Crushed By Wrecker’s Pecs

~ dm for removal -

You knew which gallery windows bled the best morning light and which stairways stayed cold even in summer. You knew which tapestries hid alcoves big enough for two girls to squeeze behind, and which doorways were always, always guarded, no matter the hour.

You also knew that your father's mood rose and fell these days with the gossip of neighboring lords.

"No banners on the horizon yet," Violet said, swinging her legs under the window seat. "Just tongues."

She popped a sugared almond into her mouth and spoke around it, unbothered as always by decorum when it was just the two of you.

"Tongues lead to banners," you said, pinching one from the bowl. "That's what he's worried about."

Outside, the inner courtyard buzzed with activity. Servants carried crates toward the cellars; a farrier hammered at a shoe. Across the way, in the training yard, men in worn leather and steel moved in tight formations, their motions sharp as cut glass.

Violet followed your gaze and made a thoughtful humming noise.

"Speaking of tongues," she said. "Have you heard what they call them now?"

"Who?"

She rolled her eyes. "The King's favorites. Your father's pet lunatics. Him and his three."

You bit into the almond, sugar cracking under your teeth. "You'll need to be more specific. He has several pet lunatics."

Violet leaned closer, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. That was the thing about Violet: even in silk and jewels, she still conspiratorially whispered like the baker's daughter she'd once been.

"They're calling them the One-Four-One," she said. "Whispering it, like it's a prayer or a curse. 'Don't cross the King; he'll send the One-Four-One.'"

You tasted the words, rolling them around in your head. "The numbers mean something?"

"Probably." Violet shrugged. "Or perhaps men just like making things more important by making them sound like they mean something."

Down in the yard, you could pick them out easily even from this distance.

Captain Price, with his graying beard and the easy, contained authority that made seasoned knights stand straighter when he walked past. Johnny MacTavish; the youngest of them, broad grin visible even from here, dark hair tied back, moving like he loved the fight more than he ought to. Sir Kyle, quieter, precise, eyes taking in every opening and angle.

And then there was him.

Sir Simon Riley.

He was taller than all of them, still. Broad through the shoulders, the lines of his body all muscle and scar under armor that fit like it had been made only for him. His boots were heavy, but they barely made a sound when he moved.

He didn't wear the old separate mask anymore, the one you remembered from your teenage years. At some point, without you seeing it happen, it had changed.

Now the skull was part of a fitted hood, black cloth pulled tight over his head and jaw, the bones sewn right onto the weave. Dark markings curled from the eye sockets down along the cheek, teeth suggested over his mouth in crude strokes. It should have looked ridiculous; it didn't. It looked like it belonged to him, as much a part of him as the sword in his hand.

All you could see of his face were his eyes: dark brown, as sharp as you remembered, watching everything.

"The King's ghost," Violet sighed, chin in her hands. "Or hound. Or whatever they're calling him this week."

"You sound like the laundresses," you said, but you couldn't quite keep the smile out of your voice.

"The laundresses do not get to sit in a window and stare at them without getting their ears boxed," Violet pointed out. "We do. It would be rude not to."

As if he heard her, Johnny wheeled his practice partner around in a sudden, showy move that had the younger men on the sidelines whistling. He caught Kyle in a headlock, laughed, nearly got his feet swept out for his trouble.

"Sir John is going to break his own neck one of these days," Violet said. "And half the maids' hearts before that."

You hummed, noncommittal, watching the way Simon stepped in; not to show off, but to correct. A quick, economical motion of his blade, tapping Johnny's guard lower, Kyle's elbow in, a silent command to reset. They listened. Of course they did.

"What about you?" Violet asked, nudging your knee with hers. "If you were forced at swordpoint to choose one of the legendary four, who would you pick to run away with and live in a cottage by the sea?"

"Four?" you echoed. "There are three down there."

"Four with you," she said promptly. "Try to keep up, Your Highness; it's unbecoming when a princess is the slow one."

