Elara. The Southern Plain The fires had nearly all gone out except for the watchfires at the edge of the camp. Elara felt better in the darkness. She could not see the knights or the horses or the swords and spears in the dark, only the sounds. Somehow they were less unsettling on their own. She'd given up on trying to sleep, hoped that at some point exhaustion would force her to at least a few hours of unconsciousness for lack of the strength to keep her eyes open. Elara wondered as she slipped out of her tent if this was how her brother had always felt before a battle, restless and uneasy. But perhaps he had always rested, knowing his men and knowing his strategy and knowing his own horse and sword. Elara would not hear the war council's objections to her decision to stay. "You are the queen now, Your Majesty, and without an heir," Marrard had said. "You will be killed if we fall, and Selles will die with you." Selles will not die, she thought bitterly to herself, only the name of my father and his father before him and their fathers more than a thousand years back. But the plains showed no signs of the battle the council feared on her behalf, not in the dead of night. The Southmen were cruel but not without honor, and they had many guards along the perimeter besides. Elara looked out at the plain and the dark spots beyond that were the Southmen's camps, black spotted with the dull gold of fires as in their own. Her tent was on a low ridge, the better to be defended, and from which she had a commanding view of the Southern Plain beyond. It was quiet in the light of the moon. Peaceful, even. Her eyes adjusted slowly, hair blowing about her face with each gust of wind from the west. She imagined Derrick was with her. He would not be with me, her mind couldn't help but to supply. She wrapped her arms protectively around herself, over the layers of wool and fur and suede she wore to keep warm. I would be mistress of Castle Randal and he would be here. Elara took in the cold night air through her nose. She reveled in the icy burn it left, rubbing her raw. From the low clouds obscuring the stars out west, she could tell a storm was coming, perhaps to be there soon or perhaps to hold off until morning. Her men would fight in the freezing rain and mud. My men. It still felt strange in her head and even stranger on her tongue the times she'd said it. Derrick would have said it proudly, without hesitation. As Elara looked around the camp, she saw a few of them sitting by the watchfires, or darting out of their tents to make water in the woods along the north side of the camp. They did not feel like hers, only like a gaggle of children she had offered to watch until their rightful mother – their rightful father – could take them up again. They had no father now, and would not until she sold herself to one. Elara turned to go back to her tent, hoping the melancholy would ease her off to a tormented sleep, at the very least. She had been alone when she came to the ridge with the watchmen and their torches, the rest of the high tents silent. It was so late into the night that even any drinking or whoring before battle had come to an end. Now, she was not alone. There was another figure across the ridge to the east, silhouetted against the night in a billowing cloak. She approached, silent as a shadow, or so she thought; if he heard her, he did not acknowledge it. "I see you are having trouble finding rest too, Lord Ingraham." William turned to her at the calm words, his cloak buckling and folding as he turned into the wind. She could not read his expression, something to which she had for the first time in their lives needed to become accustomed. "You ought to be sleeping, Your Majesty," William chided her. They said nothing, but he did not look away. Neither did she. At an impasse, William nodded to her with a curt, "Please go rest, Majesty. Good night," before turning to duck back inside his tent. Elara stood by herself on the eastern part of the ridge for a long while, watching the stars and thinking about how easy it had been. When everything had been most trying, that was when she and William had found each other easy company. He was her brother but lacking her brother's judgment, and he was her advisers but lacking her advisers' fear of offending her. Now he was the High Commander of her army, at her dead brother's decree and her agreement. On the eve of battle, he was everything to her, and nothing. She thought of the poor innocent girl to whom she had sold him off. Or had it been the other way around? She might have taken the girl's widowed lord father to husband, had anyone suggested it, but her hostage marriage to Tambor Renfry was still too fresh, too bloody a wound, to suggest that she marry again. And so the girl had been a playing piece, William her offering. Now the girl was dead by the same sickness that had taken Derrick. She hoped William had treated her kindly in life, and even found moments of joy with her; they had in common that they were both pawns, after all. She felt an irrational amount of guilt for the girl's