(Elara Pov)
We dragged ourselves onto the riverbank, and for a moment I genuinely did not know how we had managed it. My memory of the climb is blurred by the sound of my own coughing. Water forced its way out of my lungs in harsh, painful bursts, and I remember thinking—very irrationally—that this might be worse than drowning. At least drowning had felt quiet at the end. This felt violent.
The stones beneath me were cold and uneven. My hands slipped as I tried to steady myself, and my whole body trembled in a way that had nothing to do with fear. When I finally managed to lift my head, I saw that Eri was already standing.
Of course she was.
Water streamed from her clothes, darkening the earth around her boots, and although her breathing was heavier than usual, there was nothing frantic about her. She looked as though she had simply stepped out of the rain rather than survived a fall from a cliff.
"We can't stay," she said.
Her voice was steady—too steady, considering what had just happened. I tried to answer, but another cough overtook me instead. She didn't waste time watching me struggle. She wrung out her sleeves with practiced efficiency and looked at me in a way that made it clear she expected me to do the same.
"Lighten it. We move."
My ribs protested when I bent forward. The fabric clung stubbornly to my legs, heavy with river water, and I realized how easily it would slow us down. Everything in my body felt bruised. My head rang faintly. My lungs still burned. But she was already reaching for my wrist.
Her hand was warm.
That was what startled me most.
Not the urgency. Not the danger.
The warmth.
We began to run, though "run" might be too generous a word. It was more like refusing to collapse in the same direction. The forest floor was uneven and slick, and I nearly lost my footing more than once. Behind us, faint shouts echoed along the riverbank. They were still looking.
I remember thinking that we would not make it far like this.
Then suddenly she pulled me sideways so sharply that I almost cried out. My back struck the trunk of a large tree, and her hand came up immediately, steadying me before I could stumble again. Through the thin curtain of leaves, I saw them—three bandits moving carefully between the trees, scanning the ground as though expecting to see footprints.
They were close enough that I could hear their boots scraping against stone.
Eri raised one finger to her lips.
I went still.
We stood so near that I could feel the faint brush of her breath against my cheek. I don't know how she managed to look calm in that moment. Her clothes were soaked. There was blood on her side. We had nearly died. And yet she was composed, watching, calculating.
One of the men paused and turned slightly toward us. My heart pounded so loudly I was certain he would hear it.
Then a whistle sounded from somewhere deeper in the forest.
"That way!" someone called.
The men shifted and moved off, disappearing into the trees.
Eri did not move immediately. She waited, listening longer than I would have dared. Only when she seemed satisfied that the danger had passed did she pull me forward again.
We had not gone far when a man stepped into our path.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, with long hair tied back and a face that looked as though it had spent more time outdoors than inside palace walls. For one awful second, I thought we had run straight into another attacker.
We froze.
He looked at Eri.
Recognition changed his expression entirely.
He dropped to one knee.
"Your Majesty."
The word felt strangely out of place in the middle of mud and blood.
I saw something flicker across Eri's face—relief, perhaps—but it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. The color drained from her skin, and before I could react, she swayed.
Then she fell.
The man caught her, lowering her carefully to the ground, and it was only then that I truly saw the damage. Blood had soaked through the fabric at her side. The arrow in her leg was still lodged there, shallow but real.
She had been running like that.
Swimming like that.
Holding me upright like that.
And I had not noticed.
"She's been losing blood," the man said quietly.
"I know," I answered, though the truth was that I hadn't known at all.
The queen survives. That is what we are taught. The queen does not shield. The queen does not fall.
And yet she had stepped in front of me without hesitation.
She had jumped.
She had carried me.
Now she lay unconscious at my feet.
I followed without question when the man lifted her. His house was not far, hidden deeper within the forest. The air inside was thick with the scent of herbs—sharp, earthy, almost overwhelming after the clean violence of the river. It did not feel like palace medicine. There was nothing delicate about it.
He laid her on a narrow wooden bed and began working with the kind of quiet familiarity that unsettled me more than I wanted to admit. He removed only what was necessary to reach the wounds, leaving the rest undisturbed. There was nothing improper in his movements—only certainty.
I watched.
Too closely.
Scars covered her skin in ways I had never seen before. Thin lines crossing older ones. Some faint. Some jagged. None accidental.
These were not training scars.
These were survival.
When he turned her slightly to examine her back, I saw a scar unlike the others—long and deep, cutting across her skin as though something had once tried very hard to end her.
"What is that?" I asked.
He did not hesitate.
"That," he said, "is the price of wearing her crown."
I looked at her then—not as the Ice Queen, not as the ruler feared across kingdoms—but as someone who had endured more than she had ever spoken of.
And for the first time, I realized that there were parts of Queen Eri's life I knew nothing about.
Parts that had existed long before I did.
And the man standing beside her—working as though this were not the first time he had seen her bleed—was one of them.