Fire In Her Eyes

Buxby Manor was enchanted, the legends said. That was not wholly true, but for young Isabella Wright, it was certainly an enchanting prison, with ivy growing up its exterior and it being surrounded by pine forests. There was a wooden swing behind the manor but still inside the gates, and Isabella spent hours sitting, swinging, reading, and doing a variety of other things on that swing. It was her escape within her prison. Because Isabella was no average child. 

She was the Queen of Switzerland. Her father had died when she was just a year old, and the crown had been placed on her head.

But there were those who thought that a girl queen was no queen at all, and didn't care that her mother Cecile was Regent at the time. People had tried to kill her. So Isabella’s aunt, Aylee, took her into the mountains to raise her at Buxby, Cecile’s ancestral home.

Isabella, who knew she was the Queen from the age of two, was raised in absolute solitude, locked inside the gates of the manor. It looked a bit like a castle, with its gothic architecture. The builder of it, Isabella’s great-great-great grandfather, had unknowingly made it into the perfect place to keep a young monarch safe from harm. It had sprawling hills and fields of endless grass, a fountain that Isabella could play in, and everything else a fairytale Queen could want.

Except for her mother.

Because this is not your average fairy tale.

Plans for Isabella’s escape to Buxby began when she was just a few months old. The plan was to tell the public that she had gone to live with Aylee abroad, where in reality, she’d be less than an hour away.

Isabella never saw her mother after she was taken to Buxby, and so she had no memories of her. Aylee showed her pictures of Cecile and sent Cecile pictures of Isabella every year, but if Cecile was seen going to Buxby out of the blue- she was known to have a strong dislike for the manor, and never went there of her own accord- people would become suspicious. So they never met.

On Isabella’s sixteenth birthday, she received the news that her mother had fallen gravely ill. A tumor on the liver, the doctor said. There was no cure, and it was terminal. 

Usually, this would mean that another regent would be found and put into action until Isabella’s eighteenth birthday. However, there was an often-overlooked provision in the Swiss monarchy’s laws. It allowed for an heir, older than thirteen but younger than eighteen, to be crowned the fully-fledged sovereign before they reached the age of majority if their predecessor’s advisory panel voted in favor of it.

But Aylee had been counting on the two final years to teach Isabella all that she didn’t know, so the provision had come up only once. Once it was clear that Cecile would not survive to Isabella’s eighteenth birthday, the provision was renewed. Now there was only the matter of cramming two years of a future sovereign’s preparation into two months. 

Aylee had successfully raised Isabella to be pious, but she had yet to be confirmed into the Catholic church. She had learned how to be a queen, but she had not learned how to be a queen alone, without her experienced mother to guide her. She had to do and learn so much. Madly scrambling to leave the soon-to-be-orphaned Isabella with the wisdom to reign, Aylee brought in a tutor, a Sir Gatsby from Ireland. He came with a glowing recommendation from Isabella’s uncle, and Aylee thought he would have a great deal of wisdom to pass on to her niece.

Indeed, he did.

“Sir Gatsby,” Isabella began one crisp autumn morning as she was in the midst of her lessons. “When addressing the children of fellow monarchs, how should I behave?”

Aylee was away, shopping at the specialty market. She wanted to make Isabella a unique lavender-and-lemon tea, and the necessary dried lavender blooms were expensive and rare. 

A rap at the door interrupted them. Mrs. Nickell, the singular maid of Buxby Manor, poked her head through the doorway. “Sir Gatsby, a letter from Neuchatel.”

“Neuchatel?” Isabella jumped out of her seat. Her mother lived at Neuchatel, and they were nervously awaiting news of her inevitable death, at which time Isabella would journey to the capital and present herself.

Sir Gatsby opened the letter, his steely eyes scanning the page of luxe handwriting, no doubt the work of the royal scribe. 

“Sir Gatsby?” Isabella asked with trepidation. “What is it?”

