Prince Fitz's POV
By the time the second group of girls had left the room and Jadie was leading the triplets back to the cramped room where they had waited previously, Fitz was already at work in his mind sorting the girls he had just met or seen into various groups and types. It was something akin to what he had done when he had first seen the girls in the lottery, though this was more of him using what he already knew than making predictions, that being what he had done then.
It would have been better to have a piece of paper and a perfectly sharpened number two pencil, but that didn't matter after Jadie decided that she was going to speed things up. This left him no time to do his sorting. He would have time to do it later, though he would have preferred to do it with the information still fresh in his memory, but there was no arguing with Jadie. Her clipboard was quite the intimidating weapon when it was being waved around. At times like these, Fitz could see where Katelin got a little bit of her intense personality from.
"Boys, don't sit, we'll be leaving in a minute. I've got an assistant helping get the girls into the room so we can do this in a more punctual fashion," Jadie said, scribbling something down onto the large pad of schedules and other things clipped to her clipboard. Fitz was positive that the assistant would be Naomi Petry, a close friend to the women, and that she had a similar personality to Jadie. She'd been around before the one time Jadie had gotten so sick she couldn't do anything and needed someone to help out.
Sam nodded at Jadie and stood very still in the center of the room. Luke, on the other hand, had started to turn green and looked like he was going to fall down, even leaning on the wall for support. Fitz was unsure if this was just because Luke was tired or if he was so scared of Katelin Flores-Lee that he was going to throw up to get out of meeting her in the room. The two hadn't really interacted, as far as Fitz was concerned.
"Prince Luke, are you okay? Should I send for a paper bag?" Jadie frowned as though Luke's current state was going to cause time issues. She also held her clipboard closer to her person as if Luke was going to ruin it with his reemerging, though quite meager, breakfast of one waffle and three bites of French toast. The middle triplet shook his head and pushed himself off the wall. Jadie nodded in approval.
The neon green planner made a sharp turn back out the door, motioning for the three to follow her, and brought them back to the magnificent oak wood entrance once again. The door barely squeaked when it was open this time, something that relieved Fitz. The sound had set him on edge when they had walked through before, and he didn't like the feeling. The guards next to the door were still the ones that had been their the entire time, but he knew that their turn of duty would be ending soon, however much Jadie would want them to stay and perfect the art of door-opening.
A glance in a passing mirror showed Fitz that he was still looking the same as before in his navy suit. Sam still appeared similar to his beginning form, though Luke's continuing green shade was a far cry from his normal skin tone. Fitz turned back to look at this brother and gave him a small half smile, causing Luke to nod and give him a thumbs up in return.
His strategy this time for choosing which girl to talk to was a simple one. Find the girl who seemed like she would have the most interesting conversation or find the girl who he had found interesting in the binders and the lottery. Fitz knew exactly which girls were left, though he didn't want to start with the person who would be getting the most attention, leaving a girl who was close by.
"Hello, Lady Renalie. I hope you've ben having a good day," said Fitz. Renalie, a girl with black hair and honey brown skin, turned towards him and gave him a bright smile. He had spoken to her first because Renalie happened to be the oldest girl in the entire selection, nearly four years older than himself, and he wanted to see if this would be an odd thing to have or if it wouldn't matter at all. Renalie certainly seemed intelligent, with her profession as a historian, and Fitz hoped that this proved to be a correct assesment.
"I am, thank you! The palace has been simply lovely so far," replied Renalie, her hazel eyes sweeping over him while looking almost as radiant as her smile. The red of her laced-sleeved dress made the few flecks of green in her eyes stand out even more, a smart decision in color, while the red also made her skin tone work better. Fitz had no idea where this type of analysis had come from, possibly stemming from the accidental rabbit hole of investigating the color spectrum that one time and ending up reading some sort of fashion magazine article.
"That's good to hear. Are you adjusting to the climate? Hudson is very different from Angeles," Fitz remembered that Hudson was her home province, as well as being the home of one of the better historical research buildings in Illea, stretching all the way from the Great Lakes to Hudson bay. Province trivia was more Luke's thing, however. Renalie tiled her head to think about this before slowly nodding.
"Yes, I think so. I haven't gotten much of an opportunity to go outside yet," Renalie replied. She gestured at the window and the bright sunshine, the light catching on an opal ring she wore. He noticed that she had a more joyous element to her personality from her tone of voice. She spoke elegantly enough, but he could tell that she could be more of a bouncy, excitable person when she wanted to be. Having someone both intelligent and excitable would be an interesting element to the selection. He was now eager to see how she would interact with people like Atlantis or Scarlett, how both sides would shine through depending on who she was speaking to at that moment in time.
