#heroine's

“Well, I’ll admit, I didn’t expect to see you again.” a rough voice broke through the darkness, followed by the sound of a match striking and a flash of orange light, and then a dull red glow: “Especially not with those bruises I gave you still showing.”

Ailynn shrugged: “They’re calling me the Hero of Brightwall now. It’s hardly far from here, so surely it makes sense for me to be around.”

“Sure it does. Around there. Not around here.” 

Ailynn had to give Saker that. On paper, the warm welcome of Brightwall and its inhabitants should have been far more preferable than the mercenary camp she’d stormed through only yesterday…

…but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

Brightwall suddenly seemed claustrophobic. There were too many eyes on her there, too many people with expectations. The Drifter Camp was the same; everyone seemed to be waiting for her to do something.

Less than a week ago, Ailynn had been a sheltered princess living in a castle. She’d hardly been beyond Bowerstone’s city walls! No-one had truly cared about her or expected anything from her; she had been the second child of the Great Hero Queen - people had expectations of her mother, of her brother, but never Ailynn.

Now all of that had changed.

The only people who had no expectations of her were the mercenaries she’d beaten half-way into the ground. They didn’t give a damn about her being a Hero, or a Princess, or her attempting to start a rebellion; all they cared about was about the fact she could beat them in a fight, and so they were happy enough to ignore her completely and let her come and go as she pleased.

At least, that was what she had thought. Apparently someone had thought to inform Saker of her appearance, and it seemed Saker cared enough to come and challenge her presence.

Enough to not accept her silence as an answer.

“So, Princess, why are you here?”

Ailynn sighed, opting to tell Saker the truth and just get it over with: “No-one here wants to ask me for anything.”

To his credit, Saker accepted her response without questioning it: “Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and all that.”

“God only knows how I’ll feel if I’m ever actually queen…” Ailynn snorted.

“So don’t be.” Saker shrugged: “Give up the revolution, don’t go after your brother’s crown, and don’t be queen.”

Ailynn paused.

She hadn’t been expecting Saker to say anything along those lines; he seemed like the sort of man to chase power at all costs, stress and all other emotions be damned…but then again, maybe that had been presumptive on her part. After all, Saker had abandoned his position as a captain in Albion’s army, and he must have had his reasons for that, even if Ailynn wasn’t privy to them.

Power and influence clearly wasn’t everything. He could’ve lost everything after deserting the army, even his life…but he’d done it anyway.

And he was here to tell the tale.

“Do you think that’s what I should do?” she asked him.

Saker grunted: “How the hell should I know what you should do? You’re a Hero, by all accounts.”

“Well, it’s not as if I have any other Heroes to ask.” Ailynn reasoned: “And you’re the person who’s least likely to spare my feelings.”

“I suppose there is that.” Saker sighed.

He didn’t sound pleased by the admission…but he didn’t tell her to leave, either, or deny her an answer. Instead, he seemed to be gathering his thoughts, so instead of pushing for a response, Ailynn waited patiently.

It wasn’t easy; Ailynn wasn’t naturally patient - it was something Walter had been trying to train out of her for years now - but no matter how much it was in her nature to push for a response, Saker’s insight was too valuable to rush him.

What she had said to him was true: he was the only person she could think of who would give her the unvarnished truth. In a whole new world where everyone seemed to want or need her, she wasn’t sure she’d get the truth from anywhere else, not from a source she could trust.

“I think you should do whatever you can live with. Sometimes it’s not about what we want, or even what we need.” Saker finally said: “It’s about what lets us sleep at night. Could you live with yourself if you took the crown? Could you live with yourself if you didn’t?”

Ailynn paused: “...I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to, at least not yet.” Saker shrugged: “You’re not going to be storming the castle gates tomorrow. You have time to think about things…but you will need to know at some point, and that point is probably not too far away.”

It really wasn’t what Ailynn wanted to hear.

She wanted to hear she had time. That she didn’t have to make a difficult decision. That things would just work themselves out.

But she hadn’t come to Saker to hear what she wanted.

“Thank you.” she replied softly, accepting his advice with a nod: “I appreciate you telling me what I needed to hear.”

“Yeah, well, if it’s shit advice, I didn’t offer it freely, so you can’t blame me.” the man shrugged.

Ailynn shook her head: “Your advice will be good. I know it.”

Saker looked uncomfortable…but it didn’t stop him from offering: “If you every need anything else, your highness…”

“Yes?”

“You’ll probably need to get me very drunk first.”

Ailynn grinned.