The next day, a royal decree went out calling every prince, lord, and minister to bring their households to the palace for a banquet honoring the Prince of Dunmara’s arrival.
Devlin House was, of course, among them.
Aisling’s father, as ever, couldn’t be bothered to care much either way.
His servants had to prop him up just to get him dressed and his hair combed, still half-drunk and barely awake by the time they were meant to leave.
Lady Sibéal, on the other hand, had been delighted from the moment the invitation arrived.
She’d had her maids lay out her finest clothes and hairpins the night before, and had the lamps lit before dawn to start her hair and dressing.
Aisling couldn’t work out why the king had specifically ordered every minister to bring the women of their households.
Something about it sat uneasily with her.
Still, refusing wasn’t an option.
The three of them rode to the palace gates in half an hour, and palace officials led them in on foot from there, through a long, narrow corridor until they reached Larkspur Gate, where the men and women of each household were meant to part ways.
There, they ran into Lord Declan Riordan, the Minister of Finance, with his own family in tow.
The Riordans were one of the great families King Cathal favored above the rest.
Declan led that generation of them, and his younger sister was none other than Lady Neala herself.
Aisling’s own stepmother, Lady Sibéal, was a Riordan too, Declan’s cousin.
The moment Sibéal spotted her brother, she brightened, lifting her skirts to hurry over.
“Brother!” She caught his arm, all youthful charm.
“What’s kept you so busy lately?
You haven’t come to see me in days.”
Declan smiled back, his eyes settling on her face as he patted her carefully kept hand.
“Busy enough.
With the Prince of Dunmara in the city, once this business is settled I’ll come round properly, I promise.”
The two of them lingered at the gate, laughing together over something.
Watching them, Aisling felt that something wasn’t quite right.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a palace maid in green waving at her from a side path, mouthing something urgent.
Aisling went over.
The maid grabbed at her like she was the only thing keeping her upright, her voice low and frantic.
“Miss, the princess needs you right away.
Please, come quickly, to the garden.”
She looked close to tears.
Aisling could guess roughly what this was about.
She glanced back at Sibéal, still lost in conversation with her brother and paying her no mind at all, then nodded and let the maid lead her down a side path.
Her name was Nuala, one of Princess Gráinne’s own attendants.
Aisling followed her through hedges and bamboo, through a small dark gate, until they reached the spot Gráinne had asked for, a quiet bamboo grove.
She was already waiting there, anxious, and the moment she saw Aisling her whole face lit up with something close to relief.
“Sister Aisling, what am I going to do?”
She caught Aisling’s hand.
“Don’t panic.
Tell me exactly what’s happened.”
Aisling had come back to Dunmore two years ago, and at that year’s Winter Solstice banquet she’d come across Gráinne being bullied, her dress splashed by Princess Aoibhinn, and her crying alone in a corner afterward.
Aisling had happened to be passing and given her own hand warmer.
Gráinne had looked up at her like she couldn’t quite believe what was happening, hands shaking as she took it from her, and then cried even harder.
Her mother had died young, and she’d grown up alone in the palace after that, more or less forgotten by the king.
A princess in name only.
Lonely and unprotected.
An easy target for anyone who wanted one.
That small kindness had been the first she could remember in a long time.
Ever since, she’d attached herself to Aisling completely.
Every time Aisling came to the palace, Gráinne found her way to her, like Aisling’s presence alone was enough to settle her.
Aisling had never had the heart to turn her away, not with those frightened eyes.
So she’d simply accepted the attachment as it came.
“The Consort wants me to marry the barbarian!”
Gráinne’s voice shook.
She’d heard all the same stories Aisling had: a man built like a tiger, born cruel, fond of killing.
The thought of marrying him clearly felt like the sky caving in.
“How do you know that?
Was there an order, or did something happen?”
Aisling squeezed her hand, steady, her face calm beneath the shifting bamboo shade.
She went straight for the important question.
Ronan’s line, I wish to choose my own wife, had already spread across the whole city, and people everywhere were furious about it, cursing him as some arrogant upstart.
How dare he treat a princess of Kilmore like produce at a market stall?
But whatever anyone thought of it, one thing was clear.
He’d be the one choosing, or the king would have arranged the match already.
Gráinne lifted her eyes to Aisling like she was seeing that first snowy day all over again.
That day, in all that white snow, Aisling had walked toward her wrapped in white fox fur.
To Gráinne, it must have looked like something out of a painting, some kind of blessing come to life.
Only a year older than her, and just as delicate in build, and yet somehow Aisling had seemed to carry her own light.
Gráinne couldn’t have explained it properly even now, but she knew there was something steady in Aisling beneath all the gentleness.
