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

35| A Lover's Duel {Part One}

AN// you have officially reached over 300k words in this story 🎉 Onwards!

∴

═ 𝘼 𝙇𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙙'𝙨 𝘿𝙪𝙚𝙡 ═

[TW// mild violence]

Lancelot distances himself from the queen and Ari takes a drastic step to try and bring them back together.

❖
Are you in or are you out?
❖

Ari didn't see much of Lancelot for a couple of days since he had left her flustered, dazed and royally flushed in the tent just off of the edge of the clearing. In truth she thought that he was avoiding her, and he was. Ari would be lying if she said that it didn't hurt. They had become so close and their connection went far beyond just friendship. Lancelot was one of the few here who she trusted completely, if not the only one in this forest filling with her people.

She still did not know why he had run away from her the other night and every time that she had caught his eye since, he looked away from her almost instantly. It was inevitable that theories and assumptions of what she had done wrong in that tent as she kissed him whirled and raced in her overthinking mind. She couldn't seem to calm her thoughts or even think of much else.

She had seen that he was slowly building up the time that he was spending with Hector as they got to know each other, the younger Ash often sitting with him in the clearing and giving Lancelot an easy excuse to not approach her, or her, him. Ari wanted him to have this time with his brother, Lancelot deserved to have that relationship again so she didn't interfere when she saw them together each day. She was sad at their new distance after they had been working their way closer to how they once were. But at the same time it gave her a chance to spend time with her father, to rebuild that particular unsteady relationship. As well as this, the plans that they were making and her usual affairs and duties as queen had also been keeping her busy.

Ari found herself in the den, walking around the stone table as she examined the parchment maps laid out and held down with rocks. What she was looking for she didn't know exactly, perhaps just some perspective. The council meeting this morning was surprisingly short. They settled the few matters that had come to light, mainly about food supplies and how they could reach to further parts of the kingdom more efficiently, but the latter was still left with some unsolved problems. The council decided to wait a day, to allow time to think more before they met again.

Ari was intending to join the midday patrol around the eastern borders of the forest but her father had stayed behind after the meeting without explanation. Something was clearly playing on his mind as he stood off to the side silently, his hands clasped low behind his back like usual, so she waited for him to say whatever it was that was troubling him.