dreadful.”
“Indeed,” I said dryly. “Such concern for your dear, sweet stepmother while she’s suffering through the most intense agony of her life. You’re the soul of sympathy, you are.”
With an indifferent shrug, Sable crowded closer to me so she could peer around the corner as well and study our father in all his feral glory. “Even if it’s a girl,” she whispered, persistently pursuing the conversation she’d initiated. “You still have less of a chance to inherit the crown from him than, well, I do.”
