heaven in your eyes
summary - it appears that prince sebastian has finally had enough of their game of deception, and seeks out his knight in the middle of the night. praestes knight au. (3.2k words)
The firmament held no stars.
Thus, on the stone ledge of the tower’s window, she had the distinct impression that if she were to push her heels against the wall and lurch into the unyielding black of night, she would fall for all of eternity. Her hands gripped the mantel, pressing against tiny pin pricks of limestone, grounding her. With closed eyes, the sliding whistle and frost of the cold winter wind whipped the strands of her hair wildly. A slight lean forward, still anchored, but it is enough to drop her head and feel the weightlessness of being vaulted into the air. Tantalizingly familiar.
"What are you doing?”
The knight turned, leaning on her arms to look questioningly back at her charge. He stood shock-still in the doorway, the other key still in hand: in the moonlight, he had taken on a sort of pallor mortis, all stiff limbed and wide-eyed. Putting his mind at ease, she swung her legs back over into her makeshift bedroom and stood. It felt good, exercising her returned power over his temperament. It was agonizing, those first weeks, where seemingly no tears or begging could move him to even look her in the eye. Now, a longing look towards any window or roughly pulling him by the collar of his shift was enough to cause him to break out in subtle sweat. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t enjoying it, as she watched him trip forward into the chamber.
“Why are you here?” She asks, closing the door behind him. His rights to the tower were thin; he only needed to rush past the cots and medical supplies and into the stone doors of the tomb every so often. Otherwise, he knew she had moved what little belongings she still had at the castle into here and staked the distant room as hers. It was only fair, after all. She looked at his neck and hands; no downy feathers or immature claws. “The quell was not but a week ago.”
“Refrain from your threats of suicide, Praestes,” His Highness stressed, ignoring the very reasonable question. She clenched her jaw, intending to cuss him out over his pull of rank, but bloodshot scleras and puffy eyelids stopped her in thoughts. It profoundly embarrassed her how his pitiful state removed any unkind words from her tongue, and he took her silence as an opening to say: “We need to speak.”
“Per my agreement with your father, my duties are strictly limited to -.”
“Please.”
“Ask nicely.”
She stared at the prince in challenge. He laboured a shaky sigh and acquiesced; she startled, having expected him to obstinately refuse, only to watch him lower to the floor on bended knee. He spoke, desperately. “Almira, please. I need to tell you something.”
She had intended to make a fool of him to see if he considered the drivel from his mouth worth suffering for, but her own name moved her more than anything. It was rare to hear it from his lips and it sounded almost as sweet as it once did. Though she didn’t say a word, he rightfully assumed that she would follow and rose to open the door, waiting for her to walk through it with him. She glared at him on the way out.
There was a hasty energy about him, she thought, which infected her with his own neuroticism. It felt like chasing a silent ghost down the stairs, which led her into the corridor and down the servant’s passages, making quick work of wherever His Highness had in mind to have a discussion. A handful of stationed guards had greeted them as they briskly walked by, sharp eyes meeting hers in question, but she nodded in assurance that all was fine. One right and two lefts later, they emerged through the kitchen doors and past the ornate steel gates of the garden.
His Highness did not stop walking or turn around at the sight of the fall of thick snowflakes; undeterred, he took them further into the hedges. Oh, he’s gone mad, she thought. Took us out into the cold with nothing but his thin shift and nary a robe between either of us. It was almost poetic, really, how the stone cold heartless bastard was seemingly unbothered in dragging them out into an equally frosty landscape. Thwarting his attempts at killing them both, The knight’s teeth chattered loudly behind her grimace and she took a swig from her pocketed blood vial. She muttered a rite, and the enchantment settled over them both with a pulsing warmth that pushed the cold at bay. The prince made little acknowledgment that she had done any magic at all.
He took them deep into the heart of the garden. His Highness stretched his ears to listen for anyone possibly hiding amongst the flowers in the winter snow in the dead of night. Finally satisfied, he exhaled shakily and looked at her with an intensity that rivaled the heat of her spell, stopping her in her tracks.
There is a silence, and then, a private mutter: “I am not worthy of your oath.”
The knight’s face contorted into a scowl. She anticipated this excuse along with many, many others to make sense of his betrayal, months ago.
“I sincerely mean that.”
“What good is your sincerity? As I have told you, your father, your staff, your fiancee: regardless of what has transpired and what may come, I will not relinquish my oath. I vowed to your parents that I would defend your life and this kingdom to the last, and I will not renege on it because their son couldn’t— couldn’t—.” She grits her teeth.
“I was not unfaithful.”
“Kill yourself.”
“I sent the missive to the Bael Furesians, yes,” the prince said, raising his voice. “I forced you out of our bedroom, I flaunted my engagement with the princess, I tarnished and spat on your name in the castle walls, I took relief in watching you shrink every time I stepped into the room. You are relegated to being this lightless shade of your former self for the rest of your life because what I have done to you, and done with pleasure, but I have not so much as touched a single hair on the princess.”
