Syrix went to find Jeira an hour after he left the meeting, when he ran out of decent excuses to avoid doing so. He sighed as he scrambled up onto the roof, paws slipping ominously on frost-coated stone. When he righted himself, he looked around doubtfully, momentarily unable to find her. And then, suddenly, a flash of white caught his gaze and he turned slowly, brow furrowing, to find her at the very edge of the roof, one arm wrapped around the shoulders of a gargoyle crafted to look like a snarling bat-winged jackal. She had traded her black gown for a white shirt and dark breeches, and the clothes were obviously too big for her. The sleeves of the shirt were rolled up to her elbows, and the breeches hung low on her hips, kept up by a strong belt and the gods' blessings.

Syrix's first thought was that she had to be absolutely freezing. His second was that she was terrifyingly close to the edge, and, while she had never faltered before, she had never courted death so boldly, either. His third was that he recognized the shirt she was wearing.

"Are you wearing my clothes, Jeira?" Syrix asked, and it occurred to him almost immediately that, really, Jeira stealing from his dresser should be the absolute least of his concerns.

She turned her head to look at him, blinking sluggishly like someone coming out of a very deep sleep. Her eyes were red-rimmed and empty. She stared at him for a long moment and then blinked again. Her eyes widened slowly with recognition. "Syrix," she said, "I didn't hear you."

"Yes," he said. "Clearly." He wanted to move across the roof, to go to her and pull her away from the edge, to drag her by the neck back to safety if necessary. Instead, his paws twisted uselessly, nervously at his sides, and he did not move an inch closer to her. "Come away from the edge, Jeira." He said, his tone quiet and calm, not at all like the voice in his head, which was screaming the same words with anxious, dismayed alarm.

Her brows rose, and she blinked again, looking around her. "Oh," she said, very quietly. "I hadn't even realized..." She gave the gargoyle a lost, bemused expression and then leaned hard against it, resting her forehead against its shoulder. She murmured something that Syrix couldn't make out, and he was one more thundering heartbeat away from going to fetch her when she stepped backward, released the gargoyle, and made her way carefully to Syrix.

Syrix's paw reached out without his permission and grabbed her elbow. "Jeira," he said, "it's freezing up here. You should be..." Faced with the numerous things that Jeaira should be, Syrix trailed off, struck temporarily dumb. She should be inside. She should be safe. She should be fully clothed. "Jeira, why are you wearing my clothes?"

"I went to your room." She told him. Her eyes were locked on where his paw was clinging tightly to her elbow. She looked mildly taken aback. "You weren't there. I waited for you, but..." She looked away, her gaze dragging across the castle's grounds and off into the distance, staring at a series of dark, jagged cut-outs in the Northern constellations where the mountains blocked out the stars. Suddenly, she seemed impossible young and impossibly small, too vulnerable to exist in a world where fragile things like her were treated as entertaining novelties by monsters that couldn't be stopped, even by the best of intentions and the purest of hearts. She was a butterfly lost in the howling savagery of a midwinter blizzard, where the ice that fell from the sky was honed blade-sharp by the whetstone of the wind, and Syrix's protectiveness of her was a mad beast set loose in his belly, ripping him to ribbons from within with its fangs and claws.

"Jeira," Syrix said, cautioned. "There's no time for this. You have to be-"

"Don't you tell me what I have to be, Syrix!" Jeira hissed at him, abruptly furious. Her eyes snapped to his, hate-filled, enraged, and, under that, exhausted and lonely and afraid. "I have be strong, and I have to be brave, and I have to be willing to accept that I will never see my father again, that I will never see my mother again or my sister or my bothers or my home again. I have to be quiet and contained when I say goodbye, and I have to be gone by morning, and I have to be willing to leave my father to die alone. And I have to gone, Syrix. I have to be gone by morning, and I don't want to hear what else I have to be, because I can't!" She breathed in hard, and something that sounded like a sob was ruthlessly strangled before it could become anything more than a quiet noise of anguish in the back of her throat. "I can't, alright? I cannot be anything else for you or my father or anyone right now."

"Jeira," he said, uncertainly. Everything he wanted to say was stuck, somehow, and he couldn't say anything at all. He looked down at her, taking in the way her eyes spat fierce defiance and her paws trembled with cold and her shirt fluttered as the wind caught the extra material and pulled at it, making the fabric ripple like a white flag raised in surrender. He tried again, "Jeira."

