Andrea stared at her nails. The edges were jagged and rough, sharp enough to cut a man's flesh but not as clean as she wanted. They needed filing again. Her thumb flicked over her index finger, quietly tracing the shape. What bugged her most of all was the lack of color. Pink nails stared up at her, missing their usual shine. She'd been forced to scrub off the heavy polish for the meeting ahead. "No weapons" was the rule, and as much as Andrea hated it, she intended to play along.

The soft scratching of a pen caught her ear from across the table. Not needing to guess who it was, she glanced up and glared at Cassius. Oblivious, the young man pushed aside black locks and furrowed his brow downward. He sat next to Shahin as Meric sat next to her, but the large table made the room feel empty. It was the first time she'd been away from Casper for a while, and she was missing the way he could have lightened the atmosphere with a single smile. Instead, they were all just waiting.

Stretching, Andrea bent her hands behind her back and curved her spine. It sent a fresh wave of irritation dancing along her side. Every time she forgot about the wound it came back to bite her. Drumming her fingers on the wooden table, Andrea cast a side glance at her companions. Meric was rewrapping a small wound on her arm, the bandages almost hypnotic in their steady rolling rhythm. Meanwhile, Shahin had taken to staring off toward the opposite wall. He looked to be having a deep conversation between himself and the wooden beam he was facing. Not sure if bothering him was the cleverest idea she'd ever had, Andrea focused on the bard instead. A new piece sat before him, the ink of whatever word he'd scribbled down fresh.

"What are you writing?" the girl asked, leaning on both arms to peer across the table.

Cassius's gaze flickered to hers in surprise. It was a well-known fact she didn't appreciate the way he broke into a high soprano at the drop of a sword and didn't stop until the birds protested against his caterwauling. That being said, Andrea was positive she would die of boredom trapped in the small room. So, she would settle for what she could get. The musician cast an uneasy glance to Meric first to check if the question was a trap, and upon receiving a shrug, gave in by setting aside his pen and clearing his throat.

"I'm trying to find a rhyme to fit with purple," he admitted. His eyes flashed hopefully up at Andrea for a moment and then gravitated to Meric. They both gave it a deal of thought before giving up with short shakes of their heads.

Andrea began to tap her fingers against the wood again. "I don't think there's anything." She rolled her lip between her teeth and pulled the flesh taunt for a brief moment. There wasn't a clear answer that sprung to mind, and she collapsed against the table in mock defeat.

"There's got to be! A great bard can rhyme anything," Cassius argued, picking up his quill and using it in lieu of a sword. The feathers stabbed the air mercilessly and his ink found the page again, scratching out something and rewording it a new way to please his eye. Meric let out a breath of a laugh.

"Can you not change the phrase?" Numbly, the young man's head shook. He whipped the quill around again, this time almost swatting Shahin in the face. The older knight pulled back at such a speed Andrea was sure he was going to fall off the bench and spill onto the floor. Luckily, he caught himself with a hand, grasping the underside of the table. Knuckles white and expression irritated, he shot them all a warning glare and went back to what he was doing before, like his conversation with the wall was all so important.

Twisting her empty ale glass before her, Andrea stole the pen with a nimble movement. She spun it in her own hand, admiring the brown and white speckles. "Why do you need purple anyway? Use the color red. Red rhymes with all sorts of things," she offered, pulling the writing utensil out of Cassius's grasp just as he reached for it back. "Bed or shed or lead work." The feather went to the right hand now as he leaned across the table far enough to indent his stomach. "How about bread? Or bled? Or head?" His nails sunk into her hand as he finally ripped it back.

"I can't. It needs to be contained within the crest of Elusia." The quill became tucked behind his hair, half hidden in his bouncy curls.

"And why's that?" The bitter taste that swarmed the girl's tongue held short of seeping into her words.

"It's a ballad on the deal that will transpire," Cassius assured her, a playful smile dancing across his lips like he could be proud of that. Andrea wrinkled her nose.

Tracing her teeth with her tongue, she cupped her cheek in hand and leaned heavily on it. Right, the deal. The bitter feeling grew until it was chomping down on the back of her tongue with every intention to spring loose of her lips. To call what King Gavin had settled on a deal was appalling. It was a like offering a proposition to a dog and expecting the mangy mutt to put two and two together enough to slap their wet, muddy paw on the contract and not bite the hand feeding it. It wasn't as if Johnathan had a choice at this point. Had they wanted, they could have crushed the kingdom to dust. Andrea wished they had.

