As Ava turned to head right back out of the store, elation was felt by some of the remaining young adults.
“Alright, this is great!”
But mainly Finn.
Mostly Finn.
“You guys sure are going to love Ava’s cooking,” he raved as Rowan squatted back down to find the other keys. “And the inn! Well, except for the ghosts.”
“There,” Lia asked as she quickly held tight to Radic’s arm, “are ghosts?”
“No,” the guard griped while Finn nodded at her mournfully.
“It doesn’t matter,” Balt grumbled once he was certain Ava wasn’t going to turn and head back in. Shaking his head, he informed the young woman, “We’re not staying.”
“What do you mean?” Finn frowned. “Ava said-”
“We will at the very least use the rooms,” Toren decided and her words seemed to be law, as there were no more complaints or inquiries from her group. Gripping the key tightly in her palm, she remarked, “Now who’s going to show me to my room?”
Rowan.
He made certain of this by rushing right around the counter before Finn even had a chance to stop his eyeing of Balt. It’s not like Finn wanted to lead the guests to the inn anyhow; he was very serious, there were ghosts.
“Right this way, Princess,” Rowan remarked as he navigated the cramped space and headed back to the door. Glancing at the others amassed, he said, “And the rest of you too, of course.”
Toren didn’t follow Rowan immediately. Rather, Radic took the lead behind the other guy, Lia and Toren falling behind while Balt stayed in the store, to help Finn with loading their carriage. Outside, Rowan babbled nervously as he apologized for the overgrown portion of the grounds, leading the two princesses and their guard to the back of the property.
“The younger boy,” Toren spoke up as they approached.
“Finn,” Rowan remarked, subconsciously rolling his eyes as he said this.
“Right, Finn,” she agreed. “He mentioned a dojo?”
“It’s attached to the back of the inn,” Rowan remarked. “I don’t even know why he brought it up. It’s where Ava trained, as a young child. It’s just an empty, open space.”
Lia knew that wasn’t true.
Rowan wrote her frequently about his training with the woman that took place in the dojo. It was something he prided himself on, at least in the letters, and felt odd to be so passive about now.
But Rowan didn’t understand Toren. And her secretiveness. She now knew for certain who he was, but seemed to be playing some sort of game. Or at least that’s all he could reason. She was playing some sort of amnesia game, he thought at first to confuse Balt, but now…
While the grass might be a bit overgrown in places and the shrubbery that lined the front of the building could use some clipping, inside the inn was the same as it always had been. The front room had a counter, for reception, a few chairs along one wall, and a full display in one corner of the armor Ava had worn in the finally battle between the Harakai and Galian.
A relic, steeped in history, forgotten in the front room of a mostly non-functioning inn.
Radic fought a frown at it’s presence, as well as his desire to approach.
Rather than inspect the armor, he stood before Toren and Lia as they looked around the tiny reception area. The older was interested in the armor as well, eyeing it while her sister still huddled a bit, behind their guard.
“Are the ghosts all the way out here too?” she asked softly, glancing over at Rowan with a blush. “Or-”
“There are no ghosts, Lia.” Toren didn’t even allow her sister to further inquire. Rather, she walked away from Radic some, to do as he’d desired before and examine the armor. Still, glancing back at her younger sister, the woman reasoned, “Why would there be?”
“No one’s died here.” Rowan walked over to the armor as well, but did glance at Lia and smile some as he insisted, “So there can’t be any ghosts. Right?”
“I guess so,” Lia whispered, relaxing slowly. She glanced up at Radic to assess his reaction this explanation, but he didn’t return her gaze. Rather, his was fixed on Toren and Rowan.
“Do you recognize it? On sight?” the man was asking the princess as she closely examined the plaque that rested on the wall beside the ornate armor. “Ava wore this-”
“In the final battle.” Toren’s bright blue eyes found his as, glancing to her side at the man, she remarked, “There’s artwork of her taking on the Harakai army, all alone, to defend the Galians.”
