Author's Note: I do not and never will own the Heralds of Valdemar, or any other bit of it, for that matter.
Written for the One Prompt, Many Fandoms competition. AU and apologies if details are fuzzy, it's been a while since I read it.
There's a horse on the road.
Talia carefully peeks between the bushes, her heart stuttering in her chest. It has been a week since she left the Holding, stealing away as night fell. She left before she could be married off, she left before her brother could finish the job, she left before the First-wife could bludgeon every last bit of defiance from her stubborn frame. She left on foot, with her only belongings twisted up in a change of clothes and a blanket she swiped from the laundry, food jumbled together in the heap of fabric.
It's not been easy, and Talia won't pretend it has. She lives a ghost's life in the trees, flitting from place to place. She can't go to any other Holding, she has no doubt that word has spread about her. A thief, a layabout, a wayward, disobedient child who needs more than a firm hand to be tamed. She refuses to be broken.
The horse is white and seems to have lost its rider. For a moment, she thinks of Companions and tears prick her eyes. How she's longed to be a Herald...
But dreams of being a Herald are just that. Dreams. And she's packed away childhood fancies, left them trampled in the dust with the crumbs of her first pilfered breakfast. No Companion would Choose a traitor like Talia, who's betrayed her family and all she holds precious.
If she's truthful to herself, she knows that she didn't leave much behind that she'll miss. If anything now, she misses the familiarity, and that's not enough to hold dear when the sun dips below the horizon and the world is bathed in shadows.
Talia freezes, her fingers trembling on the edge of the leaves. The horse seems to have sensed her, trotting toward her. Her, or its lost rider? She twists her head, searching the wilderness behind her when her foot slips, and she topples down the hillside, landing on the road with a painful thump that drives the breath from her lungs. The horse wickers, and suddenly, its head is filling her vision, and she is falling into its eyes, impossibly blue eyes...
My name is Rolan and I Choose you, he whispers into her head, filling her with everything that she's ever wanted, everything that she's long thought impossible. Family and belonging and love.
Now for the moment...forget, he murmurs, with a tinge of sadness, and Talia shakes her head, stumbling to her feet and holding onto the horse's saddle for balance. Perhaps it is a Companion, she decides critically, looking into the fathomless blue eyes.
"I'll take you to Haven," she says, awkwardly clambering onto its back. "They'll know what to do with you," and he plods gently down the road.
