The Atonement of a Writer

18. Kindred Souls

"How interesting." She looked up at him through her eyelashes. "Is that your roundabout way of saying you'll fight beside me?"

He scratched his head. "Is that what you got from it?"

"It is."

He grinned at her. "Then you are half-correct. You're missing something else, though."

"Oh? What is it?"

"Hmm. It will have to wait."

That drew an incredulous laugh from her. "Why?"

"We have company."

~*~

Lili was really, really tired. She'd seen people ride for hours in movies--who would've known it would be this tiring?

Her legs and abdomen were cramping. Her back was killing her. Next to her, Clovis looked at ease, as if he was used to it--which he probably was. Or maybe male protagonists' muscles never cramped. After all, they wouldn't look good all hunched over.

She was really, really regretted not putting teleportation magic in the story.

"Are you tired?" A voice caught her attention. It was Clovis, who was gazing at her as though she was a fascinating specimen. It wasn't fair, she thought, that he could look at her like that, when he was the one who was the most fascinating specimen of a human being to walk on Earth.

(If this was Earth. Lili stopped herself before her thoughts could go down that road.)

"...No." She didn't want to be the whiny noble lady who complained on their first day.

Clovis grinned, as though he knew what she was thinking. She wouldn't be surprised if he did--he was startlingly observant whenever he was on the move, most probably because he was conditioned to be. Usually, however, he was quite dense, especially over emotional matters.

He glanced up at the sky, and called for a halt. "It's getting late. Let's stop here for the day and set up camp."

Lili dismounted gratefully. As the men behind her busied themselves, she found a log and perched on it. One of the perks of travelling with the army was that no one expected her to help. There was a part of her that felt uncomfortable just sitting around when she could be helping out, but tiredness won out. That, and she really didn't know anything about camping--nor was she expected to, apparently. Men.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Killian walking up to her. Before she could give it more thought, however, Clovis intercepted her vision and grinned as he handed her some water.

"Thank you, Your Highness." She accepted the water.

He shrugged, as though it was no big deal to him. She wondered why he was making all this effort to talk to her.

Clovis was surprisingly good company for a prince. At first, she'd been apprehensive, but he acted like their last meeting didn't happen, which she wasn't sure was a good or bad thing. She went along with it, since he decided to forget about it, bringing it back up now would make her seem unnecessarily annoying. It wouldn't do to annoy a person she was stuck with--she could slip in a few "lessons" in their conversations if need be. Perhaps she should've done this from the start. Annoyed, Lili sighed at the fact that she didn't have to go through all that trouble.

After the initial awkwardness, they'd hit it off pretty well. Clovis asked her all kinds of questions about different animals--apparently, he was an animal lover. This wasn't news to her, since Arielle and Clovis built their relationship upon a common love for wildlife, but that didn't mean Lili knew the answers to his questions. She somehow muddled through by keeping her words vague enough.