So it was today that Ronan rode into Dunmore.
Ronan, ruler of the clans of Dunmara, up in the northern wastes.
The history Aisling had read about him said he was born of mixed blood, southern and clan both, and humble beginnings besides.
At sixteen, he’d burst onto the scene, and within three years he’d united the whole of the northern grasslands under him.
He’d come south himself to marry a princess of Kilmore, sealing an alliance people would still tell stories about long after.
And then, because heaven apparently begrudged anyone that much good fortune, he died young.
Twenty-three years old.
From what Aisling knew, Ronan was the seventh son of the old clan king, Fiachra.
Nobody recorded who his mother was, only that she’d been a southern woman, likely taken north against her will.
Because of his mixed blood and low birth, his father had never favored him growing up.
He’d been all but invisible in that household, bullied for the southern blood in him, and by every account his childhood had been miserable.
And then, at sixteen, he’d come out of nowhere, won the bloody scramble for the throne outright, and become king of the clans.
From there, he pulled his forces together, fought in every direction at once, and crushed anyone who stood against him.
Three years, and he’d folded every clan and small tribe on the grasslands under his own banner, becoming the single power in the north.
His name alone became enough to end an argument.
Some tribes, hearing he was coming, panicked before he’d even arrived, threw down their weapons and surrendered the moment his horse came into view.
He was twenty when he did all that.
Then he came south to Kilmore himself, to ask for a princess’s hand, and sealed the alliance between their two peoples.
Some historians later guessed that maybe it was his mother’s blood in him, some old pull toward southern ways, that made him want that alliance so badly.
If he hadn’t died so young, if that alliance had held, maybe Kilmore wouldn’t have fallen as fast as it did.
Maybe it could’ve held out long enough for a better king to come along and set things right.
But heaven begrudged brilliance.
It always had.
There were plenty of remarkable men in that age.
None of them shone quite like Ronan did.
Powerful, striking, gone too soon.
That was the kind of story that got turned into songs and plays for centuries.
It was the only reason anyone remembered that stretch of history at all.
Sadly, so much had been lost in the chaos of those years that all they had left now were scraps, fragments people used to try and picture what he had actually looked like.
His whole life had burned bright and fast, like a shooting star crossing a dark sky before finally going out.
Reading about him, back before all this, Aisling had often wondered whether things could’ve gone differently if he hadn’t died so young.
Now she knew better.
History didn’t turn on one man.
Kilmore’s fall had been seeded more than a decade before any of this.
A kingdom was like a great ship.
By the time anyone could see it sinking, the lower decks were already flooded.
No patching a few holes would fix that.
And whatever people centuries later would say about mourning Ronan, the people living through it at the time hadn’t felt much warmth toward him.
Wariness, mostly.
Caution.
After all, whatever else he was, Ronan was still a foreign king.
It was only because the clan lands and Kilmore didn’t share a direct border, with other tribes sitting between them, that the two sides had no immediate quarrel and could afford an alliance that suited them both.
The moment that changed, Aisling had no doubt either side would tear the whole thing up without blinking.
Ronan had plenty of legends attached to his name, but the ones people repeated most were about his skill in battle and about what he looked like.
Since he’d first taken the field, he’d never once lost.
He led from the front every time, spear in hand, and men said he was simply unstoppable, that every battle ended with an enemy commander’s head on the end of that silver spear of his.
Word of it spread everywhere until people down here described him as some nine-foot giant with a leopard’s face and copper eyes, built like a tiger on the charge.
Aisling had never laid eyes on him herself, and she was already half afraid of him just from the stories.
In some places, they said just his name was enough to quiet a crying child.
So when the rider came galloping in shouting that the Prince of Dunmara had arrived, everyone’s face changed at once.
The crowd split like a wave pulling back, clearing a wide path straight through the gate.
“Is it true, then?
The Prince of Dunmara’s come himself, to ask for one of our princesses?”
“A royal daughter, married off to one of them!
God help us.”
“That man’s got a wolf’s heart, mark me.
He’s got his eye on more than a wedding.”
“Forty years this kingdom’s stood, and now we’re handing over a woman for peace.
If the old king could see this, it’d break his heart.”
“Keep your voice down.
You know well enough the king on the throne now isn’t of the old king’s own line, and you’re talking like that in the open.”
“I’ll say it because it’s true, plain as day…”
Listening to the crowd mutter around her, Aisling felt something cold and sharp settle in her chest.
The current king was famously touchy about that particular truth.
He’d taken the throne after King Ailill, who’d been King Diarmuid’s younger brother.
Years back, Crown Prince Tadhg, Diarmuid’s own son, had died at thirty.
The grief of it had struck Diarmuid so hard it reopened old wounds and nearly killed him outright.
Tadhg’s son, the young prince Ruairí, was only twelve at the time.
Kilmore had just put down internal unrest, and the clans beyond the border were watching for any sign of weakness.
Afraid of leaving the throne to a boy that young in times like those, Diarmuid, after much agonizing, passed the crown instead to his younger brother, the Prince of Ossory, who became King Ailill.
Seventeen years ago, when Ailill lay dying and the court began arguing over who’d succeed him, a handful of voices suggested it should go to Ruairí’s son, the King of Devlin’s line, meaning Aisling eventually.
It never went anywhere.
Cathal took the throne cleanly enough.
But he’d never once stopped being uneasy about it.
Even now, if a minister so much as brought up what happened that year, it soured his mood, sometimes badly enough that he’d strip a man of his post for it.
Even praising old King Diarmuid had to be done carefully around him.
