Work Text:
One:
( He loves you like you’ll burn if he touches you -
- like you’re kerosene and he has torches for hands. )
You are alone, as you have been for years, as you may always be. Alone even in the banquet hall, in a corner behind a royal banner. On a discreetly placed mahogany chair within a deep shadow. Perfect for eavesdropping, avoiding human socialization, and the loudest of the noise. Like the thundering footsteps of dancers and the spirited cry of a violin. Hot, intoxicating liquid swims in your gut, flammable and burning through the knots perpetually fastened there, the twisted barbed wire tearing you up inside. Still exhausted from last night’s patrol duty, you don’t pay attention to any one conversation, instead favor staring into your faint reflection of a cheap but shiny wine bottle with half-lidded eyes you ‘borrowed’ straight from the kitchen cellar. You pour it into your clear glass with your full attention until you aren’t, and your head silently jerks toward the familiar distant group nearest you.
“To possess a King’s love.”
Your fingers twitch around your glass stem when you catch the words from one of the ladies congregating around a wooden round table like the group are birds protecting a nest of eggs. One glance from your vantage point, and you see all they are doing is monopolizing a hoard of gathered liquor, standing in a tight circle to keep others from joining them. As a thief who took an entire bottle obscuring yourself, you won’t judge.
“What do you think that’s like?” Continues, unsurprisingly, a female soldier known as Karen Orsena the Bold.
Her slender back is half-turned to you, only her side profile visible. And even with her nickname preceding her — there are limits — so you’d wonder why she’s speaking so loud if she were not lifting a wooden mug and greedily pouring the entire contents down her thin throat in a handful of swallows, gorging herself — because a Soldier never knows when they’ll taste something other than bitter ale again.
Yet it’s all long since tasted like dust, ashes, and dry soil on your tongue.
Timider than he would’ve been in the past, Eric Wheelsman contributes at a lower octave, “It would be terrifying as he is, I imagine.”
“Terrifying? Oh, please.” You whisper. If they’d been around their King and his Aunt Tasha simultaneously, they’d know their scary, scary Monarch is a total softie with people he cares about -- until you threaten his people.
Eric is leaning against the table adorning a full olive-green mask that conceals the entirety of the burn scar covering a significant portion of his face. You wear a half-mask painted gold that someone shoved into your hands on your way to the celebration party. You didn’t protest since being inconspicuous among your fellow Soldiers is impossible with your infamous reputation and fiery hair.
“He’s not that scary.” Neo Tolz snorts, but his thick arms are crossed like a shield, and his eyes are darting around to ensure his comment isn't heard. You’re never surprised how he’s survived this long anymore because you realize cowardly cockroaches are among the most difficult pests to kill.
“You’ve never been in his presence for longer than a few minutes, or you’d know how intimidating and intense he is, Neo.” Amiru, Naval Base Second-in-Command, raises her nose down at him. Unimpressed.
Sitting on the bench behind Amiru now with her legs crossed, Karen’s rosy lips curve into a demure smirk that does not belong on her devious face, “If he is known for such intensity, I would like to see if it follows him into bed.”
A hot, tingling sensation, stirs between your thighs, and you rake your free hand through your rouge hair irritably, scowling at yourself or her, you aren’t sure. Countless people desire the King.
“Karen shut the fuck up!” Hissing urgently, Neo doesn’t hide his reluctance and fear this time, and you must force yourself not to shake your head as you attempt to focus on ridding yourself of your arousal. Focusing on them, the hint of jealousy for Karen you hear in Neo’s voice you hope is there.
Huffing a quiet disbelieving laugh, with long-ingrained elegant movements, you take another graceful sip and listen to your comrades risk it all. You don’t notice the presence approaching you on silent lethal steps as if a ghost, stopping beside you.
“Calm down, Neo.” Karen’s eyes give one big roll in their sockets, “I don’t care what anyone says. Being with a King would be rather glorious.”
Neo face palms and grumbles, “Perhaps during peacetime, it would’ve been, but now? Wedding him would put a massive target on your back. So will you shut up?”
Then, you catch a beautiful scent, subtle yet intense and close by. It invades your senses like you are dozing and falling into a sweet dream. The fragrance is more expensive-smelling than pure sandalwood, which is rare to find during the taxing war that has bankrupted so many —
“Isn’t part of this whole victory masquerade party so our King can find his Queen?” Amiru questions.
Something incendiary creeps up your extremities at a terrifying speed and blazes a violent path into your aching chest.
“Splendid.” Karen smirks, “I knew it was a good idea to attend tonight.”
“That’s the rumor, but the reliability of such a claim is doubtful.” Eric disagrees, and then he goes statue-still and stares over your shoulder like death is here to collect his soul, and, paling, he breathes,
“Everyone, quickly…bow.”
— Light erupts from behind you like a beacon, brightens up the area, and completely exposes your eavesdropping figure. Then, a pleasant and dangerous warmth radiates against the slope of your right shoulder, and the hairs on the nape of your neck stand on end.
You drank too much alcohol. You should have detected his presence. That scent should have tipped you off if nothing else.
You pivot around, and meet burning yet icy arctic-blue eyes — an imposing figure with a powerful aura in stunning formal clothing. A charming smile crafted to perfection on a handsome and irresistible face. Decorated with a gold mask that matches yours.
With a hard palpitation of your heart, your scarred hand strengthened by years of swordsmanship, clenches around the fragile glass so tight, the delicate object shatters in your grip, and razor-sharp pain slices into all your scarred fingers.
Agony ripples through your arm as chaos erupts around you, as wet bright crimson eclipses your swimming vision, trickles down your wrist, and the King himself calls for medical attention with two simple words — Priestess Cage — and a woman’s hands grab your broad shoulders within five seconds. She guides you away from the shattered glass on the chipped and now bloodied tiled floor, and Alberu Crossman follows you both out into the open air while your seething furious glare pierces him the whole way.
Two:
( He loves you like you alone can tear off that mask he wears -
- like if he lets you it will take everything he has to return it to his face. )
*
With fresh air, the fragrances of fruit, flowers, and various herbs invade your senses now that you are outside and possibly in one of the last gardens in the Southern part of the Roan Kingdom that has managed to upkeep its beauty and health without neglect. But you can barely enjoy it because the soft humid wind keeps carrying his cologne to you every minute or so, and your body hones in on it as if being lured into a trap.
