“When Audric was a boy, I could dismiss his fondness for Armand Dardenne’s daughter as harmless. But now…I see the way he watches her when he thinks no one is looking. We must be careful, sister, to discourage them. Ludivine must be queen. Ludivine will be queen.”
—Letter written by Lord Dervin Sauvillier to his sister, Queen Genoveve Courverie
Year 994 of the Second Age
Rielle’s favorite room in Baingarde—other than Ludivine’s and Audric’s rooms—was Queen Genoveve’s private parlor.
The queen had many sitting rooms set aside for the receiving of guests, but this was her private space, meant only for her and her family.
“Must we do this?” Evyline muttered, standing board-straight at the parlor door as Rielle peeked around the hallway corners to make sure no one was coming. All was quiet, the air in the castle gone soft for the night. Light from the thin crescent moon filtered through the colored glass in the windows lining this particular corridor. The glass was a northern tradition, intended to bring cheer into a home during the long winter months. Belbrion, the seat of House Sauvillier, featured so much colored glass that it was said to glitter like a jewel-encrusted crown when the sunlight hit.
Satisfied, Rielle returned to the parlor door. “I’m to undergo yet another life-threatening trial tomorrow, Evyline.” She looked guilelessly up at the tall, gray-haired woman. “Would you really deprive me of a few moments of peace, knowing what awaits me in the morning?”
Evyline sighed. “Only a few moments, my lady.”
“You worry too much, Evyline.”
“I expect that’s true, my lady.”
Rielle held out her hand, gave Evyline a brilliant smile. “The key?”
Evyline withdrew a small brass key from her jacket pocket and dropped it in Rielle’s hand. “I could get banished for this, my lady. Or worse.”
“When I’m Sun Queen,” Rielle said, “you will be head of the Sun Guard, my close adviser, and the most revered soldier in Celdaria. That’s worth a little sneaking around, isn’t it?”
Evyline’s cheeks flushed, her eyes trained on the wall across from her. “If you insist, my lady.”
Rielle inserted the key in the lock. “I won’t be ten minutes.”
Once inside, Rielle walked to the center of the parlor, sat on a footstool, and breathed in slowly. Here, in this quiet, her true nervousness about the next day tickled her insides like birds desperate to be set loose from their cages.
She had read all the books she was supposed to read, said her prayers, studied with Grand Magister Rosier under the watchful eyes of the Archon. Ludivine had worked with the finest tailors in the city to create yet another marvelous costume for the occasion. Visitors had been trailing into the capital all week in preparation for the event.
And perhaps that was it, Rielle thought. It was the people who would be watching her that had stirred up her nerves—many hundreds more than had attended the water trial if Audric was to be believed. It was the Sun Queen banners that winked golden at her from doors and windows as she looked down from Baingarde at the city. She’d seen the banners even at the temples, decorating the libraries, the gardens, the doors outside the acolytes’ dormitories. On the fluttering fabric, a crown encircled a blazing sun.
Since the last trial, Rielle had started to understand—to really, truly feel—that something was beginning.
She tried to breathe, separate her nervous feelings from her excited ones, and lock the nervous ones away where they could no longer annoy her. She turned her head to the ceiling and gazed at her true reason for coming here.
Queen Genoveve had a soft heart for animals, particularly the godsbeasts of the angelic ages, long died out. Upon marrying King Bastien, she had ordered the ceiling of her parlor painted with an extravagant menagerie of them. There were the fur-crested ice dragons of Borsvall, the firebirds of Kirvaya, the giant white stags of Mazabat, the ferocious krakens of the northern seas, the unicorns of the old angelic lands to the east, the shape-shifting fey-beasts of Astavar.
But Rielle’s favorite of the godsbeasts had always been the chavaile—the giant winged horse that the bedtime stories from her childhood had told her lived in the mountains of Celdaria and could fly even faster than the dragons. They hunted game as mountain cats did and were sated for weeks afterward.
Rielle smiled to think of those stories. Hearing them read aloud was one of the only memories she still had of her mother. If she closed her eyes, she could hear Marise Dardenne’s voice—low and rich, a voice crafted by God for telling stories.
So her father had said, watching them from beside the fire as Rielle snuggled in her mother’s arms, a book of godsbeast tales open on their laps.
Rielle drew in a sharp breath as the memory surfaced. It was one she hadn’t remembered before, and yet there it shone in her mind, clear as daylight.
You’re welcome, came Corien’s voice, kinder than Rielle had ever heard it. I thought that might comfort you.
“How did you do that?” she whispered, eyes still closed.
“And now you’re talking to yourself.”
Rielle’s eyes flew open, and she shot to her feet. Beside the windows on the far side of the room, Queen Genoveve rose from a high-backed chaise and considered Rielle with one arched eyebrow.
“My queen!” Rielle hastily curtsied. “I didn’t… I didn’t see you…” She swallowed, took a deep breath. “I apologize. I would never have intruded, had I known you were resting.”
“I wasn’t resting. I was thinking. I come here often to think.” The queen crossed the room, wrapped in a gray dressing gown hemmed in blue silk. “And you come here often as well, it seems?”
There was no point in pretending. “Only sometimes.”
“I should punish you. Or at least your guard. But you are enduring enough punishment as it is, I suppose.”
When in the presence of the queen, Rielle often felt herself reduced to the child she had once been, leading Audric and Ludivine on some wild game through Baingarde. The three of them had once burst into the queen’s sitting room, shrieking merrily, right as Genoveve was taking tea with visiting dignitaries from Mazabat—and then, not five minutes later, Rielle’s father had chased her down, brought her back to her rooms, and shut her away once more.
She had never gotten to know Genoveve as well as Audric or King Bastien. The queen was a Sauvillier from skull to toe, with none of Ludivine’s warmth.
“Please, my queen,” Rielle managed, “do not punish Evyline. I’m afraid I rather manipulated her into thinking that if she didn’t obey me, I would bring the wrath of God down upon her, once I’ve been named Sun Queen.”