|Sworn to you| Ether Abney

The heavy scent of white lilies and beeswax was suffocating. Ether stood with his back pressed against the cool stone of the Grand Chapel, his posture a ramrod of disciplined misery. The weight on his shoulders today had nothing to do with the gilded pauldrons of his dress armor and everything to do with the hollow ache in his chest. A young squire, his face flushed with the importance of his task, scurried over.

“Sir Abney... the chairs for the Northern delegation. Are they... correct?”

Ether didn’t grace him with a full turn of his head. He gave the perfectly aligned rows of velvet-cushioned chairs a cursory glance and offered a sharp, singular jerk of his chin. It was an order, a dismissal, and an expression of his utter disinterest all at once. The squire took it as the first, bowed clumsily, and scurried away.

Gods, the boy looks like a panicked field mouse. The thought was cruel, and Ether immediately chastised himself for it. His temper was a frayed rope today, worn thin by sleepless nights and the relentless cheer of the palace staff.

His gaze drifted to the courtyard visible through the chapel's arched doorway. Sunlight streamed down, catching the dust motes dancing in the air. Two kitchen boys, no older than ten, were chasing each other with wooden spoons held like swords, their laughter echoing faintly.

The sight snagged a memory from the depths of his mind, pulling it to the surface with startling, painful clarity. The Prince, all of nine years old, his training tunic perpetually askew, had looked up at him with an expression of pure, unadulterated awe. He was standing in this very courtyard, the sun just as bright, his small hands clutching a wooden sword Ether had carved for him.

“I want to be a knight too!” the Prince had declared, his voice full of childish certainty.

Ether had let out a rare, amused snort, the sound startling even himself. He’d reached out and ruffled the boy’s soft, unruly hair. “You are a prince. You will command knights, not become one.”

But the Prince had grabbed his wrist, his small fingers surprisingly strong. His little face was suddenly too serious for his age, his eyes wide and earnest. “When I grow up, teach me how to use a real sword. Promise me, Ether.”

The memory dissolved as the deafening blare of ceremonial horns suddenly erupted, shaking the very stones of the chapel. The ceremony was beginning.

Ether’s heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. He pushed off the wall, his movements stiff and automatic, and made his way to his assigned post. Not beside the Prince—that honor was for the King's own guard today—but at the towering main doors of the chapel. He was the gatekeeper.

He took his position, a living statue of polished steel and grim duty. At the far end of the long, velvet-draped aisle, the Prince was already standing at the altar. He was a stranger in a suit of suffocatingly fine white and gold silk, his jaw tight, his posture rigid. Ether could feel the Prince’s gaze trying to find him, a desperate, searching pressure across the distance.

He could not stomach it. He could not meet those eyes. To do so would be to acknowledge the shared, silent scream between them. Instead, Ether fixed his stare on the intricate ironwork of the door's handle, tracing the lines of the forged leaves with an intensity they did not deserve. I am a knight. This is my duty. I am a knight. This is my—

A sharp nod from the Lord Chamberlain across the hall was his cue.

His hands, encased in steel gauntlets, felt clumsy as he gripped the two large iron rings. He pulled. The great wooden doors groaned open, revealing the figure standing in the sunlit archway beyond.

Lady Angelica Crestwood.

She was a willowy silhouette in a gown of shimmering white, a long veil obscuring her face completely. The sight did not register as a bride, or even a woman. It registered as a threat. A verdict. The bile rose in Ether’s throat, hot and acidic. He had known, of course. He had overseen the security arrangements, read the treaties, watched the dowry wagons arrive. He had known this day was coming for months.

But knowing a blade is coming and feeling it slide between your ribs were two entirely different things.

With a final, shuddering groan, the doors were fully open. Lady Angelica took her first step into the chapel. Ether stepped back, flattening himself against the wall, his duty fulfilled. He was a shadow now, a part of the architecture, forcing his face into a mask of perfect, neutral indifference as the woman who would own the Prince's future began her slow, deliberate walk towards the altar.

