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"You know, little hayseed," Kurtz said as he finally caught on to what the two witches seemed to have in mind. Their offer was so obviously unappealing to his adventure-seeking little treasure that they wouldn’t have to reject her outright, she would turn them down herself. All he had to do now was create a different opportunity that wouldn’t see his daughter running off to follow the witches into the Vale of Mists before she was old enough to live on her own.

"You can still learn to fight and become strong enough to fight for Lady Heila one day," he pointed out. "You don’t have to become her ’squire’ and study chores. In two years, I’ll enroll you in the best school for gladiators, and I’ll train you myself until then," he promised.

"By the time you’re sixteen, you can go across the High Pass and visit Lady Heila yourself to show her what you’ve learned," the veteran gladiator said. "I’m sure that if you’ve worked hard, you can earn a place at her side, just like, um, I’m sorry," he said awkwardly as he looked to Virve. "I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name. "

"I’m called Virve," the bearish woman said with a smile. "I’m the captain of Lady Ashlynn’s guard.

I don’t know if Lady Heila will require an entire company to protect her, but she may have need of a few loyal retainers in time.

But if you wish to fight at her side, I don’t recommend training as a gladiator," she added with a frown.

"I have seen the way that the champions of High Fen City fight," Virve said candidly as she looked at the young girl.

"They fight for glory and the entertainment of the crowd.

Fighting against humans and people who are hunting you is a very different kind of fighting.

If you want to become a guard or a soldier in the army of the Vale, you should come to us when you turn fifteen so you can learn to fight with your brothers and sisters of the Horned Clan. "

"You know, you don’t have to decide anything right now, my treasure," Kurtz said, pulling his diminutive daughter up into a tight hug. "Her Dominion even said that people don’t usually become squires until thirteen. It’s okay to grow a little older before you make a decision."

For a moment, Emmie wanted to shove her father’s hands away. Everyone kept talking about how she needed to be older to do anything. Older to join an arena school, older to learn to be a soldier, older, older, older! But if she waited... if she waited...

"If I’m not your squire," Emmie asked, struggling slightly against her father’s hug and trying her best to look serious. "If I’m not your squire, will you find someone else to be with you? To help you when you need help so you’re not alone anymore?"

"I don’t know," Heila said honestly, casting a glance at Ashlynn before she continued.

"I never thought about it until today. I give most of my time to Lady Ashlynn or sometimes to things Lady Nyrielle and her progeny need help with.

I still learn things from Madame Zedya. I never thought about having someone to help me. "

"But, but you said it," Emmie said, slipping free from her father’s hug to stand in front of Heila, clutching at her chain whip with both hands. "You said that sometimes, you meet someone and they change things. But, if you meet the person who could change everything, and you don’t.... Wouldn’t that just be too sad?

If you had to wait to find someone else who could help you, even if it’s just with chores, wouldn’t that be too lonely? "

"Are you sure?" Heila asked, looking between Ashlynn’s gently smiling face and Kurtz’s panicked one before looking back at the young, horned girl. "Even if it’s boring?"

"I’m sure," she said, nodding her head resolutely. "I’ll help, I promise."

"I’m glad that you’re willing to help Heila," Ashlynn said warmly. "She’s a very important friend to me, and I’ll feel better when she has someone who can watch out for her the way she watches out for me. But before you can do that, there’s still one more thing you need to do."

"What?" Emmie asked, completely forgetting Ashlynn’s exalted status in her eagerness to grasp this opportunity with both hands and never let go. "I’ll do anything!"

"You need to go home," Ashlynn said, pointing at the panic-stricken Kurtz.

"You need to talk to your parents, and they need to give you their permission. We won’t leave for another three days," she added, giving Kurtz a reassuring look.

"You have until then to change your mind or convince your parents that this is what you really want. "

"I won’t change my mind," Emmie promised, bouncing over to grab hold of her father’s hand.

"And Father never says no to me about anything I really want, so I just know he’ll say yes," she added excitedly to her pale-faced parent.