She was crying, suddenly. Sobbing. For a long moment, she stood with her shoulders back and her spine straight and her chin lifted, sobbing like a cub with the perfect posture of a princess, and Syrix couldn't stand to look at her. He closed his eyes, and his paw tightened sympathetically around her elbow, and she lurched forward, nearly setting him off-balance as she wrapped her arms around him and tried to smother her sobs by pressing her face into his shoulder.

Instinctively, Syrix wrapped her arms around her waist, but instinct failed him from there, and he was silent for a long stretch of horrible, painful seconds. He had no idea what to say to her. She was leaving, and it had been his plan to begin with. He'd known all along she would hate it; he'd set this plan in motion and supported it all along even though he'd known that it would break her heart. He'd told himself that a broken heart could be healed so long as it kept beating, but he found little comfort in that sentiment now that the consequences of his actions were playing out in front of him. "You'll be safe," he said because it was all he could honestly offer. No matter what, Jeira would be safe. Luke and Zath would have done it for him, out of guilt if nothing else, but now that he would be going along as, well, he could promise her safety. With Zath, Luke, and Syrix as guardians, there would be very few creatures in the world who could ever pose any serious threat to her. "I promise you that much."

Jeira pulled back suddenly, and Syrix caught one glimpse of a tear-soaked face before he forced himself to look away. He told himself he did so to save her the embarrassment of being seen this way, but he knew damn well that it was because he couldn't stand the depth of heartbroken disbelief in her eyes. "Safe?" She demanded, incredulous. "Safe?" She shook her head sharply. "And at what price, Syrix? What sacrifice must I make for this safety you promise? I've lost everything and everyone but my father and my land, and now I have to give those up for the sake of my safety?"

Syrix's lips pressed together, and he found that there was nothing he could say to that. He kept his eyes pinned to the left, refusing to make eye-contact even though he knew it annoyed her when he wouldn't meet her gaze. He had no idea how to tell her that he'd done this knowing full-well how it would make her feel. Of all the creatures in the world, Syrix knew Jeira the best, and he'd known exactly what this would do to her, and he had done it anyway, without even warning her beforehand. It was cruel, and wrong, and he didn't regret it. He didn't regret it at all.

"Say something," she commanded, hissing it out between her teeth. He looked at her then, mutinous and silent. Her eyes flashed with something dark and spiteful. "I order you, Syrix."

Now that her brother was dead and she was crowned heir, Jeira held authority over him for the first time in either's memory. Using that authority was a slap in the face, though, since even the king hesitated before giving Syrix orders, and, aside from the rather memorable incident earlier tonight, the king never made his orders so incredibly blatant. From Jeira, who knew very well how deep Syrix's natural aversion to submissiveness ran within him, it felt like a betrayal.

Which, he supposed, was only fair. Betrayal seemed a common theme of the night.

He was still and silent until he'd counted twenty heartbeats and then he bowed, deep and dramatic and mocking. When he straightened, he gave her his most bland expression, because he knew it would sting. "I've told you before, Jeira. Grief is an entirely selfish emotion."

She stared at him, and he could see her mind turning that over slowly, disbelievingly. "You did this," she said, accusation slowly overtaking incredulity in her tone and expression, "because you didn't want to bother with the nuisance of grieving for me?"

"If my worst sin, Jeira," Syrix said, his own frustration and annoyance starting to win the war with his desire to irritate her with indifference, "is that I care for you too much, then-"

"That's not what this is about, Syrix," Jeira snapped. "That's not why you did this. You did this because you didn't want to be hurt. You did this for you. If you'd done this for me, you would have told me beforehand, so I could have stopped this lunacy, if I'd decided that it needed to be stopped. If you'd done this because you cared for me, you would have cared enough to let me make my own decision. This isn't a rescue, Syrix. This is a kidnapping, and I-"

"Kidnapping?" Syrix repeated. "I am not kidnapping you! I just don't want you to die for-"

"Just because my father gave you permission doesn't meant this isn't you taking me against my will to some abbey that I have absolutely no desire to go to! I don't want to retreat, Syrix! I don't want to surrender! I don't want to leave my father here to die alone so that you don't have to deal with the great inconvenience of losing someone."

"You aren't just someone!" Syrix shouted it, far louder than he would have ever intended, if, in fact, he'd ever meant to say that at all. His jaw clamped shut tight, so hard his teeth clacked together audibly and he bit deep into his own tongue. He breathed in, hard, though his nose, and struggled to keep another outburst from exploding out of him.

Jeira searched his face, eyes boring into his own until he had to suppress the urge to squirm like a cub caught breaking some ridiculous rule. "Neither is my father, Syrix." She told him, her voice low and serious and perfectly contained in a way that Jeira had never really managed. Despite her upbringing, she'd never been the perfect embodiment of composure during moments of extreme emotional upset. She hadn't been, at least, until this moment. "I wasn't supposed to be the last one alive, Syrix. I was supposed to die next. It was supposed to be over for me. I wasn't supposed to have to lose anyone else."

