Chapter Text
Kiera didn’t object to being lined up for execution. She kept her head low, calm and resigned, hiding behind the tangled curtain of her dark hair. Death was far preferable to being recognized by one of the very Thalmor agents that had tried—and nearly succeeded in—abducting her fifteen years ago.
The gods were cruel. So very cruel, to put her here when she hadn’t done anything to merit it.
General Tullius glared at Ulfric Stormcloak. Elenwen was nearby, looking over the crowd, but as long as Kiera stayed still and quiet, neither she nor her agents would—
“Corinthia Mede?”
Kiera’s stomach dropped. She froze beneath the shocked words, pinned like a hunted thing, not even daring to breathe.
No. No, no, no no no—
She watched out of the corner of her eye, petrified, as the gold-and-black shape of Elenwen stepped closer. The activity around them stilled bit by bit. Even the headsman’s axe stalled. Kiera was the only Imperial woman in this sea of Nord prisoners. Despite the impossibility of the idea, there was only one person that name could apply to.
“Corinthia… Mede?” Tullius echoed.
Kiera was fourteen again as Elenwen’s hand reached out to hurt her and drag her away, terrified and helpless—
Except, no. She wasn’t fourteen anymore.
She was twenty-nine. She was an experienced sellsword.
And she wasn’t going down without a fight.
Terror fed rage, and she had a lot of both. Elenwen was only a hair’s breadth away when Kiera snapped around and lunged, blind with fury. The next minute was a blur. The only thing she knew was that she was trying to beat the Thalmor bitch’s head in with her bound hands.
When coherent thought returned, she was pinned to the ground and paralyzed by magic. Her throat hurt terribly, like she’d been screaming at the top of her lungs. She blinked, face pressed into the dirt, and tears spilled over. The terror didn’t return. It was gone for the moment, smothered by numbness.
Nearly fifteen years of keeping her existence secret, undone in a split second by the very people she’d worked so hard to evade.
“Well, well,” Elenwen drawled. Kiera couldn’t see her, but it sounded like she’d at least taken one good punch to the mouth.
“Corinthia Mede? The dead Imperial princess?” said Hadvar, audibly stunned.
“It can’t be,” said Tullius. He crouched near her, but she couldn’t quite see his face. “It—it is! But you’ve been dead for fifteen years!”
“Stand back,” said Elenwen coolly. “We will handle this… unexpected development.”
“You mean take a hostage, Thalmor bitch?” one of the Stormcloaks snarled. Kiera heard an impact and a grunt as someone struck him.
Tullius stood. “Absolutely not,” he said. “The Imperial Legion will escort Her Highness back to Cyrodiil immediately.”
“The concordat demands a respectful conversation with your missing princess, General. Noblewomen don’t simply disappear without cause.”
“They don’t recognize and attack specific Thalmor agents like a cornered animal with no cause either, Ambassador.”
Kiera blinked again. More tears slid down her face and into the dirt. The odd, distant roaring sound from earlier returned, louder than before.
“Let her up, for Talos’s sake!” said Ralof. “You were about to execute your own princess, and now this? Imperial scum!”
“Quiet, Stormcloak!” the angry captain who had sentenced Kiera to execution snapped.
Tullius growled under his breath. “Get Her Highness inside and—”
Elenwen interjected. “The Thalmor will—”
“What in Oblivion is that!”
Kiera felt the force of a tremendous impact nearby, but she was still paralyzed on the ground. She watched a sea of boots skitter away from something in fear. The potential for an unknown threat didn’t quite punch through the numbness, but she took keen note when the Altmer pinning her suddenly slackened his grip.
“DRAGON!”
A sound and force like nothing she’d ever felt struck her from behind, and she felt a flash of searing pain at the base of her skull. The world went dark and quiet for a while.
When she came to, the paralysis was gone. She stared at the blurry ground, bound hands dangling awkwardly, pulled to one side. Someone had her over their shoulders like a prize catch, but the armor didn’t feel like Thalmor plate or justiciar robes. Blood dripped from her cheek to the bridge of her nose as people shouted and screamed.
“—the legends be true?”
That was… Ralof, she thought. He sounded breathless.
“Legends don’t burn down villages,” rumbled the person beneath her. “We need to move now!”
Stairs appeared beneath her, but only briefly. There was a cry and the sound of a stone wall shattering, then an odd, deafening screech. Intense heat licked across her exposed skin.
“Back! Back!” Her… captor? Rescuer? Whatever he was, he cursed. “We’ll have to go through the streets. Dammit!” He shifted her higher over his shoulders. “With me, keep an eye out for those Thalmor dogs. They will be after the princess, mark my words.”
Ulfric. Ulfric Stormcloak, leader of the rebellion, was the one who had stolen her in the melee. She felt her head start to clear, but not enough. Why had they been shouting about a dragon? It certainly would take a legendary dragon to free him from the Empire’s grip when he was about to be executed…
“She’s an Imperial, my Lord,” a different Stormcloak said as they began to move. “We should leave her here.”
