#thrain

"Tell me. If I told you that i had the power to bring any wish of yours to being… what would you ask for?"

It was one silly question you had once came across in some old fable tucked into one among the countless scrolls arranged in the grand library of the castle. One that, while lacked any reasonable value in normal times, was a little indulgence you allowed yourself to toy with.

Since you're first spoken words, as one of the crowned, you were taught that to each question is an answer. And so, you asked.

You had addressed it first to your governess out of innocent curiosity, back when you were too young to attend the court and the serious matters yet. You remember her hands being busy, probably doing your hair or adjusting the lace of you dress. She had smiled faintly at you through the mirror, pretending to think for a moment.

"My husband is a bit sick. Perhaps I'd wish for him to find his health and youth once more. I love him more than anything else."

You had nodded at the time, somewhat satisfied with the reply, taking it into account.

Later that day, you had asked to meet your father, if only for a moment.

"A wish… yes? Well, perhaps one isn't enough… but it would be either the prosperity of our kingdom, or the happiness of my very beautiful, my oh-so-precious daughter." He had answered with the warmest of smiles.

The contrast between his and the governess' had your lips pursing until the tiniest of pouts, an expression steaming from confusion more than anything else.

The third time you had asked was to the daughter of the countess that came once or twice each week to keep you company.

"A wish? Well… hm… I have read in a book or my sister's about flying horses. The idea is fascinating, don't you think? I would wish for one!" She had replied in a very cheerful tone.

You had spent the next week or so tipping this question around the corners of the castle. The cooks, the maids, the guards, the gardeners, even managed to catch the physician on her break. And each time you had asked, you got one more reply that matched its peers in nothing.

Some wished for their own, while others wished for their surroundings. Some were good, some sounded a bit selfish, maybe even vain. Some were fantasy, some were necessary…

But never had you found the same reply twice.

It was around that young age when you had built this habit of yours.

So even years later as you grew in height and might, it lingered in your mind.

You had once asked your lady in waiting. She smiled and confessed being charmed by another noble, and that her wish would simply be the approval and blessing of both their families.

You had once snuck out of the palace without notice for a little walk in the street market, ending up into a tavern, sitting face to face with the girl behind the counter. She looked around your age, with her own fair share of beauty in her smile and a crinkle in her eyes. Pushing your order to you, she had grinned.

"Perhaps a pair of arms strong 'nough to deal with all the grim and scum i have walkin' in here night after night."

The question was a river: it was impossible to dip your fingertips in it hoping to touch the same water twice. Some answers could appear as rather close, but its never the exact same.

So, whats your wish?

For the longest of times, you didn't know.

You had a loving father. A late mother you didn't really long to know. Being a princess came with more riches than you could ever ask for, and there wasn't any fantasy that had your heart would specifically yearning for.

And so, you had made peace with the realization that only time would bring in a proper wish for you to hold on.

Time. A really impredictible concept. It could heal just as it could harm. It could break, and it could mend. It could forge, and it could chip away at one's self bit by bit.

And for you, ut was the latter. As the weight of the crown settled on your head, and by the times where you had grown enough to earn a seat among the court and a voices for you to speak and be heard, you had found yourself changed.

Of course you had. Thus was the human nature. You knew this much as well.

But knowing and living rarely feels the same.

Time, being what it is, had forged you.

Forged you into a young lady full of life and virtue. The kingdom's pride and hope. It had raised you smart enough to carve yourself a reputation from your first hearing in the court. It had taught you enough eloquence to to present your foes poison with the gentleness and hospitality of one offering honey instead. It had made you into everything a princess -a queen- should be: just as dangerous as beautiful, twice as sharp as she was charming.

But despite being your best mentor, Time could hardly bothered itself being gentle enough to be called for such kindness. After all, it had broken so much in you.

One must suffer at the hands of time, for they are the marble to be sculpted by its hands.

And so, time being what it is, had broken pieces of you.

It had taken away some of the light from your eyes. It had burdened your shoulders with so much knowledge and ruthlessness for a crown you had never asked for. It had caged your bust into corsets that often restricted twice as much as you were comfortable with. It had forced a smile on your face under the name of grace in the face of the outrageous nonsense of the court. It had painted a mask over your features. A mask they referred to as "her highness".

And it only got worse by the days.

Your father, the king…

He was a fair ruler, the most thoughtful of them all. Or so you believed. Day by day by his side, you started to find out that time had done its work on him years before you came. The "caring father" was but his own mask in your presence, a tool he used to raise you into his legacy. He easily traded it for a more royal mask whenever a third person walked into the room. This later was colder, more calculated, less human than the child you once had been could have ever fathomed.

