Elara's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Elara carried a basket of cut stems toward the south garden because that was where the princess now spent her mornings. A month ago, Elara would have found her in the library, laughing at something Elara had said under her breath about the king's hunting dogs. Now the princess sat under a new gazebo the suitor's men had built in three days, a wooden frame already heavy with climbing roses and pale vines someone had forced into bloom out of season. Elara had loved her since the day the princess held her gaze too long over a private joke. She meant to keep her. She did not yet know how. The suitor was the king's choice, a noble from the eastern holdings with a clean jaw and a clean name. Every morning he sat across from the princess in the gazebo and spoke without pause. Today he had brought another gift, set on the table between them: a small model of a dark stone castle, towers and clock and tiny garden, the kind of thing made by a craftsman paid for a year's work. He told her it was a replica of the keep he would give her. Elara watched the princess touch one of its little spires with a finger. The princess did not look up. The king stood at the far end of the path with his advisor, watching. Elara remembered telling that same advisor, loud enough to carry, that the king's hounds looked better fed than half the court. The king had not forgotten either. Elara set her basket down by a rose arbor near the path. The arbor needed pruning. Anyone could see it needed pruning. She took the shears from her belt and began to cut, slow, close enough to hear the suitor's voice but not close enough to be sent away. The princess laughed at something he said. It was the laugh she used for strangers. Elara kept cutting. When the suitor rose to fetch wine, the princess walked the path alone and stopped at the arbor as if to smell the roses. She did not look at Elara. She said, quietly, that her father had set the betrothal terms that morning. She said Elara should go before nightfall. Then she walked back to the gazebo. Elara stood with the shears in her hand. She thought of the nursemaid who took her apples and said nothing, of the back gate and the road past it, of the princess crying the last time Elara refused to leave. She closed the shears and slid them into her belt. She would not go before nightfall. She would go to the nursemaid first, and she would ask how a princess might be moved out of a castle without the king knowing which gate.