Daryl and his Kingdom girl.
He doesn't know her that well, but he’s seen her often enough around the Kingdom. Whether she’s in the gardens tending to the crops, ensuring everything with the cattle is in order, or simply walking through the bustling streets, her presence is something he finds impossible to ignore. That smile of hers—bright, unbothered, always there—is something he finds deeply irritating. In fact, everything about her grates on him: her laughter, which echoes like a bell, the way her hair slips free from her ponytail and falls delicately across her face as she works, even the way she seems so effortlessly at ease with everything around her.
The first time he hears Ezekiel call her "princess," he nearly laughs out loud, thinking how well the title fits her. But when she scoffs and rolls her eyes at the moniker, as if it’s the most absurd thing she’s ever heard, a fresh wave of irritation surges through him. The way she dismisses the title bothers him even more than the title itself.
After the accident on the bridge, when he decided to distance himself from everything, she was the last person he wanted to encounter. Yet, even in his self-imposed exile, he couldn’t escape her. The first time he saw her outside the safety of the Kingdom, his immediate reaction was confusion—what was she doing out here? He found himself following her, not out of concern, he doesn't care about her at all, but because she was close to Carol and Ezekiel. If nothing else, he reasoned, he could make sure she didn’t get herself killed.
But when he sees her hunting, a strange feeling knots in his stomach. There’s something unsettling about how capable she is, how she moves through the forest with the same ease and grace that he does. Damn it, he thinks. Now, every time they cross paths while hunting, she greets him with that same annoying smile that makes his blood boil. And yet, no matter how much it bothers him, he finds himself nodding back in acknowledgement, as if compelled by some unspoken rule.
He can still remember the first time they actually spoke. He had been tracking a deer for nearly two days, but just as he fired his crossbow, he noticed another arrow strike the deer almost simultaneously. His frustration surged as he rushed forward, only to see her emerging from the trees, heading towards the same prey.
"My arrow hit first," she declared, her voice steady as she approached the deer, now lying on the ground with two arrows embedded in its chest.
He rolled his eyes and scoffed at her audacity. "Ya wish," he retorted with a mocking tone, unwilling to concede even an inch to her.