“If you wanted to listen in on their nonsense, you didn’t need to stand that close to me.”
Your blood boils and you hiss like a cornered serpent from where you sit in front of him on a bench because Priestess Cage ordered you to remain there, and if you disobey she won’t help you remove the glass shards you can’t afford to remain and get infected. You are accustomed to pain now, but that doesn’t mean you revel in it.
The King exhales a soft breath, a sigh you think he reserves for you, whenever you get a little too drunk like you are now like you wish you weren’t because you loathe it when he has the upper hand during your interactions.
“That’s what you think I was doing?”
“Why sneak up so quietly then? You’re lucky I’m not as jumpy as some of your other soldiers.”
Cage’s eyes are like arrows, stabbing your face, observing you as if you are a strange exotic creature found on a continent the world hasn’t discovered yet, and you feel like you’re being teased, picked apart, and made fun of all at once.
“Just to clarify,” The King gestures in a circular motion toward your wounds as if the king has no shame when he is with you, “you are claiming shattering a wine glass in your hand is not jumpy?”
Anger spirals from the pit of your stomach, and heat burns your cheeks that has nothing to do with the wine, but you barely feel it within the sea of humiliation you are drowning in.
“I wasn’t startled.”
“Of course not,” The Monarch’s full lips quirk upward brightly, “Just glad to see me.”
You grit your teeth so hard, your jaw aches, and your words are a sharp bite, doing what he least expects, which is for you to drop the pretense in front of Cage. “And what if I was? Would it interest you, Your Majesty?”
Alberu’s smile dies away, his intense crystal-like gaze smolders down at you, but there’s no triumph in your heart.
No, heat stirs between your legs again instead and you burn beneath your uniform. As satisfaction and regret pour into your system in equal doses. You’re sick of this humiliating situation and even caring about what he thinks. You’re angrier by the moment every time you find yourself wanting to smile at him, and if the King wished to bend you over right here and now and use you to completion, you would let him.
The worst part is you know he can read your thoughts from your body language because he has learned to see through your lies. You’re an actor, a fantastic liar, but you aren’t the only one who has been doing the noticing.
“Cage,” The King addresses her, and you see how his throat is corded, veins sticking out on each side of his neck just above his collar, because you don’t do that, it’s unspoken you don’t.
“How much longer?”
She clears her throat softly, the atmosphere around her a mixture of awkwardness and reluctance to be within this strange tension with you and the King.
“We’ll be finished in five minutes, Your Majesty. I’m stitching his hand up now.”
“Heal him completely.” The King commands, and your lungs rise and collapse with a startled, disbelieving laugh.
“Ridiculous. I don’t need her to waste her powers—”
"Waste?" Alberu’s flaxen brow raises above his mask, tone darkening, before he changes his mind and says, “It wasn’t an optional suggestion.”
A cold bead of sweat rolls down your spine, following a faint shiver from the authoritative nature he’s spoken with. Which stars in almost all your countless fantasies. Your nostrils flare, and you tense as he lowers himself to sit beside you, and waits in silence. You don’t disturb it, because you don’t trust what will come out of your mouth. You tell yourself you wish he’d leave you here to your drunkenness, negative thoughts, to your wanting, but he doesn’t.
Of course, because he’s cruel.
No, his gaze focuses on your face, darker as if thunderclouds are gathering in his irises the longer he stares, and you hate him for it, because you can’t rip your sight away from the intensity of that gaze, and have never been able to. It binds you, it obsesses you, mesmerizes you.
Don’t look away.
“All done.” Cage says more quietly than usual, and Alberu nods firmly to her, a silent dismissal for privacy, without glimpsing in her direction.
Immediately after, the King reaches into a pocket of his beautiful formal frock coat, takes out a clean white handkerchief, and holds it out to you, likely so you can cleanse off the traces of blood staining your sleeve, that slipped beneath the fabric down your wrist. Your throat constricts, and that blazing path burns stronger.
“As the only person who cares that I’m stained with my blood, you should do it.”
“You should care,” The King locks his jaw. There’s a tick but you act as if you aren't affected, as you roll up your sleeve and show him your scarred forearm. His pale eyes trace the many old white and new pink abrasions on your porcelain skin. You’ve gotten the impression that he doesn’t like that you’ve been hurt at all, but that he respects you for it, and if he thought you any less beautiful, he wouldn’t hesitate so much to lay his hands on you.
Yet, he can’t pass up the opportunity to be gentle to you, either.
So he dabs your forearm with the handkerchief, checking for glass as he goes, so he won’t cause further harm, and you see the slight guilt in his gaze, because he’s the one who ‘startled’ you according to him, but it isn’t like he knew you’d crush your wine glass in your fist just because he popped out of nowhere, because he stood too close.
“I don’t understand how a King like you can worry about a bit of spilled blood from one of his foot soldiers, knowing what you’ve seen on the battlefield.”
The gruesome acts the King has committed himself.
“You know exactly why.” The King says, no bullshit, so clear and open that your figure tenses and freezes beneath his ministrations.
Without pause, the King carefully and gently wipes off another slick crimson line of blood, brushing the cloth tenderly along an indigo vein to cleanse it, but his skin has not touched yours once. Even as the atmosphere weighs heavier, even as his pupils dilate from your proximity as they always do, and his touch is getting slower as if he’s reluctant to end this moment between you two, this closeness. Until his lashes fan his cheekbones, and he draws in a deep breath.
And suddenly, you are lightheaded, blood rushes in your ears, molten fury pours into you, and you are fearless. “Did you have a victory celebration, partly to find a Queen tonight?”
“What?” The King’s brow furrows, and he lifts his head, his full lips tugging downward in a severe frown, “you actually believe their nonsense?”
“Hey, it’s a possibility. I mean, a political marriage would be right up your alley. You’d do anything for the Kingdom. Even sacrifice what you personally want no matter how much you want it.”
