═ 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴𝘵 ═
𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘛𝘸𝘰
[AN// Chapter 50! Oh wow. Thank you everyone whose been here since the very beginning, and welcome to the newcomers!]
After the massacre of the Trinity, Ari and Lancelot make their way home.
❖
oh don't fail me now
put your arms around me and pull me out
❖
Ari stood back to give Lancelot some space, her arms folded loosely across her chest. She didn't wish to rush him, but they needed to keep moving before they ran out of daylight. Their forest was still hours away at this pace.
"You moved the entire of the River Wren for me," she reminded him. According to the boy, it had been a magnificent sight.
Lancelot's jaw twitched. "That was driven by fear," he said flatly, a hint of irritation with himself breaking through. He turned his chin to his shoulder but could not see where she was stood behind him, which unusually made him feel small while he crouched to the water - elbows resting over his knees and hands balled in fists.
Ari didn't acknowledge his attempt of an excuse. Fey powers were best taught to be controlled with tough love and being thrown in to the den of wolves with no way out.
"You can move this." She gestured to the shallower water though he didn't notice the action, blinded by his hood. What flowed gently before him was little more than a deep and narrow stream, and she had no doubt in her mind that he could do what was needed. It flowed close to the trail which they had been following, so all that he had to do was wash it up the embankment opposite where he was crouched and soak away their tracks. As if that wasn't a lot to ask?
Lancelot didn't like this hollowing feeling within him, one which was quickening the pace of his heart. The last time he'd used his powers was when Ari had sat with him by the brook, and all he'd done was make ripples. He had not forced it to raise three feet and cross a forest.
Ari watched him staring back at the river in his silence. If he absolutely did not want to do this, then they could leave - but the risk of being followed from where they'd left behind that collection of dead Trinity Guards would be far greater than if they didn't cover their tracks.
"With all your power over the earth, how is that you cannot move water?" Lancelot asked, unintentionally bitter and exhaling with irritation. She was far more powerful than any one Fey which he had seen, though he understood why she kept such a thing to herself. Practically no one except himself, Squirrel and the old King knew of her fire. Most folk in the kingdom likely did not know that she belonged to the earth either.
Between the two of them, they commanded all of earth, fire and water.
Ari had asked herself that question too before now and come up empty. However, like with everything regarding Fey, there were few who had answers to give her.
"Water is a different element," she said, lifting her hands from across her chest and looking to them. Like their lines would hold the truth. "It has energy and so I can feel it, but I cannot manipulate how it moves." Even if she wanted to, she couldn't. She'd tried many times before with no success, and so had drawn the conclusion that it just was not possible.
Ari dropped her hands down to her sides, settling her eyes again on the back of his hood. "Do not ask me why, I have no answer." Not even her old Druid friend, Zurah, had been able to enlighten her.
There may have been some explanation within the ancient scrolls that her father had once told her about - ones which had lived in the library of the Sunborn Court. Except they no longer existed as anything but ash in the earth now. The Fey had once had Sunborn scholars and teachers - people full of wisdom about the exact things which Lancelot yearned to learn of. Their entire history stored in minds and writing.
But now few Fey knew when they would even get their next meal.
Lancelot stared down, watching the water as it ran its steady course. He shook his head in defeat. "I don't think I know how to do this."
The words that were in his mind came out through his mouth, and he didn't even think of hiding his doubt like he used to. Yet still he felt the shame - a pressure he was putting upon himself to not fail her. Across his back, he felt his scars tighten ever so slightly.
Inside her chest, Ari's heart sank to hear him say that. He'd come further than he knew in a time shorter than most. He needed to cut himself some slack.
She came to him at the edge of the embankment, crouching as he was doing. Past the hood, she searched for his eyes - seeing the beginning of a storm rolling in. "I told you before - you don't think," she said, "you feel." Ari lit a flame from her fingertip which got his attention, burning it out almost right away. He looked up from her hand between them to her eyes. "I moved my first flame when I was two summers old, and I definitely wasn't thinking about doing it." What she was trying to say is that these things take time, and she could see in how his brow didn't pinch or his eyes, narrow - that he was realising that.
