Olivier Davenport

The western ramparts of the palace were forbidden after dusk for a reason.

The stone walkway ran along the outer curtain wall, high enough that the wind never quite stopped moving, carrying the distant scent of the pine forests beyond the city and the faint metallic tang of the river far below. Torch brackets lined the inner side of the wall at uneven intervals, but half of them had burned down to sullen red embers. The other half had not been lit at all. It was the sort of place a princess had no business being after the evening bells had already rung.

Olivier Davenport found her there anyway.

He had been searching for nearly forty minutes. First the solar, then the library wing, then the lower gardens, then the servants’ passages that she sometimes used when she wanted to disappear. Every guard he passed received the same quiet, precise question. Every answer had been the same: no one had seen the princess since the midday meal. By the time one of the younger sentries—Sir Calder Veyne, barely two years into his service—admitted he thought he had glimpsed a figure on the western wall walk, Olivier’s patience had already worn thin enough to taste.

He climbed the narrow spiral stair without hurry. The sound of his boots on the stone was measured, deliberate. When he stepped out onto the rampart, the wind caught the edges of his dark cloak and made the silver trim on his pauldrons glint once under the thin moonlight.

She was standing near the farthest crenellation, exactly where she should not have been.

For a long moment Olivier simply stopped and looked at her. The cold night air moved between them. His expression did not change—still the same controlled, unreadable mask he wore in every corridor of the palace—but something behind his cool grey eyes tightened.

“Princess.”

The single word carried easily on the wind. It was not loud. It did not need to be.

Somewhere farther down the wall walk, two night sentries—Sergeant Bram Holt and a younger man named Tolen—turned at the sound of his voice. They had clearly been pretending not to notice the royal figure standing where no royal figure was supposed to stand. The moment they recognized Olivier, both men straightened as if someone had pulled invisible strings.

Olivier did not look at them. His attention remained fixed on the princess.

“You were instructed,” he said, still in that same low, even tone, “not to leave the inner palace after the seventh bell. You were also instructed not to come here at all.” He took three measured steps closer. The soft clink of his armor was the only sound besides the wind. “Yet here you are.”

Sergeant Holt cleared his throat awkwardly. “Sir Davenport, we— we did try to—”

“You will return to your post, Sergeant,” Olivier said without turning his head. “Both of you. Now.”

The two men hesitated only a second before retreating, boots scuffing quickly against the stone. Their lantern light bobbed away into the darkness, leaving the rampart quieter than before.

Olivier closed the remaining distance. He stopped an arm’s length away, close enough that the heat of his body cut faintly through the cold. His gaze moved over her once—assessing, cataloguing, already deciding how this would end.

“I have spent the better part of an hour,” he continued, voice still perfectly controlled, “asking every guard between the great hall and the eastern towers whether they had seen you. Most of them looked as though they would rather face a charging line than admit they had lost track of the princess. Again.” A pause. “You have made a habit of this.”

He did not raise his voice. He never did. The quiet was somehow worse.

“The Queen asked for you at supper. The King inquired after you during the evening briefing. Two of your ladies-in-waiting are currently searching the lower gardens with lanterns because no one could find you. And you—” his eyes flicked once toward the sheer drop beyond the crenellations, “—chose the one place in the entire palace where a single misstep would end the conversation permanently.”

He exhaled once through his nose, a short, controlled sound that might have been irritation on a less disciplined man.

“I am finished asking.”

Before she could step back, Olivier moved.

One gloved hand closed around her wrist. The other slid firmly around the back of her thighs. In a single, practiced motion he bent, lifted, and settled her over his shoulder as though she weighed nothing. The world tilted. Stone and sky swapped places. His armor was cold and hard against her stomach; the thick leather of his baldric pressed into her side. His arm locked across the backs of her legs like an iron bar, holding her securely in place while he straightened to his full height.

“Olivier—!”

“Silence.”

The word was soft, almost conversational, but it left no room for argument. He adjusted his grip once, settled her more securely, and turned toward the stairwell without another word.

The walk back was long.

He carried her down the spiral stair with the same steady pace he used on the training yard. Every step rang faintly against the stone. When they reached the lower corridor, two servants—old Marta from the linen rooms and a page named Eddin—froze mid-step at the sight of the princess draped over the knight’s shoulder like a sack of grain. Marta’s mouth opened. Eddin dropped the stack of folded towels he had been carrying.

Olivier did not slow.

“Sir Davenport,” Marta began, voice high with alarm, “the princess—”

“Is being returned to her chambers,” Olivier said without looking at her. “You will forget you saw this. Both of you.”

