Descendants of the Kings (Book 2)

Ch 22.2: Bloody hell

Aedion broke the quiet first, flopping onto a large, overstuffed sofa near the fire with an amused quirk on his lips.

"I have never once witnessed someone hold their own so well against Callan," he mused, propping his long legs over the squat wooden table in front of him. "Win, at that. You ought to be granted an award of sorts, Wen dear. This is the stuff of legends."

Ella snorted and let herself fall on the other side of the sofa, tucking her legs beneath her. "Then you've never seen my mother. From what little I've seen and heard, she always managed to win. She may not have his temper or his presence, but she makes up for it with sheer will," Ella mused with a smile. "Minna Hawthorne always gets her way. My father is not the exception."

Meticulously, she began to unwrap her many elaborate braids, pinned curls and twisted loops. The intricate and beautiful hairstyle Katram had so lovingly made for her had long since gone from being pretty to being a literal pain. Ella sighed in appreciation as her hair began to come loose, her scalp finally relieved from the pressure.

Aedion observed her with a small, barely-there smile. An expression located in his eyes, rather than on his lips. "I'm sure she did," he said after a moment. "As they say, there never was a man who managed to win against the woman who owns his heart. Not even a king." He tilted his head and drolly added, "There's not much of a prize to it either."

Ella bit the inside of her cheek, equally amused and flustered by the humour in his eyes and the cheeky tilt of his full lips.

"There never was a man to win an argument against any woman, full stop," she sniffed instead, nose pointed high. She ignored Aedion's low chuckle and continued to untangle her hair.

She turned abruptly when after a moment of wrestling with the back of her hair with no luck, she felt Aedion's hand on her head.

"You are making a knot of it," he tutted, grimacing at the tangled mess she'd made. He'd vacated his spot on the other end of the sofa and come closer, the ends of his fingers brushing against the mar of looping curls and braids.

"Yes, well, I can't see very well," Ella grumbled, hating the flush on her skin product of their proximity, at such a trivial thing like his fingers in her hair. "I don't do my own hair," she admitted curtly. "I only know how to make simple braids. Not anything as nice as this."

She found herself floundering, unable to bring herself to ask for help, but not wanting Aedion to stop.

Fortunately, he didn't seem inclined to make her beg. He indulged her and, without prompting, gently began to unpin the dozens of braids and curls, taking care not to pull, his touch much softer than Ella's brutish yanking.

"To say you can make a braid is generous, no? I've seen you manage to make a bird's nest out of those as well."

"Oh, do keel over, Eagan," she huffed, crossing her arms and wordlessly backing closer to him, settling against the bent angle of his knee.

"With one of your knots--pardon, braids--as a noose? Likely."

He chuckled when she threw her hand back and pinched his thigh, using just enough strength that it wasn't malicious, more so playful. He didn't comment on this, nor did he stop fixing her hair. He continued to take down the braids and then one by one, with priestly patience, he gently undid them. Ella allowed herself to close her eyes, just a little, because he couldn't see her, and pretended he also couldn't see the way her shoulders relaxed and her breathing evened out, or the way she leaned more comfortably against his knee after a while.

"Don't you find it funny that despite how mighty they're meant to be, how larger than life they seem, the Great Five were no different than us?" Ella mused after a moment. The tension in her body had finally filtered away, leaving her pliant and calm.