Something that didn’t bend, whatever came at it.
She stammered out, “Yesterday the Consort sent someone with a set of fine clothes and pearl hairpins.
She told me I was to perform at the banquet today.
Aoibhinn’s older than me and still unmarried, so the Consort wouldn’t send her.
She picked me instead.
She…”
Just then, passing nearby, Ronan stopped in his tracks.
He’d caught a voice he recognized.
The southern woman from the border road near Ardmore.
Here, in the palace.
Could she be a princess too?
Something sparked inside him at the thought.
His southern mother’s blood had left him with little taste for the women of his own people.
But he was twenty now, and among his own kind, that was well past the age most men married.
His men had been pushing him about it for a while, and he’d started to feel it himself.
This trip south had partly been about finding a southern wife he actually wanted.
The attendant guiding him was confused by his sudden stop but didn’t dare question it.
Ronan simply stood there, listening in without any shame about it.
Behind that wall, most people wouldn’t have caught a word.
But his hearing was sharp, and his grasp of the southern tongue was fluent enough that he followed nearly all of it.
“All right, I understand,” Aisling said, drawing a silk handkerchief from her sleeve to wipe the tears from Gráinne’s eyes.
Her voice alone seemed to settle the girl.
“If the Consort ordered you to perform, that tells me she hasn’t settled on a candidate yet.
She’s using you to try and catch the Prince of Dunmara’s eye.
Which means, if he simply doesn’t like you, her plan falls apart on its own.”
“How do I make him not like me?” Gráinne asked quickly.
Ronan, listening from the other side of the wall, found himself curious about what this sharp southern woman would say.
“A man who insists on choosing his own wife is someone with ambition, and a plan behind it,” Aisling said, weighing together what history said of him with what little she’d seen herself.
“A man like that has no patience for weakness or timidity.”
“So when you perform, play it as frightened and small as you can manage.
Something soft and slow, like the old river ballads.
He’ll lose interest before the piece even ends.”
Gráinne’s eyes lit up at that, whatever had been weighing on her lifting all at once.
“Thank you, Sister Aisling!”
“No need.
It would’ve turned out the same without me.”
The advice fit Gráinne’s own nature well enough that it barely counted as Aisling’s doing.
Ronan, hearing that assessment of himself, found it uncomfortably accurate.
Something like respect stirred in him despite himself.
Still, the conversation soured his mood.
None of these princesses wanted him.
He had no patience for their timidity either.
Hmph.
But that woman…
He wanted to see her face.
Sister Aisling.
So that was her name.
Aside from that small detour, the banquet welcoming the northern envoys finally got underway.
Aisling saw Lady Sibéal hurrying over, her hairpins slightly askew as she fixed them while walking.
The banquet was held in Solas Hall.
A hundred and twenty pillars ringed the hall, the whole thing raised on a nine-foot stone platform.
Bright candles lit every corner, gold and silver worked into the doors and windows, and portraits of famous ministers, old and new, hung along every wall.
The beams overhead were carved from fine dark wood, capped with gilded animal heads.
Every inch of it had been built to impress.
King Cathal had chosen the setting deliberately, to remind Ronan that Kilmore, vast and wealthy as it was, was nothing to compare itself with some clan from beyond the border.
He was still furious, underneath it all, about Ronan’s demand.
Choosing his own bride, as if the king’s own choice wasn’t good enough.
Wasn’t that an insult, plain and simple?
And the worst of it was that, as king, he had to swallow it for the greater good.
If the alliance fell through, every hostile clan waiting beyond Kilmore’s borders would come pouring south the moment they smelled weakness.
Since Ronan ruled the grasslands in his own right, the Office of Protocol had spent hours arguing over seating, finally settling on two head seats, one east and one west, with Kilmore’s ministers on one side and the northern envoys on the other.
Musicians sat arranged in neat rows before Solas Hall, braziers lit throughout the courtyard.
Ministers in ceremonial robes and seals of office filed in through both doors in orderly lines, taking their places in the eastern gallery.
Before long, drums sounded and King Cathal entered.
Every minister bowed low.
Once he’d taken his seat, a golden bell rang out, and an attendant announced loudly:
“Let the Prince of Dunmara and his envoys enter the hall!”
Ronan walked in with a dozen or so of his own men behind him.
He glanced at the seating laid out for him, frowned, and simply dropped down cross-legged at his place, stretching his long legs out under the table without ceremony.
That alone was enough to set the whole hall murmuring.
Ministers exchanged glances, some outright furious.
“No manners at all, these savages!”
“None whatsoever, just as everyone said!”
Kilmore’s customs, inherited from generations back, still held that kneeling was proper and sitting cross-legged was crude.
