Jack O’Connell’s Suspenders

Too slow.

Too loud.

Too much dew to slick the soles of your feet as you ran from death.

Through dense thickets and towering trees, there wasn’t an end in sight. Lost, but still moving. You had to keep moving.

You weren’t going to make it. You were. You weren’t. It didn’t matter. You had to try.

Because if you stopped, that was it.

Your ragged pants grew into chest-bursting gasps—unused to pushing yourself this hard—whipping past trees and fallen branches and thorny brush. The night was eerily silent (or perhaps it was you that had gone deaf?). All the animals must’ve hid themselves away by now, much better at being prey than you were. Here, the only breathing thing left in these woods was you.

Because that thing surely didn’t breathe. Not like you did.

Uneven ground caused your ankle to twist and slip. You cried out, but carried on. It was all you could do.

You ran just as fast, if not faster, the adrenaline keeping you afloat. But you could hear him getting closer. If you slowed, he would kill you. If you stopped, he would kill you.

Just on the edge of hearing, a steady thump, thump, thump bounded down the path. You remembered his breathy laugh in your ear, the mocking, the wild look in his eye. He was a daemon, or maybe just a beast—coming straight for you.

Hah. Hah.

It wasn’t your fault.

You clawed through leaves that crowded the way. You urged your body to go faster, move lighter, survive, survive, survive.

It was all you could do.

But it still wasn’t enough.

He had gotten too close, too fast. How did you not hear it? The creature in the shape of a man pulling your desperate form back by the thin fabric of your night gown. Curling his arms around your torso like a steel cage. His mouth parted next to your ear as he pulled you against his chest; scaring you half to death with those wet, jagged teeth sticking out like spines.

“No, no, no, no, no… please, please!—” You tried to twist. Almost strangling yourself with the force at which you pulled and jerked away. But his hold was absolute.

You could feel his warm breath steam across your cheek. Sighing something pleased now that you’ve both had a good run and some liveliness in your bones. But it was over now, and hush, shhhh, it’s okay, you’ve lost.

You expected him to tear your throat out, or perhaps strangle you and feast on your organs; your mind coming up with more and more terrifying ways this was going to end.

But no, he did something unexpected instead.

He forced your head to the side and kissed you.

“Mmph!”

His tongue prodded deep with endless drool falling into your mouth. He laved over teeth, tongue, and the silky sides of your mouth, until there was nothing but him, him, him. It was a viscous, uncomfortable thing. Devouring your lips and pressing into the depths of your mouth like he wanted to bury himself inside and never be removed.

It was humiliating, it was gross, it was warm.

You felt so warm. A little voice in the back of your brain told you something was off, but everywhere he touched grew hot. A spreading, blooming fuzziness that seeped into your muscles and made you feel oh, so soft.

“Hm! Mm, oh…” Your struggles faded with the static in your bones. Not because you wanted to, but because you couldn’t control the use of your limbs anymore. Which was more terrifying than if he just killed you.

He groaned, animal-like and pleased at your compliance. Letting his grip soften, letting his kiss turn sensual and firm. You could make out a growing hardness pressing into you from behind, and, with disgust, you could recognize the slow, thick movements of him grinding into your body.

He let you fall to the ground. Grunting and satisfied with the toxin taking hold. Your body completely limp, muscles unresponsive and tight as he moved you the way he wanted. Pulling your knees up, pushing your face down, spreading your thighs to make room for himself behind you.

His too long, too bony fingers dug into the dirt beside your waist. Panting and sighing as he pushed himself against your thigh. You could feel his clothed cock rub back and forth onto you, stroking himself into a fever. Whining as he grasped your hip, curling over you to gain leverage, humping your leg like if he didn’t he’d die.

You weren’t dumb, you knew what he wanted, but that didn’t mean you were ready for how it felt.

That strange warmth clouded your thoughts, made it hard to think. But it was like each nerve had been massaged and heightened to the point his touch on you started to feel good. You started to sweat. You couldn’t move, but a whimper still escaped your lips. His rubbing on your leg feeling like a warm hand on your cunt.

Your face was pressed into the dirt; you tried to move your fingers, even an inch, but all you could manage was desperate twitching as he pressed up on your leg.

He shredded your night gown with ease and in his haste he nicked your back with his claws.

You waited for the pain, but it didn’t come.

In fact, it didn’t hurt at all.

As the blood bubbled from the cut all you could do was moan.

Exposed. Frozen. And open—your cunt begging to be filled. It was all he could do to free his cock fast enough, pushing into your sensitive entrance with a growl.

You could hear him snarl above you—possessively digging into your hips, drawing blood with his claws, licking and mouthing at your shoulder blade. His tongue on your back brought a sharp jolt straight to your clit, his spit turning the spot sensitive and tender. So good that when he bit in, you came with a surprised, choked gasp. Cunt squeezing and milking his cock as he drove in faster. You heard him gulp and swallow before lapping at the wound. That warmth pushing into your veins and making it feel so, damn good.

Your whole body was a living nerve, sweating and feverish and sensitive. Every touch felt like a thousand, every groan amplified a hundred times in your ear. You could feel another orgasm quickly approaching as he bit and soothed, bit and soothed, all while driving desperately into your core.

Your second peak was just as intense as the first time, if not more so. Gushing wetness over his cock and making him laugh and growl in equal measure.

“Mine,” was the first word you’ve heard out of him all night. Repeating it like a brand, mine, mine, mine.

Quick and easy, he flipped you over. Spreading you out again. Pushing back into your dripping cunt. Indecent sounds filling the quiet night air as your pussy swallowed him over and over again.

You weren’t even allowed to cry, helpless as you were. The most you could manage being a slight twitch of your brow.

Your head lolled off to the side, and in your madness you thought you saw the vacant eyes of your ma and da staring back at you. He had killed them, this beast set on ruining you. Charmed your sleepy parents and killed them right in front of your eyes, before looking at you, stepping aside, and just daring you to try and run.

You knew now, he only did it to play with you some more. Perhaps make his meal taste sweeter with an adrenaline high.

It didn’t matter, not now, not when he sucked your bare breast to feel all your muscles grip him tight. You could feel another wave, as impossible as it was, and when he pressed his tongue flat against your nipple it crested. Your body giving another spasm of wetness and clenching that had him burying to the hilt.

When he broke the skin of your breast, you think you came again, but you weren’t sure. All the pleasure and peaks blending together until your mind gave under the strain.

He took your knees in his hands, pressing them up and up and up until they strained next to your head. The angle hitting even deeper than before as he kept you there.

“Please…” you tried to stutter out, but your vocal cords wouldn’t respond. Stop. More. Harder. Ruin me, hit me, bleed me, bleed me, bleed me.

Your whole body convulsed, less of a body and more of a mindless, pleasure-filled puddle. A soft, wet, clenching thing for him to fuck and eat and fill with sensation. As your fifth (or maybe seventh?) orgasm hit, that was all you were: Sensation. Your body trying and failing, to give anything else. Running out of steam, out of blood, out of mind.

He nuzzled at the tender flesh of your throat—bite marks littering your entire body, blood leaking into the soft Earth—and with one final thrust, he latched onto your neck and pumped your body full of his spend.

