Chapter Text
The Festival of the Founder spanned all around Rosilith.
While the people were content with wherever the festival led them, the First Shield of Rosaria and the Princess of the Northern Territories were absolutely overwhelmed with possibility. Joshua had returned home with Torgal.
Without the ball-and-chain that was their charge, Clive and Jill didn’t know what to do with themselves. Jill casually wondered if that’s what normal parents felt in this situation, Clive chuckled.
“My mother certainly wouldn’t understand that.” Given how little Anabella actually parented their household, Clive recognized how odd it was to refer to Anabella as ‘his mother’ in that traditional sense. “She always finds a way to keep herself busy.”
“Makes sense, there’s always someone to make miserable.” Jill added, playing with the ribbon at the end of her braid.
Thankfully, having no objective in this crowd didn’t reveal some hidden emptiness within the two no more than it usually did. Jill decided they should eat more and Clive welcomed that distraction. They settled on more caramel apples and took to walking aimlessly around the stalls, past the joyful people, and seeing if there was something that caught their attention.
So far the only thing they noticed were a few stalls packing up, word of a storm building seemed on everyone’s mind if they didn’t live in the city. Despite the torchlight, Jill did find herself missing the moonlight quite a bit. Metia as well.
As Jill bit into her apple, the thought of a storm reminded her of something.
“Back home around this time,” Jill mused. “The Northern Territories would be having their Day of Heart and Hearth.” Clive turned at her words, “They do it to celebrate their endurance, giving thanks for those who could not be with them… those lost in the storm, away from home.” His interest was peaked.
“The storm?”
“It’s an allusion to Shiva,” Jill explained, Clive recognized that.
“The Warden of Ice,” he recited.
“She’s also a folklore figure… a frigid woman standing at the heart of a frigid snowstorm.” Of what little she remembered of her father, his stories about Shiva were of great interest to him. “If for whatever reason, you are trapped out in the storm, she’ll find you, and judge your heart. If you are worthy, she’ll lead you back home to your family, if you weren’t… you would redeem yourself by wandering the storm forever as her thrall.”
Jill sounded so morbid in that description, Clive’s interest was peaked while she continued.
“But the Frostmaiden,” Jill looked away, “Doesn’t have a home. Her duty is the storm, her duty to protect her thralls, to keep the cold out of our homes so we can keep our hearths warm. So we give thanks to her, or at least we did, before we really knew how Dominants worked.”
That really complicated everything about the northern belief system… not that Jill was much of a believer in that part of it. Clive however couldn’t help but be curious.
“Does Shiva have a choice in the matter? Or is she a thrall herself?” Jill was surprised by the question, how Clive was curious of that personal angle stories tended to lack.
She couldn’t help but relate to the story herself.
“Well, dominants and bearers can’t choose, so why should Shiva?” Jill suggested. “She does what is required of her. To ask for more is selfish.”
And with the way Jill said that, a quiet sorrow permeated the two in a way they couldn’t describe.
“That is somehow both uplifting and horribly depressing…”
“Thank you,” Jill agreed as Clive finished his apple.
“I’m always surprised how much you remember home given you only lived there for a short time compared to Rosaria.” Clive intended that to sound sweeter than it came out, Jill was unbothered by his intent.
“And yet I know your home far better than you do, Lord Marquess.” She chided, a hand pressing into his shoulder. “And according to our old tutor, that holiday you’re ‘surprised I remember’ started long before the Founder’s Festival in Rosaria.”
“That can’t be right,” Clive shook his head. “Ask Berlon again.” Not that either of them could.
“He was adamant, he actually believes Rosaria copied the date. Said it ‘ought be useful for trade with northerners coming south.”
“Maybe the duchess was right to have him removed from court.” Clive quipped, Jill was amused by his intolerance, finishing her apple and depositing the stick into a brazier, the flames swallowed it up. “Day of Heart and Hearth, would it be so strange to celebrate it here in Rosaria?”
“I don’t see why it would be… I feel like I’m always celebrating it with you.” Jill smiled.
A wind pushed through the space, blowing through her ashen hair. Despite the cold air, she didn’t feel disrupted by any of it. She flattened her braid into her back in a somewhat comforting motion like her mother used to do.
As snowflakes blew off the roofs above, intertwining with the torchlight… Jill felt melancholic in this moment.
