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“Leave me.” The words were a trembling breath on the monarch’s lips as she turned away from her knight.
The man was still wearing the blood of her former assassin across the white cape he wore. The snake had gotten close. Too close.
Sir Marshall could still see the shadow which had loomed over the empress’ bed, still feeling his body pressed to the criminal’s back as his sword ran through him. “With respect, empress, I cannot.”
“You will leave me.” Mallory sniffled, wiping her tears away frantically.
He would, the dutiful part of him wanted to.
But the part of him that loved her did not. “I will not, not until I know that you are well.”
“I am well, you fool. I am not yet dead, am I?”
You could have been killed, he thought, you could have been taken from me.
His rough hand rested upon her shoulder and she let out a sob. She was more frightened of what had nearly happened to her than she admitted.
Of course she was, he thought. Her duties demanded that she remain stoic and regal throughout the day. She faced foreign diplomats and pompous ambassadors to no end. Then there was the matter of her suitors (each of whom the knight secretly detested) and the demands by her council for her to marry. Despite Erone’s status as a hereditary matriarchy, many sceptics believed that the throne would not truly be secured until the empress was married to a man of an important political position and pregnant with the empire’s heir.
It was a shame they thought so little of the woman they entrusted to lead them. They were fools and cowards, the lot of them.
“You are not well.” The knight’s words broke the shaky silence built with the woman’s trembling breaths. “You may be able to lie to your advisors, majesty, but you cannot lie to me.”
She turned to him and looked him in the eyes. Hated that no matter how hard she tried, she could not hide from him.
Marshall’s thumb came to rest on his empress’ chin. “You were afraid. I was also afraid.”
For a moment, he had imagined his life without her. It drew a coldness into his blood unlike anything he’d ever felt.
“…but you needn’t be afraid now. He is dead. He cannot harm you.”
There would be another soon enough. In a month, in a week, a handful of days if her opponents were bold enough. They both knew that truth.
“You will tire of this eventually.” Mallory murmured. Her disputants would not end their campaign until her planet was conquered, hollowed out and made anew…with a man sitting on her throne.
At her words, the knight’s azure eyes hardened like sapphires. “I am yours to wield, your eminence, the blade with which you will defend your throne and life. If it is your wish that I should serve until my death, then it shall become my destiny.” The devotion in his words struck her deeply in a place for which she had no name. It surprised her still, even after all of these years.
Sir Marshall of the house Bikad had been one of her guardsmen since her coronation at the age of eighteen. They had attended The Eronian Military Academy together and graduated, she at sixteen and he at nineteen.
Upon her ascension to the throne, Marshall was promoted as a member of the empress’ chief security council. A week after the crowning ceremony, a disgruntled ambassador from the planet Rihri sent an envoy to negotiate a trade deal with the crown.
But she was no regular courier. The encounter had ended with Mallory nearly having her throat slit.
She remembers the edge of the blade an inch from her pulse, the sickening, wet crack of the thug’s head against the marble table as Marshall grabbed her out of her leap through the air and slammed her into the surface.
Mallory remembers the blood dripping from the edge of the table even as the medics came to collect the body.
“It was necessary,” The knight had explained.
Just as this assassin’s death had been.
It was terrifying at first, the notion that killing for her was not something which he hesitated to do for her. But now, it added a depth to his devotion that she had not considered when she was young.
Suddenly, she brought her lips to his. The kiss bloomed warmth into her stomach as his hand wrapped the small of her back, pulling her close to him by the waist.
“I will never tire of this,” he whispered against her mouth and pressed a calloused palm to the place where her heart now beat wildly “or of you. I took an oath to protect you, Mal, and I will never break it.” The moment stretched, long and passionate, hidden by shadow. The two of them were entwined with one another. Fate. Destiny. A bond by many names. In some form or another though, it seemed they would always find each other.