I wake up in darkness, to a silence so absolute and pressing, it's deafening. I have no idea if it's tomorrow night or early in the morning, and I panic for a second thinking I slept through the day and no one thought to wake me. It sends a cold shock through my system. I sit up in bed, gathering the blankets around me, and rub my hands over my head slowly. I've woken up with a headache. I eventually think that because of my state (it felt like I had just stayed awake all night doing hard labor rather than eventually forcing myself into sleep) that there was no way I had gotten more than a couple hours of sleep.
I have to just lie down for several hours, tossing and turning, hoping that my brain will somehow find sleep again. It doesn't work. I'm just left to think.
Where is that girl? Who hired her? How am I going to write a speech in just a couple of hours? What would have happened if that girl had been caught? Was this truly an inside job? Could the guards right outside my door have aided and abitted my father's murder, and I am unknowingly feeding them, paying them, giving them the shelter and the prestiage and repuataion of serving their King so directly? There's silently a thought more depressing than all of this. How in the god's names am I going to manage planning my own father's funeral? Kings here are supposed to die in older age, passing the throne to their child peacefully when their heir is twenty. They help shepard and guide as advisors, and, optimally, live long lives, dying peaceful deaths and seeing their child help shape the nation they did the same for. Not lying, blood dripping, wounds fresh, at thirty-nine.
Everything about this is wrong.
While my thoughts run away from me, my body moves in tiny shivers, my skin feeling cold even as I layer on blankets. The anxiety just moves in waves through my body, until I'm so worn down by it I swing my feet onto the floor, letting them touch old stone, which seems to help my shivers a little bit. Barely-visible light peeks through the heavy criss-crossed iron supports on my window, casting a tiny pool on the floor. I step in it, and my head is so exhausted it feels like water for a moment. I'm still in my clothes from last night and they're crunched in odd places now. I throw them off onto the bed, and try to change. Then I realize I'll have to wear something black now. Everyone will. It's the official mourning period, at least inside the castle until the news is broken to the public.
I poke through my closet with the light still coming in from the window. Although my clothes are usually in calmer colors, we don't wear a lot of black here. And that's made more difficult by the fact that since most mourning dresses are formal, I'll want to find something floor-length. I haven't dug out my clothes from last year's winter, so I don't have many skirts out. I'm trying to wrack my brain for missing information. Is there anything else I'm supposed to do in a mourning period? Our culture's rules were taught to me young, this is going back a while. I try to concentrate on it, but I can't. I eventually give up, just layering leggings under a shift, then struggling to put on a very dark grey, heavy dress with a skirt that reaches down to my ankles. It should preferably come over them, but it's the only thing that comes close enough. I pin up my hair, and the room gets lighter around me. I try not to look in the mirror.
There's fresh paper and ink on my desk, like there always are, and they're just a reminder of the speech I have to write. The last thing the kingdom needs is news getting out that the King died without it being officially announced, it could sow doubt among the people about how much the people in power really tell them. I want to avoid that as much as I can. But I also just feel like going back to bed, as much hell as that was just minutes ago. I plunk down in my chair, having to fiddle with my skirt so it crunches down in something that looks graceful, but I discover it is harder than it looks when it's so early in the morning you can barely think.
I try to write out a few lines to thaw my hands out, and my writing is shaking and almost unreadable. Hello, fair people. No. It brings me no joy to tell you- Absolutely not. Greetings, my countrymen. Sounds good enough. But nothing comes beyond that stays on the page, not crossed off, for more than a minute. There are almost an impossible amount of things to touch on. How do I mention the heir to the throne? Do I admit I'm not the one to lead the country? It makes the throne look bad for not saying anything about a child that was apparently illegitimate, but it also sounds like very few people knew about it. I'm fairly sure even the Captain didn't, and he's one of my father's closest advisors.