“You know…” She began, “One of the last few memories I have of my mother is her taking me to a festival like this back home in Iskald.” Clive saw that look on Jill’s face, infected with a sweet memory. “She played with me in the snowfall… taught me to move my feet to the bards’ music.” He could picture her younger self out in this festival.
Clive could see that little girl dancing without a care in the world.
“I had little idea there was a war going on, she was so good at hiding it from me.” Jill returned herself to reality.
“She sounds lovely.” Clive said, “I wish I could have known her.” Jill nodded simply.
As music played in the background via fiddle, Clive and Jill both heard something similar, but arguably different. With the same song, they both recognized it as separate songs belonging to their respective homelands. Without accompanying lyrics, the specific song couldn’t be confirmed. So Clive ended up feeling a tension in the air, to split the difference and suggest a dance. He was shocked to find Jill offering first.
She was already standing, holding out her hand with that sweet smile.
“Seems only right. Unless you think they don’t dance to this melody in Rosaria… on account of guilt after stealing it from us.” She grinned, Clive cracked a proud smile.
“As a cherished member of this family, you would know that the inner turmoil you speak of was an idea we Rosarians also stole.”
He took that hand.
So they settled into that dance, holding each other and letting the music sway them. They were the only ones dancing, not that anyone cared. There was a freedom in making mistakes here, Clive realized they became rather intentional in that loving way.
Eventually the swaying slowed to Jill pressing her head to Clive’s chest, and she could feel that heightened rhythm of his heartbeat.
“You feel so tense, my lord.”
“I ‘ought have reason to be,” Clive whispered. “My lady.”
Clive have enchanted Jill, his flirting in the past months had improved leaps and bounds, becoming expert-like very recently. Despite how stalled they felt by the feasts, no affection could possibly fade from them. He always had a way of filling her heart with warm and tender feeling, and this moment was no different.
So looking up at him, Jill felt a want, a need to press up into him, complete that moment.
But she hesitated,
Of course she hesitated.
The moment faded with the music as her attention drifted to something else nearby.
Rosarian children sat together as a group, watching a vendor performing with puppets. A bard stood by, strumming a Rosarian battle hymn. The two wouldn’t think much of it if it weren’t for the laughter. It looked like a collection of scarlet puppets battling bandits garbed in blue upon a field of white. The azure puppets looked made of a different cheaper material compared to the red ones, they must have been the villains.
As soon as Clive recognized what was being depicted, he opted to move on, but Jill released him. It appeared to be a childish recreation of one of Rosaria’s recent wars, this one with the North, from years ago.
Jill saw what she surmised to be a poor imitation of her father’s likeness. It was a man with silver flowing lion-esque hair wielding a spear. He was locked in combat with the Phoenix-like Archduke Elwin (who looked much more accurate and better crafted). The narrator’s voice was hard to hear as the children cheered when Elwin was winning. Their excitement reached a peak as ‘Silvermane’ bent the knee to Elwin.
“I didn’t know they did these…” Jill whispered. Clive tried to move her away.
“We should go.”
“Yes… we should.” Jill replied, and yet she remained planted there.
Behind the Silvermane puppet came a smaller diminutive one with similar gray hair. Elwin approached that puppet to put a line made of twine around its neck. The small puppet whined incoherently for comedic effect. Elwin finally pulled that string as he left Silvermane victoriously, dragging the smaller puppet behind him. The toy comically winced in pain. Children laughed as the story ended, nothing about whatever future that awaited that puppet was made evident.
As silly as the performance made it seem, Jill couldn’t help but stroke her neck. She imagined that same line there, and it felt constricting, hard to breathe. The children’s laughter took on someone else’s voice in her mind.
In her introspection, she felt that same coldness she felt from Anabella deep inside of her. She couldn’t move, walk away from it, it wouldn’t leave. So instead she felt herself stewing in it, in those feelings.
“Jill…” Clive whispered, trying again to gently move her. He led her away, and they settled into an alleyway, where no one could see them. “Don’t pay it any mind. They don’t know what really happened,” Clive reasoned, trying to protect her, to coddle her.
“Neither do I,” She rejected his protection. “Is it strange to say that I don’t remember what he looked like?” All Jill could recall was her tiny hands holding one far larger than hers… walking through a hall. “Or my mother?” It was a struggle to imagine what she looked like, she saw a very different face instead. At the thought of that replacement, all she could do was think about the feel of that imaginary line around her neck… dragging her in whatever direction the wind took her.
