Chapter Two
Wynessa
It was strange, the things we remembered.
The sound of silk folding. Floral oil’s scent. The way the light pooled on the floor of my chamber like a spill no one dared to mop up. The morning sunlight, usually taken for granted, now felt like a final embrace on my skin, each golden ray a fragile gift soon to be lost.
Jasira was elbow-deep in my traveling wardrobe, muttering curses at a stubborn ribbon.
She piled her dark curls on her head with a strip of mint-green silk.
Jasira hummed under her breath, folding a pale cream chemise with unnecessary precision.
She consistently acted in that manner when she lacked something to state—methodically, quietly, gently.
Though only one year older than me, she carried herself with the calmness of someone twice our age.
“If I ever meet the tailor who thought rose-gold satin and floor-length skirts were sensible for a diplomatic journey, I would personally feed him to a goat,” Jasira grumbled.
“I think someone has already fed him to the court fashion council,” I said absently, combing through the tangles in my hair.
The room smelled of orange and lemon oil, the kind Jasira always rubbed into the wood of the wardrobe drawers. My lavender cloak lay draped across the end of the bed; its edges embroidered with trailing vines and stars. It was too fine for riding. And too heavy for summer.
“You’ll charm him, I think.” The words came tumbling out of Jasira, her eyes fixed on her task at hand. “Unless he’s allergic to flowers and hates the gardens. In which case, we may have a problem.”
That earned a brief laugh from me. “With my luck, he will be, won’t he?”
She glanced at me, her soulful brown eyes full of mischief. Jasira was sunshine wrapped in sarcasm and strength, and was also the only friend I could speak plainly with.
Jasira paused, then turned to me with arms crossed. “Do you want to bring your journal?”
I blinked. “Do you think I’ll have time to write?”
“You’ll make time.” She glanced out the window. “It’ll remind you who you are.”
I hesitated before walking over to the shelf and running my hand over the worn spine. It was green with gold-pressed leaves on the cover—pages marked with pressed petals, sketched leaves, and half-finished thoughts.
I slipped it into my satchel, nestled amongst my scrolls and herbs.
“I packed your lavender soap,” she added, placing it beside my cloak. “In case Caerthaine has forgotten what civility smells like.”
“Thank you.” I smiled weakly.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My bare feet were tucked beneath my nightgown, while my hair cascaded loosely around my hunched shoulders. My eyes looked far too much like my mother’s when I was quiet, except mine always gave too much away.
“Do you think he’ll like me?” I asked, the silence becoming a little too unbearable for me to withstand.
Jasira looked at me through the mirror. “If he doesn’t, he’s a blind fool. And if he is a blind fool, I’ll happily trip him into the harbor.”
Before I could reply, the door burst open in a theatrical sweep.
“By the heavens, I hate silk,” said Alaric, striding in like he owned not just the castle but the sky above it. His hair was a lighter blonde than mine, sun-swept and always tousled like he’d escaped a duel or a lover’s bed. His tunic was half-buttoned, and his sword belt hung crooked at his hip.
Behind him stood a massive warhound, dark gray and thick-furred, its amber eyes alert but unbothered. It moved with the grace of a wolf and the weight of a storm.
“Is that your new tactic?” Jasira teased. “Seduce the enemy into surrender?”
“I’ll have you understand, this shirt costs more than your entire wardrobe,” he mentioned, turning to me and dropping to one knee with exaggerated solemnity. “Dearest sister. Flower of Elyrien. Don’t marry the snake prince.”
I snorted. “Get up.”
But he pressed his forehead against my stomach, wrapping his arms around my waist like a child clinging to safety.
“Wynnie,” he murmured, his voice dipping lower, “don’t go.”
I stiffened. He was always the dramatic one, but this felt different. I rested my hands on his shoulders, silent.
“I did try,” he said, his eyes widening with a silent plea. “I presented my argument. I raised my voice. I threw a goblet. Mother said it was unbecoming of a future king.” He leaned back and offered a wry smile. “So, I threw another.”
“Did Father say anything?” I asked softly.
Alaric hesitated. “Only that we do what we must to keep our people safe. He said he trusts you to make the people love Elyrien.”
My throat tightened.
Jasira gave him a look. “That is both touching and infuriating.”
Alaric stood, brushing imaginary dust from his knee.
The warhound sat beside him, ever still.
Bran, as people called him, embodied shadow and steel; his ears twitched at every sound, always alert.
Loyal beyond reason, he had followed Alaric onto battlefields and into ballroom halls with equal poise.
“If anything happens, Wyn—”
“I’ll have Gideon to guard me,” I said. “And Erindor.”
He raised an eyebrow. “The quiet one?”
I nodded. “Apparently.”
“Good. Quiet men are harder to bribe.”
He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a pressed red poppy. “For courage,” he said, tucking it into the palm of my hand. “And memory.” He looked at me with an understanding gaze.
I accepted gratefully, gently closing my fingers over it. “I’m not small.”
He kissed my forehead. “Not where it matters.”
I knelt, and Bran padded forward, resting his massive head in my lap.
“Oh, you sweet boy,” I murmured, burying my fingers in the thick fur behind his ears. He gave a low huff of approval, his tail thumping once on the rug.
Ignoring the slobber already soaking into my nightgown, I continued to scratch him under his chin. “I’ll miss you the most,” I exclaimed, enough for Alaric to hear.
