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The May sun soft in its descent, casting amber streaks across the fields strewn with petals of wildflowers fallen from wreaths upon the heads of fair maidens, crushed under dancing feet. The festival has come to its peak after the long hours of welcoming the coming summer in the sun, laughter and music rising into a horizon painted in the colours of the wildflowers gathered to bring in the warm month.
There is something in the beauty of the fields caught between spring's end and the coming of summer, Ser Vi thinks, that reflects in the resplendence of the Princess Caitlyn of House Kiramman.
The knight stands at the edge of the revelry in quiet vigilance, clad in the midnight blue and silver of the Kirammans' guard, watching as her charge laughs, twirling effortlessly with the other maidens as they weave their celebration into the frame of the erected maypole with ribbons of silk in the same bright colours of summer blossoms weaved into Caitlyn's silken blue hair.
To say that her princess is beautiful seems to be a near blasphemous understatement. She is radiant, the kind of beauty that poets struggle to capture in ink, the kind that even songs sung by the most lovestruck of bards seem to fall short in their description of.
The scent of wildflowers and honeyed mead lays thick in the air, with the distant trill of flutes and laughter, with the celebration of surviving through another harsh winter and finding peace once again in the Sun's embrace. Petals drifting lazily on the breeze as villagers and nobles alike celebrate the season of renewal around bonfires crackled in the courtyards, around maidens dancing around towering maypoles in linen gowns of white and golden thread like the sun's rays.
But Vi can focus on none of it. Her heart can withstand the frost of the coldest blizzards and the heat of the hottest summers; it is only by the princess's hand that she can be undone.
And Caitlyn has certainly made her undone.
It is in silver armour clattering against the heavy carpets over the heir's floor; delicate fingers tracing over the raised white flesh, stark against what little unmarred skin is stretched over the taut muscle of the knight's bulky frame; breaths that quiver in Vi's lungs, the oaths that she had sworn before the Queen long ago—to protect the princess, to serve the princess, to remain at the princess's side without ever truly having her—sounding profane on her tongue with Caitlyn's soft lips mouthing hotly at the column of her throat.
Vi has always known her place. A lowborn knight has no right to yearn for a princess, and yet, her heart has never heeded the rules of class or consequence.
And neither does Caitlyn's.
Vi watches from the distance as the lilting melody beckons Caitlyn into its dance. The ribbons in her hands flutter as she moves, each step deliberate, graceful, enchanting like daylight itself, weaving between the other girls, laughter spilling from her lips like the chiming of bells. Caitlyn smiles and twirls beneath the fluttering ribbons and petals, the entire kingdom watching in adoration.
Beloved by her people; forbidden to her knight.
And yet, when she twirls mid-step, Vi sees the princess's deep sapphire eyes flicker across the festival grounds—searching. The knight is but one of the many in a faceless crowd, yearning for what has never meant to be hers, but Caitlyn finds Vi with ease, a thread of longing tethering them across the distance. Something unspoken lingers beneath the surface of the princess's irises. A promise. A defiance.
It is a dangerous thing, Vi thinks, the way Caitlyn looks at her in a crowd. The way she reaches for her in stolen glances, in lingering touches beneath the weight of silk and armour.
If Vi hungers, then Caitlyn starves.
The glance feels as though it lasts for an eternity—an eternity too short as the princess spins again, the weight of her gaze like a sword's edge against her knight's skin falling away. Vi misses it, with the same sort of masochistic yearning possessed by a general constantly throwing themselves into the gaping maw of war.
But she knows that it is she who will have the Princess's final dance that night—in the secrecy of moonlit corridors, where their only witnesses are the Lady Moon and their shadows and their own whispered confessions. There, Vi will hold her close, trace the curve of her waist, kiss away the worries that came with a crown.
They will be each other's again, Vi knows this—without the weight of crown or armour.
It is an act of love in itself, she thinks: waiting . So that is what she will do, until Caitlyn is hers again.