Chapter 1: Cecilia
The girl in the antique, gilt-edged looking-glass didn’t feel like me. She was a porcelain doll, spun from spun, gold hair that refused to hold a curl and wide, sapphire-blue eyes that always looked startled. She was breakable. She was boxed away.
I hated her.
I tugged at the high collar of my silk blouse, the fabric feeling tight around my throat like a noose. For seventeen years, the Bluethorne Palace had been my entire world. I knew every secret passageway, every echoing ballroom, and precisely which floorboard outside my parents' bedroom creaked.
I had been homeschooled by a rotation of terrified tutors who bowed before they spoke. My geography lessons were maps of places I was forbidden to visit. My history lessons were lists of people who wanted my family dead.
"Anti-monarchist rebels," my father, the King, would growl, pacing the drawing room. "Valorian spies. The world is not safe for you, Cecilia."
It used to be safe. Or at least, it felt safe when Edmund was here.
My reflection blurred, and I blinked away the sudden sting of tears. Silence was the heaviest thing in the palace. It had settled over us five years ago, the day the black-bordered telegram arrived informing us that Crown Prince Edmund, my brave, laughing older brother, had fallen on the Valorian front lines. A Valorian arrow, they said.
His death turned my parents' caution into paranoia. The palace gates were sealed tighter. The guards doubled. I went from being a sheltered princess to a prisoner of state.
A sharp knock on my chamber door made me jump.
"Her Royal Highness," a footman announced, eyes glued to the floor. "Their Majesties request your presence in the Solar immediately."
My stomach dropped. A summons to the Solar was never good. It was where my father practiced his "King face" and my mother, the Queen, practiced her icy disapproval.
When I entered the sun-drenched room, they were sitting in matching velvet armchairs, looking like statues draped in expensive fabric. They didn’t offer me tea.
"Cecilia," my father began, his voice gravelly. "Your eighteenth birthday approaches. The Age of Ascension."
"Yes, Father."
My mother smoothed her already perfect skirt. "We have kept you safe. Hidden. But the council argues, and we are forced to agree, that a Queen cannot rule from the shadows. You need... exposure."
I frowned. "Exposure? Like waving from a balcony?"
"Like reality," my father said sharply. "You need to understand the political landscape not from books, but from the pit itself. You need to understand the nobles you will command, and the commoners you will rule over."
A dreadful chill snakes up my spine. "What are you saying?"
"You are being enrolled," my mother said, delivering the death blow to my quiet life, "at The Aurelian Academy. You leave in three days."
The Academy. The legendary, fortified boarding school in the mountains where the children of the world's elite; royals, warlords, and tycoon billionaires, were sent to sharpen their claws.
"But," my voice trembled, "it's dangerous. You always said...."
"It is necessary!" my father snapped, slamming a hand on his armrest. "If you are to take Edmund’s place, you cannot be terrified of your own shadow, Cecilia. You go. You learn. You survive. That is a decree."
I was dismissed.
I made it back to my room before the panic attack fully hit. My breath came in short, sharp gasps. The Aurelian Academy. I’d be eaten alive. I didn’t know how to talk to people my own age. I didn't know how to do anything other than curtsy and speak dead languages.
I needed air. I needed sanity.
I scrambled for the loose floorboard under my bed, pulling out the sleek, burner smartphone I’d bribed a gardener to buy for me three years ago. My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped it three times before I dialed the only number saved in its contacts.
It rang twice. Then, a click, followed by loud, chaotic noise; engine revs and shouting.
"Hold on, hold on, I got a call," a husky, familiar voice shouted over the din. The background noise muffled as she likely shoved the phone against her shoulder. "CeeCee? Everything okay? You never call this early."
Just hearing the nickname made my shoulders drop three inches. "Ada. I... something terrible has happened."
"Did the Queen catch you eating carbs again?"
"Worse. They’re sending me away. To school. The Aurelian."
There was dead silence on the other end. Then, a low whistle. "The snakepit? Damn, princess. They're finally letting the canary out of the cage."
I closed my eyes, picturing her. Ada Lovelace. The daughter of the palace’s Head Mechanic. My best friend. My only friend.
I could see her perfectly in my mind’s eye, a stark contrast to the pale ghost I saw in my mirror. Ada was vibrant chaos. She had a mop of unruly, ink-black hair that she chopped herself with kitchen shears, usually tied back with a grease-stained bandana. Her face was a constellation of freckles and smudges of dirt that she wore like war paint. Her eyes were a startling, mischievous hazel, always crinkled at the corners because she was always laughing at something she shouldn't be.
She was tough, street-smart, and entirely unimpressed by titles. She was everything I wasn't allowed to be. And right now, she was the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
"I can't do it, Ada," I whispered into the phone. "I won't survive a week."
"Sure you will," she said, her voice hardening with that fierce loyalty that always made my chest ache. "Because I’m coming with you."