“She hates that Thalmor bitch. Her own Empire tried to execute her. That’s more than enough reason to take her with us, Hrolgar.”
Politics, thought Kiera. All this movement was making her head pound so hard she couldn’t think straight. The next time they were relatively still, she said “Put me down.”
Well, sort of. It came out sounding more like a slurred groan.
“Good, you’re alive,” said Ulfric. He did not put her down. “Stay still. That dragon shouted a rock straight into your head.”
“Dra… gon?” she managed to say.
He didn’t answer, and then they were moving again and she lost the thread of that inquiry. At least it’s not the Thalmor, was her next coherent thought. The Stormcloaks were shouting, and steel rang against steel.
“Take her!” Ulfric shouted, and she was dumped into someone else’s grip like baggage. They grunted and knelt, leaning against the wall of a half-destroyed building.
From her new vantage point, she could see a lone Thalmor agent and some Imperial soldiers fighting the Stormcloaks. They lost immediately when Ulfric joined the fray and unleashed his Voice upon them.
Wish I knew how to heal head wounds, she thought. The rudimentary restoration magic she’d picked up over her years as a sellsword sprang to her palms, but did little to help clear her mind. It at least seemed to stem the flow of blood from the cut on her scalp.
“We’ll get to a healer,” said the Stormcloak she’d been dropped on. “Shor’s bones, I wonder if you really are the lost princess.”
“N-no,” Kiera denied on sheer reflex.
“...ah.”
She had the distinct feeling she’d made an error of some kind, but then the other Stormcloaks returned and she was hauled over a shoulder again. This time it was Ralof’s, and the jostling made her want to close her eyes and lie down for a while. Ulfric hissed “Go, run!” and she nearly threw up as they did.
The sky was reddish and cloudy high above. She remembered that as someone dragged her onto a horse. Flaming stones rained down, though none got near enough to hurt them. Then the unmistakable silhouette of a big, ebony-dark dragon passed above, and her heart seized in her chest.
What?
“Ride! Ride! For Skyrim!” Ulfric bellowed in her ear. The horse sprang forward, and they passed under the gatepost. Helgen’s wooden gates were broken off their hinges on either side. She thought she heard, distantly, the sound of Tullius shouting “Stop them!”
An arrow whistled past. Then her head struck the hard line of Ulfric’s shoulder and white stars exploded across her eyes. She gave in and sank beneath the murky darkness for a while.
It was bitterly cold when she came around again. Someone pressed a bottle to her mouth. Her eyelids fluttered, stiff from the snow. She couldn’t quite remember why it might be a bad idea to drink, and so she drank. Her mind began to clear, slowly, like a ship emerging from dense fog. A hand pressed against the back of her aching head and restoration magic flowed into her.
She opened her eyes and remembered exactly what had happened to get her here.
“Easy,” said a healer outfitted in Stormcloak blue as she sat up too quickly. “That knock could have killed you. You’re lucky it didn’t.”
She looked around without answering, taking quick stock. They were in a camp—an established rebel camp, by the looks of things, hidden high in the rocky foothills around the Throat of the World. She was on a cot, under a large tent. Ulfric was sitting on another cot, having a burn tended to. His attention was fixed on her, and he wasn’t the only one.
Kiera wasn’t usually someone who struggled to speak. When she was silent, it was by choice. But now, as the weight of everything pressed down on her without a veil of confusion to soften it, she found her throat growing tight. There was no point in denying what they’d all heard, but she… she didn’t know what else to do. It was all she’d done since she was fourteen.
Ulfric spoke before she could reconcile the frightened teenage princess with the seasoned sellsword she’d chosen to become.
“I will not allow the Thalmor to capture you again,” he said. “I swear it.”
Her hands dug into the furs that had been draped over her. She struggled harder with herself for a moment, eyes squeezing shut. “...fuck.” She dropped her head into her hands. “Fuck!”
It was, perhaps, the most honest she’d been in her entire life.
“Not exactly what I expected to hear from an Imperial princess.”
“Corinthia Mede is dead,” she snapped at him, swinging into an anger that didn’t make sense. Her fingers dug into her hairline. “She had to die so the Thalmor couldn’t use her as a hostage, and… fuck. And now it’s all pointless.”
“I see now.” She heard him shift closer while she tried not to break. “Your ‘disappearance’ was a Thalmor plot. And Elenwen was part of it. But you were… what, fourteen then? How did you escape?”
Was there any point in lying? It was too late to try and keep the story covered. Far too late. “A Blade found me. Hrol Fortis. A Nord. But I knew the Thalmor would just keep trying, so Corinthia Mede had to stop being a weakness for the Emperor.”
“A son of Skyrim saved your life. We honor his sacrifice.”
She ground her teeth. “Don’t speak to me about sacrifice,” she hissed at him, still unable to raise her head.
