Cracked open, vulnerable, and broken.

(A/N: I belong to a fansite for Tamora Pierce, and this was a challenge from them. We're supposed to write about the 'Ordeal of Knighthood' which is basically a room that exposes someone's deepest fears before forcing them to become Knights. The challenge was to take a character whose Ordeal we never see, and write about it. This one is mine.)


It had been a long night, shivering in the cold wet and with only a thin robe to keep him warm. Faleron of King's Reach would never admit it, but he'd very nearly wept silent tears as the cold bit into already wet and chilled flesh. Yes, the night had been long, but this ordeal- he was dead certain that it would be longer.

A Priest guided his steps towards the room- his body slowly moving forward, though every cell quivered with the intelligent notion that the only smart way to go was behind him. Nothing at all in his logic or intellect could tell him that anything in life would be worth this. Despite his chill of a few moments previous, his palms were slicked with sweat as he crossed the threshold and into the Chamber.

At first, Faleron thought that there had been some mistake. Surely, he thought, surely this was wrong. He was in a corridor of the palace near the Squire's wing, where he'd lived for most of the past four years. He began to search the palace, looking for someone who could tell him that he was wrong, that he wasn't in his ordeal. Although he searched for what he knew had to be hours, he could find no one. Not a person, or an animal, or even a pest. It then shattered his mind, a single thought:
Faleron was alone.

It was the one sensation that could bring him to his knees, and indeed to his knees he fell. Tears fell freely to his face. As his eyes bore into the stone beneath him, he watched it change to grass. Lifting his eyes, he looked at the field outside of his home, King's Reach. Thrilled, Faleron rose to his feet. He began to walk towards the gates, and was surprised when the opened while he was still far off. His surprise increased when he saw Keladry of Mindelan exit them.

No one, and that meant quite literally no one, knew how Faleron felt for the only female squire. Quite a few people knew of his fear of being alone. He'd never told anyone that he loved Kel, allowing her to be free and single- which was the thing he knew that would make her the happiest. His heart skipped a beat, when she smiled- though it was the most heartbreaking smile he'd ever seen her wear.
"Faleron, I've heard....rumors." Her toe scuffed against the grass, and Faleron could see she wore her finest Yamani masks. "I wanted you to know that I believe them to be false- they clearly are. I don't know where anyone could dredge up such a ridiculous notion. Why, the thought of us..." She stopped shaking her head while she lowered her eyes to hide her amusement.

Faleron felt quite ill. He wanted to contradict her, to force her to believe that he could and did love her, that every insult to her made him crazy. He wanted to hold her, to inform her that he knew she didn't and wouldn't want to settle; that he wouldn't ask it of her. He wanted to beg for her love. But he couldn't.

Faleron stared after her, even when the image had faded. The tears remained through the rest of the waking nightmare- watching his future children being slaughtered, breaking the law and being shamed in front of everyone. One by one the fears crowded, though none broke or hammered him as thoroughly as the one about Kel.

The silent tears coursed down his cheeks, remaining long after he'd been Knighted.

In fact, they're still there. You can't see them- they fall from his vulnerable and broken heart, but they're there none the less.

And if he could tell you what the worst part of the Ordeal was, it would be that he believed every word that had fallen from Kel's lips, and never pursued her farther.