Crystallofolia

by Halfpenny

Trapped in the snows of Nohr, in the shadow of her brother and a stolen baby sister, Camilla burns.

Trigger Warnings and Tags: child neglect, mentions of warfare and child soldiers, mentions of kidnapping, canon-typical training violence, assassination attempts. Themes of found family, father-daughter relationships

Her father sits on the Throne of Thorns Camilla wonders what family it is that she's apparently supposed to be protecting.

---

She was a savant with axes and Xander was a mule's ass in all languages. She almost wished she'd trained with a bow just so she could have the reach to puncture him across the sparring grounds, but then again that's what throwing axes were for. Cleaning grime from dragon claws and gutting brothers. "You can't use axes on a flying mount," Xander sighed for the fifth time. "You have to get within striking distance of the enemy to make it count, which defeats the whole purpose of a flying mount in the first place."

"I'm learning other weapons." She hated him a little more than usual. "The weapons master says I'm too small for lances anyway."

"If you're going to wield axes, at least choose a different mount. If you try getting in that close to an enemy with a dragon, your opponent is going to take out its wing."

"No one asked you."

"You asked me. Just now. When you asked me 'how can I fight on my dragon better."

"I meant how can I fight better on my dragon with my axes."

"You can't," Xander said. "There's a reason lances and bows are used in aerial combat. Accept your limitations. Move on. I can talk to the weapons master and get you fitted with a new weapon before the day's out."

Camilla's sweat bristled in the scratches Marzia had given her earlier that day. She gave Xander no warning when she swung at him blade-first. Xander blocked the attempt with the haft of his spear and knocked her into the dirt with a blow to her cheek, and the blood that welled up between her teeth was more infuriating than painful. She deliberately spat the mouthful out over his boots as he crouched by her. He ignored the insult, smoothing her hair out of her sweaty face to check her eyes. "I don't want to train with you anymore." Camilla swung at him and he caught her fist. "I don't care what Father says. All you ever do is hurt me."

Xander's eyes were compassionate. His words weren't. "I hurt you because I don't want the second in line for the Nohrian throne to be brought down by some prepubescent Hoshidan brat with a wooden throwing star. Better me knocking you into the dust than them. At least I pick you back up."

"I don't care about Nohr. I care about my dragon."

"Hoshido doesn't care what you care about. If you truly want to keep your dragon, educate yourself on your combat options so you won't lose her when it comes time to defend her. Caring about your dragon is caring about Nohr."

Camilla rubbed her fist under her nose and smeared blood. "I'm overdue for my lessons," Xander said, standing. "Keep going. Another hour of drills, then an hour of footwork. If the weapons master says you did your due diligence, then you can see your dragon. For Nohr."

Camilla expressed her patriotism for Nohr by throwing her axe twenty-nine times against her target until it crashed broke through the other side. She left without permission to escape in the dragon pens, hauling up in the loft to watch Marzia finish chewing her emaciated deer with baleful eyes. "I don't want it," Camilla said.

Marzia's curl of flame was a derisive flicker over the deer's skull. Camilla loved her more than usual. She extricated her venison jerky from her satchel and navigated the snack carefully with a sore mouth, and all in all that was how she spent her sixth birthday. Trying to gut brothers while her dragon gutted deer.

---

.

Her first milk tooth came loose by the time she received her first Fire Tome. She alternated between pulling it back against her gums and pushing it forward to poke against her lower lip as she flipped through the pages, hissing with delight when the occasional spark rolled off the text. "'Talent'." Gunter was dry as a Plegian summer on the far side of her chambers. "Her 'talent' will burn down the entirety of the east wing, and that's only if she doesn't decide to visit the stables first."

"All the more reason to start her young."

"The girl is barely into her primary lessons reading Nohrian standard, let alone ancient glyphs."

"Garon allowed you a leash for her, not a muzzle." The castle's current weapon master was a grizzled Kougan expatriate with skin like old leather. The only smile Camilla had ever seen from him was when she'd accidentally missed the target with her throwing axe and hit a squire in the thigh. "You've coddled her long enough."

"Proceeding with care is not the same as coddling. It is too soon."

"Magic must be planted early to allow time for it to sprout properly," the court magus said. "It grows with the child. Your overzealous caution already cost Xander his potential to grow as a mage; I won't permit you to stunt the girl's."

"Garon has placed the onus on me to decide the pace of the girl's curriculum. Should she choose to remain on wyvernback, Tomes will have no place there."

"Dragon, not wyvern. We have begun to breed them selectively according to size and tolerance to magic. The beast Camilla currently rides is one of such stock. If she isn't to use magic, the dragon will need to be reassigned."

Camilla was barely listening. The cover of the Tome was made out of a dense material she didn't recognize. She continued to push her tooth around idly with her tongue, fascinated with the way the air changed around her as she navigated the text. One a whiff of campfire smoke to her nose, one a greasy sensation of cold ash on her tongue. One – a nearly-blank page embossed with the ancient Sorushin symbol for flame – brought a noxious odor of sulfur so strong it made her eyes water.

The Magus was still speaking. "If the Hoshidans have alicorns capable of tolerating dark spells, we must respond in kind. The wyvern sub-species we've bred has the ability to meet that demand. We must diversify if we expect to be able to defeat Hoshido in the air."

"That is what archers are for. No matter how selectively you breed, wyverns have limitations," Gunter said. "Their hides are not as resilient to sudden temperature changes as an alicorn's. Even if that weren't so, they're stubborn and spiteful. It would be next to impossible to train new soldiers without multiple fatalities."

The next page held only a line that bottomed out into the right margin. When Camilla drew her finger across it, the line smoked under her touch but didn't burn her flesh. She lifted her finger on instinct to her lips and blew, and a trail of fire billowed from it like a banner.

"I will not permit you to burden her with thoughts of a future that may not come to pass. She won't—"

"Leave us," Camilla said absently.

All three men stopped talking.

Her fingertip was unblemished. Utterly entranced, Camilla turned to the next page and sucked in her breath with delight when she found it glowing pieces of broken text the darted around like fireflies.

Gunter cleared his throat. "I beg your pardon, my lady Camilla."

"Leave us."

"Which of us are you dismissing?"

"All of you. 'Us' meant me and the Tome." Camilla tried to catch a firefly phrase again and this time succeeded. The phrase wriggled a little under her grip, then surrendered and slid up the skin to her knuckle. When she clucked her tongue there was a fizzle and a pop behind her eyes, and her next swallow was redolent of smoke. "Close the door on your way out."

Gunter shifted his weight, but it was the magus who spoke first. "It was for you to examine, not keep. It would be remiss of me to allow you to have that unsupervised before you are versed in your own abilities."

"Then you have misstepped," she said, borrowing a phrase her father often used shortly before a servant vanished mysteriously but permanently. "You have already given it to me, and it's poor manners to take back a gift."

"It isn't a gift any more than your axes and your wyvern are gifts. It is a tool of war and is to be respected."

"I am also my father's tool of war. Should I not also be respected?"

Gunter's expression was the one he reserved for Leo's extravagant nightly theses on why he shouldn't have to go to bed. "It is a beginner's Tome – scarce enough to set a pile of dry tinder ablaze, but well enough to blind an eye," the magus said. "I cannot in good conscience allow you to keep it while you remain untrained."

The Tome whispered secrets underneath her palm that tickled like tongues. She could feel the heatless sparks gathering under her fingers and all of a sudden she felt feverish. Reckless. She'd been wasting time in the training yards. This was far more addictive.

"Camilla," Gunther said.

What. Camilla tasted smoke. She sucked it off her upper lip with a curl of her tongue.

"These are not your axes, nor your spears." It was the weapons master unexpectedly this time who spoke. "Tomes are treacherous. They need to be broken in order to heed their masters."

"Then I will break it."

"Or it may break you."

"It may try," Camilla sighed, dearly looking forward to it.

Gunter as usual was the last one out. He anchored himself with a hand on the door, a war in his eyes as he watched her. He was mercenary enough to teach through pain but sentimental enough to occasionally regret it, which was a mercy she'd taken advantage of since toddlerhood. "Do not keep it near your bed," he said. "Failing that precaution, take care enough to keep it on the stand at least rather than under your pillow. Failing that precaution may result in consequences beyond what staves can repair."

"I understand," she said, mostly to get him to shut up. She pressed her fingertip to another firefly spark and swallowed a hiss of greed as it warmed her belly.

"If you set fire to your chambers or any part of this building," Gunter said, "I will personally see to it that your tutor has you rewrite the entire Ten-Year Nohrian Armistice Declaration with your non-dominant hand."

The Armistice Declaration was a hundred forty-seven pages long. Camilla said again, perhaps more sullenly, "I understand."

Gunter rapped the doorframe smartly, expressionless, and disappeared behind the door.

Camilla washed herself in her corner basin, getting behind her ears and knees, toweling off briskly enough to make her skin hum. The castle sat preternaturally still this time of the night, breathing with creaking ribs as the structure settled and the guards moved through the corridors at timed intervals.

The moon was slipping in and out from behind the clouds and making the thorns by her window glint like little teeth. Shivering, Camilla flung herself onto her bed in her nightdress, dragging the heavy Tome into her lap. She let her fingertips explore the engravings once more before delving inside. She returned to the page where she'd drawn the line of fire, closing her nose off in preparation for the smoke, but this time there was no reaction.

Annoyed, she flipped to the next page, then the next. The pages she'd already experimented with were sallow as wood ash under her touch, and eventually she came to the realization that it was a trainer's Tome and likely had only one spell per page.