“Cale.” The King warns him, his deep voice dangerously low, and you observe him as tension rolls in his broad shoulders. Your body is heavy as if mercury has replaced all the water and blood in it because your exhaustion is coming back to you, but you fight it, as you’re fighting every instinct to believe his affection can really be yours, but he --
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the reason you’re terrified of me.”
“Terrified…” The King peers at you, his eyes narrowing to slits like you’ve lost your mind, “How dare you.”
“You’re saying none of that is true? Nor a possibility? If so, you’re a fucking liar.”
“Ha. You seriously want me to say it, Cale?” The King breathes, and there is an undercurrent of something you recognize well beneath the surface, an emotion stronger than rage, stronger than sorrow, and even stronger than pain. It started years ago and these last few months have been the hardest.
“Yes, goddammit. I do. I think I’m entitled to the truth by now,” You’re tired of being yanked around by these chains that bind you to him, and he with you. You need to break them, but you don’t know how to anymore.
“Entitled, huh? Here it is then.” He leans toward you instead of away, and your heart lurches in your throat as you listen, as you finally hear it, because you thought you knew the extent -- that it didn't go so far -- but you didn’t.
“I can’t even touch you without wanting to hold you.” His eyes aglow as if auroras, Alberu whispers harshly, dropping the handkerchief on his knee, and allowing his warm calloused fingers to encircle the now tingling, burning skin of your inner wrist that you have caught him staring at many times.
Just that touch, one lingering touch of his, you've craved so dearly, hitches your breath, as he observes your features, visibly more upset the more he sees the many emotions flashing across your face -- the emotions he inspires in you, he instilled in you, that he gave you without even trying. The worst part is he’s staring at you madly like you’re so beautiful he can’t stand it, and now the words are rushing out.
“That’s right. I can’t speak to you without missing your voice when I go. I want to see you every day. Talking to you feels so easy, so right. I desire to know everything you’re thinking. And whether you’re hurt or not, all I want is to take care of you. I can’t be in your presence without wondering what it would be like to stand by your side. That’s not terror, you bastard. That is torture.”
You gaze at him, chaos and a losing war raging in both your eyes, as he removes his fingers from your wrist. He brushes his face with one hand, glares, and finally begins to stand. You wonder how he can just walk away after that, and you don’t, because he is a creature of self-control.
But you aren’t.
So it is you who reaches for him. You who tears off his mask. You who explodes.
Forgetting that one must never demand things of Kings beyond their duty.
And this goes beyond either of your duties.
Three:
( He loves you like he will fight for you -
- even if it means fighting against you. )
*
At first, he doesn’t hold you back.
You don’t withdraw anyway. Your action is like boys who go cliff-diving into deep rocky waters at midnight. Like a bird attempting to fly with one unbroken wing. Throwing yourself into battle with a chipped cracking blade, because you can. You bravely believed in yourself, and you thought he’d smile with that pretty mouth of his and speak your name like a wish as he so often does. So you take the dive, you open your wing, and you throw yourself at him, expecting him to catch you.
You whisper,
“Alberu.”
— hold me —
You forgot there is also a saying that Kings are anointed by Gods, therefore the most blessed, divine humans. You’re an untamed beast he doesn’t keep on a leash out of pity. You’re a seething hateful monster who seeks bloodshed and vengeance like it’s your destiny. You risk your life more recklessly than most soldiers do.
The longer he stands there, the more you begin to ask yourself: Why you thought you wouldn’t crash, drown, or break your blade? When he reaches for you with one open palm outstretched in what you think is his answer.
You think that when his strong figure leans in, the space between you thins, and a sense of safety surrounds you. His intoxicating scent, like spiced rare and expensive incense, overwhelms you, and you hope for the first time in ages until you are sure you have been crushed by your own choices. And you think you’re rejected, as you’ve always been, sought to be by your own will.
Then, you are almost crushed to him by two strong arms, and he’s burying his face in the hollow of your neck, hugging you so close, neither of you can properly breathe, and your heart must have left your chest because it appears to have stopped. You tighten your arms around him and clutch at his frock coat, and you breathe easier, with this indescribable ease you thought you lost somewhere back when the Henituse Territory burned to the ground.
“Oh, ashes and death,” Alberu laughs softly, brushing his fingers through the silken hair along the back curve of your skull. It doesn’t even occur to you, what he’s done with his hands, how dangerous it is to come near them so closely. All you care about is that he’s pulling you closer like he wants to weld you together as if two sheets of metal, “I knew I wouldn’t want to let go of you, but I couldn’t have imagined how much.”
“Then don’t.” You murmur, “Because I can’t let go anymore, and I don’t want to, Alberu.”
There are several heavy labored heartbeats of silence, that slowly gains tension and weight and mass, and you know something is wrong before he says it.
“I’m sorry. You must, Sir Henituse.” Alberu gently releases you, untangling his fingers from you and your hair, his features smoothed out, his tone and apology - which he’s never supposed to apologize - are so disgustingly gentle, it makes you sick. You thought of digging your nails so deep, you hook him and reel him in, as he’s done to you. But you’ve failed. His too-handsome features, the face of a heart-breaker, withdraws instead. His aurora-blue eyes aglow with what you’ve never named but know exists and torments him too— know — “because you are my Soldier, and must address me as Your Majesty.”
The words scrape up your throat like venom, “I’m not your anything.”
“Yes, you are.” The King breathes, clinging to his self-control and patience you wish would collapse, “As long as you fight in my armies, that is all you will ever be, and as close as I can allow myself to get to you.”
“There is no law against it.”
“It is immoral, extremely power imbalanced, and taking advantage of my position.”
“All of that, and you still gave into temptation with one hug from your subordinate.”
“I forgot myself, that’s all, and now I have remembered who we are.”
You snarl at him, "You claim what you have with me goes against the morals of a man who has blown up thousands of people. As if you’re not as morally bankrupt as the troops who serve you and follow your orders, marching every day to their deaths and murdering in your name.”
“What about your pursuit of revenge? You’re on a road that leads to a dead end, leads to you gone and me left behind, and you expect me to follow you down it and watch you do it all in silence. Allow this to grow, while I play god with your life.” The King glares.
