To Hunt a Silver Stag (I)
AU MASTERLIST || PART II
PAIRING: Knight!Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick x F!Fae Princess!Reader
WORDCOUNT: 6.9k
WARNINGS: Arranged marriage, talks of childbirth, traditional views of women & men in medieval times, talks of war, death, heavy religious imagery/symbolism, etc.
*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*
You wore a crown of deer antlers atop your head. Charms were woven into the gaps between the tines, attached to golden thread; jewels of starlight strung like teardrops from the moon. Your feet, staying still on the hard stone of the Great Hall, are bare though attract no dirt or dust—it is as if the very ethereal aura that coats your gown of pure white repels any such thought of uncleanliness or corruption of this mortal plane.
You are so very far from home.
Standing in the center of your soon-to-be husband’s court, your eyes seem not to be on the man himself, who watches you greedily from the throne of black iron, but instead behind him. Blank of any emotion, your long lashes blink in the direction of the stained glass windows with a horrible longing. Whispers from the multitude of court attendants go in one ear and out the other—useless to you. Their time would be gone in a blink, and yet here you would remain, immemorial. Their words were nothing, and their utterances would turn to dust faster than their bodies would.
You can’t help but wonder if those colorful depictions in that glass window, of God and his valiant angels, are mocking you as you blink at them slowly. Not only for what you are and where you now find yourself in the kingdom of your enemies but for being so full of the very qualities that would normally resign a woman of this age to the stake.
Independent, confident, and curious, among others.
A voice raises above the rest, and your eyes blink elegantly, the silver hue to them unnatural in all senses. Yet, you do not look away from the mighty white stag, its soldered bits of thin glass a patchwork of an overwatching Lord. Saint Eustace is there, staring at it, just as was told from generation to generation.
A pagan man converted to Christianity, the symbol of a cross set between antlers very much like the ones adorning your head. Humming under your breath, your eyes dip down, chin moving. Below the window, there stands a tall knight, and your gaze locks with his softly.
“Today,” the King’s voice echoes over the crowd as brown orbs stare at you, blinking. “We are here to celebrate the joining of two great bloodlines!” He stands with a grand cape over his shoulders, falling to the floor as his boots stand at the top of the stairs to the throne. Yet, this knight holds your attention more than your Promised does as the cheering starts, loud; making your ears twitch.
At your waist, a golden belt is engraved with expert attention, stories woven into metal that even seem to move with the magic embedded into it. It seems to hum with an energy that makes your eyes narrow in confusion upon this stranger.
He had brown eyes, the knight, and the hues reminded you of brown that you could see in the trees of your home—those old beasts that grew still with the magic of your line and your gentle touch. Surrounding him, there was silver armor and a strip of red fabric that went over one shoulder, hanging beside the items of his station; a sword and a dagger on a brown leather belt.
Brows furrowing, your head tilts slowly, unblinking, as the eye contact persists.
A bold man, it seems.
The knight’s eyelids slightly widen, as if realizing he had been staring, and his face swiftly moves to the side, his short hair close to his oval skull. You hear the faint clearing of a throat come into the shell of your pointed ears.
Sighing, your focus returns to the matter at hand, the crown’s adornments clinking together as your head rotates. The speech.
King Michael spreads his hands out, a man far into his older years but still had the gleam of malice in his eyes. Those beady things. They remind you of a rat—a small creature, while intelligent, that cannot win unless through tricks.
“We all know that magic has slowly been disappearing from the lands,” the King utters, voice echoing off the walls. Your hands are holding themselves near your abdomen, grace embedded into your bones. Watching how he speaks, you can’t deny he was influential. But influence didn’t matter when you had no wife—no children. He has a dying line, and that means weakness…which is why you’re here, after all. “And in that time, our war with the Fae has fallen into a stalemate.”
Your expression sharpens, fingers twitching. Stalemate? There were humans in your lands—spreading their fires and swinging their defiling iron swords. There was no war here except the one that this King was perpetuating.
But you held your tongue, even if your silver eyes narrowed in an ancient, bitter, anger. Your head raises itself higher, hanging gemstones swinging. The knight near the stained glass is back to watching you—his feet shifting from under him, hands behind his armored back with loose shoulders.
