“No. It’s forged from my tears and all the things I had to relinquish to keep it. Do you truly believe it’s a stroll through the gardens?… Sweetheart, power is never a choice. It can be a sanctuary, a stronghold, or a cage. But a choice? Never.”
“But it is! Everything is a choice. And if you’re too weak to make the right one, you’re not worth it.”
“I certainly hope I’m not. It’s not about me. I’m bartering myself to the most wretched souls I’ve ever known. If I had any true worth, it would’ve been a tragedy.”
“The Goldlanders? You said you were smitten with their son just yesterday!”
“I don’t always speak my heart.”
“Then you’re a liar.”
“Privacy is power, Luna. I must marry Logan of the Goldlands, you know that. Would it help if I confessed to his mother, their queen, that he’s loathsome and that, even if he weren’t, I wouldn’t sit in the same chamber with him for a king’s ransom?”
A tear slipped down Isabel’s cheek, but it did little to soothe her sister’s temper.
“Still, you should be free! Stay here, help me make this land a haven for everyone, just as Father dreamed. Instead, you play the role of a queen, and you can’t even decide who you love.”
“Luna, I’ve made decisions every day for the last fifteen years! I raised you when I was but a child myself. Or have you forgotten? The nights spent in the library, how you danced among the stacks of books while I buried myself in studies because it was the only way I could watch over you and still learn what I needed to survive? And then you blamed me because I wouldn’t let you roam outside alone, while I couldn’t even lift my head from my desk for fear I’d fail to keep you safe. Everything is always my fault. Every dawn I rise and give all that I have, and each night, when the moon hangs high and my eyes feel sealed shut, I lie awake, knowing how little I’ve achieved and how much remains undone. There’s. Always. More… So no, I’m not playing queen—I am the queen. And if you think my decisions are poor, so be it. But someone must bear the burden, and I cannot shoulder it alone. Not when every minister is bribed to keep the rot intact.
“I detest Logan, but his kingdom has lorded over ours for decades. If they decide to tighten their grip further, our people will rise in rebellion, and I won’t know how to quell it. So yes, I will wed him, and I will endure him, if that’s what it takes to secure peace. True peace. At the very least, we will survive. Unlike Father.”
“But he brought joy to the people! He gave them hope.”
“Yes, because he was a hero. I am a queen. Queens do not inspire happiness, Luna. They protect their people, so that happiness is theirs to find.”
“Still, there must be a choice!” she cried, her voice echoing through the grand dining hall, reverberating against the painted ceilings.
Isabel exhaled heavily, a sigh of defeat.
The heavy chair scraped against the marble floor with an ear-piercing screech. The clicking of Luna’s shoes filled the chamber as she stormed away. “Always running wild like an untamed mare,” Isabel thought bitterly. She knew freedom was her sister’s greatest value. Luna was so much like their father. Of course she was. She hadn’t seen him in his final moments. She was too young, shielded from the truth. Their nursemaid had whispered tales of their father’s heroism to spare her from grief.
The truth was far less noble. He’d been undone by his failures. One frigid winter’s day, he’d cast himself from the cliffs. Though he survived the fall, the guards found him shattered, with but hours to live. He didn’t die a hero—he died a foolhardy king who had failed to broker a fair peace after years of war with the neighboring realm, leaving the treasury barren and his people destitute. Rather than face his mistakes, he chose the abyss.
He left his daughters and his realm in the hands of a feckless secretary who deliberated for months over the color of the royal stables’ walls. And so, Isabel seized the reins. She spent her youth devouring tomes on politics, history, and finance in the castle library. When she came of age and claimed the crown, stability returned, but it came at a cost—her bond with her sister.
Luna loathed her methods, her endless parleying, her cryptic decrees, and her ceaseless tinkering with laws and customs. Even Isabel’s gowns, adorned with ribbons and jewels, drew her sister’s disdain. “The old Isabel was better,” Luna had said. “She wore breeches, braided her hair, and never painted her lips. She looked fearless.”
“And now you look like a cursed cake figurine who can’t wait to be kissed by some lord!” Luna had sneered when Isabel wore a lustrous gown to their cousin’s wedding.
But Isabel knew appearances mattered. In the kingdom of Arten, ministers and governors feared a woman on the throne more than they feared the Goldlands. Unless, of course, that woman was a frivolous ornament. A bimbo. A doll. Such a queen was harmless, malleable. If she wished to play at ruling, why not indulge her?
“A queen who plays is a queen who smiles,” they thought. “And a smiling queen keeps the gates wide open.”
So Isabel played her part. Night after night, she dined with powerful men, laughing at their jokes, feigning awe at their stories, and weaving in her own “frivolous” proposals—laws for pregnant peasant girls, or small-statured merchants with golden hair, or orphaned babes of darker skin.
To them, her ideas were ridiculous, a jest for their amusement. But they carried her proposals to parliament, eager to humor the queen. And, miraculously, the laws passed. Change was easy to sell when it came wrapped in absurdity.
And so, young mothers gained access to cheaper medicines and bread. Blonde-haired merchants secured favorable loans for their wagons. Orphaned children found tutors to guide their education. It wasn’t swift, and it wasn’t always fair, but it was progress.
Day by day, year by year, Queen Isabel I of Arten—known to her people as the Caramel Queen for her honeyed words and sunlit skin—reshaped her kingdom, one “absurd” law at a time.
If only her sister could understand…