“That line has been around my neck for ten years, and his grace has never told me if my mother still lives, if Silvermane still lives…” Jill shook. Clive lowered, she recalled his presence. “Did you ever hear anything?”
“No… nothing, just that more are running from the blight. Any folks coming south don’t know anything about Silvermane… or Lady Eisa,” or of any of the others Jill had spoke of. She knew he would have told her before if they had learned anything. The answer didn’t make Jill feel any better at all. It was so obvious of an answer but so incomplete, like she was. “We always ask, it’s always the same answer.”
“There’s not much north left…” Jill murmured, in that moment she was feeling so small, like she might as well be an island swallowed by a frigid landmass.
“The last time I saw her, she put these ribbons in my hair,” Her fingers pressed into the ribbons in her braids, the ones she also still wore at her arms. “She promised she’d pray to Metia each night, until I returned to her.”
“I didn’t know that.” Clive replied softly, not that Jill was really listening to him.
“I’m ashamed that she might still pray for me but I don’t even remember her face. Instead my mind wants to picture the duchess in her place instead… If that isn’t absolute cruelty, I don’t know what is.”
She felt heartless saying that, and as much as she wished to cry about it, she couldn’t.
She just felt empty… and cold.
Clive felt that cold much like he felt his brother’s heat earlier that evening. The air around her grew frigid. He couldn’t explain it, only ignoring it because his friend was suffering.
Jill couldn’t help but sink into that despair.
“How would she feel, if she knew I stopped my prayers to find her, to instead pray for you? Would I have found her instead if I never stopped?” In her guilt, Jill’s tears finally flowed. They slid down her cheek and cracked on the ground like tiny icicles. She felt wretched, craven, and little by little those horrible things Anabella said to her became real.
She was stolen south to live in luxury, while her home was decimated…
Jill had betrayed everything she came from… perhaps she deserved to be an orphan.
She deserved to be a prisoner. It didn’t matter if she was Elwin’s, Anabella’s or even Joshua’s.
“Please stop.” Clive begged her softly, but she wouldn’t look at him.
“Would she hate the way I feel about you? That I’d rather choose you over never seeing her again? Does that make me the worst daughter to have ever lived? One wretched enough to choose her captor over her parent?”
There was the briefest hint of animosity towards Clive, as Jill recognized something deep within her she didn’t understand, that coldness that lied at her center. It was a frigid anger, a hate that begged and demanded she despise Clive, to imagine him as not another prisoner but as a warden. That part of her wanted her to hate him, to ease her grief. It was a mechanism to protect herself. And she felt just as awful in its consideration as she did without it, so instead she felt that grief manifesting, threatening to tear her apart.
It became especially impossible as he hugged her in that alleyway. Clive wrapped himself around her cold form, trying to embrace whatever storm was ripping her in twain in hopes of holding her together. There was nothing he could say to make her feel better, only to shoulder as much of it as he could.
So Jill silently sobbed into his chest, those icy tears stuck to his coat in the embrace. He held her ashen head close, pressing his hand down her back in an almost soothing manner, almost. As Jill wept there, it finally began to snow again. Unlike that burgeoning storm, her tears thankfully weren’t endless.
In the walk back to the castle, Jill was despondent. She allowed Clive to lead and only followed where Clive pulled her hand. Whatever hope Joshua had intended them to feel in his treachery was short lived.
The snow first seemed modest but soon it saw no end in sight. The road to Rosilith Castle was filled with raining snow, blocking out much of their surroundings, yet onwards they trudged. They walked down that long road for countless minutes, silence unpunctured between them. However much they were slowed down by the storm, Clive remained adamant she would return home.
Well, to his home, at least.
As the storm worsened, they grew exhausted and recognized the need for shelter. There had been an abandoned shack nearby, its owners had departed years ago. The two found their way there, hoping to escape the chilling wind for just a while.
At a small firepit, Clive settled into building a diminutive fire, granting it his energy. Jill sat across from him, her mind dwelled on Clive’s reaction to what she said. The room warming up thawed her feelings, and she discovered a perplexing anger within herself, at herself. Clive witnessing her vulnerability in that way made it frustratingly real, made her feel pathetic.
While Clive would have preferred feasting with his mother than suffering Jill’s tears, he didn’t regret any of what he saw. There was something to it, of holding her as she released her grief like she did. But he felt awful in knowing Jill better through her suffering.