He’d seen it, when he visited the capital as a child, and nodded in remembrance. “She still talks about it frequently. This battle in particular.”
“We sing songs of it,” Toren assured him. “Back home.”
Radic cleared his throat from behind then and, when he got the glance of Rowan, he only insisted, “The princesses have been traveling for some time. I’m sure both would enjoy a chance to be alone, in their rooms.”
“R-Right, I apologize.” Rowan had felt at home, speaking to Toren so freely, and blushed a bit, at recognition of how close he’d taken to standing next to her. Even Toren seemed to note it then, shifting away from him while the man said, “I can show you both upstairs, if you’d like.”
All three of them, rather, as Radic climbed the nearby staircase with them. He noted the loud groan as they all four clambered up, but they felt sturdy enough.
Still, he was certain to stand behind the princesses now, to catch them, should they fall.
There were five rooms at the top of the stairs, two doors on each side of the landing and one at the end of the hall. Gesturing between the main four, Rowan remarked, “All four of these are standard rooms and that one,” he said, pointing down the hall, “is a nicer suite. I can give you all the keys and you can divvy them up how you like, princess, but I believe the key you currently hold does go to the large room.”
Toren still held the key in her hand and, without further prompting, bypassed Rowan to walk across the long hall to the door at it’s end. Slipping the key into the hole, she remarked over her shoulder, “Pick a room, Lia, and then freshen up, okay? I’ll be in here if you need me.”
And with that, she opened the door and slipped inside.
Then there were three remaining in the hall.
Rowan turned not to Lia, but rather the other guard as he remarked, “I can give you all the keys, if you’d like, to the other four rooms.”
At his nod, Rowan did as he said and then, with a slight bow to Lia, he was rushing back down the stairs to be alone for a bit, outside, and mentally process all that had gone on.
It was a lot.
Lia though, left with only Radic, waited for the man to first choose a room and walk in side it. Not checking for ghosts, of course, that would be silly, but Lia did assume, as she lingered in the doorway, observing him sweep the room, any would surely vacate in his presence. He went as far as to inspect the adjoining bathroom as well, only returning to her when he was ready to give the, “All clear,” affirmative that she could enter the room.
Lia giggled a bit at Radic’s attentiveness, remarking, “You didn’t clear Toren’s room.”
He knew.
He’d wanted to, of course, but the woman had disappeared into it before he had the chance. And while Toren was his main focus, the younger princess was perhaps even more vulnerable.
In every aspect.
Radic told Lia not to leave the inn until her sister was ready and that, were Toren not to collect her, then he’d be back for her soon.
“What are you going to do?” Lia asked with a bit of a frown. “Do you not wanna wash up?”
He did.
Desperately.
But he also was on duty. A permanent one of sorts now, he thought, as he left Lia safely in her room and went to go knock at Toren’s door.
Rather than answering fully, she cracked it a bit, griping back at him, “What?”
“I didn’t get a chance to clear your room of intruders, Princess,” he replied, helmet hiding his frown. “If you would just allow me-”
“No.” The door closed. Through it though, Toren ordered him, “Go find Balt though and send him up here.” Then, after a second, she added, “And seriously, Radic, go clean up. While we have the chance.”
The woman had given him two tasks, which meant Radic chose the one that didn’t involve leaving post.
At least not entirely.
He felt certain there was nothing lingering in the inn and felt confident in walking back out of it to find Balt.
The pair were brothers, Radic and Balt. Literally. They shared a mother, though absent from both their lives, and clung to one another many times over the years, when things got a bit tough. Radic’s father, Talik, had been stuck rearing Balt as well, when his wife returned from a tryst with another, pregnant.
He didn’t like Balt much, but was in the unique position to easily provide care for him, while being rather hands off. His residence in the castle allowed this, as Balt was raised with most other noble children at little cost, by nannies and the like, while Talik was around to merely glare closely at him, were they around one another, to try and pinpoint just what man had been brave enough to impregnate his wife.
