#felgrim

“I beg your pardon?”

His eyes sparkled, deep and earnest, piercing her, making her unable to move.

“You heard me, Polita. I need you. I have always needed you.”

He had crossed the small stables of Throttlewell estate in but a moment, his hands, rough and callused, winding their way around her waist and pulling her in tight towards him. She could feel her heartbeat skittering through her skin, and wondered if he could feel it pattering away there, too.

“Oh!” The realisation crashed in on her all at once. “Oh! This is a dream.”

His mouth twitched up into a smile she rarely saw lingering there, his eyes still not moving from hers.

“Of course it is,” Dream Firmen agreed far more suavely that he usually did--as if she should never have had any reason to doubt it. “But that’s no reason not to enjoy it, is it?”

Polita considered the logic of this for a moment, but as he bent his mouth to hers, all doubts fled from her sleeping mind.

The straw was damp against her back even in her slumbering state as they collided and tumbled towards it together. She became aware with the abruptness that is so normal in dreams, that rain was hurtling down outside the warm, stuffy stables.

Her horse, Swiftheart, huffed indignantly in the next stall. Father had laughed when she had told him the name. He had said that she had named the horse for herself, for her own heart was all too swift to love.

Firmen pushed her back against the loose straw, his face even more rugged and handsome than usual. She ran her fingers over it wonderingly, revelling in the sensations her mind created for her. 

“Isn’t it a little cliched, Polita?” he rumbled, lowering his lips to her throat, making her arch up against him in pleasure. “The lady of the manor falling for the stable hand?”

“No, you don’t understand,” she wanted to say as his lips worked their way gloriously around her throat. “A stable-hand is what you are, not who you are. You’re kind to men and animals alike. Thoughtful and measured of word and deed. Hard working and driven, but never at the expense of other people. Dedicated, considerate, handsome. How could I not fall in love with that, even if you are just a stable-hand?”

But even in her dreams she wasn’t brave enough to voice these thoughts aloud--wasn’t brave enough to confess to her own, fluttering heart that this is more than just childish folly--that there was something deep and earnest here, something that would mark her, wound her, scar her if she let it. 

Honestly. Garin was always prattling on about not having personal attachments, and how anything could be turned into a weapon against you, but she would have hated living in such abominably bare surroundings. 

She clenched her hands in her blacks, the uniform of all the assassin apprentices.

“Lots of children play Break-the-barrel,” she tried. “It could have been any one of them.”

Break-the-barrel was especially popular amongst the assassin- and spy-apprentices of Hollowick though, she had to admit. The game, breaking into someone else’s house, rearranging all their stuff and leaving again without getting caught, was considered a mark of honour amongst the apprentices--a testimonial to their skill.

Perhaps that’s why Garin keeps nothing, she thought to herself suddenly with a grin.  He doesn’t want to fall victim to Break-the-barrel and lose his authority. Though who would be foolish enough to venture into Garin’s offices uninvited, she didn’t know. That was a terminal type of stupidity. 

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, Garin frowned.

“Perhaps,” he rumbled, breaking the silence at last. “But not a lot of children would be foolish enough to break into the palace to try it upon Prince Delphin’s personal chambers. That is an arrogance reserved solely for you, Black.”

She almost grinned again then. Anyway, she wasn’t a total fool. She had chosen the soft-hearted Delphin to practice upon, not his proud and haughty elder brother, Dorian, nor the youngest, Davon, a child of ice and stone who was already shaping up to be as ruthless as his father.

“Even if I did do it--and I didn’t  do it, Garin--then I didn’t get caught, so you have no proof,” she reminded him again.

His eyes tightened slightly, but she thought that despite his stern demeanour, he was trying not to laugh.

“May that comfort you all the way to the whipman, Black,” he retorted. “And be grateful that I don’t have you sent down to the younger classes again to teach you some sense.”

Marla jutted up her chin defiantly. The sunlight which streamed through the windows alighted on her pale and freckled face, tangling in her auburn hair.

“You always say that you can’t teach me anything,” she retorted, turning on her heel and marching away.

But Mama didn’t seem to be listening. She was holding up the fabric swatches to the light streaming through the window now, tilting them this way and that way to see how they fared by daylight and by candlelight respectively. 

The light streaming in through the windows seemed gloomy and grey today, as it so often was on the cliff-side keep. It was as if the daylight here was somehow permeated by the thick stone walls of the old house. Strong, study, and ever so slightly glum--was it any wonder that Throttlewell reminded her of Father, Polita thought with half a smile. It would break her heart to leave it, if she had to go and marry the king.

