Heidi and Hadrian
Hey guys! Songs of Stone just passed 50 reviews on Amazon! As promised, here is a bonus story about what was happening with Heidi and Hadrian in the background!
If there was one thing that had made Heidi a bit of an oddity among her family, it was her interest in their Castian heritage. Her younger siblings and grandmother had never given her any grief about it, but none of them had ever shared the same interest she had in it. To be fair, that heritage was an enchanted red cloak they no longer possessed and a great-great grandmother who had lived more of her life in Faen than Castia since she’d married a Faenic and left Castia at the age of eighteen.
Heidi, though, had never quite been able to shake her fascination with it even with that knowledge. Yes, she was Faenic, mostly. But she was also one-sixteenth Castian. Details mattered.
Of course, for most of her life, Heidi had always had more important things to deal with than indulging her curiosity about that heritage. Helping her grandmother raise three younger siblings was one. Worrying over her younger brother who made a living putting his life in danger to kill monsters in faraway lands all so she could restart their family business was another. Trying to restart a business while being in debt to the biggest empire on the continent had been the most time consuming in recent years.
Until it had all gone up in flames.
Ever since then, she and her family had abandoned their homeland, running from the Esmean Empire to seek political asylum in Glaciar, the queen of which her younger brother Chasen had befriended on his travels.
And while she had lost everything she’d ever known and had worked for, Heidi also didn’t have any of her previous issues taking up her time anymore. Her youngest sister, Katja was almost a grown woman—even if she didn’t act like it. Her other younger sister, Della, had taken quite an interest in Queen Eirwen’s library and had always been the easiest to look after anyway. Chasen was done slaying monsters now that he was engaged to the most recent one he’d been tasked to slay.
Fine… technically, Chasen’s fiancée, Aerona, wasn’t a monster anymore, and was the whole reason Queen Eirwen was actually able to grant them asylum thanks to the fact she was a princess. Heidi had warmed up to Aerona as much as she could while she remembered when Aerona had paws and fangs that had almost killed them all. Aerona was also the reason the empire Heidi’s family had once been indebted to would now kill them on sight if they ever returned to their homeland.
Queen Eirwen had taken them all in and ensured they were taken care of, so Heidi didn’t have to worry anymore about whether the price she would get for wood the next day would last her family the week. Instead, Queen Eirwen insisted Chasen and Chasen’s fiancée acting as her and her husband’s guards was more than enough to earn their keep, and even that was unnecessary in her eyes. It was an excuse to have her friends close by.
It was wonderful of the queen to treat them so well. Extremely generous. Heidi couldn’t be more grateful…
But Heidi liked to be busy. She wanted to be useful.
So she made herself useful to Queen Eirwen. Heidi didn’t like the feeling of owing the queen. If the queen was going to take care of her family, Heidi at least wanted to try to earn it, even though Queen Eirwen had insisted that Chasen and his family were family to her.
Heidi had good penmanship, a head for numbers, business, and economics, and she made a great assistant to Queen Eirwen’s advisors, but even that still left her with free time.
Free time.
Heidi hadn’t had free time since she’d been a little girl before her parents died.
But she had it now. So when she had it, she would join Della in the library and Heidi found herself drawn to book books about Castia. Now she could finally indulge the little voice in the back of her head that made her say, “Mostly Faenic, but I’m one-sixteenth Castian.”
Heidi did nothing halfway. So ever since she and her family had come to Glaciar she’d slowly started to make herself an expert on Castia. She had become the advisors go to resource about the country on the occasion it did come up in discussion.
For example, when Queen Eirwen’s ally, King Besart wanted to to enter into an alliance with Castia, there were discussions about the consequences that might have for Glaciar. Heidi had been the first to reassure the advisors that despite Castia’s extremely mountainous landscape, their stone quarries were not up to par to compete with Glaciar’s marble quarries. The country severely hobbled itself with its draconian restrictions on magic being used for profit.
