12
If only I could see your face, instead of rushing towards the skyline
I wish that I could just be brave
I must become a lion hearted girl, ready for a fight
Before I make the final sacrifice.

The feminine hum of compliments and gossip swirled around me like a hive of friendly bees. The girls were excited today. It was there in the higher pitch of their voices and the clearer blush of their cheeks; they could feel the land beginning to heal. They could sense the peoples' spirits rising.

I refused to waste time and water bathing in that colossal tub on my own. After deliberation about propriety and class difference that I had to firmly dispel, they all splashed in with me, probably feeling like queens themselves.

Now, toweled and clothed, they were setting about finding me the perfect dress for my new day. I waited in my chamber, fidgeting in my shift.

This day, and the next few to come, would carry phase two of the kingdom's resurrection. Organising and planning for the future. Making things work again. Kick starting the trade and the crops.

But not before my interview with the highest ranking of Ravenna's army - recovered enough to travel by Hammond's judgment. My stomach was seizing up just thinking about it. The situation hung over a dangerous precipice as it was; handling this the right way was going to be vital.

I knew that I meant the best for everyone, but I'd been in solitude since childhood. Tact and diplomacy were foreign things to me. How would I know that I was saying the right words? How would I work my way out of potential dilemmas?

I nodded politely at the incandescent ocean-blue gown exhibited in front of me. Greta clapped her hands in excitement, and the girls piled into my room and set to work. Bethany had apparently decided that I couldn't go on wearing my hair loose and ordinary forever - she was armed with a comb and two delicately carved hair pins.

"Soon your Majesty will have gowns made more to your taste." Greta said, almost apologetically, as I stepped into the folds of fabric and she pulled them up around me.
"I would sooner wear my real clothes."

I sounded spoiled, but the dress was tight, and revealed an awful lot of cleavage. I felt unsafe, too prissy and perfected.

"I would die to wear a dress like this." Bethany murmured as her fingers worked systematically along my head.
"You're welcome to try them on."
"Are you joking?"
"Majesty! Really?"

"You don't have to call me that." They sounded as though I'd just given them a kingdom. Why shouldn't they be allowed to step into some rich clothes, if only in private?

"The amount of times I have gaped at the witch's dresses and wished - but there, now." Bethany had finished the two elfin plaits that twisted my hair up on either side, "We are the lucky ones. We are only fat because we've worked in the kitchens all these years."

"Fat?" I looked her up and down. She was no fuller than me.
"Soon we will all be fat." Greta beamed, tightening the crisscrossed ribbons of the gown's back. I winced.

"Am I ready? They are probably waiting for me."
"Just step into these shoes, Majesty."

I was obeying, tilting a little and leaning against Greta's arm, when footsteps resounded in the corridor just outside. Then a swift knock which waited for no response before the door was pushed impatiently aside, and a figure as radiant as royalty strolled in.

Greta felt the sudden pressure on her forearm as I nearly tipped sideways, just managing to fit the shoe on and rebalance myself in time to greet him.

In a panic-stricken moment of guilt I found myself thinking, she knows, she knows now.
Quite abruptly, I realised the full extent of my self-deceit. I had given myself away to myself, in the instant that I'd given myself away to my maid.

I felt utterly foolish and hopeless and clumsy as I straightened, reaching to tuck hair aside that was already plaited for me, and so letting my hands drop and clasp as I stared at his shoes. My father's shoes, fitting a little too perfectly on his well-planted, sturdy feet.

"There she is." he exclaimed quietly, and his voice was that of some tame beast's, like the viscous dark gaze of the stag who had allowed me to touch him, though he was bigger than me, than his own body, bigger than everything, and all-powerful.

I felt the awful urge to reach out to this parallel creature now, to feel the silky mane and rough jaw and the glance of acceptance upon me, small and unequal as I was. He wouldn't turn me away.

Don't flatter yourself, I heard the past echo of grim humour.
And suddenly I shrank away. Only a slight flinch, the smallest fraction of a motion backwards, but he saw.

"Everything alright?" he sent a cursory glance around the girls, then back to me, his smile stiffened but still intact.
I nodded apologetically, suppressing my desire to bolt.

"Haven't you had your clothes washed yet?" I asked, accidentally hinting at how much it hurt to see him in my father's velvety blue surcoat, his silk shirt. How much I wished, against all better judgment, that I would always be able to see the huntsman in royal clothes. Because the implications of that wish were monumental and awful.

Once again, he looked taken aback. He'd been so ready to be his jovial self. I felt ashamed.

"I mean, I can arrange it all for you, if you like. Where did you put them? In your chamber?" I was babbling and hoping that I wasn't visibly blushing. Bad start to the day. Bad start.

"Thank you, I would appreciate it. I've not much idea about how washing works in the castle." he tried a tentative crooked smile that made me wish I didn't have eyes, it did such powerful things to me. "I just came up to ensure you were prepared for the meeting – and to ask if you've guessed my name yet."

The soft glint of conspiracy and pleasure in his blue halos finally thawed away my inhibitions and my nerves. How could I stand here saying such rude things, being petrified of my every thought and feeling, when he was trying to make me comfortable? I wanted to run into his mighty arms like a child.

