Chapter 3 Heart
Heart
I don’t usually go out alone. It’s risky, splitting from Mance and going off in different directions, because someone might see her in more than one place and wonder. But last night left all of us so wrecked that this morning we’re taking drastic measures.
Even though we argued until the candles burned down to stubs, we still haven’t agreed on a plan for the proposal.
Sometimes dividing ourselves makes things more balanced, all our voices getting equal weight.
But sometimes, like now, it only polarizes our opinions.
The crux of this particular conflict was between me and Asset. Reason and emotion. Head and Heart.
Because Asset refused to agree that we would definitely turn down the proposal.
She argued that a political marriage was something we’ve always known would come, and that this is in many ways a strategically good match.
That we’re only just establishing our reign and we’re not willing to offer the military resources our father did, so we need other methods of shoring up alliances, marriage being one obvious possibility.
She wanted to at least hold off on any decisions until we could hear out the Forest Prime completely, weigh it all properly.
But there is nothing to weigh.
Not when we finally have a real chance to be with Silver. Not when his dimples make us melt and his kisses make our toes curl and his unfailing support has been the only thing getting us through these last few months.
Not when it would break his heart.
And ours.
We went at it for hours, Asset calm and measured and me pleading and tearful with Poise trying to moderate, until, finally, Mance gave up and called us all back, only for the fight to continue raging in her mind.
She didn’t sleep. And in the morning, exhausted, she sent the three of us out to fulfill her duties so she could get some rest with an empty mind.
I was chosen to help with the Outskirts cleanup efforts, which has been systematized by Asset, and I’m glad. It’s a cause that’s important to me, and is probably one of the only things that might distract me right now.
I take a breath, trying to center myself, and look around.
Sunlight glints off the shattered glass embedded in the earth, and I can’t help but think that even pain like this has a bright edge of loveliness to it.
Not because the shards sparkle when they catch the light, but because there are people who managed to survive here despite those shards.
Who managed to love and laugh, right here, among this tragedy and brokenness.
Today in particular there is a quiet joy interlaced with the ache, because the existence of this wasteland of sharp fragments has inspired a whole community to come together and try to fix it.
In a patch of land that was once a blight on the realm, inhabited by outcasts shrinking into the shadows, today there is a redemption in progress.
I know the others think I’m naive to see the best in people. But on days like today it’s hard not to.
Feeling more relaxed than I have all morning, I stand in line with everyone else and am quickly assigned a square plot and a set of tools.
At first, when I claim my area, getting on my knees in the dirt, the people around me startle and fall silent, not knowing how to act around their ruler.
But I merely give them a wink and keep my head down, and eventually the cheerful chatter around me returns.
I listen to it with idle satisfaction, even as sweat beads on my brow and my muscles burn.
This, right here, is what I became Prime for. This is what I envisioned. Tangible hope, visible change. Something better.
Shade falls across my square, and I look up, pleased to see my former Captain, Petrice, blocking the sun.
“Thank you for being willing to meet me out here,” I tell her. I’d sent word this morning, wanting to talk things through with her. Even if I can’t talk through everything.
“Of course,” Petrice says easily. “I am at your command.” She kneels down next to me, and I notice she’s brought her own pair of gloves.
Unbidden, she begins picking through the corner of the square I haven’t gotten to yet, fishing out the largest chunks and dropping them in my bucket with a series of soft plinks.
For a moment, we work in silence, and it’s not an entirely comfortable one.
We haven’t spoken to Petrice much in recent months outside of her reports about the Academy, and I’m not sure the others would want me to now.
Once, we considered making her one of our inner circle. But that was before the argument.
Still, she’s a good woman, and I have questions. Ones she may be able to answer.
When the pause stretches too long, Petrice looks over at me, and I meet her eyes. “You were there, weren’t you?” I ask finally. “When we fought the Forest Realm. You were part of it?”
She stills, her thumb running absently along a shard of glass with a single, perfect hawthorn leaf sprouting out of it. Although it looks smooth, its edge cuts straight through her glove, and red beads spring up on her now-exposed finger. “I was,” she says softly.
