I saw an idea on Pinterest and wanted to use it. Credit to the unknown person on Pinterest. I then adapted it my way, which was kind of completely different.

This was unacceptable.

Aravis Tarkheena sat silently waiting. Every minute her posture grew more rigid. She could feel the looks all around her, as she sat alone waiting for Karin to turn up. He had, after all, promised, to come and court her this evening, starting from the elaborate restaurant she was currently waiting in.

He was late.

Very late.

She had arrived promptly on the hour, where he'd said five past. It was now seventeen minutes past the hour, if the sundial was to be trusted. Every minute had ticked away with agonising slowness. Karin, she determined, was late.

What humiliation! To have the daughter of a Tarkaan, a lady of the Archenlandish court, waiting, for a man who was quite probably not going to come. He had seemed so in earnest when he asked King Lune if he could court her. And yet this was the first time, the first evening she would spend alone with him, and he had not come.

Her hands clenched until they were pale and firm. The carefully manicured nails dug into her palm and would probably leave imprints. If he came, and saw it, he would know. Aravis did not care.

At some point she had to give up, but not yet. Not now, when the stares were unbridled and sympathetic. Later, when others had learned to keep their eyes to themselves.

"Lady Aravis."

She looked up, forcing herself to move slowly to view the owner of the voice with careful detachment. She did not want to look desperate.

"My apologies for being late." Prince Cor seated himself carefully. "I was delayed."

She could feel the stares sliding away as the diners returned to their food. "Prince Cor, thy apologies are accepted."

"I thank thee," he said. Despite his long practise, he still sounded awkward, unfamiliar with the phrasing. In a lower voice, he said, "Karin will never enter my sight again, Lady. I shall not permit it. He is a beast, to have done thus with thee."

"I am sure he has his reasons," she said, swallowing the grief that rose within her. "But I thank thee, Prince, for rescuing me."

"That I shall do at any time," he said.

Aravis glanced up and met his eyes; they held something unfamiliar in them. She found herself flushing, and looked away. She was still angry—her hands shaking—at Karin, who had dared to be so disrespectful towards her.

"I shall never speak to Karin again." This time her voice was quiet with anger. "Thou need not be concerned by him, Prince Cor."

"Concerned?" His voice was higher than she expected, and she frowned. "I am not concerned, Aravis."

Dropping civility, were they? Well, he'd started it.

"That is well, then, Cor! I shall cast away the thought that thou wouldst be concerned for anything of me." She regretted the words the instant they came from his mouth, but he paled as if she had struck him.

"Aravis, we will take this conversation elsewhere," he snapped, standing rapidly. "There are others observing us." Without giving her a chance to object, he took her arm and pulled her out of the restaurant. "'Tis not a meet place for the one to be king, to meet his queen." His chest was heaving, lips tight and stance tense.

"His queen? What are you talking about, Cor? I never agreed to anything. Are you saying that just because you pretended to be the one courting me, you suddenly expect to truly court me?"

"Not at all! I think of what others will think, Aravis, as you ought to be too. I'm to be king," he abruptly dropped all the formalities as well, "and it appears, to anyone watching, that you are to be queen, since I am courting you in their opinion. It is not done! The ruse does not work, and all will know what happened tonight. They may not know of Karin himself, but they will know that I came to save you from humiliation. Especially since it has not been formally announced that we are courting!"

"You should have sent Corin instead!" She found herself shouting, and Cor pulled her further away from the restaurant. She fell into quick step beside him, returning to the castle as they argued. "He at least would be less likely to have such an announcement made before he began to court somebody. They'll know it's a ruse. Your—you coming was no use." Aravis swallowed a sob. "They'll all know."

"No, they won't," Cor contradicted her sharply. "Not if we announce that we are courting immediately, at the next gathering. It has been a sennight since the last, and perhaps they can believe we only began within the last sennight, thus waiting until the next gathering." "So you're going to trap me into it?" she asked, quickening her pace into a run. Gathering her skirts, she fled from Cor, the wind whipping through her dark hair and tearing the elaborate structure it had been put in to pieces, the promise and expectancy of the evening already ruined.

He caught up with her, his breathing still mostly even. "Not at all, Lady Aravis!" There was a note of something in his voice—desperation, she thought. "I merely posited a suggestion. Or it is possible they will see that we were arguing, and assume that it was broken off before it hardly started. Or that it was completely unconnected to anything romantic at all. We are known to be friends previously. They will think nothing of it."

She would have accepted it as usual and moved on, but he was not meeting her eyes as she was used to seeing. Aravis stopped.

"Cor?"

"What is it?" He stammered slightly, and to her surprise, flushed.

"You're not acting normally." She wasn't quite sure how to express it. "You're not… looking at me."

He turned abruptly, staring fiercely at her. Aravis caught her breath in surprise. His eyes were blazing, and his breathing was fast. "Now I am."

She swallowed and tried to say something, but it didn't come out.

"Happy?"

"Yes."

"Good." Cor spun again and continued walking towards the castle. "I won't let Karin bother you again," he promised her. "Unless, of course, you want him to."

"I don't." But she was definitely marriageable age, and still had had no luck in being courted. Approaching, that was, in Archenlandish concepts; if she went by the memory of her past, where she had grown up, she would have been long married.

Something that Cor, and Cor alone, had saved her from.

It wasn't cold, but Aravis Tarkheena shivered.

Cor turned to her again, slowing to a stop. "I was thinking, Lady, and thou caused the thoughts to rise in my head."

Surprised by his sudden formality, Aravis stopped too, and looked at him, faintly illuminated in the growing dusk. She suspected she herself was nearly invisible; all the better, for she had no idea what to expect of him.

"I was wondering whether we ought not to try to court?" A blush grew on his cheeks. "I have—I have enjoyed arguing with thee for these years, Lady Aravis, and if we were courting, and perhaps marrying, we could continue to do so—more conveniently."

With the last words, nervous laughter grew, and he was more like the boy she had once despised and grown to respect. She tried to answer, and found herself stumbling over the words.

"Perhaps, next gathering, we may announce that we are courting." The arguments of a few minutes ago seemed petty and silly; she had objected so indignantly to being caged by his kind action, and yet when offered she had stepped willingly into the very same cage.

"At least, we can give it a try."

He smiled in instant, hesitant response, and she thought it was the loveliest smile she had ever seen. "Good."

And it was the last word spoken between them for quite a while, and neither of them thought of Karin at all.

Only a little one, but I hope you enjoyed it! Please review and give me as much feedback as you're willing to give. Right now, as I expected, I'm still leaving everything longer on hiatus. I'm also… um… working on another story that may or may not be a long one-shot or a short multi-chapter story, oops. About Edmund and the rest of the Four, with a slightly different spin on the post-Narnia phase. It will probably be the next to post. Ideally, to be finished and posted within the year to meet my goal stated on my website, lemorganauthor dot wordpress dot com.

Anyway, please review, I hope you enjoyed this. I could have lengthened it, but I did not feel inclined so to do, so I stopped it… which may have made it a bit abrupt. Oh well!

The prompt, by the way, was something along the lines of, 'Your terrible boyfriend has stood you up. The rest of the restaurant is looking sympathetic. Right when you're about to leave, somebody you've never met slides into the seat opposite you and says, 'sorry I'm late, the traffic was bad', and at the end of the date asks you out for real.' I, obviously, adapted this to put on it a Narnian spin. What d'you think?