death, as she knew William did for not having been with her but with his king. He would not have had to make such a choice, had Elara not ordered his marriage. My sister will rule my realm, but you must protect it. Elara's stomach turned as she looked out over the camp, at the men William now commanded, the men who protected her and her subjects, the men she now ruled. She did not feel very queenly for it. There was a rumbling in the distance; perhaps the rain would not hold off until morning. Elara held her heavy fur-lined cloak closer to her body even as its hem whipped back and forth around her legs in the wind. She realized she had not felt warm in a long time, and not because winter was coming, not entirely. She looked again to the Southmen's camp across the plain. The men asleep in those tents would have her dead. Her, and William, and her war council, and anyone who swore her or her brother before her fealty. It nearly made her wretch on the spot. Elara realized she had begun to cry when a gust of wind chilled the tears on her face. Rather than turning back to her own darkened tent, Elara crossed to the nearest one and ducked inside without announcing her presence. William spun around at the noise. He had been standing over a basin of water, no doubt washing before bed. He wore only his breeches, his winter wool tunic and vest discarded on the foot of his cot with his heavy cloak. "You won't speak to me. Even tonight. Why?" Elara knew the answer. He looked at her thoughtfully, water dripping down his neck from his freshly washed face. Finally, he answered, "You sold me off like a pig for slaughter, and it was still your brother's deathbed I chose over my wife's, the wife you gave me. I owe you nothing. Not anymore." Elara had known, but it hurt more to hear it spoken from his lips. "Then why are you here, William?" She knew the answer to that as well. William stood to his full height and crossed the tent toward her. "I am not here for you. I am here for your brother, who was a good and honest man and king and as much a brother to me as if he had been my own blood." His blue eyes were dark but shot with the gold of the lamp that illuminated the tent from its hanging above. "You told me once that it would be your honor to serve me," Elara insisted quietly, hands clenched into fists beneath her cloak. She saw William flinch, remembering. "As I recall you said you might be happy for any ill to befall you on my account," William countered her bitterly, "and it was you who brought ill against me, Your Majesty. You reap what you sow. You let the field go fallow the moment you closed your ears to me and treated me like a daughter who'd just bled." She loathed when he called her Your Majesty, but never had it felt as cold to her ears as it did now. "Did you sleep better at night, knowing you had one more liege lord because you'd bartered his daughter off to your war hero? Lynelle deserved better than that, Elara, and so did I." She could see he was angry now, though it was not his voice that betrayed him; it was still as calmly forceful as ever, though his face had reddened, the angry flush covering his neck and collarbone too, broken only by the white of his scar. William ran a hand through his hair and then pinned her with a heavy glare. "You asked me to serve you. You asked me to give you good counsel. I cared for you not because your brother asked me to but because you are as much a part of my life as breathing, and you ignored it all because I was your most expensive bargaining chip." He paused, breathing heavily, almost seething with anger. "Your brother never used me without my consent." Elara resented his talk of Derrick, and did not consider her words before she said them. "Then my brother did not treat you like he was your king." "No, he treated me like the friend I was to him," William said, pointing a finger at her, "something you have failed to do since you came into your crown." He looked at her almost menacingly, looking her up and down and for a moment it seemed his expression had softened. It was almost like pity. Finally, he spat, "You are no queen of mine." Elara slapped him hard across the face. Her palm stung from the impact, and she noticed she was shaking. You are no queen of mine. William's eyes burned bright blue in the lamplight, and nearly made Elara sick. She turned and left swiftly, walking from his tent out onto the ridge with its commanding view and heavy winds. You stubborn child, she told herself, and the thunder out in the west answered her. It began to drizzle soon, cold drops of rain pelting her and hanging in her hair, dripping down her face. It made her forget that she had started crying. What kind of queen was she, to cry at a slight? And what even was the slight? Was it a slight if she brought it upon herself? Elara folded her hands against her chest beneath her cloak, feeling her father's signet ring on her own finger. It weighed heavily, and had to be sized smaller to fit even her index finger after Derrick passed it on to her. She wondered if the place where its heavy gold band