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The weariness and quiet resignation isn’t hard to fake. Wrapped in a tattered cloak and wearing her old travel clothes, Vale looks just like any other sorry soul who’s lost their home and family to the Horde.
So when she arrives at the gates of Camp Dragonhead, a downcast expression painted onto her features, the guards wave her in—not without second glances; she cannot and will not disguise her scales, her horns that just barely peek out from under her hood, but they do not stop her. Her weathered boots scuff on the cobble ground, and she is inside the walls of Ishgard’s stronghold.
Lady Iceheart will be pleased.
The so-called heretics were the ones who welcomed her with open arms when the Ishgardians turned her away into the tundra. Raised her when her parents died on an ill-fated journey through the Western Highlands, treated her like one of their own. Embraced—even envied—her draconic features, the selfsame ones Ishgardians saw only as a mark of an ancient sin.
It did not take her long to pledge her support, her life, to their cause. To stand by the dragons in a fool’s war wrought by humanity’s hubris.
And now she is here, on a mission entrusted to her by Lady Iceheart herself.
Sitting at Camp Dragonhead’s hearth, clutching a warm drink in her hands, she’s already completed the first step. But it’s far from being the hardest.
No, that will be getting into Ishgard itself.
“Bide your time, if needs must,” Lady Iceheart had told her. “They will not let you into the city if they do not trust you completely.” Her delicate brows furrowed as she gazed off into the distance at the towering spires. “Mayhap not even then.”
She let out a breath in the frozen air, watched it disappear in a wisp of white. “I will not disappoint you, my lady.”
“No, I do not think you will.” Lady Iceheart had smiled at her then.
It does her a disservice, she had thought, calling her that. When her heart is anything but.
She takes a sip of her tea, only opening her eyes at the sound of someone pulling up a chair beside her. It takes all of her willpower not to startle. “Lord Haurchefant,” she says, and she does not have to feign surprise.
The Knight Commander waves when she moves to rise, a blanket draped over his arm. “Please, no need for formalities. My men informed me of your plight, and you must have had a long and tiring journey. You are free to rest and recuperate here as long as you need.”
The story she fed the guards was not entirely false. Easier to believe that way. She had spun a tale of her lost in the Highlands with her parents when they were ambushed by dragons in the night. Her parents held them off, told her to run, and in the end she was the only survivor.
Half-truths. Her father fell through the ice while hunting and her mother was killed by a Vindthurs. In a way, she wove it to be kinder to herself. At least there she got to hear her parents tell her they loved her one last time.
She swallows past the lump in her throat and dips her head in a low nod. The fire pops and it sounds like a lake cracking open, a door squeaks open and the wind whistles past like a voidsent. She laces her fingers around the mug, trying not to squeeze too tight as a ghost-light shiver dances down her spine. “Thank you.”
His gaze flickers to her cloak. Full of new rips and old patches unraveling. “Are you still cold?” he asks, unfolding the blanket. Without waiting for an answer, he leans towards her and drapes it over her shoulders.
She’s not unfamiliar with Ishgard’s nobility. More often than not, they were the topic of conversation between other members of Saint Shiva’s followers. Huddled together around a fire, she’d hear them snarl and spit about the High Houses. How they built their legacies on the backs of a lie. Some of the names she could put faces to, most she could not.
But she knows about Haurchefant Greystone. They’d told her about him when she accepted Lady Iceheart’s request. Said he’s the bastard of the Fortemps family, that he’s kind to most everyone he meets.
That he’s her best chance at making it into the city.
When she arrived at Camp Dragonhead, she was expecting to spend days here. Talking to the soldiers and the servants, gathering information on their Knight Commander and formulating how best she could approach him.
She wasn’t expecting him to offer himself up into her palm just like that.
So she gives him a small, shy smile. Adjusts the blanket to wrap it tighter around herself. “You are too kind.”
He smiles back. Painfully sincere. “‘Tis no trouble at all to aid someone in need. I hope your time here will help ease your burdens, at least a little.”
Boots on wood. “Lord Haurchefant,” a knight says. “There is someone here to see you.”
A frown crosses his face, gone as soon as he turns back to her. “Pray forgive my departing so soon. But please, if there’s anything at all you may need, do not hesitate to inform me.”
“You have my thanks, my lord.” She inclines her head. He stands and, with a small bow, tucks the chair back underneath the table behind them before he leaves with the knight.
She smooths down her irritation at the interruption. There will be more time later , she reminds herself. More time than she had given herself, since he so graciously opened a path for her.
Her eyes close again as she listens to his footsteps fade away, mug raised to her lips. A little girl’s voice in her mind whispers that she should be ashamed for this part she plays. Warns her that the guilt will weigh in her heart like stone when this camp and everyone in it is naught but ash and bone.
She drinks. She will not entertain specters tonight. That little girl died long ago, left to rot under ice and snow.