The Great Hall
King Arion’s Hall had stood at the centre of the four realms for as long as anyone could remember.
It had stood there when the four elven kingdoms were still one.
Lady Loren of Greenborne lingered near a pillar in the great hall, trying to look as though she belonged. Trying to look as though her green and brown travelling dress was not painfully plain against the surrounding splendour.
Not that it mattered. She was a firstborn princess of Greenborne. She had every right to stand in King Arion’s Hall, no matter how plain her dress.
The fact she had adjusted the gold circlet in her hair at least six times in the last few minutes was entirely beside the point.
The great hall stretched around her: its stone floors worn smooth by centuries of diplomatic feet. Loren had been here twice before. Those visits had been formal affairs for some treaty or other where she stood shyly behind her father and tried not to fidget.
This time was different.
This time, she was the treaty, which sounded far grander than being exchanged between kingdoms like an especially decorative goat.
She was going to be married. Not today, but soon.
Lady Loren of Greenborne was betrothed to the Prince of Windrider, the eastern realm she had never visited and understood as little as she understood the language of fish, which is to say, not at all.
The prince was said to be fond of music and poetry. Not a warrior, which suited her fine. (The few warriors Loren had met were all action and no conversation). By comparison, a prince who wrote poetry seemed practically romantic.
Of course, she had never actually met him. They had never exchanged letters, or sent messages by owl, or stoat, or whatever creature the eastern realm used to send messages.
The negotiations had been conducted years earlier between their fathers. But, now, his father was dead, and Windrider law decreed that the prince must be married before his coronation.
A delegation from the Frostborne court swept past, dressed in furs, faces tattooed, their ambassador’s pale hair braided tight. The ambassador caught her staring and inclined his head in polite acknowledgment.
Her sister Sybille, younger by a year, was to marry the King of Frostborne in only a few months.
Loren sighed. Sybille had been lucky enough to meet her husband-to-be, for their mother was a princess of Frostborne and they had often travelled to the northern realm to visit her people.
Once upon a time, her mother too had stood in King Arion’s Hall awaiting an escort to the forest realm, feeling very much like a decorative goat herself.
But not once, in twenty five years of marriage, had she complained about it. Loren had taken careful note. She was not going to be the one who complained now.
She was prepared for this.
She had been raised for this.
No-one in the elven realms expected princesses to marry for love. They married because King Arion had decreed it so.
To preserve peace between the four kingdoms, the ruling houses were bound by law to inter-marry, blood crossing borders so no one kingdom could ever stand alone.
The fact it meant leaving the forest realm, and her family, was simply the price of duty. Still, she did hope the prince was at least moderately handsome.
Through the tall windows she looked down into the lower courtyard where horses stamped and snorted in the brisk air. Her own escort would be here soon.
The thought sent a flutter through her chest that might have been panic, if she were the type to panic, which she absolutely was not.
Soon she would be riding one of those horses, galloping across the eastern steppes to a court she had never seen, to marry a man she had never met, whether she liked him or not.
Perhaps she was panicking a very small amount.
The hall felt too bright, too full. Heat prickled across her skin. She found herself desperate for the cool damp air of the forest canopy.
Loren spun sharply and slipped out to the terrace, fingers grazing along the stone walls.
No one noticed her leave.
No one but one man.
He stood across the great hall, a falcon perched on his shoulder.
He had been watching her as she stood by the pillar, her auburn hair lit up by a shaft of coloured light spilling through the narrow windows.
Small. Unsure of herself. Alone.
***
Outside, the air was blessedly cooler.
Loren rested her hands on the stone balustrade and slowed her breath. Leaping from the terrace and bolting into the wilderness like a rabbit escaping a snare was, unfortunately, not acceptable princess behaviour.
Her mother’s face, calm and serene, flashed before her. Loren squeezed her fingers closed. She would not complain, she would not.
The terrace was less crowded than the great hall. Pale winter light washed everything in silver and grey. Below the terrace, trees stretched skeletal branches toward the sky.
A delegation of Mirefolk from the southern Marshes lingered nearby.
The women glanced her way, whispering and laughing behind their hands. Little shells hung from their wrists and ankles, tinkling as they moved.
Loren watched them out of the corner of her eye. The Mirefolk were tanned and golden, draped in silks of blue and silver that revealed more than they concealed.
