Face to face, the Prince of Court Corvus is all angles. 

The shadows of the corridor cast his features in darkness, dancing in the hollows of his cheekbones, the dim candlelight reflecting in the dark browns of his eyes. He wears the deep greys and blues of his court, they add to his sharp angles, his severeness. 

But there is nothing severe about the look he sets on her.

She might have mistaken it for pitying, but the heartbeat she thinks she's noted that, it's already gone.

Fae aren't a species to show their age, but there is something slightly withered to this man's features that make him appear older. 

He is older, maybe by a decade if she remembers correctly. 

Barely a blink of time in the terms of their lifespans, but it feels like an infinite distance in that heartbeat.

His eyes are fixed to her, studying and careful.

The silence is a weighty thing between them, and she realises, belatedly, that he is waiting for her permission. 

Elodie swallows the lump at the back of her throat, and steps back. Dipping his head to him, it isn't quite submission, it isn't quite a bow, somewhere between the two, a compromise she could let herself live with. 

Either way the movement feels stiff, unnatural.

Aeyliv, is kind enough or perhaps simply oblivious enough, to not pick up on it. 

On elegant feet, she steps aside, her skirts dragging across the floorboards as she moves, the fabric rustling as she pulls the door open to allow him in. 

Aeyliv steps past her, his own footsteps as quiet as an encroaching frost. 

Though she allows herself the comfort of tightening her grip around that length of wire, until her fingers numb around the breadth of it.

It is enough to anchor her against this storm. 

"Is it clever for you to be here?" She asks quietly, the closest thing to a joke she can muster. Her alternative question was why on earth was he here, so she felt this was the friendlier of her available choices. 

She's caught him off guard, but she hasn't displeased him.

"My mother would argue no," his answer is more honest than she'd expected it to be. A slight hint of a smile splits his features. "But that's my mother's favourite word, so I wouldn't take too much heart to that." 

"And his Royal Highness?" She queries, her voice gentle. 

"If he notices I've snuck off, I'll be sure to offer an apology."

Elodie tries not to take the easy way he speaks of his parents to heart. 

How she longed to think even briefly of her parents without it sparking grief through her veins again, but she does not hold that against this stranger. 

As tempting as it would have been.

"But if I am to be married, I think I have every right to make that choice on some sort of grounds."

It takes all of her effort to not flinch at those words.

She blinks - she'd half convinced herself her efforts had already been a failure. 

"I apologise about that," her voice is quiet, but unflinching. 

"You already have cold feet?" Dark eyebrows cock toward shaggy brown hair.

Elodie isn't quite sure if she would call his tone of voice mocking, reading this face is like trying to read a book at a distance, in the dark. 

"Forgive me for thinking I was the one who'd sprung it on you," comes her retort. 

"The way you speak, and from what I've heard," his voice returns to that gentle, deep melody. "You've lost everything these past few days."

Aeyliv swallows, the sound dry in his throat, quiet. "Why give this away too?"

"You're so handsome, the moment I laid eyes on you I simply had to have you as my own," her voice is sickeningly sweet, a lie and she doesn't make an effort to hide that. 

She wouldn't fool this stranger, and doesn't do either of them the disservice of trying to. 

And to Aeyliv's credit, a smile, a blossoming, tiny thing, splits his features before its absorbed back into the uniformity of the face carved from stone.

"As gorgeous as I am," his voice is quiet, the melodic accent she has always associated with Court Corvus but deeper, resonating. "I unfortunately don't believe in love at first sight," his gaze drags across her, taking a careful measure as he speaks. 

Its careful, but studious. 

The stories wouldn't paint this man as a warrior, there isn't a callous on this man that would speak of a day of battle. She wondered if those fingers had ever touched a blade, she doubted it. 

The stories would paint this one as a poet, and his features did give promise of a beautiful singing voice, if the fates were kind enough to offer him that gift at least. 

Elodie barely notices it, wouldn't have, if this new territory hadn't put her high alert. 

Something in his dark eyes flicker when he spots the bruises at the curve of her throat, and Elodie has to resist the urge to pull at the collar of this dress. 

Wanting to hide her skin, its imperfections. 

Like if anyone looked too closely at the cracks, they would deepen until she fractured into a hundred thousand pieces. 

Elodie's gaze is dark for a second, and she finds it drawn to the nearest window. The slice of sky she can see through the breadth of it. 

She inhales, imagines its the cold, open air of moorland that she can taste on her lips, rather than the dank, strange air of this foreign land. 

Then turns her gaze back to her companion again.

"Why?" He repeats, quieter. 

Part of her wants to refuse to offer an actual answer. 

I don't have any other choice, this much was obvious, but this isn't a time for the obvious answer, the thing that springs to mind first. 

"I've been breaking pieces of myself away for years now," the words are a confession, new even to her. Perhaps even she is only just coming to terms with what spills from her lips. "What's one more piece if it might do some actual good for once?"

That. What flickered across his face, true and proper as noticeable as the sun breaching the horizon. 

That was pity. 

His fingers twitch, and Elodie might have flinched. 

After so many years of battle, she might have mistaken that gesture as a temptation to strike, to hit her.

But it was neither. 

That flicker of pity, the temptation to reach out, to offer sympathy, some mix of the two. 

But Aeyliv notices the reaction she's had, and quickly touch both hands behind his back, dipping his head in apology.

Somewhere, whether its in her bones or in the world around her, she notes a change. 

Elodie might have convinced herself it was nothing, a medley of the day's emotions weighing down on her. So much so that she was imagining things. 

A phantom wind on her skin, the whisper of something on the back of her neck. 

Nothing. 

She needed it to be nothing. 

But then the man beside her feels the change too, the Fae Queen feels the gentleman before her stiffen, ever so slightly. 

She sees the tremble work its way through his veins and her eyes narrow. 

The question is posed on the very tip of her lips, and she bites it back only by the very edge, swallows it despite how it fights. 

She says nothing, only watches him. 

If he notices the fact he's being watched, Aeyliv doesn't care or is too pre-occupied. 

The line of his jaw is on edge, the blue of his veins standing out against pale skin. There isn't a bone in his body that is free of the tension, like he is posed to spring into action. 

Whether its to set off at a run, or to leap to her defence, Elodie can't quite be sure. 

Her grip on the wire, pitiful as it might have felt in that moment, grows tighter all the same. 

Prince and Queen both jump out of their skin when, at the great oak door, there comes a thunderous pounding.