This one came out a little janky. I can't decide if I like the more photorealistic style or not, but it certainly takes a lot longer.

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The long, hot summer hunting alongside the marital envoy were the happiest days the king had known. Waking with the sun to track their quarry across the royal forest, eating their kills at dusk, and sleeping in the boughs of trees under a starry sky.

Jurek made a formidable huntress. Forty years of experience, and when he took a swig from the potion on his belt, a lithe 20-year-old body to utilize it. Even he admitted his niece’s form had its uses.

Faleron had already decided the man would be his Queen. He just hadn’t told him that yet. There was never the right time or words for it. If only he could get an heir into him, the king thought, it would settle everything. It would be simple. Fun too. Not that he dared.

The wounded silver stag thudded to the glade floor and lay, chest heaving. The king stepped forward, spear in hand to finish it off, but Jurek caught his arm.

“Careful, boy. Don’t be so eager to impale it in the guts that you run in there half-cocked,” said the old man. “It may look helpless now, but with a creature this dangerous, you take your time.”

The king held back on the marriage proposal all the way back to the capital.

“Make sure the beast doesn’t have its herd-mates waiting in the bushes,” Jurek had instructed. “Once it’s alone, it’s at your mercy.”

Back at the palace, the king was quick to dismiss the envoy’s entourage back to their homeland. Without his men, Jurek looked adrift, now a stranger in a strange court. Out of his element amidst the courtly intrigues of women that considered him the competition, he now clung to the king’s side.

“And keep an eye on its antlers. They’ll gut you if you’re careless,” Jurek had said.

Before Faleron dared make his move, he needed Jurek disarmed. Sure, there were times when the envoy looked like butter wouldn’t melt in that sweet mouth of his. But there was also no end to the number of daggers concealed about his person.

To his amusement, it was Countess Aurelia who resolved that little issue. She hated Jurek more than anyone and railed vocally against his flouting of court fashion while in his niece’s form. She wouldn’t rest until the man was in corset and skirts.

No place to hide a scabbard beneath that, Faleron soon thought with satisfaction, eying Jurek’s pert rear beneath the hemline.