had collided with William's skin would bruise. "Do you remember what you said to me, about me, when we were in Tyron's Keep?" The voice startled her, the presence at her side even more so. She had not noticed William's approach, but he was now standing at her right side, staring out at the plain through the light rain. "Do you?" William asked again, turning to look down at her over his shoulder. He had pulled his heavy cloak on once again, but the hood was down, and his hair was glistening with rainwater, droplets sliding down the sides of his face. "I told you I trusted you with my life," Elara recounted, the words soft and familiar on her cold lips. William might have been smiling as he turned back to look at the plain, his expressions hard to read fully in the darkness. "Do you remember what else you said?" Elara waited in thought, and the words came to her. "It was not your fault, nor mine. We just had to make it right." Those words burned. She had failed that promise of we thereafter. William stared out into the rain, arms at his sides. Elara saw his eyes scan east and west along the Southmen's camps, mouth set in a severe line. He was strategizing, she could see. "You will make it right," Elara said softly, realizing what he had meant. "You will end this." The watchfires flickering at the far side of the vast plain were the last remaining evidence of the war they had pledged to wage in the dungeons. It felt that they had made the promise as children. But they were far from children then, nor were they children now. When William turned to look at her again, Elara could feel the tears on her cheeks, hot despite the freezing rain. "You must end this," she added, turning fully now to face him. "I will," William affirmed, closing the distance between them. "For Derrick, and for your father, and your mother. For your child, for my wife. For Selles, for all of them, I swear it by the gods." His fortitude shook her in her own moment of weakness, and Elara exhaled shakily into the rain. It was only then that William seemed to realize she had been crying. He reached out as if to touch her, but retracted his hand before it found her. "Why do you cry?" "Live, William," Elara started, the plea she had made of him all those years ago in a sweltering sickbed by the sea. "Swear to me, by all the love you bore my brother, that you will try. I know I cannot ask anything from you for myself, but for my kingdom and for the king before me I beg you..." Her voice had gone hoarse, quiet. And no more words were needed anyway. William sighed, in the knowing way that made it seem he knew his answer would either be a lie or simply folly. He said nothing, only took her hands in his, larger tha hers but just as cold. Finally, he said, "I am sorry, Elara." It was not an answer, nor was it even an excuse. It simply existed, her name in his familiar voice, soft and calm as it was supposed to be. She had grown ill of hearing Your Majesty from him, only to hear her own name in moments of biting anger, harsh and cold like a curse. But there it was, in the refrain he had echoed too many times to count. "Will you forgive me?" she breathed, almost a prayer out into the rain. "Forgive me, and live tomorrow, and I swear by the gods I will try and be a worthier queen." Elara reached up a hand to touch William's face where her palm had connected with it. She could not see in the darkness if it had indeed bruised. Meeting his eyes, she added, "Worthier of you, most of all." William bowed his head, eyes closed, both hands having closed over one of hers. Elara brushed her thumb gently against his cheek, watching him silently. For a brief moment, she saw in him the young man who had trained at swords with her brothers, childishly lean, mirth in those startling blue eyes. Before anyone they loved had died, before anyone had run away, before she had been named an apparent heir. If she was to be a queen worthy of serving any of her subjects, it ought to be William first before all. After all, he was all she had left. He had withdrawn his hands by then, and placed them instead on Elara's shoulders. "Alright," William said, meeting her eyes. His hands shifted inward, cradling her neck, fingers folded into her wet hair as he made her the same promise he had in that sickroom in the Summer Palace. "I'll try." She could not know if he would try to forgive her, or return to her, or both, but either was enough. It hardly mattered which, and she could not be so greedy as to ask for both again. The look in his blue eyes was a different kind of promise, a silent agreement. Not their first one. No sooner had they ducked in out of the rain than William's hands grabbed for the tie of her cloak, undoing it and letting it drop to the floor as Elara's own hands matched his, making the rain-soaked cloaks on the floor a pair. The lamp had gone out and the inside of his tent was dark, but it was better that way. William made quick work of her heavy wool dress and tore off his own tunic before lifting Elara in his arms and laying her on his narrow cot, clad only in her linen underclothes. He