Princess Rainy's Arc

Chapter 2 of 12

That night, Rainy could not sleep. Her mother's words spun in her head. A tribe in the north. People who might understand her. By dawn she had made up her mind. She would ask her father for leave to go. She dressed in her sky-blue traveling clothes and pale boots. Her white lynx rose from the foot of the bed and followed her down the long halls of the pale-stoned castle. Its claws clicked on the stone floor. The throne room doors stood tall and heavy. Rainy pushed them open. Her father waited on the dais. King Anthony was a broad man with dark hair and a scruffy beard. His silver crown sat crooked, as if he had put it on in a hurry. He ruled hard, but his hands had always been gentle with her. He watched her cross the floor, and his stern face softened. "Come, my child," he said. Rainy climbed the steps and bowed her head. She took his rough, warm hands in hers. They were the same hands that had lifted her onto her first horse. "Father, I want to travel to the tribe in the north," she said. "Mother told me they may know why I am the way I am. I have to go." His grip tightened. "The north." He said the word like a wound. "Do you know what lies between here and those mountains? Frozen passes. Wolves. Men who would take a princess for ransom." He stood and walked to the tall window. Outside, the blue-green domes and spires of the castle caught the morning light. "I have lost too much to give the mountains my daughter." "I am not helpless," Rainy said. She lifted her hand. From a basin by the wall, water rose and coiled in the air. "The water listens to me. You have seen it." Her father turned. He looked at the floating water, then at her white hair. Something shifted in his face. Fear, and pride pulling against it. "I will not stop you," he said at last. Rainy's heart leapt. Then he raised one finger. "But I set a condition. You will not ride out alone. I will send word today for a guide. Someone who knows the passes. You wait until he comes. Swear it." The water dropped back into the basin. It was not the free leave she wanted. But it was leave. "I swear it," Rainy said. King Anthony pulled her into his arms. His beard scratched her cheek. "Then it is done," he said. "May the goddess who gave you watch the road." Rainy left the throne room with her promise made. She had won her father's blessing. Now she was bound to wait for a stranger she had never met, a man chosen to lead her into the very danger her father feared. The journey had a start. She only lacked the one person who could begin it.