For a few moments, a grin graced her lips as she listened to his play on words. It wasn't every day that someone treated her like a normal person instead of the woman who could have them beheaded if they said the wrong thing to her. The playful content of the words only made him more interesting to her. If she hadn't known better, she may have even said the soldier was flirting with her. Even so, it ended almost as quickly as it began, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes. Very unladylike.

Her expression matched his, though, when he grabbed her bow from her fingers and snatched an arrow from the quiver on the back. Now, she was just fine with him talking to her like an equal, but she would not even let her own mother take those things from her. So where in the world did he come off doing it? So what if he could shoot? So could she, and he'd still basically called her... what was it? A pretentious twit. She could no longer hold her tongue. 

"Is that what everyone is to you? Twits? Idiots? Are we all below you? Should I be calling you, Your Highness, instead of the other way around? Because that's certainly how you act, so you must believe it. Please, tell me what makes it so that you are up in the heavens while the rest of us are still down on Earth." Her voice was dripping with sarcasm. Astora was built on equality, love, and freedom, and here he was pretending that he was better than the damned Princess? Just because he believed her job to be silly and the people she spent most of her day with to be stupid, it did not give him the right to judge her. 

Despite this, she was impressed by what he had shared with her. The plan was a rather good one. It would allow them to leave the castle inconspicuously. No one would recognize her if she was not dressed up, and no one would question that they did not belong if there were only two of them. They were bringing very little of value, so there wouldn't be much a reason for bandits, though she knew there were other dangers on the roads as well. Kiara, however, would never share her thoughts with the likes of him. Not after the things he'd said to her, and certainly not after his last comment. That was the one that struck her the hardest.

 [i]"If I could establish a truce just by fucking someone, you bet your ass I'll be all over that one a hundred times over."[/i]

The sentence rung in her head while she stared at him, looking as if she'd been slapped. He had no idea. How could he? He thought that her life was all parties and money. How in the world could he ever understand that it wasn't simple? Her voice was hard and angry as she spat out at him. "If you think that all I'm doing is fucking someone, you're more of a 'bumbling idiot' than you claim. Fuck. If that's all this was I wouldn't have hesitated either." She didn't even bother to apologize for her language. What was the point? He'd started it anyways. "You have no clue what it's like to be married, and even less what it's like to be a woman. How can you stand there and act like this is nothing? Like it's easy?" Here her voice betrayed her with just the slightest break.

She shook her head, trying to remember how it felt just staring at that target minutes before, but she could not. Why had she expected anything more from him? Kiara stormed off to gather her things without another word to him. 

No one would ever understand. Kiara knew this, and still she had been hoping that maybe he would. A silly hope. What she wanted was to be normal. To be able to shoot arrows as she pleased, marry who she wanted. God forbid she didn't want to marry at all. That was against her entire life plan. He'd never understand that she had been born and raised only to give birth to and raise her own children. For her country, for [i]him[/i], she was shackling herself to a man she did not know or love. A man who was their enemy and could possibly kill her in her sleep one day.

For that stupid ungrateful knight, she was giving up her home and her people and her freedom. And he thought all it was was fucking. Kiara decided right then and there that Ostus was delusional. That bit of playful banter they'd had at the very beginning? Well that was surely never going to happen again.