Oh, Tristan.
Despite herself, Alethea had been looking forward to seeing him, on her ride back from her family’s manor. The week away had been lovely, and it was good to see her mother, but so much had changed...it was almost as if she had come back a stranger. Even the stable boys no longer stole flirtatious glances, but seemed awe-struck, deferent. Thea wasn’t sure if this was because she had grown, or simply because she’d been living at the castle. Whispers followed her wherever she walked. She was relieved to return to a place where she was not a celebrity.
But that was before the latest gossip reached her.
Alethea heard about her friend’s dalliance with Megan nearly as soon as she entered the castle gate. The other girls were all too eager for a fresh set of ears – she heard five versions of the tale before reaching her bedroom. Between the barrage of sordid, impossible details, and her jealousy, and the length of the ride, Thea found herself completely uninterested in dinner. She went to bed early, heartsick and confused, and woke in complete darkness to the thump of a fist on her door.
Oh, Tristan.
Thea was out of bed as soon as she processed what was happening, stumbling to her door on legs that had not quite caught up to the wakefulness of her mind. She threw the door open, grabbed Tristan by his shirt, and pulled him inside, closing the door hastily behind her.
“What are you doing! Someone might have heard you!” she stammered, staring at him a moment, before pressing her ear to the dark wood. There were footsteps in the hall, but they were distant, directionless. Someone might have heard Tristan, but they hadn’t. If only that were true of his romantic life.
Alethea turned back to him with a sigh, crossing her arms over her chest. She had been asleep too recently to take any note of her state of relative undress – the knee-length cotton chemise she wore left little to the imagination, and her tousled hair fell around her shoulders like a lion’s mane. She was seventeen, and a beauty; other boys would have fought for a chance to get yanked into her bedroom in the middle of the night. But Tristan just knocked. And stood there.
“Hello,” she began, finally, and smiled. Heavens, how did he look so adorable with straw in his hair? She reached out to pluck it out, pursing her lips to keep from laughing. ”What a strange way to welcome me home. What is it? I didn’t understand a word you said through that door...”
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