━━ ⦗the swan princess! ⦘
❝ you're beautiful!
thank you, but what else?
... what else is there? ... ❞
███████████ 𝙞𝙣 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝
the courageous odette teaches the
once and future king a less...
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prologue! 000. a breath of a name
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SHE ARRIVEDin the night of the deadliest storm Camelot has witnessed. For a mere newborn babe to survive in the winds of howling ghosts, screaming winds and shattering light that sent the sky thundering back together to repair the scars sliced across its skin, it should've been impossible. But amongst the trembling foundations, the gasps muffled inside and the horrible sounds of crumbling thresholds, cracking stone and terrified screams from the Lower Town, there was a small cry.
The young handmaiden barely heard her. If she had not been forced to travel through the dark corridors of the castle, gasping at each strike of lighting and clash of thunder, down to the kitchens to gather her mistress some food in the late night, she would have never found her. The child would have perished in the storm, crying her throat roar and have her heart stop at the sheer fear that rattled her thin, frail bones.
But while there had been many to lose their lives that night▬their bodies found in ruins, tossed in the streets and drowned in flooding▬she survived. The newborn girl faced the ferocity of the night and emerged from the other end, swaddled in worn blankets and hidden in the crates of forgotten food: the likes of burnt pies, stale bread and imperfect baked goods.
The handmaiden heard the cries between the howls of the wind, heart thundering as she flinched yet again at the sound of the torch she had lit in the cool, dark kitchens be snuffed out. The headstrong Ivette Mason thought she must've imagined it, struck by all the sounds this sinister destruction in the blackened clouds taunted and haunted her with.
She stood alone in the dark kitchens▬a large room that by day, was boisterous with chatter, work and the smell of freshly-baked bread that starved the stomach of a girl who could barely manage a meek porridge in her early mornings. But now, it seemed more malevolent and ghostly than the tombs of the darkest sorcerers below Camelot. The shadows created beasts in the dark, looming over her as she shuffled towards the table, hoping that perhaps in such scatter and fear from the storm, a plate or two had been left▬enough to please Lady Elayne Vecentia and her wailing son of four winters. The young Ronyn Vecentia held a tongue for soft fruit whenever he was upset, but all Ivette believed she might muster could be left over bread and cheese.
The handmaiden named Ivette brushed strands of dark curls from her brown eyes, mustering enough bravery to peer around the tables of the kitchens when she heard it again.
She froze in her stance, fingers brushed against the edges of the wooden centre table▬following the strange sound came the loudest clash of thunder that night, briefly lighting the dark stronghold in a ghastly white light. And there, she heard it a third time▬clear like cut glass amongst the pouring rain. The high-pitched, hiccuped cries of a child locked out in the storm.
