'Finally, some room to breathe…'
Tia found herself in quite the confusing situation.
On one hand, with her guards now off to pay her respects to the local lord to stay true to the noble protocol, she was finally free from their oversight. And by all means, she ushered in this sense of freedom that came with it, enjoying every passing second of this unexpected blessing.
On the other hand, though…
Tia slightly raised her chin, stealing a glance at the man escorting her, whose arm she held onto in a princely fashion.
'To think that monster would turn out to be that 'pitiful prince',' she thought, only to then actually rest her weight on Theo's arm when just thinking about it made her light-headed.
The story of the so-called pitiful prince was quite commonly known among the nobility and especially within the higher ranks of it.
The young prince with considerable talent born too late to expect any real support from the royal family. A pitiful reject who ended up a mere political prisoner in some insignificant sect at the very fringes of the kingdom.
His situation was so bad, the rumors of his unfortunate death became almost a routine, sparking up every year or two only to be relegated as merely a secondary topic of conversation.
And yet?
Here he was, confidently strolling through Vistra's streets after performing a feat he shouldn't be able to and wielding techniques no one ever heard about before.
'What happened to you? How did you come to learn to wield spiritual energy in such an unorthodox way? What are you even doing in this town?'
Tia's head brimmed with questions she wanted to ask. Yet, whenever she even attempted to open her mouth to do so, the futility of such a task forced her mouth to close.
What happened to you?
How could she ask something like this, when she was just one of the endless nobles who never gave two shits about his fate before?
How did you come to wield such unorthodox techniques?
What reason would Theo have to reveal something like this, when he clearly didn't want to be seen when he performed those unorthodox arts?
What are you even doing in this town?
How was that any of Tia's business?
Torn between her livid curiosity, Tia found herself unable to speak a single word ever since her escort left.
'How do I even start a conversation, when the last we talked was like ten years ago, at some random ball back in the capital?' Tia gulped down her saliva, her body alternating between tensing up and then fully relaxing to the point she struggled to keep herself upright. 'No, even after starting a conversation, what would I even talk about?!'
To panic like that… was not like Tia.
Normally, she would be perfectly fine in any kind of social setting, thriving in the palace's corridors just as well as she would in terms of her cultivation.
But right now, she wasn't in a palace or even a noble abode. Instead, she was out in the street, surrounded by commoners giving her puzzled and curious looks, with her hands wrapped around Theo's arm as he escorted her towards the highest-class inn in the town.
Then, a realization came.
'Was all of my socialization up until this point… all fake?'
Conversing about the current fashion trends, discussing the recent political developments, even arguing about policies her father disagreed with or praising the ones that favored her house… When it came to those, Tia excelled like no other. Yet, when it came to having an actual conversation about a topic not rooted in politics or diplomacy, she suddenly found herself to be… empty.
"Alright, we've arrived," Theo spoke out, forcing Tia out of her messy headspace and back into reality.
"Wha… Huh?" She jumped a little, unprepared for such a sudden end to the trip, one coming too fast for her to gather her thoughts or figure out a way to jumpstart a conversation.
How was the prince, deemed to be an unfortunate failure of circumstance, now a master of techniques the world had never seen before? What was so important for him to use those techniques just to get to the city faster? What was the underlying principle of those techniques of his?
So many different questions popped in Tia's head, pressing her to seek answers. And yet, rather than getting those, all she was getting was, quite literally, Theo's cold shoulders and the pressing stare that made it clear he wanted her to free it from the hold of her hands.
"We are here, at the inn you specified," Theo elaborated, even going as far as to point at the nice-looking building with his free hand. "And that means…"
"Wait!"
Tia jumped up, refusing to let the encounter end just like that.
'I was too desperate to find him, to figure out who he is, to figure out… what he is, to just let him go like that!'
Yet, as Tia struggled to come up with a reason for delaying the prince, he ended up rolling his eyes before pulling away anyway.
"What?" Theo asked, his voice growing a bit colder than before.
"I…" Tia hesitated, her arms grabbing at the cloth of her robe and then grasping hard at it, as if she wanted to go and flash her ankles at the man to stop him from leaving in a truly prudent, old-school noble fashion of courtship.
And so, overwhelmed with her passion for the answers and complete lack of ideas as to a proper excuse to make the man stay by her side for even just a little longer in the hopes she could find a way to ask him all about the things she wanted to know, Tia just mindlessly mumbled out.
"I don't know, okay! Just…" she gritted her teeth, her chin moving down as she pinned her eyes to the ground and clenched her fists so hard the whites of her bones started to show through the skin on her knuckles. "Just, don't go yet! I still have yet to…"
Over and over again, Tia failed to form proper sentences, speaking in halves only to then turn silent whenever she was about to say anything that bore the risk of displeasing or annoying the other party.
There was a part of her that feared the consequences of angering the monster in front of her, sure. But that was merely a relic of the past, from the time when she saw him as no more than an anonymous monster, unknown master of the arcane.
Now that she recognized him as that playful kid from back at the palace's ball, the unfortunate young man sold off by his own family as a political hostage, a cultivator exiled by his household to the fringes of civilization… Now that her perspective over Theo has changed, it was no longer the fear of his anger but his rejection that scared her away.
'What are you even doing, you stupid girl!'
Unable to deal with her own emotions, Tia transformed them all into self-aimed anger.
'Is that how a cultivator does things? Is all your strength just for show too, just like your social skills?!'
Gritting her teeth to the point her jaws started to hurt—a considerable feat given just how heavily the spiritual energy reinforced her body—Tia suddenly raised her head.
"Wait, good sir, before you go," she looked up and then locked eyes with Theo, this time refusing to just look away nor backing down a single step. "Could I, maybe, become your disciple?"