The air was cold, but Uarria was prickly-hot, wrapped in a heavy cloak and nestled tight against Ealin's body. The woman's arms passed on either side of her, front and back, and closed her in.
Uarria felt crowded, but lonely, and she felt sick, and she wished she were at home. She straightened her spine and looked up into Ealin's face. Seeing once again how changed Ealin was, Uarria was for a moment terribly afraid that Ealin was her mother, that Ealin had somehow become her mother.
Ealin's face was pale, like Mother's, and it was as beautiful a face as it had ever been: a face Uarria knew. But Ealin had always had dark hair and dark eyes, like Ouchie's. In the dark hallways of the palace, she had changed almost into a different person, with her pale hair and her eyes an uncertain color.
Now, Ealin had changed her hair again. It was no longer a long, long, long braid like Mother's braid. It was short and tousled, cropped to her shoulders. There was something different about Ealin's face, too. Whereas before, that face had usually been softened with a smile, it was now blank, a fresh sheet of parchment unmarred by emotion or thought.
She looked nothing like the woman she'd been.
That expressionless face, in which Uarria saw nothing to latch onto, to understand, frightened her far more than the changes in Ealin's appearance.
"I want Mother," Uarria whispered uncertainly.
"Be quiet, sweet," Ealin said. Her gaze darted down to meet Uarria's for a fraction of a second, then broke away.
Uarria looked past Ealin. The two men who were traveling with them were sitting not far away, their faces lit golden in the flickering light from the camp fire. They were trading a skin of ale back and forth between them. Although there were three grown people with her, Uarria was scared, and she felt very far from home. She felt as if her home were impossibly far away, as if it were somehow uncertain. She missed her father and mother more than she ever had in her life. Even when she did not see her parents—when they were in council meetings or, rarely, when they traveled—she had always been surrounded by familiar comforts.
Now, she wondered when the next time might be that she would see her father, her mother, and Ouchie, a man she loved almost as much as her father himself.
"Where are we going?" Uarria asked in a small voice trembling with misery.
"We're going to see my father," Ealin said. "And your uncle. Won't you like that, little one?"
Uarria frowned. Her uncle, Kaori, lived in the palace. "Why have we gone away if we are going to see Uncle? Isn't Uncle at home?"
"A different uncle. He lives very far away, with my father."
This was all too confusing, and there was something about Ealin that Uarria could not understand. She was not like other grown-ups Uarria knew, who talked to her and saw her and understood her. Ealin had always treated the princess kindly, but she wasn't the same as she had been in the palace.
They sat for a while, Uarria giving up her questions. The warmth of the cloak around her and Ealin's embrace lulled her, despite her troubled mind, and, before long, she sank into an uneasy half-sleep, curled against Ealin's chest with her fingers knotted into the woman's skirt.
She woke some time later when Ealin murmured her name. She sat up, wiping her mouth with the back of a sleeve and looking around, bleary-eyed, at their camp. They were on a rutted dirt road that looked nothing like the road out of the Holy City. Uarria had never been outside of Karelin before, but she noticed the difference. This road was simply two dirt channels in the earth, divided by a mound of grass out of which weeds and flowers grew.
A short distance to the side of the road stood a large wooden building, old and scary. Part of the roof was broken, and the little things that made up the roof, for which Uarria did not yet have a name, were sticking up in places and gone in others. It did not look like a nice place, especially to a girl who had lived all of her years in the Imperial Palace of Penrua. It was dark outside, too; the pale fingers of dawn had just touched the sky far into the distance, and the world was in shadow, a nightmare place full of danger and things to be frightened of.
"Bring the girl," said one of the men who had accompanied them, the dark-haired man Ealin had called Neshar. He had taken out the stones again.
Tears sprang suddenly into Uarria's eyes. "I want to go home," she said.
"Shh," said Ealin. She had risen to her feet, and now she stooped, scooping Uarria up into her arms.
Uarria shook her head, resisting. "I want to go home!"
"Shh."
Ealin was a small woman, slenderer than Uarria's mother and not very strong; she was unequal to the burden of a flailing child. With one furious buck of her spine, Uarria tore herself from Ealin's arms. She landed painfully on the dirt, skinning her knee. That's when the tears began in earnest.
Uarria's piercing cries split the shadowy pre-dawn hour. At last, emotion came into Ealin's face: agitation. Uarria perceived that she had upset the woman, but she was not of a mind to make amends. She wanted to go home. She wanted her parents.
"Uarria, be quiet," Ealin hissed. She dropped to a crouch beside the girl and seized her by her shoulders, giving her a shake.
"Shut her up!" Neshar snapped.
Uarria screamed. "No! You are not my mother, and I want to go home!"
The sound came first. It was the sound that stopped Uarria's tears more than the pain. The hurt blossomed after the crack had faded, unfurling with tingling, hot fingers over Uarria's cheek.
She lifted one hand to touch her swollen face and looked up at Ealin. Her tantrum-tears, born of fear and rage, spilled over her cheeks—and tears of betrayal came next.
Ealin looked calmly down at Uarria. The agitation that had marred her beautiful features was gone, replaced with a look of perfect detachment. "That is not going to happen again."
Uarria's breath hitched in a sob, the residual effects of her outburst. She put her other hand over her mouth, afraid that the hiccup would make Ealin hit her again.
No one in Uarria's life had ever so much as raised a hand to her. Once in a while, her father or her mother would shout, but it was only when Uarria's games were dangerous. Quickly on the heels of such reprimands always came lessons. Gazing up at Ealin, Uarria waited for the lesson...but Ealin did not say anything.
Instead, she closed her fingers around the princess's throat.
"What are you doing?" asked Telai, the man who had opened the gates for them back at the palace. There was a note of unease in his voice.
Ealin did not answer. Standing there with her legs trembling, Uarria drew in another shaking breath. She did not like the feel of Ealin's cold hand on her neck, which was hot and clammy. Ealin had closed her eyes. Her lips moved with silent words, and from where she had touched Uarria's neck came a golden glow. A prickly, tight feeling passed through Uarria's neck and chest, a feeling she did not like at all.
Ealin took her hand away. She knit her brow, giving Uarria a look of close scrutiny. "What is your name?"
Confusion flared in Uarria's heart, followed quickly by a strange feeling, a feeling she had seldom experienced: defiance. She opened her mouth and said, Uarria, but although her lips and tongue moved to shape the most familiar word she knew, no sound passed her lips.
Relief replaced the studious look on Ealin's face. She rose to her feet. "Good. Keep your peace, child. We are in danger. If anyone suspects who you truly are, they will kill us all."
Staring up, up, up at Ealin, Uarria heard those words and clenched her hands over her stomach. The confusion and fear at being unable to speak her own name was surpassed by the woman's foreboding words.
Even as her tears began again, Uarria could not make a sound.
Thank you so much for reading! Despite how hard this year has been, y'all are inspiring me to keep going and to do justice to the characters in this story.
What do you think of Ealin and the choices she's made? Do you have any insight into what might be motivating her?
Have a wonderful week, friends!