Work Text:
It was winter when she found him. The kind of winter where even the village children no longer cared for the snow and where the adults looked at the pitiful stocks of food and the distant spring and felt dread join hunger in gnawing at their bellies.
The winter had already claimed many of the elders, including her parents. It was just Hunith in their small hut now, Hunith with her shaking arms that couldn't carry enough firewood, Hunith with nothing but a small pot of gruel to eat every day.
And now there was a strange man sitting outside her door.
The snow was stirred up around him. He looked more like he'd collapsed there than chosen the spot. His hair was as tangled as a wild man's, and his eyes look lost as he stared down at the burns on his bare hands like he couldn't believe they were there.
Strange and wild, like the rumors coming over the border. Stranger still for the furs that wrapped around him and marked him as someone of note.
Hunith shivered in her own thin cloak.
The man started as if only just realizing she was there. "Is this - is this your house?" he asked hoarsely.
She forced herself to nod and wished that someone would brave the biting cold to come see what was happening.
The man looked at the door and then back to her, eyes desperate. "Could I - just for the night - Gaius said - "
Gaius? Her eyes went wide at the mention of her uncle.
Her parents were dead. It wouldn't be proper to let the man in.
And it was winter. The kind of winter where she couldn't afford to be kind.
But that was her father's voice talking, and her father was dead now, so she said, "I'll get the fire going," and she held the door open for him to stumble in.
Whatever life had animated him outside disappeared quickly. He ate what she handed him and slept where she pointed. He didn't say another word for a week.
When she handed him the axe, though, he came back with wood, and he watched her with the animals until he knew what to do. She started talking to fill the silence, simple stories about the village, and when that failed to get a reaction, she took to singing as they worked. It distracted her from the others' looks, and her guest always came to a closer semblance of life when she did.
She was humming as she ladled out the gruel for dinner when he finally came back from wherever he'd gone in his head.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
She jumped, but she smiled at him quickly.
He didn't seem to notice. He was studying the hut with pinched eyebrows, like he'd never seen it before.
It made her uncomfortable to think he was judging the meagerness there, so she spoke to break the silence. "You never told me your name."
He looked back at her, put a hand on his chest, and made a gesture that was almost a bow. "Balinor, my lady."
"Hunith," she corrected.
"Gaius's niece."
She nodded and sat. "Is my uncle likely to send more strange men down to sit in the snow outside my house?"
Balinor threw back his head and laughed, far longer than the words deserved.
"I have given up guessing what is likely," he told her, and Hunith could not argue with that.
It was spring before she gathered the courage to ask him why he kept staring at the parchment he always pulled out when they sat by the fire.
He glanced up before looking away from her into the flames, the way he sometimes did. "I'm trying to see what I missed."
She gathered her daring and said, "If you teach me to read, maybe I can find it for you."
He looked at her, startled, and then he smiled. "It might take a while," he warned.
"So did teaching you to milk a cow," she shot back, and Balinor laughed.
It was late spring before he handed her the parchment. She looked down at it, eyes eager for words that hadn't been marked into dust or dirt.
She wasn't familiar with all of the words, but she made it all the way to the end. When she had, she looked up, staring him down like he was one of the boys who threw mud at passerby.
"Something stand out?" he asked.
"Mainly words like 'King Uther' and 'dragon' and 'Lord Balinor.'"
He flinched and looked away. "I've put you in danger by being here," he admitted. "If you want me to go . . . "
"The only place I want you to go is to get more firewood," she said tartly, and that was that.
It was midsummer when he said, "All I have left, I brought with me. But I was hoping - I wondered - "
She put down the bucket of water from the well and waited for him to get to the point.
Balinor looked at her hopefully.
"I'm not your dragon," she reminded him. "I can't read your mind."
That startled a laugh out of him. "It's not quite like that," he told her, "it's more like - But that's not the point." He took a deep breath. "Will you marry me?"
She turned away for a moment and braced herself against the table. She had to, if she was going to keep him from seeing her face. "You don't have to," she said evenly. "If this is because of all the talk in the village, you don't have to."
She wanted to, more than anything, but men who had letters from kings did not marry village women, no matter what those letters had led to.
He touched her shoulder hesitantly, and she almost wanted to laugh that this man who had seen courts could still be almost shy. "I don't know what they've been saying," he admitted, and there was a touch of protective anger in his voice. "For some reason they haven't wanted to say it to my face. But I would like to marry you, Hunith. If you'll have me."
This sort of thing didn't happen, but the rumors all said the world had gone mad, so why not?
She nodded.
It was two days later, and five days before the headman was to marry them, that the dragon landed just outside the village.
They were in the fields when it happened.
Everyone ran. Even Balinor.
Of course, Balinor ran towards it, and Hunith hesitated only a moment before she followed behind.
