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

20| Falling {Part Two}

[TW// mild panic/anxiety, referenced near drowning]

Ari tries to prove that she has healed, and a moment of calm brings Lancelot closer to her in a way he had never thought possible.

They began to follow the river's path south. A few more days and they would arrive in Byzantine and their journey would be over.

Ari sat in front of Lancelot in the saddle so that he could keep an eye on her. She was not quite ready yet to ride her horse by herself which Squirrel had taken, and their arrangement had worked out for the better. The boy rode off in front of them, practicing the new skills that Lancelot had taught him in the last couple of days. Ari felt contempt enough to relax a little into the arms which circled around her to hold the reins, and Lancelot felt comfortable enough to let her just this once. His feelings had crept up on him and then had hit him in a wave when he thought he had lost her. They were new and strange and he didn't quite know how to deal with it, he didn't know how to rationalise these things inside of his head. But when she leant back into his chest, surrounding herself in his warmth, his heart fluttered, and he felt like she belonged there. Her scent had begun to come back to her and the familiarity of it that flooded his senses put him at ease. No, his face twitched, she does not want you, she cannot want you. You are just a murderer and she is a queen.

Ari began to realise that who she was with Lancelot and Squirrel and who she was with everyone else were indeed two different people, two different versions of herself. One was powerful and commanding and the other reminded her of who she was before the fates came crashing down on her. Before her father disappeared, before Benni, before her mother, before she assumed the secret throne of a whole kingdom of Fey. A part of her wished that she could stay like this, travelling and exploring, living day to day without the worries of her people sitting heavily on her shoulders. She knew it could not last forever, being the queen was tough but it is who she was in her bones, she could not run from it. But right now, just being Ari with them was a feeling that no throne could ever give her.

Then there was Lancelot. Her heart tugged her towards him and she tried to fight against it. To anyone else it would be deemed irrational and wrong for her to seek him but to her it wasn't, he was becoming a part of her, he was safety, and she did not know how to stop it, or if she even wanted to stop it.

"What I said the other night, about Benni. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable," Ari's voice came up from out of the blue and he glanced briefly at the back of her head.

"You didn't."

Ari thought he sounded unsure, "It's just that, I know some things about what the church does and doesn't allow you to do. I didn't want to cross-"

"You didn't," he repeated, "it's alright." If anything, he was the one who had crossed the line between them when he held her to his chest for hours on end without letting go, but she didn't know this.