She smoothed her wool skirts, all at once aware of every sensible stitch.
A shadow passed over her.
Overhead, Loren’s owl, Tyllu, circled lazily.
The great forest owl was a magnificent creature, bronze feathers catching the light, its wide wings casting shadows across the terrace.
She had raised Tyllu from a chick, after he fell from a nest in a storm. He knew her voice, understood her commands, carried messages, remembered places. And he would remember this one.
The falcon struck.
One moment Tyllu glided, the next he tumbled in a chaos of feathers and wings. The falcon darted from above like a feathered thunderbolt, talons raking across the owl’s back.
A sharp screech split the terrace. Feathers drifted down, some streaked with blood.
Loren looked up in horror. The bird that had been her companion for most of her life was plummeting toward stone that would crack bones like kindling.
She lifted her arms into the air.
“Down, down,” she called, her voice pitched to the tone Tyllu knew. "Come to me.”
Tyllu recovered, wings flapping to catch the air with a sound like sails filling with wind.
He hovered there, beating hard against the fall, before dropping into a slow descent, one wing faltering as it caught the stone balustrade with a scrape of talons.
“Easy, easy,” she said softly. “You’re alright, my darling.”
Tyllu’s golden eyes fixed on hers, breathing rapid but steady.
“Let me see,” Loren murmured, reaching slowly.
Her fingers found the injury, a bleeding gash along the wing. Painful, but not crippling.
Tyllu ruffled his feathers, a gesture Loren recognised as the owl equivalent of straightening one’s clothes after an embarrassing stumble. She smiled at him fondly. But not for long.
The falcon had landed.
Somewhere among the gathered people, the bird of prey had found its master, and that master was about to discover that attacking the owl of a Greenborne princess was a very grave error indeed.
Loren rose and straightened her circlet, her expression dark as a gathering storm.
Conversation faltered. People turned. One by one they stepped aside. A path opened before her in a slow ripple of silk and fur as she crossed the flagstones.
At the far end of the terrace, the falcon perched on the forearm of a tall, pale man.
His eyes were dark, with a slight upward slant that suggested he was from the east. His hair was long and black, two thin braids framing a face as cold and smooth as polished river stone. The kind of face that likely frowned at joy.
He wore robes of Windrider red and gold, cut in the style of a military officer. Loren huffed. No wonder his falcon had a distinctly murderous disposition.
“Your falcon attacked my owl without provocation,” Loren said, her voice carrying, cold and controlled.
“Your owl entered my falcon’s patrol arc,” he replied, as though any reasonable person would understand that logic.
“Patrol arc?” Loren kept her tone even with effort, though it sounded annoyingly shrill in her own ears. “This is King Arion’s Hall. It's neutral territory. There is nothing to patrol here.”
“No territory is neutral,” he said, glancing toward the open sky beyond the trees. “Not if something wants blood badly enough.”
Loren found herself following his gaze to the sky, which she immediately resented.
“In any event,” he continued flatly, “patrols are standard protocol for marriage delegations. Though I would hardly expect you to understand military procedure.”
“Is it standard protocol to attack a messenger owl without warning?”
“Diplomatic messengers do not circle overhead conducting surveillance.”
She stared at him.
“My owl was flying,” she said tightly. “Doing what owls normally do, when they are not drinking tea and eating cake.”
“What owls do,” he said evenly, “is spy. What military falcons do is neutralise potential threats.”
“Potential threats?” Loren’s voice dropped. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
The question came out in the quiet, dangerous way that usually made her sisters remember prior engagements elsewhere.
He looked her over then.
From the circlet on her head to the tip of her soft leather boots. And back again.
His gaze lingered on the flush of freckles across her cheeks.
On the sharp green of her eyes.
On the rise and fall of her bodice.
His gaze did not hurry. It did not soften. It simply assessed.
Loren held her breath.
For one brief, unpleasant moment, she had the absurd impression she was being weighed and found irrelevant.
His fingers tensed beneath the falcon’s weight, then loosened again. At last, he spoke.
“Frankly, m’lady,” he said, as though concluding a mildly tedious discussion, “I don’t care who you are.”
Without another word, he stalked from the terrace. The falcon twisted in his grip, looking back at Loren with bright red eyes.
Loren stared after him, speechless.
She had never, in all her Greenborne life, been spoken to like that before.