“...Today, myself and the King of the Fae have come to an agreement in confidence, and in the fashion of old, I am to be wed to his daughter, a princess!” Gasps, cheers, clapping. They spring up from all corners of the Hall, bouncing. Your body longs for nature, to be away from rock and metal, these suffocating walls that close in with the gaggle of wretched corpses walking. “Peace shall be beholden to all of us! Magic shall come back into my bloodline through our many children, and all will share in its wealth!”
You had compared yourself to a broodmare when your father had given the news of your journey here. A womb to be filled until you could give no more; restrained to a bed—away from any privilege and right.
And you’d been sent here anyway. A price needed to be paid, your father had told you. A daughter to stop the war. A child to bring back mortal magic and keep the peace through generations. Was your head to be put to the block for that? Who was to say that children would bring peace? That there weren’t more conflicts to come?
This was a momentary sacrifice, and here you were wearing white.
You hum under your breath and feel shackles tie themselves to your ankles; tying you to this place. But what other option did you have?
Your ears listen to the loud rapturous cheering, the exclamations of love that mean nothing to you—you do not love these people, do not love their need for violence and their pride. You want to go home, to find where you can rest among glades and grass. Converse with the birds and the beasts to learn of their news of far-off lands; run your hands through clear streams and watch plants grow where you walk.
As your stone body stays still, silver eyes unblinking, the knight near the window is the only man in the room not gazing at you like he wants something from you. While Lords have their eyes filled with lustful envy of your age-less skin—your finery and wealth; the promise of strong children, the knight is the only one with an open expression.
He only watches, handsome face holding the whispers of stubble and eyes that would make many moral women wish to be his wife.
Admittingly, your attention keeps going back to him, just as his own is stuck on you even as he tries to look professional. Back straight, armor glinting, sword pommel fiddled with by long fingers.
The King is walking down the stairs, one withered leg at a time. You don’t offer any help.
“My bride,” Michael licks his lips when he’s in front of you; but he’s more fixated on your stomach than all else. What it will hold for him. “My beautiful Fae bride. My wedding will be known through history for ages to come.”
My.
The world holds its breath. The knight’s jaw clenches, though no one sees it.
You take a heavy breath into your lungs to hold back your snapping tongue. As the words meet the air, they come out as unemotional as a wave at sea. Wind holding mist.
“Certainly.”
—
As it turned out, the castle itself was even less homely than the material that was used to build it. You walk slowly through the halls, hands behind your back and your crown glimmering—the trail of a thin and flowing gown making you look like a specter. One crudely carved window after another passes by your right shoulder, and you look out of every slit; seeing the silver shades of moonlight. In contrast, everything on your left was washed with firelight from the blazing iron sconces, your ears twitching to the pop of wood and fabric saturated in animal fat.
Everything here was horrible.
A prison, you think, slowing near one of the larger windows in the hall. A cage.
Staring outside, trying for only a moment to understand the disgusting castle and adjoined town you look at, there’s a faint noise from far down the corridor.
Wasting no time, your head moves slowly to the side, blinking. There isn’t anyone to be seen, but yet again, your slightly pointed ears twitch.
A firm heartbeat.
Bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump.
Staring at nothing, you listen for a moment, taking it in as your visage fights with blue and red light, shadows littering the small cracks and the marks of stone—your hands slightly tighten, but you hold no fear.
You refused to be afraid here; you would go to your spiritual death with a high head, and nothing less.
“It’s unbecoming to stalk as if a wolf,” you call, voice smooth and even. A beat of bird’s wings. “Four-legged beasts have perfected it, yet, the same cannot be said of you.”
There’s a lapse of silence—a swirling of slight tension that comes not from you but another. The heartbeat in your ear lightly skips. Startled. A shadow cusps one of the connected hallways, a gleam of silver armor. You blink slowly.
“Apologies, Ma’am.” The Knight. The one from the Great Hall. “I…didn’t mean to make you nervous.”
His lithe form doesn’t try to hide from your accusation, instead, his body moves to the middle of the stone floor and straightens—one hand going to his heart and the other behind his back; bowing. The darkness of his complexion seems to glow in the light, smooth skin besides the marring of small scars along the left cheek. Tiny things, only two lines.
