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“Wake up.”
At the sound of her mother’s voice, Hellena stirred.
“Wake up, dear.”
Turning, she opened her eyes. It was still night, not time for her lessons.
“We’re going to play a game.”
The light of the lamp flickered across Gwen’s face, making her look gaunt and worried.
Partially throwing her cozy comforter aside, Hellena sat up. “What sort of game, Mama?” Normally, she wasn’t allowed to leave her room, let alone play games this late at night.
“Hide and seek.”
“Oh!”
They were always playing this game - sometimes in the middle of her lessons or when she was playing games in the citadel with other children. She didn’t mind. Uncle Merlin (he was actually her godfather, but she called him uncle because it was easier and he and her father were like brothers, anyway) was always the one to come and find her, and he gave her treats or turned pebbles into butterflies for her.
“Come on.”
Gwen held out a hand, and Hellena took it, slipping her feet into her slippers as she did so.
“I want you to find an especially good hiding place, all right? Give Merlin a challenge for once.”
Hellena pouted. “But he always uses magic! It’s not fair.”
When she complained to him about it, he always threatened to turn her into a ferret.
He was joking, of course.
At least, she thought.
Her father said he was joking.
“Well, that’s why you have to make it an especially good hiding place. You’re good at that.” Although her eyebrows were knit, Gwen smiled down at Hellena, and Hellena grinned up at her. “Hurry. Merlin’s will come looking for you soon.”
Hellena knew the perfect place. The room across from hers was empty, but there was a wardrobe filled with thick blankets. She was small enough that she could squeeze herself in them, and she’d never used that spot before.
It was perfect.
Before her mother could say anything else, she dashed for the door so she could get in place before Merlin came searching for her.
Behind her, she closed it so it would look exactly as it had been left. The room was dark without any candles lit, but she knew its layout well enough to find the wardrobe after feeling about in the dark with her fingers.
She longed to stop for a moment to bounce on the bed (she wasn’t allowed to do that in her own room, but no one would find out if she did it here) , she desperately wanted to win the game.
Once she found the wardrobe, she opened it and pushed her fingers against the blankets.
They were soft. Not as soft as the ones in her room, of course, but they were worth burying her face into for a second before squashing them with her hands to create enough room for herself.
Feeling rather satisfied with herself, she wedged her body into the crevice and then settled down to wait for Merlin.
Usually, she counted to two hundred, and he’d found her by then.
One, two, three, four…
She wondered what treat he would have for her this time.
Maybe he’d been lucky enough to snag some tarts from the kitchen without Cook catching him and dragging him out by the ear.
She prayed it would be tarts. She liked those.
Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight…
She thought she could hear footsteps out in the hallway, but because of the blankets packed around her, she couldn’t make out the muffled sound for certain.
She wasn’t going to give herself away by trying to figure it out, though. She wanted to win the game.
One hundred and ten, one hundred and eleven, one hundred and twelve…
The blankets were beginning to be hot and stuffy, making her sweat. Loose around her neck, her hair stuck to her skin.
It would feel better if she could pull it back a little, but the last time that had happened, she’d elbowed a wall and given up her position...
One hundred and sixty-three, one hundred and sixty-four, one hundred and sixty-five.
The sounds had died away.
One hundred seventy-eight, one hundred seventy-nine…
As she kept mentally ticking off fingers, a tingle ran through her. She’d never won a game of hide and seek against Merlin! He was too good at it. Experience from getting out of mucking the stables and evading bandits, he’d told her once with a twinkle in his eye.
The thought of Merlin mucking the stables always made her laugh.
One hundred ninety-eight, one hundred ninety-nine…
Two hundred.
She’d won.
Grinning, she pushed herself out of the blankets, smacking the door of the wardrobe open and falling to the floor in a heap.
No one was there to witness her victory.
Well, she was going to find her mother and father and tell them. After fixing one of her slippers, which had come loose in the wardrobe, she skipped across the room.
Peeking out, she looked up and down the passageway.
No one was there.
Her parents’ room wasn’t very far from hers, so she headed in that direction. Padding down the hallways, she felt like a spy - maybe Uncle Merlin on one of his many adventures when he and his father were younger.
Pretending she had magic, she crouched down lower as she shuffled along in the shadows cast by the burning torches on the walls.
She was Merlin Emrys, the greatest warlock to ever walk-
Turning a corner, she ran into something solid.
“Oh!”
“Princess Hellena?”
It was Sir Leon, fully armed and with a torch in hand. She didn’t know why he was awake at this hour - the knights always complained about waking up so early in the morning to train even though they were even grouchier when they didn’t - but he was a good enough audience for her news.
“Sir Leon! I won the game!”
“Game?”
She didn’t wait for him to figure it out - she could see the door to her parents’ bedroom, so she ducked underneath him and ran towards it, hair flying behind her.
“Wait, your highness! Don’t go in there!”
Ignoring him, she flung open the door. “Mama-”
The room was fully lit.
Her eyes fell upon Merlin.
He was slumped on the floor, his back against the wall by the head of her parents’ bed. Blood dripped from his lips onto one of his favorite handkerchiefs, the red one Hellena had given him for last Michaelmas.
He’d promised to not let it get soiled.
A greater pool of blood was blossoming around his stomach, where his fingers clutched at the hit of a knife.
His back to her, her father was crouching on the ground in front of him.
“I thought I told you not to take knives for me!”
“And...I suppose your death...was a better option?”
“Uncle Merlin!”
Merlin’s eyes widened as they connected with Hellena’s.
“Hellena-” her father started.
“Get her out of here,” Merlin gasped. “Get her out of here, get her out of here, get her out of-”
Her father pushed him back down. “Please don’t move. You’re going to be all right, Merlin - you’re going to be just fine. Don’t move. Gwen’s getting the physician. Just - just-”
Sir Leon burst into the room behind her.
As she numbly stood there, her horrified gaze moved from her godfather to another shape on the floor - a dark lump against the bright light of the room.
It was shriveled, almost old looking, as though all of the water had been drained out of it and it had been left to dry in the sun, but it was undoubtedly a human, wrapped in black clothes and another knife clutched in the spidery remains of its hand.
And suddenly, she understood the game.
It wasn’t fun to play anymore.