A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"You confuse me, Princess," Oliver said, shaking his head gently, her fingers still latching on his wrist. "Everyone has pain behind their eyes, do they not? That is where we keep it, or we would spend all our time crying. You, now, more so than me. And you wonder why I feel guilt when I see you? You've lost it all, haven't you?

That which makes it worth it."

Her fingers twitched, startled, as her eyes fixed on his. She tried to turn away in time, but could not. The tears were already pouring from her eyes. She hurriedly tried to brush them away, and make up some excuse, but Oliver had hit the heart of the issue, perhaps cruelly.

"Not that… Not that, at all, Ser Patrick…" She insisted, but her tears had already begun to wrack her shoulders, and make her voice croak. "A Princess expects to… be alone… A Queen, even more so… It is privilege, and a responsibility…"

"And pain," Oliver said, squeezing his hand. He wasn't a man of comfort, but there and then, he understood the girl. Ingolsol's eyes saw those emotions. Somehow in her, they were both clearer and more obscure than everyone else. They shone bright, like a lighthouse, grand in their magnitude, but hidden, as if by some shield, or otherworldly force.

No matter the shield, though, loneliness of that magnitude could not go unrecognized.

She bit her lip, and continued to cry, never affirming, nor denying his claim. He didn't press her, or try to get her to voice what they both already thought they knew. Quietly, she cried those tears to herself. Only when she'd collected herself, did she speak again.

"How terribly embarrassing," she said, wiping her eyes. "I told Verdant I'd look after you, and here you are, with all the vital signs of a dead man, and I'm crying in your place, like a little girl. How terribly embarrassing."

"I did not find it to be so," Oliver said.@@novelbin@@

She looked at him, trying to search for some meaning in his words, but that meaning – or lack thereof – quickly became apparent. He'd merely said it, because he didn't know what else to say.

"Of course not – you were not the one crying," Asabel said.

"You found me at my worst, in the Academy gardens. That was embarrassing," Oliver said. "By contrast, I'd much rather be caught crying."

"Oh, comparing embarrassments are we?" Asabel said, snatching on her hand back away from him, so that she could affix him with a proper glare. "You're terrible at comforting women, Ser Patrick."

"A fitting retort would be that you're terrible at resurrecting dead men… but that doesn't seem to be true, as a general truth. Only today, apparently," Oliver said.

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That quickly put a dampness on her smile. She hadn't forgotten her task, but she still didn't know how to go about it. Now that she was standing, she moved closer to him, and put the back of her hand on his forehead. "Certainly feverish… but perhaps less than I would have expected feeling your pulse," she mused.

"One would think that I were an incompetent, with the sort of enigma that you present me, Ser Patrick. Rarely has there been a sickness that I was unable to cure, or at least do something for. I would have hoped that my studies would carry me further…"

Oliver felt a tiny shock prickle the surface of his skin.

"My, did I brush your hair?" Asabel asked, feeling the shock too. "You must have built up some sort of static, brushing it against your coat… How everso odd."

"I could say the same for you," Oliver replied.

Inside him, he could feel Ingolsol swirling, as though responding to something, but the fragment lacked the capacity to speak. Generally, as a rule, he was meant to only be able to come out in combat, but given the turn that Oliver's life had taken lately, each day was getting closer to a battlefield, and the fragments were able to manifest themselves more and more readily.

Now, though, he was unable to do much more than make his presence known, noting something.

"What are you, Princess Asabel?" Oliver asked, watching the woman work.

"What am I?" She repeated. "I recall, you've asked me such a question before. If you want a fleeting answer, I suppose I could say that I am a young woman, hopefully of a certain calibre of beauty, though I do suspect that the flattery I receive in that regard is mostly due to my station of royalty."

"I would not dismiss it as flattery," Oliver said, though he was only half-committed to listening to what she'd just said. He didn't notice the raised eyebrow he'd gotten in response to his somewhat indirect compliment. "If you label me fog, then what would you be, Princess?"

"Ill-stationed, I would think," Asabel said, a hint of self-depreciation in her words, though she said it with enough of a smile to hide her true feelings on the matter. Now that she was committing herself to her duty, and performing the proper examination of Oliver, she resolved that she would not cry again.

"A lighthouse," Oliver mused, inspired, not in small part, by the fire beyond her.

"Pardon?" She said, startled. "Is that some sort of cruel joke, Ser Patrick? I am both Queen and Princess, but even my feelings shall get hurt if you compare my figure to that of a building."

"A lighthouse," Oliver declared again, nodding to himself. That certainly made sense to him. It bashed away at the cloud of unknown that hung about his image of the Princess, and categorized in her something that she'd felt – or something that Ingolsol and Claudia had told him that they'd felt. "If you call me fog, then I might call you a lighthouse."

"Without being cruel?" Asabel asked, carefully.

"Without being cruel," Oliver assured her. "Only in metaphor. Not in regards to your appearance."

"How amusing to hear you attempt poetisms…" She said. "But I suppose, there's a certain endearingness to it. A lighthouse would have use when there's fog, it might guide the ships… But alas, if that is what you mean, I cannot enthusiastically say that I believe such a high opinion. My only real worth is offered by my station."