Aery never had been a big fan of royal gatherings. It had since gotten worse since she’d come back from assassin’s training, found out she was the only surviving Silverheart, and thus had her coronation as queen… Before her thirteenth birthday.
	Today’s gathering was her thirteenth birthday celebration, which meant that she had an extravagant host of guests attending the party, all wanting to speak with her. Which she hated, because so many of them would talk at her from just behind her, where she couldn’t see to read their lips. She’d lost her hearing during her excursion to Xandria three months previously, and that proved terribly useless in social situations.
	So, her scalp itched from the hair extensions that the maids had fitted her with; although her hair had grown back in some, it was only about three inches long at its longest point, which was totally unbefitting a queen. Her makeup was caked on terribly thickly, so that no one could see the numerous scars crisscrossing the skin of their fair young queen.
	And yet no one saw through it. Of course, no one was really allowed close to the dais on which her throne sat, no one except the suitors (of which there were many.) A good number of the important families of the realm had sent their youngest sons to try to win her favor, and she flat-out refused them. Her advisors spend days or weeks talking her ear off about this realm or that realm, but all of their chatter ultimately came down to: You need to find someone to marry, or we’re going to get forced into a war that we cannot survive.
	To which she would inevitably reply, But if I make an alliance with one nation, will not their sworn enemies then attack us? Is it not better to keep the bowstring taut for years than to suddenly run a knife across it?
	And her advisors would praise her as a clever girl, but none of them could understand why she was so reluctant to find a husband. All of them were male, and oafish ones at that, far removed from any female contact by choice or by their work. But she carried a secret that could not be allowed to come out, even in a whisper, as it undoubtedly would if she ever tried to marry. Whispers behind curtains would pass on the knowledge that the young queen of Adarlan had a child before her time, and before too long she would be known as a joke in the realms. Not that she would mind.
	But there was one other thing, so secretly buried that she refused to recognize it herself. A husband would tie her down, and she couldn’t afford it. Her offerings to the poor and the homeless had already gotten her hailed as Queen Aerienna The Generous. But what they didn’t know, and would never find out was that, at night, their beautiful queen would wash off her makeup, don a silver mask and silver spidersilk garments, and go out into the city known only as the Angel of Justice, protecting the young and killing those who haunted the city and frightened innocent children.
	And on a completely selfish level, she missed Celaena. God, she missed Celaena. Celaena Sardothien, AKA Aelin Galanythius. Aery’s first mentor and mother figure. And also the only person who knew of the pain she’d borne in Xandria. She’d said goodbye just a month earlier, made a joke about how she had to go sort things out in her own homeland Terrasen.
	Aery shook her head, realizing there was someone standing in front of her throne. She quickly played catch-up in time to realize it was one of her more persistent suitors, the second Prince of Fenharrow, asking for a dance. He’d always been her dinner and dance partner from the time she was nine until the time she finally ran away to join Celaena in the lower city, and apparently he’d wanted to regain that role again.
	“I don’t think… I shouldn’t dance…” She said, softly. It had to be soft, to cover the strange intonation that came from being unable to hear herself. She was actually rather frightened, because she’d never had the chance to practice dancing when deaf.
	But the prince grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet and out onto the dance floor. The broken bones had healed by now, but there was still a warning twinge of pain. Quickly the prince spun her into a waltz and most of the dance floor cleared in deference. She had a moment to see a ring of other angry princes around them before one of them cut in on the prince of Fenharrow, and another cut in on that one, and so on and so on, until she’d barely managed to dance two steps with each boy before they’d gotten cut in upon. At least then no one had time to realize how desperately clumsy she was, as she couldn’t actually hear the music and could only vaguely feel it vibrating in the floor.
	Looking around at the scuffling boys, she desperately wished Celaena were there. She’d have had most of them tied to the ceiling rafters by their shirttails before they’d even realized they weren’t still scuffling. She saw her opportunity and made a break from the carnage, headed back to her seat. But an ambassador snagged her arm and started chattering in her ear (and she had to look out of the corner of her eye and give herself a dreadful headache to even begin to comprehend what he was saying!) and then another did, and another, and by the time they were finally done with her the princes were ready for another round of dancing. On and on it went, never any rest at all. She wished she’d been able to stay on the streets and never get back into the aristocratic way of life.