“If I could go back, I would have already. And even though you know all of this, you claim you want me. You’ve already failed to keep yourself from straying into this unethical territory.” At this point, you're shaking subtly with rage.
“Yes, I have. Yet, I don’t have to act on it. If you were working for a baker, for example, he can report you to authorities, but he can’t have you cropped at the neck. He doesn’t ultimately decide whether you are pardoned for a crime or not. I can have you executed, and I am the final judge in any trial. It is me who sends you to danger, and it is me who orders you, and I could see you tortured out of suspicion with a single command. Do you want to be with someone with that much power over you? Who wouldn’t hesitate to do any of those things if necessary?”
Neither of you have mentioned how you can be used against each other by the White Star because you both know that better than most.
You tsk, and raise your head, “You’re lying to yourself when you say you wouldn’t hesitate.”
“Are you sure about that?” The King whispers, his furious tone chilling, yet you still don’t stop.
“That you would do it? No, but you would hesitate.” You’re both gritting your teeth now, and your hands are balling into tight fists.
“Now you’re just being fooled by your own wishful thinking.” Alberu is closing himself off emotionally as best he can, you can’t let him. Time for your last resort.
“Then hit me, you bastard.” You smile at him in a mocking fashion, “Right now.”
“What?” A laugh of pure outrage slices through the King’s teeth, appraising you like he’s trying to figure out if he heard you correctly, because surely you would not ask this of him. Think again.
“You heard me. Try to hit me right now, or hurt me in any way with your own hands. Go on.”
“Look at every scar on your body from battle, punk. I don’t have to lay a finger on you to cause harm. I can have someone else do it. I can watch you go out to the battlefield and get hurt. I can live with it and still sleep at night even with everything I feel for you. So stop—”
“Then call someone right now, and have them hit me.” You sound insane now, and you know it. You look insane too considering the wide grin stretched across your pink lips, and Alberu is getting colder because you aren’t giving in. There is an icy fire in his eyes, and the way it burns at you makes you want to play with it.
“You think I’m incapable of doing that.” The King observes, voice lower, sub-zero.
“Do I need to attack for you to hit me?”
“You attack your King and you go straight to prison. No exceptions. And there goes your revenge.”
You have no intention to attack him. The Royal Guards will shut you down in an instant before you get close enough for him to strike you, and it will get in your way elsewhere.
“Then train with me, we’ll have an excuse for you and me to fuck each other up.” You chuckle.
“No. It’s not necessary, and I have plenty of people to train with, you crazy punk bastard.”
“Really? What about a slap? Those aren’t so bad.”
Oh, that one hit the mark.
Now there is glacial anger pooling into the King’s eyes like liquid nitrogen.“Where is your pride?”
Just the thought of hurting you with his bare hands, directly, is beginning to wear on him. Your asking for it has to be the worst part though, you showing once again, you’ll take pain to prove a point, to reach a goal. It maddens the King to know he’s part of your self-destruction anyway, but the King is nothing if stubbornly sane because he simply has no other choice until the White Star is dead. Neither do you.
“I didn’t lose it. It just changed a bit when you came into my life and made me different,” You say, leaning down, picking up and dusting off the handkerchief to fold it like a lucky crane, because you can use some good fortune right now, “but this has nothing to do with pride. I’m calling your bluff.”
You can feel his stare on your hands again, your pretty pretty hands you know he dreams of. The natural elegance, the King wishes to see if you can maintain if he has you. You know because expressions can be manufactured. Body language is poorer at subterfuge. But you can’t underestimate Alberu’s skill with both.
“That’s it.” Alberu chuckles, and covers his face in obvious exasperation, “I can’t leave you here, can I? You’re so intoxicated, I don’t trust what you’ll do if I let you back into my party.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“We’re going to my room. But make no mistake. I don’t agree with you, nor is this a reward for your awful behavior or mine. I just don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret further in your current state.” The King says as if the matter is final. You get the feeling, he is flaunting his authority in your face right now, so you get a good look at how it would feel to be with him, but never above him, never equal. Yet, you give him grief anyway, and you would have sober, too.
“Didn’t you hear a thing I said,?” You smirk at him like you’re ready, willing, even excited to have your teeth knocked in. Tough as nails, but inside — inside, you don’t want him to — “I’m telling you to prove you’re a heartless bastard, capable of hurting a man you claim you sincerely care about.”
The King sighs and faces him fully, and his impassive features melt, as if a block of ice, warmer, and you can trust it because he wears this around you more often than Alberu likes, “neither of us wants to prove it. You know it in your heart of hearts. I have no reason to hurt you so move on or shut up and follow me so you don’t wind up in a worse situation with no one watching over you.”
You clamp your jaw shut. Glowering at him with an inner light, eyes like live coals. “I don’t need—“
“Come on,” The King smiles brightly at you, a smile that can and will cut verbally, “or I’ll have Commander Shawn follow you around, and he won’t be happy he has to babysit you.”
And abruptly, your exhaustion takes over, and you are drawn into a distant dream, a memory from years ago, as your knees collapse beneath you, and you land in the King’s strong arms.
Four:
( He loves you like murder -
- because you are killing him. )
*
Years prior, you kneel on a mossy bank in wet mud and struggle to work dried blood out of the creases in your numb palms and stained fingers in a stream of liquid ice. It looks like ink and it is almost as dirty and difficult to wash out. In your haste, you chaff your skin, you rub it raw like skinned meat, but you must hurry before the disease can invade through the cracks, and slither inside.
The sound of a violin carries to you with the southern wind. Crystallized water glitters beneath the waning moon, but you are stripped of color. Painted a corpse-gray beneath its silver glow. An apparition, because you need to be one. Anyone who sees you like this sees your weakness and will pluck you out of your position as if an errant weed, unwanted, useless.
I told you he’s no good — they’ll say — look at him, he can’t stomach his own sins.
You are silent, but the stars are your witnesses, they mock you because you can’t escape their twinkling laughter even beneath the dark shroud of midnight. You hear them laughing, they pulse above you, living things, and you’re as good as dead if you’re found, retching at the gruesome sight of your own evidence. Static buzzes in your ears, the sound of numbness creeping in as if a fog.
