Hadand | runaway AU where her betrothal is dissolved | Open to assorted cross-canon AUs!

[deheldegarthe]

She remained silent as he glared down at her with those angry green eyes she’d braced herself all her life to endure. To deflect. He had never struck her, but he’d beaten Evred and Barend frequently enough that his presence in the schoolroom had felt akin to impending thunder all the days of their childhood.

“I will marry Joret, and you’ll get an honorable treaty,” he said, having planned that much, and practiced it over and over to get it out in one piece, with no tremor.

She gasped. "What?”

“Marry. Joret. You and I. Go to Father together. You marry a p-p-prince. Trade. Alliance. All with honor.” He got that out with utter conviction—there was no going back, not now. He’d promised Joret.

"Have you, uh, seen her?” Hadand groped wildly for the real world, which seemed to have slipped sideways, leaving her in a terrible dream.


--


The week or two that follow are like a bad dream continued. None of it is real, somehow, until she sees Joret at Aldren's side in front of the whole city. Joret is as unwilling to take Hadand's place as hlinlaef, the heir's betrothed, as Hadand was to give it up. It was her duty. And her home, of course. And her honor, she supposes. She was going to outrank every woman in the kingdom, and she's trained all her life for it. If Hadand has to leave her responsibilities to anyone else, someone she loves and trusts like a sister is obviously best, but...

But trouble seeks out Joret, lured in by her beauty. Hadand thinks she'd be hard-put to find a single man in the kingdom, at least among those whose interests run toward women, who isn't attracted to Joret.

None of that is left to her, and she's seen what Queen Wisthia's life was like every day for the past twenty years. No Marlovan, Hadand included, ever gave the queen much in the way of respect or consideration. They conducted the business of the kingdom around her, as if she were furniture. Hadand can't bring herself to be put in that situation. Deposited in another kingdom whose customs she doesn't understand, ruler in name but never in fact, always an outsider.

Hadand knows she won't refuse, if the king asks it of her. She doesn't think he'd ever order it, but he'll ask, along with other options that won't benefit the kingdom nearly as much. Staying in Iasca Leror won't be included in her list of options. Hadand left here would be a rallying point for strife and bickering among all the Jarls, a carefully planned royal betrothal made decades ago set aside in favor of the heir's obsession with a pretty face. Her sense of duty is too strong to say no, so she has to be out of the palace before the question is posed.

She loves the palace and Choread Hesea, raised in the royal nursery after being fostered into her betrothed's family at age two. It was never just duty. Aldren has taken her home from her along with the position she's worked for all her life. He won't take the rest of her choices from her.

Hadand writes a letter to her mother first of all, in code and handed to Tesar for personal delivery. She packs very little, hides as many weapons on her person as she can manage, and, in equal measures desperation and cold deliberation, seizes the first opportunity for escape she comes across.

Her younger brother was smuggled out of the kingdom on a ship over six years ago, and it seems to be Hadand's turn for the same. She lets a wave of guilt and regret at the thought of her mother, now childless, wash over her. Then she sets it aside for another day. Right now, she has to figure out what comes next.

Comments

[hisheadintheclouds]

There was talk of giants, usually they weren't pleasant. In fact most giants were perceived as dangerous or terrible beings. But for the most part they were considered rare. Thought to be wiped out for the safety of others, at least that usually was the tale. No one had considered what happened to the gentle giants that may have fallen victim to the damages humans tried to pull blame on.

Recently from the trip down a safely hidden beanstalk, Arthur did come down carefully to the ground. He was quiet for a giant. The only sound he ever did make was when he walked. At 50 feet in height, and gentle as he was, he couldn't prevent the little tremors that would come for when he walked. For another part, he didn’t look like a disgusting ogre nor disfigured. In fact he looked more like an overgrown man. Dark shaggy hair and stubbled beard, his brown eyes softly gazed across the terrain of the woods.

It seems Arthur was looking for something within this forest. He came into a slow crawl as he lowered himself within the trees. Only disturbing the birds as they flew out of the branches, squawking toward him to get out of their territory, which he only let out a noise of discomfort as he tried to wave them away, "C-Come on now get, I don't want have anything to do with you, I just need to get by!"

[diedbytheknife]

The city of Darujhistan is a port city on the landlocked Lake Azur which people travel to and from every day. The main thoroughfares are lined with gas lamps lit every night. The last free city on Genabackis, its climate is similar to the region near the Caspian or Dead Seas. It was summer and the Festival was approaching. The streets were filled with the news of Pale's fall to the Malazan Empire and people were celebrating like the sky might fall at any moment.

Captain Ganoes Paran was trying to find the dive his squad was holed up in all over again. There was a pain in his gut that shortened his pace as he wove through the noisy crowd. He paused to get his breath, watching people milling in a cross street.

(Fantasy geography is hard.)