Rythe Falls by Craig R. Saunders

her rooms, she was distant. Polite. Unerringly polite. But of the few people he could share his thoughts with, Shorn, the lady, Drun...he hardly ever saw them.
                  And they could come and go as they pleased. You'd think Shorn, even, would have come to share an ale, or even punch him in the face. But no.
                  Renir stood for a second longer, staring up at the now empty window, and had never felt so alone in all his life. Angrily, he strode along dark halls barely acknowledging the bows and the congratulations as he headed back to his rooms. To more boredom. To more tuition. To learn the business of being a king. To learn all the things he did not wish to.
                  'I'd rather fight the bloody Draymen than this,' he said to himself when he reached his room. And to his surprise, he found that he spoke true.
     
    *
     

Chapter Eight
     
    Tirielle A'm Dralorn was far from aloof. If anything, though she did not know Renir's loneliness, she was the sadder of the two. She tried to stay alone simply for fear that her crushing despair would engulf any who came near her. To be next to her would be akin to standing beneath a landslide.
                  While the barbarian king was, perhaps, a glorified captive, Tirielle was her own prisoner. She kept her council, kept to her room. A room no more lavish than Renir's own, and one in which she rarely invited visitors. Her meals and drinks she had brought to her. What else could she need? Light? Air? Company?
                  She'd had her fill of them all.              
                  Quintal came daily, as did Cenphalph, or Disper, or Typraille...each paladin had their own salve for her ails, but none were right. They thought her broken for the loss of j'ark. It hurt, true. She had fallen for the man, and he had died...but it was not what caused her so much pain. She was no stranger to loss, was she?
                  She'd lost her friend, Roth, to a great beast known as the Revenant...but was she heartbroken? No. She'd lost friends and family, father to an assassin, her mother dead, her servants and lands gone. Her once vaunted position and all her power; lost to the Protectorate.
                  Tirielle hugged herself, staring at the map of Rythe she'd made on her bed. Hangings on the wall kept the cold at bay - the castle servants were murmuring about winter, about this being a mild autumn. Felt cold enough for winter already, to Tirielle, but she wasn't aching with chills.
                  Was she afraid? Not of death, certainly. No more did that hold any terror for her. She'd been captive, once, of the very Protectorate that took everything from her. Afraid for her life, then, and Roth, who wore chains beside her. But she lived...Roth was dead.
                  Bonds broken, bonds made. Once, she'd taken sanctuary with Roth's kind, the Rahken, and received their great gifts, twofold. The daggers she wore inside her long sleeves, and their friendship and promise of alliance.
                  Friends she'd lost, friends she'd gained. The Rahken, The Sard, Sia, these barbarian who would fight their own war in this land Sturma. All were staunch and solid and dependable. The barbarian king himself...Renir...he'd fight. His friends, the mercenaries and the black-skinned man whose deep, dull eyes frightened her - the one they called Wen.
                  Loss and gain...but then, it was war, was it not? Men died. Children were caught up in the widening circle of destruction, women slain in battle or grieving for their loves...
                  Tirielle was no soft maiden, no mother. She had no husband nor child to lose to war. Her family were dead, her friends gone. The man who'd taken her heart for but a short time was dead.
                  There was almost nothing left for her to part