[1] WEEPING MONK // you're not what I was looking for

38| Alliances {Part One}

═ 𝘼𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙨 ═

Ari accepts an invitation and a rising jealousy prompts Lancelot to take a risk.

❖
For you I would ruin myself
A million little times
❖

A man rode out from the trees, holding a branch up in the air. "I come with a message," he announced at the show of their weapons, "for the Fey Queen, Ari."

The following events which transpired happened so quickly. The man was taken down from his horse by his own will, however, prompted by the points of various blades which were angled towards him. The man seemed rather terrified, particularly of the one who cries with his sword drawn and practically waiting for an opportunity.

Ari manoeuvred her horse a little further into the forest against the patrol's approval, one set of stormed eyes burning into her cloak as she left in particular more than the rest. Unbinding her palm from its leathers, she placed it flat to the bark of a tree to find that the messenger had indeed come alone. There was no one else here that she could feel, no followers lurking up ahead to ambush them. She did not know how this one in particular had slipped past the scouts but their patrol had brought them close to the edge of their borders, and perhaps that is how he had entered unnoticed. Still, it irked her.

Ari rode back to the others with less haste than when she left. That stormed set of eyes shifted to her before she had even caught sight of them and she could read the unspoken question which they held. The other's were circling around the spindly man standing considerably shorter than the height of their horse's shoulders. She could almost see him cowering at the formidable sight.

The queen halted her horse alongside the monk's, his own trained beast stepping aside a short distance to make way in the ring of Fey. She looked to him, a similar question in her eyes as in his own. He shook his head once yet stiffly to her and she understood that he could not sense any others here either besides those surrounding the human, most of their weapons still drawn and braced in anticipation but the queen did not need her own. Her glare as gold locked onto the blonde's blue was enough to make him break away from her.

The man wet his lip, those rounded eyes shifting anxiously between his captors.

"Speak your message," a patrolling Tusk told him firmly, his horse stomping a hoof to wet ground below.

The messenger spooked with the sudden order from behind him. He took a shaken breath, darting his eyes back and forth, "I was told to deliver it to the Fey Queen."

The queen sat tall in her saddle, dissecting in her mind each movement he made and word which he spoke. He was dressed well, too well to be nobody and not well enough to be somebody, and yet he was here.

"I am Ari," she announced and he twisted at the assertive sound of her voice, "say your message." His eyes latched onto her, looking her over subtly like he were examining her for a sign that she was indeed the queen which he was sent to find. Ari knew that her royal blood was not entirely obvious, for she dressed the same as most other Fey and only her hair and gold gave her position away. She wore no crown. No precious jewels to elevate her status in some way, but the authority here was in her hands.