Princess Willowyn's Arc

Chapter 64 of 70

Morning light crossed Willowyn's borrowed bed at Graystone Castle. For a moment she forgot where she was. The minx stirred against her side, warm and soft. Then rain struck the window hard, and she remembered. She had slept without meaning to. The storm had not passed. Thunder still rolled beyond the stained glass. She could not fly through this to reach the King and Queen of Allorie. She was still trapped here. A servant pushed the doors open and bowed her head. "The King and Queen await you, my lady." Willowyn pushed herself up. She had met Queen Gretta the night before, but not the king. She dressed in her silver gown, set the circlet on her dark red hair, and let the servant lead her down the stone stairs. The throne room held two seats. Queen Gretta sat in her pale blue robes, her brown hair loose. Beside her stood a broad man with a dark beard and a gray goatee. A pale blue fur cloak hung from his shoulders. Royal chainmail showed beneath it. His silver crown caught the colored light. He watched Willowyn cross the floor, and his eyes were not warm like his wife's. "Ah," the king said. His voice was raspy and deep. "You must be our guest." Willowyn stepped forward and curtsied. "I am Willowyn." "King Stefan," he said. He did not smile. "My wife opened our doors to a dragon in the night. I would know why it came." Willowyn kept her back straight. She had run from Kai and the Allorie pact. She had let others decide her worth. She would not shrink here. "I came out of the storm," she said. "Nothing more. I mean your house no harm. Your queen already knows this." "She trusts easily," Stefan said. "I do not." He stepped down from the dais. "They say an elven princess stopped wars with water and moonlight. They say she wakes the drowned. If that is you, prove it. My youngest daughter has burned with fever for three days. No healer can break it." Gretta rose. "Stefan." "Let her show us who she is," the king said. Willowyn's fear thinned. Here was a thing she could do. She thought of the dying prince, of the water she had drawn from failing lungs. "Take me to her," she said. They led her to a small chamber. A girl lay pale and sweating under thick blankets. Willowyn knelt, reached for the water in the child's blood, and pulled the heat outward with slow, steady will. Sweat cooled. The girl's breath eased. Her cheeks lost their flush. She opened her eyes and blinked at her mother. Gretta wept. Stefan stared at his daughter, then at Willowyn. The hard set of his jaw broke. "Whatever you need of this house," the king said, "it is yours." The rain still fell. But Willowyn had earned a king. She was no longer only a guest waiting out a storm.