Ceilsea woke at sunrise, grumbling at the brightness interrupting her sleep. Her back was against the cool stone of the marble. She sat up, laid her head back and opened blerrie eyes.

“Morning,” Vonae greeted her, looking far too awake and put together for having slept outdoors. He was still sitting on the kaftan he’d laid on the grass, so she knew he had slept with her. He stood and stretched as if he’d been waiting for her to rise. She didn’t move. He continued, “I’m not sure where Shaelis went. Maybe they left after we fell asleep.”

Ceilsea glanced over at the bushes and knew that wasn’t true. Their bag was still there, only partially hidden by the underbrush. As if they had heard them, Shae emerged from the brush looking as put together as Vonae, except for a leaf in their hair. 

Shae looked directly at Vonae and said, “You promised me drills.”

Vonae paused for a moment, perhaps confused about why they looked so at home in the bushes. Then he picked up his kaftan and answered, “Fair enough.”

“What are you…? You’re not really going to practice now, are you?” Ceilsea whined trying to keep the light from her eyes with an arm.

“What’s wrong with you? We didn’t even stay up that late last night.” Shae glared at her.

Vonae looked at her with affection. “Ceilsea isn’t too fond of mornings. She usually stumbles out of bed a few hours after sunrise. I used to say she dreamed of working on sculptures too hard to sleep well.”

“The sun doesn’t dictate when I’m awake. I decide that,” Ceilsea muttered.

“You’re already up. What are you going to do now?” Shae asked stooping down to collect their things.

“I’ll go back to my room and sleep for a few hours,” Ceilsea answered.

“Really?” 

“Yes, she’s serious,” Vonae told them as Ceilsea stumbled to her feet. 

“Have fun swishing and spinning and flicking,” Ceilsea said as she walked towards the door waving her hand dismissively. 

“We will be doing none of that,” Vonae assured her as she disappeared through the doorway.

She stumbled through the halls to her bedroom, trying to keep the haze of sleep fresh. Luckily she didn’t run into her parents or her other siblings. She fell into bed without changing out of her clothes from yesterday. The mists of sleep engulfed her.  She was not sure how much time had passed when she became conscious and curious about a quiet knock at her door. 

“Yes?” she inquired, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. Her clothes felt heavy and twisted. She was probably going to regret sleeping in them, as it would take longer to get them laundered and ready for wear again. Her small wardrobe would be even smaller.

“Ceilsea?” the voice was distinct even though it was quiet. It was Yippinee.

Tugging at her soiled clothes as if that would fix the foreign feeling on her skin, she crossed the room and opened the door for her little brother.

He looked surprisingly timid, glancing left and right like he was on watch. He looked up at her and asked, “Do you know where Vonae is?”

Ceilsea sighed. “Is he supposed to be teaching you?”

“I’m supposed to be practicing magic with him, but he wasn’t at breakfast or in his room,” Yippinee said, which explained why he looked like he had hidden the king’s jewels. Their parents would scold him if they saw him anywhere but at lessons.

“Do you want to practice magic with him?” Ceilsea asked, weighing whether she should interrupt Shea’s limited time with Vonae.

“Not if it’s more combat magic,” Yippinee admitted convincing Ceilsea that she didn’t have to co-opt Vonae’s time. However, she did have to keep her baby brother occupied so her parents didn’t find out. 

“I do know where he is, but why don’t I teach you today?” Ceilsea offered. Opening the door wide, Yippinee slid in her bedroom. 

“I don’t know if that’ll work…” 

“I can’t do magic, but I can help you with another subject,” Ceilsea assured him. “When I was your age, I had to do all my lessons before breakfast, then go to my sculpting masters’ for the rest of the day. I had to meet their expectations for all my schooling to ensure Mother and Father would keep paying for my apprenticeship. I had higher marks with the tutors than Vonae and Jala.”

“You had to learn the same things as us? Even though you were sculpting?” he asked, sitting on her bed. 

Ceilsea stripped her top layers and then hid behind her dressing screen as she continued telling the story, “At the time, Mother and Father weren’t sure I was going to be good enough at sculpting to make money. They were more concerned about finding me a way to make a living than what I enjoyed. Sculpting was just one option. If it didn’t work out, I could have been a scholar, a scribe, or even a seamstress.”