But then Esmea invaded Reshil.
Queen Eirwen brought up Castia again as she and her allies sought to convince Castia to join their embargo against the Esmean Empire.
When Queen Eirwen asked her advisors for a volunteer to go to Castia as ambassadors, Heidi was the first to volunteer. She had never imagined she would actually have the chance to go to the country her great-great grandmother was from. But when opportunity arose, it wasn’t a question.
She and another Glacian advisor, Taris, began preparations to leave as soon as possible for the country halfway across the continent.
When they arrived in Castia, stepping off the ship and looking around the port, she didn’t really know what she had expected. She had read hundreds of books on Castia by then and could quote what all of them said about Castian architecture, but even the sketches in the books were different from reality.
Heidi noticed how warm it was there, even though it was winter. Much warmer than the snow drenched Glaciar. She also noticed how much red she saw as she and Ambassador Taris traveled from the coast to Castia’s capitol, Isuri.
Heidi thought it ironic that a country with such strict regulations on magic was distinctly known for its proclivity for the color of their most infamous illegal magic user. It made Heidi miss the enchanted red cloak that had been passed down through her family. Also lost because of the situation with Aerona.
Heidi… had made her peace with Aerona. But some days she couldn’t help a little bitterness when she remembered everything she’d lost because of what had happened. She tried to be grateful instead. Her siblings and grandmother had all survived it. They lived better lives than Heidi could ever have given them otherwise.
Although the hardest part to swallow was being so unneeded by her family.
At least she was needed by Queen Eirwen in Castia.
When Isuri appeared on the horizon, Heidi focused herself solely on the task she’d been given, representing Eirwen’s interests and convince the Castian royal family to join the embargo. There really wasn’t a better choice than Heidi, in her humble opinion.
She knew Castia well, she knew the economic realities well, and there were a few people on the continent who had as much motivation as she did to see the Esmean Empire suffer.
Once the gates to castle courtyard were closed behind her, she moved to climb out of the carriage. The first thing she saw was a man around her age offering her his hand to step down. Heidi took it and stepped down as the man said, “It is my great honor to welcome you to Isuri, ambassador.”
But as the man spoke, his eyes darted over her and what little he did to mask the confusion in his eyes didn’t work. Heidi could see it written all over his face. He was absolutely astounded to see someone so clearly not Glacian step out of the carriage. Heidi’s light golden brown skin tone certainly didn’t match the near snow-white of a Glacian.
She lifted her chin and gestured to the carriage as Ambassador Taris stepped down from the other side and she said, “If it helps, my companion might be a little more to your expectations.”
The man blinked and he stepped back, drawing up his shoulders and his height and said, “We were expecting the Glacian ambassadors. Are you with them?”
What did it matter to him?
Heidi raised an eyebrow and smirked at him. “I am one of them. It is me and Ambassador Taris.”
“And you are…?” the man said, his eyes flickering over her. He clearly didn’t believe her, which was ridiculous. If she had stolen someone’s identity, she wouldn’t get very far, nor would she have much to gain stealing the identity of an ambassador. Heidi knew first hand they had dreadfully long days and often boring mind-numbing work only broken up by the occasional opportunity to argue a position.
“You may call me Lady Heidi. Surely you were given the names of the Glacian ambassadors? Now while you might want to continue expressing your disbelief at my existence, Ambassador Taris and I need to go greet our hosts, the Castian royal family,” Heidi said expecting that would be the end of it.
She shouldn’t be too surprised. Not many this far south on the continent knew how many Faenics had actually ended up in Glaciar because of the Esmean Empire, and to have one as Queen Eirwen’s ambassador would also be shocking.
“Yes, well—” the man stepped back and said, “That would be me. Lady Heidi, I am Crown Prince Hadrian.”
Heidi’s eyes widened.
Maybe Heidi should have let the Esmean Empire kill her.