A ridge at the base of his cock started to swell, his grinding turned to pushing you back and forth as he locked himself inside. If you had any capacity of mind you would be horrified, but in this moment all you could think about was how good the stretch felt. Plugging you up and fitting you together. A warm, comforting weight after an endless burn of friction.

He drank from your sweet neck, making your head spin and your vision give out. Your eyes fluttered closed—head completely empty—as you wallowed in a body ruined. But you didn’t know, couldn’t know, that he would wait for you to wake to do it all again.

Filling you up, making you cum over and over and over, until it took. Until you swelled up nice and pretty for him.

But for now, he would let you rest, laying his head on your body, curling and purring around you while he plugged you up. Taking in all the comfort your body could provide.

Outside the barn, hidden beyond the lantern glow, Remmick stood deathly still among the trees.

His dark coat stirred softly in the wind while Joan and Bert beside him shifted impatiently. Their eyes glimmered gold in the darkness, fixed on the warm light spilling through the cracks in the barn walls.

Living people.

Beating hearts.

Easy prey.

One of them smiled, revealing sharpened teeth. “They’ve packed themselves together nicely.”

The other chuckled low beneath his breath. “Makes feeding easier.”

But Remmick said nothing.

Because then your voice rose over the crowd again.

Clear.

Honey-soft.

Achingly familiar.

Inside the barn, Sammie sat beside you atop an overturned crate near the musicians. His fingers tapped against his knee while he played along quietly, grinning when you bumped your shoulder against his.

“You came in too early,” he muttered.

“I did not.”

“You absolutely did.”

“You play too slow.”

“That’s because you rush every song like the Devil’s chasing you.”

You laughed under your breath, and the sound floated through the open windows into the night.

Remmick’s expression faltered.

His wife used to laugh like that.

Not the same voice exactly. Not the same face.

But the same warmth.

The same lightness that made grief feel unbearable once it was gone.

“You alright?” one of the vampires asked him quietly.

Remmick barely heard him.

Inside, Sammie began another tune, slower this time. A hymn their father used to hum while working long afternoons beneath the southern sun.

You joined him effortlessly.

The harmony hit Remmick like a physical blow.

His memories came uninvited.

Maeve standing barefoot in their kitchen.

Maeve singing while rain battered the windows.

Maeve dying slowly in her bed while he held her hand and prayed to a God that never answered him.

The hunger inside him twisted painfully.

But for once, it wasn’t hunger for blood.

It was longing.

Without realizing it, Remmick stepped closer to the barn doors.

The wood groaned beneath his boot.

Inside, your singing stopped abruptly.

The room quieted little by little as heads turned toward the entrance.

Sammie frowned first.

Then the doors creaked open.

Remmick stood there beneath the lantern light, pale as moonlight itself.

The room froze.

Every instinct screamed danger.

Several people backed away immediately. Someone cursed softly. One man reached for the pistol tucked beneath his belt.

But Remmick didn’t move.

His strange eyes drifted across the crowded barn until they landed on you.

And stayed there.

Sammie stood slowly in front of you. “You lost, friend?”

The vampires behind Remmick lingered in the shadows outside, tense and waiting.

Remmick ignored the question.

Instead, he asked quietly, “Who taught her to sing like that?”

His voice carried an old Irish accent softened by time and decay.

Sammie blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

“You,” Remmick said, still staring at you. “Or was it your mother?”

The room remained painfully silent.

You narrowed your eyes slightly. “Why do you care?”

At that, something almost human flickered across Remmick’s face.

“She sounds like someone I buried a very long time ago.”

The words unsettled the room more than if he’d threatened them.

Sammie glanced at you carefully before answering. “That still don’t explain why you’re standing in our doorway in the middle of the night.”

One of the men near the back finally muttered, “Something ain’t right about him.”

They were correct.

Nothing about Remmick looked alive.

Not the stillness. Not the unnatural sharpness in his face. Not the hollow grief sitting behind his eyes.

You studied him carefully.

And somehow, against all logic, you didn’t feel fear first.

You felt sadness.

“You knew somebody who sang like me?” you asked softly.

Remmick’s gaze shifted to yours fully then.

For a moment, the barn disappeared again.

Maeve used to look at him with that same unbearable gentleness.

“My wife,” he answered after a long pause. “Before sickness took her.”

No one spoke.

Even the drunken laughter from earlier had vanished entirely now.

Sammie still stood protectively near you, but his posture eased just slightly.

“You got a name?” he asked.

“Remmick.”

One of the older men whispered the name under his breath like he’d heard it somewhere before.

You tilted your head. “You came all this way just to listen to strangers sing?”

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Remmick’s mouth.

“Yes.”

The honesty in it startled everyone.

Behind him, one of the vampires shifted impatiently again. Hunger burned visibly across his face now.

Remmick sensed it immediately.

Without turning around, he spoke coldly.

“No.”

The vampire stiffened.

The entire barn noticed.

Sammie’s eyes narrowed. “Who exactly are those people with you?”

Remmick was silent for a moment too long.

Then finally:

“People who forgot how to be human.”

A chill swept through the room.

You should have been terrified.

Maybe part of you was.

But another part saw the exhaustion carved into him like old wounds that never healed.

“You miss her,” you said quietly.

Remmick looked at you again.

This time, the grief in his face was impossible to hide.

“Every hour of every day.”

Silence settled heavily between all of you.

Then, carefully, you stepped around Sammie before he could stop you.

“Sis—”

“It’s alright.”

You looked back at Remmick. “Do you remember her favorite song?”

His expression tightened instantly.

“Yes.”

“Then sit down,” you said gently, motioning toward the barn. “And we’ll play it.”

Several people immediately protested.

“You crazy?”

“Don’t let him in here—”

But Remmick himself looked the most surprised.

“You would invite a stranger inside?”

“You haven’t hurt anybody.”

Yet.

The unspoken word lingered between you both.

For a long moment, Remmick simply stared at you.

Then slowly—almost cautiously—he stepped into the barn.

The room tensed as if death itself had crossed the threshold.

Maybe it had.

But Remmick only removed his hat quietly and sat near the doorway while the other vampires remained outside in the dark, watching silently.

Sammie picked up his guitar again reluctantly.

“You better not make me regret this.”

Remmick gave a small nod.

Then he looked at you one last time before the music started.

And for the first time in nearly a century, the monster felt something dangerously close to peace.

Years passed after that night in the barn.

At first, the town feared him.

People whispered when Remmick appeared beside you in the marketplace or lingered outside church doors waiting for you after Sunday hymns. Mothers pulled children closer. Men kept silver crosses in their pockets and shotguns near their porches.

But Remmick never harmed them.

Not once.

And slowly, fear turned into uneasy tolerance.

Then familiarity.

Then something stranger still.

Acceptance.

Because every harvest season, he helped rebuild storm-damaged homes before anyone even asked. Every winter, firewood mysteriously appeared stacked outside widows’ houses before the first freeze. Lost children were always found before sunrise.

And every Saturday night—

music drifted from your porch.

You grew older while Remmick did not.

That truth became impossible to ignore after enough years passed.

The first silver strands appeared in your hair while his remained dark as midnight.

Fine lines formed beside your eyes from laughter and sunlight and years fully lived. Your hands softened with age. Your steps slowed little by little.

