Chapter 10: Today
(Fantasia)
A great weight was suddenly and forcibly thrown onto me. I awoke from my nap and came back to the squalid reality of our present lodgings. The baby cried and my father and mother were conversing with a woman in a silver and blue dress, a tiara of ice made her already titanic height somehow more imposing. As they spoke, I could see where she’d touched, frost curling around and melting after contact had been broken.
I huffed and very carefully manoeuvred out from under the weight of my unconscious sister. A nasty bruise across her jaw spoke to a petty squabble that had possibly broken out over this or that, whatever had set her temper off in the moment.
I sniffed haughtily as my place as a princess had taught me. How this petty wench called family had wound up disgraced this time would be a story to behold for certain. I was far too tired to care about my attitude towards Eris, if father lost his temper on her, all the better in my eyes, she probably deserved it. Father looked angry enough but I could see that underneath it all, he was worried.
“Very well, we will be making our way from here down southwest towards Noxurnos, can you guarantee us safe passage from the city?” Mom begged, to which the queen of the tundra nodded her crown-adorned head.
“I’ll escort all of you myself in the morning when the blizzard lets up and you are ready. By all means, stay as long as you wish though, they know you’re here but don’t know that you have the child.” Her emerald eyes seemed to survey the cooing infant curiously in his warm cage of furs and clothes. His little arms were all I could see from the bed as they grasped at the air searchingly. Taiga smiled and created a small wafer of ice from the air and gave it to the baby, making him squeal in abject delight as he teethed on it. I got up and walked over to them but my father put a hand up, stopping me as he talked,
“We must do everything in our power to make sure they don’t find him for as long as is reasonable. I doubt any of the current presiding rulers would want anything to do with him, but the people would most likely want to hold him ransom or worse.” While my father typically spoke about matters like this all the time, especially of his children, my mother seemed particularly distraught by this comment and walked outside, her face turning almost as pale as my father's already pale features.
His typically kind, brown-eyed visage that was only marred by a single violet ring in his left eye held no such niceties beyond the physical and was almost colder than the outside. “Fantasia, follow your mother.” His words were quiet and alone were inoffensive, but there was something that charged them in such a way that made us more akin to king and servant than father and daughter.
I began to argue since I didn’t like the cold but he cut me off before the words even left my mouth. “I will not repeat myself.” There was the briefest threat of violence as he set the hearth alight with just a glance, his black, curled locks spinning with his movements. As I left, I saw him bring out a map from his pack and begin discussing in low, fervent tones with the queen.
My mother was the kind of woman to worry over one thing or another until it made her sick and, oftentimes, she would be found hunkered over somewhere crying, vomiting or in some other way incapacitated in a way unfit for a queen. At these times, only I could really comfort her and tell her that what my father spoke of would only come to pass if we let it.
I donned every layer I had for the cold and even stole Eris’s long fur coat. So what if it didn’t fit me, it was warm, and the warmer in these extremes, the better.
Outside, I found my mother sitting near a small group of birds she had nimbly carved from ice with her sword. She was in the middle of finishing up her covey of doves when I found her. At least she looked dignified where she sat. Every now and again she would get like this and all I could do was sit and watch her. She gave the birds to passing people as they came and went their separate ways and eventually she had no more and rose up, wiping her red and black dress of snow, breathing in and out shakily. How could a woman so fragile and pure have married one of the most terrifying warlords of all the world? I thought to myself as I walked over to her and offered her my arm.
“Can we go look at the shops around the city before it gets dark?” I asked her innocently as she looked into my light hazel eyes. She nodded and sheathed her sword before taking my arm and walking with me along the frosted, icy roads.
For some reason or another, I felt watched, as if someone were looking deep into my deepest heart of hearts. I took a cautionary glance around our immediate vicinity but could see nobody who would want anything to do with us.
Today was a beautiful day in the middle of a city with barely any sunlight and a blizzard raging along the outskirts. There was no use spending this day crying for a future that would never come or looking for secret admirers or gawkers as father called them. Today was a day to not worry about yesterday’s mistakes or tomorrow’s problems. All we had was today.