For no reason at all, your body lightly turns towards him, watching.
“I’m not nervous,” you respond. “Please, stand straight.”
He does so without hesitation, though his eyes are avoiding yours. A guilty pull is to his lips that you can’t help but quirk a brow at. Yet, you remain emotionless, and outside the shadows of flying birds shift past.
“What is your name, Knight?” You see his expression slightly tense at the question, but you continue easily. A test, perhaps, if this man was worth your time. “I recall your face.”
“I can’t give you that, My Lady.” Brown eyes go to meet yours, and the silver flecks in your orbs glimmer. “My orders were clear.”
“And were those orders also to follow me?”
He clears his throat, feet shifting. “...Maybe.”
You hum, moving your body slowly and walking forward to him. The man blinks in surprise, straightening even more but a firm set to his eyes. His attention never wavers, unless it’s to glimpse your crown and belt, perfect pieces of artistry lost to this section of humanity. No mortal craftsman could imagine making something as such. He liked them, you notice at the light impression of awe in his gaze.
Anyone with sense would.
Stopping just a few feet away, you tilt your head.
It was common knowledge that you never gave your name to one of the Fae, your betrothed would have told everyone close to him to avoid doing so. Just as you would never tell your real name to anyone—not even under dire circumstances. Names hold power, and no person in this castle would make you even more of a prisoner than you already were.
You know the names of beasts and plants, flora and fauna—they bend to you, let you manipulate them to your will, though you often find no need to. The animals from any land prefer your company, anyway. The castle’s hunting hounds have already become well acquainted, just as the messenger birds had.
But mortals? No. No, there were no names that you knew besides the King himself, and even then it was a fake one. Second names and such, are common.
“Your title, then,” you say to the Knight. “If you’re to be a constant face to me.”
“Gaz is just fine, I’d say.” He nods his head, a slow smile moving his cheeks. Your brows furrow. Strange fellow. “A pleasure. I really do need to say that I wasn’t following you for long—I was only concerned you might have lost your way.”
You stare.
“Lost?” Owlishly, your head shifts.
Gaz makes a noise in the back of his throat, one hand coming up to rub at the base of his neck. “Yeah—lost. It’s, uh, it’s a big castle, My Lady—”
“Stag.” Wide eyes blink, this meeting is only awkward on his part and not yours. In fact, for how humans go, he was acting far better than most. Usually, there was iron being brandished by now.
“What was that?”
“My title,” you explain, your crown’s gems bright in the light. The fire crackles, popping. “Stag. I do not need my status stated. I know what I am, Knight.”
“Then I’d say the same,” your fingers twitch, liking the word game he plays. Inside of your sockets, the unnatural makeup of your eyes shimmers.
“Very well,” you pause, picking your words. “Gaz. A strange choice to be sure.”
He chuckles, nodding in a very stoic-like way despite the nearly boyish nature of him. “Well, Stag isn’t exactly common, either.”
You hum in your throat, unblinking; staring. Your intrigue grows the longer the man talks. Just like in the Great Hall, his form attracts all of your attention to it, against all laws that you seem to know in your soul.
“Pray tell,” you shift, moving back to the window with your feet not making a single sound. Gaz watches on, eyes flickering between the hanging gems and how you tread over the stone as if you had wings. Your form slips back to the window, and your focus once more goes outward. “Has the King told you to spy on me, Gaz?”
The title, even if not the one of his birth—not the one written on his soul like a brand—still made the air quiver with might. You were older than most of this kingdom, the Knight knew. Older than the oak trees of the nearby forest; older than rock and wind and air.
Power dripped off your tongue like water to a leaf.
But it wasn’t your influence that made the man answer you. It was his own nature.
“Yes,” Gaz says, taking a few steps to where you stand, watching a flock of birds dance above the courtyard, silver moon-drips illuminating white feathers. “But I wouldn’t call it spying. Officially, I’ve been put in place to keep you safe, Princess.” His dark brows crease when you don’t pay him any mind. “I take my job very seriously, yeah?”
“I can see that,” you utter, eyes still on the birds. “The only thing I need protecting from is the iron ring on your right hand.”
He startles, blinking for a moment.
“...Parden?”
