Third In Line

Chapter Sixty - Ascension

Ellie couldn't remember a worse night's sleep. She lay awake, staring at the dark ceiling and listening to the noises coming from the other rooms, the footsteps from the corridors, the muffled voices from across the palace. Everyone was restless, tense, anxious, so much so that she could feel it in the air. Nobody was sleeping, at the most they were lying there with their eyes closed, waiting to drift off.

Alex was shifting about in her bed constantly, never finding a comfortable position. Ellie could hear their parents in the room next door too, getting up constantly and walking around. Every now and then one of them would peak into Ellie and Alex's room, checking if they were asleep. Ellie pretended she was, but her parents could likely tell that she wasn't. It wasn't worth having a conversation over anyway, they all knew why they couldn't sleep and she had decided that talking wasn't going to help.

They were all waiting, hoping to hear something good. Nobody cared how early in the morning it was, they all knew that as soon as they heard anything, the whole house would jump out of bed. The only thing that they could do was try and sleep, hoping that they would be able to make a few more hours vanish.

It was hopeless, Ellie thought. Staff rushed hurriedly down the corridors, people were talking in the other rooms, cars were arriving throughout the night with their headlights strafing the walls of the palace and lighting up each room. It was as though night had never actually come, as if Sandringham still thought it was daytime and was acting appropriately.

Ellie gave up, she'd gotten a couple of hours, nothing more, and even that was separated into short fifteen-minute stretches. She decided to climb out of bed and go for a walk, copying her parents. They hadn't made a noise for at least half an hour, so she figured a walk must have helped.

Her suitcase sat against a chair beside her bed, still mostly packed up. Struggling to see in the darkness, she knocked it on its side as she was trying to find some slippers and a nightgown, causing her neatly folded clothes to fall out in a mess and her sister to wake up.

"Walk much?" Alex groaned.

"Snore much?" Ellie retorted.

Alex wrinkled up her face and sneered at her before burying her head in the pillow. "Don't get lost."

Ellie roughly shoved her clothes back into the suit case, but her eyes were drawn to a black dress that had been on the bottom of the pile. Even in the dark of the room, the black fabric of the dress seemed to stand out and yell at her.

Every royal is supposed to always have something black to wear, just in case a family member died unexpectedly. Ellie hated seeing it in her suitcase. It always made her depressed when she saw it, especially over the last few years and seeing her great grandmother slowly pulling away from public life. She had never paid much attention to it, but recently she always seemed to be there in the exact moment Anna packed it into her suitcase.

Ellie picked it up daintily, avoiding touching it as much as possible, and then shoved it back into her suitcase and covered it with a pile of clothes. She didn't want to see it just yet, she told herself, tying the sash of her nightgown with a determined forcefulness.

The corridor outside wasn't as busy as she expected, since it was the Queen's apartments after all. The staff all seemed to recognise that the family needed their rest, and the few courtiers that did walk the corridors made sure to be as quiet as possible.

Ellie watched them as they moved around her, all of them bowing to her and leaving her to roam the palace. They were all looking gloomy, already seemingly in mourning. She could see it in their faces, a distracted, distant sort of look, and in the way they looked at her, pitying, worried, looking after her. In that moment Ellie felt like everyone was her parent, all of them waiting to see what she would do, whether she would burst out in tears or be crushed by the responsibility.