Irah of the Seven Dominions

Chapter.4: A Meeting

**The palace in the header is the closest I found to how I imagined Irah's palace to look like**

To say that Haynes had a long weekend would have been an understatement.

For starters, when he finally arrived home on Friday night, angry and shaken from his run-in with the horse-rider, he found a teary-eyed Lacey in the arms of her grandmother, the sight unleashing the guilt and pain that so often overtook him whenever Lacey cried or was upset. Haynes spent the next hour and a half singing her lullabies and telling her stories, until she finally fell asleep a little after midnight. Haynes retired to his own room afterwards with Julianne staying with her granddaughter lest she wake again from a nightmare.

Most of Saturday was spent out shopping as Julianne insisted that Lacey had absolutely no winter wardrobe, with Haynes forced to tag along as Julianne looked through seemingly endless shops for all manner of winter clothing befitting a child.

Haynes spent much of Saturday evening and most of Sunday pouring over the presentation he was to deliver to the Queen on behalf of his and Rodrick's company, Panther Enterprises, in a meeting at the palace on Monday morning.

So, when the morning in question finally arrived, Haynes was found grumbling to himself as he sat in the back of his car, ready to head towards the palace.

As the car headed north in the direction of the Queen's residence, Haynes couldn't help but recall the night of his run-in with the rude horse rider. As Haynes replayed the scene over in his head, he decided that the horse rider was more at fault than he was, after all she should have been riding on the bicycle path to the side of the road instead of in the middle of it as if she owned the place. Therefore, it only made sense to Haynes when he decided that he would promptly report the incident to the Queen, provided he got the chance, so that she is aware that there are some serious lunatics riding horses on the roads near her palace.

When it came to the Queen, Haynes was indeed nervous about a meeting with the most powerful person in the seven dominions and he certainly was curious about how she actually was like in person as many political analysts on late night talk shows painted her as a weak ruler who was fond of hiding in a corner, pretending not to exist.

This was also to be Haynes's first visit to the palace as he normally avoided coming to events where he'd have to come in contact with royalty or highly-ranked nobles; their pretentious manners and fake small talk only serving to irritate him. Therefore, Rodrick would spare him the headache by representing their company in such meetings and events; this morning being the first time Haynes had to attend such a meeting, that too on the behest of Rodrick who had left on Sunday to attend a wedding in Vesper, in the Western Dominion.

However, Haynes's curiosity won over his dislike for such events and he was more than willing to attend the meeting as he headed towards the palace that morning.

As the car pulled out of the trees, Haynes caught his first view of the Queen's palace.

Perched atop a hill, the palace was a five-story, rectangular building, whose four corners supported tall turrets, each bearing the flag of Dominia, a tree with seven branches spreading out in each direction, the collective symbol of the seven dominions. The building was painted entirely white, except for the roof painted dark blue and golden paint trimming the edges of it and the windows, the color making the palace shimmer, as sunlight reflected off the golden paint and the many windows that lined the walls on all sides.

The palace gates were framed by a white, marble archway, and opened to a wide courtyard, with rows of apple trees lining the side of the road that lead straight up to the enormous porch that shielded the entrance of the building from view.