Silver eyes pierce him, watching; waiting.
Gaz looks down, locking on the hand that has been resting on the pommel of his sword. Cape swishing, he makes a noise in the back of his throat. His sigil ring—the one that had been given over at his dubbing ceremony sat on the first digit, the engraving of his King’s coat of arms glimmering back.
A wolf; a snake caught in its fangs.
Brown eyes dart back, and he sheepishly smiles, huffing a chuckle of sorts.
“Comes with the job, unfortunately,” yet still, his other hand easily grasps and slips the thing off, tucking it away into the leather pouch swinging from his belt. “I thought that was a myth—the Fae being harmed by iron. Conjured up to give people something to cling to.”
“I can name a million things that men and women like you consider myth,” you mutter, starting at that pouch, deep in thought. You hadn’t expected him to give in that easily. Your shoulders loosen their rigidness, but your chin never drops its high pride. “Every story comes from somewhere—be it reality or wives’ tales. Who’s to say that the words don’t give them life in one form or another?”
“Bloody hell. Not a discussion to take up with me, I’m afraid,” Gaz huffs a chuckle, smirking. While still hesitant around you, the conversation wasn’t anything that made him want to not be around you. Everyone deserved to have their character shown, and what he was seeing so far wasn’t ringing any alarms. “Sound more of a scholar than a Princess, if you don’t mind me saying.”
Your lips quirk. “I prefer philosopher.”
“And what’s a Fae philosopher doing out in the middle of the night, then?” A breeze wafts through the window, blowing on your dress and making Gaz’s cape flutter in its bloodish tint. The torches whip and dance. You take a low breath, bird chips coming closer.
“Speaking with an old friend.”
A white dove lands on the stone opening of the window, fluttering wings coming to fold along its sleek form until it shakes and settles all at once.
“Lysander,” you say in greeting, nodding your head. Gaz watches, barely moving as his lips part in astonishment.
Your hand extends itself, bearing no rings or bracelets. All you needed was your crown. Tiny eyes blink as an angular head turns to the side, tiny coos sparking from a rounded breast. Pale feet grasp your perfect flesh, such a tiny weight settles before you lift effortlessly; wings flapping to keep balance.
“What news, then?” You ask in a whisper, bringing the beast to your crown. Lysander settles on one of the tines, head dipping down as feathers puff. Into your ear, words take shape.
You hum in answer, blinking at every clicked sentence; tapping talons.
Gaz stares blankly, eyebrows pulled up on his head and unable to articulate himself.
So many stories about your people—he hadn’t thought half of them to be true. While he’d been stationed in many places during the duration of this war, he’d never actually encountered one of the Fae before. Gaz had been told they were like a plague; they came in when you weren’t looking, spoke magic into your ears, and forced you to come back to their home and live as mindless beasts. Cupbearers and entertainment.
Of the countless knights he’d been in line with, he knew the true names of none of them. A precaution. Forethought.
Yet…you don’t look dangerous.
But the man is far from stupid.
“He says the fires from your forges burn his eyes,” your voice snaps him back to you, and he straightens, fingers twitching. Gaz finds your face already turned his way, owlish in its movements. “The smoke makes his throat ache.”
“I,” he pauses, mouth opening and closing. Brown eyes dart to the sharp-beaked dove; the thing very much like you in the way it watches him. “I’m…sorry?”
Your lips pull in a frown, sighing with a shake of your head.
I can never survive here, you find yourself thinking. I believed this is what I had to do, but if this is how I’m going to live…
“Tell me about your King, Gaz,” your body swiftly turns, feet carrying you down the corridor once more with long, even, steps. “If I’m to marry him, I will know of his nature.”
The man clears his throat and follows after, where you hear the clinking of silver and the scabbard against his thigh. He glances over at you, walking if not a bit behind yourself in proper fashion.
“What do you want to know, Ma’am?”
Your unnatural orbs shimmer, and the bird on your crown hunkers down; puffed contently and eager to rest his wings from a long flight.
“Everything. I will not be unaware of my fate.”
“Well,” Gaz sighs, rubbing at his chin with his opposite hand. He licks his lips, mind running to answer the best he can. “You’ll not want for anything—finery and wealth will—”
“I do not care about mortal revelry. I need neither fine things nor wealth.” Your voice curtly moves along the open air. The Knight’s boots connect with stone while your bare flesh emits nothing. “His character, Knight. Is he fair—just?”