The knight stooped on the ground. She could not look at him. “Is that what you wished to say?”
His Highness sat down beside her. “It is not. I want you to relinquish your oath.”
“You incorrigible—.”
“I have been wanting that for three years, now.”
She froze.
“My heart has only ever beaten for you.” She felt the tips of his fingers brush against hers, not daring to transgress any further. “What I said at your knighting remains steadfast; these small things — people, power, politics, wealth, territory, title — none of it matters, but you. I would undergo any sacrifice, commit any ignoble or sacrilegious deed to have you by my side, smiling.”
“But we had that,” the knight despaired, pulling the glove from her hand and shoving it in his face. On the back, the sigil of her oath burned, the everconstant proof of her devotion. The prince rubbed the back of his own hand, his own admission of guilt. “Help me see reason; why would you propose to the princess if what you say is true?”
“You would trade your life for mine without a single regret,” His Highness answered, face pinched. “Speak plainly: how am I supposed to imagine an eternity with you if moon after moon, my mind is clouded with bloodlust, I am blinded to my dearest knight, and my flesh distorts and grows into a monstrous beast that must be immured and put down by your hand alone?”
He pulled his knees up, tighter, as if to contain himself within the tight hold of his arms. His head dipped down, muffling his voice. “I cannot be the reason for your undoing. What did my father think, when he woke from his sickbed and his advisors had to look him in the eye and tell him that he had slain his own wife? He does not even remember doing it. He doesn’t know what her last words were, or what she looked like as she gave her final breath. Doesn’t know if his claws shredded her flesh, his beak pierced her heart, or if, sky’s above, if he ate her. To him, he fell unconscious and when he woke, the love of his life, my mother, was dead.”
She heard him let out a sigh, so haggard and bone-deep that it could only be truth. A quiet confession. “I cannot lose you like that.”
The knight knew. Too many times, herself, she has imagined the pain and suffering that His Highness would endure if she were to be killed. To not crush his soul, she fought tirelessly to survive against the tirade of the unholy beast, braving the skull-piercing screech and the thousand blades of its feathers. In these past months, that ache eased as she came to accept that he would not care a whit. In the quelling tower, beyond the stone passage, her blood would circulate gently in her body, calm with the knowledge that her death was now meaningless. There would be a ceremony, honouring her, but the only emotional burden would be the stress of paperwork and trials as they would scramble to find someone else with the same capacity for devotion to the prince and thus, the same capability of undertaking the powers bestowed by the oath.
“Then,” the knight said, slowly. She leaned towards him, shifting his hair out of his eyes. They opened delicately, and her heart cracked at seeing the renewed redness. “This was all to push me away.”
“Yes.”
“Then you have betrayed me and scorned me for nothing, Sebastian.”
He laughed, hollowly, and shifted abruptly, as if he was wished to lean against her, but thought better of it. “I know, I know. I was a fool to ever think that I could convince you to cherish your life on my behalf. Tell me, does breaking the oath actually kill you? Is that why mother and father were so hesitant to train you? Why you won’t leave, despite it all? I know you do not harbor that much love for the kingdom.”
The knight blinked. “I am in love with you.”
The prince waited for more. “And?”
Oh, he was an idiot. She grasped his hands firmly, conviction and sincerity clear on her features. “Your Highness, I have been in love with you since the day I met you. I count it my greatest fortune, to have been forced to attend that tedious ball with my family and stumble across you wailing your eyes out in this very garden. On the carriage ride home, I threw a tantrum, begging my father to train me in swordsmanship along with my brother, and my mother to pull some strings to have the same royal tutor as you. I was enchanted with your mother, admired her skills as a knight, and envied her for being able to serve your father as queen-protector. As we became friends, I stole my family’s stationery to hound the king into an audience, and demanded to know the criteria to become a Praestes Knight. You are well aware that it took me several years to wear them down and get the queen to take me on as her sole apprentice.”
“Everything I do is in service of you,” she said bluntly. “It is not forced by the oath or by your family’s wishes. I do it because I have only ever wanted one thing, and that was to devote my entire being to you. You ask me to relinquish my oath; in doing so, you might as well sentence me to death, for if my fate does not end by your hand, it will end by mine.”
Sebastian stared, dumbfounded. Raising his hand, he massaged his eyelids roughly. “What have I ever done to deserve that?”
Solemnly, she said, “You need not concern yourself with deserving my care, for this is not a benevolent act. You are right; you are condemned to having me by your side for the rest of your days because no one else is capable of loving you as much as I do. You had no choice in that matter from the very beginning.”
“I did not mean that,” His Highness blurted out, trailing off with embarrassment. He turned, and all she could see was the pink colour of his neck and ears. “It simply sounded absurd, and perhaps you would not question it as much as any other excuse.”
The knight sighed, moving to stand on her aching legs, and the prince followed her up, putting them on equal ground. “Your Highness, you should have told me. It did not have to come to this, where you ridiculously drag us out here in the snow to confess all this to me.”
