My splendorous Isabella I lust for your touch, for an embrace of soft and subtle curves, of silk smooth skin and porcelain pale flesh. All that surrounds me here are the hard, coarse and crude angles of my father’s banner man. That and the vulgar, brazen and whorish affections of those squat and ugly women which follow an army at march.

I write to you from my fortress of solitude and bitter tears. Father brought me out in front of the war council again, like a fattened calf on display he had me prance and swagger to and fro, my face contorted in a mockery of a smile as he bandied about designs of slaughter and death.

I understand not how they beam and hoot when discussing things of such great and profound morbidity. Smiles should be reserved for those actions of the world which are warm and agreeable, holding a lover, rocking a babe, drinking with friends. For times such as these I would much rather wear the grim and darkened visage of reluctant duty, the knowledge that darkness need be expunged but that the light should take no pleasure in the carrying out of this action most base.

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Each and every time I step through the threshold into that tent of swirling, acrid pipe smoke and predatory grins my stomach lurches. The torches of their souls have grown dim with their bloodlust, my father and his court, and I wish for anything but to have to stoop to their realm of flickering and dying flame, where naught but the cold joy of killing still heats the blood.

I burn an essence of lavender through my tent as I write this, allowing this pantomime of your scent to tide me over until the real thing, hanging of your perfect body, is within the reach of my senses once more.

An idea has just come to me. I know you said you wanted to wait until after your sister was cured and I respect that most familial and passionate loyalty, but I want to marry you. I can’t wait. I’ve planned it out, a statement which I suppose makes irrelevant the before ruse of spontaneity, but wouldn’t we be able to better care for your sister with both our funds pooled? I could direct my full financial cooperation to your plight without the raised eyes and whispered gossip of petty onlookers, our quest for discovery concealed behind the flaring blaze of a husbands love and dedication for his wife.

I intend to broach the subject with my father after my showing in the battle which approaches. Id like to see him deny me when my words come at the foot of deeds most heroic. I too would like to see any of those hooting savages Siam’Siak has gathered stand before a sword when the arm behind it is powered by a lover’s fervour.

When the heads of the Night Council roll, I will come back to you with flowers and dowry, and finally we will be conj-