Gaz’s face tightens, glancing from you to the hallway as he takes a moment to think.
“My King has…become troubled with the turning tides of the war. I’m sure when your marriage is official, he’ll go back to how he was before.” He doesn’t seem certain, but loyalty is a trait that a knight knows well. You had been set as his charge, of course, not under the best of circumstances, but he would do his job how he believed would benefit all parties. Even if his guts were stiff at the thought of a forced marriage.
“My Lady Stag?” He asks, and your heart jerks unexpectedly at the muttering of your title.
Blinking in confusion, your hand coming up to rub at your collarbone like a willow branch, you almost miss the question entirely.
“Where you come from, if I can ask, of course, what’s it like?” Your mind strays from marriage ceremonies and consummation—momentary peace slipping in on waves of this man’s smooth accent.
Mouth opening, only to close once and open again, you decide to indulge this man with your answer. If only because he speaks of your home.
“Green,” is the soft utterance of your answer to him. “It’s green. More trees and rivers than you can count in your lifetime. Animals each more fantastical than the last; all of which your people now call nothing but hearsay.”
You can sense his attention, sucking up knowledge as if he had the years to know and understand it all.
Lysander coos, shaking his feathers out, and you glance upward without moving your head. You chuckle like a blade of moving grass.
Blinking, Gaz slowly begins to smile, cocking his skull to the side boyishly. “What’s so funny, then?”
Your high nose twitches.
“He says you’re as if a Wyvern hatching. A curious thing.” Brown eyes drift to your companion, whose peaked eye pierces like black fire-stone. Gaz’s mouth releases a puff of a chuckle, chest jerking.
“Hell, never thought I’d get insulted by a bird.”
“Humans have not the ability to speak with beasts,” you ease out, walking on. “On that, I have to say you are at a sure disadvantage.”
“What?” Gaz’s amused voice is in your ear. “Minus the whole immortality thing?”
You side-eye him, visage calm with decades of understanding. “Not everything is built to last forever.”
A momentary silence falls between the two of you. Eyes locked, you both stare, legs carrying bodies across the unfeeling stone until the area Lysander had told you about takes form. You shift a slow right and exit into the inner courtyard, large stone walls making a small square of patchy green grass and dying plants. A fountain sits still.
“If this is to be a game of equal exchange, Knight, I desire to ask the next question.” Your eyes take it all in, hand moving out to capture the blackened leaves of a Medlar tree. Frowning at the dead fauna, you hear Lysander take to wing, flapping until his ghostly form lands on the far-off fountain’s edge.
“Alright,” Gaz nods, looking around at the dying place with a frown as well. He’d never come here before, but the state of things was…sad, really. “Ask away.”
“When you leave the castle—the town,” you let power move to your fingertips, and you feel the tingles of it running the lengths of your arms like ice and fire; taking a low breath. “What do you see? I admit, I’m not used to having company with humans. I know not how their souls feel.”
Gaz walks into the small enclosed space, humming as he taps the pommel of his sword. His shoulders shrug as his head tilts up, blinking at the stars.
“I wouldn’t see it as you would, I gather.”
You look over your shoulder, amusement in your face mixed with a slice of intrigue. “That wasn’t my question. But, no, you would not.”
“Figured,” he chuckles, nodding at you. Gaz articulates himself dutifully. “I see a place far more peaceful than the one here. Outside the stone and smog—it’s beautiful, truly. Calm. You can actually think above the noise, you know? I usually find myself wanting to get out more often, but my duty ties me here.”
Your eyes soften slightly, thumb running the face of the leaf as you take in his words. Lysander stoops to take a sip of water.
“You’re…” You lack the words, only humming and stopping yourself.
“Why are we here, Princess?” Gaz asks you, gazing around. “I had only expected you to walk to the kitchens—the library, even. Don’t get me wrong, you can go as you wish, but I’m not sure this is the most…” He grunts. “Sightly place to end up. Everything’s dead.”
“Nearly,” you whisper, a tiny smile taking over your flesh. “Not quite.”
