Chapter Text
Princess Adaine Abernant was blessed with many things: countless servants at her beck and call, clothes and jewels crafted by the finest artisans in all of Fallinel, indulgent meals and a warm bed and a roof over her head that also happened to be the roof of the Abernant Royal Castle towering over the rest of Fallinel city, imposing and resolute. She was also blessed with intensely controlling parents who expected nothing less than perfection, a sister who acted more like a mortal enemy than a relative, and a severe but undiagnosed panic disorder. Well, cursed, really.
Which is why, when she got the news that her parents had decided that it was about time they retired and had chosen Adaine’s sister, Aelwyn, as the next Queen, she had a panic attack.
“Wait, what?” Adaine sputtered, barely able to pick her jaw up off the imperial dining table. Just a moment ago they were having a normal dinner—tense silence broken up only by the sound of delicate chewing and the occasional scrape of a utensil on a plate—and Adaine had been pushing soup remains around in her bowl, lost in thought as she marveled at the swirling liquid. And then her father had opened his mouth and upended her world. “What do you mean Aelwyn’s going to be queen?”
“We’ve reigned over Fallinel for quite a long time,” her mother, Queen Arianwen, answered from across the long table, delicately stabbing a cube of carrot onto her fork and slipping it into her mouth in that upside down, fancy way that Adaine despised. “If we do not install a new queen soon, it will appear as though we are not confident in our successor.”
“But… but we’re only teenagers!”
“Speak for yourself,” Aelwyn jeered. “I’m going to be twenty in mere weeks.”
“Twenty isn’t old enough to run a fucking country!” Adaine shot back.
“Language, Adaine!” Arianwen scolded.
“Sorry, but isn’t this a little sudden?” Adaine scrambled, abandoning her spoon in her soup so she could clasp her hands together in her lap, hiding the way they shook. “I mean, when did you even choose? I thought there would be some sort of formal test, or a vote, or some other way to figure out which one of us would become the Queen once I was old enough to—"
Adaine’s sentence was cut off by her father scoffing. King Angwyn smirked, too focused on folding his napkin to look at her as he addressed his younger daughter. “Please, Adaine. It might’ve been cute when you were younger, but we’ve all known for years that Aelwyn would be our successor.”
“Just because she’s older? Because Great Grandma Allindaine was the middle child, and she was a great queen, so I don’t see why we care about age now.”
“We do not.” Angwyn raised his voice just slightly, snapping Adaine’s mouth shut. “We never have. We simply care about ability to rule. Aelwyn has demonstrated excellent capabilities in all aspects of diplomacy, governing, and decision-making.” Aelwyn straightened up in her seat as Angwyn praised her, smiling at her father before morphing it into an evil grin for Adaine.
“Aelwyn is the perfect model of the queen we have always wanted to take our place.” Angwyn finally set his napkin down, then, and his gaze shot to Adaine, pinning her in place beneath his scrutiny. “And you, Adaine, are the spare.”
The insult was so cutting and precise in its ruthlessness that it took several seconds for the impact of it to fully hit Adaine. By the time it did, all the air had been siphoned out of her lungs. Her body started trying to get it back, forcing her to start taking too quick, too shallow breaths. The edges of her vision started to distort just so, the world around her becoming less solid, less present than it should’ve been as her fingers and toes began prickling with that awful sensation of all her nerve endings sizzling. Adaine knew what was happening – she had panic attacks on a relatively frequent basis – but she didn’t know how to stop it. The deep breathing techniques and “think happy thoughts” bullshit Daybreak, the royal cleric, had told her to use when he brushed off her concerns the one time she worked up the courage to voice them never made a difference.
Adaine desperately tried to shove her panic down, picking up her fork and planning to force the rest of her dinner down as quickly as possible so she could escape before her symptoms got too bad to hide. But as she brought the utensil to her mouth, her eyes flicked back to her father of their own accord. He wasn’t looking at Adaine, which was a relief at first, but then she noticed the emotion on his face was one of unbridled pride and admiration, something that Adaine had never seen directed at her. Of course, it was aimed at Aelwyn, who was practically glowing beneath the heaps of parental praise.
Adaine couldn’t take it, couldn’t handle trying to tamp down the oncoming panic attack as more disappointment and disinterest was lobbed her way. She needed to get out while she could still feel her limbs enough to do so.
“Well, that was a delicious dinner,” Adaine choked out, tossing her crumpled napkin beside her plate, “but I must return to my studies, if I may be excused?” It was infinitely more difficult to get the words out while feeling like her heart was ready to explode, but she thought she did well enough to avoid being scrutinized by her parents. Luckily, she did, with her mother making an insubstantial gesture at King Angwyn that amounted to “ask your father,” and Angwyn returning to his meal with a disinterested shrug.
