For most of her life she had felt more like part of a machine than a girl, harnessed and strapped and attached to a variety of painful apparatus to improve her looks and posture.
Marie scrutinized herself in the mirror. She was seventeen now, no longer shackled by contraptions or sitting in a wheelchair. But a few years old she had caught the wasting plague, a rare and debilitating illness of the tubercular variety, which causes blood in lungs, shortness of breath, and weakness in the constitution.
It had turned her pale coloring almost translucent. She had thin brown hair, a high forehead, a narrow nose, and intelligent gray eyes. The dress did give her a little more color, even as she despaired of ever looking pretty.
It took almost an hour for the ladies to give her properly outfitted—to hook every eye in her corset and tie her every bow on her skirt, to plait her hair and arrange it artfully around the nape of her neck.
When they were finally satisfied with her appearance they led her to the queen's bedroom, where two hundred courtiers were already gathered behind the railing that separated the private from the public space of the room.
The assembled were the great and the good of the realm: the noble ladies and lords, dukes and earls, ministers and officials, high-ranking enchanters; even the Merlin was there for a change, looking impatient as he scanned his pocket watch.
She had heard Aelwyn was supposed to return to the palace that day, and wondered when her friend would come to see her. Emrys nodded a greeting, and Marie shuddered inwardly; she had been uneasy in his presence ever since the day of the fire.
He had stormed into the burning room and cast a spell to put out the blaze, his face full of wrath, and anger. Emrys was a sorcerer, a wizard, a master of dark arts. Like many of the queen's subjects who did not understand magic or its workings, Marie was afraid of the man who wielded it.
The queen's bed was a grand four-poster draped with the most luxurious of the velvets, embroidered with the white fleur-de-lis of France and the white roses of England, Marie held her breath as a gnarled hand reached and pulled the curtains away. The queen appeared in her nightdress: a small old woman, stopped, hunchbacked, balding at the top. She was neither stately nor regal, but when she appeared all two hundred members of the court bowed low. Marie kept her head bent and tried not to cough. She snuck a peek as her mother walked behind the dressing panels, where her ladies-in-waiting helped her into her morning robe and breakfast cup.
The court kept their bows in place until the queen spoke.
"Good morning," she said, addressing them at last. Her voice had a majestic timber, powerful and authoritative. It was a voice that made proclamations, turned commoners into lords, and sentenced enemies to death.
The crowd chorused a hearty "Good morning, Your Majesty!"
"Her Royal Highness, Princess Marie-Victoria Grace Eleanor Aquitaine, Dauphine of Viennois, of Wales," said the herald, announcing Marie's presence.
"Marie , my child, will you join me for breakfast?" Eleanor said looking pleased and surprised, as if she had not orchestrated her daughter's appearance herself.
Marie took a seat across from her mother at the gold-and-white table in front of the railing, which was set with an exquisite breakfast. It was a command performance; the entire court hung on their every word and scrutinized their every action.