A Fair Performance
LUCIEN X RHYSAND MEDIEVAL AU〡14k words〡10 parts
cover art by ester-gal & dividers by honeyluvsw
Lucien Vanserra is seeking anonymous freedom by masquerading as a knight at the Crossroads Fair. Unfortunately, Crown Prince Rhysand has other plans—convinced that Lucien's presence signals some elaborate Autumn conspiracy. The truth is far less interesting. The consequences, however, are not.
an @acotargiftexchange series made for @madameraccoon. surprise!! a longer note from me is awaiting you at the end😽i hope you enjoy my sweet, racoon friend!
READ DAILY CHAPTERS ON AO3 〡PART ONE BELOW
A prince in want of anonymity must be in possession of a very good reason for seeking it.
Whether the youngest son of Beron Vanserra, King of the Autumn Lands, possessed such a reason at the Crossroads Fair on that particular morning in late summer, he could not himself have said with any certainty. He knew only that the bread here was brown and honest, the ale was mediocre but blessedly free of poison, and no one had called him "my lord" in three days. These were pleasures, he had discovered, of no small significance.
Lucien—though he had given his name to the fair's master-at-arms as Reynard of Exilewood, a fiction as thin as it was expedient—sat now upon a barrel outside the armorer's tent, watching the crowd with the idle attention of a man who has nowhere in particular to be. This alone was a novelty of such profound rarity that he had not yet tired of it. At court, he always had somewhere to be, and that somewhere was inevitably somewhere he would rather not go.
The fair sprawled before him in cheerful disorder: merchants crying their wares, children darting between the stalls, a juggler of truly lamentable skill attempting to manage four balls when three was clearly beyond him. Lucien had watched him drop the same ball seven times in the past quarter hour. He was, perversely, rooting for an eighth.
"You're smirking at that poor bastard," observed Andras, the knight with whom Lucien had been sharing a tent. "He's doing his best."
They'd met three fairs ago—Andras was a younger son of some minor house, seeking his fortune with a sword and good humor in equal measure. He'd become something close to a friend, which was a category Lucien had precious little experience with. Lucien was good with people. This he knew. People, however, were not often good with him.
"His best," said Lucien, "is objectively terrible. I admire his persistence in the face of all evidence that he should take up a different profession."
Andras laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. "You've a sharp tongue for a country knight."
The emphasis was deliberate—a gentle reminder. For he was meant to be Reynard of Exilewood, a fiction they both pretended to believe.
"It's not mine, but belonged to a woman I once knew," said Lucien, which was true. "She believed that wit was the only inheritance worth cultivating." This, too, was true, though it omitted the rather significant detail that she had been a lady of considerable station before Beron had decided her station was to be an early grave.
He tried not to think of this often. His attempts were unsuccessful. He thought of it constantly, indeed. But he'd grown skilled at thinking around it, the way one learns to walk with a limp. He had not even loved her yet, and still he had condemned her to a life in the ground.
The juggler dropped the ball for the eighth time. Lucien felt a small, absurd flicker of satisfaction.
It was precisely at this moment—as if summoned by Lucien's inattention to anything of consequence—that the stranger arrived.
He did not arrive so much as materialize, which was the only word that seemed adequate. One moment the dusty lane between the tents was empty save for a merchant's cart and a stray dog; the next, there was a rider astride a black horse, both shrouded in shadow that seemed to drink the sunlight rather than reflect it. The man wore the plain leathers of a traveling knight, well-made but unadorned, and a helmet that concealed his face entirely. He moved with the economy of a predator.
Lucien, who had been trained to notice such things, sat up straighter.
"Now that," murmured Andras, "is a man who knows his way around more than a blade."
The stranger dismounted, handed his reins to a stable boy, and turned his head in a slow survey of the fair. Even with his features obscured, there was something in the set of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw, that suggested a man accustomed to being obeyed.
Or perhaps, Lucien thought with a sudden prickle of interest, a man accustomed to such obedience but currently pretending otherwise. It was a subtle distinction, but he had spent his life drawing such distinctions. At Beron's court, the difference between pretense and reality was often the difference between keeping one's head attached to one's neck.
The stranger's gaze—or what Lucien assumed was his gaze, given the helmet—swept across the crowd and stopped, quite deliberately, on him.
For a moment, neither moved. Then the stranger tilted his head in a gesture that might have been acknowledgment or assessment, and walked directly toward the armorer's tent.
Lucien's heart, traitorous thing that it was, began to beat faster.
"Friend of yours?" Andras asked.
"Never seen him before in my life," said Lucien, which was true. And yet there was something in the stranger's walk, the controlled power of it, that plucked at his memory like an instrument.
Lucien knew, with the sudden irrational conviction that sometimes seizes the mind in defiance of logic, that this man was no mere knight. Knights did not move with that particular breed of arrogance, that certainty of their own worth.
Princes did.
The thought arrived fully formed, and with it, a thrill of recognition that was half dread, half exhilaration.
