For centuries, the fragile peace between the human kingdoms and the fae courts has been upheld by the ancient Iron Accord, a pact forged after a brutal war nearly destroyed both realms. But that peace is unraveling; fae are vanishing near human borders, and human villages are being found turned to ash with no trace of life. As tensions rise, the two sides agree on a desperate diplomatic solution: a political marriage to symbolize unity and stave off war. Character is a human noble, raised to fear and hate the fae, whose family was slaughtered in a border raid blamed on fae forces. Character B is a powerful fae royal, exiled by their court for sympathizing with mortals, now ordered to marry the "enemy" for the sake of appearances. The two are forced into a marriage that neither wants. Hostility crackles between them like fire and flint, each believing the other is a threat in disguise. But as they are sent on a journey to investigate the mysterious attacks threatening both realms, they begin to uncover hidden truths: a third force manipulating both sides, ancient magic stirring, and a shared past neither of them expected. (Possible Twist: Their growing feelings trigger forbidden magic that could either restore the old balance, or break the barrier between the realms forever, reigniting a war even love may not survive)

The city of Aurenwald had not seen fae in over a generation. But it remembered. It remembered in the way the banners were strung between its towers before the sun had peaked over the horizon, blue and gold for the human king, silver and green for the Seelie Court. It remembered in the way the bells rang, somber and slow, echoing across rooftops like the toll of a thousand warnings. And it remembered in the way the people stood silent at the edge of the main thoroughfare, backs pressed to stone walls and behind cordons of soldiers, held at bay not by order but awe. The fae were here, and nothing about their arrival felt human.

`

Now midday, the capital was a patchwork of tension and curiosity. Human soldiers in polished breastplates stood at attention along the grand thoroughfare, their spears gleaming and nerves taut. The fae's arrival was unlike anything the people of Aurenwald had seen in over a generation. The Seelie procession rode in like a vision from legend. Gilded carriages drawn by pale stags, armored fae knights with impossibly elegant weapons strapped across their backs; banners embroidered with silver thread and silk that shimmered even without the wind. The humans had made an effort to impress, but next to the ancient grace of the fae, even the capital's marble towers looked newly hewn.

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Aurelion Thorneveil sat within the foremost carriage of the Seelie procession, its frame a work of otherworldly craftsmanship, smooth, root-woven crystal wood shaped by fae hands, veined with softly glowing runes that pulsed like a heartbeat. It moved without sound over the cobblestones, and the four stags pulling the carriage were clad in silver-threaded barding, their hooves never once slipping and their breath misting despite the warmth. Inside, the air was cool and fragrant with a subtle perfume of starlight and frost-slicked roses.

`

Across from Aurelion sat his mother. The Queen of the Seelie Court. She was as distant as a dream. Her gown flowed like liquid pearl, shifting hues between pale amethyst and moonlit silver. Jewels clung to her throat and wrists like capture constellations. A veil of gossamer trailed from her crown of living metal, woven with thorns, feathers, and something that glittered with a light no forge had ever made. Her expression was unreadable, a mask carved by centuries.

`

She did not gaze out the window. She did not speak. Aurelian by contrast, watched the city pass. His hair, pale blonde like burnished sunlight was combed back and clasped at the nape with a ring of gold. A circlet rested upon his brow, simple compared to his mother's but no less regal. His tunic and formal robes were tailored in midnight and deep emerald. They were threaded with sigils of his house: thorns, stars, and an argent stag whose eye was made of a single sapphire shard. Over one shoulder hung a mantle of layered silk the color of dusk. But for all the finery, it was his eyes that unsettled the humans most, faintly glowing, too ancient for his youthful face, and always watching. Calculating, as if nothing escaped them. He saw everything. The tension in the guards' stances. The way mothers clutched their children and averted their eyes. The noblemen watching from balconies, trying to appear dignified while their hands twitched at their belts. Aurenwald was not ready for this meeting. It reeked of preparation and fear.

`

Aurelion leaned slightly against the pane of crystal glass, arms folded, golden hair catching the sunlight. "This is a far cry from the last Accord summit." He murmured without looking at the Queen. His voice was smooth, rich, and laced with something sardonic. "They've certainly cleaned up." His mother said nothing at first. She didn't need to. The silence itself was a tool she had honed over centuries. Eventually, her reply came soft and sharp. "They must appear strong. Even if they are not. Especially now." He didn't argue, instead he merely watched as a child on the sidelines held up a flower, some wild half-wilted thing, only for her mother to yank her hand down, eyes wide in worry. The child stared after the carriage as it passed, lip trembling. Aurelion's gaze lingered on her for a moment. The idea that there was so much fear of him and his kind, that a mother would stop her daughter from offering a flower, and parents would hold their children close was saddening.

