Doves and Peacocks

This was not at all going the way he had planned.

Two weeks ago, Aleigh had begrudgingly offered Ruthenia the seat beside him at the wedding, for no reason other than that he had owed it to her for saving his mother's life.

Of course, he had rued his choice the minute he'd had more time to think about it, but there was no going back on his offer. Not when so much rode on it.

Sitting and pacing restlessly in the entrance hall before the function, he had been preparing himself to battle her stubbornness to right some grievous omission in her grooming or her manners—to pull her aside to teach her the proper greetings for each of his relatives, or to have her switch her shoes into a more respectable pair. That was not because he thought her incapable of managing on her own, but because of an almost ironclad certainty that she couldn't care enough to endure the tedium of such social niceties.

After all, this was Ruthenia "Bullies Teachers for Sport" Cendina, Ruthenia "Wronged by the Diarchs" Cendina, with whom his conversations had largely consisted of her sneering at him—the Arcane Prince of Astra, no less. And she was here on a mission for her boss—nothing that would require her to so much as pretty herself up and learn the appropriate honorifics for every official.

For these reasons and many more not listed, he would have called it an admirable effort on her part if she had showed up dressed in anything other than her usual ratty shirt and rolled-up pants.

So, when at first Aleigh had noticed an apparition in red gliding towards him from the gates, and when that apparition—all aglow in chiffon and silk—had become just recognisable as the classmate he'd been awaiting, it had taken all of his years of training in etiquette not to show on his face how he had felt: like the entire world had turned on its head.

It wasn't until Ruthenia had opened her mouth that he was certain he had not mistaken the person in front of him for someone she wasn't. And in that familiar rough-edged voice, she had said, “Well, you're dressed up.”

You're saying that? he thought, though it left his mouth more politely. He'd never thought to imagine Ruthenia in a dress, let alone one quite so...startlingly red.

As it went, she would go onto surprise him with just about every one of her actions that evening. Ruthenia, it turned out, needed no teaching at all. She knew every honorific, every gesture of deference for every member of the royal families. She made conversation with the Archbishop and the Ordinary King, neither of whom left with any less than a smile. She had learned to dance the Helika Waltz, and the ones she hadn't, she picked up by watching.

All at once, Aleigh was being forced to acknowledge something he had never deigned to before: that he had direly underestimated her.

He had thought she would bring her street manners to the palace—and to be fair, she had, at least when Aligon had tried to corner her—but she put on a performance worthy of any Arcane, perhaps even better than someone who had grown up immersed in it. She adapted soundly to the unfamiliar niche, but it couldn't possibly be because she enjoyed it. No, she had put in all that work because she cared about the people whose fates depended on her showing.

These thoughts fleeted across Aleigh's mind as they twirled on the floor hand in hand, her dress billowing around her. But with each step and sway, those musings were swept away by the more pressing anxiety of another dawning awareness—that her dress so flattered her hair and complexion, that she could leap to the tune of the Helika Waltz with such unbridled delight—that she, rude, rough Ruthenia Cendina, could ever be so pleasing to gaze upon, and that he should be the one to dance with her with all the world to see…

No, no, none of that. He could allow no such nonsensical thoughts to develop, not about Ruthenia. Anyone else would be a more acceptable subject of these ridiculous fancies. She was a free spirit, a decider of her own destiny; she would never lower herself to accept all the laws and bindings of some coy courtship ritual—particularly not from someone like him, the Arcane Prince of Astra, no less…

Aleigh blinked himself awake from that ruinous trail of thoughts to find that his pulse had started racing of its own accord. But of course, they were dancing. It was no more than that. The exhilaration of the swelling music.

When Ruthenia next spun around to beam at him, his resolve to believe that lie crumbled somewhere in the glistening of those bright brown eyes. And his heart kept racing traitorously each time their eyes met, and each time the thrill rose to cloud out more of his senses, and he began to hold her just a little tighter—belligerent, rebellious Ruthenia—because he knew this would be his last chance to do so.