"You will, eventually. Are you excited to be here for the selection?" inquired Fitz, ready to test this new theory. To his amusement, Renalie nodded happily and smile from ear to ear. "Of course! It's a wonderful adventure that I'm glad to take part in," she replied. From her application, he had seen that Renalie did, in fact, like adventure. She spoke no less than seven languages and was an experienced traveler, along with being a focused researcher who cared about her work. Fitz felt like he would have a good relationship with Renalie, but there was something about being near her that he couldn't put his finger on.
"I'm happy to hear that, Lady Renalie. I'll enjoy speaking to you in the coming weeks," he said. Renalie smiled at him, her eyes wide and glittering. She smoothed down the skirt of her dress and moved away towards another girl, one with chocolate brown hair and a large grin on her face. Renalie waved back at Fitz. He was a little perplexed at her manner of leaving, but she must have wanted to talk to Averian, the girl with brown hair.
His eyes darted around the room in an attempt to find someone to talk to next. In doing so, he spotted the notorious Katelin Flores-Lee, the girl Luke seemed to be so afraid of and a regular inhabitant of the palace before the selection, talking in a corner with two other girls. He noticed that Luke was standing quite a long distance from them with occasional glances back at them every few seconds. Fitz was surprised to see that he couldn't put a name on one of the girls in the group.
Before he was able to think about this for any longer, a girl with blonde hair came towards him. She wore a deep blue dress and had her hair down, flowing out behind her as she moved in his general direction, passing by other girls that were ambling around nonchalantly.
"Hi, your highness! I've been waiting for awhile to use that one," said the blonde girl, a happy, light giggle escaping her lips. Fitz had to admit that he found that amusing, but was bewildered by the fact by someone starting a conversation with a pun would talk to him and not Sam. Sam was infamous for his puns, to the point that everyone had a special groan for when he made one.
Since a large percentage of the girls seemed to have blonde hair and blue eyes, identifying her was no easy task. He could rule out all the girls in the previous groups, and could rule out both Elizabeth Morey and Sterling Everett because she didn't have Sterling's wavy hair or Elizabeth's petite build, meaning that this had to be Alexis Kingsley.
Alexis was one of the few scattered fours in the selection. She was from the province of Waverly, and worked as a pastry chef and baker for her mother's business. She had appeared to be nice enough in her section in the binder, with a strong imagination and a good high school transcript, graduating before the selection and working fulltime in the bakery. Fitz had given special attention to the fours because of their limited number, and slightly because he was bored and needed something to memorize to keep him awake and functioning.
"Hello, Lady Alexis," replied Fitz, glad to see Alexis's smile when he said her name. She quickly tucked pieces of her hair that had began to fall over her face back behind her head, securing them behind her ears and over the back of her deep blue gown. He knew from the memorized facts that Alexis was 5'6', and that let him know that she wasn't wearing heels underneath. "How are you finding the palace so far?" he asked, curious to what her answer might be.
"This room is even bigger than our whole bakery back home! I'm guessing the kitchens here are gigantic, just due to the amount of staff I've seen in my short time here. It'll be amazing to stay here, at least for awhile," Alexis accented her answer with another one of her smile and some waving hand motions. Fitz made a note to try and show her the kitchens sometime, because they were as large as she thought they would be. The palace also got food from the local stores and bakeries around Angeles, but the kitchens were still a place of activity.
"Did you know that we have a chief potato peeler? You're quite correct in thinking that they're big," responded Fitz. Sam had been on the floor laughing when he went to pillage food from the kitchens the first time and had been chased away by the very intimidating man who's sole job was to make sure the palace's potatoes were peeled the right way. Alexis laughed, nodding her head, and he could tell that she was envisioning that in her head.
"I'm not surprised. The palace kitchens are a legend in the food world!" Alexis exclaimed, "It's also a big honor to prepare food for the royal family. The strawberry tarts are known across the world as being the best," Fitz have to give her credit for that one. Ever since his father's selection, the strawberry tarts had become a specialty of the palace chefs and were in high demand. He'd heard that they were sold in an Angeles gift shop for a considerable sum of money after the selection had made them popular and the chefs had seized the opportunity for more income.
"They are delicious. Thank you for talking with me, Lady Alexis," said Fitz. "The pleasure was all mine, your highness," replied Alexis, brushing her hair back behind her ears in annoyance with it as she gave him a last smile. Fitz suddenly noticed she wore contact lenses. He expected to see her with glasses on their next meeting, and for Alexis to make a joke about it.
Overall, Fitz felt like the conversations with Renalie and Alexis had been enjoyable. The third group of girls was smaller than the second by a lot, and had a few less in number than the first. Jadie was intent on getting them through the day as quickly and as smoothly as possible. Currently, she was watching her daughter from across the room, most likely making sure she wasn't turning into a vicious blood-consuming creature of the night or strangling someone using a hair ribbon as a garrote. He'd talked to Jadie about Katelin before and she had said that both had been used as threats.