Eddin scrambled to gather the towels. Marta only nodded quickly and pressed herself against the wall as he passed.

Further along the corridor, near the junction that led toward the royal wing, they encountered Lady Isolde Maren—one of the Queen’s more sharp-tongued attendants—coming the other way with a small cluster of ladies. The group stopped dead. Lady Isolde’s eyes widened, then narrowed with something like scandalized delight.

“Sir Davenport,” she said, recovering her composure with impressive speed. “I was not aware the princess required... such direct escort this evening.”

Olivier halted just long enough to meet her gaze. His expression remained perfectly cold.

“Lady Maren. You will inform Her Majesty that the princess has been located and is being escorted back to her rooms. You will also inform her that I will speak with her in the morning regarding the continued failure of the household to keep track of its own blood.” His tone never rose, yet every word landed like a quiet blade. “That will be all.”

Lady Isolde’s mouth tightened, but she only inclined her head and stepped aside, the other ladies following in a rustle of skirts and poorly hidden whispers.

Olivier continued on.

The final stretch of corridor leading to the princess’s private apartments was quieter. Night torches burned low in their brackets. The air smelled of beeswax and the faint perfume the royal wing always carried. Two guards—Sir Rennick and Sir Oren—stood at the outer doors. Both men straightened sharply when they saw who was approaching, and what he was carrying.

Sir Rennick opened his mouth.

Olivier spoke first.

“Open the doors. Then leave. Both of you. I will summon you when I require your presence again.”

The men obeyed without question. The heavy oak doors swung inward. Olivier carried her through, past the small antechamber, and into the main sitting room of her apartments. Only then did he stop.

For a moment he simply stood there, still holding her over his shoulder, as though deciding whether to set her down or keep walking until they reached the bedchamber. The fire in the hearth had burned down to low coals, casting long shadows across the carpet and the carved furniture. Outside the tall windows, the night wind continued to move against the glass.

At last he bent and set her on her feet with deliberate care, steadying her with one hand at her waist until he was certain she had her balance. Then he released her and took a single step back.

His grey eyes were colder than the wind on the ramparts.

“You will not leave these rooms again tonight,” he said. “You will not attempt the windows. You will not bribe the pages. You will not send for anyone. If I return and find this chamber empty, I will not ask the guards where you have gone. I will simply find you myself, and the consequences will be considerably less restrained than they were on the wall.”

He paused, letting the silence settle between them.

“Do you understand me, Princess?”

His voice remained low. Controlled. Almost gentle in its absolute certainty.

But the way he looked at her made it clear that the answer had better be yes.

The great hall of Terranel had been transformed for the evening.

Long tables that normally seated the court for formal banquets had been cleared back against the walls. In their place stood clusters of upholstered chairs and low tables arranged in careful conversational circles, each one lit by tall silver candelabra that threw warm pools of light across polished marble. Musicians played softly from the gallery above—strings and a single restrained flute—loud enough to fill the silences but never so loud that conversation became difficult. The air smelled of beeswax, expensive perfume, and the faint sweetness of the spiced wine being carried on silver trays by liveried servants.

It was a suitor event in all but name.

The King and Queen had not called it such, of course. Officially it was simply an evening reception for “select members of the peerage to pay their respects to the princess.” Unofficially, every noble house with an unmarried son of appropriate rank had received an invitation, and every one of them had accepted. The result was a carefully orchestrated parade of polite interest, measured compliments, and questions that circled ever closer to the matter of marriage alliances.

Olivier Davenport stood at the princess’s right shoulder and hated every minute of it.

He wore formal attire rather than full plate—a black doublet with silver threading at the cuffs and collar, a dark cloak pinned at one shoulder with the sigil of Terranel, and the longsword that never left his side even in the most civilized of settings. His posture was perfect. His expression was the same cold, composed mask he wore in every public space. To anyone watching from a distance he looked like nothing more than a high-ranking knight performing his duty: silent, watchful, and entirely unremarkable in his restraint.

Up close, the tension in his jaw told a different story.

The current petitioner was Lord Cassian Vorel of House Vorel, second son of the eastern marches. He was handsome in the way many young nobles were—carefully maintained, well-dressed, and entirely too aware of both facts. He had been speaking with the princess for nearly twenty minutes, having somehow maneuvered himself into the seat directly across from her while Olivier remained standing. The man’s smile never quite reached his eyes.

“I must confess, Your Highness,” Lord Cassian was saying, swirling the wine in his cup with theatrical care, “that the stories circulating about your... independent spirit do not do you justice. One hears such dramatic accounts of midnight rides and vanished lessons. Yet here you sit, the picture of royal composure. Tell me, do you find the constraints of palace life truly so stifling as the gossips claim?”

