Chapter 15 #2
"I'll cover it," the young man from the window said, setting down a pair of lahr on her table. Something about his tone seemed almost annoyed.
The tavern maid quickly scraped them up and walked back to the kitchens.
"Thank y—"
"You always this helpless?" His voice was laced with contempt. "Or just spoiled?"
"I'm sorry," Mirielle said earnestly, "I'll repay you." Her voice was small.
He just scoffed. "You should go back home, princess. This place will eat you alive."
Before she could answer, he turned and walked back toward his chair, dropping heavily in his seat and reaching for his mug.
Mirielle decided not to finish her breakfast, feeling like she didn't deserve it, and retreated upstairs.
To her horror, the man followed. She could hear his heavy footsteps keeping pace behind her.
Her pace quickened. Instead of going to her room where she could be cornered, she decided to try and escape through the service stairs. She walked at a near run to the end of the hall and stumbled down the crooked passage.
When she tumbled into the alley a cold, wet air hit her.
Her stomach dropped.
There was nobody in the alley. Only cold fog breathing against dirtied windows and smoothed stone.
She ran.
Her boots splashed through slush and icy puddles as panic rose higher in her chest. She could hear her own heartbeat now thundering in her ears alongside her panicked breathing.
She turned only to find a dead end, so she quickly doubled back and ran through a skinny street pinched between two rows of houses.
For a moment she thought she had escaped him.
Then heavy boot steps sounded behind her.
He emerged with infuriating ease, hands in his pockets, sword on his back.
"Leave me alone!" she lashed out in panic.
"You're terrible at this," he replied.
"What does that even mean?"
"You keep picking dead ends."
Mirielle looked at the passage in front of her. To her horror, it ended in a solid stone wall.
Panic surged through her. Her eyes darted desperately around the narrow alley. No escape. No doors. No people.
Only him.
He tilted his head slightly. “You scare easy.”
Mirielle backed away until cold stone pressed against her spine. “Please leave me alone." Her voice was small and desperate.
Something unreadable flickered across his face then. It wasn't pity or anger. It was almost annoyance...
...with himself.
Before he could speak, a cold voice cut through the alley.
"What the hell are you doing, Dane?"
The man straightened instantly.
Mirielle’s heart lurched and she looked toward the alley entrance where Reis stood. His large, cloaked frame nearly took up the whole width of the passage. His face was laced with irritation. Snow dusted the dark fur lining his cloak. His expression had gone deathly still.
His eyes moved once over Mirielle pressed against the wall, then slowly to Dane. The silence that followed felt dangerous.
Dane looked entirely unimpressed by it.
“She ran,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I can see that.”
Relief hit Mirielle so hard her knees almost gave out. She crossed the alley quickly and curled into Reis’s side. Fear still lingered openly across her features.
Reis softened.
Dane saw it.
"What did I tell you?" Reis asked quietly, still looking at Mirielle.
"To watch her. And I did."
"I didn't tell you to stalk her like a petty thug."
"She ran." Dane shrugged.
"I wonder why."
"She's alive, isn't she?"
That earned Dane a hard look. "How do you expect to protect her if she's terrified of you?"
This time Dane didn't have an answer. A cold wind swept through the alley. Mirielle shivered, having left her cloak in her room.
Reis noticed without even looking. With one smooth motion, he pulled off his heavy fur-lined cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders, shielding her from the cold.
Dane watched the gesture carefully, saw the way Mirielle unconsciously moved closer to Reis afterward.
Reis’s eyes returned to Dane, sharp as blades. “We’ll discuss this later."
Then, with Mirielle tucked under his arm, he turned for the tavern.
*
Mirielle immediately brightened when she saw Gerald, Kay and Marta in the tavern, only for her cheer to be squandered when she saw their solemn faces.
They had lost their home and Mirielle couldn't help but feel like it was all her fault.
"Now don't you go looking at me like that, girl," Marta scolded with a hard look. "I'm sad I lost my home, but don't ye go blaming yourself for the actions of foolish men."
