This is just a preview of my latest work, alright? I'll post the first full length chapter when it's written and ready, but please tell me what you think already. Thanks, and enjoy the preview!

Medieval AU: In which she doesn't choose her husband, nor does she choose to fall in love with him.


It isn't that she was expecting a fairytale. She wasn't, never had been. She had known since she was of age, since she had past her eighteenth year of life, that she was due to wed. Who, she had never known. Of course, as a girl with expectations and hopes and fantasies, she'd hoped for a Prince. He would be tall and handsome, well-tempered and mannered. He would be smart, and he could teach her things. How to hunt, how to earn other's respect, how to love and how to be loved.

And she had been rewarded with him in the end, or perhaps just as close as one could ever get.

Her husband, her long-awaited prince, though she knows he was far from being her soulmate, was perfectly well-groomed. He had bright eyes and deep tanned flesh, but his manners were sometimes slacking. He was kind, and judging by the way he had held her hand during the ceremony, whether it be out of choice or obligation, he had been gentle. He smiled around her and touched her lightly and didn't make her feel pressured in the slightest.

She just wasn't sure what would happen when their guests, his guests, would dissipate and she would be left to handle him, to join him on his bed and reveal herself. Perhaps his attitude would change, his entire charade would drop and he would show his true colours, show her how he was rough and brutal and aggressive.

She was worried, to say the least. Her mother and her sisters had shared their knowledge, their experiences with her. It would be painful, and she would hurt. But eventually the anguish would subside and she would enjoy it, she would enjoy him. Or, at least she would have to pretend she did. What if she didn't? What if he didn't? If she couldn't satisfy him, couldn't feed his demands, then what purpose would she serve? That of wife? Maybe he would find his release somewhere else, in the arms of other women. She has not even touched him yet and she was already afraid of him choosing a whore over her, choosing another woman to please him, to let him use her. The thought of her husband, though she barely knows him and barely even wants to, lying with someone else disgusts her. She was his, he was hers. It was the law, the vow they had both just taken. And she was brought up to do anything and everything she could to save her life and her family. Even if it included her doing things she may not feel comfortable with. She would keep him, she had to.

This was it now. Her fate, her future, her life. She'd been born into it, forced into a planned marriage from an early age, hearing about her groom since she was only twelve. Her father had told her why they were shipping her away; her marriage to the Avery heir would guarantee their alliance, though she fails to see how there couldn't have been another way to forge the families into one. She would be his Queen, in time, when he rose to the throne and took over his father's duties. She would be by his side, rising to power and living the life she always thought she wanted. She would be Queen, but she would have to force herself into loving him in the first place.

"My Lady," Her husband holds a hand out to her, waiting for her accord to follow him up the stairs. His face is almost blank, though he softly smiles at her and she nervously blushes under his gaze. He was definitely handsome.