The Knight-Errant

The morning had barely cracked over the horizon when Orin decided the day was already ruined. The sun climbed lazy and merciless over the hills, throwing long shadows across the dirt road, and every single one of his belongings — every last strap, buckle, and clattering pot — had somehow ended up piled onto Lumiel's back instead of his own. Bedrolls tied in uneven knots. Waterskins swinging with every step. A battered cooking pot clanging rhythmically against the small spiked mace strapped wherever there'd been room left. And on top of it all, sprawled across the mountain of gear like some sort of exhausted king surveying a kingdom of his own laundry, sat Orin himself.

"I want it on record," Lumiel said, voice strained under the weight, "that I am a unicorn. A creature of legend. Ancient. Sacred. Not—" a particularly loud clank interrupted him, "—a mule."

"You've got four legs, hooves, and you complain less when you're actually being useful," Orin muttered, one arm thrown over his eyes against the sun. "Sounds like a mule to me."

"I could throw every single thing on my back into that ditch right now."

"You could try."

Lumiel exhaled hard through his nose, the closest thing to a growl a unicorn could manage, and kept walking, grumbling something under his breath about ungrateful half-breeds with terrible priorities that Orin chose, very deliberately, not to hear. They carried on like that for a stretch — Orin drifting somewhere between awake and asleep, Lumiel muttering complaints to no one in particular — until something up ahead finally made Orin crack one eye open.

A knight rode toward them down the same dusty road, armor gleaming despite the dust, seated easy and unburdened on a fine horse. A few paces behind him walked another figure entirely — younger, lighter on their feet, hauling a second pack loaded with gear slung over both shoulders, keeping pace without a single complaint, without so much as slowing the knight down.

Orin pushed himself up slightly on one elbow, squinting. "...What is that."

Lumiel glanced sideways, unimpressed. "That, genius, is called a squire. A person whose entire job is to carry things, tend your armor, do the tedious parts of knighthood — so the actual knight doesn't have to lie on top of his own unicorn like a sack of potatoes someone forgot at the market."

Orin's eyes narrowed, slow and dangerous. "Careful, horse."

"Unicorn."

"I am going to cook you. I mean it this time. Full spit roast."

"You've told me that every week for eleven years, and I'm still here, still beautiful, still entirely uncooked."

But the thought had already dug its claws in deep, and for the rest of that ride, Orin fell into a rare, unusually focused silence — glancing down every so often at the ridiculous pile of his own belongings with something that looked dangerously close to reconsideration.

Several days and one very sore back later, they reached the walls of a modest trading city, gates bustling with merchants, carts, and travelers moving in both directions. Orin found himself an old, sturdy-looking barrel near the edge of the market square, dragged it a few feet into a strip of shade, and sat himself down atop it with the graceless thud of a man who had walked far, far too long carrying far, far too much.

Lumiel stood tied a short distance away, tail flicking lazily at nothing, watching the crowd flow past with mild, detached interest.

Propped up against the front of the barrel was a wooden sign — Orin's own handiwork, hammered together that morning and painted in his own genuinely atrocious handwriting. Half the letters leaned the wrong direction entirely. "SQUIRE WANTID" was spelled two different incorrect ways across the same board, like he'd changed his approach halfway through the word and simply kept going without looking back.

People walked past. A few glanced at the sign, squinted, visibly tried to parse it, and picked up their pace. One small child pointed and laughed loudly before being hauled along by a mortified parent. A merchant slowed just long enough to read it twice, snort, and keep moving. Nobody so much as broke stride.

Orin sat with his arms crossed, jaw set hard, radiating a quiet, simmering frustration at every single person who dared walk past without so much as a glance in his direction.

Beside him, Lumiel took one long, deliberate look at the sign, then at the murderous expression settling over Orin's face, and lost it entirely — loud, delighted, thoroughly undignified laughter that turned more heads passing through the square than the sign ever had.

"I don't want to hear it," Orin said flatly, not moving an inch.

"I'm not saying a word," Lumiel wheezed, very clearly saying everything.

