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Midir had been a squire for not yet a year when Edain resigned from the path of knighthood. Her stepmother had not been pleased. Her father hadn’t liked it much either, but he’d already lost one child; he had no desire to lose another.
So on her fourteenth birthday, the heir of House Yngvi was introduced to the court not as a squire, but as the Lady Edain. Her long, blonde hair had tumbled like a waterfall down her back, a golden crown of sunshine atop her cloud-white robes. The color already looked so natural on her that Midir wondered how she ever wore the black and beige outfit of a knight-in-training. She looked so lovely in a dress—she looked like she was at peace.
Midir had never liked dresses before, but from that moment on he wouldn’t picture her without one.
There were limits on what the Lady Edain could do, even as the heir to one of the richest families on the continent. It didn’t seem fair to Midir: Duke Ring was one of the most influential people in the world, why did his daughter have to live a life of such restriction? But when was life ever fair to people like them… People like them. The phrase burrowed into Midir’s heart and made a home there. It put down roots. In the worst of times, it bloomed.
He wasn’t alone anymore.
Yet the gap between him and the Lady Edain, a simple squire who became an even simpler knight and the radiant Lady of the House of Ullr, felt insurmountable even at the best of times. What else could a child who was too pretty to behave like that think when standing beside the most beautiful woman on Earth? Midir had been captivated by her since before he knew her true name. When she masqueraded as a boy, Edain had yet worn her hair long, tied back in the usual fashion but for sprigs of wheat-white curls around her face. She had never been very tall, but her presence was nonetheless commanding of attention: a full face like a mirror pool, a softness to her that her gangly half-brother couldn’t hope to mimic, both drawing Midir in like a planet in orbit.
When he’d first met her, Midir had knelt before her in his new House Yngvi doublet alongside all the other youth hoping to prove themselves worthy of the Beige Ritter. That became the foundation of their relationship: she stood in front of him, and he knelt before her, or stood at her back. He did not touch her. It seemed blasphemous to even consider it.
She would touch him, though, hands on his shoulders as she bounced up and down, or tugging him forth by the elbow to chase after ground squirrels, or attempting to braid his hair. It seemed that every time he tried to uphold a chivalric air about her, she’d scoff and say, “Come on, Mida, let’s have fun!” She used to smell like bread and brown butter, as she spent her free time in the kitchens listening to the stories of the cooks: stories about her lost twin sister, about her mother lying behind mausoleum stone. She liked to chatter, but Midir is certain she could have said nothing at all and he still would have trailed after her like stormwater to a stream, the famously elusive attention span of a child miraculously unending in her wake.
They were, against every principle that had been instilled into Midir from the first time he was able to hold a training sword, friends.
He’d loved her even then, though he didn’t know it yet.
It was that unknown, instinctive love that guarded him through each progressive year of his life. If not for Edain, Midir would have given into despair before he turned thriteen. Mida would have hung herself on the noose that seemed to have been wrapped around her neck from the moment she was born female. She’d had plans. She wanted to be outside. She wanted to be in the trees. She wanted to be a part of them instead of a part of a society that didn’t seem to have space for her.
One day, after sparring, Edain with a Fire tome and Midir with a bow, Edain had asked, “What’s it like to be a girl?”
What Midir had said was not kind. He was frustrated by the spar, even though he had won, and he was haunted by the branches and rope that hung in his periphery. “It’s awful. It’s like being a bird in a cage. But I’m not a songbird. I’m a swan, and I’m too big for the cage, but I’m stuck in it anyway. And I can’t get out.”
Edain had been quiet for a long moment. During that time, Midir had paced back and forth, watching his feet sink into the sand. “That’s what being a boy is like too,” she’d finally answered. “I like swans. They’re pretty and strong. I wish I were a swan.”
At the time, Midir hadn’t known just what she was telling him. He thought of swans, large and graceful, masters of sky and stream, so aggressive and beautiful that it was against the will of the gods to hunt them even in a dukedom known for its field sport. “Me too.”
When she became a Lady, Edain wasn’t allowed to wear the swan wing headdress of the Troubadours. She wasn’t allowed to train as a Troubadour at all. Midir just thought of her in her white dress at her debut ball and knew she was closer to the gods than anyone else in Yngvi, no matter what she was and was not permitted to wear.
They didn’t spar together anymore, and Midir was generally considered a bad influence on Edain by her caretakers, so their friendship entered its winter. Edain trained to be a Priest, and Midir trained to be an Arch Knight. Edain began therapeutic treatment, and Midir traded thoughts of rope for bandages to bind his breasts with. Edain sought him out in the castle halls, before jousting tournaments, after celebratory feasts. Midir kept his pimpled face turned away.
He couldn’t resist answering her, though, not when she seemed so happy to see him. She was an endless fountain of joy, of gossip, of ideas about everything from mischief to science back to politics. Midir had middling talent with a lance and had recently been assigned to extra strength training in order to keep pace with the other squires. He tried not to talk too much about himself.
Edain could still draw out his heart.
“Do you still think about flying away?” she asked him, shortly after his seventeenth birthday.
Midir startled from his place by the window. They were in a back hallway that ran parallel to the brackish bay, situated just below the highest ramparts of the castle. He hadn’t expected to be found here. “Do I…”
“When we were younger, you said you were a swan,” Edain explained, stepping closer and leaning on the wall next to the window. “You wanted to escape from your cage.”
Remembering, Midir blushed. “How… foolish.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. Her hair, the longest Midir had ever seen, swung gently by her knees. “I needed to hear that. I needed to escape my cage.”
His mouth moved faster than his common sense. “Have you?”
As she considered this, she tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. Her smile was shy—it was unlike her. “Almost.”
There was no need for him to ask why she said almost. He knew all too well what injustices she faced: he was planning to pledge his life to her, after all. Every offense against her and her personhood was one he took personally. Actually, almost enlightened him in a different way. “You seem happier,” Midir told her. He mulled it over. She was sixteen now, and seemed brighter than ever before. Her smiles came easier. Her hands had a satin sheen now that she was practicing healing instead of sword swings. The week before, she told him she was learning the harp.
“I am,” she confirmed.
“I’m happy for you.”
“Are you happy, Mida?”
He shrugged.
Gently, Edain placed a hand on his elbow, just for a moment before returning to her personal space. “You can talk to me. The gods know how much I talk to you.”
“No, I like it when you talk!”
She giggled: he’d say she was bashful if he ever thought that word could apply to someone so headstrong. “Good. I treasure it when you talk.” It was a pointed compliment, but a compliment all the same. Willing his face to stop flushing, Midir bit his lip.
He thought of swans, and cages, and flying away. He thought of spring-storm streams, and petticoats, and galloping on his horse, bowstring pulled taut next to his cheek. He thought of knighthood and girlhood and an existence beyond either thing.
“I’m thinking of changing my name,” he murmurs. Between the two of them, he was always the shy one. Yet something about Edain’s magnetic presence makes him want to be brave. “Before I get knighted.”
Edain straightened immediately, her hands rising as if she meant to clap. “Oh! What should I call you?”
Despite his anxious instincts, Midir’s lips twitched with mirth. “You can call me Midir,” he said, not looking at Edain but past her, through the checkered window to the horizon beyond.
In his periphery, he caught her smile.