Finally, your fingers are clean (not quite, not quite) you straighten up, you stumble away from your mess, and the air is stripped from your lungs as surely as a smothered flame flickering out of existence. Crouching down, you reach for your sword, only to remember it broke in half, right before you drove it between an enemy’s ribs.
Eyes like old whiskey rolling back, you wonder if this is fate, an eye for an eye, to be found when you least needed it, but then you realize with a gut-punching impact — the interloper did not move from their position, did not react defensively and you suck in a harsh lungful of oxygen, of relief, before vigilance grips you, an apprehension.
“Take this,” An undaunted deep voice, rich as poured gold honey, reaches out to you just as the man’s hand does with a white cloth folded neat and crisp between two fingertips, “it will help.”
But you’re in the dark and he is a shadow like one of the trees in the surrounding forest, menacing now for reasons beyond your crippling mind. Your head spins like a coin flipped loose on a table, “I don’t know who you are, but if you’re death disguised as kindness, leave me be. I still have a reason to live.”
“If I don’t?”
A curious cock of the shadowy figure’s head, and he takes one step forward, and you point your thumb over your shoulder in the direction you came stumbling from, as you swallow down bile, and as you prepare for the potential of more bloodshed. Your hands are primed to hurt now, experienced.
This brings you no comfort. You just can’t die. So he dies. Right — Father?
“I’ll dunk us in that river,” You tell him with feigned calm, through one drawled slur and a passionless smirk as the world tilts, and turns sideways, like the Earth has been tethered and suspended in place, and this dizzying fog overwhelms you. “but I’ll be the only one who comes back up.”
“You shouldn’t say that while you are falling.”
Whispers the man, as you do just that, and you just barely hear him say — safe, you’re safe — and vague faint laughter ricochets in your ears. It’s yours, and you go limp within the circle of two strong arms, lulled into the depths of slumber by a steady heartbeat.
You collapsed, but it was only briefly. Then you were walked to his room, and are being given royal treatment, apparently. King Alberu winds up personally brewing tea for you that is supposed to help with detoxifying someone from alcohol and curing hangovers. It tastes awful, but you’re drinking it because at this point, being drunk is no longer fun tonight. Alberu hasn’t said much, hasn’t asked you a single question besides how you are feeling, if you’ve noticed a difference from the tea, or if you feel sick. As if he’s avoiding anything of significance, for reasons you aren’t certain of. Yet being in his presence is not boring. You’ve spent much of your life in silence, and it almost seems like he has too for how comfortable he is in it.
“Are you tired enough to rest in bed?”
“I am not interested.” You tell him through a small yawn, “If you’re tired, go to bed by yourself.”
“This is ridiculous,” The King breathes, “you make it sound as if I was inviting — never mind,”
“What, it sounded like I was saying I intended to join you in your bed? Some assumptions you are making there, Alberu.”
“You infuriate me.” He half-growls and half-whispers abruptly.
You smile at him, softer than you intend. “You drive me crazy too, what’s new?”
“If I did invite you, it wouldn’t have been like that, punk. Sometimes you have an average amount of pride, other times your confidence is so inflated, I can’t believe you don’t explode.”
“Do you like it?”
“A little too much, actually.” The King lowers his teacup to the table and cocks his head to the side, raking his crystal-like gaze from your uniform upward, lingering on your face, like you are magnificent, and god, it hurts. Neither of you mentions your survivor’s guilt, your self-loathing and self-sabotage, or your self-destructive tendencies.
It’s not that Alberu does not see them or ignore them. It is because you already know it well.
“Good.” You murmur as evenly as you can, “I can’t be the only one in this room who finds us insanely attractive. Together, of course.”
“…I think you’ve had enough tea. It’s empty.” The King stands from his chair with this insane amount of casual grace and majestic dignity to him, and you wonder what he looks like without it, you wonder if he knows. As you watch him personally move the tea away from you. Another thing sticks out, the fact that your face is crotch level with him, that he is hard, and he is now glaring down at you, reading you as he has been, but he’s not immediately moving away from you, as if he has something to say, but the words get stuck in his throat.
Careful, but confident, you reach up, and slip both hands beneath his frock coat, under the fluid silk dress shirt, and take hold of one of his narrow hips. You gently smooth your fingers across his carved abdomen, only to the middle, and you hold onto the loop that will undo his trousers. Tugging on the ribbon. You’re close enough to breathe on him, his large desire that had already been half hard, and now his erection is straining to be released. Your chest is on fire, your fingertips trembling, and as you often do, you don’t watch your mouth.
“Excellent. Long and thick, and the perfect size for my throat.”
You see and feel the carved muscles in his lower abdomen shift and contract, and you peer up at him, as you would if he were in your mouth. He’s gazing down at you, brows raised, eyes widened a fraction and bright in the candle lights, his soft-looking full lips parted. It’s so rare to see him surprised, and the fact he has been taken off guard, yet hasn’t rejected you yet, gives you courage.
“I can give you so much.” You continue, your amber gaze never wavering from his as your body aches to be closer, to be touched, loved. “Not just this. If you want it, you can take it. Just say the word.”
You hope it is obvious that this is both a confession no one else will ever hear and asking for permission to do this with him as well as an offer extremely significant to you, that you hope is important to him as well. For a second he reaches down, strokes your head gently in his large hot palm, and calloused fingers like in your fantasies. Then suddenly, his hand is snapping out, gripping your crimson hair at the soft base of your skull and he’s guiding your head up, your mouth away from his desire. Your throat bared like he intends to rip it out, a hurricane in his eyes.
The show of dominance and slight sting on your scalp doesn’t hurt. It’s threatening enough that a thrill like an electric current is coursing through you, and you worry you’ll cum if he tugs any harder. In the seconds he has you in his grasp, you imagine him commanding how your head moves differently, to keep it still as he relinquishes control to move deep into your throat until you swallow and milk from him everything he has to give whole.
You’re sure that he’s seeing what you’re thinking through your passionate russet eyes because his are burning like the hottest of blue fires, his pupils dilated with arousal, until he releases your hair and steps back, slowly shaking his head with a hand over his mouth, eyelids squeezing shut.
