xavier gets distracted helping you practice your shakespeare lines!
a/n: wc: 629, not proofread soz
you had an obsession with tragedies, specifically tragedies written by william shakespeare.
hamlet, macbeth, and especially romeo and juliet. your obsession led to you being a theatre major specializing in shakespearean plays.
for years now, xavier has been the best partner you could ever ask for. he watches shakespeare adaptations with you without complaint (even on the 100th watch).
when you get a new script and have to run your lines, he’s always happy to read the opposing lines in the scene. he even gets into character, trying to put emotion into the lines that he’s heard on tv countless times. it’s never perfect, but you would never think of complaining.
so why was your dear boyfriend suddenly having such a hard time remembering his lines?
you lay on your bed, eyes closed and arms resting on your lap, playing dead. you were practicing the scene where romeo kisses juliet (you) then drinks the poison and dies.
it wasn’t hard work for you, but you wanted to make sure you could lay perfectly still without laughing.
xavier stood by your bed, reciting the line from memory because he insisted he knew the lines. “a dateless bargain to engrossing death!”
well, he wasn’t having trouble with that part… it’s the part after the k-
his lips pressed to your still ones, hands cradling your face. he moved ravenously, like romeo truly believing this is the last kiss he’ll ever have with his lover juliet.
eventually, he pulled away and paused, licking his lips and trying to remember his lines. “uh.. come, bitter… uh. my star, i forgot what i’m calling bitter.”
when you pry open an eyelid, you catch him rubbing his neck awkwardly, trying to rub away the blush manifesting there.
“your line is ‘come bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide…’” you read out the line until he nods, giving a small smile.
“right, conduct. i remember now. let’s try again.”
so you try one, two, three, seven more times before you snap.
on the seventh attempt, xavier rushes through his first few lines before kissing you- no that was an understatement, he was fully making out with you.
you let him kiss you for approximately 30 seconds before you finally snapped. the last straw was when he swiped his tongue between your lips in an attempt to coax them open.
you huff out through your nose and grumble through closed teeth “xavier.”
“mmm?” he hums, tilting your head back and lifting his knee onto the bed to get better leverage, still kissing you stupidly.
“romeo does not kiss juliet this long in the play or any adaptations.” you tease, a hand preesing on his chest with gentle pressure.
xavier stills mid lick to the corner of your mouth, his eyes opening slowly and meeting yours. he takes a few moments, as if remembering where he is and what he's supposed to be doing. “romeo.. right.”
he clears his throat and stands up again, going back to reading his lines. except he starts reading the complete wrong line. “and, lips, o you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss-”
“xav.” you sit up and smirk at him.
his thin brows furrow, trying to gently lay you back down. “hey, juliet doesn’t come back to life yet, you’re still dead.”
you laugh and grab his hand from where he’s pressing on your shoulder, interlacing your fingers. “and romeo seems to be stuck in a loop of kising juliet. are you really forgetting your lines, xavier? you’ve never had trouble before tonight.”
his sweet blue eyes meet yours and you know he’s pleading the fifth.
“if you’re faking just to kiss me, i’d rather you admit it. i might even reward you a kiss break.”
…xavier’s kiss ‘break’ lasted two hours.
a/n: inspired by xaviers multi card obviously hehe. i've always wanted to write a romeo and juliet au for caleb, but now that xavier got it it feels pointless hmm😵💫😵💫
cw: on hickeys and places to leave them. smut but no piv penetration. fingering.
“You’re leaving too many,” you whine.
Out of your mouth comes another groan, but the truth is you don’t want Xavier to stop - not the kneading of your breasts from behind, his hands slipped beneath your oversized t-shirt and his thumbs stroking over your pebbled nipples, nor the soft press and suck of his lips on your exposed skin. His teeth have found so many places to nibble along the nape of your neck, the curve of your shoulder, and now are working their way along the curve of your jaw, still from behind, and your back arches with every new spot, your head swimming in pleasure.
Whatever efficiency you thought you’d have tonight has shrunken to probably a quarter of your projected productivity. You don’t know what possessed you to let him get behind you as you worked on your laptop, but you sorely regret it… or perhaps you don’t, because the fact of the matter is that you feel good, with the warmth of your back pressed to his chest, the pressure of his chin on your shoulder, and his ever-working hands, his curious tongue.
“I’m not leaving enough,” he murmurs, kissing your earlobe. The hand on your left breast releases it finally, then trails along the length of your abdomen to rest onto your lap.
“You want my career to fall apart,” you moan, but your eyes are closing and your back is arching as you extend your neck slightly backwards; he kisses your cheek and chuckles against it.
“I want you to get a good night’s rest.”
“By riling me up?” You mewl as his finger slips below the waistband of your cotton shorts, searching, then finding what he’s looking for. The tap of the pad of his finger on your clit sends a jolt of desire through you, sudden and selfish.
“By relaxing you. Perhaps an important part of a bedtime routine.” The palm of his right hand presses onto the front of your neck, covering the spots that you know will bloom overnight.
“What’s relaxing about this?” The thrum of your voice on his palm thrills him and you can feel his arousal press hard and hot against your lower back.
“You’ll find out soon enough. Close your laptop and put it away.”
The order, said softly, doesn’t make it less direct and demanding. You take a deep breath, one that runs through your entire being, and push it onto the coffee table beside you as he moves you flatter against him.
You slump slightly, letting his voice guide you and his body support your weight. Xavier turns your head towards him and takes you in an unfairly breathtaking kiss.
“Baby…” he whispers, once you part. Your voice is breathy with slowed, deep breathing as his fingers start to work a bit faster.
“Y-yeah…”
“Relax here.”
His hand passes through your closed thighs - you part them obediently, and he cups your pussy in his hand.
“All mine,” he murmurs, and he presses another kiss to your neck that will bloom like a flower by morning. Smooth fingers pass through your slit, soaking up your arousal. “You’re eager.”
There’s still a modicum of fight left in you.
“I was also busy,” you quip. He chuckles, slipping two fingers in your hole first, making you gasp, then swallowing the gasp with his mouth. When you’re quiet, breathless yet again, he passes his slick fingers over your lower lip.
“You taste sweet.”
He pokes a finger into your soon parted lips, then slips both into his mouth. You’re reminded of royal food tasters for a moment, and then his fingers are back, pumping and teasing faster. Your moans are faster, louder, until they reach crescendo, and his hard working digits are soaked more thoroughly, a meal fit for a king.
“Xavier!” you cry out his name, his delight, trembling for him.
“Mm? No more hickeys?”
“That’s not…” your voice trails off, still needy, wanting more, much more than a few simple marks.
“Sleepy already?” he says, nuzzling your cheek as if he’s nothing more than a harmless pet.
“Y-you know what you’re doing,” you remind him.
He nods, pulling you into a more careful, close embrace, and suddenly you’re lifted like nothing off your couch. Maneuvering you into his hold, he takes note of your lust-softened features and smiles.
“I’m just taking you to bed, aren’t I?”
You slap weakly at his chest, and he laughs.
“Jerk.”
“I honored your request to stop with the hickeys.”
He guides you sideways into the bedroom before laying you onto the bed. You watch him, your lower lip pulled between your teeth as he pulls off his shirt, desire obvious in your eyes.
“What?”
You watch him fold his shirt, then pull yourself onto your knees, moving to the edge of the bed, and dragging him in gently by the waistband of his sweatpants.
“You can leave hickeys in other places.”
He smiles, without teeth but with just as much bite. “Don’t worry. I know.”
on xavier, zayne and rafayel gifting you high heels
Xavier
Out of the cream colored box Xavier has placed gently over your knees as he joined you lounging on the couch, comes the finest pair of high heels you’ve ever seen in your life. The two lay wrapped in elegant tissue paper, and your eyes grow wide as you look from the box to him, then back.
“Why?”
“Just because.”
He presses his chin to your shoulder as you pull one out, awed at the craftmanship, then murmurs,
“You had said you wanted to go dancing, right?”
You give him a weary but appreciative grin.
“Maybe not in shoes that cost thousands of dollars?”
He blinks twice innocently, but you know intimately he’s the type of man who would want to see you in those and nothing else.
“You don’t know the price.”
He’s right - you don’t, but there's no way on earth shoes of this quality aren't a pretty penny.
Your finger trails gently against the pitch and outsole, mirroring the way Xavier starts to gently pass his lips along the curve of your shoulder and up to your neck.
“You know..."
You tap the shoe against his chest.
“You’re not supposed to gift lovers shoes, or they’ll walk right on out of your life.”
You grin at your own joke, but he’s got jokes as well, swiftly pulling you into his lap with a suddenness that makes you let out an unprepared gasp.
“In that case, maybe I’ll just make sure your feet never touch the ground again once you put them on,” he says, leaning in just close enough to devour you if he feels.
—
Zayne
Despite your insistence that you can open a car door yourself, Zayne beats you to it, ushers you into the passenger seat of his car, then clicks your seatbelt for you. You’re about to say something smart about him being old-fashioned, but before you can say a word, a rectangular box plops in your lap. The door closes before you can say anything, and you stare at it, still puzzled when Zayne reaches the driver’s seat, buckles himself in and starts the car.
“What is this?”
Zayne doesn’t look at you, opting to smoothly tap on the gas as he pulls out of the driveway of your home.
“Open it.”
You hesitate for a moment, but as you watch the tick of his jaw, nervous not upset, you remove the box cover to reveal a pair of shoes you’d bookmarked on Pinterest last week.
Your hand flies to your mouth. “How did you-”
“You leave your laptop up all the time,” he replies. If it weren’t so dark, the soft pink flush he tries so hard to hide from you would betray the fact that he’s relieved and grateful for your reaction. If it weren’t so dark and if Zayne weren’t so closely focusing on the road to get you to your reservation safely, but also avoid pressuring you for a good response, he’d be able to see your eyes well with tears.
“T-they don’t match my dress right now,” you start, a soft wobble to your voice. It only makes it all the more sweeter to him.
“I’ll buy you one that matches.”
You turn to him for just a moment, and he sneaks a glance, sensing your desire to meet eyes.
“Zayne.”
“I can afford it.”
“It’s too much.”
“No gift freely given is ever too much.”
He permits his hand to reach for yours and squeezes your fingers gently.
“If it’s in my power, I’d get you anything you want, on top of everything you need.”
—
Rafayel
A perfumed box arrives at your doorstep in the evening, within it an ornately and likely custom made pair of high heels. With it, there is a card in his distinctive, playful script -
I’d rather look at your bare feet all night, but I hope to paint you sometime soon in these. <3
Title: The King of Slaughter
Word Count: 16,631
Genre: dark; do not read if you can not handle the follow, forced marriage, kidnapping, war, blood, murder, p in v sex, rough sex, threats,
Summary: The King of Slaughter always get what he wants, and she is the key to the final siege.
AO3
Gold pooled along the ballroom walls, torchlight flickering across satin and marble and the slow whirl of masks. The air was scented with crushed rose and beeswax, heavy with the perfume of too much silk and fear. She stood at the top of the stairs in a dress the color of spiced wine, smiling for the nobles gathered below, voice calm as her hands tightened unseen in her sleeves. Linkon needed peace, and she had always been good at pretending nothing burned.
They called her the Realm’s Delight. No one said it without smiling. It had always followed her like a title, spoken in softer tones than her crown allowed. She knew how to keep the court amused, the banner men loyal, the ministers eager to please. But beneath the weightless mirth of the evening, she could feel something shifting, the eyes on her were sharp now, watchful, hungry.
Her brother had not come. That was the first sign something had broken. In the days since the last envoy returned bloodied and silent, he had locked himself in the high tower with the war council, leaving her to reassure the nobility with her charm while fear made them clumsy.
