while the gods watched ❇ i
sci-fi/fantasy!au · logan howlett, bucky barnes, clark kent x f!reader
word count: 11k
⋆.𐙚 ̊. a 2k celebration oneshot ⋆.𐙚 ̊.
⚔️ WARNINGS/TAGS: knights and princess; EVENTUAL SMUT, 18+ MDNI (making out, oral fixation, groping, slight voyeurism, hickeys, dry humping, coming untouched, nipple play, public place/outdoors (but it's empty)); eventual sex pollen/fuck-or-die; eventual foursome; porn with a little plot; soft worldbuilding; heavy religious imagery (mostly made up); original side characters; cameos; nicknames (Bucky is referred to as "James" or "Jamie", "princess", "sweetheart"); ambiguously complicated relationships lmao
🏰 READER WARNINGS/TAGS: afab!reader, princess!reader, reader is able-bodied and has hair, mentions of reader's parentage (race-agnostic/you can pretend you're adopted!)
✨ AUTHOR'S NOTE: i'm having the time of my life with this genre and this fic so of course i have yapatitis.
Moonlight flooded onto a square courtyard, casting black shadows into the four lonely hallways that bordered it. Although the hour was well past midnight, its glow was brighter than usual, like an echo of the sun blotting out stars from the inky sky.
Nights such as these could only mean one thing: the vernal equinox was fast approaching.
A tall shape cut through the dark. Its shadowy outline passed through between a stone-hewn arch, then another, and another. Its heavy steps were hastened. A hint of silver followed its movement: threads of embroidery adorning ice-colored priestly garments gleamed where the light hit as its wearer traveled deeper within the castle’s structure.
The night’s quiet was smeared only by the figure’s footsteps above faint cricketsong.
Beads of sweat ran down aged ebony skin, escaping the curls of a graying beard before seeping into a woolen stole wrapped around a neck. The material was heavy for what would have been a cool Spring night, but not nearly as heavy as the matter this man carried in silence.
In all his long years as the head of a Holy House, Amon Amhara had never been so on edge.
The divine message he had just received was unlike any other—much stronger than the one that called him as the House’s servant, and clearer than any dream.
Still, the elder forced himself to remember the sensations, gripping them by the frayed edges of his human consciousness. A high priest with Gods-given fortitude, the Amon clutched onto each detail with all his might, his painstaking effort even causing him to screw his eyes shut as he muttered down the open corridor.
His path turned a corner, away from the moonlight. The darkness made it easier to remember the vision.
Two swords: crossed, twins in shape. Their steel was jagged and threatened by rust, yet sharp they remained—for the Amon feared they’d cut his skin despite being a mere image. Together, they rested upon the backdrop of a sable sky.
Above them loomed a single star, its light brilliant and pure.
And then there had been a voice—only one, at first. It had begun as a whisper, a thrum too low to understand, before growing into wisps that tickled beneath murmured prayers, until they swelled and swelled and swelled into a cacophony of overlapping voices. The rattle had drowned the Amon’s thoughts. Loud. Frantic.
Until eventually the soundwaves found each other, blending together to form the same shape. An unmistakable chant that had only stopped when he’d snapped his blurry eyes open in a cold fright.
The voices had said a name.
The princess’s name.
Yours.
The terrace was on the west wing’s rooftop: green, open, and particularly quiet this hour of the morning.
Past the overlooking view of the lake-sea, a red circle rose. The burning sun always promised a clear day ahead, though temperatures may be cooler than the color suggested. Gentle clouds floated by, distant and wispy way up high as if emanating from the horizon line, itself barely noticeable between the still-dark expanses of sea and sky that bracketed it.
You leaned against stone railings, surveying the waves below.
There wasn’t always so much water. The past three years had changed that.
The quietness you got to enjoy this morning was partially thanks to the high tide, although to thank it would be exceedingly blasphemous.
When the waters had first risen, it was the lower levels of the kingdom who’d suffered.
And Gods, how they had suffered. Wards of the commons woke to waterlogged fields, their bedrooms flooded, crates of precious supplies beyond saving in drowned cellars. Some disappeared, swept away—kin and cattle alike. Those who remained were broken with a loss no amount of coin could repair.
What had followed had been a mass-migration to the city level above: a tear-filled mess that the imperial officers did their best to marshal. Even after settling down, an atmosphere of unrest had gripped the populace.
It hadn’t let go since.
Because the lake-sea had been nothing but giving until the Flood: an abundant source of nature’s bounty, providing your territory with food aplenty and a place of rest laden with beauty. Tradition called it many a thing: old folk songs lauded it as the mirror into which the sky gazed, sonnets celebrated it as a sapphire dropped by the Gods.
Now, it was a silent terror. For the tides do not rest as men do, and they grow ever taller.
Your people had to relocate yet again in just three months after the first Flood.
The lake-sea had been the reason so many people left to seek refuge under other banners. Some had taken up their sails, while others with heavier purses had boarded airships.
What they hadn’t known at the time was the fact that water had been rising everywhere.
The seas swelled. Lakes crested. Rivers overflowed—all despite man’s cunning to contain them.
A natural disaster or a supernatural malediction, the human race was still undecided.
Either way, the very thing that tended this Earth was suffocating it, as if finally telling land-dwellers that they were unwelcome. What used to be the ground now lay buried in the deep.
You stared at the graveyard of rooftops underneath rippling water.
Three years ago, children used to play there in a plot of green. It felt like ages had passed.
Just then, something soft circled around your left ankle. Something furry.
You smiled, looking down at the movement under your dress that betrayed a beloved culprit. It meowed, further giving itself away.
Two ears emerged from beneath the hem, white as fresh snow, before out popped a feline face with blue eyes. The creature’s lanky body shimmied out of the fabric, almost like it was trying to scratch its back on it—a useless attempt against such a weightless material.
You leaned down and extended a hand to do the job. The cat happily received it, arching into the touch. It yawned.
“Good morning, Alpine.”
She purred in reply.
The peaks she was named after had drowned centuries ago in an older, primordial flood. Nobody knew the waters could rise higher than they already had.
You may call the morning peaceful, but silence was its true name.
Silence that broke when a trumpet blast pierced the veil.
One long, clear note divided the dewy air, and you nearly jumped in your own skin. Alpine was clearly taken aback at the sound, bolting in shock between the conifers and rose bushes that blushed at the sunrise.
It wasn’t a warning—too pretty to be one. The tune was that of a return.
Someone was coming home.
You looked up to the sky.
As the red sun broke the sleepy blue morning with streaks of light, you watched as the sky began to glimmer with a thousand reflective surfaces. What looked like perfect little squares shifted rapidly in your vision—light, dark, metal, light, dark—until finally, a low sound polluted the air.
The sound of an engine.