Aisling had been reborn as the daughter of King Ruairí of Devlin, right into the middle of all this mess.
Being born into money and royal blood should have meant an easy life.
Instead, it meant she never really got to feel safe.
A hundred armored riders came thundering forward.
Just short of the gate, their leader hauled back on his reins hard enough to make his horse rear, its front hooves striking out at the empty air.
He raised one arm, palm out, and the whole line behind him pulled up in the same instant.
All those horses screamed together, manes whipping in the wind, hundreds of hooves suspended for one long moment before they came down as one, hard enough that the ground actually shook beneath them.
A few people standing close enough to the horses stumbled backward in fright, caught by whoever stood behind them.
To be fair to him, the Prince of Dunmara wasn’t quite the savage everyone whispered about.
Once he reached the gate, he slowed the whole procession down to an easy, unhurried walk.
Even so, faced with over a hundred armed riders in full gear, the crowd couldn’t help the fear that ran through them.
All that muttering died away at once, leaving nothing but hoofbeats and the clink of armor.
The whole gate went tense in an instant.
Curious despite herself about this Prince of Dunmara everyone told stories about, Aisling leaned half out the window to look.
There he was, riding alone out in front, two lines of iron-clad riders behind him carrying black banners that snapped in the wind like a dragon crouched flat against the ground.
Her eyes landed on his face first.
Young, but there was nothing soft about him.
A light beard covered most of his jaw, giving him a rough edge.
His brow sat heavy and pronounced, dark eyebrows slanting sharply upward.
His eyes were set deep in that way clan blood tended to show, narrow and jade green, cold as drawn steel.
Even a passing look from him felt like it could cut straight through you, the kind of gaze that made you want to look away and bow at the same time.
That was the weight of a man who’d spent years soaked in blood and battle.
It wasn’t just ordinary people who feared it.
Even hardened soldiers would struggle not to flinch.
He wore no crown, no royal robes.
He simply sat that warhorse like it was the most natural thing in the world, his hard armor only making his size more obvious.
He rode at the front of his own men like he owned the ground he was crossing, entirely unbothered by every eye on him.
Riding boots, powerful thighs resting easy against his horse’s sides, swaying gently with its stride.
It looked less like a diplomatic visit and more like a king walking his own territory.
Something about him nagged at Aisling.
Familiar somehow.
Like the raider she’d crossed paths with on the road days back.
But no.
The horse was different, and something about his presence didn’t quite match either.
And more to the point, the road from Dunmara to Dunmore didn’t run anywhere near the northwest.
Just someone who happened to look alike, perhaps.
Aisling kept her doubts to herself and continued watching.
Every one of the hundred men behind him was built solid and hard, the arms holding those royal banners steady and unshaking.
Whatever else people said about the clans of Dunmara, their riders were clearly not a force to underestimate.
Ronan could feel all those eyes on him, plainly, and didn’t care in the least.
But something caught his attention.
One look in particular.
He turned his head to find it, just as hurried footsteps came rushing out from the city behind the gate.
A cluster of officials rode up fast, led by the welcoming envoy, a man in a deep red robe and a two-tiered ceremonial crown, sweating through his collar and breathing hard.
The moment he laid eyes on Ronan, he swung down off his horse and started apologizing before his feet even hit the ground.
“Forgive me, Your Highness.
I beg the Prince of Dunmara’s pardon for my lateness.”
He’d timed it carefully, or thought he had.
Nobody had told him these clansmen rode this fast.
His backside felt half-split from the ride over trying to catch up.
“No matter.
My horse is simply faster than most,” Ronan said, waving it off with something like a smile, not troubled in the least.
“The Prince of Dunmara is famous for both his skill in battle and his eye for a fine horse.
It’s no wonder.”
Lord Fintan thought he caught a thread of mockery in that, but decided he was probably reading too much into it.
He pulled a handkerchief from inside his robe to dab at his forehead, his voice pitched deferentially the whole while.
Aisling’s carriage sat close enough to the gate that she saw all of it clearly.
Her eyes settled on the envoy, the silver seal and green ribbon at his waist, then rose to that smiling, sweating face.
This was a high-ranking minister.
Kilmore was still, on paper, a great kingdom, and this was happening in its own capital.
Late or not, he ought to have carried himself with some dignity befitting that.
Instead, he was practically groveling, and it was hard to watch.
Even the crowd around Aisling pulled odd faces at it.
Fintan, for his part, was thinking how none of them could possibly understand the position he was in.
Word was that the Prince of Dunmara killed men without a second thought.
One wrong move, and it could be his own head on the line.
Once the pleasantries wrapped up, Fintan led Ronan off toward Ashgrove Gardens, where he’d be staying.
Normally, Dunmore kept the Envoys’ Hall for visiting foreign dignitaries.
But Ronan wasn’t just some envoy.
He was a king in his own right, ruler of the grasslands.
Housing him in the usual hall clearly wouldn’t do, so the king had ordered Ashgrove Gardens, part of the royal grounds themselves, cleaned up and prepared for him instead.
Once the procession moved on, the gate went right back to buzzing, everyone talking over each other about what the Prince of Dunmara’s visit could mean.
Reading between the lines of what the court wanted, it seemed almost certain a princess would be married off.
The only real question left was which one.
Setting aside the ones already married, there were three princesses of a suitable age still in the palace: the Fifth and Sixth Princesses, both sixteen; the Seventh, fourteen; and the Eighth, only eleven.
Anyone younger than that didn’t even factor in.
The history books never said which one of them it ended up being.
Aisling couldn’t be sure herself.
But it wasn’t her problem to solve, either way.