Synopsis: Gem is tired of feeling useless. She wants to get involved in the matters that affect the country and the people she is supposed to rule one day. But her father, the king, has her trap inside the castel with no knowledge of the outside world more than what he tells her.
Etho is an assassin. He is also part of the rebels. A group of people who want to take down the incompetent king doesn't matter the cost. Etho is tasked to kill the princess to make a statement and get the king to show his face, but to his disconcert, the princess isn't as easy to kill as he expected.
Chapter 1
Etho tries to kill the princess. He fails big time.
Chapter 2
Gem has a new knight, she is angry. Joel is guilty. And Etho is there too.
Chapter 3
Ethos is role-playing as a knight (or something like that). Joel watches him a lot (obsessed much). And Gem is there too.
credits: figure 1 by Pierre Auguste Cot, figure 2 by Claude Monet, figure 3 by Frank Dicksee.
Tw: idk, let me know if you find one.
Sinopsis (?): Etho is a revolutionary who is an assassin and gets assigned the job to kill the princess. It turns out the princess is more then just a fragile girl.
Pt.1 | Pt.2 | Pt.3
Etho found himself in a strange position.
One day, he was trying to kill the princess hidden in her backyard; and the next, he was pretending to be her knight.
Funny how life changes.
It’s not that he was unhappy about it, but he wasn't exactly happy.
Etho was far from being a knight, so if it weren't for Grian and his contacts, there was no way he would have gotten the position of royal knight. Even more surprising, the princess' personal guard. Things would have been easier for him if this “Joel” dude wasn't also the princess’s guard, but he was sure he could find a way around it to carry out the rebels' plan.
Talking about Joel, he could feel the other guard’s eyes on him, following every move he made and it was unsettling. He was used to working in the shadows, not in plain sight pretending to be someone he is not.
If he wasn't so fixated on the princess, he would return the look to the younger man, showing him he wasn't easily intimidated. Instead his eyes stay on the redhead walking in front of them as she goes to her morning class.
Not even the magnificent palace hallways, with their gleaming, polished floors, portraits of past rulers lining the walls, and ornaments so valuable they could feed an entire city, could draw his eyes away from the princess.
There was something about her that captured his attention more than anything else. He couldn't quite pinpoint it, but it was there.
Maybe it was the way she carried herself, so elegant and so different to what Etho was used to. Or it could be the way her eyes shone with fire, as if she was always ready for battle. She was dressed in confidence and not in vanity as everyone in town thought.
It was even weird for him to be thinking this way about a royal, but it wasn't like he could help it.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he almost didn't notice that both Joel and the princess had stopped walking. She was standing in front of a big door.
Joel moved and Etho wasn't sure what he was doing, but he was quick to follow.
The knight opened the door and Etho stood by his side awkwardly.
He could feel the princess’s eyes watching him closely. It was very obvious that she didn't trust him.
That didn't really concern him, winning her trust wasn't Etho's mission.
After she stepped inside the room, he went to follow, but after two steps, he noticed that Joel was standing by the door, giving him a weird look.
He tried to play it cool, and walked back awkwardly until he was standing on the other side of the door. That's when he finally looked at the room.
It was gigantic, for Etho’s standards, and he would bet that most people would agree with him. The floor was made of polished marble, mostly pale white with veins of green and gold,the royal family’s colors.
His eyes traveled from the floor to the walls, lined with carved stone columns and stained-glass windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, letting in sunlight. His stare keeps on going up to the ceiling, which is vaulted and high, with chandeliers hanging from it.
At the far end of the ballroom, there was a raised platform that he guessed was meant for musicians or speakers. He doesn't really know what the royal family would have as entertainment.
He tried his best not to show fascination and shock in his face. Well, mostly in his eyes, given that the other half is covered. When he is out of the stupor of all of it, he realized he had missed most of the conversation that the princess seemed to be having with her teacher, an old woman that only stood out because of her straight posture and serious demeanor.
Etho looked at the princess. She was frowning and nodding at the teacher’s words. He thinks she is planning something by the way she shoots pointed looks at him from time to time, and then seems to lose herself in thought. That makes him extremely nervous for no reason, which is new to him.
He doesn't feel nervous when killing, spying, or stealing. He is used to all those things. He is always ready and always has a plan. He even has a back up plan for the back up plan.
It seems to be that he doesn't know what to do with himself when a pretty young lady looks at him.
Great. Fantastic, Etho.
His heart beat quickened when he saw the princess point in his direction, and he prays it was Joel who she was going to when she starts to walk in their direction.
Her eyes don't leave his, and he can't move them away for some magic reason.
His hands are a little bit sweaty and he is using all his mental strength to keep them still by his side, and not fidgeting.
To his disgrace, the redhead stops right in front of him. She exudes security, and he hopes he is tricking her to think the same of him. There’s only one thing the princess says to him.
“You are going to be my partner for this class.”
She says it as if he should know what those words mean.
He is quick to follow her, that much was clear. They reach the teacher, and the princess is positioned in front of him, as if expecting something. He doesn't know what to do… is he supposed to do something?
He thinks that touching the princess would be an offense to her, and he doesn't even know how he should hold her to dance. He was never taught those things. He knows nothing about formal dances or the proper way to ask a lady for a dance.
All he does is look between the teacher and the student, waiting for one of them to tell him what to do.
“Well, go on, sir,” The old lady moves her hands indicating him to move.