An airship uncloaked itself from its reflective camouflage, looming out in the open—though it would perhaps be more accurate to call it a shuttle, instead. The smooth gray of its reinforced steel covered a triangular, dart-like body. Lean. Designed with and for precision. It was feather-light compared to most passenger ships, apparent in how it floated gently downwards. Its turbines blasted hot air, causing the nearby scenery to shake.
It descended on the docking terrace—the structure itself austerely made of stone, bleached from sun’s lashings—before stilling to a complete stop.
The shuttle’s chosen landing pad hummed to life, greeting it: a circular iron structure etched with veins of light, both arcane and artificed in nature. Unseen mechanisms raised the pad from the ground as the vessel’s bridge dropped. Decompressed air hissed, like it had finally gotten the chance to breathe.
You watch the disembarkation from afar.
A squad marched out of the ship. Orderly. Uniformed. You counted fifteen soldiers. In a line like that, and from this distance, they looked like a colony of beetles: their armor gleamed under the rising sun, steel plates washed with pinks and oranges from a sky that burned at the horizon line.
Even from all the way up here, you could spot him.
Helmet off but still armored like the rest of his men, he stood in front of them, likely giving orders you couldn’t possibly hear from your viewpoint. He was far away, but it was as if you could see the lines on his face as he spoke: Gods knew you’ve had more than enough time to memorize them, having known him since you were barely literate.
It should scare you, the exactness with which his head turned to where you stood, at least three hundred feet above where he was.
His eyes found yours. They were bluer than the wakening edges of the sky.
James Barnes—Captain of the Inquisition, Holy Knight of the Imperium—had returned.
Eight seats marked a circle within a chamber of smooth, calcified stone—one for every point on a compass rose. On their sides were runes, as ancient as the kingdom itself, decorating what would have been blank slabs of sanded-down rock. The seats rose up, united with the ground as if they’d been birthed from it.
You sat at the head of the enclosed room: North. Seven other people of various ages and adornments occupied the remaining seats, covered in shadow. The air smelled faintly of lake-sea salt.
The room looked like it was built by nature herself. In place of doors, the rock curved, forming archways and pillars that resembled a network of short tunnels. Its structure trapped coolness in the room, a welcome reprieve for when the sun shone vengefully, at the expense of leaving most of the chamber’s corners shrouded in darkness.
The source of light came from a part of the domed ceiling that was left exposed: one that formed a jagged circle at the center. Where the rest of the stone chamber was smoothened by tireless hands, this part was left the way it was. Its coarse circumference of raw rock allowed the morning rays to pour in—the way a skylight cave would.
Under that spotlight, surrounded by the Council, was a lone figure.
For the second time that day, you laid eyes on Captain James Barnes.
He stood at the chamber’s center, dressed as he was when you saw him disembark.
“Your report, Captain.”
He bowed, casting long shadows on the bare ground.
“Our southward expedition confirmed that another flag has abandoned the Gulfed Earth,” James said, gaze kept low.
“What flag?” The low voice of a Duke seated to your right chased.
The Captain kept facing you as he answered:
“Sokovia.”
Murmurs of uncertainty and weariness bloomed within the chamber’s walls—except the room was dead silent. It was the restless thrum of pure energy that tickled the edges of your mind, even without focus.
Other than that, you could hear a pin drop. Or maybe the heavy breathing of a corpulent Duke seated on the Southwest.
“And you’re sure of this?” you ask.
“Yes, Your Highness,” this time he stared right at you, “A crater in the ground, just like the others. They’ve taken to the skies. I suspect we might be the only grounded territory left.”
“Sokovians, traveling to space?” someone spat—an older Marchioness to your left. Her voice serrated unabashedly as long robe-sleeves gesticulated past armrests. “Whenever did they learn how to do that?”
“It seemed that in closely watching the waters, we forgot to watch our enemies,” Southeast calmly said.
Darius Petrov sat in the Southeastern seat. The head of House Petrov was a lean man in his forties, with a square face and a bare-minimum bow. Like the other Petrovs, living and dead, his thin eyebrows were the only hair he possessed on his head. Outside of council meetings, his vanity was revealed by the endless finery he draped himself with—and by preferring gold over silver despite its unflattering sheen on his skin.
During council meetings, his ambitions were always concealed, poorly as it may be. Today, however, it appeared that he stopped trying.
“Sokovia is our ally, Archduke Petrov,” you corrected, tone clipped.
“Was,” he hissed back, though his voice remained dangerously placid, “Our good Captain here said they abandoned us.”
You steeled your expression, finding his hazy figure in the dim.
“They’ve simply gone down a different path. It was our choice to stay.”
There was derision even in the way he leaned to one side, the outline of him resting his face on a palm—a face which surely would reveal the same disdainful energy that emanated from him, if only he were better lit.
“Then I’m beginning to think our decision unwise,” he concluded smoothly.
The objection in his tone was so clear, you could feel the tension in the room grow more pointed. Its sharp edge was directed at you instead of the Archduke; the minuscule signs of rest in most other Nobles’ body language made it apparent that they happened to agree with Petrov.
You felt like you were in a nest of snakes.
This was Petrov’s way of posturing, you realized. Show that he had the majority’s support. Rattle you with the beginnings of a revolt.
You made sure to imbue your words with coldness when you spoke.
“You say so, but I believe the Council had your vote to stay when we convened three seasons ago.”
“Many things have changed between then and now, Princess.”
The way he uttered the title sounded deeply infantilizing.
“So if I asked you again, at this very moment,” you uncrossed your legs, brows lightly furrowed, “you’d vote to sunder our kingdom from Earth?”
There was a pregnant pause, but you already knew his answer. You just needed him to say it.
“I would, Your Highness.”
Disquiet flooded the chamber again, multiplying as though they amplified like slithers chasing each other against infinite concave walls; a noisy chatter that lived more in your head than in your ears. You fought back a frown at the overwhelming sensation.
Meanwhile, James remained an unmoving figure amidst the turbulent tempers that rapidly filled the room. The Council’s single, silent audience.
You focused on his energy. Heavy as he felt—weary from the journey, no doubt—you at least found him steady; an anchor to the Nobles’ volatile excitability.
Finding calm, your gaze pierced Petrov in his seat, dark as it may be.
“You do realize, Archduke, that sundering would doom our Queen to sleep forever?”
The implication in your rhetorical question hung with weight in the quickly staling air, thick with venomous silence. The Archduke’s alignments were a clear infraction against the Crown. In some serpentine effort to gain more power in an ailing world, these so-called Nobles would turn their backs against a Queen who bestowed on them her favor—the Archduke just happened to be foolish enough to make the first move.
You would have found it a little funny, if not for the fact that the Queen was your mother.
There was no response from Petrov. He seemed to realize that any more dissent may suggest treason—enough for his Council seat to be vacated. Permanently.
