The Missing Monarch

. . . ⇢ ˗ˏˋ [Family Secrets] ࿐ྂ

Brielle:
1879, December

It had been five months since Queen Hyacinth had disappeared, Brielle's attitude had turned more bitter with every passing day, and no one had dared step foot in the late Queen's bedchambers since the day she had been declared missing. As according to Quinn, all hope of finding her mother was practically zero so Brielle had finally decided it was best to clean her mother's room herself. After all, if the Queen ever did return, Brielle knew that she would not be pleased, if she ever found out that just any servant had put their hands over her stuff and packed it away.

Quinn had tried to be as nice as possible when he had told her that the guards would have to stop the search for her mother. But Brielle could see the hard lines of his face stretched into a look of pity and caution, not quite knowing how she'd react. It made her feel worse. Her own best friend didn't really know her anymore, when before her mother had gone missing he'd been the one to read her emotions and thoughts quicker than she could register them herself. And now he couldn't. She hadn't known how much her mother's disappearance had affected her until that moment.

However, Brielle felt truly foolish for still holding out hope that her mother would return. She didn't really want the crown, well not now anyway. She wasn't ready, she'd barely begun her training up until a month ago when the Gossiping Gazelles, as she liked to call them, had demanded she start preparing immediately. She didn't even know why she had listened to them, but she couldn't shake the feeling it was because she was so incredibly desperate to hear the voice of an older woman, like her mother had been. Brielle knew she'd secretly wanted to keep those ladies around for some sort of representation of her mother, despite how aggravating they could be. And now they were gone. Driven off because Brielle had simply had enough of them crossing the line. Could that possibly be why her mother had left? Had Brielle crossed Hyacinth's lines once too many times?

Everyone knew Brielle was a great princess when she wanted to be, but to be a queen? That was another whole situation. She couldn't keep up the constant act of being effortlessly perfect, like Quinn could. And being queen meant always being perfect. Being judged by the whole world and other countries such as Kanery critiquing every move she made, that set her teeth on edge. She couldn't handle the thought of knowing that her choices would then affect the whole country. She wouldn't be able to speak as she wanted, she wouldn't be able to act the way she wanted, she wouldn't be able to love who she wanted. All those things would be picked for her.

Brielle was no where near ready for that pressure or the loss of freedom nor did she think she ever would be. And if her mother hadn't returned by ten more months, then Brielle would be expected to accept all of those problems and ascend to the throne immediately.

But that was for the future and she was currently in the present. Brielle stared down the door in front of her, taking short and curt breaths. Could she do this? It was a door. A door. Yet this door, she had never once set foot behind and never dared to even walk past, held the answers to the woman her mother had become.

Brielle had had a hard job even finding this door. The way she'd strolled straight past it, only to have one of the royal guards stop and wait for her to notice. She'd whipped her head back around at the sudden stop of feet shuffling behind her and noticed the door the man had stopped next to.

It was an extraordinarily elaborate door. The dark, oak wood door had several swirls and lines carved into it to make a flourish that anyone would recognise as the Naeland signature sign; the fox and the wolf circling each other. The fox and the wolf were their symbol because it represented to the people that they were all similar and belonged to the same family despite being entirely different and having different social classes. It was a foreign idea for Brielle's mind. To stand here and picture her mother's thought process in the design of this door. A symbol Brielle had never thought her mother would like, as she'd never had the impression her mother would ever dare put a likeliness between them and the lower classes.