Chapter 1: The Daughter in Disguise
IN a coliseum in Neue Milchstrasse—Regenbogen’s royal capital—our blades danced in commemoration of the beginning year and social season.
“Frohes Neues Jahr!” we shouted to the crowd, concluding the ceremony with the traditional blessing.
My ponytail bounced from side to side as I gently shook my head. I glanced over at my sword dance partner and childhood friend Felzen as he ruffled his fiery red hair.
This is what gets the ladies cheering.
I felt a sigh welling up, as was also tradition. Noticing my expression, Felzen tossed a smile my way. We stepped together, shoulder to shoulder, to face the stands, congratulating each other while the stadium roared with applause.
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I’M Bernstein von Eisberk, a seventeen-year-old second year at the military academy. I also serve as a knight to the kingdom—those who enroll at the academy, after first finishing military prep school, are referred to as knights in Regenbogen. In prep school, boys ages thirteen to fifteen train to become soldiers. At sixteen, graduates who seek to rank up to officer attend the military academy, a boarding school, as officer trainees. The title of knight is meant to represent and encourage the aspiration to become more than a trainee.
I come from a noble family with a long history of involvement in military affairs. That said, Father, though a marquess, currently serves as personal staff under the marshal and has no official position in the royal court. In other words, while our standing is high, our authority is nonexistent.
In contrast, Felzen, a childhood friend of mine and fellow knight, is nobility among nobility: son to the marshal and just under six foot two with gleaming bronze skin and a well put-together face. Brazen, yet surprisingly pleasant to be around. The ladies simply adore him.
Our fathers, both marquesses, endearingly nicknamed “the kingdom’s finest,” were close friends, so Felzen and I grew up not unlike family. We’ve studied, trained, and goofed off together for as long as I can remember.
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WE had just finished our performance.
Felzen and I returned to the changing room. We lined up in front of a mirror, our reflections’ eyes meeting.
A smile crept its way up my face. “Fan favorite as usual, I see.”
“You say that as if a good chunk of them weren’t cheering you on.” Felzen smirked. “They even changed the color of their fans, in case you didn’t notice.”
“They did?”
“Red and blue, like the colors of our hair.”
The red and blue fans were rather hard to miss, come to think of it.
“And the purple ones?” I asked.
“What color do red and blue make?”
“Lively bunch, aren’t they?”
We chuckled.
“I’mma hit the showers first.”
I watched Felzen enter the shower stall per our normal routine, then undid my ponytail and splashed water over my sweaty face. Reflected in the mirror were my deep blue hair and frosty eyes.
“Done,” Felzen said to my back, finishing his shower in a few quick minutes.
“Thanks as always.”
Felzen snorted at my response.
There was, of course, more than one shower. The reason I didn’t use the others regardless of that fact was so Felzen could stand guard while I bathed.
I ducked into the stall and turned the faucet. A stream of warm water ran across my body. Despite identical training regimes, my muscles never became quite as big as Felzen’s. Waterdrops trickled down my lacking yet distinctly unmanlike chest.
Yes, I, Bernstein von Eisberk, an all-boys military academy student, was a woman who cross-dressed as a man to conceal my true identity.
My father and head of the family, Zilber von Eisberk, was both a marquess and a margrave. My mother’s name was Iris. I had two siblings: Elfenbein, my older brother by seven years, and Lilia, my older sister by two years.
The remote region of Eisberk, north of the royal capital, was our territory. A range of mountains bordered the province to the north; west was the sea; east was a Vulkan enclave within our land, tiny though it was; and south, separated from our land by a small forest and large river, was the royal capital.
One of the reasons my disguise worked as well as it did was my uncanny resemblance to my father. We both had straight, midnight-blue hair and eyes. His characteristic appearance even got him nicknamed “the Icy Advisor.” Yet my brother had light blue, gossamer hair and Mother’s paler eyes. Lucky.
Perhaps it was what I deserved for riding horseback in culottes (they’re easier to maneuver in) with my hair in a ponytail (which gets in the way otherwise). Why else would I be confused for the opposite sex? My boyish face probably didn’t help matters, though.
Neither did me matching the average male’s height at five foot seven, nor did my square shoulders or meager chest that appeared no different from a man’s when flattened with a binder. The fact that I needed the right wardrobe to properly resemble a woman irked me to no end.
The second crucial reason was that my sex was legally listed as male, which was my father’s doing and not mine.
House Eisberk was historically predominantly male. The few women that did crop up were feeble to the point that living to maturity was the exception. Everyone had been wildly excited when Mother gave birth to Lilia—the first girl in a hundred-odd years. She too, however, suffered an extremely weak constitution.
