A Fiancée

The worst part about Alistair's birthday event was that it fell about one week before the school term started. A lot of families from the school were also invited to the party, so it tended to feel a lot like the year was starting sooner than it should have. Alex always felt like he was getting cheated out of a week of his holiday. Though in all fairness his holiday had been slowly becoming less of a real break with each passing year.

The event was a black tie, a form of dress that Alex thought he looked ridiculous in. The collars were always too tight, the jackets were always too bulky. He tended to come out looking like a child playing dress up no matter how old he got.

The party itself never felt that much more remarkable than any of the others to Alex. The music they played was boring. The food was pretentious. The alcohol was overly opulent. His mother had said he was allowed to have one drink of his choice once he turned thirteen, but Alex never touched it. He had spent too many nights making sure Jack didn't drown himself in their flat's toilet to find any appeal in the stuff.

An aspect of the party that Alex had grown not to mind was the fact that Jack was at least bound to be there. He had hated that part too at first. Back when Jack would spend the whole time finding ways to cause trouble that always fell on Alex because he was supposed to be the one babysitting him. Even though Alex was a whole year younger. Though at least following Jack around had always given him an excuse to get out of having to socialize with his family and other party guests.

Once Jack grew out of his 'causing problems on purpose' phase, he wasn't a bad partner to have at parties. He was still a little too boisterous, a little too unrefined, and drank a little too much, but people always forgave him. For one he was American; people would have thought it stranger if he wasn't the way he was. But more importantly, he was a Farrow.

Alex always remembered what his mother had said to him back when he was seven, the first time he had been thrown together with Jack with the instructions to help him keep his nose out of trouble. Alex had been young enough to not know better and questioned her on why.

"His parents asked you to," she said. "They think you'll be a good influence. You should be flattered they think so highly of you."

"Why?"

"Because they're Farrows, Alexander." She said it like that was the only explanation needed, but when she saw he still didn't understand she sighed in exasperation. "What do you know about the Farrows?"

"They're an old family. They live in America now, but they're from Scotland."

"And if they had stayed in Scotland, the Conrads would probably be irrelevant by now. This island is only big enough for one powerful old family to take up permanent residence. If the Farrows had stayed, they would have won out. So, when they ask something of us, we do it. Understand?"

At the time he said yes, but he didn't really. Now he did. The Conrads may act like they owned the country, but they were only allowed to because the Farrows let them. If even people like his mother and grandfather were afraid of them, he couldn't even imagine what any of the other old families thought. Never mind the average wyvern.

So not only was Jack a way to keep Alex entertained, but he was also a way to keep his cousins off his back once he decided to start being an ally rather than an adversary. Add to that the fact that Sean had been making a point to be more amicable since his drunken confession, and Alex was poised to have at the very least a not-terrible time at the party. The only thing he was still really dreading was seeing Hannah Palmer.

The Palmers were an odd old family. A very long time ago they had more prestige than the Conrads, maybe even the Farrows, but they had been resistant to the changing times. They had held on to old wyvern traditions too long. Accused other families of becoming too human even though doing so was keeping many of them relevant in the world. Before long they faded into such obscurity that some were convinced that they had died out until they resurfaced in the public sphere in the early 1900s. The new patriarch, Winston, had realized what his ancestors couldn't. He worked hard to bring his family into the 20th century. Since then, they've been gaining wealth and prestige, but they've been out of the spotlight too long to have the relevance they once did. They seemed to realize the best way for them to get that back would be to marry up.

Winston had tried to have his son Jacob put in consideration for Margaret's betrothal, but he didn't stand a chance. Not because Alistair didn't think a Palmer was good enough, though. He just never really took the time to think about it. Margaret was born at a time when the Conrads were in the midst of one of those rare scandals they couldn't quell quickly, over things they had done and were still doing in imperial exploits around the world. Most noticeably India. Margaret's betrothal to Utkarsh was born out of a necessity to patch that over without actually having to fix or change anything. Once the bad press passed, Alex had a feeling Alistair would have called off the engagement if he thought he could get away with it.

Jacob ended up marrying a woman named Angelica Markov, the youngest daughter of one of Russia's upper-tier old families. When they had a daughter around the same time Margaret was pregnant, they decided to try their hand at marrying into the Conrads again. At the time Margaret had already spoken with the Farrows about what would happen if she had a daughter. The Conrads and Farrows had always flirted with the idea of a merger through marriage, but something always stopped it. Margaret and Basil Farrow, Jack's father, had made an informal agreement that if she had a daughter, she and Jack would be engaged. She told the Palmers this, and they asked if they could be considered if she had a son. She said yes.