“Which do you think, Polita? The blue?” Mama asked distractedly, watching the way it shimmered in peacock hues in the light. “Or perhaps the lovely soft dove grey to match the Wicksted colours? But will all the women think of that?” she worried. “We want to set you apart from the other competitors. We want you to stand out.”

She would certainly do that, Polita thought with a sigh. She knew she was pretty, she had been told that often enough, and she had nice enough manners--as she ought given the extensive training she had had, but her family were of, what Mama delicately referred to as ‘straitened means’, and they were hardly influential in court right now. She knew that as soon as she went there, all the other competitors would be whispering about poor, impoverished Polita Asher, who was naive enough to think she stood a chance in the Heart Contest.

“The grey is beautiful,” Polita confessed, her fingertips stroking of the tiny square enviously. “It is such a soft colour. Silver, almost.”

“You have gold enough, you do not need silver,” Mama said decisively, stroking Polita’s golden curls off of her shoulders softly. Some cruel folks said that Polita’s shimmering yellow hair was all the gold Throttlewell had left. Mama said it was all the gold Throttlewell needed.

Polita just hoped she was right.

Mama took a deep breath in suddenly.

“Oh, what about this one, Polita?” she scrabbled through the pile and plucked out a deep crimson, shimmering darkly. It was a thick fabric, well made. Confident and gorgeous--and yet, Polita could not help thinking that it looked liked blood.

She forced a smile to her face.

Bissy didn’t answer. She was too busy watching those fingers tighten in his hair, a sure-fire sign that he was agitated beneath his grinning demeanour. 

She swallowed, clenching her hands into fists at her sides to stop them from reaching out, too. They were always trying to disobey her when Eaton was around, it seemed.

She looked away hastily. 

First Camp was quiet today. The freedom camp, set deep in the heart of Banewyrd forest, had been unusually busy of late, but it seemed to have grown still now, as if it had exhausted itself from the commotion. The tents which clung to the perimeters of the camp glistened, still heavy with the morning’s dew. 

The mistiness of the perimeter wardings hid the outside world from view and, more importantly, hid the rebels within from the outside world, too. Nobody who did not bear a rebel’s rune could pass through the warding circle.

Eaton, Bissy knew, chafed at the restraint, he longed to be fighting the unjust Avillean crown for freedom, but Bissy was more than satisfied to stay within the warded boundaries of the camp. 

“It’s only another year until you’re of age,” she told him consollingly, as she turned back to her darning. She was trying to fix up another one of Eaton’s torn and battered tunics again. He never took proper care of them--probably because he knew that he wasn’t going to have to be the one to fix them, she thought a little sourly.

He had ripped it during sword practise last week. Bissy had seen him--had watched him, more like, she admitted to herself with a guilty grin. He was improving, though how he would stand up to the official guards of the citadel, she had no idea.

“It’s not fair,” he muttered, kicking a twig into the fire before them. They were perched by the large bonfire, perpetually burning in the centre of the camp. Bissy, sewing primly on the large tree trunk, Eaton striding up and down before it. “It is every man’s right to undertake the ystava,” he growled. “Mostin has no right to stop me.”

“You’re not a man yet,” she sniffed. “Not for another year yet, Eaton Poole. Besides, you knew what your uncle would say before you went. No one undertakes the ystava until they are of age. It’s dangerous--not everyone survives it. We have these rules for a reason. He won’t make an exception for you.”

“But they need help now!” he said earnestly. “They’re trying to set up a new freedom camp, and they need all the help they can get to do it.”

Bissy felt her heart stuttering. She knew Eaton wanted to claim his birthright one day, that, as the last remaining son of one of the seven Noble Houses, he had a right to run a freedom camp in his own name--but if he did it meant that he would leave First Camp--leave her--forever.

Not yet, her panicking heart pleaded. Let me keep him for just a little longer yet.

He looked over to her, as if he had heard her thoughts, and grimaced.

“Go on,” he sighed. “Tell me I’m a fool.”

“You’re not a fool. You’re just passionate. But you’re time will come, Eaton,” she said earnestly. “Don’t wish it away yet. And don’t keep plaguing poor Mostin,” she added, grinning suddenly. 

He sat down beside her and nudged her with his elbow. “And...?” he prompted, grinning wickedly. She grinned back.