"Kilgharrah!" she heard him shout.
The words he said after that were fierce and snarled and sounded like the words of the dragon tongue he had whispered to her. She didn't know what they meant, but she saw the way he leaned into the dragon, and she saw the way the dragon curled protectively around him.
She watched and waited, anxiety boiling within her, until Balinor jogged back, bewildered joy and grief mingling on his face.
"Uther's dead," he said blankly. "Kilgharrah said that Tristan du Bois killed him. He's been made regent for the prince. The Purge is over."
She wasn't Balinor. She didn't know this king except for the grief he had caused the man she loved, so Hunith's delight was pure. She gripped his arms and smiled at him, happier than she could remember being. "You're safe, then. You're safe."
Balinor smiled back, but his eyes went down to his hands, still scarred from their burns. "He's fooled me once before," he said. "I have to - I have to be sure, Hunith."
She didn't understand his expression for a moment until it finally hit her. "You have to go."
He gripped her arms tighter. "I'll come back," he promised.
She forced a smile. "Go. Be safe."
He kissed her, face shining with relief. "I'll come back," he promised again.
She nodded mutely and watched him go.
If this Kilgharrah was wrong, then he was flying straight into danger, and he might not return.
If he was right, then Balinor was nobility once again.
And noblemen didn't marry village women.
The days after that were long. The hut was too quiet without Balinor's barking laugh, and she'd forgotten how hard the work was when she had to do it alone.
And she'd never been quite as alone as she was now. She hadn't cared much that Balinor had made her an outcast when he was there. They had known that the village gossip wasn't true, and that had been all that mattered.
It was different when she was alone, but the fields needed tending and cows needed milking, and she wasn't a noble lady who could sit and cry about it all day.
If she had been a noble lady, she wouldn't have had to.
And she had more food to herself now, and, and -
She sang to herself so she could ignore the way the others muttered about her instead of to her, and she traced her letters in the dirt every evening. She would save up and buy parchment so she could send a letter to Gaius. He could tell her what had happened, at least, so she didn't have to wonder.
If she cried at night, in the bed that Balinor had always insisted she take after he had woken up from that strange fog, well, that was no one's business but her own.
She didn't count the days after he left. That would have meant she anticipated something, and all she anticipated was eventually having enough stored by to trade for a single sheet of parchment, a bit of ink, and a quill.
She didn't know how many days it had been. She just knew it was midday and hot, and that her ragged dress was covered with dirt and sweat when the terrified cry went up again.
"Dragon!"
The other villagers didn't run this time. They waited nervously in the field, not sure if this time would go as well as the last.
Hunith ran.
Kilgharrah had landed in the same place as last time. He turned to look at her when she came into view, and she could see him consider her, weighing her.
Balinor didn't wait for that. He slid off the dragon's back and ran towards her.
He was in new clothes now, not her father's old ones that she'd adjusted for him when it grew too hot for his winter clothes. The clothes were dyed rich blue and trimmed in silver, and she was suddenly aware that she didn't even know what to call that kind of fabric. What business did she have touching it?
If Balinor sensed her hesitation, he didn't share it. As soon as he reached her, he picked her up and twirled her around, his whole face alive with wild joy.
Balinor - quiet, so frequently uncertain or awkward Balinor who had taken months to really talk to her - was falling over his own words in the rush to get them out. She understood some of it - female relatives thought dead now come out of hiding, dragonlord lines thought died out that might still have hope, eggs found and ready to be called forth and the dragons might yet be saved - And other bits meant nothing to her, for what did she know of priestesses and regents, alliances with some placed called Catha or the Isle of the Blessed?
But he was happy, so she was happy, and she could ask her questions later.
"Our traditional hall was burned, but they're rebuilding it now, and there's a place for us at the citadel regardless," he said, and -
"Us?"
Uncertainty marred his face for the first time. "You'll come, won't you?"
"Your family," she said hesitantly, "the court . . . I'm not a lady, my lord. Surely they'll object."
"Balinor," he insisted, pressing his hands to her either side of her face. "My family doesn't care, and I told the regent I was marrying you whether we got to live in Camelot's court or had to move to Cenred's."
"A threat he took most seriously when he realized I intended to go with him," Kilgharrah said dryly. "Although I would have appreciated a warning first."
"I gave you warning, you old lizard," Balinor said, laughing. "It's not my fault you thought I was exaggerating."
The dragon sniffed, but his eyes seemed amused. "If you do not come, he will be unbearable all the way back," he informed her. "In view of all the suffering that has already occurred this year, have pity on us both and agree. It will ease the coming of destiny."
She blinked at the last bit, but Balinor just seemed exasperated, so she let it go.
"If I am riding a dragon with you back to Camelot, you have to introduce me to him properly first," she told him firmly.
That much of their courtship would be done properly, at least.