She accepted dance after dance, fingers gliding across gloved hands she didn’t bother remembering. Then came the man in black, cloaked, silent, taller than the rest, moving with the stillness of a blade just before it falls. He said nothing. He only took her hand and led her into the waltz as if he’d done it a hundred times before.
He smelled of snow and metal and something older, something bitter. His mask was bone-white and unmarked, hiding everything but his mouth and that, too, was unsmiling. Her heart stumbled when his hand rested at her waist. He moved as though she weighed nothing, each turn precise, each step planned.
She tried to speak.
He only looked at her, head tilted just slightly, and in his silence she felt something impossibly cold slither down her spine. The song ended and when she blinked he was gone.
Only later, in her chamber, with Jenna breathless and pale at her door, did she hear it – the guards had seen Xavier, the King of Slaughter, already within Linkon’s walls.
___
The wind howled against the windows like a thing alive, dragging wet branches across stone with sharp, skeletal fingers. The storm had come in sudden, violent sheets, thunder shaking the lattice of her windows as she stood barefoot in her nightdress, watching the rain drown the garden paths below. Sleep would not come, not while dread twisted her stomach like knotted silk. Her brother hadn’t spoken to her in two days, and no one would tell her what had been decided in the war room.
She turned from the window only when the door creaked open. Not Jenna. Not a servant. No footsteps. Just silence and shadow spilling into her room like ink. She opened her mouth to call out but the figure was already there, cloaked in black, hood drawn low, and behind him came two more, tall and broad, each moving with terrible efficiency. She tried to scream.
A gloved hand clamped over her mouth before the first sound escaped, another arm catching her around the waist, lifting her clean off the floor as if she were a doll. She kicked wildly, catching someone in the shin, but a sharp pain bloomed at the back of her head and her vision exploded white. The gag bit between her teeth, the cold press of iron at her wrists locked her still. Her body was bundled in furs, not for warmth but concealment, and the moment she struggled again, a whisper in her ear said, “Quiet or we make it ugly.”
She was carried like a prize through the servant corridors she’d once run barefoot as a child. Every twist of the walls, every faded tapestry blurred past. Not a soul stirred. Someone had arranged this and arranged it well. They moved through the old garden gate, down to the back stables where a wagon waited, the horses restless, flanks slick with rain.
She thrashed once, violently, but the blow came again though not enough to make her lose consciousness, just enough to drown her in dizziness.
The gates of Linkon opened for them. Not broken, not breached…opened. Lightning split the sky behind the battlements, and she caught a final glimpse of her city’s towers, proud and gold-tipped, disappearing behind black trees and endless dark hills.
Her scream was swallowed by the storm.
The rain did not stop. It soaked through the canvas of the covered wagon, turned the roads to sucking mud, washed the world into a blur of grey and forest and hoofbeat. Her wrists were rubbed raw beneath the ropes. She sat curled in the corner, wrapped in a coarse wool cloak that stank of horses and iron, her nightdress still clinging wetly to her skin beneath. The gag had been removed once they left Linkon's borders, but no one spoke to her. Not even to taunt.
She tried questions first. Demanded to know her brother's fate, if her people had been spared, if she was to be ransomed or imprisoned or worse. The commander; a hollow-eyed man with a jagged scar beneath one eye and only glanced at her when she screamed his name, then rode on without slowing.
Every man in Xavier’s black leathers ignored her as if she were already dead.
By the third day, her voice was hoarse from yelling into silence. Her ankles bled from when she’d tried to run, thrown herself from the wagon when they slowed for a stream, only to be dragged back kicking into the mud. That night, one of the guards tossed her a clean shift and a flask of water. He didn’t meet her eyes.
She watched them closely and tried to memorize the terrain, the stars above the trees, the brands on the soldiers’ armor. Anything that might give her a name, a clue, a thread to pull. But everything had been stripped of identity. The men bore no sigils. The horses were silent. No fires were lit when they camped.
Their king had sent ghosts to fetch her, and his name was Xavier , she dared not speak it aloud now. It was a weapon and a promise and a curse. She’d grown up hearing it whispered in court, spoken with disdain by diplomats, with unease by generals.
The King of Slaughter.
The Butcher Prince of Lumiere; now King, but never like this. Never as something crawling beneath her skin.
She told herself her brother still lived. That he would ride after her. That he would burn Xavier’s empire to the ground. But as the days passed and no one came, her fury curled in on itself like scorched paper. Every breath she took was deliberate. Every tear swallowed before it fell. She would not give them the satisfaction.
By the sixth day, she no longer looked at the men who guarded her. She sat straight-backed in the wagon, chin high, lips pressed tight. They had taken her kingdom, but they had not taken her name. Not yet.
Still, when she slept it was only out of pure exhaustion she dreamed of Xavier’s hand at her throat, his breath at her ear, and the soft, sick sound of her city gates opening like a mouth ready to swallow her whole.
The gates of Lumiere disappeared behind her in the wagon’s shadow as it turned into the narrow inner roads, rising through streets that gleamed even beneath the rain. The city narrowed the deeper they went, stone archways and polished towers crowding close, the buildings designed not for beauty but control. Guards no longer flanked them; they lined the rooftops instead, distant and watchful, eyes tracking her progress through slitted helms. She did not know if she was being delivered or displayed.
By the time they reached the palace gates, her hands had gone numb. Not from cold from the slow, creeping realization that no part of this had been done in haste. The road had not wound here by accident. Every step from her brother’s halls to this place had been laid out long before she ever tasted fear. She had not been stolen. She had been claimed.
The palace itself was austere, pale and vast and windowless at its base, shaped more like a fortress than a home. The wagon was not taken through the main court but a side arch, where torches burned low against wet stone. No words were spoken as she was removed. Her feet touched the ground, and her legs wavered beneath her weight. One of the soldiers steadied her with too-gentle hands before vanishing into shadow.
She was escorted through narrow halls without ceremony. No courtiers. No attendants. Just the sound of her own breathing and the echo of her steps. The guards peeled away two at a time until she was left with only the man at her side, an officer, silent, armored in black steel without a crest. He opened a set of heavy doors and motioned once.
The doors closed behind her with a finality that made her stomach knot. The room was quiet, large, but absent of ceremony, no dais, no guards, no watching court. The hearth burned low, the only sound the slow hiss of rainwater dripping from the hem of the man’s cloak onto the stone floor. He turned when the guards stepped back, revealing his face fully for the first time.
He was taller than she remembered. Not broad, but solid, hair unbound and heavy with rain, falling like a curtain over his shoulders. His sword remained sheathed at his hip, though his hand brushed its pommel with a kind of idle familiarity. His expression held nothing, no gloating, no cruelty, only consideration. When he looked at her, it was not as a prize to be won, but as something already decided.
“I have no wish for more blood,” he said, voice low, quiet enough that she had to strain to hear it.
“Your people will be fed. Your lands untouched. Linkon will endure.” He stepped forward once, slow, measured, the way one approaches an animal in pain.
“You will be my queen.”
The spit caught him across the cheek, sliding down past the line of his mouth. She did not flinch. Her heart thundered so violently her knees nearly buckled, but she held her ground. She saw the moment his mouth twitched not in anger, but in amusement.
“You will marry me,” he said, calmly, “or your brother dies.”
Her hand moved before thought could catch it, knuckles cracking against his cheekbone with the full weight of her fury. The impact sent his head half a turn, and for a breathless moment, the air held nothing but the sound of her breath, ragged and rising. Then he turned back to face her, wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand, and smiled.
She said nothing.
There were no words left. Her limbs felt distant, bloodless, the silence between them too thick to breach. She looked down, throat raw, and nodded once, slow.
The doors opened again, a gust of colder air stirring the edges of her gown, and in stepped four more figures. Jeremiah entered first, fair-skinned, square-shouldered, marked by the rigid calm of a soldier long used to death and command. He wore no ceremonial armor, only a blue sash at his hip, the only nod to his station beneath the king. His eyes swept the room once, resting briefly on her, then shifted away as though he already knew what had been agreed.
Anya followed behind him, her steps feather light on the stone. She wore ivory, the fabric sheer enough to whisper wealth, her hair pinned high with delicate obsidian combs. She looked young, too young, her gaze uncertain, lips pressed thin around something she dared not speak. Behind them, two scribes took position at a small side table and began preparing the records.
No one addressed her or asked her name.
Her presence here had already made fact; she was not the subject, only the object, and the only truth that mattered now was Xavier’s claim. She kept her chin lowered, unblinking, the shape of her silence as sharp as any blade. The air in the chamber thickened under the weight of acknowledgment, all four witnesses aware, none intervening. Jeremiah did not question the absence of a priest. Anya’s hands stayed folded neatly over her stomach, eyes fixed on the floor. Duty made them complicit.
Xavier moved closer again, the click of his boots unnaturally loud. His hand rose without force, but without invitation either, curling under her jaw to lift her face toward his. His fingers were warm. Her skin flinched beneath them. She thought of biting him, thought of spitting again, thought of screaming but she had no voice left. No room in her chest for it. When his lips touched her brow, a hush fell over the room like a dropped veil. He did not press, did not linger. But something broke open in her anyway, some deep place that had still dared to believe this could be undone.
Her body trembled, but her feet stayed rooted. She didn’t look at Jeremiah. She didn’t ask why Anya’s hands trembled when the ink pot was uncapped. Whatever vows Xavier intended to speak would be written down, recorded, copied into the archives as law. Witnessed by bloodless mouths. Watched by strangers. There would be no ceremony, no audience, only evidence. When history remembered this day, it would not remember the violence that brought her here.
Only that she said yes.
Only that she stood, silent, when he marked her as his.
___
The palace was a maze of gilded cages. Her chambers overlooked no streets, only the walled inner gardens where guards paced in shadow. She was never alone not to bathe, not to dress, not even to breathe. At all hours, one woman stood at her back and another outside her door, their presence constant as her heartbeat. Her gowns were chosen for her, tailored in silence by seamstresses who bowed and measured and vanished. The scent of crushed violets haunted the air.
Tara arrived each morning with a ledger and tight-laced composure, her tone courteous but clipped. She asked what color the princess preferred for the feast table’s runners, then marked “emerald” before the answer could come. She explained the guest list, the order of procession, and the importance of spectacle. Tara always called it “the union,” never “the wedding.” Her hands moved swiftly, efficiently, writing down things the princess had not said. She never raised her voice. She didn’t need to.
Anya was different. Quieter in a way that made space instead of taking it. She didn’t pry, didn’t pity. When she brushed out the princess’s hair at night, she spoke of nothing at all unless invited. Once, when the princess’s hands shook too much to hold a goblet, Anya simply held it for her and said, “You don’t have to speak today.” That small mercy was a knife in the ribs. She wanted to ask Anya how long she had served Xavier, what he’d done to earn such loyal silence, but the words wouldn’t form.
Tara watched her closely. When the princess refused to attend the garden luncheons or chose to wear mourning colors, Tara made note in her little book. Always with a smile, always with a calmness that felt sharpened from the inside. Once, the princess heard her telling a guard that resistance was unbecoming in a queen, especially when she'd already been chosen. Tara’s approval was a chain. Her disapproval was a muzzle.
By the second week, the plans filled an entire scroll. Imported florals from distant provinces. Gold-leafed programs, velvet runners, a choir imported from the western isles. Everything ornate, beautiful, final. Her voice had no place in it, only her face, her body fitted into the shape of obedience like a puppet stitched too tightly to move. Anya helped her dress each morning with eyes that understood. She didn’t ask if the princess wanted to run.
She only whispered, once, while tying a sash, “I’ll come if you ever do.”
The nights stretched long and hollow. In the quiet moments before dawn, she would sit by the frost-laced window, watching the pale light touch the palace spires, her breath fogging the glass. Anya’s presence was a small comfort then, sitting just behind her with a woolen shawl draped over her shoulders, hands folded tightly in her lap.
