“But, where should I sit?”

“Here child, at my left, of course.” He laughed as he said it, as if this were an old game we played at.

“I haven’t earned that place,” I said stepping closer to him. It wasn’t a game but a polite dance of society that even kings and their daughters cannot be exempt from.

“You will sit there all the same, and no one can say differently,” he chided.

My mother sat silent in her own chair at the right of my father. The entire room bustled around us in the correct way of the court, pretending to ignore our conversation.

As I sat in the large chair at his right, I felt my breath catch. I expected a trap or fanfare, I was never sure really what I was waiting for. I sat, and there was nothing. A still small silence to be sure held the room captive, but for a moment, and it passed just as quickly. My father smiled down at me in the way he always had, but I could feel something else behind his eyes. Something that said accepting the chair to his left meant much more.