by Shelby Hild
“And we wanted to know how your date went,” Tia said as she skipped into the room.
Vivilyn moved back over to the easel and sat in the chair again. Nell and Tia continued speaking as she stared outside. It wasn’t the comforting way that Maia or Iza or even Darissa raced their speech. It felt harsh and loud. They just when on and on and it seemed as though they were fighting over who could speak the loudest.
Suddenly the walls of her room felt as though they were moving in. The sounds of Nell and Tia talking turned into the sound of gnats buzzing around her head. Vivilyn felt as though she couldn’t properly breathe, and the room started tilting slightly.
“Can we talk about it outside?” she interrupted whatever they were saying, turning back towards Nell and Tia. Both women stopped talking. “Would you mind helping me get this stuff outside facing the sun?”
“Of course we wouldn’t mind.” Nell said. Between the three of them, one of the guards, and a cameraman, they managed to get all of Vivilyn’s art supplies to the edge of the gardens between where her bathroom window faced and the greenhouse.
After setting everything up around a stone bench, she looked at the blank canvas. She wanted to paint something to do with the date she’d been on, but wasn't entirely sure which part.
Since she’d always been able to see her ideas clearly in her mind, as she started telling Nell and Tia everything that happened she closed her eyes and began to move her brush.
It was slow at first, as she tried to determine exactly how the colors would look on the canvas. As she grew more confident in what she was doing, her strokes sped up.
As Vivilyn mentioned the reddish orange bird diving into the sand, both Nell and Tia perked up.
“What kind of bird does that?” Nell asked.
“A sand-loving one,” Tia replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
When she finished telling Nell and Tia about the date, they stayed around for a bit longer just talking about anything and everything that popped in their minds. And for Tia, that meant they talked about everything from the other women to the average lifespan of an ant. They left as her picture started taking shape on the canvas.
Vivilyn sat there for hours, for the most part being left alone. Every so often someone would come and sit next to her to talk for a bit, but generally anyone who noticed her would say hello and then be on their way.
The cameramen grew tired of watching her paint and wandered away after about an hour.
A snorting laughter caught Vivilyn’s attention as she finished her attempt to add texture to the sand in her picture.
“Viv,” Darissa yelled from across the gardens. “Where are you? She is out here, right?”
Someone said something to her and then she called out again, “Vivilyn, where are you?”
“Over here,” she yelled back as she set her brush down and looked over in the direction Darissa could be heard running from. She approached in clothing so dirty it looked as though she spent the whole day rolling in soot. Her entire face looked as though it was covered in dirt.
“What were you doing?” Vivilyn asked as Darissa sat next to Vivilyn on the bench with a loud sigh. No cameraman followed her.
“Oh,” Darissa said, wiping a hand at her cheek. It didn’t help remove any dirt and Vivilyn couldn’t tell if it spread what was already there since her face was so dirty. “Prince Aiden and I spent the day in the city.” She reached down to take off her shoes which were equally covered in grime.
“They let the prince into Ettravil? I thought they were worried about another explosion there?”
“Apparently before we left, guards double and triple checked to be sure it was safe. And we spent the day helping clean up the rubble and debris. It was so much fun.” Darissa sighed with a distracted smile on her face.
“Fun?” Vivilyn asked as she washed the paintbrush in water she had recently refilled.
“Well,” Darissa said, “it was enlightening.” She laughed a bit. “I’ve only ever seen Aiden in a fun-loving playful way. But I got to see him in a more serious light.”
“And…?”
“He’s so kind. And you can just tell how much he cares about his people.” Darissa looked directly at Vivilyn. Her sea-green eyes seemed larger than normal. “He’s going to make such a wonderful king someday.” Darissa sighed again and laid her head lightly on Vivilyn’s shoulder.
Darissa looked up at the painting and drew in a deep breath.
“What is that?” She asked as she picked her head up and reached out to touch it. She stopped herself before she actually did.
