The Princess's Servant

88. Cara and Holden

Sybil slipped through the alleys of the Wardian capital, hopping here and there to avoid detection. She had hoped Holden would go to his cabin so that she could stop tracking him like a hound. But wherever he was winding his way to, it was not his home.

Holden stepped into what looked to be a government building. Sybil — or she supposed she was Cara, now, with her Wardian-brown hair and eyes — angled herself so she could peer in. He withdrew a letter from the folds of his cloak and dropped it in a box. And then he did something Cara didn't understand: he left.

She scrunched her brow. There was a sign above the front door that read "Post Office," but those words meant nothing to her. This had to be some Wardian ritual that she knew not of, she thought. If only her mother had prepared her for her marriage into this strange and foreign land, perhaps she could have understood.

Cara watched Holden walk over to stone bench. He sat down, and then he did something even more unexpected than leaving his mail behind in a locked box: he started to cry.

Tears. Real tears. Sybil had seen Holden cry once, when he had been bound in a certain throne room with a certain princess threatening his life, but this wasn't like that time. These weren't involuntary tears of fear and anguish. This was something quiet. Something personal. Something almost vulnerable. 

Cara took one step forward, and then another, and soon she found herself crossing the small courtyard. She stepped over to the prince and very gingerly sat down beside him.

Holden wiped a stray tear from his cheek, looking away from her as he did.

"You're crying." When Cara said it, she heard how foolish it sounded, yet she hadn't known what else to say.

Holden still did not meet her gaze. "Am not," he said, as another tear dropped from his cheek.

A white handkerchief flashed before Cara in her mind's eye. That night of the Saturn Ball, when Holden had hid in the trees, he'd given her one then. She did not have a handkerchief on her, but she did have a scrap of cloth. Cara plucked open the knot of her bandage and unwound it from her hand.

She offered the unbloodied end to the prince, who leaned away from her offer.

"Oh no, I wouldn't want to..." he began, but Cara only shoved it closer to him. So Holden bowed his head. "Alright..." He surrendered with an uncertain grin tugging at the side of his lips. He took the bandage and lightly touched it to the wetness beneath his eyes.

While he did, he looked to Cara's hand where two holes that had once been see-through were now sealed.

"Your hand looks better," he said.

Cara looked down at it. There was certainly still healing to be done, but it no longer appeared as gnarled and swollen as it had before. "It is better," she said. "Thanks to that." And she smiled and stuck her hand out for the cloth.

Holden crinkled his brow and cracked a strange smile. "You're weird," he said, and he handed her the strip.

Cara's smile only grew. "I know," she said, and for a moment they only looked at each other. He had soft eyes, she thought, as soft as the light that glows just before the sun peaks over the mountain tops. And like watching a sunrise, the inevitable happened: the moment passed. But after it did, she could tell his mood had much lifted, and so she said, "Hey, are you in the mood to check out a tavern or two? I would love to learn the local card games."

She should have known better than to suggest that; she should have been thinking. But she hadn't been, and Holden's good mood was frightened back into whatever burrow it had crept out of, leaving only solemnity. "Oh, I'm not really in the mood for... uh... tavern games..." he said.