Falls

Still in the thrall of her waking nightmare, Kvothe’s heart began to crash in her chest when she heard the sound of a heavy body moving nearby. It was too easy for her imagination to bring the darkest of her fears to life; too easy to assume that the shadows concealed her unborn child’s end. The rational whisper that spoke firmly amidst her panic – that neither Ironclad nor his sibling were so large as the creature she’d heard – meant little, and the familiarity of that rumbling voice even less. In her desperation and after the horror she’d witnessed, Kvothe’s mind leapt from thought to thought like a hunted doe. And the mare herself – frozen where she stood, one forelimb lifted and her ears flattened against the gentle curve of her skull – resembled the same creature in the moments before it took to startled flight.

Kvothe…

Only a greater shock could hope to penetrate the thick fog of Kvothe’s hysteria, presenting truth where her mind had invented fabrications. What is wrong? The suspended hoof completed its downward arc, and her the points of her ears pushed forward, emerging from the ember-colored sea of her mane. “Tyr?” She questioned, the timbre of her voice somehow wavering from a breathless quaver to a husky murmur over the course of that single syllable. Yet even confronted by the evidence of her senses, the chestnut Friesian was still too afraid to believe it. For each step that the draft male took towards her, Kvothe took an equal step back. And across the remaining length of the clearing they indulged in this choreographed dance – until the red woman found herself backed up against the broad trunk of a pine, her only avenues of escape requiring her to move closer to the stallion’s looming figure. Trembling, she could only scrunch her eyes closed and turn her head to one side, braced for the worst.

Then Tyr’s warm breath bathed the quivering skin of her muzzle – and Kvothe expelled the air from her own lungs in a soft sigh. “Tyr,” she repeated, a small measure of clarity returning to the muddled depths of her dark brown eyes. “It really is you. I thought…” She’d thought that she had only been chased to her doom. She’d thought that she might die here, and never be able to apologize to her beloved King for the defiant actions that she still believed to be necessary. It was not in her nature to judge Ironclad for the decisions that he made or the laws he upheld. But Kvothe felt she must treat every life as if it were sacred; yield any sacrifice that the fates required to protect it.

Because if Narene had not done the same for her, then she herself would not exist.

Shaking her head rapidly from side to side to dispel the gruesome image of Brunhild’s son, she took a single step closer to the chimeric bachelor. “I saw her kill him… her own son. And I – I couldn’t risk the same for my own child.” For their child, she might have said. But even though this truth went unspoken, it was evident in the way her soft brown eyes sought Tyr’s – and held them. “I didn’t want to leave,” Kvothe whispered as a stream of tears trickled down the puckered flesh of her scar. “But I – I’m afraid, Tyr. And I didn’t know what else to do.” She knew that it was unfair to burden this kind soul with yet another of her problems, but this stallion was the only creature besides Ironclad whom she felt she could trust. Before Brunhild and the child she might have turned to Medusa, but Kvothe could not be certain that the tobiano mare had not commanded that act – or at least condoned it.

She was Ironclad’s Queen, after all. And Kvothe… Kvothe didn’t know what she was to the greying stallion anymore. A distance had opened between them since the events of the previous Fall, and her efforts to breach it had only brought more discord into their home. But it was pointless to dwell on such things now – pointless to pine for the affection of her once-Prince.

To do so would only bleed her resolve and courage – and more than ever now, Kvothe needed both.