Edward {ManXMan} ✔

Three

"Stop that," Harlow mumbled, her blond hair falling down ringlets from her head, a red gown swept the ground around her feet, the dark red lined with blue threads, a corset thinning her, another dressed was coming from under her top layer, a lighter green colour. A golden rope was spun around her waist twice and hung loosely.

An amazing amount of time went into dressing a woman who was not due to leave the walls of the castle. My feet halted mid-step. I had been pacing the long hallway that breaks away from another hallway that my father was now sitting in and having a meeting with his knights.

Normally I wouldn't be worried when my father called a meeting. But things had been on edge as of late. Our kingdom was not a big one, but at that, we were also not small. And being in the middle meant we became an easy target for other kingdoms that laid bigger in troop size.

That kingdom at the moment was of King John. A tiny man who had a big ego to overcompensate for it. He had taken a smaller kingdom known as Blaire just two fortnights ago. Blaire was a harmless kingdom that had sat on the shores of Delara. It was mostly of poor fishermen, the ruler was no king. Well, of course, it was ruled by a king. But he was hardly one. He was not the child of a king, a nephew from what I had heard. He was very relaxed in his rulings.

Was, because King John had him beheaded after his knights overcome the kingdom.

It was up in the air on how Blaire was doing at the moment.

Father wanted to be ready for when King John turned sights on us. Which was something that was bound to happen. And I was not ready for that. For Edward to go to battle.

He trained his whole life for this, He had dreams of the days when he would fight in a warlike his father before him, and his father before he. But I had nightmares of it.

The thought of losing Edward shook me like nothing before. Not even my mother speaking to me of marriage scares me as much as losing Edward.

"I apologize," I mumbled to my younger cousin.

Harlow was not younger by much. Not even a year had passed since my birth before Harlow came into the world. Her father had died months before she was born due to sickness. And her mother had passed the night after she had brought Harlow into the world.

My mother was the older sister to Harlow's mother, so of course, she had taken the baby as soon as word spread to her about her sister's death. Mother looked at Harlow no different then she looked at me. Sometimes I wondered if she favoured Harlow more so then I, she had a habit of taking everywhere she had went. She may not have the family hair, but I did often wonder if they had rather her take the throne over I.

The pressure was starting to become almost to much a deal when it came to being the heir. Mother wanted me to wed, she was looking for a suitor for me to court for years. She was starting to gray in her hair over I'm sure. Naturally, I did not take to any of the women mothers threw my way. I would meet them, sometimes we would dine. But after one meal together I found them distasteful.

I never took to women. I had, of course, many friends who were female. But as a lover? Absolutely not. Women were very sweet, I had nothing opposed to them. But no lady would ever hold a light to Edward.

Speaking of. I turned my head just as the latch to the meeting room echoed down the hallway. Harlow and I both stepped to the side to let the men orf arms thorough. Ser Talbot the third, was speaking to my father as Edward walked behind them chatting with another knight known as Samual.

"Ah, just the lad I was looking for," Father said, greeting me with a shoulder pat.

The years had been doing father wonders. For a man his age, his hair still had most of the red that it held in his younger years, his face graced with orange hair, little gray poking through.