“The Gods aren’t bound by time the way we are. Their promises remain eternal.”
A new voice came from the arched entrance, echoing ominously.
Three figures step into the shaded light through one of the doorways to your right. They were no more visible than the outlines of the Nobles in their stone seats, but their white robes betrayed them. Identical fabric moved with a faint snowflake-like glimmer. Intricate details were embroidered with silver thread on the length of their stoles. Thin veils draped across their faces as a means of modest obscuration, its fine mesh pinned to the front of high hennins made of silk.
It was the figure in the center who had spoken: female, older, the smallest of three, the smallest in the room—yet what she lacked in height, she made up for with unmistakable authority, also despite the slight roundedness in her shoulders and neck.
Her voice boomed in the chamber.
“All that is to say, are you no longer a believer, Archduke Petrov?”
The Archduke replied, taken aback: “This is a closed meeting—for the ears and eyes of the Council only!”
“The Amons’ guidance is always welcome, especially in troubling times,” you casually dismissed his complaint, before turning to the clerics in the room. “Well, Amon? Are you here to bear graver news?”
You could see her face now as she stepped forward: skin pale, weathered with wise wrinkles; gray eyes shrewd, like a fox, but twice as sharp. Her thin lips were lightly rouged, white hair pulled back tightly and hidden underneath the fabric of her headdress.
Amon Lisianthus smiled. For once, you noted a sliver of zealous gladness.
“No, Your Highness. In fact, there might be hope yet left for us.”
Once again, the room reacted. You felt the pulse of energy by the tips of your fingers—sharp with cynicism, and then melting into the warmth of faith. Scanning the seven seated around you, you noted their unspoken responses, taking care to mask your own into neutrality.
Unlike your mother’s, your powers weren’t fully developed. She would have looped the thread of emotion to each person within a second or less.
But now was hardly the time to covet.
You opened your hands.
“Do share, Amon.”
The curve of her smile flattened into a terse line.
“I’m afraid I cannot, Your Highness.”
Her response stalled your breathing ever so slightly.
“Why?”
“The prophecy hasn’t taken its true shape,” she offered. “We’ve only received signs—but the pieces shall fall into place on your name day, as the Gods decreed.”
Of course. You swallowed the urge to scowl. If there was anyone in this room with an inclination for dramatic suspense, it would be the religious.
Yet theirs was a power you couldn’t fight—not that you were sure you wanted to. For the Gods spoke exclusively through their bloodline, the same way power flowed through yours, and as long as the kingdom lived, their prophecies had not failed. Not even once.
It was as though the Gods, unseen as they were, wished to equate skepticism with stupidity.
This form of power was what bound the royal bloodline and the Holy Houses. This was what shut Archduke Petrov up.
The waning of the waters had been promised a year after the first Flood. Not straightforwardly—which was strange, considering how the Gods’ previous decrees were always so sure—but in hints. They spoke of the tides’ cradle: a genesis, a source that may be harnessed or caged to stop the flooding.
The year after, they spoke of man’s rule over seas, and that sustained those who remained grounded. While the rest of the human race fled to the skies, taking pieces of Earth with them, your banner stood firm: a spike of pearl and silver above the rising flood.
Amon Lisianthus spoke again, addressing the room while her wiry fingers intertwined around prayer beads.
“We ask the Noble Houses to hold on,” her tone was firm, like she wasn’t asking at all, “for Her Highness’s name day is near, along with the vernal equinox.”
She was right. In the midst of daily reports, resource management, and finding the time to eat, you’d forgotten your own birthday and the tradition that came with it.
“Three days,” Amon Lisianthus said, “and your decision shall be unanimous.”
Archduke Petrov leaned back into his seat. “Let us hope that is the case.”
“Then I see no reason for this council to continue.”
You stood. Those seated followed suit.
“We convene again after the name day rites. You are dismissed.”
Seven figures drifted out of the domed chamber, each taking leave through a different doorway like the split of a water drop. Their exit was soundless, though you had no doubt of the whispers that were sure to escape once they were out of earshot. The Nobles’ coats and pelts and robes revealed their colors under the leaks of sunlight from the ceiling, before disappearing entirely past stone-cast archways into the darkness beyond.
The chamber was no more silent than it was before, but at least the air was less oppressive.
While you dismissed the Council, the Amons remained. So did James. You looked towards Lisianthus, the ivory of her silhouette firm like a chess piece.
“Is there truly nothing you can share with me before the rites, Amon?” you asked.
“You know there isn’t, child,” she smiled. Something in her expression spelled secrecy.
You followed that hunch with the singular focus of a notched arrow—although the manner with which you concentrated on her aura was carefully concealed.
…because she was the one who taught you how to do this.
Nothing about the Amon wavered or changed; not in reality, and certainly not in energy. You stared at her. She stared back placidly, the halo about her colorless. The edges of your consciousness grasped onto hers as well as fingers against thin silk: slipping, barely holding on.
Where your power was primed to reveal, hers concealed. Considering her long years as Amon, she had plenty of time to practice camouflage.
You dropped it, and in doing so, your shoulders relaxed. The movement was barely there, but her gaze turned a stern chastising as if you’d been completely transparent. It nearly made you regress to your earlier years, when you were just about as recalcitrant as every other youth in the kingdom.
“You gave Mother plenty of time to prepare for her prophecy.” Adolescence trickled only slightly out of your tongue, but there was enough bite to chill the air.
The Amons tensed. Lisianthus masked her reaction the best.
“The Queen’s prophecy was an exception, given how dire it was.”
“I suppose I should be happy, then, for it appears that mine isn’t.”
You smiled as you spoke. One would think it a genuine thing, though in doing so, one would find oneself the furthest one would ever be from the truth. It was a royal smile—painstakingly perfected upon, gradually easy to offer, unfailingly difficult to discern.
You felt it this time: the prying touch of another’s mind. You recognized its thrum as Lisianthus’s.
You breathed—a slow rise in, an even slower fall out. A fortification trick she taught you many years ago, while you were still under her wing.
“Many think evading the third eye is the same as cowering,” she said, circling around your standing posture, “Freeze, and hope you don’t get caught.”
Her slender hands landed on your shoulder, willing them to drop.
“But that just makes them easy prey.”
A finger tipped your chin up to meet her gray gaze.
“Breathe, child.”
You obeyed, letting air in and secretly feeling glad for it.
“To truly shield yourself, you must make yourself a hunter. The bigger animal they can’t even touch.”
That lesson truly bore fruit today.
In Lisianthus’s search for your true feelings, you remain unperturbed. What brought you comfort was simple: the Amon could scrape the very crevices of your brain all she liked—at the end of the day, the seat on the throne was yours, and so was the power to deal with any wrong move on her part.
What you didn’t expect was the faint taste of her emotions that attempted to comb yours.
