"This was always going to happen. She's been dead since the beginning."
- Aeschylus
It is a child's dream to outwit fate, to somehow escape the great ending that awaits us all.
But Orianne Fernwood would burn the world if it meant a moment longer w...
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The slow shifting gait of a horse beneath him was enough to instill some sense of ease in Arthur, even if his eyes were constantly tracking the small empty spaces between the greenery of the Kingswood in search of a threat waiting just beyond the tree line.
Arthur looked toward his companions. They rode beside him and behind him, a force of knights and soldiers, some green and others who had seen battle far too many times. How many of them would be dead come the end of their hunt? Who would ride back, reins in hand, and who would be hauled back in carts, covered in sheets and carted to their families with the empty promise that their husband, lover, brother, father, friend, had fought bravely and died with honor.
The older he got, the harder Arthur found it to see the honor in death.
Just over his left shoulder, Sumner Crakehall rode with his young squire behind him.
Jamie Lannister, a boy of fifteen and yet he was twice the swordsman than most of the men around him. Arthur had seen the boy spar while he accompanied his father in King's Landing, he had a talent for the blade, that much was clear. There was a passion in his eyes, a dream of chivalry, knighthood, and honor that always started out with a shine before dulling with time like rust on a blade ill-cared for.
Would this boy see through the fighting?
Skill paled in comparison to luck; Arthur had seen many a craven, cowardly idiot survive when better men in both skill and bravery died horrid, painful deaths. Arthur did not want to see that happen to young Jamie Lannister, the boy who seemed to have an eternal smile on his face, the boy who joked with the soldiers and seemed ready to spring into action at the slightest rustle of a bush.
Worst of all, he looked at Arthur like a hero from a story.
Jamie had crept around his campfire the night before, waiting and watching, anxious in the way only a child could be to approach someone they had placed on a pedestal in their minds. Arthur had invited the boy to sit, and Jamie had listened with rapt attention as Arthur told him stories of past battles. It made him feel less horrid in the moment, to have someone be so amazed by the things that haunted Arthur. But when he had awoken and tried to remember the look of awe on Jamie's face, all he could see was the boy lifeless and bloodied on the ground, forever a child whose face still held the soft lines of infancy and cheeks rounded by baby fat.
Arthur wished he had never agreed to lead the hunting party, not when his mind was so distant from the task at hand, and he had never felt less like a knight in all his years. He had left King's Landing with a mess in his wake, and worst of all, he had left Orianne alone to deal with the consequences.
"Arthur? Orianne?"
Arthur hadn't immediately placed the voice, and in his shock at hearing another, he spun around and tried to do his best to cover Orianne with his body. If they were to be discovered, he would be damned if he did not try to spare some of her dignity from whatever viper had stumbled upon them.
