Alethea didn’t notice the Prince’s awkwardness. A week ago, she would have fixed on that gesture like a hawk on a rat, curious about her effect on him and what the bashfulness might have meant. But now she was as immune to these subtleties as she was to modesty. She did not realize that a hint of lace camisole was showing over the collar of the robe, or that her knees occasionally peaked out from the hem. And if she had noticed, it was unlikely she would have done anything about it.
Her eyes trailed after him as he entered the room. For the first time, she thought suddenly, absurdly, as if this was important. This is the first time he’s visited me. The thought made her chest feel tight.
"You think so?" Her smile was faint, shy – but genuine. She searched his eyes for the truth behind the words, and was apparently satisfied with what she saw there. The smile broadened.
And then it vanished, as quickly as it had appeared. Tristan, and idiot? No. It was she who had called him to the beach, and what kind of prince would he have been, if he refused? If he ignored that she was in danger? She’d been flirting with him, she knew – deliberately distracting him from the things he should have been doing, worrying about. And in her selfishness, she had made herself the object of his protective instinct.
She had treated him like a stable boy. But he was the heir to the throne...and younger than her. Not a child, exactly, but perhaps more vulnerable to her power than an older boy might be.
“I don’t think you were an idiot. This is my fault, really...I should write to your father. No. I should–I should speak to him.” She sighed, weary of the sadness and the guilt. Her steps brought her back to the window seat, where she perched lightly, one leg bent over its surface and one bracing her from the floor. Her eyes drifted to his boots. “You probably saved my life. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t come, and led me off the beach when the fighting broke out? I might have just stayed with Gibbs.” She choked on his name a bit, as if hands had closed around her throat. “So, I am very grateful. And very...sorry. For putting you in danger, and getting you into trouble.”
Leto whimpered, nosed her head up onto Alethea’s lap. The girl’s hands threaded instinctively through her fur, but her eyes lifted from Tristan’s boots to his face. She was fresh out of tears; her expression was raw, like a bare nerve. What would she have done, if something had happened to him? But nothing did happen to him, my Thea. He is alright, and so will you be. The wolf’s voice was gentle in her mind.
Alethea felt that she might have a tear or two left, after all.
“Can you forgive me?”
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