~Florence

  I thought there would be more people around, but it’s just Sir Thorne and myself in the practice yard.

  The first week of my lessons is over and my mind is exhausted, but my body is burning with the need to move, especially after sitting for hours at a time, day after day.

  But Sir Thorne is more interested in hearing about my mage classes than beginning our lessons.

  “How did it go, m’lady?” he asks, arms crossed in front of his chest. In the evening light, I can barely make out his features beneath the cowl he wears.

  “I have nothing to compare it to, so how am I supposed to know?” I’m not as polite as I could be—the crankiness I feel is hard to bury beneath pleasantries. “He says I’m promising. And, since I’m the only one he’s teaching, he wants to forgo the curriculum and teach me what he called, ‘more useful things.’”

  Sir Thorne smiles. “If you don’t mind my asking, m’lady, who is your professor?”

  “Sir Elwyn Windemere.”

  Sir Thorne gasps—the most uncomposed I’ve seen him since meeting him. “The Elwyn Windemere? The Wind Rider?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know much about him, honestly.”

  “Lady Florence, he’s a legendary Battle Mage! Every single knight in the kingdom has heard of him.”

  “Well, I’m not a knight, am I?” I point out. “Can we begin now? I don’t have much time before I’ll be missed. Also, I thought you were going to call me ‘Ren.’”

  “Right, right. Of course…R-Ren,” Sir Thorne clears his throat and shifts his feet on the packed earth. “First of all, I need to gauge how strong you are…do you want to run laps first, or do strength testing?”

  I smile. This is the kind of thing I was hoping for tonight. “Strength testing.”

  He nods. “See that bar over there, mounted between two trees? Try to pull yourself up like this—” he jogs over and demonstrates, hanging from the bar and easily pulling his head above it “—as many times as you can.”

  I stand below the bar and immediately notice a problem: I won’t be able to reach it, even if I jump. I glance at Sir Thorne just as he seems to realize the same issue.

  “Ah,” he walks over to me, “with your permission…”

  I nod, and he holds me around the waist and lifts me to the bar. The metal is smooth and cold in my hands, an unfamiliar sensation. I grip it tightly and try to mimic the maneuver, immediately feeling a burn in my arms as they try to lift my dead weight. They start to tremble as I pull my chin closer and closer to the bar, and I start to doubt I’ll be able to do it.

  Am I really this weak?

  No. No! I refuse to be.

  Sweat breaks out on my brow and my body shakes, but I finally pull my chin above the bar. I fall limp and let go, knowing I won’t be able to do another one, but Sir Thorne catches me around the waist before I hit the ground and eases me down to it.

  “Well done,” he says, his gravelly voice too close to my ear. “Are you steady?”

  He still has his hands around my waist! Am I? Am I lightheaded?

  “I’m fine,” I say, though I do feel a bit flushed. He lets go.

  “Good. You can rest for a bit, then we’ll move on. By the way, not even all the new pages can do that when they first start their training.”

  Is he trying to praise me? I try to find his eyes beneath the hood, but I can’t see them.

  “Aren’t they about ten when they start?”

  Half my age.

  “Around that, yes,” he chuckles softly, “but…forgive me, m’lady, you’re about the same size as some of them.”

  “It’s not my fault,” I retort, grabbing a waterskin hanging nearby and heading for a tree stump.

  My palms burn from the effort of pulling myself up. I stare at them, red and raw from rubbing on the metal.

  He must sense something in my tone, for his next question is, “Do you want to talk about it, m'la—uh, Ren?”

  Sir Thorne takes a seat nearby while I rest. Do I? It dawns on me that nobody has ever asked me that before. Nobody!

  “We have—” what did the book call it again? “—confidentiality in our agreement, correct?”

  At one point, I had taken a book from the LaVelle library on agreements, contracts, and obligations, so I could be better prepared to deal with Sir Thorne. Sometime soon, we really should write down our terms…

  “Yes,” he says. “Whatever you share is safe with me and I expect the same from you.”

  I take another sip. It would probably be good for him to know. Someone should.

  “Alright, then. When I was under the sleeping curse, I wasn’t actually ‘sleeping,’ like you would at night. The clerics told me that my soul was in a hellscape, mana-bound with a collar around my neck. All I knew how to do in that place was run. Run away, I mean.” The hellscape comes alive in my mind, crackling fire with emerald and crimson flames. Sapphire lightning splits the inky sky. “It is a place filled with demons and shades, shadows and apparitions. There were a few who would plague me more than others…but…it didn’t matter what they looked like. I ran away from them all. That is how I know how to climb, and crouch, and run, and swim, and…slither like a snake.”

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  The toad man and the knife woman leer at me in the shadows, their glowing eyes growing closer. I look away. I look into Sir Thorne's hood and see the flash of a smile in the shadows—he remembers me being compared to a snake the first time I got caught on the Rowanward March.

  “Apparently, while I was busy doing all of that with my soul, my body would thrash about on the bed. They told me they tied me down so I wouldn’t hurt myself. But…I have scars from the ties rubbing my wrists and ankles. I think I might’ve been tied up so as not to hurt them. Anyway...

