It began when my mother kidnapped a child.
No, not a child. A baby. Three days out his mother's womb and wrapped up in linen in a basket. She stole him from a tower in the Deadlands on the command of my Lady, in a desperate attempt to avoid the fulfilling of a plan that would not be enacted until thirty-two years later.
She returned him to his father, who in turn handed the babe to one of his soldiers to keep him safe from harm and to be raised as a peasant. To keep suspicions from falling on Azura, my mother was sent to Nirn, to act as a sleeper agent. She was to hide away, close enough to the babe to observe the rising tide, but far enough away that even she would not know who he was if she chanced upon him. If she died, the plan would be ruined.
But even the greatest of plans go awry. My mother died when I was young, too young to know the truth of the plot. But chance offered up another option, an unplanned meeting on the road that thrust me straight into the life of the bastard prince himself.
I came into contact with him when I was still a child myself, unaware of the memories Azura had locked in the furthest spaces of my mind. The plan of the princes changed; I would watch over the child, grow with him, experience my childhood with him all the while unaware that I had the memories of my mother locked away. I would reach adulthood with him, when I would then be trusted to know the truth.
I was never supposed to fall in love with him.
The nine year old Lauraine started her life in Kvatch having been dragged there by an eleven year old boy who had declined to give her his name until they had been seated safely in the chapel.
She had been found on the road.
When she opened her eyes that morning, it was to find she was covered in soot and laying in the broken, burned down ruins of the alchemy shop. Scents of a dozen different ingredients hit her nose from the breeze, but the overpowering scent was that of burnt wood. The old, worn and weathered sign stood tall in the ground outside the building, seemingly the only thing to have escaped the blaze.
When she pulled herself from the rubble she sat and cried for her mother, unaware of her dead, burnt body on the second floor. Thankfully, it was unreachable as the stairs had burnt right through to ashes, but the young girl knew immediately that she was dead. Either killed in the blaze or murdered by those who had set upon them as her mother attempted to close shop for the night.
She sat, and she cried, and then she knew she was alone. As the sun rose to its highest point in the sky, Lauraine picked herself up from the rubble and left what remained of the walls of the shop, and stared ahead.
The familiar ruin, introduced by a tall and beautiful archway of Ayleid construction, seemed to her as though the only place she could shelter herself until someone found her. She was cold, and frightened, and the captivating ruin would most likely be her best shelter from the cold if she were to remain here at nightfall.
That was the moment the boy arrived. Her eyes snapped from the stonework of the eerie ruin before her to watch him come down the road; he had not seen her, and so Lauraine moved to the archway and hid behind it in order to keep her eyes on him.
As he approached, a dagger at his side and a knapsack on his shoulders, she realised he couldn't have been much older than her. He looked to be of a similar age, give or take a year or two, and she took a curious step forwards in order to get a closer look. She didn't realise she had her foot caught in a tree root until she moved forwards, stumbling with a cry of surprise. She felt a hot-white pain shoot up her ankle, but her cry had alerted more than just the boy to her presence.
A rat, curious and hungry, emerged from the bushes to sniff at her; it was half her size and filthy, and she knew from her mother's training that she could get an infection if it bit her. She tried to scoot back, but each jostle of her ankle sent a pain up her leg. The rat's whiskers tickled at her skin as it gave a sniff, and she would have laughed if the fear did not have her frozen in place. Before the animal could open its mouth to bite her, the boy from the road jumped out from behind a tree with a loud shout. Lauraine screamed in surprise, and the combined noise was enough to send the rat skittering off into the bushes.
They watched it flee for a moment, before both children looked at each other and erupted into peals of laughter. The boy moved over to her, one hand already out to help her to her feet, a grin on his face. Lauraine returned it, and tried to get to her feet as delicately as possible without moving her injured ankle.
"Thank you for your help." She smiled in thanks, but sensing her unsteadiness the boy allowed her to brace a hand on his shoulder to keep her balance as she kept her other foot off the floor.
"You're welcome." He returned her smile, before his expression changed to one of curiosity. "Begging your pardon, miss, but why are you here on the road on your own anyway?" The question was asked with undying curiosity as he bade her to sit down on a nearby broken wall, and Lauraine pointed to the alchemist shop across the road.
"I woke up this morning and the shop was burnt down. I remember mother fighting some bandits last night, but I fell asleep when the smoke started. I don't remember much of what happened." She watched him warily as he took his knapsack off and rummaged through it; she had to give a breath of relief when he pulled out a salve and some bandages.
