Drained and heightened all at once. That was how Persephone was feeling by the end of the day. A strong combination to be sure. One that required her to feel both completely out of sorts and low in energy, and another that had her nerves and skin tingling with activity. The entire feeling was foreign and unsettling. And she had firmly decided that she didn't like it.

At least she knew how to make sure she didn't feel it again: Don't have a romantic tryst pushed up against a trellis with your legs wrapped around a man, only to go and meet a different man you intended to be engaged to two hours later.

Good plan, Persephone. She chided herself.

Gods, she felt like a complete and utter idiot. As well as entirely mean and disrespectful towards the Lord Iason who, it turned out were perfectly kind, polite and handsome to boot. He was, in fact, the perfect betrothal candidate that his father had described him as. And, while Persephone was not one to make rash decisions and would be paying close attention in all of their future meetings to decide the arrangements and exchanges of any hypothetical, future engagement... if the man turned out to be exactly as he was coming across so far... she would be marrying him.

It was the right thing to do for her rank, her family and her kingdom - of that she had already been aware just from his familial situation and the heritage that came with it - but to meet him in person and have no contradictory observations to be made? That had just cemented the idea in her mind.

So, now she was left with an issue. One that she had been thinking on since she had retired to her personal chambers after dinner.

Persephone had written in her journal. She had sat staring into the darkening space of her room as the sun slowly set. She had paced. It was as she had gotten up to light the candles on her bureau and at her window, that her maids had come in to undress her and make her ready for bed.

As they worked, and her gown from the day was removed and her hair untangles from the pieces of gold ivy they had previously secured within her tresses that Persephone had come to a conclusion.

Her interlude with the gladiator would not be happening again. Of this, she was certain. She had already decided this, thirty seconds after the man's lips had left hers. It was simply an impossibility. Reality and responsibility would not allow for it. And as she was likely to never be within close proximity of the man again, it should be easy to avoid any natural inclinations to break that vow.

However.

The interlude itself had raised in Persephone the very real and very obvious revelation that she had almost zero knowledge of men, their bodies, the feelings they could exude from a woman and the communion married people were supposed to enjoy in order to produce offspring - heirs that she would be certain to have to produce.

And if Persephone was one thing above all else, she was a planner and a learner. She did not enjoy being out of her depth or ignorant of what she was supposed to do or know.

So, when her maids had finished dressing her in her long white sleeping gown and her hair had been braided into a simple and thick plait down her back, she spoke out to her head ladies maid - the only one she trusted so closely to be called and friend - and called her back.

"Amynta, would you wait a moment please?"

She said, before moving to her large four poster bed and settling herself cross-legged on its surface, her gown long over her knees and pooling out around her.

"Please - ensure the door is shut and then come sit with me." She entreated. "I fear I am in need of counsel."