Otherwise, Balt learned to avoid Talik and Radic knew better than to bring his brother’s name up, out of turn. Talik was a stern man, but fair. So long as Balt kept to himself and didn’t bring any trouble to the man, Talik seemed content with a smoldering hatred.
It wasn’t like either man spent much time thinking about Talik. Not even when they were boys.
Balt was Toren’s closest playmate from a young age while Radic, a few years older, was elected to be her guard in training. His father was King Torcan’s noj, a term in native Galian to describe the one closest to the king. There was a spiritual connection, between the Aither bloodline and the Galians, and it was strongest between whoever ruled the Kingdom and whichever Galian they felt most drawn.
The hope had been that Toren would form the same bond with her guard as her father had, with Talik. The pair had fought in the Great Wars together and, though they’d had decades of peace, there was a prevailing thought that Toren would hopefully have the same level of protection her father had.
But a noj didn’t have to be a guard.
It could be any Galian.
But no matter how heavily they’d pushed Radic onto the girl, she found him to be cold and uninteresting. Rather, Toren seemed drawn from a young age to his younger half-brother, Balt, and though it had never been expressed fully, Radic expected them to wed. Their friendship had blossomed into more once they’d become teenagers and now adults encroaching on their twenties, it didn’t feel like a lot could separate the pair.
Or that anyone wished to.
Their relationship, while not anything official, was old gossip in the castle and even to some civilians. Toren one day becoming Queen and already having a Galian at her side would only strengthen her reign.
Radic found their relationship made things easier. Toren would have surely rejected him as a guard by now (she did even those not personally involved in her day-to-day activities) were he not Balt’s brother. Instead, he’d survived all those years until he was here now, poised to one day be personal guard to the Queen.
His chest hurt when he thought of it though, that day.
Balt and Finn were just finishing loading up the carriage when he arrived back to them. The sun was slipping down behind a line of trees and the cool evening air felt much better on the armored man than the sweltering heat it provided during the day. As he approached the carriage, his brother was just jumping down from it, Finn standing beside with a bright smile.
“Run into any ghosts?” Finn asked with wide eyes, but Radic merely looked to his brother.
“Princess wants ya,” he said stiffly. “Last room at the top of the stairs.”
“Tell her I’m sorry, but,” Finn kept up, “I don’t think I can brave the ghosts.”
Balt ignored the younger guy as, running an arm over the perspiration sprinkling his forehead, he nodded at his brother. “Need to wash up too, honestly. And I’ll take driving for the night, huh? You can go wash up too and then snooze in the carriage, until-”
“The Princess doesn’t like to remain waiting long.” Radic brought a hand up to his head and knocked his own helmet off, freeing his natural, tightly coiled curls. Bringing his helmet down, he hooked the end on part of his armor, leaving it hang. “Go, brother. I’ll finish up here.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Balt smiled at him warmly, clapping his brother on the shoulder before moving to walk around him and rush off to the building in the distance.
“Poor guy,” Finn whistled with a shake of his head. “The ghosts especially don’t like men, you know. Attack us. Rowan told me so. You’re lucky you got outta there alive, man!”
Radic narrowed his eyes at Finn before questioning, “Where is Ava?”
“Oh, she said she was getting dinner ready, so probably by the cookin’ pot, I’d guess,” Finn said, glancing about a bit before, with a squint, pointing off into the distance, to the left of the general store. “Can you see that thin line of smoke? In the sky? Follow it. There’s a little path in the trees, if you can find it. I could walk you there-”
“No.” Radic was quick to walk away from the younger man, eyes on the treeline. “That won’t be necessary.”
Finn waved him off, all the same, but Radic didn’t even offer one over his shoulder.
Kroto Forest was vast and yet so interchangeable. Over the two days or so since they’d first fled the capital, Radic had seen much of it, flashing by his eyes as they road towards one end. The capital city, Galos, was nestled at Mount Ail’s base, yet featured much of the same foliage as that he saw over a hundred miles away.
It was equally comforting as debilitating.
