Chapter 26 - Life Reset
Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.
- Tennessee Williams.
Everything tilted toward chaos. A lesser soul might have panicked, might have fumbled as a dozen variables spun like knives in the air. Seraphina did not. She knew chaos for what it was: a door left ajar. Chaos was opportunity; chaos was change.
For the briefest moments, she considered that Elidion, in a fit of stupidity, might attempt to seize her within the Academy itself. But Meridian’s Academy was famously neutral ground, a politically sacrosanct area. Even the King would not dare set that precedent; to do so would be to turn every lord of the realm against him. Then again, men grow desperate when the board looks poorly for them.
And Elidion’s position on the board was poor indeed. Only a few of the great houses stood with him. Much of his strength was borrowed—drawn from the loyalty of her father, his cousin, Duke Anatoli de Sariens, the Red Ogre. There, she suspected, lay the root of it all. Elidion wished to replace Anatoli with someone, or something, equal in power and influence and more easily managed. Her father had never cared for the small deceits of the Royal Court in Aran; he kept his gaze fixed on his duchy’s charge, the border where Aranthia held against the Empire. The Church, by contrast, could offer a king soft power at home and long fingers abroad. A marriage to the so-called Saint would yoke altar to throne, and by slow degrees turn Aranthia into a theocracy.
That, Seraphina would not abide. Her only true dedication was to the twin constants she trusted: money and power.
On a more personal level, she loathed religion and all its shackles upon the mind—the dogma that bound living thought to the mad certainties of the long, imperfect dead. Not to mention the mental contortions required to square reason with ancient superstition. Faith could drive decent folk to indecent acts and furnish those with black hearts a license to commit greater evils. In a world unshackled from such a curse, humanity might have already colonized Mars. She smiled thinly at the thought. Only stupid sheep could worship a dead man on a stick.
Steps rang softly on stone as she walked with her Knights, their cloaks whispering as they crossed the courtyard, passing by a burbling marble fountain. There was, too, the human tangle of the strings of the heart. Old journals from the Succession Wars she had acquired at great expense, the gossip salted in their pages, told an interesting story about her mother and Elidion. Once, it seemed, they had been in love. When the crown came within reach, Elidion chose power over a woman’s hand, wedding Seraphina’s paternal aunt, Lydia, to clinch de Sariens' steel for his claim to the throne.
Lydia, according to the setting and this body’s memories, had died far too young. She had always been kind to Seraphina.
It was irony in the extreme that her mother had chosen her father, she mused as her hand plucked a random leaf from a bush, shredding it slowly with her delicate finger.
If that tale held any truth, if even half of it did, it explained much: her mother’s machinations, and Elidion’s resistance to the marriage long agreed between Seraphina and the Crown Prince, Velens. Old wounds bled into present chaos.
If she were able to play her cards right, the Kingdom of Aranthia might just have its first Queen Regnant.
Footsteps slapped hastily against the stone behind her.
“Lady Seraphina!” Eloise’s voice came breathless, her face flustered as she paused to catch her breath.
“Whatever is the matter, dear Eloise? You shouldn’t be rushing about in such a manner; it is a little unseemly,” Seraphina chided gently.
“It’s the Prince!” the dark-haired girl cried between ragged breaths.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Seraphina sighed, half hoping.
“No, Lady Seraphina! He has woken up!” Eloise explained hastily.
The blonde girl had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “Yes, yes, but what does that have to do with me? Am I supposed to care?”
“Well, he is asking to see you…” Eloise answered, looking down.
“He has no right,” Sir Filippe interjected, his brown eyes flashing.
Seraphina flicked open and shut her mother’s fan as she chewed on the news. “I don’t see why I should grant the royal brat the honor—do you?” she asked her escort.
To a man, they all shook their heads.
“Well, there you have it. I shall decline the royal invitation,” Seraphina said with a pleasant smile. “Now then, I must see Rashana; one hasn’t time to waste on foolish Velens…”
“Sera!” called a familiar voice.
“Speak of the devil,” Seraphina muttered, opening her fan and covering her mouth.
“Rashana, darling, I was just on my way to see you!” Seraphina said, schooling her surprise behind a pleasant smile.
“And I you…!”
Eloise started to look quite flustered. “Lady Seraphina, you don’t understand! The Prince… he wishes to make a formal apology to you… and there is something wrong with him!”
“Wrong with him, you say? What, between the whoring…” Seraphina spat acidly.
“Milady,” Sir Gravens warned politely.
Eloise covered her mouth in shock at her mistress’s crude words.
As for Rashana, she looked as if she had been punched in the gut. Had Seraphina not known better, she would have called it shock—of all things.
“Well… we hel— I mean, we must find out at once! This is important, Sera!” added the half Al-Lazarian girl, determination hardening her voice.
“I agree, Rashana, yet a part of me thinks this is some childish scheme—to have the last word, or to paint me in a certain light.”
“Please, Lady Seraphina!” Eloise insisted, looking rather cutely cross. “The Prince hit his head, which means there have been complications in his recovery.”
Rashana crossed her arms, the bangles at her wrist chiming. “We were friends with Velens well before your parents agreed to your match. We owe it to him, as his childhood friends, to at least see if he is in good health. Boys will do the silliest things when pressed.”
Seraphina looked at her quizzically, raising an eyebrow. “I owe it to him, do I? Maybe I owe him another knock to the head.”
“Such crude talk is beneath you, darling,” Rashana chided, her smile thin. “And yes, Seraphina—especially if he wants to try to make amends. No matter how you spin it, you are at least partially to blame for this spiraling as it did,” she said, shaking her head. “You know Velens, and I know you. You are better than this, Sera.”
“How dar—” Seraphina half-snarled.
“I dare, Sera, because I know you!” Rashana bit back smoothly.