But every evening, Remmick still looked at you like you were the first warm thing he had touched after a century buried in snow.

Like he still couldn’t believe you were real.

Sammie noticed it long before you did.

One humid summer evening, after a family supper filled with music and too much wine, he pulled Remmick aside quietly while you laughed with nieces and nephews out in the yard.

“You love her.”

It wasn’t a question.

Remmick stood silently on the porch for a long moment.

Then finally answered:

“With what remains of me, yes.”

Sammie studied him carefully.

“You ever gonna leave?”

The vampire looked through the screen door toward you.

You were smiling again.

Always smiling.

“No,” Remmick said softly. “Not unless she asks me to.”

But you never did.

Not through the decades.

Not even when age began taking things from you one by one.

Your knees first.

Then your eyesight.

Then your breath came shorter during winter months.

Still, every morning, Remmick sat beside you on the porch while the Delta woke around you. He read books aloud when your eyes grew weak. He brushed your silver hair gently before bed. He carried you when your legs could no longer manage stairs.

And every night—

you sang for him.

Sometimes softly from your rocking chair.

Sometimes half-asleep beneath quilts while rain battered the roof.

The same way Maeve once had.

Except this time, death did not steal the song too soon.

One dawn, many years later, the world felt very quiet.

The house creaked softly around you while pale blue light stretched across the horizon.

You lay wrapped in blankets on the porch swing overlooking the fields.

Remmick sat beside you.

One arm around your shoulders carefully, as though you were still something precious enough to break.

The sunrise painted gold across his unmoving face.

Your breathing had grown shallow during the night.

Both of you knew what morning meant.

Still, neither of you spoke of it directly.

You simply rested your head against him and watched the sky brighten together.

“Remember the barn?” you asked weakly.

A faint smile touched Remmick’s mouth.

“You invited a monster inside.”

“You looked lonely.”

“I was.”

You chuckled softly, though it dissolved into coughing.

Remmick’s hand tightened around yours instantly.

Even now, after all these years, panic flickered through him whenever your body failed you.

You squeezed his fingers gently.

“I’m alright.”

But you both knew you weren’t.

The birds had begun singing now.

The same sweet southern melody that used to drift through the Delta fields when you were young.

Remmick stared at the rising sun along the horizon.

For over a century, dawn had only ever meant survival.

An ending.

A thing to hide from.

But beside you, it became something else entirely.

Peace.

You looked up at him carefully.

“You know,” you whispered, “you still got that same look on your face.”

“What look?”

“Like you can’t believe I let you into that barn.”

A quiet laugh escaped him then—small and broken with love.

“I still can’t.”

Your eyes shimmered warmly.

Then, after a long silence, you asked:

“Do you want one last song?”

Remmick’s expression fell apart completely.

But he nodded.

So you sang.

Softly.

Weakly.

Your voice no longer carried the strength it once had, but Remmick listened like it was the most sacred sound ever made.

The hymn from that first night.

The one about mercy.

The one that reached a starving creature standing in the dark and reminded him he had once been human.

As you sang, tears finally slipped down Remmick’s face.

The monster who had outlived generations.

Wars.

Empires.

Entire lifetimes.

And none of it had ever broken him like this.

Your voice trembled near the end.

Your fingers curled weakly around his hand.

The sunrise spilled fully across the porch now, warm and golden.

For the first time in over a hundred years—

Remmick did not move away from it.

He stayed beside you.

Burning slowly in the dawn light while you finished the final verse.

And when your song finally faded into silence—

you smiled at him one last time.

The same gentle smile from the barn.

The same unbearable kindness that saved him.

“I found you,” Remmick whispered.

You barely had strength left to answer.

“You came when I sang.”

Then your breathing slowed.

Once.

Twice.

And gently—

it stopped.

Remmick bowed his head against yours as the sunlight consumed him inch by inch.

But he never let go of your hand.

Not even at the end.

And as the Delta morning bloomed gold around the porch, the old vampire closed his eyes beside the woman who taught him how to live again—

and followed her into the sunrise.

His father had given him a wooden sword before he had given Remmick a blessing. His mother, God rest her, had taught him prayers with her hands still smelling of lye and wool, and when Remmick was old enough to be sent away, he was sent to men who believed tenderness was a sickness best beaten out before it spread.

By the time he came into the service of King Alaric, Remmick was already something carved rather than born. A knight made useful by obedience.

And King Alaric had great use for obedient men.

Alaric was not merely feared. Fear was too simple a word for him. He was the sort of king mothers prayed their sons would never resemble and their daughters would never attract the eye of. A ruinous man. Cold in the marrow. The kind that burned villages to make examples and slaughtered bloodlines down to the cradle because dead children could not grow into rebellion.

Men bowed to him because they wished to keep breathing.

And God, looked away.

Then the king was given a daughter.

And the kingdom changed around her the way frost changes beneath the first sunlight.

Not entirely. Never entirely. Alaric still carried death at his back like a royal cloak. Men still vanished into his dungeons. Rivers still ran red after his wars.

But there was now one small soft thing in the world his hands would not crush.

His daughter.

His princess of sweetness and cherry pie.

Remmick heard the servants call her that long before he ever stood in her presence. A teasing little title born from the fact that the child was forever sneaking into the kitchens, forever stealing sugared cherries and tarts from cooling trays and returning to court with stained lips and innocent eyes. The cooks adored her. The old women who scrubbed floors adored her. Even soldiers, hard-faced men who had hacked other men apart at king Alaric’s orders, softened when she ran laughing through the halls. She touched the one untouched thing in her father’s heart and somehow made it live. As the years passed, the little princess became the sort of woman kingdoms sharpen themselves over.

Lovely not merely in face but lovely in spirit. Lovely in voice. Lovely in the dangerous way spring is lovely after a brutal winter, making starving men believe in warmth again.

Princes crossed seas for her.

Lords emptied treasuries for the chance to kneel before her.

Poets ruined themselves trying to describe her eyes.

When he entered her service, she was already grown. Already the kingdom’s jewel. Already the princess men spoke of with longing in their throats. And already entirely capable of ruining him.

Remmick had always believed a wound should show itself.

A split lip. A sword-cut. A torn side. Honest injuries. Things a man could bind with linen and vinegar. Things he could press his hand against until the bleeding slowed.

Love was not honest.

Love entered him like an arrow without a shaft, leaving no place to grip and pull. He had served the princess for five years before he understood he had been dying for four of them.

Not all at once but slowly.

Kneeling in the chapel while candlelight gilded the edge of her veil. Riding at her left side through villages where children scattered flowers beneath her mare. Standing behind her chair while suitors praised her beauty, her bloodline, her usefulness.

The court called her sweet enough to make men foolish.

They did not know half of it.

They did not know how she smiled at servants and remembered their names. How she laughed with her whole body, head tilted back as though joy were something holy enough to surrender to completely. How she chased away suitors with gentle cruelty wrapped in honeyed manners, smiling all the while as proud men stumbled willingly toward humiliation simply because she had looked at them too kindly first.

And worst of all, they did not know what she did to him.