They’d gone so far and yet…
The path that Finn directed Radic to was a winding one, walked frequently enough that the grass was worn down, but otherwise not denoted. At the end of it, he found a clearing with a large fire pit with a pot suspended over it. Ava stood by the pot, stirring at it while making idle conversation with Rowan, who was busying himself with setting the long picnic table on the other end of the clearing. Behind it, another, shorter path trailed back to a little house, mostly obscured by the trees and other foliage.
Their home, Radic imagined.
“Dinner’s not quite ready yet,” Ava called out to him, not looking up as the man approached. He was hard not to hear, anyhow, given the clank of his metal plating. “And I am surprised at you, knight. To leave your princesses all alone.”
Radic didn’t look at the woman either, instead glancing about the clearing before assuring her, “I am no knight.”
“No,” she agreed as her eyes did raise then, to glance over the armor he wore. “I suppose you aren’t, but I don’t quite recognize the symbol on your armor-”
“One of a kind.” Glancing down at it himself, his grin was harder to fight. “It’s only used for the personal guard to the Queen.” Then, a frown did break through, as he rectified, “A true Aither born queen.”
“I was not aware we had one of those,” the woman remarked. “Currently.”
“We do not.” Radic leveled his gaze on the woman. “But we will soon. When Princess Toren is ordained, my rank will rise immediately beside hers.”
“You’re her personal guard,” Ava surmised. At the man’s nod, she added, “Quite young for such a feat. What is your familial name?”
Radic let out a slight breath before responding, “Locros.”
“Talik Locros.” She felt vindicated. Or at least the slight smirk that came over the woman felt as such. “King Torcan’s noj.”
“That is my father, yes.” Radic shifted, uncomfortable. “But I’ve been trained my entire life for-”
“I’m sure you have.” Ava no longer cared for him. Eyes falling back to the pot, she called over to her son, “Bring me the vegetables, Rowan, from the house, please. I left some chopped on the counter.”
The man dropped the stack of plates and silverware he held, leaving the table not fully set as he went off to do as she asked. Radic, in his place, made the short walk over to the table and began to set the remaining spots. Ava snorted at this, glaring a bit at his back, but remained silent.
It was as Rowan was returning that Radic remarked, “We’re leaving after this meal.”
“Leaving?”
“We have a tight schedule to keep,” Radic insisted. “To linger-”
“It is a tight schedule, yes,” Ava agreed. “Never one I’ve seen, outside of perhaps war, where two pampered, spoiled princesses are asked to travel in such conditions. A tiny carriage, one guard, and an unknown man-”
“The movement of both princesses is highly classified and thoroughly thought out.” Radic glared over at the woman, but her gaze was down now, watching as Rowan slid an array of fresh vegetables from a large cutting board and down into the cooking pot. “Your concern is not warranted.”
“And yet, surely you understand why it exists.” Ava returned his gaze finally. Green eyes like stone, she told him simply, “I have it within me to contact capital, even, and inquire-”
“On what,” Radic challenged back as Rowan merely took to glancing between them, “grounds?”
“Does it bother you?” Ava questioned. “The very idea of it?”
“You have no connection to the capital, much less the crown.” Radic looked back to the table, uncertain how much his expression gave away. If anything, he was upset at himself, for having removed his helmet. “Your inquiries would be met with silence.”
“Perhaps” she agreed. “And yet you seem agitated.”
“Ava.” Rowan took a step closer to the woman, voice dropping a bit as he asked, “Aren’t you being kinda rude?”
She wouldn’t give him her eyes either though as she remarked at full volume, “I am merely inquisitive. If this offends our guest, I implore he state as much.”
Radic was silent for a moment, thinking, before replying, “I am not offended by your questions. However, I do not care for their implications.”
“What might those be?” Ava questioned. “Guard?”
He stood up straight, finished with setting the places, addressing the woman fully as he replied, “Princess Toren and Princess Lia are not only safe in my presence, but are also here of their freewill. If you wish to contact Galos to confirm this, then so be it.”