Time had taught you that he was a king before ever being your father.

You shouldn't have been surprised, really. He never lied to you about it, after all. Since the day you had asked.

'The prosperity of his kingdom, or your happiness.'

You only realized that his choice had long been made, much to your sorrow. Or perhaps you too had realized it, but refused to acknowledge it.

From the day he had taken the throne, he had made for himself more than one name:

King Irmin.

The Vinster King.

And the mist recent of them all: the Mad King.

For a reason you couldnt quite name, you felt a sense of obligation to stand by his side through it all, defending him tooth and nail with each outrageous decision he made. Because he was a king, and you were but a princess.

A chip on his table to bargain.

You never decided which among the crown or time is to be blamed for this. But in either case, Time did its thing in both ways, then a third.

It had finally given you an answer to your old question.

Your wish…

"You haven't been to the court today." Your father's voice cut through the thick silence of the dinning hall.

You were sitting at the very end of the table, feeling like he was at an eternity's reach across from you.

"I had been invited to the duchess's tea party. Declining would have been a shame, given our bond with her." You replied with a tone just as icy as his own.

Whoever had said that the apple doesn't fall far from the tea should have been a wise of their time.

You didn't like this. Not the setting. Not the moment. Not the sight of him anymore. You had grown to dread the times when his forehead creased in the manner it did now: not really a frown, but something more akin to a look of deep contemplation that often came with more bad than good.

As if that wasn't enough, he had went as far as to summon you to the dinner hall when you had stopped sharing meals with him years ago.

The last time that had happened had you on your nerves of days on end.

"The western borders are finally settling down. The war that had been ravaging the land seems to be finally dying down." He kept talking even when unsolicited.

"So I have heard." You replied noncommittally. He had no reason to be telling you this. This matter had been brought up two days prior in the court when you were present.

"We are on the way to sign a treaty with them." He picked on a piece of meat from his place, not even looking at you. "Its evolving rather smoothly into an alliance."

You didn't reply immediately, but when you did, your voice was so quiet in a way that made the air in the vast room freeze. "I am well aware of the progression. And I am just as aware that I wasn't consulted about the matters of this war since it had begun." You marked a pause. "Is there anything you wish to inform me about, Father?"

He still didn't lift his gaze to look at you, talking with unnerving casualness. "Ah, yes. Simply that we had agreed for you to be wed to the Viscount from their closest province."

You had to stop at the end of his sentence, nearly doubting your ears. "Yes?"

He reached for his cup of wine, reveling in its taste as if he hadn't just shake your entire composure from its core.

"I am… To be what? What is going on, Father?" Your expression grew harder.

"The domain of Alberich is probably the one who took the biggest damages over the years. While discussing it, I would have wished to have better options. But the heirs to their kingdom's crown are all ladies, and their Duchery is still without offspring." He explained. As if that justified any of it.

"Viscount Alberich." You repeated, hoping that you had heard him wrong. The name came with more than a few bad connotations from rumors and reputation.

"He is the best suitor among the available men of status." He confirmed.

"I don't recall ever accepting any suitors." You replied, unable to hide the edge in your voice.

He finally looked up at you. "Well, I suppose now you do."

"Father-"

"Yes, Princess?" The title rolled off his tongue disgustingly heavy. It was something he did whenever you lost your bearings, a twisted reminder of how much power you lack, of how your words, as sharp as they could ever be, barely hold a candle to the weight of his verdicts.

You fell silent, but only for a moment. "When will I be shipped off, then?"

He smiled, and it looked horribly twisted. The kind of curves painted black and red on the murals of the cathedrals you've been to whenever they depicted the devil and its foul embodiment. "Come on, now. Don't use such crude language about your precious self, my dear."

You didn't reply, fearing that two more words would only tear the veil of decency you wore to let the profanities piled up in your chest spill free. "Correct me if I am wrong, then."

He didn't.

You waited.

He didn't.

You stood up.

He still didn't speak.

You turned around.

He looked down back to his plate, his fork already picking at the next piece of meat he had set his eyes on.

You walked to the door, abandoning your barely-touched plate.

"It was a delight to see you this evening, Your highness." You breathed out the title with just as much gravity as he did with your own, the closest thing to a riot you were allowed, before pushing the doors open.

The heavy wood slammed shut behind you with a loud thud.

You didn't look back. Not once. Not twice.

Time was a master at his craft. It had made sure to crush every piece of authenticity you held to yourself.

How cruel could it get?

