The Wolf Cubs

The King of Greenborne was not an early riser. It was late morning when he beckoned Alix to follow him up a spiralling set of wooden stairs, the banisters carved here and there with childish initials scratched in with a blunt knife.

“Come,” the King said, “I’ll show you the view.” He punctuated this with a wink, which Alix chose to ignore.

They emerged onto a gallery that overlooked what would have been a parade ground in Windrider but here resembled a minor skirmish. The grass was patchy and pitted with circles of trampled mud. At the far end, an ancient yew tree bent at a stubborn angle, its roots exposed.

Below them, four girls and a boy tumbled across the training yard in a chaos of wooden swords, grass stains and shouted accusations. One princess had another in a headlock. The boy was knocked flat and immediately set upon by two others, only to re-emerge moments later with a triumphant shout before being dragged back down again.

Someone lost a shoe. Hair escaped every braid. Laughter echoed off the stone walls.

The King watched with the fond resignation of a man who had long ago accepted defeat.

Alix watched with considerably less enthusiasm.

Four daughters. All red-haired and sun-freckled. The boy, unmistakably human, was grass stained and outnumbered, but he fought with a stubbornness that almost impressed Alix. Almost.

The King observed this display with a mixture of pride and resignation. 

“My daughters,” he said, as though presenting a collection of wildflowers he noticed had overgrown the garden. “And the boy, Tristan. He’s a foundling, but the late Queen insisted.” He smiled, then sighed. “The tutors try. Most last a week. The dance master made it three days before he climbed the yew tree and refused to come down.”

Alix wasn’t sure what the right word was for this in his report. He settled on ‘undisciplined’.

“They have not had a mother for half their lives. I do what I can,” the King’s voice softened.

“They are…spirited,” Alix offered.

The King clapped him on the back, nearly sending him over the railing.

“That’s polite, coming from a Windrider. But I didn’t ask for polite, Duke.”

Alix considered. In Windrider, aristocratic daughters were a different breed altogether, every word and gesture monitored from birth to debut. Here, there was only sweat and laughter and dirt.

“In my experience, royalty is shaped and prepared. Here, they are…”

“Untamed?” the King supplied.

Alix allowed himself a very small smile. “Unpredictable.”

The princesses were now sprawled out under the shade of the ancient yew, breathless and content. The boy, Tristan, made a show of shaking the dirt from his hair, while the smallest girl poked at her sisters’ scrapes. Alix might have found the scene charming, had he been the sort of man to find anything charming.

The King of Greenborne pointed at the oldest of his brood, the one with hair the colour of autumn chestnuts and the bearing of someone who’d never been told no.

“That is the Princess Loren,” he said. “Your future Queen.”

Alix studied her. Loren of Greenborne was on her feet pacing beneath the tree’s shadow. She walked the way wolves did, with a loose, predatory ease. Her hair had mostly escaped its braid, and there was a bold streak of mud running from cheekbone to jaw.

When she spoke, the others listened. He guessed, correctly, that she was accustomed to getting the final word.

He watched as she finally sensed his gaze, the slow lift of her chin and the narrowing of her green eyes when she found him in the gallery above.

She said something sharp, pointed up, and all five heads turned in unison to stare at Alix with curiosity. But when Loren shook the hair from her eyes and met his gaze for one heartbeat, there was a flicker of something else he recognized.

Defiance.

He filed that away for later.

She made a show of brushing her hands off, then reached for the short blade in a holster tied at her ankle. With no more warning than a flick of her wrist, she sent it slicing through the air. The knife struck the yew tree with a solid thunk.

She turned, slow and deliberate, and raised her eyes back to Alix.

He did not smile. He did not blink. He let her look at him, and he looked back.

The King chuckled beside him. “She’ll shake the dust from the east.”

Alix turned from the gallery and readied himself for departure. His men were waiting in the courtyard, saddles cinched tight, their patience only slightly frayed by the local wine and casual indifference of their hosts.

Alix mounted up.

The Windriders left Greenborne as they’d arrived, in perfect formation, banners flying.

He did not look back.

But as the trees closed behind them, and the first grassland opened in a sweep of gold to the east, Alix found himself replaying the scene again and again. The girl, the blade, the look of defiance she had given him.

Vetting the Prince of Windrider’s future bride was a matter of national security. Alix had been entrusted to observe, to report, and to ensure no surprises. He was not to become invested. He was not to care.

The words were already assembling themselves in his mind, every sentence as crisp as a general’s dispatch: The princess is unsuitable, undisciplined, unschooled in the finer points of statecraft or even civility.

He told himself the report was written, the decision final. He told himself this three times between the forest and the horizon. But when night fell and the orange light of an inn’s fireplace warmed his face, it was not the King’s bluster or the castle’s chaos that haunted him.

It was Loren, and the deadly aim of a thrown knife finding its mark.