He stiffened his back as the colossal striped cat sat up and placed its paw onto his lap. The claw, though retracted, grazed his skin. His gaze was fixated on a miniature waterfall that seemed out of place in the middle of a desert wasteland. Holding his breath, Sebastian leant backwards, searching for a wall he knew the gazebo didn't have.

If it weren't for the dry wind evaporating any sweat that formed on his skin, a pool would have formed beneath the bench. All those years of Uncle Tom worrying about his safety and giving him endless lectures on being the only legitimate heir to the throne suddenly seemed so futile now that his life depended on the whims of a maned animal able to rip his head off or claw his chest open.

"Dana won't do anything. He wants to get to know you," Jhara said with the serenity of a Scorian Princess. 

The silver bracelets on her arm jingled to the casual tunes of the feather fan flapping in her hand. She might as well have told him his name was Sebastian, and he still wouldn't have believed her.

Danarion rose. There was a glint in the tiger's amber eyes as a second paw landed onto his knee. Sniffing, the creature's nose ruffled through his hair. The whiskers prickled his face.

Sebastian forced himself to keep still, to endure this lesson from the Goddess of Humility. He was used to being the tallest person in a room, to be the one others looked up to even if he had done nothing to deserve their awe. Jhara's five-hundred-pound cat reduced him to the coward he was.

"Yes, good. Pet him, Seb. He likes that," Jhara said.

Sebastian turned his head towards her, frowning but not for long. There was something about the black shadow around her already dark eyes that made his future wife just as intimidating. With gritted teeth, he reached for the tiger's shoulder. He laid his hand on the thick, coarse fur and moved it in hesitant circles.

A wet nose poked his face. 

He froze. Between getting cornered by a fleet of the silver army and being stuck inside a gazebo with a Scorian Princess and her tiger, he suddenly found death at Silvermark's hands the more honourable option.

"Get acquainted with your future wife before the wedding," Aunt Crystal had said. 

With the tiger's head now resting on his shoulder, he wasn't sure he would get that far. Danarion would go down in history as the creature who decided the outcome of the sixth Greeno-Silvermark war. A mauled Crown Prince and a patient usurpation by King Storm and Fox as they merely had to wait for Uncle Tom to draw his final breath. Southern relationships would sour; the world in peril.

The nonchalant way with which Jhara waved her fan into the feline's face revealed that she didn't share his worries. As Danarion pawed at the peacock-eyed feathers, she jerked the fan away, luring the animal towards her. "I know it'll be a long while before peace returns to the north, and I can follow you to Sunstone Castle. But when we do, I want Maro to join us. You, Greenlanders, are hopeless at taking care of animals. I want only what's best for my Dana."

"Sure," Sebastian said. Not that he remembered who Maro was or whether he had seen him or her.

Though he wished Uncle Tom and Aunt Crystal had warned him that getting married to Princess Jhara meant getting married to Danarion too. The chance of the enemy taking care of the creature was slim to none; his uncle had forbidden his return to Sunstone Castle until the war was over.

Or if the King passed away unexpectedly, George had added. A message that had been stuck in Sebastian's head more than any other advice his uncle had given him.

The General considered scenarios Uncle Tom didn't want to think about. Sebastian was nearly seventeen—in case his uncle died, he had to rule. Sure, the law permitted George to be regent until Sebastian's return to Greenlander soil. A reign which legally could be stretched endlessly, if it weren't for the Lords having enough power to dismiss Sebastian during peacetime if he hid like a hare running from the hounds when his kingdom was burning. 

Of course the Lords didn't care that he was staying in a tiger's den, inches between him and a brutal, bloody death.

Danarion sank his teeth into the feathers. Jhara swung him off, as though she was playing with a puppy. The loose headscarf around her head slipped over her eyes and covered the turquoise tasselled earrings.

"Who's a good kitten?" she cooed.

As if to say not me, the tiger tugged so hard that Jhara let go.

With the plumes sticking out of his snout, Danarion darted towards the pond, prouder than the peacock whose feathers adorned the fan. He turned his head to assure nobody was chasing his precious prey.

