Chapter 423 There Is One On My Leg, Petra

“Your Grace, they are children.”

“They are underdeveloped assets, Petra. Nobody in this kingdom is investing in them. They have no patrons, no mentors, no one teaching them how to stand, how to speak, how to enter a room.” She looked at a girl of about twelve who was standing slightly apart from the group, watching the dragons with reserved interest rather than participating in the pile. “That one. Standing alone. Observing. Good instincts. She is reading the room before committing to it. Court material.”

She walked towards the girl and stopped in front of her.

“Stand up straighter.”

The girl, startled, straightened her spine.

“Better. The outfit is doing you no favors, but we will address that. What is your name?”

“Maren, Your Majesty.”

“Maren, you have better situational awareness than half the nobles in my court.”

Maren stared up at her with wide eyes.

It was both.

A boy of about seven approached Bellatrix from behind and tugged the hem of her dress. Bellatrix looked down at the hand on her fabric. She had no protocol for this.

“Are you a princess?” the boy asked.

“I am a queen. Queens outrank princesses. The hierarchy is important and you should learn it early.”

Another child grabbed her other hand. A third pressed against her leg. A fourth appeared from behind Petra and attached to Bellatrix’s skirt like a barnacle with emotional needs.

Bellatrix stood very still.

She was being touched. By multiple children. Simultaneously. Without permission. Without warning. Without the social buffer of staff or distance or the specific physical barriers she had maintained between herself and unsolicited contact for the entirety of her adult life.

“Petra. There is one on my leg.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“It is attached.”

“She appears to be, Your Grace.”

“What is the protocol?”

“I believe you stand there until she releases, Your Grace.”

Bellatrix stood there. The child on her leg tightened her grip. The child holding her hand swung it. The child on her skirt began humming.

Bellatrix Drakenfell, Queen of Drakenfell, architect of an eight-step divorce prevention campaign, was being held hostage by children whose collective age did not exceed her own and whose grip strength was disproportionate to their size.

She looked across the room at both dragons, who were still being adored by separate contingents of orphans who had apparently decided that the tuxedoed dragon and the waistcoated dragon were the two greatest things that had ever happened to their facility.

A boy in the Onyx pile was wearing rags. The rags were literal. The fabric was torn at the shoulder, patched at the knee, and carrying the specific wear pattern of clothing that had been handed down through enough children to have lost its original identity.

Bellatrix’s eyes narrowed.

“Petra.”

Petra looked up from the supply crate.

“Make a list. I am sending Matthis. Every child in this orphanage will have one formal outfit. Tailored. Fitted. Age-appropriate. If they are going to be seen with me, they will be seen in clothing that does not make the Crown look negligent.” She paused. “Also, start a clothing donation. Quarterly. Practical items for daily wear. Seasonal rotations. These children are dressed in fabric that has given up on being fabric. That ends.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Petra wrote the list.

A small boy with dark hair and large eyes appeared at her side. He had detached from the Onyx pile and was looking up at her with the specific expression of a child who had something to say and lacked the social awareness to evaluate whether the timing was appropriate.

“I miss my parents,” he said.

“I understand loss. My husband is trying to abandon me after thirty years. Different scale, similar betrayal.”

The boy blinked. “Did your husband die?”

“He is alive. He is choosing to leave, which is worse.”

The boy considered this. “My mother didn’t choose to leave.”

“Then your mother loved you more than my husband loves me, and you should take comfort in that.” She looked at him for one more second, then turned to Petra. “Give this one extra blankets. He is too thin.”

✦✦✦

One hour later, Bellatrix was sitting in a wooden chair in the orphanage’s common room, surrounded by nine children. Onyx and Avalon were both asleep at her feet.

The wine was open. Nightspire reserve. Bellatrix was on her second glass.

“He said ’watch me,’” Bellatrix told the children. “Watch me, as if I am a spectator in my own marriage. As if I have been sitting in a chair for thirty years contributing nothing while he ran the kingdom and took all the credit.”

A girl of about eleven raised her hand. “Did you contribute?”

“I held the court together with my bare hands. I negotiated trade agreements he took credit for. I raised his heir, who was produced by another woman, and I turned that child into the Crown Prince of Drakenfell, and my reward is a man who looks me in the eye and says watch me.”

A boy of about nine, who had been listening with his full-body, spoke. “Have you told him how you feel?”

Bellatrix looked at him. “That is an excellent question. What is your name?”

“Tomas.”

“Tomas, I have been telling him how I feel for thirty years. The problem is he does not listen, because listening requires valuing the speaker, and he has categorized me as decoration. Decoration does not speak. Decoration sits in a chair and smiles and looks beautiful during state dinners and is expected to be grateful for the chair.”

A girl in the back of the group, the same girl Bellatrix had identified as court material earlier, spoke without raising her hand. “Have you considered that telling him the same way for thirty years and expecting different results might be the actual problem?”

The room went silent.

Bellatrix stared at her.

“You are correct,” Bellatrix said, and the admission cost her exactly one sip of wine and a recalibration of her assessment of thirteen-year-olds. “My approach has been consistent. Consistency without adaptation is just stubbornness with better posture.”

“My father used to say that doing the same thing over and over is how you go crazy,” a boy of about eight offered.

“Your father was a philosopher. What is your name?”

“I told you already. Four times.”

“Tell me again.”

“Jorin.”

“Jorin, you are correct. I have been going crazy for thirty years and calling it strategy.” She drank. “Maren is the smartest of all of you, by the way.”