It took nearly a half an hour to find a page that allowed her to summon and a half an hour after that to realize she'd miscalculated. The energy drain had been subtle and had fed from her as she'd sat. Only trying to use the chamber pot introduced her to her own wobbly legs and swaying vision.

With the last of her stubbornness she managed to conjure a tiny ball of flame, rolling it clumsily between two knuckles for a while before it faded away. Exhausted, she slammed the Tome closed and shoved it onto her bed stand, yanking her covers up over her head, and all in all that was the last time she conjured fire for two months.

---

.

Father had commissioned multiple portraits of Xander's mother long after her death. He'd continued to line the halls with them as Camilla had been growing in another mistress's belly, as Camilla had grown up thinking that this was normal, probably: fetishizing dead women while actively bedding new women. Camilla often wondered if her sex was to blame, but the reality was that Garon's love was simply finite. He had a certain amount to spare each day for whatever child tapped it first, and once the supply was out, there were no more depths to plumb.

Camilla had grown up with tales of Queen Katarina's kindness, but the portraits told a different story. Hoshidan beauty was perfumed with flowers: Nohrian beauty was forged in steel. Xander had inherited the same golden hair and ice-colored eyes, but that beauty only made his occasional cruelty more jarring. Beauty that slipped in like a knife through the ribs.

Caught without a personal narrative, Camilla wandered the halls and wondering what traits she was supposed to have inherited from her mother. There were far fewer portraits of her and they were typically hung in the less-traveled halls. Where Xander's mother had been honey and steel, Camilla's mother had been dusk and smoke. Songs referenced cunning, not kindness. She had apparently seduced Garon with a tongue clever both in and out of bed and he'd spent months under her thrall while his frantic advisors failed to win back his attention.

Camilla didn't adapt to expectations because she couldn't. When it became clear that her latent magical aptitude was influenced by emotion, the court magus suggested a sensory regimen to replace the emotional triggers with something she could control. Camilla spared maybe a fraction of her attention to the lessons and significantly more attention to the way Father was currently fixating on the Nohrian noblewoman from Roskeld with buttery hair and a slow, secretive smile. Leo's mother had fallen out of Garon's favor even faster than Camilla's. Leo wasn't Camilla: he thrived under the lack of attention and soon took to being as much of an ass in the atelier as Xander was on the training grounds. Camilla wondered how long it'd be for Leo's mother to show up in portraits and what new brother or sister might currently be growing in the noblewoman's belly.

She chafed. She divided her days between her dragon and Corrine's chambers, coaxing the girl away from her mute vigil at her window with games and stories she pulled from thin air. It sometimes worked and often didn't. Corrine had grown up pale as a specter and nearly as unapproachable, but when she could be pulled away from the isolation in her head, Camilla could see glimpses of what her stolen sister could've become under a different sky.

Camilla wove comedic stories about dragons that burped butter and jam. She coaxed Corrine's head into her lap and told her of all the far-away places they'd one day go when Father decided he didn't need them anymore. Corinne wrapped her pallid little fingers around Camilla's wrist and the bitten nails hurt, but Camilla didn't mind. She thought about places where green was abundant and beauty was a gift rather than a weapon. Some fictional place where daughters weren't leveraged right out of the womb.

---

.

Fire erupted in her chambers just before dawn, belching smoke out the windows and causing fire bells to begin clanging around the compound. Her bedcurtains were flaming and there was no way for her to get to the door. Gagging on smoke, Camilla blindly clawed to her windowsill, grasping fistfuls of thorns and vines on her windowsill in preparation to crawl over the side.

The door to her chambers gave way with a splintering crash. Gunter and a bevy of staff hoisting buckets of water burst in under a cacophony of shouted orders. Unheeding of the pain, Gunter tore through the curtains and scooped her up in his arms, carrying her from the room as the staff made brisk work of subduing the blaze. Even before they'd reached the threshold Camilla could hear her bed being quenched by a barrage of Fimblevetrs from the court magus; more shouted orders, and the flames licking the ceiling and her chest of drawers were doused by the fire in the buckets. The corridor was enveloped in clouds of thick, roiling smoke.

Camilla alternately gasped and choked against Gunter's shoulder as he strode down the corridor, vaguely aware of him passing crowds of disoriented staff in the upper atrium and winding down to the servant's wing away from spectators. She could feel blood trickling from her hands and the side of her face felt ominously hot and stiff, the corner of her left eye watering ceaselessly. She gasped when he abruptly stopped to sit her down against the wall, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, yanking her face towards him. She was too disoriented to struggle. She blinked at him stupidly, pupils still blown from the unnatural brightness of the flames. "The Tome?" Gunter asked, voice harsh with anger and smoke.

"What?"

"Was it the Tome?"

She hiccupped with tears. She wondered if her stuffed pegasus had survived. Father had ordered her nanny to dispose of it when Camilla had turned five, but in a last act of defiance before she was reassigned, Camilla's nanny had loosened the seam at the corner of Camilla's mattress so it could be hidden inside. Even if the fire hadn't reached it, the mattress would probably be disposed of now that it was smoke-damaged. "What did I tell you about the tome?" Gunter snapped, shaking her.

"I d-don't know—"

"What did I tell you?"

"Not to set a fire," she sobbed.

"Reckless, foolish girl," Gunter growled, but he was swiftly checking her for injury and suddenly, without her knowing quite how it happened, she'd flung her arms around him and he was crushing her to him, muttering into her hair. There were blood smears everywhere and her left eye was starting to swell shut. Her hair would have to be cut, probably. Gunter felt solid and reassuring as he supported her, and for a delirious moment Camilla wondered if being damaged meant her father would no longer have no use for her. She wondered if it was normal to feel normal that Gunter was here comforting her instead of Garon.

As a consequence for her recklessness, Garon didn't allow her to change rooms, bidding all but the most heavily smoke-damaged items in her room to stay in her chambers as punishment. As was likely the plan, Camilla quickly grew to hate the scent of fire, propping her window open even when the temperature plummeted to try to drown out the odor. Her hands and lungs healed, but no healer could unpinch the cluster of scar tissue in the crook of her left eye. "It's barely noticeable," Xander sighed as she tugged at the bangs over her eyebrow, trying to coax them to grow faster. "If you wear your hair that way it's only going to impede you in battle."

"You've already said I'm useless in battle anyway." Also shut up. It took a year and a half for her to stop smelling smoke when she walked inside her room and nearly as long for her to get the courage to touch another Tome. By that time Leo had progressed from terrorizing Gunter to terrorizing the entire staff with a combination of eggs and Thunder Tomes, and Camilla's dragon had grown just large enough to start eyeing both Xander and his horse as a prospective meal, which was coincidentally around the time he stopped teasing her about nearly burning down the castle.

---

.

A Hoshidan force launched a surprise attack on a fortress in the northwest a week before Camilla's eighth name day. Camilla spent most of the time repairing her dragon's saddle and running axe drills while her father's advisors spoke to him in hushed voices behind closed doors. The court, aflutter only a month earlier with the announcement of the pregnancy of Garon's newest mistress, was now grim and secretive amidst whispers of looming war. Gunter was sent out to lead a retaliatory strike force at the site of the skirmish, not scheduled to return until the end of the month, while the weapons master was tasked with training a new shipment of recruits from Nohr's southern borders fresh off the farms and tanneries.

Gunter came back with two-thirds of his troops and a new scar on his face and promptly disappeared for three days. Camilla found her way to his chambers near midnight on the fourth day, heavy text under her arm, navigating the darkened halls mostly by feel as she crept down to the servant's wing. The glow from a lantern was faintly visible in the crack near the floor as she approached. When she gripped the latch and pried the heavy wooden door open, the sliver turned into a flood, forcing her to blink as her night vision adjusted.

Gunter was perched on a stool on the far side of his room, applying himself to the task of sharpening the blade of his lance with his whetstone. He looked up briefly as Camilla eased the door shut behind her. He looked thinner and crankier than she remembered him, but his eyes were expectant as he catalogued her intrusion. "It's late."

Camilla's hand was cramping. She shifted the text awkwardly into her other arm, flicking her head to clear her hair from her vision. The servant's quarters were divided informally between the day staff and the night staff; this time of night the day staff's wing was deathly silent, insulated from the noise of the royal kitchens. Gunter's lantern was a single beacon of warmth in the frigid night. Once Camilla's eyes grew accustomed to it, she crossed the small room and thrust the text towards him.

Gunter cased her with a quick glance before taking it from her. He shifted his weapon from his lap, propping it with care against the wall, and opened the book.

Camilla watched his stern expression soften. "The Armistice Declaration," he murmured. His voice was rough with lost sleep, but she heard a note of deadpan humor. "I had heard tale of its reconstruction only in legend."

"I completed my sentence while you were gone. I have fulfilled my duty."

"So I see." He flipped to the middle, assessing the quality as she knew he would, methodically making his way to the back. "And only a year and a half to complete it. The popular wager was on two."

"I can write with both hands now," she told him, archly ignoring the implication that money had been lost on her success. "My right is neater but my left is faster now. The weapons master thinks I can start throwing my axes with both hands."

"And? Did you learn anything?"

"To not leave evidence when I err."

Gunter's laughter was an unexpected bark: rusty as the sound of an old blade pulled from its sheath. He closed the book and settled it with great care upon his bed stand. "I will keep this as proof, then, that you know how to provide the proper reparation for your mistakes," he said.

Camilla had other things to say. The weight of it had already carved new dents in his armor and grooves on his face and was working on the rest of him even as she watched. She wanted to ask will father send Xander out to fight but she already knew the answer. Princes had commanded armies at even younger ages in the past, but Xander was brilliant and that made him tricky to expend. Season him now and gamble that he survived the trial by fire, or temper his steel here in Nohr's forge a little longer and risk underutilizing him when Nohr had the chance to get ahead.