  “While I was tied up, Mary, my maid, says it was difficult to feed me. She says that I was ‘uncooperative’ and that I would choke on anything I had to chew. So, I was fed mush. This,” I gesture to my small frame, “is the result of seven years of mush. I know I do not look...grown. But, I also know it isn't my fault." I breathe out a sigh, finding I feel better having told someone my horrible secret, even if that someone is still mostly a stranger to me. "I expect you not to repeat any of this to anybody, Sir Thorne, including Lord Trevor.”

  Sir Thorne is quiet for a moment before he responds. “You have my word, my lady.”

  There’s an edge to his voice that hasn’t been there before, but I can’t place it. Almost like anger, but who would he be angry at? Not me, surely, I know that much.

  “I’m ready to run now,” I tell him. More than ready—I’m eager to burn away that distasteful confession.

  “Very well.” He gets to his feet. “I’ll run the first lap with you to show you the course, then run as many more as you can after that, Lady Florence…Ren”

  We set off on a faint track outside the boundary of the yard, that also circles the thicket I had landed in a few weeks prior. Sir Thorne points out the markers that denote the start and midway points. True to his word, he stops after just one lap.

  The boots that Tali crafted for me feel infinitely better than the ones I had stolen—they are shaped well to my feet and supportive. My lungs begin to burn by lap three, but I push through, enjoying the sensation of stretching my legs, using my legs.

  Lost in the burn, I lose track of the number of laps and Sir Thorne eventually rejoins me, running alongside me.

  “You’ve run for over two miles, m’lady,” he says. “You can stop now. I can see this is not an area you need to improve much upon.”

  “Oh,” I heave a breath, slowing to a walk. Sir Thorne walks with me.

  “Have you ever shot an arrow?” he asks after a few moments, while we walk.

  I shake my head ‘no,’ still catching my breath.

  “Drawn a sword?”

  No.

  “Used a knife?”

  No.

  “Thrown your fists?”

  I smile, but still shake my head, ‘no.’

  When we get back to the yard, he has me punch into his hand, try to lift a few different swords and blades (eyeing each attempt critically), and try to draw a bow, all of which I fail to do.

  The frustration I feel must be obvious, since Thorne says, “This is normal, Lady Flor—I mean, Ren. Have some faith in yourself, and me. It’s only the first day, after all.”

  “But all I can do is run,” I say, feeling like a petulant child. "And lift myself once."

  “Which is more than some can do when they first begin. You’d be surprised how spoiled and lazy some of those little noble brats can be…ah, I mean…I shouldn’t have said that.”

  I find myself smiling, whether it was his intention or not, and I do feel better about myself. Besides, it’s true—everyone has to start somewhere. The fact that he’s not giving up on me tells me he still thinks I’m trainable, which means he thinks I can learn something. Maybe not a sword or a bow, but there were a lot of weapons, more than I knew existed. Surely, there is something I can work with.

  As if hearing my thoughts, Sir Thorne says, “With some training, I think I have the right weapons for you. But you’ll need to be patient with yourself Page Ren—it takes time to build muscle.”

  I nod, trying to look serious, but then a laugh escapes. “Page Ren? Really?”

  “Maybe you’d be more of a squire, to be honest…”

  “Are you serious?” He has to be making fun of me.

  “If you were knighted, you’d be Dame Florence,” he spreads his hands out in the air majestically. “Yes, 'Dame Florence,' that has a nice ring to it. However, it takes about seven years to be knighted and you’re what, nineteen? Hmm…”

  He strokes the stubble on his chin.

  “I don’t need to be knighted,” I say, trying my best to sound serious, but I can’t help but be pulled into his musings. ‘Dame Florence’ really does sound nice, now that I’ve heard it.

  “But if you could, would you?”

  “Yes,” I say without thinking. I put my hands over my mouth.

  Sir Thorne looks down at me for a moment, as if studying me, then nods and says, “Duly noted, my lady. Ren. Squire Ren.”

  I heave a sigh before I can laugh again. “Goodbye, Sir Thorne. I should go now.”

  “Ah, I suppose it’s time.”

  “Until next time,” I say, then run to the trail that will take me home.

  ????

  ~Trevor

  As soon as Lady Florence was out of sight, Trevor turned to a raven that had been sitting silently on a high branch nearby.

  “Go,” he commanded.

  Lady Florence insisted she did not need an escort to and from the training grounds, arguing that the Rowanward March was regularly patrolled, and therefore safe.

  It was true that Trevor’s men patrolled the perimeter of the march. It was also true that Trevor prided himself on keeping it relatively safe.

  But it was impossible to keep out every single danger.

  Therefore, he surveilled her through Bergamot. Then he’d know if something happened to her. Trevor knew she wasn’t helpless, especially now that her mage lessons had started, but if bandits or wolves attacked...

  He sighed. Florence's words, "I know I do not look...grown," echoed in his mind. Objectively, she was small. But he wouldn't say she didn't look grown. Was she not aware of her appearance? She certainly didn't look like a boy in the clothes Tali had crafted for her. If a bandit got his hands on her...would she be able to fight him off?

  The thought of another man laying his hands on Lady Florence filled Trevor with a strange feeling. Surely, it was his sworn duty as a knight to protect a noblewoman such as Lady Florence, but was it more than that?

  No. No, it couldn't be anything more than disgust at the possibility of such an attack happening. Maybe...maybe he would simply have to insist on accompanying her. Even with Bergamot watching, his unease was simply too great.

  Tranquil as a forest, but on fire within! Lady Florence, aka Squire Ren, has officially started her training. Woo!