Cracks in the Crown
The summons came at nine in the morning, delivered not by her mother's warm voice through the door but by a folded card slipped under it, embossed with the royal seal in gold foil that caught the light like something mocking her. *Your presence is requested in the Throne Room at ten o'clock. — By Order of the Crown.*
Elara read it three times before the words settled into her stomach like stones.
*By Order of the Crown.* Not "love, Mama." Not even her father's looping signature, the one he used to scrawl at the bottom of her birthday cards with a little crown drawn beside it, the tips always slightly crooked because he never could get them even. Just that cold, official phrase, as if she were a dignitary from some distant province rather than their only daughter.
She dressed slowly, choosing a pale blue gown that her lady-in-waiting, Marguerite, had once said made her look like "the very picture of springtime." Today it felt like armor that didn't fit right. Her fingers trembled as she fastened the small pearl buttons at her wrist, and she caught her reflection in the mirror—sixteen years old, dark hair pinned back the way her mother preferred, eyes too wide, too aware that…