Camilla wondered what cause in the future would be sufficient for her father to trade her life as casually as he routinely tried to trade Gunter's. Forged to an edge, discarded when broken.

Gunter was watching her.

With a suddenness that startled her, Camilla yearned for the half-empty Fire Tome wedged away behind the other books in her personal library. She curled a fist over her chest and tried not to burn. She needed—

She said, "You've been neglecting your training these past four days."

"I have."

The bald admission startled her. "Why?"

"I am tired."

"Did my father give you leave to rest or are you disobeying orders?"

Gunter didn't answer.

She was terrified suddenly. The flames heated her throat and she had to swallow down smoke. "You'll meet me tomorrow in the training yard," she said. "I've fallen behind on my lance training since you left."

Gunter turned his gaze towards his lantern to watch the flame dance behind the glass.

"Nohr needs you on your feet," Camilla managed, and backed out of the room before anything else could be said. She didn't want to hear whatever else he had to say. She made her way through the shadows back to her chambers and threw herself onto her bed and burned and burned until the frigid air from her open window doused her back down to shadows she could control.

---

.

Leo sneezed out a Lightning spell during dinner, which led to the discovery that he kept ripped-out pages of his Tomes in his sleeve to aid him in his mischief. Swift medical intervention from the court magus saved his right eye, but he was forced to wear a protective patch over it for the next two weeks while Camilla and Xander heckled him mercilessly.

Apparently deciding enough was enough, Garon ordered the magus to take Leo under his sole tutelage for the next two months, banishing Leo to the castle's southern compound in an effort to curb his conduct. It worked. When the sixty days were up, Leo emerged focused and more serious, his energy successfully diverted into studies of the arcane arts instead of pranking the castle guard. He spent long hours in the library, listening with rapt attention as the magus recounted the Wars of Magi and drawing up his own battle strategies with his chubby child's hands. He's a prodigy, the magus raved to Garon. Already able to cipher and write, with a magical aptitude that rivaled the magus's own. He will be fearsome when he comes of age, the magus told Garon, to which Garon replied dryly, he was fearsome enough already.

Camilla had expected to be relieved that Leo's days of pranking had come to an end, but as the drudgery of routine pressed down on her she found herself missing her exuberant, mischievous brother. In response to the uptick in Hoshidan aggression on the borders, the weapons master was reassigned to the task of training new recruits, leaving Camilla to briefly flounder before Gunter – and later Xander – stepped in to continue her martial education. She spent long hours in the training yard, learning to exploit weaknesses in armor; how to parry lance thrusts and sword swings, how to use her aerial position to its full advantage.

When darkness fell and no one but the castle guard was awake, she crept with screaming muscles to Corrine's chamber to read her bedtime stories through the bars. Father had stopped cutting Corrine's hair the months prior, satisfied the girl would no longer yank it out in her anxiety. It now fell in reddish tufts around her pointed ears, giving her a vulpine appearance that Camilla found irresistible. "And then the princess threw the useless prince out the window, took up his fallen sword, stabbed that naughty griffon right in its eyeball, and from that point on no griffon dared tread upon Nohrian soil," Camilla said. "There, now. Isn't that a better ending than a smelly prince marrying a silly princess atop a pile of rose petals?"

"Stab," Corrine echoed obediently.

Camilla was fairly certain this was exactly what true love felt like.

---

.

The assassin came through her window in the midst of a winter storm, dressed in white to camouflage himself against the maelstrom of snow. Camilla, up late trying to coax a tendril of flame from her new Fire Tome, swung the hand-axe she kept under her mattress into his foot. As he screamed, she unearthed the hand axe she kept on her bed stand and buried it in his knee, producing a bone-splintering crunch and a spray of blood that splashed onto her teeth. She spat it out and dove to the floor, scooping up her third axe – the largest one, stored under her bed alongside her slippers – to hurl it through the air. It struck him squarely in the center of his chest. He pitched out the window, screams swallowed up by the howl of the blizzard.

The alarms were raised around the castle a second later; within the minute her chambers were flooded with the castle staff. Gunter, clearly rousted from a sound sleep and angrier than Camilla had ever seen him, bawled out the night watch and then the court magus for failure to secure the castle perimeter.

Camilla burned again. She took advantage of the distraction to slip away, managing to evade the throng of shouting adults all the way down to the snow-choked training yard. She spent the next half hour hurling vicious, uncoordinated Fire spells at a Warded target, watching them fizzle harmlessly out of existence whenever they met their mark. The heat of the Fire cleaved a track through the snow.

She didn't hear the footsteps behind her until they were within striking distance. Heart leaping, Camilla spun, flailing reflexively for the axe at her side and dropping her Tome into the snow in the process.

Xander bent to pick it up. Camilla stood trembling, breath pluming like dragon smoke. She was only belatedly aware of her aching fingers, curled into winter-bitten claws. "Cold as our blood runs," Xander said, scanning the cover with little interest, "coming out by yourself on such a night ill-behooves you, baby sister."

Camilla said, frozen lips barely moving, "Give it back."

Xander handed it over without fuss. Camilla snatched it away and drew it close to her chest with both arms. Her nose was clogged and her hair was stiff, but she felt like she was still boiling inside, skin steaming wherever it met air. "Congratulations on your first kill," Xander said. "Tomsin said your aim was true. The man's breastbone was cleaved nearly in two. He was likely dead before he hit the ground."

It wasn't like the significance of what she'd done hadn't occurred to her. There were just other things to worry about more. "Was he Hoshidan?"

"No, though that would have made things simpler," Xander said. "When they searched the body, they discovered a family crest burned into the skin of his left shoulder belonging to the Idasson clan from the south."

"The baron Fredris." Camilla's mind slowly churned back through her studies of the local fiefdoms. "He was in court not a month ago to renew their vows to Father."

"Father has suspected it for some time now. With this failed attempt at your life, he finally has the evidence he needs to dissolve the vassalage and wipe the family out entirely. You've done him a great service, actually – not that it probably feels like it. He'll probably seek you out tomorrow to congratulate you."

"The Idassons have courted favor with us for years. Why attack me?"

"Hard to say." Xander flicked it away with his wrist. "It's neither here nor there anymore. Tomorrow Father will raze their patrimony and salt their earth. They'll never rise to threaten us again."

From this angle she could still see the lanterns lit in her room. She wondered how long she could get away with her disappearance before Gunter came out to drag her inside. "You don't look happy," Xander said. "Was there something else we should know? Did the man say anything to you before he died?"

"Thank you for the report. You can go now."

"Oh can I." Xander had the gall to look amused at her commanding tone. "If you hadn't noticed, it's a blizzard out here and your fingers are already winter-bitten. Your tantrum has gone on long enough."

"My training is none of your business."

"You have nothing to prove to the castle guards or to Gunter. You defended yourself as well as any Nohrian soldier twice your age."

"No, I didn't," Camilla snarled, inflamed by his casual dismissal. "In case you hadn't noticed, I killed the man using my axes, not my Tome. If he'd been wearing armor I would have barely dented him. I was lucky."

"A kill is a kill. Be it be by steel or magic, all that matters is that you successfully defended your life. Had the assassin claimed yours, he may have gone on to make an attempt on baby Elise's or Leo's, or even Corrine's. The results of your training speak for themselves."

"You don't understand!"

Xander stopped.

Camilla was mortified to realize she was crying. She hadn't cried in nearly two years. She didn't know what to do with it. She raised her arms but they were holding her axe and her Tome. She had too many weapons to comfort herself. "It's not the point," she said. "Don't you get it? If I can't learn to use magic, they're going to take away my dragon. I heard them talking. You have to be able to use axes and magic to be a Malig Knight. Those who can't are given normal wyverns. I've been raising my dragon since it was a hatchling, and I still can't use magic properly enough to ride it into battle. If I can't learn Tomefaire soon, they'll take Marzia away. Gunter knows it too. He just won't admit it."

It was hard to read Xander's expression in the gloom. The wind swept off the castle wall nearest to them with a whine, and for a moment the funnel of eddied snowflakes blanked out the world. When it was gone Xander remained in its wake, and Camilla hated him for it. She doubted his hands would look like hers even if he stayed out twice as long. "I didn't think a daughter of Garon would give up so easily," he said.

"I'm not."

"Father would be disappointed. Maybe you don't deserve your dragon if you're not willing to do whatever it takes to keep her."

In the middle of the snows of Nohr, Camilla burned.

She said, "Leave."

"Your shortcomings stem from a lack of confidence, not ability. Surely you know better than to—"

"Leave."

Xander pressed his lips together and resumed his study of her, waiting. Like they were at court and she was an unruly peasant he was being forced to negotiate with. As if he wasn't a brother who had nearly lost his sister.

Camilla just barely restrained herself from striking him. She instead dug deep into her skillset and produced the most critical hit in her arsenal. "If your combat skills are so perfect that you feel you can fault mine, maybe you should have fought harder to keep your mother alive. Then you would have been sure to have had a real sister more worthy of your protection."

Xander's face blanched to the color of the snow in his hair.

Unable to look at the damage she'd caused, Camilla surged past him, numb feet struggling to find purchase in the mounting piles of snow. The halls were dark again as she fumbled her way through the heavy door. She closed it with her weight and leaned against it, too cold to shake, feeling melting clumps of snow snake down her hair and sluice down inside her collar.

There was a guard posted next to her door when she approached her chambers. Camilla pushed past him without a word, closing the door to her chambers behind her. She pretended not to hear the soft thunk of wood on wood as the bar lowered into place on the other side.

