the guard {h.s.}

1- dancing queen

Guinevere Eyres of Everfall knows two things for certain: first, she is betrothed to marry Prince Peregrine Thornley of Loil; second, she loves to dance.

Her marriage to Peregrine is unavoidable and imminent. Having only recently turned eighteen, the negotiations between both sovereign sets of parents have begun to determine the terms and conditions of this union that is meant to be mutually beneficial. Since the moment that she was born, Gwen has known that this day was coming. She was raised with Peregrine and finds him agreeable enough, if easy to look at. Flamboyant and fun, she does know how to laugh in his company and she suspects that come the day, she will learn to love him. If not for himself, for the future children and heirs that she will bear him.

True as this all is, none of it comes to mind tonight. Tonight, Gwen's heart thuds in her chest. It's not fear; it's exhilaration. Dancing has always made her feel this way. Limitless, like her feet can't touch the floor and like nothing in the world can stop her. She feels like she can fly when she is dancing. If not flying, she is certainly floating. There's an ease in her step this way. When dancing, she looks beautiful.

Already, Gwen is a sight to see. Her hair is black as a raven's wing, loose curls tumbling over the skin of her back. There is a blueness to her eyes that is intimate and filled with an unreserved passion, but still cold nonetheless. A blue so wintry that they almost become gray. Looking into the expanse of her eyes is almost comparable to looking into a palace of ice on a winter day. Such is only distracted by the rim of cobalt around the rim and the circle of yellow around the center. There is an entire world in her paleness of her eyes. Her skin is pale, too, too pale. A glance at her skin contains the truth that she is a girl having spent too much of her life contained inside. Her parents always felt it was safer within the walls of the castle and no one ever dared disagree with her father, lest they be on the receiving end of his wrath. Offending him would mean a most certain and painful death.

Still, this makes her no less beautiful. There is still a height in her hollowed cheeks that makes her look regal in a warranted sense of the word. Gwen is a natural beauty, and she holds herself like she knows it. She need do little more to her face than pinch her cheeks for color and add a bit of red paint across her lips. Her lips that she both loves and hates—the top shaped like an extravagant bow and the bottom heavier than the top, distractingly so. There's a plumpness to her lips that she doesn't consciously capitalize on. Instead, she just sinks her teeth into the lower as she contemplates any number of issues in which she is asked to give her opinion on.

Inherently, there is a sort of seriousness to Gwen. There is a square to her shoulders and there is a sort of weight that settles there in the formation of pride. Her identity is tumultuous, impossible to pinpoint on just one stage. There's a sort of cultured air to her—something that makes people search her out, studying her reaction. She was raised to be looked at and assumes this to be true. Yet, there is an unpracticed youthfulness to her; a sort of innocence there.

That innocence takes form in her dancing. She loves to dance. In this way, she looks her most beautiful. She laughs frequently and stands light on her toes. Her heels click across the floor and she switches her partner frequently. Prince Peregrine rarely graces Gwen with his presence and Gwen dare not miss even a moment of merriment. Even if she is betrothed, most every man in the kingdom still vies for her attention, desperate to be noticed by the princess, the sole heir of King Rowan and Queen Rosanne.

Princess Guinevere.

She is a beauty. Everyone in the kingdom—the world, even—knows it. The swish of her skirts around her ankles as she dances makes her look like she is gliding across the floor. She contains a grace that causes her parents to always look on proudly. Proud, not only of their daughter, but of themselves. Eighteen years old and her concerns remain materialistic. Never once have they forced her to something against her will. They succumbed to her every whim, their only daughter. She has them wrapped around her finger, but she doesn't take advantage. A kindness, they called this, as they shielded her from the horrors of the world. For now, they relish in that she may maintain her kind, sweet heart.