fullrangeofemotions asked: “I prefer not to discuss the matter any further.”
past transmissions || { always accepting }
It had been half a year since Laira had found herself at court. Half a year since she had defied her brother, the King’s, will and returned from a progress North with a Wolf as her husband. Half a year since she’d gained the ire of the Queen Consort and her younger brother in her defiance and the distrust of one of the Great Houses.
Laira had never been one to shy from confrontation, a fact well known among the members of her brother’s court. It had been scarcely a year before, in fact, that had seen her felling a rebellion out among the craggy outcroppings known as the Stepstones, returning to court drenched in ash and blood with the heads of traitors within her grasp. Confrontation was no foreign thing.
Still, she had kept her distance from court, more for her own peace and for the peace of her husband than for those that lived among its walls. Her husband and the King had clashed the day of her name day tourney, the very same day where her marriage had been revealed to the whole of the King’s court and half the city. The King’s temper over her defiance had fanned her own husband’s protective nature into an inferno, igniting it in a way that she had never thought to anticipate.
Returning to its walls, to the delicate dynamics that had long since formed, was a near oddity. There were some things, though, that fell back into place with ease. Though the Queen Consort kept her distance, her younger brother’s bride was a more willing companion. If Lady Donna held any sort of animosity towards her for her defiance, it was something that was not shown.
It is only her third day back at court when Laira notices dark discoloration along her companion’s arm, a mere flash of darkened flesh that appears and then disappears with the slip of silk across the other’s skin. She thinks little of it at first... until she spies the marring a second time, darker and larger than she originally perceived it to be.
Laira questions its origins, questions how such a thing came to be. It hardly seems accidental. Lady Donna’s answer is all the more concerning. Such a thought, and such an answer, puts Laira on edge more than she already is.
“We need not discuss the matter if you do not wish it,” Laira answers. The matter, as Lady Donna has referred to it as, remains nameless. Laira has her own name for it, yet will not speak it aloud. Not when they are so exposed among the castle’s halls. Not when the Queen Consort has her every move monitored by her guards and her ladies. “I merely wished to know if you had sought treatment for such a thing,” she said.
