Sworn To Another

Chapter 3: The Envoy

The banners went up at dawn, Draven red and black strung alongside Virell silver and white along the length of the great hall, taking the whole place to an appearance of a wound that refused to decide whether it'll close or not.

I stood at the top of the entrance stairs in the silver ceremonial gown, grandmother's pendant cold against my collarbone, watching the courtyard fill up with a procession that took three weeks to prepare for and, my mother had assured me, would be over within an hour.

"Chin level," she murmured at my side, not looking at me. "Shoulders back. You are not being presented, Elira. You are receiving."

"I know the difference."

"Then act like it."

The gates were opened and house Draven arrived in the procession that heralded more of a conquest than a courtship, mounted guards taking point, black-armored and all in grim faces, the royal carriage following after them, built of iron and with no decorations at all. I understood, watching it pull to a stop within our courtyard, why my mother had spent the last ten years fearing this house and making plans to bind us to them.

King Aldric Draven got out first, a broad-shouldered man with a grey beard, dressed in the same style as his son with less care, commanding the loyalty of an entire kingdom without realizing that he wears his care as armor. I curtseyed as soon as his eyes landed on me, going lower than was necessary, and met his gaze as I stood back up, seeing the calculating look in them, the way a general would watch a battlefield he intended to claim.

His son followed his lead soon after, getting out of the carriage with the same measured pace.

I had expected someone a lot different, given that I've only ever seen him in a portrait that showed his father's strong facial features softened down and his eyes watchful and careful. He was as tall as I expected and as composed, his dark hair pulled back from his face, the black of his Draven coat not holding any decorations at all. The difference, the way he carried himself, was like I had been bracing for the last few weeks. It was strange to realize it, but something in him had eased the same way I had been doing all the time since I took this position.

"Lady Elira," the prince said, bowing properly before I was able to curtsey for a second time. His voice was softer than I had anticipated. "I have looked forward to this event for longer than is probably decent to admit."

"I had a portrait of you for the last four months, Your Highness," I said with a small smile. "I have had one of you for four months, and I imagine I will feel just as prepared and unprepared for the same reception you have had for me."

Something like relief crossed his face, mixed with a fraction of surprise. "That was an unexpectedly honest answer."

"Would you prefer an honest one?" I gestured with a smile. "I have a few to choose from. My mother wrote most of them."

"I would appreciate hearing the honest ones, if you don't mind," he said, inclining his head. "I get enough prepared answers from my own side of the engagement."

That was probably the most unexpected answer I had heard all day, coming from a man that I have hated for the last few months for simply existing and representing this horrid fate for him and now me. I was, in that moment, unexpectedly disarmed by the admission, not falling in love with him as the dresses and the pendant on my neck and my mother's lessons had taught me to, but something else, something weaker and more dangerously human, and I found myself surprised by something else, that I had been expecting an obstacle and now I'm seeing one's face in it.

We exchanged the appropriate courtesies after that within the length of the hall, his father and my mother already having moved onto the safer topics of small talk that served for conversations between two warring kingdoms that were forced to spend time in each other's company, and I kept track of where the wall guard was standing and where along the wall his shadow fell for nearly the entire time, though I didn't look at him even once.

I felt him watching me the entire time, however, and I have no idea how I knew. I merely knew that I did.

The reception feast was the same dragged-out affair as all those of royal marriages tended to be, courses and toasts and more courses and toasts, as the representatives of the Draven and Virell families kept drinking and my mother kept watching the exchange with the most careful scrutiny. Prince Corin spent the length of the event on my side, keeping up a conversation that was unexpectedly light, keeping to a few topics that were safe for me to comment on, and I found myself surprised by what he said.

"You don't have to like this," you said quietly at one point, when the hall had grown too loud for me to hear anything else. "I know it was not on either of our lists."

"Does it bother you?" I asked. "That I might not?"

"It would bother me more if you pretended otherwise," you said, turning the glass in your hand. "My father chose this for us because it ends the war. I have accepted that it is the most reasonable decision, most days. I think I can survive the same for us, but you are not required to make the same peace on the same schedule."

It was unexpectedly good, that statement, and I found myself almost liking you for it, a warmth already unfurling in my chest, something not entirely dissimilar to what I was supposed to feel for the man that was standing three tables away, in the black of a guard's uniform.

I didn't like you, not really. I liked the idea of you, perhaps, if you had not been standing there in the middle of this hall. I found myself thinking about you again and again throughout the feast, but it was not until the end of it that I lost the battle to actually come and see you for myself, standing in the shadows of the corridor.