Syrix thought, irrationally, of his own family, who had loved him only so long as he was useful and had left him the moment it stopped being profitable to keep him. He thought of Kiri, who he'd adored as a youth and who he had been accused of killing. He thought of the soldiers he'd befriended when he first arrived; he thought about their mass grave, with the single marker that failed to distinguish it from all the others surrounding it. He thought of Jeira, who only knew the carefully censored version of him that he allowed her to see and loved him anyway, in the same simple, trusting way that she loved anyone who didn't move to deliberately hurt her.

She wasn't supposed to lose anyone else? Yes, Syrix understood that. And yet. "Well," he said, "neither was I."

She slapped him across the face, hard enough to snap his head to the left. He grimaced, caught off-guard by the sudden pain, and, by the time he'd looked back at her, she was already pulling away. His paw was still wrapped around her elbow, but, when she tugged, he let her go.

He figured he'd done enough damage to their friendship for now. His paw lost its grip and fell to his side, and Jeira left him alone, scrambling down the roof and in through the window with a careless haste that made his stomach flip over and jerk upwards, lodging itself in his throat.

He swallowed hard when she was safely inside, but his stomach stayed where it was, anxiously wringing itself it knots and making his breath catch in his throat and his heart ache in his chest.

...

When Jeira burst into her rooms, she found a dozen maids rooting through her belongings and arranging her things into piles. They all averted their eyes and dropped into deep, sweeping curtsies as she walked in, and Jeira found that she simply could not tolerate it. "Leave," she ordered them, putting on her most imperious tone to mask the tremor underneath it. They hesitated, exchanging looks, and Jeira blinked once, long and slow, to give herself time to bully her features into a mask of mildly impatient impassivity. "Leave now, please," she said, her tone shifting from imperious to demanding, and the maids gathered their skirts in their paws and left her room as quickly as they could without breaking into a run. The last of them shut the door quickly behind her, casting an unreadable look in Jeira's direction, and Jeira stared back, blankly, until the heavy wooden door creaked shut.

As soon as the door was fully closed, Jeira turned her back on it and moved quickly across her room. She shoved all the piles of gowns and jewelry off her bed and climbed atop it, snatching up a pillow and curling around it. She buried her face in its softness but did not cry; instead, she trembled in silence and bit deeply into the side of her mouth. The coppery tang of blood was unpleasant but not unwelcome; she found it oddly soothing. It reminded her that her heart was still beating, despite the fact that she felt as if it had been ripped from her chest and replaced by some of the heavily-packed snow on the ground outside. It ached, distant and cold, and her paws tightened around the pillow.

The door opened, quietly, and Jeira did not even lift her head. Over the past few seasons, the number of creatures who would enter her rooms without knocking had slowly ticked down until only two remained. She had abandoned one on the top of the castle, and the other, by all rights, should be busy gleefully throwing her belongings into trunks. It was one of the two, and whoever it was would announce themselves soon enough. Jeira was in no rush to lift her head to see who had come to interrupt her solitude.

"Oh, Jeira," Ayra's voice was soft, apologetic. The bed sunk as she took a seat near Jeira's hip, and Jeira heard her sigh. "I never even thought. I was just so glad to be leaving. I never even thought about how it must feel to you." She pulled one of Jeira's paws away from the pillow and held it, tightly, for a moment. Jeira clutched back, clinging to her friend's paw, and this, right here, was the best thing about Ayra: she didn't need to understand to sympathize. Unlike Syrix, she didn't calculate and play coy and hide truths behind honest answers that said nothing at all. She was a fierce thing, half-mad and more than half-wild, but she was honest and sincere and earnest. Even her insults were edged with honesty, so that they cut all the deeper.

"It's for the best," Jeira admitted, her voice muffled by the pillow. She could say it to Ayra. Saying it to Ayra was easy, simple, and uncomplicated. With Syrix, it was almost always a competition somehow, even if she had never understood the rules and hadn't the faintest idea as to the point. Ayra didn't turn the truth into a puppetshow for her own enigmatic purposes, and so it was easier to face the truth around Ayra. Jeira sat up slowly, her paw still holding Ayra's, and she offered her friend a weak, exhausted smile. "I know it is, Ayra. I just...this is my home. This is my realm. This is my father. I'll...I'll miss them," she stopped talking abruptly, before the words could choke her.