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"I remember..." He murmured aloud, more to himself than to his mother. "When The Accord was first signed the humans sang then. Strangers offered us bread, fruit, and wine from open windows. Some wore our colors. There were petals scattered in the streets, real ones. Not this... sterilized parade of silence." Sterile, the perfect word to describe this procession. It was void of all gratitude and relief that had once been handed freely to him and his kind. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his mother shift and turned to look at her as she spoke, her voice cool and crystalline. "Then they were grateful. Hopeful. Now, they are afraid. Their king knows it, and so does their court."

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For several moments Aurelion was silent before he turned his gaze back out the window. "Five hundred years ago I walked their markets with no guards. Ate their peaches, laughed, and played with their mortal children. I remember their courage." He paused, and then with a softer tone he sighed. "Have we truly changed so much, or have they?" It was a question he wasn't expecting to have answered, but when his mother turned her head slightly, enough so that a strand of her hair caught the light like a silver flame, Aurelion waited for her response. Her voice was low and measured as she answered him. "Change is the nature of all things, Aurelion. And fear is always easier to feed than trust. The Bleed has left scars they cannot name, and we are the nearest gods that they can still blame." He didn't answer. What could be said of such words? Gods. Is that how these humans saw them? He supposed it wasn't too far-fetched an idea, and what better way to relieve fear, tension, anger, and pain than to blame beings of greater status and longevity? As well as beings that were, in part, responsible for the breaking of the world.

`

The streets narrowed as they neared the heart of the city, the crowds thinning but no less watchful. The human palace, Castle Aureden, loomed ahead. A bastion of pale stone and gold-trimmed spires. Its arched windows glimmered in the sun, flanked by enormous banners: The golden lion of the human king, and beside it - the silver thorn stag of the Seelie Court. Together they fluttered as a sign of peace. But peace, Aurelion thought, was a fragile thing. Especially when it was built on fear, obligation, and the binding of two hearts not yet willing.

`

The carriage slowed to a halt at the base of the grand palace stairs. Human soldiers lined the steps, gleaming in ceremonial armor. Trumpets blared. Aurelion exhaled and straightened in his seat. "You're certain this is necessary?" He asked quietly, eyes forward. "That binding ourselves... binding me... will be enough to restore the Accord?" It had been done every hundred years since the end of The Sundering, but it had always been with lesser nobles with no ties to the blood of the royal family. His mother had always insisted that her bloodline remain pure and untainted by human mortality. However, with how weak the seal had gotten and how quickly The Bleed was spreading, it seemed her mind had changed. "Certainty is a human luxury, Aurelion. We deal in what is required." She said and stood, the action impossibly graceful despite being in such a confined space. She turned to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. It was not affection, not really. But it was something. A gesture of trust and of a shared duty. "You are the blade, my son." She started. "But you are also the bridge."

`

The doors opened and Aurelion drew himself to his feet and stepped out of the carriage first. The city greeted him not with cheers but with silence. Descending the carriage steps like a prince from myth: blonde hair gleaming, fine clothes rippling in the wind, his presence both stunning and severe. Behind him came the Queen, and then the few fae nobles who had journeyed with them in separate carriages. They were dressed similarly, draped in gemstone-colored silks and starlight, like gods among men.

`

The human king waited at the top of the steps with his own court, his wife, and children at his sides. Aurelion looked up at him and somewhere within his chest, beneath all the finery of his clothes and underneath bone-deep discipline, his heart whispered: May the Accord hold, and may this sacrifice be enough.

When his boots hit the cobblestone ground, Aurelion stepped to the side to allow his mother the room she required to descend the steps of the carriage. He turned his head to watch her, the Queen of the Seelie Court move. Every movement of hers was like it was carved from ancient starlight, refined, regal, untouchable, and cold. As she descended from the carriage behind her son, her presence rippled through the gathered crowd like first beneath a doorframe, unseen, but felt. Her every motion was deliberate, each step a quiet echo of eons past when fae queens had not come to negotiate but to conquer.

