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She was asleep. Her golden hair was splayed out over the pillow and she was lying on her back, hands on top of one another. Next to her there was a bottle of pills. “She's had trouble sleeping ever since she returned,” the Lord Marshal had said. “Those pills should help her doze off.” He sounded unconcerned when he said it, but Alternis knew better, had always known the Lord Marshal cared for his daughter more than he let on. Especially after everything had happened. He saw it in the way Braev Lee looked at Edea, his only daughter, his only child.
He didn’t want to disturb her, but the itch to touch her was too great. He was always doing that, always finding an excuse to touch her and at first she hadn’t picked up on it but it dawned on her later that he couldn’t control himself around her and she had accepted it like Edea only could to Alternis. He loved her, as infuriating and maddening as she was and she cared about him enough to let him love her. She'd never told him to stop, though she'd never addressed his feelings. In this way, he thought, she cared for him.
She would never know, he thought. She’d never know if he stroked her cheek now and so he did. He'd never be able to do this if she was awake. He slid a hand over both of hers and began to thread his hands through her golden hair, smoothing it over and marveling at how relaxed she looked asleep. When she was awake she usually had a scowl or a hardened expression on her face, a byproduct of being one of the only girls in Master Kamiizumi’s dojo. She’d learned early on that if she ever hoped to be taken seriously as one of the only girls she would have to look as though she wouldn’t take any crap from anyone. It’d been second nature to have this sort of resting face on her for a long time up until recently. Ever since she got back to Eternia, her face sometimes drifted into nothing, as if recalling worlds and places and emotions that did not belong to her. Her face would grow curiously blank, and when she woke up from that stupor her face was, more often than not, weary as if she'd just lifted thousands of worlds across her shoulders. She was always tired now. She needed sleep. And this had alarmed Alternis at first because Edea never needed sleep. But he slowly accepted her need to drift off, to dream, to sleep.
But she was in one of the deepest slumbers he’d seen now. He traced his fingers around her hairline, to the pointed bridge of her nose, down to her lips. He wanted to kiss her. The fairytales all said that princesses would be awakened by true love’s kiss, and Edea was nothing short of a princess. Alternis had no doubts his love for her was true. He leaned down, heart pounding, wondering if it would work, if she would somehow wake up but knowing it would be entirely selfish on his part if, by some miracle, she woke up. He shouldn't do this because he knew it wasn't something she wanted. She didn't want to wake up. He brushed his lips over her pale, cold ones gently, gently, then with a growing insistency, urging her to awake. Please, Edea.
She was a princess after all.
He nudged her lips open with his so that he might siphon the warmth of him onto hers. But it was no use. He was no prince.
And she may be asleep, but she hadn’t been breathing for several hours now.