The silence between them was not empty; it hummed with unsaid things, with shared weight. Sometimes Anya’s fingers would brush a stray lock of hair from her face, careful and steady, grounding.
Tara moved through the halls like a shadow of protocol, her footsteps precise, her smile never faltering. She brought messages wrapped in silk ribbons, all rehearsed pleasantries, and strict reminders of the expectations pinned to the princess’s shoulders.
“Remember, Your Grace,” Tara would say softly, voice measured, “the court watches not only your actions but your silence.” Her words pressed down on her like the heavy velvet drapes drawn against the windows, suffocating and inescapable.
When the princess stumbled under the weight of the days, when her resolve threatened to fray, Anya was there steady and unyielding with a quiet strength she neither demanded nor explained. Once, after a particularly sharp reprimand from Tara, the princess found herself trembling in the dressing room. Anya’s arms encircled her without hesitation, pulling her close with a softness that almost broke through the armor she’d built around herself.
But Tara’s gaze never wavered. It was always there, a thin line of disapproval behind her calm façade, watching, judging. She did not speak of kindness or rebellion. She spoke only of duty, of loyalty to the king and the crown. Her loyalty was a cage fashioned from smiles and whispers.
The wedding approached like a gathering storm, each day tightening the invisible noose around the princess’s throat. Yet amidst the golden scrolls and whispered instructions, the quiet defiance in her eyes remained unbroken, held only by the fragile thread of Anya’s silent promise.
The council chamber was colder than she expected, shadows pooling in the corners beneath towering stone arches, the flicker of torches casting walls into restless motion. The heavy oaken table stretched before her, polished but scarred, a testament to countless wars planned and lost and won. She had been summoned again to endure another lesson on loyalty from men who measured strength by the weight of their swords and the reach of their bloodlines. She entered silently, her steps swallowed by the thick tapestries that hung like silent sentinels.
Maverick lounged at the head of the table, his grin sharp and easy, teeth showing in a way that suggested he had never truly faced anything worth fearing. His armor clinked softly when he shifted, a bear wrapped in steel pretending to be a lion. His eyes slid over her with something close to amusement, dismissal wrapped in a smirk.
“Your Grace,” he said, voice smooth as oil, “it’s admirable how you cling to your family’s old dreams. But Linkon is lost, and the provinces that rebel bleed dry because of such stubborn hearts.”
She felt the weight of every word as a whip cracked across her ribs. The name of her brother was a wound she carried silently, and the faces of her nieces and nephews flickered in her mind like candle flames threatened by a draft. “And what would you have me do, General?” she asked, voice steady but laced with ice. “Bend my knees while my family is ground beneath your boots? Watch my people suffer in silence because it’s easier to bow than to fight?”
Maverick’s grin widened, venom lacing his tone. “Rebellion is a poison. It festers when nurtured by weakness. You speak of sacrifice, yet here you stand, far from those fields of blood, safe in these walls.” He tapped the table with a gauntleted finger, a warning unspoken but clear.
“Loyalty to the crown means obedience. Anything less... invites ruin.”
Her breath caught, a low fire sparking behind her eyes. The goblet beside her trembled with the force of her clenched fist before she snatched it up and hurled it across the room. The crystal shattered against the stone pillar behind him, scattering droplets of wine and shards like broken promises. Silence slammed down, heavier than any reprimand.
Maverick’s eyes flashed with surprise but also grudging respect, his hand curling near the hilt of his sword. “Bold,” he muttered.
Before the tension could fray further, the doors opened. Xavier entered, his presence swallowing the room whole. His gaze fixed on Maverick, cold and unyielding.
“Enough,” he said, voice calm but edged with steel. “You will show respect to the princess. She bears burdens you will never understand.” His eyes flicked to her, lingering with a softness that both unsettled and steadied her.
Then back to Maverick. “Your insolence will not be tolerated. Remember that.”
Maverick bowed his head, chastised but not broken. The princess felt a surge of something fierce and fragile vindication mixed with exhaustion.
She was a pawn, a queen, a captive of politics and promises. Yet she had refused to be silenced today. For her family. For herself. For the whispered hope that one day, the weight of their sacrifice might be seen and honored.
The dim light of the corridor barely brushed the sharp angles of Jeremiah’s face as he leaned against the cold stone wall, arms crossed loosely but every muscle taut beneath the leather of his coat. His eyes, dark and serious, flicked to her with a casual interest that unsettled her more than any open challenge ever could. He said nothing, just waited. patient and precise, as if weighing a question she hadn’t yet dared to ask. She had noticed how he moved through the palace, always just out of sight yet always there, a silent sentinel whose loyalty was a blade wrapped in velvet.
She had heard whispers that he and Xavier were inseparable since childhood, brothers not by blood but by bond, forged in the same fires and sharpened on the same stones. Once, Jeremiah had wanted to be Xavier’s personal guard, to stand at his side with sword drawn and shield raised.
Though Xavier, ever the strategist, refused. “You have a better purpose,” he had told him.
Jeremiah’s role was not to fight but to watch and to speak, to be the voice that bridged the kingdoms when war was a distant memory and the ink of treaties still wet on parchment. One day, the sons of their realm would learn under his tutelage, shaping a future he alone would help craft.
She met his gaze now, searching for cracks, for any flicker of the man beneath the carefully guarded façade. But Jeremiah’s face remained a mask of calm amusement, dry wit lurking just beneath the surface, daring her to guess how much he truly knew. His silence was a fortress wall built to protect secrets that could topple empires.
She wondered if he saw through her, if he knew what churned beneath her composed exterior: the fear, the defiance, the fragile hope that whispered she might yet outmaneuver the king’s grasp.
“What do you think of all this?” she asked quietly, voice low enough to blend with the distant murmur of the castle.
Not the wedding plans or the politics, but the man who stood at the heart of it all. Jeremiah’s eyes flicked briefly to the heavy oak door down the hall, beyond which Xavier’s throne waited silent and unyielding.
“Xavier?” His smile was slow, knowing. “He plays a long game. Everything he does is a move in a war only he understands. We all have our parts. Mine just happens to be the quietest.” His glance returned to her, sharper now. “You’ll learn that the world isn’t kind to those who refuse the roles they’re given.”
She swallowed, the weight of his words settling in the pit of her stomach. He said nothing more, only shifted on his feet, the faint scrape of leather against stone the only sound before he slipped away, leaving her alone with the questions that had no answers and the uneasy certainty that Jeremiah’s loyalty was as impenetrable as Xavier’s ambition.
The chamber where they dined was cloaked in deep shadows and the soft flicker of candlelight that threw long fingers across the high, arched ceiling. Heavy curtains, drawn tight against the night, muffled the storm raging beyond the walls, leaving the air thick with the scent of damp stone and burning beeswax. The table between them was set with polished silver and crystal goblets that caught the flame and fractured it into shards of light. Yet the room felt less like a place of celebration and more like an arena, every glance a calculated move, every silence weighted with unspoken demands.
She entered already bristling, Tara’s sharp hands having forced her into a gown too tight around her ribs, the fabric stiff and unfamiliar against her skin. The painted smile on her face was brittle, a mask she wore for Xavier’s sake but which did nothing to soothe the tight coil of irritation wound deep in her chest. Tara had made sure every strand of hair was in place, every detail perfect all while her eyes flickered with that sickly sweetness, the kind that tasted like honey laced with venom. There had been no kindness in it, only a reminder of the cage she now inhabited.
Xavier was already seated, the image of calm control. His long hair, still damp from the rain, clung slightly to his neck. He wore no crown tonight, no finery beyond the simple dark tunic that allowed the slight rise and fall of his shoulders to speak of strength without effort. He raised a chalice to his lips, eyes glinting with something both cold and amused. He said nothing as she took the seat opposite him, the distance between them a deliberate boundary.
Finally, he spoke low and measured, folding around her like smoke. “I have expectations. Not just for the ceremony, or the crown, but for what comes after. You will behave, and in return, your family will live. Perhaps, after you provide me with an heir, you will even see them again.”
She stared at him, the faintest tremor in her fingers betraying the storm beneath her composure. The room felt suddenly smaller, the weight of his words pressing in. Then, with a breath that tasted bitter and honest, she let the words spill from her lips before she could stop them.
“I hate Tara,” she said, voice sharp, urgent. “She makes me feel like an idiot every damn day. As if I’ve never known what it means to be royal, to carry a people’s hopes on my back. She grades me, watches me, corrects me as if I’m some child trying to play a part she’s never been meant to fill.”
Xavier’s lips curled into a slow, dark smile as he lifted the chalice again, the faintest glint of amusement lighting his eyes. “Is that all you want from me?” he asked softly, the question hanging between them like a challenge.
She met his gaze, her pulse quickening, the fight in her flaring anew. “Yes,” she breathed tiredly. “I want you to stop her, keep her away from me, I don’t care what you do with her otherwise..”
He leaned forward then, the candlelight casting shadows across his face, highlighting the intensity there. “Very well,” he said, voice a low promise. “I will see what can be done. But remember loyalty is earned, not given. And I expect nothing less than perfection.”
The night closed in around them, a fragile truce forged in whispered threats and unspoken desires, the space between king and queen charged with power and peril.
The great hall was suffused with a solemn hush, the air thick with the scent of polished stone and fresh lilies gathered from distant gardens. Torches flickered along the towering columns, their flames trembling as if caught between reverence and anticipation. Rows of nobles sat rigid in their appointed places, faces veiled beneath masks of duty and curiosity, watching the corridor where she would appear. The heavy velvet curtains parted, and the world narrowed to the rhythmic click of her boots against the marble floor.
She wore silver, a gown woven with threads of moonlight and frost, its fabric cascading in delicate folds that caught the torchlight with every careful step. The weight of it was nothing compared to the cold she felt pressing through her bones, seeping into her fingers, numbing her hands that trembled against the silken sleeves.
The jewels at her throat and wrists were gifts from kingdoms united under one banner, yet they felt like shackles, glittering but unyielding.
Her breath came shallow and steady, measured like the steps that carried her forward. She did not meet the eyes of the courtiers, did not seek their approval or pity. Her gaze was fixed ahead, on the figure waiting where the hall widened into the chamber of vows.
Xavier stood like a dark god his sandy hair loose and wild, framing a face etched with both power and quiet hunger. His eyes held hers with a gravity that made her knees weak.
The murmurs of the assembled faded into silence as the herald began the ancient recitations, the words steeped in tradition and law, binding two souls to one destiny. She listened with a strange detachment, her mind a storm of thoughts she refused to voice.
The silver gown brushed softly against the marble, a whisper of sound that marked the passage of her will towards the altar, towards a future she had not chosen but could not deny.
Xavier took her hands with surprising tenderness, fingers curling around hers as if to anchor her to this moment, to this unyielding fate. His voice rose then, low and fervent, carrying the weight of all he had endured, all he demanded, all he worshiped in her.
“You are my salvation,” he declared, the words fierce and consuming. “In you, I find the peace that has eluded me through wars and bloodshed. With you, the fractured realms will heal, and the crown will shine eternal.”
His gaze burned into hers, searching, claiming. She felt the heat of it like fire on cold skin, a hunger that both terrified and drew her in. Yet she said nothing, her lips pressed into a thin line, her heart hammering with a tumult she dared not betray. The vows wove around them, sacred and binding, stitching her into the tapestry of his reign with threads she could neither unravel nor refuse.
When the final words were spoken and the seal of the union marked with rings of entwined silver and onyx, the hall erupted in restrained applause, a chorus of duty and hope, of fear and acceptance. She allowed herself a single breath, sharp and trembling, before stepping back from the altar. Her hands had thawed only slightly, but the cold lingered beneath her skin, a reminder that the warmth she might crave was yet beyond reach.
