Annifer

Chapter 2: Larnick

I ran down the winding staircase of the East Tower at top speed, taking the last five steps at a leap and landing on all fours on the stone slabs of the corridor.

Quickly I got up, spun left and ran down the corridor. Kriston's rooms were in the West Tower on the opposite side of the castle, I could cut through the Banqueting Hall to get there. Halfway along the Hall's northern wall were the Great Doors that led into the Throne Room. I stopped in my tracks. They were open. I'd never seen them open during a council meeting before. I needed to get past without being seen, but how?

There was only one thing for it. I dropped to my knees and crawled under the long table that stretched the length of the Banqueting Hall. As fast as I could I scurried along underneath it, my eyes fixed on the space a few inches in front of my fast moving hands. Crack! My head connected with one of the table's thick oak legs and I let out a scream.

"Princess Annifer!" called out a shrill voice ringing with disapproval. "Kindly do us the honour of gracing us with your royal presence in the Throne Room, Your. . . Highness," the voice called, heavy with sarcasm.

Shamefaced, I crawled out from under the table, trying to brush off something that looked like a squashed roast potato which had attached itself to my skirt. In the process it got stuck to my fingers and I had to wipe it off on the skirt, creating a big white potatoey smear. I felt a dozen pairs of eyes staring at me. Mustering what remained of my dignity, I stepped inside and awaited my fate.

The members of the council sat round a long table in the middle of the room, all in their elegant velvet robes with fur around the collar. The high walls were covered in colourful tapestries depicting scenes from Frailing legend. At the far end of the room on a raised platform was the King's Throne, made of gold and studded with gems of all different colours. The backrest rose to a point and in that point shone a diamond the size of a man's fist: the Night Star, the diamond of power. According to Frailing Legend the Night Star conferred limitless power on whoever sat on the throne beneath it. No one believed the legend anymore but it was still impressive to look at. To the left was the Queen's Throne, equally beautiful and ornate but with no diamond.

The thrones would remain empty until Kriston's eighteenth birthday when he would be crowned king. Until that time my father's brother, Uncle Ivan, the Lord Regent, ruled the kingdom on his behalf. He had the same white blonde hair and green eyes my father had had but that was where the similarity ended. Whereas my father had been friendly and good humoured, Ivan was a stern man who never laughed and rarely smiled. But apart from Kriston, he was my only living relative so I did my best to love him.

The shrill voice belonged to his wife, Lady Beatrix — a pale, sour woman who always looked like she had a bad smell under her nose. Her raven black hair was poker straight and her grey eyes cold and distant. My aunt Beatrix had never liked me because I reminded her of my mother. When Beatrix was a girl, growing up in the barren, rocky kingdom of Skaliff on Frailing's eastern border she had been promised in marriage to my father, Prince Narin of Frailing. But my grandparents changed their mind and married their son to my mother, Princess Sofia of Moonrun instead, preferring an alliance with the fertile and prosperous west.

They gave Beatrix to their younger son, my Uncle Ivan. Now every time she saw me she was reminded of the woman who was made Queen of Frailing in her place. I kept hoping that one day she'd stop seeing me as the living reminder of a long-ago injustice and see me for myself instead. Maybe one day she'd even love me. I could only hope. She addressed me in her high-pitched, grating voice.

"Princess, the council meets today to discuss your marriage."

Not this again! I thought. Every few months when the council had nothing better to do, they'd talk about marrying me off to some halfwit prince from a neighbouring kingdom that Frailing wanted to form an alliance with. I knew how to get out of it though. I put on my humblest voice and lowered my head.

"Lady Beatrix, it's so kind of you to concern yourself personally with my engagement but I'm not nearly refined enough to be married yet. Lady Bellina says a blind woman with no hands could sew better than me, my lute playing could be used as a form of torture and my formal dancing is comical and borderline dangerous. I need to study a little longer before I can be offered as a suitable bride to any of the other royal households. I don't want to be an embarrassment to the royal court of Frailing." I rubbed at the potatoey patch on my skirt to emphasise my point.

Usually at this point in the proceedings I could rely on Lady Bellina, my pristine tutor with her immaculate clothes and fine features and not a single strand of her auburn hair out of place. Usually, right now, she would stand up and give a long list of my shortcomings in the matter of refinement and insist that it wasn't her fault, that in all her twenty years of teaching, she'd never had such a coarse and unrefined student, and really how could anyone of royal blood be so without natural graces and that she was trying her best, her nerves were in ruins trying to make a princess of me but it took time to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. And usually the council would agree and that would be the end of it.

This time wasn't usual. This time she was silent. She looked at her hands for a while, elegantly folded in her lap. Then stood up, gave a small cough and said in a strained voice,

"Princess Annifer has satisfactorily completed her refinement training. She is ready for marriage." She sat back down and continued staring at her hands. I was stunned. Why the change of tune? And why wouldn't she look me in the eye?

"It's settled then." Lady Beatrix's triumphant voice pierced the silence. "Prince Larnick of Crosstain has agreed to be your husband. At the next full moon, when the time is auspicious for marriages, he will take you as his wife. His parents, the king and queen have agreed to the match."

Larnick? He was the worst of the lot! Crosstain was a cold, inhospitable kingdom to the north of Frailing and Larnick was a sweaty, flabby teenager whose only interests were hunting, eating and farting. I'd only met him once before, at the celebrations for my sixteenth birthday a few months previously.

He was sitting further down the table from me but not so far away that I couldn't hear him say to his manservant through a mouthful of pheasant, "She's not pretty, that's for sure, but if she knows her place and she does as she's told, she'll make a tolerable wife for me. The dowry will be good."

"But I'm only sixteen!" I wailed, looking to my uncle Ivan for rescue. He fixed his eyes on the floor, eyes so like my dear father's but so different. My heart constricted.

"I was married at sixteen and so was your mother," hissed Lady Beatrix. "You may leave now."

Thank you for reading this chapter 😊

Do please comment and vote if you enjoyed it 💬 ⭐️

✨🌿⭐️🌺💛🌺⭐️🌿✨