Wymar stared at his home, bringing his horse to a stop. The windows were open, servants waving flags to welcome him home. He felt himself tense and stall going up the long driveway. He was so eager just moments before, to return to the comforts of his ancestral home, to clamber through the forests that surround it as he had as a boy. But now, faced with people who had known him that long, he baulked. He wasn't the same, and it worried him.

That wasn't the only worry weighing on his mind. The Great War, the very one he'd been fighting in, had ended and at his expense. His eyes fixed on the figure at the doorway. The King had sent two messengers. One to covey the end of the war, the second to him. He had been married to the Princess of Hiseon, their enemy kingdom, to end the war. Without him, or even his bride, needing to attend, the two kings signed their lives away. Wymar had much further to travel, so it appears his bride was already living in his home.

He bristled and set his horse at a smart canter up the drive, past the clumps of trees and wildflowers, past the herb gardens and neat rows of vegetables, past the stables. He pulled the horse up at the bottom of the entrance's steps, staring up. He tried to remind himself that he was, in all likelihood, not the only unwilling participant.

"Wife," He said, in the same way he would call a stable-hand 'boy'. "You are well?"