[2] WEEPING MONK║you're not what I was looking for

60| One Made In Flames - 𝐈𝐈

[ CW// mature content ]

Lancelot returns with an old friend.

The evening sun had faded in— the night time moon cresting over the canopy of the forest. Conversation and bursts of merriment echoed from the clearing where the campfires were starting to burn strong. Tonight's supper of potatoes and beans with rashers of pork was still slowly heating in the cooks' tents.

She stood, watching him. Not a care in the world for who might have been watching her. Though she knew that he was aware of her presence, he always did.

They had barely spoken recently and Ari had realised in the last hours the extent of just how much grief she felt without him. How empty the days had become.

He kept his back to her. Did not twist or acknowledge that she was here in the armoury's entrance. She could hear the quiet grating of the stone that he worked over the edge of his long sword, resting at an angle on the workbench. That action usually meant that he was troubled, in need of something to keep his hands and mind both busy and calm at the same time.

Ari knew that it would be up to her to speak first, remembering their argument from the day before.

"You meant that I was turning into one of them." Her chest was heavy, her eyes too. Those weights all echoed in her sombre, guilty voice.

Lancelot pushed the stone down the edge of his blade again.

"You have always wanted to minimise casualty," he said gruffly. "But since that human poisoned you you've been different."

His voice was edged with hurt and bitterness and Ari understood why. It was the only thing that he needed to give himself the righteous high ground.

"Being poisoned will do that to you," she said beneath her breath, lowering her eyes to the ground. She felt smaller in this veiled doorway, and an instinct to cross her arms over herself that she refused. Though she could not avoid standing still, shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

"I understand. But you— the Fey queen— cannot lose your head." Lancelot could not bring himself to so much as even glance at her. If he did, then he would not be able to say these things knowing the hurt that he would be causing her. His patience waned. "Carry on like this and you will get us all killed."

Ari closed her eyes to withstand their sting for the words which he said next.

"I'm beginning to not recognise you, and I don't think that you do either."

Lancelot returned to tending for his sword though without much carefulness. Keeping his hands moving.

Ari felt her heart sinking. Her legs were weak. She reached just behind her and pulled on the cord that held the veil open. It fell to drape and plunged them into an almost darkness. The steel of his sword caught the light of the lantern on the workbench, but her lover was all but a shadow to her.