Queen Malin came from the House of Vesuvere, the seat of power in the North, which commanded the greatest army of all the regions when their vassal houses were numbered. When Lady Malin came of age, King Alisander was already wed to Queen Naya. 

Had the prince not been so quick to wed Naya and waited only a few more years, there could not have been a more sensible match than Malin. The royal family needed to keep the great houses as closely allied to itself as possible, and the North, vast in distance and distinct in custom, was ever the region the Crown must hold close.

Queen Naya came from the Auster-Marches, the merchant-rich southern coast of the kingdom. Naya’s house, however, was no grand merchant lineage; her family’s holding was a humble fishing town, renowned only for its bountiful catches, seashell jewelry, and fine pearls. A young Alisander had discovered Naya when he journeyed to learn the art of the wave-stave in her coastal village. 

Many rumored versions of that tale persisted, but one truth remained absolute: Alisander had not married Naya as a strategic masterstroke. Beyond her sun-kissed, breathtaking beauty, her sharp wit, and her strength of personality, she brought little dowry to the Crown. Fortunately, she bequeathed those gifts to her daughters in abundance—and it was here Malin felt she fell short.

To turn the late Queen’s tomb into her home, Malin brought a sizable retinue of her own from the North when she came, and banished all remnants of the late Queen to her family seat in the South. Her loyal retinue in the Highstone Seat worked as her eyes and ears around the castle. She needed this support, because Alisander had handed such a marked advantage to her stepdaughters in the form of his naked favor toward them.

Malin herself never antagonized her stepdaughters. She was quite aware of the common fables regarding cruel stepmothers, and she had no intention of giving the court any fuel for gossip at her expense. 

However, she recognized the true terms of her arrangement: she had married Alisander—a man who was, even after years of marriage, quietly besotted with his dead first wife—to serve as a respectable political ally whom he occasionally took to his bed. She had wedded him to secure enduring power for her family, and she regarded it as a sovereign objective. For that reason, and for the trauma she endured bearing her two daughters, her own girls had to prevail. 

If she sought to dismantle her stepdaughters’ standing, it was only due to the mathematics of her circumstance: the throne had room for only one crown.

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Queen Malin’s first hope had been to produce a male heir for the King. Surely, a prince would secure the line of succession, and the King would be indebted to her if she could bear him a son. The King was kind enough to her, and made no demands for a male heir, but her place would be secure and beyond question if she could give him a boy. 

When Malin was pregnant the first time, she had great difficulty, and, in the later months of her pregnancy, remained bedridden. Then Anasha came screaming into the world as a disappointment. But at least she had Malin’s beautiful golden hair.

Malin was comely, but not the great beauty that Naya was. She was tired of being compared to a dead woman who had entranced everyone who came across her. She saw her stepdaughters, and she was afraid her daughters would fall short just as she had, even though she came from a grander lineage than Naya.

But the shadow the elder princesses cast was long. Kat had played the hammer-harp with her eyes closed by six. Celesta had composed poetry and painted still lifes of skulls and guttering candles by eight.

Anasha did her best to keep up, dutifully shadowing her mother everywhere. Malin could see that in Anasha’s child’s heart she looked up to her older sisters and wanted to play with them, though in time she must surely learn that they were different.

“Listen to me, Ani. Your royal father wants the princesses to go out into the capital and perform noble self-sacrifices to gain the love of the people. His intentions are good,” Queen Malin began. “Katarina has her Scriptor’s Hall, Celesta has her lettering hall. You must look inside the castle, to a far more easily gained weapon that your half-sisters underestimate.”

As always, Anasha listened with rapt attention.

“Do you see all these ladies who come to Highstone Seat to wait upon me and the princesses, to attend court?” Malin went on. “Their years here are meant to give them something—friendship with the Crown, and with the other great houses. It is a way for the Crown to bind the realm together, for it is the great houses that hold the realm together. Is it not so?”

“But Mother, the work Kat and Cel do among the commoners—no one has ever done it before. That is important too, I believe,” Anasha offered meekly.

Malin sighed in impatience.

“Teaching a smith’s son his letters warms the heart, indeed,” she said. “Yet it is a bond with a great lord’s daughter that yields power. The noble ladies of this realm must be capable. They must know how to keep ledgers and carry out tax audits; they must learn provisioning, the practicalities of baggage trains and siege, and the craft of the feast. They do more of the underlying work that keeps a great house and estate afloat than the lords themselves—who are, of course, indispensable when might is called for.”

Anasha opened her mouth, but Malin held up a hand.

“And above all this,” the Queen continued, “a noble lady must be a faultless architect of hospitality, orchestrating grand feasts for hundreds of visiting dignitaries without a single stumble, while remaining ever ready to manage the quiet governance of her own nurseries. In the end, these are the women who come to wield real power in the houses they marry into.” She finished and looked at her daughter.

“Mother, I attend all those lessons alongside them,” Anasha murmured, “and the advanced studies in statecraft with Lady Valiya that Father decreed. I know what they must know.”

Malin smiled. Anasha was so well bred that this was as much impatience as one could expect from her.

“You may have sat through those lessons without ever grasping your true purpose there,” she said gently. “You are to strengthen your ties with these women, as deeply as you can. It will serve us later.”

Malin would never openly argue with her husband about sending Anasha out of the castle to serve the community. Instead, she would one day offer up Gela, her second-born, as a compromise.