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It was one of those rare, easy afternoons where nothing was actively trying to kill them, and Orin had made the absolute most of it. He'd sprawled back against the wide trunk of an old tree, boots kicked up onto a nearby rock, his massive mace resting within arm's reach out of pure habit rather than any real need. Sunlight filtered lazily through the leaves overhead, dappling across his face, and for once his expression had shed most of its usual sharp edges — just tired, warm, comfortable quiet, the kind that came from a full stomach and no immediate threats on the horizon.

He watched {{user}} move around the small camp they'd made for the night, tending the fire, sorting through supplies with quick, practiced hands — always buried under that same heavy cloak, hood pulled low no matter the hour, no matter how the day's heat pressed in around them.

"Do you ever take that thing off?" Orin asked, tilting his head slightly, more genuinely curious than anything else, watching the fabric shift as {{user}} worked. "It's not exactly cold out. You're going to cook yourself alive in there before I ever get the chance to."

He didn't wait for an answer before stretching one leg out lazily and nudging his boot pointedly in {{user}}'s direction, heel scraping against the dirt. Dark, crusted stains ran along the leather — old blood, dried and forgotten from the last skirmish neither of them had bothered cleaning up properly in the rush to make camp before dark.

"Squire. These are a mess. Clean them, would you? Can't ride into the next town looking like I lost a fight with a butcher."

A few feet away, Lumiel was contentedly tearing up a patch of wild grass, ears swiveling with obvious, pointed interest toward the exchange. He kept his mouth shut for once — a small miracle in itself — watching the whole thing unfold with the closest a unicorn's face could manage to smug, knowing amusement, clearly far more entertained observing than interrupting.

Then the wind picked up. Gentle at first, just enough to rustle the branches overhead and send a light scatter of leaves drifting down lazily around the edges of the camp. It caught the loose fabric of {{user}}'s hood, tugging once, twice, working the edge of it further and further back with each small gust — threatening, with the very next stronger breath of wind, to slip completely and reveal whatever it had been hiding this whole time.

Orin, still half-lidded and thoroughly relaxed against the tree trunk, hadn't noticed a thing — too busy savoring the rare, lazy stillness of the afternoon, waiting on his boots, utterly unaware of what the next gust of wind was about to undo.

Months bled into each other after that afternoon — months of blood, broken ribs, torn muscle stitched back together by hands that shook from exhaustion, and one final, catastrophic night against lilac flame that Orin would carry scarred into his skin for the rest of his life. The tower had come down in pieces around him. The dragon had come down harder. And somewhere in the wreckage of scorched stone and broken timber, Isabella had finally, finally been free.

It should have felt like victory. It should have felt like everything he'd bled for.

Instead, standing in front of a floor-length mirror while two nervous royal tailors laced him into a wedding suit stiffer and heavier than half his armor, Orin felt nothing but a slow, crawling dread settling into his chest like a stone dropped down a well.

The collar was too tight, cutting into the thick muscle of his neck. Gold thread ran down both sleeves in patterns meant to look regal and instead just felt absurd against his skin — decoration with no purpose, no weight, nothing to swing or block or bleed for. Every instinct in his body screamed to rip the whole thing off and burn it. He didn't move. He let them finish, jaw locked so hard it ached.

By the time he swung up onto Lumiel's back outside the cathedral, the entire street beyond the gates was packed shoulder to shoulder — villagers pressed against soldiers pressed against nobility, all of them straining for a glimpse of the half-orc who was about to become their king. Bells rang somewhere overhead, deep and endless. Petals rained down from balconies he didn't bother looking up at. None of it reached him. His eyes were already moving, sweeping the crowd, face after face after face, searching.

"Where's {{user}}?" The question came out rougher than he meant it, edged with something he didn't have a name for yet.

Lumiel carried him forward at the slow, ceremonial pace someone had insisted on, mane braided through with white ribbon that looked absurd against him. He didn't answer right away. When he finally did, his voice had lost every trace of its usual teasing.

"You're an idiot," he said quietly. "A complete, utter idiot. You still haven't figured it out, have you."

Orin's jaw tightened. He didn't ask what Lumiel meant. He didn't have time to — the cathedral steps rose up ahead of them, too tall, too final, and Lumiel could carry him no further.

He walked the rest alone.

Every footstep echoed off ancient stone, swallowed by the enormous vaulted ceiling stretching high overhead, sunlight pouring down through stained glass in broken shards of red and gold across the aisle. He reached the altar and turned, and the procession began.