She retreated to the chambers prepared for the queen, the heavy doors closing behind her with a weight that echoed through the silence. A mirror awaited, framed in ebony, reflecting a figure she barely recognized as a princess transformed into a queen by vows spoken under watchful eyes. She did not raise her gaze to meet her own, instead turning away, refusing to see the promise and the prison that now adorned her like the silver thread on her gown.
Outside the window, the night deepened, stars scattered like shards of light across the ink-black sky. The weight of the crown settled heavier with each passing moment, and though the hall had applauded, the echo in her chest was a quiet question whether she was the savior he claimed, or the sacrifice demanded by a kingdom thirsting for control.
In the stillness, the memory of his words burned: “You are my salvation.” The phrase replayed endlessly, a mantra and a warning entwined. And beneath it all, the silent dread that the man who called her salvation might also be the architect of her undoing.
Her fingers brushed the silver ring, cold and unyielding against her skin, a chain disguised as a promise. The night waited, and so did the future uncertain, shadowed, inevitable.
The chamber was dark, shadows pooling thick beneath the heavy velvet drapes drawn tight against the night. The faint flicker of candlelight cast soft edges along the high ceilings, but it could not warm the cold knot twisting in her stomach as she lay stiff upon the bed. The gown had been stripped away with practiced hands, replaced by linens she did not choose, thin and scratchy against her skin. Her pulse throbbed with a fierce, tangled anticipation, not of tenderness, but of cruelty, the brutal claim she had steeled herself to endure.
She kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling, breaths shallow and measured, bracing for a storm she had imagined in a hundred nightmares. Instead, the silence shifted subtly, a presence moving near, deliberate and careful. Xavier did not speak; he did not press her, did not claim what was his by force. Instead, his hands found her wrists, cool and steady, his lips tracing soft, reverent kisses along the delicate skin where pulse and bone met. The tenderness was unfamiliar, unsettling, a sharp blade veiled in silk.
Her muscles tensed, every instinct screaming in confusion. This was no conquest, no violent marking. Yet the restraint gnawed at her, a different kind of power one built on control not through domination, but through withholding. He settled beside her, the space between them a charged silence, the absence of touch heavier than any grasp. Sleep claimed him soon, his breathing even, unbroken by desire or need.
She lay awake, the weight of his quiet presence pressing down in ways she could not name.
Morning came slow, pale light leaking through the drapes to catch her eyes, still wary, still searching for cracks in the carefully built façade. Word came soon after, a letter, brief and official, bearing news that struck like a blade wrapped in silk: her brother had stepped down from the throne and vanished from public life.
The realm spoke of peace, of a new era born from sacrifice and unity. But she did not believe it. The absence of his name in council halls was a silence louder than any war drum.
She pressed her fingers to the parchment, heart twisting in betrayal and fear. How could peace be brokered in shadows and secrets? Her mind raced with possibilities darker than the night exile, imprisonment, worse. The official story was a lie, a thin veil meant to mask fractures too deep to heal.
Alone in her chamber, she began to write, the quill scratching fragile lines that carried her whispered defiance, letters destined never to leave the shadows.
Her words poured out in the quiet hours, pleas to unseen allies, questions posed to faceless ghosts. She poured the ache of separation and uncertainty into each stroke, the ink a balm for wounds too raw to bear aloud. Each letter was a secret rebellion, a lifeline to the brother she could no longer reach, a testament to the truth she refused to abandon.
Xavier’s presence remained a constant, silent force just beyond her threshold, a reminder of the fragile cage she now inhabited. She longed to hate him for what he had taken, yet his restrained passion, the fierce protectiveness laced beneath his cold words, confused her heart. His love was a war waged in shadows violent, possessive, yet somehow protective.
The contradiction tore at her, eroding the defenses she had so carefully built.
The morning air was crisp and biting, the scent of pine and damp earth thick beneath the canopy of ancient trees that stretched endlessly into the sky. The court rode in a slow procession, horses’ hooves muffled by moss and fallen leaves, the sun casting fractured light through branches heavy with dew. She kept pace beside Xavier, the rhythm of his mount steady and sure, his presence solid like a boulder amid the restless motion of the hunting party. The world around them felt alive–wild and untamed in a way the court rarely admitted.
Xavier glanced sideways, his voice low but carrying easily over the soft sounds of the forest. “To rule men like this,” he said, “you can’t expect loyalty from fear alone. They would sooner die than bend to a crown that demands too much.” His gaze was fixed ahead, sharp and clear, but she caught the flicker of something darker beneath. “Wildness isn’t just a threat. It’s the heart of power. You learn to feed it, to ride it, or it will tear you apart.”
She swallowed, feeling the weight behind his words settle into the quiet spaces between the trees. “And do you feed it?” she asked, voice careful, wary.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, his hand tightened on the reins, knuckles pale against worn leather. “Sometimes,” he said finally, “I let it out. Not recklessly. Not without purpose. But when you hold dominion over men who carry steel in their veins and fire in their eyes, you can’t afford to be tame.”
She watched him then, the way his jaw clenched, the faint crease between his brows. The king she’d feared was no mere ruler; he was a predator shaped by necessity, forced to wear a mask of control over something raw and hungry beneath. The forest closed around them, shadows flickering over his face as if the wild itself recognized its own.
“What if the beast inside you breaks free?” she asked quietly. “What then?”
His eyes met hers, “Then I make sure it’s the only beast left standing.” His voice was steady, but there was a glint there…a promise, and a warning that unsettled her more than any blade.
She rode closer, matching his pace, the forest swallowing their words as the hunt pressed on, the line between king and creature blurring beneath the green canopy.
The stone corridor was cold and dim, the flickering torchlight casting uneven shadows along the rough walls. She paused at the sound. A low choking sob, fragile and desperate that wove its way through the palace’s quiet. Pressing her palm to the cool surface of the wall, she listened more closely, heart tightening. The cry belonged to a woman, a servant or perhaps a peasant pressed into service, her grief raw and unguarded. The princess traced the sound until she found the source: a young mother, crumpled against the stone, clutching a bundle of worn cloth where a child should have been.
The woman’s tears fell freely as she whispered broken prayers, hands trembling, face streaked with dirt and sorrow. “They took him,” she said, voice barely more than a breath. “At dawn, before the sun had risen. They say he’s to be trained, made strong for the king’s army. But he’s only seven... seven.” Her sobs shook the air between them, fragile and heartbreaking.
The weight of the moment pressed upon the princess’s chest as she stood there, silent and unseen, the walls holding the secret grief of a thousand lives twisted by duty and power. The child’s absence was a wound she could almost feel in her own bones. Anger and helplessness surged together, hot and sharp, threading through her thoughts like wildfire.
Later, she found Xavier in the council chamber, his hands folded on the table, eyes fixed on maps and strategy. The flicker of torchlight caught the hard lines of his face, but his voice was calm as she confronted him. “They’re taking children too young,” she said, her tone steady but fierce. “A child’s not ready to bear a blade at seven. They should wait until at least thirteen or fourteen old enough to understand what they fight for, to choose.”
He looked up slowly, meeting her gaze with unflinching certainty. “For an army to be efficient,” he replied, voice low and measured, “waiting that long is a luxury we cannot afford. The moment they can hold a sword, they must be trained. Strength built early is strength that endures.”
She searched his face, seeking the hardness beneath the reason, the cold logic that shaped his reign. There was no cruelty in his tone, only an unyielding pragmatism that left no room for doubt. “They’re children,” she said softly, “not weapons to be forged before they can even comprehend the cost.”
“They will grow strong,” he answered, eyes steady. “They will not starve. Their mothers’ tears do not feed the kingdom, but their hands wielding blades do.”
The truth in his words cut sharper than any blade. She hated herself for understanding, for knowing that in the vast machinery of power, innocence was a sacrifice demanded by survival. The line between protector and oppressor blurred, leaving her grasping at fragments of hope in a world built on harsh necessities.
Her fists clenched at her sides, the weight of responsibility and helplessness settling deeper. Xavier looked up from the maps, the candlelight catching the sharp planes of his face, but his eyes held that familiar calm, unyielding, precise, like the edge of a finely honed blade. She met his gaze, voice steady but charged.
“Seven years old. It’s too young. They don’t understand what they’re being dragged into. They’re just children.”
He folded his hands on the table, the lines of his jaw tightening slightly. “You romanticize youth,” he said flatly. “War is not a storybook. If we wait for understanding, we lose years in which enemies grow stronger, rebellions fester, borders bleed. The moment they can grip a sword, training must begin. Strength built early is strength that lasts.”
Her breath hitched, frustration curling sharp inside her. “It’s not just strength we need. It’s loyalty, courage, something born of choice not forced hands and stolen innocence. You’re molding weapons, yes, but what of their souls? What do they lose?”
His eyes darkened, voice dropping into a low, relentless certainty. “Their souls must be forged in fire. The realm demands sacrifice. If their hearts break, it will be because the kingdom still stands. Better broken children than broken kingdoms.”
She shook her head, anger flickering in her chest. “You call it sacrifice, but it’s just cruelty. Mothers lose sons, families lose futures. You say it’s for the realm, but what kind of realm devours its own youth? You make monsters out of boys and expect them to return as men.”
Xavier leaned forward, the firelight sharpening his features, his tone colder now, edged with the weight of command. “If I do not shape them, others will. They will learn in blood and terror whether I will them or not. I offer them discipline and purpose, a chance to survive this world, not be consumed by it.”
She swallowed hard, the truth in his words clawing at her resolve. “And what about hope? What about mercy? You demand everything from those who have barely begun to live.”
“Hope is a luxury,” he said quietly. “Mercy is a weakness this land cannot afford. I protect what remains by preparing for what is to come. That is the price of peace.”
The room settled into a heavy silence, the fire crackling as if mourning the innocence lost between them. Her hands clenched at her sides, torn between the man who demanded loyalty and the child whose cry echoed in her heart a reminder that some sacrifices could never be justified, even in the name of survival.
The doors had barely shut behind them before she whirled, the fury she’d swallowed for hours boiling over in one blistering breath. “You humiliated me,” she snapped, hands clenched so tightly at her sides she felt her nails bite flesh. The collar of her gown was torn where a courtier had tugged her too forcefully into line during the ceremony, and her cheek still burned from Tara’s whispered reprimand about decorum.
The entire court had seen it, the queen stiff with fury while the king sat silent, letting her fumble. “You let them treat me like I’m a doll they can dress up and reposition, and you didn’t lift a finger!”
“I was watching,” Xavier said, too calmly, unlacing his cloak with deliberate slowness. Rain dripped from the hem, and he flung it over a nearby chair without care. “And I saw a woman who still hasn’t learned where her power lies.”
“Power?” She laughed, bitter and breathless. “You parade me like a trophy and call it power. You let me choke on silence while they smile and bleed me dry”
“And what would you have me do?” he interrupted, voice steel under velvet. “Cut down every courtier who insults your pride? Turn the court into a graveyard to soothe your wounded ego? I give you stage after stage to act your will, and you stomp your feet like a child instead of learning how to draw blood with grace.”
She struck him. The sound cracked through the room, sharp and satisfying, the echo of palm on cheek singing between them. His head turned slightly from the force, and for a breathless moment she felt her own pulse roaring in her ears, like thunder held in the cage of her ribs.
He moved. His hand caught her wrist, not roughly but fast, inescapable, fingers tight like a lock. He stepped in, not looming but close enough that her breath tangled in her throat. “You want violence?” he murmured, gaze flickering with that quiet, terrifying control. “You want to be seen?” His voice dropped further, coiled heat beneath cool words. “Then stop wasting your fire on tantrums and use it where it will matter.”
She jerked her arm back, struggling, but he pressed her to the edge of the bed with a single step. “Let go of me.”
“No.” His voice was flat, certain. “Not until you listen.”