Trepidation.
Curious, considering her optimistic word choice earlier—and you hadn’t sensed any falsehoods when she spoke them, either.
“All shall be revealed on your name day,” the Amon’s voice cut through the silence. “Until then, may the Gods be with you.”
She bowed with the other two figures, mute once more. Together, their bone-white cleric garbs swept the floor as they walked out of the chamber. You watched as their uniform steps led them to turn into the hallway, disappearing from sight.
You and James were alone.
Even without scanning him, you felt his mood. It was pinkish-orange, not unlike the sunrise from earlier—a shade that flickered with eagerness: for attention or for something else, you were about to find out.
You turned to look at him. He stayed, obedient at his designated spot. The streaming sun sculpted his face in light and shadow, making his eyes shine an even more brilliant blue.
“Was it really just Sokovia?” you tilted your head.
The sundering of one nation was devastating enough a loss to humankind, and you know James Barnes to be quite discerning when he wanted to.
“…We suspect the Wakandans may have evacuated as well, Your Highness,” he answered.
Your eyebrows raised slightly—a tell that you didn’t bother to mask. He had seen you make uglier faces behind the Amons’ backs as a child.
“Suspect?”
James nodded. “There was no extraction sign on their territory. No crater. Not a single moved rock, actually. It was like Wakanda never existed.” He pressed his lips. “I decided to omit this finding until the Inquisition finds out more.”
You filed that point of concern in your head, gazing at an imaginary point: a cold column on the other side of the room. Two kingdoms, both allies, no longer on the same plane. Yours was a territory which had always had an affinity to the waters—often worshiping the element—but to be the only one left with it was… dangerously lonely.
“Their technology has always been superior. Maybe that meant a cleaner sundering… The kind we aren’t familiar with.”
“We’re looking into the possibility,” he said.
You looked at him.
“If it’s true,” you began cautiously, “if we are the last…”
He knew. He nodded, eyes softening.
The Inquisition wasn’t an inquisition to begin with. They were organized to seek out survivors of the Flood. What started as a search-and-rescue mission throughout the realm’s far reaches turned into a mere inspection of what remained. No more rural communities to evacuate. Not even major territories remained.
The Inquisition had been formed to ask if anyone out there needed help. Today—now—the question was: is anyone out there?
Once the remaining doubts about Wakanda were cleared, there was no need for the Captain’s unit to exist.
Something in James’s energy shifted. It took you out of your pondering.
There was a beat of silence, and then:
“Your Highness?”
Your eyes met his in a silent question, trailing to his lips when he spoke the answer slowly.
“I haven’t… given you your due greeting.”
The movement in his throat was all too clear.
He approached, one step closer.
“May I?” he whispered.
You nodded.
Then plate armor scraped against stone floor. He bent the knee.
The rays of light that painted him from above made him look more sculpture than man: a knight born into myth, instead of the boy who taught you to skip stones on sunset-pink pools. His hair looked a lighter brown from here, his blue eyes icier.
You rewarded him by stretching out your hand, bare except for a lone signet ring. Your fingertips brushed his. The touch was almost anything but—a mere graze of skin against callused skin.
Still, you felt him just enough: weathered by the sword, warm nonetheless.
With that gentle hold, he brought your hand up to his face and kissed the seal of your ring, gaze kept low—a veneration to a higher power.
But he didn’t stop there.
Those lips landed again, this time on the back of your hand.
He raised his eyes to meet yours.
For someone who’d only seen far-reaching waters for more than a month, the look in his irises spelled out thirst.
One that only you could quench.
But quench was the opposite of what he did to the flame in your stomach.
His hand turned yours—just enough for his lips to kiss your palm. They trailed, divining a fine line like a fortune-teller would: soft but firm. Out of the act, he pried pleasure instead of a prophecy. Stirred restlessness instead of relief.
You weren’t the only one affected. With a building urgency, James rose to stand again, holding your wrist up as he stepped closer. The silk of your dress stroked the steel of his armor; an echo of the way his metal hand slid onto your waist. The touch was cool, yet it inspired the course of your blood to be anything but.
The rising temperature could’ve fooled you into thinking it was summer and not the edge of spring.
His other hand still held yours. His mouth brushed against your inner wrist, kissing your pulse point. Eyes remained locked with yours even as his mouth nipped, blues looking at your face from beneath lashes that had no right to be that pretty.
You sighed.
The sound seemed to embolden him.
Because he kissed up, up, up past your palm again, until his plush lips ensnared a finger between them.
“Missed you,” the confession was poorly enunciated, a low moan with your pointer finger knuckle-deep in his mouth, “so much. You don’t understand.”
Dampness bloomed between your thighs, at the same time as the snag at your heartstrings.
His pink tongue swirled, and you understood why he held your waist: there wasn’t nearly enough strength in your knees to keep them from buckling.
“James—”
“Nobody’s coming,” he cut you off with a reedy whisper, almost reading your mind.
Then he took a second finger in his mouth, as if eager to distract you.
You exhaled, shaky and stuttered. Though your knight’s senses were enhanced to be sharper than the average anatomy, the risk of being discovered like this—in the Council’s chamber—still caused your heart to race.
But he swallowed more of your fingers in his mouth. Hummed. And suddenly the violent pump of your pulse took on an entirely different meaning: the way a wave erased writings on sand, so did lust wash away your fears.
You couldn’t even begin to think about putting your guard up. Not when you were glued to him like this.
In taking over your senses, he took away your common sense.
He let go of your fingers with a wet pop, only to trade his hands on your waist, groping soft flesh while he ducked to nose at your neck. His hot breath alone was enough to make you shiver, but he gave you more: slowly, big palms reached down your hips, cupping the globes of your ass only to press you against him.
Your hipbones met his—or what would be his, underneath all the metal that housed him.
“Tell me you missed me too,” he rasped against your throat, hands kneading the fat of your rear, “You did, didn’t you, Highness?”
Gods, his hair. You combed your fingers through the long locks. You could smell him. He smelled like the ocean.
Untrusting of your own voice, you answered with a nod, but the way he parted signaled a dissatisfaction. The burn of it was clear behind dilated pupils. The metal hand now cradled the back of your head. His lips hovered over your parted ones.
“Say it for me, sweetheart.”
It took you more than a second to find something other than inflamed anticipation in your throat. The syllables almost shuddered with succumbence:
“I missed you, too.”
When he finally leaned in, it was with a languor, like he was smearing his lips against yours. Your blood sang at the taste of him, the warmth of his mouth traveling through yours and down your limbs, before making a home south of your stomach.
Hunger took over swiftly.
A slant of his face, and suddenly you were consumed. He pressed, earnest and deep, tonguing into you before you could right yourself against his chest. The hand that held on to your curves moved to one side of your cheek, a stern commander to keep you where he wanted you—where he knew you wanted to be.
