I wanna be a bottle blonde
I don't know why but I feel conned
I wanna be an idle teen
I wish I hadn't been so clean
I
think I startle her, and were it anyone else I surely would have found it funny.I blame her hair. It is so soft-looking even from where I stand, white as snow and princess-flowing, that when I see her head bob as she slips, her back legs sliding to meet the front, my heart does a funny little leap and I am just about to spring out and catch her before she catches herself.
“Hey!” I say sharply, at the same time she whispers forth a hoarse oh. The icicles capping my hair clink together like wind chimes. I grind my teeth together and my breath plumes out in clouds. She is like a cat that leaps into the air at a shadow! I'm certain that even mushroom-hearted Stolas wouldn't have fumbled so.
I'm not certain if I am more irritated that she could be so easily frightened — or that my pulse has yet to settle. Flinging my hair behind my ears, I drag myself out from the warmth of the sconce and go to her. She is the Commander's daughter, isn't she? One wrong fall and she could roll an ankle and tear the ligament, bench herself for weeks. Somehow this frustrates me further, and makes meeting her eyes of palest goldenrod easier.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I soften my gaze just a little when I reach her. Her voice, like her hair, is as soft as petals. “You didn't wake me. I came back late, but — don't tell your mother that,” I say, rolling my lip between my teeth. My circumstances are special enough, and my movements in practice today had been sloppy to the point of distraction. Goddess knows what the Commander thinks of me, but unlike with Calanthe —
A feeling I know to be unpleasantness claws up my chest when I think about upsetting Queen Marisol.
Her daughter, however, is a different matter. I can't help but think of Stolas, with his poorly-hidden distress and tucked-in smiles, and before I realise what I am doing I lean in towards her and blink at the red rimming her eyes. It can't be from slipping, can it? Unless she truly did roll an ankle, and then it would be my fault and if she tells her mother...
“Goddess,” I curse softly, glancing from what I can see of her ankles to her wide eyes helplessly. The light from the line of sconces fizzle to blindness down this stretch of the hall; I stare hard at the pale, curved angles of her face, before leaning back against the clammy sandstone wall. The words taste foreign and strained on my tongue, but I push them out anyway. “... are you alright?”
I don't quite look at her now because I'm not sure what I would say if she told me no, or even yes (worse, even, because she won't mean it). With Stolas I would tug his hair and sigh loud enough for him to know that I am disappointed, again, before herding him into his room and digging around his drawers for bandages. (Unlike my Blessed brother I wield none of his handy healing spells. I rely on tinctures and spite alone.) With Jorah, I wouldn't even notice.
Instead — the wings behind my ears flap like a butterfly's as my face freezes into a smooth-browed coolness no one has ever believed of me.