Jhara kept her gaze on the scene and smoothed the wrinkles from her light blue linen dress and fixed her headscarf. The giant cat laid down on the middle step of the marble stairs, then started gnawing on the fan like a dog gnawing a bone.

Sebastian cupped the back of his neck in his hands. Stretching his legs, he let out an exhalation of pent-up breath.

"You don't like animals," she said. He couldn't tell whether she was asking or making a statement.

"Oh, I do. I'm just not—"

She didn't wait for him to finish speaking. "Do you have any pets?"

"Wouldn't call her a pet, but I own a horse—gifted by your parents for my twelfth birthday. A silverish black mare called Luce—named her after one of my sisters."

"Why her, and not your other sister?"

He lifted his shoulders. "She seemed more a Luce than an Ems."

"How so?"

"I don't know." He didn't want to talk about his sisters. "And a few years ago, the Icians gifted me a Mountain Dog, but I gave the pup to a friend who needed him more. He's called Bear."

"Your friend?"

"No, the dog."

"Odd name."

"Well, I was only eleven years old—thought it was funny." He stretched his lips into a cheesy smile, though not for long. She wasn't even looking his way.

Silence settled between the two as Danarion tore the fan into two, then stared at the two pieces, something between forlorn and confused.

A shadow crept across the royal garden. The sky, as blue as the Jade Sea but minutes before, suddenly had an orange hue. Sebastian swore he could see the sun moving as it descended below Alburkhan's skyline. A full moon stood ready to take over its duty.

"Is—" he wanted to ask.

Again, she spoke at the same moment. "Um—"

"Go ahead." He gestured.

"Ummi has requested the mehterani to perform during our wedding," Jhara said. "The choice of songs they'll play is ours. They have a wide range of Greenlander and Scorian classics in their fingers. Or some Jade Islandic ballads, if you prefer to slow dance."

"Oh, dancing." Sebastian ran his fingers along the edges of his moustache. "I don't... really... I... You should ask my cousin when she's here."

"You will dance with me, won't you?"

"Of course, but it can be any song. As long as there are  Scorian belly dancers at some point during the wedding,  I'm already a happy man."

She shook her head, chuckling. "Oh, how the Goddess of Lust lives in you, Prince Sebastian of The Greenlands. You'll see some belly dancing, but not during our wedding. I'll keep that for a... private occasion."

The disappointment over not seeing scantily clad women shaking their hips to the tunes of the drums and the tambourine during the feast faded away. He began to realise the perks of getting married to a Scorian wife.

"We're alone now," he tried with a grin on his lips.

"You're not my husband yet," she said. The tone of her voice was a warning that he could still be turned down.

After all, it was he and his uncle who were bringing matters of the continent across the Jade Sea. They were the ones requesting Queen Rainah's steel-armoured steamships and a potential extra twenty-five thousand men to turn the tide of war. Now that Fox too was eligible to claim the obsidian throne, the Silvermarkers were stepping up their game. Since most legions had been called to the wider Sundale region, the Silvermarkers attacked randomly, their only purpose to stir chaos and conflict. Coastal Lords refused to send their warriors to the capital, preferring to secure their own lands instead of a fortified castle that had never been taken.

Had he been King, he would have gathered the Greenlander army and the Jade Islandic privateers and laid siege on Moondale years ago. He would have crushed the enemy long before the dispute escalated to war. They would have owned the land beyond the Horseshoe Mountains instead of Aunt Crystal's magician brother, Storm.

Any debates had ended in Uncle Tom calling him a brainless Muttonhead. After which Sebastian refused to attend formal meetings for a fortnight, cursing his uncle's gutless spine to waste away in the boiling pits of The Seven Hells.

And now he was boiling in the Scorian desert, the furthest away from the war. Or so he had believed until this afternoon, when he had shared brew and lemon cakes with a nice, old Scorian lady who insisted he called her Nana and Sayid Harun who had told him about all three deserted islands he had discovered in the South Scorian sea.

"I invited Scirocco's family to our wedding," Sebastian said.

"You already attended her funeral."

"She died in mission. It's thanks to her I'm sitting here."

"She was a witch," she spat. "You bring shame to my family, as though you seek to remind us of our blindness."

"So you cast them out, Sayid Harun too? I understood the man worked for your mother."

