@meljaymicrofics ⸻ royalty au ⸻ wc: 540 ⸻ rated G
As an indentured servant, Jayce does not see the ruling family of Piltover often, but every glimpse of them he catches is enough to give a boy dreams. He becomes greedy for their sightings, dressed in their gold and crimson, bright like the sun, like some glittering ancient god. Forever youthful.
It is she he sees the most of. The second child of the Medarda House, honeyed and gilded. Called Mel, she is his age, and yet so vastly distant from him in deportment and station. A distant star. And then one day as she passes him in the hall, he swears she smiles at him, a slight shadow of the real thing, but a smile all the same. And Jayce has never wanted anything so desperately than to befriend the princess.
The vision of her lingers, the scent that follows her feathering across his skin and clinging to him even after she is gone. He cannot forget the gentleness of her manners, the shrewdness in the hazel of her eyes that betrays the mind behind that gaze. She is girl, she is princess, she is the makings of a ruler soon to be. There is a curiosity that settles in his bones, curious and tugging, his eyes following the princess whenever she appears.
Now, at fifteen, Jayce finds himself splitting his time between the blacksmith’s forge and the stables, while learning the art of war. He is taught to use the greatsword, how to shoot a bow, but he finds he is better at wielding a warhammer or maul. Still, he excels in them. He cannot afford to fail, not when his service counts towards a debt.
“Ye think they do not see how yer look at her, boy?" The blacksmith grunts. “Her brother will pluck ye eye out for staring the way ye do, aye, that he will.” Jayce shrugs, cannot find it in himself to care. Cannot find it in himself to look away from her.
The older Jayce becomes, the fewer and farther in between are the glimpses he catches of her. They move him from the main house and relieve him of his duty as blacksmith; though his house may be ruined, he is still a nobleman after all. No matter how disgraced. He is a page now. A knight in training.
She becomes a dream he holds deep in his heart, even deeper than the dream to see his mother, or his wish to become a huntsman like the prince, famed and known across the land for his skill with a rifle. But Jayce, young though he may be, is well aware of his place. He is the son of a baron, a baron long passed and debt laden. He is not in any place to gaze as he does, to dream as he does.
He is not of the sort to fraternize with royalty. There are those who's lot in life is to rule, and those who's it is to serve. To lead and to follow. He is meant to serve, and his longing has no place in this life.
But at night, his dreams are his own, and he falls asleep to the princess smiling at him from beneath his eyelids.
