The room is beyond opulent. Diamonds and jewels glitter from every surface, embedded in the dozens of intricate murals covering the walls. Chandeliers dangle from the endlessly high ceilings.
It’s the shining example of luxury. Its very existence is a direct insult to every poor person alive.
Keith hates it.
He’s not alone, he doesn’t think. Pidge, Hunk, and Allura are looking around in awe, mouths gaped, but Lance is — tense. His dark eyes flit around rapidly, never once settling for longer than a few seconds, taking in every part of the room (well, if room is the right word — this stupid court room is the size of fucking Texas). His jaw is clenched, and his hands are forcibly relaxed. His centre of balance is shifted, and he’s even standing straight.
He’s prepared to make a quick exit.
Keith exchanges a wary look with him. He doesn’t trust this kind of royalty, either. Anyone who hoards this much wealth and has their people so blindly loyal is up to something.
“Announcing his Holy Eminence,” booms a voice, accompanied by the sharp sound of a staff striking the marble floor.
All of them startle, but Keith and Lance reach reflectively for their bayards before realising with dread they were confiscated so they could make an appearance.
Fine. It’ll be fine.
Hopefully.
He and Lance have relaxed, marginally, by the time a boot steps through the gilded doorway. Even if the king’s entrance hadn’t been announced, Keith would have been able to guess: the boot is made of rich, supple leather, and what looks like solid gold. The rest of him glides into view, and he’s positively draped in riches — precious gems sewn carefully into richly dyed fabric, created a sort of armoured corset. He wears a heavy lace veil, his eyes the only part of his face visible. His crown is inlaid with more diamonds than Keith has ever seen in one place, and they once took a mission in a diamond mine. Keith wonders how many people starved so the king could wear his crown.
The king stands before them, towering above them from his place in front of his throne — an altar to himself.
Lance shifts beside Keith, balancing on the balls of his feet — like he does before he’s about to strike. His head is tilted, eyes narrowed and calculating.
Something’s wrong.
“Our king, in all his grace, has granted you an audience,” speaks the same guard as before. “Bask in his glory, and thank the gods for his benevolence.”
The whole thing is so sinister that Keith feels his very blood sour at the heaviness in the air. The rest of the paladins have lost their wondered expression, replaced with the same wariness Lance and Keith are wearing. It’s been a long time since Keith brain screamed danger! at him with such volume, and he was stuck where he stood.
They fought for this audience. This planet, for all it’s strange stillness and plated gold, would be an excellent ally. They need to make nice with this king, they need to win his favour. Tales have been spun from either end of the galaxy of this man’s greatness, of his power, of the worship he deserves. No one will speak his name, tongue too heavy with the title.
It’s wrong, wrong, wrong. But even if they wouldn’t appreciate the allyship, they would come here, insist on an audience — they must meet the man who has millions of millions of people worshipping his very shadow.
The king slowly lifts his veil. His smile is placid, pleasant, and does not match his eyes — there’s a crookedness in his blue irises.
Lance makes a strangled choking noise once his face is revealed.
The king smirks. He takes a heavy step towards Lance.
“Hello, son of Hestia. It’s been quite some time.”
“You,” Lance snarls, and there’s so much animosity in the word Keith actually startles. He’s argued with Lance more times than he can count, and there’s no one he’s known who can spit an insult like Lance, but gods above — Lance has never sounded like he wanted to kill someone before.
“Me,” says the king, and he sounds taunting. Keith looks at Lance in confusion, but his focus is still as a corpse, entirely on the king.
Lance says nothing. He’s stiffer than Keith has ever seen anyone, muscles trembling with how hard they’re clenched. His brown eyes flash, bitter as burnt coffee grounds. The air between him and the king is thick enough to suffocate.
Lance tilts his head back. His gaze never leaves the king, but he addresses the room, the gathered guards and nobles and peoples.
“This is your king?” he says, and his voice is no louder than usual, but it rings and echoes. “A coward who ran from his own world?”
Startled gasps pile over each other, horror and offense in equal measure on every face.
“Lance,” Allura hisses. “What are you talking about?”
The king laughs. It is filled with mirth, but devoid of any warmth. Keith is reminded of an orca, laughing and cackling as it chases its prey to exhaustion.
“Is that how you speak to me after so long, Leandro? I’ve missed you. Is there no love left in your heart for me?”
Lance takes another echoing step forward. The whole court is as tense as he is. He has commanded the attention of each of them, Keith included.
He is no scared prey, fighting for his life.
“It dried up when you left me to die, πότης αίματος,” Lance spits.