A heavy silence fell over the clearing then as Rowan glanced uncomfortably at his mother and the woman, in turn, looked down into the pot, watching the brown solution it contained bubble and gurgle. Radic, finished with placements, folded his arms behind his back and eyed the older woman, awaiting her rebuttal.
It never came.
Finn arrived around then, laughing and cutting up, even all by himself, as he came strolling down the path. He’d come to ask about when dinner was gonna be ready, he explained, and his presence immediately shifted the vibe in the clearing. There was an easy jolliness in Finn that, even when you didn’t wish for it to transfer over to you, was difficult to avoid.
For most though, that joy was quickly soured into annoyance.
While Ava and Rowan were used to the younger man’s antics, the speed at which he spoke, as well as the intensity of his glee, only served to give Radic a headache.
“I’ll return with the princesses,” he finally declared, loudly but not directly to any singular person. “When the meal is closer.”
Both of her sons were at Ava’s side now, Finn thoroughly explaining just how much danger the poor princesses were in, trapped in with those ghosts, as Ava supplied subdued grunts to acknowledge her listening. At Radic’s words, Rowan, who’d been standing awkwardly beside, rushed to follow the man.
“I’ll make sure you don’t get lost,” was his excuse and Radic didn’t say much, anyhow. Merely nodded some as the younger man fell into step with him down the path.
Rowan thought he should make conversation.
It would be the polite thing to do.
But at the same time, all the books that he’d consumed over the years about knights and guards told him they weren’t exactly the communicative type. Even then, Radic had room to speak, to start a conversation himself, but had chosen to remain silent and Rowan decided to respect it.
This did serve to make the walk awkward, however.
Rowan didn’t think the short trek from the house to the inn had ever lasted so long.
“Did Finn get your carriage properly stocked?” he asked when they walked back through the lot in front of the store and both noted the royal carriage. The horse attached sputtered at them and the man thought to add, “He didn’t do anything for your poor horse though, I see.”
“The boy...young man… He seems a bit…” Radic glanced down at Rowan uncomfortably, shrugging a bit at the slighter man as he remarked, “I am unsure of how to phrase it-”
“Finn lives in his own world.” Rowan frowned when he realized how applicable the designation fit himself. “I’ll take care of your horse for you, once we check on the princesses.”
Radic snorted at the assertion they both were doing anything of the sort, but chose not to correct the younger man.
The inn wasn’t so quiet as they’d left it. Now the old pipes connected to the well were whirling, a boiler in the basement steaming. The inn was being utilized for the first time in awhile and it made Rowan smile, even removed from his current situation.
Toren was here now. All he had to do was figure out how to get her separated from the others so they could talk. He imagined she’d invite him to accompany her, wherever she was headed. Or insist on picking him up on the way back. Or at least that’s what he allowed his imagination to get carried away in fantasizing.
Radic climbed the stairs with worries of his own.
He stopped off at Lia’s door first, bringing a soft knuckle up to rap against the firm birch. Softly, he called, “It is I, Princess. Do you require anything of me?”
Rowan stood behind Radic, hands clasped behind his back, but eyes on the door in the distance.
“No,” came back Lia’s soft reply. “I’m alright, Radic.”
“It’s not yet time for the meal.” He was already moving on from the door. Protecting Lia had never been his domain and though he did see himself as her guard now as well, his concern always went back to its proper place. “No need to rush.”
Rowan stayed by Lia’s closed door, only watching as Radic walked the few feet over to Toren’s.
He knocked just as softly as he had before. At first. When this, as well as a soft call of, “Princess?” got no response, Radic closed his fist and hit the door a bit harder.
There was movement on the other side of the door. Before, there had been an unmistakable soft thud of something against a wall, repeatedly. This stopped though, at the sound of someone complaining and someone else hastily moving around.
“What?” came the complaint of the princess as, though she wasn’t the one to crack the door open, she could be heard behind Balt. The man stood there, flush and shirtless, having tumbled back into his pair of pants and nothing more. His body in the slim crack he opened the door did as intended, hiding the princess completely from view, but still allowing her complaints as, even then, she added, “What the fuck do you want, Radic?”
