Chapter 2: A Quiet Farewell in Paint and Ink
The tower chamber felt like a painted eggshell, beautiful and hollow. Morning light, fractured by the leaded glass of her window, threw coloured diamonds across the bare stone floor where her rug had been rolled and tied. Adela moved through the familiar space with a methodical quiet that felt foreign to her own hands.
She opened her cedar wardrobe. Silks the colour of lapis and emerald, damask gowns threaded with silver—the costumes of a princess. She let her fingers brush the fabrics, then closed the door. They belonged to Eryndor. To a before.
Her true belongings fit into a single, scuffed leather trunk. She wrapped her brushes in soft linen, nestling them beside clay jars of pigment: ultramarine from distant mountains, malachite green, the precious vermilion. A worn volume of sonnets, its pages soft as skin. A sketchbook, its pages filled with the castle cats, her father’s tired smile, studies of light on the river. These were not ornaments. They were the tools of her self.
At the windowsill, the stubborn rosebush in its cracked pot held a single, defiant bloom. With careful snips of her sewing scissors, she took a cutting, wrapping its stem in a damp cloth. She tucked it into the side pocket of her trunk, a living secret.
Finally, she knelt by her bed. From beneath the mattress, she retrieved the small canvas she had saved from her father’s tent. The golden barley field. It was too painful to look at now. Using a thin blade, she carefully loosened the lining at the back of her heavy wool cloak and slid the painting inside, resealing the stitch with a few deft knots. A talisman. A hidden heart.
A soft knock. Her maid, Elara, stood weeping in the doorway. “My lady…”
“Don’t, Elara.” Adela stood, brushing dust from her knees. She wore a practical riding dress of grey wool. “Water the rose for me, will you? And give the silks to anyone who needs them.”
The descent from the tower, the walk through the silent, watchful courtyard—it all passed in a blur of heightened sensation. The too-loud clatter of her boots on the flagstones. The accusatory glare of a Brynmoor soldier leaning on his spear. The smell of char still clinging to the lower walls.
Tristan was already mounted on a colossal black destrier, a creature of muscle and simmering impatience. A smaller, calm dappled mare was held for her. He didn’t offer a hand up. She managed, her skirts tangling, a flush of humiliation warming her cheeks.
They rode out as the sun cleared the battlements. No fanfare. No farewell from her father; he had said his goodbye in the grim dark of the tent. She did not look back.
The journey was a long, silent punishment of sunlight and jolting rhythm. Tristan rode ahead, surrounded by his officers. She was placed amidst the baggage train, surrounded by the clatter of wagons and the rough banter of soldiers who pointedly ignored her. The countryside, once beloved, was a scarred tableau—burned farmsteads, fields trampled by hooves and boots. She focused on the dappled grey shoulders of her mare, the rhythm of her breath.
At dusk, they made camp by a wide, chattering river. Tents sprung up like grey mushrooms. Adela was shown to one larger than the rest, clearly the king’s. A cot had been added for her, a polite afterthought beside his own pallet.
She sat on the edge of the thin mattress, listening to the camp come alive with fire crackle and male laughter. The trunk with her things had been placed inside. After a time, driven by a quiet desperation, she opened it. The smell of her pigments, of home, wafted out. She took out her sketchbook and a piece of charcoal, but the blank page stared back, hostile.
Her eyes fell on the small campaign desk in the corner. Neat stacks of vellum, a pot of ink, several quills sharpened to fine points. Official documents. Maps. His things.
The impulse was irrational, a spark in the dark. She needed to make a mark, any mark, on this day that had erased her. She rose, took a single sheet of the fine, creamy paper, and returned to her cot.
She didn’t draw the ruins she’d seen. She drew the river outside, as she imagined it before the war. She drew the sinuous line of its bank, the suggestion of willow branches, the dancing surface of the water catching the last light. It was swift, instinctive. The charcoal whispered across the foreign paper, a gentle rebellion.
“Finding my supplies adequate?”
The voice, cold and close, froze the charcoal in her hand. She hadn’t heard the tent flap. Tristan stood inside, having entered without a sound. He had removed his armor, wore a simple black tunic, but he seemed no less formidable. His eyes went from her face to the sketch in her lap, to his paper in her hand.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. “I… apologize. I took without asking.” She kept her voice low. “The need to put something beautiful down… it was overwhelming. I can pay for the sheet.”
He crossed the tent in two strides. He didn’t look angry. He looked intensely, unnervingly curious. He plucked the paper from her grip.
He studied it. His brow, marked by that pale scar, furrowed slightly. It was not a strategic map. It held no information. It was pure, useless feeling. A memory of a place that likely no longer existed.
“You drew this just now?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“From memory.”
“From what it should be,” she corrected softly.
He was silent for a long moment, the sounds of the camp a world away. He turned the paper over, as if looking for hidden treason on the back. Then his icy blue eyes met hers. “You stole from a king. In my land, that is a flogging offense.”
She held his gaze, the submission in her bed an instinct, but the defiance in her art a deeper truth. “Then flog me. But the image was worth the price.”
A flicker, something raw and unguarded, passed through his eyes. It was gone in an instant, replaced by his usual shuttered expression. He carefully, almost reverently, folded the paper and tucked it inside his tunic, against his chest.
“Go to sleep,” he said, his tone leaving no room for discussion. “We ride at first light. And from now on, if you have an overwhelming need…” He gestured to her own trunk. “Use your own materials.”
He turned and left the tent, taking the sketch with him. Adela sat in the sudden quiet, the ghost of the river still flowing behind her eyes. He had not praised it. He had not destroyed it. He had confiscated it. Claimed it.
She lay back on the cot, staring at the dark canvas roof. The encounter left her more unsettled than any outright cruelty could have. She had seen a crack in the ice, a momentary glimpse of something perplexed and hungry. And she had no idea what to do with it, except to keep drawing, to keep folding her memories into the lining of her cloak, and to wait.