Chapter 2 : Coup d'état

Elizabeth's room was lit in a myriad of pinks and purples as the light of the setting sun shone through her window. It gave the room a sense of quiet serenity that the third princess of Liones currently lacked as she paced restlessly back and forth across her room. Her dinner sat untouched on the small table in the corner. She hated to be cooped up, always had. Even as a small child, she would slip away from her caretakers and explore the castle at all times of the day or night. As she got older, those escapes extended beyond the castle walls to the city. After having spent the last two days trapped in her room, her meals brought to her by silent servants with downcast eyes, she felt like she was ready to explode.

The cacophonous sound of armor outside her bedroom window halted her pacing. In the courtyard below her window, she saw what must have been over a hundred knights moving towards the open gate. She frowned, realizing what she was witnessing was the same thing that had happened twice a day, every day, of her entire life. The knights assigned to guard the palace were changing shifts. The oncoming shifts must have already arrived because the current flow of knights were all moving away from the palace and out the front gate. The reason that this particular shift change demanded her attention was that there were far more knights than there had ever been before. The sounds of their armor echoed off the walls of the castle, amplifying the sound of metal against metal, clashing, clanging and grinding.

Why were there so many knights at the castle today? Was there an actual imminent threat to the kingdom, the castle, her family? She needed needed to speak with her father. She needed to see her sisters. She needed to get out of this room!

Unthinkingly Elizabeth rushed to her door, giving it a sharp tug, but it didn't budge.

"You're confined to your chamber little girl. That door won't open." The voice of the knight that guarded her room came from the other side of her locked door.

"Oh yes. Of course." Elizabeth answered sweetly. "I must have forgotten." For a split second in her haste, she had forgotten.

"That doesn't surprise me." The knight said, and then added, "You never were the smart one." It was said quietly and she wasn't sure if he had meant for her to hear it.

"Well as that's the case, I guess I will be going to sleep early." She answered back sweetly choosing to ignore the knights comment.

Her one exit blocked, Elizabeth made her way back to her balcony. She peered over the edge to the now empty courtyard. The vertical drop below made her head spin. Her balcony was perched on the wall, high above the courtyard below. Just like every other balcony on this level.

Every. Other. Balcony.

Her eyes snapped to the adjacent room's balcony. The room next to hers had been her adoptive mother's retreat and a playroom for her and her sisters due to it's proximity to their rooms. It had remained empty and untouched since her mother's death. Except for the time Elizabeth had been exploring the servants passageways and accidentally found herself in it.

Elizabeth smiled to herself, that was her way out. The servants passageway to that room was never used, because the room was never used. It wasn't likely to be guarded or even locked. She quietly moved back into her room, arranging her pillows and sheets to resemble her sleeping form on the bed. She wasn't sure if the holy knights ever checked during the night to make sure she was sleeping. The idea of it made her skin crawl, but this ruse had fooled many servants and nannies over the years and she was sure it would work on a lunkhead that was too dumb to keep his voice down.

Back on the balcony, she eyed her goal. It wasn't a huge gap, only 5 or 6 feet, but it was 5 or 6 feet over a fatal drop. Not allowing enough time to second guess herself, she climbed up onto the railing. Purposely didn't look down and with a deep breath that she hoped wasn't her last, she jumped.

For a second, Elizabeth was suspended in the air before gravity took hold and she slammed into the railing of the balcony hooking her arms over the top. Her feet dangled over the precipice for a moment before she managed to get a foothold and propelled herself over the rail, landing hard.

Elizabeth thanked the goddesses for her life as she took a moment to catch her breath and allow her rapidly beating heart to slow. When she'd calmed, she tried the handle of the door. It opened without resistance. Stepping into her dead mother private space felt a lot more like intruding than it had as a child. There was a heavy stillness that filled the room. The furniture and paintings on the wall were all covered with sheets to keep the dust off and preserve them until some untold date when the room would be allowed to come back to life.