Gaz’s frown is lost to you, as is his comment that he mutters, “Looks it.”
Leaning forward, you press your lips to the leaf you hold as if a precious object. Into its blackened and shriveled form, you whisper its name—its true name, one you had learned through years of patience and trust that bordered on an entirely trance-like state. A Medlar is a tough and stubborn thing, like the fruit it bears, it will hang on until all else is gone to dust. Its roots are strong, and from them, you had listened to the earth sing its songs one buzzing note at a time.
All things speak, you just have to know how to listen.
There’s a surge of wild order, a dichotomy of will and freedom; the sing of an axe and the memories of young saplings just gracing their leaves to the sun. A circle of death and rebirth as old as the stars that still shone in a sky of black.
You know many names, but those of the trees were the first to come to you, and it was only proper. Before anything, there were trees.
The Medlar shakes, its leaves dropping down one at a time until they come in groups, in clusters—bare branches shiver like dogs do until creaking ballads move over the air.
Starling, Gaz had taken a large step back, hand snapping to the handle of his sword, the blade half drawn. Lysander flies past his face, blunt talons skating the close-cropping of his hair before the bird grapples to your crown. Flinching, the knight watched with a mixture of horror and pure wonder.
The tree was sprouting new greens.
You step back, and from your feet, the dead grass quivers, before the smell of groaning earth makes his nose twitch; fresh blades show themselves anew. The dove atop your crown jumps from one sharp tine to the next, dodging lines of gold—eyes glinting and wings flapping excitedly.
Life is in the very air.
You smile to yourself, silver eyes moving as a nearly ancient-looking spark flares to life in them—a long breath entering your lungs.
Gaz’s face begins to heat as he watches, his heart pounding with something he can’t understand. He stares at your bright face before his fast-blinking eyes move to the grass growing all around; the bushes dancing, flowers opening up and turning to you. Birds gather on the edges of this verdant and fertile land, darting one by one to the fountain and to the trees. Singing.
The knight steps back, feet dancing over the ground with an airy laugh stuck in his throat.
“Holy hell…” he breathes, nearly panting.
Wide eyes move back to you, expression open, innocent. This was a moment when you truly believed you’d never seen a face more bare than this; more giving.
“You…” He laughs. “You’re tellin’ me you could always do that?” You chuckle, and it is a sound that could make roots grow in his heart, flowers bursting from his lungs. “I…I’m speechless, really. This is,” he laughs once more, turning a full circle, with his hand going to the back of his neck in shock. It was entirely new—all of it. Ivy climbed the stone, and the animals spoke and flew in the air; excitement something that transcends species. “This is extraordinary.”
You were something incredible.
Chuckling, you raise a slow brow, feeling a foreign heat move over your cheeks. It’s a moment before you speak, taken aback by the reverency.
“My thanks, Knight,” your head nods his way, a simple dip of your chin and nothing more. “But this is only a small courtyard. A fraction. If I so wished, forests could grow from ashen ground.”
“How?” He asks you, eyes glittering more than the moon.
Smaller birds join Lysander on your head, finches, perhaps, and sparrows. They tweet and chip, speaking their thanks. You reach up and let one move onto your finger, bringing it back to eye level as you move to softly connect your forehead to its own. Moving back, you hum and watch the bird fly off.
“Ages of practice,” you elegantly tip your head his way, careful of your cargo. “Quite verbatim.”
Gaz is speechless, unable to recall something in his life that had made him feel so special to be able to witness it. Magic to humans was a dying thing—you’d be surprised if he’d ever even seen it in this magnitude before.
“...Amazing,” he utters under his breath, smiling like a fool.
For all of your Fae trickery, your games, you had to be honest. “I don’t believe I thought you’d be this moved by it.”
“Really?” He blinks at you, a boyish twist to his face. “How could I bloody not be, Love?”
Your air gets stuck in your throat, eyes minutely widening.
Gaz quickly comes back to himself, straightening and clearing his throat as your face suddenly blazes in a way that startles you. Heart pattering like a horse’s hooves not only at the…different title but his awe at your magic as well.
“Forgive me, My Lady,” you choose not to correct him. “I overstepped.”