There was a single lantern by her washbasin, dimmed to a flicker, providing just enough light for her to make her way across the floor without stumbling. A shadow sat in a chair in the corner of her room.

Ignoring it, Camilla tossed her Tome aside and pulled her towel from the bar by her basin. With hands that prickled and burned in turns, she clumsily twisted her hair to wring it out. She could already see that the linens on her bed had been changed, the floor scrubbed and damp and free of bloodstains. The axe that had killed her would-be assassin had been polished and set by her bed.

When Camilla's hair was reasonably dry, she crossed the room and rescued the axe. Her fingers were still aching and clumsy but the axe felt as comforting as a doll in her hands. "Leave," Camilla said.

A woman's soft, neutral voice came from the shadowed corner. "I cannot, milady."

Camilla threw the axe. Even with her impeded grip, the trajectory was arrow-straight, slicing through the shadows and imbedding itself into the wall a handsbreadth from the woman's ear. The woman didn't flinch. "Leave," Camilla said.

"I cannot. Garon has ordered my presence."

"I order you to leave. I don't need a protector. I took care of the assassin myself."

"With respect, King Garon's commands supercede yours, milady."

"I want Gunter," Camilla said. "Bring him here instead."

"That would be inappropriate, milady."

Camilla left the axe where it was. She stripped out of her soaked clothes and left them in a heap in the center of the room, changing into her fur-lined sleep-clothes. She crawled across the mattress to her window, rising up onto her knees to push against her closed shutters. They held.

She fetched another throwing axe from under her mattress and spent the next few minutes hacking through the divide, driving her axe in every crack and shred of darkness. The woman in the corner did nothing to stop her. Camilla felt woodchips sing past her cheeks. She threw her weight into a final downswing, and with a crash of splintering wood the shutters came apart, flinging out on their hinges and admitting a blast of winter air.

Camilla set aside the axe and leaned out over the sill, freshly-warmed fingers complaining anew as they curled around the frost. She searched the ground below for signs of the body. While there was still a slight indentation where he'd fallen, the body itself was long gone, the rapidly-falling snow already obscuring the surrounding bloodstains. In a quarter of an hour it would be as if nothing had happened at all.

Camilla was about to pull herself back in when she noticed a dark figure in the training yard. She craned her neck, blinking against the snow, and realized with a start that it was Xander. He hadn't moved from where she'd left him, tall and motionless in the deepening drifts. Even from this distance she could see that his arms were slack, his shoulders drawn back, his face upturned towards the storm.

Camilla withdrew. Leaving the damaged shutters open, Camilla buried herself inside a cocoon of linens and blankets, letting her breath gradually heat the space until the ice in her chest was the last remaining stronghold of winter.

---

.

News trickled in of a border skirmish north of the Bottomless Canyon. Camilla, whose training regimen the past week had consisted of avoiding her family and later her guards, discovered the information by chance when a cluster of gossiping dignitaries passed by her hiding place under the central staircase. She'd already known from her studies that the Nohrian wheat farmers and the Hoshidan fisheries had been in a state of perpetual contention since the Territorial Accords had been drawn up over a thousand years ago. While the Bottomless Canyon and nearby mountain chain served as natural borders along the Hoshido-Nohr divide, the Valley Settlements to the north had no such geographical divide, and minor territorial spats amongst the competing industries were common. Over time, favorable growing conditions and a migration pattern that took several vital species of fish through the area had eventually forced Hoshido and Nohr into an unspoken, if uneasy, truce.

That truce had apparently held until recent months, when a harsh summer and dry autumn had led to the Nohrian farmers to redirect one of the branches of the Shendir river to help irrigate the winter wheat. While any body of water longer than three leagues was neutral as per the Accords, Castle Shirasagi had reacted to the potential devastating affect on Hoshido's fisheries by sending out troops from the Mountain Fort to enact martial law while the territory dispute was settled.

Garon's orders were swift. Gunter was to lead a retooled regiment of three hundred men up to seize the Settlements until Castle Shirasagi either confirmed Nohr's right to the river or ceded the territory to Nohr entirely.

Camilla's heartbeat wouldn't slow. She ran through throngs of dignitaries, through whispers of provocation and famine and open war as she stormed across the castle barracks. She threw open Gunter's door without knocking and immediately found herself nose to tip with the lethal end of a lance. The tip just as hastily jerked away; a cuff on her ear an instant later made her stumble as Gunter seized her arm above the elbow, hauling her across the small space and shoving her down onto the stool. "Gods, girl, you would make a murderer of me?" Gunter snarled, white as a winter sky.

"You would compound your near-miss by striking a daughter of the crown?" Camilla shot back, but her ear was ringing and she could feel herself flushing. "Traditional barracks had no doors. You're fortunate to have any privacy at all."

"Aye, and what time was saved erecting doors was spent cleaning the bloodstains off the floor," Gunter growled. "You'll announce yourself here, Duskdaughter, out of a sense of propriety appropriate to your sex if nothing else. You're due in the training yards with the weapons master. Why are you here?"

She tried to stand up to reassert some control, but he shoved her back down as he waited for her answer. Cumulative strain from the past week brought her to a swift and irrational rage. Her hand flew up, digging her nails into his wrist hard enough to break the skin. Cursing, Gunter seized it, tightening the restraining grip on her shoulder so harshly she felt a bruise blossom over her collarbone. "What hells have gotten into you," Gunter seethed. "Pull yourself together."

"It's wrong. Marching the Valley Settlements. It's wrong."

"Keep your voice down—"

"There's no reason to seize it by force. We could send a diplomat—"

"It isn't your place to question this."

"But Father is wrong!"

Gunter cursed again. He jerked away from her and crossed the room in three hard strides, slamming the door. He stationed himself with his back flush against it as though his bulk would prevent her mutiny from leaking into the corridor. "It's our fault," Camilla said. "If Hoshido had diverted one of our major rivers, we would have declared war. The only thing Hoshido did was send up forces to stop the fighting. Father is—"

"Have a care with your words, girl," Gunter snapped. "You would heap treason upon your head as well?"

"He's using this as an excuse. He's sending you out to die."

"That is his right. He is my king."

"But it's wrong."

"You would declare your loyalty to Hoshido, then? Betray your king and country over the death of a handful of fishmongers?"

"No." Because Garon hadn't bothered with propaganda with his children as they grew. Camilla's hatred of Hoshido had grown organically as she'd expanded her studies into their combined economic history. Hoshido's aggressive isolationist policy and refusal to expand the trade markets even after the truce of the Accords. Lush, self-righteous, pampered Hoshido. Hoshido with their overabundant rice crops, their full-to-bursting fisheries, their sprawling peach orchards standing half-harvested as wild animals feasted upon the rest. In the meantime, on the other side of the border, the Nohrian cattle farmers struggled to feed their livestock when the summer droughts scorched the grass, and the berry farmers to the east fought a decades-long infestation from the spotted Hoshidan beetle that was slowly but surely decimating the mountain crops. Nohrian mothers incorporating cabbage into every meal in order to ward off scurvy in their children. Children whose entire experience with fruit was often limited to the pockets of wild strawberries that would occasionally sprout in the valleys.

No, Camilla loathed Hoshido. She loathed it as much as the fire she used in combat. Still, "Stealing their river and then using it as an excuse to kill Hoshidans when they try to take it back – is this why you became a knight? To rob innocent farmers of their lands, and kill them for trying to protest?"

Gunter said nothing, but the silence was damning.

Camilla fixed her gaze on the opposite wall instead of the scars on his face and his crookedly-healed fingers and the way he favored his right leg even now, two years later. Tempered steel broken down chip by chip. "Fine," she said. She marveled at her own detached tone. "If you're so willing to throw your life away, the cause shouldn't matter. I order you to stay in the castle as my retainer, effective immediately."

Gunter did her the immense courtesy of not laughing in her face. "You do not have the authority."

"I am your liege lord. I have every authority."

"Your authority," Gunter said, "is in play only, given to you in parcels to exercise for King Garon's amusement. Overstep these bounds, and your place in this world will be reinforced swiftly and harshly."

Fire and ice warred in her. Gunter's lance still lay by her foot. Camilla slid herself off the stool and picked it up, hiding a stagger when the full weight of it nearly dropped her to her knees. Setting her stance, she levied it up to elbow-height, stepping forward and aiming the lethal tip directly at Gunter's bad knee.

Gunter's eyes were the grey of flint.

"So you will not become my retainer." Camilla's forearms were already shivering with strain. She swallowed it down and continued to speak calmly. "Then I suppose the solution is to maim you so that my father no longer has any use for you."

Gunter was silent.

Her arms shook harder. She expected him to engage her or at the very least move himself from the path of the blade, but he merely stood disarmed before her, waiting for her to make her move. She caught a subtle softening in his eyes as he watched her struggle to keep his weapon level and it infuriated her. Gunter's gentleness infuriated her. His kindness to Corrine infuriated her.

She thought of the pegasus doll she'd burned to crisp in her bed and the way comfort and kindness had become so foreign that she'd seek it so desperately. She was unprepared when Gunter unexpectedly moved, taking a step forward. She tried not to recoil, stomach churning, bracing the weapon in preparation for Gunter to try to take it.

He didn't. He took another step forward, bringing the top of his knee flush against the point.

Camilla stared, captivated, as a spot of blood appeared on the fabric, spreading within moments to a stain the width of her thumb.

Gunter's eyes were fixed on her.

