Caspian
She was still watching him.
He smiled, and her eyes widened.
The woman’s gaze fell down to her hands.
Suddenly, he was very glad he had found her.
Though it did appear that she was well muscled, her frame seemed so small against the dark silhouette of the pines looming over them.
She had nothing to defend herself but a hunting knife on her belt.
If there really was something in these woods…
His eyes scanned the outskirts of their camp for movement.
“I’ve heard stories about you.” Her soft voice drew his focus back at once. Her gaze remained fixed on her hands as they twisted nervously in her lap. “Is it true they call you the White Knight?”
“I suppose,” Caspian said. He’d never cared much for the nickname, or the myriad of tales that seemed to sprout from it by the day.
“You saved the prince’s life at Icespire Pass?”
Caspian studied the crackling fire. The log was beginning to catch as he had hoped. “Yes, we fought together there.”
“How did you…?”
“Save him?”
She looked into his eyes for the first time since he had caught her hiding in the brush. “How did you survive?”
Caspian took in a heavy breath, turning back to the fire. “I nearly didn’t.”
He could feel her gaze tracing over his scar.
He had been unconscious for weeks before he woke in the field hospital.
His head injury had been severe, not to mention the broken bones.
“I would have been written off, a lost cause, if the prince hadn’t demanded that the healers do everything they could to save me.
Even with all their help, it was months before I was back on my feet. ”
She nodded. “And now you’re a lord?”
He shuffled, uncomfortable under all her curiosity.
“I do my best to look after the lands the prince put in my charge.” Some regarded him as little more than a folktale these days.
The soldier who became a lord, a hero who had single handedly saved the heir to the realm in the war.
These were the kinder tales. Others thought he had coerced the title through brute force or even magic.
In either case, the events of that day had transformed him in the eyes of everyone else.
But beneath the title and the keep, the legacy and the responsibility, he still felt like the same person.
Her eyes found him again, narrowing. “So, what are you doing out here?”
“Something’s been attacking the farms, eating livestock, destroying the crops. Something more than wolves.”
“You mean to hunt it, then?” she asked, a little more energy in her voice than before.
Caspian paused to study her. She didn’t seem the least bit frightened at the notion of a terrible monster in their midst. “It is my duty, yes.”
“I could help you,” she offered without hesitation. “I’m an excellent tracker.”
Absolutely not. That was his first thought. His second was that a tracker might be exactly the thing he needed. He had no doubts about defeating the beast, whatever it was, but he’d searched an entire day and had felt like no more than a fool stumbling through the woods.
“You don’t need to refuse in order to protect me,” she said, as if she were somehow able to read his thoughts. “I’m more capable than I seem. I can handle myself.”
There was a sure twist of her lips as she spoke, a confidence that conjured a ghost of a smile within him as well. “I’ll take all the help I can get.”
Satisfaction blossomed within her as she nodded.
“For now, we should, um-” Caspian looked at his carefully laid bedroll.
“-sleep…” She had no supplies but what she wore.
Nowhere to rest but the ground. He supposed if he were to lie on his side then she could- Caspian pushed the thought of her body pressed against his own far from his mind.
“You can have the bed. I can sleep on the ground. It’s-“
“Of course not,” she refused him. “I have my cloak.” She demonstrated wrapping it around her shoulders until she was nearly hidden within.
Caspian rubbed his neck. “You’ll freeze.”
“I’ve spent more than one winter night in the woods,” she remarked. “At least there’s a fire.”
“You’re sure?” he asked even as she began settling into a soft patch of pine needles.
She just looked at him with a raised brow that dared him to ask again.
Caspian settled into his own bed with an uncomfortable guilt gnawing at him.
He should have insisted. Her clothes were so much thinner than his.
The snow was going to leak right through that cloak.
But at the same time, he didn’t want to give her the impression that he saw her as weak. Caspian turned toward the fire.
She was wrapped in her green cloak, hood drawn and facing away from him. It was impossible to tell if she was sleeping or not.
“I didn’t ask for your name,” he said quietly.
She shifted, clearly still awake, but did not answer at once. The silence stretched out between them, and he found himself holding his breath, anticipation coiling within him.
“It’s Erin,” she offered at last.
Caspian rolled onto his back, looking up at the scattered stars through the reaching pine limbs. “You can call me Caspian.”
“Good night, Caspian.” Her voice carried to him so softly that for sometime as he lay awake he wondered if he had heard it at all. But he must have, because those three words swam through his mind again and again even long after he had fallen asleep.