You huffed a laugh. "And why are we assuming I'd run away with any of them? Perhaps I'd prefer a sensible marriage to a dull, kind lord with good land and no taste for war."

Violet snorted. "You? Dull? Please."

You let your gaze slip back to the yard, to the tall figure in the skull-hood moving through the men like a shadow.

"If I had to," you said lightly, "I suppose I'd take the one least likely to talk my ears off."

"Sir Kyle, then."

"Not him," you said, too quickly.

Violet's eyes lit. "Ah. I see."

"You do not see anything," you protested, but your ears felt hot.

"Oh, of course not." Her grin turned wicked. "You merely have an academic interest in the King's hound. For... research."

"For the safety of the realm," you said primly.

"Mm." She put on an airy falsetto. "'Oh, Sir Simon, I am but a humble princess; do tell me, how does one swing a sword so very dramatically—'"

You swatted at her and missed. She dissolved into giggles, the sound bright and bubbling in the little alcove.

You could feel it though, under the teasing: the way your heart had learned to pay particular attention whenever he was near. It was ridiculous, really. You were a grown woman. You had danced with princes and debated with ambassadors. You had sat through meetings where your father tried to ignore you and could not because you knew the tax ledgers better than his treasurer.

And yet one look from a pair of dark eyes framed in painted bone could send your thoughts scattering like startled birds.

You were meant to be in your rooms after dusk.

You usually were. You weren't eleven anymore, chasing storms up stairwells. You knew better. You knew the list of enemies had grown since those days, and not all of them lived beyond the borders.

You knew all that.

You still slipped out.

The corridor outside your chambers was quiet, tapestries muting your footfalls. You lifted your skirts just enough not to trip, walking quickly but not running;

running drew attention. Violet slept in the next room; you'd heard her soft snores through the door as you crept past.

You'd only meant to get some air. Really. The gardens at night were a different world: cool and damp and secret. You liked the way the moonlight turned the fountains silver and the way the roses smelled when no one was around to prune them.

You'd stayed longer than you should have, sitting on the edge of the dry fountain, talking nonsense to the stone fish that spouted water during the day.

By the time you slipped back in through the servants' entrance and into the main corridor, the lamps were turned low. The palace had that particular hushed feeling it only got in the deeper hours of the night, when even the scullery fires burned small.

You were halfway down the long gallery that led to your wing when a voice came out of the darkness.

"Princess."

You stopped so abruptly your slippers squeaked on the stone.

He stepped out of the shadow where two corridors crossed, as if he'd grown from it. Tall, broad-shouldered, the skull-painted hood turning his face into a pale, grinning nothing. His armor was stripped down for the night, only the leather and mail that sat close to his body, but he still seemed too big for the hallway.

All you could see were his eyes, dark brown and very, very awake.

"Sir Simon," you said, aiming for breezy and hitting something closer to breathless. "You nearly scared me to death."

"Nearly?" he replied. "I must be losing my touch."

His voice was lower behind the hood, softened and muffled by the cloth, but still rough enough to roll down your spine like distant thunder.

Your fingers tightened on your skirts. "Do you make a habit of lurking in corners?"

"Yes."

The flatness of it almost made you laugh. Almost.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

The question was simple. The weight behind it was not.

"In the gardens," you said, lifting your chin. "I couldn't sleep."

His gaze flicked past you, to the faint damp on the hem of your dress, the smudge of dirt at the edge of your slipper, the sheen of night air still on your skin. He saw too much with one glance. He always had.

"You are meant to be in your rooms after dusk," he said.

"So are the kitchen girls," you pointed out. "Yet somehow the cook still finds bread on his table at dawn."

"The kitchen girls are not the King's only daughter."

There it was again. That fine, irritating line between your title and your cage.

"Nothing happened," you said. "I walked. I looked at the moon. I walked back. No assassins hiding in the rosebushes. Promise."

