Mara looked momentarily worried, and Penryn was close to despair that yet again she had managed to offend, but Mara shook her head, rolling her eyes lightly as she did so. “I said you were slight in stature. Didn’t know they would take that to mean you were half-starved.”
She huffed out a breath before pasting on a smile. “I will explain it to Lettie, my lady. They’re likely in enough of a dither if you’ve been sending food back uneaten. They’ll be glad to know the reason isn’t that you dislike the cooking.”
Penryn nodded, feeling a great burden lifted. “You have my thanks.” She swallowed. “For all of it.”
Mara gave another of those dipping bows before she turned and left the room.
Leaving Penryn alone in her finery, with no way to know how much time had passed or how much was left before a host of sages would be at her door, ready to summon her from her tower.
She did not want to risk returning to her perch at the window, not when she was uncertain if the fabric would be damaged in some way as it was crushed between the wood of the chest and the stone of the surround. Better to sit in her chair and simply wait.
But that made her all the more anxious, her hands beginning to tremble by the time there was a knock upon the door, her heart already racing. Not for the Introduction itself, but for the talks that would come after, the negotiation, the signing.
Not the simple pleasantries that she had been taught to exchange, but the other, graver lesson.
On what to do when the treaty had been breached.
When kind words and humble awe were put aside on both sides, and reality, no matter how cold, had to rule her words.
Penryn had managed some semblance of calm before the knock came. Her steps were steady, and her pulse was not a quick staccato of alarm although she was certain that simplest error it would become so.
She did not entertain the fantasy of barricading the door, of refusing to leave what for days had felt more prison than luxurious suite.
She had been born for this, after all.
Even if she had spent years denying it was true.
She opened the door, ignoring Henrik’s smile of welcome and looked instead to the grave faces beyond, all bowing their heads in deference as they met her gaze. She did not know how many were lining the passageway beneath for she could only see three directly and the edge of a fourth before they disappeared entirely from view.
“We have come to beg you join our humble ranks,” Henrik spoke, his words all warmth and friendliness when they had quite the opposite effect, her stomach clenching and her hands prickling with the urge to fidget.
To flee.
“Your Lightkeep graciously accepts,” she answered, knowing it was expected. A shuffle, a prelude of red as it moved downward almost as one, each sage before moving a step and the other following, allowing her room to exit the chamber.
And shut the door behind her.
Henrik was still looking at her, and she tried to find some hint of treachery in his expression, of the guile and cunning that must have been present that would allow him to welcome her so freely while knowing all the while that warriors had already breached the Wall.
That they were coming for Grim’s people.
That they had tried to circumvent her presence at all.
But try though she might, she could not find even a trace of deceit. His smile was all artifice, of course. There were others like him in her home, who would sometimes pretend the young one she had been, giving her an extra dose of kindness sprinkled in amongst the never ending lessons.
Yet all the while, always watchful, always correcting, always reminding that she was not truly the needful child that she was so certain she must be.
She was something greater, important.
Yet she always felt so small and insignificant.
Desperate for what she saw in her storybooks when she was young and a minder would read to her so diligently. There were families there, tucked within the pages, fledglings that were born to parents who wanted them. Loved them. And sometimes there was more than one, with siblings to keep one another company and play games together, and look so happy whenever an illustration happened to grace one of the old, well worn pages.
She would look at them sometimes, hiding away the book beneath the bedclothes where she would stare at it by lantern-light and wonder what might have been. If it was true what the sages said, that she simply appeared to them one day, her destiny already predisposed.
Then why was it so hard to believe them?
As she had grown older, the concept of her simply appearing was too ridiculous for words. She knew the stories that filtered through the common-folk. Her title spoken in hushed whispers, the need for reverence instilled from earliest possible memory. But she had seen the scars upon her back, she knew what she had lost, the remnant her only proof that she had been one of them once.
Even for so short a time.
And they needed her now. Needed to keep them safe, even if they did not even remember the danger that surrounded them.
She took a breath, and felt a stillness, a peace, as she pictured Grimult himself. The ache was there, and she wondered if it would be a companion all its own for the remainder of her days, or if that too would fade with time.
He needed her. His family needed her.
To be what they believed, even if she did not.
And it made the steps a little easier, her footing a little more sure even as she navigated a dress that did not quite fit her, the hem pulled up to reveal one of the intricate slippers that donned
