Great, oaken doors slam shut behind her.

The slam creating a wind that furls her wings inward, cocooning her body for a heartbeat.

Elodie finds herself in a throne room.

Immense windows line one wall, the stained-glass floods the room in diluted sunlight and bluish greys. Each ancient pane painting a history of starlight and bloodshed, images that had been burned into the back of her skull since the day her parents had deemed her old enough to know it.

There wasn't a fae, commoner, royal or wild, who didn't.

It is not the only familiar part of this foreign place.

Half a dozen canvas' hang on the parallel wall, descending in age order. The ones nearest to her, the entrance, are ancient. The paint peeling and chipped.

The one furthest from her, barely a decade old.

Most of them she barely recognises, but the high cheekbones and steel eyes that are near perfect copies from one to the other, are quite familiar.

The ceilings tower over her, but do not take away from the claustrophobic sensation that clings to her with every step she takes.

A fine rug lines the length of the throne room. A beautiful, woven fixture that is a medley of every shade of grey and dark blue the sun had ever dared to shine on.

It too tells a story, and one step onto the cloth and the Queen knows it has been here longer than the trees she can see through the windows, waving in a gentle breeze.

Three grandiose from rich grey chains, a thousand candles flickering overhead.

She isn't sure if the smell of smoke is imaginary, from those licking flames - or a thing that sticks to her own skin.

Every set of eyes is fixed to her, the sensation makes her want to tear her skin clean off her body. It feels filthy - tainted in a way she doesn't have the words to describe.

It doesn't feel like her own anymore, and every instinct screams to discard it and run.

Instead she follows that stone grey, constellation dotted rug towards the dais.

She is grateful for it - as it muffles the click of her heels, the limp in her gait.

The dais itself is a grand thing, boasting a sprawling, basalt throne. The jagged, irregular shapes sharp enough she fears a cut simply from looking at it.

But the royal family arrange themselves comfortably on it, a mixture of casual, studious, and lethal.

She forces her posture straight and her chin high as she closes the distance between them.

Great curtains swathe the throne in shade, immense, heavy fabric, the same greys and blues of everything in the throne room. But it does nothing to hide who hides in the shadows of it.

The glint of their metal, a mixture of swords, crossbows and spears.

There is a ripple of movement, she has no way of knowing how many, but doesn't need a close estimate to know she is easily outnumbered.

A small army, here with one, unwavering duty.

To protect the royal family.

It seems, from the likes of her.

The world is silent as she walks, a tension fierce enough she could slice clean through it with a rusty butter knife.

As she reaches the first step of the dais, a booming shout sounds from the shadows.

"Halt."

She does not need to be asked twice.

A man peels from the shadows, clad in dark leather and carrying a broad blade. His movements are seamless in spite of his impressive side, a silver fish darting along the current, the kind of fluidity that shouldn't have paired well with this brutish bulk.

His wings are broad, not gossamer like her own pair but feathered, the silver and grey dappling of a goshawk. But they too glint with metal, several feathers replaced with a razor sharp blade.

Only visible to her now as a warning to not do anything stupid.

Her gaze does not leave his as he approaches her, coming to a stop on a stair a few higher than hers. His dark, oak brown eyes dragging across her in careful, studious silence.

"It is customary to bow in the face of Royalty." His words are a growl.

She has to drag the hiss that almost pulls from her lips, she drags it back screaming.

And silently sinks to the ground, until her bruised knee buries itself in the carpets.

There is a blink of surprise, that lasts no longer than a heartbeat, so fleeting she doubts for a heartbeat it was there in the first place.

It is pulled back, into the uniformity of the stranger's stony features, as he turns his back on her again.

Gaze on the man at the heart of this all, the King of the Court Corvus.

Arzian, the King of Crows.

Who watches her, steel grey eyes glinting with something well restrained.

"I understand you have come quite the distance for an audience with me, Princess," his voice is the scratch of bark, the hollow echo of knocked timber. "I am sorry to have to be the one to tell you that your efforts are for nothing."

When the King speaks to her, she lifts from her knees. The joints screeching beneath the pressure, her balance wavering only for a moment before she grounds herself again.

The ice in them are a subtle thing, something a younger, more naïve person might have missed.

They work their way into her bones.

But she does not allow them to take root.

"Courts Aquila and Corvus have a long standing alliance," her voice pitches high, it echoes and she is proud to find it does not tremor.

"An alliance that will be buried with your parents," it is not the man who speaks now, but the woman at his side. The voice is monotone, as though the brutal slaughter of everything Elodie had ever known as a mundane matter, as boring and typical as a conversation about the weather.

Queen Theodosia, who's ice cold words were better suited to the more northern Courts, but seemed more at home in this dark throne room than any of her family members.