"Come on, Father," she said, tugging his hand in the direction of the door. "We have to tell Mom right away! I’m going to be the Willow Whip’s squire! "

Emmie’s declaration at the time had sounded bold, and Ashlynn couldn’t imagine getting away with telling her father that she knew he’d say yes to whatever she asked for, not now and certainly not when she was only twelve, but in the end, the diminutive horned girl had thoroughly defeated her gladiator father and even gained her mother’s enthusiastic support.

Now, several days later, as Ashlynn walked through the blowing wind and bitter cold of the High Pass, she paused to watch an eager Emmie placing a foot stool at the door of the carriage that Heila shared with Virve, Talaui,a and Lennart.

Of the four, only Heila exited the carriage, trotting quickly across the snow to join Ashlynn as she walked toward the awaiting Frost Walker delegation.

"It seems like your squire is adjusting well," Ashlynn said with a smile when Heila reached her side. "Are you?"

"I think I understand you better now," Heila said, smiling at Ashlynn as she recalled her own first days as Ashlynn’s personal servant. "There is so much to teach her that for now, the only ’duties’ I can think to assign her are things that I’m used to doing for myself.

When we met, it used to bother me that you wouldn’t let me help you dress or prepare your outfit for you.

But now the shoe is on the other foot, and it feels. .. awkward," she admitted.

"I never had many servants attending me because they might see my mark," Ashlynn said, speaking just loudly enough to be heard over the crunching of snow beneath her boots. "Maybe if I had, it wouldn’t have been so easy for you to become such a dear friend. I’d have been too stuck in what was ’proper’ to do what’s ’right. ’"

"I’m glad you weren’t propper," Heila said, walking respectfully half a step behind Ashlynn and forcefully holding herself back from waving at Hauke as they approached. She’d still been a bit stiff and awkward when they last spent time together, trying hard to live up to Zedya’s teachings and become a worthy attendant for Ashlynn.

This time, however, she was looking forward to greeting Hauke as a peer, especially since her own witchcraft drew so much on the power of water.

Perhaps this time, she’d be able to learn a few things from the talented young Frost Walker soldier that would help her in the days to come.

And even if she wasn’t, just spending time together again would be a treat now that the cloud of Elder Paulus’s treachery was no longer hanging over their heads.

Stopping twenty paces away from the Frost Walker delegation, Ashlynn and Heila schooled their features into calm, composed masks appropriate for the formal meeting between the two parties.

Later on, there would be feasts and drinking and time to celebrate a reunion among friends.

But this moment wasn’t about friendship, it was about alliances and demonstrating to the onlookers that the High Pass and the Vale of Mists stood together.

"People of the High Pass," Ashlynn said, carefully pitching her voice to be loud enough to be heard on the fortress walls but not shouting so loudly that it would trigger an avalanche of snow.

"I am Lady Ashlynn Blackwell, Daughter of Lord Rhys Blackwell of Blackwell County, known far and wide as the Mother of Trees and as the Seneschal of Lady Nyrielle, the Harbinger of Death! "

She’d considered carefully how she would modify the traditional structures to reflect her unique status, and here again, she chose to push the line.

She honored her human heritage and presented her place in the human world in a way that the Eldritch could understand.

It was a small thing, but her heart swelled with pride that her father’s name would circulate among the Eldritch, not only as the father of the Mother of Trees, but as a powerful lord to be respected in his own right.

"Today, Her Eternity, Lady Nyrielle, Eldritch Lady of the Vale of Mists has come with her retinue to visit..."

"DEFILER!"

Before Ashlynn could finish the formal greeting, a deep, resonant voice echoed across the mountainside. But more shocking than the outraged shout was the person it had come from.

Hauke’s horn had turned a deep, icy blue, swirling with energy as a look of outrage contorted his face.

The snow at his feet erupted into a small cloud as he charged forward, gathering his icy sorcery into a long, slender spear of ice with a razor sharp point that glittered with a swirling current of bright icy blue and something sinister, dark and purple aimed directly at Heila’s chest!