“I didn’t know that,” Yippinee said almost dismayed. Being twelve years her junior, Ceilsea didn’t expect him to.

“I’ve never been handed everything I wanted, despite what Miennere thinks,” she told him as she cleaned herself as much as she could with a day-old water basin. Then she picked out her outfit. She reused the yellow and orange clothes from a few days ago, but paired it with a different kaftan.

“I don’t think Miennere knows that either,” Yippinee pointed out.

“That’s because she—" Ceilsea stopped herself mid-sentence, recalling two-year-old Miennere hoisted up in their mother’s arms, her hair stroked by their father as they lauded, celebrated, and loved her for showing signs of magic. Ceilsea had never gotten that kind of love and acceptance, yet Miennere thought she was the jilted one. Ceilsea sighed and continued, “She never asked.”

Yippinee fell silent as Ceilsea finished dressing.  Ceilsea knew she hadn’t given her younger siblings much opportunity to know her. She didn’t have much in common with them, and their main interest, magic, made her squirm. Vonae was different because he had been her big brother forever. The rest of her family stayed at a distance.

Once she was clothed, she sat next to Yippinee on the bed.

“Is there anything in particular you want to learn about today?” she asked him. He looked back at her with eyes that matched the deep green of her own. 

“Um, well, you are friends with the king, right?” he said hesitantly.

“I work for him like Mother, Father, and Vonae, but we are close, yes,” she clarified.

“Could you teach me how…why he became king? It’s too recent for my history tutor and I get conflicting answers from everyone else,” he said looking at his feet.

The truth wasn’t complicated, but she knew why people avoided the subject. Some people whispered about his coronation like it was a scandal, and others denied it was any different than any other. If the process was going to become the new tradition, which his majesty wanted, children like Yippinee needed to understand why it was important.

“Follow me,” she motioned for Yippinee to follow her. They went down the hall to the sitting room. He sat on a lounger as Ceilsea collected a large book from the bookshelf. She flipped to almost the end. “You know about Targar, the Blood King?”

“He was the last of his lineage, warred with tribes within Sumanar, and pillaged the edges of the Aebris empire regularly,” Yippinee tried to summarize quickly, skipping over a lot of nuance.

“He was a king who liked to bully and attack his own people. He said it made them respect him, but it led to fear and hate throughout the country,” she added, trying to inject some of the emotional landscape of the time that she had heard his majesty describe. “The noble families that descended from the tribal heads— some still involved in the tribes, some just established land owners— faced multiple threats of retaliation from the Emperor. With the blood, sweat, and tears of their own people on their hands, they decided enough was enough. A small group of them compiled a group of warriors who slaughtered Targar’s army during the night and hung the Blood King from the top of the cliff the next morning.”

Placing the book on the table in front of Yippinee, she showed him the section where it talked about Targar’s death and the aftermath of the revolt. It discussed the turmoil and the chaos between different factions of Sumanar but not how it ended. The historian who wrote the book wanted to frame the revolutionaries as wrong. 

Ceilsea continued, “After no one forced their way into the position of king,” Though not through lack of trying according to the king. “It was put to a vote amongst the nobles. Duke Mileubramn of Ishzalt on one side and Duke Samsil of Obinon on the other. King Mileubramn won and married Samsil’s sister to prevent a civil war.”

That was the part people hesitated to talk about. Some thought a king shouldn’t be elected. Every king before had won their position through violence or by divine forces, back when most people believed the gods were still alive. Kings were not picked from a line. Still, there was more to the story. 

“His sister was Princess Esmine’s mother… they didn’t marry because they wanted to?” Yippinee asked, curious for more information.

“They wanted to, in the same way Mother and Father married, to create a powerful lineage. The king and queen had a common goal to bring peace and prosperity to Sumanar,” Ceilsea told her brother, still flipping through the pages of the book, “They weren’t much more than acquaintances. They had no interest in one another. After years with no heir, people started to gossip. They said an elected king offended the gods’ memory, and from the grave, they made sure he could never have an heir.  The queen begged the king to have a child with her. People were starting to slander her name. He eventually relented, and that’s how Esmine was born.”

