Grace FitzRoy and Cecily Neville were two sides of one deal. On Loveday in the year 1458, when York and Lancaster came together ceremonially to reconcile their two warring factions, the Duke of York and King of England struck a deal. A daughter for...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
REBELLION
≿————- ❈ ————-≾
June, 1459 – One year after Grace arrived at Ludlow
It had been a long time since Grace FitzRoy had felt fear. Almost a year, to be exact. A year of feeling strangely at home, a year of relative peace between her blood family and the people who had begun to feel like family. But now it was leaving her, as spring flowers faded with the summer or as small kingdoms fell away to a far greater empire. There was not enough air in her lungs, and for a moment she thought she was choking. Then she realized that she was holding her breath, and that she could actually inhale entirely well, if only she just let herself.
And so she did that, though it became increasingly more difficult as she focused on it. Her body – tense and unsure of itself – did not want to allow her to breathe, and it's battle against her mind resulted in a shaking, rough inhale that moved her entire body. Her jaw slacked and her lips parted slightly in shock. She tried to calm herself, to not show any weakness. In truth, no one would be angry with her if she cried, if she allowed herself to break down. She was child, freshly ten, not a war-hardened soldier.
Heavy stares weighed down upon her almost painfully as everyone around the table laid their eyes on her. She could almost feel them on her skin, like tar covered hands that stuck to her arms and neck and dragged her down. Blue, green, brown, their eyes seemed the same despite the difference in appearance.
It had been obvious that there was something wrong as the Duke entered the dining room, face pale and eyes frighteningly hollow, as if someone had ripped the soul out of the vessel that was his body. The Earl of Salisbury followed – a rather short man with a large bushy beard –, and then his son, the Earl of Warwick behind him. The two men had always been an enigma to Grace, being she only saw through the window of her chambers when they arrived at the castle and then at dinner – like now – from the other end of the table. The Earl of Warwick's anger still radiated off of him in waves when he saw her. Not a blazing fire as Grace had always experienced it, but a cruel biting frost that spread across the room like tendrils of thorny vines.
But this time, he did not look at her with anger. He looked at her with fear. Something she had never seen from him before. And that frightened even more than the Duke's expression did. And then, finally, the shoe dropped and the Duke opened his mouth.
It stayed open for a few moments before any words left him, but when they did it was a strangely strong sound. A contrast to his hallow face. "We have been indicted for rebellion." And then the world around her stopped, but she herself was spinning, spiraling, moments from cracking. At first she had wondered if she heard him wrong, if perhaps she was just in a bad dream. But that could not be true, because everything around her felt, looked, smelled and sounded far too real for that to be the case.
