Bookish Ponderings

Prologue CHAPTER ONE Architecture functions on a very different scale from the inside-out than the outside-in. It is one thing to see a space laid out in halls and wings and roofs and towers from a distant hillside or from outside its walls, and it is quite another to walk those halls. And walk them Princess Reserve did. It had begun when she was a child, defying the spirit of the rules set upon her while still following them to the letter. She did not leave the castle’s walls. She did not put herself at the mercy of the dangers of the world outside its walls. But that still left everything in the castle. They’d tried to limit her walks about the castle with chaperones and watchful guards but the castle was big and she, if not as graceful or clever as her sisters, knew how to outpace and outwit her escorts. The pain was still present through all this, of course, and some days she did as was expected of her and stayed in her room and rested and she was glad for it. But restful d

Once upon a time, there was a king who had three daughters. The first, the eldest, was from her very first year a well-mannered and studious child, so the king called her Wisdom, and raised her in the matters of statecraft and science, to one day be married to some far off prince and bring the knowledge of the two kingdoms together into a brighter age. The second was from her very youth taken with dance and ritual, so the king called her Grace, and she was taught in poise and elegance, to one day be married off to a rambunctious and adventuresome prince, who would be in need of a wife who was calm and collected yet charming. The third was the youngest and she was not like her sisters. But her being unlike her sisters was not in the way of heroes, of youngest sons who know virtue and humility, no, her way was that she was neither wise nor graceful, but a daughter. A daughter who the physician had deemed fragile, for there was a thorn bush in her ribcage, and sometimes, it rustled and th