“I’m sorry… miss. It has been years since this was taught to me, could you remind me of the basics, please?” He managed to say, coming up with an excuse.
He’s used to lying and thinking quickly to get out of dangerous situations. He wasn't exactly satisfied with his excuse, but he was proud of himself for managing to come up with something under the scrutinizing gaze of the lady in front of him.
The teacher lets out an audible sigh, and he can feel her disapproval.
“Your Highness, you should have stuck with your usual partner,” the woman speaks with a comfort that surprises him.
He isn’t sure what he had expected the interaction between the princess and her teacher to be like, but it wasn’t this.
Maybe he was expecting fear or coldness between them, but the warmness in the older woman’s eyes was proof of his wrong prejudice.
“It was getting boring to dance with the same partner every time,” the redhead says with a giggle. “So please, help me, my knight.”
The tone in her voice doesn't match the look she is giving to him.
He feels like she is threatening him with her eyes.
For some reason, her green iris pulls him in, the intensity of them makes him feel things he can’t admit. Etho forgets for a second where he is and what he is supposed to do.
The teacher, clicking her tongue and stepping between them, brings him back to reality.
Her hands are firm, but not unkind, as she places them lightly on Etho’s arms.
“Back straight. Shoulders down. Chin up,” She gives him a look, analysing him. “You are not stalking prey, you are presenting yourself with poise,” she says, nudging his elbow into position with practiced ease.
Etho stiffens, resisting the urge to step back. He forces himself to follow her instructions, though his body is screaming that this is unnatural. She moves to the princess next, adjusting her only slightly with a gentle touch to the waist and a nod of approval.
Then the instructor returns to him, guiding his hand to the princess’s waist, Etho feels himself stop breathing.
His other hand is lifted and placed into the palm of the princess. Her fingers are warm, and much smaller than his. She doesn’t look away from him, which doesn’t help his nerves at all.
He looks away, worried that if he kept staring at her, he would blush.
That’s a mistake, because his eyes land at her cleavage due to the difference in height. He sure is seeing more than intended.
He gulps, deciding that the best course of action for his well being is to look to the ceiling.
Don’t get him wrong, he is not a prude.
Well, maybe he is a little bit of a prude.
But that's only because he had to spend most of his life working hard to get money.
No free time, no breaks, just work, work, and more work.
When he did get a little bit of free time, he would use it to sleep or train.
It's not like he had never touched himself, or he didn't know about sex. After all, he was a teenager once, and growing up in poverty, he was surrounded by brothels and prostitutes.
It’s just that he never had the time to appreciate a woman's body like now. He never had the time or the opportunity to touch another person's body in such an intimate way. This felt like something very intimate to do with the princess.
He had never encountered someone who he found as attractive as the princess.
So yes, maybe he was getting red just by her touch and the view of her collarbone and breasts. Maybe some parts of his body were reacting to her proximity as if he was once again a teenage boy.
This felt way out of his comfort zone.
He could feel her breath on his neck, one of her hands on his shoulder and the other holding his. His mind was conjuring thousands of scenarios where her lips were on his skin and her hands on his body.
It was bad.
“You lead with your left foot. Do not stare at the floor. Keep your eyes up, ideally on your partner,” the teacher continues, stepping aside and clapping her hands once.
He feels like thanking her, because the sound of her voice helps him a lot with his problem.
Etho tries to follow, tries to remember something about this style of dance, but his mind keeps going in between reality and his fantasies.
The teacher sighs. “You are not wrestling. This is a waltz. It is a conversation without words.”
He swallows hard, feeling like everyone in the room can tell what he is thinking.
He keeps trying, it’s stiff, awkward, and he steps on Gem’s foot almost immediately. She lets out a sharp breath, and he mutters a quiet apology. She doesn't seem angry, just curious, and still a little bit threatening.
The teacher circles them like a hawk, occasionally correcting his stance with a prod of her finger, or snapping at him to lift his elbow or hold his frame.
“For the love of the realm, you are not dragging a sack of potatoes through the ballroom!” she snaps after his third misstep.
He has faced blades in the dark, poison in his cup, and arrows from towers, but somehow this is worse.
He is sure he’s imagining the tension between himself and the princess, but that doesn’t make it less distracting. He is battling with the man he is, trying to stick to his role, but damn the woman in front of him is making things so difficult. Her eyes are on him at all times, letting out sighs that he isn’t sure she knows she is letting out. Biting her lip when she seems lost in her thoughts and when she is met with his eyes on her, giving him a look that only screams defiance.
It makes him spiral in all kinds of emotions. It makes him imagine all kinds of outcomes.
Etho is certain that he shows her more of him in this little time they have been hand in hand, pretending to dance, while a battle occurs between them, than he has shown any woman before. It scares him.
He was so busy trying to focus that he let all his defenses down, and she had taken the opportunity to read him like a book.
Looking at her in the eyes, the glimpse of success in them told him all he needed to know.
She did all this on purpose. She knew exactly the effect she had on him and she had used it to her advantage.
He was an idiot, all blush and embarrassed by her simple touch.
In that moment he saw the manipulative woman that everyone thought she was. The woman he had started to think didn’t exist.
Once again the princess had proved him wrong.
For the first time since he tried to kill her, Etho felt like he hated the princess.
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Note: A BIG thank you to @serendipitys-dragon @self-righteous-idiot and @finn-hasnoclue for beta reading this! is the first time i ask for beta readers and it was awesome, they help so much.
