A/N: This does not appear to have anything to do with Crown/Court Duel until the very end of this chapter, but by the next it will be extremely obvious, so relax. Also, review. That's all.
Tell Me A Story
Prologue
"Mama, mama!"
The duchess looked up from her painting and laughed aloud as she caught sight of her children racing towards her, frantic nurse in tow. Torian, her only son, and his twin sister Trissia, and their younger sister Elsala, all of them, happy and excited. Elsa's chubby fists were sticky, and Sia's face was smeared with chocolate, which meant they'd been to see their father first.
"Shouldn't you three be in bed?" she asked, just before she was engulfed.
Sia reached her first and latched on to her skirts, crying, "Mama, mama, Tory stole my hair ribbon!"
"I did not!" Tory protested, even as he tried to hide the ribbon in question behind his back.
"Mama, see!" Elsa waved her bandaged finger in her mother's face. "See!"
"I see, darling," she replied, indulgently. "Tory, give your sister her ribbon back." Tory tried to scowl but did as he was ordered and even hugged and kissed his sister on the cheek as an apology.
The duchess thought that it was probably all the chocolate smeared on Sia's face that made Tory want to kiss her cheek.
"I'm sorry, milady," the nursemaid--Ilana, she remembered--said breathlessly, catching up to them. "They got away from me..."
"No, no harm done, Ilana," she told the nurse. "Loves, if you're all good and promise go to bed with no fussing after, I'll tell you a story."
"A story, a story!" the children clamoured, Sia even forgetting to voice a cry of protest when Ilana wiped the chocolate from her face.
"Promise first." The children had inherited their father's ability to find loopholes, and the duchess was no fool.
"We promise," they chorused reluctantly, then immediately began to clamour for a story again.
"Hush, hush." Elsa quieted first and held her arms up. The duchess picked her up and sat her daughter in her lap, as Tory and Sia settled themselves at her feet.
"Once upon a time," she began, "not so very long ago, there lived a young woman, in this very kingdom, and her name was Elenet."
A/N: For those who like to be precise, Tory and Sia are five and Elsa is three.