Keith doesn’t recognize the word. It doesn’t even register on the translators. It’s in no language he recognizes, and by the looks of it, no one else does either.
Except for the king. The word sends a flash of anger in his eyes, so brief Keith half believes he’s imagined it, before his expression returns to insufferably smug.
“That’s no way to address me, boy.”
“Do not tell me how I will speak to you.”
The king laughs, stepping down from his throne. He approaches Lance, stops centimetres away from him, and grabs Lance’s chin before Keith can think to stop him.
“You’d think a child of Hestia would be more mild-mannered,” he coos, and Keith starts at the title.
That’s the second time he’s addressed Lance in such a way. He doesn’t know what it means.
“Quiet, like she is,” the king continues. “Soft. But you’re nothing like her, are you? Except for your eyes. Big and brown and soft, just like hers.” He trails a hand down Lance’s face as he says it, and Lance looks seconds away from biting it clean off.
Keith almost wants him to.
“But no. You take after Marcela, don’t you? That attitude had to come from somewhere — of course it comes from the filthy mortal. You’re her mirror image.”
“That’s how genetics work, dumbass,” Lance bites out. “Gods, you’ve just gotten dumber, huh?”
That wipes the smug look right off the king’s face. He tightens the hand on Lance’s face. Keith lurches forward on reflex, but as soon as he moves dozens of guards are pointing their weapons at him.
Keith grits his teeth and stays where he is.
“I will warn you again,” the king says, and the threat is clear in his voice. “You watch how to speak to me. I have given you everything you are, Lance. Everything you can do is because of me. Show some piety, or I will show you how quickly I can take it away.”
Lance spits in the king’s face.
“You have no claim over me.”
Before Keith or anyone else can move or even blink, Lance swipes the King’s feet from under him, pinning him to the ground with a bronze spear he produced from nowhere.
The guards move at once, each of them shouting, half of them keeping their weapons trained on the paladins and the other half moving towards Lance and the king.
“Lance!” Hunk shouts. “Step back! What the fuck are you doing?”
“Unhand him, paladin,” a guard orders.
Lance only laughs.
“Have you become afraid of me, προδότης? You need your whole cavalry to keep you safe, you precious thing?”
The king snarls, and snaps his fingers. In a second, a green ring of raging fire encircles him and Lance, cutting them off from the guards, who shout in alarm.
Cutting them off from the paladins.
Pidge swears.
The king moves quickly, twisting his arms under Lance’s spear and shoving him off. Lance uses the momentum to flip himself backwards, landing on his toes, weapon outstretched.
“There we go,” he taunts. “Now this I missed.”
“You are as weak as you are ungrateful,” the king hisses, encircling Lance. “After all I have done for you. After everything you learnt from me.”
“You left me to die. I learnt nothing from you that I wasn’t forced to teach myself.”
There’s real emotion in the words. A rage that can only come from a deep hurt.
The king picks up on this.
“If I took you everywhere, you would never be able to stand on your own,” he says with a sharp smile. “You’d never be able to talk, if I always spoke on your behalf. Leaving you to fend for yourself was the best thing I could have done for you.”
Lance snarls, stepping back to the very edge of the ring of fire. He swipes his spear through it, and flames lick immediately up the handle, enveloping the weapon in tongues of flickering green. Keith feels something lurch as the flames curl around brown hands.
But Lance doesn’t move. He doesn’t even flinch. The fire has burned three of the guards who’ve come too close to a crisp in seconds, but Lance is still as it dances on his skin. His lips move rapidly, voice a murmur too quiet to hear over the roar of the fire and panicked shouts of the courts. He closes his eyes, brows creased as if in pain, and when he opens them again, they glow — flickering in time with the flames.
“You have made a grave mistake,” he says, and these words are impossible to not hear. They ring throughout the court, quiet and deafening in equal measure, unlike any sound Keith has heard before.
But the voice is unmistakably Lance’s, if only tinged with a power Keith feels in his bones.
“I am not the boy you left behind.”
Lance lunges forward, and the flames explode in a flash of blinding light.
By the time Keith blinks his eyes back into working order, the room is in chaos. People are shrieking at the top of their lungs, trampling over each other in a desperate bid to escape. Most of the guards have abandoned their posts — Keith can’t blame them. The flames have made this room sweltering, and have lit the ornate tapestries are on fire. He can barely see Lance through the brightness of the flames, only flashes of a bright spear as his limbs move in a flurry of speed that’s almost inhuman.
“We have to get Lance and get out of here!” Pidge shouts over the panic, and Keith agrees.
