**Timeless Tale—Eternal Eclipse feat Merethe Soltvedt**
"My daughter is back as well."
It wasn't just the words that struck the room cold. It was how they were spoken—not with warmth or sentiment, but with a glacial finality. A pronouncement. A threat wrapped in flickering flames left out in a snowy dessert.
That was what finally stirred the crown prince. His cold, calculating gaze detached itself from the woman he once called wife and found Ember instead.
"Elara." he said coolly, as if acknowledging a long lost servant. Like his daughter had been on a ten years vacation since her birth, and was only just coming back.
Ember met his gaze, her stomach knotting.
Ember had somewhat thought that she had it worse. Her father too never looked at her, instead he spent all his life staring from afar at a woman that would never love him, nor see him as an equal.
But Elara had it way worse. At least Ember's father loved her mother, but Elara's father loved no one at all.
She forced her hands to remain loose at her sides, resisting the urge to curl them into fists. This was not the time for rage. This was the time for illusion.
"Fa...father," she whispered, weaving tremor into her voice. Letting them hear the daughter overcome with emotion. Letting them believe she was just that, and not a doppelganger there to play a game of revenge in place of her deceased forbidden twin.
That got the gathering started as many of them murmured that the princess was truly back. But the same couldn't be said for her wailing stepmother. Thalara's dramatic weeping had now dried to a halt, her clenched fists tucked behind her elaborate skirts in quiet fury. After all, their return was one that would thwart her dream of becoming queen… a dream many would kill for.
But the question remained—was it hers to dream about in the first place? Seeing how so deceptive and two-faced the woman appeared, Ember couldn't help but imagine that she might just be the one that harmed Elara.
But if that were true, surely the crown princess would have long suspected her?
Still, Ember continued her act of the very emotional, despondent daughter. Not like her act was nearly as fine as Thalara's. Her eyes welled up at the right time for added emotional impact, yet the crown prince remained unmoved. Instead, he turned his attention toward the tall man standing to his left.
The Duke of Belmore.
Grim-faced and robed in luxurious silks, his very presence reeked of influence that it was almost too easy to identify him according to Syria's depreciating description of him.
'Old, quite greedy, with a white hair that isn't exactly evidence of any far fetched wisdom.' It was with that one sentence that Ember was able to identify him—Father of Thalara, father-in-law and possible ally to the next king, and possessing a vast influence in Thalor by occupying its largest and most war-strategic lands—Belmore.
"The crown princess may have returned," the prince declared, his voice rising above the chatter with rigid command, "but the coronation shall proceed as planned."
What?
The words struck the room like a crack of thunder. Gasps, rustling fabrics and not so startled glances, evidence that the people now knew well of where the crow prince's true loyalties lied with. A queen was about to be crowned, yet the rightful wife of the heir stood before them. And still, he dared.
A not so silent range of support flowed from the crowd. After all, the return of a woman, no matter how noble her blood, could be cast aside by the will of a man. Especially a man about to wear the crown.
The crown princess said nothing, the corners of her lips curved into an audacious smile while she curled an eyebrow at the crown prince in what was a silent challenge… one aimed at finding out just how low he would still descend.
"With all due respect to the seat of the Andals," the crown prince continued, voice rising with righteous authority, "as my wife and as Crown Princess to the Huntsmen, you have failed in your duties. You vanished for years… a decade. You abandoned your people without a thought. The ruby crest you wear has gathered more dust than honor. The woman beside me has proven her worth. She deserves this crown."
Right on cue, Thalara sniffled daintily, lifting her gloved hand to dab at eyes dry as sand, the very picture of noble suffering.
But beside her, the Crown Princess's fair skin was flushed red with fury. A slow smile unfurled on her lips—but there was no joy in it. Only scorn.
"What?" She scoffed, the sound extinguishing the bubbling noise in the room as all eyes turned to take her in anew.
"I am unsuitable?" She chuckled, voice taut like a bow poised for the kill.
"And who, pray tell, gave you the authority Giovanny Aldrek Thorne, to judge whether I am suitable or not?" She said, her voice rising with every word. "Who gave you the right to weigh my worth? You, who played father in name but never in action? You, who watched your own daughter be erased from memory and said nothing?"
