Chapter 647: Accepting Reality
"Can you accept the arrangement I made in the High Pass? Or do you object to the decisions we made?"
Ashlynn’s question stunned many people in the audience, but Hauke had been expecting it for the past few days. Frost Walkers tended to be more straight forward than most, but when she approached him on the second day of his recovery, she made it clear that handling an audience as large and diverse as the one they’d gathered in the Vale of Mists would require more ’theatrics’ than the young Frost Walker lord was accustomed to.
Ashlynn gave him plenty of time to consider his answer, and he’d rehearsed what he needed to say several times, running through his lines in his mind right up until the moment that the heavy, iron-bound doors to the great hall opened and he entered alongside Virve.
He thought he was ready for the moment, but as he stood in the great hall, looking at Lady Ashlynn before him, all he could feel was the weight of his father’s gaze on his back, like a glacier about to come crashing down on him. Feeling that weight, along with the countless stares from the crowd, Hauke froze, as if his mind was once again trapped in unbreakable chains of ice, stopping him from speaking.
"Whatever you rehearsed," Virve said quietly enough that only Hauke and Ashlynn could hear her words. "Forget it. Just speak from your heart. The truth is all that matters."
"Thank, thank you, big sister Virve," Hauke said as the quiet prompting broke him free of the momentary paralysis that gripped him. I, I can do this," he said as he stood up as tall as he could, drawing a deep breath to speak loudly enough that the entire hall could hear his every word.
"Lady Ashlynn has been most kind in her judgments," Hauke started, shaking his head and filling the air briefly with a small flurry of ice crystals shaken free from his white mane as he spoke. "Kinder than I deserve after putting her and Lady Heila in so much danger and causing so many problems in the High Pass."
"You never deserved any of this suffering," Ritchel said under his breath at the table filled with honored guests. Ipiktok briefly raised an eyebrow at the former Eldritch Lord of the High Pass but said nothing as the father put all his attention on his young son. "Your elders failed you, Hauke, and your ancestors betrayed you, but that doesn’t mean you deserve to suffer."
Ritchel’s words were heard only by those few people at the table he shared with Heila and Old Nan’s family, but every parent sitting there gave him kind, sympathetic looks as the fallen lord watched his son standing up straight under the weight that his father’s shoulders could no longer bear.