I was born two years later on the brink of death. No one thought I’d make it long. That’s when Father, either out of resignation or as a last resort, gave me a boy’s name and had me baptized as one. I was officially documented as male as a result.
And because of that or maybe something else entirely, I made a miraculous recovery.
Thank you, Father. Because of you I get to live yet another wonderful, disease-free day!
Our household had little experience with raising girls; concepts such as political marriage might as well not have existed. As such, I was brought up rather liberally.
Eisberk had long been renowned for its fine horses, and our tradition of husbandry carried on to this day. Father was often called the “shut-in marquess” for spending most of any given year preoccupied with our demesne, or so my brother once told me. Everyone in the family was something of a free soul, perhaps a carryover from our pastoral roots.
While I was taught basic etiquette and manners, I never actually had to act noble in Eisberk. It didn’t make much sense to, seeing as we were the only gentry in the territory. And the commonfolk, also descendants of nomadic tribes, were meritocratic by and large: if you couldn’t ride a horse, you would be treated as a child, lord’s daughter or not.
It’s a tough world out there.
Growing up surrounded by horses, I naturally learned how to ride one. I honed my swordsmanship alongside my brother, who was striving toward knighthood. I also shared my love of flowers and sweets with my sister and enjoyed playing dress-up.
I wasn’t told to act a certain way because I was this or that. The servants addressed me by name and not some formal title. That was probably a big contributor to why I didn’t really recognize gender.
I was me and no one else. I did what I wanted; I got what I wanted. Perhaps not all too surprising considering I was the daughter of a marquess. Or maybe it was youngest-child privilege at work. Either way, I romped around in my underwear outside and favored pretty dresses inside. I thought that was the norm, although I’ve since become convinced that my family simply had no idea how to raise a girl.
Setting that aside as an unfortunate inevitability (was it?), I became a knight because I inadvertently got into military prep school.
In prep school, boys learned the basics of being a soldier. Yes, only boys were allowed entry. By extension, only boys could attend the military academy and only boys could be knights.
As for why I had gotten into a supposedly all-boys school, it basically came down to placing highly in a junior sword fighting tournament that Felzen invited me to. It was during the tournament that I had a life-changing encounter with Second Prince Sternchen von Milchstrasse.
I fought the disguised prince and, regrettably enough, lost. My fighting prowess seemed to have caught his eye, however. That, coupled with the fact that he and Felzen were childhood friends, led to my invitation to the royal palace. We became fast friends, eventually referring to one another as Bern and Stern.
At some point we began talking about how fun it’d be if we could go to military prep school together, as we were all the same age. When I passed the entrance exams, my first thought was that the prince’s authority could even get me, a girl, through, but no, I had been admitted as a boy. I was, after all, officially male—a rather disappointing realization.
It was around then that I learned Stern still thought I was a guy. I hadn’t intended to hide being a girl or anything; he’d just never asked me my gender, so I’d figured he already knew.
There was also the fact that no one tried stopping me. Not Father, nor Mother, nor even my brother. On the contrary, they celebrated my acceptance.
Father told me he’d have my back no matter what. My brother had been standing close behind, tapping his chest with a smile.
Something’s off about this picture, right?
Mother had grabbed me by the hand and assured me that I was free to live my life however I liked.
Thirteen-year-old me was, of course, over the moon. I liked swords, bows, and horse-riding. I admired my brother and father’s work. If there was a path to female knighthood, I would walk it.
Above all, I wanted to spend more time with Stern and Felzen.
And that was that.
No one besides the people of Eisberk and Felzen’s family knew that I was a woman, not even the king or the other princes. Why? Because girls weren’t allowed into the military academy. Girls couldn’t be knights. If my true gender was found out, I’d no doubt be expelled.
That would ideally all change by the time I graduated, but unfortunately, my family didn’t have the power to enact such an important reform themselves. They were, however, considering founding an all-female cavalry unit within Eisberk. In fact, they’d recently begun training potential candidates to that very end.
In any case, I wanted to be a knight but didn’t wish to throw away my womanhood entirely (not that I particularly cared about it). Nor had my family ever instructed me to live as a man.
I liked dresses, I liked flowers, I liked pretty-looking things. Embroidery and other handicrafts weren’t really my cup of tea, but I did have a sweet tooth. I also enjoyed horseback riding, swords, playing outside, and gorging on meat. That was how I lived my life.
I didn’t know much about love, but I wasn’t especially into girls. I wasn’t so sure about guys either.