It couldn’t be as embarrassing as this was. Treating the crown prince like a footman.
The last thing she had expected was for the first person she interacted with in Isuri to be the prince himself. She had expected any number of people they would send to collect the ambassadors before having them brought in front of them before she would have expected a member of the royal family themselves to come down and greet the two of them.
While they were representing royalty, they weren’t royalty. Not to mention she imagined the royal family had their hands full, not just with all the talk about the embargo and the invasion. On the way to Isuri, she had heard whispers among the common folk about missing children and natural disasters that the royal family apparently had yet to solve. Heidi had really only been expecting to interact with the royal family when she and Ambassador Taris were introduced formally in the throne room and then when they made their cases before them in court. Nothing more.
Of course with rotten luck such as hers it would be that she would be petty and dismissive to a prince the second she arrived in Isuri thanks to her own pride. She dipped into a curtsy and hoped she could salvage this.
Of all her siblings she had always prided herself on having the best manners, but even the best manners of a peasant woman might as well have been the abrasive behavior of a feral child to royalty.
“My apologies, Your Highness, for not recognizing you.” Heidi kept her gaze lowered as she started to rise from her curtsy. “We are honored that you came to greet us personally.”
Ambassador Taris was on the other side of the carriage speaking to an older woman. Now that Heidi took a good look at Hadrian and the woman and the expensive fabric and tailoring of their clothes, as well as the crest they both bore, she could only assume they were related.
Hadrian blinked and then he gave her a stiff nod as she rose back up to her full height and said, “It would be a great insult to send any less than our best to greet the people Queen Eirwen has deemed worthy to send on her behalf.”
Heidi studied his face trying to find a hint of insult or implication about her obvious departure from Glacian ethnicity, but Hadrian was as hard to read as a stone wall.
“I’m sure Queen Eirwen will appreciate the thought,” Heidi said.
Prince Hadrian gave her a tight nod, looked over at Ambassador Taris and the woman he was with as they started to walk toward the castle, and then he turned back to Heidi and held his arm out to her. He said, “You’ll meet the rest of my family tonight at dinner, but if you’ll allow me, I’ll show you to your room.”
The crown prince was on escort duty? Didn’t they pay people to do these things for them?
At least that was what Heidi had assumed all royalty did.
Heidi took his arm and let him lead her toward the steps leading up to the castle doors. She wasn’t going to mess this up for Queen Eirwen by snubbing the crown prince.
“Allow you? Is there anyone in their right mind who would refuse?” Heidi said. She couldn’t help herself that much at least.
Hadrian glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and while he didn’t seem offended, Heidi wasn’t really sure what he was instead. His lips twitched before he finally shook his head slightly and said, “You are not quite what I expected from the Glacian ambassador.”
Heidi bit her cheek. “Yes, I gathered that from your shocked expression. I’m not Glacian by blood, obviously.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I meant,” Hadrian said.
It wasn’t?
He paused before the door and looked down at her and said, “You have… an air about you. You’re rather frank for an ambassador. I’m used to more flattery and flowery language.”
Heidi hadn’t found flattery to get her much of anywhere when her countrymen thought her a traitor for dealing with the empire and the empire thought her the dirt beneath their boot for being the daughter of their so-called criminals. She found honesty and money to be far more effective. As most common folk did.
“I didn’t mean to disappoint, Your Highness,” Heidi settled on saying.
“I didn’t say I was disappointed,” Hadrian said, leading her through the doors and into the castle.
If Heidi had thought she’d seen a lot of red before, it was nothing to this.
Hadrian paused beside her as she took in all in.
“It is a bit much, isn’t it?” Hadrian said.
Heidi shook her head, still taking in the tapestries and banners and red. “No. Not at all. I love red.”
“I was beginning to think Castians were the only ones who did.”
Heidi was here to go a good job for Queen Eirwen, but she could have some fun of her own. She gave Hadrian a wry smile. “That makes a lot of sense. I am Castian.”