Alaric gasped in mock betrayal. “Bran, how could you?”
“He’s clearly the better brother,” Jasira added dryly, grinning.
Bran snorted and nuzzled closer. I rested my cheek against the side of his head, breathing him in.
“Take care of him for me,” I whispered. Bran made a soft sound, almost like a promise.
Alaric pivoted, halting near the door, and as he left, he plucked his old lute from its usual spot by the doorframe, strumming a soft, wistful chord as he walked away. “It won’t be the same without you here, Wynnie.” Alaric sighed before closing the door behind him.
His departure hung in the air long after he was gone.
I lingered a while longer, sitting back against the edge of my bed, watching the light shift across the floor in bands of honey and dust. It all seemed so final.
“Do you remember when we used to pretend we were priestesses?” I asked Jasira quietly, still staring at the sunlit dust.
She looked up from tying the last ribbon on my cloak. “You mean the time you made a crown from garden weeds and declared yourself ‘Wynessa the Merciful’?”
“You called yourself Jasira the Blasphemer.”
“Because you made me sacrifice my hairbrush to the bees.”
The sound that emerged was a mere whisper of a laugh, thin and fragile, as if it might shatter at any moment.
“I wish we’d stayed in that game,” I said. That world seemed so much simpler.
Jasira crossed over to me and took my hand. “It was easier. It was ours.”
I squeezed her fingers. “Promise me you’ll take care of Alaric. And Bran. And the garden.”
“Only if you promise to come back with stories.”
...
That night, the castle exhaled into silence.
I left my chambers wrapped in a gray cloak, soft-soled shoes whispering against marble. The moon was a waning crescent, a silver eyelash drifting across a velvet sky. No one stopped me. No one ever did. A princess is invisible when she wants to be.
The garden shrine was no longer truly a shrine.
Instead, an alcove hidden behind a veil of ivy and moonflowers, once devoted to Cireth, the Bloomfather—God of rebirth, balance, and green things.
No priest lit incense here. No offerings lay at his feet.
Vines had overtaken the altar, curling around a cracked stone bowl etched with his symbol: a flame inside a blooming flower.
Most had forgotten him and his shrine. That made it mine. I knelt in the moss, the earth cool beneath my knees, the sky aching above me. My hands folded, not because I believed it helped, but because it seemed like a necessary response to the longing in my chest.
“I am unsure if you’re listening,” I whispered. “I don’t even have proof that you’re still there.”
Then, without warning, the wind veered, whipping hair across my eyes and tugging at my clothes.
“But if you are,” I continued. “If there’s a god who still remembers the quiet ones, the ones who smile through duty and ache under silk, then please, please see me.”
I bowed my head lower, fingers trembling against the hem of my cloak.
“I don’t want to be bartered like grain in a shipment ledger. I desire to be more than a bride to a stranger with icy hands. I want to walk through Wildervale without fear. I want to heal things. Grow things. Be something more than just soft and silent.”
A breeze stirred the chapel garden, soft and sudden. It slipped through the clover, kissed my cheek, and rustled the petals of a pale lavender bloom beside me.
“I want to mean something.”
I held my breath.
It was the wind.
But for an instant, it felt as if something had noticed me.
A hush. Like something was listening.
And then, it was gone.
I opened my eyes slowly, and the moonflowers swayed as if exhaling. My palms were damp with earth, my knees sore from stone, but I didn’t rise.
My eyes traced the weathered carvings in the shrine’s stone, the remnants of Cireth’s sigil, half-erased by time and moss. The air seized in my lungs, refusing to move.
I reached to brush the vines aside, but a thorn snagged my wrist—sharp, sudden, almost deliberate.
A bead of blood welled up on my skin.
I remained fixed on it, half-expecting it to burn or shimmer or speak. But it didn’t. Yet, something within me shifted. A quiet tension tightened, drawing inward like a held breath deep within the marrow. I pressed my palm over my heart.
And in this moment, I was a girl again, kneeling in a forgotten chapel, with moss clinging to my hem with a poppy tucked behind my ear.
The last of the candlelight clung to the chapel walls, soft and stubborn. I traced my fingers along the stone as I rose. My knees were aching from kneeling too long, but I wasn’t ready to return. Not yet.
Outside, the stillness of the garden descended once more, a quiet that made the world seem remote.
I sat on the bench beneath the arbor, my breath plumed before my lips, a fleeting ghost in the frosty air, each exhale a miniature cloud that vanished as quickly as it appeared.
The moon was rising, silver and whole. From the pouch at my hip, I pulled the little leather-bound green journal I hadn’t written in since summer. I ran my fingers over it, hesitating.
And then, slowly, I opened the next blank page:
I used to think the garden chapel was the quietest place in the world. But tonight, it seemed loud, like every hope I’ve ever whispered there came echoing back, unanswered.
We have packed everything. My room is bare. I keep telling myself I’m ready, but I’m not sure I even grasp what that signifies anymore.
They say it’s my duty to go, that peace depends on it, that I’m the bridge between Elyrien and Caerthaine. But no one’s ever asked what I want. It could be because it’s insignificant? Perhaps that is the essence of royalty. You trade your voice for a crown and your name for a signature on treaties.
Still...I’m not courageous.
Alaric says I am. But I realize they’re only saying it so I don’t fall apart.
I have no idea what sort of princess I’ll become out there.
But I hope to remember who I was before this began.
-W