“It’s a mixture of different things we saw at the beach,” Vivilyn said. “With an extra bit of flare.” She smiled at the awed look on Darissa’s face.
“Is that…” Darissa said as she pointed to the bird standing on the sand with a ribbon in its mouth and its wings spread out. “That’s the prettiest phoenix I’ve ever seen. Where’d you get the reference for it? It looks exactly like the ones in my old nursery rhyme book.”
“Phoenix?” Vivilyn said, laughing slightly. “No, that’s just some bird we saw.”
Darissa’s eyes grew wide as she shifted from looking at the painting to Vivilyn.
“You can’t have seen one,” Darissa said. “They’re extinct. Just like the gryphons and dragons.”
“That doesn’t look anything like a phoenix,” Vivilyn countered, although she had no idea what a phoenix was supposed to look like. “Plus, the bird obviously was a beach bird. It knew a turtle’s nest was there. They’ll probably hatch soon.”
Or never, Vivilyn thought as she remembered Brayleigh saying it wasn’t the season for turtles to hatch anymore.
“Oh my gosh, Vivilyn,” Darissa said as she stood up, eyes wide again. “You’ve never heard the… the… it’s not a prophecy, but…”
For once, Darissa wasn’t smiling. Her hand covered her mouth and she looked around. “I don’t remember the whole thing, but… it involved the phoenix returning and magic too. What if…”
“What are you talking about?” Vivilyn asked, running her hands through her hair. A splotch of coolness hit her forehead as her hair fell back and she was sure she’d accidentally gotten blue paint in her hair.
“I… I am going to go see if they have the same book here,” Darissa said running off, still holding her shoes. “I’ll be back.”
Vivilyn watched in the direction Darissa ran for a few moments after she was no longer in view, then shifted her attention back to the canvas in front of her.
It was a picture of the beach. On one side, water lapped onto the sand in different shades of blue, green, and brown. On the other side, the sand-diving bird stood guard over the nest of turtle eggs. The ribbon it stole blew in the wind from its beak. She wasn’t sure why she’d added the beginnings of a comet heading away from the golden-orange sun, but it felt right. It was light enough that she could only tell it was there because she looked for it.
Shaking her head, she picked up her brush once again and returned to the painting. In the background, she worked very carefully at adding small details to the railcar.
“Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for dinner?” A voice reached her ears from the gardens again. When Vivilyn set her brush down again, she looked over to see Prince Ethan approaching her. As she moved to stand up, the prince waved her back down. He approached and sat next to her as everyone else had since she’d sat there to paint.
Ethan looked over her painting, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“This is a stunning painting,” he said. Vivilyn blushed, slightly self-conscious about how the paints had blended with each other between the railcar and the sand in front of it.
“Thank you,” Vivilyn said looking back over to the prince.
“Now destroy it.”
“What?” Vivilyn said, startled. She lifted her hands in defense of the painting as though she anticipated Prince Ethan to start tearing the canvas apart like it was a flimsy pi
ece of paper. He, of course, didn’t even reach for the painting.
“I thought Darissa was joking when she tried entering the library still covered in grime from her date with my brother,” Ethan said, not once taking his eyes off the painting. “Obviously, we couldn’t let her in until she cleaned up. She was adamant about needing to check into some of the older mythology books about phoenix and prophecy.”
When he paused for a few moments, Vivilyn said, “She kept trying to convince me this bird was a phoenix, but it was just a beach bird. Everyone knows….”
“The phoenix is extinct. As are all creatures known for magic,” Ethan said. “Because magic no longer exists here.”
“Exactly,” Vivilyn said. Prince Ethan shifted his gaze from the painting to look over at Vivilyn through just the corner of his eyes.
“Magic can never return to this place,” Ethan said, his glance feeling heavy on her.
“P-precisely.”
“Do you really believe that?” Ethan asked, turning his head completely to Vivilyn.
