Paper Rings Part XII

September 2995

With Leo and Caleb gone, the air in the garden seemed to have shifted. Conversations were fizzling out, and the courtiers had started to turn their attention to the head of the table. To her.

At first, it was just stolen glances. Most of them were too afraid to look at her too directly, but they wanted to see who this new addition to their world was. Without Caleb there to protect her, she felt cold and alone. He had promised to stand by her side every step of the way, but he hadn’t anticipated that he might need to attend to his father first. 

When they started to whisper, Marie started to squirm. Even Ariana sat up straighter, her mask of indifference slipping over her face as she sensed her family under interrogation. She knew Caleb favored his mother in appearance—dark hair, green eyes, thick lashes, cheek dimples, warm brown-toned skin—and sometimes even demeanor. Now more than ever, it showed. She had to wonder if even Ana or James could tell what she was thinking.

At the other end of the table, not far from the seat Vance had just vacated, an elderly woman was the first to address Marie directly. She was gray-haired and heavyset, her skin wrinkled and sagging. Jewelry adorned what felt like every inch of her: her neck, her wrists, her ears. Even the pins in her hair were set with tiny gemstones. It must have been heavy. 

There was no question about whether or not she was outrageously rich. Marie didn’t even have to look at the heavy folds of vibrant silk fabric that made up her dress to know that.

“So, one day, you’ll be the queen,” she said. It was neither a question nor an observation, her tone condescending as she looked Marie up and down. The common girl.

Marie tried to think of what Caleb might say, remembering what his mother had told her mere hours before. If they’re going to let you be their queen one day, they need to believe that you are better than them, and right now, they don’t. They think that they are better than you. Changing their minds will take time, but it starts with your refusal to be less than them. It’s all in your attitude. 

She tried not to let her eyes flit to the Queen, channeling her without breaking eye contact with the woman. “That is how succession works, correct?” Holding her head high, she prayed nobody else could hear the tremble in her voice. “I’m new to this, but if my husband is the king, then I will be the queen. No?”

Even through her mask, Marie caught the corner of Ariana’s mouth twitching into a smirk. The knot in her shoulders loosened.

The Queen wasn’t stepping in yet, allowing her to handle this herself. But if she was amused, Marie must have been doing something right. At least, she hoped.

The woman smiled, amused. “You are beautiful, child,” she said. “And you carry yourself well. Almost as if you belong here.”

A ripple passed through the table. Somebody chuckled, the sound low and brittle.

Marie inhaled sharply and straightened in her chair, forcing herself not to fidget. Caleb’s voice echoed in her head: It’s really not too much? All of this? Me? My future? he had asked. She had told him it didn’t, but this was the real test. If she couldn’t pass it, then she may have to accept that she wasn’t cut out to spend the rest of her life by his side. No matter how much she loved him.

But then she reminded herself of what he had said next. I’m a different person when I’m with you. A better person. And I don’t want that to be a temporary thing. I don’t want it to be a snippet in my memory. I want it to be forever.

She wanted that too. Forever. The court was just another obstacle, one of many that she had already faced to get a seat at this table in the first place. If she wanted to win this game, the first thing she would have to do was the one thing that no member of the court would ever be able to: earn her place.

Caleb had chosen her for a reason. She didn’t want to be a queen, but it was what she would have to become if she was to be his wife. Maybe she would never live up to the image of steel that his mother was, but she could try.

“That’s sweet of you to say,” she said, surprised by how mild her tone was. “Caleb brought me here for a reason. Don’t you think?”

The woman leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes narrowed at Marie. Her jewelry caught the light like shards of ice. 

“And you think you deserve that?” She raised a thin eyebrow, unfazed. “What do you think that looks like? To wear a crown? I know you haven’t been raised for it.”

A few of the courtiers exchanged glances, some wary and some entertained. They were waiting for something, a signal maybe, gaining strength with each word from the woman’s mouth.

“I have no doubt about his love for you, dear,” she said. “The young prince is quite… Shall we say passionate?”

Marie opened her mouth—to say something, anything, to defend herself—but the old woman wasn’t done.

She drawled on, unrelenting, “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know I pray to the gods every night that his passion is stronger than politics. Stronger, even, than war.” Her tone reminded Marie of her grandmother, tender and sweet. But still, every word was coated in thick venom. “Otherwise…” Her eyes flicked to Ariana, if only for a second. A challenge. “I’m afraid we might all pay the price.”

The silence that followed was heavy. A breeze rustled the trees, and a squirrel dashed through the grass. Marie didn’t even know this woman’s name, but she knew that she was powerful. The court moved at her command, allowing her to lead the conversation this way or that. Maybe they were all her allies, maybe only some of them were. Right now, it was impossible to tell. 

It was enough to embolden the others. She had started them off strong, so much so that there was really no way that they could lose their grasp on the upper hand. Marie could try as hard as she wanted to act like she was strong enough to handle this, but the old woman had laid out the truth for all of them to see. She was weak.

“I’m afraid she does have a point,” said a man a few seats down. He leaned forward, almost eager. “The crown needs allies. Experienced allies. Its stability has always depended on the strength of those alliances, and this…” He looked Marie up and down, his nose scrunched. “Well, this is questionable at best.”