"Don't count the fry before they hatch," she muttered, the words muddled by her hand. "Things may change yet." Eyes fell upon her, more serious than before.

"Are you saying you know more than us?" Meric asked. Her tone was light, bordering on joking as she snipped the last thread of her new wrapping and set the gauze aside. Andrea knew that was her way out, a backtrack to laugh the comment off and return to safety. Blatantly ignoring it, she shook her head violently.

Her nails dug delicately into the table. "I'm saying there's something not right about this." Her head ached as she pulled her sticky cheek away from her palm. "Marrying the princess off to settle ties?"

"It's been done before," Meric reminded her.

The gaze pressing against her skin made it uncomfortably warm. There wasn't a problem with her receiving attention, but there was the problem with proving her point that sent anger shooting fast through her blood. Andrea ducked her head away. "And what's to stop the Elusian from taking over the moment the marriage is complete?"

How? Shahin signed, not interested but not disinterested as he watched the group. He set aside his talk with the wood to watch them fret over something they all knew would be done with or without their counsel. Garner was the first line of defense if Gavin's mind had snapped in one way or another—though implying that alone would find one's own mind missing with the help of a guillotine. Then there were a few others, royal court advisors and meeting counsels and perhaps, if they were lucky, the knights would get their own say. Among them, Andrea would guess he would look to Sir Shahin first but to listen to one with a tongue was difficult enough, let alone to listen to one without. Andrea knew herself to be too rash and Cassius too foolhardy, and while Meric may have been able to slip a word to King Gavin, Andrea didn't know the sort of word it would be.

Sighing, the girl tugged her fingers through knotted strands of blonde and brown hair that had begun to clump. The black headband slipped around her neck as she worked, sifting around for an idea, a reason. "A dagger through Gavin's chest works well enough." Andrea said it so flippantly she was surprised it'd come from her own lips. Still, she pressed forward feverishly. "Once they get married what's to stop him from becoming a king and reeking havoc?"

"The Prince isn't that much of a fool," Cassius argued, piping up for the first time in a while as he wrote the word 'havoc' in the corner of his page.

"He was fool enough to drag the war out as long as he did, foolish enough to start it in the first place," Andrea countered. "Who's to say he wouldn't kill them both? Take over and then lose everything we've gained in some act of young, hot-headed insolence." The line struck too close to home, and she retreated in her chair, back pressed against the rough wood. Her tongue was thick with insults and poison, but there was nowhere to throw them. It was useless to continue arguing, to press a point that had no merit and no proof.

King Gavin was not a fool. The Prince of Elusia, though she couldn't speak for him and could hardly imagine so by his actions, wasn't meant to be one either. Maybe that was what was infuriating—the useless of it all. They had fought and died and scraped each other until both sides were raw and wounded and now what? They sat around watching and waiting on the politics of it all. Pathetic.

Without waiting for the others to argue or protest or even side with her, Andrea slammed her hands against the table and pushed back. Her chair tilted, threatening to crash to the ground before she caught it be the edge, nails catching the oak and throwing it back into place. "I'm going to get some air," she informed no one in particular as she pulled her band back up over her eyes and smoothed her hair back. The door was five paces away, and another two to exit through the doorway. She paused, only once when he name was called from behind, and then exited.

The outside hall was cold. She dragged both hands over her eyes, pressing softly and exhaling deeply. It was unfair. To do so much and wind up with so little. That wasn't to say Elusia was a small parcel of land, quite the opposite in fact. Trading and exports were won and another expansion was to be swallowed whole. But how many kingdoms was that? Provinces and palaces and parcels of land swallowed like little pebbles in the gut of a whale. Then they go to swallow another, and nothing they had done would be for anything.

It wouldn't matter. The war would end, and she would head back to Laesh. Back to fish guts and expectations that grazed her ears like knives. Or perhaps she'd stay on as a soldier, fighting another bloody war and watching those around her die. Maybe this time she'd be the unlucky one who found a sword sliced clean through her neck, or maybe it'd be Casper. Not that they would be remembered when the deed was down, not any of them. Shahin's service would be forgotten, Meric's magic would wilt, and even Cassius's songs, meant to be sung long after they were gone, would lose their lyrics. So why bother listening at all?

Andrea glanced back at the door behind her, shut on the other knights inside, awaiting orders. There wasn't much time now, but there was time enough for her to slip away. Long enough for her to grab a dagger no bigger than a thumbtack and slip it into her boot. The girl would be back in time for the meeting, to smile pretty and act as much like a fair negotiator as possible. But if something were to happen before the wedding, she would not mind. In fact, she might find a place in history to be remembered.