“Your mother is dead,” he announced. Isabella bowed her head and crossed herself. And it was while she was doing this that Sir Gatsby drew his sword. 

She heard the noise and looked up with great shock. “What on earth are you doing?” She gasped.

“Everything is going according to plan,” he sneered menacingly, barring her exit from the room with his blade. “Your uncle, Aaron, has planted the news that you are dead as well, and he has charged me with the task of making it so. He is unofficially ascending as we speak, and once he’s crowned in a few days, I will get more money than you’ve used in your entire life.” Emitting a single, bitter laugh, he smiled triumphantly. “And now I’m going to teach you a lesson, Isabella.”

She was frantically looking around for a diversion. Perhaps she could throw a nearby book at his head! No, he’d impale her with his already drawn sword before she could-

“The lesson is this,” Gatsby interrupted her wild thoughts. “Your youth makes you weak. Were you a seasoned adult monarch, you would know better than to trust me so fully. You would know better than to allow me to carry a deadly weapon with me when I’m alone with you. You, my dear Isabella, are painfully young. With youth comes naivety. And you will suffer greatly for that.”

Isabella’s face lit up. “Mrs. Nickell, help me!” She shrieked, facing the door.

Sir Gatsby wheeled around, prepared to skewer the intruder, but was shocked to find the door entirely closed and no one there. Then he felt a poke on his middle back. Sharp but minor. It felt like a sewing needle had pierced him, and then the needle was pulled out. He turned around and saw Isabella with a gleaming, bloody knife in her hand- short, slender, and utterly dangerous. Just like Isabella. His legs went limp and he slid to the floor.

Isabella tossed the dagger several feet behind her so that on the off chance he was mobile enough to grab it, he couldn’t. He didn’t have even enough strength to resist when Isabella plucked his sword out of his hand and hovered it, tip-down, over his stomach.

“How can you even lift that?” Gatsby sputtered, blood beginning to drip out of his mouth. “That’s the heaviest sword I own.”

Isabella glowered. “I’m stronger than you know. Stronger than you’ll ever be.”

He knew that she didn’t just mean that literally, and he had to admit that she was right as his head slid back into the slick puddle of his own blood, his pale hair marred by the redness.

Isabella plunged the blade into his stomach. After assessing his wounds and realizing that he could never survive two stab wounds of that magnitude and severity, , she slipped his sword sheath off of his limp form and adjusted it to fit across her comparatively narrow frame.

“And just so you know, you’re wrong,” she hissed to the rapidly fading Gatsby. “My youth makes me strong. And thanks to you, I’ve lost my naivety. Thank you, Sir Gatsby.”

Sliding the blade into the sheath, she raced down the winding staircase and to Aylee’s bedroom. She had known for years where Aylee kept the key to the gates, but by the time she found out, she understood the reason for her confinement. So she had never used it, or even tried to retrieve it.

Now she needed to. She opened Aylee’s vanity drawer and took out a hardcover Bible with an embossed cross on the front and a metal combination lock that held it closed. She entered the combination- Isabella’s birthdate- and opened it, turning to the page it naturally fell open to- because right there, kept in between the pages, was the steel skeleton key that Isabella was after.

Clutching the key in her right hand, Isabella inserted it into a lock behind the front entryway to the manor. She turned it clockwise and the metal gates began to automatically rise. When they were done, she tucked the key into her blouse and headed for the stables, where their horses were kept.

She lept atop Charmion, her dun gelding, and knotted his mane into her fingertips. It would be a long ride, uncomfortable without a saddle, but she didn’t have time to equip him with all his tack.

As she rode, the sheathed sword banged against her side. She recognised the landmarks on her way to Neuchatel, and it seemed Charmion did too, because he made all the right turns on their way.

When Isabella entered the castle, she immediately encountered a guard.

“Oh, my, you’re little Isabella, aren’t you,” he growled. “I must take care of you, or the boss will be unhappy.”