"Yes, he worked for Ummi."

"That's cruel. Scirocco was a magician and died for being one." By her own hand—but he wasn't going to mention that.  "But the family is innocent—they've been punished enough. I want to show them I care."

"You've shown enough care," she said sharply. "I won't have them at my wedding."

Though the urge to yell that his father was a magician too and that he was the noblest man he had ever met, Sebastian clenched his teeth tightly.

Voices speaking with a rapid musical lilt came from the vine-covered tunnel that led back to the palace. The moonlit sky shone on two dark figures in leather and revealed Jhara's siblings, Sahabi and David. They strolled casually with a scimitar and a small metal shield in their hands, their hair tied back into a bun.

Upon seeing the two appear, Dana rose from the water, abandoned the chewed pieces of the fan, and ambled back towards the gazebo, into Jhara's welcoming arms. He purred.

Sahabi rose the shield in greeting. The future Queen of Scoria was half a head shorter than her brother, but her arm muscles showed she had received the same training as David.

"Good evening!" Sebastian waved. "Going to spar?"

"Yeah, perfect weather to stab your sister," David said with a chuckle.

The grin on Sahabi's face could be heard. "Not if I stab you first." 

Sebastian's fingers itched as the two took their stance on the patch of green in front of the gazebo. He was about to ask Jhara for her permission to join them, when she scoffed and continued stroking her tiger's mane. If she didn't seem pleased at being reduced to her sibling's audience, he figured it was better he stayed by her side.

Sahabi marked the middle of the field, then returned to her spot, a few yards from David. Their shield pressed against their body, they raised their scimitar and bowed. 

A blink later, they were slamming at each other's shield, performing a dance of push and pull with piercing blows and quick cutting slashes.

David spun onto his feet, forcing his sister to follow him. She replied by shoving her shield into his face. A short twitch later, he headed back into the game. Sahabi managed to thrust back, parry his attacks, but lost terrain. He was more on her half than she on his.

"Push when you hit him. Use your upper arm, not your hand," Sebastian shouted out of habit. Since he had earned his Lieutenant leaf, he was in charge of training the youngest soldiers. He had never fought with a scimitar, but he knew everything about short swords.

"It's no use—they're showing off," Jhara said when Sahabi kept on using those short cuts in defence. "A scimitar is a horseman's weapon. The arc of the blade matches the sweeping of a rider's arm as they cut open their target in full gallop. In one-to-one battle, nothing tops the ordinary iron sword."

Sebastian eyed her. Before he opened his mouth, she added with disdain, "What? Might be surprising to you, Greenlander, but all women in Scoria are handy with a weapon. We can be pretty and cut your heart out, if we must."

Though irritated by her bold assumptions, he said, "We should get married already."

On the grass, David swung the scimitar so hard that Sahabi's shield dropped out of her hands. Screaming victory, he was too slow to react when his sister whacked the curvy edge against his hip. He sunk to one knee.

"Don't sell the meat when your prey is still darting around," Sebastian muttered.

David cast his shield aside just in time to duck under the swipe, then leapt to his feet, slipping his hand towards the part of the weapon's shaft beneath the head. Ready to strike, he hesitated for a heartbeat too long.

Sahabi forced him into defence.

"The wedding ceremony," Jhara lured his attention back to her. "It will be a blend of Greenlander and Scorian traditions. We will both do the bonding of the knot and the signing of the blood contract. I must ask you, prior to the contract signing, Ummi will be taking our confessions. You will have to think about a sin you want forgiveness for."

"Fine." He had many, though he wasn't sure which he wanted to share to all of Alburkhan.

The fight in front of him had turned into a dance rather than a fight. Though Sahabi had the upper hand now, both of them were getting tired, their movements slower and sloppier. At the Academy, duals had ended with a soldier touching his opponent's skin or right before cleaving the other's vital parts. Not here.

In the background, Jhara kept talking about the wedding. ".... shoot away the sins, then break the arrow. I will draw the bow first, then after I have hit you—"

"So you weren't kidding about cutting my heart out," Sebastian joked.

She stopped petting Dana to shoot her gaze at him, not blinking. "You weren't listening. I said the arrow would be blunt. You won't experience as much as a bruise."