Her shoulders were burning. Reality came back to her with a greasy snap. Sickened, Camilla felt her throat close tight as she hurled the weapon away. It clanged off the wall and tumbled back to her, batting against her ankle bone.

Gunter stooped with surprising grace. Sliding a handkerchief from his pocket, he cleaned the blood from the weapon and propped it with reverence in the corner of the room. He then took a knee in front of Camilla, taking her hand up in his.

Camilla quivered like a fawn. She didn't fight him, swaying in place, gulping down nausea. "Don't go," she whispered.

"I must."

"I forbid you to go."

Gunter's expression spasmed and then smoothed. He incrementally increased his grip on Camilla's hand, bracing her until she took a deep breath and then another. "You will," Gunter said, "accomplish many things in this life, Lady Camilla, the least of which shall be in battle and the greatest of which shall be in the service of your people. Give your shadow time to grow long. Keep yourself in reserve when others would expend you. Treasure yourself when others would seek to diminish you. Learn and grow and live for your own sake, as well as for the people of Nohr. Then, when the time comes at last for you to sacrifice as I have, it will be a gift of your free will rather than a punishment for your oath."

She felt a bridge emerge under the flood, linking consequences to her anger at last. She stood in his grip and hated, intensely, every moment of her weakness. How Gunter, warping slowly over time under the weight of his own grief, could still flex his will to bend hers with barely a shred of effort. How every bruise and cut and broken bones from her training meant nothing when internal wounds hurt so much more.

Her voice rasped when she spoke. "I won't see you off."

Gunter huffed a bit in startled laughter. "Gods forbid."

"And I won't wait. If you take too long I'll hire a different retainer."

"As is your right. I would expect nothing less."

She stepped back away from his grip, pulling. This time he let go. There was heat buzzing in her ears. Before she could change her mind, she slid her embroidered handkerchief from her sleeve and shook it out, motioning for his wrist. Gunter gave it to her. The handkerchief's small size was prohibitive, but she managed with some coaxing to work it around the limb, tying it in a secure knot.

Gunter regarded it for a while. When he spoke at last, his voice was conspicuously rough. "Favor from Lady Camilla is a thing to be treasured indeed. I will bear such a token into battle with pride."

Camilla left him on a knee in the center of the room, making her way back up the servant's wing and back to her chambers. There was a guard posted outside her door. She dispatched him by throwing a chair down the adjacent hall, making sure it crashed off the stone. He darted away from his post to investigate the noise, and Camilla took the opportunity to slip into her room unnoticed, slamming the door behind her and shoving a chair up against it.

Gunter's chambers were cleared out the next morning.

---

.

The sum of her travel experience was limited to the capitol, so there were no knickknacks to preserve her memories. She had no affection for her mother and kept no family heirlooms. What room she had in her saddlebags and satchel were dedicated to weapons, coin, and what supplies she'd need to survive in the Nohrian wilderness.

She did use her last available sliver of space for something sentimental: a book of illustrated bedtime stories that she read to Corrine during her visits to the Northern Fortress. It was this last item that gave her the strength to see her decision through.

After a week with no further attempts on her life and the entirety of the Idasson clan either buried or imprisoned, Garon had announced himself satisfied and had relieved the guard rotation outside their doors. Camilla now crept unnoticed from her room with the silence of her own shadow, making one final journey down the darkened corridor she'd haunted for the past eight and a half years.

Marzia was the only creature awake in the keep when Camilla let herself in. Moonlight spilled in as a rush of warm, heady air spilled out; shaking her hair from her face and forcing down a sneeze, Camilla eased the door shut behind her and picked her way across straw, keeping her elbows close to her body. Marzia was already up against the bars, red eyes a beacon in the shadows as she tracked Camilla's progress. "Partner of my heart," Camilla murmured to her in old Nohrian. She slipped a hand through the bars and rubbed Marzia's snout. The unforgiving scales stung her fingers: a moment later the dragon's tongue slipped out, greedily swiping the tiny cuts clean.

Camilla saddled her in darkness. The moon was already past its zenith by the time she led the dragon out to the feed lot, hand firmly over the saddlebags to muffle the clank of the armor inside. Marzia held still as Camilla climbed on, moving only to stretch her neck towards the moonlight. Her breath puffed out into the frigid air as she snapped at a passing flake of frost.

Camilla's heart was strangely calm. Her cheeks stung as she secured the saddle straps mid-calf. She barely had time to wrap the reins around her wrists and whisper, "Corrine," before Marzia was spreading her wings, black scales bouncing the moonlight between them in dazzling monochrome.

The Northern Fortress had been a scant league northeast from Windmere, just removed enough to feel isolated but close enough to the capitol to be accessible on foot. On wings meant to glide, Marzia struggled at first to gain altitude but eventually peaked enough to settle, taking them on a gentle downwards trajectory the latter half of the journey. As soon as they'd gotten close enough for Camilla to make out the detail of the masonry, she pressed her knees in and guided Marzia down into the bordering forest.

The trees stood out in skeletal relief against the moonlit sky, branches glowing with a thick layer of rime. Camilla's breath swirled with snow around her head as she dismounted, boots crunching through the hardened layer of snow. With fumbling fingers she unhooked the bear stomach from the saddlebags, emptying the chunks of raw meat she'd stored inside it out onto the snow. Marzia swung her head over to devour them, leaving Camilla to turn the pouch inside out and scrub it clean against a nearby patch of snow. "I'll be back," she whispered, replacing the pouch in the saddle bags. "With Corrine."

Marzia finished and lifted her head to violently sneeze a dusting of snow from her snout. "Stay here," Camilla commanded, softening it by rubbing her under her chin until the dragon's chest rumbled in contentment. "I'll be back soon."

She armed herself with her battle axe and two throwing axes, leaving the rest behind to maximize her speed. She didn't bother with stealth amidst the crunching snow, instead adopting an erratic, zig-zag flight pattern in hopes of mimicking the sounds of wildlife. The fortress never slept, blazing with light in every window and arrowslit. The intimidating curve of the barbican closed off any approach on foot save for the southern entrance, patrolled by an omnipresent two-man guard.

Camilla crouched in the thick foliage and reviewed her options, drawing shallow breaths in through her nose to avoid giving her position away. Two months ago she could have simply flown Marzia up to Corrine's tower directly, but Father's recent acquisitions – the solemn, eerie-eyed twins from the Ice Tribe village – meant Camilla had to rearrange her strategies. The twins made her skin crawl: one impeccably poised and intelligent beyond her years, the other struggling with a speech impediment but so ferocious with a dagger that even Camilla wasn't eager to try her luck.

The solution, Camilla decided, was to kill the sentinels now, then use their bodies to choke the flow of guards trying to exit the portcullis. Camilla would breach the walls and make her way to the center of the fortress via the hidden servant's corridor. Barring any armed staff, it'd take no time at all to reach the Northern Tower. Once inside, she could bar the door to delay reinforcements from arriving, and from then on the only real challenge remaining would be the twins.

Breath slowed to barely-perceptible stream, Camilla slipped the first throwing axe out of its holder and hefted it in her hand, gaze unblinking as she calculated throwing distance and angle. There was no wind to contend with, but she couldn't afford to miss without ruining her entire strategy. This would be down to muscle memory and luck.

She drew her wrist back and shifted her weight, and only then picked up what she'd missed in her concentration: the rapid approach of footsteps behind her, the snap of branches as someone hurled themselves toward her.

She spun too late. The figure crashed into her, hurling them both to the ground, sending up a flurry of loose snow.

Winded but already furious, Camilla struggled fiercely, fighting to twist her arm free enough to wield her axe. She partially succeeded, landing a glancing blow off the figure's shoulder that made him curse. Not waiting for him to recover, she jammed her knee upwards and missed his groin by a fraction. The near-hit nevertheless was enough to make him twist his lower body away, giving her the space she needed to wriggle out from under him. She clawed at the snow, trying to seize enough distance to get to her feet.

An iron grip clamped over her ankle and brutally dragged her back over the broken branches. Enraged, Camilla twisted against the limitations of her spine, trying to angle herself up enough to engage him head-on. Darkness churned with snow and the collage of sensory data made the world spin. Camilla managed to get her elbow under her enough to take a blind swing at him, but a hand on her wrist brutally arrested her attempt, wresting the axe from her hand. Undaunted, she lunged upwards, assaulting him with blows to his face and neck that made him curse again and release her ankle in order to guard his face.

It came to her, somewhere around the point where she was yanking out her other axe from her belt, that he'd done nothing so far to strike back. He turned his shoulder just in time to dodge her downwards swing; Camilla yelped as his hand came back with lightning speed, yanking her off her feet and sending her crashing back to the snow.

She distantly heard shouts from the fortress. Grief-stricken, she rolled to her feet and cursed him, cursed herself for giving up her only chance, for letting her training instructors down yet again with her carelessness. If I'm to be executed for treason, she thought viciously, kicking up a spray of ice-crystals at him and eliciting another curse as he twisted to spare his eyes, I'll make sure your blood paints the path to my pyre.

She was aware that he was trying to speak to her. She didn't care. The shouts were approaching and the crunching snow filled her ears. She avoided his attempts to sweep her off her feet again and hurled herself past his guard, swinging the axe in an unforgiving trajectory towards his head. The moment of triumph she felt when it connected was dashed when she realized she'd swung the blunt edge, robbing the lethality from the blow. It didn't matter: the instant steel clanged against his skull, the figure dropped soundlessly into the snow, stolen axe skittering from his grip across the hardened surface of the snow. He didn't move again.

Camilla stood over him, panting, shaking with exhaustion. She felt no joy. She didn't bother to flee when the guards from the gate breached the treeline, lanterns cutting swaths through the darkness. "Who goes?" one yelled. "Show yourself!"