pulled her feet into his lap and unlaced her boots, hunched over to delicately kiss her calf, then her ankle as it was revealed beneath boot and half-stocking. He threw them away into the dark. Only then did he kiss her lips, leaning over her and exploring her mouth with his. Elara met his kiss hungrily, cold hands threading through his wet hair as she drew him closer. He withdrew long enough to remove her underclothes, and kissed her breasts and then the lowest part of her stomach when they were revealed. Her skin tingled half from cold and half in response to his touch. William's arms slid around her bare waist and drew her flush against him as he sank onto the cot, his body covering Elara's almost completely except where her legs parted to make room for his. Between kisses he wrestled with his breeches, finally forcing them down and kicking them away with the boots he'd never bothered to lace up. Fear had made Elara bold, and she reached between their bodies, finding him warm and hard. He groaned against her lips and broke away, head dipping down and pressing against her chest as she touched him. His breath came quickly along the curve of her breast. "Gods, stop," he breathed as her hand slid from root to tip, then back. "Don't tease me," he ordered, even as his body betrayed him, grinding into her touch. One of his hands finally batted her wayward one away, taking physical control even though the emotional control on both sides had clearly frayed. He touched her, finding proof of her desire as she had sought his. Rather than chide him for the very teasing of which he'd accused her, Elara let her body revel in William's touch. A soft whimper slipped from her lips, and she watched as he loomed over her, knowing the only regret he'd find in her face and in the arch of her body against his fingers inside her was that they had wasted so much time, tonight and every night before. "Don't wait," Elara murmured, either to herself or to him. She could not wait for the world to be different than it was to feel something, to feel a lover's touch again. And she could feel how hard he was pressed to her leg, how slick she must be against his fingers, how their bare bodies caved in towards each other as if unwilling to be kept more than a hair's breadth apart any longer. They were not for waiting. Their joining was rough, needy, deep. Elara moaned loudly until William stifled it with his mouth, kissing her again and again as his body drove into hers over and over. William tucked his arm beneath her, angling her closer as his other hand pulled her leg over his hip to the same end. She held onto his shoulders and rode each thrust with all the strength she could gather. Her nails bit into his shoulderblades, unable to hold hard enough, clench every part of him tightly enough, to keep him from harm. Her release caught her off-guard when it arrived, and she cried out, finding William's voice an echo of it against the hollow of her neck as he came. Shuddering in his arms as he spilled his seed inside her, Elara dreamed for a brief moment that it would quicken there, that her body would change for good and true this time. Then the thought threatened to make her ill, both for having thought it at all and for fooling herself into thinking it possible. Instead, she gave herself to blissful mindlessness. This time, Elara did not cry in his arms, did not shed tears against his skin to mingle with the sweat as they slumped against one another. Her chest rose and fell heavily under his, until William rolled off of her, though the narrowness of the cot kept them pressed together. Elara's eyes had adjusted to the dark, and she found William's in the blackness as she lifted herself to face him. They did not speak. It was silent but for the sound of their breathing, and then the soft rustling of his fingers in her hair when he reached out to touch it. Elara's heart thudded heavily in her chest, overexerted and anxious at once. Her head drooped onto William's shoulder, hair draping across his scar, and he curled an arm around her, heavy and sure. They did not speak, but nor did Elara sleep. Her head rang with the imagined sound of steel on steel, mixed with the very real patter of rain on the tent. She chanced a look up at William, and found him looking at her too. "You cannot sleep?" he asked her. Elara shook her head. Her mouth felt unsure, unable to wrap itself around words. William sighed, tucking his free arm behind his head and staring up into the darkness. He did not say anything; he did not have to. Elara felt his fear as if it radiated out of him and into her. Gently, Elara shifted in William's embrace and inclined her head closer and closer to his. Her mouth found his, at first timidly. For all that they had shared, for both nights they had laid together, she had not encouraged him to kiss her, had not begged for his kiss with her own. But even for that, William did not seem surprised. His lips danced with hers, tried to follow them as she pulled away, only to return. Elara treated it delicately, with a tender restraint uncommon in