Alethea’s smile vanished, replaced by a look of utter confusion that quickly transformed into alarm. The Baron? Why would Nyx suggest the Baron? It was clear from her grin that the younger girl had seen Mordred and Alethea dancing at Tristan’s party, but did she know something else? Did everyone know something she didn’t?
Swallowing the lump in her throat and forcing her hand to move again – it had frozen mid-stroke over the two-dimensional Nyx’s forearm – the little lady turned her mouth into a pantomime of a smirk. “I think the Baron is far too busy to sit for me,” she replied, a bit more forcefully than she intended. In truth, she would have loved to draw him...had wanted to, desperately, since she first laid eyes on the perfect planes of his face. But after the confusing moment they had shared, it no longer seemed appropriate to suggest drawing him, and if he had suggested it, she would have been suspicious of his intentions. And suspicion was not natural to Alethea – it made her feel sick and disoriented, as if she had eaten something unwholesome.
Which was why, she supposed, her stomach clenched unpleasantly, now. Her eyes lifted, meeting her subject’s, whose innocence no longer seemed obvious. But that was unfair, surely? Perhaps the strange girl thought there was a real possibility of romance between her and Mordred. She couldn’t know – nobody knew – that Tristan was the only one she wanted.
They couldn’t know, because she’d only just realized it.
Alethea sat up suddenly, stiff, and dropped the pencil. As she hastily bent to retrieve it, Leto tutted in her mind softly, knowingly. If you think nobody sees that, dear...
Tristan doesn’t, she snapped back, mentally.
Her face was harder, colder, when she resumed.
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