Page 148 of A Tale of Ice and Ash
She still wished he’d come, though. They had much to discuss.
The Huntsman had been serving as her personal guard in lieu of trusting any of the new ones quite enough, but she hadn’t discussed with him whether or not he wanted to make the position permanent. She asked him about it one day as he escorted her to yet another meeting.
“I’m hoping to have no need of an executioner,” she said. “So what would youliketo do?”
The Huntsman smiled. “Raise horses, marry Wren, and maybe have a couple of children, if we’re able, and she’s willing.”
The grin spread through Eirwen’s cheeks. “Then stablemaster you shall be,” she declared. “The rest is up to you.”
He bowed to her, and edged out of the room.
“Huntsman?”
“Yes?”
“What’s your name?”
He laughed. “Robert Hunter,” he said. “The occupation fit the name.”
“Well then, Stablemaster Hunter, I bid you good day.”
∞∞∞
It was a week before Cole finally drummed up the courage to visit his mother. He’d been assured she was being taken care of and had actually been something of the model prisoner. He worried if that meant she was trying something, and what it said about them that that was his first thought.
It had been a strange week. He’d wanted to assist with the rebuilding, but with his hand there was a limit to the help he could offer. He’d wandered from place to place and station to station, escorting the twins home to pack up the cottage and bring back the animals, ordering provisions for the wounded, writing to the families of the dead and injured. He tried to keep himself busy and ignore how wrapped up and away from him Snow was right now.
A part of him thought he’d imagined the whole thing between them, how focused and professional she was when others were around. But every fleeting moment in the corridor before breakfast, every swift kiss when no one was watching, reminded him of what they were. He just had to be patient. She was running a country, after all.
He made his way into the dungeon to the cell at the end of the room. It was clean and nicely-furnished. Eirwen had made good on her promise that she was, at least, made comfortable.
And alone.
She sat at her desk, a book open on her lap, staring out at the narrow scrap of sky afforded to her by the high, narrow window. She was perfectly poised, looking like she had done a hundred times before when he’d found her reading. For a moment, the bars seemed to fade away around her.
He coughed quietly. “Mother.”
She wheeled around, standing sharply. The book fell away from her. “Cole.” She stepped towards him. “Are you well? Your hand–”
He tugged down his sleeve. “I’m assured it will be fine in a few weeks. No damage done.”
“Good. That’s good.” She looked down at her feet. “I… I never would have hurt you. If I’d known–”
“But youdidhurt me, Mother. I’m not talking about broken bones. Eirwen almost died. I don’t think the weight of the moment where I thought I’d lost her will ever truly leave me.”
“I didn’t… I didn’t know how you really felt about her.”
“You didn’t care to. And in the end, it didn’t matter. You would have killed the woman I love for your own selfish gains. Don’t tell me it was for me. I was just another part of the future you wanted for yourself.”
She fell silent.
“You loved Olwen, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “It didn’t start off that way. It was just for power, at first, because the Mirror… because Janus said it would be a good match. I know, now, that he was just trying to get closer to the mountains. But when I came here, he was so good, and so kind to me, I couldn’t help but grow to love him. And when he didn’t love me–”
“Do you regret killing him?”
His mother’s eyes turned glassy. “Almost every single day.”
