Falling down slightly on these updates, thanks to a combination of con crash (the fall was busy) and me reacting really poorly to the time change or, more specifically, the light change, but after today we should be on the ball again with the daily posts. 20,015 words, which puts just a bare 15 above par but we’ve never dropped below it yet!

And now, we finally, finally have the last parts of the plot that were giving us despair worked out (there was a lot of despair) are worked out, so we’re gonna start posting snipped and screenshots etc, of what’s still very much a WIP.

The following are the opening paragraphs of what we still haven’t been able to come with a better title for than The Court Quadrille. It’s still kind of a hot mess but hey, this is what first drafts are for:

Chapter 1

“I can’t believe you don’t think this is boring,” Myles says before punctuating his general distaste for watching his sister be fit for her wedding dress by biting sharply into an apple. They’ve been here, in the luxurious encampment designed for their transfer to [kingdom/palace/something] for days.  If he weren’t relatively sure [the lands their parents rule — some shit that doesn’t sound like a bad faerietale] are strategically valuable, he’d be a bit concerned that they are merely being fattened up for slaughter.  As it is, a wedding still isn’t what he had in mind for their coming of age ceremony.  Wil is at least vaguely intrigued by their moving up in the world.  Myles is just annoyed by the whole thing.  

“Regardless of whether it is boring,” Wil says with all the sharpness of an older sibling that has never let Myles forget that she is seven minutes his senior, “These are some of our first official duties as heads of state.”

Myles glances around at the various staff.  Right now, they’re not heads of anything, and Wil is being something of a twit.  He doesn’t want to point out either of those things with an audience, however.  It’s much more pleasant to watch the bee crawling up his wrist to get the juice from his apple.

At least, until one of the attendants shoos it away with a flick of a fan and a disapproving look at Myles. Myles slumps back on the stack of pillows piled on the divan and sighs.

“I can’t believe we’re only marrying one person.”