Prince Khalid of Almyra did everything to avoid getting married—because he’s tired of his pursuers only wanting the title of being his first bride. No one knows what he really looks like so he always scares off those seeking his hand by dressing as a robust middle aged man.
Vildan (once known as Cereze in Fodlan, Claude’s) mother, decides it’s time to request help from Judith (her sister) to find someone that her son might come to love.
Queue Lorenz in Gloucester, who has a blindness condition that developed mysteriously on the eve of his 20th birthday, and has since been adjusting to life with his eyesight vanishing. In the years that follow (I'm thinking that Claude’s 27 and he’s 28 at this point) he watches as his sight worsens until all he sees are light and shadows.
His stepmother (a narcissistic and cruel woman who hides behind the facade of being a caring and doting person), has slowly warped Lorenz’s delicate self-image. She's managed to convince him he’s nothing to look at and can’t even offer anything to anyone because of his condition. Less than useless.
Vildan concocts a plan for her son to at least play along with her and pretend that he’s a small but affluent merchant from Diedru who is seeking to buy a “bride”, Judith thinks it would benefit Lorenz to get away from his home—that its a shame he’s become so passive when in his youth he was passionate about the round table. So she coerces Lord Gloucester to consider this a boon, much to his second wife’s consternation.
“Claude” is surprised by Lorenz during their meeting when he sees that the other man's sight is impaired so completely and decides to give him a chance. They bond slowly while Claude stays in Deidru running a family friend's merchant business while they're away, with it all culminating into an “Could I see you?” scene with Lorenz mapping out his face after six months of living together peacefully.
Lor tells him he has “beautiful and intense eyes” and though he seems shocked by his beard (spoiler, he can tell the texture is different from the hair he touched on the others' head and even from his brows) he tells Claude he likes what he’s seen both emotionally and physically. Claude tries to tell him he’s a rather large man in his middle, but Lorenz tells him that it must mean his business is going well.
"Besides, anyone can be beautiful Claude. It is all about their heart."
Khalid starts noting little details about him after that. His habits, and tells. The way Lorenz' cheeks dimple when he tries not to laugh at Khalid's complaints about balancing the books and tracking inventory.
"But my darling man, are you not a merchant? Why, there was a time in my younger days that I could tally all the individual roses of my ancestral estates by breed and colour variation alone in one sitting."
It's the first time Lor opens up about himself, talks about what he was like before his eyesight was lost. It's thrilling for Khalid and he pushes the other man gently into talking more about the things he liked to do. From that moment on, he has Lor challange him on things through verbal relay, and finds himself falling slowly for the other even more.
He also notices that there’s something strange about Lor’s medicine (that his step mother seemed adamant he takes) and pays close attention to how it affects him like making Lorenz get paler which was a feat in itself or weak as though he were close to fainting, getting headaches that left him prostrated on the bed—etc.
Eventually Khalid tests it and realizes that what Lorenz is taking is a slow acting poison that’s been eating away at him and the root cause of his blindness.
With this discovery the step mom gets exposed and jailed by Lord Gloucester for harming his only hier, and Lorenz gets taken to Almyra to be tended to by the best care that Claude can afford.
Which ends up being the royal physicians. He doesn’t know it yet at the time, Khalid decids he wants to take care of Lor first before giving up on the sham of him being a merchant. He wants to give Lorenz the choice of whether he wants to get to know the real Khalid of Almyra, or if he wants to leave. He’s free to chose.
Everything is such a big shock, his step mother, the poinson, his eyesight, the possibility of it returning slowly, and the truth about Khalid.
It overwhelms him so much that he just requests to be sent away to Judith—the only person be can trust at the moment as she’s the one who has his step mother arrested.
It takes a year for him to decide because that's how long it would take for his eyesight to return. In that time, Khalid writes to him; sends him courting gifts and even one of his personal medics to aid and ensure Lorenz is ok as his eyesight slowly starts coming back.
In that year, Lorenz tries to relearn himself and the ongoings of both Fodlan and Almyra (through some of the books Khalid sends him).
He never responds to Khalid’s letters, afraid that he’s too emotionally raw to control himself, but as the year wears on, the gifts Khalid gives him become his treasures.
A book of poetry (that he requests the same maid who has been dictating Khalid’s letters for him to read), a high quality leather journal and a beautiful exotic peacock feather quill (for when his sight returns, as if Khalid could not fathom the idea that it wouldn’t), a promise ring with a gem that looks like dusk, bolts of soft fabrics that compliment his hair, eyes, and skin so perfectly that he has little choice but to ask a tailor to create something out of them for him to wear. Finally, a set of dangling pure gold earrings with a gorgeous emerald set into each one to catch the light in whatever way they can.
The moment he puts them on, there is no taking them off. Just like the promise ring which he’d started wearing soon after.
He uses the quill gifted to finally write to Claude the moment he realizes he can see clearly. He wakes one morning and after a year of being cared for by one of Almyra’s royal medics, he can see. His gifts that he’s so carefully kept and cared for as much as he could, now fully availed to his newly restored eyes. He looks in the mirror and sees the love Khalid has been showering him in for a year, for longer even. With shaky hands he writes a letter back.
It feels like a new dawn for him.
And when he meets Khalid, this time properly…
It feels like he’d never left. Like the distance between them of mountains and valleys, of a year were only a dream.
“Lorenz of Gloucester—“
“No, not anymore my dear. For a year and some months now, I have been Lorenz, the bride of Khalid. Can you not tell?”
The smile Khalid gives him is just as warm and handsome as he’d known.