Ayra smiled back and nodded and looked perfectly, wonderfully sorry, and there was no hint of evasion or frustration or guilt in her eyes whatsoever. "Well," she said, "my mother's ordered me to talk half of my pointless, ridiculous ballgowns, so we'll have balls at this abbey. You and I, and the boys, too. We'll make them dress up in our gowns, if we have to. They'll stand there, bored and out of sorts and drinking too much wine, and it'll be just like home, won't it?" Jeira laughed, caught just enough off-guard by Ayra's complete lack of propriety to find it amusing rather than uncomfortably accurate, and Ayra grinned, quick and bracing. "See, there?" She said. "It's not so horrible, after all."

Jeira stared at her, shaking her head slowly from side to side. "You've always been the brave one, Ayra," she said, marveling.

Ayra stared at her for a moment, looking completely serious for perhaps the first time in her life. She leaned forward suddenly and wrapped Jeira in a tight hug. "No, Princess," she said, fiercely, "I've never been half as brave as you."

And then, just as quickly as it had come, Ayra's seriousness had passed, and she pulled back, grinning cheekily. "Now," she said, "let's discuss your outfit. Those are Syrix's clothes, are they not? And, pray tell, just what were you doing naked in his chambers?" Her grin grew all the more roguish. "Don't tell me the little fool finally found a proper way to cheer you up?"

Jeira choked and sputtered, leaping off her own bed in shocked indignation. "Ayra!" She hissed, so taken aback that, at first, that was the only word she could manage to get past her lips. Ayra, meanwhile, was rolling on Jeira's bed, cackling wildly, legs kicking in the air. "You," Jeira said, as solemnly as she could manage, "are a terrible, terrible squirrel."

"I'll take that for a no, then. Which means you were undressing in his rooms, and he still didn't quite manage to figure it out." She paused just long enough to hum thoughtfully. "Syrix, I think, has just been disowned by all male otters everywhere." She flopped over on her side, grinning up at Jeira in impish amusement. "Although, in all fairness to him, I suppose you weren't disrobing in his presence? It's too bad, really. If there's one thing that otter needs in his life, it's-"

"What I need, Lady Ayra," Syrix's voice froze the blood in Jeira's veins for half a second before all of it tried to flood into her cheeks; she blushed so hard and so quick that, for a moment, she felt like she would faint, "is for you to close that truly astonishing mouth of yours and get back to packing. You'll be truly devastated to hear that you must get rid of at least a quarter of the clothes you were planning to bring. We need more room."

Ayra, who had been staring at Jeria with her face twisted up into an actor's mask of shock, sat up slowly and took one long look at Syrix. Then she hopped up, nodded, and ran off, breaking into hysterical giggles as soon as she was clear of Jeira's doorway. Jeira, meanwhile, refused to look, refused to even acknowledge Syrix, who was standing outside of her line of sight and seemed in no hurry to acknowledge her.

"That squirrel," Syrix said finally. He said it heavily, as if he were fully prepared to sum up all of Ayra in a quick, damning sentence, but he floundered. One heartbeat of silence went by, followed by half a dozen more, before he sighed, exasperated. "She'll scandalize the entire abbey," he said, finally, and this time there was no anger in his tone, only grim, grudging pride.

"How fortunate," Jeira said, "that you'll be there to see it."

Syrix was silent again, for even longer than before, and then he moved across the room, his footsteps nearly silent. He made noise on purpose, she knew, as a favor to her; when she first befriended him, he used to startle her near to death by sneaking up on her soundlessly and addressing her suddenly, with absolutely no warning. He moved to the edge of the bed and knelt suddenly, and she had no idea what he was doing until she saw that he was rummaging through all the clothes and jewelry she had thrown to the ground.

"What are you doing?" She asked, too tired to get terribly worked up about this latest impropriety.

He glanced up at her and then looked quickly back down. "You need your things packed, Jeira, and you sent your maids away." He began moving things, setting them aside, folding clothes and forming piles.

"I'd rather them than you," she said. "And isn't it ludicrous, to take this much clothing? From what I've seen of Luke and Zath, the Redwall dwellers don't exactly dress formally, even at formal occasions."

"You are not of Redwall," Syrix told her, his gaze focused on the clothes in his paws. His tone was guarded, almost dismissing, and it occurred to Jeira suddenly and brutally that, when they reached Redwall, Syrix might not even stand at her side. He had belonged there once; surely he had friends that he had missed, loved ones he had longed for these long seasons in exile. Perhaps he would abandoned her. She'd be sent to Redwall with three allies, and Syrix would leave her to be with creatures he loved more than some overly-sensitive, ungrateful princess he'd been forced to serve, and Ayra would make a dozen friends in a dozen minutes, and Feran would stand by her, faithful but lonely, made awkward by his overdeveloped sense of duty and decorum, and she would be completely alone.