His body bends forward in a deep bow, hand to his heart, resting over his armor as the cape drapes its crimson fabric to the now vibrant grass.
It had briefly eluded you that you were to be married soon. A comment like that could get the Knight and his tree-bark brown eyes put to the sword. You hold back a long sigh, eyelids fluttering shut softly.
“Is he kind?” Your question is small, but it moves like a knife.
Gaz stares hard at the ground, once dead and nothing but a reminder of nature. He clenches his jaw, a worry swirling in his gut. The man knows who you’re asking about, and he holds the same dread he did in the Great Hall as you were led like a sacrificial lamb to the altar.
Maybe the Knight was broken, but even if he’d never met one of your kind before, he knew that no person deserved to be bartered for the illusion of peace—forced to give children like they were only objects. But maybe he was also just a man not meant for this lifetime.
It was the way of things.
Gaz swallows the tension in his shoulders. He will not lie.
“...No.”
—
This tall knight had become a constant at your side. Officially, he’d been placed for your protection, but you knew it was because the King didn’t want you to cut and run.
But unless there was a very good reason to, he should have known that you were not the running type. It was a battle of wits, and even into your marriage, you would always come out on top.
It started easy enough—Michael would invite you for tours of the castle ‘making it a home’ he’d said in front of his court. It was a power trip.
He’d talk about his wealth like it would make you swoon; like you cared at all. You could only hide your sneer for so many hours, even with your infinite amount of patience. Time had mellowed you like the rocks of the ocean, but even they cracked when the storm was strong enough.
Yet still, you considered yourself too intelligent for baseline insults.
“My palace was much the same, your Highness. Our towers rose high—nearly gracing the clouds themselves.”
“Oh, lovely, my King. Pray tell, do you also have pet dragons? Oh…unicorns, perhaps? My, I had the most lovely unicorn companion when I was just shy of my two-hundredth birth year. A little thing—all legs and neck. Beautiful creatures.”
“Gorgeous little trinkets. Tell me, do you have a coffer for fallen stars? They create the most magnificent illumination for late-night reading.”
Gaz nearly lost his composure at times, even if no one else could tell except for you and your pointed ears; twitching at every breath that was fought to keep still. The over-the-lip huffs and chuckles. In fact, you found yourself perpetuating the back-handed insults just to hear those noises. Such small and meaningless things, in the grand scheme.
You took…enjoyment from it.
Seeing the effect it had on the King was also a bonus—his raging eyes, snapping tongue held back for only his reputation and little more. He wanted to take you by the arm and shake you, you knew, yell in your face.
Kind, King Michael was not. Gaz had been correct.
In the nights, you would discuss with the Knight—sitting in the dense and growing courtyard with your body comfortable on the grass; Gaz’s on the fountain’s edge.
You have much of the same confidence in one another as you do tonight.
“Do knights marry for love?” Your voice wafts out, petting Lysander with a single finger in your lap; itching at his neck as he coos. “Do they get to choose?”
Gaz fiddles with his cape’s clasp, fingers dancing over the silver make. He has made a motion to always take off his ring when it’s just the two of you, easily slipping it away until he was forced to put it back on. He doesn’t know if you feel it, but he believes the two of you to be well-off acquaintances—perhaps even friends.
The man enjoyed speaking to you. He reveled in the limitless knowledge that spilled from your tongue, your stories and tales. Gaz, unlike so many others, enjoyed your company not for the power that it offers in a physical sense, but for the words that you freely give. Often your sentences were like honey to him, seeping into his head.
A princess speaking with a knight? Unheard of. A Fae princess? Blasphemy.
It was easy to forget that you were older than many generations of his family line.
“No,” he says, glancing over. “All knights take a vow of chastity when they commit to service. None of those alive in this kingdom will wed unless they willingly break their oaths.”
Your head tilts, crown resting comfortably a small distance away on a rock.
“That sounds lonely.”
Gaz smiles, “Worried about me?”
You stare, eyes traveling the little deaths on his face—the lines, the scars. “If it’s what you wish to do with yourself, who am I to tell you any different?”
The man’s face softens, lips pulling as his cheeks heat under the moonlight. “Figured you’d have some opinion of it.”
