The Raven: Prince of Iron and Blood.

Dvidešimt Aštuntasis

The tapestry portraits that adorned the echoing corridors of the Wing appeared to mock the Prince with every step he took. These overambitious pieces of art, depicting long-forgotten ancestors in their pompous finery, seemed to twist their painted lips into sneers, their beady eyes following his every anguished movement. The Prince's quarter was a too-opulent shrine to aristocratic excess, but tonight, the splendour seemed to mock him as much as the portraits did.

As he stormed through the chamber, his heavy boots thudded against the cold, ancient stone floor, the heat of indignation coursing through him like wildfire that seemed to awaken the very shadows in the room. The walls, lined with dark oak panelling and ancient seemed to close in on him, their stoic silence a cruel contrast to the storm within him.

"Cursed be the Lady of Harrow!" he muttered, slamming a solid fist into a velvet pillow as if it were her face. A figure of bruised dignity threw himself onto his bed with a graceless thud. He passed a hand over his face, a futile gesture to ward off the relentless spectre of his mortification.

"God's blood," he hissed through gritted teeth, the words cutting through the stillness like a serrated knife. His eyes, sharp with indignation, scanned the lavish tapestries on the walls as if they might magically rewrite the evening's disgrace. He had to find a way out of this arrangement.

Róis' voice broke through his thoughts as she entered the room without so much as a knock. "My dear," she began, suppressing a laugh, "you cannot possibly be upset over the words of a drunken goose."

"I shall never show my face again! The court will think me weak, cowed by a mere woman. To think I contemplated marrying her! A wretch of a Lady—an ungracious trollop!"

"It can be fixed," she said, her tone implying that the fix was both inevitable and inexorable.

"Róis!" The Prince's outburst was a sudden storm, his face contorted in horror.

"You will marry her," she said firmly, her voice brooking no argument. "The dowry is too great to pass up."

"How can you expect me to spend the rest of my life with someone like that? "

She sighed, "Sometimes, brother, we must make sacrifices for the greater good. You will learn to see past her... eccentricities."

Rya knew his half-sister was right, but it didn't make the bitter pill any easier to swallow. To him, she was nothing more than a pox-ridden relic of a bygone era—a good-for-nothing hag whose sole talent seemed to be in making him look the fool.

"Ah, but therein lies the charm," Róis replied with a hint of mischief in her voice, her sapphire eyes glinting like daggers under the moonlight spilling through the ornate windows. "Her folly is but one thread in the fabric for something grander."

Rya shot up, eyes wide in unvarnished horror. "What scheme? If you suggest I return to her, I may just run to the North Sea and jump in myself!"

"Calm your tempestuous heart," Róis chided, raising a hand to restore order. "The Lady may be a drunken ass at times, but she does possess assets—real ones." She paused, allowing the gravity of her words to sink in. "The Lord's diamond mines..."

Rya's eyes widened, their scorched depths flickering with the sudden realization that had struck him, her words weaving an enticing thread into the fabric of their conversation. "Holy gods."

"Diamonds... But must I be shackled to a disgrace?"

"The dowry, dear brother, shall be most sufficient," she continued, her voice dropping to a whisper, drawing closer to weave a deeper web. "For in this game of thrones, one must play the pawns wisely."