“Fine, Adaine,” he brushed her off. Adaine tried to ignore the added pain it caused and focus on leaving the room instead. When she pushed her chair back, squeaking the legs loudly on the tile, her mother sighed, annoyed, the last bit of icing on a bitter, toxic cake.
The second Adaine was out of the dining room, she dimension-doored herself back to her room upstairs, landing in a heap on her bed. She let herself go, the blinding panic taking over as her breath was stolen by sobs that wracked her body. Time always passed by strangely when she was overtaken by her anxieties – everything felt like it would never end and that it was speeding by, Adaine panicking over both how her fears felt eternal and how much time she was sacrificing to them. It took some time, but she finally began to feel the symptoms ebb, the weight crushing down on her chest finally starting to ease as the world came back to her. When she could see straight and feeling had fully returned to her hands, she grabbed for her crystal: nearly an hour had gone by, and half a dozen unanswered texts and two calls were waiting for her. All were from the same person, and Adaine felt so bad for leaving her hanging when they had standing plans to meet up on Tuesday nights that she nearly started to panic again. She kept control of herself this time, though, knowing even in her exhausted state that her friend would never be upset over a few missed messages.
“Hey, Kristen,” Adaine’s voice came out hoarse, spent despite Adaine’s attempts to keep her sobbing as quiet as possible.
“Adaine, there you are!” Kristen’s bubbly voice answered through the crystal. It was a sound that never failed to brighten Adaine’s day, no matter how rough it had been, because it was one of the only voices she felt truly safe around.
“Everything good?” Kristen continued. “I got worried when you didn’t show at the hill.”
“Honestly?” Adaine sighed. “Everything’s awful. You still have time to meet before curfew?”
“Psh, as if Daybreak would ever find out. Meet you there in ten.”
The two times Adaine felt most herself were when she was doing magic and when she was with a friend. Lucky for her, time with Kristen usually meant both. As a princess, Adaine wasn’t supposed to be working on combat-based magic, and she certainly wasn’t supposed to be sparring with the Royal Cleric in Training. Once a week, though, that’s precisely what the two girls did, and Adaine had never needed it more than that night.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Kristen stammered after Adaine threw a firebolt at her, which one of Kristen’s spirit guardians deflected. “They just picked Aelwyn as their successor? No meeting or contest or anything?”
“Yup.” Adaine formed six meteors over her head, tossing two in Kristen’s direction. The cleric deflected one with her staff, smashing it in two, but fumbled on the other. The meteor hit Kristen square in the jaw. Or, well, it would’ve if she hadn’t cast a protective spell on both of them before the match. Instead of injuring her, it harmlessly bounced off into the trees.
“Alright, you got me,” Kristen dismissed her guardians and the mage armor on both girls, tossing her hands up in surrender. “Wanna go again?”
“No.” Adaine sighed, sitting down on a nearby log to catch her breath. “I want to spar with my sister. Or my parents. Without the armor.”
“That tracks.” Kristen joined Adaine, wiping her brow with the bottom of her shirt. “I’m not thrilled about the choice, either.”
“You’re not?”
“Of course not!” Kristen seemed appalled that Adaine would even suggest such a thing, which brought the princess a bit of that warm comfort she always felt when her dear friend showed how much she loved her. “I mean, first of all, Aelwyn sucks, and I so don’t want to be her Royal Cleric. But also, you deserve it way more than she does!”
“ I don’t know about that,” Adaine shrugged.
“Well, I do,” Kristen refuted. “You work so hard all the time, Adaine. You’re always studying your magic or reading up on all the complicated diplomatic dealings that your parents are doing or learning another language or being a perfect princess for the public.”
“Kristen, come on,” Adaine pushed her shoulder into her friend’s, trying to play off the way that the compliments were only making her feel more hollow and inadequate. Because, at the end of the day, all the things Adaine was doing, Aelwyn was doing better.
“I’m serious, Adaine.” She turned to look the princess in the eye. “You’re an amazing princess, and you would be an even better Queen.”
Adaine didn’t know how to respond, the earnestness in Kristen’s eyes catching her off-guard.
“Well, too bad we won’t find out,” Adaine joked bitterly. “Unless, of course, Aelwyn’s so bad that the whole kingdom mutinies against her.”
“We can only hope.” Kristen laughed and Adaine joined in, trying to hold onto the bit of levity it provided.
“Enough about my own problems, though,” Adaine said when they had calmed down. “Any updates with this girl I’ve heard so much about?”
