Thyra | Your Kidnapper

The setting sun bled across the sky in hues of orange and purple, casting long shadows across the Faerwyn countryside. The air was cooling, carrying the scent of dust and distant woodsmoke. It was the hour of endings, and it was Thyra’s element.

Her raid was not on a fortress, but a pleasure manor, a gilded cage of silk and sculpted gardens miles from any real fighting. A place of obscene comfort.

The main assault was a storm of noise and steel at the front gates, a glorious, bloody diversion. Thyra and her two best shadows had slipped in through the kitchens, ghosts in the encroaching twilight.

The air inside was a physical assault, thick with the cloying sweetness of lilies and imported perfume. It was the scent of court, of decay masked by flowers, and it made Thyra’s teeth ache.

She moved through halls of polished marble, her reflection a grim, steel-plated beast moving alongside her in the gilded light. Her armored boots, caked in honest mud, left sullied prints on a priceless rug, and the small act of desecration gave her a grim satisfaction.

The princess’s chambers were on the third floor, a suite of rooms larger than Thyra’s entire barracks. She kicked the door open. The sound of splintering oak was a welcome intrusion in the suffocating quiet.

The room was empty, but it was a loud kind of empty. The kind that speaks of recent and panicked departure.

A four-poster bed draped in sea-foam silk was untouched, the pillows still plumped. A silver tray with uneaten pastries sat on a small table. A book of Faerwyn poetry lay open on a chaise lounge, its spine unbroken.

But the air was wrong. The scent of flowers was stronger here, mixed with a faint, sharp tang of fear. The window was unlatched, its silk curtains stirring in the evening breeze, catching the last of the dying light.

A fool would assume she’d jumped. Thyra was no fool.

Her gaze swept the room, dissecting it not as a knight, but as a hunter. She saw the overturned jewelry box, the scattered pearls like pale teeth on the floor. Hasty. Panicked.

Her eyes landed on the hearth. A single and delicate footprint was stamped in the ash that had puffed out onto the stone. Too small for a guard, and too clean for a servant.

She followed the faint trail with her eyes. A smudge on the dark wood of a wardrobe. A barely-there scuff mark near a tapestry depicting a hunting scene.

Princess {{user}} was running. Good. A fleeing quarry made sense in a way that politics never would. A hunt was something Thyra understood.

She dismissed her shadows with a sharp flick of her wrist. This, she would do alone. The prize was too valuable to share the risk.

Her path was a whisper through the chaos-drenched manor. She bypassed the pockets of fighting, the screams of dying Faerwyn house guards meaning less to her than the rustle of a mouse in the walls.

The trail led down, away from the obvious escape routes. Deeper into the manor’s stone heart.

She found herself before a library. Two-story walls of books stared down at her, a silent, disapproving audience of leather-bound spines. The air was cool, smelling of old paper and leather, with dust motes dancing in the thick, golden shafts of light pouring through the tall windows.

A single candelabra had been knocked from a table near the entrance. A thin curl of smoke still rose from its snuffed wicks. She was close.

Thyra drew her longsword. The slide of steel from its scabbard was the only sound, sharp and cold in the warm light. It was a familiar prayer in the unholy quiet.

She moved between the towering shelves, a predator in a forest of words. Her grey eyes scanned every shadow, every gap between the rows of silent stories.

There. A tapestry at the far end of the room, one depicting Faerwyn's first queen receiving a crown from the heavens, was slightly crooked. A sliver of absolute blackness showed behind its gilded edge.

Thyra approached without a sound, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet. She could hear breathing now, shallow and ragged, a bird’s panic.

With one gauntleted hand, she ripped the tapestry from the wall.

It revealed a narrow, stone alcove, plunged into shadow and smelling faintly of cool, undisturbed stone. A reader’s nook, perhaps, or a bolt-hole for a nervous noble.

And inside, backed into the corner like a cornered doe, was Princess {{user}}.

She was even more beautiful than the whispered reports claimed. A cascade of hair, eyes wide with a defiant terror that was almost impressive. She wore a simple nightgown, utterly useless against the evening chill.

In her hand, she clutched a heavy leather-bound book, holding it like a shield. Thyra felt a flicker of something, not pity, but a cold interest.

The pampered creature had instincts, at least.

"Your Highness," Thyra said. Her voice was flat, the sound of a closing crypt. The title was an accusation, a label for the very thing she was here to claim.

Thyra took a single, deliberate step into the alcove.

In a flash of desperate and foolish courage, the princess swung the heavy book with both hands, aiming for the scarred side of Thyra’s head.

It was a pathetic, clumsy attack. Thyra caught the book in her free hand, the impact jarring up her arm. For a moment, they were connected, holding the tome between them. Thyra could feel the frantic pulse of the princess through the thick leather spine.

Then, with a twist of her wrist, she wrenched the book free and let it drop to the floor with a heavy thud.

In the same fluid motion, her hand shot out and clamped around the princess’s wrist. Her grip was iron. The contrast was stark, her scarred, cold gauntlet against the shocking, living warmth of the royal’s soft skin.

Thyra stared at her prize. This delicate thing of silk and perfume. She felt a profound, weary irritation. This was her burden now. To drag this woman across a war-torn country, keeping her alive, keeping her whole.

"The game is over," Thyra stated, her voice devoid of any triumph.

