"I cannot believe I lived to see the day when you are married, my lord," Zachary said as they arranged the carriages to return to Larkin.
Gideon stood apart from his men, watching the bustle of servants loading trunks and boxes onto the carts. The morning air was crisp, still carrying the chill of the stone courtyard. Above, the sky was pale grey, promising rain before noon.
"Are you not lucky, my lord," Jayden added, hefting a leather satchel onto the back of a wagon. "In this land where they all look the same, you got the rarest of them all."
"Honestly, a fresh breath of air to see someone with different colouring here," Darvis said, shaking his head. "I never thought I would say that ever."
"Went to the pub last night," Zachary said, tying a rope around a trunk. "Every single person there looked the same. Blonde hair, green eyes. Every last one."
"I almost threw up at the sight of it," Jayden shuddered dramatically. "It was like looking into a hall of mirrors, except the mirrors were all slightly uglier than me."
Gideon watched them, amused. His men had served under him for years, through battles and sieges, through frozen winters and blood-soaked springs. They spoke to him with a familiarity that would have been unthinkable in Alaric's court, but Gideon had never stood on ceremony. On the battlefield, titles meant nothing. Loyalty meant everything.
When they had first ridden through the gates of Valerion, from the outer walls to the castle keep, every person they had passed had looked the same. Blonde hair, green eyes, pale skin. It was as if the entire kingdom had been stamped from a single mould. He had heard the rumours, of course – Alaric had warned him – but experiencing it firsthand was a shock.
In Larkin, everyone was different. Brown hair, black hair, red hair, grey hair. Eyes of blue, green, brown, hazel, grey, even the occasional amber. Some families shared features, of course, but the variety was endless. He wondered how the people of Valerion told each other apart. Did they rely on height? On voice? On the cut of a coat? It seemed exhausting.
It was not until he had seen Liora walking up the aisle that Gideon truly understood why his brother had been so certain Valerion would not keep their end of the bargain.
Alaric had been adamant from the beginning: Valerion would cheat. They would promise peace, they would promise their eldest son, and then they would send someone else. They would blame Larkin for the misunderstanding, drag out negotiations for another year, and the war would continue. Alaric had seen it before. He had read their letters, studied their diplomats, learned their tricks.
"Valerion does not want peace," Alaric had told him, three months ago, in the war room. The fire had burned low, and the maps on the table had been stained with wine and candle wax. "They want the war to continue. It gives their barons purpose, their soldiers glory, their king an enemy to blame for his own failings. They will agree to an alliance, and then they will find a way to break it."
"Then why bother?" Gideon had asked.
"Because we must try. Our people are tired. Our coffers are empty. Another five years of this, and Larkin will tear itself apart from within." Alaric had looked at him then, his grey eyes – so like Gideon's own – heavy with exhaustion. "You will go in my place. You will marry whoever they send. And by the time they realise the switch, you will already be gone."
Gideon had been the leader of the army that fought at the border against Valerion. He had watched his men die in the mountain passes, had held the hand of a boy of sixteen as he bled out from a belly wound, had written letters to widows and mothers for longer than he cared to remember. The war had been going on for generations. No one alive remembered a time before the fighting.
The curse of this war was Valerion and its greed. Valerion and Larkin were neighbouring kingdoms at the far north, sharing a long, winding border through the Greyfang Mountains. For centuries, they had coexisted. Trade had flowed both ways. Families had intermarried. Then a baron on the Valerion side – a petty lord with ambitions far above his station – had decided to impose his laws on the Larkin villages nearest the border. He had demanded taxes, declared that the people of those villages were Valerion subjects, threatened to burn their homes if they refused.
The people of Larkin had fought back. They had sent word to their king and Gideon's father – the old king – had marched south with his knights. The baron had been killed, but his son had appealed to the Valerion king. The king, whether out of pride or obligation, had declared that the border villages were indeed his. And so a war was born.
That had been sixty years ago. Sixty years of raiding, burning, retreating, and advancing. Sixty years of young men dying in the snow for a strip of land that no one truly wanted except to deny it to the other side. Gideon had been fighting since he was old enough to hold a sword. He was tired. His men were tired. The whole of Larkin was tired.