"What," Jeira said, "does that mean?"

Syrix looked up at her, and he looked exasperated. "It means," he said, "that you are not of Redwall and therefore you will not be expected to act like you are. By all means, assimilate if it pleases you, but your father wishes you to be dressed as a queen if the occasion calls for it, so you shall have the means to do so." He paused, mouth twisting in a brief grimace. "And you will be taking your family's jewels."

"My family's...the crown jewels?" Jeira demanded. "He is giving me the crown jewels?"

Syrix closed his eye briefly and then put the necklace he'd been untangling down on the ground and looked up at her. "Since you are to be the last surviving member of the royal family, Jeira, does it not make sense that you would be granted guardianship of the crown jewels?"

At that moment, Jeira wanted very much to kick him. But she knew that he was being as patient as he knew how to be, and she knew that she had already strained their friendship further tonight than she ever had in the past. So, she refrained from kicking him in the face but gave him a sour smile in order to make absolutely certain that he knew she did not appreciate his sarcasm. "But, Syrix, how are we to get the crown jewels to Redwall?"

Syrix shrugged. "Your father has granted us the use of one of the small carts the soldiers use to haul their wounded from battle. It'll hold the jewels, as well as jewelry and clothing belonging to you and Lady Ayra. Zath, Luke, Feran, and I will take turns hauling it."

Jeira fought the urge to roll her eyes because that was not what she had been asking, and Syrix clearly knew that. "I meant," she clarified, "how exactly are we to carry a literal treasureof jewels halfway across the world to Redwall without getting ourselves killed for all that finery?"

"It's only halfway across the world if you go by land, Princess," Syrix said, "and Luke apparently has friends who are in possession of a ship."

"What?" Jeira said, shocked. There were bays about half a weeks' walk away where the water had not yet frozen solid, but to go by sea at this time of year was lunacy. These sailors of Luke's were either incredibly experienced or completely mad.

"Yes, I know," Syrix said, "I was quite shocked, as well. What creature in their right mind would befriend that mouse on purpose? My only guess is that it must have been completely accidental."

"Yes, wonderful, Syrix. Make your jokes. Because we certainly aren't all going to die on this boat."

"Oh, don't be dramatic. I can assure you of this, Jeira: Zath's survival instincts are never to be underestimated. If there is a way to survive, Zath will find it. And if Zath is willing to take to the seas in the middle of winter, than you and I can find comfort in the fact that, so long as we stick somewhat nauseatingly close to Zath, absolutely no harm will come to us."

Jeira stared down at Syrix, taking in his serious expression and the smile tucked away safely in his eyes, and she sat down on the edge of her bed and rubbed tiredly at her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said, quietly. "About...about before."

Syrix nodded slowly and then ducked his head, going back to his task of folding and sorting. "There's nothing to apologize for."

"I behaved horribly," Jeira reminded him.

Syrix was still looking down, still folding up one of her favorite gowns, but there was a small, soft smile curling up the corners of his mouth that he probably thought she couldn't see from her angle. "Perhaps. But not inappropriately. I'm not...I'm not exactly the best creature to befriend. I'm appallingly selfish, in my way, and I take my oaths entirely too seriously." He finished folding her dress and set it aside, picking up another one from the pile: a yellow one that she had always hated. "You have to understand, there's nothing I wouldn't do to protect you. There's no one I wouldn't hurt to keep you alive, and, sometimes, that's going to include you."

Jeira understood that. Syrix's focus was a terrible thing; it often consumed him so completely that he did great harm to himself in the pursuit of his goals. But, still. "That's not what a friend does, Syrix. A friend would have realized that this was a decision that I should have helped make."

Syrix looked up at her, briefly, and then back down at the dress in his paws. "Jeira," he said, "I will be the best guard you ever have. But it's quite possible that I will also be the worst friend you've ever known." And then he grabbed the dress at the neck and tugged violently, ripping it nearly to the waist. "Oh," he said, his tone completely unapologetic, "looks like I've torn this dress. You'll simply have to leave it behind. How tragic. And you loved this one so very much." He tossed it carelessly aside, up onto the bed where it lay, even more hideous now that it was disfigured, and Jeira smiled.

"Perhaps not the very worst," she said, softly.

He looked up at her and smiled, wide and wicked and a little bit relieved. "No," he said dryly, "perhaps not the very worst."