Scene: After Dinner

The long table lay empty now, the echoes of laughter and bickering faded into the distant corridors. Half-eaten plates were being cleared away by weary servants, and the warmth of the hearth seemed almost mocking compared to the heaviness that settled in King Arthur’s chest.

He lingered at the head of the table, staring at the abandoned chairs. A trail of crumbs marked where Vira had sat, her toys still scattered across the seat. Clover’s paw prints were smeared across Sofia’s plate. Anastasia had left a dagger behind, lodged into the wood of the table where she had driven it down in a moment of excitement.

Arthur leaned back, rubbing a hand over his weary face.

Later, in the quiet of his study, he found himself standing before a large portrait that hung above the mantle. Queen Caelina, painted in the bloom of her youth, her eyes soft and full of warmth. A hand rested protectively over her swelling belly at the time—pregnant with Courtney.

Arthur touched the gilded frame with his fingertips.
“My love,” he whispered. “They need you.”

The silence of the room pressed in, broken only by the pop and crackle of the fire. He let his shoulders sag, the weight of kingship and fatherhood heavier than any armor he had ever worn.

“I’ve tried,” he admitted softly. “Gods help me, I’ve tried. But they are wild as the wind, and I… I cannot shape them alone.”

His hand clenched around the edge of the frame. “If only you were here… they might grow into the queens they are meant to be.”

For a long time, he stood in silence, gazing into her painted eyes, as if waiting for her to step from the canvas and guide him. But she never came.

At last, Arthur straightened, his jaw set though his eyes burned with grief. “Very well,” he said into the empty chamber. “If I cannot guide them, then others must.”

He turned sharply, striding from the study with the heavy decision weighing on every step. By morning, messengers were sent out.

The Odd Sisters would come.

And so, the fate of his daughters began to turn.