2.4 KiB
The wind returned the silence he left behind. Telaryn stood unmoving, staring out over the city as if she could still hear her father's footsteps echoing on the stone. The cold now bit sharper—through her boots, through her skin, through the thin shell of conviction she’d worn since the siege began.
She didn’t turn when she heard Alisha arrive. She never needed to.
“I brought your gloves,” came the soft voice behind her. “The lined ones. Your fingers are blue.”
Telaryn looked down. She hadn’t noticed. She accepted them without a word and pulled them on.
Alisha stepped to her side and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear without asking. A gesture so small, so practiced, it nearly broke her.
“You’re shivering,” Alisha murmured. “But you won’t go inside.”
“There’s nowhere left to hide inside,” Telaryn said, her voice low.
Alisha said nothing. She rarely disagreed with words.
Telaryn studied her now—not as a lady observes her handmaiden, but as a woman clinging to the last familiar thing she could still touch. Alisha’s face was drawn, the kind of exhaustion earned by long days of firelight and too few meals. Her brown eyes were wet, not from tears, but from the wind. Always too brave to cry. Always too soft not to feel.
“How long have you served me?” Telaryn asked suddenly.
Alisha blinked. “Since I was ten, Your High—”
“Not that name,” Telaryn interrupted. “Just… how long?”
Alisha hesitated. “Twelve years.”
“Twelve years,” Telaryn echoed. “And I still don’t know what you fear most.”
“I’m not sure I do either.”
Telaryn gave her a rare, small smile. “Liar.”
Alisha lowered her eyes. “Losing you,” she said, so quietly the wind nearly stole it.
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
Telaryn stepped away from the parapet and brushed a hand along the cold stone. The wind shifted, carrying with it the scent of smoke and old snow.
“When the palace falls,” she said, “I want you to run. Not fight. Not burn. Run.”
“No.”
“You will.”
“I won’t.”
Telaryn turned to her then—really turned—and for a moment their faces were close enough to share breath.
“I don’t need loyalty,” she said. “I need someone left to remember me.”
“I’d rather stand with you than remember you,” Alisha whispered.
Another trumpet sounded far below. Louder. Closer.
This time, it was the call to war.