i.

“Come, Jaejoong, and meet your sister.”

He watches as the babe is set down on the makeshift bed - covered in blankets of fur in his parents’ solar. She is a small thing, a shifting mass of fair skin and brown eyes that might be a little too knowing for her age. He finds himself hovering by her, distracted from what was supposedly a good play of swords by this.. this mystery he is drawn to.

There’s a mark on her left wrist and he dares touch it one night when the everyone had gone to the hall to sup and he finds it just a patch of raised skin, a mark nevertheless but nothing peculiar. His - Their - brother had a mark on his face from an accident two summers ago and nobody makes mention of it. No one is seemingly bothered by it.

It’s the warmth that unsettled him, he would decide years later. The warmth that traveled through him the moment he touched that mark. It reminded him of his lady mother’s embrace, the elation that first time his lord father allowed him to ride his steed, swordplay fights with his brothers and running in the fields barefoot and muddied. She had stirred, opened her too-aware eyes to look directly at him, and for a moment the warmth intensified, sweeping through him, and he knew that she was different. But then she smiles, child-like and toothy and makes those gurgling noises and he chooses to forget, sweeps away the knowledge and lets her little fingers wrap on his own, smiling back down at her because she’s a Maistrian now, Princess of Eravim, his sister. He decides he was going to love her as one.

When she disappears from her cot a fortnight later, Jaejoong feels he lost a part of himself to the brown-eyed babe named Cassandra.

ii

Father finds a litter of wolf pups - one for each of them. Or so everyone thought. It was Jaejoong who voices it out while his brothers were already busy playing with their pets.

“What about Cassandra?”

He was a child of one and ten then, the coming summer marking the fifth she had gone. The question brings the elders pause, and he sees the pity in their eyes - for him, for his father who had a grim line on his mouth now, for his mother whose eyes were b with unshed tears for the babe they saved and lost many moons ago.

They had forgotten her, he thinks.

It was their youngest who breaks the silence, his pup cradled in his arms.

“She could have mine.”

Almost instantly the rest of his brothers were willing to share. He would have done the same, without doubt but,

“She would have liked one for her own,” was what he whispered.

When he is found unconscious in the woods the next morning, his wolf and another one not belonging to his brothers playing not too far from him, he tells his lord and lady parents about the dream.

“I saw her, mother. She’s grown now.”

The pup - hers - wiggles against his arm and he sets it down.

“She told me that Gyneara couldn’t come where she’s going and asks if we could care for her until she returns?”

Jaejoong begins to feel guilty then, because his mother is sobbing again. He begins to apologize but his father crouches in front of him, grasping both of his shoulders when he asks,

“Where did you see her, boy?”

“In the woods, by the same tree you found her the last time.”

“How did you--?”

“She told me, Father. Truly. And she asks to tell you not to worry so. She will be back, after all.”

“When?” was the almost simultaneous question.

“A hundred moons from now.”

iii

The day she was to return, there was a thrum of anticipation within the castle. Whispers of the returning princess, of magic and sorcery, of legends and hearsay echo throughout until there is a mixture of excitement and restlessness. Their mother is among the afflicted, and their father’s expression is much more schooled but still telling.

He had to chuckle at the contradiction that while people prepared a feast they are yet conflicted between believing her existence and not. His brothers are not any better, for as night rolls they shift from concern to barely concealed excitement, all wondering how she would be, to impatience and then back to worry. He sits among them and waits, simply because she told him to. He knows she’ll make good on her word.

It was the wolves who sense her first, for they stand as one, and as eerie as it looked it was the sound of howling that chills them. Gyneara runs for the door and into the woods, closely followed by the others, and only after do their humans chase them. Jaejoong could not describe that moment - when he stood at the steps of the castle and waited with bated breath. Their men-at-arms were not too far behind, carrying torches, all waiting, all wishing for the promised miracle.

The wolves howled again as one, and then they reappear from afar - six grown wolves flanking a cloaked figure. His - Their - mother gasps softly and they are seemingly stoned, confined to watching the spectacle of the cloaked form stop in the middle of the courtyard. The wolves sit surrounding her, as if guarding for danger for which none is present here. There is only anticipation as a hand lifts to draw the hood back and it felt longer than seconds until her face is revealed and his first thought was how grown she’d become. How beautiful.

Fair lady with the brown knowing eyes.

That warmth threatens to swallow him up again but he stems the urge to move, watching instead as