@deliratio from your open!
Ysabeau did not resist the pressure of his hand, though the force of it pressed her deeper into the cushions, pinning her in a way that would have humiliated a lesser creature but humiliation did not touch her. Instead, she lifted her gaze to him with a cool, unbroken steadiness — the kind that made even the apprentices shift uneasily in their seats.
Her lips curved, the faintest suggestion of a smile — not warm, not apologetic, but edged with something ancient and dangerous. "And I told you," she addressed, voice soft enough that the apprentices had to lean in to hear, "that I am breathing, not squirming. If you wished for a statue you ought to have carved one" She only pretended to breathe so the young ones under their master's gaze would not be terrified.
"You asked for a living subject. I am very much alive." Pretending to be.
A few of the apprentices exchanged glances. She ignored them.
Her voice lowered, intimate but carrying easily through the vaulted room. "What troubles me is not your painting but the atmosphere.” Her eyes flicked — just once — toward the watching students. "Your apprentices stare as though waiting for me to break." No, they watched the way mortal eyes always watched what they could not fathom but she could not speak freely. Phillipe was in distant shores waging war, a portrait would remind him to come home to her safe...maybe.
"If you want me still, Marius, then dismiss them. Or paint faster."Her chin lifted a fraction. "But do not expect me to lie here like a docile ornament while half‑trained children gawk at me."
She was restless worrying over Phillipe and his religious war. Call them clans, call them covens, he named them all enemies, took their sons and send word only sporadically the way commanders write to their stewards that tend their estates but of course she would not speak her worried heart to a room of children.