"You do not know that," he said mildly. "That is rather the point of assassins, Your Highness."

You huffed. "You are being dramatic."

He did not move. Did not fidget, or sigh, or run a hand through his hair. He simply stood there, a wall in front of your path, eyes on you, weighing.

"You've heard the same talk I have," he said after a moment. "Neighboring lords testing the borders, counting their coin, their men. So far it is only talk. For now, that makes them more dangerous, not less. Men who only whisper have not yet committed to their foolishness. They are harder to see coming."

You hated that he was right. You hated that the reminder prickled under your skin like cold.

"I am not a child sneaking onto the tower stairs anymore," you said quietly.

"No," he agreed. "You are not."

Something in his tone made you look up at him properly. Made your pulse skip.

In the dim lamplight, the skull painted on his hood should have made him monstrous. Instead it just framed those eyes, the only visible part of him, dark and intent.

"It does not mean I would like to find you bleeding in the dirt one day because you fancied the moon more than common sense," he added.

It wasn't the words that did it. It was the way he said them: matter-of-fact, like he was stating the time of day. Like the idea of you hurt somewhere in the shadows was not hypothetical, but a picture he had already dragged himself through too many times to count.

Warmth flared at the same time as irritation.

"So what would you have me do?" you asked. "Bolt my door as soon as the sun touches the horizon? Sleep until the world is tidy again?"

"If I thought sleep would make the world tidy," he said, "I would have tried it myself, Princess."

The corner of your mouth betrayed you with the beginnings of a smile.

His gaze flicked there. You wondered, absurdly, what his own mouth was doing under the paint. If the scar on his cheek still pulled when he tried to smile back.

He stepped aside then, not much, just enough to leave space for you to pass within the circle of his reach.

"Allow me to escort you back," he said.

"You have already waylaid me," you pointed out. "Escorting feels redundant."

"Indulge me," he said.

You did.

You fell into step beside him, his stride slowed just enough to match yours. His presence filled the corridor: solid, quiet, radiating a kind of controlled readiness that made the hair on your arms want to stand up.

"Violet says the people call you ghosts now," you said, because silence felt suddenly too loud. "You and the others. The One-Four-One."

He made a low sound that might have been a scoff. "The people call us many things. Ghost is one of the kinder."

"Do you like it?"

"Liking has nothing to do with it," he said. "Names are for other people's benefit. We still bleed the same no matter what they shout."

You thought of the laundresses' stories. Of the scar under the paint.

"I do not like ghost," you said. "You are... too solid for that."

He glanced down at you, something unreadable flickering in his eyes.

"What would you call us then?" he asked.

You pretended to consider, wrinkling your nose. "Idiots," you said. "For charging into every stupid, dangerous thing my father points at."

He huffed. It was not quite a laugh, but close enough that your chest unclenched.

"At least you are equal-opportunity with your insults," he said. "You do not spare kings."

"I am very kind to cooks," you said. "When they deserve it."

You reached your door too soon. The lantern outside threw a circle of warm light on the stone.

He stopped a pace away, as proper as any courtly dance partner, and bowed his head a fraction.

"Sleep, Princess," he said. "In your rooms. Preferably with the door closed."

You made a show of considering. "I will try," you said. "No promises."

"Promises," he said, "are for people who control their own days. You do not. You have my understanding instead."

The words sat strangely in your chest, heavy and careful.

You curled your hand around the latch.

"Good night, Sir Simon," you said softly.

"Good night."

You slipped inside, the latch clicking behind you. You leaned your back against the door for a moment, eyes closed, heart beating too fast for someone who had merely taken a late walk and had a scolding.

Through the wood, you could almost feel his presence linger on the other side for a breath, maybe two.

Then the weight of him moved away down the corridor, boots quiet as ever, leaving you with only the echo and the memory of dark brown eyes watching you like you were something far more dangerous than any whispered war.