“Y-yes,” she said, hesitantly, “Why should I worry about magic returning?”
The prince shook his head and stood up.
“I sent Darissa back to her room to clean up,” he said. “Dinner starts in an hour and a half. Please,” Ethan looked up at the painting again, “if you don’t want these eggs to be destroyed and that bird hunted down and killed, destroy this.” He gestured to the painting. “Destroy it before anyone else sees it.”
After he left, Vivilyn stared at the bird in her painting. She didn’t want to destroy it. She’d spent the whole day creating it! Carefully, she closed all her paints and washed her brushes in a small cup of water as she tried to work out what to do. She picked up the painting, careful to have the picture side facing her but not touching anything and went back towards her room.
When she returned to her room, Malcolm, Andrea, Nell, Tia, and Fiona were all pulling different outfits out and putting them up as they worked on deciding what Vivilyn should wear to dinner. Serinta and her team were nowhere to be seen.
“Could I trouble someone to go and get my easel?” Vivilyn asked as Malcolm set a brown pantsuit out on the bed with an agreeing nod from Andrea.
“Of course,” Fiona said as she dropped into a quick curtsey and rushed from the room. A quick look at Vivilyn made Malcolm clear his throat, startling Nell and Tia as they pulled bottle after bottle out of their make-up bags trying to discover what they had done with the nude pallet.
“You look like you could use a few moments to yourself,” Malcolm said. Vivilyn smiled at him. “Go take a shower,” he said as he gestured for everyone to leave the room. “We will go see what everyone else is wearing and we'll be back to help you get ready in fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you, Malcolm,” Vivilyn said, unsure how he could read her so well.
“But she’s been alone all afterno—” Tia was saying as Andrea and Nell ushered her out of the room.
“Fifteen minutes,” Malcolm repeated as he closed the door behind him.
Vivilyn sat on her bed, lifting her painting to look at it again.
How can I destroy this? She asked herself. Something about it seemed important. The feeling was almost as strong as the one she’d had on her birthday that everything was about to change.
She knew she couldn’t destroy it. Instead, she dug out the picture of the man she’d drawn with the dragon, wings spread out behind him, folding it in half three times before she tucked it into the back of the canvas. She walked over to the bookcase and pulled on the book that opened the secret passage. Once the door opened completely, she set the painting on the ground beside the opening and closed the door once more.
With her painting and the sketch hidden, Vivilyn went to take a shower and get ready for dinner.
As water soaked her hair, she was pulled into a vision of Prince Aiden staring out a window as the sun finished lowering on the horizon. His brother paced rapidly behind him.
“It’s not as big a deal as you’re making it,” Aiden said, not bothering to look behind him at his brother.
“Other people can see it,” Ethan said. He rubbed his forehead so hard that his fingers left red marks on his skin. “You know what that means.”
“Grandmother made it clear that this would happen someday.” Aiden finally turned his head to follow his brother.
“Mother says—”
“Mother says a lot of things. She knows just as much as we do, but she’s the only one panicking. We all have our own ideas of what should happen. What is yours?”
“I…” Ethan halted his pacing as he went quiet. “Honestly, I don’t know.”
“It’s happening,” Aiden turned and set his hands on his brother’s shoulders. “We can’t stop it.”
“Mother thinks we can.”
“Her way will leave us completely defenseless if things continue down this path. We’re already snow in an avalanche. Besides, she’s so hypocritical about the whole thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ori’s back.”
The vision faded away as someone on her team knocked on the bathroom door.
Chapter 11
“I wonder what the big announcement is going to be,” Irene said as she lifted a bite of fish to her mouth.
“Probably that Natalie is going home,” Brayleigh said from across the table. “Poor girl is still so distraught after… everything that happened.” Vivilyn looked at Brayleigh as the blonde woman smirked. “If it was me, I’d be trying even harder at this point. Prove to whomever threatened my family that they don’t scare me. Not whimpering like a baby in hiding.”
