The In-Between

Chapter 1 - To Whatever End

Agh. Liquid was suddenly covering the worn paperback novel in front of me. I jumped back in my seat as the brown beverage began seeping into the world of Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. I am most seriously displeased, indeed, Lady Catherine.

"Gods! I'm sorry!" The book destroyer exclaimed. I glanced up at him while I hastily grabbed napkins to soak up the spill. The book could not be saved. Its highlighted pages, broken spine, and dog-eared corners had met their match.

"It's fine." I said, grumpily, doing my best to clean up my side of the table.

"I'm such a klutz." The man said apologetically, picking up the book at its spine. "Let me replace it...though it looks as if it was on its way out already." He murmured the last part low enough that I knew I wasn't supposed to hear it.

I rose an eyebrow at the man with the long dark hair that went to his chin and eyes that resembled the color of sage. His posture was easy and casual, not all attempting to help clean up the mess he had made.

"It's fine." I emphasized, laying more napkins down on the table.

"Can I at least buy you a cup of coffee?" He offered. My head snapped up at him and my eyes narrowed. Irritation rang through me as I began to piece together that perhaps this was not an accident at all. As if the destruction of a good book was worth the chance at a coffee date. Surely, he must be joking.

Didn't he know who I was? Obviously not, I thought to myself. Otherwise, he would have not tried to sit with me. My eyes scanned the bustling coffee shop. People stood against the walls, waiting for tables, despite there being two open on either side of where I was sitting. I noted my denizens avoiding looking over at the spectacle we were making. Perhaps they thought I would turn this man into ash. On occasion I could be thought of as...overdramatic. If we were alone and it had been a first edition, maybe I would have. I considered as I tried to get the sparks running into my fingertips to simmer down. My magic had a mind of its own on occasion, and lately it was growing restless.

I realized then that I had never seen this man before, and I had met everyone in our small territory. Perhaps he was visiting from a neighboring court. I disregarded the thoughts; any questions would only encourage his advances. Besides, I was late to a meeting anyway.

"No thank you." I bit out as I finished tidying my area and grabbing my things.

I looked to the destroyed novel, using magic to clean it would remove all the highlights, notes, and tear stains from its pages. I would be better off buying a used copy elsewhere.

Tossing my soiled book into the garbage, I stepped outside of the shop, the sun warming my exposed arms. I removed my sunglasses from my head and placed them on face. I had been trying to distract myself from thinking about this meeting, but it was all that plagued my mind since the date had been set.

My heels clacked along the cobblestone pathway to the subway entrance. I had not faced Calden since that day on the battlefield. I hadn't dared retaliate for Ollie's death, not when my court was reduced to scraps. We had spent 50 years trying to rebuild and form alliances with neighboring courts. Rivendall, my court, had little to offer to others now. It certainly did not help that the Crown Prince– sorry, the newly appointed King of our continent, Celestia, had forbidden his allied courts from trading with us. A notice to kill me on sight prevented me from going to his home court of Iotia to reason with him...not that I would have done so willingly to begin with.

Celestia was a large continent divided up into smaller territories. The strongest alliances amongst them coming from shared regions: north, south, east, west, and central. Rivendall lay in the center of the continent, in the central region, equidistant from all the other territories. Before the war we were the central trading post. Our cities were always flooded with people coming and going. We had the strongest alliances and the most resources. After the war, everything changed. My father had sided with the western and southern territories, and we had lost, terribly. Our court was as good as exiled, while most of the western and southern courts were forgiven for their alliances.

Rivendall had gotten by. We learned to make use of what remained of our cities and portion our resources. Citizens learned lucrative skills – craftsmanship, medicine, hunting – to keep our court from dying off. Rivendall still struggled and weeks ago my councilors had had enough. They were tired of living as if they were not nobility.

Greedy. Greedy, ridiculous children. That's what they were.

They had given me 50 years to fix the state of our court. Though we had regained some of our former functioning, they were not pleased. They pleaded with me to marry a Lord from another court, but could they not see how that would fail. I was a Lady with a death note from the King himself attached to me. I would not be able to marry and combine courts with someone who would be beneficial to us. In all honesty, it would merely create more people to allocate limited resources across, with a slim chance of branching into more alliances with the other courts. Not to mention that I could not bring myself to think of marrying anyone...not after Ollie.

My heart seized as I pictured his smirk and the glint of mischief he carried in his royal blue eyes. In the before times, we were to be married and unite our courts. His court of Windguard, housed across the river to the west overlooking the sea, would have given us access to profitable resources and opened the possibility of trading with courts further along the coast. Now, Windguard was nothing but ash and rubble, destroyed in the war. All its people were killed or escaped into other courts to hide. That future I longed for was extinct.

I sighed deeply as I boarded a subway car to take me to my statehouse in the center of my court. While I could have shimmered to my statehouse, relieved some of that anxious magic, I often decided to travel throughout my court the way everyone else did. Magic was gifted from the gods to only the highest nobility: the Lords and Ladies of courts and their families, passed down by blood. In Rivendall, I was the only one left with magic, my family having perished during the early years of the war. In the wake of their death, I was appointed Lady of Rivendall and had taken over for my father.

As I walked down the center of the subway car, I ignored the stares of my people. I pretended I didn't notice how they moved further back into their seats. I avoided looking at them as those closest to where I sat moved to another seat further away from me. This happened everywhere I went, and I did not know if it was because they were afraid of me or just angry at my family's choices...mychoices in the war. Did they blame us for our decline?

If they did, then they would be happy to learn I would be leaving soon. The desperate fools that my councilors were had begged me to contact the King of Iotia and allow him to select a candidate for my betrothal. Once selected, the Lord would court me, propose, and after we were married, I would move to their territory. We would rule both courts together and I would appoint a steward from my council to oversee the day to day needs of Rivendall.

"It will show a sign of reconciliation with his court...with the continent." Nobleman Harrison had assured me when they proposed the idea of contacting King Calden. "He will see that we value his opinion, and this will signal to other courts that we can have trading relationships with them."

Begrudgingly, I agreed. I would do what I needed to for my court. I would marry whoever I needed to in order to regain our status, even if it meant it feeling like I was betraying Ollie.