It’s only an instant, the barest second, but Henri thinks for a moment that he loses her there. He wouldn’t have noticed, except that he can remember similar deep breaths coming from Jasmine any time they had approached some kind of fairy magic. “A shame you have not visited before now. You would have found an easy place with Alia’s attendants.”

‘Great princess’ makes him snort, if only at the idea of Alia’s reaction to it. “I made a comment on her appearance,” he says airily. “It is not a topic one should breach lightly with the most beautiful girl in the world, as it turns out.” He still hasn’t quite gotten used to the way she really looks. Something unsettling in his stomach isn’t surprised that his dream never quiet matched reality.

Henri mulls that over in silence. Camwood’s alliance with Adelisien had been concerning – even a nation as great as Capet had no wish to be trapped between two budding imperialists. But stability was preferably to the threat of war spilling over borders, and it seemed as though the other kingdom had not yet gotten its feet under it enough to do more than think about said stability. His expression twists a little at that last comment, an instinctively bitter reaction that even a decade of distance hasn’t cured him of yet. And from little cause; it was not, he reminded himself, as though anyone had thought of the Skirmishes as a true war.

“That would depend on your position,” he murmurs. “War seems to have done quite well for Aorlind.”

Other than getting their sole heir cursed with death. But even that had turned out well for them.