`

The living metal of her crown glinted as if it remembered battlefields fought against the very beings it now found itself amongst. Aurelion heard nothing but the hush of wind and her footfalls on stone. There was no herald calling her name, nor trumpets announcing her rank, she required neither. With her gaze fixed on the mortal king, his family, and his court, she passed him without a glance. Her chin was raised, her gaze fixed forward. Her silence was a decree of its own. She had walked through cities burned and rebuilt and had seen empires rise from mud and fall into dust, this moment was important, yes, but it was not new. Not to her.

`

Following his mother's lead, Aurelion moved in her wake, like a shadow given form. His long strides echoed the queens, not quite matching rhythm but near enough to show intent. The silks of his mantle whispered around his boots as they climbed the stairs, the embroidered stag on his chest seemed to watch the humans just as they were watching him. He could feel their eyes, on the Queen, on him, on every strange and shining thing the fae had brought with them. But more than that, he could sense their unease. Could feel their fear and disdain with such clarity that it had a frown tugging at his lips.

`

It was interactions like these that had Aurelion understanding, at least to a degree, some of the folk's belief that abandoning the mortal realm altogether would be best to preserve the fae people and their land. After all, why should they continually sacrifice themselves for a people who were so ungrateful? But such thoughts did not hold up when challenged. If he and his people were to abandon the mortals, then The Bleed would spread, bringing with it hoards of Wretches, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the veilpiercer had torn through the fabric of magic itself and cursed the land with The Bleed. And what would they do then? When any human allies had fallen and only the fae folk were left?

`

Trailing up the steps, Aurelion didn't look up at his mother ahead of him. He didn't need to. He knew that if he did, he would see the tight line of her mouth, the impassive cool of her expression, and the way her posture bore the weight of a thousand years and not a sliver of doubt. To her, this was a duty long delayed. To him... it was a tether knotted tighter with every step.

`

When the mortal king spoke, his mother did not stop immediately, though the man's voice echoed clearly through the air. Her steps slowed in a way that made time feel as if it, too, had been commanded to yield. She lifted her gaze, crystalline and cold, and the air itself seemed to still in deference. It was only once she reached the top of the stairs that she offered her response. Not with words, but with a single, elegant incline of her head. A gesture that bore no warmth, yet could not be mistaken as an insult. It was an acknowledgment from one sovereign to another, cloaked in the poise of one who had ruled long before the stone beneath her heels had been laid.

`

Then, she was stepping aside, just as Aurelion ascended the final steps behind her. The dusk-colored folds of his cloak caught the faintest shimmer of magic as he moved. His expression remained composed, unreadable, and carved from courtly discipline, but his eyes flicked once to the king as the formal greeting reached them. He said nothing yet, for his mother the Queen had not yet spoken. Until she did, he would remain silent, her sword in waiting. He stood half a pace behind and to the side of her, a sentinel veiled in silk and restraint.

`

At last the Queen finally spoke. "We are received." She said, voice clear and low as river ice, touched with the slightest musical lilt that marked her as not of this realm. "As is expected." Her gaze slid briefly across the bowed heads of the human court, lingering not out of interest but calculation. She knew what games were played in mortal palaces, she had taught them first, long ago. "To accept your hospitality is... gracious." She continued, and though the words held politeness, there was a curious ambiguity in her tone, as if she were tasting the custom of it more than the sincerity. "We will partake."

`

Only then did her eyes shift, briefly, to the human woman who did not look away. There was a pause, a flicker of something, perhaps interest or perhaps warning. But it was there for only a fraction of a second, and then it was gone.

`

When it was clear that his mother had said all she intended to, Aurelion stepped forward, only half a step. He didn't dare stand on equal ground as his mother, at least not here and now. So he stopped a step behind her. His gaze fixed on the king he dipped his chin in a courtly nod, neither submissive nor haughty, but precisely measured. His voice, when it came, was smooth and calm. The kind of sound that made people lean in without realizing it. "We are honored by your welcome, King Geralt. The journey was long, but the stars have been kind." As the last word left his lips, his eyes swept across the assembled court. Most had cast their gaze downward, as expected. Reverence, caution, fear. He was used to it. But one did not. She looked at him, truly looked, and didn't flinch.

`

Aurelion's gaze met the human woman, brief but pointed, the corner of his mouth ticking upward in the faintest suggestion of a smile. Not mocking, not warm, something unreadable, like a ripple under glass. "We accept your hospitality and the spirit in which it is offered." He let the words settle like falling snow as he inclined his head once more toward the king.