Your stomach drops like a guillotine. Perhaps you did go too far. Maybe you’ve been wrong this whole time about whether he wants you. He has never mentioned desiring anything sexual. You just went for it because you read his signals wrong and you thought he wanted you too because of his body’s reactions to you. An erection is not an invitation.
“You are so drunk, and yet I think you mean every word.” The King whispers, his lungs rising and falling fast, but you see he’s no longer aroused, “For the rest of the night, don’t do anything like that again.”
Lowering your reddish-brown eyes and concealing your self-loathing behind them, you nod and begin to turn away because you don’t want him to see you like this, not him, not now — but you stop moving because the King is kneeling in front of you.
“Don’t misunderstand. It’s not that I don’t want you, but I can’t do this while you are drunk and not thinking clearly. If you give me consent for anything of this nature, it has to be sober. On top of that, I still don’t think you’re taking my concerns seriously. And you don’t realize it, but you’ve already given me enough, more than I thought I’d ever accept from someone. You’ve become special to me.”
The King holds out his hand, and you do your best to ignore the ocean welling up inside you. None of the people you’ve ever slept with gave a damn about you. You’ve never had feelings for someone this strongly. A little crush doesn’t compare to the uncontrollable fire he ignites in you, and the gentler feelings, feelings just as precious. Through his actions that match his words, you have confirmed he cares, and that is almost too much to stand.
“I can get out of my chair on my own,” you grumble roughly in a rasp because your throat has closed, and he drops his hand to his side with a shrug that shouldn’t appear so majestic. Then, he heads toward the bedroom like nothing happened and that he trusts you to listen for both your own good, “but Alberu?”
“Yes, Cale?”
“Thank you.”
He smiles a breathtaking smile that wrenches your heart from your chest and gestures for you to follow him, but you are aware this is a request, not a demand because he said you’re special.
So against all his little morals and damnable talk of ethics, he winds up holding you all night without any sexual advance or attempt at seduction at all. It’s physical affection, and you didn’t realize you crave it, but you also suspect maybe it is reserved for him. You feel safer in his arms than you’ve felt in ages, but you don’t know he didn’t sleep that night, and he won’t for a long time until he learns to trust you. You don’t know the other reason he fought you and his feelings for you.
He has a secret to keep, and that secret can end you both, or set you free.
In the morning, you awake to a delicious-smelling breakfast on a tray by your bed, with a note that says,
‘I’ll think about it.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
— Alberu.
You laugh, and stare out his temporary castle window, with a smile bending your lips. You don’t believe that true happiness is possible for you anymore. Revenge is what matters most over any other desire. Alberu has said that the Kingdom comes before you. He has never stopped you from going after your purpose, so that is nothing to fear, yet you hope that you can have something with him, anything at all, and you don’t care if it is ethical, because tomorrow could be either of your dying days.
And you’re terrible at letting go.
Five:
( He loves you like he’s been through a lifetime’s worth of pain -
- as though even if you hurt him, you help him not be beaten by it. )
*
As a King, these are the questions you should have asked starting at year one and considered these mental records the most all the years after:
Summer: You approach him as your true self. You recognize his emblem from your army. He is desperately washing blood off his fingers. In a dangerous mental state. Threatens you. You think ‘brave’, you think, ‘survivor.’ You carry him to the healing Priestess — curious. You see him resting drunk on a tree branch the next day, choose not to wake him up. You find out about his history with a few questions. So when he gets in a fight that night, you aren’t surprised. You introduce yourself as his King in the morning. He doesn’t recognize you. There is electricity on your fingertips when your hand links with his like a chain. Your tongue is numb.
Since when do you bite down a clever compliment? As of then.
Autumn: Golden leaves caught on the joints and gaps in his armor. As he plucks them out of his chainmail, you laugh at his scowl outside his hearing range from the opening of your tent beneath an awning, the laughter bubbling up more and more as you observe his state. It's not his suffering that amuses you but the obvious emotion you see flashing across his face like reels of film, the best movie. You delight in him. Something so small to another. You forget you shouldn't do this, even without your disguise. Shawn fancies you a madman until he follows your line of sight and whistles, you pretend you don’t hear it.
How could you rationalize your fixation? Entertainment.
Winter: he's on his patrol wrapped in a thin scratchy cot, shivering. He looks like a streak of wet blood in the snow. No one is paying him any mind to help him find heat. His sword is clutched in his frozen gauntlets. His frosted lashes can be seen from your position. You imagine how cold he is, how miserable, and your chest is tight, discomfort in your gut. Your stomach capsizes like a ship in a storm when you see him hunch over. You pace in private. You call your royal guard. You put a disguise on her. Pathetic.
Do you send all soldiers warm thick fur blankets anonymously? No. Just him.
Spring: he’s twirling a clover in his fingers. He’s atop a boulder. He looks thoughtful, waiting for something, you hope is not a special someone. Who sees him like you do. He tucks a strand of silken hair behind his pretty ear. You peer at the shape of his skull, flaring around the edges with clouded light. His scarred hands move like quicksilver, like water. Beautiful, elegant, deadly, savage, you think. He turns his head. He stares straight back at you -- fearlessly — why didn’t you turn away?
You couldn’t.
Tonight, you dream of summer again. Your second summer since you saw him. Of blazing sunset hair. Eyes like poured whiskey. Meeting a blade of a man — how he cut into your chest — and you never stopped bleeding. When you realized a King has desires that you’d yet to grasp until you laid eyes on him. When he approached you first. When your defenses were breached in earnest.
“Can I ask you two questions, Your Majesty?”
He kneels at your feet in polished steel armor with only traces of blood and dirt caked at the joint areas. His rouge hair is damp as if he is fresh out of a river bath, his lips pink as if he’s been biting them. Like those in the Seduction Division do, and even his enchanting amber eyes are red-rimmed along the corners, the soft edges where his auburn lashes meet skin.
As these thoughts spiral through your mind, a molten heat builds in your chest, a furnace being fed poison-laden coal the more you consider the makeup and its suggestive meaning. The experts in the art of deceptive love can wear armor and do wield weapons, so this young man is not exempt from the strong possibility. You've prevented him from being assigned there once already.