It reminded him of when they were children…
“Clive…” Jill whispered as he tended the small flames. Snow gently rained in through the broken windows. “You know you don’t have to marry me, right?” There was a simpleness to how she said it, not able to look him in the eyes. She needed that distance, if she looked at him she’d break.
There was a pregnant pause whilst Clive stayed with the fire, she thought he didn’t hear her when he finally answered her.
“I do.” Clive breathed. Jill accepted that as the answer she sought.
“Good… because I don’t want to weigh you down like that. It’s not fair. You don’t deserve any of it.” She heaved, “So we can talk to his grace, I’m sure the duchess will be gracious and arrange something else, and soon I’ll be out of your hair-“ How quickly she’d rather leave then be Clive’s problem.
“Is that what you want, Jill?” Clive asked, causing Jill to crane her head back to him. She felt immediate frustration at his obtuseness.
“What I want, doesn’t matter… it’s irrelevant”-
“If you want to end the engagement, I’ll do it. But it has to be what you want.” Oh how much Jill wanted him to call it off, give her that easy out. “Not what you think I want.”
He still wanted to be with her, even despite what he saw?
“You… you still want to go through with it?” Even though she pressured him to commit to her in the first place? He still wanted to settle down and start a family with her?
“I always did.” He tried to reassure her, Jill stammered at recalling his words at the lake. “And if you want to, I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”
He was so understanding and it frustrated her.
How could any reasonable person want to be with someone like her?
And yet Jill couldn’t lie and say she didn’t want him anymore, so she settled on a different answer.
“Why?” Jill asked, confused like a winter storm. “I don’t understand what you get from me that… that someone else could do better.”
Clive continued to watch Jill, and found himself thinking of that younger phantom Jill he imagined back at the festival. He leaned closer to Jill, and she turned her gaze immediately, absolutely caught up in her own misery.
She didn’t think she was good enough for him, that her vulnerability somehow made her unworthy, that she deserved to wander that storm instead. He refused to accept that.
“If you let me… there’s something I wish to tell you that’s been on my mind for a long time. Is that alright?” Jill silently nodded. Clive reached for the fire again, it grew a little from the presence of his magic.
“When I was much younger… his Grace had summoned us to the throne room, to tell us something. His new ally Lord Geir had tasked House Rosfield with taking care of someone that was precious to him…”
Clive began to recount a story from ten years ago, after Silvermane and the Northern Territories had surrendered to Rosaria. He remembered how simple Elwin was with the language for Joshua’s sake, but his younger self knew more of the details.
They were to house the Silvermane’s daughter as a means to end the war with the north. As a child Clive recalled the stories his uncle told about Silvermane, the uniter of the tribes, the ender of the everstorm. Byron said he fought like a freezing storm. Clive figured he must have been Shiva’s dominant with how he used the tide of winter as a weapon. The man had somehow encased Byron’s ship in ice during an attack.
So those stories, along with all the horrid things his mother said about the savage north, Clive had painted a picture in his mind of Princess Jill Warrick. As he said that, he recalled a very different image in her head.
“I imagined a savage warrior twice my size garbed in wolf pelts, she was armed with a spear made of ancient leviathan bone. And I was excited for that, for that challenge to overcome in order to protect Joshua and father… prove to mother I was worth something.” Clive heaved, his eyes glanced out the window towards a snow filled wasteland. Even now he could picture that imaginary woman weaponizing this storm to strike back against Rosaria.
His gaze returned to Jill finally, who seemed drawn in. Her grief had turned to strained curiosity.
“What I didn’t expect, was this mousy little girl. She had long silver hair, braided with ribbons woven in.” Jill found herself touching her braid. “The day father returned from the north, I saw him pick up that girl from his chocobo and drop her in front of our family.” He smiled a little. “And immediately she curtsied towards us. She looked so nervous, and I was so let down… this wasn’t at all dangerous warrior, not like I imagined myself to be.”
“Rosilith was so big, I wasn’t prepared for that,” Jill admitted. "And so green."
“She looked so overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to do with myself… thinking I was going to fight a scared little girl, this couldn’t be Silvermane’s daughter. Something was wrong.”
“I’m sorry for disappointing you.” Jill said, but Clive refused her apology.
“I remember how she approached me, telling me her name, about her mother… I was very curt with her, I tried to avoid her, like a plague. That girl wanted a friend, and I wouldn’t do that.”
