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scorchieart · 2 years

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Second to None

Characters: Belle, Chevalier Michel, Clavis Lelouch, Nokto Klein, Luke Randolph

Genres: Action, Suspense

Wordcount: 2.1k

A/N: This is a quick fic based on @the12thnightproject's Reverse Ask Game challenge! I chose 7 of Spades, and my prompt was “No Beta we die liek men.” I had the idea for this story sitting in my mind for months, ever since I started really craving Chevalier's faction to hang out more, and today was finally the day to execute it. True to form, I set a pomodoro timer for 3 hours and worked straight on this story with zero backtracking. I only quickly read it once over to check for grammatical & spelling errors (I hope I caught them all, those keep me up at night) but the rest is pure, raw Scorchie-brain. I only ask that you don't think differently of me after reading this, though I completely understand if you do...

Warnings: Fighting, mild descriptions of injuries, unedited work.

I tripped on the last step and met a facefull of gravel. I considered myself fortunate that I did not wear glasses, but in my current situation, the fact I wasn’t knocked out cold was a blessing.

Making sure I wasn’t bleeding—a blood trail was the last thing I needed right now—I picked myself up and ran in the direction of the forest. The stables would be too obvious for someone making an escape, and the palace grounds were crawling with soldiers and guards whose loyalties I did not have the luxury of time to decipher. I prayed no one would consider the looks-like-she’s-running-for-her-life woman grounds for suspicion as I swerved off the cobblestone path onto grass that grew grungier the farther I went.

Night frost and thorns pricked my skin as I burst through a patch of gangly rose bushes into the forest, but I didn’t dare stop and catch breath. My heart pounded louder in my ears with each hulking tree, looking more monstrous and mangled than the last. I think I heard an owl hooting from above, but my gaze was preoccupied with making sure I didn’t trip on anything else. I’d read about adrenaline sharpening senses while dulling others in the moment, but this is the first time I’d ever experienced it firsthand. Even if I couldn’t rely on my ears, at least my eyes were working overtime. And I could definitely do without the pain in my no-doubt twisted ankle slowing me down.

Roots and leaves, I told myself, just avoid the roots and leaves. I jutted my head in so many directions to avoid so many crisscrossing branches I was surprised it didn’t fly off my neck. Perhaps it was because my shoulders remained immovably stiff since I hightailed it out of the castle, but frozen muscles were a natural reaction to that lot chasing after you.

That insatiable lot and their thunderstruck faces all trained on you at once. I’d sooner fall face first into a giant cauldron full of sizzling gravel than wish to encounter them again. But runaways can never count on their wishes coming true.

Perhaps it was the cacophony of crunching leaves beneath my feet. Or that incessant owl hooting overhead. Or the fact that my attention was solely focused on advancing deeper without looking back. Whatever the reason, I was spotted. And I was wholly unprepared for what followed. One moment I was pushing a bramble of spiderweb-encrusted twigs from my path, and in the next I expelled the entirety of my breath out of my lungs in one go, my back knocked hard against the base of a tree, and numbing stars and a flash of red invaded my vision.

“Give it back,” a burly voice breathed onto my face. The overwhelming odor of honey and sweat punched my nose harder than the words. It seemed as though smell was my dominant sense at this time.

I wriggled my legs in an attempt to kick him away, but Luke surprisingly maneuvered his massive body to avoid most of the blows. The ones he couldn’t avoid hit him softly in the chest, as though they were little more than the beating of a butterfly’s wings. He didn’t get any closer, though, like he was waiting for me to tire and give in to his demands. But I wasn’t going to succumb that easily. As soon as my vision fixed to focus again, I would make a run for it. But just as I could start to make out the frenzied features on his face, a new smell entered the scene: the crisp, tart aroma of freshly plucked vetiver.

I managed to roll onto my side just before Luke was shoved straight into the tree trunk. My entire body vibrated with rising dread as Chevalier grabbed a fistful of Luke’s cherry hair and pulled his body to face him. Flakes of bark chips stuck to Luke’s face as he glared back at his leader, and his angry huffing intensified with each passing second.