Some of the higher clan-style furniture had made its way south by now, but it stayed strictly a private, at-home thing, never suitable for an occasion like this.
Ronan clearly noticed the reaction and didn’t care in the least.
Their rules were tedious and pointless.
Why bother learning them?
His men behind him sprawled out just as freely, legs spread wide.
The Master of Ceremonies finally couldn’t hold his tongue.
“It’s said, when in another’s house, follow that house’s customs.
Since the Prince of Dunmara has come to our lands, surely he might extend us the same courtesy.”
One of the men behind Ronan, a broad, heavily built man with a ring through his nose, snorted openly.
“We came here for our king to marry, not to sit through your customs.
Bring out the princess so our king can wed her and be done with this alliance business.”
That was blunt enough to nearly send the Master of Ceremonies into a fit.
The ministers around him scrambled to hold him up.
“Easy, easy, my lord!”
“Yes, don’t lower yourself to their level.”
The nose-ring general, seeing how close he’d come to knocking the old man flat with words alone, laughed loudly.
That only made the ministers angrier.
“Prince of Dunmara, this is the palace of Kilmore.
We treat you with respect as our guest, but there are limits!”
Marshal Tiernan stood, pointing straight at them.
Ronan paused, cup halfway to his lips, and glanced over without so much as a frown.
Somehow, he looked more imposing sitting than Tiernan managed standing.
“If you’re not satisfied, you’re welcome to settle it with General Brogan directly.”
Brogan thumped his own chest at that, grinning.
“Come on, then!
Draw your blade and fight me!”
They all knew perfectly well what these southerners called them behind closed doors.
Savages.
Bandits.
Here was the perfect chance to needle them properly.
If any of them had the nerve, let them try.
Brogan stood a full eight feet, nearly matching Ronan for size.
Not even Kilmore’s fiercest generals could be sure of beating him, let alone ministers who’d spent decades behind desks rather than on a battlefield.
No one accepted.
Losing the fight would be embarrassing enough.
Losing it in front of the whole court, in front of history, would follow their family names for generations.
Seeing things spiral, King Cathal stepped in before it went further, offering everyone a way out.
“The Prince of Dunmara was only joking.
Surely envoys from two kingdoms wouldn’t come to blows over nothing.”
The banquet hadn’t even properly begun, and already the relationship between the two kingdoms had gone brittle.
Behind twelve white silk screens worked with phoenix patterns and gold-threaded curtains, Aisling sat listening to the commotion from the front hall, turning it all over in her mind.
Later histories would claim Ronan admired southern culture, that he’d even pushed reforms modeled on Kilmore’s ways.
A nice story.
The kind that got repeated for centuries.
But from what she’d just watched, calling it admiration would be generous.
It would be flatly wrong.
Maybe he never actually pushed those reforms at all.
He’d died too young to manage much of anything lasting.
Or maybe he’d done it anyway, whatever he actually felt, simply because it served him to rule that way.
If that was the case, his ambitions ran far deeper than anyone gave him credit for.
Had he lived, he would have become Kilmore’s greatest threat by far.
And even with his death, Kilmore never escaped its fate.
The southern lands still ended up trampled under northern hooves in the end.
Partway through the banquet, the curtains in the hall were suddenly drawn back, leaving only the screen between the women’s side and the men’s.
Ronan glanced over at the movement out of habit, but the silk screen blurred everything into shapes he couldn’t make out.
His brow furrowed.
Gráinne had indeed been sent out to perform alongside another Princess.
Both were led up before the screen with their instruments.
Dressed richly, jewels at their throats, and still their eyes stayed lowered, frightened as young animals, shrinking into themselves, not daring to look up.
Was this really what Kilmore’s princesses were like?
She wasn’t out there.
Ronan found himself thinking again of the southern woman from the road.
He hadn’t paid her much mind at the time, but her image had only sharpened since, small details rising up now that he hadn’t noticed catching at the time.
No fine robes.
No palace around her.
Just bare, open ground, and her wrapped in white fox fur, so pale and untouched she’d seemed to belong somewhere else entirely, some legend, not this world.
And yet, for all that delicacy, she’d stood straight-backed and unshaken.
He hadn’t even seen her face, and already he could picture her clearly.
Everyone watching assumed, from the way Ronan stared at the screen, that he’d taken a liking to one of the two princesses in front of him.
Gráinne, feeling the weight of that gaze, grew more anxious by the second, her fingers trembling enough to fumble a few notes on the fiddle.
Don’t notice me, don’t notice me.
If Sister Aisling’s plan works, he won’t pick me…
She kept telling herself that, her face going paler by the moment.
None of them had any idea Ronan was seriously considering just tearing the screen down to see if Aisling was standing behind it.