Olivier’s gloved fingers flexed once behind his back.

The princess answered with whatever polite deflection she chose. Olivier did not look at her. He kept his gaze fixed somewhere over Lord Cassian’s left shoulder, as though the man were merely another piece of furniture that happened to be speaking.

Lord Cassian leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice into something meant to sound intimate.

“I only ask because a future consort would, of course, wish to understand the temperament of his princess. Some men prefer a quiet, obedient wife. Others—” his smile widened a fraction, “—find a certain spark more appealing. I myself have always believed that a woman of strong will can be... guided, given the right hand.”

The temperature in Olivier’s chest dropped several degrees.

Across the hall, Lady Isolde Maren—ever watchful—had paused in conversation with two other ladies and was observing the exchange with poorly concealed interest. Near the dais, the Queen sat in quiet discussion with the Duke of Rennell, though her gaze flicked toward her daughter more than once. A servant named Joren approached with a tray of spiced wine; Olivier dismissed him with a single, barely perceptible shake of the head before the man could interrupt.

Lord Cassian continued, undeterred.

“And of course there is the matter of heirs. The realm requires stability, after all. A princess who has already demonstrated such... spirited tendencies might need a firmer presence beside her. Someone who understands how to temper fire without extinguishing it entirely. I have studied the histories of Terranel’s more successful royal marriages. The pattern is quite clear.”

Olivier’s voice cut through the space between them like a blade wrapped in velvet.

“Lord Vorel.”

The nobleman blinked, clearly surprised to be addressed directly by the silent knight. “Sir Davenport. I did not realize you were part of the conversation.”

“I am not,” Olivier replied, still looking past him. “You, however, appear to have mistaken a formal reception for a private negotiation. The princess is not required to discuss her temperament, her future marriage, or the production of heirs with every lord who manages to claim a chair.”

A few nearby conversations faltered. Lord Cassian’s smile tightened.

“I was merely making conversation, Sir Knight. Surely even the princess’s guard can allow for ordinary courtly discourse.”

“Ordinary discourse,” Olivier said, finally lowering his gaze to meet the man’s eyes, “does not require repeated inquiries into a woman’s obedience or the firmness of the hand required to manage her. You have asked the same question three different ways in the span of ten minutes. The answer will not improve with repetition.”

Lady Isolde’s fan paused mid-motion. Somewhere to the left, a young lord from House Calder muttered something under his breath to his companion and received a sharp elbow in return.

Lord Cassian recovered with the practiced ease of a man who had never been truly checked in a public setting. He chuckled lightly, as though Olivier had made a clever joke rather than a quiet warning.

“Come now. We are all adults here. The princess is of an age where such matters must be considered. Surely you, as her sworn protector, would prefer she be matched with someone capable of handling a certain degree of... willfulness.”

Olivier’s expression did not change. The air around him seemed to grow stiller.

“I prefer,” he said, each word measured and cold, “that men who have not been granted leave to speak so familiarly with the blood royal remember their place before someone is required to remind them of it.”

The silence that followed was brief but sharp.

Lord Cassian’s face flushed, though whether from embarrassment or anger was difficult to tell. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

“You overstep, Sir Davenport. I am a peer of the realm—”

“And I am the man tasked with ensuring the princess leaves this hall in the same condition she entered it,” Olivier interrupted, still perfectly calm. “That includes protection from tedious conversation as much as from physical threat. You have been given more than sufficient opportunity to make your interest known. You have done so. Repeatedly. The princess has heard you. I have heard you. The entire left side of the hall has heard you.”

He shifted his weight a fraction, the movement small but deliberate, placing himself more fully between the nobleman and the princess without ever raising his voice.

“This audience is concluded, my lord. There are other guests waiting for the privilege of a few minutes of Her Highness’s attention. I suggest you allow them the chance.”

Lord Cassian stared at him for a long moment. The calculation behind his eyes was obvious—whether to escalate in front of the court or retreat with what dignity remained. In the end, self-preservation won. He rose, offered a stiff bow in the princess’s direction that barely qualified as polite, and murmured something about “continuing the conversation another time” before withdrawing into the crowd.

Olivier did not watch him go. He simply remained where he was, a silent wall of black and silver at the princess’s side, gaze sweeping once across the nearby clusters of nobles as if daring the next one to approach with similar questions.

Lady Isolde drifted closer under the pretense of adjusting her sleeve, her voice low enough that only those immediately present could hear.