And that did it. It cracked the stone façade.
Hadrian was openly gaping at her as she turned back and took a few steps forward. She gestured to the staircases and said, “So which wing am I in, Your Highness?”
“You’re—” Hadrian shook his head. He took her arm again and directed them toward the right staircase. “You almost got me. I wasn’t aware ambassadors had senses of humor.”
Heidi pulled her arm out of his grip and pursed her lips, doing her level best not to glare at him. “Surprisingly, yes, ambassadors are human and they do often come with a sense of humor, but I wasn’t joking.”
“Sorry, Lady Heidi, but I won’t give you the satisfaction of getting one over on me.” Hadrian’s lips twitched. As they reached the top of the staircase he gestured down the wing. “We’re almost there. You’ll be in the next hallway, four doors down to the right.”
Good.
Heidi started off in a brisk walk, leaving Prince Hadrian behind as she looked over her shoulder and said, “For your information, Your Highness, since you are so astonished by me in general, let me be as plain as possible. I am not Glacian by blood. I was born and raised in Faen and by blood I am mostly Faenic, and one-sixteenth Castian. Its why Queen Eirwen sent me, and if you don’t believe me, feel free to ask Ambassador Taris or Queen Eirwen herself!”
Hadrian stared after her as she swept around the corner.
Heidi could only hope it’d be easier to convince his family to join the embargo than it would be convincing him she was partially Castian.
* * *
Heidi was quite gratified to discover she actually didn’t have to interact much with Prince Hadrian or the royal family at all. After their formal introduction, Heidi let Taris handle any interactions that occurred outside of the court meetings, and he actually handled the majority of that as well. Heidi was mostly there in a support capacity.
So she found herself in the library quite often.
It was pretty peaceful.
She spotted the Idresian princess there quite often with the librarian’s apprentice. Princess Liliana was young, but nice enough. She’d been holding her own as the only representative of the Western Alliance until Heidi and Taris had arrived. Heidi had met her and interacted with her briefly, and she had liked her well enough. Heidi though spent her time researching in the library for Taris alone for the most part.
Heidi liked her little hidden back corner.
At least she had until Prince Hadrian rushed around the corner, pressing himself against the bookcase like he was trying to hide from someone. She almost didn’t recognize him at first. She didn’t think he was capable of looking so panicked.
She sat up in the chair tucked in the corner and lowered the book on Castia’s history of trade with Kadure as Prince Hadrian leaned his head back against the wood, clearly not seeing her.
“Your Highness—” Heidi started.
Prince Hadrian’s eyes snapped open and he spotted her quickly shushing her.
Heidi fell silent, even if he hadn’t shushed her, she was too astonished to say anything.
He peered around the corner of the bookcase and sighed as he turned back to her. He pushed off the bookcase and stepped closer to her as he whispered, “My apologies, Lady Heidi.”
Heidi eyed the row where he had come from and whispered, “Dare I ask what you’re doing, Your Highness?”
Hadrian lifted the book he was holding and said, “What does anyone do in a library?”
Heidi was not impressed. She gestured to the shelves. “Most people don’t careen around corners like they’re running from a fire.”
“Not a fire, just the librarian,” Hadrian said, looking over his shoulder.
Now Heidi was intrigued. “And you’re hiding from an old woman who walks with a cane because…?”
Hadrian stiffened and narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
Heidi still wasn’t impressed. “You came and disturbed me and my work. But if you don’t want to explain that’s fine. I’m more than happy to come up with my own reasons why the crown prince of Castia is terrified of a little old lady.”
Hadrian huffed, crossing his arms over the book he was holding. “Fine. If you must know, that little old lady is actually my Great-Aunt. And she hates me. You’d avoid her too if it was your shin she’d hit with that cane, and also because the last time she spotted me in the library she made it near impossible for me to find the books I was looking for.”
