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The fresh air wasn’t doing much with the sickly smell of flowers over everything.
The vines crept up the walls with the rising anxiety Nom knew Scott was feeling somewhere on the other side of the venue. He should find him. He should- but he felt his throat constricting as he watched the ivy wrap tighter around the balcony balusters, and he figured two panicking grooms in the same room an hour before the ceremony- one of whom grew poison thorns when he was nervous- would probably not be very good for the structural integrity of the building, or for the people inside of it.
Nom needed space. He needed air that wasn’t filled with the floral perfume of honeysuckle.
He gripped the edge of the balustrade until his knuckles turned white, trying and failing to slow his breathing.
There were too many people back there.
It was all too much.
With shaking hands, he took the scrap of paper out of his pocket and scanned the first few lines.
Fuck.
They were as good a set of vows as he was ever going to get- Nom wasn’t much of a wordsmith, but the prose flowed smoothly enough. They were nice. They were expected.
The paper trembled between his fingers, making it even more difficult to read with his spinning vision.
“Am I, err… Am I interrupting something?”
Nom almost jumped out of his skin and turned around. Owain was standing to knightly attention in the doorway, backlit by the warm torchlight of the hallway behind him.
“Owen, I-“ Nom wiped his eyes, “Sorry, I’m-“
“Is everything alright?” He asked.
“Yes,” Nom said, far too quickly.
Owain glanced at the growing vines on the doorframe that threatened to wrap around his arm and feel their way under his armour.
“Is-Is Scott okay?” Nom stammered.
“I suggest that if you don’t want the floral arrangements to take over the entire table, you should probably try to ease your soon-to-be husband.”
Nom dug his fingernails into his palms, “I don’t think that would help anything. I’m not- I d-don’t-“
Owain’s expressionless mask stared at Nom, patiently.
Nom took a deep breath, “I… I’m not particularly at ease myself, you see.”
“Ah,” Owain said. He waited a beat, then added, “I live to serve.”
“I don’t think that I-“ Nom looked back at the paper in his hands, and sighed, “Actually, you’re probably the person I should talk to about this.”
Taking this as permission, Owain finally moved from the doorway and dutifully stepped to Nom’s side.
“What is on your mind?” He asked, when Nom didn’t speak first.
“I’m supposed to go up there,” Nom said, slowly, “And read out my vows. I’m supposed to talk about how Scott is my one and only, the center of my devotion, the person I want to spend the rest of my life with- and he is-“ Nom added quickly, “But…” he sighed, “I don’t know…”
“I see,” Owain said, “You’re thinking about your oath.”
“I was nineteen, Owen,” Nom told him, “I was barely an adult when I decided the rules that I had to stick to for the rest of my life. And I was dumb, so I chose the easy ones. I chose the ones that were expected of me,” he looked out over the tops of the houses in the kingdom, at the cornfields and gardens and all he had promised to serve. He looked at the castle, blue banners fluttering in the wind, “And I’m worried that I’m making that same mistake again.”
“Perhaps… this is a chance to amend it?” Owain suggested, “I mean, you cannot undo your defiance of the gods, but perhaps proving that you can stick to this might at least bring you some peace of mind.”
“But it’s not the fact that I broke my oath. I regret the oath I took in the first place. I regret ever taking an oath. Do I even want to stand up there and pledge my fealty to someone else? To proudly and loudly proclaim that this is who I shall be forever? What if it all goes to shit?” Nom looked down into the kingdom- lanterns glowing softly under the night sky, “I… I love Scott. I do. I don’t want to fuck this up. Not again.”
Owain seemed to think about it for a second, then said: “Well, what’s the alternative?”
“If we call it off, it would be telling Scott that I don’t want to commit. That I don’t trust him to not let me live my life, or that I don’t trust myself to stay tied down. And none of that is true. I don’t want to be fickle or loose with my morals, I stick to what I believe, that’s why I broke my oath.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I’m scared that I’m doing this because I feel like I have to.”
“Hmm…” Owain’s lion face stared blankly out at the kingdom.
“What?”
“I’m thinking,” he said.
The ivy on the wall crept slowly across the railing, a tendril loosely wrapping around Nom’s wrist.
Nom was not sure if he should pull away this time.