Even the son of hers, who angles himself between the newcomer and his mother like he expected something to explode. Aeyliv, a name she remembers only as a distant memory of a round faced boy at Court meetings.

She feels the carve of his gaze like a knife clean through her.

Unlike his parents, he finds no amusement in any of this.

Exactly what this stranger feels, is something Elodie doesn't dare put a name to.

"An alliance that has proven worth less than the paper it was scrawled on centuries ago, in recent years."

Her lips part around the words, too sharp for her own good, and the act of reigning them in fills her mouth with the taste of her own metallic blood. She swallows it and tries again.

"My parents kept Court Corvus out of their own affairs as long as they could," it is a play on the truth, a sugar coating that makes her own skin crawl. Her parents secrecy had been for no one's good but their own Court, and it had cost them everything.

Had cost her, everything.

"But that can go on no more."

There is the muffled sound of chuckling, the sound echoing through her, and battering her body and her pride.

"Admittedly we hadn't thought just how kind your parents were. I will ask our Priests to thank your parents for their generosity when they pray this evening."

Her fists tighten, and that is enough for the throne room to be flooded by the singing of metal, the clutter of boots as the guard takes one, calculated step towards her.

She swallows, the sound dry in her throat, and forces her hands to relax.

For a moment the world tastes like metal and ice and midnight, for that heartbeat she fears it might already be over.

And she wants to plead with them to use that metal to cleave through her, and end it all at last.

Instead she says, quiet but firm, "My parents did what they thought was best for their court, no doubt you would have done the same."

"Please, young Princess," the King speaks now, his voice cutting through her, his eyes barely looking at her. "Tell me why we shouldn't leave Court Aquila to burn, much as your parents once did Court Leo?"

Any hints of laughter in the throne room are silenced by those words, what had been a bitter wind now becomes a blistering, biting cold.

Even after all these years - a topic of venomous taboo.

For the first time, all eyes aren't on her.

Some remain steadfast, nailed to her small frame.

But a handful flinch at the words, turn to the King in the briefest glimpse of horror. Then - remembering themselves, return to their positions.

The tension doesn't fade, however.

Court Leo's brutal, calculated destruction a biting memory, even after all of these years. Though she had only seen it from afar.

"My parents did what they thought was best for their court," she repeated, putting on the best show she could at believing her own words. "We couldn't have guessed how that was going to end, Your Majesty, no one could."

Of all the eyes in that wide hall, it is Aeyliv's piercing gaze she feels burning through her. Studying her closely, though he makes a good show of pretending he isn't.

"'What they thought was best for their court,'" the King repeats her words, mocking her but now there is no laughter sound-tracking the words.

"I fail to see why Court Corvus shouldn't we do the same. Turn you in to Court Draco, reap the rewards for the capture of an enemy of the state - a threat to the realm?"

Despite the fact it is far from the first time she has heard those words, those accusations, it is yet another dagger to the back.

"Court Corvus and Court Aquila were once the closest of allies," the reminder is gentle, close to hopeful.

"Once, sweet Princess," King Arzian parrots her, a smile toying at the edges of his aged, greying face. "The world has ended in that timescale," his gaze drifts towards the windows.

And she knows without being in his head, he is imagining her home.

She wonders, fleetingly, how this man remembers it.

"And it seems it has ended again," for the first time the King's voice draws close to kindness, or perhaps melancholy is the more appropriate word for the haunted shadow that darkens the older fae's expression, brief as it is.

"No doubt we would be rewarded extravagantly for capturing an enemy of the realm," the Queen speaks with the tone of someone already picturing the luxuries she might buy herself with the blood jewels.

All but drooling at the thought of it.

But the words are a sharp blade in their own right, pulling the King back into the moment.

Though one careful glance around this throne room - Elodie would have been pushed to suggest they were struggling for luxuries.

"I struggle to see what bargaining chips you bring to the table, sweet Princess,"

"But I am a big believer in hearing people out," the King's gaze drags across her, she can feel the nettles of the searching gaze dig into her skin as he considers her. "So pray tell what is it you think you can give us in return for our alliance?"

It was the question she had been preparing for.

The niggling thought at the back of her head, the voice that, with every step she took towards this fateful place, grew from a soft whisper to a trembling roar.

A warning that now she can no longer ignore.

A lifetime of war, and only one thing left to offer.

Elodie swallows harshly, and for the first time, she struggles to produce the words, fails the first time, restabilises herself, and tries again.

When she does, she lifts her chin again, meets the King's eye and doesn't waver when she does. Despite the bile the very words brings to the back of her throat.

"The Queen of Court Aquila's hand in marriage."