From the moment he laid eyes on her, he'd known what she was.
She arrived with her sister one fall evening, estranged granddaughters delivered, captive, to the old lady and her companion. Young and beautiful, with hair the color of spun gold, she was just as broken as he, twice as abandoned, and filled with a fury that belied her desperation to survive and keep her sister safe.
She's just like the others - he surmised as he watched the handover - hapless damsels that needed rescuing, with their hopeful eyes and fragile souls. He'd met so many in his lifetime - faces as fair as to seize one's heart in rapture, confessing their love, vowing that they'd leave hearth and home, would give up everything to be with him.
He'd seen through it all - their obsequiousness and lofty promises. They wanted his power, his status, the idea that he could save them from themselves. They didn't want him - a boy unfit to rule, whose only charm lay in his dubious claim to a throne no one believed he deserved.
He'd washed his hands of princesses - every last one of them. And when this one came hurtling into his life, bitter as frozen rain, he swore he'd have nothing to do with her.
Even if her face was so fair that it took his breath away.
The old lady called her liebling - sweetheart - and offered her a home and an inheritance of power and magic.
Ah, he thought, this one is luckier than most, for she is being given her heart's desire.
Instead, she turned her back on her legacy, and fought for her freedom. It gave him pause, made him wonder.
But when he observed her contempt for the old lady, who alone in the world had been kind to him, his heart - not entirely hardened as he'd thought - ignited. He challenged the princess with his title, his army and his sword, unaware in his outrage that, in spite of all his boasts to the contrary, he still possessed a hero's honor.
Unbeknownst to him, however, she - this enigma of a princess - had tricks of her own, and his underestimation of her cost him dearly. She defeated him, winning not only the fight but also his surprised and grudging admiration.
Then he retreated with his forces, perplexed that she was unlike any princess he'd ever known, eschewing luxury and entitlement, wanting only to reclaim the family she had lost. She intrigued him and, against his will, he was drawn to her, if only - he defended himself to Kraven - to watch her make shipwreck of her life.
How interesting, he mused, that she does not want to be rescued, and instead aims to save others.
He determined that therefore, she must either be extraordinarily stupid, or else unimaginably brave, and because he could not fathom the latter, he chose to believe the former.
He would discover later that he couldn't have been more wrong.
The change was so subtle, he didn't notice it in the beginning.
Heroes, he explained to Kraven, were fools. Theirs was a code of honor, with expectations and sacrifices, their reward the cloying reconciliation and riches that couldn't buy true joy.
That, he scornfully disclaimed , was not his story. Villains lived by a better code - they sold their souls for the price of fear and submission; they lived for themselves, owing nothing, needing no one.
Except each other, he vowed anew to Kraven. We are sworn brothers; we rise and fall together, and no one shall come between us. But his thoughts constantly drifted to the princess - wanting to protect her, to aid her in her mission, to simply be with her. He concluded that she was a threat to his villainhood, and so provoked her, as was his way, tearing her down to elevate himself in her eyes.
She needs to know her place; she may be a princess, but I am a king.
To his consternation, she paid him no heed, so focused was she on her quest to find her parents that she was cavalier with her own safety. They were her whole world, and while he couldn't comprehend it, he felt a hollow where his heart should have been, in the shape of a family he no longer knew. So he broke his code, and helped her, trading once more in the currency of chivalry, just to see if happiness - even if not his own - could still be found within the boundaries of a home.
And when she'd failed to find them, he wrapped his wings around her broken heart, said he was sorry, and meant it.
After, he'd ricocheted, ashamed and disgusted, swearing vengeance and making oath after oath to be wilder and wickeder than before.
The kiss was his downfall.
It was not his first, technically. After all, a prince who'd been alive for centuries - even if every one of those years was on this side of childhood - could hardly have avoided such encounters with the eligible daughters of visiting royalty.
He'd been nursing a wounded ego in his room when the princess waltzed into his sanctuary and picked a fight. Her timing, he felt, had always been unfortunate, but that day, it was positively calamitous.
They argued, and the sight of her flustered and utterly immune to his natural charm, so unlike the sycophantic palace females from his past life, spurred him to close the distance between them and - as he rationalized - silence her, thus saving himself further offense. He had high expectations of the effects of his kiss on her, had fully anticipated her stunned and awed into a blushing swoon.
But he was unprepared for the way his own body betrayed him in that instant, the way his breath rasped shallow, as if he were suffocating, and how his heart hammered inside his skin, like a bird trapped and desperate for release. His lips might have been those of a boy, but his soul was a crucible of things hungry and tender, brewing over the hundreds of years spent watching others love and leave him.