The air in the royal springs was thick and warm, heavy with the scent of sulfur and damp stone. Steam rose from the large, placid pool in the center of the cavernous chamber, coiling like ghosts in the flickering torchlight. Ether stood at his post near the arched entrance, a silent sentinel in a world of echoing drips and hissing vapor. The heat was a physical weight, baking him inside his polished steel armor. Sweat trickled down his spine, an irritating path beneath his gambeson. It was a pointless, tedious duty—guarding an empty bathhouse well after midnight—and his thoughts had begun to drift.

Another hour, he thought, shifting his weight. Then I can finally peel this blasted kiln off and—

A faint splash from the far side of the pool broke the quiet.

Instantly, every nerve ending fired. His hand dropped to the pommel of his sword, his body coiling into a state of lethal readiness. He scanned the shadows, his eyes narrowing. A servant? A stray courtier looking for a clandestine meeting?

Then, the touch.

It wasn't the sharp point of a blade or the blunt force of an attack. It was the shocking, intimate pressure of two damp, warm hands sliding beneath the backplate of his cuirass, pressing directly against the sweat-slick linen of his undershirt. They snaked around his midsection, fingers spreading over the hard plane of his stomach with a possessive, familiar ease.

Every muscle in his body went rigid. The breath hitched in his throat. Only one person in the entire kingdom would dare.

"Have you lost all sense?" he hissed, the words a strained rasp of pure terror. He tried to pull forward, to break the hold, but the hands held firm. "My prince, for God's sake, anyone could walk in. A servant... another guard making their rounds..." His mind, his carefully trained tactical mind, was a maelstrom of patrol schedules and worst-case scenarios. Disgrace. Exile. The headsman’s block.

The hands on his stomach simply tightened, ignoring his frantic, whispered plea. A moment later, he felt a soft, warm pressure against the back of his neck, right where the steel rim of his helmet met the high collar of his gorget. A kiss. Then another, tracing the exposed, vulnerable line of his skin.

A low, wretched groan tore itself from Ether's throat before he could stop it. It was a sound of absolute surrender, the death rattle of his professionalism. Duty, honor, fear—it all evaporated in the humid air, burned away by the simple, devastating touch of the Prince’s lips. Damn him. Damn this burning, hopeless need.

In one explosive movement, he rounded on him.

The Prince was there, water dripping from his hair and shoulders, his body gleaming in the torchlight. He was completely, brazenly nude, a small, knowing smile playing on his lips. The sight struck Ether like a physical blow—the sheer, reckless beauty of him. The trust. The invitation.

With a clatter of metal on metal, Ether tore his helmet from his head and let it fall to the stone floor, the sound echoing through the chamber like a judgment bell. He didn't care. He seized the Prince by the shoulders, his steel-clad fingers pressing into soft, wet skin, and slammed him back against the nearest rough-hewn stone wall. Before a gasp could even escape the Prince’s lips, Ether’s mouth was on his, hungry and punishing. It wasn't a kiss of tenderness; it was a desperate, frantic claiming, a war he had been losing for years and had just now conceded.

A soft, encouraging hum vibrated from the Prince's chest, and then slender fingers were tangling in the short, damp hair at the nape of Ether’s neck, pulling him impossibly closer. The small sign of permission, of eager response, was enough to shatter the last of Ether’s frantic desperation, letting a wave of something hotter, darker, and more possessive rise in its place.

He broke the kiss only to press his mouth to the Prince's throat, breathing in the scent of his skin, of clean water and of him. A rough, helpless groan rumbled in his chest. "Someone's an insatiable little minx, hm?" he murmured against the pulse fluttering there, his voice a low, ragged accusation. His hands went to the buckles at his own hips, his gauntlets fumbling with the thick leather straps of his faulds. "You know I cannot deny you. You know it and you torment me with it." The sound of a heavy leather strap being unbuckled was loud in the quiet chamber, followed by the metallic clatter of a plate of his armor hitting the stone floor.

The dream always began with the scent of rain-soaked earth and the impossible warmth of skin against his. It was a fever dream, viscous and hot, that left him tangled in his sheets, a sheen of sweat on his brow. In it, there were whispers against his jaw, desperate kisses that tasted of sweet wine, and the phantom weight of the Prince’s slender body pressed against his own. It was a place of impossible permissions, where the rigid lines of duty blurred into the soft curves of a yielding waist, where calloused, questing hands were not a betrayal but a form of worship.