“I’ll get the bayards!” Hunk says, just as loud as she is.
Keith nods, tilting his head at Allura. “Allura, get Blue ready to take us back! Pidge, you see if you can get word through to Coran for an emergency extraction! I’ll get Lance! Go!”
They all rush to comply, and as soon as they’re out of sight, Keith turns back to the ring of fire, squinting.
“Lance!”
Nothing. If Lance could hear him over the roar of the flames, it would be a miracle.
Keith swallows roughly. He’s going to need a miracle.
Hey, Red, he thinks, and even his thoughts are shaky. I know it’s been a while. But I could use some of your flames, girl. Your paladin is in danger.
There’s nothing, for a moment. The time stretches, but Keith pushes back his despair — he has to have faith. He hears his father’s voice in his head. Shiro’s.
Lance’s, even.
Sometimes, Akira, you just have to trust what’s up there.
Patience yields focus. You can do this, kiddo.
Black trusts you, and I do, too. Come on, Samurai. I’ll follow where you lead.
All at once, a burning feeling blazes through his mind — Red. She’s as warm as she’s always been, the terror for her paladin making her burn hot.
Go, she urges. I will keep you safe. Save my cub. He has blocked me from his mind.
Keith can’t help a wry smile. Oh, how the turntables.
Trusting Red, he rushes forward, straight through the flames. He clenches his eyes shut — trusting, but scared.
When he opens them again, the flames are behind him. In front of him is Lance, agile and quick, unleashing a constant barrage of attacks on the king. The king’s heavy robes are torn. There’s a burn, blackened an raw, on half his face. His crown has been ripped from his head, crushed to pieces beneath Lance’s heel.
Lance is worse. Keith hardly recognises him with the swelling of his face and the blood covering his skin. He is still wrapped in a blaze.
“Lance!” Keith yells.
It does nothing. Neither man looks up, although Lance stumbles. Just slightly, the smallest roll of his ankle, but it’s enough — the king snarls, grabbing the wooden end of Lance’s spear, spinning him around, and pulling him in a chokehold, pressing the blade to his neck.
“All this power and I still bring you to your knees,” the king snarls.
Keith rushes forward without another thought. He has no weapon, and the king is twice his size, but that’s Lance in danger — Keith can no more ignore it than he can ignore the breaking of his own heart.
But Lance doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even struggle. He only leans his head back, eyes turned to the sky, and starts to chant.
θεά της εστίας, εγγόνι της γης,
στρέφω τα μάτια μου στον ουρανό,
σε ικετεύω να απαντήσεις την κραυγή μου,
για τη δύναμή σου σε παρακαλώ,
για την προστασία σου σε λατρεύω,
προσφέρω τη θυσία μου και παρακαλώ για τη χάρη σου,
δώσε μου τις φλόγες σου για την κόλαση τον εχθρό μου που τοποθετώ.
It’s again in the language from before. Keith shouldn’t understand a word he says. He couldn’t translate them himself, and he already knows the translators cannot manage them.
But he doesn’t hear the words. Lance’s lips are moving, and he’s speaking, but the words don’t echo through the room, to be picked up by his ears: the words settle in his brain. There’s nothing he can do to avoid them.
Goddess of the hearth,
Grandchild of the earth,
I turn my eyes to the sky,
I beg you answer my cry,
For your strength I implore you,
For your protection I adore you,
I offer my sacrifice and beg for your grace,
Grant me your flames, to hell my enemy I place.
Lance whips his head to the side, intentionally slicing his cheek on his own blade. Blood drops down his face.
“No!” the king shouts.
The second the blood drops to the ground, the king turns to ash. The flames extinguish. Silence settles around the marble hall.
Lance’s eyes, however, still glow.
“Let’s go,” he says, picking up his spear. He twirls it once, sliding it down his back as if sheathing it, and it disappears.
Keith doesn’t move.
“Keith, we have to go,” Lance urges. “Before the guards regroup and everyone sees what happened. We have to go.”
Keith only states at him.
“Lance…?” His voice is hoarse, he can barely force out the words.
Lance’s brows crease.
“I know it’s insane. I’ll explain later. We need to go, though, okay? Now.”
Keith nods mutely, because what the hell else can he do but move forward?
“Everyone else is headed towards Blue,” he says, forcing his voice to work.
“Great. Let’s meet them.”
Lance grabs his hand — gently, Keith notes, and his hands are soft, unburned. Covered in blood, but somehow unaffected by the flames.
Lance breaks into a light jog, tugging Keith behind him.
Keith shakes his head. He follows.
