[1] WEEPING MONK // you're not what I was looking for

24| Love and War {Part One}

═ 𝙇𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙒𝙖𝙧 ═

Ari and Lancelot's relationship is tested as the trials and tribulations of their lives threaten to get in the way. Lancelot makes a decision, and the trio come face to face with something unexpected.

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I can't escape the way that I love you

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Ari did not get much sleep for the rest of that night, forever sitting up in her cot and watching the entrance to the tent. She cursed her senses for not being able to realise that Lancelot had been bound and dragged in the dark without her knowing when she had explicitly promised him that he would be safe. She felt guilty for getting him hurt, if they had just continued on in the forest then none of this would have happened. It's my fault, I shouldn't have brought them here. She had thought that this clan leader was wise enough to head her words, but apparently he wasn't. Her hands ran through each other tightly as she stared in the dim candlelight at the haphazardly tied veil for a door, her eyes growing dryer and more weary by the minute. She hadn't expected to have experienced such an emotional storm in just one night.

Her mind replayed their embrace, their first kiss was so gentle and dare she say sweet before they stepped into the fall and delved for something deeper. The feeling of his hands on her skin and his fingers threading in her hair still remained like a shadow she could not cast away. She hadn't wanted to fall for him or even let him into her life this way when they had set out from her camp. She had fought so hard against it, but there was just something pulling her towards him that was out of her control. She can't explain it, she'd never felt this before. She'd had a feeling that there was something familiar about him when she first met him, when she had him pinned to the dirt and he was looking up at her. She couldn't name it, there was no word or phrase for what it felt like. The closest she could get was the idea that she had known him all her life but without ever meeting him, it was strange. And the fact that the Hidden had suddenly made themselves more apparent made things all the more stranger. She felt them and heard their whispers so much more often now ever since he stumbled into her life, she didn't understand what was happening. Ari twisted the thread of the blanket she was playing with around her fingers as she tried to make some sense of it all.

She had loved Benni but not at first. He had been chosen for her and she had protested, but after getting to know him Ari found that she had started to like him. She grew to love him over time, or at least she thought that she had. Perhaps she had just liked the idea of him? Someone good, someone steady that she could rely on in this war. Then Lancelot came along, unwanted and uncalled for and yet he earned her trust. He earned her loyalty, her protection and her affections despite the fact that she should hate him with every fibre in her body. He made her feel so much and she wanted to be near him, that much was obvious, but she wasn't ready yet to call it love. They were something indeed but she would not name it yet. She knew better than him about how romance and such things worked, and she knew that she was falling, but she just needed more time.