Alex being a son was the first wrinkle in the marriage plans. Alex being born very frail and ill was the second. Nobody expected him to last long, and most 'if it's a boy marriage proposals were rescinded so families could hedge their bets on a child that was likely to survive to adulthood. Survive infancy at least. But the Palmers didn't. When Margaret told them about Alex's condition, they still requested their daughter Hannah be considered as a fiancée.

"He'll grow into a strong young man," Jacob Palmer insisted.

The strong bit could still be contested, but Alex had managed to push through. When it became clear he would survive all those proposals reappeared, of course. He was the eldest son of Margaret Conrad. Would be the only child of Margaret Conrad, if the fact that she hadn't had another child in several years was any indication of a pattern. But the grand prize went to the only family that hadn't wavered despite the odds. Alex was officially engaged to Hannah Palmer when he was six years old.

Alex has been terrified of Hannah Palmer since he was six years old.

It's not that she's done anything particularly horrid to him. Jack has probably done worse than she ever has. But there was something about the way she looked at him that was always unsettling. It reminded him of the way the stable cats looked at the mice they were stalking. Every time she spoke to him it felt like she was saying something other than the words coming out of her mouth. Her face was almost always void of emotion. When she smiled it never felt like something good was happening. Every time Alex was alone with her, he felt like he had been shoved into the enclosure of a big predatory cat like some of the enrichment toys.

He thought for the longest time that it must have just been him. This was all based on a weird gut feeling, after all. She had never actually done anything. But when he mentioned all this to Jack when they were about twelve, he had nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, that girl is pretty scary," he said. "Very Talking Tina."

"What?"

"Dude, you need to tell your mom to let you watch more TV."

"If you tell her she might listen."

"She's like this possessed doll. That's what Hannah reminds me of. Beautiful on the outside, but god knows what's underneath that."

Alex thought about that beautiful comment. Hannah had big dark blue eyes, long dark lashes, straight jet-black hair, and very fair skin. She had always been a cute girl, and she certainly got prettier as time went on, but Alex wasn't sure if he would call her beautiful. Beautiful always felt like it meant something more. Something different. The sunsets were beautiful. The clear night sky in the countryside was beautiful. Alex's father's smile when he recognized his son at his bedside was beautiful. Hannah Palmer was something else entirely.

That fear instinct only ever intensified as they got older. When they were thirteen, she had started making a point of going out with different guys and girls in their year. Sometimes it felt like she was doing it just to see how he was reacting. And he was pretty sure that wasn't paranoia. Sometimes he would look over to see her snogging someone and she would be looking directly at him while she did it. She also got into the habit of using him to make whoever she was dating jealous. Sometimes she would pass by with a group of her friends, her current boyfriend or girlfriend among them, and be uncharacteristically affectionate with him. Verbally and physically. And they couldn't say anything about it. He was a Conrad, and they were technically going to be married someday. What could they say?

As Alex's father said, it wasn't against any rules for them to date people outside of each other. It was kind of expected. Sean had been engaged to a girl named Lily Roche since he was three, but he had a different boyfriend almost every year. Julia was slated to be married to a boy named Christian Atkinson by the time she was twenty-five, but she was still dating the same boy she had been with since she was thirteen. Nobody had a problem with aunt Mary seeing Christopher Dominguez back when they were in school. It was only when she saw him after getting married that problems came up. Well, she saw him and got caught.

Despite that, Alex had never been comfortable with the thought of dating anyone before he married Hannah. There were only two ways it could go. The first was that he would never be able to stay with someone long enough for it to mean something to him. People like Sean and Hannah were fine with the casual fling model, but Alex wasn't. Then there was the other option. See someone for a long time, like Julia. Get overly invested and committed to that relationship, like Alex suspected Julia was getting. Someday break it off so you can marry whoever your parents have already promised you to like Julia inevitably would have to. Alex didn't see the point of starting something that was destined to end in heartbreak, so he just steered clear of it all. He had a feeling Hannah knew that, and used his apathy towards all romantic inclinations to entertain herself.

At least one of them was having fun.