Irene's green eyes traveled over lands she was familiar with. Well, familiar wasn't the right word.
These were lands she had ridden through as a child. The lands she had rebelled against her mother's wishes and went to rescue her father when she heard that he was buried under the rubble of a mine that had collapsed.
They had shaped her and put her on this path.
And now she rode alongside the man she married while traveling to what felt like another major step in her life that would shape everything as she knew it.
Even though it was borderline unbearably cold, Irene and Henry didn't bother with facial coverings while they rode through the lands just south of the Northern Mountains. Compared to the Sunstoian region, this felt like nothing.
Henry could sense his wife's pensive mood as they slowed down, seeing the first sign of civilization in a while. It was the inn Irene always stayed at on the trip between her family home and the Duke's Tower.
