She received the ornate silver key with her other regalia on the day she became queen and asked her seneschal what it unlocked.
“Why, nothing, Your Majesty. It is symbolic.”
“The key to the kingdom, as it were?”
He chuckled. “Quite right, ma’am.”
As her reign progressed, she couldn’t get the old key out of her mind. She took to wearing it looped on a chain and wandered the corridors at night, looking for a keyhole.
It was three months before she found the door in the lowest depths of the palace basements and discovered how deep her kingdom went.

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