You didn't even glance at the shadow that stood next to the door, rushing past it as if walking away from the hall would suffice to shield you from your own father's madness.

You shut your mouth, shut your mind with it, and ran.

It was unbefitting of a princess, unbefitting of a queen, unbefitting of everything you should have been. And that exactly was the reason why you did it. You ran down the halls mapped out in your memory the same way lines across your palm were. It was quite the walk to your chambers, one you stepped in without much sense in your heart.

The heels you wore were not made for such graceless strut, so it broke under the weight of your hurt not even halfway through. You cursed under your breath, bracing yourself against a wall as you kicked off one sole, then the other.

Damn it all. Damn it all to the deepest pits of hell!

You didn't care for the horrified glances of the guards you ran by, nor for those of the few maids that crossed your path. You didn't stop to care for it, not until you reached the door of your room.

It was about time for you to finally look at the truths you so diligently pushed down your throat for years now.

'What difference is there between the cuffs of a slave, and the crown of a queen? Nothing other than the nature of its steel.'

You slumped down against the door, the layers of mesh and silk pooling by your feet as you brought your hands to your face.

Something in you still foolishly hoped that this was nothing more than a very unfortunate dream. But the way your heart lurched so painfully inside of your ribcage was enough proof of the veracity of the moment.

The Viscount.

THE Alberich.

A man twice your age. A scum like none that you had ever met before. You had read through all sort of reports about him in the years if war.

A man with more matter in the midriff than in the head.

A man with so much power, yet barely any humanity to rein it. A reputation that reeked of every vice a man could ever have.

And your father decided that you were to be wed to him without the least consultation on your side. Even worse, he did not mind handing you overnight to a man twice as low in title as you were.

You were so lost in a dark corner of your mind that you hadn't felt the tear that rolled down your cheeks, nor the knock that preceded the door being pushed open.

Only when you heard a metallic click did you lift your head. Your gaze fell on the shoes first, the treacherous pair that had failed your moment of impulse set by your feet. Then it traveled up the armored hand that had brought them.

Your heart gave another even worse squeeze in your chest when your eyes dove into the hollowness beneath his helmet. You hated yourself for it the most.

He didn't say anything. Not immediately. He quietly moved to kneel by your side.

"By what right does a Knight invade his princess' chambers?" You tried to muster a frown and an edge to your voice, and maybe it could have been believed … only if it didn't crack on the last two words.

"By all obligation and duty when she looks so distressed." He replied, still kneeling.

You didn't reply. Your tongue felt too heavy to find any words or attitude to fake in your state.

"You should leave at once." You muttered, head falling on your crossed hands, knees against your chest.

"You know well I wont, My lady." He replied.

His Lady. Not princess, not highness. Just a lady. It was you who had asked him to forsake the heavy titles, sure. But it still held so much more comfort than it should have.

"You rushed out of the dinning hall without a word." He continued. "I barely-"

Your sob cut him off. He immediately fell silent.

"My apologies. I should-" a hiccup punctuated your words. "I shouldn't be losing composure over this-"

But you did. You told him. Told him about the marriage, about the man you were to be wedded to, about the implications of his cruelty stretching to your life. This was who he was to you.

Capitano. Your personal knight. Your closest confident. A man you trusted with your life day and night.

You had known him for so long, not by face, but by heart.

It had all started when back in your first week at the court. A poorly done assassination attempt had your father assigning him to be your shadow and protector. Capitano had sworn loyalty to the crown in front of the entire palace, but as he escorted you back to your chambers later that night, he had knelt in front of you unsolicited and swore allegiance to you, by name instead of title.

You didn't see what expression he had beneath the steel of his helmet, even less of a reason for him to put on such a show for you alone. You had suspected him to be one of your father's lap dogs, to be a cage to imprison you before it protected you from anything.

But Time was a funny thing. It had proved you wrong on this too.

Day by day, week by week, you had learned bits and pieces about him. Words unsaid between evening strolls and tea-times, the kind that quietly arranged itself into paragraphs over the months to become a revelation that came without fanfare. He was a fierce soul wrapped in a gentleness that was rare to find somewhere as corrupted as the golden cage you lived in.

And Time was just as cruel as it was funny. It made you regret it too.

Because paragraph after paragraph, the silence between the two of you had crumbled and changed into something that better remained unnamed.

Something like this moment where he would patiently kneel when you broke apart. Something about the way he would pick the pieces of your burdened heart and thread them back together with the sound of his voice and reassurance. Something that should have been too wrong to be between a princess and a commoner, between a future queen and a soldier, but something that was allowed to grow nonetheless.

