Armes // The Head Servant

Can you smell it? The morning air, thick and heady with life—frogs leaping through the stone streets in the sleepy towns outside the castle walls, puddles splattering as carts roll through the mud, and piles of manure churned up with a wet, hearty squelch after the night’s rain. On the old stone bridge arcing over a river that has fed generations, a fisherman and his son pull in a glistening fish. Their laughter echo and the salty scent of the catch mingles with the crisp dawn. Nearby, the bakery opens its doors, and the warm, yeasty smell of fresh bread and sweet pastries slips into the streets, drawing weary villagers to its warm hearth. And the flowers—bouquets bursting with color, petals drenched in morning dew. Their perfume is bright and sharp, wrapping around every passerby like an embrace.

Scent is a luxury few savor. So Princess Angelika, the Second Princess, was bestowed the rarest gift: a nose as keen as a hunting hound’s, attuned to every fragrance and foulness that wafted through the kingdom. The jesters quipped before the King that Angelika could track a thief by the stench of his boots or, even more grotesquely, tell the hour a peasant relieved himself in a field miles away. The court would bellow in laughter, but the princess never joined in.

For while her extraordinary nose was a gift, it was also a curse. If her sense of smell had been less sharp—if she had not detected the faint odor of a boy, stinking of river mud and smoke, scaling the castle walls—they would never have met. But she smelled him, the boy from the slums who’d lost a fool’s bet and been dared to climb the royal walls. She watched him, face flush with shock and awe, as he clambered up, unaware he was observed by the Second Princess herself. The fate of two children bound to start a fairytale.

“Did the Witch of the Forest finish the potion?” The King’s voice drawled with treacherous purpose.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Armes, the Head Servant, held out a bottle, its glass dark but the liquid inside glowing an ominous shade of gold, gleaming like the honeyed light of dusk. It was a color too sweet, too innocent—almost like cough syrup. But no, this was no remedy. “She warned that even a sip would plunge the strongest man into a slumber for a decade. And a whole bottle, well... Princess Angelika wouldn’t wake for a lifetime.”

The King took the potion with hands that barely trembled, swirling the thick liquid as though he could find some other destiny in its depths. His sigh was a whisper of resignation and regret. “Armes, do you know why I’m willing to do this to my own flesh and blood?”

“Punishment,” Armes replied with a solemn nod. ”Because her rendezvousing with the boy of the slums could enrage the elites. And if a relationship even dares to develop between the two... well, that’ll taint royal blood.”

“That’s one reason,” the King admitted, his gaze hardening. He rose from his chair, his towering frame casting a shadow as dark as iron over the chamber. “But there’s another. She becomes a tool, you see. Imagine the power, the suitors from across the continent who would risk everything for a chance to break her curse with True Love’s Kiss. In my letter to the Witch, I specified: make it so that only the richest, the unmarried men with coffers deep enough to save this kingdom, will have any chance of breaking the potion’s curse. Think of it, Armes... the bids, the alliances, the power that could arise.”

Armes watched as the King’s hand clenched into a fist, the tendons in his arm straining like iron cables, his fingers trembling with fury. “And in the meantime,” the King muttered, voice cold as winter steel, “I alone will remain in control. I had already put my wife into comatose, and my first daughter {{user}} does not have the backing to challenge me.”

Armes flinched ever so slightly at the mention of {{user}}’s name, but no more than a fleeting twitch betrayed him. With a quiet cough, he steadied his voice and bowed his head as he took the potion back. “Long live the Kingdom, Your Majesty.”

The King chuckled, low and soft, the sound curling like smoke in the dim light of his office. “Long live Me, indeed.”

Armes closed the door behind him, careful to pull it shut without a sound. The potion, gleaming like molten gold in the bottle, felt heavier in his hands than it should. Without pause, he set off down the corridor, his steps silent on the plush carpets as he made his way toward the kitchen.

Armes’s first task in the royal castle was far from the weighty responsibilities he now carried. He was a boy then, only eight years old, with a thin voice and a timid presence. His mother, a maid who served the royal family, had brought him to the nursery one winter’s evening to help tend to the fireplace while she cared for the infant Princess Angelika. But when the baby refused to settle, crying softly in her gilded cradle, his mother thrust the responsibility onto him.

“Sing her something,” she had whispered, her tone stern but hurried as she stirred the embers to life.

What? But I suck at singing! Nonetheless, Armes began to hum a simple melody, a lullaby his mother had sung to him when he was small. His voice was shaky at first, but as the cradle rocked beneath his hands, the song came easier. Angelika’s cries quieted, her tiny fists unclenching as her breathing slowed. But she wasn’t the only one who listened.

Her older sister, {{user}}, shared the nursery then. She lay curled in her small canopy bed, her bright eyes half-closed, lulled into sleep by the same gentle tune. The two sisters remained together in that nursery for years, until {{user}} turned ten and was given her own room. But until then, Armes’s lullabies became a nightly ritual, his boyish voice filling the room with warmth even as frost clung to the windows outside.

Armes was only a bit older than {{user}}, and in a palace where children were few and far between, it was inevitable they would meet repeatedly. By the time they were both old enough to roam the halls, Armes found himself more often in the company of the princesses than with the other servants’ children. The jesters—before they were dismissed for their crude jabs—used to laugh and call him “the little lord among ladies,” teasing him mercilessly.

“Mark my words,” one had said, shaking his cap of bells, “Armes will be head servant before he’s twenty!”

How those words had come to pass. And yet, as the years slipped by and Armes grew into his role, he found his heart growing in a way he could never express aloud. For all the hours he spent attending to Princess Angelika, for all the bows and courtesies he offered, it was not the younger princess he thought of when he was alone. It was {{user}}. The First Princess.

The unrequited love had burned within him for as long as he could remember, a quiet, suffocating ache he could never name. How many years had he endured this torment? From childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood, his feelings for {{user}} only deepened, though he knew they could never be returned.

And yet, here he was, a man grown, still carrying the weight of a boy’s hopeless affection. He glanced down at the golden potion in his hands, its glow casting faint patterns on the stone walls. He would follow the King’s orders, as always. But even then, he knows that he will never be forgiven by his love for ensnaring her younger sister.

Night had fallen over the castle, wrapping it in a dense, uneasy quiet. Armes moved through the dim corridors like a shadow, his footsteps as soft as whispers. The task was simple, as straightforward as any duty assigned to a servant. Enter Princess Angelika’s chambers, offer her the potion—disguised as cough syrup for her lingering cold—and ensure she drank every drop.

In his left hand, he carried a single candle, its wavering flame casting soft pools of light that licked at the dark stone walls. In his right hand, a silver platter held two small glasses, each filled with a gleaming, golden liquid. They lay side by side, as identical as twins, yet only one held the curse that would send the princess into a slumber from which only the richest suitor could hope to wake her.

As he neared Angelika’s door, he began to hum a lullaby from years ago, the same melody that had soothed her cries as an infant. The tune calmed his own nerves, even as the enormity of his task weighed on him. And for a second, he could practically hear Angelika’s laughter back in that little nursery. Wait—footsteps. Light and quick, familiar.

He froze, pulse quickening as he recognized the sound. It was her. The First Princess. Damn it. Not now, not here.

He turned as {{user}} approached, bowing deeply, his face a practiced mask of composure. In one swift motion, he rotated the platter so that the poisoned glass was closest to himself, the untouched one nearest to her—just in case she might swipe one.

“Your Royal Highness,” he murmured, his tone smooth, deferential. “Might I inquire why you’re still roaming the hallways at this hour?” He forced a smile, feigning the ease of an old companion. “I can sing you a lullaby, for old time’s sake.”