"The alchemy shop is gone? That is a shame, for now the closest one is in the Imperial City!" The boy looked like he was telling himself to remember that information for later, and he removed the lid from the salve bottle. "This should help the pain, but it tastes disgusting."
Lauraine stared at him. He frowned, watching as she pointedly looked at the bottle and then back at him. When he said nothing further, she laughed. "Of course it tastes disgusting: you're not supposed to drink it."
Understanding crossed his features along with a red tint of an embarrassed blush, before he looked at the bottle as though it had done him a personal wrong. Shrugging at her amused laugh, he waited for her to pull her boot off before he handed her the salve. Lauraine took it, swiping a cold and greasy dollop of it over her ankle. It began to tingle, and she accepted the bandages from him with a question on her tongue.
"Why are you travelling alone?" She asked hesitantly, wary when she held out the roll of bandages and he sliced through it with the dagger.
"My mother sends me to Anvil on the first of every month, for their shops have more variety and the items are often fresher." He motioned for her to look inside the knapsack, and she was surprised to see it full of a variety of items. "The road is not too dangerous, and I usually stay close to the Imperial soldiers between the inns."
He helped her to her feet once she had secured the tightness of the bandage around her ankle, hoping it would allow it to move less. She still could not put much weight on it, and so he slung her arm around his shoulder. "If your parents and family are gone, what are you going to do?"
Lauraine paused, her eyes on the road rather than on the ruins of her house. The question brought tears to her eyes as she thought of her mother, and she shook her head.
"I have no other family. Do you come from one of the cities? Mother always told me to go to one of the chapels if anything happened to her shop."
"I do! I'm from Kvatch! Our chapel always rehomes orphans; you can come back with me!" The boy was excited, incredibly so; he had found a new friend and one he could take with him back to Kvatch. He completely forgot that the young girl had just seemingly lost her family.
Lauraine had wanted to cry, but could not ruin his laughter.
"Whoa, you got lucky. This is the first time that the Bellamont family have considered taking in someone from the church." The young boy who had dragged her to Kvatch with a grin on his face and a spring in his step stared at her now in awe. Sitting on the bench, Lauraine had no idea who the Bellamonts were, only that they were the finely dressed couple who were currently deep in conversation with the chapel priest. She'd been here three days with little luck, but after the priest had appealed to the morning congregation they had remained behind to speak with him. Lauraine hoped it went well: she was uncomfortable sleeping on the floor of the chapel.
The boy had been her constant companion the past few days, having never left her side despite his apparent duties at his own home. Lauraine caught his eyes as he tilted his head towards her, and the light streaming in through the stained-glass windows lit up his face. His eyes were a curious shade of blue, and she could not look away.
"Are they nice people?" She was scared; she wanted her own mother, and the boy's words were both comforting and unnerving. "And why haven't they taken anyone in before me?"
"They are nice, and they have a son of their own. They sponsor some of the town's events, like the spring festival and some of the Arena games. And maybe it's because you're a girl? Mostly the chapel has rehoused boys, and they get taken in quickly because they're needed on the farms." He shrugged, leaning against a barrel with his arms crossed over his chest.
"Ah."
"Oh, gods!" His voice was alarmed, and Lauraine turned to look at him in worry at the alarm in his voice. He stared at her, and the horror was aimed at her.
"What, what is it?"
"What is your name? I just realised I never asked!" Lauraine laughed at the panic in his voice, his own breach of propriety shocking him and amusing her, and she held her hand out to him the way her mother had taught her to.
"My name is Lauraine."
He took her hand, shaking it more enthusiastically than was perhaps warranted, and then used the grip to pull her to her feet.
"I'm Martin. Now come on, they're looking this way."
Having raided the bandit camp in the dead of night, Lauraine was satisfied to see that her time in jail had not ruined her sneaking skills. She left the bandit camp with only one wound, from a dog she had not expected to see, a new quiver full of steel arrows, a brand new bow and a delightfully warm fur-lined cloak. Greaves stolen from a chest were filled with enough gold coins to rent herself a room at the inn not far from the ruin, and she had only been forced to take the life of the dog and the bandit on night watch. The rest were either sleeping or in the ruin.
She had waited all day for the camp to become silent, had stood in the cold at the edge of the sewers waiting for them to fall asleep, and it had been well worth the wait.
The light of the inn lit up the road ahead, a shining beacon in the coming darkness.
Lauraine felt a dread overtake her that she had not felt before in this life.