Page 137 of A Tale of Ice and Ash
Eirwen steeled herself. A voice murmured something from behind her. A hot bit of anger fashioned itself into confidence. “Where your son spent last night, for one.”
Cole arrived at the flap of the tent, hastily dressed and dishevelled. He stopped the minute his eyes settled on the queen.
“Mother,” he said.
Her gaze darkened. “Cole,” she said icily. “Unhappy as I am to see you here, I am glad, at least, that you are unhurt. Come to me now; all will be forgiven. I know how easy it is to be…seducedby someone.”
“Um, yes, no, it… it didn’t happen like that.” His eyes glanced around the rest of the camp, at the army around them, the slumped sentry. They darted back to the tent, towards his abandoned weapon.
“You wouldn’t attack your own mother, would you?”
Cole stepped closer to Eirwen’s side. “To save her, there isn’t much I wouldn’t do.”
Bianca’s eyes boiled. “You don’t know what it is you say!”
She lunged towards Eirwen, but Cole cut across her. A bolt went flying.
“Stop!” hissed the queen. “Do not hit the prince!”
There was a shouting within the tents, a thumping, rustling, hollering. Wren bolted from a nearby tent, crossbow already docked, the Huntsman streaming out behind her with his axe raised. A dozen other rebels followed suit.
A moment stretched out before Eirwen, endless and touchable. A thousand seconds, a thousand thoughts, a thousand abandoned solutions all crammed into it. All failed. There was nothing she could do, no bargain she could summon, no action she could complete fast enough, before complete and total pandemonium erupted on the fresh snowy ground.
Within seconds, it was stung with blood.
Eirwen didn’t know who struck first, whose order they acted on, she didn’t know anything. She dived back into her tent and seized her sword, raising it just in time to meet the steel of a knight that came charging in afterwards.
She kicked him backwards, rolling over her cot, seizing a sheet to fling in his face. She cut the back of one of his hamstrings and sent him floundering to the floor, but he still lashed out wildly, his blade shredding air.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Eirwen rushed.
Something crashed against the back of his head. A lantern.
“I have no such reservations,” Cole declared.
He seized Eirwen’s arm, slashing through the back of the tent and pulling her through the gap. Two more swords rose up to greet them.
“You need to run,” he hissed at her.
Eirwen shook her head, parrying the blade, rolling over in the snow and flipping it up into the face of her enemy. The few seconds was all she needed to disarm him. He made a frantic bid for his abandoned weapon, but she swiped across his cheek. Blood spurted across the white floor.
She did not mean to go that deep. She did not want to hurt him.
I hate this I hate this I hate it.
“Stop!” she shrieked, kicking the sword out of reach. “Just leave! Justgo.I don’t want to hurt you!”
The man blinked up at her.
“Run!” she told him. She looked back at Cole’s opponent. “Both of you– just give up and live! You have that option!”
The wounded one listened. Cole’s didn’t until she punched the back of his head with the hilt of her sword.
“I’m not leaving them!” she yelled at Cole. “I’m not leavingyou.”
Cole blinked for a moment, his jaw tight. “She doesn’t want my heart to resurrect a god,” he said quickly. “You have to get out of here–”
“Would you leave me, if the positions were reversed?”