The subject change immediately had Kristen grinning from ear to ear, a blush coloring her freckled cheeks. Adaine hadn’t actually heard much about this mystery girl, besides her basic existence and that Kristen was completely head over heels for her after a single conversation they had a month and a half ago. Adaine had to beg the normally too open Kristen for every tiny detail, which set off a few alarm bells for Adaine, if she was being honest. Even with her concerns, though, it was much easier conversation than all her royal succession problems, and infinitely more fun.
“I mean,” Kristen started, bashful, “I may or may not be seeing her tomorrow night”
“Wait, what?” Adaine smacked Kristen on the arm, making the cleric laugh. “Since when are you having clandestine meetings? Last you told me you had barely spoken.”
“That was before a few days ago.” Kristen waggled her eyebrows before proceeding to fill Adaine in. The cleric had apparently bumped into the mystery girl while out visiting with her parents. Her whole family were holy workers who worshipped Helio, which meant that every Sunday morning while Adaine and Aelwyn were sent off to Sun Service at a different local congregation, Kristen went to meet up with her family on the southeast side of the kingdom. That was apparently where the mysterl girl’s extended family lived, too. At least her uncle lived there, who she told Kristen she had been on her way to meet for lunch. Adaine had met Kristen’s parents before, and she knew how strictly traditional they were, so she was impressed that Kristen even managed to talk to her crush, let alone ask her on a date.
“So where are you going?” Adaine asked, fully bought into her friend’s escapades.
“Not sure yet,” Kristen shrugged. “We’re gonna meet near her work at that bakery on 4th and Carraway.”
Adaine nodded along, knowing on paper that there were a few bakeries in the downtown area of her kingdom, but unsure of where exactly or which one Kristen was talking about. Adaine and Aelwyn weren’t allowed to leave the castle walls much, and when they did, it was only to make their family look good in whatever public appearance her father thought best that week. Adaine would kill to spend an afternoon wandering the city, stopping into some random bakery on 4th and Carraway to get a coffee or pastry instead of staying cooped up in her gilded cage. It had been one of the handful of things she had dreamed about changing if she ever became queen, but with Aelwyn in charge, Adaine didn’t count on it. She could barely count on being let out at all.
“Adaine?” Hearing her name broke through Adaine’s thoughts and transported her back to the darkened hillside, Kristen sitting beside her. “You okay?”
“Sorry, sorry.” Adaine shook her head, trying to rid it of the excess thoughts and worry poisoning her fun with Kristen. “What were you saying about your date?”
“Not much, really,” Kristen brushed it aside. “She’s planning, is all. But we don’t have to talk about this stuff. It’s all just silly romance drama.”
“But I want to talk about silly romance drama!” Adaine got to her feet in a huff, starting to pace. “I want to go to bakeries and train with you and talk about teen gossip because we’re teens and that’s all fun, but instead I have to figure out how to survive the rest of my life with my evil sister as Queen.” Adaine threw her head back, looking up at the stars, wishing they had some answer for her. It didn’t seem like they did.
“Maybe you don’t have to live with it?” Kristen’s suggestion was hesitant, but there seemed to be more than air behind it.
“What do you mean?” Adaine questioned.
“I mean, I’m sure even if this is the way your parents would want their decision for Queen to go, it probably isn’t how it’s supposed to, right? You said yourself, your ancestors didn’t have any specific sort of first-born thing going.”
“They didn’t,” Adaine admitted. “But I’m not sure they had much of anything set in stone, so my parents can sorta do whatever they want.”
“Are you sure, though?” Kristen pressed. “Like, have you checked the records or books or whatever? Someone had to have written down something about whatever ways they picked their next rulers. Maybe you can find a loophole that’ll force them to give you a real chance.”
“Kristen, that’s…” Adaine trailed off as the wheels started turning in her mind. Why hadn’t she thought to consult books first? It had always been her first instinct, and this issue should’ve been no different.
“I know, it probably wouldn’t work, but—” Kristen started, but Adaine cut her off.
“No! I was going to say that’s the best idea I’ve heard since this all started.”
“Really?” Kristen asked, incredulous. “What were your other ideas?”
“Oh, you know: murdering Aelwyn, faking my own death, staging a coup. The usual.” Adaine numbered off the sarcastic answers on her fingers. “Doing some research is highly preferred, and probably a better starting strategy.”
“I mean, that coup didn’t sound all too bad.”
“Careful,” the princess warned, looking around exaggeratedly. “Never know who from the guard might be listening. It’s treasonous to go against the crown.”
“But what if I’m supporting my favorite part of the crown while doing it?” Kristen raised a brow, teasing.
