the guard {h.s.}

6- take care

"Private Styles—"

"Harry is fine, my lady," he interrupts, looking up from the counter where he is preparing the fish that he'd gotten this morning. He'd been quiet since they arrived. As soon as Gwen was both safe and settled, he'd mumbled something about her staying out of sight while he went to get them some food. He'd returned an hour later with enough fish to last them a couple of meals. Very quietly he'd set to preparing them. Gwen could only imagine what was going through his head.

"I hope you don't expect to start calling me Gwen anytime soon, then," she responds indignantly, her chin tilted upward. She has no control over the authority that she assumes whenever she speaks. Her crowd has always been relatively equal to her in status and she's always been aware of it. Accordingly, it had never really settled in for her that her treatment of other people was anything but standard, seeing as everyone around her acted in the same way.

"Wouldn't dream of it, my lady," he answers, hardly even looking up at her. In truth, he is scared to look at her. Harry finds her beauty to be overwhelming and this is most definitely a time in which he is not able to be overwhelmed.

She shifts her weight in the doorway to the bedroom, the floorboards creaking beneath her. Adrenaline having finally worn off, the pain in her feet officially began to thrum. The throbbing moves in time with her blood, with her heartbeat. She feels it throughout her body—the urge to sink into a seated position to get off her feet, but she's done that. It doesn't make anything better.

Wincing slightly, she mutters something under her breath. The sound of it draws Harry's attention. "What was that, my lady?" He asks, not quite looking up, but paying more attention to her. He allows her to pull him out of his thoughts. His wonderings about what could have possibly happened to his mother in the time since he left. He knows the timeline, roughly, if only from the checks that were stacked just beside the door. They date back four years ago. Four years of his life he'd spent sending every meager penny he could afford back to his mother, only to find out that she had not been receiving the money. She'd been long gone. Dead, left. Harry doesn't know.

"Nothing," the princess breezily responds. For a princess, she hates having the attention on her when she is anything less than perfection because she was raised in a world that viewed perfection as currency and she was always wealthy. "Just adjusting my position. As I was saying—"

Something in her tone caught his full attention. Looking up from the fish, he dragged his gaze toward the mud that cakes her feet. Brown, dark brown, mixed with a blood red, Harry curses himself internally. At the castle he had noticed that she was walking on her bare feet, but survival became their singular thought. She'd not once complained and therefore the concern for her feet had left him.

Gritting his jaw, he gently places the fish down and the materials he had been using. "Let me see your feet, my lady," there's something gravelly in his tone. The words deep and guttural in a way that sent a shiver of obedience down Gwen's spine. In the back of her head, she heard a voice echoing the soldier knows how to give orders.

Though as fast as the thought comes, it is dispersed. Well as he may be able to give orders, Gwen will always have the ability to disobey him as the person who outranks him, "No." She stubbornly refuses, standing firm in her spot as she stares him down. The green eyes are locked on her, a sort of curiosity there as he attempts to figure out the nature behind her refusal. "I hardly find that appropriate."

Exasperated, Harry lets out a bitter laugh. "Make me a list, my lady."

"A list of what?" She bites back, landing directly into the verbal trap he had intentionally set for her.

Glimmer in his eyes, he smirks at her. "A list of actions you deem appropriate. Clearly saving your life is not, my lady, as twice you have scolded me for attempting to do so." Very obviously, he is referencing the cutting of her shift. Just at the mention of it, she imagines she can feel a breeze against her naked shins. A blush takes over her cheeks. Annoyed as he had been by her scandalized nature in the moment, she had been genuine in her reaction. A lifetime of teachings does not disappear in a life or death situation, apparently.