“Can you not love an Englishwoman?” She pressed.
“Why do you insist she will be English?” I narrowed my eyes at her. It wasn’t uncommon for the Oracle to move people around like a chess game in hopes of bringing her visions to fruition. My mother wasn’t simply a messenger; she was sometimes a meddlesome instigator, if she thought her prophesies were not coming to pass quickly enough.
“The winds tell me there is a young English princess born with the ability to heal. Now, you come to me, telling me you are leaving to invade England in a week’s time,” she said coyly as she turned her head and raised her brow at me.
I didn’t have to respond. We’d already hashed out the coming campaign. She’d made her point. Unfortunately, her most recent revelation left me unsettled. I was supposed to be getting my soldiers ready to storm a foreign land. There were drills to be done, weapons to be maintained, provisions to be packed. I didn’t need any distractions right now. Not to mention that, when the fighting commenced, I was going to need my attention fully on keeping us all alive. I wasn’t going to have time to search for some princess healer amid the chaos. Diverting my attention on the battlefield would be utterly mad, tantamount to suicide. I could have told Hilda this, but I knew it would garner me no sympathy. So instead, I leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then bowed to the Oracle. “Peace to you this night, seeress. Thank you for the meal.”
“And to you, brave warrior. May the gods bless your battle with victory.”
I left the warm familiarity of the hut and stepped out into the cool fall air. Winter was coming—a change of season. Apparently, it was not the only change our clan needed to prepare for.
“Many people think being royal is a privilege, a gift given only to a lucky few. In some ways, I’m sure they are correct. But, most do not realize the responsibility that comes with the birthright. Please don’t think me ungrateful, but oh how I would love to walk in the shoes of a commoner and breathe in the freedom of that station. To be able to live where I choose, marry whomever I love, and be myself is a desire burning so strongly inside me that I fear it will consume me.”
* * *
~Diary of Princess Allete Auvray
As a princess, the oldest of three sisters, and future queen of England, I, of course, did the mature thing when my parents told me I was to marry the King of Tara—I ran. Allete Auvray, noble-born heiress of the Britannia Empire, ran. Now, I did not run away. There would be no point in that. My father would have sent guards searching for me like crazed hounds to drag me back before I even made it to the borders of our land. I ran only as far as my familiar old oak tree—the ancient tree that had become a sanctuary to me and my cousin, Thomas, when we were children—our place of refuge. Disregarding the fact that I was clothed in one of my finer dresses, I hoisted myself up on to the lowest branch. Then, I continued, up and up, until I was sitting high enough that I could see the whole of my father’s lands spreading out before me like a giant green picnic blanket. Ours was a beautiful and bountiful kingdom for most, but it was but a gilded cage for me. The day I had dreaded had finally come, even though I had always known I would be married off to a nobleman. As the oldest, it was my duty to either marry a nobleman worthy of becoming king of England or marry another king in order to secure an alliance beneficial to our empire. Every decision for my family was about power—how to gain it and how to keep it. Throughout all the kingdoms, the ruler who held the most land and possessed the largest army was feared. As princess, what I personally wanted was nullified. It didn’t matter that I would wed someone I did not love. Nothing mattered except what my father, the king, wanted.
“Do you not think it is time you stop climbing trees to run away from your problems, cousin?” A voiced hailed me from the ground below.
I rolled my eyes. I should have known Thomas would not let me sulk in peace. We’d always been close, like siblings, but that didn’t mean he didn’t drive me to wanting to club him with a tree branch every now and then.
“I do not believe I asked for your counsel on the matter,” I yelled down at him.
“It is a good thing, then, that I do not sit idly by and leave you to your own devices. What sort of cousin would I be if I were to let you pursue your own destructive whims? Instead, like the selfless and loving relation I am, I concern myself with what is best for you. Come down, Allete. Let us talk about this like mature adults.”
“I don’t want to be a mature adult. I’d rather be a petulant child and stomp my foot until someone says, okay dear Allete, you don’t have to marry that brute of a king.”
Thomas chuckled. “How do you know he is a brute? Perhaps he is a paragon of charm and wit, not to mention dashingly handsome.”
I scoffed. “No king is dashingly handsome. They are old, bossy, and uncaring of what their wife thinks.”
“Oh really? Does King Albric treat your mother like he doesn’t care what she thinks?” he asked, challenging my retort.
Why, oh why, did he have to talk reasonably? I hated it when he used his calm, appeasing voice, and I hated it even more when he made sense. People who thought rationally when you wanted to marinate in your misery should be automatically stomped on by a large herd of boar. “No, he doesn’t most of the time,” I admitted. “But you know other kings are often that way.”
My father was somewhat of a forward thinker when it came to women and their intellect. He was wise enough to know that his own wife had such intelligence in abundance and that he would be a fool not to take advantage of it. Not to say he was completely reformed of his antiquated way of thinking, which was proven by his quest to marry me off to our most powerful ally without even batting an eye. Yet he did seem a tad distraught when telling me that, in a month’s time, I would be leaving the only home I’d ever known, travel to a land I’d never seen, and marry a man I’d never met. However, being upset by something and standing against hundreds of years of tradition to make your daughter happy are two different things.
“Besides,” Thomas yelled from below, “you should be more worried whether this brute of a king will even have you. If you showed up on my doorstep looking for holy matrimony, you’d be on the first skiff back to England. I would think your noble father must be playing some kind of joke on me. Surely, King Cathal can find plenty of grubby, tree-climbing children in his own country to marry. Do you really think he wants you?”
I growled at him. “Thomas, you shut your mouth.”
“Happily,” he said as he beamed up at me, “as soon as you come down.”