Kingdoms Lost

03

I first learned that I would have an arranged marriage when I was eleven. Samuel had been showing me what he'd learned in his most recent fencing lesson, using a stick from the woods instead of the sword he usually practiced with.

"Why can't I learn how to fence?" I'd whined.

Samuel had laughed, maybe thinking it was a dumb question, maybe thinking I was kidding. "Because you're a girl," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"So?" At age eleven, I didn't know much about the ways my life would differ from my brothers' in the years to come.

"Girls can't fence," he'd explained. "It isn't proper."

I'd stared at him as if this word, proper, was a whole new concept. Of course, having been raised in a castle, as a princess, I knew what was proper and what was improper. To an extent, at least. I knew girls wore skirts and boys wore trousers, and that eating with your mouthful wasn't proper, but I hadn't known it extended into things like swordsmanship.

"What else isn't proper?" I'd asked.

"Well, I don't know. It probably isn't proper for you to be so interested in the sorts of things you are. Proper girls like stitching and singing and such," he said in reply. Looking back, I don't think he meant it meanly, but it had felt like an arrow to the heart.

"I might not be proper," I hissed, "but at least I'm not going to grow up to sit in council meetings my whole life!"

"At least I'll have a say in who I marry!" he'd retorted. I remember freezing in place, hearing the truth in his words. I remember his apology, as I ran crying to Mother. I don't remember how she confirmed it, only the spiraling, sinking feeling that never quite lifted from the pit of my stomach.

As I stand, dressed in white, in the little room off the rectory, that same feeling swirls in the pit of my stomach. Some sickly mix of dread, anger, fear, despair. I stare at my reflection in the mirror, schooling my expression into blankness. The person looking back at me is no more than a girl. If not for the hopelessness reflected in her irises, she might seem like a girl playing dress-up in her mother's wedding gown. I wish I was a little girl playing dress-up in my mother's wedding gown.

The dress turned out nicely, at least. An ivory silk slip with a fitted lace bodice and layers of flowing silk skirts. It hugs my curves while staying modest, and the little diamonds encrusting the waist and neckline match the ones pinning my hair back, and the one that will be slipped onto my finger during the ceremony. The ring was an Adriennic custom, replacing the marriage tattoos that we usually had in Montelle. Prince Theodore—Theo he'd asked me to call him in the letter I'd never returned—had refused to have his skin inked.

In Montelle, all milestones in life are marked with a tattoo encircling your finger. When I was seven, I'd had the Royal sigil tattooed on my ring finger, signifying I was of the Royal Family of Montelle. For my wedding, I should have had a band of two woven strands of ivy inked right above it. But there's no point if Prince Theodore refuses to have a matching one.

"Elle," Samuel calls, his voice echoing in the small room. "Ready?"

My mouth goes dry and my stomach ties itself in a knot at his words. The girl in the mirror flushes ghostly white. I manage a small nod and walk over to him on unsteady feet, slipping my fingers into the crook of his elbow.

Seeing the look on my face, Samuel shoots me an easy smile. "You've got this," he says, miming an exaggerated deep breath. I pull as much air into my lungs as I can, holding it, and let it whoosh out just as the first notes of the organ ring through the air.