"Scared the life out of my mother though," she added jovially, exhaling a breathy chuckle at the same time.
Lancelot's lip twitched at that image. He did not know her mother or what she looked like, or even her name - but he could imagine a young, bright eyed Arianne Sunborn causing mischief by playing with flames. It was odd to think that at the same time, he would have been locked within his cell under the Abbey, reciting his prayers in the silent darkness. Or spending hours learning the skills of murder which a boy of ten summers should not have to learn.
Ari saw that crack in his smile, and also how quickly it faded. She put her hand to his chest, covering his heart. Through the layers and in those troubled blue eyes she could feel his fear, how he was afraid of himself - to let his powers be strong. He was always there for her in her moments of doubt. And it was time for her to repay that debt.
"I believe in you," Ari told him with her whole heart, gripping her fingertips to the woven blue leather of his tunic. Firmly, she looked in his softening eyes. Giving him no room to not listen to what she was saying. "All you can do is try. And if it does not work then we will go."
Lancelot looked straight into her eyes, so golden and warm. Within them he could see the world - anything that he wanted, it was right there. For a moment the rest of the forest went away. He no longer heard the river at his feet, or his horse uprooting the grass somewhere not too far away. But he could feel his heartbeat - how steady it was becoming as her kindness held all of his focus.
He nodded to her and took a heavy, preparatory breath. I have to try. They needed to cover their tracks, and there was no other way unless he could somehow pull rain from the sky.
Ari folded towards him, lifting her hand to his neck and capturing his lips before pulling back. It was a sure kiss, again not letting him doubt. "Have faith," she hushed. Ruffling up the hairs across his jaw with her thumb as he dropped his gaze to her lips. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but he didn't and instead curved his hand around her wrist between them, letting a shallow smile grace his features.
Faith in the unknown. Lancelot remembered them speaking of that. He had stopped a river current before, made ripples in a brook - not knowing how or why. But never made such a body of water as deep as this change its course. Make one ripple, he'd said, and the rest of the water moves.
He could do this.
Flexing his fingers around her wrist, Lancelot nodded again to let her know that he'd try. She looked in his eyes for a moment longer. Lingering her gaze unless he changed his mind. But he didn't.
Ari stood back where she had been before and gave him space again. Discretely, she unwrapped a bind from her palm, just in case that she needed to intervene.
Lancelot shifted so that his knees were in the dirt, the sword at his hip making his position awkward - but he managed. He pushed up his sleeves and braced himself for the cold, before dunking his fingers inch by inch into the surface of the stream. Its only water, repeating in his mind. Water could not hurt him.
The strain of the fight earlier had begun to make his muscles seize, which was not aided by the sting of a chill which shot up his arms - the water flowing but almost idly over his hands. It made the air hiss and catch in the back of his throat. He didn't have fear this time to numb him to these reactions - his reflexes telling him to pull his hands from the water.
But the longer that he wasted time, the longer he had to endure this.
Without much thought he made one ripple in the river spread from his hands, and then another - letting them grow and ebb against the current.
Ari could see the water changing, how it was beginning to slow. The hiss that he had let out made her tense her shoulders, his own pulled forwards and sloping down. It didn't look comfortable.
"Breathe," she said, her soothing voice travelling through the air. Whatever he was doing, he had command, so he was halfway there.
His blood thrummed too loudly in his ears but Lancelot heard her, as if she were standing double the distance away from him than where she was. He closed his eyes, willing for the water to move further until his markings began to burn. A buzz like a shiver spreading in his veins. His thoughts shifted - between the calmness that he feels from the touch of his love's hand, to the overwhelming fear that he felt not long ago. The anger that had swept his better judgement away.
Don't think - feel.
The forest breeze descended from the treetops and crossed over him. Nipping at his hood. It carried his name amongst the whisper of something else. Listen to the light, they said. The voices which he had heard this morning.