“I was here first,” growled Luke, wrapping his hands around Chevalier’s wrist and yanking it off. Chevalier only spared me a passing glance as Luke slowly rose to his feet and reached for his sword.

“If we are ranking validity by seniority, then I have you beat, Jumbo. I had been sitting in the office long before any of your arrivals.” Chevalier cleanly unsheathed his sword and pointed it at Luke.

“And since when did sitting on your lazy behind count as seniority?” Luke spat as the two began to circle each other. The section of forest we occupied could hardly be called a clearing, and my heart stuck in my throat at the thought of the damage they could do if they actually began to fight. I primed my knees and followed their movements, desperate to find an opening to escape before it all went down.

“That hardly constitutes a retort, coming from you,” snorted Chevalier. His eyes locked briefly with mine, a silent command of “I will deal with you later,” but I quickly turned away and focused back on the gallowing trees surrounding us. Just a second… one second is all I’ll need to slip away.

But my pleas were ignored. Luke kicked the ground and lunged at Chevalier, thrusting his sword directly toward his heart. Chevalier effortlessly sidestepped and punched Luke in the gut, sending him tumbling backward, coughing and sputtering. But Luke quickly recovered and launched again, this time aiming his swing for Chevalier’s head. With perfect timing, Chevalier ducked and jabbed the hilt of his sword again into Luke’s stomach, but instead of backing up, Luke released his own sword and wrapped his arms around Chevalier’s neck, bringing him to the ground with his superior weight as they fell.

This was my chance. I steeled my knees and grabbed the nearest trunk to me for support. Chevalier repeatedly rammed his elbow into Luke’s chest only a few paces beside me, and though it looked like Luke possessed the strength of a boa constrictor encapturing his prey, I could see his hold slipping as Chevalier persisted his attacks. I began inching away, my hand plastering to any tree I passed like a lifeline, my eyes glued to the struggle I left behind. I would only allow myself to tear away from the sight as soon as I could be sure they hadn’t noticed my departure, but just when I had passed my seventh tree trunk, a new contender entered the ring.

It was as though what I had been watching previously moved in slow motion. In an instant, something shifted in the trees behind the brawling pair, swift and nimble like an autumn gale. Branches and leaves shook in its wake, and the once hyper-focused Luke diverted his attention to the sound. Chevalier snatched the chance to give a final push and disentangle himself, knocking Luke out in the process, but as he reached to retrieve his sword, he was seized once more, this time from behind.

Nokto’s silver hair gleamed ominously in the pale moonlight as Chevalier stood, the younger prince’s arms firmly wrapped around his shoulders. Chevalier grabbed at Nokto’s hands and tried to pry them off, but Nokto only climbed higher on Chevalier’s back, using his legs to try and push Chevalier back to the ground.

Chevalier growled when Nokto jabbed a knee into the back of his thigh, but he didn’t yield. Instead, he raised himself to full height and rammed backward into the nearest tree, squishing Nokto into the trunk with all his might.

“Nokto!” I cried, but immediately regretted it. Nokto’s ruby eyes found me in the darkness and glared with the ferocity of a beast on the prowl.

“You… stay—” he wheezed, but before he could get out any more words, Chevalier silenced him with a backward headbutt into the tree. Nokto gasped and tightened his grip, but two more strikes from Chevalier slackened them entirely, and he fell limply to the ground to join the fallen Luke.

Chevalier wiped his face and stared at me, and I bolted from the scene as he reached for his sword once again.

My limbs stung as I zipped back through the bramble. Half-broken branches and fallen twigs told me this was the direction I came through previously, but I shuddered at the thought of returning to the palace after what I just witnessed. Now more than ever, I was assured that I needed protection, but could I be guaranteed to find it back at the palace? But with a bloodthirsty Chevalier only paces behind me, what choice did I have?

“I heard a fight. I’m amazed you made it out in one piece.”