There was only one prince Lucien could think of who might have reason to appear at a border fair in disguise, only one prince whose kingdom had spent the last decade in the sort of careful, frigid détente with his own that suggested both sides were merely waiting for an excuse.
The People of the Night.
The stranger removed his helmet as he reached the armorer's tent, revealing a face that could only be described as—
Well. Lucien had always considered himself a fair hand at description, but he found himself briefly without words. Sharp cheekbones, dark hair, and eyes that were an unsettling shade of violet-blue—twilight distilled and given focus. Handsome, certainly.
Terrifyingly, aggravatingly so.
The stranger's gaze flicked to Lucien, held for a beat longer than courtesy required, and then he smiled.
It was not a nice smile. And Lucien knew that look, that face, that thrum of power barely contained. Rhysand, his mind supplied with perfect, damning clarity. I know you.
Or rather— of you. The arrogant prince of the Night.
"Reynard of Exilewood?" the stranger—Rhysand—asked, his voice pitched to carry just far enough. "I've heard of you. You won the melee on the second day."
Lucien had, in fact, won the melee on the second day, disarming the last man standing with a move Eris had taught him expressly for the purpose of humiliation. It had been deeply satisfying. Lucien was still, at his worst moments, a Vanserra man with Vanserra instincts.
"I did," Lucien said pleasantly. "And you are?"
"Noctis," said Rhysand, and oh, that was almost funny. Lucien nearly laughed. Reynard and Noctis. A fox and the night. They were not even trying. "Of the Northern Holds. I'm here for the tournament."
"The tournament ended yesterday."
"Did it?" Rhysand examined a sword hanging from the armorer's display with casual interest. "Pity. I suppose I'll have to find some other way to entertain myself."
His gaze returned to Lucien, and there was no mistaking the amusement in it now, nor the challenge.
Lucien felt a smile tug at his own mouth, the sort of smile that had gotten him in trouble more times than he could count. This was interesting. A game, perhaps. And Lucien loved games, because Lucien was very good at winning them.
"Well," Lucien said, rising from his barrel with the languid ease of a cat stretching in sunlight, "the fair does offer a number of diversions for a man of discerning taste. There's a truly appalling juggler just there, and I'm told the ale at the Broken Wheel is only mildly poisonous."
"High praise."
"I'm known for my candor and general goodwill toward my fellow man."
"Are you?" Rhysand said, and if Lucien had not been certain before, he was now absolutely certain he was looking at Crown Prince Rhysand of the Night Court, which was both thrilling and potentially catastrophic. The prince tilted his head, studying him. "I would not have guessed that from the way you fight. The melee, I'm told, ended with you holding a sword to a man's throat while making observations about his footwork."
Lucien's smile widened. So the prince had been asking about him. How flattering. How dangerous.
"I was providing constructive criticism."
"With a blade."
"The best lessons," Lucien replied, "are memorable."
A Vanserra truth—one of the few Lucien had, strangely enough, adopted as his own.
For a moment they simply looked at each other, and Lucien had the distinct impression that he was being weighed and measured by a mind that was used to calculating odds and angles, a mind that saw a chessboard where others saw a conversation.
Well. Two could play that game.
"If you're looking for entertainment," Lucien said, inclining his head toward the fair's main avenue, "there's a horse race this afternoon. I've been considering entering. Of course, it's only interesting if there's real competition."
It was a dare, thinly veiled. Or perhaps not veiled at all.
Rhysand's smile sharpened. "I do enjoy a race."
"Then perhaps," Lucien said, "we'll see who has the better mount."
Andras, standing nearby, made a noise that might have been a cough or a laugh hastily converted into one.
"I look forward to it," Rhysand said, his voice dropping half an octave. Then, with a nod that managed to be both courteous and mocking, he turned and walked toward the stables, leaving Lucien standing with his heart beating against his ribs.
"Well," Andras said after a long moment. "That was..."
"Yes," said Lucien.
"Are you going to tell me what that was about?"
"No," said Lucien, watching the prince's retreating form disappear into the crowd. "No, I don't think I will."
He wasn't entirely sure himself. He knew only that he had come to this fair to hide, and instead he had been found.
And he did not mind it in the least.
A NOTE TO MY GIFTEE-
HI ANGEL!!! being your secret santa was so lovely!! it was very fun getting to know you. rhys/lucien lovers forever!!
i'm not gonna lie, this was such a challenge for me hehe. i haven’t written past tense in so long, and this writing style is very different from my usual, but it was the only way to immerse myself in such a different setting!
my writing process included listening to golden brown on repeat with this and also this in the background, reading old merlin fanfics, aaaand...watching heated rivalry. i actually bothered my older brother in an attempt to learn more about medieval times. we even went to eat at the restaurant and i observed the knights for…research purposes. but there was only so much i could reveal about my mlm romance au to my mormon brother, so some liberal creativities were had😸
i do hope you enjoy! like i mentioned, my elves will deliver new chapters daily for the rest of the week.
Love,
Santa Rae