“And the queen died,” Yippinee said. 

“The king likes to say she valued her reputation more than her life. Still, the king was happy to have a child. Esmine helped with the loneliness that his majesty had always felt as king, but it also led to the realization of his worst fears,” Ceilsea said, getting to the last page of the book.

“What did he fear?” Yippinee asked.

“Despite what some fools may tell you, his majesty despises royalty and does not want to pass down his title. The princess of Sumanar, to him, should just be a regular girl. He wants the next monarch to be elected just like he was. Not everyone agrees with him,” Ceilsea told him.

“Least of all, Princess Esmine,” Yippinee commented. Even he knew that.

“She became obsessed with Targar and the throne. The man and the system King Mileubramn devoted his life to destroying, are revered by his daughter. For the king to accomplish what he wishes most, he must destroy his daughter’s hopes and dreams. Worst of all, he might not have the power to stop her,” Ceilsea said, still staring at the book. Her mind had devolved into memories of hours-long conversations with the king about his daughter and Sumanar’s future. 

“Why not? He’s the king,” said Yippinee. He was watching her intently.

“Even if it’s put to a vote, there’s a high chance the nobles will choose her. Many of them support succession. It will become a true royal line after that. For nobles who would consider choosing someone else, there’s no one with the charisma, the reputation, and the drive to stand against her,” Ceilsea explained. Esmine taking the throne was her nightmare too. The princess cared about only herself. The amount of degradation Ceilsea had endured for threatening her position illustrated that. Ceilsea couldn’t imagine Esmine would do anything good with the power to control a kingdom.

“Except you.”

Ceilsea laughed, “Because I’m the pseudo-princess?”

“Yeah…” he replied sheepishly.

“Two problems with that. One: I’m not noble. The bloodline-obsessed nobles aren’t likely to elect me. Two: I have no interest in the self-sacrifice and hard work required to rule a country. Trust me, I’ve heard about it from the king. It’s a nightmare. Being a symbol of Sumanar’s cultural integrity is bad enough,” Ceilsea told him, leaning back from the book. Then she concluded, “So that’s what they don’t want you to know. The monarchy is on the edge of falling apart, and the king is working to ensure that royal inheritance doesn’t survive.” To be fair, the title of king would survive, but the tradition would die. That irked people who feared for the stability of the nation. On the other hand, the lower classes feared acknowledging that the king did not want a blood successor in case he changed his mind and decided to silence them.

“Is that why the king decided to join the Empire? To undermine the monarchy in Sumanar?” Yippinee was repeating the gossip against the king he had heard.

“No, we joined the Empire to garner peace after Targar’s antics. If the king hadn’t negotiated the annexation, we would have been conquered. If that had happened, we wouldn’t be able to self-govern. As it currently stands, we are given near complete independence, except for sending tithes and sacrifices to the Empire,” Ceilsea explained. People talked as if the king was weak for giving into the Empire, but considering it was that or the destruction of Sumanar, Ceilsea thought the king had turned a forced arrangement into a deal that benefited Sumanar. Under the Aebris Empire, Sumanar was protected, trade was encouraged, and travel between the nations was easy. 

“Sacrifices like the champion,” Yippinee finished.

Terreniael was one of the Empire’s founding cities, and the empire had guarded it and protected the world from its monsters as long as it had existed. Years ago they had started demanding champions from all their territories to spread the ‘honor’ of the Heroes that served there. Despite many critiques of Sumanar joining the Empire, almost everyone agreed that a Hero from Sumanar would be a badge of honor. It would redeem the country as a nation of renown, even more than Ceilsea and the growing arts movement had. 

“That is why this tournament and its outcome could change things, depending on who wins,” Ceilsea said. If a champion backed Esmine’s claim to the throne she would be harder to oppose, but if a hero backed the royal election, their influence could bar Esmine from participating. Who would oppose a Hero? Despite the king and a faction of people pushing to distance Sumanar from its violent tribal past, the only person everyone would listen to was a warrior of great honor.