Jill did recall that, how uncomfortable Clive had been around her. Joshua didn’t have that problem. He even took to calling her sister rather early.
“And then…” Whatever nostalgia Clive felt vanished. “The duchess saw that little girl running in the hall after me one night, thinking I was playing with her. And she decided to teach that child some manners… she ordered her hair be cut short, made safer.” Clive looked away. He and Jill couldn’t help but look at the fire, imagining her hair burning in it.
“You accepted it, but I knew what you said about how your mother braided your hair… how important and special her ribbons were for you.” Jill cringed painfully at the memory.
She remembered how cruel the duchess was about it all. Said she had a savage look about her and it would not do in her house.
“I remember…” Jill flinched, “how she stared at me the whole time, and that look in her eyes when it was all cut.” There was a pain in her voice. “I refused to cry, but the duchess just basked in my misery… she could taste it in the air.”
Jill recoiled, imagining that satisfied face peering down at her.
“She said with my hair shortened and that quivering look on my face, I looked like a boy…” Jill’s breath staggered, like she was still there. “She promised when it grew back she’d make sure I’d be taught what my mother failed to teach me, to be a proper lady.” She reflexively grabbed for her braid.
She remembered how so much of her hair and ribbons were rounded up into a bag, the castle’s hairdresser took it with him when he left.
Her gaze returned to Clive.
“You were there, weren’t you?” She asked, he nodded, solemnly… it was also a guilty look.
“I was hiding in the hall outside, they didn’t see me when they left you, my mother told Sebastian to burn your hair, and I thought that was the end of it. I was about to leave, then I heard something from behind the door.” His gaze stuck to her, he refused to look away.
“You heard me,” Jill whispered.
“You were sobbing… crying so hard for what my mother took from you.”
Jill was reminded of those tears, she had been so drained by that encounter, all she could do was cry when nobody was around to witness it.
“I felt awful,” Clive admitted. “I saw you through the keyhole and you looked so small, so tiny. Like a caged bird."
"Like a canary in a cage." She found herself whispering so quietly, Clive could barely hear her.
"You were so powerless and she made you feel that way, like she made me feel.” He heaved, thinking of himself.
It was horrifying, to watch the duchess treat another child like she treated her firstborn, like they were a disposable toy. He thought he could suffer that burden alone, but to see it thrusted upon another?
“And I knew right then, you were a warrior the same way I was, enduring her. And I couldn’t let that person be alone like I was…” In recognizing his own sadness, Clive felt those emotions from their childhood returning. He thought he locked it away, but his blue eyes told a different story. They welled up with tears of a younger Clive… ones he also refused to shed in public.
“I refused to let her win, and take anything else from you.”
A look of realization came to Jill’s face.
“You found them… my ribbons.” Clive nodded breathlessly.
“I followed Sebastian to the servant’s quarters. He dropped your hair in a fire and left it. When he was gone I rushed in to pull them from the flames, to dig out the ribbons, all of them. I made sure to count, some were cut up, a little charred… but I knew you wouldn’t care as long as you had them.”
Jill studied the ribbon at the end of her braid, she recognized the burning discoloration on it, and stitches she had made. As she looked at it, she couldn’t help but see the dwindling fire and then Clive, who seemed shaken in this admission.
“You slid them under my door, when I woke up.” Jill remembered the small burns on his hands, how he seemed so unbothered by it. He absolutely refused to let Joshua heal him. Clive couldn’t help but smile through his tears.
“I saw how you wore them on your arms at breakfast, and you were so happy. That was the first time I ever saw you really smile… and it was like everything clicked into place.”
“Clive…” she muttered, his breathing staggered.
“I realized then that... I didn’t care how, but I hoped we’d be together forever, because I lived to see that smile.”
Jill’s gaze on Clive was completely unbroken. All hints of her grief had vanished as Clive grew emotional telling this story. He carefully wiped his own eyes, casually recognizing that the fire was out. Clive was also covered in snow from the window… none of it was melting.
As they stared at each other, words were so difficult to come by after they had flowed so easily.
Soon there was a break in the storm and Clive suggested they had rested enough. If they hurried they could make it back to the castle. Jill agreed.
Despite the cold, she felt completely safe beside him.
