I hadn’t the inkling of a clue now what to say. She hadn’t expressed a single displeasure at the nature of the question, or even the smallest of disapproval at my suggesting she might share that intimacy with a woman. She was making it increasingly hard to mind my station, and to keep from thinking of her as a friend rather than my princess. But she was my princess, and it wasn’t my place to be asking those kinds of questions, or to be thinking the kinds of things I was to make me want to ask those questions. It was so clear to me that she already considered me a friend, and, as she’d considered Ellie one of her dearest friends, she didn’t mind my lack of title. The truth of the matter was, however, that once my task was seen through, whether I took her north to her father or south to her own destination, it was likely I’d never see her again. I don’t know why, but I felt the pang of that thought in my chest.
“Kiena?” Ava prompted, breaking my silent reflection. “Why snow storms?”
I glanced toward the motionless shutters while I took in a deep breath. “I taught myself to hunt as a child, out of necessity,” I began to explain, feeling far too vulnerable to meet Ava’s eyes. “Albus was just a pup the first time we went out on our own. Mother was sick, she needed something of substance, but I hadn’t learned to read the weather yet, not like I can now.” Having heard his name, Albus finally got off the bed and trotted over, setting his head on my lap as if he knew the story I was telling. “A storm came only shortly after we’d gone out, a bad blizzard that lasted days. I couldn’t see more than a couple inches before my eyes, and Albus was too young to know the way home. We got lost.”
“For days?” Ava asked in concerned understanding.
“Aye,” I answered. “I knew not to wander, so we curled up beneath a fallen log. It was so cold. I held Albus to my chest to keep us warm, but we were both wet and frozen and shaking.” I scratched behind my dog’s ear. “By the time the storm ended, dear Albus was stiff. I thought I’d lost him.” Ava reached out to stroke Albus’s back, like she felt the immediacy of the danger all those years ago. “I hardly had the strength to run home, but I did. I warmed him back to life.” I laughed at myself, my cheeks tinting while I admitted, “I cried so many apologies into his fur it was hard to dry him by the fire.”
Ava smiled at that, the warm kind of smile that eased my bashfulness. “You know better now,” she offered. “You won’t be caught off guard again.”
“No, I won’t,” I agreed, leaning back in my seat and feeling strangely comforted having shared my discomfort. “But the cold is a glutton, and its greed chips at me whether I permit it to or not.”
“Your fear is not ill-founded,” she said. Albus turned away from me to meet Ava’s loving hands, and ran his tongue up the side of her face so that she giggled her bell-chime laugh. “And Albus seems to have forgiven you.”
“I’m grateful to you,” I told her, but her eyes met mine with confusion. “For your concern.”
“You needn’t thank me,” she said, pushing Albus’s face away when he tried to lick her again.
“Still,” I said.
At the tone of my voice, she looked at me with a somber understanding. “You’re welcome.” After a moment’s pause, she grinned and picked up something else on the table that I hadn’t noticed until now. “A traveler had parchment,” she said, holding up the paper, “I got him to part with some.”
“I don’t suppose you should be making the acquaintance of travelers.” I tried to narrow my eyes in rebuke, but I couldn’t help smiling at how excited she looked. “And educated ones at that.” She was more likely to be recognized by the educated.
“What’s done is done.” She set her teeth in a grin in response to the look on my face. “May I borrow your dagger?”
My eyebrows rose at that. Ava stood and walked to the fire, picking a long, cool piece of charcoal from the edges. It became apparent to me that she wanted to sharpen the charcoal to a point, so I removed my knife and handed it to her as she sat back down. She held the charcoal over her knee and proceeded to carve over one end, and I managed to watch her calmly for a minute before she nearly skinned herself.
“Be careful!” I exclaimed, wincing at how close the blade had been to slicing through her trousers. Then I realized my protest had been too forceful, and added, “If you’d please.”
Ava smirked, and I’d seen her smile enough by now that I knew she was about to tease me. “Tell me, Kiena, how many times have you cut yourself with this blade?”
I reached out to take it when she handed it back, answering, “Too many to count.”
“Alas,” she said, doing what she could to hold back that smile. “Here you are, alive and well.” I pursed my lips as though I wasn’t amused in the slightest, though truthfully, even Ava caught the entertained glimmer in my eyes. “Perhaps I should be a bit more reckless to prove I’m not so fragile.”
“Is it your goal to suffer me an early death?” I replied. “By the gods, you’re well on your way.”
Ava laughed, testing the point of her charcoal at the corner of a parchment. “You weren’t so uptight about me a couple of days ago.”
I stood to walk to the saddle on the floor, reaching in one of the bags for my sharpening rock. “I hardly knew you a couple of days ago.”
“Are you saying you’ve grown attached?” she asked playfully.
Though I blushed, I refused to look at her so she wouldn’t see it. “Mind yourself, Ava,” I said with just as much jest, though at the recesses of my mind I was hoping she’d heed my warning, “or a subject might forget the true height of your title.”
“Maybe that’s the goal,” she said without a hitch.
“To what purpose?” I asked, suddenly suspicious and serious despite the fact that Ava was still almost maddeningly smug.
“The comfort of both.”
I glanced down at the stone in my hand so Ava wouldn’t notice my confusion. “That’s a broad answer.”
“Indeed,” she agreed, and when that’s all she said, I felt my eyebrows furrow. “I’ve frustrated you,” she observed flawlessly.
I paced over and resumed my seat in the chair across from her. “No.”
“Liar,” she stated. “What’s upset you?”
“It won’t do to have me forgetting where you come from,” I told her, and at the same time I glanced up at her, I felt myself wanting to forget.
“Why?” she asked. All hint of playfulness had abandoned her expression, and now she was leaning forward against the table, watching me with sincere interest.
“Where I’m from,” I said, meeting her gaze, “royalty’s not associated with a subject’s comfort.”
“But we’re not where you’re from,” Ava said, “and we’re not where I’m from. Might comfort be associated with whatever we’d like?”
I just couldn’t figure her out. She wasn’t being direct, and though I’d kept up with her banter thus far, it was getting to the point of losing me. I thought I knew what she was trying to tell me, but I couldn’t let myself get too comfortable with her. If I did, I’d risk feeling things I shouldn’t be feeling, or doing things I could be killed for. I was already walking a fine line in being so friendly and informal with her. It was dangerous, but she seemed determined to guide me over that line.
“I suppose it remains to be seen,” I answered, and Ava’s lips curled with approval.
Chapter 5
While the storm raged outside, Ava had been working over her parchment, and I’d cozied up on the floor in order to groom Albus. Usually I didn’t fret so much about the state of his fur, or what he felt or smelled like, but Ava insisted that she didn’t mind him sharing the bed. The least I could do was make sure he was clean. So I spent a better part of the day picking pine needles and brushing dirt from his fur, and even trimmed his nails with my knife—a task he hated and for which I had to reward him with a handsome sum of meat. I took off my chest wraps to have some rest of them while I sharpened my knife, made repairs to my clothing, poked at the fire, anything to keep my mind occupied. Ava seemed well equipped for the stagnation of the storm, but I wasn’t accustomed to sitting still or having no tasks, especially in the midst of a blizzard.