“Would you have listened to reason, if it meant entrapping me in the chamber until you found a blessing or cure to break the curse?” The prince retorted. “If that process took years, and I was to suffer from madness within those white walls?”
She faltered, and he continued. “No, you would continue to quell the beast, rushing in without knowing if its strength was magnified or its longevity was lengthened, and by then, you would be dead from weakness or exhaustion.”
Perhaps her face twisted in some odd way, because the prince quietly huffed, holding her gaze. “Do not look at me like that. I knew you love me. I just didn’t think it was this much.”
“Still,” the knight said, throat suddenly dry. “I am honour-bound to you, to follow your word and guidance. I would not —.”
The prince barked out a laugh, which resounded in garden. “Your hypocrisy astounds me. I do not believe you have heeded my command for a single moment if it did not suit your purpose. Every member of our staff is well aware that it is you who wields power over me.”
She smacked his arm, disgruntled. “Fine, but there are any number of things that we could have looked into before you hastily decided upon suspension of my duty and then engagement to another.”
“Such as?” He raised his brows, pointedly.
“Perhaps there is information within the archives. The artisan guild also contracts many magicians to do spellwork. There is a chance that someone may know something, or perhaps we could have contacted an arcane capital, like Bael…” She trailed off. The knight turned to look at the prince, full of smug condescension. She bit back a smile. Clever, still, even while stupid. If only she could kiss him for it. “I see.”
“By proposing to the princess, I intended to not only hurt you to oust you from being my Praestes Knight, but I also wished to capitalize on their magicians with our newfound alliance,” he said. His Highness reached downwards and grasped the hem of his shift and began to lift it, revealing way too much bare skin from his legs. The knight’s hand shot out, grabbing his own tightly, heart spiking.
“Uh,” she said, very intelligibly.
He looked confused and then seemingly coming to his senses, he stuttered, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “There is a reason for this.”
Flustered, she prayed on his behalf that his cause was just and slowly released her grasp. She swallowed, shutting her eyes and turning her head away for good measure. Damn him, making this experience so strange.
She heard the prince raise the thin cloth stiltedly over his head, more self-conscious of his actions, and listened to it drop unceremoniously onto the snow-covered ground. He clicked his tongue and dryly said, “I’m afraid you need to see me to understand.”
The knight hesitantly opened her eyes, and gasped. The prince’s porcelain skin was marred in fields of purple-green bruises, a connected leyline of marks scattering across his entire body. She touched the many splotches of injury and the prince winced, doubling over in pain. Nonplussed, she kept examining to get a sense of the work being done.
“What is it?” She squinted, face mere inches from his warm skin and hands running carefully over the marks. “Leeches? Pinpricks?”
“You would know better than I.”
As if she had any formal training in the arcane. She pinched his unbruised arm. “So you have been letting that annoying magician tamper with and scar your skin, and you don’t even understand what it’s doing to you?”
His Highness grunted. “You are welcome to ask him yourself now.”
The knight glared at him. “Was it just me who was unaware about this arrangement?”
“No, of course not,” the prince said quickly. His knight would be furious if the castle was conspiring against her. “My father is also in the dark.”
“Then, who knows what? I am not asking as your—,” she hesitated. Difficult to describe what they are now. “As Praestes Knight, you cannot have me slipping royal secrets. I would never live it down.”
“I have only told the mage,” His Highness states, picking his shift up and adjusting it in place. The knight sighs, mourning the loss of the view. “Though, who is to say whether he has shared it with the princess? They strike me as schemers.”
If only he knew the half of it, she thought, but there was no need to concern himself with that information right now. She had it under control. The knight stared at his covered midsection, mind and heart racing at the possibility that the prince could be free, truly free, from the curse. Perhaps she owed the mage a debt. “Has he made any improvements? Or at least, does he have an inkling of how to remedy or lessen it? I have not noticed any differences during the quellings.”
The prince quieted, discouraged. “It is slow work. He isn’t familiar with whatever magic lies in Avicadere – apparently it is quite different from Bael Fures’ – and the initial cursebreaking did not show any merit.”
“No wonder he has been pestering me with more questions as of late. I will help, of course. Perhaps the archives might have something,” the knight muttered. She ran her fingers through her hair, and turned her back to him. Just above the noise of the wind, a whisper: “I wish you had told me sooner. I have been so lonely.”
He almost touched her shoulder. Almost tugged her into his arms to bridge the distance between them, but there was no amount of touch or words he could impart that would make it better. Instead, he walked to stand beside her in the silent seclusion. Graciously, she linked her pinky around his loosely, and something unfurled in his chest in relief.
“At least it is a beautiful night,” the knight mentioned, almost wistfully.
The prince glanced upwards, but the thousand brilliant pinpricks of white stars that normally laid in the distance were hidden against clouds, black as coals. “Is it?”
She tilted her head and smiled, looking into his eyes. “Indeed.”