Chapter 6
102 YEARS AGO
AMELIA TREKKED THROUGH the forest, her boots sinking into snow. White coated the bare trees surrounding her, and bits of crystal fell on her cheeks like teardrops. In the distance, the sun barely rose over the castle, hitting her eyeline. She blinked hard from the winter light, pulled the collar of her wool jacket to her chin, and winced at the air nipping her face.
A bulky figure walked beside her, cloaked in bear fur to blend with the towering trees. His muddy footprints were so large they could swallow her own feet. Amelia didn’t understand why her father took her to the woods. Winters in Gyldan were so cold that even wild faeries hibernated in the forest, refusing to come out unless humans tantalized them with jewelry and coins. She had asked her godmothers to accompany them on their trip, but they preferred lounging around the castle, content with their crackling furnace and wool blankets made from rabbit fur.
“We worked hard for this life among royalty,” Clover harrumphed. “Don’t mix us with common nymphs.”
“Were the forest nymphs and animals not your friends?” Amelia had asked.
“Worrying about others who no longer serve you, my dear, is a waste of precious time. I choose to be with those who can bring good to my life.”
Amelia had assumed Clover meant this literally, as her godmother beckoned another servant to pour wine into her goblet.
And so, Amelia joined the trek with her father alone. All morning, he wore a dour expression and flat mouth. She remained silent to avoid worsening his mood and instead sought distraction from the nature surrounding them. A sweetly whistled warble of a bird played across the passage of white trees. Her eyes followed the sound before stopping at the movement of a new creature in the distance.
Speckles of white covered the deer’s light-brown coat. His large ears twitched as falling leaves grazed his head. The tip of his nose pushed around a pile of twigs, and his soft pink tongue flickered as he ate a woody portion of leaves and stems.
The small pleasure of his meal made something flutter in Amelia’s heart. She wanted to sit beside this deer and brush her hand through his coat, counting the star-colored spots that blanketed him.
“Good find. This one can be your first.”
Her father’s blue eyes fixed on the deer. A sense of dread filled her stomach, like he’d uncovered a secret she didn’t want to share without tainting it. He handed her a bow and quiver that held a dozen arrows.
The purpose of their journey to the woods sliced her like the bitter nip in the air. Amelia pushed the weapon back and shook her head frantically. He ignored her, slinging the strap around her shoulder, and positioned the bow in her trembling hands.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Yes, you can.” He kept his voice low so that the deer would not run. “To hunt is to prove you can conquer. It’s a reminder we have power.”
“I don’t want to conquer anything.”
“You are the future queen, Amelia. This is what it means to be a ruler.”
She gripped the bow as realization sank into her bones. This was the real test she needed to pass. Not whether she could make a good wife or mother, but whether she could stand tall and become a woman worthy of a crown.
Perhaps there were girls who dreamed of conquests and power, but not her.
Her father lined her body perpendicular to the deer. He muttered directions about drawing an imaginary line to the target and standing upright, but she hardly heard him. Her knuckles clenched white over the bow. She stayed trembling, her arrow pointed askew to the ground. Her father then leaned over her shoulder to ready her hand and hold it upright. The hedgerow of his beard prickled the side of her cheek like an animal scratching at her.
“I will not be raising a princess.” His breath was low, quiet. “I will be raising a warrior.”
The tip of the arrow pointed straight at the unsuspecting deer. Amelia breathed hard as she imagined the arrow piercing the deer’s flesh, staining the stars on his coat and turning it red like a bloodied sky.
She let go of the arrow only after shifting the bow to the side.
They watched the arrow strike a nearby tree. The deer jumped and scattered into the distance, disappearing before she dropped the bow.
Amelia broke down crying, wiping the drip from her eyes and nose with her sleeves. Silver clouds cloaked the weak sunshine as cold air bit her wet cheeks. Her father bent down on one knee and brushed a thumb over her tears. In her blurry vision, she saw the gray hairs that stemmed from his temple.
“It’s all right.” His jaw was clenched. “Let’s go home.”
? ? ?
“IT WAS HER first time, Your Highness. Regardless, you know she loves animals far too much to harm another living being. That’s what makes her so sweet.”
Amelia overheard her godmothers talking in the dining room after dinner. She peered from the doorway, where a long oak table stretched from one end of the hall to the other. King Victor stabbed a fork into a piece of venison. The meat had been roasted, a pink hue on the inside exposed between each slice.
“She cannot fend for herself,” he muttered.
Dahlia, who had been speaking, shifted her chair legs across the tile floor.
“Perhaps she does not have to. We can still return to our original plan of disguising her until she’s safe from Malicine.”
“That’s not the issue.”
“Then what is it?”
A long silence pulsed between them. Candlelight made the blood around the king’s plate gleam a sickly shade of red. His eyes took in the wine swirling inside his goblet, retrieving a distant memory from its murky waters.
“When my first wife was with child, we didn’t think the baby would survive. Then Amelia came out, kicking and screaming. I was too amazed to even be disappointed that she wasn’t a boy. The way she emerged into the world so defiantly, I thought she would grow up to be a fierce woman. Spunky and loudmouthed, just like her mother.”
There was fondness in his voice, tinged with a foretelling of defeat. King Victor drank from his cup, his throat bobbing up and down until he eventually set the empty goblet on the table. He leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut.
“But she couldn’t have turned out more different from what I imagined. She talks to animals and inanimate objects as if they are her friends. She stares at the sky longer than she can look into another human’s eyes. She’s there, but she’s never present.”
He pushed the chalice farther away from him. Drunk eyes roamed across the wolfskin blanket that lay scattered in front of the fireplace. Preserved skulls and animals sat on the mantel. The room had been decorated with relics from Victor’s younger days, a time when he was a hunter, before he became king.
Amelia had heard stories about his own father taking him to the woods, shooting the creatures that inhabited the wild, and coming home to make fresh stew. He had shared his childhood tales with pride, his chest puffed, his face flushed with glory. This was what it was like to be a man, and wasn’t that what made a person stronger than all?
“I’m not afraid of my daughter dying,” he said. “I’m afraid of her growing up to be a coward.”
Murmurs shifted among the godmothers, but their responses faded in Amelia’s ears. Her feet slowly backed away from the door before sprinting down the hall. She reached her room and dove into bed, burying her face in pillows and hiding from the rest of the world.
That night, she understood the cruel irony of her birth. When Amelia was a baby, her godmothers had blessed her with three gifts: beauty, song, and true love’s kiss. Beauty proved itself whenever men ogled her pearl face, golden hair, and long lashes. Song revealed itself as handmaids fawned over her voice echoing down the corridors, sweet and light as a hummingbird’s. True love’s kiss promised itself to be the cure to her curse, the answer for whenever she needed a reason to wake up and keep living.
She was born a beautiful girl with a beautiful life.
They told her she could become anything.
And so, she became nothing.