Because Remmick had survived battlefields without trembling. He had ridden through smoke and screaming flesh, had watched boys scarcely old enough to shave drown in their own blood beneath his boots, had buried steel in men’s throats and slept soundly after. Fear was an old companion to him. Death was even older. But sometimes the princess, this darling princess of sweetness and cherry pie, would look at him after saying something soft and impossible, and then blink once.

Slowly.

Those saintly lashes lowering over her eyes as though Heaven itself had grown shy of being witnessed. And Christ, he would spend entire nights awake afterward. Lying in the dark like a man fevered. Turning that single moment over and over in his mind until it became something holy and diseased all at once.

Had she lingered beside him too long as they departed the chapel? Had her hand brushed his deliberately, just for that one terrible little moment beneath God’s own roof, or had it meant nothing at all? He could still feel it sometimes, phantom-warmth against his glove, enough to make his chest ache like an old wound reopening.

Had her voice changed when she spoke his name?

Remmick.

Sweet Virgin, the way she said it. Not ”Ser Remmick”. Not ”knight”. Not ”Guard”.

Just, Remmick.

Softly. Quietly like she was tasting the syllables before giving them to him. He would think of it for days after, disgusted with himself, tormented by himself, wondering if her mouth formed other names so tenderly. Wondering what madness had seized him that he had begun staring at her cherry coloured lips whenever she spoke, thinking of tracing them with his thumb, his fingers, his mouth.

God forgive him. God forgive the filth in him that looked at something so good and wanted it. To caress it, to possess it. 

Had her smile softened because she pitied him? Because she trusted him? Because she loved him?

Could she ever love him?

The thought itself was enough to make him sick.

Because perhaps she felt it too. Perhaps she searched for him in crowded halls without meaning to. Perhaps her breath caught the same way his did whenever their hands touched accidentally. Perhaps she laid awake as he did, replaying moments that should have meant nothing. Or perhaps he was only another starving fool standing outside the gates of Heaven convincing himself the warmth spilling through the cracks belonged to him.

Because that was the misery of loving her. Not merely wanting what could never be his, but beginning to believe, in weak and dreadful moments, that perhaps she reached for him too. Perhaps when she said his name there was prayer in it. And that thought, more than any battlefield or blade, brought him to his knees.

Because Remmick knew what he was.

A man shaped by blood and violence. A creature carved into usefulness by crueler men. He killed in her fathers name. He had ridden beneath banners soaked in innocent blood. There was no purity left in him. No softness untouched by war. Men like him were built to guard heaven, not enter it.

And yet there she stood before him so often that he could almost believe God was cruel enough to let him see paradise with the gates thrown open, only to remind him it was never meant for the likes of him.

So he watched her.

Hungrily. Reverently. Hopelessly.

Like a dying man standing outside a chapel in winter, staring through stained glass at the candlelight within, knowing he would never be worthy enough to cross the threshold and touch its purity without staining it with the ruin of his own hands.

That was the true cruelty of it.

Not loving her.

Not even the certainty that it would destroy him.

But never knowing whether, in some secret untouched place inside her heart, she had already opened the gates for him anyway.

It was not knowing.

The way hope crept into him despite himself, thin and poisonous as a snake. The way one soft glance from her could feed his very soul for weeks. The way he had begun to live like a dying man surviving on crumbs from a royal table, convincing himself they were a feast because the kneeling before the Savior in the palace chapel while candlelight gilded the edge of her veil like a halo too beautiful for mortal hands. Little saintly princess of the southern tower, with flour on her cuffs from bribing the kitchen women into letting her help with pastries. Yes indeed her strength is her sweetness. It was a weapon she pretended not to sharpen. Lord Auberon came boasting of his hounds, his fields, his sons yet unborn. Yet his princess smiled, all honey and lowered lashes.

“How fortunate, my lord. I have always wanted to be spoken of as breeding stock.”  She would say and the hall would fall into silence.Then she turned to Remmick, eyes bright with restrained laughter, and said, 

“Ser Remmick, would you fetch me my cherry tart? I feel faint from admiration.”

He bowed.

“As you wish.”

That was all he ever gave her. Three words. 

Three miserable, faithful words he wielded like a shield against his own undoing.

Because the truth beneath them was far too dangerous to survive spoken aloud.

She learned that quickly.

Learned, with the wicked cleverness only she possessed, that every time she tugged lightly at the thread between them, Remmick answered the same way. Never more. Never less. No matter how she smiled at him afterward, as though trying to tempt the rest from his mouth.

“Carry this basket.”

“As you wish.”

“Walk with me.”

“As you wish.”

“Tell that dreadful prince I have taken ill.”

“As you wish.”

She would glance back over her shoulder after issuing impossible little commands, lips twitching as though she knew perfectly well that the great grim knight trailing faithfully behind her would follow her straight into damnation if she asked sweetly enough.

Sometimes she tested him only to hear him say it.

“Ser Remmick,” she would murmur, all false innocence and candlelight eyes, “if I told you to steal the moon for me, would you?”

“As you wish, my lady.”

That laugh of hers would follow after him then. Bright. Warm. Ruinous.

And every time she smiled at him like that, some starving thing inside Remmick leaned closer to the edge.

“Stand beneath my window tonight. For I cannot sleep without knowing that you are near.”

Silence. He should have said no. Instead, with his heart already kneeling, he said,

 “As you wish.”

He stood beneath her window until dawn, rain gathering in the seams of his armor and running cold beneath the steel, soaking slowly through leather and linen until even his bones seemed to ache with it. Still, he did not move. Above him, framed by candlelight and old stone, the princess leaned her cheek against the windowsill and spoke softly of nothing. Of the moon hanging pale above the towers like something lonely enough to understand them. Of her father the king’s temper. Of how lonely a castle could become when every room knew your name but not your soul.

Remmick listened.

He always listened.

A man could starve on less than the sound of her voice and still call himself blessed. She looked less like a princess that way. More like a lonely girl speaking into the dark because she trusted the man beneath her window more than anyone inside the castle walls.

And God help him for it, that trust hurt worse than longing ever had.

Because Remmick understood then that she was not merely speaking to fill the silence between them.

She was giving him pieces of herself.

Small sacred things.

“I shall never care for a husband as I care for you, Ser Remmick,” she whispered.

He looked up.

Her face was pale in the candlelight, softened by shadow. One loose curl moved against her throat, stirred by the night air.

The words entered him quietly. For that was the cruelty of them.

No trumpet. No thunder. No merciful violence to make the wound honest. Just a soft sentence dropped from a window, and his whole life divided itself into before and after. 

He did not answer.

For he could not.

Because if he answered, the world would change.

If he answered, she might understand him.

She might understand that every as you wish he had ever given her had not been obedience at all, but confession.That every time he had bowed his head and surrendered to her smallest command, he had been laying another piece of himself quietly at her feet.

So Remmick stood below her in the rain, silent as stone, while the sentence she had given him moved through his body like a blade too deep to pull free.

Yet all he could think was: 

Is it better to speak or die?

It was not a poet’s question. It was not beautiful. It was not noble. Poets lied about love. They dressed it in roses and moonlight and called suffering beautiful because none of them had ever stood where Remmick stood now, with Heaven looking back at him through a sweet princess’s eyes. It was a knife laid flat beneath his tongue.

If he spoke, she might recoil, and the sight of her stepping back from him would kill whatever war had failed to finish.

