The sound of horses rushing through the forest filled the air, their hooves hitting the ground in rhythm. No horse was off beat. Over twenty of them, all in uniform.

Two carriages were pulled by two horses each, and the rest followed behind, beside, and in front of the carriages. The two carriages were pristine, made of polished and painted wood with golden edges. Everything metal on them was gold. On either side of their doors was a crest, a golden depiction of a rising phoenix.

The horses around them carried men in full steel armor, with the same crest embedded in their chest plates. Every man was wearing a helmet, aside from four figures that rode at the very front, two women and two men, all without helmets, and their armor carried a more unique and sleek design.

"We are approaching the meeting place the elves chose," one of the men at the front said. He seemed to be the leader here, with blond hair and blue eyes. His gaze was stern and confident. A great sword hung on his back with casual ease.

"Tch, having to come and meet elves, tch," the other man riding right behind him clicked his tongue in irritation, almost like the thought of elves was some sort of abomination.

"We are here to foster the next generation of peace. You must learn to control yourself, Michael," the lady riding next to him said. She was beautiful, with black hair and eyes like the abyss. She oozed power even with her small frame.

Michael gritted his teeth. He didn’t like this, but he had to accept it. He didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

The lady riding in front glanced back at him. She seemed to have the same level of authority as the first man, but she carried herself with a lot of pride. Her hair was snow white, and her eyes looked like they were made of ice.

"Any trouble you cause here will lead to your death. Do not forget that this girl has the backing of all elves," she said simply, then looked back ahead.

Michael forced himself to remain calm even when he disliked the situation. They rode until they finally made it to a large clearing set for the meeting. They had agreed that Luna would be handed over without the humans knowing the home of the elves. They arrived there, and now they had to wait for the elves, but the wait was not long.

The elves arrived without sound.

One moment, the clearing was empty on their side, and then they were simply there, emerging from the tree line in a quiet and unhurried procession that somehow managed to feel like a statement. Dozens of them moved with the particular grace that made human soldiers look like they were always slightly off balance by comparison. Several did not come down from the trees at all, remaining above in the canopy with bows across their backs and eyes that missed nothing, their presence felt more than seen.

Lumeria came through the center of the elf formation, and the way the others moved around her made her position clear without anyone having to announce it. She was tall and unhurried, her bearing carrying the particular weight of someone who had never once in her life needed to prove what she was to a room. Her silver hair caught the light of the clearing, and her eyes moved across the assembled humans with a calm and thorough assessment that she didn’t bother to conceal.

Luna walked beside her.

She was smaller than her mother, younger in her bearing, but there was something already forming in the way she carried herself that echoed Lumeria’s composure. Her eyes moved across the carriages and the armored soldiers with open curiosity rather than nerves, taking everything in without settling on any one thing for too long.

Sierra came next, slightly to the left and a step behind, one hand resting naturally near the hilt of her blade, her eyes already moving across the human formation with the professional patience of someone cataloguing threats out of habit rather than fear.

Ken walked beside Luna.

The reaction was not loud. Several of the human soldiers noticed, their eyes finding him and sticking, the confusion plain on the faces of those who didn’t bother to hide it.

Leo arrived just behind them all, Luna’s cousin moving with a loose and unbothered energy that seemed almost deliberately at odds with the formality of the occasion, his eyes sharp beneath the casual surface of his expression.

On the human side, the carriage door opened.

The man who stepped down first had white hair and a calm face that gave nothing away, the emblem of the kingdom on his chest catching the light as he straightened. He moved without hurry and without any performance of authority, which somehow made the authority more present, not less. His eyes passed across the elf formation and settled briefly on Ken with an expression that didn’t change but sharpened very slightly before moving on.

Two figures followed him out, a boy and a girl, both with blond hair and gold eyes that were identical enough to mark them immediately. The twins of House Argoth, Mira and Kira, carried themselves with the particular confidence of people who had grown up knowing exactly what their name meant in every room they entered. Mira’s gaze found Ken almost immediately and stayed there a full second longer than it had stayed on anything else, something between assessment and interest moving through her expression. Kira’s reaction was different, a slight narrowing of the eyes, not hostile, but deliberate, the kind of look that filed things away for later.

The last figure to descend from the carriage made the soldiers on both sides straighten almost involuntarily.

The princess moved like the formality of the occasion had been arranged around her rather than the other way around, her purple hair catching the light of the clearing with every step, her bearing carrying a regal weight that she wore without any apparent effort or modesty about it either. She took her position beside the white-haired man and let her gaze move across the elf side of the clearing slowly and deliberately, the way someone looks at a thing they are deciding the value of.

Her eyes reached Ken and stopped.

They stayed there for a moment that was slightly too long to be casual, something unreadable moving through them before she looked away without any change in her expression.