I found her sitting alone in the west garden, knees drawn up beneath the overlarge folds of her ceremonial skirt, the gray sky painting the sea below in restless brushstrokes. The courtiers were still bustling in the main hall, debating the schedule for tomorrow’s royal lessons—her first as the designated heir, my first as her official guardian. I could still hear their voices whenever the wind shifted: clipped, cold, and certain. They’d already made clear what they thought of her sketches and her salt-stained shoes.
She didn’t look up when I approached, though I saw her fingers curl tighter around a stubby bit of charcoal. At her feet, torn corners of parchment fluttered like wounded birds. One showed the faint outline of a ship’s prow—sharp, bold, utterly unlike the stately barges that waited in the palace boathouse.
I stooped beside her, careful not to cast my shadow over the scattered fragments. "The tide’s coming in," I said, watching the waves. "Some things always return."
She sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "Not sketches. They took them. All of them. Said they were useless."
Her voice trembled, but beneath it I heard the iron, the stubborn refusal to cry in front of me. The wind tangled a strand of her hair across her brow. I remembered how, just last week, she’d asked me what made a ship strong—if a hull could carry more than just cargo, if it could carry a dream.
Tomorrow, the academy’s doors would open to her for the first time. Tomorrow, the court would expect her to recite history, to greet dignitaries, to accept her crown as if it weighed nothing. She was ten years old and already learning how small a life could be, if she let others draw the lines.
I crouched beside her. My cloak settled over the grass. "You’re expected in the library for etiquette lessons at dawn. But it’s not dawn yet."
She looked up at me then, eyes wet but fierce. "What if I don’t want to wear the crown? What if I want to build something that floats?"
The palace bells rang the quarter hour. Above us, gulls wheeled against the stormy air. The lost sketches, the lesson awaiting her tomorrow—already, the court was shaping her path. But she looked to me, hoping for something I could not simply command.
A guardian is supposed to protect, to guide, to draw strong boundaries. But I knew the hardest part of guiding her would be knowing when to let her dare the deep water herself.
The torn ship design at my feet caught my eye. It was the only part that hadn’t been trampled underfoot. Perhaps not all was lost—yet.
Behind us, the light in the royal tower flickered—my signal that the council expected an answer soon. I flexed my hands, the brine in the air stiffening my knuckles. The next steps I took would decide not just tomorrow’s lesson, but the shape of all her days to come.