Ether awoke with a gasp, his heart hammering against his ribs as if trying to escape a cage. The dream clung to him like a shroud, its phantom sensations a cruel torment in the cold, spartan reality of his pre-dawn barracks. He threw the sweat-soaked linens off, the rough wool of his blanket scratching against his bare legs. A familiar, acidic shame washed over him as his gaze fell, confirming the evidence of his nocturnal treason.

Gods, what is wrong with me?

It was getting worse. The yearning had become a living thing inside him, a constant, dull ache behind his sternum. For years, he had been able to compartmentalize. The Prince was beautiful, yes—that was an objective fact, like the sky being blue or steel being hard. But these dreams, this sickness, had begun seeping from the dark of night into the light of day.

It was the little things that drove him to madness. The way the Prince would lean over a low table in the map room to study a chart, the fine silk of his tunic pulling taut across the small of his back, a silent invitation Ether’s mind couldn't help but accept. Or the times in the royal baths, where the Prince would submerge and resurface mere feet away, water sluicing from his hair and shoulders, utterly unconcerned and unaware of the war being waged behind his knight’s stony facade. Ether was a fixture, a piece of the architecture, and that trust was the cruelest torture of all.

A memory, unbidden, flashed behind his eyes. A thunderstorm, years ago. The Prince couldn't have been more than seven, a tiny, trembling thing swallowed by a silken nightshirt. A crash of thunder had sent him scrambling from his bed and straight to Ether, who had been standing watch by his door. The boy had clung to his leg, burying his face in the rough wool of his trousers. Without thinking, Ether had scooped him up, his own heart aching at the boy's terror. He had held him, murmuring reassurances until the trembling subsided, the Prince’s small head tucked trustingly under his chin. He had felt so small, so fragile. So his to protect.

Now, the memory was tainted. When he recalled the feeling of that small, warm body pressed against his own, his traitorous mind would superimpose the image of the man the Prince had become, and the remembered innocence would curdle into something shameful and predatory.

Right now, for instance.

Here, in the suffocating quiet of the royal library, the air thick with the scent of old parchment and dust motes dancing in the afternoon sunbeams. The Prince was reaching for a book on the highest shelf, a heavy, leather-bound tome on Gledish lineage. He was on his toes, his body stretched into a long, elegant line. The movement caused his tunic to ride up just a fraction, exposing a sliver of pale skin above the waistband of his breeches.

Ether’s breath hitched. His gaze, against all discipline and holy sanction, dropped. It bypassed the book, the shelf, the entire noble pursuit of knowledge, and landed squarely on the subtle curve of the Prince’s hips.

And the dream was there. Not a memory, but a sudden, violent fantasy. His hands, large and rough, clamping down on those hips. The feeling of pulling the Prince back against him, flush against his armored chest. The surprised gasp, the subsequent melting...

He flinched, a full-body recoil, as if he'd been physically burned. A strangled sound caught in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, his gauntleted hands clenching into fists at his sides, the leather groaning in protest. No. Stop. You are his shield. Not... this. He forced his lungs to work, his breathing coming in ragged, heavy drafts that sounded obscenely loud in the stillness of the library.

He was so lost in his own internal flagellation that he didn't notice the Prince had given up on the book. He didn't see him step down, the soft thud of his heels on the floorboards barely registering.

He only opened his eyes when the silence stretched, becoming pointed. The Prince hadn’t moved away. He had retrieved a different, smaller book from a lower shelf and set it on the large oak reading table. Now, he was standing there, his arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t looking at the book. He was looking at Ether, his head tilted slightly. There was no accusation in his gaze, no anger. Just a quiet, unnervingly perceptive curiosity that felt far more damning. It was the look he gave when he knew, with the certainty of a man who had been shadowed for fifteen years, that something was being kept from him.

The Great Hall was a tactical nightmare. A suffocating tapestry woven from the drone of a hundred conversations, the cloying scent of roast boar and spiced wine, and the cloying perfumes of far-too-many courtiers crammed into one space. From his position just behind and to the left of the Prince’s chair, Ether was a statue of polished steel and simmering vigilance. His eyes did not see the feast. They saw a hundred potential threats: the glint of a ceremonial dagger under a lord’s tunic, a serving boy who stumbled too close to the royal table, the shifting, predatory glances of political rivals.