their desperate unions. But desperation soon overcame them again, and William pulled her astride him, seeking her, watching her lay claim to him. It was not until later, when she was once more spent beside him, that Elara's eyes became heavy enough for sleep. Elara was resting on William's chest when a crash of thunder woke her. The storm had rolled in overnight and it seemed it was right above them in the early hours of the morning. She moved with every rise and fall of his chest. The rhythm of his lungs and his heart had helped her to sleep for a spare few hours in the heavy embrace of his body and layers of wool and fur blankets. Even with cold rain beating down outside, Elara remained modestly warm. William stirred beneath her on his cot. Elara shifted off of him, resting lower along his side, head nuzzled against his ribs. He was warmer than she was, and still smelled of sex. Elara could hear other sounds outside mixed with the downpour, the movement and hurried voices of waking the camp and preparing for battle. Thoughts of the battle to come flooded her, and she nearly got sick. She rolled over William's arm and stumbled off the cot, retching over one of the washbasins. She had hardly touched her food the night before, and nothing came up but rough air that burned her throat. There was a creaking, then footsteps, then a hand on her neck pushing her hair to one side while an arm slid around and across her abdomen, warm and heavy and safe. He did not say anything; he did not have to. William merely stood there, head resting alongside hers, holding her back solidly against him, shielding her body with his. He was all she had left. Brother and councilor and lover and protector, and friend besides. Elara did not weep as she had the night before, for what purpose did it serve? She had ordered them to battle, and to battle they went, William at the lead. They dressed in silence. Elara slid into her underclothes and wool dress, her well-worn boots. She pulled the mail hauberk from William's hands when he lifted it and helped him into it herself, and then the leather vest over it. Last came his chain of office, the steel and sapphire chain of the High Commander; her father's, then her brother's, and now William's. William broke their silence when Elara lifted her cloak from the floor and moved to swing it around her shoulders. "Wait," he said, grabbing the edge of her cloak. With the gesture he had moved Elara closer, and she stood quietly as he lifted his own heavy hooded cloak from the floor, black lambswool trimmed in matching leather and lined in sable. It had been a gift from her brother when William assumed leadership of the cavalry upon Derrick's own advancement by nature of his kingship. "I want this back," William instructed her as he swept it across her shoulders. The great heavy garment swallowed her up, a good length of it pooled on the floor around her feet for her lack of height. Elara saw William's hands were shaking as he tied it at the collar. Elara took his hands in her own and said, "I look forward to returning it." It was a silly euphemism, a weaker promise by far than the event begged, but easier to stomach. They broke apart as Sir Marrard busted into the tent, windswept and damp with rain. "Majesty," he said, startled at the sight of his queen but managing a quick bow nonetheless. "Lord Commander," he continued, addressing William now, "I have gathered the council to look over the maps once again." "I will join you in but a moment, sir, when I have had a word with Her Majesty," William replied, indicating Elara. Marrard bowed quickly and was gone. William turned back to Elara, face ashen and worn. "Be safe, do you understand me?" she said, speaking first and taking him by the arms, hands gripping to the mail that covered him. "I can't--" "I know," Elara cut him off. "Promise me anyway." William smiled that sad, wry smile she had known for many years. "Is that an order, Your Majesty?" he asked her. The memory of him asking the same in her bed a long year ago threatened to make her ill again. "One I must give," Elara affirmed, meeting his eyes. Taking her hands in his and drawing them up to his mouth, William said, "Then I promise." He kissed her knuckles, each hand in turn, and then both at once, lips barely touching the signet ring on her right hand. Then he kissed her, covering her lips with his and drawing her close, one arm snaking under the cloak and around her back, the other cradling her neck, fingers buried deep in her hair, brushing against her scalp. Elara's hands searched him for something to grip on to, but there was only tough leather and heavy mail. When they broke apart, Elara looked him up and down. He had yet to be fitted in his outer armor, but even without it he looked every inch a knight: or rather, a commander. She thought of her father, of Derrick, of old Master Crawley who had taught the boys swordsmanship and riding. Oh, for them to see us now. For them to see William now. Elara kissed him more chastely, softly but in earnest. Then, still silent, she preceded him out into the rain.