Voices began to gather, everyone trying to speak over everybody else. To say their piece. Each swipe built on the old woman’s first strike. These people would not accept her as their queen.

Another man shouted in agreement, his thick mustache curling up to his nose as he nodded vigorously. “Precisely,” he exclaimed, and pointed a finger at Marie as if to accuse her of something. “You have nothing to offer. What makes you qualified?”

Across the table, several other courtiers echoed him. The older men were the most eager to do so, their voices the loudest. They wanted to be seen defending the sanctity of noble blood.

It was true that the court and its nobles knew more about the ways of the palace and the Magican government than Marie did, but anybody could learn those things. Besides, knowledge wasn’t what they were referring to anyway. The qualification she was missing was the right family name. Earning the favor of the Crown Prince didn’t change that. 

As far as she was concerned, money and so-called bloodright didn’t qualify someone to rule a kingdom. But then again, she wasn’t sure what did. Maybe nothing. Maybe nobody could ever be qualified enough to have the right to be a monarch. Crowns and protocols weren’t what it took to create true leaders.

But these people had a different way of life. This system was good for them. Money couldn’t buy happiness, but it could buy power. And it was a shame.

“You know, we have to be careful with common families,” said a man directly across from the old woman. Everything about him was pompous, from the way he sat to the irritating taint on the edge of his voice. “Court can be complicated. Not everyone has the… capacity for it.”

“Or the class,” a middle-aged woman added, her eyes burning a hole through Marie’s head. “I hear you have brothers. Wild boys.” She shook her head, lips pursed, now addressing the entire table. “If they come in here, we can be sure they’ll corrupt our daughters. Village influence isn’t good for noble girls.”

A fire raged in Marie’s chest. She didn’t know how to respond to them without screaming and giving them another thing to gossip about. Her family was plenty smart, she wanted to tell them. They just lacked the ignorance the court seemed to hold so dear. 

It wasn’t untrue that Florian and Theo both liked to flirt—Theo enjoyed making girls laugh, and Florian knew how to get someone to blush with a smile alone—but they were nowhere close to wild. They knew where to draw the line.

She’d heard different stories about the rich boys, noble boys, boys who had been told all their lives that whatever they wanted was theirs to take. She wanted nothing more than to tell this table of supercilious people that their sons could learn a thing or two from her brothers, but she bit her tongue. With everything she had, she swallowed down the words and managed not to glare.

One day at court and she was already coming to understand how crucial it would be that she learned to formulate her own mask, just like Caleb and Ariana.

“We could always compromise,” someone else said, though Marie couldn’t see them through the white rage she was fighting to suppress. “Have you thought of that? Caleb can love her all he wants, but she doesn’t have to be queen. Kings often take mistresses.”

A mistress. At the very least, they could grant her the decency of calling her a lover or a consort. But no. She knew exactly what they were trying to say. 

As far as the court was concerned, mistress was synonymous with whore. It was a way to say to her face what they had already been saying behind her back without using language that was quite so crude. To them, all of this was her fault.

The Prince loved her, and somehow, that made her a villain.

They had all certainly done their homework—on her and on her family—and she hated them for it. They had probably waited weeks, if not longer, for the chance to do this to her. To bring her down piece by piece with their words alone. To attack her. Unlike the people who had surrounded her growing up—people who had to work for everything they had—the court had all the time in the world. And they had earned none of it.

Her mouth was too dry, her body too rigid, to say a word in her own defense. They would eat her alive, just like Ariana had said they would.

“Her parents are good people,” another woman cut in. She was much younger than the first woman, probably in her mid-forties, also clearly very rich but not as startlingly so. She wore jewels, but they weren’t big and gaudy. She sat up straight, but it didn’t give her an air of self-importance. The look on her face was serene, but there was nothing careless about it. She almost looked familiar.

“They’ve made jewelry for me before,” she continued, and Marie remembered seeing her in the market, wrapped in a simple cloak. She always came to them herself, and she always had something to chat with Flora about, as if they had been best friends all their lives. “They’re kind, they have fair prices, and they do very good work.”

All Marie wanted at that moment was to give that woman the longest hug in court history. It likely wouldn’t be a difficult record to break. Caleb’s lack of experience with warm gestures had told her that much.

“Precisely.” The old woman tapped a long, painted nail on the table, bursting Marie’s bubble of comfort. “Work. They are common workers. Down in the market with all the rest of them. What place does their daughter have at the side of our prince? What place will their grandchild have sitting on the throne after its father?”

It.

Not they. Not he. Not she. It.

The old woman’s tone had changed with the word, careful to place emphasis on it. There was no question about whether or not it was intentional. 

Marie was not one of them, and that would diminish her child’s worth, even if their father would one day be a king. A fire raged in the pit of her stomach as she clamped her hands down on the arms of her chair, willing herself to stay in it when all she wanted to do was leap across the table and claw the old woman’s eyes out.