It was the metal one: the perfect leverage that bordered on balefulness, except you craved this kind of trap.
The other one of flesh and blood found home on your body, running up and down the expanse of it. Fingers caressed a line down your sternum, cradled your waist, cupped your hips to kiss his the same way your mouths found each other.
You gasped when his greaved calves moved, walking you backwards until the fabric covering your legs brushed against stone.
Even with your eyes closed, the world spun.
After the light stopped its split-second dance, you found yourself on James’s lap, fluttering eyelids gathering his spread thighs as he sat like he was one of the Nobles—and as a Holy Knight of the Imperium, he technically was. Except, perhaps, the ‘holy’ part.
Because when you parted a mere hair’s breadth away, he crashed his lips into yours again, barely giving you a chance to breathe. The metal hand slithered to the back of your neck this time.
You moaned into the kiss. His tongue wasn’t the only thing that coaxed the sound out of you—it was also the sensation of engraved steel against your core.
He was grinding up into you.
Little did you know, James put you in this position for a certain purpose. A nefarious one. While it’d take a few more seconds to be revealed, he was set on exhausting you of any remaining sanity in the meantime.
The stone was unrelenting beneath your knees when you escaped the rut of his hips. You sat down on your haunches, letting him chase you. The sensation tugged your head back.
Lips parted, though a thin strand of saliva remained. It broke when he dove, pressing open-mouthed kisses down your jaw and neck. He laved at your skin shamelessly. Your chest heaved in response, but a gasp gave itself away when his tongue traced a long line up to the shell of your ear.
It teased with heat before engulfing your earlobe with it.
“Jamie—!”
Hands flew to his pauldrons as his tongue twirled, further ruining the already erratic pattern of your breathing. A pleased growl reverberated in his chest: reward for saying his name—the name you knew he always relished in times like these.
‘James’ was for everyone. ‘Jamie’ was just for you.
Then you heard someone clear their throat a distance behind you.
Jumping in your skin, your reflexes whipped your head back—or they would have, if not for James’s hand gently caging the back of your skull to keep you facing him.
Just as he had expected: the culmination of the footsteps only he could’ve heard.
“It’s alright, Highness,” your knight rasped, mouth loyal to your neck, “just the other James.”
The other James didn’t ever go by the same name at all, preferring a sobriquet that had been stitched onto his being for as long as he’d been alive—and a long time it was. To call him an older man would be the understatement of the century. He lived through at least two of them, yet his face could never tell. To many, he was a part of legends.
To you, he was Logan: a mentor you owed much to.
As if sensing your wandering mind, the James you were sitting on sank his teeth into the flesh of your neck. Sharp. Mean. The whimper was ripped out of you before you could stop it. He chased his own cruelty with generous laves of his tongue, before sucking greedily on your skin to make matters worse.
Unbeknownst to you, his blue eyes were pinned to hazel ones the entire time.
James Barnes’s hold on your head only loosened when he was sure he’d leave a mark—one with a shade deep enough to last a few days. He grunted, the sound smug.
You turned around just enough for shaky pupils to catch a glimpse of the intruder hanging by the doorway.
Logan stood a good thirty feet behind you, definitely not far enough to mistake the sight of his Princess perched on James’s lap as something else. He was out of his armor, instead donning something much more everyday: a loose linen shirt, comfortable from many wears, and leather belts that criss-crossed over a practical pair of earth-colored trousers. The ease in his posture suggested disillusionment over what he walked into, but you knew better.
There was a slight tick of his jaw that gave him away.
Despite the unmistakable flush on your face, this wasn’t Logan’s first time catching you in the act. It was almost too convenient.
Almost as if someone had diligently planned for it to happen.
If your face was russet from shame, now the shade was made deeper from anger.
“Bad timing?” Logan drawled. James didn’t stop mauling your neck.
“W-What did you need?” You managed, attempting to paw James off, which failed to the point of it backfiring: the knight gathered your wrists in one hand and stopped your body’s squirming with the other. His mouth sailed to your ear then, bullying you there again. You fought back a noise.
Even with your clothed back facing Logan, you still felt exposed by the indecency thickening the air.
“Wanted to make sure you’re not too tired for tomorrow morning’s training.”
Logan’s tone was calm. His eyes were the polar opposite, housing a dark storm. You didn’t miss the taunt in his words.
“I’m fine,” you breathed. A miracle, really, while James continued to nibble at your ear, briefly reminding you of an animal’s bid for attention. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Logan didn’t bow when he took his leave. Just nodded. He never did bow. Didn’t have to. He had served long before your private wing of the castle was even drafted.
His booted footsteps echoed down shadows, lingering long after he was out of sight, until finally you were left exasperated in silence—or however much of it could survive a man abusing the shell of your ear.
“James, I swear to Go—mmng!”
Your chiding was cut short by the weight of two fingers on your tongue.
Metal. Heat rushed southwards at the taste, your moan muffled by the unexpected intrusion.
Blue eyes stared straight at you. They burned.
James dragged his syllables over a voice like gravel, and in doing so, he made your heart hurt all over.
“How do I make you choose me?”
You didn’t answer him. Can’t, because he slowly pushed his fingers deeper into the cavern of your mouth, while yours trembled on his shoulders. His flesh hand skimmed down your spine, finding a familiar ribbon that held your dress together.
He tugged at it with one practiced pull.
Silk spilled loose around your chest. The fabric took its time escaping from you, and when it did, his hands covered your skin like they were bound by duty and not lust.
What makes you think I haven’t? you wanted to reply, but the very thought clouded over when his warm hand slid up between your bare thighs.
There was a secret hour between dark and dawn. It colored the sky in a blemishless indigo.
In this secret hour, the stars shone a touch brighter than when the sun kissed the edges of night’s fabric. The winds gentler. The world quieter. Even before the men and women of your kingdom fled the ever-rising waters, this hour had always been secret.
Nobody woke or spoke or did things. Not outside, at the very least.
Certainly not in the palace arena, of all places.
Close to a mile away from the castle’s innermost point was a circular, roofless structure, built downwards. Steps receded into the ground, hewn out of natural limestone, bleached over the years by sun and rain. The arena wasn’t as big as the Dueller’s End at the far reaches of the realm—that coliseum was a landmark for much more gladiatorial spectacles, its bloodiness abhorred within your borders—but it was sizable, and uniquely subterranean.
Calling it a hole in the ground would be equal to spitting on the faces of craftspeople who poured their life into it. An edifical marvel was what it was.
One could feel its ceremony even before entering its passageways. Trees lined the perimeter, their foliage tall and spiky, as if puncturing the sky. A generous ten, maybe twenty yards of cobblestone lined its rim: this plaza was where vendors often parked their carts on a game day, enticing show-goers to spend coin on trinkets or a bite.