“That would be a tough one.” Adaine laughed as she held out a hand to Kristen, pulling her up from her seat. The two began their wandering walk back to castle grounds, picking through the foliage that hid their secret path, Adaine’s mind turning over her new plan of action.
It only took Adaine half a day to tear through all the books that were readily available to her at the castle while searching for her loophole. The Abernant Royal Library wasn’t small by any means, but there were a shocking few books on her family themselves. All she came up with in the end were passing mentions of past rulers in a couple biographies about her parents and the usual list of royal heredity, but that list was absent of even birth dates, let alone info on how the rulers were chosen. She was combing the palace for any place that other records might’ve been stored away when her crystal buzzed. When she saw the notification, it took her so off-guard that a blush sprung to her face before she could even fully process the message.
Oisin: So, have you decided to skip tutoring today? Or are you just playing hard to get?
All Adaine’s cogent thoughts sizzled out, no match for the heat of her crush on her dragonborn tutor. He was the same school year as Adaine, though a good half year older and two heads taller, and had been tutoring her in magic for the last year and a half. Her parents had decided that Aelwyn would receive additional education from their personal professor, Tiberia Runestaff, around that time. While Adaine had at first been frustrated when she was only given a peer to work with, the resentment hadn’t stuck around long as she and Oisin struck up a friendship.
Something had happened in the last several months between them, though, that Adaine couldn’t quite put her finger on. Maybe Oisin was taller, or he had filled out into his skin more. Maybe he exuded more confidence, or got smarter, or she was simply more comfortable around him. Whatever it was, Adaine kept finding herself looking forward to tutoring even more so than normal, not the least bit because it had turned the tiniest bit flirty.
Besides having caught Adaine’s eye, Oisin was also quite intelligent, which meant that Adaine’s mind quickly put two and two together. She drafted a quick text as she wandered through the castle halls, headed toward her study.
Adaine: A little bit of both maybe – wanna help with a secret project?
The princess didn’t wait for an answer, striding through the door a moment later. Oisin was already there, of course, looking as prim and proper as always. He leaned against a table, looking down at his phone through the reading glasses that seemed too small for his dragonborn face. He was dressed nicely, as was required for anyone entering the castle – wearing a dusted pink button-down tucked into tan slacks, the sleeves on his shirt cuffed by his elbows. The color contrasts were impeccable against his deep blue skin, and Adaine found herself wondering what the texture difference might be like, imagining the feeling of running her hands down Oisin’s arms to see where the clothing ended and the scale-covered skin began.
Oisin looked up, smiling the second Adaine was in view. “Absolutely.”
It took Adaine a second to remember that she had asked him a question and that he wasn’t responding to her thoughts, but she returned a grin when she did.
“Excellent.” Adaine shut the door before crossing the room to her tutor, who was standing now and gently putting his glasses back into their case. Adaine held out her hands to him and he raised a brow.
“Secret project, remember?” Adaine teased. “One ward isn’t gonna do it.”
“Of course, princess.” Oisin laid his hands atop hers, their palms meeting. Adaine wasn’t sure if it was the contact with his surprisingly soft, cool hands, or the way he called her “princess” as more of a term of endearment than a title, but something sent a little zap of nervous excitement through Adaine.
In a shared breath, Oisin and Adaine casted their spells – the dragonborn alarmed all entrances to the room and several feet down the hall outside the main door, while the princess formed a shimmering cone of faint blue light around the two, blocking out any potential eavesdroppers, be they magical or otherwise.
“Alright,” Oisin said, letting his hands fall to his sides after lingering for just a moment too long to be useful to the spells. “What’s so top secret about this project?”
“Well, for starters,” Adaine took a breath. “Aelwyn’s officially been chosen as our parents’ successor.”
Adaine explained the situation to Oisin thus far, and while he was more subdued in his reactions than Kristen, his eyes were wide as saucers by the time she was done.
“Arbitrarily picking a new queen seems incredibly unfair,” Oisin replied at the end of Adaine’s catch-up, looking off in thought.
“Have you met my parents?”
“Unfortunately.” Oisin turned back to Adaine, the corner of his mouth turning up just a tad in a sly grin. “But you have a plan to ruin it.”
“Ruin’s a strong word,” Adaine hesitated. “But I suppose if proving that my parents violated some important family custom and finding a loophole to get a fair shot at becoming the next queen constitutes ‘ruining it,’ then yes.”
“Well, then, we better get sleuthing.”
