From the outside, it looked like a beetle that had tucked its legs under its shell to sleep, but on the inside, it was warmth and a home away from home.
I sat on the bed with my hands wrapped around a hot mug of tea that Ursa had made for me, watching the lamp throw its small circle of light against the curved wall and listening to the silence.
The other haulers were dark. The crew who had been well enough to ride back down had eaten in near silence and gone totheir bunks, and the camp had settled into the mourning quiet that followed a disaster.
Gavon had been taken directly to the closest hospital, no doubt charming the nurses instead of resting because he wouldn't miss an opportunity like that to shine. The dragons had flown him and Horrov and Palel straight down from the mountain, which had probably saved Horrov's life.
Moran and Voser were gone, and the captain had promised that they would return in the morning to search for their bodies, but we all knew that finding them under the thick layer of snow would be impossible.
I kept repeating their names in my head so I wouldn't forget them. I couldn't. They needed to be etched on my memory forever like a holographic tombstone that would reside in my mind for as long as I lived.
"You should drink your tea, my lady," Ursa said in that quiet tone of hers that was meant to soothe me but irritated me instead. "It will warm you from the inside."
"Perhaps I don't want to be warm."
"You're in shock, and you're not thinking rationally. The tea has sugar in it, which you need, and some of the tincture Sorel left for you, Your Highness."
Ursa could play a part in one of Gavon's plays. Any part, really, because she was a chameleon. To the other royals, she was exactly what she appeared to be. A polite, unobtrusive, forgettable lady's maid, but I knew who and what she really was, and yet she insisted on keeping up the act with me no matter how many times I had told her to drop it.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't what?"
"You know exactly what. I hate it when you use that stupid honorific or my title for that matter."
"But both belong to you, Your Highness. You did not steal either, and you are not a bastard child who does not deserve them."
If I weren't as depleted and depressed as I was, I would have chucked a pillow at her, and maybe that was the reaction she was hoping to provoke, but today her teasing tactics were not going to work.
I drank the tea. It was over-sweetened to mask the taste of Sorel's bitter herbs, but it was exactly what I needed to defrost the ice around my heart.
The problem was that ice turned to water, and water needed an outlet, and it found it through my eyes.
The dam broke.
One moment I was drinking tea, and the next the mug was shaking in my hands, and the tears were coming faster than I could blink them back.
Ursa crossed the cabin in two steps, took the mug from my hands, and set it aside. Then she sat beside me, wrapped her arm around me, and pulled me against her shoulder, holding me while I came apart.
"Let it all out, Idrilia," she murmured into my hair. "I've got you."
I cried for Moran, who had four children. I cried for Voser, who had liked to whistle off-key during the trek. I cried because I had led them up that mountain for a flower, and a flower wasn't worth a life, let alone two, and no amount of telling myself that I couldn't have known an avalanche would claim them would ever make that arithmetic balance.
Ursa didn't tell me it wasn't my fault because she knew better. I abhorred platitudes, and I always took responsibility. I was a princess after all, so if not me then who? My mother, the queen?
When the worst of it had passed, she handed me a cloth, straightened, and stood. "Are you ready to disrobe, Your Highness?"
I looked at her, my eyes still swimming. "Are you for real?"
"Yes, very much so." The corner of her mouth twitched. "Now that you've let it out, you can have a good night's sleep so you can wake up refreshed tomorrow. You have a lot on your plate."
I sighed. "I know."
I would have to visit the families and deliver condolences in person. I wasn't looking forward to that.
"I don't think I'll be able to do it by myself."
She arched a brow. "Do what? Have a restful sleep? I promise you, Your Highness, that I will sleep soundly on my cot."
