so many times, I knew it by heart. I knew my route out of the antechamber up to the aisles between gallery seats, where the visiting nobles all stood watching somberly, likely remembering Camellia's attack on me just weeks ago. There were still flowers climbing the walls and violets bordering the stones of the floor.
My steps moved in time with the music, and time seemed slowed and warped, my mind a little too distant from my body. Feathers whispered behind me as I walked up to the dais, the voice of the two-natured urging me gently forward. My mother was there, her Chosen waiting behind her throne, a golden crown on her head, old and heavy and beautiful. The same crown that my ancestor had taken from the head of a king barely anyone remembered.
They'll remember me, I decided. Not for battles or for hardship, but for the golden age of Kimmery I'd been told I'd help create since I was a little girl. I would fashion it with my own hands if I had to. I would march through fields and plant seeds myself if that was what it took.
My mother rose from her seat, a soft smile on her lips, shoulders loose with relief. My Chosen were waiting in the wings to the side of the dais, watching, their eyes like pillars shoring me up. My mother's hand extended to me, and I dipped my head to kiss the back of it.
"Bryony of Kimmery, Daughter of the Queen's Line, why do you stand before me today?"
"To carry on the mantle of Queen of Kimmery," I said, surprised by the strength of my voice, the way it carried up to old wooden arches, bounced against dark stone.
"What is in your heart?" my mother asked.
"My love for Kimmery." The answers were my own, although I was sure I hadn't been the first woman to say something like them.
"What is in your hands?"
"The lives of my people."
"What is in your blood?"
"The strength of the queens who came before me," I said, thinking of my grandmother.
My mother paused and smiled, and I wondered what her answers had been.
"What is in your mind?"
I hesitated. I had too many answers for this question. All my plans for Kimmery's betterment. Acts of change and promises of improvement. But I didn't know how to fashion it all into a single answer until the words fell from my lips.
"My own voice."
My throat tightened, breath freezing. It was a risky answer in a way. Probably not reassuring to the council, and a bit of a slap to my mother and her habit of listening to everyone else, but it was the truth. I'd learned to trust my own conscience.
My mother only blinked. "Kneel, Bryony of Kimmery."
I sank, releasing a silent, wavering sigh.
"Do you swear?? There was more, questions to answer in the affirmative, old promises someone had written hundreds of years ago. But that part was easy and a little mindless. "??nd to live your life in service of Kimmery and its people?"
"I do," I said easily, in a bit of a daze and nearly forgetting that I'd just sworn to my last promise. It struck me, and I looked up, my eyes on my mother's. She was calm, and I suspected, relieved.
"I surrender unto you my crown," she said, raising her hands up to her head and taking the crown in her grip, lifting it carefully away, "Bryony, Daughter of the Queen's Line, Queen of Kimmery."
The metal was warm from her head, sinking into my hair, and I closed my eyes as my throat squeezed shut. The crown settled easily, heavy enough to be a reminder of what I'd just taken on, but reassuring too.
"Rise," my mother said, gently, taking my hands and helping draw me back up from the floor. One hand remained held in mine as she stepped carefully to the side of the throne, leaving me in the center. Behind us, men shuffled away, my mother's Chosen making way for my own.
I looked at her, and she nodded, magic sparking between us. I guided it for her, down into the stones, up into the rafters, pushing it into the ground and the sea and the sky. There was a whisper of breath, expectant from the audience, but the transformation was small. Behind me on the throne, the peonies vanished, roots crumbling down back into the magic I'd made them from. Bryony flowers took their place, white and shy and delicate, vines curling over the