“My, my, Sir Davenport. One might almost think you had taken a personal interest in the quality of the princess’s suitors.”

Olivier did not look at her. “One might think many things, Lady Maren. Most of them incorrect.”

She smiled thinly and moved on, already turning to whisper to the woman beside her.

A new figure began to approach from the right—Lord Edran Solmere, older than Cassian and considerably more cautious. He slowed when he saw Olivier’s expression, then seemed to think better of closing the final distance. After a moment he redirected himself toward a different circle of conversation entirely.

Olivier exhaled once through his nose, the only outward sign of the tension still coiled beneath his ribs.

He leaned down just enough that his voice would reach the princess alone, the words quiet and edged with something darker than simple duty.

“The next man who asks you how much firmness you require,” he murmured, “will not receive the courtesy of a public dismissal. Do try not to encourage them.”

His gloved hand settled briefly at the small of her back—light, proprietary, and gone again almost before it could be remarked upon—before he straightened once more to his full height and resumed his silent watch over the hall.

The musicians played on. The candles continued to burn. And somewhere across the room, Lord Cassian Vorel was already recounting a carefully edited version of the exchange to anyone who would listen.

Olivier did not care.

He had made his position clear.

The rest of the evening could adjust accordingly.

The palace had been searching for her for nearly an hour and a half.

It began, as these things always did, with a simple absence. The princess had been expected in the Queen’s solar after the evening meal for a private discussion regarding the coming midsummer progress. When the appointed time came and went, a page was sent. When the page returned empty-handed, a second was dispatched. By the time the third messenger reported that no one in the royal wing had seen her since dusk, the quiet machinery of the household had already begun to turn.

Olivier Davenport had been in the lower training yard when the first report reached him.

He had listened to the young guard’s rushed account without interrupting, then handed his practice blade to Sir Calder Veyne without a word and started walking. By the time he reached the main corridor of the royal wing, the search had already widened. Servants moved in pairs with lanterns. Two of the princess’s ladies-in-waiting—Lady Miren Holt and the younger Lady Elira Voss—were questioning every maid who passed. The captain of the night watch, Sir Bram Calder, stood near the great staircase issuing quiet, clipped orders to a cluster of men-at-arms.

Olivier did not join the discussion. He simply asked one question.

“Which places has no one checked thoroughly?”

Sir Bram hesitated. “The outer gardens, sir. The ones beyond the yew hedge. We assumed she wouldn’t—”

Olivier was already moving.

He took the eastern colonnade at a pace just short of a run, cloak snapping behind him, boots striking the stone with hard, precise rhythm. Two younger knights—Sir Tolen Renn and Sir Oren Vale—fell into step behind him without being asked. They knew better than to speak. When Olivier Davenport wore that particular expression, conversation was not welcome.

The outer gardens of Terranel were older than the current palace. They had been planted generations ago by a queen who preferred wildness to symmetry, and the intervening years had only encouraged the tendency. Tall yew hedges formed winding corridors. Rose beds that had long since outgrown their borders spilled thorns and dark blooms across the paths. In daylight the place was merely untamed. At night, with only the thin light of a half-moon and the occasional distant torch from the walls, it became something closer to a maze.

Olivier entered through the iron gate near the old orangery and did not slow.

“Spread out,” he ordered without looking back. “Tolen—take the eastern paths toward the reflecting pool. Oren—the western edge along the wall. If you find her, you do not speak to her. You find me. Am I understood?”

Both men answered in the affirmative and vanished into the dark.

Olivier continued alone down the central path, senses stretched thin. The night air was cool and damp, heavy with the scent of turned earth and late-blooming night jasmine. Somewhere to his left a fountain still trickled, the sound unnaturally loud in the silence. He passed the marble bench where the princess sometimes read in the afternoons. Empty. He passed the small stone pavilion half-swallowed by climbing roses. Also empty. His jaw tightened another fraction with every empty place.

He had warned her.

Repeatedly.

The last time she had disappeared for less than half this long, he had stood in her chambers and explained—calmly, clearly, without ever raising his voice—exactly how many people were pulled from their duties every time she decided the walls of the palace were optional. He had told her what it looked like when the Queen’s expression went carefully blank. He had told her what the guards muttered when they thought he could not hear. He had told her that the next time would not be met with another conversation.

Apparently the message had not taken.

A flicker of movement near the far end of the yew corridor caught his eye.

Olivier stopped. For a moment he only listened. Then he turned off the main path and moved between the high hedges with the silent precision of a man who had spent years learning how to approach without being heard. The moonlight filtered through the leaves in broken silver patches. The air grew stiller the deeper he went.

