“What?” I ask, but she just nods like we settled something and starts walking back to the cave.
“You’re right. Anyone could recognize me, so I need your help. Then you can get yourself to Lake Titicaca however you please, and I’ll go my own way,” she says.
“What?” I repeat, but I doubt she hears me from behind her.
She doesn’t address me until we’re in front of the cave again. It feels like a flashback, the same frustrating emotions I felt yesterday right in front of this cave aimed at her.
“Give me your knife,” she orders.
And, gods be damned, I almost do it on instinct alone.
“No,” I say.
“No?”
“It’s a delightful word,” I answer.
Her cheeks redden in response. She glares at me and turns around in a huff. She kneels and starts messing with something on the ground. Before I can catch a full view of what she’s doing, I see her smash a rock into her own face.
“What the fuck,” I scream, running toward her as her face starts to swell.
She uses a sharp edge to slice a line in her eyebrow immediately after. By the time I reach her, all she’s doing is slathering mud into her hair. It becomes obvious that she’s digging around for more mud when her hands disappear in front of her.
“What in the name of our Guardians are you doing?”
“My hair. The white is distinct, but if I dirty everything up, it should camouflage a little bit.”
“Not the hair, gods, the self-mutilation! Just regenerate your mimicry–”
“I won’t,” she turns around to scream at me with full force.
I hear Mare shout my name, and I look for him in the distance and wave him off. I’ll have to explain her appearance later. The princess looks close to tears. Her teeth grind into each other. Her hands are balled up fists and, yes, they’re shaking.
“I. Won’t,” she repeats, lower but no less vicious.
“You saw the same thing I did last night? Doesn’t that change anything for you?” I don’t know how something like that wouldn’t. I don’t know anything about the princess, not really. I realize that’s why I’m asking. It’s out of genuine curiosity rather than the judgment I expected to feel.
“I don’t know,” she answers and looks shocked at her own response. She shouldn’t be. I know in my heart that it’s the truth.
“Okay,” I say. “I won’t make you do something you don’t want to do.”
It’s a repeat of what I said before, but this time it takes out all the fight in her. Without the fire, she’s just a girl, exhausted, sick, and covered in mud. I don’t need the Guardians to whisper to me to help her. I want to do it because she’s hurt, even if I don’t know exactly how. I don’t want to see her the way I saw her youngest sister. The imagined projection makes my heart slam its fists against my chest. I wouldn’t be able to stand seeing her that way, same with Mare and Suyai.
I’m shaking just thinking about it. Now I’m the one who looks surprised at my own reaction.
“We can use pieces of our tunics to make head coverings, but covering your hair won’t be enough. We look like complete outsiders,” I say.
The princess isn’t happy, but she looks a little less defeated, as much as she can anyway with a wounded face. She trades in her devastation for analysis as she takes me in. I wonder if she wants to know what’s in my head as much as I want to know what’s in hers.
I offer up my knife without a word and watch her chop off her hair into an uneven line at her shoulders. She looks unaffected as strands of white litter the ground, like she never cared about the status and rank her hair provided. She hands back my knife, and the exchange settles something between us, something unspoken.
“You…”you’re beautifulhangs off my tongue but doesn’t fall.
The princess opens her mouth to say something too, but before any words escape, I hear Mare call me once again, closer this time. It’s not just my name he’s shouting. As he bridges the gap between us, I hear his high-pitched giggle along with the thuds of his limping pace on the wet ground. Yet, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Something about the sounds is off, like his uneven footsteps are growing nearer while his laughter peels away.
It’s only when he barrels into my arms, bad leg crumbling beneath him and shrieking my name that it all hits me. The princess notices at the same time, jumping into a defensive stance. The laughter grows and grows around us, while all Mare says is my name in panic.
It’s not Mare laughing.