You hum, raising a brow. “It’s your life—it’s so fleeting. Tread it as if water between your fingers. Before you know it, it’ll be gone.” Lysander leans into your flesh, shivering. “Live it.”
“For someone who says they don’t know humans that well,” Gaz grumbles, though his chest is light. “You sure know a lot about them.”
“Intuition,” your mouth twitches in a smile. “And a bit of reality.”
Delicate looks are shared.
You do admit, you liked these conversations with Gaz. The long nights and the feeling of grass under your flowing dresses; the horrid contraptions that your betrothed had tried to make you wear stuck far back into the wardrobe of your room. Heavy items—suffocating corsets, unlike the simple but elegantly sewn one you wear now. You could feel it trying to sneak in when the days drew on.
Control.
It was all becoming more and more apparent. You did not want to live like this.
Your face goes troubled as the calm silence moves over the Medlar with its reaching branches. Fireflies hang like miniature stars as you take your crown and slip it back on; to feel the comforting weight of antlers.
The knight pauses as he slips his cape off of his shoulder, blinking over at you in a slow confusion. You look troubled. He’d never seen that expression on your face before.
“Stag?” Your head swivels, as if in another world.
“Just thinking,” your voice moves into his ears, making them hum with energy. Gaz’s brows furrow, a frown taking over. After a second, he stands, moving closer on quiet feet.
You watch him as he goes to kneel near you, one arm moving over the bent nature of his leg while the other holds fabric—letting it cascade over the earth. Brown eyes narrow, and a joking tease moves with the undertone of slight concern.
“I’m usually the talker, I know, but when you look a bit like that it makes me nervous.”
You frown. “Look like what?”
“Like someone’s got a sword to your neck, Princess.” The air is cool here, the deep throws of night taking you by the breath in your throat. A smooth smirk. “It’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen, yeah?”
If you leave, if you find a way out of this…the war will never end. It will go on until stone cracks like glass and generations forget why it even started in the first place.
But why were you put to the axe because of it? Why must you take the blade to the stomach—an object of greed?
Gaz’s amused voice moves lower at your immobile lips, going serious.
“Hey,” a hand outstretched to your arm, hovering. “Really, is everything alright?”
“Gaz,” you pause, voice still level despite your heated pulse. It’s like a snake curls itself in your guts, roots growing in your veins. The courtyard seems to shiver all by itself, leaves curling into themselves from bushes and trees. Lysander’s feet shimmy, head moving about.
This knight had been kind to you as well as honest about his intentions. Chivalrous. Such qualities are hard to come by anymore.
“I don’t believe I want this.” It’s a breath more quiet than a lapping of waves. Gaz stills, fingers above your flesh twitching. “I can’t live in a cage. I refuse.”
Silver meets brown, holding it firmly.
“I will not be a prize to be chained to a birthing bed.”
The man’s face pulls at that, tightening.
You don’t know what to expect. It isn’t fear in you—no, nothing like this could make you afraid. Apprehensive? Perhaps. Age made you cautious. At any moment he might flip his tune; run off to tattle to a King he, seemingly, likes just as much as you. Which is to say, very little. But there’s still the possibility, the knowledge stacked over ages and ages of strategy and mind games.
A knight of a tension-ridden kingdom, swearing fealty to a King whom you’re betrothed to. You’d just expressed treason, in a way. It could put you to the sword; to the rope. To irons. Your mind runs through the millions of possibilities, not able to settle on a single one before—
A cape settles over your shoulders, startling you.
Hand snapping to grab the front, your head snaps up, eyes wider than you can remember them ever going.
Soft browns meet you, a thin smile. Fireflies buzz about, and a dove sits under your still finger, watching with beady orbs intently at the scene. A Medlar quivers.
A stag and a knight breathe the same air. A godly creation and a saint ensnared in a song far larger than they intend, as the world shifts past all around them. Silver starlight leaves long reflections breaking from the hanging glory of your gems, but the patches of light on Gaz’s face capture yours in that instant far more than they should have.
Impossibly so. Unnaturally so.
Does this mortal have magic of his own, perhaps? You have to ask yourself. There was no other possibility.
And when he speaks…it’s like whatever ice has been layered over your antediluvian heart breaks into fire. There wasn’t even a fight from him.
“Then tell me what you need.”
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