[ AFTER ] : sender has just impulsively and passionately kissed the receiver without any warning nor apparent reason. how does the receiver respond?
Stained glass bled the last light of day across the library floor like the mortal wounds of saints. Silence, immense and trembling with unsaid things, pressed between the two figures. He, still clad in the half-armour of his station. She, cloaked in the veils of a courtly existence she loathed as both prison and ornament.
Books surrounded them. Row upon row, a hundred spines begging for human touch. On any other day, uncollared by duty, Faramir might have buried himself in their innumerable pages. Instead, he stood stock-still and at disposal.
He had sworn himself to his lady’s protection. To defend her with life and limb, to covet nothing not freely given. Yet, he had admired her always, the dark river of her hair, the swan-like column of her neck, the defiance that glittered in her eyes.
It was without herald, without word, that she kissed him. A kiss not of girlish fancy nor delicate gratitude, but the sudden, searing exhalation of a long-resisted impulse. It came upon him like a squall, unseen until it was already tearing the sky at its seams.
Faramir stood rooted, as still as the stone beneath his feet. His lips yielded helplessly to the velvet press of her tongue, even as he battled the instinct to return the kiss. Her breath, warm and urgent, tinged with salt and nightbloom, clung to his mouth. In that moment, he saw not a princess, but something older than rank, finer than any coronet – a soul ablaze in a world that demanded she be pale, still and stitched politely into tapestry.
His own heart, loyal and shackled and schooled into obedience, now kicked against its bone cage like a colt, wild and green.
“Lady Seraphina…” he murmured, but the name broke against her devouring mouth.
He failed the noble test, and reached for her – not gently, not timidly, but with the fervour of a man who knew the axe already cast its shadow. A hand caught her waist, trembling not from fear, but with restraint unravelled, and he kissed her in return. Fiercely, devoutly. As though the oath he had sworn twisted itself now into a new covenant, written not in honour and duty, but in breath and blood, in heat and heart.
It was not the kiss of a knight to his lady. They would cut out his tongue for this transgression. They would cut off his hands.
High windows bore witness, indifferent and radiant. Somewhere in the cloister below, a bell tolled the hour, and ravens rose in a thunder of glossy wings.
“I have failed you,” Faramir panted.
What then? Should he surrender his post? Should another be charged with her safety? Even in his despair, the answer rang clear.
There was no man more willing to die for her than he.