Her hands cannot grasp it, but it is there. Always at her side.
Time after time she is defeated. In the training ring. In the streets. She's a scrapper, they say. Unbefitting of her noble blood. Already she has a broken tooth and she's hardly more than a child.
No one else sees the sword. At night, it gives off a pale green glow. It's a mundane thing to her. She's always seen it. Sometimes at night she'll study its aspect. The runes roughly carved into the blood groove. The simple guard and pommel. A warrior's weapon, not a noble's. A thing designed for the honest work of killing.
When they come for her in the courts, she is alone. She doesn't know it yet, but all her family is dead. Poisoned at their dinner tables. Throats cut in their bedsheets. She is the last of them.
And when they draw their daggers, she casts out a hand, grasping at thin air. Her fingers grace cold steel.
And she is reminded - they are all reminded - that her ancestors didn't beg for their crowns. They didn't lie for them or barter for them.
They fought for them.
Paddy Dobson
6th March 2022