It took Camilla several tries to speak. When she managed it sounded detached to her own ears. "Here."

The trajectory of the footfalls changed. Within moments they were upon her, lighting up the clearing. One seized her by the shoulder to spin her around, fingers digging roughly into her skin. Camilla didn't fight, knowing he'd release her as soon as he recognized her. Sure enough, the hand flew away as if burned; she heard an oath of by the gods and there were more shouts and footsteps coming towards them. Camilla's sole point of focus was her assailant as the second guard took a knee, carefully guiding him onto his back.

There'd been some part of her that had suspected, but the sight of Xander's pale, slack features emerging under the light of the lanterns stole the warmth from her core. The guard cursed again foully; he braced Xander's head away from the snow and shouted over his shoulder. More lights approached, followed by the sound of the alarm being raised at the bridge.

Camilla felt time brush by her like whispering dignitaries. There were lights everywhere now and warm bodies and words. She saw a man with lieutenant's regalia and another with the robes of a strategist amidst the general assortment of soldiers. The men milled and for a few seconds Xander was blocked from her view; when the crowd parted and he reemerged, she saw that the knight lieutenant had lifted Xander up into the cradle of his arms.

The sight struck her as particularly surreal. Surely they would need a litter or at least the strength of two men. Xander was tall. He towered over her in the training yard, loomed over her for missing her tutoring session. He—

She pressed a hand over her mouth as bile rose in her throat. She was quaking down to her ankles. He wasn't tall. Not in this group of fully-grown soldiers. He was eleven winters. He was a boy. They were two children playing out in the snow past their bedtime, only now one of them was dying and one of them was soon to be executed for mortally wounding the crown prince.

The lieutenant turned towards the fortress, Xander in tow. The instant his back turned and Camilla lost sight of Xander, her daze fled under a wave of raw panic.

She lunged forward to try to stop them and stumbled when the blood slammed into her head. Branches clawed at the stars as the world under her reached for the sky, trying to keep it from turning long enough for her to catch up.

She felt someone arrest her fall, heard a curse close to her ear she was hefted out of the snow and into someone's arms, and she abruptly forgot who she was pursuing.

---

.

The message came in from Garon via wyvern within the hour. Having expected to be immediately placed in the holding cells after being cleared by the Keep's healer, Camilla was surprised when she was led to a sparsely-furnished but comfortable room off the central hall instead. The strategist reassured her that the soldiers had located Marzia and had led her to the wyvern pens, before shutting the door and bolting Camilla inside for the night.

Exhausted, numb, having nothing better to do than to await her father's judgment, Camilla buried herself in the bed's dusty but otherwise clean covers and slept like the dead. She was roused only when a scuffle came at her door, followed by the nearly-imperceptible clunk of a boot against the frame.

Muscles screaming with mutiny, she lifted her head drowsily to listen. The scuffle came again, followed by the quiet rasp of the bolt being drawn aside.

They'd taken everything but the tiny dagger she hid in her boot. Clad only in her shift, Camilla silently rolled out of bed now and rescued it, scooting across the floor like a spider to take her position behind the door.

The door opened a crack and stopped. Still blinking sleep from her eyes, Camilla waited, reflecting on her acceptance of being executed in contrast to her offense at being outright assassinated. It was one thing to accept lawful punishment for her crime but another thing entirely to lay there and allow herself to be slaughtered in her sleep. If Father wanted her dead, he would have to go about it through respectable means.

The door opened another crack. Just as she was about to attack, she heard Xander's soft voice come through the space, "It's me."

Surprise made her heart miss a beat. Lowering her weapon so quickly it slipped from her fingers, Camilla lunged to her feet, throwing open the door the rest of the way.

Xander was standing on the other side, dressed down in breeches and a loose cotton shirt. His eyes widened when he caught sight of her, face coloring as he took an involuntary step back. "Gods," he hissed. "You would answer the door dressed so?"

"I didn't answer the door, you sneaked in," Camilla reminded him, irritated with the reaction. "I was sleeping."

"And if someone else had come in? The door unlocks from the outside. Have you no care for your modesty?"

"If you're that embarrassed, stop standing out there yelling at me and come inside. Or do you want the entire staff to see me?"

Cheek shifting as he visibly gritted his teeth, Xander shoved past her and slammed the door closed. Defiant, Camilla stood in the middle of the room with her arms crossed as Xander stormed across the space, throwing open the room's small wardrobe. He emerged with an oversized tunic clearly meant for a full-grown soldier. When she refused to take it from him, he wrestled it down over her head, forcing her to either relent or spend the rest of the conversation with her head mummified in fabric.

She expected him to confront her then, but apparently the war for her decency had tapped him out. Xander now threw himself down into the room's sole chair, propping his elbow on her bedside table and scrubbing his hand through his hair in exasperation. Without his crown to set it into place, the golden mass spilled over his brow, almost but not quite obscuring the bandage that had been wound around his head. He looked younger and more vulnerable than Camilla could ever recall him looking.

She warily slid herself back onto the edge of her bed. While the bandage was clear evidence of the injury she'd given him, his color was healthy and there'd been no unsteadiness as he'd crossed the room. What injuries remained visible through the looseness of his own shirt confused her more – large swaths of raw, pink skin over his collarbone, a ragged fringe of singed hair by his ears, a collection of bandages encircling his left hand. She'd been a dragon rider too longer not to recognize burn damage.

Xander said, blunt and tired, "What were you doing at the Fortress, Camilla."

"It's none of your business."

"It is."

"Nothing that I do is your business. Not anymore."

"Fine, I'll tell you what you were doing," Xander said. "You were running away from home with plans to abduct Corrine and escape into the wilderness. You stupid idiot."

"Prove it."

"Your damn saddlebags prove it. Are you mad? What have I told you about always having a contingency plan? There was always the likelihood that you would be caught. You should've at least packed hunting gear."

"I don't hunt."

"Then play up the vapors of your sex. Pack an empty diary and writing tools or a blank canvas and paints. Say you wanted to go out and capture the sight of the moonlight bouncing off a bear's ass. Anything to avoid the indictment of stealing the king's property and engaging in outright treason."

Camilla shut her mouth, but internally she was burning again. She never felt less Nohrian than when she was next to him. Fair-haired pure-blooded Xander of Nohr: Garon's only legitimate child. Xander, pure legitimate blood leaking into the snow from the wound his bastard sister had dealt him. "Your stupidity's made the situation nearly impossible for me to remedy," Xander said. "You've always been prone to acting on your whims, but like it or not, your actions have consequences, little dragon."

"What do you mean remedy."

"The contents of your saddlebags made for pretty unconvincing evidence, but as far as Father knows, we were both out for a midnight visit to Corrine. You, out of irrational anxiety for her safety following your own assassination attempt, and me out of concern for my stupid sister's safety. Alas, the way was treacherous and dark. I was knocked off of my horse by a low-slung branch while trying to keep pace with your equally stupid dragon. My horse fled, and you stayed with me until help arrived."

Utterly taken aback, Camilla could do nothing but stare at him with an open mouth. Xander eventually shifted under her gaze. "We won't avoid punishment," he said, stiff with resentment. He couldn't quite seem to meet her eyes. "Father's been lenient with you since the attempt on your life, but no longer. You'll be confined to the castle until he's sure this recent misbehavior has been… corrected. As for me, I misstepped by pursuing you rather than informing the guards that you had escaped. We'll both be reprimanded."

She wasn't aware she'd stood until she realized she was looking down at him. After a moment Xander looked back up at her crossly.

Her heart was thudding harder than when she'd contemplated killing the sentinels at the gate. Camilla lifted her hand to his face, settling her thumb with the weight of a moth's wing against his temple. She traced the length of the bandage where it encircled his brow, ruffling the hair atop it until she'd guided it from his eyes.

"Camilla," Xander said.

She backtracked to the site of the original injury, cupping it with her palm, and realized abruptly that her stomach was crawling again enough to make her ill. She heard herself say, very faintly, "I'm not sorry."

"You shouldn't be," Xander said. His expression was severe but his voice was incongruously soft. "You didn't know it was me. I would expect you to fight for your life."

"How did you know I left?"

"Father isn't the only one with sentinels in the castle. There's a young page who reports to me and no other. He saw you steal into the pens. It didn't take much deduction beyond that to determine where you were headed."

"Why didn't you tell Father? If you knew what I was going to do, why did you come after me yourself?"

Xander's eyes were catlike in the lantern light, assessing her the way she'd seen him assess opponents across a chessboard.

"Why—" It was getting hard to speak. Camilla swallowed and managed, "Why did you let me almost kill you?"

"I didn't 'let' you do anything." She was astounded by his wry tone. "You think I wanted half my head leaking out onto the snow? I was fighting tooth and nail to keep you off me."

"But why—"

"My goal was to stop you from murdering two soldiers, then to talk some sense into you so we could both return home without attracting the attention of the guards. Unfortunately for me, I underestimated your resolve. I hadn't prepared myself for that kind of response. The weapons master would say it was my own fault probably. He'll probably punish me worse than Father."

Not sure if she was understanding correctly, Camilla said, "You chased after me yourself because you didn't want me to be caught by Father?"

"Much as you enjoy maligning me, baby sister, I take no enjoyment watching you put yourself in harm's way," Xander said. "There are many things Father will forgive, but had you successfully abducted Corrine from the tower, your life would've been forfeit. As much effort as I expend keeping you alive, you truly think I'd enjoy seeing you throw everything away over a tantrum?"

Despite everything, she bristled. "It wasn't a tantrum."