Sebastian hummed as David twisted Sahabi's hold. The tip of his scimitar was inches from her stomach. A potential fatal wound if this were a propper battle.

Sahabi slid sideways from the blow, then used the momentum of David's confusion to steady her stance. The metals clashed, with Sahabi having the edge on her side and David blocking.

"Hey!" Jhara snapped him away from the battle. "This is our wedding I'm talking about—it's important."

"I'll go with the flow of the day. There's nothing to worry about." His eyes were still on the grass, where David was struggling with his footwork as Sahabi backed him into a corner.

"You don't care about the wedding."

"I do," Sebastian said, looking at Jhara. Female cheering came from the field—he had missed how Sahabi had won. "And I apologise. A good battle tends to distract me."

"You wish you could have married my sister, didn't you? I see the way you look at her."

"Our marriage is political," Sebastian said calmly. "We don't have to like each other."

"So you don't deny it."

"I barely know you, or your sister—for that matter," he went into defence. "Look, my uncle needs your mother's army and fleet, and your mother wishes to gain influence in the north.  We don't have to like each other to  do whatever is needed for our family and our country. And as for the wedding, I'll do anything, even shave off my moustache if that's what Scorian tradition prescribes."

"It does," she said harshly. "You would have known had you listened to me."

"I'm all ears now." He gesticulated at Sahabi and David discussing their fight in more detail. He caught Sahabi being critical of her brother's faltering, and quite rightly so. David could have had her halfway through the battle.

Jhara stroked the purring Danarion. The tiger had its head on her lap, its sharp teeth bare though giving a relaxing appearance that Sebastian didn't fully trust.

"You said we didn't have to like each other, but I don't want that. I have never seen anything else but my Ummi and Abbah avoiding each other unless they wish to discuss business or have sex. It's not how I want to be married—I want to be a couple."

Sebastian pondered as Sahabi and David prepared for a second round. His parents had been a couple, but they had married out of love. And his father had cheated on his mother too. "My aunt and uncle live separate lives too, but there are two firm rules in Sunstone Castle: they always have dinner together, at six o'clock sharp, and they share a bed."

"Separate during the day, but together during the night," Jhara summarised.

"Something like that." He didn't mention that his uncle worked until halfway through the midnight oil, nor that he himself hadn't slept on anything but the ground or a window sill since first coming to Sundale.

"And what will I do when you are performing your princely duties?" Jhara asked.

"You'll be having duties of your own, helping my aunt managing the household and arranging feasts and balls. You'll be the Scorian star of Sunstone Castle—everybody will want to be you or be with you. You'll hear proposals, ideas, and criticism long before I do. Some say Greendaler gossip holds more power than its monarch."

"And what do you say?"

"I'd say you'd enjoy steering the gossip into your favour, into our favour."

"A power couple," she mused.

"Yeah."

In the light of the bright full moon, two shimmering scimitars clattered in opposite directions. David parried the sweep meant for his shoulder with a thrust of his shield. He lunged forwards, the edge facing Sahabi who seemed to be struggling with her shield, just like before.

"Seb?" Jhara said.

He jerked away from the battle and turned back to her. "I'm listening—I'm here for you."

"Do you think you'll ever love me? Not now, not on our wedding day, but in a decade when we are surrounded by the sons and daughters I bore you."

The sounds of metal clinging rang in his ears. He felt trapped between an unsatisfactory lie and a painful truth. The tiger's presence didn't help either. Twice over he opened his mouth before closing it again.

"I don't know," was what he settled on.

"I appreciate your honesty," Jhara said with a faint smile. "I'll retreat to my chamber. If you wish to take part in my siblings' training, I won't stop you."

"Or I can take you to your chamber?" He tried.

She rose from the bench, Danarion following in her wake. It was she who looked down on him. "That won't be necessary—I won't need you for that. I can walk through the palace blindfolded."

"Then perhaps you should show me the way..."

"There's nothing for you there." 

Without sparing him a second look, she made her way towards the pergola, disappearing into its shadows with the graceful steps of the feline by her side.

In The Greenlands, he would have chased the girl. But he was in Scoria with more to lose than his dignity. 

He unsheathed his ceremonial sword.