He does not really want to be king.

But each of his tiny kingdom's many neighbours seems to need his mother to kick their very own personal ass before they will believe she can defend herself. This is not a sustainable trend. Seventeen years of it has already been kind of too long. If putting a crown on his head will stop this nonsense, then fine. He will have the most royally ostentatious birthday party imaginable.

Which is why he has been overseeing the preparations all day and is only just sitting down to dinner in an empty hall three hours after sunset.

For a little while, he has the hall to himself.

But soon enough, there's a faint scent of oranges, and a rustle of almost-wind, and Islacari's solitude is disturbed.

Oh. Great.

He waits for his kingdom's patron to show herself. He is not really in the mood for dramatic entrances right now, but you can't really say that to one of the fae.

Natsuleva's entrance isn't her most dramatic, but it's certainly somewhere in the top ten. The nearby window ices over with unnatural, iridescent pale frost, twisting the light into shimmering rainbows. Heralded by a faint sound of wind chimes, the glass cracks and twists alarmingly, like a cloth twisted in wind. At last it shatters entirely in a shower of glittering crystal shards, a cascade of light and noise and color that might be alarming, if Islacari wasn't used to these sorts of dramatics.

A silver haired woman steps off of air through the cascading shards, smiling in a way that might attempt to be motherly to match her subtle wrinkles, but not quite making it. Her dress is a shimmering, ghostly white, swirling into subtle sparkling greys and blues, and fading into nothingness at the edges. She's never worn white before, which is perhaps a pity, the color is very striking on her.

"Greetings, my prince," she says, still with that smile.

Yep. That just happened.

"Good evening, Natsuleva," he says politely.

"How has this eve of your birth been treating you?" asks Natsuleva, with the implication that she's asking to have asked the question, not to know the answer.

Behind her, the window quietly restores itself to wholeness, the glass shards fading away into nothing.

"It's been busy."

And of course she's not going to take a hint and go away, because when in his life has Natsuleva ever done that.

Never. She has never done that.

Instead she waves a hand carelessly, and the seat at the head of the table twists and swells to a gorgeous crystalline structure. At which, of course, she sits, looking down upon him with a too-familiar fondness.

"Three gifts I gave to you, on the eve of your birth. Now three gifts I give, on the eve of your majority."

...well that's magnificently unsettling.

Last time it was health, long life, and beauty. He has had plenty of reason to be grateful for the first one, but the last has always worried him just a little.

"Your generosity is inspiring, fair one."

"As it should be," she says, agreeably.

She straightens herself in her chair, and holds up her hand imperiously towards him. A stillness falls around the room, and her voice echoes through the hall.

"The first gift I grant you is surety of direction, that you might always know your way."

...okay admittedly that's really useful. "Thank you."

She nods regally.

"My second gift to you is the gift of discernment, that you might know that which the fae know."

Nope. That's too useful. This is one of those conversations that ends in somebody taking a hundred-year nap or spending the rest of their life as an enchanted goat. He does not need the discernment of the fae to know that.

But he does, in fact, have the discernment of the fae. He can tell that in fae terms this kingdom... does not quite belong to her, but it's certainly her business if not her property. He can tell that he himself is much more concretely connected to this place. Wherever he looks, he finds a new sense of significance underlying the things he sees.

And when he considers the balance between Natsuleva and himself, he can feel the debt formed by these extravagant gifts.

"My last gift, highest of the low," she says, with a calm assured satisfaction of someone that's about to get something they want, "the greatest of all of the gifts I might offer," she indulges in a dramatic pause, "is my hand in marriage."

...

fuck

"I will graciously permit you a moment to recover your speech, few mortals are so fortunate."

Okay deep breath time to handle this.

(It makes sense of so many things - the gift of beauty she gave him when he was born, the gifts now of navigation and discernment - extremely useful things to have if you're going to be living in the faerie realm for the rest of your life - the way she looks at him -)

"...You are too gracious, fair one," he says. "To accept so exalted a gift would be an insult I cannot bear to offer."

"More insulting to refuse it, I think, and not so insulting to accept," she says, somewhere between fond of his diction and short with his implied refusal.

She's not going to let him out of this. But he has to try. Despite the looming weight of debt made tangible by his new senses, giving him a very visceral understanding of just how hopeless his situation is.

"I've known you all my life; you've been my kingdom's patron since before I was born," he says. "It would be against custom for us to marry."

"Against human custom. The custom of the Faerie is better. You are new to it, I understand. Have no fear, you will have the best instructor."

She smiles at him again. It is not a nice smile.

"I hadn't heard that the custom of the Faerie supported marrying mortals."

"The custom of the Faerie," she snaps, "supports whatever the Faerie wish it to support."

Yeah okay fine. He's not going to win this. The best he can do is make it really personal, so her retribution for his refusal falls on him rather than his kingdom.

"I cannot marry you," he says, "because a marriage is a promise of love, and I don't make false promises."

The room begins to grow colder.

"And you think it impossible to love me?" she asks, soft and dangerous.

"That would be the implication, yes."