Princess Elodi's Arc

Chapter 29 of 55

The morning after her first coins, Damon led Elodi through the castle gates and showed her what he had built. A wooden stall stood against the outer wall, with shelves for wool and a stool worn smooth. "So you have a place," he said. "Yours. Not a guest's corner." Elodi ran her hand along the wood. For the first time, something outside the castle belonged to her. She filled the shelves with yarn. She hung a small sign. Then she sat and worked. Loop, pull, loop. The otter curled at her boot, its jeweled collar catching the sun. She knit through the morning and into the afternoon, and people came. The cold mother returned for mittens. A farmer took his winter socks and paid in copper. The flower woman traded a shawl for an armful of blossoms. Elodi made booties for new babies, no bigger than her palm. She made scarves and stuffed rabbits with button eyes for children who begged their parents to stop. Each day she earned coin. Each day more people knew her name. Days turned to weeks. She learned the rhythm of the market, the faces, the wind that came off the sea by afternoon. She learned which children needed warm things and made them anyway. She sat outside the walls she was free to enter and leave, and the freedom no longer felt hollow. It felt like hers. One evening, as she packed her wool, Damon leaned against the stall. He watched her count the day's coins into a small pouch. "You've made a home," he said. It was not a question. Elodi looked at the stall, the shelves, the sign with her name. She thought of the locked doors she had run from, the guards, the cage of her mother's fear. This was the opposite. She had built a place no one gave her and no one could take. "I have," she said. "I made it myself." The otter climbed into her lap. She scratched its head and felt the weight of the full pouch in her hand. She was no longer a runaway. No longer only a guest, or only a bride. She was a woman with a trade, a stall, and coin she had earned. Damon smiled, but something crossed his face. "There's talk in the market," he said. "A ship flying Avalonian colors was seen off the coast this morning." He paused. "Not riders. A royal ship." Elodi's hands went still on the otter's fur. Her mother had promised no pursuit. She had released her. And yet a ship had come. Elodi looked south, toward the water, where the last light touched the waves. She had built a home here at last. Now someone from her old one was sailing straight toward it, and she did not yet know why.