Now numb fingers were spread out wide in the water, his ribs achingly taut. His hands trembled with the strain as his elbows locked and he willed the water to obey. Ripples growing larger and larger until they became a wave.
Ari heard a shallow gritting of pain right before the river raised up and over the rocky embankment. Hiddens, he did it. She watched down through the forest, seeing the waters rise. Flooding up and into the trail that they had been walking along. Either relief or pride, or both more likely, caved in her chest. It was no small feat for naive powers to be used so precisely, let alone from a full grown adult Fey. Lance was a man but the age of his gifts was still that of a child.
Power surged out through his palms - forcing the waters against the pull of the earth. Lancelot's eyes squeezed shut. Teeth baring to the forest. As if his face were thrust into a fire - his markings burned as he lost all concept of time. The whispers about to snap on the wind.
Then he couldn't hold it any longer.
Lancelot collapsed to his side, just catching his own weight with a frozen stiff hand to hold his body up. He took his first laboured breaths in far too long, trying to depress this lancinating ache within the back of his head, and he didn't have to guess why it was there.
Ari was by his side by the time that he had landed and held him before he fell. He didn't flinch at her hand immediately on his shoulder, and leant into the touch as it moved across his back. A tingling like the dusting of a feather across her skin spread across her unwrapped palm - embedding itself down into her bones. His power, his magic - she could feel it like she feels that in the earth around her.
Beneath the hood he kept his face hidden, those beautiful eyes locked away while he tried to breathe.
Exhaustion was a teething pain which Ari wished that she could tell him would eventually go away, but she couldn't. No matter the complexity of a Fey's power, they were still a burden on the untrained body.
"Its okay, Lance," she tried to soothe him, rubbing her hand between his shoulders. "Its okay, you did well." She wanted to be so much closer. To wrap him and hold him completely in her arms but she resisted, forcing herself to not crowd him.
Lancelot let the queen of the Fey's authority on this calm him down - since he had no other choice. Opening his eyes to see for the first time whatever he had done. The embankment was sodden, mud slipping down between the grass roots and stones. And the river was nearly empty, except for perhaps an inch. He swallowed down to try and wet his scratching throat, feeling like it was being worn raw with each of his uneven breaths.
Slowly the waters seeped back through the ground and headed naturally towards the dredged out river bed. With Lancelot still recovering, Ari stepped down and walked across where the stream had been before it filled too much, using a rock to help herself out of the other side. She moved through the longer grass to peer down the horse-trodden path between the bushes, trying not to ruin Lancelot's hard work by leaving more tracks.
"It worked, they've washed away," she called back to him.
Lancelot nodded tiredly to himself, bowing his chin to his chest. He'd watched her leave his side, holding on with bated breath again for if he had failed. Good, that's good. He didn't want to take the risk of potentially leading their enemy right to them.
Slowly he rolled his slumped shoulders and sat up straighter. Then he got himself back up to his feet and wiped his hands on his cloak, but they still felt numb to the bone. And stiffer than they had been for a long time. It reminded him too much of diving into the River Wren - of searching for Ari's sinking body and feeling useless when he couldn't reach her. He shouldn't allow his mind to go there. Today, his powers had been under his control, and the plan had worked.
After she found her footing in the longer grass, Ari noticed that Lancelot was now stood in that same spot and was wiping his hands, his face low beneath his hood. He seemed perhaps in pain but she wasn't sure, knowing him well enough to know when he was masking his hurt. Today had been rough for them both, so maybe whatever was aching within him was not only in his body, but also in his mind.
The guilt of what they had done today was being pushed under all of her other worries for now. The Fey Queen couldn't afford to sit with that feeling whilst they were still in the middle of nowhere like this. Lancelot had not said anything of it but she knew that he felt it too, even when he tried to convince them both that he was immune to it all. Ever since they had met she had watched as he tormented himself over it.
Ari unwound her bind from her other palm, tucking the end in to the rest wrapped at her wrists before crossing back along the almost empty stream. Trying not to slip down the embankment or up the other side. It probably wouldn't take too long for it to fill back up once more. And if it rained today then the trail would be washed away again anyway. Despite her efforts, her boot did slip in the mud but a hand clutching her outstretched wrist caught her, and pulled her back up onto drier land.
