Chapter 19
Sleep was elusive. I couldn’t stop thinking about Parisar…and the kiss. He kissed me. Parisar kissed me. He kissed me and…then pretended like it didn’t happen.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t true. And really, what was I expecting? It wasn’t like we were going to somehow become a couple, right? It was a birthday kiss. It wasn’t anything special…except…
It felt special.
When we got back to the main house, Parisar was just Parisar again. He practically ignored me. I didn’t know what to make of it. Had the kiss really happened at all? Had I dreamed it?
No. I touched my lips in the dark. No, the kiss had really happened. And it was more than just a birthday kiss. There was more behind the way he kissed me than just a well-wish to celebrate the day I came into the world.
I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. Sim and Cor slept deeply, their breathing long and slow. Tain snored. Not enough to wake me, but enough to stop me from going to sleep.
I rolled over again with a huff.
‘Go to sleep,’ Tain grumbled.
I froze. She wasn’t asleep?
‘Or get up, but just choose and stop keeping the rest of us awake.’
I squeezed my eyes shut and willed sleep to come but…nothing.
With a silent sigh, I slid out of bed and tip-toed out of the room, trying to be as quiet as I could. I pulled on a coat from the peg by the door and slipped someone’s boots on. I didn’t know whose. They were too big for me, but I didn’t want to use any light and potentially wake someone else up.
Closing the door quietly behind me, I stepped out onto the porch of the house and breathed in the cool air. It smelled like snow, although the days of snow fall should have been far behind us. There were no stars visible through the thick cloud cover.
‘What are you doing out here, Princess?’
I turned to see Parisar leaning against a post at the other end of the porch. He was rugged up as well and held a clay bottle in his hand. Mead. Or wine, but I thought it was more likely to be mead.
‘What are you doing out here?’ I asked, sauntering toward him.
‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he said, lifting the bottle to his lips.
I watched as he swallowed and then tore my gaze away. My hand lifted to the locket around my neck. The weight already felt familiar, as if it had always been there, as if it was part of me.
I reached for the bottle and plucked it from his hand, lifting it to my lips and taking a swig. I spluttered. He grinned and took the bottle back.
‘Careful, Princess.’
I glared at him. ‘Why do you do that?’
‘Do what?’ He looked innocent, as if he didn’t know what I was talking about.
‘Sometimes you call me Princess, and other times you call me Snow. Why do you do that?’
He shrugged and took another drink before answering. ‘You are a princess,’ he said, as if that answered the question.
‘We were friends once,’ I replied.
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘It was,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I never understood what happened. Why we stopped being friends. One day you were smiling at me, and we were laughing, and then the next you looked at me as if I were no better than the dirt on your shoe.’
‘I wasn’t the one who changed,’ he said. ‘You did.’
I frowned, looking out to the empty yard. The chill breeze stung my cheeks and made my eyes water. ‘That’s not how I remember it.’
Parisar stood from his slouch and swigged from the bottle again. ‘And you are always right,’ he said, attempting to bow with a long sweep of his arm, sloshing mead over the porch and very nearly over me.
Parisar stumbled, and I caught him, putting his arm over my shoulder and taking his weight.
‘You’re drunk,’ I said.
‘No. You’re drunk,’ he replied, his head lolling to the side, crashing into mine.
I sighed. I’d come out here to get some clarity and maybe quiet my mind enough for me to sleep. Instead, I was left with more questions. Why was Parisar like this? Had something happened?
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get you inside and into bed.’
‘Can’t sleep,’ he mumbled, nuzzling his face into the crook of my neck. It had to be uncomfortable. I was shorter than him, and he had to contort himself to do it. ‘You smell good,’ he whispered, taking a big breath in.
‘Are you sniffing me?’ I asked, not willing to admit that I’d done the same thing earlier.
‘You remind me of sunny days in the middle of winter when there is a thick layer of freshly fallen snow. Early in the morning, when the sun is just cresting the horizon.’
‘Um…thanks?’
He sighed. ‘Best time of day. Winter is my favourite season. Did you know that? I love winter. I love snow.’
I didn’t know what to say to that. Most people thought snow was little more than a nuisance. I’d heard the workers in the castle complain about it often enough. Sure, it was pretty in the right light, but it was more of a pain than useful. In fact, it stopped people from doing the things they needed to do, and it could even kill.
I always wondered why something so…annoying and dangerous was what my parents chose to name me after.
I struggled to get Parisar into the house. He was a dead weight, and a couple of months ago, I wouldn’t have had a chance. But I was stronger now. Not as strong as I could be, but stronger than I was.
I didn’t bother trying to get him into his room and risk waking the others. Instead, I manoeuvred him across the room to the pallet I usually sat on when I did the mending at night. I lowered him down, not as gently as I should have, and then pulled a rug over him before going to the fireplace and stoking the embers. I didn’t know how long he had been outside, and I didn’t want him to get a chill.
Finally, I removed the bottle from his clutched hand and took it over to the table, out of his reach. I turned to look at him. I had never seen Parisar like this. I had never seen him as anything other than completely in control and calm. What had made him drink tonight?