Her hand flew again, he caught it this time. The twist of her body brought them chest to chest, and she saw it then and the thread of fury laced tight beneath the stillness.
“You think I don’t know what I’m doing?” she hissed. “I survived your war, your court, your leash. And you think I’m blind to the way you”
He kissed her.
It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t sweet. It was brutal, all teeth and heat, mouth crashing into hers with enough force to stagger. She gasped against him, then bit hard. Tasting the sharp tang of blood on her tongue before he wrenched back with a snarl.
“Good,” he said, low, voice fraying at the edges now. “Then fight me. But don’t mistake your bitterness for righteousness.”
She shoved him, fury pounding in her chest like war drums, but he didn’t budge. He only stepped in again, hands capturing her face, and this time the kiss came slower but no less forceful, but more calculated, each motion measured, devouring. His teeth grazed her lower lip, his thumb smeared dampness from her cheek. Her body responded before her mind caught up something twisted and traitorous inside her melted.
Her gown was halfway off her shoulder before she realized it. She grabbed at his tunic, pulled hard, tore fabric. His breath hitched, and his hands slid down her sides, palms hot and reverent over trembling skin. “I hate you,” she whispered against his throat, her voice a crackling spark.
“I know,” he breathed into her hair, pulling her hips flush against his. “But your body…” he kissed her again, deeper, slower, “…your body knows what I can do for you now. I believe there is no reason for me to assume you won’t be back in my bed soon enough.”
“Shut up,” she growled.
And when he pushed her down to the mattress, it wasn’t conquest. It was a storm, rough hands, breathless gasps, garments torn and flung aside with no regard. She writhed beneath him, dragging him down by his hair, biting again when he tried to control the pace. But he didn’t retaliate. He only kissed her deeper, slower, his tongue mapping her mouth like he intended to own every inch of her.
He didn’t rush the claim. When he slid his fingers between her thighs, he touched her like a man unafraid of reverence. Her breath caught, back arching, the heat building between her legs impossibly sharp. Still she fought every moan that was bitten off, every shiver buried. But he felt it.
He knew.
When he finally pushed inside her, it was slow, deliberate, his breath shuddering against her shoulder as her walls clenched tight around him. He didn’t thrust. He stayed still, letting her feel the stretch, the weight, the shape of him lodged inside her. Her nails bit his back, and she let out a soft, strangled noisesomething helpless and furious all at once.
He groaned low in his throat. “You’re perfect like this,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to hers. “Too proud to beg. But you’re mine now..”
She bucked her hips, snarling, and only then did he begin to move slow, deep strokes that set fire to every nerve. Her thighs quivered around his hips, breath broken, voice stripped down to gasps. It was wrong. It was too much. But she couldn’t stop. Every thrust dragged her deeper into something molten and unbearable and when she came, she bit down on his shoulder to muffle the scream.
Her body trembled beneath him, slick and aching, but her mind roared. She shoved at his chest, breath coming in shallow bursts.
“Never again,” she said, lips raw. “You’ll never”
He pulled out slowly, kissed her neck once then twice.. “I don’t believe you,” he said softly, brushing hair from her face. “But I look forward to you trying.”
–
Isaiah first appeared as a footnote in the palace. A soft-voiced noble with ink-stained cuffs and a gaze always directed just left of hers, as if wary to meet her fully. He spoke in slow cadences, careful in a way no one else in court dared to be. She learned his name over a quiet morning discussion on the terrace, where he’d brought her books from the old library without being asked. Not history, not law, but poetry. Myth. Works banned in Linkon during wartime for being too idealistic, too dangerous to soldier minds. He didn’t speak like Xavier’s men did. He didn’t speak of duty or legacy or command. Only words, and their weight.
She smiled more around him than she had in months. Not because she trusted him, not truly, but because the mask was lighter in his presence, and that was dangerous in its own way. Isaiah never pushed. He asked things softly, offered space to answer or ignore. When she let a bitter laugh escape, or muttered a thought she should’ve buried, he never flinched. Instead, he listened with a stillness that seemed holy in a palace built on noise.
And Xavier noticed.
He didn’t comment. Not at first. But his eyes were knives in Isaiah’s direction, often when Isaiah wasn’t even speaking. During one feast, while Isaiah quietly explained the lineage of an old crest carved into the hall’s marble, Xavier’s hand slipped beneath the table and traced the inside of her thigh with glacial patience. She flinched, nearly dropping her goblet. He leaned in, mouth brushing her ear.
“Should I be concerned,” he whispered, lips grazing skin, “that your appetite includes quiet little bookmen with soft hands?” His fingers pressed firmer.
Her breath shuddered, shame flooding her like heat. She said nothing. She didn’t dare.
After that, Xavier never said Isaiah’s name again. But he began to appear more often. In the corridors. In her chambers, unannounced, asking nothing. Sometimes he only looked at her, brushing her shoulder as he passed. Other times, he stood too close behind her while she read, his presence towering and mute. At dinners, his voice found her ear, low and filthy.
“I could bend you over this table.” A sip of wine. “Let them watch.”
She started craving the sound of it. Dreading it. Every breathless murmur was a lash and a gift twisting her gut, soaking into her skin like rot. When he wasn’t near, her mind raced to fill the silence. Would he touch her tonight? Would he whisper what he’d do to her if they weren’t surrounded by lords and ministers? When he stood behind her and said nothing at all, the ache was worse.
She hated herself for it.
He was her captor. Her tormentor. The man who’d taken her name and made it ornament. Who’d ripped her from her life, thrown her into velvet and stone, stripped her to silence and called it peace. Yet when his breath caught at her throat, when his fingers ghosted the small of her back as she passed, it was not revulsion that lit her blood.
It was need.
She feared that more than anything.
She told herself it was the illusion of power that he made her feel seen because he watched her like prey. That the heat in her belly was just anger distorted, shame molded into arousal by months of proximity and violation of boundaries until they blurred. But that wasn’t the truth.
The truth was darker. Shameful. Sometimes she caught herself leaning back into his shadow. Her eyes would flick to the door not to escape, but to wonder if he would come through it. She’d lie awake in bed, skin prickling where he’d brushed his hand that morning, fists clenched in blankets that couldn’t recreate the shape of his hands.
Isaiah is gentle and harmless - he became unbearable by comparison. Too careful. Too light. He reminded her of the woman she used to be, and she didn’t know how to speak from that place anymore. She still smiled, still let him speak, but part of her twisted with guilt every time his kindness made her flinch. Every time he asked how she slept and she remembered Xavier’s teeth on her shoulder instead of her dreams.
She didn’t want Xavier.
She wanted control. She wanted her name back. Her breath. Her crown, but when his hand found her wrist and his thumb grazed the inside of it slowly, deliberately, she could feel her pulse responding like it knew the rhythm of his voice.
She feared that he’d broken something in her.
She feared she liked it.
__
The great hall smelled of damp stone and blood. Not fresh blood, the old kind, soaked into the floor from years of judgment handed down like ritual. The torches hissed low, casting long shadows over the stone dais where Xavier sat like judgment incarnate, one hand resting on the arm of his throne, the other curled loosely around her fingers. The queen’s seat had been placed beside him today. Not below, not apart. Beside. A throne without comfort, its height no reward.
The rebel was dragged in on torn knees, face swollen from days of questioning, jaw set despite the agony etched across his skin. He did not beg. He did not break. When his bloodied eyes lifted to hers, something twisted low in her chest recognition. Not of the man himself, but of the fury that lived behind his gaze. A fury that had once burned in her bones. Still did, buried beneath layers of silken obedience and measured breath.
Xavier said nothing at first. He didn’t need to. The rebel’s name was read aloud by the herald, followed by crimes of insurrection, of theft, of sedition. Xavier didn’t glance at her, but his hand tightened slightly against hers when the verdict was pronounced. Death, of course. The executioner stepped forward with quiet efficiency, face hidden behind an iron mask.
She wanted to turn her head. She wanted to stand, to scream, to do anything but sit there like a porcelain doll while a man’s life was snuffed out at her feet. But her spine stayed straight. Her lips stayed sealed. Only her fingers betrayed herclenching the fabric of her gown so tightly that her knuckles burned white. The sword fell. The sound was wet and final. Blood splattered the stones in front of the dais. Some of it dotted the hem of her dress.
The court murmured. The body was dragged away. The ceremony ended. And she left without a word.
Later, in the shadowed quiet of her chamber, she walked in circles until the seams of her gown stuck to her with sweat. Her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking. Every time she blinked, she saw the man’s eyes, saw the defiance in them, and the way his head snapped forward when the blade hit flesh. She pressed her hands to her temples as if she could scrape the memory out of her skull. The blood on her dress had been washed already, but her skin still felt stained.
The door opened quietly. She didn’t turn. Didn’t need to. Xavier didn’t announce himself. He never did. He simply crossed the room and stood behind her, saying nothing for a long time. She waited for a reprimand, a question, a mockery of her reaction. Instead, he reached out slowly and wrapped his arms around her.
She stiffened. Then almost without meaning to break. Her body folded back into him, her forehead pressed to his collarbone, hands curled uselessly against his chest. No sobs. No heaving gasps. Only a long, trembling breath, and the slow leak of tears down her cheeks like water from a cracked cistern. His hand stroked her hair once, then again, slowly and steadily, and when he spoke, it was only three words- “You stayed strong.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Not with the taste of iron still lingering on her tongue. Not with the ache in her chest where her sense of justice used to live. But she let him hold her. And for the first time, she didn’t know whether the comfort was a mercy, or another form of control.
__
The mornings belonged to her now.
It had started as an act of survival a need to claw some piece of herself back from velvet cages and perfumed suffocation. A quiet request, pressed through Tara’s bureaucracy like thread through a needle: permission to educate the daughters of court nobility. Not needlework. Not posture or etiquette. But discourse. Thought. Defense. She’d expected it to be denied. Instead, Xavier approved it without comment, and the next week six girls arrived at dawn with wide eyes and wary silence.
By the second week, they no longer flinched when she raised her voice. They sparred with dulled blades on polished floors while the morning light warmed their cheeks. She taught them to parry ideas as well as strikes. “Your mind is a sword,” she told them. “And your body, the hand that must learn to wield it.” She quoted tacticians and poets alike. Let them question, argue, contradict. In this room, they were not vessels for dowries, they were heirs of thought and strength. She saw herself in their fire, and sometimes, she feared what that meant.
On the twelfth morning, he appeared.
No guards. No herald. Just Xavier in the archway, his silhouette sharp against the golden light flooding the training hall. The girls froze mid-form, wooden blades lowered in instinctual deference. The queen didn’t pause. She corrected one girl’s grip with a touch of the fingers, then nodded once. “Again,” she said, voice even. They obeyed.
Xavier said nothing. He folded his arms, leaned against the door frame, and watched. Not like a hawk more like a scholar appraising something he hadn’t expected to find. His gaze tracked the way one girl pivoted too wide on a back step. The quiet discipline of the others as they countered, struck, missed, laughed. She didn’t approach him, nor acknowledge him, until the lesson ended and the girls bowed out in pairs, breathless and flushed with pride.
She turned to him once the chamber was empty. “I suppose you came to put an end to it.”
“No,” he said. “I came to see what you’d do with a little freedom.”
She blinked. “And what did you decide?”
“That you’re more dangerous with chalk and wooden swords than I gave you credit for.”
There was no smirk behind the words. No teasing menace. Just... observation. She crossed her arms, posture wary but not closed. “They’ll inherit this world, eventually. I’d rather they not do it afraid.”
Xavier stepped closer, slow, deliberate, like approaching something untamed. His voice stayed low. “I remember being taught to kill before I knew how to write my name. You’re giving them what I was never offered, purpose beyond survival.”