Now that was interesting. No one had mentioned the librarian was part of the royal family.
“What’d you do?”
Hadrian’s mouth fell open before he blinked and said, “Why do you assume it was anything I did?”
“Call it a hunch.”
Hadrian scowled at her and said, “I… I didn’t mean it the way she took it.”
Oh, this sounded good. Heidi leaned forward, raising an eyebrow. “And just what did you say?”
“She overheard me talking to my father about the fact I thought… Look, it’s a long story. Great-Aunt Carin is a convicted criminal and I suggested that it reflected poorly on us a royal family that in the past she was shown deferential treatment in the sentencing for her crime. It wasn’t personal. It was a matter of upholding the law equally.”
Heidi tried to smother a snort of laughter. “And she didn’t take it well, I’m guessing?”
Hadrian rolled his eyes. “No, she didn’t. Ever since, she’s made my life difficult when I need something from the library.”
“I can imagine. To be frank, Your Highness, I don’t blame her. It’s not a good look for you. Trying to get an old crippled woman ousted from her position and put in jail,” Heidi said.
“Not jail. I didn’t want to put in a cell for the rest of her life, but she committed a crime, she confessed to it. Giving her a cushy library job for the rest of her life is hardly fair to the rest of our people. I thought we should do something to show that no one is above the law.”
On the one hand, Heidi could admire that sentiment, but on the other hand Heidi was wanted by the law through the crime of tangential relation to someone whose crime was existence.
“What’d she do?” Heidi asked.
“She used an enchanted pair of red shoes to illegally earn a position as a court entertainer, and it was only after she had the security of a prince who she’d managed to con into loving her that she confessed to the fact her talent was all fake.”
Heidi laughed, causing Hadrian to shush her again.
“So her crime was making fools of the royal family?”
Hadrian glared at her. “Those shoes were illegal from the beginning. She knew very well what she was doing, and she knew she wasn’t going to be punished properly because of my Great-Uncle.”
“Did she have to say anything at all?” Heidi asked.
Hadrian sputtered. “That’s not the point!”
Heidi liked catching him off guard.
But before she could continue to antagonize him, the tapping of a cane sounded. An old, weathered voice called out, “Hadrian? Are you here?”
Hadrian winced.
“Hadrian. It’s about Valens. It’s urgent.”
Heidi knew little about the youngest prince, but Hadrian’s annoyed expression vanished as he stood up straighter. He started to move away before pausing and saying to Heidi, “Pardon me, Lady Heidi. I have to go.”
Heidi simply nodded, watching him rush around the corner right as the librarian turned down that alley. She didn’t like either of their grim expressions. As Hadrian rushed toward her, Heidi could hear him say, “What is it? What’s happened? He can’t possibly be back by now?”
As they kept walking away, as fast as the old woman could walk Heidi heard her voice shake as she said, “It’s a message from Amias. There was an accident. Valens is—”
Heidi couldn’t hear any more.
But she didn’t like it.
But she did admire Hadrian dropped everything the second the great-aunt who hated him said it was about his brother. Now that Heidi understood more than anything.
* * *
Hadrian moved through everything in a haze. He didn’t really know when he ate, when he slept. The only clear moments were when he heard the words, “No news yet.”
Anything else was unimportant. He was extremely grateful he was just a prince and not the king. He didn’t know how his parents were doing it. Holding themselves together when they knew any moment was going to be the moment someone arrived, saying they’d found Valens.
Or rather his body.
He’d been trapped in a landslide. Hadrian wasn’t stupid enough to hope he was alive.
He had to accept it. His younger brother was dead. Killed by his stupid wanderlust that would not let him just stay at home.
Hadrian just stared out the window, at Isuri and the horizon. The sun had almost left the sky completely, and the stars were coming out. Even if a messenger was coming, he wouldn’t really be able to see, but it was all he could do. Just sit in this alcove and watch, waiting for the death knell.