Rising from the ground was a smooth wall about half your height, but too wide for tight-pursed visitors to actually leer into the arena like it was a wishing well. Sculpted beams of translucent white quartz jutted out from this border, hovering where a roof would be. They dotted the edges of the circle like markers on a sundial. Oblong shapes tapered at the ends, almost mimicking a blunt needle.
It was from these beams that the mages would put up enchanted tapestries to shield spectators from rain and shine. Sometimes, real fabric was used in place of magic. The sunlight would smear color into the pale stone below, dappling the crowd’s faces with pinks and purples and blues. The faint kaleidoscope always reminded you of marketplaces and their vibrant canopies.
This place had not seen a single smile since the first Flood. Nothing to celebrate. Nobody to celebrate with.
Children who’d once gasped in awe at the displays showcased here were most likely on an airship now, going far away. Relocated mothers and fathers were probably bleeding warmth to fight the cold outer space—sundering meant living a life entirely different than on Earth.
James’s report repeated in your head. Your kingdom was most likely the only one left in a drowning world. A final frontier before extinction.
You imagined the view from way out there. It would be bleak. All inky blackness with no end. Sure, the stars were pretty—but would they still be, if their sparkle was the only thing you could see for eternity?
The secret hour was too late into the night, or too early in the morning. Not a soul was to be found in the arena: not on the steps, the plaza, or the ring.
None but two.
You, and the man who was making you fight for your life.
The weekly spar was your way of finding comfort in routine. A way of soothing the hollowness of a ghost kingdom. An attempt to feel something as the world sunk into nothing.
You were losing. Admittedly, you’d been slightly distracted.
In letting your mind wander to the skies where most people flew to, your shortsword barely parried his claws set to tear at your chest. If that hadn’t chased the sleep and stray thoughts that clung unto your system, you didn’t know what would.
Because Logan sparred with you like station and rank didn’t matter.
Here, you weren’t a princess, and he wasn’t the knight bound to protect your royal line.
Here, you were quarry—but only if you let him treat you like one.
This was why you enjoyed training with Logan the most: he wasn’t afraid to be rough. Perhaps he even preferred it.
Even now as he drove another clawed fist at you, he didn’t hold back. You sidestepped in the nick of time, boots scraping backwards. The distance allowed you to breathe. If you’d moved any later, your guts might have colored the stone floor red.
Despite all this, you knew he’d never hurt you.
Maybe it was this unconditional trust that dulled your senses today.
His leg swung at you with a high kick. You ducked down, nearly tasting the sand from his boots. As you bobbed back up, you attempted a stab at his shoulder—but it was too obvious a try. The way he swatted your weapon off its mark almost echoed a disappointed deadpan. Steel against steel sounded once: a noisy clang. His claws ground against your sword.
“Too slow,” he murmured, looking down at you.
Your eyes must have gleamed, because he smiled. Whether he chose to interpret the flame in your stare as irritation or amusement, the possibility of either pleased him.
You couldn’t admit that it might be both.
Not that you needed to say things for him to know them. After all, this—the fight, the air that seemed to thin, the scan of limbs in every microsecond—was his preferred language.
His preferred way of being close to you. His favorite excuse for watching you.
You swung at him again. Harder this time, maybe even a little wild.
Logan clicked his tongue. A wordless reprimand.
That provoked you even more. You launched at him with no regard for tactic or technique: a downward slash—deflected, the jab that followed—dodged.
“You’re impatient,” he barked. As if he were so virtuously above recklessness.
His foot swiped at yours. A poor attempt at tripping. You shifted your body weight back, avoiding the movement entirely. There was even a second to spare—you used it to shoot him a look that said: really?
The maneuver felt too cheap for someone who had his kind of edge.
Logan was a Gifted One. Fought in the Bloodstorm War that decimated most of his kind, if not all. And that War ended far before you were born—just one of the many crucibles in James Howlett’s long life.
Having looked at him, you knew his body didn’t even house the scars to prove it. Rather, it couldn’t, thanks to his regenerative powers.
You always thought it was a curse, not being able to save the evidence of your grief.
Because surely, he bore much more pain than just any man could.
They said he served your great-grandfather first. That his face hadn’t changed over the years.
Nobody from that generation was alive to attest to the former fact. But you could attest to the latter.
The face you’d gotten to know in your childhood was the same as the one you looked at now, give or take a few faint lines—they aged him the way leathers and fine wines did: flatteringly.
You hung back a couple of steps, preparing a springboard for the next clash, but he didn’t let up. Closed in with two long strides.
A slash of air. You were face-to-face with the pointed ends of three claws. Your shortsword blocked them, the blade slotted perfectly in-between. That leverage was enough for you to wrest his limb away, and suddenly there was an opening—enough space for a kick to his stomach.
The impact pushed him three feet. He landed on both of his with a mere grunt, the soles of his boots scraping against the ground. Compared to your heaving chest, he looked almost peachy.
“That’s better,” he growled.
Except there was a gleam of something dangerous in his eyes.
It translated into the way he came at you again. He threw himself forward with renewed strength, and the fight left its strategic trajectory.
The flurry of your attacks was faster now. Messier.
He aimed at your head and thigh. You spun around him in a narrow semi-circle, pummeling the hilt of your sword square on his back. He twisted to grab the longsleeve of your shirt. Fist around fabric locked you in place. You swung back, violent—heart pounding as the metal of his claws cut the air where your head had been.
You yanked free from his grasp and swung your sword at his arm. He faced you and parried with his claws.
It was a stubborn dance from there: swipe—parry—swipe—parry, all while he pushed forward and you stepped back.
The sparks were no longer metaphorical.
You felt the vague presence of the arena wall behind you. How many more feet until you’re cornered?
The thought made you blink at the wrong time. Your attack slipped a moment too late—or too early.
His perfectly-timed rebuke sent the shortsword flying out of your hold, flung by its blade to one side of the arena. It clanged a few times at the rough landing before lying still.
Your eyes and his spared a simultaneous glance at the weapon, then found each other. So did your breaths
The edges of his caressed your face with warmth that you knew was not a result of mere training.
Your palms were sweating more than you thought they would. Maybe that was what loosened your grip.
Just to drive the message home, he rested his claws at your jugular—heavy, but not enough to hurt. Your throat bobbed, nearly tasting metal.
“I yield,” you murmured.
He stayed there for a beat, almost like he was milking his victory.
Then Logan retracted his claws with a sharp snkt.
You physically felt the dip in adrenaline once he did: it fizzled out like seafoam, and suddenly you were left with limbs that burned with exertion. The fire in your lungs was bright, unrelenting.
It was quiet for a moment.
You repaired the pattern of your breathing. Tried to ignore the beads of sweat that raced down your spine underneath your clothes—identical to the ones that ran down his bare biceps, far too visible and within arm’s reach.
