Ellie absolutely hated it when she cried. Often, she could never find it in her to properly cry over things, but instead could only leak slow tears that gathered and fell with the slowness of dew, and hardly seemed to serve her sadness in the way crying should. There was no relief in slow cries because they never truly relieved the tightness in one’s chest like a proper sob could. It was like a long meal that still left you hungry at the end. For now, she simply let the tears dry on her cheeks, too preoccupied to try to wipe them off as she moved quickly down the hallway, not toward any particular destination but just away, away from her room and the direction she had come. Her cloak was draped precariously on her shoulders, thinly protecting her from the damp chill of stone. Her book lay forgotten in the inside pocket.
Only five minutes could have passed since she had been dismissed from class and set off for her room, but the castle seemed to Ellie to already have been enveloped in the solitude of night within that time, the hallways quiet and emptied. If there was one thing to be said for castles, which Ellie found at least in this case to be oppressive and dreary, it was that one could always find a place to oneself when they wanted it. Ellie couldn't claim that she had discovered all the secrets of even the one wing she spent much of her time in, but she had discovered enough to hide from most of the world when she was upset. Now, she felt she needed to be alone more than ever.
When she had returned to her room, she had been surprised to find a maid inside, the young women pulling her dresses from the wardrobe and placing them neatly in an unfamiliar trunk already filled with her nightdresses and sunbonnets. Another woman she recognized but had never spoken to before stood in the corner, watching the maid as she worked.
"Hello," Ellie had said in stiff surprise, forgetting, as always, the rules of her position that discouraged her from speaking to the servants, or to her elders unless they had already addressed her. "Why are you packing my things?"
The woman in the corner had pursed her lips at this. She approached Ellie from the opposite side of the bed, grabbing a pair of stockings and refolding them carefully, not even looking down, as she spoke. "You're taking a trip, baroness." She told her. "There is a young duke in Eile who is searching for a wife. His father is ill and he will soon have to take on the family title, so he is looking to marry rather quickly. You will be visiting him with a dowry, and his family hopes the decision will be made by the end of the next month." She placed the stockings perfectly inside the trunk, allowing the maid to close it and snap the clasps before placing it neatly in the corner. Ellie's eyes followed it uncertainly, a heavy feeling forming in her stomach. She could almost feel the color receding from her cheeks.
"Marriage? But I'm not old enough," She said uncertainly. "I couldn't--"
"Baroness, I'm sure you're aware that your situation makes it rather difficult for us to find a suitable match for you." She cut in, her voice understanding but firm as she continued. "We are already providing you with a dowry, and I assure you many other girls would be very excited for the opportunity to visit him. Therefore, you leave in the morning. I assure you the journey is short and pleasant. I'm sure you will have a wonderful time."
The woman waited for Ellie to nod, and the girl obliged her robotically, cowed by the authority in her voice. "Thank you." She said, looking at her with something that might even have been pity. "Good day, baroness." The woman had excused herself, nodding at the maid to follow her as she left, and the door closed behind the two with a soft click.
Ellie stared around the room for a minute, feeling the sickly sense of misgiving settle over her as her mind caught up with reality. Marriage, a concept that had only been unsettling in the abstract, was found to be very frightening when viewed from this close. She had been certain that she would be able forgo the inevitable for a few more years at least, but she had failed to account for the fact that she was a liability, an orphan that they had been obligated to care for since her mother died in childbirth. No one even seemed to know why she had been allowed to stay in the royals' quarters after her birth, with no parents to take care of her, although Ellie often felt as though people discussed it when she was not around, the maids whispering theories behind their hands as she left the room. The sense of a hazy scandal, partly known by almost everyone in the castle except her, had followed her all of her life and yet never become any clearer to the child. Perhaps it was this sense of inherited wrongdoing that had always made Ellie feel so ill at ease in the castle, the reason her room had never felt like her own, nor her shaky standing within the castle anything more than a loan, like an ill-fitting coat given to her by an unknown benefactor trying distantly to protect her.
The girl had emerged from her thoughts slowly, dazedly, taking a few minutes to recover herself and finally retrieving the cape she had come for. She had purposefully avoided looking at the waiting trunk as she retreated from her room, forgetting the clasp of her cape as she closed the door gently behind her and set off quickly down the hallway.
The narrow stairs Ellie had found turned downward in a tight spiral, her own footsteps echoing back to her until there seemed to be two sets of feet in the corridor, the sound muddling into a monotonous rhythm that soothed her crying. In fact, the steps seemed almost to be overlapping now, as if someone else were coming up--
Due to the speed at which he was going, Ellie saw the boy only at the last moment, too late to for either of them to pull up. A sharp, shaky gasp escaped her as she flinched backward, trying to avoid the inevitable collision, but the boy was going too fast, and the impact was hard enough to make her feet slip off the sleek stairs as she bounced off his chest. She fell backward, landing with surprising lightness on her bottom, but also feeling rather as though her breath had been knocked from her lungs. The boy didn't fall down the stairs, at least, holding his footing and avoiding tumbling down the stairs.
Ellie avoided the stranger’s eyes as she hastily wiped her cheeks, pulling her book from its cloak pocket and checking to see if the edges had been battered. Tutor Muir would have murdered her had she ruined the book, but luckily it looked to be okay. "S-sorry." She said quietly as she stood back up, shoving the book back into her pocket. "I d-didn't hear you coming."