How could she ensure that there wouldn’t be a fight over the succession? What if the court turned to James or his children? Or to Ana? Or even to one of Caleb’s infinite distant cousins? Her children would be first in line to the throne, but there would also be plenty of alternatives in line after them.

She had to remind herself that attacking the court would do nothing to benefit the lives or claims of her hypothetical children. When Caleb said something she didn’t like, she could say to his face the things she was thinking. She could defend herself and call him out. But while he was the Crown Prince, he was also her fiancé. He loved and respected her in a way that these people did not.

Finally, the Queen cut in. “Olenna, that is enough.”

There was a darkness in her eyes, one that, despite the neutrality of her face, told Marie that she wasn’t the only one who had caught the “it” comment. Her voice was stern and steady, everything Marie couldn’t will herself to be. To stand up for herself. She was not a queen. Not yet. Maybe the court had a point.

“Are we to taint ourselves with the blood of commoners now?” the old woman, Olenna, demanded. “My granddaughter will have to marry some man off the side of the road instead of the Crown Prince?”

Beside her, a girl—a young woman—leaned back in her seat, eyes closed, visibly resisting the urge to shake her head. They were probably about the same age; maybe this girl was a little older, closer in age to Caleb. She had to have been one of the most beautiful women Marie had ever seen. There was no doubt that she was the granddaughter Olenna was referring to.

“My blood.” Ariana’s eyes blazed, and some of their fire bled into her voice. Her hand on the table was clenched, her nails digging into her palm. “Caleb is my son. Mine. And his children will be my grandchildren. My blood. Leo’s blood. The blood of Callix Martinez. That will not be tainted anymore by a marriage to her than it would be by a marriage into your family.”

The room went still. Ariana was right. The only way that the Martinez family could keep their bloodline “pure” was to start marrying each other, so it didn’t make a difference whether they had children with a noble or a normal person. Not really. Not genetically. Only socially.

Marie could feel that even the people who had agreed with Olenna knew a line had been crossed. Olenna was no longer insulting just Marie. She was insulting the future of the crown: Caleb’s children and Leo’s grandchildren. Before they even existed. 

But if Olenna knew that she had gone too far, she didn’t show it. Instead, she sat up straighter, staring her queen down from the opposite end of the table. She wore a keen smirk, appearing to see herself as at least as important as the Queen, if not more so.

“This girl should know that the words of her fiancé and future father-in-law are worth nothing,” she said, directing her gaze at Marie as if she were doing her a favor. “If he’s told you that you will live a life of jewels and luxury, he’s lied to you. That boy is not to be trusted.”

Ariana scoffed. “You will not speak of my son—”

“You need to remember her oaths.” Olenna cut her off as if it were her birthright to do so. It sent a cold, electric shock through the garden, so intense that even the birds went silent.

In response, Ariana’s voice was sharp as a whip crack, no hesitation and no remorse. “And you need to remember your place.” Her eyes scanned the table, cynical and reproving. “All of you.”

Nobody spoke. They didn’t dare to.

There was a chalice in Olenna’s hand, and when she slammed it down, red wine splashed out, staining the white tablecloth. She didn’t appear to notice. The sound was so sharp, so filled with fury, that even one of the guards flinched, his sword clinking against his armor. 

Her granddaughter had leaned forward and was whispering something in her grandmother’s ear, her hand blocking her lips from view, but Olenna waved her off. She didn’t say a word as she rose to her feet, the sneer on her face challenge enough. 

She wanted Ariana to stand too, to face her, but the Queen didn’t take the bait. She remained seated, her back straight and her face set like stone as she stared up at Olenna. Even when she was the one being looked down upon, her presence was commanding. She didn’t have to say that she was the Queen to remind them all of it.

A look of disgust flashed across Olenna’s face as, tsk-tsking intensely, she turned her back and began to march away. Ariana had subdued her, but she had not been defeated. She would be back. There was no doubt about it. 

When she turned back toward the table, Marie fought the urge to shrink back, afraid that Olenna would take one last swipe at her before making her grand exit. But she didn’t. Instead, she shouted back at her granddaughter, demanding that she follow.

“Camilla!”

Camilla hesitated, but got to her feet. Unlike her grandmother, she didn’t leave without turning to not only Ariana, James, and Ana, but to Marie, nodding in acknowledgment of each of them in turn. There was an apology in her eyes when she turned away from them, her dark, coiled curls bouncing as she rushed off.

Intuitively, Marie knew she should see this girl as a threat. She was the competition—a girl from a rich, powerful family, who had clearly been raised to wear the very crown that Marie now stood to inherit—but what if she wasn’t? Her kindness, however subtle it may have been, could be a trick, but it could also be a signal that she didn’t want for herself the same things her grandmother had imagined for her. Maybe she could be a friend. There was no way of knowing for sure, but Marie wouldn’t count her out. Not yet.

Even once Olenna and Camilla were gone, the garden remained quiet, nobody willing to be the first to speak. The small fountain in the nearby pond gurgled, and the wings of birds rustled in the trees. Every noise felt like the blast of a horn, slicing through the heavy sheet of unease like a freshly sharpened knife.

TO BE CONTINUED