I Am Bree - Book 1

Chapter 2 - The Dice Are Cast

 I was born hardly two days from the New Year, which was celebrated every year by a royal ball. As a child, I never understood what this would entail, but as I grew, it became painfully clear. In Falea, young women must come out in society after their sixteenth birthday. Usually it is merely a formality, nothing more than a few drinks between fathers, but I had to be born right near one of the largest and most fancy balls of the entire year which meant my coming out would be done at the New Year's ball. I willed myself to be ill as my sixteenth birthday approached and wished fervently that my birth could have fallen on any other date.

Unfortunately, my health didn't fail, and I was forced to bear the growing excitement of my sisters. Apparently, Prince Aidan had recently returned from a year abroad and was to be at this particular ball, and they hoped to catch his eye before his birthday celebration two years from the present where, by Falean tradition, he would name his bride. I was given an assortment of my sister's old finery—rather stretched beyond its time and in desperate need of fitting. . .and a good wash.

I had always been small for my age; in fact, I doubt you could have found a more stickly girl in all of Falea, not even taking into account our small town of Lund—a thoroughly and unbearably small town in the eyes of my sisters. Because of this, I had never had a dress that fit me properly. Whenever I received a new gown, it came out of the dressmaker's box in need of my nursemaid's fingers to work a magic of tucks and pleats to make them wearable.

Now that I must attend the ball, Mother announced that it wasn't cost efficient to purchase new gowns for all of us, and it would be perfectly fine for me to attend in my sisters' old gowns. As the date drew nearer, I contemplated pretending to be ill in an effort to force them to leave me behind, but this idea never would have worked. I couldn't lie to save my life, and besides, the very thought of faking something to get my own way was preposterous in my mind.

Instead, I scurried off to the menagerie more and more often and tried to forget about the ball and everything that it would entail. Unfortunately, I could never wipe it entirely from my mind. No one in Lund was talking about anything else, and I was constantly plagued with the whole wretched thing.

Father, whenever I saw him, seemed graver and more reserved than usual. I must have caught him at least ten times sitting alone in the gardens and staring off into space as he spun his wedding ring about his finger, smiling in an odd way. I could tell something wasn't altogether right with him. Perhaps it had something to do with the way he and Mother conversed with their eyes when they thought no one was looking. They seemed at odds with each other in some way, conflicted in an irreparable way.

Once I caught the two of them sitting together near the rose garden. Usually Mother detested going outdoors if it didn't involve going to visit out rich neighbors, but it was different in some way that day. She sat with him, her hand clasped comfortably in his, her head resting on his shoulder. Clumsy as I was, I knocked into a bucket of ashes the groundskeeper had intended to spread around the hydrangeas. Something passed between the two of them at the sight of me, and Mother jerked away from Father, venom in her eyes, and stalked away without a second glance.

I suppose that was when I first got the inkling that their marriage was not what it should have been, and a part of me must have realized that I was the cause. They seemed to have differing opinions on what was to be done with me, and at some point, they had unconsciously decided that the issue was more important than their marriage, and it had destroyed their relationship. At almost sixteen, I should have been able to see this, but I was blinded by my own troubles and was unable to understand the sorrow in Father's expression, when he looked at me, was more than sorrow over his deteriorating love life.