He drew his sword and did a double-take when Isabella unsheathed Gatsby’s blade, even bigger than the guard’s. Without hesitation, she ran him through. He pressed his hands to his gushing abdomen, coating them in burgundy blood.

He grabbed Isabella roughly at the waist, shaking her with all of the strength left in him. “The boss won’t like this,” he muttered, half-delirious. “Uh-uh.”

“No, he won’t,” Isabella agreed. Pulling her sword out of the guard’s torso, she left him on the castle floor, bleeding.

She strode along the halls, towards the throne room, which was the center of all life at the palace. Aylee had told her it would be on the other side of the Great Hall, accessible through a small door meant for servants.

She pushed open the door. It was small but strong, made of solid, thick wood and fortified by metal. It slammed against the wall with a deafening thud. She stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the chorus of gasps from the people in the room. She recognized most of them from the photographs Aylee had shown her…

Six guards on the fringe of the room.

Lady Marisa Byatt, Countess of Torquay, one of two females on Cecile’s advisory panel.

Michael Noel, the ambassador to Nigeria, who had been good friends with Cecile and was visiting when she died.

Katharine Moore, Marchioness of Saxon, the other female advisor.

Viscountess Haletta Day, Aaron’s wife and Isabella’s aunt, who was routinely abused by Aaron and was holding their daughter, Amity, in her arms.

And Aaron Cole, Duke of Geneva. Isabella’s paternal uncle, and the heir to the Swiss throne if Isabella should die before producing or naming an alternative heir. 

They each took in all five feet, four inches of Isabella. Her cream and pink dress had handprints of blood on the bodice from the guard, and droplets and splatters on the skirt from Gatsby. She was holding a sword in her right hand, with congealed, dried, and fresh blood alike coasting the blade. Her hair was snarled and knotted from the wind while riding and her eyes were wildly fierce.

But it was hard not to imagine the crown on her head. It was in her blood, after all, and in the uptilt of her chin you could see that Aylee might as well have melted down the crown, pouring the scalding liquid into her veins and brain. With every pounding beat of her heart, Isabella Wright knew who she was, and where she belonged. Her place was at the very top of the chain, and she would settle for no less.

“Who is she?” Someone, one of the women, asked quietly.

Aaron cleared his throat unhappily. Cecile, in her infrequent letters, had said that she showed Aaron every picture of Isabella, and so he would know who she was. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is my niece. Isabella Margareta Claude Wright, the daughter of my late brother.”

Upon hearing this, Lady Hyatt and Marchioness Materne were the first to curtsy, no doubt having heard about her from Cecile. The guards took that cue instantly, and soon Mr. Ambassador was kneeling as well. Haletta glanced nervously toward her husband but decided that the Queen ranked above him, likely connecting the blood on Isabella’s dress with the anger on both her and Aaron’s face. She sunk her legs into a curtsy with her arms still holding the baby girl, Louane.

Aaron begrudgingly bowed, straightening quickly and clenching his jaw.

Isabella turned to the guards. “Arrest my uncle.”

“What?” He made a show of panic, although it was evident in his eyes that he knew exactly what he was accused of and that he was guilty. 

Isabella tilted her head, stony-faced. “Aaron Alexander Brady Wright, you are under arrest for masterminding a regicide attempt. You will be held in the dungeon and tried, and when found guilty, will be executed.” She flicked her hand towards the door, sending the guards to haul Aaron to his cell.

“No! No, no, no, this is a mistake! You’re making a mistake!” He cried desperately. He thrashed so much that the guards had to drag him hand and foot.

“On the contrary. This is justice. The mistake was made when you tried to kill me.” She turned to the remaining onlookers, who were looking at her with a sense of admiration, awe, and shock. Isabella noticed that Haletta radiated adoration. Isabella thought it was how her mother would have looked at her, had she ever met her.

As Aaron’s howling faded, she smiled warmly at Haletta, then turned to the rest of the small group, daring any of them to challenge her. Fire was in her eyes. “I am Isabella Wright, and I have come for my throne.”