Aliana. Balent Woods The first snowfall finally came. It was the first week of the tenth month. They had found shelter in an abandoned cabin in the Balent Woods and spent the last weeks of autumn restoring it to habitability and erecting a lean-to that would shelter their horses. Aliana's hands were raw from work and cold, but when the first white flakes of winter bore down on them one midday she was grateful for the work they had done. It may not last many years, but it would protect them through the winter. With winter approaching and then upon them, it would be more difficult to move, let alone move without a trace. William had bartered for a dagger in one of the holdfasts they'd come across, which he had wrapped in a small hide and given to her. "You keep this in your bodice, no matter if it isn't comfortable," he had told her as he most carefully protected its sharp tip. "If anyone finds us in the snow, we are as good as dead unless you can protect yourself." He had taught her how to wield it, where best to strike and from how close a distance, how not to injure herself either drawing it or using it. Now the dagger in its leather binding pressed uncomfortably against her side beneath her clothes as Aliana sat by one of the two small windows and watched the oncoming storm. The snow had started at midday, a few scattered but large flakes. They were soon coming down in flurries, faster with each minute, and William had gone out to find food. Aliana knew he would try hunting something first, but if that proved futile then he would go to the nearest town, which was a half-hour's hike away. He had left when the sun was only an hour or so past its zenith. Now it was nearly gone, and from the cottage in the woods it already felt like dusk. Aliana had made a fire hours earlier. It was slower going without William's assistance, but she'd had nearly two months to learn the process and managed sufficiently on her own. The heat did not quite reach the far window by which she sat, but she was learning not to mind the cold. She had her heaviest cloak over the heavier cloth dress she had bought at market, and over that she had laid the second of William's two fur-lined cloaks. Her hands were buried in the folds of fabric; gloves would be all the sweeter if she only slid into them later. The five-beat knock was laid against the door. Aliana rose swiftly and went to unbolt the thick wood front door. Even though the signal had been given, she was still relieved when it was William on the other side. He was quick to give orders. "Take these," he said, holding the bundles in his arms out for her to take, "I'll need to get my boots off before I flood us out with melted snow." Aliana did as she was bidden, placing the parcels on their small table as William unlaced his heavy boots and stepped out of them, stocking feet landing on the dry inner floor. He placed the snow-sodden boots just inside the door and bolted it. Aliana watched as William pulled off his bow and quiver of arrows and laid them on the table, followed by his sword belt. Next came his cloak, laid out by the fire to dry, the wet snow in his hair making it almost glitter in the firelight. His cheeks were raw and red, his hands plainly stiff with cold when he pulled off his heavy gloves and set them by the cloak. He proceeded to take off the layers of clothing that were wet with snow, and crouched next to the fire in his breeches and woolen tunic, hissing as the heat touched his frozen fingers. "We won't be able to get out for a few days, I don't think," William explained, glancing up and over his shoulder at Aliana. "Bad storm, this one. The whole village is barricading themselves indoors." Aliana stiffened, oddly hurt by his words. She longed for the roaring fires of Castle Randal, the warm soups and stews the cooks always managed to make even in the darkest and coldest nights of winter. She looked across at the pile of provisions William had brought; it seemed enough for them to last a few days, but even having to consider it made her stomach churn with fear. "Close the window, will you? The eaves won't keep the snow out much longer," William asked, and Aliana nearly jumped at being asked for help, ashamed she'd daydreamed away about the castle far away. She hurried to the window, bolting it, and thus shuttering out the bit of natural light. She looked back at William, noticing for the first time how his broad shoulders just barely shook back and forth as he twisted his hands in front of the fire. Blushing, feeling again that she'd forgotten herself, that she was too busy being a princess to be a friend, Aliana quickly untied the larger of the two cloaks she wore, one of William's. Quiet and on light feet she approached him, laying the garment across his shoulders from behind. His head turned toward her, his eyes finding hers. "You don't need it?" Aliana shook her head. "It's yours, at any rate. It won't do us any good if you freeze and leave me alone." William stood, tying the cloak at its collar and adjusting it over his shoulders. "Did you love him?" William asked, voice low but innocent. Aliana's cold hands loosened where they were buried against her body, as if giving up the fight she did not know she had been waging within herself not to speak of past tragedies that were pale by comparison to the largest among them. "As much as I knew how to," she said, eyes flitting between William and the fire. "He was... gentle. And he held me like a woman, not like a princess. Like something worth holding for no other reason than that you want to." Her vision had begun to blur, the embers at the bottom of the hearth seeming to fan out around their edges like glowing, breathing sunbeams. "You could have--" "I could not have married him," Aliana preempted him, blinking the film from her eyes. "My brother was already the king, I had become too important." The statement felt like a redundancy given their very conversation was only happening because of its truth. William cleared his throat, then said tenderly, "If you had wanted it, Derrick would have allowed it. You know he would." Aliana had suspected her brother would have had that sort of regard for her wish had she rquested it, but hearing William, his confidant, say it aloud hurt like a dull ache from a wound that had mostly healed. She was not sure if she would have had the courage to ask – not because she was uncertain of the answer, but because she was uncertain if she truly wanted that for which she would have been asking. "I thought," Aliana stated softly, "about asking him... about telling him, that that was what I wished and that, if he was to go off to war..." but she trailed off, the self-consciousness seeping in at her edges. "If he would have you as a wife, in all but name," William concluded on her behalf, observant and intuitive as ever. Aliana looked at him, willing herself to feel shame for what she was admitting to have wanted, but could not find it. "He would never have agreed, he cared too much for my honor," she finally said, though guilt started to edge in on her now that she was putting words in a dead man's mouth, "and I wonder now if I really would have wanted him to have agreed at all. Not because I would have regretted it," she clarified promptly, "but I think I loved the idea of him, of us, tucked away in some room... I think I loved that more than him. It would not have been fair." "To him, perhaps not," William countered, shifting his cloak around his shoulders. "But if that is what you wanted, in what is so often unfair to women..." he trailed off. Aliana