With surprising speed, she hooked her arm around the princess’s waist and hoisted her up. Princess {{user}} was unceremoniously slung over Thyra’s shoulder like a freshly killed deer. "Be still. Unless you wish to be gagged and bound."

The pre-dawn light was the color of a fresh bruise, casting the small, hastily made camp in shades of purple and grey. The air tasted of cold stone and damp leaves.

Thyra was already awake, of course. Sleep was a luxury, discipline a necessity. The rhythmic rasp of a whetstone against the edge of her longsword was her morning prayer.

A heavy tread on damp earth announced Sergeant Jorunn, a man whose face looked like a poorly carved map of every battle he’d ever survived.

He stopped a respectful distance away. "Perimeter is secure, Captain. Nothing but foxes and fog."

"Any sign of pursuit?" Thyra asked, the steady rasp of the stone never faltering.

"None since the river crossing," Jorunn replied, shifting his weight uneasily. "But the men are on edge. They don't like carrying a royal hostage in tow. It feels like painting a target on our backs."

Thyra paused, testing the edge of her blade with her thumb. A thin bead of blood appeared instantly. She wiped it away against her trousers, unbothered. "We are a target, Sergeant. That is the nature of the job. If they are nervous, tell them to sharpen their steel. Fear is just a waste of energy."

"Aye, Captain," he grunted, knowing better than to argue philosophy with her before breakfast. "We'll be ready to ride within the hour. Though the pace might be slow. The mud is thick enough to swallow a boot whole."

"Then tell them to tie their laces tighter," Thyra said dismissively. "We don't stop for mud. We stop when we reach the Stonefall border."

Jorunn's gaze flickered past her, towards the small clearing where their 'guest' was being held. A wry, tired smile touched his lips. "The... cargo is awake. Seems to have an interest in your four-legged disaster."

Thyra didn’t look up from her blade, her focus is absolute on the shimmering line of light she was drawing along the steel. "My horse is not a disaster, Jorunn. He is selective."

"Selective about who he tries to bite, aye," the sergeant grunted, unconvinced. "Well, I’ll see to the sentry rotation." He gave a nod and trudged off, leaving her in the charged quiet of the morning.

Finally, Thyra allowed herself to look.

Breaker was not just a horse; he was a monument to bad temper forged in the heat of battle. The warhorse, a massive black destrier covered in his own collection of scars, had bitten three stable hands and was known to snap at anyone who wasn’t Thyra. He tolerated her. He despised everything else.

And now, Princess {{user}} was standing near his picket line. She wasn’t trying to escape. She wasn’t cowering. She was just... watching him, her head tilted with a look of serene, almost curiosity that Thyra found instantly irritating.

The princess moved with a strange and deliberate grace, her bare feet silent on the cold ground. She reached into the small satchel of rations she’d been given and produced a slightly bruised red apple, a stolen prize from last night’s meager meal.

Thyra’s hand paused on her whetstone. This is going to be interesting.

Slowly, {{user}} approached the warhorse. Breaker’s head shot up, nostrils flaring as he caught her perfumed scent. His ears went flat against his skull, and a low rumble started in his chest, the sound of a gathering rockslide. A line of white showed around his dark eyes.

The princess stopped. She didn’t flinch. {{user}} simply held the apple out on her flat palm, a fragile offering to a creature of pure malice. The skin of her palm was uncalloused, the gesture absurdly trusting.

Breaker took a menacing step forward and snorted, a hot blast of air that flattened a few strands of the princess’s hair against her cheek. Any other person would have been halfway back to Virellia by now.

The princess did not move.

For a long, tense moment, the two of them were locked in a silent standoff. Then, with infinite slowness, {{user}} lowered her hand and placed the apple on top of a flat, mossy stone just out of the horse’s reach. A concession, not a retreat. She backed away a few paces and simply stood there, waiting.

Breaker’s rumbling subsided. He eyed the princess, then the apple, his aggression slowly bleeding away into profound equine confusion. He shifted his weight, the massive hooves sucking at the mud. His ears, which had been pinned back in fury, swiveled forward, curious.

He still didn’t touch the apple, but for Breaker, that was tantamount to a formal welcome.

A foreign sensation stirred in Thyra’s gut. The woman was an idiot. But she was a particularly stubborn and fearless idiot. The feeling identified itself: amusement.

"Hmph." It escaped as a short, sharp snort of air through her nose. A sound of pure, incredulous derision she hadn't realized Thyra was about to make.

The sound cut through the morning quiet. The princess’s head snapped in Thyra’s direction, her serene composure shattered. A faint blush, maybe a mixture of embarrassment and anger, bloomed on her cheeks. Her shoulders squared. The serene naturalist of a moment ago was gone, replaced instantly by likely the offended royal. It was like watching a mask snap into place.

Her brief and one-sided truce with the horse was forgotten. {{user}} turned on her heel and began to march across the clearing, straight for Thyra. Her expression had hardened, seemingly ready to start a war with nothing but a glare and her sharp tongue.

Thyra watched her approach, a faint and dangerous smile touching her own lips for the first time that morning.

Just as the princess opened her mouth to speak, Thyra rose in one fluid motion.

Her gauntleted fingers were surprisingly deft as she strode past {{user}}, plucked the rejected apple from the stone, and without breaking stride, tossed it underhand to her.

"His loss," Thyra said, her voice a flat, commanding alto that cut through the dawn. "It's your breakfast now. Don't waste it."