It wasn’t until she spoke that he even realized she’d sat down beside him.
“I have three younger siblings. I’m the oldest.”
Lady Heidi.
“I love them to death. I’d do anything for them. But they drive me insane most days. And I’m sure I do as well. It’s a strange thing. Being more mother than sister. Our parents died when we were young. We had our grandmother, but still, as the oldest, I was responsible.”
What was she doing?
“I’d like to be alone, Lady Heidi,” Hadrian rasped, his voice hoarse. He couldn’t recall if he’d had anything to drink that day. Or if he’d eaten in the last two.
Lady Heidi looked out the window and continued, “When we were still young, in debt to the Esmean Empire, and I was trying to restart our family’s business, my younger brother, the second oldest took it upon himself to find a way to make money. Enough money to help up get out of debt and help finance a business. I curse myself a little every day for letting him. He became a huntsman of monsters. He has seen more of the continent than any man should have the right to. And all of it in search of the next creature so dangerous people will pay him to kill it.”
“Lady Heidi, I must insist, I want to be alone.”
Lady Heidi was undeterred. “Those first few years, I worried myself sick every night. I sat at the window and I looked up at the stars, and I prayed. Oh, did I pray. I was so certain every day when I woke up it would be to a letter someone found amongst Chasen’s things when he didn’t return to whatever inn he was staying at. That someone would find on his body. That’s if I was lucky. I worried even more that no one would find anything. That the letter he kept on him to be sent to us in the event of his death would never arrive. That I would spend the rest of my life always nursing the hope in my heart that my little brother would come home, but knowing with the deep cold dread of my bones he was gone.”
Oh. That’s why she was there.
Hadrian swallowed thickly, looking at the brightest star. “Did something terrible happen to him?”
“Yes.” Heidi continued staring out the window too. “But he’s not dead.”
“However terrible, at least you still have him.” Hadrian didn’t dare believe he would be so lucky. “What was it?”
“He fell for the monster he was sent to capture.” Heidi then turned to face him. “But at least he came back.”
Well, that sounded like a story.
“Valens wasn’t supposed to go.” Hadrian shook his head. “I told our father not to let him go. He was supposed to be here. His place is here.”
“You can’t control your little siblings no matter how much better off you think they’d be if you could.” Heidi’s expression was tired, making her look much older than he’d ever seen her before. Hadrian understood the feeling well.
“They were in the mountains. Why were they in the mountains?” Hadrian whispered. “They were supposed to meet the caravan in Bethar. Why did he have to go in those cursed mountains? I told him not to chase loose ends.”
“I don’t know,” Heidi whispered, shaking her head.
A hand rested on his, sitting on the bench. Heidi’s hand was warm and rough, callused, unlike every other ambassador Hadrian had ever shaken hands with.
“I cannot pretend to understand my brother most days. But the days when I woke up with a terrible pit in my stomach, certain something had happened, but knowing there was nothing I could do about it as I was hundreds of miles away and I had a grandmother and two younger sisters to feed, I still got up. And I got to work. They were counting on me.”
Heidi squeezed his hand.
She whispered, “You’ve got a lot more than three people counting on you right now. The worry and the dread don’t change that. But you cannot stop functioning because of fear, Your Highness. The answers may never come. It doesn’t have to be today, but you’ll have to make peace with that and let go. Your brother’s life is his. They are his mistakes to make. No matter how desperately you may want to shield him from them.”
He found his fingers finally moving, squeezing her hand in return as she started to leave the bench.
He whispered, “Please, I don’t want to be alone.”
Heidi stayed.
He stared at the stars. “Tell me of the terrible thing that happened to your brother. Give me hope that no matter what terrible thing has happened to mine he might still come back alive.”
She did.
Hadrian clutched her hand as her soft voice filled only the space of the alcove they were in as the moon rose higher and higher into the sky, and with each word, Hadrian desperately prayed that his brother would come home alive.