In looking away from the distracting veins down a muscled forearm, you caught sight of his chest: his breathing was much better than yours, but the white sleeveless shirt that covered him was slightly damp with perspiration, betraying effort.
When you righted your gaze to his face, he was already staring at you.
The fever that plagued your lungs was cured, but in return, you felt the heat everywhere else. The flash of it was so violent you found yourself unable to look away.
Because his jaw clenched.
It was the same tell you caught yesterday, while someone else’s mouth was on your neck.
You wondered if Logan thought about it.
But here was the thing with Logan: the man was as mysterious as he was blunt. A true paradox of nature.
Except today, he spared you from wondering.
The kiss was stern more than anything. He had a hand on your chin, face slanted in a sharp angle to capture your bottom lip between his.
The breathing you just calmed hitched again, because you felt everything in no time at all. He tasted like adrenaline and sweat and remnants of tobacco; his weight hinted at the wall behind you that you weren’t quite pressed up against. Not yet, at least.
Wherever his hand went, goosebumps followed. The fingers on your chin moved to stroke your jaw. Cup your cheek. Slide down your neck. Their journey paused at the knot of your lace-front shirt that covered your collarbone. It came undone quickly.
The same could be said about you.
You gasped into the kiss because his broad palm kneaded at your chest while pushing you back against the cold wall behind you. He was the rock to the arena’s hard place—you were the soft thing he pawed and groped at. Your hands clung onto his forearms for anchor.
One of his hands held on to you, too, just selfishly: it stationed itself at the back of your head, making sure his lips continued to mesh against yours. Don’t run from me, he seemed to say, as you traded hot breath and spit and want.
The way you gripped his arms replied back a wordless never.
A swivel of his hips against yours rent a moan straight into his mouth. He was already hard. His trousers weren’t enough to conceal the ridge of him; you spied it from fluttering lashes, ached just from the suggestion of his size.
He ground into you again. You rocked back this time.
“Fuck, princess,” he groaned, the sound punched out of him. You traded your breath for more of his mouth.
Then his tongue melted against yours, and you traded sounds, too: a small whimper out of you, a growl from deep in his chest.
His lips and hips both parted from you. You almost gasped at the loss, if only he didn’t stare at you like he wanted to tear you apart.
If only his knee didn’t nudge yours to open.
It slid in the space between your legs, moving up up up before settling right against your cunt with a gentle press. The color in his eyes was swallowed by black at your visible shiver.
He lifted.
You mewled in surprise, eyes widening while your hands scrambled around his shoulders for purchase. The simple movement sent pleasure racing through your nerve endings.
He grinned down at you, canines flashed, breath caressing your face. “Such a pretty noise.”
Much like the spar earlier, he didn’t go easy on you.
His knee continued to rub against you, insistent and precise with each grind. The layers of clothing between your body and his only served to make the friction worse—or better. Your back peeled against the wall, arching almost in delight when you responded to his movements with your own.
Your hips timed perfectly against his knee. The wave of lust hit you two-fold.
You groaned. So did he.
Together, you entangled in the dark of twilight, the only two shapes in an empty arena. Despite the shade that cloaked the space, your sin was apparent through the bend and fold of your bodies.
Your hand closed around one of his, guiding his palm to slither up your own body until it reached the undone part of your shirt. He kneaded the flesh of your breast from above the fabric, impeded by a bodice that supported you underneath.
Logan’s eyes studied your countenance. By now, the flush on your skin could no longer be blamed on the spar. The pink that dusted your cheeks was a lewd shade—one that had kept him awake for more nights than he cared to admit.
Something caused Logan to still.
There was a bruise on the side of your neck, purple with indecent promise. Faint and obvious all at once.
A gift from your Captain.
He paused his ministrations. Felt a mix of lustfulness and pity at the pleading look you shot him—still a weakness of his, after all these years.
You swallowed when he leaned down. Your mouths were inches away from each other, yet he did nothing but stare back.
Then, three things happened at the same time.
The first was him yanking your bodice down. The boning pushed your tits up, presenting them as if in some kind of obscene offering. A rush of cold air sent goosebumps crawling on your skin—but you didn’t stay cold for long.
Because the second thing that happened was his hot mouth closing greedily around your exposed nipple.
You choked out a sob. Your fingers sank into his hair anyway, wanting more.
The third was his knee rutting into you, pressing relentlessly over your clothed cunt. You were practically perched on him, thanks to a palm around your rump that pressed you in place. You were convinced he could feel just how wet you were; the linen that made up your breeches and undergarment was too light to conceal anything, or maybe you were so soaked it was beyond hiding.
You mewled when he delivered a hard suck on your tit. Hips rolled onto his wedged knee. The zings of pleasure pooled into a paradox of satisfaction and hunger.
“Thaaat’s it, good girl, use me to feel good,” his voice rumbled, words muffled by your flesh. While you did as you were told, he teased your nipple with the barest hint of teeth.
When Logan’s other hand snaked up to knead and pinch and bully the breast he wasn’t sucking, your vision spun, dizzying you. The assault on your senses ripped his name out of your throat: sobbed, not spoken.
“L-Logan, ‘m gonna—”
He didn’t stop. Just looked up at you from under his browbones.
“Yeah, princess? You’re gonna what? Hm?”
Whatever you meant to say melted into a keen, unintelligible noise. Your head tipped back, mouth open at the crest that shuddered through you—one powerful wave that sent you writhing unbecomingly atop his knee.
He watched. He always did when you came. His eyes were half-lidded, a low moan escaping his parted lips as he witnessed you crumble. His knee still hungrily rocked into you, as if coaxing every last bit of your pleasure for his own.
While your tremors subsided and your chest heaved, his lips leaned into yours.
This time, Logan kissed you like he wanted to believe he was the first to do so. Soft. Gentle.
You indulge in the daydream, your fingers carding through his hair, hands cradling his head as you tasted his longing.
He certainly hadn’t seen you as a woman when you gave your first kiss away. That was crystal clear.
You were much too young then. Too wide-eyed. Logan had barely paid attention to you beyond the duties demanded of him as the Crown’s guardian—which he enacted in the most detached, bare-minimum way.
Maybe that nonchalance was what drew you to him all those years ago: the idea of a lifelong Holy Knight of the Imperium being not at all holy and less than devoted to the Crown was strange, but interesting.
How old had you been when you’d confided to him about the boy you liked? Ten? Twelve? The memory seemed so distant.
“He has pretty eyes.”
“Mm.”
It was always likely to encounter Logan on the west wing’s rooftop terrace: that spot was furthest from the busier parts of the castle, and the view it offered of the lake-sea and the lower levels was extraordinary.
The sky was blue above you—one of those transitory afternoons before you were dragged to another supplementary class.