You won’t fail to note the other side of the coin, however. It’s as if this Soldier cleaned up for his audience with his King, and most interesting — he hasn’t lowered his razor-sharp gaze from yours in subservience or intimidation for an instant. Like he wishes to see into your mind as much as you, him.
“Yes.” You grant him, standing in front of an empty round table, noting from a copper pocket watch hanging from a wall, that your meeting with the Generals is in ten minutes in the war room. Tempering your inner state to its balanced ways, while questioning yourself why it is you struggle to breathe easy, your mouth dry, a storm in your veins, yet a lifetime of practice smoothes your tongue into liquid-like quicksilver. Why do you wish you had more time with this man?
A voice inside the far back of your treasonous mind hisses rebelliously,
-- you know damn well --
“If you are fine with the fact there is no guarantee I will answer, go on.”
The Soldier swallows, his gauntlet-covered fingers curl into fists over his knee, and you watch his strong jaw clamp shut, and finally, he flickers his sight over your features, in an attempt to read your expressions. And you can't stop yourself from hoping, guiltily, inappropriately, that he finds you handsome.
You smooth your face out on instinct. Few people dare to openly scrutinize you, and you rarely need to conceal your emotions, since you are calm most of the time, if cold inside. Right now, your blood is at a simmer, and working itself into boiling.
“Why did you grant me an audience,” The soldier questions you slowly, and his deep rich voice that gives you chills as it lowers at the end to a bare whisper,
“And why do you look at me like I can’t be real?”
With one hard palpitation of your heart, that inner heat travels up your throat, but you accept his challenge, by never removing your crystal-like gaze from his. You step away from the dais on the platform they’ve set up in the Stan Castle, down the steps, and you stop in front of the man who you’ve noticed for too long now at different scattered times.
You lean down and your long lashes descend, just enough to distract him and catch him by the jaw. A sensation you’ve only ever known near this human creeps into your chest, fine tremors in your ribs. Your fingers burn, your muscles tense, and your touch feels so distinguishable from his pale smooth skin that you linger longer than is wise.
Turning his face like you've lost it -- because in a way, you have -- so ethereal up close you question his humanity, satisfaction fills you to the brim when you see that it isn’t red paint that lines his eyes, but a natural pigment supplied by his porcelain skin for whatever reason. The tension eases out of your muscular figure in waves, but the white-hot blistering of your inner world increases, and you — want, want, want, but don’t know what — realize exactly what you are doing and have been, have done.
You release him, a little too quick, and say in just as bare a whisper as if you’re exchanging a secret.
“I don’t know yet.”
Frustration flashes across his features, and he’s biting into his rosy bottom lip, your gaze falls on his mouth, and your lips tingle as if sparks beneath the supple flesh. And he is standing without your permission, before you, slightly shorter in stature but at eye level, and blood is rushing in your ears, pooling between your legs. Not just from the proximity, but from his glare. It only lasts a handful of seconds, yet it affects you so profoundly, you'll never forget that instant.
“If you want to find out,” He leans down and gives you a bow instead of a salute, his hand over his heart, graceful as a sparkling stream, and something verges in the back of your cognizant awareness. “I think you’ll find your answer with a second audience, Your Majesty.”
“Who says there will be another?” You cock your head to the side, brow raised.
“I could say I don’t know yet,” He chuckles, teasing you like it’s natural, “but I guess I said so since the responsibility falls to me as you won’t tell me you want to see me again and just go back to admiring me from afar.”
A feverish chill tiptoes down your spine. Your full lips quirk upward for a split second, and your lashes lower, as anger and something so different in nature near-overtakes you, “You’re one bold Soldier.”
How dare he.
-- No, isn't the question, how dare you? --
“Yeah?” He grins at you like he’s a beast who can never be tamed like — don’t even try to tame me because I’ll eat you alive — his eyes wild in a way that claws at you, drags you in, and thrills you to the core, “You’re one great King.”
And you realize as the air stalls in your lungs, with a sudden impact, you want.
For the first time in your life, you want someone, and it’s him.
Cale Henituse.
And, finally, you do know. So you make a single vow.
To never touch him again.
You cannot make him yours.
Your resolve only lasts three years.
Three years of wanting.
And that is by far not the last meeting you have with him.
You are King before you are anything else.
A King.
You are a King before a son, before a brother, before a friend, before a lover, before a man. You’d say nothing has changed at this moment, but a significant part of you is already changed.
You visited him last night and caused him new scars on his hand at your victory party unintentionally -- which burns -- fought him, and took him back to your room, but it feels like you haven’t been in his presence for ages.
You know what it is like to hold him now, to receive his warmth is as if accepting sunlight on your skin for the first time, every time you held him. Now, you know what it is to be certain there is a non-family person in this world you are incapable of harming with your own hands.
You can’t imagine it without debilitating sickness, you can’t move, it cripples the monster in you capable of extreme violence. Because hurting him goes against every instinct you have. If he commits treason, betrays the Kingdom, — you’ve thought of the worst — yes, you’d have someone kill him, or would you?
All you know is...by your own hands?
Never.
You didn’t consider it for a moment when he tried to provoke you to hit him. He’s been in enough pain without you destroying his life more.
This is one reason you shouldn’t be with him, one can argue it is one reason you should be with him. You have an inner war waging, and one side has to win or lose eventually. That's how wars are.
He is still on your mind. You tasted the purest of needs when he offered you everything he could, and were defenseless against that level of willingness and affection. You know a lust so overwhelming, you almost wish you can get rid of it. You know how it is to rip open your chest, to let him glimpse inside an opening far too wide like a gaping hollow in a tree, about what you have, and now…now you have decided you can no longer —
“You called for me, Your Majesty?”
Naturally elegant in posture beside when he is sitting, your gaze briefly flickers along his burnished steel armor, to his otherworldly face, wondering how anyone can be this stunning to this day, while locking gazes as you are now.
But that is physical. The man beneath the skin, flesh, sinew, and bone is who you covet with almost the same strength as ambition, who calls to you whether you are awake or asleep. That maddens you and brings you to wish, inspires you to imagine, and do things you shouldn't that you never thought you'd do -- and the punk is all too aware.
