Sorry for the slow updating! Manic life at the moment. More romantic action will happen soon, but I thought this was an important moment that got left out of the film. Like so many other moments! Enjoy.

8.
And if you stand on winter's wall, with the Snow behind you
Then don't look back and don't let me find you
Just carry on straight and shake off the frost
'Cause I am deep winter, and I'll just get you lost.

I had watched men die, and now I would watch them disappear under the earth.

My first real, official act as the resurrected princess, the kingdom's hope for the future, was as morbid a thing as overseeing the funeral of the soldiers who had died to get me here.

William's strength was a towering, resounding thing beside me - he sheltered me from the holy man not feet from us, who was reciting a mournful passage as the surviving men and handful of women stood in silent reflection.

His dark locks stirred in the sea breeze; his boots were planted firmly in the grassy sand where the mass grave had been dug. He was sturdy, ever true and achingly beautiful. His hands were folded in front of him, but I knew they itched to hold mine. I knew because I felt the same gnawing desire. I wanted his fingers slotted between mine, my anchor, united as we never were in childhood.

I thought of all these things, over and over.
I thought them so hard that I was hardly paying attention to the ceremony.

I fought to keep at bay those other thoughts, the dangerous notions that were supposed to be caged snarling deep within me. Where they couldn't hurt anyone.

But even if I could block my own thoughts out, I still couldn't ignore the physical energy of his presence. The way his entire being seemed to seep out towards me and soak my body, like the eternal waves lapping at the shore not far from us.

It wasn't the bright, armoured aura that William gave off. William was a beacon, a conspicuous pillar of power at the centre of my sights.
The huntsman was a dimmer illustration around the periphery of consciousness - less dazzling, less compact. But the more I turned my attention to those edges and corners, the more I realised that he was everywhere, surrounding me utterly.

William was the light of a burning star, up close, incandescent and perfect.
But my huntsman was every star beyond, in that vast and overwhelming sky - while William guarded the citadel, he was roaming the universe, the forests, the mountains, keeping out all danger, before it could even reach the Duke's son's defences.

He was subtle, but irrefutible.
He would keep me safe for the rest of my life, if I asked it of him.

And so would William, but I sensed with a pang of regret that it could never be in the same manner. There was something about me - about the huntsman - a strange unearthly thing I couldn't explain but felt was wedged deep within me - that made me feel wholly safe in his care. Not only physically.

He would hold me down when I woke screaming from nightmares.
He would smooth back my hair and know everything without hearing it.

Even now, I could feel his hand enclosing mine, though he was further from me than William.
I desired William's touch - there was a gap that needed filling - but the huntsman didn't have an empty space to close. He transcended space.

We were quietly, eternally, undeniably connected on a level that William had never even comprehended.

I was nudged gently on the arm, and started, glancing sideways at the disturber of my thoughts.
William. Gazing down at me with a meaningful expression that only meant one thing.
My time had come.

Duke Hammond had prepared me briefly for this, but his advice hadn't made it any less daunting.
"Women always sing the first lament. They will be looking to you."

The neatly piled bodies beneath me awaited my farewell.
Part of me wished that I could dive into the throng of corpses and pass on with them. No more despair...

I envied them.
To sleep so soundly, without the weight of a world upon their shoulders.
Without the weight of a kingdom, of a title, of a name that brought hope to all but not to its owner.

Everybody was looking at me. My ears were scorching, my throat was dry.
I knew the song, the only song I knew appropriate for this, but I couldn't find the heart to begin it. I'd already had to say goodbye so many times.

"Princess." William urged softly, and with a small jolt, I realised that his hand really was in my own.
It didn't feel the way I had imagined it would.

Then a low, rumbling cough from somewhere behind me interrupted the air.

Quite suddenly, it was all right. If I couldn't use my own weak voice, I could always borrow his. The voice of a lion. The voice of a true soldier.
I had been a soldier too, I reminded myself. And I was still nothing more - singing no more than a dirge for my brothers, my equals.

I owed it to them.

The words still stuttered from my mouth awkwardly, but at least they were there.

"Man may think that he lives long,
But often him belies the wrench."

I sang it to him, though my back was turned. Because he was one of them, and one of me. Because he already knew everything the song said, and unlike anybody else there, he knew the words beneath the ones I sang out loud. He knew I was afraid, he knew I was sorry, he knew I needed him.

... Did he know just how much?

The women rescued me now, picking up the thread of my lament with their own wavering voices. Some sobbed so violently their words were lost. Widows.

"Fair weather turneth oft into rain
And wondrously it makes its blench.
Therefore, man, thou thee bethink,
All shall fail, your green."

I imagined losing either of my friends - the flashing memory of falling to my knees beside William haunted me again - and I heard my own tune faltering simply from the notion.

Alas, there's neither King nor Queen,
That shall not drain death's drink.
Man, ere thou fall off thy bench,
Thine sins thou must a-quench."

There was a silence more profound than the dirge had been.
The wind whipped about the company, blowing dull dirty garments into billowing beauty, whispering things to the lifeless men stacked like logs in their grave.

The ocean foamed and sloshed its way up the shore. The scent was sharp and cold, carried on the air.
It stung of life.

Then, without warning, he was singing.
His steady, firm notes pierced the atmosphere as heads turned to search for the source of that awful beauty. The beauty of deep, rolling, masculine sorrow.
Sorrow mixed with such strength.

He was singing for me. In that moment, as the tune lifted me into his arms and carried me soundly to the shelter of his soul, I knew that he was creating a pact between himself, the broken bodies and I, exclusively.

I knew because he was singing Gus' song.

"Dark the stars and dark the moon
Hush the night and the morning gloom."

Hot, wet droplets shocked my eyes and ambushed my skin.
There was Gus, his bright young face among the faces. Waxy pale and moist with the tears of his horror, his pain, his departure.

His expression flooded my mind. The utter despair in his downturned mouth, the fright in his innocent eyes. His agonised breaths.

I couldn't take it. I hid my face in one hand awkwardly as my shoulders sagged with the weight of loss, so heavy upon the gathered people, seeming heaviest upon me.

William was there immediately - throwing an arm around me and pressing my head into his side, hiding me from the stares of all those strangers.
They probably thought that I was weeping for the fallen in the grave. Or for myself. Who knew.

I listened for his voice beyond the rising calls of the company as they once again joined the lament - men now, as well as women.
His tones were always lingering there, over my shoulder. Silently holding me to the earth just as William was holding me to himself.

"Tell the horses and beat on your drum;
Gone their master, gone their son.
Dark the oceans, dark the sky
Hush the whales and the ocean tide.
Tell the soldiers and beat on your drum;
Gone their master, gone their son."

All that answered the sound of our sorrow was the everlasting surge and rush of the surf, as it drove mercilessly, heartlessly onwards up the beach, longing to claim the corpses we denied it.
We filled the grave, shovel by shovel of earthy sand.

Then we made the long trek back over the dunes, slow and weary, so differently to the way we had charged on horseback up this same strip of beach only yesterday.
The sea had eaten the remnants of explosions, the fallen bodies that had not made it to the castle. No blood stained the wet sands. It was as if our struggle had never happened.

One day, I thought as we ascended the ramp to the shelter of the castle - one day it would be as though we ourselves had never existed, either.
At best, we would be twisted, perfected versions of ourselves - playing out a great game in which the mundane was not included. In which there was no aftermath. Only glory.

But oh, what a story it would make.