Tags: Yearning, Domestic Abuse, Light Violence
"You swear your life to uphold my daughters safety, honor, and virtue above all mortal needs? To place yourself between her and the worlds foulness even when it demands you lay down your life for her?"
Those words repeated through Peters ears as his hand tightened on the pommel. Had it really been ten years? His chest tightened with each step, the sputtering pitch torches smelled rank, shadows danced along the keeps walls as if they had sunk into hell itself.
He could hear them screaming at each other, hateful words tearing a family apart. Their rage echoing down the steps as he hurried, his armor gently clanking, scraping on the stone.
Thoughts died half formed, chaos reigned in his head as the oak door came into sight. Briefly he hesitated, the dim light just enough to illuminate the hand painted flowers decorating the edges of the door frame. Once bright and full of love, now faded and flaking away.
He drew a breath of that rank air, lowering his visor. His mind clear on what he had to do. He barely felt the door swing open, yet it flew away from it as if he had kicked it. In less then two steps he was in the room, his gauntlet wrapped around his Kings wrist.
The King stank of wine, his clothing stained and crumpled. The old mans eyes wild with rage, his knuckles smeared with blood. The Princess, Peters Charge and duty stood defiantly across from her father. Her nose lip swollen and eye blackened, a small cut bleeding on her cheek.
Peter's fist tightened around the Kings wrist, pulling the old man into a hug. The knight felt shock, hearing the King gasp into his ear, seeing his own sword sticking through the mans torso and out of his back. He didn't feel himself draw his weapon, though the chaos finally went silent, leaving him suddenly clear headed.
"Why? Why have you done this?" The King asked, the rage draining from his eyes just as quickly as the blood drained from his wound.
"To uphold her safety, honor and virtue my King. To shield her from the foulness of the world, even at the cost of my own life." Peter responded, easing the old man down to the floor.
"To shield her from you, My King." The knight lifted his visor, his lips pressed into a grim line as he watched his future bleed out into the threadbare carpet. There was no response from the corpse, no sense of relief nor purpose. Just a small sense of duty upheld to the end.
Peter flinched, feeling finger tips caress his cheek. His charge looked down on him with a strange look. Pity? Joy? Fear? He was never good at reading people, and a sudden cold panic coursed through him. He had just murdered her father, did she hate him?
"Peter. . . You need to run. Here help me with my sheets, we'll lower you out of my window to the courtyard below." She spoke softly, with kindness. Taking him by the hand and leading him to the window, in silence they knotted the sheets and even one of her dresses into his future, into an escape. Yet everything inside of him felt like this was a mortal sin.
"I cannot my Lady, I cannot flee from this, I cannot flee from you." The knight's tone was steely firm, yet within his mind he was begging her. He had no other purpose, and yet his own actions have damned him from that purpose.
"Then consider it an order. Live for me." She smiled, despite the tear streaming down her cheeks, mingling with the blood and staining her night gown. She stretched up on her toes, wrapping and arm around the cold steel helm and pulled his head down. Placing a kiss on his brow.
"Live for me. Do you understand?" She asked with a whisper, closing her eyes to memorize the smell of her comfort. Sweat and leather, the smell of her childhood, of her safety, of her Knight.
"I do My Lady." His voice wavered. Their eyes met as she pulled away, she gave him a final nod and handed him the rag tag rope of his future. The moonlight glinted off of his armor as he lowered himself down. His empty sheath rattling against the wall of the keep as if the devil were mocking him for fulfilling his duty.
No alarms were raised yet, the soldiers walking patrols along the walls were sleepy and near the end of their shifts. It wasn't difficult physically to leave the castle, yet every strand of his soul begged him to turn back, to keep her within arms reach again. His mind was set on fulfilling his final orders, and nothing seemed right in the world anymore.
