When Spring Died

Chapter Two

Ivette loved the acres of wisteria gardens, lush, bountiful, and redolent beneath the springtime sun. White and purple wisteria trees bloomed alike, but Ivette would always be partial to the white. The blossoms billowed like clouds of sea froth, and every time she set foot beneath the trellises and trees of flowers, she felt as if she'd been whisked away to dreamland where the world did not mean anything.

It often seemed to Ivette that she thought too much about herself amidst the wisteria. She was never where she was. Instead she was in her head. Anyone could have made her blush any hour of the day in telling her she was selfish for it. Here she reflected upon herself and her manner of ruling, assembling and disassembling ideas that crumbled and formed and rose like staircases to mysterious ends in the desire to flourish amidst the lack of change.

She was always envisioning her kingdom desiring her own perfection, observing everything's lengthy progress. Her demeanor here possessed a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of thorns and murmuring branches, of shady bowers and scours of blossoms, which made her feel that introspection wasn't a crime. It was a necessity. She had the capacity to see both beauty and potential for sameness simultaneously, creating a refined shrewdness in all she did.

She was of the opinion that one should be the best at anything one was, and perhaps that, instead of her heritage, was why she became queen; "A," as her brother Laurent put it bluntly, "damnably good one to boot."

Her shoes made pleasant clacking noises on the pathway, soon becoming muffled from the blanket of fallen wisteria petals. As she walked, the chirping of the birds grew a little quieter, as if out of respect for their queen.

Vesna's blessing had truly outdone itself to the end of the year, though that could be said of every year that Ivette travelled north-east to the Cathedral de Printemps, the Cathedral of Spring, where she would spend a day in prayer to Frantsiya's patron goddess in the hopes of accruing another beautiful year of sun and prosperity. That was how it had been every year for centuries, something that the whole line of royalty, kings and queens alike, performed without fail. Every year, the springtime goddess Vesna answered their prayers, and Frantsiya's beauty remained as it had always been.

She would have to make the trip again soon, a journey that lasted nearly a week in full. Then when she came back there would be the Vernal Fête which would require an exhausting amount of planning paired with everyone's expectations of it being grander than the one before. What set it apart from the normal balls held at the palace was that several commoners from each city were allowed to attend in the hopes of increasing good will and uniting everyone once again for another year.

Ivette slowed her walk as she came to the wisteria arch, a favored trait of her garden. She'd had her gardeners grow the wisteria on arched trellises that spanned from one side of the pavement to the other. The flowers grew so thick that only a little sunlight shone through, forming a floral haven that Ivette wouldn't mind getting lost in forever.

When she turned the corner to stroll beneath the arches, she paused only briefly out of surprise. There she found a young man who did not look very special at all.

But Ivette knew better. Ivette knew Étienne.

He had gently-defined features, soft, wavy chestnut hair, and wary hazel eyes that changed expression whenever he was happy or relaxed, which never happened often. He looked as if an artist had painted him blurred into the background, and unless you knew precisely what to look for, you wouldn't find him. He had a rare sort of smile that concealed guarded friendliness and defensive admiration...it evoked something different when it came to women.

"Étienne?" Ivette called, and though she didn't smile, and nor did he, she felt her spirits warm when her fiancé turned upon hearing her voice.

She caught up to him soon enough, and he took both her hands in his, pressing a brief kiss to each one before soon dropping them. His lips were cold.