Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 116570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
There would be no escaping. “No, ma’am.”
There was silence as we walked down the hall, up some steps, then down another hall before going down other steps. However, I didn’t recognize where we were going. Not because I wasn’t shown this part of the palace, but all Wolfgang had told me was that they were security rooms.
“You all will wait here,” the queen said, speaking to Gelula and everyone else who followed the queen.
They nodded and stepped back. When the doors opened, it looked like any other portraits room. However, the wallpaper was a more cream-gold color, and the portraits on the wall were all of queens.
The live queen in front of me walked up to a portrait of herself. She was much younger, her red hair shorter. She wore a soft-pink ruffled gown and crown of white diamonds on her head, a cross in one hand, and scepter with another large diamond on the top. In the background was a picture of the capital.
“I regret that dress now. It makes me look like a cupcake,” she said as she looked up.
“It kind of does, but it is still nice.”
She glanced over at me, frowning as she stepped forward before lifting a small remote I hadn’t noticed she had been holding. What she needed it for since there was no television—well, no furniture at all—I wasn’t sure until she pressed a few numbers and all of a sudden, a humming noise sounded it. Slowly rising from the ground, before her portrait, was the same crown she wore in the painting. Turning back, it wasn’t just hers but in front of everyones. Crowns in glass cases rising from the ground like resurrected queens was something I’d never thought I would see.
“I wish to yell at you,” the queen said, drawing my attention back.
“What?”
“I said, I wish to yell at you. To scream. To tell you how inconceivable it is to me that you married my son without my blessing, presence, or even a proper wedding. I wish to throw things and vent at how much of an utter mess everything has been from the beginning. We are flung from mayhem to mayhem. It is all very upsetting, and I wish to take it out on you and scream,” she said it all very calmly and stood poised and elegant as if she were not bothered at all, which was a bit scarier actually.
“But you won’t yell at me.”
She nodded. “Do you know why?”
“You are the queen?”
“Exactly,” she replied. “Even if the sky is falling. Even if all the world is in chaos and I am in pain, even if my children are in pain, I must be the calm one. I must be the queen, not the sovereign but the queen. My role is to support. And so, I am supporting. I shall ignore everything else and do what I must do anyway. Gale is the future king. Sadly, he does not see me as his support but as another person demanding something of him that he does not think he can do. You married him, even though no one else knows or if it is legal, so you are that support. He needs it now, and he will need it again tonight for the state dinner. Therefore, you will need to choose a crown.”
“If I wear a crown instead of a tiara, won’t everyone know what they reported was the truth?”
“Of course, someone will say that. Others will say it is customary that every woman wears a crown or tiara at a state dinner. People will always say something. We are above it. We ignore it. Choose the one you like so it can be taken out of the volt and prepared for you,” she demanded, waiting.
Once again, I looked around at the crowns.
“With haste, Odette, you still have a schedule to keep.”
At first glance, it was hard to choose. They were all so sparkly and royal. A room of crowns worn by former queens, all of them different, but all of them stunningly beautiful. I wasn’t sure which one to pick. How did you just pick a crown? Part of me wanted to pick the least “in your face” looking one. However, as I walked, I found myself stopping and staring at a golden crown covered in every color of jewels—sapphires, rubies, emeralds, pink diamonds, and white diamonds. It wasn’t at all quiet. It was in your face. I glanced up at the queen, who had worn it in the painting above. She was a petite woman with long, light-brown hair and a large, red birthmark on her face right under her eye.
“Queen Polina,” she said, coming up beside me. “She was a commoner. The first commoner to ever marry into nobility, let alone become queen. To make matters worse, she was not of stunning beauty, either. But she not only saved then Prince Michal during the Second War of Princes but treated his wounds and helped him sneak past enemy lines to rejoin his army. After the war, he came back for her—a butcher’s daughter—and married her. But she was not treated nor felt like a queen. So, he had a crown of every jewel, embedded in gold, created for her.”