"Maybe not," he conceded easily, stunning her into silence. "I can admit I've been dismissive of you in the past – is that what you want to hear? It is. Look at you. Camilla, I know I can be stifling, but if I criticize you, it's only—"

She watched him stop himself. Watched him reflect, twisting his mouth around into a near-scowl. "No," he said abruptly. "That's not right. I did say what I said to push you to succeed, but if I'm going to be king – if I'm to command soldiers the way Father wants me to in the next few years – I have to be more aware of the effect my words have on others. I'll be a man in a year. I can't keep using inexperience as an excuse."

Camilla was utterly frozen when Xander met her eyes again. "My criticism weakened your confidence," Xander said. "That's my fault. I can't offer you proof, but believe me when I say that I see you – blood, half blood, no blood at all – as my sister. My true sister. I don't care about parentage. As many times as I was hard on you and easier on Leo, it was just because I worry about you more. Leo and I are assured positions in Father's court. You have to work harder for your place. Elise will have to do the same."

Camilla couldn't speak. She'd nearly forgotten how to breathe. "I'm sorry," Xander said.

She let him go. She backed up and ran into her bed, fumbling along the edge until she was further away from him.

He stood to follow her. "Camilla—"

"Don't." To her horror she was crying. She scooted further away from him and tried to hold onto the vestiges of her anger. Anger was easier. "Just go away."

He sat on the bed and caught her wrist before she could get away. "Camilla."

"I hate you," she sobbed. "I hate you, I hate you."

"I'm sorry."

"You don't care about me. You don't care about Leo. You're just as bad as Father. I hate you."

"I'm sorry."

"You let me kill you," and she was suddenly folded against him and she was pounding his chest with her sore fists. She felt him flinch as the blows jarred the burns under his shirt, but he wrapped her in his arms anyway, blunting the impact with proximity.

She rode out the full course of her journey against him until all that was left of her was a scorched plane. Without pulling away, without lifting her head, she exhaustedly raised her hand to press her fingertips against the burned skin.

She murmured, voice cracking, "A dragon?"

"A Tome."

She pulled herself away enough to see his face. Xander avoided her, freeing a hand from her back to rake his hair from his eyes again. "A Tome?" she repeated.

"Is that so surprising?"

"What were you doing with a Tome?"

At first she thought he wasn't going to answer. He looked grumpy as he continued to brusquely sweep his hair back up from the hairline. "Aren't you training to be a Paladin?" she pressed, just to be sure.

"Yes."

"Then why were you—"

"Do you recall what I said to you about being king?"

"What about it?"

"When you told me of your struggles to keep Marzia, I started to think about the expectations of me when I first began training," Xander said. "The magus said that Gunter stunted my growth by not allowing me to train with Tomes until it was too late for the magic to take. You were caught just in time, but didn't show much aptitude. All the same, I realized that I had been expecting more from you than I was expecting of myself."

Camilla pulled away fully to stare at him.

Xander's gaze slid over to hers and off again just as quickly. "In that same vein," Xander said, "I realized that what I would expect of you, I have to also expect of me, or I have no room to judge you for your failures."

"You tried to wield a fire Tome?"

Xander's irritable look said everything his silence didn't. "Really?" She gaped at him. "You tried to wield a Tome? Without any training?"

"I read up on the logistics," he said testily. "I studied for days before attempting to pick one up. I tried the most elementary spell in it to start with. A spark, nothing more. Something a child could do."

She waited, but he didn't elaborate. "So it worked?"

"It didn't work," Xander said. "It did, however, prompt me to turn the page and try the next spell – and when that failed, the spell after that. Which is when I realized that the spells weren't designed to show on the page that they were working, and when I smelled smoke I realized that I'd… successfully summoned flame from the pages. Elsewhere."

Camilla stared at him. "Onto my pillow," Xander said. "Which may have then lit a stack of reports on the bed stand on fire. … Which then may have progressed to the curtains."

"You set your chambers on fire?"

"Unlike you, I had the foresight to keep several buckets of water at hand," Xander snapped. "I put it out myself. Just not fast enough to avoid some instructional damage."

Camilla flopped back onto the bed and laughed and laughed until tears streamed past her temples. "So there you have it," Xander said. "I'm not perfect. But never think for a moment that I'm able to do everything you're not just because I'm older. I learn the same way as you. Just differently."

"You set your curtain on fire," Camilla gasped, giddy, hiccupping against the stream of her tears. "If only Gunter had known. I wonder what he would've made you write."

"In the meantime, I've spoken to the dragon handler. It hasn't been officially ratified by Father, but I doubt he cares enough to dispute it. Marzia won't be reassigned, but there are caveats. You're going to need to spend twice the amount of time during the day that you used to in order to advance your Tomefaire. You'll also have to improve your aerial combat training. If you continue to skip your lessons, I can't guarantee my order will hold."

The merriment in her dimmed, but the warm glow was left behind. She rolled onto her elbow to look at him. Xander's posture was perfect even sunken in a too-soft bed. He dropped his gaze to hers expectantly when the silence stretched. "Xander." She sought his hand out with a brush of her fingertips, skirting along the bandages. "I thought you didn't like me riding dragons."

"I don't like anything you do," Xander said. "I think Tomes on a dragon is the dumbest idea the magus has ever thought up. I think you should be using lances until you get taller. But it doesn't matter – you're going to do what you want. My job is to make sure you don't get killed doing it."

She wrapped her fingers around his hand tighter until it was off the bed and fully in hers. The maelstrom in her had her voice shaking. "What I did. Are they sure I didn't…"

"I've received more traumatic blows in training," Xander said. "They healed the worst of it. There was no permanent harm done, sister. The medic made sure of it."

"I thought surely, when you fell—"

"There was no permanent harm done. May the lesson teach me to keep my guard up even amongst the littlest dragons."

"Don't leave," she pleaded when Xander shifted as if it slide from the bed. "Stay here."

Xander huffed out a derisive laugh that somehow managed to be gentle. "You really think they allowed me to leave the infirmary without supervision? No doubt they're searching for me even now."

"We can hardly get into any worse trouble as it is."

"It's improper."

"You're my brother."

"Yes," he said, and his posture suddenly folded into itself as he leaned his back against the wall. His temple lolled on stones and he closed his eyes. Fatigue was visibly etched into the corners of his young face. "I am."

"And Corrine is our sister. And Leo is our brother. And sweet baby Elise is our precious sister."

"Yes."

"I would kill for them," she breathed, and meant it more than anything she'd ever meant in her life. "I would burn this entire country to the ground if it meant keeping them safe."

Xander watched the ceiling until his eyes slipped shut. "I know."

"Don't leave me alone."

There were a few dozen heartbeats of silence. Camilla waited for his response. When the silence stretched into a minute, then two, Camilla chanced a glance up. Xander had fallen asleep against the wall, golden hair hiding his eyes.

Camilla gathered what linens she could not trapped under their weight, managing to collect enough slack to cover him to the waist. Moving carefully so as not to jar him, she settled herself down beside him, leaning her own back against the stones, daring to rest her temple on his shoulder. He didn't wake, chest rising and falling in the gentle rhythm of sleep.

The lantern oil was sinking low in its tray. Camilla closed her eyes tight against the shifting shadows, latching onto the warmth. Holding onto the flicker of it inside her breastbone as winter continued to creep up to the gate.

---

.

She was bound to the castle for two months. By that time the sun was beginning to rise higher and stay longer in the sky, the winds slowly losing their bluster as winter's hold weakened on the region. When Camilla craned her neck out her window, she could smell evidence of thawing earth underneath the light dusting of early spring snows.

Marzia accosted her when she was finally permitted to visit the pen, worming her head and neck so frantically in Camilla's grip that Camilla's inner arms were covered with slices and scorch marks. She laughed through it, murmuring nonsense and complimenting Marzia's new growth – a handspan in either direction, which would alter her flight pattern yet again – and cooing over the deadly new barb in her tail. Her lesson in Tomefaire with the magus cut the reunion short, but she eased the parting by emptying a bucket of sheep innards into the feed trough. Marzia devoured it with the same relish as disemboweled deer.

The crocuses were starting to bloom along the foundation of the eastern gate when Garon gave her permission to visit the Northern Fortress again. This time Camilla brought two bedtime storybooks and a change of clothes for overnight. Corrine met her with unusual intensity, melding with her the instant the guard unlocked the door to her room and refusing to let go until Camilla bribed her with the hard-candy honey drops she'd swiped from the stable boy in exchange for a kiss on the cheek. "And then the princess pointed at the poisoned lake with her magical Tome, and the water turned into a giant berry pie," Camilla concluded as the bedtime story ended. "Everyone in the kingdom received a magical golden spoon and got to eat as much as they wanted, except for the nasty sorcerer who tried to turn them all into cockroaches, because the princess summoned the naughty one-eyed griffon she'd banished from the other story, and the griffon flew down from the sky to eat the sorcerer while he was raw and screaming. And then they were all friends, and no one ever went hungry again. The end."

"Ate him raw," Corrine echoed sleepily, head in Camilla's lap.

"And screaming," Camilla murmured as she petted the girl's hair, feeling a surge of love so intense it was probably obsession at this point.

---

.

The message came by means of a wyvern scout a month later. Warmth had coaxed up the stubborn tufts of ragged green foliage to break up the brown monotony of a Nohrian spring. Camilla, whose hair had grown long enough for her to have to wake up an extra quarter hour before dawn to sort it the way she liked, was the last to hear the news as she entered the training yard for drills that morning.