After more minutes of walking in the snow they could finally make out the outline of the castle, its windows seemed lit up, indicative of the feasting inside. Not that Clive and Jill gave that any mind.
Eventually they reached the gate. The guard seemed surprised to find them caked in the guise of this winter storm. It likely reminded him of the stories of Silvermane, especially with how Jill’s hair blew in that wind.
He had informed them that Joshua returned perhaps an hour earlier with Torgal.
“You were right,” Clive whispered to Jill as the guard hurried off to open the gate. “He didn’t need me.” Jill however was distracted by something else. They had left their conversation unfinished.
“Clive…” she whispered, and he turned back to her, the storm built up again, dancing around Jill, her ashen hair billowed with the snow flickering in the air. It all seemed to shimmer around her in ways he didn’t understand. “About what you said… why didn’t you tell me before?”
Clive eyed her, uncertain. They rarely spoke of their childhood, after all they lived it.
“It just didn’t seem like something I needed to say. You were happy, that’s all I wanted.” She saw that as such a Clive thing to say.
“Then I have to thank you.”
“You don’t have to.” He refused that gratitude.
“I do.” Jill replied, more confident… it’s as if she saw something so clearly now. “I have so little left of her, even in my memory. You helped keep her with me… that’s priceless.”
Clive nodded respectfully.
“I think she would actually approve of you, all things considered. I wish you could have met her.” Her intended smiled.
“I know she must have been wonderful.” He breathed uncertainly. “So you still want to go through with it then?”
“Of course I do.” Jill summoned a wave of relief in Clive, but he didn’t vocalize it. “You made me realize something, something that I need to tell you, if it’s alright, Clive.” He lowered a little, to see her better in the blizzard surrounding them.
“What is it, Jill?” Jill heaved uncertainly, flickering ashen eyes on his.
“You are the reason I survived our childhood, and I can never repay that.” Clive watched her as she said that, and refused to believe what she said was true. But he also knew how hard to was for her to admit that.
“I’d never ask you to.” Clive smiled, preparing to turn back to the gate and Jill felt something insider her flicker. It was like a swirling vortex picking up snow from the ground in a tumultuous dance.
Her heart palpated in Clive’s nonchalance, his need to be so gallant and self-effacing infuriated her. How dare he have this effect on her, knowing how powerless she was to stop it.
And like a proper lady she would have to move on. But Jill did not feel like a proper lady in that moment.
So like the burgeoning storm surrounded them, Jill embraced the one within herself.
Despite his keen senses, Clive was caught unaware as Jill crossed that divide into his space. Her hands easily delved past his defenses to catch him by the collar, and pull him down intently. Clive’s eyes grew wide as he saw Jill’s wonderful flurry filled face press up into his in a frantic unplanned kiss.
Her lips caught Clive’s in the greatest kind of surprise. The shield was immediately compromised by her, and despite his training he chose to commit to that weakness. She was his weakness. Clive refused to fight her on any of it, choosing that wonderful surrender instead. They had been waiting so long for this, it became infuriating they ever thought they could wait longer.
Jill’s courage paid off as a decade of longing finally melted away, very much like he felt she melted into him. Or maybe he was melting, Clive didn’t care to know the difference (though the snow that covered him melted very easily).
His hands reached for her shoulders to ground himself and pull in closer. Jill couldn’t help it and cupped his face with her hands, feeling that intense warmth his face radiated in this moment.
She also realized quietly that he felt absolutely drenched, and giggled just a little into the kiss, feeling Clive as his clothes somehow froze in ways neither partner understood.
Thankfully the guard hadn’t seen any of it, but someone else had, two figures in fact.
As the door opened, Joshua stood there beside Torgal. The prince was biting into an apple with just the smallest of smirks at what he witnessed in the blizzard.
The prince promised Clive and Jill would be pure as snow, he didn’t mean they’d be covered in it.
As the kiss ended, Clive and Jill watched each other closely, faces mirroring one another’s happiness.
They would have continued had they not realized Joshua stood there in the distance, turning around (tossing and catching his apple) and walking away. Torgal followed, tail wagging behind him.
As pedantic as Clive wished to be about sharing an audience, he saw Jill’s smile, already over it.
“Come on, love.” She whispered. Clive’s cheeks reddened as he followed.
They walked back into the courtyard of the castle, hand-in-hand. The guard returned to his post, none the wiser… though he thankfully caught himself before he could slip on some ice that hadn’t seen there before.