I drop my sieve and pull off her glove, examining the cut. It’s shallow enough that I don’t need to request bandages from the makeshift medical station onsite. I have several small ones in my bag that are up to the task.
She starts to protest as I pull one out, but I give her a pointed look and she relents, letting me clean the wound with swabs and a small bottle of alcohol.
“What can you tell me about the Prime of the Forest Realm?” I ask as I dab. “I’ve never met him.”
She inhales sharply, though it might be because of the alcohol stinging her wound. “He was a desperate man when I encountered him,” she says. “I’m not sure I saw his best side.”
“But perhaps his truest,” I push back.
I make one last swipe against her wound before putting away the swab, but this time she doesn’t flinch, either from my care or from my words.
Instead she nods, understanding what I mean.
“He had honor. He had loyalty to his own. He never abandoned a squadron, even if the odds were against them. But he was cruel to his enemy. To us. He took any shot he could, no matter how underhanded. Of course . . . we were doing just the same, at your father’s command. ”
I feel a surge of grief at the pain in her voice, one that makes the creatures within me shift.
When we split, our animals seem to pick favorites, dividing themselves between us.
The ones that live in me are the pets. The cats and dogs and rabbits.
Their soft furs brush up against the underside of my skin.
No matter how many times I hear about the war, it will never make sense to me why there had to be so much needless suffering. I press my lips together as I smooth a bandage over the pad of her finger. “That must have been hard for you. And for him. For everyone really, I suppose.”
She nods, slipping the glove back on. “It was war.”
I feel another stab of angst at her dismissiveness, but I don’t press her on it. Instead, I clear my throat, fiddling with the rest of the bandages as I put them back in my bag.
“Did you . . . ever meet his son?”
Her eyes catch on mine, clearly detecting that this is what I really want to know.
She fingers the new hole in her glove before responding.
“Only once,” she says. “He was extremely young, of course. Like you. So he wasn’t brought out for the battles.
But there was one night when Prime Merod directed us to attack deeper into the forest than we ever had before.
We didn’t realize until we arrived that we were attacking civilians.
And . . . Reltas was there. In one of the homes we invaded. Probably hiding from us.”
I let this sit with me, idly running my sieve through areas I’ve already cleared as I consider what that must have been like. “And . . . ?”
“I only caught a glimpse, but he was a small child, even for his age. Sort of wan and pale. Yet, for someone so young . . . he looked at me with such burning hatred. So fierce and so . . . hard. I’ve never forgotten it.”
“One can hardly blame him,” I say in a small voice.
“No,” Petrice agrees. “One cannot.”
I put my sieve down, distracted. Wondering if Reltas has healed from that day or if he still harbors that hurt and hatred close.
What has the last decade been like for him? What brought him to the point of wanting to marry me?
I want to ask for Petrice’s opinion, but our argument still lingers between us. Besides, it feels wrong to confide in her about this when we haven’t even told Silver yet. So I try to speak around it.
“I was talking to . . .”—I lower my voice—“Asset last night.” Petrice is one of the only people who knows about my new power, so this at least is not a secret.
“About the kinds of hard decisions one needs to make when ruling a realm. And . . . how to know which choice to make. Do you have any advice on that? In particular when the choice is . . . painful?” I wince, wishing I could be clearer.
Petrice lays a hand on my knee. “As Prime, you will have to make sacrifices,” she says gently. “That’s a core part of the job. But it will be up to you which ones you’re willing to make, and for what purposes you are willing to make them.”
“So you won’t counsel me?” I ask, bitterly unsurprised. I can feel my kitten’s paws kneading my insides in dismay.
“Without full information, I cannot. And besides . . . you have not always taken my counsel well.”
I feel the pinpricks of my kitten’s claws digging in.
She’s talking about our argument.
She’s talking about Livid.
I put my head down, lip quivering. “She’s dangerous,” I insist weakly. “We had to.”
“Anyone can be dangerous if they’re caged and ignored, Heart. And in my experience, no matter how hard we try, the parts that we push down have a tendency not to stay caged forever.”