Princess Autumn's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Princess Autumn folded her wings tight and still they knocked a vase off the shelf. The vase shattered. In the great hall of the pale-stone castle, every servant turned to look. Autumn stood alone among them, the only person in Volgareth with wings black as crow feathers. Eighteen years in this castle, and she had never once met another like herself. She wanted to know if her own kind existed anywhere. She wanted, just once, to walk a room without every eye tracking the strange girl. A maid began sweeping the pieces. Autumn knelt to help, and her wing caught the girl's arm. The maid flinched back. "It's fine, Princess," she said, too fast, and would not meet her eyes. Autumn climbed to her chamber and shut the door. She had heard the same fear her whole life. Servants whispered when she passed. Guests stared. Only her adoptive family treated her as their own. Yet even they never spoke of where she came from. She needed the truth. She was tired of guessing. Someone knocked. Queen Aileen entered without waiting, the way a mother does. She was small and gray at the temples, her braid resting over one shoulder. She had found Autumn as a baby in the woods and named her that same morning. She had raised her, defended her, loved her past all the whispers. "You broke a vase," the queen said, smiling. "I break everything." Autumn's voice cracked. "Mother, where did I come from? You've never told me. I need to know if there are others." The smile faded. Queen Aileen sat on the bed and folded her hands. For a long moment she said nothing. Then she reached beneath her shawl and drew out a small cloth bundle. "I kept this from the day I found you," she said. "I feared this question. I feared it would take you from me." She unwrapped the cloth. Inside lay a single black feather and a torn scrap of fabric. On the scrap, someone had stitched a row of sharp gray peaks. Autumn touched the feather. It matched her own exactly. "These were tucked in your basket," the queen said. "I never learned who left them. But that stitching—your father says it shows the High Crags. The mountains in the north." Autumn stared at the peaks. Her whole life she had asked one question, and here at last was an answer she could hold. Someone had wrapped her in this cloth. Someone from the northern mountains. Perhaps someone with wings like hers. "Then that's where I'll find them," Autumn said. The queen's eyes filled. "I know. I have always known." She closed Autumn's fingers around the feather. "But the road north is not safe for a girl." Autumn looked at her wings, black and wide but strong. “My wings have always been strong mother, I can do this”.