The first night was the worst. My first time sleeping with only tree cover and first time getting teased relentlessly by Adeline about the contrast in my sleeping arrangements from a few nights ago to now.
How much I would give to sleep in that cloud—like bed from the palace.
Now, as we sit and eat our small lunch of raisin bread and some cooked geese Tony shot down during the flight, I have smudges of purple under my eyes.
Although, with my black eye on the right it's disguised perfectly. Positives.
"What's being a princess like?" Adeline asks from behind me as she threads my hair into two tight braids starting from the top of my head.
A laugh escapes my mouth, earning me a withering look from the female behind me due to the movement of my head.
"Well, certainly not as exciting as all of this. I'd swap in dragons for parliament speakers any day of the week. Dragons are less vicious." The laugh we share dances in my ears.
It's the first time anyone has truly laughed with me who isn't Peter. I wonder where he is right now. If he's safe.
I lost contact with Lilliana sometime in my first three months of Regalas. We both had full schedules and never had a chance to call, so he truly was my only friend.
Adeline finished up my hair with a celebratory yell and comes back to sit on the left of me.
She pulls something out of her pocket which takes me a few seconds to recognise. Adeline senses my interest in her phone and murmurs,
"We're not meant to have them in Dergona, but I always find a way to sneak one in." One of her violet eyes winks at me, Tony looking over at us from behind the fire set up in front suspiciously.
As I finish up my raisin bread and reach over for my waterskin, I catch a glimpse of a photo on the news app of Adeline's phone. A photo taken only a week ago, of me. The bright light makes me look even paler than I already am, highlighting the frailness of my limbs and the attempt of covering the dark smudges under my eyes.
"What does it say?" She looks up at my inquiry, face softening with sympathy.
She passes me the phone and I only need to read the first paragraph to understand everything.
The reason I have been getting tiny meals, the reason they didn't want me working out when I saw Celeste in gym clothes more than once.
"They didn't feed me very much, didn't let me exercise or work on my powers and let me fade away. Now they're blaming my 'death' on some chronic illness I've been fighting for months, saying Peter has abdicated because he was in love with me?" Tony comes over then, crossing his arms over his chest listening in.
For a minute, the only sound is the fire slowly dying out, the cracking of embers quieting.
Adeline nods, long, blonde hair bobbing, "But that means...it means your queen has been planning this with Nurala, for months. Raising you like a pig to slaughter, watching you waste away all so no one would ask any questions when Nurala's plan went into action. It's sick." Silence encompasses our small camp, before Tony gets out an old looking map, tea stained and ripped at the edges.
"We're two hours away from the border. We'll fly Southeast from here and cross over into Dergona on foot on this island." He points on the map of Vitala and Dergona, at the border-line cutting straight between a small island where we'll be landing.
"Well let's go then." Adeline prods, as I help her clean the dishes, and pack them away.
"You know this isn't the first time we've met." Aurelias statement cuts through the air, Tony looking up from drawing our route on that map.
"It isn't?" She shakes her head, some of the light in her eyes blinking out.
"We first met a couple days after your Choosing day. You and the Prince were on a trip around the capital, and as you passed the slums, my father recognised you and tried to tell you, to warn you." Of course.
The Blaze that got murdered, and the screaming, violet eyed girl behind him, "He was the Terragonian ambassador in Vitala, and lost his job when the Queen took over. My mother died in childbirth and I have a little sister called Caroline — or as she would prefer, Cara—who is staying with my aunt in a small village in the countryside, not a days flight from here actually. When Father recognised you on the tv, he knew he had to try, little did he know the guards had been told to clamp down on any 'rebellious' activities. So they killed him. For speaking the truth, in a sea of liars." Silver lines her eyes, causing the violet to turn evermore purple.
Blinking back my own tears, something caved in my chest.
"I'm so sorry Adeline. If I'd known who you were and he was your father I would've done...more to save him." She shakes her head violently, laying a hand on my shoulder.
"Even if you had, they were too swift. Even for my magic to detect. It is not you who I blame, Princess." She looks back northwards, as if she could see all the way back to Aloura, or even further, to my apparent homeland Teragon.
"I truly am sorry though, loosing a parent is one of the worst pains." Her mauve eyes soften as she passes and points to Nyxus' saddle bag,
"Aria, put them in here," Tony instructs using my 'old' name per my request.
It doesn't seem right to just switch to Aurelia so soon, it doesn't feel like me yet.
I still haven't properly had time to take it in.
Teragon, the fractioned, unstable, huge country that is really more like a continent occupying the North, that is my birthright. Or my sisters. Gods I have a sister.
Nyxus stirs, blinking the sleep from his eyes as I pick up the scraps of one of the giant geese we had for lunch and chuck it up in the air for him, which he grabs, baring those razor sharp jaws and swallows it whole.
Antonius—who gave me a look when I called him that instead of Tony— pulls me up onto Nyxus' back just before Kaida shoots up into the sky, us following after her.
I smile into the wind as I watch the forest disappear slowly until it stretches so thin that sand coats the surface beneath us. Tony looks back from where he sits in front of me and smiles.
"Say goodbye to Vitala, Aria." Because the blue expanse laying out before us was the sea, choppy with the wind the dragons soar through as if it didn't exist, and somewhere miles ahead was the border that would take me out of this damned country and into the next.
My eyes don't leave Vitalas coastline until it fades into the horizon, only a speck on the slight curve of the view behind.
"How long until we reach the border?" Tony looks up at the sun then in front of us, judging and calculating.
"I'd say about an hour and a half." Nyxus' chest reverberates in what sounds like a growl of approval as his huge wings beat heavily, soaring over the waves and into the cloud speckled sky ahead.
———————
Told you it was going to be short! But it'll be quite a long chapter next so hopefully you'll forgive me lol
YOU ARE READING
The Shadow of Royalty
Fantasy"I don't know if I should kiss you or stab you." - Aurelia Cartozen Aria was chosen. There was no denying it and certainly no escaping it. She was chosen for the sacred role as a Regalas, forced into the deadly ranks of the elite royals, and she has...
