Xander carried the tray of soup and bread into the dining room. But before he went in, he paused at the door, and added a little seasoning of his own. Adalia wouldn’t speak to him, so that meant they couldn’t get married. He had tried to be the gentleman and wait it out. His advances had been met with cold rejection and icy words. But this wasn’t going to fail him, he was sure of it.
He picked the tray back up and marched into the dining room. “Sire, your snack,” he put it in front of Gabrielle and stood beside him as he watched him drink it.
With each sip he took, Xander could feel himself get closer and closer to the throne room. A few more snacks like this and Gabrielle wouldn’t be a problem, and Adalia would be too weak to resist him anymore.
***
Adalia was staring at her diary. She hadn’t written anything in it since she was in the North. She didn’t feel inspired to write anything. The dark thought looming in her mind prevented her from communicating with anyone that included a blank piece of paper. She had a knock on the door and like a scavenger rat she scurried to the darkest part of her room.
“Father?” Adalia sat in a corner of her room and watched as Gabrielle walked in looking for her.
Gabrielle spun towards her voice but he couldn’t see her. “Where are you?”
Adalia stood up and took a step out of the shadows. “I’m here, father.”
“You can’t keep this up,” his eyes roamed over her.
Nothing about how she looked shouted princess or life. Adalia had let herself go. She was in her training trousers and shirt, and her hair seemed to have assumed a life of its own. Gabrielle walked towards the windows, reached for the gigantic curtains and pulled them open. Adalia staggered back, escaping from the ferocity of the sun as its rays spilled into her room.
“Father close them,” her hands were covering her eyes, protecting them from the light that seemed to burn through them.
Gabrielle went on to open all the windows and curtains. Adalia slipped under her bed the only place the light wouldn’t get to her. She vowed to stay there until her room was just as how her father had found it. But Gabrielle didn’t leave. He sat on a chair across from her and waited for her.
***
“Adalia,” Archer murmured.
She occupied his mind night and day. It was no wonder that when he got his pen and paper, it was her name that he wrote down first.
“Who’s that?” Fiona was standing close enough to hear Archer but not that close to invade his privacy, in a way.
“Who?”
“Adalia,” she moved closer to him. “When you were unconscious, you would always say that name. You would wake up exhausted and fighting as if you were up against an army. Then you would cry,” her tone was low and empathetic, but all Archer could hear was pity. There was nothing he despised more than pity. “You know, the only Adalia I know is the princess of the South.”
“That’s not her,” he didn’t want her to make a connection. “Although I hear the princess is beautiful.”
“That’s what I hear,” a frown came on her face as she went on. “I used to know someone who is in the Southern Army. He says that her hair was raven black, her lips as red as a rose, and her skin as white as snow.”
Archer couldn’t help but gloat. He felt proud listening to someone else describe Adalia in the same words that he would. But then a thought crossed his mind, what was a Southerner doing in the North without permission. “What was the soldier doing here?”
“He was trying to get the rebels to stop their attacks.”
“Rebels?” Archer felt at ease knowing that he wasn’t taking refuge in enemy camp. “How long was he here?”
“Almost a year. He left about a week or so ago,” her face seemed to sag inwardly.
For a moment Archer could see how he felt in her eyes. She was obviously in love with this man, and she longed for him. He had to get better. He would first go to the South and find Adalia then he would find the soldier who left with Fiona’s heart.
“Don’t worry, if he loves you he will come back.”
“But he doesn’t, he’s in love with her or her power,” Fiona stood up and marched out of the room in a huff.
Just as Archer was about to follow her out an older man walked in, he had a bow and a sachet of arrows tucked under his arm. Archer assumed that this was the owner of the hut, Lola’s father. Respectfully he stood up and waited for him to address him first.
“How are you feeling?” the man grunted.
“Better, thank you for your hospitality,” Archer remained on his feet as the man walked around his small hut, picking things up and throwing some of them to the side.
“You should thank my daughter, she saw you lying on the side of the road. She’s the one who brought you here.”
“Lola?” Archer couldn’t imagine her tiny hands dragging him to this place. He wasn’t sure how far it was from where the ambush took place but still he wasn’t convinced that her tiny body could handle a weight like his.
“No, Fiona. She’s my eldest,” he pointed at his bandage. “I see your would has been redressed, so you must have met her.”
“I have, she’s a nice girl,” he didn’t understand why she hadn’t told him this was her house. But then if she was the one who dragged him there, she knew that he was a royal or part of the royal guards.
“She has a kind heart. If it were up to me I would have left you there,” his face seemed to sag inwardly as he glared at Archer. “Your kind has already caused us enough problems. They may have been from the South but you are still a soldier. You are all the same in my books.”
“What do you mean?” Archer picked up on the way he referred to him as a ‘soldier’ his identity was safe.
“There was this one soldier who came here. He wanted us to join the rebels. He stayed for a while, lied to my daughter then left.”