Neither of you had acknowledged it. Not then, not now. And you were content with it the way it was…

That is, until the fatal news of a marriage came to shake you to the core.

"I've given everything I had to this place. My youth, my life, my time, every single breath I have ever taken!" You looked at him. "So why? Tell me why, Capitano? Why does this palace only keep asking for more? Does its greed know no bound?"

"I fear that other than to blame it on the greed of men, I wouldn't know an answer." He replied, voice low, quiet in a way that was strangely anchoring.

"I've never asked for any of this. I have never wished for any of it…" You muttered.

Under the metal, his face contorted into a strain. Something in the way you had said it felt like a blade sliding between his ribs and prodding at his lungs.

"Capitano… I tried. Archons know I did try with my all…" your voice only got quieter. "But it seems that even my best wasn't enough…"

You had said something more after that. It didn't make much sense in your haze, but he still remained kneeling besides you through it all.

Capitano was a soldier, a man of discipline and steel. A man of principles. But also a man with a heart. A treacherous thing with feelings that hardly followed his reason. It loved the sound of your voice and the rhythm of your words. But much as he adored listening to you on the most normal of days, he hated whenever your voice wavered, even more so when it was for things he couldnt shield you from.

Just like now. Every raw sob that tore from the depth of your chest felt like a pain in his own, worse than any wound he had ever gotten.

If it were a foe that aimed harmed at you, he would have disposed of them before you even learned of the threat.

If it were a noble picking on you, he'd simply stand behind you looking like a storm contained in an Armor, It would be enough to drive them away.

If it were a whim of yours, he would have bent to it before you found the words to ask him.

If ut were the moon you asked for, he would pick it for you to adorn your fingers with.

If it were the oceans, he would have spent a lifetime bottling them for a smile of yours.

But it was your heart breaking. It was the most precious thing to ever grace existence that bled through his fingers. It was the thing he cherished the most, so much that he stifled his own feelings for you to protect.

But even with that, you still were hurting.

"My lady." He gently called out. "Please, allow me a word or two."

You lifted your head to look at him, eyes slightly puffy.

"It is none of your fault of the world had failed you." He stood, stepping back, much to your confusion.

"If a flower is trampled, do we blame it for growing on its soil, or do we blame the careless trespasser?" He moved to one of the windows to draw its curtains shut.

"If a cup if pushed to its shatter, do we blame it for breaking, or do we blame the clumsiness that caused its fall?" He moved to the second pair of curtains and did the same.

"If a sword is made out of wood only to break on its first strike, do we blame it, or blame the one who made it with something lesser than steel?" He drew the last curtains shut, effectively dimming the room. You could only discern the outline of his armor with the candle light catching on its edges.

He moved back to kneeling in front of you, holding the last source of light in the blacked-out room.

"You always had a peculiar question you asked." He continued. "I never understood why until now, so allow me to ask it back."

He held the candle out to you. "If I told you i had the power to turn your wish into becoming, what would you ask for?"

You blinked once, then twice, taken aback.

"The question itself is pointless. Wishes are just that: dreams that collapse under their own weight, wishful yearning for something that could hardly ever be." You replied, your words hitting the dancing flame like a tired breeze.

"Perhaps. I am but a man, after all. I may have no miracle to offer, but I have my word to give." He marked a small pause. "I had once pledged my loyalty to you alone, and I stand by my word. So whatever it is that you wish for, my lady, is my duty to abide by."

Your heart swelled at his words, and you felt another new wave of tears pick at the back of your neck.

Because right, Time toys with irony the same way it toys with souls. You smiled faintly, weakly.

"Then allow me to be selfish for this once." You replied, your eyes shifting from the dancing light in his eyes to that of the candle. "I wish for a normal life. Far away from here. Far from the crown. Far from the poisons and the hidden daggers. Far from the court and it's sickening rot. Far from my father. Far from the war and its spoils."

You gently blew on the candle, repeating it once more. "I wish to leave it all, Thrain."

The room was instantly drowned into darkness.

You felt him put the candle and uts holder away, and soon heard the sound of metal clicking against the velvety carpet bellow.

By your wish, he finally found the courage and permission to act. He had discarded his metallic gauntlets and helmet. His hand found yours, the calloused pads of his fingers hooking under your soft ones to bring the back of your hand up in a gentlemanly fashion.

"Then allow me…" you felt his lips softly landing on your knuckles before whispering his next words against it. "…To renew my oath to you. Not as the princess. Not as the queen. But as Y/N."

Because if it was for you, there was little he wasn't willing to do.

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