Elizabeth vaguely remembered playing in here as a very small child. Her mother told her that even though she hadn't given birth to her, she would always love her as her own. The truth of Elizabeth's birth had never been kept from her. She couldn't even remember the first time she had learned that she'd been adopted, she'd always just known. Even so, she had never felt anything less than loved by her family, that had taken her in as an infant.

But now, something was going on and if there was anything that she could do to protect them she would do it.

Shaking herself from her thoughts, she hastily moved through the room to servants door in the corner. It was disguised by the pattern of the gilded floral wallpaper and she was glad she remembered where it was. In the fading evening light, it would have been hard to find had she not known where to look. She turned the small knob and pulled. The door didn't move and for a moment she was worried that it had been locked, but with a little more force it creaked open. The noise of the door seemed to thunder through the previously silent room. She froze, convinced that she was going to hear the sound of armor headed her way from the hallway. When none came, she released the breath she was holding and stepped into the passageway.

It was dark and the air smelled stale and musty from being sealed up for so long. That confirmed that it hadn't been used. Feeling her way through the pitch black it only took a few steps to reach the lip of the top step. The stairs spiraled downwards under her cautious feet. She stumbled, more than a few times, saved only by her hands firmly pressed against the cold stone of the walls.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she saw a sliver of light and heard muffled voices as she approached the door at the base of the stairs. It was only now that she realized that she couldn't remember where this door led to. Her memory from childhood was of coming up the stairs and into the room, not how she got the stairwell in the first place. But, she could handle this, she reassured herself. She knew her childhood home. All she had to do was see a little bit through the crack along the edge of the door and she would know exactly where she was.

The voices were becoming more distinct now. She was thrilled to realize that among them was her father's voice. Elizabeth rushed to the door and was about to throw it open when a cold shout of "SILENCE" brought her up short. Who was possibly addressing her father in such a way?

Peeking through the crack of the door as she originally intended brought a view that had her stomach churning. Her father in chains and surrounded by people she recognized as Holy Knights.

"If you cooperate and do not cause a commotion, we will maintain the safety of your daughters. So come my good King." the voice sneered, "You are much too weak to prepare this kingdom for what is to come, it would better if you rested in your chambers, indefinitely." She recognized the voice, but couldn't place whose it was. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't see the speaker from her limited perspective.

But her father in chains, his shoulders slumped in defeat, that she could see perfectly. That is until tears clouded her vision. He moved forward, following the speaker and the contingent of Holy Knights that surrounded him moved along with him. A sob threatened to escape Elizabeth's throat and she clamped her hands over her mouth to muffle it, moving away from the door. She collapsed on the bottom step as she began to cry silently.

She knew it! She knew something was wrong! That something was going on!

The steady increase in guards. The restriction of her and her family's movements and liberties. The guards to her father's room threatening her with their weapons. Her father in chains. The people, the Holy Knights, sworn to protect the kingdom and her family had betrayed them. She had grown up with many of them. They had been childhood friends and playmates. She had trusted them.

The only people she had ever thought of as heroes weren't heroes at all. The silent tears flowed freely down her face. She had wanted to help, wanted to do something, but there wasn't anything she could do now. She couldn't fight like Victoria and even if she could she couldn't defeat an entire army on her own. No one could stand up to the Holy Knights.

Except.

That wasn't quite true, she realized with a jolt.

Her tears paused and she focussed on the sliver of light that slipped through from the hall like it was a beacon.

There WAS a group that was powerful enough to stand up to the Holy Knights. In fact, they had decimated the ranks when they had escaped 10 years ago. The Holy Knights had been attempting to capture them since then. They weren't allies.

But what if they were dangerous? Maybe they were more dangerous than the Holy Knights. She immediately dismissed the thought, her father had told her stories of their bravery and heroism. Like a dream that you can only recall the essence of upon waking, something deep within her told her that they were good people. She knew that if she could find them they would help her.

Her tears had completely stopped, and she scrubbed at the lingering dampness on her cheeks. She didn't have time to cry. She had to find the Seven Deadly Sins.