Across Galaxies

I didn’t expect to find myself attempting to free the captured princess of a matriarchal monarchy I had committed my life to fighting against. I certainly didn’t expect to feel guilty, staring down at her lifeless body. Her mother was cold to the point of insensitivity and I would celebrate her death, but the princess… It hadn’t taken me long to realise she was not her mother. I doubled back that evening, slipping out of my quarters and sneaking from the hideout. I would take her body back to the rebellion. They would bury her with the proper rites, at least. Perhaps not with the grandeur her family would have given her, but our best. This girl, her death was on my hands. I closed her eyes with my fingers and covered her body in a cloak before lifting her as gently as I could from the ground. Dead bodies were heavy. I started walking. Our nearest post was three leagues away. The stone cover of the the base faded in the green forest backgrounds as thick trunks covered in vines grew closer and closer together. Periodically a bit of vine was hacked off and the tree marked with a trailblazer to mark location. It was an obscure piece of land uninterrupted by any roads.
A large body slammed into me. I was significantly smaller, caught unaware, and burdened by the princess. I went down immediately. I started to try to scramble back up but a knee on my chest pinned me against the earth. The princess was sprawled on the earth next to me. The point of a sword rested on the hollow of my throat.
His copper eyes were focused on me. “You’re a part of Ferr?”
“No,” I answered quickly, the simple word causing my throat to rise enough that the sword drew some blood.
“You came from that direction. You wear their colours.”
“Spy.” A short explanation but sufficient.
“What was your purpose?”
I didn’t see any point in lying. “Her.” I used a hand to gesture to the body of the princess, still completely covered in the cloak.
Finally his intense eyes left me, shifting to glance at her. “Stay down,” he instructed. I did, knowing he knew I wouldn’t be able to leave without her. He slowly pulled the sword from my throat but did not sheath it, before uncovering the princess’s face. Something flashed across his face that I couldn’t quite read. Then, he pulled her to him, murmuring, “Elaea…” He stroked her hair with loving familiarity and kissed her forehead before placing two fingers to her throat, checking for a pulse.
“She’s dead. I’m sorry. I don’t know who she was to you.”
“Arynn?” she asked.
I snapped up. Arynn didn’t seem to care. “You haven’t had a pulse for hours!”
They both ignored me. “You’re hurt,” he muttered, removing a hand from her back to see silvery pink blood. “Why haven’t you healed yourself?”
“I can’t,” she told him, very much alive, though her voice was weak and wavering. “The collar…”
He traced a finger along it and up the gold veins, following them up her face to rest two fingers on her forehead. He suddenly pulsed with copper energy and her with silver. His posture slumped but the princess looked slightly healthier, the gold not quite as visible under her skin. When she raised an arm from under the cloak to push his hand away from her forehead, I saw only spiraling, pink tinged scars where torn flesh had been. I guessed a similar transformation had occurred on her back.
“Don’t,” she said sharply. “You’ll drain yourself too much.”
His eyes were wide. “It’s never been that much effort.”
“You’ve never tried to work around inhibitors before.”
He looked back down to the gold collar. “I have, actually. The last half a year I’ve been practicing,” His tone was equal parts proud and confused. “This is different.”
I chimed in again. Maybe they had calmed enough to listen to me, though I wasn’t sure having their attention was in my best interest. “It’s not just an inhibitor. It’s prophecy deriven. ‘Royal silver, diseased by gold, youngest in line, decider of thrones.’ It fits.”
They both looked to me. Arynn spoke. “No.”
She pulled the cloak tighter around herself and sat up to face him. “Why not?”
“Because. You’re free. Mother and the world will assume you’re dead. You can take on another identity, live a normal life with father and I.”
Laughing dryly, she responded, “I’m not exactly inconspicuous.”
“Elaea, you know the stories as well as I do. We may not have known the prophecy, but we knew of it. The one it speaks of dies slowly and painfully. It can’t be you.”
She watched him for a long moment. I felt I was interrupting something. Slowly, she reached for his hand and placed it under her jaw where her pulse was.
His eyebrows furrowed, and he shifted his hand, searching. “I can't find it,” he finally said, bewildered.
“I know. It’s not there. It slowed down gradually when they put the collar on. It was gone completely in a month. Perhaps I already died slowly and painfully.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re clearly not dead. I can’t heal the dead. Besides, you’re moving, talking. You aren’t dead, Elaea.”
She fixed him with a long, silent stare. “As you say,” she finally responded quietly.
Arynn turned on me. “Who hurt her?”
Elaea fixed her suddenly cold eyes on me.
I hesitated. “I did.” No excuses.
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you right now.” There was a freezing anger in his eyes and between the two of them, I shivered.
“Because I can fight my own battles,” the princess responded. “And because if he was a spy as he said, he wouldn’t have had a choice. Besides, in a way, he’s the reason I got out. It gave me a wonderful excuse to play dead.”
I opted to stay silent as the ice in Arynn’s eyes barely tempered as he backed down. He lifted his sword with one hand and used the other to retrieve a dagger which he set in the princess’s lap. “I brought your armour. I’ll go get it. It’s not far, but don’t let him leave or hurt you.”
She nodded to him and traced the lines of the dagger, flipping it in her hand with startling skill and familiarity. I couldn’t decide if it was a show for my sake or if she had just missed the feel of the metal in her hand.
I didn’t know what to do, alone with her. Any apology seemed pathetically insufficient considering what I had aided in putting her through. Still I could see how she was the first time I had seen her. She had been in the corner of her cell, scrawny legs pulled up to her chest. I had been cold down there even in a thick layer of wool but it seemed they had confiscated her clothes for her skin was bare, but she hadn’t shivered. I had expected some regal beast but instead been greeted with a calm, yet suffering girl. Even now her cheeks were sallow, though her skin had taken on a healthier hue since her brother had healed her. After seeing her set against a grey background for all those months, it seemed odd that greens made up the majority of the background now. I think had I been stuck inside for all those months, I would have looked up to the sky and enjoyed the warmth on my face but she did not take her eyes off me, carefully watching me for any sign of aggression, deeply distrusting.
“You’re small so I can assume your value must be in speed,” she finally said.
I nodded.
“A logical choice for a spy. You would be able to flee if you were discovered and it wouldn’t be difficult for you to smuggle information by sneaking in and out. Who sent you?”
“Aes, your highness.”
“I am the youngest of my line, a princess only by name. I was always raised to be a general. ‘Your highness’ is not an appropriate title for me.”
“Apologies, but you are the Royal Silver of the prophecy. You are more than a general now, your highness.”
“And less than twelve hours ago, you beat me halfway to death, maybe more. It is inappropriate for you to use honorifics with me.”
I nodded. “As you wish.”
“What are you called?”
“Elik.”
Arynn stepped from the tree line. I had a feeling he had been waiting and listening for a while. He set a bag by the princess. “Go change. We’ll be here.”
As she nodded to him, it struck me that she was softer towards him, eyes wider, body language more open. She was clearly in a place of power over him but simultaneously looked up to him, a good little sister. She took the bag, clearly struggling under its weight but said nothing of it, allowing only the slightest frustration to leak into her face. She disappeared behind a few trees, passing by Arynn who murmured, “Stay close.”
When she disappeared from sight, Arynn advanced on me, unsheathed sword in hand. “She may act strong, but she’s still my little sister,” he told me as the pushed the point against my throat again, slowly easing me back onto the forest ground with it. I was starting to become way more familiar with that blae than I would have liked. “I will not forget what you have done to her. You will let us leave and you will stay away from us. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “I understand. But I can’t do that. I need to bring her back to Aes.”