The crown was heavier than she expected. Not just in weight, but in memory. The throne still smelled of her father’s fragrance, still bore the faint scratches from her eldest brother’s horseplay during their youth. Both are gone now. All of them are gone.
Queen Miujiza stood at the high window of the citadel, looking out over a kingdom that had never been meant for her hands. The castle banners still rippled in the morning breeze, and the streets below bustled as if the world had not ended three moons ago. But she felt the grief like a boulder on her chest.Her father’s councilmen disparaged her behind closed doors, testing her, waiting for her to stumble. “A queen so young”, they said, “with no man to lead her. A woman who had never trained for rule”, they murmured. They did not see what she saw.
She saw the cracks in the walls where time had worn away the stone. She saw the merchants tightening their belts as they began to feel their sense of security dissipate, the farmers glancing too often at the sky hoping for rain. She saw war on the horizon, neighboring kingdoms preparing to assail while the city was vulnerable. Their protector was gone.
She lifted her chin, her father’s blood and her mother’s fire burning in her veins.
If the crown was never meant for her, she would shape it into something new. Let them whisper. Let them doubt. By the time they realized the kind of queen she had become, it would be too late to stop her.
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