“Please wait here, young sir; the Little Madame will arrive shortly.”

Zephyrin nodded and seated himself on a velvet-cushioned giltwood folding stool in the crown princess’s antechamber as the maid quietly closed the door. After having entertained the queen successfully—perhaps altogether too successfully—during her portrait sitting, Adelaide-Estelle had the great pleasure of informing Zephyrin that her daughter was fully recuperated, and wouldn’t he like to get acquainted with her? Beneath her inquisitive tone had lain, of course, a regal imperative.

Never has idling away one’s time been so hectic, he thought to himself, staring at the white-enameled dial of a gilt-bronze clock standing with twisting, golden feet on a violet breche mantelpiece. Apart from its ticking, the room—as richly furnished as all the others he had seen during his stay in the royal apartments—was restfully quiet.

The sky had briefly cleared sometime that afternoon before abruptly covering itself up again, like an indolent sleeper who tests the air with an extended foot, shivers, then ensconces himself in his blanket’s depths once more. Only this stratiform layer had patches in it, letting the sun’s waning rays dye the clouds’ undersides an indeterminate reddish hue, somewhere between mauve and amphisbaenine purple…

Zephyrin relaxed the fingers that had unconsciously twined into the stool’s tasseled fringe. Calm yourself. It hasn’t been that long. Indeed, he hadn’t yet stayed a full week at the palace. If it seemed like twice that amount of time had already passed, that was because of the change in his routine, so different from that of the lyceum—and, no doubt, because of the rapid and almost bewildering succession of new faces.

With his other hand he reached up to gingerly feel the scab beneath his hairline. It hardly pained him anymore. Perhaps the court physician would be able to convince the queen that I’m well enough to be released?

Just then, cutting short the thread of his musings, a golden doorknob turned with a click, and the door—the door opening out from the princess’s adjoining bedchamber, not the one through which he had entered—swung open, disclosing the presence of his first cousin once removed by blood, and formerly remote by more than half a century, the Crown Princess of Gaulyria.

Rising to his feet, Zephyrin saw that she wore a white dress. That was how a prosaic mind or one indifferent to fashion might have described it: others more prolix, such as the curate of a certain southern Gaulyrian parish, might very well laud it as, “…a gorgeous gallimaufry of fantastical frippery pour épater la bourgeoisie!” Superabundant in lacy ruffles, flounces, and little frilly ornaments on the shoulders like dollops of whipped cream, it encapsulated the era’s elegance as much as its excesses.

Of more interest to Zephyrin, however, was the princess herself. He remembered reading that King Rudolf XIII was a man of formidable height, and even without laying eyes on him his sobriquet of “Gentle Giant” seemed well-founded simply judging by his daughter’s appearance, whose gangly limbs and slightly uneasy posture promised that their owner would also attain an impressive stature.

As the princess approached in a rustle of taffeta, he noted that the pale hands that showed past her silk-lace engageantes were larger than his own, while the white-leather mule tips that peeped out from under her dress’s befurbelowed hem were likewise of surprising dimensions.

Though presumably the same age as him or well near to it, the Crown Princess had a good inch on his height even without her heels, and Zephyrin had to slightly tilt his neck upward to meet her gaze as she halted before him. Behind her stood the indefatigable and omnipresent Madame Ehzvina, whom he could almost suspect of possessing bilocatory powers.

“Madame, this is Zephyrin dy Valensis, your newest play-mate.”

Thankful that the governess had forborne from adding, ‘and sibling’, Zephyrin offered his greetings along with a customary inclination of the head.

“It is a pleasure to meet you,” said the princess flatly, her attitude of perfunctory civility suggesting it was anything but. “Her Majesty my mother has told me much about you.”

Zephyrin thought her voice a faithful mirror of her appearance; gracefully pleasing on the whole, but marred by a certain stilting quality that made her silence more refined than her speech, as she was more elegant when still rather than in motion.

“Her Majesty wishes for you to call our guest by his given name,” the royal governess reminded her ward.

While Princess Sophia’s expression underwent no change, Zephyrin thought he saw smolder in her eyes an ember of resentment, one that her training quickly snuffed out. “Of course. Zephyrin, it will be my pleasure to serve you at supper tonight,” she said stiffly, her face set in a neutral mask.

“Serve me?” Zephyrin couldn’t help being more demonstrative. “Your H—I mean, Sophia…”—how awkward he felt, addressing her by name like this!—“…there’s no need to—”

“The offer is not mine to withdraw, nor yours to decline,” the princess said shortly. “It is the wish of Her Majesty my mother.”

Zephyrin needed a moment’s reflection to see through the queen’s intentions. I suppose she wishes for her daughter to grow into her role and accustom herself to serving those of lower station. An exercise of humility that was somewhat spoiled by his own high birth, but neither she nor her daughter could possibly suspect the truth behind his origins.

“Very well,” he acquiesced. “I look forward to the continued honor of your presence at supper, Sophia.”

“And I yours,” replied the princess, her features still as implacable as the palace’s stone battlements. Too well-bred to scowl at him openly, yet lacking the experience to entirely conceal her dissatisfaction, the princess elected to move off and began busying herself with a nearby bookshelf, straightening the leather-bound tomes.

Zephyrin stood by uselessly, unsure what was expected of him and how long this ‘play-date’, which wasn’t off to a very promising start, was supposed to last.

“Madame, why not have dy Valensis listen to the piece you’ve been practicing?” the governess eventually suggested in a bid to salvage the situation. Princess Sophia did not acknowledge Madame Ehzvina’s words verbally, merely nodding curtly instead as she strode over to a walnut wood harpsichord, the painted frame of which depicted a paradisaical scene from humanity’s Golden Age.

Seating herself before the instrument, her hands hovering over its timber carved keys, she stated in an even tone, “I will be playing an arrangement of Savarius’s oratorio Deliquium Miserator.” Zephyrin heard the flipping of sheet music, followed by a sharp intake of air; and then, the princess began to play.