She had loved him as only a twelve year old girl can love a seventeen year old boy:  haplessly, hopelessly, helplessly. 

     Murrow had come to Garland for his own foster years when Elsbeth was five years old.  It soon seemed to her as if he’d always been there, the older brother she did not have, patiently showing her the knife-throwing techniques particular to Bruster, improving her riding skills with Brusterian suggestions, even once, after she had begged for weeks, braiding her hair in his own Brusterian family style. 

For most of his time in Garland, she had adored him as a younger child worships an older.  But just before he finished his fostering and returned home, as his shoulders had broadened and the beard had begun to darken his cheeks, and Elsbeth herself began the transition from girl to young woman, she had started to think of him differently. 

She had had reason to hope, too, that a match was not impossible.  Murrow was the second son of the High King of Bruster, a not unsuitable marriage for the daughter of the lord of Garland, one of the three provinces of Elbany.  But when she had tentatively approached her mother, a year or two later when she knew her father would be beginning to consider how he should arrange for her, Elsbeth found that her father aimed higher than a mere second son, particularly of the fractious and backward Bruster, and indeed had already opened negotiations with their overlord, the Roth of Elbany, in regards to his eldest son. 

Elsbeth knew she was thought clever, well taught, pleasant to look at if not a great beauty, and seemingly agreeable, and as none of Elbany’s allies had a marriageable daughter just then of greater rank, the match was soon made.  Formal announcement would wait a few years until Elsbeth was a more suitable age, after which the actual marriage would be celebrated in a year or so, as preparations allowed. 

Unable to do otherwise, Elsbeth let herself look at him.  The shoulders had widened further, the beard was full now.  But he was the same Murrow, the gentle prince who wore knives in his boots like all Brusterian and could throw one into a enemy’s heart while skewering a second, but would stop his horse to move a turtle from the road. 

Why had he come back to Garland?  If she had never seen him again, she could have gone to Rothbury and lived with Douglas, remembering Murrow only as a young girl’s fancy.  That was impossible now.  She had heard him speak, knew his voice immediately, knew the next instant that she had not stopped loving him.  Her heart shook within her.  He should not have returned.