Chapter Text
The twin moons of Altea hung high, spilling silver light over the marble courtyards and quiet halls of the royal palace. From the highest tower, Prince Lance could see his reflection in the stained-glass windows, white hair gleaming like spun light, eyes catching the shimmer of stars. He had grown into his royal title, but some part of him still felt the weight of a boy’s longing.
It began the moment his new guard stepped through the training gates again.
Keith had changed. His stance was straighter, his movements sharper. The Galran part of him, the faint violet undertone to his skin, the soft, twitching ears that gave away what he felt even when he tried to hide it, had always marked him as different. But now he carried himself like someone who had stopped apologizing for it.
When their eyes met across the training yard, something shifted. Not just recognition, but gravity.
Lance felt it like a pull, quiet, ancient, and entirely dangerous.
---
That night, Lance couldn’t sleep. His pulse betrayed him, echoing the same rhythm that had haunted his dreams since childhood, the sound of Keith’s steady breathing beside him when they used to sneak out of lessons and hide in the gardens, pretending to be ordinary boys.
But they weren’t ordinary.
Lance was heir to the Altean throne.
Keith was sworn to protect him, not love him.
Still, love crept in anyway, in whispers, in stolen glances, in the brush of fingers that lingered too long when Keith helped him into his cloak.
---
It became their quiet ritual.
When the palace slept, the prince would slip through the hidden door behind the tapestry of the Lion of Light. Down the passage, past the armory, to the balcony overlooking the northern gardens. There, Keith would already be waiting, half-hidden in shadow, the faint glow of his Galran eyes catching the moonlight.
“Your Highness,” Keith would whisper, always with that teasing edge.
“Keith,” Lance would answer, always with that softness that made Keith’s tail flick against the floor before he could stop it.
They talked, sometimes about the stars, sometimes about duty, sometimes about how neither of them could breathe in the daylight. And when words became too heavy, silence took over. The kind that hummed between them, full of everything they weren’t allowed to say.
It wasn’t supposed to happen, that first touch.
A gloved hand brushing over skin, a startled breath, and then, stillness.
Keith’s ears flattened. “If anyone finds out—”
“They won’t,” Lance interrupted, voice trembling, but sure. “They can’t.”
And then Lance leaned forward, lips ghosting over the soft curve of Keith’s jaw, tasting starlight and danger all at once.
Keith’s claws flexed against his arm, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to remind them both of what he was. What he wasn’t allowed to be.
“I could lose everything,” Keith breathed.
“So could I,” Lance whispered. “But maybe… maybe it’s worth it.”
---
They met again. And again.
Between war councils and diplomatic banquets, they found each other, behind the armory doors, in the quiet of the training fields, in the dark corners of a palace that had forgotten how to dream.
Each touch became a promise neither dared to speak aloud;
That even if the universe demanded their loyalty, their hearts would still find each other in the spaces between duty and defiance.
Because some stars, once bound together, could never truly be pulled apart.