You even confessed last night.
As soon as you accepted this wasn't going away years ago, you thought you could find peace with it, and you were wrong enough to risk a devastating future he doesn't appear to see.
You step up to him with one arm behind your back, offer him a folded piece of parchment and he slips it into a satchel tied to his waist without questioning you. You don’t have to tell him to refrain from opening it here.
“You are being reassigned to the Ubarr Naval Base.” You inform him quietly, but you are firm as always when you give commands.
Like you lit a match, there is a spark in his reddish gaze, and you recognize the core of what lurks in the light of rage — sorrow. Cale is a creature of almost completely uncontrolled emotion, and he needs to be to fuel the hatred he has to have for vengeance to maintain his fury. You’ve always never wanted to get in his way. He lost a family, lost a territory, everything. No one can say his desire for revenge isn’t valid. And you wish there is something you can do, so you do the worst for him. But there is so much more swimming beneath his glittering surface, like a whole ocean. You want to explore. If only you could breathe underwater.
“How long?” He bites out, twisting his grin into an unfeeling smirk so convincing that if you hadn’t sent everyone out of the room, they’d be fooled, but you see the pain hiding behind it and loathe that you caused such a misunderstanding. At the same time, it may help.
The fact that you and he can be so different is one of your joys. He can do things you cannot like show how he feels without much consequence. If you were to grab his hand here —
“Seven days. Longer if the situation requires.” You whisper with a gentleness he should be able to catch, but the spark smolders at you now. You’ve got the opposite effect.
“If that is all, may I be excused,” He speaks respectfully, but won’t lower his head, which tells you he is still savagely fighting this, “Your Majesty?”
By now you are certain he thinks you are sending him away to put distance between you. A ball of rare worry and foreboding twists in your stomach like a fist trying to bury itself into your ribcage. You are capable of hurting him so easily, because you have your fingers wrapped around his epicenter, and he does not realize the true extent of his power over you.
“You may.” You whisper, and offer him a reassuring smile, just before he pivots on his booted heel and a pinch is between his brows when he glimpses at you over his shoulder, but he doesn’t say a word, and you watch him leave with grit teeth. Sometimes navigating his mind is like attempting to find your way through a maze or cornfield in Autumn.
Pain funnels into your core because there is still a chance, but you craft your features out into perfectly blank marble, before your vassal piles into the room and tells you that you have urgent business in the war room. You hope he reads your note, that he agrees, and you straighten your back.
And oddly, as your thoughts return to the Soldier, you remember your first meeting, and think of how different things were back then, and how they had stayed the same — you are changed, your feelings are changed, even your body — and it started during the first years you observed him, until he came to you.
Next thing you know, you are sitting on a dock, staring out at the sea with your royal guards nearby using invisibility magic that is set so you can see through it. You listen to the swishing waters, peer out at the waves that stretch to the horizon, listen to the shrieking gulls flying this way and that. And you focus on clearing the tender knots in your stomach and inhaling and exhaling to calm yourself. The excitement thrumming in your veins may turn to ice if he does not join you by the afternoon. It is up to him now if he wishes to meet you here and take the risk.
Then you hear footsteps, light and confident strides, and a relieved smile sweeps across your lips, as you turn halfway to face him and look up at him instead. The sun glares from behind him, surrounding him as if a halo, his red hair bright and shining, and he is returning your smile like nothing pleases him more than to see you as he anchors his amber gaze to yours, and you reach up at him.
This time he clasps his piano-fingered hand with yours, and he sits beside you, both your ankles dangling off the wooden contraption beneath you, and he is the first to speak as you reluctantly let go.
“You know something? When I first opened your note, and you told me you wanted to think about it with me as if we are on some romantic vacation, I almost hated you. Why is it that you can be decisive with anything but matters with me?”
Your broad chest rises and falls with a big silent breath as Cale reaches for your hand again, and you don’t pull away. You listen to him carefully.
“I thought over our conversations. Every word you’ve ever said regarding what we have, and I realized you are treating me as you do the Kingdom. To you, decisions must be considered wisely, every move is calculated because you don’t want me to hurt, and certainly don’t wish to be the cause, and you are trying to live with the fact that you are partially responsible anyway. So you are weighing how much damage you can stand versus how much happiness you can give me. Is this correct?”
It takes you a moment to realize how heavy, down to your spirit itself, has become, and how much weight has lifted from your shoulders simultaneously, “Then you understand.”
“I do, and I won’t bow to it. I have already experienced the worst pain imaginable, Alberu. I have accepted that being with you won’t exempt me from it. You are not responsible for my happiness, yet you give it to me naturally.” Cale gives a choked laugh and holds out his free hand in a hopeless gesture, “You make me feel all kinds of things but I want it.”
Silence reigns, and you struggle for once, to maintain control over a conversation. He toys with your emotions, your instincts, your judgment and to hear you do the same to him, just blurs every line you shouldn't cross, have crossed, so much further. He has revenge to seek, and yet he is still trying to be close to you. You out of everyone. He wants you, when you could die any day like his other important people. The White Star is after your head above all others in the kingdom. And he knows this.
“You bring out the best and worst in me,” You tell him honestly, catching his hand like a firefly and bringing it back between you with his other to hold them in both of yours. You don’t think about it much, your pulse does it for you, forcing yourself to remain still and composed does it for you, trying to focus does it for you, “and you’re saying both are alright with you even now after figuring out all of that.”
“I am aware of the risks. Regardless of you trying to scare me off or the validity of your argument, you have the right to reject me, and I have the right to accept you.”
This pierces you, it hurts, it’s shocking, because he just said “accept.” Like it’s easy, like he’s set on that no matter what. You want to believe him, that he will go on accepting everything. You want it so much you could—
“The will to resist you started failing me ages ago.” You smile, a painfully honest one, “Because you’ve always been worth so much more than I can give you."
In the end,
-- I have a secret --
Cale’s features contort, a savage beast, a monster shows itself.
He is the paragon, the pinnacle of beauty, because this is out of anger, out of pain, out of love --
For you.
But you want to be convinced, because you're a King.
And not immune to greed, cruelty, or want.
For him.