If he spoke, worse still, she might answer him with the same unbearable truth. The true terror was that those soft, saintly eyes might fill with the same ruin that lived inside him. That she might look at him as starving men look upon salvation and whisper the one thing he had spent years praying never to hear.

Because if she loved him, truly loved him, then the world would not turn merciful.

No choir of angels would descend.

No tale would gather them gently into its happy ending.

Her father would still be king.

He would still be the king’s sworn sword.

And she would still be a princess trapped in a world that forgave men their hunger and punished women for being loved.

So Remmick stood there through the rain, cold water slipping beneath his armor like searching fingers, and listened as her voice drifted softly down from the window above, while all around them the castle slept and the wound in him remained.

And for one terrible, selfish moment, Remmick allowed himself to imagine that this could be enough.

Just this.

Her voice in the dark.

Her face above him.

His name, safe in her mouth.

His soul. already ruined beyond saving and yet somehow still grateful for the destruction.

Who could have guessed that something as small and delicate as a rose would become the slow and sorrowful turning of the wheel, the quiet beginning of their undoing?

How could one flower set into motion the fate of hearts already balancing at the edge of ruin?

One foolish, soft-petaled thing, with thorns hidden so neatly beneath beauty. How strange it is, the way calamity so rarely announces itself as calamity.

And that blasted rose was the worst calamity of all.

Perhaps disaster had already been growing between them for years, quiet as ivy through stone. Perhaps every stolen glance in the chapel had planted its root. Every as you wish laid too reverently at her feet. Every foolish little thing she did to keep him near. Every blink that lingered too long. Every smile that softened only for him.

Perhaps they had been doomed from the moment he learned the sound of her laughter and found himself listening for it.But the rose was when doom finally found shape. Because at court, a rose was never merely a rose. It was favor. It was beauty chosen.

It was devotion disguised prettily enough to survive public scrutiny.

And in the hand of a victorious knight, it was confession made visible, a thing spoken where words dared not tread. The sort of gesture poets ruined with terrible verse and queens remembered for decades after kingdoms had fallen. 

The rose had been red. Deeply, darkly red.

The very shade of her mouth after stolen cherries. The shade of his temptation. The shade of his wanting. The herald had placed it into Remmick’s gauntleted palm after victory, still trembled in his bones, after splintered lances and churned mud and the roar of the crowd.

And at once, he had known.

The rose belonged to her.

Of course it did.

Who else had he ever ridden for?

Whose gaze had he searched for beneath the royal awning whilst men battered themselves bloody for honor? Whose breath had stalled when Lord Vaun’s lance struck his shield hard enough to bruise bone beneath steel? Whose smile had he sought before all others, though God knew he pretended otherwise?

His sweet princess of cherry pie.

His ruin in silk. And yet he gave it to another.

It was foolish. He knew as much even as he turned his horse from the dais. Foolish, and cruel, and cowardly in the way only frightened love can be cruel. But perhaps, he told himself, perhaps it might ease this living death. Perhaps if he placed the rose in safer hands, if he bent his head to a woman whose beauty did not make him feel unclean with longing, then the hunger would learn obedience.

Lady Drusella of Morcant stood among the princess’s ladies, gentle-eyed and harmless, pretty in a way that did not trouble his soul.

Safe.

That was the word.

Not beloved.

Not desired.

Safe.

So Remmick rode to her, the red rose burning in his hand like a wound, and offered it before the whole court. The crowd sighed and stirred, delighted by the little scandal.

Lady Drusella blushed.

And upon the royal dais, his princess went perfectly still.

Not weeping. Not raging. Not yet.

Still.

Like a storm deciding where to strike. 

Rain struck the armory windows like fingertips upon a coffin lid.

The squires were still loosening the last of Remmick’s armor when she entered.

He felt her before he saw her. That had become his private sickness. A shift in the air, a warmth at his back, the faint scent of cherries and rainwater, and already his body knew her. Already his heart, that wretched traitor, had risen to its knees.

The princess stood just beyond the pool of candlelight, her hands folded before her, her face too still.

The boys bowed clumsily.

“My lady.”

She did not look at them.

“Leave us.”

One of them hesitated, his fingers still caught in the buckle at Remmick’s shoulder.

“My lady?”

“I said leave us.”

There was nothing loud in her voice, but there was enough crown in it that both boys obeyed at once. Armor clattered softly in their arms as they gathered what they could and fled, leaving Remmick half-unfastened, stripped of plate and helm, still bound in the dark underlayers of war.

The door shut.

Silence came down.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

The armory breathed around him like some great iron beast bearing witness. Candlelight trembled weakly against stone walls. Swords gleamed in their racks like rows of waiting teeth. Cold shields stared down with the stillness of saints upon tombs.

Every blade in that room knew.

Every polished edge threw the truth back at him until he thought he might go mad from the sight of it.

She moved first.

One step.

Then another.

This princess, a small, vicious, pretty little thing, stood before him like wrath dressed in silk.

“So,” she said at last, her voice far too light for the violence simmering beneath it, “Lady Drusella.”

Remmick closed his eyes.

God. Not this. Not her standing before him with wounded pride disguised as mockery, not when he had spent the entire evening pretending he had not seen the way she had gone still upon the dais. The way her fingers had curled once, only once, against the arm of her chair when he turned away from her. He had told himself he imagined it. Told himself it had meant nothing. Men in love grow desperate enough to mistake breathing for devotion.

“My lady.”

“No.” She stepped deeper into the candlelight, chin lifted in that infuriating, lovely way she possessed whenever she intended to be impossible. Her cheeks were flushed, though whether from fury or humiliation he could not tell. Likely both. “I have been my-ladied enough for one evening.”

Her gaze moved over him, over the half-unfastened armor and dark linen beneath, and something sharper flickered there.

“Was it a sudden affection, then?” she continued sweetly. Too sweetly. “Very romantic. I nearly applauded.”

His jaw tightened.

“She is a worthy lady.”

“She is a very dull lady.”

“Princess.” he said warningly. 

“She embroiders lilies upon napkins,” she said, counting upon her fingers now with terrible seriousness, “and says ‘how lovely’ to things that are plainly not lovely. I once watched her admire boiled turnips.”

Despite himself, despite the misery of the evening, despite the ruin standing six feet before him wrapped in silk and indignation, something dangerous flickered at the edge of him.

Amusement.

Her eyes narrowed instantly.

“Do not laugh.”

“I am not laughing.”

“You are.” She pointed accusingly toward his face. “I can see it in your dreadful solemn expression. You cannot fool me, Remmick.”

Only Remmick.

The syllables left her lips softly despite her temper, and God help him, he wanted to trace them there with trembling fingers. Wanted to know whether his name tasted as holy upon her mouth as it sounded in the ruin of his own mind. He did not move. Could not. Movement felt dangerous around her. Breathing felt dangerous around her. Then, as quickly as the temper had flared, something shifted. The sharpness softened at the edges, only enough for hurt to show through. Real hurt. Young and bright and terribly unguarded.

“Why,” she asked quietly, “did you give her my rose?”

The words entered the room like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath.

Remmick looked away at once.

A coward.

Steel had always been kinder than her eyes.

“Your rose?”

