Red Queen One-Shots

The Candle Flame - Part 2: Dawn

Shade POV

I dream of the first time I met her.

I – my dream self – both know and don't know she's there, hiding and waiting on the overgrown ledge. As our little group walks up to the arranged spot, I crane my neck toward it, eager to glimpse our elusive allies. Florins, who must've noticed my spying in the last curve, turns her head back to glare at me, jutting down her chin to remind me to keep my eyes on the ground, to stay in line and follow in her footsteps.

I hold her gaze while it lasts. Reese in front of me snorts, but doesn't look behind. It's the tension all four of us share. It's been running in our blood for months, if not, for some of us, years. Too high on adrenaline and too often harmed and betrayed, no Red nortan soldier was quick to join in the conspirative meeting. There aren't many more willing to rise up, period. Even among the few people Eastree dared to propose to make contact with rebels, she found only us three agreeing to go to the meeting.

"Don't let them see how few we are," Eastree told us before we left camp, "four is a good number for this."

Another safety measure among many. To stay safe – alive – we need to be unremarkable, careful, and attentive, for the dangers of the war, of the enemies and from our own officers. I can't keep my eyes on the ground, even though my head stays down. Every whistle in the wind has me suspect the appearance of a Silver.

Ironic, in a way. And which kind of danger will the fabled Scarlet Guard pose for us?

The truth is, we don't trust them. Rumours gone through the friend of a friend of a friend, most of them enwrapped in the criminal underworld like Will Whistle, carried the notion of the Scarlet Guard as the censored news never would.

But we're criminals too, now, as are the Scarlet Guard. And the Scarlet Guard are lakelanders, on top of that.

Nortan Silvers would love to report of unrest and protest in the enemy country if they weren't more afraid of their own Reds getting inspiration from foreign rebels.

I'd love to bring it over in their stead.

I'd love if I could be sure that's what we're doing here, too.

There are a multitude of options how this could go awry. We could be caught, of course. Or this whole meeting could be a trap.

I should be used to marches like this that might result in my death but my relatively safe weeks as an aide have sunk in. My heartbeat races as we approach the ledge – and finally, I see the other group, including their rifles pointed at us.

A trap a trap a trap

Someone climbs down to "welcome" us, a tall woman of light colouring unusual in Norta.

At least she looks like a lakelander, I remind myself. So does one of her companions and yet I feel no relief. If an officer the least bit interested in the Red soldiers got whiff of insurgents, they'd do everything to find and exterminate us. And if they got brains, they'd make us sing first and how better to do that than by infiltration by fake rebels from the enemy country?

If this was a scam by the Silvers, why shouldn't they pick a decoy looking distinctively lakelandian to lull the traitors – us – they want to catch? The collaboration alone is enough to get us hanged, we all know that, yet we are here.

Has the lakelander woman there the same fears?

She doesn't show it. We're as close as we're going to get and I see she's even taller than I thought, the same height as me but bigger all in all. She's also surprisingly young, hardly older than me, and quite pretty. She doesn't wear a uniform, neither nortan nor lakelandian.