The silence that followed wasn’t tense. It wasn’t hostile. It was... new. He stood near enough to touch, but didn’t reach for her. She didn’t step back. And when he finally nodded and turned to leave, it felt less like permission, and more like something shared. Not agreement, not surrender but acknowledgment. She had made something of her own in his empire, for the first time, he didn’t try to take it.
__
The moonlight broke gently across the floor, soft as silk, spilling through the narrow windows of her chamber and pooling in the folds of her nightgown. She sat at the edge of her bed with a book open in her lap, though her eyes hadn’t moved across the page in minutes. The fire had burned low. The room smelled of lavender and ink. She heard the door before she saw him knock, just the subtle groan of the hinges, and then Xavier, silhouetted in firelight, coat slung over one arm.
“You’re late,” she murmured, not lifting her gaze. It wasn’t a rebuke. Not exactly.
“Was I expected?” His voice was quiet, lower than usual. Not sharp, not teasing. Just… present.
She didn’t answer. He moved closer, the heat of him brushing the edge of her awareness as he sat beside her on the bed, close but not crowding. His fingers reached for hersjust the tipsand brushed lightly across her knuckles. She let him. Her hand stayed still beneath his, eyes finally rising to meet his. His gaze was tired but warm, dark lashes casting shadows over something gentler than she'd seen in days.
“What were you reading?” he asked.
“Pliny. The Younger.” A pause. “Letters about ash falling over Pompeii. Describing it like snow.”
He gave a soft sound, halfway between a hum and a sigh, and his hand slid up her forearm with the delicacy of someone touching something sacred. “Even gods can be buried,” he said.
And then he kissed her slowly, this time, without hunger. No war in it. No command. His lips barely moved against hers, as if afraid to wake the storm they both knew lived under her skin. She responded not because she had to, not because he asked, but because her body leaned of its own accord, mouth parting, breath catching. His hand slipped behind her neck, holding her steady as he kissed her deeper.
Clothes fell away with none of the desperate tearing of their first time. He stripped her like she was a puzzle to be unraveled slowly, with reverence. Her nightgown pooled at her hips, his hands mapping the line of her thigh, her stomach, the space just under her breast where her skin flushed with breath. He knelt before her without a word. She didn’t stop him.
The first drag of his tongue against her was so soft she shuddered. She gripped the sheets at her sides, knees trembling open as his mouth moved slowly over her, patient as a monk, steady as prayer. He licked her like she was a language he meant to learn by heart, like there was no hurry, only understanding. Every flick of his tongue was exact, deliberate, chasing gasps from her throat she could not suppress.
Her hips rolled against him, helplessly, heat building with every slow circle, every pause and suck and kiss, but he didn’t rush. His hands held her thighs open, firm but not bruising. She hated how badly she wanted him then how her body reached for him without shame, how she whimpered when he paused. The pressure grew unbearable. Her fingers found his hair, tugging, legs trembling as pleasure built and built and
He stopped.
She stared down at him, panting, disbelief sharp and furious in her lungs. “What?”
He kissed the inside of her thigh once, slowly, before he rose to his feet, gaze never leaving hers. When he leaned over her again, the weight of him pressing her into the mattress, he whispered against her mouth, “Beg.”
Her fury exploded behind her eyes. Not because he’d asked but because part of her wanted to. Her hands fisted against his chest, her legs wrapping around his hips as if to drag him down, but she didn’t say the word. Not yet. He waited, breath brushing her cheek, hard cock pressed hot against her entrance, not moving, not thrusting, just hovering.
“Please,” she ground out, hating the way her voice broke around it.
He smiled, soft and devastating. And then he pushed into her.
The stretch was slow, deep, unbearable in how carefully he filled her. She gasped, head tipping back, thighs tightening around him as his hands cradled her jaw, his forehead resting against hers. His rhythm didn’t break long, deep thrusts that made her back arch off the bed. His mouth found hers again, but this time there was no demand. Just hunger restrained by devotion, a rhythm of heat and control that made her see stars.
He fucked her like he had all night to remember how. Like there was no war outside the walls, no court, no weight between them. Only the soft gasp of her breath and the slow, inevitable collapse of everything she thought she hated about him.
The courtyard was a sea of movement banners snapping in the wind, horses stamping against cobblestone, the metallic clang of armor and commands drifting upward like smoke. From her balcony high above, she watched it all unfold in polished silence, fingers curled tight around the cold stone rail. Below, Xavier sat astride a dark stallion, his cloak rippling behind him, the soldiers of his vanguard forming rows in perfect discipline. He looked, in that moment, not like a man, but a myth forged in iron and certainty.
He hadn’t kissed her goodbye.
He hadn’t needed to. The night before, he’d pulled her into his bed and held her with a quietness that unsettled her more than any of his orders. No filth whispered in the dark, no teeth at her throat. Just his arm around her waist, thumb brushing the curve of her hip like he was memorizing it. When he rose at dawn, he’d only said, “I ride before noon.” She hadn’t asked him to stay. That, she told herself, would have been a weakness.
And yet her chest ached now, hot and unbearable.
He turned once in the saddle, gaze sweeping the upper windows. He couldn’t possibly see her not from this distance, not through the glare of morning sun but her breath caught as if he had. And when his hand lifted briefly in a silent salute, her fingers clenched tighter around the railing, as if the stone might tether her to the place her pride demanded she stay.
She hated that she wanted to run down the stairs, to reach for his cloak and twist her fingers in the leather just to keep him a moment longer. Hated that the part of her that feared him, loathed him, still trembled now at the thought of nights without his weight beside her. She had spent months hating his control hating the way her body had come to anticipate his touch. And now? Now her heart thudded against her ribs like a traitor.
The procession moved. Hooves struck stone. Wheels turned. Xavier did not look back again.
She stood frozen even after the courtyard had emptied, the last of the banners swallowed by the outer gates. The wind tugged at the hem of her robe, lifting it like a sigh. Her skin prickled.
She told herself the ache was fear of what he’d do in the field, fear of what his absence would stir in the lords who’d waited too long for him to slip. But that wasn’t all of it. Not even most of it. Her throat tightened around the shameful truth: she missed him already.
And worse she wasn’t sure who she was without him watching.
The days without him passed like pages turned in wind uneven, brittle, stained by tension that clung to the air like the first scent of snow. She woke early now, earlier than court demanded, and spent her mornings reviewing dispatches, memorizing grain reports, revising tariffs with the ministers he’d once kept at arm’s length. They whispered about her differently these days. Not as a hostage, not just a queen. She signed documents in ink thick with her own authority. No one questioned it.
Not even Jeremiah, who only nodded when she corrected a misquoted decree.
Each evening she walked the battlements, eyes drawn north, searching for signs of movement beyond the trees. She wore no crown on those nights. Only a heavy cloak and gloves ink-stained at the fingers. She did not pray, not aloud but her breath came as supplication, silent and endless, every exhale laced with what ifs she dared not voice.
When word came, it arrived on a dust-laden rider at twilight. Xavier’s banners were seen returning. Fewer than before.
She didn’t wait for formality. The court scrambled to gather in the entry hall, but she was already moving, skirts hitched in one hand as she raced through corridor after corridor, breath sharp in her chest. The gates hadn’t even fully opened when she burst into the courtyard, boots slipping on rain-wet stone.
He was slumped in the saddle, blood crusting one side of his face, armor broken at the shoulder, eyes glassy with fever. His horse halted instinctively at the edge of the torchlight, and before the guards could reach him, she was their hands reaching up, voice raw as she shouted for help.
He nearly fell into her. His weight crushed against her frame, blood soaking through her bodice as his arms clumsily found her waist. “You idiot,” she whispered hoarsely, half-laughing, half-crying. “You stubborn, bleeding bastard”
He groaned, one hand coming up to cup the back of her neck. “Still warm,” he mumbled, his breath ragged. “Good. I dreamed the frost had taken you.”
They brought him inside. She never left his side.
She stripped the ruined armor from his body herself, sleeves rolled to her elbows, fingers shaking as she peeled blood-slick leather from shredded skin. The healers worked by torchlight, murmuring about broken ribs, a puncture below the ribs, the deep cut across his shoulder. She kept pressing cloth to his wounds even when her palms turned red. When they tried to move her away, she didn’t speak. Just looked at them and they stepped back.
That night, she lay beside him in the sickbed, the linens damp with blood and sweat and herbs. His fever broke and rose again in waves, his lips moving through half-senseless murmurs. At some point near midnight, when the fire had died to coals and the healers had withdrawn, he turned his face to her shoulder and whispered, “My starless sky.”
She froze. The words lingered like smoke, seeping into her skin. As if she were the night itself, dark and vast and infinite, without light but still his.
She didn’t sleep. She watched him instead, the furrow of his brow softening when her hand smoothed back his hair. She didn’t understand what she felt, only that it hurt more than hatred, and gentler than pity. Her chest ached not with fear this time, but something far more dangerous: hope.
She pressed a kiss to his temple as the wind rattled the shutters, the world silent around them. His body was broken. His crown vulnerable but his hand still found hers in the dark, and his fingers curled around it like he feared she’d vanish.
For the first time, she didn’t pull away.
The morning light filtered through the high windows in pale, wavering stripes. It cast faint gold on the blood-damp linens, on the half-dressed healer’s table cluttered with bandages and tinctures, on the quiet, still form of Xavier where he lay beneath layers of gauze and fur. His chest rose and fell shallowly but steadily now, the fever no longer wracking him with heat or trembling. She hadn’t moved all night, curled on her side beside him, one hand still wrapped in his like a lifeline.
He stirred before she noticed barely. A flex of fingers, a slight shift of breath. Then, slower, a murmur rasping through his throat. “...Too bright,” he said, cracking open one eye. “Either I lived… or hell got softer.”
She sat up fast, hair tangled, sleep forgotten. “You should still be unconscious.”
“I’m too arrogant to die unconscious,” he muttered, then winced as the movement tugged at his ribs. His eyes finally focused, drifting over her face, lingering at her mouth, her eyes, the tired lines at the corner of them. “You didn’t leave.”
“No,” she said softly, brushing hair from his forehead. “Not once.”
His throat moved like he might speak again, but the words didn’t come. Instead, he turned his face toward her hand, resting it there against his cheek. His fingers slid weakly up her wrist and stopped. “Did Jeremiah?”
“He stayed,” she interrupted, before he could ask. “With me. You sent him to guard your crown. I think you knew I would take your throne if you didn’t return.”
A ghost of a smile. “Then I’m lucky. You’d have ruled it well.”
She stared at him, breath caught. Not because of the words but because he said them without heat, without irony. As if it was simply true. As if he’d meant it. He reached for her again, this time with more strength, pulling her hand down to his chest where the steady beat of his heart thudded beneath bandages. She said nothing. Just curled her fingers there and for a long time, they remained like that, queen and king, neither speaking, just listening to the fragile rhythm that had not yet stopped.
__
The wind howled low outside the council chamber, dragging grit and ash against the shuttered windows. The rebellion had reached the outer provinces faster than anticipated, sharper than rumor. Smoke now drifted from the lowlands like a second sky. Xavier stood at the head of the long table, half his ribs still bandaged beneath his black surcoat, eyes sunken with pain and sleep-starvation, yet unyielding. Around him, generals and ministers murmured, offering strategies in careful tones. She sat to his right. No longer a token. Not quite a sovereign. Something in between.
“The rebels took Varn in a single night,” said General Aric, planting a gauntlet on the table. “They knew where the grain stores were. That means someone inside is helping them. We need to answer hard and fast,burn three villages for every one they torch.”
Murmurs of approval rippled, a few grunts of assent. The queen did not look at them.
“You’ll starve the rest of the countryside doing that,” she said coolly, fingers steepled. “And make every child in the north dream of cutting your throat.”
Several heads turned. The silence was heavy, not shocked, but weighted with attention. She felt it. She had learned to wield silence now how to fill a room with the gravity of her breath alone. She looked only at Xavier.