His entire world was a twelve-foot radius around the Prince, and Lord Gerey Ellell of the Eastern Marches had been lingering at its edge for the better part of an hour.

The man was puffy and wine-flushed, with the small, restless eyes of a ferret. He had been holding court with a small group of equally smug nobles, his gaze repeatedly flicking towards the Prince with a barely-veiled disdain. Ether had logged every glance. He’d noted the man’s escalating drunkenness, the way his laughter grew louder and more grating with each emptied goblet. It was a predictable, pathetic trajectory.

Then, Gerey pushed his chair back, the screech of its legs on the stone floor a deliberate disruption. He raised his goblet, its contents sloshing precariously. The conversations around him sputtered out as he swayed on his feet.

"A toast!" he bellowed, his voice thick and slurred. The hall quieted further, a ripple of unease spreading from the head table. Ether’s hand, resting casually on the pommel of his sword, tightened until the leather of his gauntlet creaked.

Lord Gerey’s sneering gaze fell upon the Prince. "A toast... to the Prince of Gledale!" A smattering of polite, obligatory echoes followed. Gerey smirked, letting the sound die down before continuing. "A boy so... cherished," he said, drawing the word out into an insult, "...so delicately raised, he can face the world with the confidence of a king, knowing he need never get his own hands dirty."

The air grew thick. Ether could feel the King’s jaw tighten from ten feet away.

Gerey took another swig from his goblet, his eyes now fixed on Ether, a malicious glint in them. "It's touching, is it not? How even now, he has his Royal... shadow... to-"

That was it.

The world did not slow down. It simply ceased to exist outside of a single, straight line between Ether and the source of the rot. There was no thought, no decision. There was only the insult, and the instinct that screamed to excise it.

In one fluid, impossibly fast motion, Ether moved. He didn't go around the table. He went over it. A silver platter of quail eggs went flying. A goblet of red wine spun through the air, splattering across a lady’s silk gown like a spray of blood. He landed with a heavy, muted thud on the other side, his armored form a specter of sudden violence in the midst of the feast.

Before Gerey could even register the movement, Ether’s left hand was tangled in his greasy hair, yanking his head back with a brutal snap. The man’s eyes went wide with shock and pain. Ether’s right hand, now holding the small, sharp fruit knife he’d plucked from the table mid-vault, was pressed firmly against the soft, pulsating flesh of Gerey's throat.

The hall was utterly, deathly silent. The minstrels had stopped playing. A woman somewhere gave a single, stifled sob.

Lord Gerey was making a wet, gurgling sound, his hands fluttering uselessly at his sides.

"You will not," Ether snarled, his voice a low, guttural sound that was more animal than human, "finish that sentence."

For a frozen eternity, he held him there, the point of the blade just barely dimpling the skin. The red haze of his rage began to recede, replaced by the cold, horrifying clarity of what he had just done. In front of the King. In front of the entire court and a foreign delegation. He had protected the Prince's honor by immolating his own, and quite possibly, sparking a diplomatic catastrophe.

"Sir Ether."

The King's voice was not loud, but it cut through the silence like a winter wind. It was a command forged of pure, unadulterated fury.

"Release him. Now."

Ether’s gaze flickered from the sputtering lord in his grasp to the King, and finally, for a single, agonizing second, to the Prince. He saw not fear, not anger, but a look of wide-eyed, stunned shock.

With a final shove of disgust, Ether threw Lord Gerey back into his chair. The lord collapsed in a heap, gasping and clutching at his throat. The little fruit knife clattered from Ether’s hand onto the stone floor. Without another word, he straightened his back, turned, and dropped to his knees before the royal dais, his head bowed, his gaze fixed on the cold stone between his knees. The shame was a physical weight, crushing him from the inside out. He had failed. Utterly.

The King’s voice rang out again, hard as iron. "Your knight has forgotten himself, my son. See that you remind him of his place."

Ether remained perfectly still on his knees, his armor suddenly feeling less like a shield and more like a cage. He heard the soft scrape of a chair and the sound of footsteps approaching. He didn't look up. He couldn't. He could only wait for the Prince’s judgment, the silence of the hall a suffocating pressure on all sides.