Nearby, a group of girls seemed to be forming around one of their comrades. By the flash of blonde hair that he saw in the middle, Fitz realized that he may have to be the one to save Sterling Everett from being trampled by Alexis, Averian, Ianthe, Renalie, and Cila. He strode over to the group and watched as the four girls quickly parted before him so he could see Sterling, who looked slightly flustered and annoyed. Sterling noticed him and breathed a very obvious sigh of relief.
"Sorry, ladies, but I'd like to talk to Lady Sterling for a few minutes," announced Fitz, guiding Sterling out of the cluster of girls and to an empty area where no other girls were nearby to form another horde around the niece of the late America Singer. Sterling was dressed in gray, a color that wasn't as popular among the gowns of the other girls, and had her hair up in a bun with small tendrils of wavy hair falling down from it. Her eyes were a bright blue, the same as her mother's and her aunt's. It was no surprise that the horde was able to find Sterling so soon.
"Thank you, your highness," said Sterling, looking up at him with a relived expression on her face. She was more serious than the others, which Fitz liked, and he was interested to see where this conversation would go. Sterling glanced back down at her shoes, one of which was falling off her feet, and bent down to fix them. She nearly fell over. Fitz hastily grabbed her arm to keep her from doing so, at which Sterling startled and stood straight up again.
"Are you okay, Lady Sterling?" he asked, a concerned expression forming on his face. Sterling nodded and fixed her shoe again, this time succeeding, then stood up and faced Fitz. Her blue eyes were very pretty, even though they were slightly intimidating.
"Yes, thanks again. My shoe started to fall off during the escape, but it's on now," she replied, glancing back at the group that was now dispersing and milling around the room with no clear purpose. Cila had began talking to Sam, with Averian watching close behind her, while the others were on their own. Fitz looked down at his own shoes, shinning loafers that were still polished to perfection after walking around on them all day.
"They didn't say anything overtly rude, did they?" asked Fitz, worried that she might have been offended by someone's tactless questions about her aunt or her personal life. "I send Jadie to talk to them if they did," he continued. He thought that the way Sterling looked back at them might have meant she was enraged at someone, and knew that Jadie could solve any dispute between the girls in an instance.
Sterling shook her head. "No, they didn't say anything. It's fine, really, you don't need to get Jadie involved in this," she said, peering over at where the women was standing with her ever-present clipboard firmly in her hands. Fitz nodded, though he wasn't sure he believed that no one had offended Sterling, and figured that the best way not to get Jadie involved was to move on to another girl. He was sure she'd swoop in if it happened again.
"If you say so, Lady Sterling. Have a good day," he said. Sterling gave him a half-smile and retraced her steps back to where she had been before he had rescued her from the large horde of girls that had collected around her. Fitz wasn't sure if this was the most intelligent course of action, but it would do for the time being. He made sure that no one was going back to her before trying to find someone else to talk to.
Surprisingly, that person came to him. It was Elizabeth Morey, the novelist from Allens who had been over with Katelin and the other girl. She was practically running across the room towards Jadie when she collided with him, punctuating it with a massive sneeze that nearly blew her backwards and stained a most alarming shade of red. She realized who she had run into and jumped, her eyes widening.
"Tangerines! Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry! I didn't get blood on you, did I?" Elizabeth frantically folded up her tissue and withdrew another one from a cleverly hidden pocket in her dress before sneezing again. Fitz's eyebrows rose on the word blood, and stepped back when he realized that she had just sneezed some of it out. Elizabeth's face took on a worried expression and she nervously twisted her left pinkie finger.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do anything, It's just that I get nose bleeds so often and then I get colds and sneeze too hard and the capillaries burst and there's blood and you really didn't need to know that, did you?" exclaimed Elizabeth, blinking up at him with an even more panicked expression on her face. Fitz shook his head while he inspected her statement to see if it was scientifically sound. Unfortunately, it was, and now Fitz understood why Katelin had merged Elizabeth into her group. There was nothing more intimidating than a tiny blonde girl who talked fast and sneezed blood.
"Thank you for letting me know, but where are you going?" asked Fitz. Elizabeth, instead of answering, pointed at Jadie. "More tissues?" Elizabeth nodded again. "Also, this room doesn't have a trash can," she replied, patting another hidden pocket that held the soiled tissues in it. Fitz made a mental to always check any article of clothing to make sure it didn't have any blood on it.
Without another word, Elizabeth went running past him to speak to Jadie. Fitz watched her go with a perplexed expression on his face. He didn't think that the third group of girls would turn out to be this interesting.
Author's Note: Clarifying the note last chapter, I just need to see who is still paying attention to the story. Don't just review if you haven't done so since February. I wrote this quicker than I did the last few because, once again, I want to be done with these chapters. Thank you tot everyone who has kept up with the story during this rather boring set of chapters.