“You are a very interesting case, Nominal Gravy,” Owain said, “Would you really like my opinion on it?”
Nom sighed, “I think you more than anyone understands the weight that taking an oath holds. Much more than me.”
“I would like you to stop breaking things,” Owain told him, “And if never taking these vows prevents the risk of you breaking them, then perhaps it is worth hurting Scott’s feelings.”
“But it feels disingenuous,” Nom said, “I want this. Both me and Scott have lost our families, I know what it’s like to feel abandoned by the people you trusted, I want a promise that he won’t leave, and I want to assure him that I won’t either. To tell you the truth- I would also like me to stop breaking things. And maybe this would be motivation for me to keep it together.”
“Hmm.”
“I’ve… I’ve learned a lot from Scott. I used to think the only thing I was ever good at was breaking, was destruction. It was all I was raised to do. But… the years I’ve spent with Scott has taught me to be soft, to be kind. That I’m good at other things- like music, and farkle. And that’s why this is such a hard decision. Because now I see options other than things just ending in shattered pieces.”
“And how much trust do you have in that hope?”
“Trust…?” Nom asked, “I guess that’s the question. I once told 4C that trust is like a big game of farkle. It’s a gamble. I can’t know if it will pay off… Owen, what will happen if I take these vows, and I can’t keep them?”
Owain peered over Nom’s shoulder and red the page of scrawled prose, “What? You mean if you-“
“I’m not gonna cheat or anything,” Nom added, quickly, “I’d never do that, but… Scott and I have had our ups and downs. We’ve fought, I’ve reacted badly. I just… what will the weight of these vows hanging over me do to me? To our relationship?”
“You’ve worked through those issues in the past, I fully believe you can work through them again,” Owain told him.
Nom smiled, “Thanks, man.”
“Look, I honestly think you’ve talked yourself into it. You claim that your problem was that you didn’t think through your knightly oath, correct? But you seem to have thought this through pretty thoroughly. You’ve learned, since you took your oath, that you’d much prefer to follow your internal morals than the expectations of the kingdom, which is why you and Scott waited until you were sure you were ready for it to go through with this wedding. You’ve learned that you have trauma responses relating to oaths and monarchs, and how that’s affected your relationship with Scott. You’ve learned you can bounce back from those arguments, that your love and your trust of each other runs deeper than that. And you’ve learned that you just might not mess something up for once. That fear that you might be repeating the same mistakes as nineteen-year-old Nominal just shows that you’ve grown. And I think that means you most likely won’t anymore.”
“But on the off-chance that I do-“
“You are fully capable of upholding the vows of marriage, but if having that tie to Scott is too traumatic for you, then- since this is a binding ritual of arcane origin- you will have the Mage God to answer to. And I can’t pay your penance for you there.”
“Is that bad?”
“Marriage oaths are designed to be sworn by the commonfolk. They are not meant to be for those as strong-willed as a knight. The punishment for cutting those bonds would be… lenient.”
“Oh.”
“It’s entrapment that you fear, isn’t it? Feeling like you can’t escape without your dignity?”
“I guess… yeah. Because it’s not about Scott. I trust Scott more than anyone- I couldn’t feel safer going into this than I do, it’s just…”
“I will reiterate that I do not doubt for a second that you can do this for him,” Owain said, “But if it keeps you strong, I promise that I will do everything I can to alleviate any consequences on the small chance that the worst comes to the worst.”
“I… thank you, Owen.”
“It’s my duty. I believe this marriage will be good for the kingdom.“
“Heartwarming,” Nom said, flatly.
“Sorry, I just- You and Scott work well as a team, and I want to see you prosper.”
“Well you’ve given me a lot to think about,” Nom tapped the paper. Something still wasn’t right, “Hey- do you have a pen?”
Owain fished through his belt and pulled out a quill and a small travel-sized pot of ink.
Nom paused, then turned the paper over and began to write.
“I shall go and see to the guests,” Owain told him. He paused at the doorframe, “Look at that,” he remarked, twirling his finger around one of the vines, which had now stopped growing unnaturally, “4CVIT must’ve found Scott,” He turned to Nom, “I… do you still need time?”
“Just gimme a sec to get this down.”
“Alright then.”
As he disappeared into the hallway light, Nom tapped the quill against his chin in thought, then began to write.