Page 33 of A Tale of Ice and Ash
∞∞∞
A pale, blue morning dawned, Eirwen snatching only a few hours of sleep. She woke long before the others. The Huntsman was stirring on his cot below, Wren snoring loudly in her chair beside the fire, empty tankards beside them. They were almost touching.
Eirwen crept to the Huntsman’s side. “I heard your conversation last night,” she said, careful not to disturb Wren.
The Huntsman stilled. “That is not how I would have chosen for you to find out.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“It wasn’t relevant–”
“My people–”
“Would still be suffering. There was a limit to what you could have done, whilst you were still so young. We would have to have found you a regent. But with your coming-of-age near at hand, and winter close by…”
“I want you to take me into the city.”
“Your Highness–”
“Please,” Eirwen begged. “I… I need to see it. If you don’t escort me, I’ll go myself, it’ll just take me longer and be less safe.”
He bowed his head. “As Her Highness commands.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I shall get dressed now. We will leave immediately.”
She didn’t want to face Garnet or any of the others, didn’t want to lie to them about her intentions, to face their worry or concern. She would tell them later, when she returned.
Slipping out of the cottage, the feeling of leaving something behind shuddered inside her bones. For a while, she had been gnawed by the sensation that she did not quite belong inside those walls, but now all she wanted to do was crawl back inside them and stay there forever.
I am not ready, not ready for whatever I might see today.
She went anyway.
∞∞∞
It was a quiet journey through the woods. Most topics of conversation had been exhausted the night before, and any idle chat would have felt forced. They were journeying to face a monster.
Eirwen tried to focus on other things. She named the different trees, tried to describe the colours she saw. Burnt orange, deep purple, flame red. Mentally, she planned out some embroidery waiting for her back home. She summoned visions of the treasures waiting to be uncovered in her next excursion into Under the Mountain.
The journey still took forever, but eventually, the trees parted and the dark castle beamed down at her from the mountain ridges.
Home.
She had avoided coming this far out for years, had avoided the shadow of her city, its accusing glare across the fields that stretched out between the mountain and the woodland, but every so often, deep in the woods, she’d caught snatches of it through the trees. The glint of a tower. The wave of a banner.
Hello, Princess, I’m still here.
“Princess?” said the Huntsman, cutting through the silence.
“Yes?”
“Have you been… happy, these past five years?”
“Yes,” she said, without a moment’s pause.
He smiled weakly. “Good. I’m glad.”
Eirwen hesitated. “If… if you ever felt guilty, about leaving me, about taking me away from this life, please don’t. I’m very happy with the dwarves.”
