peace for warmongers.

“How fast did you say wyverns were, again?”

Henry swayed with the weight of the broadsword the older knight had dropped, wishing to the gods that he hadn’t skipped training last week for that silly (but handsome, so handsome) squire. His own axe, so much easier to handle he thought, lay broken, its haft snapped like a twig under the snarling dragon’s claw as the beast lashed its tail and prepared to charge again.

“I didn’t,” Sir Tain grunted, cradling his leg’s bloody stump and promptly passing out.

the princess throws the straightest shot, and sticks the portrait of the king of Alaria at the end of the east passage in the eye every time.

No one was supposed to be in the corridor when Tia threw her dagger in frustration, her mother’s fretting at breakfast over the angry Alarian envoy that arrived that morning still gnawing at her conscience, and it couldn’t possibly be her fault that the decrepit old vizier walked so slowly.

“It’s lucky for you that I’m not too fond of this tunic,” he said, examining the hole in his belly with an absent-minded air, the bloodstain blooming from it flickering translucent before he glided on towards the throne room on feet floating just shy of the flagstones.

Tia took a moment to remember just how many months it had been since the old man was found dead in his chambers (the rumors of foreign assassins in the kingdom had started to fade already), before she retrieved the knife from where it’d landed in the painted pupil of the foreign ruler and decided not to say anything more about it.

risk-benefit analysis.

“When you hear it roar, forget the gold, and if you’re able to choose, lose an arm instead of a leg. Just ask Sir Tain next time you’re at the palace––if you’re ever back at the palace… He’ll tell you, it’s pretty hard to outrun a dragon on one leg.”

wars have been waged over less.

Tia’s coronation would have gone off without a hitch, except, of course, for the small matter of the crows. They were supposed to be doves, but a mix-up by one of the servants resulted in the release of dozens of hungry black birds into the great hall instead. It wouldn’t have been so bad, really, if one of the devils hadn’t gone after the dowager queen Marisca’s thirteen-generation-old tiara––and to think, the peace treaty with Alaria had just been signed, too.

their forces have reached the western battlements.

Each of the seven candles was extinguished one by one as the new queen and her advisors finished the summons. The old queen’s voice snuck through the burial chamber as a chill descended and the first of the enemy canons shook the fortress walls above: There is nothing to be done, but to wait and to pray for mercy.

“No,” Tia said, standing, as her mother’s ghost faded back to the ether. “Sir Tain, prepare your knights for battle.”