Deirdre: No, go to sleep.

Claire: Who delivers the mailman’s mail?

Deirdre: I love you and all, but please go to sleep.

Claire: ...

Deirdre: ...

Claire: If a kid is bad, and wants coal, what does Santa do?

I glance to her, my eyes briefly catching the way her hair is caught in the wind. So unlike how she normally wears it; perfectly kept tied back in a bun. Now it flies wild and free. Like a flame.

“I’m to guard you,” I tell her, keeping my tone even. Proper. “To keep watch, Priestess.”

“Couldn’t you guard me better from my side?” She questions, cutting her step short to face me. A challenge. “What if someone were to sneak up close? And before you could get to me it was already too late?”

“If that were to happen then I am an incompetent guard, my lady.”

She laughed. And it was a beautiful thing how her smile lit up her cheeks. “Just come walk with me, Maia. If someone wanted to kill me, I’d know.”

She held out her hand. A question. An offer.

One I wasn’t allowed to accept. But who, out here, would know?

Keep your distance! It’s not proper, I told myself as I strode forward, taking the few steps to reach her. My warnings of little use as she grasped my hand.

“Good,” she said, turning back to the path. “Now tell me about yourself, Maia. You’ve guarded me for months and yet I know nothing about you.”

You’re not the only, I stop myself before I say it. “What’s to tell, my lady?” I ask instead, keeping the bitterness out of my tone.

I know nothing of my past. Of who I am. It was stolen from me.

“Well, your family? Where are you from?”

“They’re dead,” I tell her without hope for a better answer. For if I am here… whether they’re truly dead or not.. they might as well be. “I know not where I’m from.” A bit of truth. An offering for my soul. As the lies pain me deeply. Even more, the lies to her.

“Hmm.” She frowns. “You don’t remember anything do you? They took it all from you, Rissa?”

My brow knits itself together. “Rissa?”

She shakes her head, her frown deepening before she smiles up at me. “It’s nothing. I’m just being strange…”

I would swear she was saddened. The air between us thick with turmoil. A question. One that it would seem would go unanswered, for now.

“...Well what do they have you do? When you’re not guarding me?”

“I study with the acolytes. Though they don’t teach me magic.”

She nods. “They wouldn’t… unless you’re gifted,” she says with a toss of her shoulder. “Surprising they let you train with them at all. What’s your weapon of choice?”

“Sword.”

“Have you ever used a staff?”

“I… have,” I answer, wary of the newfound glint in her eye. If I didn’t know better I’d say she was being mischievous, plotting something.

“We should spar,” she smiles, true unlike the one before, “Sometime. If you’re up to it.”

I almost stop dead in the path, instead I trip over my own feet at the suggestion. Prim, proper perfectly kept Deirdre in a fighting arena. The Priestess doing much more than sitting in her library or meditating is something I can barely imagine. Much less with a staff grasped between her hands.

She laughs again, and I’m left to wonder how she can be the same person. So vastly different from the woman I usually guard, but then also just the same. “Are you alright?” she questions.

The man's grip on my arms tightened, and the stench of him burned my nose. He was stronger than I could ever hope to be. And I couldn’t reach her.

I sent pictures to her mind. Flowers blooming in the spring. A fox caring for its cub. I showed her how her hair shines in the sunlight. The glow of her face when she’s laughing. I couldn’t tell her I love her… But maybe she would understand.

Tears shone in her eyes, and I raged against my captor. Still I could not break free.

“Let her go,” she commanded. Her voice strong and unyielding. He did not listen.

“You know I can’t do that,” a voice called from across the room. “She’s a criminal. She’s plotted against me… This entire kingdom. You don’t honestly believe she actually cares for you, do you?”

“Take me instead… I can—I can help you. Just let her go.”

The king stepped forward into my line of sight, a wicked grin laced his features. “The seer… Offering herself to me? All for what… the pathetic life of this girl?”

The room was silent now as he made the last few steps towards her. And I couldn’t make a sound. I couldn’t tell her to stop this. I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t worth it. I couldn’t tell her to leave me and be free. I couldn’t stop this.

Once the king reached her, he took her head in his hands. That same cruel wicked grin plastered on his face.

Deirdre: What is it?

Clarissa: I like you.

Will the read more work this time??? Let’s hope so!!!!! 1243 words!!!!!

[[MORE]]

—

Deirdre was not in the room when Clarissa first woke up, having had to take a call. Instead Clarissa’s eyes fluttered open only to land on Castor, silent and brooding in the corner of the room. His back leaned against the wall. She grinned at him, “I guess I’m not dead, I imagine you’d smile in heaven at least.”

Castor looked up at her pushing himself off of the wall as she spoke. “There’s no way they’d let the likes of you through those pearly gates to see it.”

Her laugh turned into a cough as her fingers pressed to her side. The movements were awkward from her casted arm. “Mmm,” she grunted, her nose wrinkling from the pain. “You’re exactly right. You’ll have to come see me in hell then.”

“We can do family dinners on Tuesdays,” he promised.