He found her in a small, overgrown clearing that had once been a knot garden and had long since surrendered to wild mint and sprawling lavender.

She was sitting on the low stone rim of what remained of an old fountain, the water long dry, her figure half in shadow. For a single heartbeat Olivier only stood at the edge of the clearing and looked at her. The controlled fury that had been building in his chest for the past ninety minutes settled into something colder and far more focused.

Then he stepped into the open.

The soft sound of his boot on gravel was enough.

“Do not move.”

The words left his mouth low and absolute. He crossed the remaining distance in four long strides and stopped directly in front of her, close enough that she would have to tip her head back to meet his eyes. In the moonlight his face was all sharp planes and shadow, grey eyes reflecting the pale light like polished steel.

“Do you have any idea,” he said, each word measured and edged with ice, “how long you have been missing?”

He did not wait for an answer.

“One hour and twenty-seven minutes. That is how long the household has been turning itself inside out looking for you. The Queen was informed twenty minutes ago. The King has already asked whether we believe you left the grounds entirely. Two full squads of the night watch are currently sweeping the inner courtyards and the stables because no one could confirm you had not taken a horse.”

His gloved hand flexed once at his side.

“I told you what would happen the next time you vanished without word. I was very clear.”

A rustle of leaves and hurried footsteps approached from the eastern path. Sir Tolen Renn appeared at the edge of the clearing, lantern raised, relief flashing across his face before he registered Olivier’s expression and immediately schooled his features.

“Sir— we heard voices. Is she—”

“She is found,” Olivier said without looking away from the princess. “Return to the palace. Inform Sir Bram that the search is over. Tell Lady Miren to dismiss the staff who were pulled from their evening duties. And tell the Queen’s attendant that I will bring the princess to her chambers myself.”

Tolen hesitated only a fraction of a second. “Yes, sir.”

He retreated quickly. A moment later Sir Oren’s voice called something distant from the western paths; Tolen’s answering shout confirmed the news was already spreading.

Olivier waited until the sound of their boots had faded completely before he spoke again.

“Get up.”

The two words were quiet. They were not a request.

When she rose, he did not step back to give her space. He remained exactly where he was, forcing her to stand close, the heat of his body cutting through the cool night air. His gaze moved over her once—checking for injury, for signs she had been anywhere more dangerous than a forgotten garden, for anything that might explain the complete disregard for every boundary he had set.

He found nothing that satisfied him.

“You will walk with me,” he said. “You will not speak until we are inside the palace walls. You will not attempt to explain yourself on the path, or in the colonnade, or in front of the guards who have spent the last hour and a half imagining every possible misfortune that could have befallen you. When we reach your chambers, you will sit, and you will listen, and then—only then—you may attempt to justify why you decided the entire palace needed to bleed time and worry into the dark for your amusement.”

He turned slightly and gestured toward the path with one gloved hand, the movement controlled and final.

“Move.”

They walked in silence.

The yew corridors felt longer on the return. Every few turns they passed a member of the search party who had not yet received word—first a pair of servants with lanterns who stopped dead and stared, then an older guardsman named Sergeant Holt who opened his mouth to speak and closed it again at a single look from Olivier. By the time they reached the iron gate, the news had clearly spread; the two men stationed there straightened so quickly their armor clinked.

Olivier did not acknowledge them.

He guided her through the colonnade, past the orange trees in their stone planters, past the tall windows of the gallery where more than one curious face had already appeared. He did not touch her beyond the occasional light pressure of his hand at her elbow when she slowed, but the message was unmistakable: she would not be allowed to drift even a step off the path he had chosen.

When they finally reached the doors of her apartments, Sir Rennick and Sir Oren were already waiting, having returned ahead of them. Both men looked as though they would rather be anywhere else.

Olivier stopped.

“Open the doors. Then leave. I do not want to see either of you until I send for you.”

They obeyed.

He followed her inside, closed the heavy oak door behind them with deliberate care, and only then allowed the full weight of his anger to show in the set of his shoulders and the hard line of his mouth.

The sitting room was quiet. The fire had been banked low. Moonlight spilled across the carpet in long silver bars.

Olivier remained near the door for a moment, simply looking at her, as though deciding where to begin.

Then he spoke, voice still low, still controlled, but carrying the kind of quiet fury that made the air feel thinner.

“You will explain yourself,” he said. “Every minute of it. And if the explanation is not satisfactory, Princess, we are going to have a conversation you will not enjoy nearly as much as you appear to enjoy disappearing.”