So...My first fan fic. It's KD. First chapter is short, just setting the scene. Hope you like it, if you do, review and I'll keep writing it for you. Enjoy!

StarryEmeraldNights

Disclaimer: All characters, places and objects belong to Tamora Pierce. Everything else is mine!

Chapter 1

Kel twined a lock of brown hair around in her fingers absent-mindedly as she looked out the window of her palace quarters. Kel still got a shock at how long her hair had now grown. It was already ending nearly past her shoulder. Her hair hadn't been that long since - Mithros- since she was five! She hadn't even been living in the Yamani Islands at that time.

Crossing the floor into her dressing room, Kel stood in front of her small mirror, just looking. It was cold in the dressing room, the crackling hearth managing to warm only her bedroom in the icy Tortall Midwinter. Admittedly, it was five-thirty in the morning. Shivering, Kel cast her mind around for a subject to think about, and suddenly realised she was now twenty-one years old. Twenty-one! Kel felt old. Really, really old.

The Scanran war had finished nearly six months ago with a full surrender from King Maggur and the forts were now disbanded. New Hope was no longer a refugee camp, but a thriving town. Tobe had his own rooms not far from Numair and Daine's quarters. He was learning horse magic from the Wildmage, and he was learning it well. At thirteen, he hoped to join the Riders in a little less than three years. Loesia, still at New Hope, was to join the Riders in the New Year. Loey would be setting out by now if she wanted to make it to the palace by the end of Midwinter, especially with roads so blocked up from the snow.

Neal and Yuki were married and back from their honeymoon, with Yuki pregnant no less. The child was to be a girl. Kel grinned in spite of herself. That was sure to be amusing once the girl reached the age of, oh, ten or so. Owen was now betrothed to Ameili of Cavall. Kel couldn't help wondering how Owen could have possibly got permission from Lord Wyldon for the marriage - but Owen did have an uncanny knack of knowing exactly how to get what he wanted.

Raoul had been married to Buri a year. Buri was now threatening him to leave his post as Knight Commander of the King's Own, while the King was threatening him to stay. Raoul had wisely baulked and made no commitment to either side. As he had said to Kel a few weeks earlier 'There are two people you never want to get on the bad side of in life. One, your wife-or in your case, husband-and two, your King.' Meanwhile, Dom-

Kel groaned inwardly. Not AGAIN. 'Every time I allow you to so much as think you just have to think of him!' Kel thought. 'The one man who is totally unattainable, both under law and realism, that's the one I fall for!' And it was so frustrating. In a most Un-Kel like manner, she flipped the mirror so that it showed only the back of itself to the room, and crossed the floor once again, this time to her weapons rack.

The same as every morning since she was eleven, Kel took down her glaive and started up a pattern dance. Purposefully choosing a really, really complicated one, her eyes crinkled up with concentration. Let's see me try and think of anything else but the pattern dance now, Kel thought. Within fifteen minutes the muscles in her arms were giving off a raucous racket as she continued thinking about nothing- nothing -else but the dips, ducks, turns and strikes that made up the dance. Pivoting on her heel, she turned and lunged right out towards the door.

Except the door was open, and in its frame stood the one man Kel had been trying not to think about, minus his trademark grin. Glaives suddenly pointed straight at your throat can do that to people.

No way, thought Kel, silently yelling at the Yamani Trickster God, Sakuyo. That's NOT FUNNY!

Her Yamani training keeping any hint of her internal battle from her face, Kel even grinned as she asked 'Didn't your mother teach you how to knock?'

StarryEmeraldNights