And that didn’t feel like Toren to Rowan.
At all.
But it did her personal guard.
He stared into his younger brother’s eyes, heavy and disappointed. To Toren, he responded around the man barring them, “I came to insure your safety, merely.”
“Then merely,” was all he got back, “fuck off.”
Balt shrugged at his brother, not speaking and Radic nodded at him, understanding. That easy. All the confirmation needed now held, Balt closed the door once more, leaving his brother alone out in the hall.
No.
A glance over his shoulder reminded him of the other man’s presence.
Clearing his throat, Radic got Rowan to jump some. The younger man had been staring, quite openly, craning his neck to see around Radic. The most he’d gotten was a glimpse of Balt, not Toren, but even he knew what was going on in the room.
It made his stomach clench.
“Any of these rooms, yes?” Radic asked then, not turning to face Rowan but rather walking over to the door to the left of Toren’s. “Even this one?”
“Uh, yeah,” Rowan answered slowly, running a hand through his short, brown locks as he assured the guard, “Any of ‘em.”
He paused though, Radic did, even after pulling the keys from his pocket and finding the corresponding one. Rowan still was just standing there, staring at him. Radic didn’t travel professionally with Toren a lot (she was usually kept in Galos and the surrounding), but from the few times he had accompanied her out into deeper Kroto, he knew that she could attract….attention.
The Royals were part of his family, practically, so though Radic still bent lowly to his king like any good Galian, he also wasn’t awestruck by them.
But knew how others could be.
Still, there was something uneasy about Rowan. Radic had caught it before, in the store, when he’d first tried to get Toren out of there, as well as before, in front of the armor. It was something about Rowan’s gaze. Its intensity. And then his insistence that they knew one another…
“Was there something else?” Radic asked him then, Rowan’s eyes wide as he shook his head no. Nodding his own, it was towards the stairs behind the younger man that Radic motion toward as he said, “Then I suppose you should be readying my horse, hn?”
“O-Of course, sir!” Rowan even bowed to him, he was that jittery then. “I will get right on that.”
Radic watched him turn to leave before he, finally, opened his own inn room door and took a step inside.
The door had hardly closed behind the man before he began stripping down.
His armor wasn’t his own.
Or at least not fitted properly.
It was armor he’d been given, had been presented to him by some of the other top brass in the Kingdom, as a present for his twenty-first birthday.
For the future.
He’d put years in by that point, at training and actively being involved in protecting Princess Toren. The armor was a symbol of the King’s assurance that, yes, he was still intended to be the personal guard to the princess, when she one day came to power.
The insignia was special.
Rather than being the standard golden crown with a lightning bolt through it, King Torcan’s royal symbol, the crown had no ridges. Just a golden band, like Queen Asaeria wore currently. The lightning still struck it though, the jagged line a denotation of Aither heritage.
“My crown,” Toren had remarked when she first saw it, years prior, at his birthday celebration, “will not look anything like my mother’s.”
Then she’d insisted she would just have to make her own insignia, since everyone else was so poor at it, but she never had and time passed, though not enough for him to ever don the very specific armor set, enough so that she’d forgotten he even possessed it, before they fled the capital.
But his former armor didn’t fit how he viewed Toren. Not even as he winced, there in the dark inn room, examining where the too tight in the chest plate straps had rubbed his skin near raw.
It felt good to rid himself of his chain mail, his plating, and the garments he wore beneath. Everything had been in such a haste, before, even days out. He was still a mess of nerves and fears as he left his sword belt and armor all piled together, with little care, and headed into the bathroom to wash up.
He decided to focus, as he lit the lantern in the tiny room, on something else. If only just while he cleaned up. The plumbing of the room felt like the safest bet. He was, at the very least, somewhat interested in it.
Plumbing, in Galos, was not unheard of. In such a large city, even, such sanitation was necessary. In the city, you could visit the large bath houses, where deep pools of water, sourced from the underground hot springs contained deep in the Mount’s base. Along with that, cool water from the nearby lake was pumped, to form even temperature. The then dirtied water flowed out to the farming community lower down the hill, to irrigate the crops.