“Yes.” Her answer came swift as flint. “Mine.”

The certainty of it struck him somewhere unguarded. Mine.

God. What would she do if she knew how wholly that word had already conquered him?

His loyalty. His prayers. His peace.

Mine.

He turned his face toward the rack of swords because iron was easier than honesty.

“I thought it better.”

“For whom?”

“For you.”

She laughed then.

Not prettily. Not sweetly. Like something sharp had broken inside her throat before it could become grief.

“For me?” she asked.

“My lady…” 

The words came out of him broken. Not spoken, not truly. But rather torn loose. The sound a man makes at the edge of his own ruin, fingers splintering from the effort of holding shut a door his soul has long since fallen against weeping.

“No.” Her voice cracked suddenly, fury slipping enough for the hurt beneath to show itself. 

He swallowed hard.

“I did not mean to humiliate you.”

“And yet,” she said softly, devastatingly, “you did so beautifully.”

The words landed clean.

A knight’s wound.

Straight between the ribs. Her gaze searched his face then, far too perceptive for his peace, and when she spoke again there was something trembling beneath the question.

“Do you care for her?”

“No.”

Too quick.

Too honest.

Her breath caught.

“Do you want her?” 

Silence followed.

Every polished edge of the room threw the truth back at him until he thought he might go mad from the sight of it and the voice of reason inside of his mind echoed of the walls: 

Speak.

Or die.

“No,” Remmick said at last. 

The word broke from him as though some great dam inside his chest had finally split under pressure, and now all the dark water was rushing through. His hand curled at his side, uselessly, as if he might still catch himself before the truth spilled out and drowned them both.

Her mouth trembled.

“Then why?”

Because wanting Drusella would not feel like kneeling, starving, before Heaven and knowing full well the gates would never open. Because she was not you. Because Drusella had never ruined sleep for him. Never made him stand half-mad in chapel, wondering whether one blink had lingered too long, whether one brush of her hand had meant mercy or madness. Because Drusella had never stained her mouth with stolen cherries and smiled at him as though sweetness itself had chosen a favorite. Because Drusella could survive being loved by him.

And she could not Or perhaps worse.

Perhaps she could.

Perhaps she already did.

“I am no good,” he said.

The words were quiet. Almost plain. Somehow that made them crueler.

Her brows drew together. The armory seemed to draw in around them. Iron on every wall. Candlelight trembling over the edges of swords. Rain worrying the high windows with cold fingers. There had been battles in this room before, in the oiling of blades and the planning of slaughter, but never one so quiet as this. Never one fought with eyes and breath and the trembling restraint of a man who had mistaken silence for virtue until silence became the very thing killing him.

“ I do not understand” She stepped closer.

He stepped back.

Like a man retreating from holy fire before it consumed him completely.

“Please.” His voice went hoarse, almost pleading now, and the sound of it seemed to shame him. “If I speak, I will not survive it.”

The words hung between them.

Bare. Ugly. True.

She looked at him then with something so wounded and tender that it nearly undid him where he stood. Not pity. Never pity. That would have been easier. No, she looked at him as though she could see the grave he had made inside himself and wanted to climb down into it with a candle.

“Remmick—”

“No.” His voice cracked violently. “I implore you, my sweet princess, do not ask this of me.”

The endearment slipped from him like blood from an opened vein.

My sweet princess.

And there was no going back.

Her breath caught, and Remmick dragged a hand across his face roughly, as though he could wipe the confession away before it fully formed. As though the room had not already heard it. As though every sword, every shield, every guttering flame had not turned witness against him.

“You think these are merely words,” he whispered. “You think if I say them aloud, the world remains what it was before?”

His laugh came low and terrible. She had never seen him like this. Not controlled. Not carved cleanly into silence and duty. No, this was the man beneath the armor. Starved. Cornered. Half-mad with wanting.

“If I speak,” he said, “I shall want your hand. Your time. Your smile when you wake. I shall want every piece of you God allows me to look upon, and when the court denies me the rest, I shall curse the heavens for it.”

The tears in her eyes spilled over. Remmick saw them and looked almost stricken by the sight, as though he would rather have taken a blade between the ribs than be the cause of that shining hurt.

“You do not understand what loving you has made of me.”

There it was.

The word.

Not whole, not clean, not safely wrapped in vow or courtly song, but there.

Loving. It entered the space between them and altered the air. His voice dropped until it was barely more than breath. He pressed a trembling hand hard against his chest as though trying to hold himself together by force.

“Every day I stand beside you and feel as though I am starving to death in the presence of a feast I cannot touch.”

Silence.

Only rain against the windows. Only the ache of two people standing at the edge of ruin, both looking down, both knowing the fall would not be survived unchanged. Not with those tear-bright eyes. Not with that soft voice that always sounded as though it had been made only for prayers and his name. Not when he was already so near the end of himself that one more kindness might finish what war never could.

“Please,” she whispered, and this time it broke.

God have mercy.

The sound that left him after that did not belong to any living thing. It was grief. It was longing. It was four years of silence splitting straight down the middle.

“Do not,” he whispered desperately. “I will do anything you ask but do not ask me that.”

Her fingers touched his jaw then.

Softly.

Reverently. Like she was already mourning him. And Remmick nearly shattered beneath the kindness of it. Her fingers lingered there, light as breath, warm as mercy. He stood beneath her touch breathing like a wounded thing, eyes shut tight as though darkness might save him from the sight of her.

It did not.

Nothing ever had.

When he finally opened his eyes again, she was still there before him in the trembling candlelight, flushed and tear-bright and impossibly brave. Looking at him not as a knight. Not as her father’s sword.

But as a man.

A man she loved enough to ruin herself for.

“And if I asked you to kiss me, Sir Remmick?”

Remmick stared at her for one terrible heartbeat.

Two.

His whole life balanced there between them, hanging by the thin thread of his restraint.

Then it snapped.

“As you wish,” he whispered.

The words sounded like surrender.

His hands found her face at once, almost desperately, his thumbs brushing the tears still damp upon her skin before he kissed her as though he had been dying of thirst for years and had only just been permitted water. It was worse than he had imagined.

Or better.

God, he no longer knew.

Because now he knew she wanted him too, and that knowledge ruined him entirely.

The kiss deepened, and the soft, broken sound that left her throat woke something in him that was both feral and grieving. His hands slipped from her face to her waist, drawing her against him with a hunger restrained so carefully and for so long that restraint itself had become another form of agony. She yielded to him at once. No hesitation. No fear. Only desperate relief, as though she too had spent years imagining this in the privacy of sleepless nights and hated herself for every dawn that came after. Her fingers tangled in his hair as he kissed her harder, then slower, savoring her like a starving man terrified the feast would vanish if he tasted too greedily.

Sweet.

Christ, she was sweet. She tasted of cherries and wine and the salt of tears.

Remmick groaned softly against her mouth, the sound low and wrecked from somewhere deep inside him, and the princess answered with a trembling breath that nearly brought him to his knees.

“Remmick,” she whispered when he finally dragged his mouth away from hers.

Not to stop him. Just to say his name.

Like prayer. Like surrender.

His lips found her jaw.

The delicate line of her throat.

Slowly now. Reverently.

But there was nothing truly holy left in him anymore.

