Summer didn’t stop, or look back, but she did slow her step until he walked beside her. She was doing it again, she knew she was doing it again, but somehow always being here, with the memories breathing from every tapestry and the same faces turned in the same old way — it made her feel small, pressed back into the shell of the person she used to be. The person she’d gone to Camelot to escape.
And that person could never deserve the knight by her side. That person deserved nothing and no one, was destined to rot in Dobria until she was bargained off as goods to some old fool in an alliance, in whose castle she would then continue to rot until she died. She became aware her hand was opening and closing on the hilt of her sword, and forced herself to still.
“What is it?”
“What is wrong?” he asks jogging up to her, slowing as he got up towards her.
“I — I don’t know how to explain it. Just … being here. Everything. Memories. Edward, and Winter, and father, and just — everything.” Her shoulders slumped, voice carrying a weight of frustration and sadness. “I left to get away from this. Partly, anyway. To find out who I was, and I come back and everything I gained is lost.”