He didn’t rise to her bait, which was more infuriating than it had any right to be. “I know sacrifice well. Certainly as well as you do.”
Her head whipped up. She glared, furious beyond words, only to falter. He was… sincere. Serious. She knew what politicking looked like, and this, at least, was not it.
Silence fell, broken only by the howling of the wind and the Stormcloaks moving about the camp. The healers had wisely moved on to tend others.
“What will you do now that the Thalmor know who to look for?” he asked.
Her hands again dug into the furs and clenched tightly. “I suppose you would like me to say I will side with you, High King Ulfric?” she sneered.
He spread his hands, the tiniest undercurrent of smug satisfaction in the gesture. “Windhelm is the safest city in all of Skyrim when it comes to avoiding Aldmeri dogs, Your Highness. Unless you would like to try your luck in Solitude? I hear the Thalmor embassy is but a short ride away.”
She wanted to punch him. She wanted to punch him so badly, mostly because he was right. There was only one city in all of Skyrim where she would have a hope of being safe, and it was his. The urge to punch was made even worse by the fact that she had no concrete plan or idea of what she even needed to do.
Disappearing forever would be best, but the Thalmor would not relent. Now that they knew she was alive, she would always be in danger. Returning to her father was an option, but—
Well, frankly it hurt to contemplate that reunion, and it came with enormous challenges besides, only to end with her back in exactly the same position she’d sacrificed herself to avoid.mAnd as tempting as sitting still and ignoring all her problems was, that would be the most stupid and pointless choice of all.
“I don’t care about you or your rebellion,” she ground out, realizing with a sudden pang that her bow must still be back in Helgen, buried under rubble or burned in dragon fire. “The only thing I care about is killing every Thalmor agent in the Empire.”
“Do you think I need your care?”
“Oh yes,” she shot back. “Oh yes you certainly do. If you didn’t, you would already have won.”
She’d finally hit him where it hurt, because silence fell again. If she hadn’t been so angry it would have been smothering, felt dangerous. But she only glared into Ulfric’s eyes and dared him to try and match her will.
At length, he huffed a laugh. The tense line of his shoulders relaxed. “I saw you once in Cyrodiil, you know,” he said. “You were so little, and I was young enough to think ruling was simple. The war had just been lost. I wanted to hate your father for being so weak, but all I could think about was how much he seemed to love you.”
If her words had landed a blow, his return volley struck much deeper. She failed to hide a wince. Only her fierce pride—and the lack of a need to hide it, now—kept her from breaking eye contact.
“Did he?” Ulfric asked simply.
Damn him. She was beginning to regret Tullius not taking her from Helgen, even with the risk of Dominion strong-arming. “Of course he did. Why else would the Thalmor think I was a useful hostage?”
The rebel leaned forward again. “And I love Skyrim just the same. Come with me. I don’t want to wage war on your Empire, I only want us to be free of Thalmor oppression. Is that not aligned to your own interests?”
“You—” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You are far too adept for a man who betrayed his king and shouted him to pieces.”
“It was mutual combat fairly undertaken, as is our way. I betrayed no one. Will you come with us to Windhelm?”
Damn him to Oblivion. She finally broke eye contact. “...my father will come for me, once word reaches him. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Let him come, then. Perhaps he will finally see that the Thalmor are too great a threat to placate.”
“Optimism does not suit you, rebel king.”
He didn’t dignify her words with an answer. Clearly, she was out of practice.
She heaved a sigh. “Fine. Yes. I will take advantage of your city and its hatred of our mutual enemies. But make no mistake, I am not siding with you.”
The smugness that radiated from Ulfric was so intense she didn’t doubt he was already redrawing his battle plans based on this ‘victory.’ She glared again. He didn’t care.
“Rest until we set out,” he said, standing and pulling his heavy fur mantle back on. “The blow you took was serious.”
“I’m a sellsword, not a fainting noble lady,” she reminded him irritably.
“I know. Were you a lady, I would have been gentler.”
Then he left to prepare his men to depart, and she had the distinct feeling he was laughing at her obstinance.
He wasn’t laughing when they had to kill a dragon along the road and its soul flowed directly into her.
She froze in horror as it all happened, borrowed bow slack in her hand. When it was over, she looked up in dread of what she would see. The Stormcloaks regarded her with wide eyes, stunned and slack-jawed.
“Dragonborn,” said Ralof breathlessly.
Religious zeal washed over their expressions. She took a reflexive step backward, denial on the tip of her tongue.
Ulfric’s eyes were sharp on her, hungry. The urge to turn and run became stronger, but she knew better. “A true Daughter of Skyrim,” he said. “Like Talos Stormcrown himself. I see now that he led us to you.”
“No,” she refuted sharply. “I—”
“Dragonborn! Dragonborn!” cried the Stormcloaks with growing enthusiasm.
Ulfric raised his axe to the sky. “All hail the Dragonborn!” he declared, voice echoing through the mountains.
Kiera’s fate was sealed.