Only devotion sharpened into hunger.

Every kiss he pressed beneath her ear felt like confession. Years of restraint unraveling against her skin one trembling touch at a time. His hands held her like something precious and breakable even as his mouth moved lower, unable to stop tasting the softness he had denied himself for so long.

The princess shivered beneath him. And God help him, Remmick felt the sound she made travel straight into his bones.

He kissed the hollow of her throat as though he might die there willingly.

Her collarbone.

The bare skin revealed where her gown had slipped slightly from one shoulder in the struggle of holding each other too tightly.

Not greedy.

Never cruel.

Just starving.

Starving in the most devastatingly tender way. As though every inch of her was something sacred he had no right to touch and could not stop worshipping anyway.

“Tell me to stop,” he whispered hoarsely against her skin, though the words sounded more like begging than command.

Her hands tightened in his hair immediately.

“Don’t.”

The answer broke him further. Remmick lowered himself before her then with something almost like reverence, his forehead briefly pressing against her waist as though in prayer before his kisses wandered lower still, trembling hands gathering silk carefully, mouth ghosting over the soft warmth of her through the fabric until she gasped his name again like she could scarcely bear the feeling of being wanted this much.

And perhaps that was the tragedy of it.

That after four years spent starving beside one another, neither of them knew how to touch gently anymore. Only desperately. Like people trying to make up for lost time before the world came crashing back in around them again. And now she lay before him across the armorer’s table, candlelight trembling gold across flushed skin and loosened silk, her breath still uneven beneath the weight of what they had done to one another. Or perhaps what they had finally allowed themselves to become.

Remmick stood between her knees like a man at the altar of his own undoing.

God help him, he had tasted the forbidden fruit willingly.

Had kissed the sweetness from the inside of her thighs like a man finally permitted to drink from a holy spring after years dying of thirst beside it. He had touched her with reverent desperation, hands shaking not from uncertainty but from the unbearable reality of finally being allowed to. Allowed to worship. Allowed to hunger openly. Allowed to hear his name fall from her lips in broken little prayers.

And he had loved her there not cleanly. Not nobly. But devotedly 

Like a starving beggar loves bread. Like a sinner loves Heaven knowing full well he shall never enter it. He had all but stolen her innocence upon the armory table beneath the watch of cold steel and guttering candles, licking devotion into her skin until she trembled apart beneath his mouth.

And still it was not enough.

Because love, Remmick understood now, was a crueler hunger once fed.

The wanting only grew teeth.

She reached for him then.

Sweet, trembling thing.

Still looking at him as though he were not ruined already.

“Remmick,” she whispered softly. The sound of his name nearly brought him to his knees a second time. He caught her wrist before she could touch his face.

Not roughly.

Never roughly.

Like a man stopping himself from stepping over the edge of something bottomless. Cruel was the thought that rept upon him then the though that beckoned him back to reality.

Could he ask it of her?

Could he stand before this princess of sweetness and cherry pie, this soft and impossible thing that had somehow bloomed untouched in the blood-soaked house of Alaric, and ask her to abandon everything for the ugliness of his love?

Could he take the girl who still smuggled sugared cherries from the kitchens and laughed like sunlight through chapel glass, and condemn her to cold roads, whispered scandal, her father’s fury, and a life forever looking over her shoulder?

No.

Because if she loved him, truly loved him, then his confession would not free them.

It would bury her beside him.

He would no longer be one man dying quietly of longing, but the hand that dragged her down into ruin with him: a princess and a knight, a daughter and her father’s sworn sword, a woman raised to bind kingdoms and a man raised only to bleed for them.

The king could kill Remmick, and that was nothing.

Death had walked beside him long before love ever had. But the king would cage her. He would dim her. And that, more than any grave waiting for him, was the horror that kept Remmick silent. Because he knew now that if he stayed, if he gave in fully to this, if he let himself have her in all the ways his body and soul were screaming for, then there would be no returning from it. No silence left to hide behind.

No honor.

No survival.

Remmick closed his eyes.

Slowly.

“I cannot,” he whispered and by God, those words sounded like death Like a coffin lid lowering. Like the last breathing thing inside him settling down at last beside all the words he would never allow himself to say. Remmick opened his eyes, she was looking back at him. Still flushed from him. Still trembling faintly from the ruin they had made together. But the softness in her face was already changing, retreating, shuttering itself away somewhere he could no longer reach.

The tears were gone.

That was worse.

Her expression had become royal.

Not cold. Never cold. He thought coldness would have spared him.

No, she looked crowned with hurt.

“What do you mean, you cannot?”

His hand flexed at his side, still remembering the shape of her.

“I cannot stay.”

For a moment, she did not move.

Then something in her face broke so quietly he almost wished she had struck him instead.

“You cannot stay,” she repeated.

“I will ask the king to send me north. To the border. To the front. Anywhere he has need of a sword.”

Her lips parted.

“You would leave?”

“I must.”

“No.” Her voice sharpened, but beneath it was disbelief, raw and young and terrible. “No, you do not get to touch me like a vow and then speak to me like a duty you mean to abandon.”

He flinched.

Good.

Let it wound him.

He deserved at least that.

“My lady—”

The word cracked through the armory.

After all his mouth had dared against her skin, the title was an insult.

A coward’s shield lifted too late. Her tears were gone. Her expression had become royal.

Not cold. Never cold. But crowned with hurt.

“Then I release you from my service, Sir Remmick.”

His lungs forgot their purpose. A drawing of his soul and those words that followed sealed his earthly tomb.  

“As you wish.”

“No,” she said. “It is your wish not mine.Your honor, not mine. Your silence. Your living death and I wash my hands of it.”

She moved to the door.

For one impossible second, he thought she might turn back. That she might ask again. That he might fail again. That he might fall to his knees and confess himself the coward she already knew him to be.

Her hand closed around the latch.

She left.

And Remmick, who had stood unbroken through war, sank to one knee in the empty armory.

Not from injury. Not from prayer.

But from the unbearable weight of having been loved and refusing the mercy of it. The room seemed altered by her absence. Still full of her somehow. The candles burned low in their iron cradles, trembling whenever the wind found weakness in the old stone. Rain struck the high windows without pause, soft and relentless as mourning. Her warmth lingered in the air. Cherry and rainwater and something sweeter he would spend years trying not to remember.

The same hands that had touched her as though she were holy now wrapped themselves around cold steel instead.

Fitting. Cruel.

He could still feel the ghost of her beneath his palms. The trembling in her breath. The trust of her. God help him, the way she had looked at him in those final moments, not as knight, not as servant, not as her father’s sworn sword, but as a man she had loved enough to ruin herself for.

Years passed after that, as years have the indecency to do.

She did not marry. She chased away more suitors with honeyed smiles and sharpened wit. One she convinced that her dowry included the haunted tower. Another she asked whether his mother would be joining them in the bridal bed, as he seemed unable to form an opinion without her. A third she defeated by serving him cherry pie baked with salt instead of sugar, then apologizing with such angelic sweetness that he thanked her for it.

He heard these stories from other men.

Never from her.

That was the cruelty time took particular care to preserve.