As though summoned by Brayleigh suggesting she went home, Natalie stepped into the room halfway through the meal. On a small raised platform up front, Prince Aiden stood as Natalie gave a small, weak smile toward him and then went to the only remaining empty seat.
“She could have tried a little harder to look nice,” Freya said from the other side of the table, loud enough for the whole table to hear. Natalie acted as though she hadn’t heard anything and focused on the food being placed in front of her.
Vivilyn didn’t think Natalie looked any less dressed up than the rest of them. Maybe more tired, but her outfit was on par with everyone else’s.
When all the women had finished eating and the plates were cleared away, Adontus stood at the front of the room. Once everyone quieted down, he smiled widely.
“Thank you for your attention, Ladies,” he said. “I would like to thank you all for being here tonight—”
“Like we had much choice. It is a mandatory dinner,” one of the women whispered.
“—I would like to give your attention to Prince Aiden,” Adontus said.
Prince Aiden stood up. Vivilyn’s heart fluttered slightly as he smiled over the group. His silver eyes stood out with his black slacks and dark grey shirt. She tried to picture him as covered with grime and debris as Darissa had been earlier, but she couldn’t. She looked over to the other table at Darissa quickly before returning her focus back on Prince Aiden.
“Good evening,” he said. All the women muttered greetings to him as well. “These Trials have not gone exactly as I planned they would so far.” His gaze lingered on Natalie and then on Vivilyn. “We aren’t very far into them, which generally means we try to keep you from contacting your families to see how you cope without them.
“Due to recent events, I’ve convinced my parents and counsel to allow for a brief change in those rules. Tomorrow morning, I will visit with each of you to collect letters or packages you might want to send to your families. Any response from them will be given to you a week from now.
“If you need any paper for writing, there will be some outside the door for you to take.”
Whispering broke out among the women, much of it excited.
“The only stipulations are you can’t give any details of the Trials, nothing about the dates, no behind the scenes information, unless you
want to talk about the food or something. Since at this point in time you are unaware of what has been shown, we can’t risk something being spoiled.”
It appeared that Prince Aiden was done talking, but after he took one step to the side, he looked at Natalie again.
“Lady Natalie,” he said. “If you wouldn’t mind coming by the office in the Chosen’s wing before you settle down, I have a surprise for you.”
With that, Prince Aiden nodded his farewell and left the room with the rest of his family and Adontus.
As everyone exited, many grabbed pieces of lined paper beside the door. Vivilyn didn’t, but she waited for Darissa to count out twenty pages.
“Gonna write a novel to your father?” Macy laughed as she took two pieces herself.
“Well,” Darissa said, smiling brightly, “there’s just so much to tell him. I can’t imagine keeping it down to just a page or two. I mean, we’ve eaten so much!” She laughed. “Seriously though, even if I don’t tell him any details of the trials, I may still need more paper. This is the longest Father and I have been separated since before Mother got sick.”
Vivilyn wanted to ask Darissa about what her mother was sick with, but with how silent everyone else grew, she didn’t think it was the time.
Darissa seemed to notice everyone had grown uneasy, because she changed the subject.
“I think I’ll speculate where I think we will be traveling once we’ve been whittled away a bit more,” she said. Conversation for the rest of the trip back to their wing revolved around the pros and cons of the different places they could go. Most people agreed that Shreville was a sure bet location.
“It’s the cultural center of the kingdom,” Sarah said of her hometown.
“Between the museums, gardens, and festivals there,” Anetta joined in, also from Shreville. “If we aren’t there during either the New Year Celebrations or the Summer Growth Festival, then they don’t know what they’re doing in these Trials.”
Vivilyn smiled as she thought of possibly going to Shreville. It was part of her dreams, her goals. If she made it to Shreville, if someone important saw and liked her artwork, then all of the risk she was taking being here was worth it.