Their eyes had snapped and met. Heartbeats both spiking at the near miss of an accident. Ari chuckled it off and Lancelot felt her move to him, and then she was stood at his toes. He was tired and weary, and drained like the empty stream. Understanding now what she means when she speaks of the toll of Fey powers. She turned his hands to face palm up to the sky and then her own too, placing hers above his like she had once done, long ago. He knew what she was going to do.
"Here," Ari said lowly, and not a moment later kindled the flames from her palms. They lit the faded white lines of scars across her skin - those memories no longer tormenting her as much as they once did. Glancing to him, she flashed a delicate smile - "To warm your hands." They might as well have been frozen like ice when she had taken them.
He looked at the balls of flames, how they were hovering above him as she slipped her hands away. He had almost forgotten that she could do this, and still it mesmerised him - the fact that they were hot but not burning his skin. It took a few seconds but Lancelot felt his hands warming through again, his fingers not feeling so numb. He thought back to the first time she had lit a flame for him this way. A physical one and not just the one in his heart.
"That evening feels such a long time ago," he said quietly, reminiscing that moment within the one of the many forests they've ridden through. It was when he had realised that he felt different when she was near than when she was not. He had felt the flame of want and care and need and desire literally form between them.
Ari smiled without realising it at the cloud-like softness in his voice, a contrast which always perplexed her to the way that he was. Threatening yet gentle, and stoic but loving.
"It is," she agreed, allowing this calm which was settling. She kept her eyes on the pair of flames and watched him turn his hands, playing with her gift like Squirrel had done that night - though much more carefully than the child did do. Who they were to each other back then felt so far removed from where they found themselves now - one unable to think of living without the other.
"So much has happened and changed," she said, adding - "except one thing."
"What's that?" Lancelot asked, watching as her eyes came up from the flames. Her gold delicately touched by the light of the embers.
Ari flickered a smile on her lips. "I'm still stuck with you."
Lancelot felt not just his hands warming, but his heart too. He smiled with a soft sigh but tried to resist, casting his glance away to the forest. "Is there someone else who you would rather be 'stuck' with?" He asked, uncommonly playfully.
"Nope. You'll do." Ari couldn't resist grinning at him for a moment. She was content with him in every way except for their circumstance. That they would both be shunned if people found out.
The brightness of life came back to those blue eyes, calming down their storms and he looked back down to her from the corner of his sight. A small smile playing on his lips. Lancelot found himself missing this airiness and whimsical conversations that were not about death or risking their lives. How things once were before they crossed the bounds of simply a queen and her guard.
He did not believe in luck but he believed that it was no accident that it was her camp that he rode into with Squirrel that day.
Ari held her hands above the small flames, and in a moment as her eyes glowed brighter - almost unnoticeably - she diminished them entirely. A thin dusting of ash fell to his skin but she brushed it off. If he wanted her to, then she could help use her power to ease his tiredness as well, but it would delay them further in leaving this place.
Within this almost silence of the forest, she caught his hands before he lowered them - swiftly raised them between their bodies and kissed his knuckles. His hands were warm once more, and her lips soft.
The innocent touch never failed to make Lancelot falter. A fluttering somewhere within his stomach that lay dormant when she was not around awaking itself. He wasn't worthy of it - to be hers.
"We need to keep moving," Ari said while she lowered his hands and let go, turning herself to head to Goliath.
"Ari-" Overcome with an urge, Lancelot plead her name and turned her back, palms raising to her cheek and her waist, brushing her cloak aside. He pulled her gently back to him, bringing his face close to her own. Their lips touched softly, like it was the first time all over again.
Ari unexpectedly found herself being held so lovingly, his hands just asking for her to stay with him. She raised her chin, deepening this sweet, sudden kiss. Their lips pressing together and the world in harmony again after such disarray. Winds hushing their lullabies up in the tree tops.
