A race! Alethea laughed, barely able to keep up, and then completely unable to. Her skirts were impossible to wrangle at a dash. “No fair! You haven’t got a dress slowing you down,” she shouted through her laughter, adding a “pardon me,” as she carefully sidestepped the winded guard. Poor man. Tristan really ought to watch where he was going. Her look was playfully accusatory when she caught up to him at last, shaking her head, and she entered the room with an exaggerated “Hmph!”
“I do hunt,” she answered him as she emerged, her voice in a typical, matter-of-fact tone,“but never just for sport. I don’t think it’s fair to kill something without the intention to eat it. I’d be happy to catch dinner with you, though, or come along. But your guards should not go, if they don’t know what they are doing…” she trailed off, looking a little grim. Her eyes were focusing on something far away, or buried deep. She shook it off, refocused. “Until then, we have cellars to plunder.” Her hand found his automatically, implicitly trusting, and gave him a little squeeze. She smiled.
And then they were interrupted by an unexpected voice.
Leto started beside her, heckles raised slightly in the kind of alarm she reserved for surprise encounters. This was odd enough, all by itself – it was very difficult to sneak up on a wolf, difficult even for wild things, and this was not a wild thing. This was a girl, about Tristan’s age, at a glance. Alethea looked from the girl’s face, to the bun in her hand, to the slow swish of her tail behind her. Her tail.
“Pleased to meet you, Nyx,” she said automatically, wide-eyed, forgetting both how to curtsy and the obvious fact that the girl had ignored her presence. Alethea had never seen a girl with a tail. Wings, sure – everyone seemed to have wings after a certain point. But a tail was something new. Her fingers twitched against her bag, where her journal rested, waiting. She blinked, wrested herself from the vision before her, met Tristan’s eyes, and was surprised to see that he was clearly perturbed by the girl’s arrival. Instinctual politeness dictated that she should invite Nyx along on their adventure, but the Prince’s discomfort indicated that she should assist him in his escape. There was a brief, and obvious, internal struggle. “Yes. You did…promise that. All day.” She turned back to Nyx and smiled brightly. “But perhaps tomorrow. Would you let me draw you? Your tail is extraordinary.”
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