“There’s another way,” she continued. “Cut supply lines. Bleed their patience, not their children. Send healers and bread to the outlying hamlets. Make them doubt who the villain is.”
Jeremiah watched her closely. He, more than the others, understood the performance. How much of her voice now belonged to strategy, how much to survival. Xavier’s gaze was fixed, his jaw working as he glanced down at the spread of maps before him. Then he nodded.
“Make a list of strongholds that can be spared for reallocation,” he told Aric. “We’ll try her way first.”
Her way. The phrase sent a shiver through her. The court was still watching, some with veiled resentment, others with something closer to awe. A year ago, they had spoken of her as a prize. Now they awaited her counsel like soldiers awaiting the sounding of a horn.
From that day on, she sat beside Xavier not only at war councils but at daily hearings over disputes of land, trade, conscription. She learned the names of merchant guild leaders, of nobles too old to kneel. She argued rulings. She corrected bad law with cleaner precedent. And Xavier let her. Or pretended to. Either way, it no longer mattered.
She knew it could be a game. That offering her power could be another way to cage her make her complicit, soften her with the illusion of agency. But she played anyway. Because the work was real. Because justice, even coiled within compromise, was better than silence. Because the girls she taught now asked her how she’d held her voice before she was allowed to use it.
And because, more dangerously, she saw something changing in Xavier’s gaze.
He looked at her now like a man seeing his reflection in stained glass beautiful only because it refracted his own fire back in shards. He spoke to her in fewer commands, more questions. In private, he did not press himself on her anymore. He undressed her slowly, reverently, kissed her with the ache of a man who had known absence and feared its return. Once, after a long night in his bed, she woke to find his hand wrapped around hers, their palms still stained faintly with ink from a joint ruling they had signed before undressing.
Though, she still feared it. Still doubted what lay beneath his tenderness.
But power had a weight sharing it changed them both. They stood now not as captor and captive but as something heavier, more intricate. A king who had conquered the world, and the queen who dared to reshape it from within his shadow and when he looked at her across the firelit war table and said, “Ride with me to the border,” she did not flinch. She stood. She took up her cloak.
She chose.
___
The great hall was soaked in gold. Columns draped in crimson banners. Musicians straining under the weight of victory songs. Soldiers drunk on blood and glory flooded the edges of the ballroom, their polished boots tracking dirt and conquest across marble that once only knew silk. Servants moved like smoke, refilling goblets, dousing torches with wine for the scent. Overhead, chandeliers shimmered like trapped stars.
She stood at the heart of it, spine straight, lips glossed in wine-dark red. Her gown clung to her like a second skin silver silk wrapped tight around her ribs, low in the back, the slit at her thigh showing pale skin and bruises that matched no known injury. She didn’t smile. She didn't need to. She was the queen. The spectacle. The symbol of a war her body had helped seal.
Xavier sat like judgment itself on the dais. One leg draped over the throne’s arm, goblet forgotten, fingers flexing idly. He didn’t speak. Didn’t nod. Just stared at her as though he’d sculpted her from some old ache and wasn’t yet done deciding where the cracks should go. Their eyes locked once. It was enough. Her stomach clenched.
She stepped out to breathe. To think. To break for just one moment.
The cloak was laid on the bench near her vanity wine velvet, her family’s crest stitched in silver thread across the lining. She reached for it absently, fingers brushing fabric. Something stiff inside. A folded sheet, not sealed but flattened as though pressed again and again in a trembling palm. Her hand hesitated. She unfolded it.
The ink was dark and rushed, but the hand was unmistakable. Her brother’s. Not addressed to her. Not meant for her eyes.
To the King of Slaughter,
I accept your terms.
I will abdicate before dawn. The ministers have been misled to believe I retreat for health, but my horse is already packed. My wife and children ride behind under cloaks. We will vanish before they even raise the gates.
Do not harm her. I ask only that. She’s clever, and she’s always been brave, even when no one was watching. I know you’ll marry her, it was part of the price. But I trust your word that she will not be hurt. She deserves better than a war made out of her ribs.
This is my surrender. I’ve protected Linkon the only way left.
May you rule it without breaking her.
Kalen
Her hand trembled. Her throat burned. He didn’t know. Didn’t know Xavier had already used his life as leverage. Didn’t know that she said yes because a blade was held to his throat. He thought he was saving her.
She folded the letter once, hard, and tucked it under her bodice. It burned against her skin like iron.
She returned to the ballroom with fire in her spine.
When Xavier approached, the court hushed. He extended his hand. She took it. Not because she wanted to, but because the world was watching and her power lived in the way she didn't flinch.
They danced.
No words. Just the weight of his palm against her waist, the warm slide of his fingers along her spine. His breath touched her temple. Their bodies moved as one slow, drowning rhythm, her heel catching his boot once, and neither of them cared. Her dress stuck to her skin. His thumb stroked her side once, absently, as if he’d forgotten where they were. Every step was performance. Every pivot a bruise.
Later, in the dark of her chambers, they undressed each other without a word. He pushed the straps of her gown down one by one, kissed the curve of her shoulder with reverent slowness, but she said nothing. Her hands tugged open his tunic, fingers flat against his ribs. His skin was warm, scarred, marked by war and her nails.
He lifted her, not with roughness, but certainty, laying her back across the bed, pressing his mouth to her collarbone, then down. His tongue circled her nipple, slow, sucking just once before kissing lower, dragging heat with every breath. She arched into him. Not an invitation but purely instinct.
He parted her legs and settled between them, fingers sliding through slick folds, slow and steady. He didn’t tease. He didn’t command. Just touched her until her hips bucked once, sharp and involuntary. She bit her lip. He kissed her inner thigh.
When he slid inside, she gasped. Not because it hurt. Because he moved like he was memorizing her.
His thrusts were deep, unhurried. One hand braced beside her head. The other wrapped under her thigh, holding her open. His eyes never left her face. She turned it to the side, lips parted, breath catching with every push.
The sound of their bodies was obscene, wet, rhythmic, a slap of skin softened only by the bed beneath them. She wrapped her legs around him, ankles locked. He groaned when she tightened. She wanted to hate how much she needed that sound.
When she came, it hit her like a wave pulled too long. Her spine arched. A broken noise slipped past her lips. His name didn’t.
He followed seconds later, buried deep, panting against her shoulder, arms shaking with restraint. He kissed the hollow of her throat. The side of her jaw. Her temple.
They lay tangled. Breathless. Sticky.
Her voice came last.
“Don’t lie to me again.”
She felt him freeze. His breath stilled.
___
Maverick’s loyalty had never been built on faith, only proximity to power, and the illusion of permanence. He had served Xavier through fire and famine, whispered strategies in his war council, bled for his throne. But over the last weeks, Xavier had watched the subtle shift in the man’s posture, the hesitation behind each bow. Loyalty that trembled was not loyalty at all.
And Xavier had known. Of course he had.
The attempt came on a cold morning. The queen’s procession was small just two guards ahead, Tara at her side, a quiet walk through the frost-laced courtyards before the midwinter audience convened. The air smelled of pine and stone. The sun hadn’t cleared the parapets. And then: movement. A flick of shadow. The hiss of a blade drawn close.
Tara moved before the queen could even process it. A blur of silk and breath her arm flung wide, her body taking the blow meant for the queen’s neck. Steel sliced flesh. The scream wasn’t hers. It was the would-be assassin’s, cut short by a guard’s sword through the ribs.
Tara crumpled, hand clutching the wound just beneath her collarbone. Blood soaked her ivory gown like wine spilled over porcelain. The queen dropped to her knees beside her, pressing hard to staunch the flow, voice low and calm even as her fingers slicked with red. Tara’s eyes locked on hers. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.
The queen looked up and saw Xavier already coming, boots pounding over stone.
Maverick stood by the east wall, still as sculpture. A single step back from the unfolding scene, mouth flat but Xavier didn’t look at the guards. Didn’t call for chains. He walked straight toward the man he once called brother.
“Maverick,” Xavier said, voice too quiet.
The general inclined his head not shame, not defiance, something between. “It wasn’t supposed to touch her.”
Xavier’s hands didn’t shake. He drew his dagger not the ceremonial one, not the jeweled hilt gifted by foreign kings but the narrow, black-handled blade he carried at his spine. The one he used to gut spies in the field.
“You thought I would forgive that,” Xavier said, not a question.
“I thought you’d understand,” Maverick replied. “She changes you.”
Xavier moved.
He didn’t order his men to act. He didn’t wait. He slammed the dagger into Maverick’s side with a soldier’s force, then again into his stomach. Then upward. Blood burst hot across stone and silk. The crowd gasped, stumbling back, but Xavier didn’t stop; he grabbed Maverick by the collar and drove the blade into his throat, twisting once before letting the man crumple in a pool of red.
Silence ripped through the courtyard like thunder.
The queen stood where she'd knelt beside Tara, her skirts now painted in blood. Some of it Maverick’s. Some of it Tara’s. She didn’t wipe her hands. She didn’t look away.
She stared at the body, then at Xavier.
When his eyes found hers, they held no apology.
Only promise.
And she nodded, once. Cold. Controlled.
She did not flinch.
–
The sheets were twisted around her hips, damp with sweat, her skin still flushed from the aftermath. Xavier’s hand slid up the line of her thigh, slow, claiming, before curving over her hip and pulling her back against him. The room smelled of sex and firewood, and the hearth cast a low gold flicker across the stone walls, warm, almost tender. A lie.
His mouth found her shoulder, the sharp ridge of bone just beneath skin, and kissed it. Not soft intentional. She didn’t speak. Neither did he. Not yet. Just the scrape of his stubble against her skin as he pressed lower, dragging lips along the slope of her spine, the side of her breast.
He cupped her gently, then sucked her into his mouth, slow and deliberate. Tongue circling, lips sealing. She arched involuntarily not from pleasure, but the unbearable focus of it, like he was memorizing her heartbeat through her skin. His hand slid across her ribs to hold her still while he worshiped with his mouth her nipple stiffening as he tongued it again, wet and patient, then grazed his teeth along it until her breath caught.
“You’re not afraid of me,” he murmured, mouth against her breast, voice hot and low. “You hate me. " her brow furrows at the words and he soaks it in, "But you’re not afraid.”
She said nothing. He kissed lower stomach, navel, the dip just above her hip. Her fingers tangled in the sheets. Her legs remained still, deliberately.
He rose over her again, chest against her back, and leaned in until his mouth brushed her ear. “I would chain you to this throne before I let you leave,” he whispered. His hand slipped down her belly. “You’re mine, and you can pretend you loathe me for the things I’ve done… the lies I’ve told…” His mouth dragged along her jaw. “But I think you’d sooner chain yourself to it than leave.”
She inhaled sharply, not protest, not agreement. Just heat curling behind her ribs.
He pulled her onto her back, eyes dark and consuming, and kissed her again, slow, wet, tongues tangling, his hand spreading her thighs like he already knew she’d part them. Her thighs parted under his palm like petals soaked through with heat, muscles taut with resistance she wasn’t really holding anymore. He didn’t ask permission, not with words just leaned down, breath warm against the inside of her knee as he settled between her legs.
He dragged his mouth up the curve of her thigh, slowly, then kissed the crease where her hip met the bone, hands spreading her wider. When his tongue found her, it was with no hesitation one long, firm stroke that made her gasp, her hips twitching. He groaned softly against her, like she tasted exactly how he’d imagined exactly how he needed her.
He licked again, slower now, deliberate the flat of his tongue pressing up through her slick folds, circling her clit, then sucking it between his lips until her thighs shook. She bit her lip, refusing the moan rising in her throat, but her body betrayed her the tremble of her abdomen, the twitch of her fingers in the sheets.