They stared at each other after, both lost for words, balanced on the brink of what might be.
Then he remembered who he was, and with those same lips made mockery of the moment and destroyed what they'd just built.
She retaliated with her fist; a thief's punishment -
- because while the kiss wasn't his first, it had been hers, and he'd had no right to claim it.
Silently lamenting his misstep and cradling his body where she'd repaid him, he turned and caught the unfocused eye of the war horse. In his distress, he imagined its look as one of spiteful amusement rather than pity, and he snapped, What are you looking at? before sending it sailing across the room in an explosion of shame. She was a princess - she was supposed to play the role inscribed in time and tradition; she was not supposed to rewrite the rules and make him the fool.
And yet, even in his wounded pride and righteous indignation, he could not bring himself to hate her for rejecting him. He was familiar with loss - oh, yes - but he felt something else that day - regret - and its newness derailed him, made him insecure and volatile. Later, he sought out Kraven and, without actually apologizing (for kings owe no such obligation, not even to a sworn brother-in-arms), sat with his hand on its mane, puzzling over what he'd done. Without words, he poured out his heart to the noble beast and, just as stoically, the war horse understood, judging neither his thoughts nor his loyalty.
There was something else as well - a feeling he couldn't name - that unsettled him far more than the success of her defence. It lodged itself deep inside him, lit his heart like a furnace, and his body, once frozen in time, began to thaw.
On and on went their delicate dance - the Trickster King and his rogue princess in an awkward pas de deux of clumsy opposites and missed cues - he, ignorant of how to earn her favor and she, unaware of how to give it. She impressed him with her love for her family, and he impressed her by choosing to be a part of it. She was not his universe - he was not yet that far fallen - but he wanted her in it, so he overturned his world, that he'd so carefully rebuilt, and made space for her. Slowly, she drew out the hero in him, the part of his psyche that believed in happily ever afters and, as heroes do, he vowed to keep her safe, even when she scoffed, I've always been my own protector; I don't need you.
He'd disagreed, calling her the names of madness and folly, but his heart had ached at her words.
He would later realize that against his better nature, he had given her the power to hurt him.
He did not know, however, that she had done the same for him.
Others watched from the sidelines: the old lady and her companion, who saw what was growing between them, and the war horse, with its unblinking eyes, who could not.
She was with him the day his father died.
And when he became King.
And in the tremulous days in between, when he was broken from battling the monster that had threatened her life and, when he stood in the gap for her, almost taken his. She'd repaid the favor by returning him to his people, unaware that they did not want him. When she finally understood, she took his hand and stood with him in his rage and pain, and together, they watched his father's body drift from them, carried away by the river and the years the boy had lost to him. When it was out of sight, taking with it his last farewell, he turned back to the city and the throne.
He was no longer a prince. He had his kingdom now, his family, and his freedom.
She tried to be happy for him, because his exile had ended, because he was no longer alone, because he was finally home.
She let him go.
He . . . could not.
Something had shifted; suddenly the beneficiary of everything his father had long kept from him, he realized that all the wealth and power in the world meant nothing without his princess. For there, on the bank of the river, she'd held his heart and heard his soul and he'd felt, for the first time in forever, truly safe. He wanted more of it, wanted to keep her alive to ensure it, wanted to give her her family just as she had given him his.
Besides, he had a war horse to which he'd sworn an oath to return, and no true warrior would dishonor that.
And so, once again, he surrendered everything, and the irony did not escape him that this time, he'd chosen a princess over his kingdom.
A/N: Gah. A whole month between updates! This fic has been the hardest one to write so far. I'd actually written the entire story before I even posted Chapter 1, but these last two chapters were so clumsy and revolting that I procrastinated forever on the editing. So powerful was my procrastination that I even wrote another entire, brand new story, which I plan to post (heaven and chocolate helping) after War Horse is done. But I do not like unfinished stories, so I put nose to grindstone and edited it, so that I could be three-quarters finished instead of just half.
This chapter has zero dialogue. It is VERY hard for me to write stories with zero dialogue. Especially chapters in which sweeping character development is occurring (one hopes) and massive changes of mind and reversals of fortune and other dramatic things are going on. The first two chapters were all about P, but this one combines P and S, and deals with all the spaces between them. So HARD without dialogue! I'm still not happy with this chapter; it doesn't feel as clean like the first two - I feel as if there are a lot of backtracking and other messy things, for instance. Someday I will probably come back and clean it up in a major way. Please feel free to review and tell me which parts grated on you, okay? I'd love to be able to fix them sooner rather than later. Thanks so much!