Allair

The mild breeze tickled my skin like an affectionate kiss as I stepped out into the market place. The suns hand was warm as it heated up blood. Apart of me wanted to just lie down and bask in the rays of sunshine like a lizard on warm rock.

Home.

This was home.

It still felt so strange.

The air smelled strongly of lavender and freshly baked bread, not a trace of the gore and blood I had smelled in the war camp or the chilly winter snow that I had witnessed in the North. No this smell was alive.

I placed a hand on my chest, over my heart to make sure it was still beating. Yes. I shut my eyes and counted to ten. Everything was still the same when I opened them again. Not a dream. Relief flooded me.

I walked along the venders in the market. My finger trailing some beautiful jewel and silk. I was here. I could feel, touch, smell. But yet... I wasn't. It's not a dream, I reminded myself. There was a apart of me that didn't seem to feel present as my boots scrapped on the gravel path.

I looked around. Horses were being saddled up in the stables. Guards past me with smiles on their faces. People haggard with each other in the market. The distant sounds of the water pushing through the moat surrounding the castle. Children laughing.

But there was nothing.

I felt nothing.

I tried to pull on the thread inside my heart. This was home, I told it. I made it back. But there was a growing isolation creeping its way through my blood. Like the slow moving frost bite eating its way through your body. One limb at a time.

The Princess who had lived her had been all smiles and mischief. She ran through the mud and hide from her mother's wrath. But as I looked down at myself, I didn't see her. But I no longer saw Little Miss either. No longer the Mistress the world had come to know me by, but no longer a princess either. I wasn't sure exactly what else that left.

An empty shell perhaps.

An empty shell filled with anger and sorrow and and pride, recently it appears, self pity. Yes, the well of my self pity was deep.

One day. That's all I wanted. One day where I could pretend to be who I once was. Its what I had decided this morning as I got out of bed. To smile at those who passed me. To be kind and bicker with my brothers. To just be. But it appears that my mind has other opinions.

"One day." I said to myself once again. "Just one day."

As if in answer, my brothers raised voices traveled through the castle.

I rolled my eyes. Anger flooded my veins at the world. And everyone in it.

I was going to have a normal day if it killed me.

And knowing my luck. It would.

I plastered a smile on my face hoping it was believable as I strode through the city. Taking in all the sights and sounds.

I plucked an apple from one of the import crates and smiled having gotten away with it.

I bought a stick of hot bread from the bakery by the edge of the castle market and took a seat at the edge of the moat, the board walk bridge busy with movement. My legs dangled over the edge and I watched the waters inhabitants ride the currents. Oh how I wish I were a fish. Or a frog. They looked like they had so much fun, swimming around all day, chasing each other. They didn't have much to worry about apart from their next meal. No social standing. No political alliance or war to contend with.

I watched one fish swim peaceful past a cluster of rocks. And another, much bigger fish lunched outward. Eating the smaller fish.

Or maybe I was wrong. I stared horrified at the moat. Maybe the fish understood my problems better than I did. Shaking my head I decided to leave the water behind before I had to witness another fishy death.

Or worse, if I fell in.

With a deep breath, I wondered back through the town. Retracing my steps.

A glint of light caught my eye and I halted. Skidding to a stop. Turning on my heel, I angled my head a bit to examine the gap in the castle wall. The entrance was covered in cob webs and clearly hadn't been used in a long time. No doubt since my mother had last laid fresh flowers many, many years past.

I swallowed.

Well, if the fish couldn't offer me some semblance of peace. Perhaps the dead could.

With a grim face, i headed for the small crack in the wall. The windy staircase and darkness meet me at the same time a great stench had my stomach turning.

I ducked my head as I down into the crept. It was colder here. The white stoned walls echoed the wind like whispers from the dead. A chill went up my spine and my arms prickled with bumps. I hated it in here. So cold and lifeless. When I die, I want to buried somewhere warm, where the sun could warm the dirt around me, not here, shoved into some cold stone box. I guess, at least here I would be surrounded by my family.

My dead, cold, decaying family.

I shook my head trying to clear my thoughts. I didn't want to think about the dead now. It was too confronting. I've been so close to death many times over the past few months, I didn't want to think about my own funeral arrangements.

I stared at the inscriptions and sculptures as I passed each grave. My steps stilled as I came across a slightly familiar face. The sculpture showed my father with a slightly wrinkled face, a beard only just starting to thicken and his hair longer than I remembered.

I tilted my head trying to picture him. His grey eyes storming as he gave commands. He was never a man to tuck me in at night or offer me a hand when I stumbled. But I remembered the kindness he showed me, the way he used to chuckle and laugh as Tristan and I scrambled for his attention. I remembered watching my father teach Arthur how to use a bow for the first time. Tristan and I were seated on a fence, our feet dangling and two guards positioned behind us just in case we fell backwards. Arthur was never skilled with a bow, his board shoulders made wrestling and sword fighting his speciality. The bow is our sigil, my father would say. It is a weapon to be respected. If you trust it, the arrow will strike true.

I smiled replaying the memory in my mind.

"How did he die?"