But for homes or other structures out in the wilderness, such as a rundown inn, to have such intricate plumbing felt special.
Not nearly as intricate, he imagined it led from some sort of spring or well, but water flowed just as easily when he turned a knob nearby. The faucet was little more than a plank of wood, chiseled like a slide, and then adhered before a square hole in the wall. From the square hole, water poured, running forth from the little wooden slab, down into the large wooden tub beneath it.
The tub wasn’t very large.
In fact, as Radic slowly climbed into it, he found that he could only sit with his knees pulled to his chest as water filled around him. It was warm, the water was, after running through that boiler he’d heard before, bringing peace to the man far too easily.
He’d been up for days, driving the carriage and trying to find a place for Toren, Balt, and Lia, and now they were all fine, for the moment, so if he just let his eyes slip close…
Had he been more alert, maybe he would have heard it when Lia closed her bedroom door perhaps a bit too loudly as she left it. Her room was right beside his and, were he not slowly falling asleep, he absolutely wouldn’t have wanted her roaming about alone.
But she wasn’t alone.
Because Radic had forgotten something else.
In his haste to get inside his room, he never really made sure that Rowan had vacated the area. In fact, after the man left, Rowan had done little more than still linger, not outside Lia’s room now, but just between them all as he hoped Toren would finally come out. The soft thuds from inside the room had died down and he hoped they’d be out soon, for dinner.
Lia came out first though.
She blushed deeply too, at the sight of the man in the hall, letting go of the thick wooden door as she stepped out of it. The door clattered behind her, loudly, the young woman wincing as Rowan, startled, glanced back at her with a frown.
“Princess,” he breathed. “I-I was just-”
“I’m sorry!” Lia brought a hand up to her mouth, covering her blush as she insisted, “I didn’t mean to scare you, I was just-”
“You didn’t scare me, I was… I…” Rowan didn’t know how to explain what he was doing, exactly, so instead, a deep red taking over his own features, the man said, “I was just heading out to care for your horse.”
“Oh, really?” Lia dropped her hand slowly, the slight tremble in her voice dying with the heat in her own cheeks. “He’s has been through a lot, getting us this far. Oh, I wish I’d thought sooner to do something for him. I-I’m just not usually in charge of, well, the carriage and-”
“Not to be rude, princess,” he cut her off with a bit of a frown, “but I don’t believe you are now, either.”
Lia nodded at this, as his words were true, but still insisted, “Please, if there’s something I can do to help-”
“You can accompany me, I suppose, if you like,” Rowan replied slowly. The younger princess didn’t come up often in he and Toren’s letters; he didn’t know a lot about her. “Your guard went into that room over there, if you must speak with him first-”
“No!” She even shook her head some as she came closer. “I’m ready.”
Rowan noted that she’d done away with the cloak from before, but rather than changing into something of her own, had pulled on what she could find in the room. A few leftover relics from years past resided in the dresser. Just a button-up shirt, with Ava’s logo from her sign out front sewn into it, that was a few sizes too big on the young woman as well as pants equally as ill-fitting. She’d always been tall, given her Aither blood, but slender, from her Availian, making finding clothes always difficult.
The majority in Kroto were of similar build to Balt, as most Galians were slightly shorter and more stout. While he and his brother packed on muscles due to their training in the Castle, most didn’t boast such muscles, loving instead their curves.
Lia frequently found herself out of place.
Her fit wasn’t so much of interest to Rowan, as much as her appearance all together. It was only just occurring to him that none of the guests had requested bags be brought up to their rooms, as well as hadn’t carried any of their own. Lia dressing in whatever she could find told him that they didn’t have belongings.
But why?
He wasn’t brave enough to ask. With a glance over his shoulder at Princess Toren’s still closed door, he sighed some before leading the other princess down the steps and out to the carriage, to care for the poor horse.