archenemy | clexa

three

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Bright blond hair is mingled with the cream white of the furs and the morning sunlight falling through a few gaps in the tent. Maybe, of all the ways Lexa could've waken up, this is the most peaceful. The most innocent. All what she doesn't deserve and yet has.

Her arm that has overnight loosend around Costia now tightens again. Her fingers draw light, absentminded figures on her girlfriend's stomach.

Costia sleepily giggles and a wide, lazy smile paints itself on Lexa's face when she hears the sound. Certainly something she doesn't deserve either, but the sweet sound still fills the air around her. When Costia turns around in Lexa's arms, the latter is once more drawn in by the breathtaking beauty such few inches away from her.

The blue in Costia's eyes is as sweet and fresh as the water of a cold mountain river, and Lexa still cannot believe how a single creature could possess as much beauty as Costia does.

"Morning," Costia murmurs and pecks Lexa's lips. Her voice is clear as ice, and it surprises Lexa every time how it lacks the rasp of sleep.

"Hi," she replies and hears her own voice much rougher than Costia's.

Costia kisses her again and Lexa feels slightly chilly fingertips graze first her cheek, then her neck. Lexa isn't surprised by the familiar weight of Costia's body settling on her hips with a grace that should be awarded for such an early time.

These moment are something Lexa relishes. She thrives off them and something deep in her blossoms in the presence of Costia, especially when she gets her girlfriend alone like this. Those hands that Lexa knows the imprint of now travel along her side, to the hem of the slightly torn nightshirt of hers. "Why don't you wear your nightgowns?" Costia murmurs against Lexa's shoulder.

"Would you prefer them?" Lexa asks, but when she looks at Costia who undoubtedly looks like a princess in the clear, bright blue gown of hers, she doesn't wonder if they look better than her worn off shirts.

"You look less like you're wearing a soft version of your armor."

Lexa hums. "I'll keep in mind."

Truth is, after the two years they have been together, she knows well that nightgowns are more graceful, and Costia likes that side of her. Lexa wears them in Polis, on occasion. But here, in the Heda's tent among 300 warriors and generals, she doesn't dare to. Maybe because a shirt and pants are the soft version of her armor. If anything was to happen right that moment, Lexa could fight significantly better than she could in a gown.

And Lexa out of all people certainly knows most that it's likely for something to happen now more than ever.

Yes. Ever. After years that she has defended her people and taken the road to form a coalition with all its bumps and obstacles, after wars and battles and unruly clans, she can confirm that the likelihood of something bad happening now is larger than ever.

While Costia takes off Lexa's shirt, Lexa's mind unwillingly travels to the reason they're there. She's never been more infuriated. After all that she has gone through, all she has had to do, rumors of a new Heda estimated by the Gods had spread through her people.

Well, that was the first instinct they had to react to the star falling from the sky and taking on the form of a human. Lexa doesn't doubt it either; a Goddess had descended from the heavens, formed out a star, but what she has trouble with is some people's belief that said Goddess was sent by Becca.

Becca, who had done them all such good.

Not Skaiprisa, which is now the Goddess' name, and who has in her time on Earth already killed three men, has been stealing and tricking and is now cutting off the whole passage between Trikru, including Polis, and all western and south-western clans. Since Polis lays east, only Floukru further that direction and some little passages north and south, it's become a serious problem in no time. Fear seems the only thing needed by Skaiprisa, and just by existing she has easily blocked large parts of the Trikru forest.

Robbed and injured carriages have appeared after the riders' journey passing said forest and they have all reported Skaiprisa; the Goddess in form of a woman. It's not only that Lexa saw Skaiprisa falling from the sky like a shooting star herself, or heard countless reports of her, she's also seen evidence. A bleeding hole in a man's shoulder, reported by both him and his companion in the same way; with a deafening bang, Skaiprisa had cursed a little thing of metal upon him, right out of her hand. Others that met and were injured by her have had a tendency to say the same, always the scary loud noise and the impossible pain such little thing caused.

Those people had no bruises, no cuts, barely blood. Skaiprisa kills as beautifully as her face has been told to be, steals and tricks as cleanly as her name, princess of the sky and stars, suggests her to do.

A soft "Lexa," pulls Lexa out of her thoughts. "Don't slip away from me so early the day."

"I'm sorry," Lexa murmurs against Costia's lips. Her shirt has long met the floor and Lexa's hands reach for Costia's gown. Her fingers untie the strings at its back nimbly.

"You know you don't have to worry that any queen ever takes your queendom," Costia says.

"Skaiprisa is not a queen, and neither am I."

"Sha, Leksa. Ba em nou laik prisa ida." [ Yes, Lexa. But she isn't a princess either. ]

"I know," Lexa whispers with a soft kiss and a small smile spreads over her face. "You're the only princess I'll ever know."

Costia says something else in Trigedasleng, a language that is heard less in the warrior's camp than Gonasleng. The language of warriors extends over all clans just for that reason- that all warriors can communicate.

A sentence in the language of the Azgeda people accompanies Costia's first sentence to mock Skaiprisa, and Lexa laughs while Costia's dress joins her shirt on the floor. "Where did you learn that?" she asks absentminded, taking in the girl in front of her for what must've been the millionth time. Small, evenly shaped breasts, soft, slim shoulders and arms, and a body that does overall not speak of the strength it possesses.

Costia does not get to answer. The hands on Lexa's skin do not resume their journey and the kisses on Lexa's collarbone don't continue. Instead, Costia flinches hard, Lexa's arms instinctively wrap around her and with a frozen body, her ears ring with the bang that's echoeing off the camp.

Lexa is out of bed the next second. She automatically pulls on her shirt and her armor, grabs her sword and sharply commands Costia to stay in the tent. The situation she reaches outside is just as she hoped it not to be; chaotic, messy, with everyone running into each other. Only when a horn blows, a sound the warriors know much better than that terrible bang, the soldiers get into shape. Protect the camp, protect their healers.

A line is formed for Lexa immediately. She rushes to the front and with her sword drawn, backed up by a front of about thirty spears, she faces the treeline from where the sound came. The reason they all are there, the reason they all might die, the Goddess that has spread fright among Lexa's people as rapidly as fire, does not appear.

With a cry of war and the sound of a horn declaring it, the warriors storm into the forest. Their shields are clutched, their weapons drawn, and each and every of their mind is ready to spill a goddess' blood. They are ready to fight to the expense of their life. Ready to meet the princess they have heard everything about.

Not one of them notices the hooded figure stealing herself into camp from the other side, sneaking into a few tents as if she was a breeze of wind and leaving again with a handful of apples, a few loaves of bread, furs, herbs, and some weapons that appealed to her. Just for the fun of it, that figure presses the trigger of her gun a second time, shooting a bullet into the sky and then she's gone as quickly as she's come.

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