The Royal Thief

Extra Story: Midwinter

Hey guys! This is our 50th chapter celebration and my holiday present to you all! Hope you enjoy it! I'm not sure if it's clear enough in the beginning, but this takes place several years before TRT, so all the characters are quite a bit younger. Also, keep in mind that their calender is different from ours-- midwinter is their New Year's.

P.s. Most of the plot got lost along the way, but I think it's okay anyway.

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There was only one rule for their midwinter celebration-- well, a few rules. The first was that you had to bring a gift for everyone, including yourself, including someone you might be angry at and didn't want to bring a present for.

The second rule was that you had to be there on time with your gifts. If you weren't... then you had broken the rules. Morie hadn't specified what exactly happened if you did this, but it would be something. Knowing Morie, it would be a something that would involve getting into even more trouble.

The third rule was that you couldn't tell anyone about the last rule, because the last rule was that everything you brought had to be stolen.

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Midwinter in the castle was the sort of elegant, sparkling affair girls from tiny farming villages with nothing better to do spent whole nights dreaming about. It was the end of the busy, productive harvest season and the beginning of the gentle-born season, when the nobles traveled from their estates to converge on the capital for months of dancing away the dreary drabness of fields buried in snow and manors surrounded by slush. No longer needed to oversee harvest or planting, they commenced ordering new suits of clothing and gossiping over goblets of wine and socializing energetically and generally politely terrorizing each other as they fought with sharp smiles and cutting giggles to advance social standing and marry off daughters to fairly acceptable young men.

The gentle season, as winter was almost ironically called, began in reality before winter did. It started near the end of autumn, when the nobles first traveled down to the coast, where winter never really arrived and snow never fell. The coastal estates would have been the perfect place to hold the gentle season, except for the twice-damned pirates that wouldn't leave the rich green coast alone. So the coastal social season was short, limited to a dizzying two-week whirl through dinners and dances held in the ivory, sun-gilded summer palace, or in heavily-scented gardens kept blooming in vivid colors and ponderous blossoms by magework, or on the floating docks anchored to the bottom of the sandy bay and connected to shore by driftwood walkways, rising and falling on the gentle lapsing of the waters.

Then the nobles traveled up, through the first lacy drifts of snow of the season, to the capital, and the castle already buzzing with preparations. One week, then, to take walks under the shaded walkways around the square markets of the Golden Quarter, hands stuffed firmly into fur muffs and winter cloaks cut in whatever was the fashion of the year. One week to visit every dressmaker in the city, and every milliner and jeweler and shoemaker and purveyor of kohl and colored powders and lip stains. One week that culminated in a ball that had made the nobles of Solangia famous in foreign countries simply for the amount of gold and silver that was spent in preparation for and worn on that night.

But suits of heavy velvet and new leather shoes were only for a select few, and Sam had always known he wasn't one of them, no matter who his father may be. Lord Regenmace knew it too. When he caught sight of the fair-haired boy lurking in the shadows of the grand entry hall, his lip curled in elegant distaste. Sam felt his hackles raise as the tall man continued looking at him. He had, for his narrow build, wide shoulders and hair long enough to scrape into a horsetail down his thick neck. His face was sharp and taut with a jutting chin and full lips that could certainly stay curled upwards for a very long time.