Oisin and Adaine spent the next several meetings forgoing magic lessons completely, opting to spend their six hours of tutoring that week on investigating. The right books were difficult to come by, at first, what with Adaine’s initial search being both thorough and less than fruitful. Oisin did manage to glean some helpful insights from the tidbits she had collected that sent him to his school’s library the next day. He returned with a backpack near-bursting with materials and a hell of a story about sneaking into the restricted section, making Adaine practically salivate over all the new potential leads.
Despite some interesting leads in the restricted section books, the most helpful resource turned out to be the most publicly accessible. Oisin had managed to check out a crystal storage device loaded with the entire back catalogue of the Fallinel Weekly, a commoner newspaper that had been around for ages. While it was smaller and less frequent than the Daily Report, it was also way less biased toward the royal family, which meant that things the royals requested people keep quiet about might not stay that way in the Weekly.
“Okay, this could be something.” Oisin turned his crystal display toward Adaine and pushed it across the large table. Adaine’s eyes immediately snagged on the headline, printed in heavy black ink: Our New King: Who is Angwyn, how he won the crown, and what his rule will look like.
“How he won?” Adaine zoomed in on the digitized facsimile, skimming the paragraphs profiling her young father as she spoke. “He always said he was chosen.”
Using Adaine’s own knowledge and some other sources, the two had already firmly established that both gender and birth order had no effect on who inherited the crown. It had brough a tiny bit of familial pride for Adaine, happy that if she had to be part of a monarchy, it was at the very least not an inherently sexist one. More importantly, it proved that her father hadn’t simply been chosen because he was the male sibling between he and his sister.
Adaine’s eyes finally landed on what she had been searching for, and as she read, they only grew wider.
“Oh shit,” she whispered, suddenly afraid of speaking too loud. “There was some sort of contest.”
“Really?” Oisin was out of his chair and on his way to Adaine’s side of the table before she could finish beckoning him over. He leaned in over her shoulder, one hand holding the back of her chair and brushing against Adaine’s shoulder, sending butterflies tumbling around in her stomach. This was time for research, though, so Adaine packed those feelings away, continuing to read.
“Angwyn was selected as the next King sometime early last week, or castle sources say, through the same secretive process that all Fallinel royalty has been chosen by for the last several thousand years.”
“So, there is a process,” Oisin commented.
Adaine nodded. “While the details of this assessment are still kept highly confidential within the royal family, the public is assured that it is the most objective and thorough test of the next Abernant’s fitness to rule.”
Oisin pointed over Adaine’s shoulder at a line lower down. “As the palace said in their official statement last night, ‘Angwyn has unquestionably emerged as the best prospect for a stable and prosperous rule of the three.”
“Wait, what?” Adaine’s brow furrowed and she leaned in to reread the line herself. Something about it was written strangely, which wasn’t that strange in context—other articles they had seen had the occasional strange use of grammar, likely attributed to journalists on tight deadlines for edits. This one seemed to suggest something that made no sense, though. “My father only has one sibling.”
“Is that what they’re trying to say?” Oisin read it again before stepping back, his hand leaving Adaine’s shoulder. “I… guess you’re right. I’ve only ever heard about Duchess Aynia when learning about your parents’ generation of royals.”
“That’s because Aunt Aynia is my only aunt or uncle,” Adaine insisted. “She never married, and my mother was an only child.”
Oisin turned the laptop toward him, scanning the paper. “There’s not even a name here of another sibling, or Aynia.” He turned the screen back between the two of them, leaning against the edge of the table. “They must’ve been talking about something else.”
“What else?” Something felt wrong to Adaine, and she couldn’t describe it if she tried. There was an unsettling feeling growing in her gut every time she looked at the line in the paper: “of the three.” Of the three what? Fallinel had more regions than three. Or was it in reference to those who came before her father? Maybe the last few rulers before him had been unfavorable by the time he was chosen?
“Adaine.” A hand grabbed her wrist, gentle but firm, and the princess was shocked out of her worsening mental spiral, turning to see a worried Oisin looking back at her. “You okay?”
“Sorry,” Adaine shook her head, pulling out of Oisin’s grasp—while a nicer kind of panic, the touch was still too much to maintain. “I’m just… I was—”
“Freaking out a little?” Oisin’s face wasn’t judgmental. In fact, he looked shockingly sympathetic. “It’s a lot on top of everything else, adding a whole mystery to your plate right now. We can take a break.”
Even just a glance back at the paper on her screen had Adaine’s heart picking up pace.
“Yeah, okay,” she agreed. “Just for now, though. There’s something strange about this that feels… important.” When she finally peeled her eyes away from the screen, Oisin gave her a determined nod.
“Whatever you need, I’m there.”
Adaine smiled, the early feelings of her panic attack having abated. “Great. Now, let’s get this stuff hidden. My parents would kill me if they found out.”