Lettie nodded in agreement from beside Kay. Kellan was watching her silently with concern etched into his face.
"There's no time for that now. I hear we have something to celebrate!" Marta said, smiling.
Mirielle looked around in confusion as Reis tensed next to her.
Then Reis looked down at her. A vulnerable look crossed his face. "We're getting married today." His voice was almost apologetic.
Mirielle's heartbeat stumbled. Reis had told her they would get married soon after crossing into Kaldyr. She didn't realize it would be this soon.
Then Mirielle remembered the wedding night and she went bright pink. She didn't know exactly what happened on a wedding night but she was pretty sure nudity was involved.
Reis noticed it but wisely chose to ignore it.
"Oh," was the only syllable she could muster.
"You are safer as the Queen of Kaldyr than the Princess of Ambersaith," Reis said quietly.
The Queen of Kaldyr. Mirielle looked at the floor as she tried to process the sheer enormity of it. She had only been in the country for a single day and she was expected to rule over people that had lived here their entire lives.
Dane scoffed from behind them and Reis gave him a furious look. Even Kellan winced.
"We need to get you ready!" Lettie jumped up from her chair, practically singing. She grabbed Mirielle's hand and began pulling her upstairs. Marta followed, grinning behind them.
"Lettie," Reis called, his voice unusually fragile, "tell her about the rite."
Lettie’s excitement dimmed slightly with understanding. She nodded once. Then the three women disappeared upstairs.
Reis remained still for a long moment afterward, staring toward the staircase with visible conflict etched into his face.
Then he seized Dane by the back of the neck. "Outside,” he growled and shoved him bodily through the tavern doors.
*
Dane followed Reis through the stable yard. It was heavy laden with mist that veiled corners and doorways into grey silhouettes and turned weary workers into ghosts huddled in their cloaks from the wet cold.
"She’ll never survive the north, Reis.” Dane was visibly irritable as he trudged behind Reis. His boots crunched over gravel as the cold, misted air bit his neck and dampened his hair, pasting it against his forehead.
"She is too soft. It will eat her alive."
Reis scowled at him from over his shoulder. “That is why she has me."
“She’s weak.”
Reis rounded on Dane, clearly angry.
“She is strong in ways neither of us had to learn. Ways you do not understand yet.”
Dane looked up at Reis, his eyes dark with challenge. “She makes you weaker.”
“If protecting someone I care about is weakness, then the man I was before her was not worth keeping." His voice lowered. "You of all people should know.”
Dane's expression shifted uneasily into something foul and unsure as the words hit Dane in a place somewhere deep and soft on his soul.
“She has spent her entire life surrounded by men stronger and bigger than her. Men who frightened her for sport, men who enjoyed watching her panic.” His tone turned cold as iron. “You will not resemble them again.”
Dane’s face softened at last. His gaze dropped to his boots. “I’m not like that.”
“Then stop behaving like it,” Reis growled through clenched teeth.
Dane stood quietly for a long moment as the irritation behind his expression seemed to settle and die. He realized that Reis was not merely angry, he was disappointed. And maybe he had every right to be.
Reis looked at Dane with eyes sharper than forged steel. “You think strength means being frightening." His eyes narrowed. "That if you scare them, they'll obey you."
Dane said nothing.
“That only works on things stronger than you. Using your strength to frighten a woman like Mirielle does not make you powerful.” His voice hardened. “It makes you pathetic.”
Dane flinched.
Reis stepped closer. His massive form towered over Dane's smaller one. “A strong man knows exactly how dangerous he is." His tone lowered into something almost soft. “That is why he's careful with the people who aren't."
Snow drifted between them in thin silver spirals. The wind howled softly through the stable clearing, bending lanterns to its will.
After a long silence, Dane admitted quietly, “I didn’t know she’d be afraid of me.”
Reis’s expression finally softened, though only by a fraction.
“That is because no one ever taught you to consider what it is like to be afraid all the time.”