Disclaimer: Robert Jordan owns Shandalle, Aes Sedai, Amaline Tagora, Artur Paendrag, Queen Mailinde, King Myrdin, the Power, Agelessness, the title First Selector, the White Tower, the Blue Ajah, the Pit of Doom, and anything else you recognize from the Wheel of Time that I didn't catch to put in. I own Seria and Dorinda. Enjoy!

Amaline Tagora laughed like a girl as her hairpins fell out and her long hair went tumbling down her back during the masque. Queen Mailinde had meant for this to be a formal event, but it was rapidly falling into more of a play-fight than a scripted, rehearsed, dignified court entertainment. Catching a glimse of the Queen, herself one of the performers, throwing flowers at King Myrdin and giggling furiously, it was obvious she didn't care and was having as much fun as everyone else.

Only Seria, the grimmest of the Ladies-in-Waiting, kept to the script, reciting her lines. No one paid her the slightest heed. Except, of course, Artur, looking for at least one practical joke he could pull off during this. While Seria was still reciting the sonnet the bewitched captive Princesses said when the Princes came to rescue them, Artur grabbed one of the few buckets of rosewater that no one had thrown yet and proceeded to throw the contents exactly so that Seria was thorougly drenched from the top of her head to halfway down her skirts. Seria's squawk of outrage was drowned by the merriment all around her. Amaline threw a bouquet of lilies at him, and he caught it, for all that that went against the script entirely. Of course, now that Seria was in a tizzy about being wet an act too early, no one at all was paying any attention to the script. He threw a red rose back, and she tucked into her hair above her right ear.

The mock-battle of flowers and rosewater went on for some time, then the Princesses, the spell broken by the fact that no one bothered to remember their lines or the chief villain, decended to dance with their heroes-even Seria. Artur immediatly claimed her, as usual. They had been courting even while remaining best friends for two years. The Agelessness had made her features almost unrecognizable, but no one ever mistook her; only one woman in Shandalle would ever be seen on Artur's arm, and that was Amaline Tagora Aes Sedai. At the moment, Amaline Tagora Aes Sedai wondered if the floaty lavender-blue dress she wore to portray Beauty in the masque had been permanently ruined, even beyond the help of the Power. As if he had been reading her mind, Artur leaned down and whispered, "You look beautiful. My mother knew what she was doing, making you Beauty."

" Oh, hush," she said back, but she was smiling. Aes Sedai dignity be hanged. Agelessness or no agelessness, anyone who saw her would know she was actually young, not just young-seeming, and she was going to enjoy herself.

" Want to get out of here, Ammy?"

" Well enough by me. Lead on, Sir Loyal Heart!" Giggling like a pair of children stealing cookies under Nurse's nose, they slipped out the side door into the garden. " You do realize what everyone's going to think we're doing, don't you?"

" Who cares?"

" Mailinde, maybe?"

" Oh, Mother," he said casually, waving his mother's disapproval away. " She actually told me to do this. I must say that I agree with her. It feels-right."

" Right?" she asked, half-teasing. " Right for what?"

Artur was pointedly not looking at her. " Right for-asking you something."

She smiled, carefully putting and holding on an expressionless gambler's mask. Her heart was pounding to beat a hundred horses galloping. There was very little that could mean, and if it meant what she thought it meant...

" Ask me what?" she asked, barely above a whisper.

He stopped walking, but he didn't give her a straight answer. " Well, you know we've been-er-more than friends for a while, Ammy," he said carfully.

There was no doubt where this was leading. " Yes."

" I'm not quite sure how to put it-you know where I'm going with this, Ammy-what I want to ask you-don't you?"

" I think I know what you mean."

He looked at her accusingly. " You're not going to make this easy for me, are you? Don't answer that-it was a rhetorical question. All right, if you want traditional, I'll bloody well give you traditional." He reached into his breast pocket and she saw something glitter. Oh, Light, he was really going to ask her-she could feel her heart hammering so hard in her throat that she wasn't sure she'd be able to speak. She knew perfectly well what that glitter had been-Mailinde's betrothal ring from Myrdin. Tears gathered in her eyes, but she kept them from falling by sheer effort of will. This was very like taking the test for Aes Sedai again, only the star was not appearing, there was no weave to perform, and there was nothing to stop her from answering exactly as she wanted to. She heard the old First Selector of her Ajah, Dorinda Sedai, telling her that Blue sisters abstained from marriage. To the Pit of Doom with custom. She would give up the Tower if she had to. With a look on his face that suggested he was screwing up every bit of courage he had in him, Artur knelt before her. He was white as a sheet. Amaline could see that his hands were shaking visibly-the shifting sparkle of the ring gave it away. Artur wasn't sure of her answer, and knew it would be the end for him if she said no.

" Am-" he started, choked, and started over. " Amaline Tagora," he managed unsteadily. " Will-Will you marry me?"

Artur had said it-he had finally said it. She could feel her throat closing up. She knew what she wanted to say, but she wasn't sure she could talk at all. Artur was watching her face with desperate hope. She grasped his hand and smiled painfully. "Artur- I don't know what to say-"

" You could always say yes," Artur suggested.

" I could," she said. " In fact, there's not much else I can say, so...Yes!" He stood and put the ring on her finger-what had the chances been that she and Mailinde would have the same ring size?-simultaneously, and she threw her arms around him, weeping for joy.

Authoress's Note: This isn't entirely original. I got the idea for the masque, with the captive princesses and the princes fighting with rosewater and flowers and the women representing virtues, from a famous masque in the 1500's where Henry VIII supposedly first took notice of either Mary or Anne Boleyn. In every piece I've read, the same masque took place in the same building, so I think it might have actually happened, though I have no clue which sister Henry danced with, if either. I've read two that say Anne, and one that says Mary. But that was what gave me the idea for the masque. Sorry about the two missing years where Artur courted Amaline and she became established at Court and Ageless and all that-I really just couldn't think of anything, and I'm basically telling the major events in detail and just summarizing the rest. The other chapters should be much closer together than two years, though probably not day-to-day. I've got it worked out through the ending, so hang in there! Thanks for reading!

Augusta