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Ursa told her parents she had been out with a friend that night. She wasn't sure she wanted to share the details. She didn't know how they would react.
"You met someone at the Fire Bending club?" her mother asked.
"Yeah," she said.
"Who was it? Was it Jinjie?" Bo said.
"Ew. No. It was... It was that guy I've been sparring with," she said.
Her other brother, Quon leaned in and, and raised his eyebrows. "Oh, you hear that Bo? Kill the fatted calf, set the tables, and strike up the band, because we're about to have ourselves wedding feast."
"Quon, I swear to Heaven!" Ursa said.
"I told you good things would happen if you got out and made some friends!" Bo said.
"I'd hardly call him that," Ursa said.
"You just did call him a friend," Quon said.
Ursa exhaled.
"No, this is good Ursa," her father said, interrupting. "Combined with your studies, taking the chance to network within the city could really help you advance yourself. I was just encouraging your brothers to do the same."
"Especially if he's eligible," Mother said, setting down her book.
"Mother!" Ursa felt blood rushing to her cheeks. She didn't want to think of the prince in any sort of romantic capacity, but her mind wondered back to his shining black hair and the sturdy build of of his shirtless torso. She covered her face with her elbow.
"I think we broke her, Bo," Quon said.
Like a thief before the gallows, Ursa denied and denied to her family that anything the slightest bit romantic had sparked between her and the boy from the Fire Bending club. But her family had seen right through her. She couldn't get the prince off her mind. His insults and haughtiness perhaps should have been a dire warning, like the yellow stripes on a stinging hornet. In a way she saw the warning, and she still felt a twinge of disgust when his face appeared in her mind's eye. But she thought about him still, their pleasant conversation in the pub, the fun they'd had practicing together. She thought about him as she struggled to go to sleep that night, and she saw flashes of his face in her dreams.
The next day, she could barely stand it. She went to the library early in the morning as usual. She read through one scroll and then another, but couldn't focus well enough for the third. A restlessness was inside her, twitching in her chest. She looked down at the scroll, eyeing at the calligraphy without really reading it. She tapped her fingers on the desk. She would learn about naval history later. She rolled the scroll back up and returned it to its shelf.
Ursa grabbed her bag, and headed out into the sun. "You know where I live," he had told her. He had also told her that the guard would let her in. She wasn't sure she believed that. But she felt like trying it out.
The palace was in the center of town. Its high tower could be seen above all the rooftops and walls. All she had to do was follow it. Though she did get lost a few times in the Capitol's twisting streets and alleys. But eventually she found the main palace gate.
She stood there looking at it for a second. The fire bending guards were armed and armored and stern looking. The walls were so tall she no longer could see the palace's high tower when she got close to it. She thought that she wasn't appropriately dressed for something so austere. But what else was she to do? Go back to library and waste the afternoon pining and unable to concentrate?
She took a deep breath and approached the guards.
They looked at her, a hint of disgust visible under their visors, eyebrows raised at her middle class clothing and cheep jewelry and heavy sun tan. She willed herself not to turn around. She wasn't sure what to say, so she kept it simple. "Hello..."
"Do you need something."
"I'm here to see prince Ozai..." she said very slowly and unsure of herself.
This wasn't going to work. It was a prank, she was sure of it. They would shoo her away and laugh at her, just like everyone else in this town did, just like Ozai had when she'd first met him.
But then they asked her for her name.
"Ursa of Hira'a," she said.
They looked at each other.
"We did have our orders," one of them said.
The second one shrugged. He signaled to a man on the wall to open the gate by a crack.
"Thank you," Ursa said.
"Wait in the garden for the housekeeper, she'll inform His Highness you have come to call," the guard said.
Ursa squeezed her way into the garden. Her senses were immediately overwhelmed by the beauty of the palace grounds.
Exotic flowers lined the path. Orchids, roses, bromeliads, all of which would have required extensive watering in this desert heat. There was a lovely Koi pond with lotus blossoms floating in it, and a fountain bubbling from its center. She had seen nice gardens before, but never ones as vast or well-manicured as this.
She heard the gate shut behind her. The guards began to talk with each other, believing she was now out of ear shot.
"I don't think she poses any danger. But we at least should have checked her for weapons."
"Oh, I think she poses a danger, but more likely in the form of a venereal disease, and I don't care to check her for any of those"
The first guard snorted. "I think he poses a greater danger to her in that regard."
The second elbowed the first in the ribs. "Quiet down before you get us both executed!"
Ursa thought about turning back to guards. Perhaps to scold them for degrading her like that, perhaps to ask how many other women had come to call on the prince. But she had already pushed her luck getting through the palace gates, and decided it would be more productive to ignore them.
She was now alone in the garden. Her heart started beating. As out of place as she had felt in the Capital City, she fit even less into the palace itself. She felt like a splinter in a finger with blood swelling around it. Maybe she should have told her parents where she was going, though she doubted they would have believed her if she had. She still wondered if all of this was a cruel prank.
She sat down under a fat old ginkgo tree and waited for someone to notice her. That happened to be another guard, who rushed to asses her as soon as he saw her. She asked him if he knew where the housekeeper was, and he did not. He became very polite when she told him her name, but he made no attempt to help her. She realized that if she waited here, she would be waiting all day.
The grounds of the palace seemed miles away from the noise and smells of the city just outside. They were so vast, she was unsure she'd be able to find her way back to the front gate after she left it. Servants and guards were stationed in corners and alcoves, but they were so quiet and demure it cast the illusion she was walking through the grounds alone.
She found her way into the palace proper through a servant's door. The vast size of the interior gave her vertigo. The fall of her feet echoed off distant walls. Art work, some of it older than the Fire Nation itself, lined the halways. She stepped past a servant woman who was better dressed than she was, though she was on her knees scrubbing the floor. She paused in front of a depiction of Fire Lord Azulon. His stern, bearded face looked down at her from ten feet above her head. He was many years younger in the portrait than he was in real life, Symbols of his accomplishments surrounded him. She felt incredibly tiny.
Male voices approached her from behind. An entourage of well-groomed officers in the midst of an argument.
"Absolute madness!" one of them said. "Just because we outgun the Northern Water tribe doesn't mean its a good idea to attack it. The losses would be heavy and the expense would be astronomical."
The northern water tribe, a place so far away, Ursa almost believed it didn't exist. But apparently it did. She felt like a child eaves-dropping on a parental discussion of sex and finance.
"If we wait, they'll continue harassing our northern settlements. And we'll have to continue to rebuild them, continue to send supplies and colonists. You don't think that will be expensive?"
"A compromise perhaps," offered a third voice. "Send the ships to the settlements. Play our hand defensively. By summer, we'll have enough new ships to discuss a raid in earnest. Look, we're not going to come to a decision on this today. And it's almost noon. Heaven knows I have other duties to attend to in the mean time. We'll meet to discuss this again tomorrow."
The entourage dispersed. Half a dozen armored men went in one direction, and half a dozen went in the other. Only man, the one who had proposed the compromise, was left. Standing before her in the hallway was the prince.
But it was not the one she had come to see.