Thalara scrambled away from the middle of the inferno, as though the crown princess's words were hot water that scalded her.
Meanwhile the room was now as silent as a graveyard while the crown prince could only stare on tongue tied as his features ticked with anger.
But the crown princess was just beginning.
She turned her back on him and faced the room—the entire court of velvet-swathed wolves and devils draped in silk.
"Let me remind you," she said, her voice ice that has aged for decades, "I am Serpentine Andal Thorne. Princess of the Iron Seas. Daughter of the House that commands the tide. In weight and worth, the daughter of a mere Duke of Belmore simply does not compare."
Her sapphire blue eyes roamed over every noble intentionally, conveying the lethal seriousness of her words.
"It is said that the Huntsmen bow to no one. I would like to see how that holds true when you face the thousand fleets of the Andals on your seas."
Ember was particularly stunned at how effortlessly the crown princess delivered a war threat she was in no position to make. Afterall, Ember had personally witnessed the crown princess rejecting her father's offer for an alliance.
So to say, even if the Huntsmen managed to cast the crown princess out and annul the marriage, considering how a vein almost burst open from the neck of her maternal grandfather when they were leaving his ship, Ember was almost sure he would not interfere in the matter.
If not for anything but to enact cold, petty, vengeance.
The unsettling threat held the room captive. After all, they must have all heard to some extent that they were coming from the Andals which would convince them that the crown princess' threat held elements of truth.
Little did they know that as against staying in a luxurious palace, they had been nestled in a desolate temple instead. Just like the strained relationship between the crown princess and the crown prince, the relationship with her father was not any better.
But before more jabs could be exchanged, the door drew open and a middle aged man with white eyes and a walking stick entered, bearing a wide smile.
Behind him was an old woman with an ugly sneer—the soon to be Queen dowager no doubt.
"Did I not tell you, your royal highness?" The blind man drawled enigmatically, "just as I told his late majesty, marriage to her royal highness the crown princess Serpentine Andal Thorne will make the Huntsmen rise to the highest heights of power when great despair will cast its dark shadows over Velmoria."
Crown Seer Cedric? The same man Syria told her about and the crown princess also warned against.
The Queen dowager eyed the crown princess with contempt. "It pains me to say this, but we should go with the crown seer's advice. This marriage was after all his late majesty's wish."
The crown princess returned the contemptuous stare with an even contemptuous one of hers.
The spirits, just how many enemies did they have in the court of Thalor? Not even one member of the royal family seemed to be a friend. It was like they were facing arrows in every direction.
No one… not one person was on the crown Princess's side, and by implication that extended to Ember as well.
Yet to Ember's surprise, the fight died out of the crown prince who bowed to his mother. "I shall do as advised then, mother."
But his mother had her frigid stare on the crown princess, "When you left ten years ago you did so with your spine bowed, but now, your spine is ever straight. You wouldn't even bow to your monarch anymore. Although I suppose we have your daughter's recovery to thank for that."
The crown princess smiled. "Days spent on my ship have wounded me so. Forgive my disrespect, your majesty." She said, obviously not meaning the apology.
The Queen scoffed in disbelief at the blatant disrespect. "Get on with the coronation." She gritted at the high priest who instantly took his position alongside the crown bearers.
The affair was a dreary one. Husband and wife clearly enemies standing side by side as they pledged their loyalty to Thalor. But Ember didn't watch it for him, who was so full of himself that he couldn't see past his inflated ego.
She watched it for her who was grief stricken and yet managed to stand regal despite the many wolves that wanted to pound on her flesh till nothing was left of her.
And maybe everyone in the room also watched it for her. For while the new King was a sight to behold, a new Queen who had been absent for ten years was an even more curious sight to behold.
And everyone admitted the same thing silently, which was that the sapphire diamonds encrusted white gold crown fit the crown princess better than it would anyone.
It was the same with her eye colour in fact, as if she had been born for just that crown.
And when the priest billowed that they bowed to their new monarch, Ember knelt just as everyone in the room. But while they chanted long live his majesty the King and the Queen.
She chanted only one sentence, "Long live the Queen Serpentine Andal Thorne."