His hands kept her open, mouth working her with obscene patience. He didn’t stop. Didn’t relent. Just devoured , like this was what he’d wanted since the first time she cursed his name. She let out a breathless, broken sound when his tongue fluttered faster, her back arching.
He felt the tremor building in her, the frantic roll of her hips that said she was close and he pulled back.
She made a sound then. Raw. Frustrated. Needy.
He climbed over her, his mouth slick with her taste, and kissed her hard, deep letting her taste herself on his tongue as he pressed the blunt head of his cock against her entrance. He pushed inside slowly, inch by thick inch, until he was buried in her heat, his forehead pressed against hers, breath shaking.
She gasped. Not from pain from the stretch, the way he filled her like he belonged there. Her nails dug into his shoulders.
“Mine,” he whispered against her lips, then pulled back and thrust again deep, smooth, unhurried.
Each thrust dragged a ragged breath from her lungs, the weight of him grounding her, pinning her. His hands slid beneath her thighs, lifting her legs higher, angling deeper until the sound of him inside her was wet, relentless.
She broke first back arching, body spasming around him with a sharp cry, her orgasm hitting hard and fast. He didn’t stop. He fucked her through it, watching her unravel beneath him, mouth parted, hair wild.
Only when she clenched around him again, her breath caught on his name, did he let go hips stuttering, cock pulsing deep inside her with a groan that sounded like a prayer and a promise at once.
He didn’t pull out.
Didn’t move.
Just pressed his lips to her throat and whispered, “You’ll never leave me.”
___
The palace square of Lumiere had never held so many. From the high towers, the city was a bloom of banners and open hands. The scent of wildflowers thrown by the crowd rose with the breeze. Musicians played from balconies, their songs swelling like the sea. It was not a day of conquest. It was a day of unity.
Xavier stood at the head of the marble steps, cloaked in black and silver. The blade at his hip was ceremonial now, but no one doubted its history. Beside him, the queen wore emerald silk embroidered in gold. Her hair was braided with narrow chains that caught the sun. The people did not cheer for him alone.
They cheered for her.
Her voice rang clear over the square, amplified by the stone arches behind her. She spoke without notes. Without trembling.
“Today, the realm is no longer divided. No more fractured provinces. No more blood for borders. Lumiere stands as the heart of a new empire, and we are its voice.”
A roar of approval rose like thunder. But it was the children that caught her eye.
Along the eastern edge of the square, past the merchants and soldiers, stood a cluster of boys and girls wearing ribbons braided with green and gold. Her colors. They had painted the crest over their cheeks in chalk and mud. One of them held a wooden doll with a crown carved into its head. It looked vaguely like her.
She smiled, and it felt real.
Xavier turned his head, eyes tracking her expression. He said nothing, only watched as her gaze lingered on the children. In that moment, she knew the crowd did not love her because she stood beside him. They loved her because she had stood beside them.
Word of the proclamation had traveled faster than the pigeons could fly. Before nightfall, riders brought news from the outer provinces. Rebellions quieted. Oaths sent by courier. And a single letter, signed in ink she knew by heart.
He arrived a week later.
Her brother dismounted slowly at the palace gates. His beard was heavier, his coat worn, but the moment he saw her, his face broke into something boyish and raw. She crossed the courtyard before the guards could announce him.
He swept her up before she could speak, arms wrapped around her ribs, her feet lifted clean off the stones. She laughed, breathless, and held him tighter. His back did not bend. He would not allow it.
When he set her down, his hands lingered over her arms, eyes falling briefly to the curve of her belly where the silk stretched gently. His breath caught, but he said nothing. She rested a hand over the swell.
“Come inside,” she said.
They walked through the palace gardens in the soft breath of evening, where the roses had not yet closed and the fountains still whispered. Her brother kept his hands clasped behind his back, eyes scanning the unfamiliar spires that now bore his sister’s crown. She walked beside him slowly, one hand resting low on her belly. The gold bands on her fingers caught the last slant of sun.
He said little at first. Just watched her face in profile, like he was trying to map what had changed and what had endured. She didn’t flinch under his gaze. She only turned to him when they reached the willow arbor and touched his arm lightly.
“I know what you want to ask,” she said. “And I won’t give you every answer. Not because I can’t. Because I don’t need to anymore.”
He opened his mouth, but she shook her head gently and kept speaking.
“I am happy. That much is true. It didn’t come the way I thought it would. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t simple. But it’s mine. This life, this empire, the man I share it with. All of it. I chose it. Even the hard parts.”
Her brother looked away for a moment, as if the words were heavier than he expected. She stepped closer.
“I love him,” she said. “He might be difficult. He might still make war out of silence. But he is mine. And I am his. That’s what matters.”
He didn’t speak. He only nodded once, slow and quiet, his eyes shining with something older than grief and softer than relief.
__
The garden had never felt more alive. Wild violets crawled up the trellises, bees hummed between the citrus trees, and laughter echoed across the stone paths. Her niece sat in Xavier’s lap with a flower crown too big for her head, her small hands pulling at the silver buckles on his coat as she asked him questions he answered with exaggerated solemnity. Her nephews chased each other in circles, their tunics already stained with grass and jam.
Xavier laughed when the youngest slammed into his side and announced he had “captured the king.” He swept the boy up and growled like a beast, tossing him gently over a shoulder before spinning him around. The child shrieked with delight. Her brother watched from the garden steps with something between awe and suspicion.
She stood beneath the olive tree, one hand cradling her belly, her gaze fixed on the man who had shattered her world and then built her a throne from the ruins. He looked soft there, shirt undone, boots in the grass, letting her niece braid his hair with sticks. But she knew better.
She could not trust him. Not truly. There were still doors in his mind she would never open, still secrets pressed between them like thorns beneath silk. And yet… she could not leave him. Would not.
So she chose to love him.
Damn the truth. Damn the past. She had a new life etched from stone and blood and her own will, and she would see it through to the end. If he was a lie, he was hers .
That evening, he called her brother into the chamber of records. Gave him a title not of pity but of legacy Warden of the Border Marches, a stewardship with land, soldiers, and inheritance. Not a throne, but a post that mattered. Her brother had accepted it with grace, though his eyes flicked to hers before he signed the seal.
When night fell, she climbed into their bed without words, shedding her robe as she moved beneath the sheets. He turned to her immediately, warm and bare, his arms slipping around her body like instinct. He lowered his head to her belly and pressed a kiss just below her navel. Then another. And another.
Their child shifted beneath his touch, a sudden firm kick that startled them both. He stilled, then smiled against her skin.
“Our kingdom is getting much larger by the day,” he whispered, lips brushing the curve of her belly. She threaded her fingers through his hair and said nothing, letting the silence hold what words could not.
WARNINGS— 16 links, all of these videos are for afab readers/viewers, don't like don't read/watch, make sure to be logged into twt/x beforehand, if some of the links stop working please lmk ! nsfw below the cut
sorry for disappearing, I started new anti depressants and was really struggling to adjust but things are good now !!
missionary is his favourite because he always gets to see the faces you make for him
despite xavier being tired he still needed to find a way to punish you for saying lumiere is sexier than him
he's sleepy, like always, but you wouldn't stop teasing him during nap time
xavier leaving teasing little licks all over your aching clit while your hips buck against his face for more (which he refuses to give you)
helovesyourboobshelovesyourboobs
pussy slaps as punishment because you've been giving him the silent treatment after an argument
riding him during date night at his apartment
this is your version of taking care of him while he's recovering from an injury
slow sex with xavier
holding your hands while he sucks on your pretty pussy
as said, he prefers seeing your face while fucking you, but the sounds you make while taking it from the back are heavenly to him
morning sex with xavier is amazing
giving him a pussyjob
sucking him off after a stressful mission
xavier got a liiiitle jealous after the two of you ran into Charlie again
𐙚 𓏵𓏵𓏵 𐙚 𝐢 𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐞 (𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐚 𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐭) | love and deep space men x gender neutral reader
💌 — ; kinda mad that i didn't take a stab at it ! lads men (zayne, xavier, rafayel) and the habits they've built because of you.. oh, and you broke up (＾＾；)
love mail — added synopsis !! lads debut lads, debut :3 my favey is zayne so if it looks obvi ignore that... (author hasn't played since release be warned for inaccurate depictions.) also i'll be writing for caleb and sylus soon! i just wasn't playing on their release so i wanna do the og three! (^_^) also i'm finally home so layout coming back soon!! love you all :3 do we like the new pfp or do we go back?
zayne hasn't seen you in weeks.
why would he? even if he wishes upon every shooting star that passes by his lonely, office window, you aren't coming back. the hunters already transferred you to a new doctor, he won't be seeing you till he closes his eyes and prays someone up there is kind enough to let him dream of you.
it's selfish, he knows. but who will be around to judge him? the house is empty, his bed is cold, and he can't do anything to change that. he aches, he yearns, though zayne has long sealed his fate. he knows he can't have you, not in any universe where the curse follows, which is every single one.
he still looks, despite this. every cafe, every cat in a tree, drawn to check out every dangerous situation in hopes to catch a glimpse of you. when a client came into his office, they asked about the photo of you he still kept on his desk, proudly on display — even though it shouldn't. it's is only way of seeing you, and he needs it, desperately so. the only thing that kept him sane all this time was the way you glowed so effortlessly. he misses that shine, the light of his life, but he'd rather drown in darkness than let you worry about his curse ever again. his worsening winter inside is nothing compared to the coldness in your gaze towards him now.
xavier doesn't know how to stop making space for you. god, he wishes he'd stop, but he can't. it breaks his heart every time he wakes up alone in an empty bed or couch, expecting to see your pretty face, only to stare at the reminder that you're gone.
he loathes waking up, getting out of bed, just to see your face at work but it isn't as sweet. it's got that sour look when you look at him, and he can't handle it. he wants to see you smile again, he misses being the reason for such a beautiful expression.. but he isn't anymore.
he can pretend well, wear that face of nonchalance and aloofness like it's all natural. everyone in the agency and on enemy sidelines can't read him if they tried. but you can, you always have. and you can see it all in just those eyes.
despite sleeping to escape his reality; xavier is still clearly exhausted. it's more than drowsiness, it's akin to despair. he can't handle this ache that comes with breaking up. but he knows it's for the best, even if he keeps making space for someone who will never fill it again, he stands firm on his decision. no matter how much it kills him.
"there's nowhere else to put these", is the excuse rafayel pulls when thomas worriedly checks on him. in his studio, on every canvas and paper; it's you. every photo of you imaginable is painted and hung on his walls, like a painter trying to remember a distant muse, cause he is. when rafayel began to slowly lose his perfect depiction of you in his head, he painted in a frenzy, uncaring of how long it took, or the care he neglected, he couldn't allow himself to lose it.
you became his muse at his darkest time, needing something to give him a *real* a heart in his work. and how is he supposed to ever pick up a brush when you were gone? sunsets are now dull, flowers seem to be empty no matter how vibrant, and everything beautiful didn't seem so anyore. not when he's seen how you looked under the moonlit light, under his sheets and steady in his arms. rafayel can't name a single part in his oceanic or luxurious home that could ever compare to you.
he noticed that you still came by his gallery sometimes, but word of mouth is that it's only to check if his very first painting of you still stands where it's always been, the heart of all his pieces.
watching you stand there, in what he can only assume to be a growing bitterness to the painting every day it still stands, hurts him. he's glad he's completely shut himself out, locked doors and closed curtains back at home, because he doesn't want to know what you'll react if you figured out he still paints you every day like you never left.
you bite xavier one time as he's cumming inside you and suddenly he's begging for it every single time the two of you have sex.
and you have to give it to him, otherwise he gets all pouty and teary eyed. he'll complain that he won't be able to cum properly until he feels your teeth sinking into his neck and he'll whine and paw at you until you give in
