Princess Aurora's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Aurora stood in the throne room and stared at the empty seat where her father should have been. The velvet was rotted through. The wood beneath showed water damage in dark rings. She had woken three days ago to find the castle held by people she'd never met, people who called themselves governors and chancellors and spoke of treaties she'd never signed. They told her the kingdom had changed. They were right. She needed to see how much, and she needed to find the faerie who had done this. Both things mattered. Both things were possible. She walked the halls alone, counting what remained. In the east tower she found the spinning wheel that had cursed her, still wrapped in thorns and roses that had grown wild through the floorboards. Someone had tried to destroy it. The wheel was scorched black on one side, but the roses had protected it, thickening until the wood was buried. She touched a petal. It didn't crumble. Whatever magic had put her to sleep was still here, alive in the wood and stone. The chancellors had built monuments to themselves while she slept. In the courtyard stood a wooden statue of a woman Aurora didn't recognize, carved with vines and leaves, hands pressed together like a saint. The plaque called her the Elven Princess of the Glade, protector of the realm during the dark years. Aurora studied the face. It was beautiful and empty. Whoever this woman was, she'd claimed Aurora's kingdom and made it into something else. The statue would need to come down, but that could wait. First, Aurora needed a place to work. She found it on the border of the forest, a spiraling tower half-claimed by thorns and roses that matched the ones around the spinning wheel. The door was unlocked. Inside, the rooms were bare but sound, the windows faced the kingdom in all directions, and the air smelled like growth instead of rot. She dragged a table to the center of the main room and spread out the maps the chancellors had left behind. The borders were wrong. The roads had been moved. But she had the truth of the land in front of her now, and she had a place to begin.