I excused myself to the air when the opportunity arose, letting the words slip out before I even registered that I had the chance to, and crossed the hall to where I knew, without a doubt, that Kael would be waiting for me. It was not the first time I had done something like that, sneaking away from the others to be with him, but the look on his face when he saw me was something different, not the carefully masked blankness he gave everyone else, but a guarded, unhappy one, and I was almost relieved to see it.

Beside the prince I was supposed to wed, in the hall decorated with the colors of the war that saw both our houses drain blood from each other, it was Kael's face, the one he barely concealed from me, the one that said that he was unhappy about all of this, that I left with when I crossed the hall to the balcony. I was still feeling it when the doors behind me opened, and when I turned around, all expectations of finding Prince Corin there evaporated in the next breath, the realization that it was not the future husband that was watching me, but my present one.

"I saw you slip out," he said, coming to stand beside me, leaning on the balcony railing. "Did I miss something overwhelming?"

"Something like that."

He followed my line of sight, watching the courtyard for a long moment before speaking again. "I don't expect you to love me by the time of the wedding, Elira. I think neither of our families would be prepared for it should you do, given the circumstances. I will only ask you to speak plainly to me, no matter what turns out between us. I have had enough of people managing me my entire life, and I would rather have a direct answer from my wife, even if it's unpleasant."

I looked at him then because he looked like the stranger that was going to marry me, asking me for something I would not have been able to give him even if I had wanted to because the truth, here in this balcony, was already complicated by the fact that I was still thinking about Kael, who was waiting somewhere in the castle. He looked like the stranger because he was still pretending that the truth was simple, something that neither of our families would have to deal with. I knew, in that moment, that I would never have been able to love the man he was expecting me to become, and that I would not have been able to love the one that had already become my friend.

"I'll try," I said, and that was the most honest answer I could have given him, because the truth was complicated and full of things that neither of us wanted to say.

It was enough for him, apparently, because he nodded and did not press further. Another mercy, I thought, that I did not know what to do with because I still did not quite know how to feel about it. We stood there for a while, watching the night stretch before us, and if I was a little quiet, Kael did not point it out, and if my eyes were still lingering on the wall guard's shadow before I turned back towards my chambers, he did not see it or, if he did, he was kind enough not to say anything.

It was already well past midnight when the hall finally emptied out, the Draven representatives finally settling down in the guest quarters and my mother finally looking as if she was capable of releasing a breath she had been holding since the morning of the presentation.

I found Kael where I was certain he would be, at the eastern corridor, half-lit by the night and the rest of the castle finally quiet around us.

"You are not on duty here," I said, approaching him.

"No," he agreed, not looking at me. "I told Reyes I would be walking the perimeter. Was not strictly truthful."

"Just not a completely truthful lie," I pointed out.

"No," he agreed again.

I should have left it at that. I knew that, in that moment, understood why I was doing what I did, understood the foolishness of it because I have known every single time I have done something like this over the last two weeks because it was obvious to me, but I stopped in front of Kael instead.

"He is not cruel," I said, surprised by my own words because I was speaking of the prince, not the man I had known for a longer part of my life. "You know, the prince. I thought he might be, and he is not."

Something like surprise passed across Kael's face, carefully restrained, as it always was when the man allowed himself to feel anything stronger than indifference for longer than a heartbeat. "That is good," he said, looking at me. "For you. For the alliance."

"You don't sound like you mean that."

"I mean every word of it." His jaw tightened. "Does not mean I have to enjoy hearing it, Elira."

That was the closest either of us had gotten to saying the thing that neither of us wanted to say, and standing there, in the half-light of the castle's night, I understood that I was too tired to pretend I did not know the weight of it. It was exhausting, being here, being engaged, feigning this happy and proper smile while inside I was thinking of Kael, missing the man I had known for the longer part of my life, and I think that neither of us wanted to lie to ourselves any longer.

"Kael"

"Don't," he said, and I think it was the first time I had ever heard him sound that raw, because he visibly regretted it the second it left his lips. You sighed and tempered it. "Don't say anything else tonight, please. I don't think either of us would survive it well."

I understood, because I was also thinking that whatever it was that could be said in this corridor at this time of night, exhausted and vulnerable, might not be unsaid in time for the wedding in four months' time, and that I still had a prince asking for honesty on a balcony and I did not know what to say to either of them.

So I did not say anything at all, and simply stared at Kael for a moment longer than I should have before turning around and leaving him to walk back to my chambers alone.