When Aislynn awoke again, the sun shining through the window indicated that it was now afternoon. She could feel a presence in the room, and she turned her head to see her father sitting in a chair beside the bed. She smiled, and he smiled back, happy to see her awake.
“Good afternoon, darling,” he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek. “The healers say that you are healing well, but it’s going to take time. They were mostly concerned about the poisoned cut across your back and the fact that you got kicked in the head, but the antidotes seem to have worked, and you are awake, so they now predict a full, if slow, recovery.”
“That’s good to know,” she said, trying to shift into a position where she was sitting up a little, and failing miserably. Jackob reached over to help her up, and she smiled at him gratefully.
“You have a very nasty sword wound across the front of you, from shoulder to hip,” he informed her, “so please take it easy. The healers also inform me that your cracked ribs are still healing, and they said to tell you that if you don’t listen to them this time, they are going to tie you to your bed.”
Her father’s voice was stern, but the sparkle in his eyes told her that he approved of what she had done. He understood that sometimes you had to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, regardless of what the healers told you to do.
“You have quite the young man there, you know,” he said.
“He’s not my young man,” she argued.
“Oh really?” Jackob asked, not convinced. “You didn’t hear him pouring his soul out to Cheta the other day, begging her to let him near you. Of course, you don’t need to have heard it… I know that you can feel what he’s feeling.”
Aislynn sighed. She couldn’t hide the link from her father because he’d had one with Tarren. “It can’t work. How am I supposed to protect him and be a queen at the same time?”
“I personally don’t see a problem with that. Eryk tells me that you agreed to become his chief advisor. What do you think a queen does? You’re already fulfilling the role without the title.”
“But what about…”
“Stop,” Jackob said, interrupting her. “I’m not going to try to convince you to do something you don’t want to do. You know his feelings for you; he can’t lie about them or make them up. That gives you an advantage most other women would kill for. You need to ask yourself what your feelings are for him, and use that as a guide for making your decision, not this idea of what your duty is or what it could be.”
Aislynn thought about that for a moment before answering her father. “I really enjoy the time I spend with him, at least now, and I think that we are becoming very good friends. I honestly don’t know if I feel more than that.”
“Well, the pact that binds our realms sent you. If all Eryk needed was a friend, I expect that it would be your brother sitting here, not you. I think that you need each other, and I’d like you to think about that before you make a final decision.”
Jackob leaned closer to his daughter. “It has worked out before, and it would work out again,” he said, knowing some of her reservations from his conversations with Marja about the young king and Eryk’s relationship with Aislynn.
“What do you mean?”
“It is a pretty rare thing for a female to be sent here, but it has happened before,” he explained. “Don’t you remember what I told you when you were first assigned here? A number of generations ago, when the pact was first created, the king fell in love with his protector, and she with him. She was commonly born though, not nobility, so their relationship had its own problems, but they worked it out. Things have a way of working out if you want them too.”
Jackob stood, getting ready to leave and return to his duties as advisor.
“Rest and get well,” he said as he left. “Your king seems to be a bit prone to attracting danger, so you’ll need all of your strength as soon as possible, I think.”