[center][img] https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/400350193658232843/420345175798317086/Nenra.png [/img]
[sub][color=77c6ae][i]Bride of Ordric [@Athoriel][/i][/color][/sub][/center]

She wanted to throw something, or scream, or seem as though possessed by a ghost and scare them all. Anything to get them to shut up. Having been stuffed unceremoniously into a carriage-cage thing again- by some massive misfortune with all four of the noble girls from the ride to Shadow Worth- was bad enough, but they kept. Talking. Their nervous tittering and hollow idle chatter was clearly meant to distract them from the doom they trundled towards, but it filled the air with its notes of panic and made it increasingly hard for Nenra to think.

They were treating her like she wasn’t there, and that was fine. Even in this… whatever this was. “Trade agreement” as one of the girls, who sounded quite like a rich merchant, kept saying. Even in this, they felt they had to maintain their snooty haughty aloofness, and Nenra would let them.

She leaned back against the wall of the carriage (the other girls had quickly claimed the spaces on the benches, and made no move to let Nenra join them), feeling the cold steel bars press into her back, her bare feet dug firmly into the rough wooden floor, as though trying to draw some assurance from the faint life of the raw wood planks. It was getting steadily hotter as they left the mountains, approaching what she could assume was the Drakkan capital. 

Periodically the other girls would gasp, all leaning closer to the bars to look at something in the distance, shielding their eyes delicately. It all meant nothing to Nenra, who focused quite intently at the point where her vision started to blur, just in front of her toes when her legs were drawn up to her chest. 

The whimpering started in earnest as they approached the city gates, a shadow falling over them as they passed into the looming walls. She rolled her eyes at the antics of these noble girls (who had, she wryly noted, long forgotten their “noble duty of the highest honor” when they realized that they were going to [i]at best[/i] be forced into a cruel man’s bed and split apart by bearing his children.) 

Nenra herself decided she was… resigned. Yes, that would be a good way to put it, she thought, as the Drakken guards pulled them out of the carriage and lined them up. She wasn’t pretty, not like these other girls- there was a good chance she wouldn’t even be chosen. Rumor had it that was what happened to Lamry when she was taken. Rumor also had it that the girl at least had a quick death, spanning hours rather than weeks or years as most Brides’ fates did. It was more than most got, at least, and more than the vast majority of Myllendh had gotten, lingering in fevered agony for days or weeks until they’d expired at last from weakness…

She was strangely calm about the prospect of dying, standing rather placidly as other, far more nervous, girls were led or dragged off around her. Though one of the first brought into the room, her carriage having been the second one in line, she was among the very last to be taken away to the warlords scattered around the room, little more than intimidating blobs of ashen skin and dull colors from this distance.

As she was taken by the shoulders, she finally realized two things. One, she wasn’t being kept for later- Lamry’s fate would not be hers. Two, she’d left the nasty pinchy boots in the carriage. Part of her was glad of it, having her feet in contact with the floor (and through it the earth) was remarkably calming, and part of her feared she’d be punished for it.

Thankfully, the skirts she had been given were long enough that her feet were hidden, even while she was being roughly guided to stand before her husband. Her scruffy hair fell forward, and she looked up from under it as calmly and distantly as she could. It likely helped that her eyes could not focus on his face, instead seeing him a looming lump of chiseled ash-toned flesh with stern lines and something- an especially livid, dark scar perhaps? Carved into the side of his face.

She listened intently to what the guardsman said, though it meant nothing to her. And just as quickly as she’d been dragged over, the guard had wandered off, leaving her standing in front of her… she supposed he was to be her husband. A bit awkwardly, she stooped into a shallow curtsy, wobbling and nearly falling. The lesson to bow was still sharply fresh in her mind, the meaty thump of blows striking the other Gems lingering in her mind.

After holding the curtsy for a moment, she spoke quietly- her mostly-unused voice low, breathy, and barely carrying to her husband’s ears. [color=77c6ae]“Nenra Corislen, sire. From the village of Myllendh.”[/color] She straightened uncertainly, unsure if she had been supposed to do that – or had even been supposed to provide that much information.