I jumped a little at the intrusion. Turning around I saw the shadow of Jonathan form as he stepped into the light of the flaming torch. His face was stern and guarded. I didn't want him here. I didn't want him anywhere near my father's tomb.

"Why do you care?" I snapped rather defensively. I turned, repositioning myself between Jonathan and my father's tomb.

Jonathan narrowed his eyes at my reaction. "I care if he suffered." There was a darkness to his voice that chilled me more than the wind and the stone. "How did he died?" He repeated.

"He died of battle wounds." My voice echoed in the tomb. I lowered my voice, not wanting to wake the dead. "About six months after the war ended. One stab wound in the stomach and a small gash on his leg."

Jonathan took a step closer, his features now clear in the light. He seemed in a trance.

"He was bed ridden and sickly for months. An infection had creeped in apparently. I barely remember him out of his bed, even for formal occasions." I turned my back towards my fathers tomb and stood tall as I faced Jonathan. "That painful enough for you?"

Jonathan snapped out of his trance and faced me. He scoffed. "Dillon was carried back from the front, covered in blood, his legs twisted and misshapen. He slept for two weeks because of the wounds. The physicians couldn't save his legs, too much damage had been done to his spine, 'he would never move again' they told me."

I remembered Dillion and Ashiar from my time in the North. Dillon is his chair, unable to move and have children. His only joy was the love he had found in a peasant girl he had hired as his nurse.

"My uncle told me, my father died fighting Cyion. He said 'two kings faced each other on the battle field and for a moment, the war stopped to watch. They traded blows for what felt like hours before my father stabbed Cyion in the stomach. He was bleeding heavily and my father got cocky. Cyion swiped his feet out from under him and stabbed him in the heart.'" Jonathan spoke as if he had spent years memorising his uncles words. I imagined him laying awake at night, picturing the scene. The way two kings moved across a battle field, equally matched, both too afraid to lose.

I imagined them myself, as he spoke. The moment my father's sword struck the killing blow. How he fell to the floor clutching his opened stomach desperately trying to keep the blood inside him. I pictured him falling to the floor, laying there as his blood mixed with his enemies on the battle field, waiting for death to take him too.

"They killed each other." I spoke out loud. My voice was barley a whisper, lost in the wind. I focused on Jonathan then, my anger boiling. "Is that not enough for you!" My voice raised. "They killed each other. They both made mistakes fighting a war that neither of them had any part in and they paid with their lives. Why should we continue to pay for the mistakes of our fathers?"

Jonathan's eyes focused on me, unfazed.

Anger and rage rippled through me. I tired to leash it. Tried to push it back down. But my self-control snapped like a thin, breakable, twig.

My features twisted into a vicious snarl. Thankfully there were no mirrors here to reflect it. "I am tired of being the victim of your petty revenge plot!" I yelled so loud my voice rebounded off the ancient stone and echoed. "I am not my father and you are not yours. If you can't let this go then tell me now. Forget the fucken treaty and leave. Wage a war for all I care, because I am done being your play thing." My voice dropped to a low and careful tone that made the mice in the tomb go running for cover. "And if you can't decided, then I will take my child and we will go far away, and you will never find us."

I didn't wait for a response.

It was a warning.

A threat of my own, the first of many I would make in the next months.

I walked out of the tomb, leaving the dead - and Jonathan - behind.

My anger was an unnamable, tangible living thing. And it begged me, whispered to me in such a seductive voice. Throw something. Hurt something. Someone. Make them bled. I shook my head and pushed down the feeling. Trying to burry it under any form of irrelevant emotions and feelings floating around in my mind.

By the time I had returned to the main castle entrance and the two guards posted there, I was a picture of forced smiles. The only tell of my anger was the fist I kept clenched behind my back.

My one day that I had promised myself, to be a normal princess, had died and drowned in the moat with the fish the moment dinner started. Jonathan had been confined to his room after he slipped his guards and followed me into the tomb earlier. And as punishment - and mostly because Arthur still wanted to kill him - he would not be given food.

The thought made me smile. It was like punishing a child.

Tristan was quiet as he pushed the food around his plate in the small dinning room off the Southern wing of the castle where our bedrooms were all situated. He was glaring at his piece of chicken.

Maybe it was my time spent as a captive, or simply the exposure to Jonathan's mood, but I found myself trying to read my brother. To find the answers without pushing him. Tristan was never one to have a temper, always such a joyous boy. But now, his shoulders were slumped and tense. His brow permanently found. Lips in a firm, unrelenting line. And the fire and rage in his eyes could burn down a mountain.

Maybe anger issues ran in the family then.

I turned to Arthur. He seemed a little more relaxed the Tristan, but still not at ease. Although, I had rarely witness Arthur in pure reaction. He was always on guard. As a King's bastard and as our childhood baby-sitter. I wonder if he ever sleeps at night.

"How was your first day home?" Arthur asked me, catching me staring at him. He offered a tight lipped smile.

I sighed, pushing my food around my plate, no longer hungry. "Fine."

Tristan's head looked up. "Just fine?" His frown deepened, his eyes confused. "Your first day back in your childhood home and it was fine?"
His pride seemed to take that as a physical blow.