I foolishly whipped my head around to the soft voice, and found myself enclosed in a sheath of purest white. My head grew numb as disorienting fragrances of lavender and soil overpowered my nostrils, but two hands firmly gripped my arms before I collapsed.

“Oopsie! My dear, you can barely stand! You look like you’ve just seen a ghost… or worse.” Clavis’s dulcet tones whispered dottily in my brain, and I fought between the urge to rip away or remain trapped in his arms. Chevalier… Chevalier was coming… Clavis could protect me.

“What has you so frightened, little bunny?” he continued, turning me to face him. His golden eyes shone like lanterns to salvation. A safe haven just within reach. “Could it be you encountered something so terrible, so savage, so brutal that you cannot bear to repeat it?” His grip slackened only slightly, like a tamer easing an animal into his care. Into his trust.

“Tell me everything, give it all to me, and I promise I will make it all go away.” His gaze was all-encompassing, and his words comforting and inviting. It was an enticing offer, how could anyone refuse in my situation? I wanted to spill out my heaving guts to him, to pass on the torch of my burden to someone else, and above all take a rest. To leave this dark and foreboding forest before someone else showed up and led me astray, before someone broke this brief respite I somehow called my own…

Wait a moment, wasn’t Clavis one of the people I had been escaping?

I broke eye contact and looked over his shoulder. Chevalier emerged from a thicket of brush, looking seconds away from breathing fire. A hobbling Luke appeared on his right and a bleary-eyed Nokto on his left, the latter’s nose red and swollen like a ripened plum.

It was as if I’d woken up from the most dangerous dream. The dread of my situation resurfaced in an instant, and horror bubbled in my chest as I felt Clavis’s hand rummaging through my pocket.

I clutched Clavis’s shoulders, stomped my heel onto his foot, and jammed my forehead into his nose. Clavis let out a piercing shriek and released me, but as I pulled away, the object he’d grabbed from my pocket slipped out from my skirt and fell to the ground. A single cookie, now broken into dozens of pieces, lay on the forest floor. All four princes stared mutinously at its crumbly remains before turning to me.

I jerked myself out of Clavis’s reach and ran back. The castle was in view now; if I could just make it past those rose bushes and call for help—

Wham!

Something pink and soft collided with me as I reached the thorny bushes and I fell on my backside. Shaking my head from the dizziness, I looked up to see Yves rubbing his forehead, a frilly basket hooked in his left arm.

“Good grief, and I thought my faction was petty over the last sweet!” he said, helping me stand. “If you’d just stayed a minute longer, I was going to tell you I had a second batch in the oven.”

“You couldn’t have said that sooner?” Nokto yelled. My cheeks burned as he and the others caught up to us, their previously angry faces melting into vexation.

“Heh, sorry. Didn’t mean to go all dramatic on you all,” I said, clenching my teeth. Yves’s mouth gaped open as he watched his brothers limp over, and he squeaked in surprise when Luke deliriously walked straight into a tree trunk. How I wished news of this evening wouldn’t reach Sariel.

“You were fortunate tonight, simpleton, but now you know not to trifle with such matters in the future,” Chevalier said, as Luke pried himself off the trunk and dove for Yves’s basket while Clavis and Nokto compared their face bruises like trophies of war.

Yeah, I thought this was really fun. Thanks for the slumber party invite, Impromptu!

Taglist:@atelieredux @queengiuliettafirstlady @violettduchess @venulus @thewitchofbooks @leonscape @rhodolitesrose @venti-tangents @dear-sciaphilia @ikesenwritings @myonlyjknight @ladyofcrowsx

If you would like to be added or removed from my tag list, please send me an ask or a message.

#ikemen series #ikemen prince #ikepri #belle/emma #ikepri belle #chevalier michel #clavis lelouch #nokto klein #luke randolph #ikepri chevalier #ikepri clavis #ikepri nokto #ikepri luke #scorchie writes #cw: fighting #cw: injuries #unedited

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torpublishinggroup · 5 months

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