Relaxing his shoulders, Lancelot sighed and withdrew when it was right, keeping his face together with hers as he wet his lip.
Savouring the moment for just a little while longer, Ari kept her eyes closed. His breaths like the touch of ghosts moving over her nose. There was no limit to the number of times that he could kiss her, and she would never have enough.
His gaze drifted over her face, studying her eyes as they flittered open. One day he would see that she was happy. That the kingdom was safe with her at the helm and she had everything that she deserved and more. Because that's what you do for the people you love.
Lancelot wiped his thumb across her cheek. "Now we may go."
~
Again they mounted Goliath as they had done before and began their route to head home, staying off the main road and riding parallel to it within the forest. Ari settled in front of Lancelot in the saddle, letting him take the reins again. Warmth pressed to her back where she rested against his chest - and it was comfortable, the two of them together like this. Her sword and dagger rested across her thighs, the belt wound around the scabbards to make it easier to ride.
There had been silence between them for a while when Lancelot started to wonder if something was wrong. He could feel her deflating into him and he did not think that it was just her seeking warmth, but something else.
"What is on your mind?" Lancelot asked gently, lifting his hand from his thigh to touch her arm.
Ari played with the thick wisps of Goliath's coarse mane, using the poor creature as a distraction from her mind. But Lancelot of course knew that something was twisting within her thoughts - he always did.
"I was wishing for a bloodless war," she said after a few more steps, barely hearing herself speak. "Seems I've failed at that already and we haven't even begun." All those guards that they were leaving lifeless behind them may have just started it. Every other day she felt like her decisions were putting cracks in her crown. It would only take time until it crumbled from this pressure.
Her dejection was not masked at all and Lancelot wished that there was some way more that he could help. "It was either them or you," he reminded her. "Wicklow was never going to have let you leave alive." As convincing as the Abbot may or may not have been, Lancelot knew that that was the truth.
A part of Ari wished that he was probably wrong. But if the Trinity really were not going to have hurt her, then she would not have this nick across her neck or a crack in her brow. She stopped running Goliath's mane through her fingers, and just sat as the horse lulled them from side to side.
Lancelot did not wish for her to sit in silence. It concerned him when she did not speak - for he knew that her mind would still be turning. He nudged her arm, but barely so. Voice smoothening out with his husk - "Burden me."
Today had reminded her of their last bloodbath - a battle which they had won but still lost many of their own fighting. It had felt easier to raise a blade to the Trinity. Not physically, but as if she were killing a deer and not a human. Their masks had hidden their faces, some of which were jangling in the sack tied to Goliath's saddle over his rump. Faceless men did not make a guiltless crime. But it did make it easier - and that scared her. Like her conscience had just drifted away.
"I still see the face of the last boy that I killed at Rea's," she said, her voice cracking. She stared up ahead through Goliath's ears, not really focussed on anything at all. "I didn't even realise what I had done."
She had told him this before of the Dagger and that day - said that it hadn't been her who killed the Paladin. And it is where Lancelot thought that she was going to go next, if she spoke again. He had seen her throw the blade - even caught a glimpse in the corner of his eye of the runes illuminating gold.
Ari thumbed at the scabbard of her shorter blade across her lap. "The Dagger glowed earlier," she said, feeling a shiver from purely mentioning it. "But it did not take me." Its magic had not flooded through her like it used to in the beginning. She could not say that she felt the obvious and draining darkness in her veins, though - "Maybe I'm just becoming a part of its darkness? So much that I don't feel it any longer." Whatever great plan was at work here, she wished that this was not a part of it, pursing her lips in a hard line.
Lancelot heard something more than that, and his heart tugged at him to comfort her. "You are not corrupt, Ari. I would know." Circumstance had forced her to be ruthless today to defend herself, that was all. There was no darkness taking control of her. He would see it in her eyes if there were, and he saw only her and her grace and her affection when he looked in their goldness.
"Perhaps I have corrupted you to blindness, in the way that you were taught that women do," Ari said, a hint of a tired smirk pulling on her lips.