I swallowed, careful with my next words. "It's just, everything has changed so much since I remembered it. It's overwhelming."

Arthur tried to intervene. "The weather was nice today."

"Yes." The smile I gave him wasn't genuine. "It was lovely."

"You went to the tomb?" Tristan asked, his words were both, a question and a statement.

"I did."

He nodded, as if he had expected me to deny it.

"Did you take him down there, or did he follow?"

"He followed." I looked between my brother's faces. "What's wrong?"

"Did he hurt you?"

I frowned. "No." They didn't hear me yelling at him then. Good to know the tomb holds in the sounds.

Tristan nodded and offered a pointed look at Arthur, as if to say see. My half-brother gave a hard, cold glare in return.

"Just to clarify," I leaned across the table. "Am I involved in this little fight you two are having?"

At the same time, they gave me conflicting answers.

I raised my brow at Arthur. He was always the first to give in to me.

And this time was no different.

"We are debating what to do about that prick you bout with you."

"Oh?" I turned to Tristan now. "I thought you were discussing terms of peace?"

"We are." Tristan all but growled.

"I say we should cut the fucker into a hundred pieces and send them back to his uncle one piece at a time." Arthur spoke with a cruel smile, one he rarely let me see growing up.

I may not have been on good terms with Jonathan right now. But I didn't want him dead. And the thought of Dillion, unable to move in his chair opening a box with John's head -

I turned from my plate angling myself towards the door, ready to bolt if my dinner crept up any further. Yes, the thought was sickening.

"We're not doing that." Tristan's hand grabbed mine, giving it a light squeeze.

He knew.

My brother knew me well, and he could read it on my face. I didn't want Jonathan dead. He saw that deep down, I did care for him, despite everything. And that John cared for me - at least enough to stop that dagger I had held to my throat. And this child, well I wasn't sure if he even knew what he felt.

"It'll show your power. You can't just let his treatment of Allair go without action." Arthur counted, completely unaware of my inability to stop my near puke.

Tristan turned to Arthur. "And then what? Then I have an entire army marching to my door and within the first year of my rule, I'm asking my people to die for what exactly? My own pride? They'll stage a coo before their army even breaks the boarder."

"So what?" Rage rippled through the room. "You're just going to let him walk out of here? Alive and well? And meet his terms as well?"

Tristan tensed. He wasn't happy with that option either. But I could see it, the answer in his eyes. Yes. He had weighed the options, and it was better than war.

"No. Maybe. I don't know yet." His shoulders sagged. I could feel the weight on his new crown weighing down on him. Crushing him body and soul. My brother was ageing faster with the weight pressing on him. It worried me.

I brushed my thumb over the rough scared patch of skin atop his hands as he continued to hold mine.

"You've got time." I told him, offering up my first genuine smile of the day.

Tristan's smile mirrored my own. Small and slightly sad. But genuine.

I watched Arthur, in the corner of my eye as he rolled his eyes. Heard the stretch of his chair and he stood up. And the muffled sounds of his foot falls on the marble floor as he stormed out.

Tristan's shoulders slouched instantly. Arthur, it seems, has been pushing him too far.

"My advisors agreed with Jonathan's terms," Tristan spoke quietly, not wanting to be overheard. "They think they're fair and we need the resources he offers after I selfishly cut ties with Petar." He looked down ashamed. His first act as a ruling monarch and it had tightened the pockets of his people, making them struggle. "They also think I should no longer let Arthur into the meetings. That he should be given a position in the guard, not the house or my counsel."

I looked into Tristan's eyes. The blue-grey matched my own. "What do you think?"

He let go of a deep breath. "I think..." He stumbled. His thoughts a wild mess reflected in his eyes. "I think he has been testing me a lot lately. He used to be a crutch to lean on, someone I talked to about all of this. But now..." He shook his head. "He pushes - questions every choice and not just in private but in front of everyone. He thinks he knows best, but I've spent years training for this crown, my whole life was moulded for this. I know I can't just go toward every time someone pisses me off." He leased his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands.

"What does mother say?"

Tristan shrugged, his face still hidden.

"We haven't heard much lately, she's been busy with Kaya. I'm expecting a letter soon."

"How are they?" My heart ached just at the thought of my mother and sister. I wanted nothing more than one of her tight hugs. For her to sit on the edge of my bed, rubbing soothing circles across my forehead and humming lightly. Kaya would be cuddled up beside me, sneaking in as she always did.

"They're fine. Kaya's doing well. The letter she sent me the other week talked about how handsome her new husband was and the new necklace he gifted her." Tristan lifted his head and rolled his eyes playfully.

I laughed. For the first time in what felt like a long time, I actually laughed.

"Can I have them?" I asked tentatively, my voice still shakes with the giggles. "The letters?"

Tristan's eyes seemed to gloss over for a moment. But only a moment. "Yes of course."

With a kiss on the cheek and a tight hug, I left Tristan. The collection of Kaya and mother's letters tucked under my arm and a dinner roll in my hand. I smiled, eager to get back to my room and read through the letters. But I had one stop to make first.

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