The Songbird and the Wolf

[ XXXIII ] Pens and Blades

The aggression of the knock has startled even Aeyliv.

There has only been three beats, maybe four, yet the sound resounds a hundred more times in the hollow of the Queen's chest. Sets something ablaze that she has to extinguish before she causes more harm than good.

Surprise is not an expression his features mold into to easily, quite the contrast of the careful mask he's thus far shown her. 

In that moment he looks younger than she'd have expected of him.

But it falls back into the uniformity of the features that were slowly becoming familiar quickly enough. Like the water returns to calmness once the storm has blown over.

His stone maintains that stone-like appearance when his lips part and he calls. "Who is it?" A very well-crafted medley of calm and frustration.

Disappointment at being interrupted? She wouldn't be sure, and she didn't have much chance to ponder it further when a voice on the other side of thick oak sounds.

"Your mother is calling for you, Sir," Elodie doesn't miss the way his features soften so slightly at that. "She's requested you return to her chambers." 

Aeyliv collects himself, draws himself together and steps away from her, like he's not quite certain they wont come charging through the door regardless of what he has to say. 

Like he needs that space between their bodies, though she can't be sure why. 

"Thank you," the Prince's voice is kindly enough despite the frustration that had splintered through him, leaving as swiftly as lightning from the sky. "I'll come to her shortly." 

The poet was a mama's boy it seemed. 

Unsurprising and sweet both.

Elodie has to fight against the smile that flickers across her features, it comes unbeckoned and unwelcomed after several days of cruelty. 

Cruelty that is at her door. 

"We've come to bring you to her, Sir," the voice repeats again. "Now, sir." 

Impatience. 

In her court it would have been read as insolence, her jaw tenses at the very sound of it. 

"I'll come to her shortly," Aeyliv repeats, says it  fiercer the second time, more like an order. 

But they don't take it like one. 

"Now," the voice comes again. "Sir," comes as a half croaked afterthought. Like the word rips and tears through something in its way out.

Elodie can hear more than one person beyond the door, the squeak of boots on old wood. Can almost see the glint of metal that is the swords at their belts. 

Her grip tightens again, fractionally on the wire.

Surprise again, but of a different sort. 

Something made more of steel than stone.

"Go," Elodie murmurs before she realises she's even opened her lips to speak. 

The Prince sets a look upon her, eyebrow cocked toward his hairline again. 

"Best not put the in-laws in a bad mood by turning their son insolent," is her reasoning. 

There's logic to her words, but also the room seems narrow, tight around her. And the space is only drawing smaller until even the breath in her chest feels claustrophobic.

That and it will prove easier to defend herself alone than this soft creature who's hands seem better used to quills and tomes than blades and arrows.

For a moment he looks like he's going to fight it, to protest.