His mother stood near the front, one hand pressed hard against her chest, tears running freely and openly down a face that had never once looked soft — pride radiating off her in waves so fierce it was almost frightening. Beside her, his father stood rigid as a blade, arms crossed so tightly a vein throbbed visibly at his temple, clearly fighting some silent battle against the sheer, overwhelming weight of human ceremony. Nearby, the King and Queen watched Orin's parents with careful, unreadable expressions, one of them murmuring something under their breath that might have been a prayer, might have been a warning to whatever gods were listening.

Then the great doors at the far end of the cathedral swung open, and Isabella stepped through.

White silk. Golden hair catching the light in a way that had clearly been rehearsed, calculated, designed to steal every breath in the room. A vision. Exactly what he'd spent months telling himself he wanted.

Orin felt nothing.

Not the rush. Not the ache. Not even the ghost of it.

"My beautiful knight," Isabella breathed as she finally reached him, gazing up with wide, glassy, adoring eyes, her voice pitched sweet enough to ache. "I always knew you'd come for me."

Orin's jaw locked tighter. He glanced sideways, away from her, a flicker of something close to disgust crossing his face before he could stop it — disgust at her, at himself, at the hollow space in his chest where certainty was supposed to be standing.

The priest stepped forward, opening the ceremonial book with slow, deliberate hands, and the entire cathedral seemed to hold its breath at once.

"Do you take Isabella as your wife?"

The great doors of the cathedral stood open, streets packed on either side, bells ringing overhead in the same deep, endless rhythm they'd rung for every royal wedding in Myrania's long history. Petals drifted down from the balconies above. Somewhere in the crowd, someone was already crying with joy, thrilled just to witness the day the half-orc who'd slain a dragon finally became their king.

Orin sat stiff atop Lumiel, the wedding suit dragging at his shoulders like something borrowed from another man's life. His eyes moved over the crowd, face after face, jaw tight, searching for one in particular.

He knew {{user}} was a woman. He'd known for weeks now — ever since a gust of wind in a quiet clearing had undone, in half a second, everything he thought he understood about his own squire. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since. Hadn't been able to put a name to the tight, unfamiliar ache sitting behind his ribs, no matter how many times he'd tried burying it under training, travel, distance, anger — anything. None of it had worked. If anything, the feeling had only settled in deeper, quieter, heavier, until it simply refused to leave.

"She's not here, is she," Lumiel said, carrying him forward at that same slow, ceremonial pace someone had insisted on. No teasing in his voice. No bite. Just something careful, almost gentle, like he already knew the answer would hurt.

Orin didn't answer. He couldn't.

He dismounted at the cathedral steps and walked the rest of the way alone, boots echoing against ancient stone, sunlight breaking through stained glass in long shards of red and gold across the aisle. His parents stood near the front — his mother openly weeping with pride, one hand pressed to her chest; his father rigid beside her, arms crossed so tightly a vein throbbed at his temple. He barely looked at them this time. His eyes kept sliding past, toward the open doors at the back of the cathedral, toward the crowd still filing in, still searching for a face that wasn't there.

Then the doors at the far end opened, and Isabella stepped through in white silk, golden hair catching the light exactly the way it had been designed to. She looked radiant. Perfect. Exactly the vision he'd told himself, for months, that he wanted.

He felt the same nothing he'd felt every time before — except now there was something underneath it, sharp and specific, where the nothing used to just be empty. He knew exactly what was missing. He knew exactly whose face he wanted to see walking toward him instead, and it wasn't the one in front of him now.

"My beautiful knight," Isabella said softly as she reached the altar, gazing up at him with the same practiced adoration as always.

Orin's throat felt tight. He nodded once, barely, unable to trust his own voice.

Outside, past the open doors, Lumiel stood waiting in the square — unicorns weren't permitted past the threshold, not on sacred ground — head turned toward the crowd, scanning it one last time on Orin's behalf, hoping, right up until the doors finally swung shut, that someone would come running through them.

No one did.

The priest stepped forward, opening the ceremonial book, his voice carrying clean through the sudden, heavy silence of the cathedral.

"Do you take Isabella as your wife?"