The day was a buttery haze of humidity and sunlight as she rushed through her training, barely able to contain her excitement. She switched between Fire summoning and axe drills until her instructors were satisfied and bade her to eat. She had little appetite but forced herself to take down her meal, knowing she'd need the energy.

The air pressure finally peaked near the evening, bringing dark skies that sent sheets of rain down to soak the dusty courtyard. Camilla, done with her lessons for the day and stationed by an arrowslit in the northernmost tower, swung between anxiety and anticipation as she waited for more news to arrive. Lanterns began blooming to life throughout the capitol as word spread: welcome your sons and fathers home. The road from the forest remained empty, the trees on the path forbidding and dense under the weight of their new leaves.

The rain tapered off after dark. Camilla could no longer wait. Already saddled, Marzia gave her hair a nip in greeting as Camilla came into the pen, her collection of unlit lanterns clacking off one another as she shoved them into the saddlebags with shaking hands. A recent growth spurt had made the effort of mounting easier, and it was with new confidence that Camilla clucked her tongue, angling Marzia out the door of the pen and taking to the sky the instant their wings had room to spread.

The moon was beginning to crest over the shelf of clouds in the east as they climbed, closing the distance to the stars as Marzia coaxed a boost in elevation from a passing spring thermal. Camilla kept her gaze to the north, squinting against the thick ribbons of fog obscuring the hills. Trained as her eyes were to seek out targets in the dark, the pallor of the moon behind the fog made the foliage loom below her, concealing out any sign of movement. "They'll have a hard time finding their way through this, even with the town lit," she murmured to Marzia, patting her neck scales distractedly. "If they're coming, they'll need something that breaks through the ground fog."

Marzia's throat rumbled under her touch. Just as the dragon was preparing to circle around to seek out another thermal, Camilla spotted something in the corner of her eye. She turned her head quickly, bringing Marzia out of the turn quickly enough to elicit an indignant rumble. "Sorry, darling," she said reflexively, peering urgently into the shadows. The hill was still enough to half-convince her she'd imagined it. Then, as she watched, the flicker of movement came again: figures cresting upon the hill to the far north, descending in a tired line down the path towards the forest.

Joy leapt in her heart. "Go," she laughed, and Marzia let out a triumphant roar, pinning her wings back and tucking herself into a dive.

The forest loomed aggressively as Camilla brought them into a landing, sending up an explosion of deadfall as Marzia's wings swept a path through overwintered leaves. Camilla's hands were shaking again as she unpacked the saddlebags, removing the lanterns one by one and setting them on the rain-soaked earth. She forced herself to move with care to avoid breaking the glass. A flask of oil was the last to be unpacked: she spent an excruciating handful of minutes filling the trays and dousing the wicks, ignoring the insects beginning to lift from the grass to investigate her exposed neck.

When she was at last done, she capped the flask and fished into her inner pocket to pull out her flint and striker. She immediately realized her mistake when she felt the smoothness of the flint between her fingertips. "Of course," she muttered, barking the striker off the metal anyway. Expertise and stubbornness produced a meager handful of sparks, but the wicks remained unlit and cold in the gloom.

She hurled it aside, the blackness of her temper rising in her throat. The contingent might make it regardless but it would be treacherous for tired feet and exhausted horses. Had Garon had more of a care he would've sent scouts out already, but so far the squires had only lit the drawbridge and lower bailey. The glowing heart of the capitol would only be visible once they crossed through the forest and crested the hill.

Marzia snorted again in surprise and bit out a warning snap at her when Camilla lunged upwards. After a moment of rummaging that nearly cleaved her hand in two when she accidentally jammed it against one of her throwing axes, she pulled out the Fire Tome from the bottom.

Dew from the grass soaked into the fabric as she dropped carelessly to her knees, angling the pages to catch the moonlight. She felt the old seed of uncertainty sprout again as she ran her fingertips over the lines, mouthing the ancient words that bloomed in her mind as she touched them. She'd been assured by the magus that she was improving. This should be easy in theory. Opening up one of the veins that led to the illegal Hoshidan fire smuggled inside her Nohrian heart.

She flipped the page and settled on a simple spell with a short incantation. The clouds continued to shift overhead as she searched and by the time the moon broke free, the words spoke themselves for her. She finished tracing the ribbon of ink on the page, and just as abruptly the mouth of the forest was flooded with light.

Eyes watering, Camilla held her palm out to gather the inferno into it, coaxing it with clumsy flexes of her will until it slid into a tight, controlled coil of flame. With gradually adjusting vision, Camilla fed each wick in turn, managing to corral the vestiges of the spell before it sputtered out on the last lantern. She lit the last one by guiding flame onto a nearby reed and feeding it to the wick.

Marzia was lifting her long neck to taste the wind. "I'm done," Camilla laughed, dizzy. She proceeded to hang the lanterns in a row down the path through the woods. Last one in hand, she leapt onto Marzia's back without bothering to strap in her ankles. A cluck of her tongue sent them both up into the sky again with a cacophonous burst of wind that nearly blew the lanterns right back off the branches.

The column had traveled closer as she worked, now a scant third of a league away as it breached the city limits. Breathless with joy, Camilla abandoned dignity. She lifted the lantern above her head like a beacon and threw her head back, giving herself over to an ancient Nohrian war cry. An instant later Marzia craned her neck and bellowed her own challenge, causing an exodus of panicked birds as they burst from the canopy beneath.

A few moments later Camilla heard it roll across the planes to her: the distant, mighty, earth-shaking rumble of three hundred soldiers roaring back to her.

Flushed with the thrill, Camilla guided Marzia down to the hill at the front of the forest trail. She could hear the cheers erupting from the capitol to her south as families emerged to welcome the soldiers on the last leg of their journey. Either from better lighting or morale, the contingent picked up its pace; it took scarcely a quarter of an hour before the first of the ranks emerged from the fog-laced treeline.

Camilla spared a nod for every soldier who bowed his deference to her, eyes fixed on the ranks as they passed. The soldiers were craggy and lean, ranging between hollow-eyed relief and exhaustion so profound it bordered on delirium. Four dozen, five dozen men, some bearing injured comrades, some of whom had lost limbs. Six and seven dozen. Horses, banner men, arms wagons, footsore hunting hounds sleeping on canvas tarps in the back of open carts.

Anxiety bloomed at the procession's halfway point. She was just preparing to give in and ask a passing soldier when she finally spotted Gunter coming over the hill. He was just as haggard as the rest astide his grey warhorse, conferring with who Camilla assumed was his lieutenant. She knew he'd spotted her instantly, but he still made a show of passing on command, instructing his officers on the proper procedure for the wounded inside the palace gates before parting from the company to approach her.

Marzia sniffed the grey as it neared, tongue lolling out to catch the scent of sweat rolling off the horse's flanks, but behaved herself enough not to take the easy meal. Camilla behaved as well, straining to maintain decorum as Gunter pulled his horse up beside her mount. There was a vicious scar down the side of his neck and a new spray of grey in his once charcoal-dark hair, but his deadpan expression was achingly familiar as he swept her up and down frankly. "Lady Camilla," he sighed.

"Sir Gunter." She was proud that her voice didn't shake. She sat straight and tall in her saddle, aware of every degree of new height. "I see you've returned more or less in one piece."

"I wish the same could be said of all my men." His voice was rustier than she remembered, but it was likely due to the strain of travel and barking orders. The infirmary would put him to rights if he agreed to a suspension – and if he didn't, Camilla would make sure that he did. "That was quite the theatrical display."

"I prefer to think of my motivation as preparation for my future as shield maiden of Nohr," Camilla said, lying comfortably and outrageously. "It was foggy anyway. You know I saved you time."

Gunter watched the men file by. Camilla sat still and watched him disappear inside his head. Watched him emerge just as suddenly, between blinks, as she had seen many service men do when they came back from the war-torn fields. He studied her again with something between grief and fondness.

She let his battle-broken fingers reach out to find a tendril of her hair by her cheek. He examined it between his thumb and forefinger, and she thought he looked a bit lost for a moment, as if reacquainting himself with the touch of something soft after months of brutality. "Your hair has grown long," he murmured. "Somehow I thought you would remain the same. All adults think this way, I suppose: that children stop growing when they're out of sight."

"Do I disappoint you, Sir Gunter?"

"Yes." But it was with a laugh. "Gods yes. All of my terrible habits, girl, and none of the good. I've taught you nothing. Riding your dragon in the forest during a blinding fog, bringing Fire Tomes out into dry dead tinder. I should make you rewrite the Armistice Declaration with your foot next."

"I'm certain my tutors would be happy to let you try," she said, and it was her turn to reach out now, guiding his arm away from where he'd kept it tucked against his ribs. She didn't miss how the tension in his body doubled as the shoulder joint was rotated, but she was gentle as she straightened his arm at the elbow. When she shifted the riding glove up by his thumb, she saw what she had been looking for: her handkerchief, faded and frayed and liberally streaked with blood, fastened firmly around his scarred wrist.

It took her several tries to speak. "It seems a bit worse for wear, Sir Gunter. Much like its bearer."

"Perhaps, but what protection it afforded me was well worth the sacrifice of fabric."

"Says you. That was my favorite handkerchief."

"Then I shall endeavor to replace it so you suffer no loss."

"I haven't," Camilla said, voice breaking at last, and for the first time in months the entirety of her world rushed back to her, falling into place like a bastion. Fire controlled. Tracks that walked beside hers in the snow. "Welcome home, Gunter."

The moonlight caught the silver of his hair. His eyes were damp with relief as he watched the starlight under the breaks in the fog. "Aye," he said, and the breath that escaped him then was like the last breath of winter. "Welcome home, indeed."