•

Lina sat like royalty in the one armchair of the room, reading a thick, leatherbound book in her lap. She looked up at me as I entered, eyes still filled with the words from the story. She blinked once, then twice, and they vanished. Lina came back to the world to greet me.

“How did it go?” she asked, closing the book but keeping her thumb between the pages.

I took off my coat. It was warm in the room. My heart knew it was Lina who was the source of it. My little candle, right there in the armchair.

“Our trip here was useless,” I sighed. I sat down at the end of one of the beds, looking in the mirror on the wall. My hair had gotten tangled by the seawind. I started combing it with my fingers. Lina picked up her bookmark from the small table, closed the book properly, and sat down behind me on the bed, grabbing the brush from the nightstand. With no words exchanged on the matter, she started combing my hair.

“Useless? What did you talk about?” she asked. The glide of the brush hairs through my hair was soothing.

“An issue he has been struggling with back home. He asked for my help, but I,” I paused, trying to find a way to word it, “I can’t be of any aid.”

Lina let out a light noise from the back of her throat in a way of reply. She had begun braiding my hair.

“An issue? Can’t I help?” she suggested. It sounded light, innocent, but my mind shrieked. No, you can’t, you mustn’t– the words were without external sound, but they were loud enough for me to cringe, closing my eyes.

“You can’t,” I managed to bring out.

She halted in the middle of the braiding process, and her disappointment was palpable, but she picked up the weaving again soon enough. We were silent as she finished braiding, tying the end with a short length of fine rope. I turned around to face her, and found her frowning, looking down at the sheets of the bed we were sitting on.

“Can’t we go with Cyneric, once?” she asked.

I swallowed back the anxiety that raised within me.

“I thought you wanted to go to Penksey.”

She looked up at me. “I do! I do, it’s just…It’s a little strange that Cyneric never goes to our house, or that we never go to his.”

She bit her lip, looking away again.

“Anwin told me that, when people are all grown up, it’s normal for them to take care of their parents when they’re old, and for families to live together so that caretaking is easy. I just thought it was…odd, for you to be away from your father all of the time.”

“Anwin knows only the traditions of Brasboliton,” I bit out. I let out a sigh, immediately regretting my tone.

“Cyneric lives far away. If we go there, we would have to leave Regwulf alone for a long time, too long,” I explained, keeping my voice calm.

Lina nodded after a little, meeting my eyes again. She understood, I saw, though the want for adventure had not vanished from her face.

“What if we take Regwulf with us?” she asked.

My breath halted.

Of course, that would be the most reasonable solution, it sounded in my head. Then why? The sudden weight in my chest seemed to tell me in a language not my own, yet all mine, that it was not possible. One could not separate the Seyherd House and its lone keeper, but why? I opened my mouth to answer Lina’s question, but as I dug for the answer to my own question inside my head, I felt like I was wading through muck, unable to find anything resembling a clear truth.

“We can’t,” I said. She seemed to take that reply easier than any other one I’d given her in this conversation, leaving me relieved. The alleviation immediately vanished, though, when her eyes met mine, and I saw the same sludge I’d been digging through in my own head in hers, too. Why?

Unable to break through, I decided to let it go, not wanting to concern the girl right after I managed to calm her curiosity. I switched subjects, looking behind her at the thick book on the chair.

“What were you reading?” I asked, trying desperately to maintain an even, light tone. I succeeded.

Lina followed my gaze, before turning back to me. Her eyes were bright.

“It’s a collection of Kewen fairytales. I’ve been reading the one about the boy and the magic herb.”

I hummed. “Sounds interesting.”

“There’s illustrations, too! Hold on, I’ll show you my favourite,” as she said this, she got up from the bed to get the thick book, balancing it on one leg as she skimmed through, looking for the pictures. She quickly found what she was looking for, hurrying back to the bed to put them in front of me. The illustrations were truly fantastic, I agreed with her on that. Yet, as she was showing me the illustrations, pointing out specific details, fully engrossed, my gaze drifted to rest on her face, and I marvelled at how blazing she was. In that moment she wasn’t a mere candle, but a whole bonfire. I tuned back in to her babbling before she noticed, though the impression of her face, so very alive in her passion, got burned into my memory. No, I would not take her to Cyneric’s home. I would protect her from the troubles brewing beneath our feet, no matter the cost. This girl, if no one else, should flourish, and that would only be possible in freedom.

•

We left Treringham again the next day. Lina was positively buzzing with excitement at this point, even though Penksey was two days away by boat –if the wind was in our favour, otherwise maybe even three. Luckily it was in fact relatively calm at sea, and we arrived at Penksey’s harbour during the afternoon, intact but somewhat wobbly as we made the switch to the sturdiness of solid ground under our feet. Lina’s resilience to the sway of the boat had surprised me, but even more impressive was her quick adaptation to being back on land. She skittered ahead, her head turning in every direction as she gaped at all the glitter and brilliant bustle of the city. I’d tried to convince her that masking her enthusiasm would be wise, to hide the fact that she wasn’t a local, but she’d clearly thrown that to the wind, her countryside-roots blaring and frightfully easy to read from her sprightly demeanour alone. I made sure to match her pace, walking a metre or so behind her, but it was hard in the crowd. All the streets were packed, clearly because of the party thrown for the prince. Lina zigzagged from stall to stall, making it even more difficult to keep up. It seemed like going to find an inn to put our luggage away before going out seemed to have gone right out the window too, because I was still walking with my suitcase, and so was Lina. No matter how compact of a size they were, I could see us getting dirty looks from people shuffling around us, clearly not happy with the extra, treacherous obstacles in their way. The crowd was getting more dense in the direction Lina was fluttering towards, and as I strained my eyes to look what was causing all the excitement I caught a glimpse of a face incredibly unwanted. My eyes flicked to Lina, and my breath caught as they met hers, guilt written all over them as she turned away from me, back towards the epicentre. I hurried to catch her wrist, and managed to finally get her to stop moving, gathering myself as I stood next to her, uncaring of the complaints this got from people around us. I opened my mouth to tell her we should find a room, first, nervous of the presence that was now surely far too close to us for my comfort, but it seemed I’d already lost the game of evasion, since Lina’s eyes were locked on something in front of her, and she stood stock-still as though hypnotised. I followed her gaze and dread filled my lungs like smoke.

There he stood, in his glory of molten gold and pokeweed. His eyes drifted towards us as he was in conversation with a group of faceless women, and stayed locked on my face for a moment. I’d wondered before, if he would recognise me. The last time we met he was no more than a little boy, after all. It seemed I was not as forgettable as I had thought however, because no matter how well he managed to veil it I saw the spark of recognition in his eyes. He then looked at Lina, and I wished fervently that she seemed just dull enough to be lumped together with the other starry-eyed young girls flocking to his person. Their eyes met, and after a moment he started making his way over, moving surprisingly fluidly through the crowd, mainly by virtue of the handful of guards floating around him. Whatever he saw in the girl must’ve piqued his interest, because he was focused on Lina, not on me, which blind-sided me awfully. A murmur rippled through the crowd, his sudden, specific interest not having gone unnoticed, and he stopped in front of us with a broad smile.

“Herleva,” he nodded to me in greeting, before turning his attention back to Lina, evaluating, appraising. The guards had surrounded us, too, in order to shield us from the crowd that was now gathered around us in interest. Lina’s cheeks were pink as she gawked up at him with wide eyes. He glanced at the crowd circling us, before speaking to me, without turning his head fully to face me.

“Let’s talk somewhere more quiet.”