She nodded her head before she caught a glint of gold out of the corner of her eye. The sparkle of several diamonds. Clarissa frowned, the pain from her wounds, and her banter with her brother momentarily forgotten. She pushed herself up to a sitting position with her broken arm. On her ring finger was a thin gold band, one large diamond rested in the center followed by a trail of smaller ones on each side. “What’s that?” she asked dumbly.

“Looks to me like an engagement ring.”

Her scowl deepened. “I know what it looks like. What’s it doing there?”

Castor shrugged his shoulders being purposefully unhelpful. “Maybe your girlfriend is trying to tell you something.”

Clarissa said nothing more, only frowning at the ring while her heartbeat pounded in her ears. “Where’s Deirdre?” she finally croaked. Her tongue felt dry and heavy in her mouth.

“She had a call, should be back soon. Want me to see if I can find her?”

She shook her head, studying the ring some more. Clarissa recognized it. Deirdre had worn it on a chain around her neck ever since her father had presented it to her at her mother’s funeral. It was something Claire had seen many times before. She’d seen it that first day. Deirdre dressed all in black as her father clasped the chain around her neck. And she’d seen it nearly everyday since. But never did she honestly expect to see it here, on her own finger.

“Why?” she questioned. Exactly what she wanted to know, well she wasn’t entirely sure. There were too many questions, not enough answers.

Castor crossed his arms over his chest, and he studied his sister with a raised eyebrow. “Aren’t you the one that told me you were going to spend the rest of your life with her? Three days after meeting her, if I recall correctly? You were a goner since the first knife held to your throat.”

“I was kidding… Mostly.” She shook her head again. “No, I wasn’t. I just… sometimes you know, right? Like a feeling. Like your heart goes, ‘yes, that’s my person.’ I always told myself that it wouldn’t work out. That one day she’d wake up and realize how much better she could have. But then we moved in together and I let myself hope that maybe we were it. And that I could have this. Could have her. And the first time she got dragged into Renegade business… The first time I endangered her I thought, this was it. This was when I was going to lose her. And I couldn’t blame her for it. She’d be better off, truly. But she’s stayed. She’s stayed through all of my bullshit—“

“Tell me this, just one thing,” Castor interrupted. “Would you be happy spending the rest of your life with her? For however long or short you have it. The rest of your life, who do you want by your side?”

Clarissa’s answer was short, spoken with shaky breath. But her tone was confident. She didn’t hesitate as the name spilled out of her mouth.

“Deirdre.”

He nodded, once. “Then put your mother’s ring to good use.” A silence fell over the room until Castor spoke again. “Your parents would love her, you know? Deacon too. I know you didn’t get a lot of time with them, but they didn’t have the same… prejudices Matthew and Evelyn have. They’d be proud of you, and they’d be so very happy that you found someone who makes you happy.”

Her tone was bitter as she replied. Cold. “You don’t know that.” It was all she wanted. To make them proud. To honour their memory. What little memory of them she had. Between her childhood stolen by the Collector and their death not even a year after she’d been found, she didn’t have much. Little more than fragments.

She remembered feelings more than anything. Their dedication. Their passion as they fought for the Revolution. Their love. The relief they felt at getting to be a family again. But she’d never gotten to know them, not really.

“I do, actually.” His voice was unusually gentle as he spoke. “And I know they’d be proud of you.”

——

Deirdre slipped back into the room quietly, trying her best to shut the door without a sound. She hadn’t expected Clarissa to be awake yet, thought for sure that she’d still be sleeping off the effects of the anesthesia. But there she was, sitting up in the hospital bed with a pained smile. Castor had left a few moments before, wanting to be out of the room before Deirdre returned.

“Are you sure?” Was all Clarissa asked as Deirdre walked further into the room. She had Deirdre’s ring pinched between two fingers as she held it up and into the light. With her other hand the blonde twirled her own mother’s ring around her thumb. “Cuz I mean, I put this back on and you’re never getting rid of me. I hope you know that. This goes on and you're stuck with me. And my madness. And my schemes. Probably forever.”

“Just put the damn thing back on, already.”

Claire grinned before holding the ring out. “You do it.”

Deirdre rolled her eyes a bit, but nothing but love shone from her expression as she took the few steps to Claire’s beside. She schooled her expression as she took the ring from her beloved and sat down on the edge of the hospital bed, and with a painstaking slowness she slipped the ring onto Clarissa’s left ring finger.

“Perfect! The deal is struck, and I’m your problem for the rest of our lives.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Clarissa nodded while grinning widely, not even pretending to be offended. “That’s fair, but that’s your problem now isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is,” Deirdre sighed with a matching grin of her own. “A shame really, because I had hoped you were my problem before.”

Clarissa pulled Deirdre down with her good hand just as the redhead started to lean down. Their lips met in a slow kiss, and Deirdre smirked against her fiáncee’s lips as the heart monitor beeping sped up ever so slightly. With her free hand, the one that wasn’t currently tangled in Deirdre’s hair, Clarissa fumbled with sliding her mother’s ring onto Deirdre’s finger. She silently cursed her cast as it took longer than it should. Such a simple thing. A small thing. Packed with so much meaning.