I would never know the answer to that. I yawned and then picked up the bottle of mead. I took another drink, prepared for the taste this time. If nothing else, it might help me sleep.
Morning came far too quickly, well, it came far too quickly after I finally fell asleep. The others weren’t quiet as they got up and dressed, but then they had never been considerate of my sleep. Sim was the only one who showed any friendliness toward me, and that was only ever when we were alone. Tain outright despised me, and Cor…well, I didn’t really know what she thought of me. She was ambivalent at best or completely disregarded me at worst. I was nothing more important to her than an annoying gnat.
I rose without complaint and dressed in leggings and a tunic. I grabbed my ridiculous wooden sword and followed the others out. Instead of going off on my own like I normally did, I continued to follow them to the training yard.
There were a few surprised stares when I arrived, and if Tain noticed, she didn’t say or do anything to acknowledge it.
Parisar was already there, looking none the worse for wear after his midnight drunkenness. He didn’t even look up when I walked past, and I didn’t know whether that meant he’d completely forgotten about the night before or if he was embarrassed by it.
I couldn’t read, him and I think that was one of the reasons I had such a hard time trusting him. He could lie to me with such precision, that knowing the difference between a lie and truth was impossible. How could I trust that? How could I take him at his word when he sometimes did one thing but said something else?
The kiss for example.
I shook my head to clear it. I would not think about the kiss. It was in the past, and his behaviour since had told me all I needed to know. It hadn’t meant anything to him. That was a perfect example of why I couldn’t trust him. How could he kiss me like that and then pretend as if nothing had happened?
I shook my head again, and then my shoulders, rolling my neck and swinging my arms to focus myself. Everyone had lined up, and I stood at the back, behind everyone else—out of their way and out of their eye-line.
The group started the kata without any apparent prompt, and I fell into the rhythm with them. My kata was the same, if simplified. The general shapes and poses were the same, but the transitions and grace with which the others performed it put me to shame. It would have been easy to get disheartened and give up. Maybe that had been Tain’s intent all along, to show me how inadequate I was. But I was beyond that embarrassment and humiliation now…okay, I wasn’t, but I was pretending I was. Besides, if I wanted to improve, I had to know how and where to improve. I couldn’t simply go on practising on my own and hoping for the best.
So, instead of giving up and running back to my own little hideaway—which was absolutely what I wanted to do—I stuck it out, and I watched. I watched the way Tain held her sword. I watched the way Sim flowed from one pose to the next. I watched the way Cor used her strength and speed. Weylei had such grace and lightness on his feet, so I took note of how he stood and where he placed his weight. Zeyr was more mechanical than Weylei, but still just as skilled. I could see how his precision would be an advantage in a fight, knowing exactly where to slide the blade for devastating effect. Breust was pure, raw power, but I already knew that. And Parisar? Parisar was all of it. He was a blur of precise yet graceful movement that left me breathless if I watched him for too long.
Or maybe my breathlessness came from the energy I was exerting. I worked hard on my own, but being with the group meant working harder just so I didn’t make a fool of myself. By the time we’d finished, sweat dripped from me, despite the cold. And it was cold. I could still smell snow, and by the looks of the clouds above, we would get a spring snowfall either today or tomorrow.
Next, everyone paired off, and I was left facing Tain, a smirk on her face revealing everything I needed to know about what would come next. She was going to teach me some painful lessons.
I straightened my shoulders and kept my chin up. It was just as important to learn how to take a hit as how to give one, and the gleam in Tain’s eye told me that was exactly what she was going to teach me.
It hurt.
A lot.
Even though I knew she was taking it easy on me, which was surprising. Tain had picked up a dull training blade to teach me, but it didn’t make it hurt less. But it wasn’t the straight up beating I’d expected. Tain would attack, and when I failed to defend myself, she would go back, reset and take it slower, instructing me on how to avoid or defend, explain where my feet should be and how I should hold my blade. Once she had shown me, we would reset again and she would attack, a bit faster this time, but still slow enough that I could practise what she’d just taught me. I would love to believe I was some sort of sword-fighting genius and I was a star pupil, but that would be a lie. The bruises that covered me were testament to just how bad I was. I expected ridicule, but Tain just kept patiently teaching me. Pain was a great teacher. By the end of the session, I had successfully defended myself against her. Just the once, and at a way slower speed than she would use in a real fight, but still, I was learning.
‘You did well,’ Tain said, handing me a ladle of water from the well.
I snorted in response before drinking greedily.
‘You can’t compare yourself to me or any of the others,’ she said. ‘You’ve only been training for a month or so and never against an opponent. I have been training since I was old enough to hold a sword. It is going to take time.’
I nodded, not sure how to respond to her when she was being nice to me.
‘We’re going to wash up before breakfast,’ she said.
‘In this?’ I asked, looking up at the sky as an icy cold rain began to fall. ‘It’ll be freezing.’
Tain smirked. ‘There’s something we haven’t told you,’ she said.
I lifted my eyebrows at her, not surprised.
‘There’s a hot spring further in the woods. That’s where we go to wash.’
‘A…hot…spring?’ I asked.
Tain laughed. ‘Yeah. C’mon.’