Remmick heard of her always from other mouths. From squires grown loose-tongued over ale. From ladies whispering behind fans. From soldiers passing through border camps with court gossip wrapped in their saddlebags like contraband. He heard she refused the northern prince. He heard she had sent a widowed count away with a smile sharp enough to leave him bleeding dignity all the way to his carriage. He heard she had made some lordling blush scarlet by asking whether he meant to marry her or her dowry, since he seemed far more tender with the latter.

He heard she laughed still. Sometimes.

He heard all of it from mouths that were not hers, mouths that did not stain his memory cherry-red, mouths that could speak his name without undoing him. And still, in the black, lonely hours before dawn, he dreamed of those lips: soft as sin, sweet as stolen fruit, and forever barred to him.

The king did not restore Remmick to her guard. Of course he did not. King Alaric was not a fool. Cruel men often mistake themselves for wise, but the dangerous ones are both. He had seen enough. Perhaps not the whole of it, not the fever that had lived beneath every silence, but enough to know that Remmick was no longer safe near his daughter. So he sent him where kings always send men they find useful but inconvenient.

To the borders.

Then to war. To winter roads where men died namelessly in ditches and called it service because kingdoms have always known how to dress slaughter in noble clothes.

It is there where Remmick became useful again.

Steel at the hip.

Scar at the brow.

Spine like a church door.

A knight made neat by distance. A weapon returned to its proper wall.

Only now there was something inside him that would not close.

No priest could bless it shut. No battlefield could bury it. No wound, however deep, could distract his body from the older hurt. He bled often enough in those years, from shoulder, thigh, ribs, once from a sword cut so near his throat that the surgeon crossed himself before stitching him. Each time, men praised his endurance. His silence. His strength.

Fools.

They thought pain was the place where blood came out.

They knew nothing.

In the sixth year of his self-imposed exile, after a campaign in the east had left him leaner, harder, and more ghost than man, Remmick returned to court.

The years had not been kind to him.

A beard now darkened his jaw. New scars crossed the old, pale script upon his body, each one proof that he could still be opened, still be marked, still bleed like the living. There was a stiffness in his shoulder where Lord Vaun’s spear had once struck him, and silver had begun, insolently early, at his temples. War had not made him cold, as men liked to say. It had only given his grief more rooms to walk through.

He entered the chapel near dusk.

He did not know she would be there.

That was what he told himself, standing half-hidden beneath the shadow of the stone archway.

A lie, perhaps.

The heart is often a better hound than the mind.

He saw her kneeling alone before the Virgin.

Her head was bowed. A blue veil lay over her hair, soft as twilight, and candlelight gathered around her as though it had mistaken her for an altar.

God forgive him for his blasphemy, an altar he had never stopped worshipping at.

Not cleanly. Not as saints are worshipped. No, Remmick had never been made for clean devotion. He worshipped her shamefully, hungrily, in the low animal chapel of memory. In the dark before battle. In the instant before sleep. In every red rose he refused to look at too long. In every cherry placed upon a noble table. In every mouth that was not hers and therefore meaningless.

He still remembered the cherry color of her lips.

That, too, was a wound. He should have left.

Any decent man would have left. A better man would have turned on his heel and spared her the burden of being seen by the ghost who had once called abandonment mercy.

But Remmick had never been good.

Only restrained.

And restraint, he had learned too late, was not the same as goodness.

So he stood at the back of the chapel, hidden in shadow, and watched her pray.

She had changed.

Of course she had.

Six years had moved across her too, though more gently than they had moved across him. There was more stillness in her now. Not less sweetness, never that, but sweetness tempered by sorrow, like honey darkened over flame. Her shoulders were straighter. Her hands, folded before her, no longer seemed girlish. She had become what hurt had always threatened to make of her.

A woman.

A wound with a crown.

Remmick watched the candles tremble around her and thought, with a kind of agony too old to cry out, that she was more beautiful than he had any right to remember.

Then she turned.

Not fully.

Only enough that he saw the side of her face.

The line of her cheek.

The soft shadow of her lashes.

Her mouth.

Her lashes lowered in the same way they had all those years ago.

That same slow fall. That same small, devastating movement that had once kept him awake for nights, dissecting the mercy of a blink like a monk gone mad over scripture.

She blinked.

And for a moment, six years collapsed.

The armory returned.

The rose.

The rain.

Her hand against his jaw.

Her voice saying his name as though it belonged to her.

Remmick stopped breathing.

Then she smiled

Not for the court.

Not for God, though perhaps even He stole some small part of it for Himself.

For him. A small smile. A wounded one.

The sort of smile carried too long in the dark, folded carefully between heartbreak and hope until both begin to resemble one another.

Then she turned back toward the altar.

As though she had not just undone him all over again with a single glance. A secret carried too long. Then she faced forward again. 

That night, a covered dish was left outside his chamber. Cherry pie.

Still warm.

Remmick stared at it for a long while before touching it, as though he already understood that whatever waited beneath the crust would hurt him more than any battlefield ever had. He ate it with his hands like a starving man, no dignity. No restraint. Every bite tasted of sweetness and punishment in equal measure. Cherries stained his fingers red. He thought absurdly of blood. Of mouths.

Of her.

Halfway through, his fingertips brushed parchment hidden beneath the crust where no servant would ever think to place it. Remmick went still. Slowly, he unfolded it.

Only three words.

As you wish.

For a moment he could do nothing except stare. Then, with shaking hands better suited to swords than tenderness, Remmick pressed the parchment to his mouth. That is the tragedy of men like him bound by honour. they become brave only in empty rooms. The next morning, he was ordered north again.

But before dawn he passed beneath her window. A single candle burned there, small and trembling in the dark like the last stubborn star before morning swallowed the sky whole.

Remmick looked up.

Stood behind the glass was his princess of sweetness and cherry pie, pale and still in her nightdress, hair in loose curls over her shoulders cascading down her back. Remmick looked at her still and it was as though he could carve the sight of her into the inside of his skull deeply enough to survive another lifetime without her. The pale gold of candlelight against her skin. The sorrow in her eyes. That cherry coloured mouth he had kissed like a dying man tasting absolution. The window did not open. No farewell was spoken.

They only looked.

Remmick wondered then, as he had wondered a thousand times, whether silence was noble or merely fear wearing armor. She lifted her hand. He lifted his own. Then her fingers curled against the glass. his curled at his side. The horse shifted beneath him. The road waited. But duty, that old butcher, sharpened its knife. 

God, how he loved her.

Loved her so long and so hopelessly that even his silence had learned the shape of her name. Loved her past honor, past reason, past every last mercy Heaven ever intended to grant wicked men such as him. Loved her with the desperation of a starving man pressing his face to the gates of paradise knowing he would never be permitted entry and worshipping anyway.

But Remmick had always known love was not measured by what a man was willing to take.

Only by what he was willing to lose.

So instead he bowed his head toward the candlelit window where his princess of sweetness and cherry pie stood watching him disappear from her life for the second and perhaps final time.

“As you wish.”

The old words.

His shield. His confession. His cowardice.

What he meant was this:

I love you most ardently. Most wretchedly. I will love you long after they drag me from your father’s battlefield in pieces. I will love you until the stones beneath me are washed clean of blood and my heart, ruined thing that it is, will continue to bear your name carved into it so deeply no blade forged by man could ever cut it free.