Chapter 273

After tracking down the nearest servant and requesting that her door be fixed—offering a simple explanation of ‘Elodie’ to the instantly-understanding woman—Rosalie headed for Astrid’s room. While she was an honored guest, she hadn’t been put in the royal wing itself. Rather, a different section of the estate reserved for esteemed visitors. The same place Zoey and Delta had been initially thrown, and which Sabina and Aria were still staying in.

Astrid was thankfully inside, so Rosalie wouldn’t need to hunt her down. The door swung open, but it wasn’t a fully dressed—much less armored and alert—Astrid that met her. Instead, it was a softer-looking, bleary-eyed, hair-mussed Astrid wearing baggy pajamas. Her facial war paint was worn and smudged. Did she not clean it off at night?

She had woken recently. Was Astrid someone who slept in when she had the chance? Rosalie wouldn’t have assumed so. The domestic sight took her aback more than she thought it would. Thus far, they’d interacted almost entirely as professionals—which had been the source of her self-doubt on whether she was the best person to check in on her.

When Astrid saw who her visitor was, her green eyes widened and the sleepiness wiped away in an instant. “Lady d’Celestin? What are you—” She cleared her throat, straightening her posture out. “You need something from me?”

“No, no. Just came to see if you’d like to join me at the training facility. I didn’t expect to find you, ah, indisposed.”

Astrid hesitated. “Went to bed late. Took time to ... fall asleep.”

“Ah. Yes. That’s reasonable, considering everything. It was a long shard, too.”

Astrid paused, then grimaced slightly. “She told you.” She shook her head. “Of course she did. Teammates. Lovers. Don’t know why I—never mind.”

Rosalie glanced down the hallway at the word ‘lovers’, and Astrid winced when she noticed.

“Sorry. Is secret, I know.”

“It’s fine. If you’d like to keep resting, I understand yesterday was a long day. I merely thought you’d ... wish to speak? Perfectly reasonable if not,” she hurriedly tacked on.

“No, no. Can join.” She rubbed an eye and glanced at an open window, wincing slightly at the bright light. “Is later than I thought. Didn’t mean to sleep this long. Give me ten?”

“Of course.”

The Harkvalen warrior emerged ten minutes later, as promised, in a much more familiar form: in fur-and-leather armor, war paint renewed, no longer sleepy or soft-looking. The contrast between the two images made Rosalie, without intending to, look at her differently.

They made their way to the training facility and into a private room. Conversation stayed professional; they discussed yesterday’s shard and what their training goals were for today. Other idle topics too, like how Elodie had made her re-appearance, and that Astrid should expect a run-in with her—perhaps even an interrogation, seeing how Astrid was Rosalie’s teammate. Even Astrid had heard rumors about the eldest d’Celestin sister, and Rosalie confirmed most of them.

Elodie didn’t have a negative reputation, but mostly because her sheer prodigy outweighed her less appealing traits. A person who abandoned their duty wasn’t well loved by the public, but the public respected their protectors—and Elodie was shaping up to be a prominent one. Already, she was sixth advancement, one of the youngest in known history, and should war come from the Striders or elsewhere, she would be no small asset.

Not that war seemed likely; borders had stabilized in the past two decades. If Father or the Muse—the Guildmaster of the Striders, Celia Harrowgate—hit ninth advancement, thus shifting the power balance, that might change, but that didn’t seem likely in the near future. Or far future. Ninth advancement was something of legend.

However professional the conversation stayed through the trip to the facility and through their first spar, there was a plain undercurrent to their responses and behavior. It wasn’t just how Astrid would randomly flush; Rosalie too found herself inordinately embarrassed whenever her thoughts strayed to the upcoming discussion. Zoey had said she and Astrid had similar temperaments, and that was true in some regards. Astrid, though she was confident and blunt, clearly didn’t view sex with the same level of casualness that Delta did. Even Maddy had been more open, for all she probably blushed the most out of them.

And Rosalie’s view on sex hadn’t changed much. Yes, her two girlfriends might be pummeling her into an incoherent mess every night, but she still found the idea rather scandalous whenever she thought about it. A part of her couldn’t believe she’d ended up in this sort of relationship. So, frequency of intimacy aside, Rosalie considered herself fairly reserved. Similar to Astrid.

Since they were in private, and an appropriate amount of time had passed—jumping straight into it had seemed awkward to her senses—Rosalie ought to broach the real reason she’d come and found Astrid. Yet try as she might, she failed to find a proper segue. Or more accurately, work up the nerve.