make me stay.

twentytwo

♜

smile, please. 

i smile, not too wide like i apparently had done before, but just enough to make it look casual and the most important of all; natural. it had to look like smilling was part of my personality, which it wasn't. at least, not anymore. 

straighten out, please. 

i correct my posture, straightening and lifting my shoulders to extend my back and make me appear confident and taller. the dress made it a bit difficult to not look like i was wearing the most uncomfortable piece of clothing ever made for me, but i managed. it was just as beautiful as it had been the first night i had worn it, when the seamstress had made it for me. 

take a few steps without letting the bottom of your dress hit the ground beneath, please. 

i grab my dress at both sides, as gracefully as i could, lifting it just barely from the flooring beneath my feet before taking eight steps in total. another thing i had been told was to walk in steps of eight, since it apparently helped with remembering how you needed to look while walking to count your steps. 

"oh, dear, your eyes," zavia, one of the 'ladies' mercer's mom had had when she was queen, stood behind me, a frown upon her face. 

apparently, a queen should have a group of females that were considered her 'ladies' since they weren't her friends, but not her servers either. they had been prepared since early teenage years to learn the ways a queen should behave, and live, to be able to prepare and help the queen whom was growing up somewhere else on mountain, at the same time and at the same age as they were. it was quite weird to think about. 

apparently, i had four ladies somewhere as well, but they wouldn't be called in before a month before my crowning. four complete strangers that had known for years that they would spend the rest of their lives helping me, would be a permanent part of my life soon. 

i glanced upwards, towards the mirror in front of me. my eyes had changed their colour, shinning in a bright silver, like mercer's eyes were. i forced my eyelids closed in a heavy blink, the colour back to green as i checked the glass again. 

they had been doing that for the last two days; the last two days i had been training before we were leaving for aeston. when i was first told i would be 'training' to prepare for my task down in aeston, my first thought had been physical. that i needed to be stronger to care for myself if i were to get in trouble down in a foreign town with only coast as a familiar face. but i couldn't have been more wrong. 

i looked over myself in the mirror, watching how stiff i looked. i looked faked all over. the dress poked and squeezed me everywhere and i wanted to tear it apart just to be able to breathe again. but i couldn't. this was my training. walk straight, sit straight, smile straight. 

samuel reyes, a mayor of the town aeston, had written to the king asking for an end to the riots that were shaking his town. mercer, - north would have left himself, but the new troops had arrived yesterday, and he was clearly insanely busy dealing with all that.

the margin, a larger building behind the castle, still inside and protected by the brick wall that surrounded the castle was the place where the current and new troops would train and hold their team meetings. it was also the building that housed all of them and mercer had spent all of yesterday and the majority of today in there so far. 

i had only seen him once since leaving him in my room that morning , which had been when he had passed me in the hall with harry by his side. i had been on my way up, bexley showing me the way to a room i had never found by myself.