“He is still the future king. As loyal subjects, we…” Eloise decided to chime in.
“Fine, fine! You win,” the blonde noblewoman replied in exasperation. “If you all want to see the Crown Prince, let us pay a visit to the glorious Crown Prince.”
Honestly, whose side were her friends on? she wondered, a little bitterly.
***
The three friends, with Seraphina’s escorts in tow, made a brisk march to the infirmary. The guards ringed about the facility shot them a few curt looks but stepped aside—orders had clearly been given. Professional, they still did their job: Seraphina’s Knights were halted and required to surrender their steel before entering.
The young de Sariens, not wanting to make a scene, ordered them to instead simply wait outside and to storm the place if she did not return within the hour. At this, the Royal Guard just shook their head.
If Seraphina wished for the prince’s life, she could have taken it many times over. The only problem with doing it in such a manner would have been, apart from the obviously bad look, that laying down a precedent that it was right to kill those in power was the done thing. This, the young girl decided, she would not abide. Image, after all, was everything.
Seraphina turned to her escort. “Wait here.”
Sir Gravens shifted behind them; Sir Filippe’s jaw worked, but both kept wisely silent. They both obeyed.
They were shown through a cool corridor that smelled of camphor and boiled willow-bark by Royal Healers, then out beneath a cloister where pale autumn sun washed a square of garden. Beds of broad, rough-edged leaves and bright coin-like blooms were laid out soldier-neat; bees labored at the last blossoms; a little rill whispered under a footbridge. And there, walking slowly as if relearning the measure of his own limbs, was Velens.
He wore plain clothes of a fine cut, soft grey and winter-blue, no jewels, no sword. A linen bandage wrapped across his head. He turned at the scrape of their tread on the gravel of the path and his eyes, clear grey as rained-on slate, fixed only on Seraphina, as if the rest of the world had fallen away.
“Seraphina?” he said, her name shaped like a question, not a summons.
It put her immediately out of temper. Feeling slightly on the back foot, she snapped her mother’s fan open with a delicate flick. “We are not on given-name terms today,” she said, sweet as frost. “Nor, do I think, any day from now on.”
He blinked, stung, and perplexed. “Forgive me. They told me you might come and… that I should… should apologize. The Healers said I would know you. That you would be the most beautiful golden girl. Yet I do not—I know only that you can only be that Lady Seraphina, by their description. A beautiful name that truly suits you. Every time I say it, I feel odd here,” He confessed as he touched his chest. His mouth tried on a smile that had none of the schemes of Aran’s court in it, no practice—only a young man’s awkward earnestness.
Seraphina hissed without moving her lips, “Eloise. Explain.”
Eloise, who already looked perilously glossy-eyed, dabbed at her lashes with a pink handkerchief. “He… the Royal Healers say… that because His Highness struck his head. There are… gaps. Large ones. The Prince has lost a good portion of his memories.”
“A convenient fiction,” Seraphina said, almost idly. The fan’s ribs clicked. “Velens was never shy of creating a few tall tales here and there when it suited him.”
Rashana bit her lip, shaking her head. “Sera, please. I do not think this is a deception.”
Velens took a cautious step nearer across the gravel. He stretched out for her, but stopped himself when he saw the daggers in her eyes. “They say I am a prince, the Crown Prince, in fact,” he said, as if reporting on a stranger. “They say my name is Velens, that I have duties, that we were engaged, and that I have… wronged you. I woke up in a room full of other people’s words. None of them sit right in my head.” He glanced at the herb beds, at the little rill, with a faint wonder that did not suit the old Velens at all. “Only seeing you do I feel no longer adrift. I feel only regret for anything I have done to you... That, at least, is true.”
Seraphina narrowed her eyes. If this was a game, it was most definitely a rather cruel and elaborate one. A glamor, then? The thought wormed up, unbidden. If there was Fae-work here, it was not the cheap sort.
“Very well,” the young noblewoman declared crisply. “Let us pretend you have forgotten everything. That does not mean you can be so easily forgiven. Your actions have set the kingdom into chaos.”
Seraphina watched him as one might regard a dangerous animal that had inexplicably gone tame. There was no deception, no telltale clusters of it around the eyes, around the lips. His stance was open and honest.
The disdain she had ready—sharp, well-honed—found nothing familiar to bite. No smirk. No preening pride. No boy who believed that her heart was his by right. Only a young man blinking at the world as if it were too bright.
“Do you recall the duel?” she asked, voice gone very even.
“What duel?” he said, and there was no guile in it, only a faint alarm.
“What duel!?” Her anger stumbled. She found herself asking other things. He knew the old kings by number, the succession of treaties; he could recite a prayer by rote. But when she mentioned more private memories, like his declaration to her in the Gilded Gryphon, his face was only puzzled.
“This is just too much…” Rashana murmured, half to herself.
“Am I forgiven for it… if I cannot remember it?” Velens asked Seraphina, his voice a pathetic plea.
“You may have forgotten, but I have not. That is not how forgiveness works,” Seraphina snapped—and then stopped, hearing the echo of something petty in her voice. “How can you apologize for something you profess you do not recall? Not to mention, you could always remember…” She looked at him again, properly. The grey eyes did not flinch, did not slide away to the nearest flattery or escape. They stayed on her, steady, waiting to be told what the world was.
At last, she sighed and folded the fan entirely, tucking it away. “Very well, Your Highness,” she said, the title given without only the slightest mockery. “We will begin with simple things. Walk with us. I will instruct you on what you have forgotten.”
“I think… I would like that.” He inclined his head, relieved—and for a breath the garden grew very quiet. As they set out along the path, Seraphina felt the first thin thread of belief tug at her—unwanted, undeniable.
And, for the girl, this was yet another opportunity.