You sat on a bench, watching Logan’s back as he stood near the stone railing. You knew he wasn’t smoking only because the Amons would give him an earful if he got caught, which wouldn’t be the first.
Unlike the priests, or any other castle staff for that matter, Logan wouldn’t pick you up by the neck to hand you to whomever was supposed to tutor you. The chief reason why you were completely content to be with him.
“I think he’s sweet on me,” you mulled over it for a while, then, as if in conclusion, “He holds my hand when I walk down the stairs.”
Logan didn’t even look back at you when he replied. “That’s nice.”
Your brows furrowed a little at his noncommittal responses—he never seemed to be interested in anything.
“You really don’t care, do you?”
“Smart girl,” he drawled.
“Are you sure you should be talking to a princess like that?” To your credit, your tone was more amazed than angry at his behavior—although his being around since before you were sentient should have gotten you used to the coarseness of his conduct.
He finally turned to stare at you, though his eyes spelled exasperation more than amusement. One didn’t need to be psychic to figure him out: in a world full of smokescreens, he was a sign on a wall.
“Princess or no, you’re too young for crushes,” he replied, one eyebrow slightly cocked.
“…What’s a crush?”
“What you’ve got for this boy.”
You pouted. How strange; you’d never heard it called that. Perhaps the term was one of his anachronisms.
“Well,” you looked down, swinging your legs, “alright, then, I got a crush on him.”
Logan went quiet again, his gaze affixed to a vague point on the ground. His eyes were a pair you couldn’t read, but there was a color wreathing the air around him. You could feel it on your fingertips. It was the same shade that accompanied a rainy day, where people wore black and threw flowers on a mound in the ground.
Your grandfather, the King, had told you Logan was bound to act like that sometimes—that he went off someplace else, and that when he did, you should take care not to bother him so much.
Why? you’d asked your grandfather, ever curious.
He might be thinking about his friends, your grandfather had said. They’ve passed, sweetheart.
You’d stopped asking after that. You understood enough, though it was decidedly through secondhand knowledge rather than firsthand experience. The War ended long before you were born, and yet its shadows reached the present: in the banners they took down every month of mourning, and in the lines of Logan’s face whenever he retreated into a memory.
If anyone’s soul understood that same hollow grief, it would be your grandfather’s.
Because whoever Logan had lost, His Royal Majesty, King Erik Lehnsherr, had lost as well.
You ended up staring back at Logan with a gaze as unfocused as his. He returned your gaze this time, no longer stuck in the past or the terrace’s paved tiles.
This was another thing you’d learned about him: where questions and chatter were ignored, a simple look might earn his full attention.
You smiled at him. Small. Sympathetic. Shy.
Your grandfather might’ve been wrong. Maybe bothering Logan would distract him from the constant pain, if only for a moment.
“Logan?”
“What?”
“Do you think I should kiss my crush?”
To your surprise, he didn’t roll his eyes. Didn’t grumble. Just kept that look on you—one that you couldn’t read.
Except the somber aura that coiled around him quelled just a touch.
“Depends. Who is it?”
You grinned. “It’s a secret!”
Logan huffed. “Yeah, well, I’m dyin’ to find out.”
You ignored his obvious sarcasm. “So? Should I kiss him?”
There was silence dotted with the sound of distant gulls, until Logan finally said:
“Only if you wanna keep him around.”
A few days after that rooftop conversation, you did end up giving James Barnes your first kiss. Ended up keeping him around, too, just like Logan said.
Except now it was Logan who kissed you, and you bore the blame for returning it.
The way he kissed was a far cry from the first match that lit the flame after your spar: one soft brush on your lips, another at the corners of it, then another on your jaw.
He let you play with his hair all the while. The tufts that curled near his temples had always been a source of your amusement.
“Logan?” you whispered, struck by a thought to a halt.
He hummed against your ear.
When you didn’t immediately continue, he pulled back, darkened eyes darting across your face, searching, assessing.
You knew this look well. He always liked to think he hurt you—which was something you had to reassure him you enjoyed, however rarely it happened. Still, it never lessened his worries.
Your palm eclipsed his cheek while you formed the words.
“My name day is soon,” you began.
He waited.
“I think,” you swallowed, “I think something big might happen again—just like it did with Mother.”
He nodded. Thumbed away sweat from your jaw. “I figured.”
The look on your face must’ve been unmistakable surprise.
“The priests looked busy, for once,” was his simple response.
Although that earned a weak smile to grace your lips, you didn’t bother hiding the trepidation in your eyes. He didn’t hide the concern in his.
“You’ll be there for the rites, won’t you?” you whispered.
Thick arms wrapped around your body, pulling you closer than you thought possible. You completely relaxed into him. It was as if you didn’t need the strength to keep you upright anymore—he’d held you so tightly between his chest and the arena wall, you could wrap your legs leisurely around his hips.
Which was exactly what you did.
When he spoke again, it was with his lips against your forehead.
“‘Course I will. When have I not been?”
And really, when had he not been? He was there on your very first name day rites—the midnight you turned sixteen. There every year since. Always one of the sword-bearing knights, trailing behind a procession of priests for a religion he didn’t entirely believe in.
He wasn’t there for duty. Nor the Gods.
He was there for you.
You tucked your face into his neck, breathing in his scent. Then you murmured a thank you against his skin, too soft to be a whisper.
Meanwhile, Logan tried not to think about the other man who was certain to be there, too.
James Barnes had been your sword-bearer for as long as he’d been knighted.
Amon Amhara woke up drenched in sweat.
There was an untetheredness to his consciousness that made him doubt whether he actually woke—his pulse trembled the way it did in his dream, and for one second he thought himself trapped. Were the cotton sheets under his fingertips real, or was this just another shackling realm?
A single sound cut through the pale yellow morning: a bell. Its tone rang once and rang clear, as if produced by striking the edge of a smooth bowl, amplified perfectly across the castle grounds. The sound was a call to prayers.
That, along with the distant shuffle of footsteps in the hallway, told the Amon that this was no dream.
Yet he looked down at his palms, which still shook. Blotches of light tainted his vision; remnants of stars and gleams of steel that blinded him. The voices he heard in his sleep bled into the day—too unanimous to be forgotten, too familiar to be ignored.
They once spoke your name in a vision. That was two nights ago.
This time, they spoke a verse.
He scrambled out of the firm mattress and onto a nearby desk. A drawer was pulled—its contents clattered—and from within, the Amon pulled a fresh scroll. Damp palms unfurled the paper, slotting each end into a thin divot in the wood to pull it taut.
Then he inhaled, pressed the pad of his thumb onto one corner, and started to write what he heard with the ink of his faith.
Two swords shall pierce the ivory crown A bright star she shall swallow And those who linger to be drowned will finally see tomorrow
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