Lancelot exhaled sharply and it almost sounded like he laughed, inclining his head to the forest. "I was damned a long time ago."
He said it so lightly that it was amusing. The two of them, playing with the tragedy of their lives like children with string.
Lancelot wondered what would happen if they simply turned a left instead of a right. Who would know if they did not return and rode off towards a new life? Never to be found. He wouldn't have to be a disgraced traitor and she could be free from the weight of her crown. Anywhere along this road - they could stop and turn back. He ached. God, he ached to just be completely free.
So he made sure to hold her close, wrapping his arm around her waist and cherishing being so near with only the forest to watch them.
A little while later, she tapped her fingertip to his knee, then traced a swirl - moving higher up and dragging out the motion.
"I miss being so close between your thighs," Ari confessed to lighten the sombre mood which had fallen.
Lancelot resisted twitching at where her fingertip rested, so dangerously high along the inner of his thigh. "This is not the ideal reason for why I would wish you there," he said. Riding with her was enough of a comfort, but riding her... he had to slow his thoughts which were spurred on by that maddening fingertip swirling along his groin.
Ari agreed with him, feeling how his thigh had hardened and tensed. She should not play with his body's reactions like this. Her palm ran back down his thigh beside her, settling further towards his knee. "We could stop again for a short while," she suggested, turning her face a little across her shoulder, hoping that he would understand what she was alluding.
As much as Lancelot loved the sound of that idea - "There were others who left behind me," he revealed rather mellowly. "They should have followed our trail by now."
It had been long enough since he left and the afternoon sun was clouding over. He had followed Ari by her scent and that pull in his veins to her that swells when his markings burn - so he knew exactly where to head towards. The others would not have been so quick, however. He had ridden out as soon as he had heard the bugle call through the camp, slowing only to hear what the Fawn had exclaimed.
Ari looked forwards again, a little disappointed. "Some other time then, perhaps?"
He heard the despondency - it was not the answer that he wished to have given either. Lancelot dipped his face to kiss her jaw as he squeezed his arm around her body, reminding her endearingly - "I am yours, Ari."
It was a promise that someday, they would be together again.
She covered his hand holding the reins, closing her eyes for a moment of peace. "At min, veri," she told him in a whisper, leaning back into his touch.
Lancelot's eyes drifted away and came back to her. "High Fey?" He questioned by her ear. She did not speak it too often, and Lancelot did not know enough to understand what she had said to him.
Ari smiled to herself, turning her face further to tuck her cheek against his - "And I, yours."
Lancelot was right, for after ten minutes of riding a small army bolder dashed their way along the trail - the Old King and Kaze leading at the front, with Arthur and others trailing not too far behind.
"Arianne!" Her father boomed when they came in sight. His magnificent white horse charging along the dirt road.
Ari breathed out in relief to see them, straightening herself upright.
Lancelot kept both of his hands firmly around the reins and nowhere else to keeps suspicions at bay. Facing those questions was not what either of them were needing today. He yielded Goliath with a constant nudge of his heel to come out of the edge of the forest and into the road to meet them.
"I am okay, no real harm," Ari said, loud enough for them to hear above the noise of thundering hooves.
Adrian's horse worked to an abrupt halt beside them, both of them breathless. "What happened?" Adrian pressed, worried eyes darting over his daughter.
"Father-" Ari thought that his heart may loose itself at any moment. "Calm yourself, I am okay. Lancelot found me in time but the Abbot was going to have let me go anyway. He just wanted to talk." It was half a lie but enough to reassure him.
"Of what?" Kaze pressed, her own horse halting nearby.
Ari did not want to stand around waiting in the road. "I shall explain along the way."
Adrian spared a glance to Lancelot, a silent 'thank you' as their eyes met. Lancelot let his face dip in return, needing no thanks.
__________
wc: 5.4k
I'm kind of proud of Lance and him commanding his powers, finally!! We hadn't seen them for a while. Ari gave him the little push that he needed.
THEY ARE SO SOFT WITH EACH OTHER
and tender together too awww.
Threw in a little more of high fey in there for you.