Greta squeezed my hand, and the shock it sent up my arm told me that she understood. She was trying to communicate – sympathy? Or warning?

"That will be all, thank you." I directed the comment at the girls, who reluctantly tiptoed away.

My heartbeat kicked into real action as the door shut behind them.
This was it. If there was ever a chance to tell him that he haunted my every living hour, that the sight of his unkissed lips was becoming sheer agony, that I thought I might be beginning to love him – now was the moment.

"Lyle." I jested instead, raising my mouth in a smirk. A very unconvincing one.
"No."
"How many guesses do I have?|
"As many as you need."
"Can't I just give up?"
"No!" he chuckled deeply in his broad chest, "That would be against the rules. My lips are sealed, remember."

A pause. His beam faded as he glanced at my bed, and I realised he must be thinking about William, and this morning.

I broached the subject, feeling I could at least deal with this, skirting around the edges of the real topic in hand. "I feel a bit pathetic… fainting on the way home."
"Aye. Dropping off the side of your horse. You emanated royalty."

"Don't talk to your princess that way."
"I shall talk to my companion any way I please." his quiet laughter joined his words together seamlessly, "You owe me enough, princess, after all the times I've saved you."

"Let's not forget the times I have saved you." I teased back.

His reactionary expression was not what I'd anticipated at all. Rather than mimicking indignation or even agreement, he dropped his gaze and his grin, and his dark brows drew together.
There was silence, heavy with a meaning he obviously intended to keep hidden from me.

"Aye." his tone was thick and so low I could barely hear, his hand raking along the back of his neck to his jaw, where it rested, rubbing thoughtfully, "You've rescued me more times than you could count."

My hands balled up into useless fists, as I tried to control their need to touch him.
My lower lip got caught up by my teeth as I tried not to blurt out something confessional and dangerous to him.

Glancing up at me, he translated this as anxiety of a different kind, and his expression softened into concern.

"Don't be nervous about today." he murmured, "We will all be with you. They haven't shown any hostility so far. They should go gladly, after all you've done for them - and I doubt anybody could be hostile to you now, wearing that dress."

The last part he added with a hint of gentle irony, and looking down, I remembered the tight, cleavage-revealing bodice holding me together. Now he'd done it. I couldn't possibly get away with the fierce burning I could feel in my cheeks this time.

He must have read my refusal to look up at him as distress, for suddenly he was taking a short step forward, and my blood started to jump in my veins.

"Snow White." he uttered my name as though it were a baby bird wrapped up in his voice, a delicate and delightful thing. It pricked my heart cruelly, because I was hearing too much, hearing the things I wanted to, and what I wanted couldn't become a reality.

Another step, another kick in the gut.

"I know you don't feel strong."
How can I feel strong when you're so close? I can't think, I can't breathe.
"But if I kept you safe for all that time, in the darkest part of our land, don't you trust me to protect you in the walls of your own kingdom?"

At that the whole room lurched sickeningly, because my immediate thought was that I only needed protecting from his temptation, and the only way to do that was to send him away.
If he left, I would cease to be anything.

"Won't you look at me?"

I couldn't bear the tenderness that I knew I'd find in his face, so I pretended to scratch my ear while I dabbed at my eye.
Then it happened. His arms unfolded and spread out towards me, and his scent wafted over like a memory, and I lost sense of everything else except the horrid space between us and the sole thought of eliminating it.

I teetered, as one who is about to jump from a precipice.

And then I collided softly with his torso, not remembering when I had made the choice, and I was engulfed in the warm, hazy cage of an embrace that I had been craving forever, without realising.

It was different from the morning I had awoken screaming. I'd been too appalled then to notice the exact shape of his body, the way his muscles moved under his skin, to drink in his radiating heat and the hard tenderness of him.
Now I found my palms pressed to his ribs, my cheek to his heart.

Slowly, my forearms moved over his wide shoulders to encircle his neck while I buried my face in his collar. His body moved instinctively with mine, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other moving around my waist as intimately as any childhood friend.

We inhaled simultaneously, slowly, in the significant way that people only do when they embrace. I could feel his eyes closing intuitively, and knew that he was drifting through this fracture in time too.

I had never been held this way before. Not by anybody other than my parents.
It wasn't frightening.

The low rumble of satisfaction in his chest vibrated against me, and my muscles burned with the ache of longing. My shy desire combusted into an open flame – all it would take was a slight movement, a tilting of my jaw, and his mouth would be locked on mine. It was so easy.

"Thank you." I muttered, tightening my hold for a split second before freeing him, in a way that suggested finality.
He complied as obediently as any servant, immediately loosening his grasp and backing away.

"Will you stop whining now?" he smirked, all seriousness gone.
"I don't whine!" I laughed, wishing I had something to throw at him, " – Tristram."
"Not even close. Let's go before they send anyone else up here to find you."

William leapt into my mind, and from the steely edge that had entered his voice I knew that was what he'd intimated. I should have been angry with him.

Instead, I ushered him out of my chamber, bracing myself for the first monumental task of the day.