She had thought the carriage looked like a jailcart. Plain and unassuming, the sort that militias used to round up dissenters and bring them to the gallows. Of course, it wasn't. There were no iron bars, no men walking along side and jeering at those within, no anguished screams from the captured. But Briallen couldn't help but feel there was a darkness that clung to the wood -- no, buried within it, a toxic grub corrupting an innocent object, the same way the iron of the jailcart perverted an otherwise normal, mundane thing.

She hated all of it, the noise and décor and tasteful debauchery. All the people, gathering to watch her life -- at least the one she always thought she'd live -- end. Their eyes glinted with tears, were they for her fate or their happiness? After all, the common folk were the one reaping the reward. Not her family, and certainly not her. Briallen looked at her father, a man she knew was formidable in battle but soft of heart for her.

She had resented her father at first, to wed her to a monster, to sacrifice his only daughter to the thick, tangled unknown woods that whispered at night. She had wanted to scream at him, to fall into hysterics. He would've reacted. If she flung open the carriage door and ran, or simply gave him a pleading look, he'd bring it all to a halt at this moment.

But she couldn't do that. No. Every princess knows their duty: to marry well for their fathers, for the land. The last few years, though she was of age to wed, her father turned away suitors. He told her none of them were worthy of her hand, even suggested she should be the one to choose: the greatest and rarest of luxuries for a princess, to find her own love.

She had to nobly accept this task, the most basic of which she could complete: marry well for the sake of the people. She couldn't remember a time when the fae didn't torment this territory. In concept, her father's lands held the advantage of being against the fae's domain, leaving only one side for enemy armies to assault. She remembered, as a little girl, sitting on her father's lap in front of the fire, as he told her this. But the fae were unpredictable, and ultimately, there was always a battle front: guards nervously watching the mist enwreathed wilderness, shouting at shadows, and watching eerie lights that they never spoke of to one another. Weeks could go by without incident, and then overnight, disaster. Babies stolen, crops withered at the root, water poisoned, towns cursed to be forever mute.

[i]This is for the people,[/i] she repeated, a mantra in her mind. She tried to avoid her father's misty eyes. She could not cry. So, instead, she examined the great Draenir and marveled at how small he seemed. Truly, she was his daughter: their noses had the same shape, their locks were the same shade, and their eyes always betrayed their emotions more than their words. She took after her mother in complexion -- pale, even after spending time in the sun -- and in the mottled brown and green of their eyes. She remembered her mother telling her that hazel eyes were lucky, that she was named Briallen because a single primrose was left in her crib when she was a newborn. They never knew who left it, but they took it as a blessing.

These days, Briallen wondered if that was just a story or if it was an omen.

She nodded her head to everything her father said along the way, mostly words of encouragement, reminding her this was the right thing.

He was right. She knew it was the right thing.

But why did it feel so wrong?