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Martyn
A year.
“No! This can’t be right! I can’t be out already!”
Maybe it was cruel.
Maybe?
Alright, I know it was.
You were the one who took him.
And look at what it cost. A war. A bloody rebellion.
Well, it was about time.
Martyn skidded to a halt where he was rushing around the cramped outpost he’d fled to when the rebellion struck the capital. The main forces who had tried to suppress the uprising were folks more aligned with the Kings newer regime, after he’d changed.
And what changed him?
Some kind of curse.
Something from the crown they’d found in explorations of the old kingdom ruins to the north, which realistically weren’t that far from where he’d ended up.
With a horse-drawn cart, paranoid and suspicious, fleeing toward the far-flung borders.
Clinging at times to a hand that he was waiting to feel turn cold.
Maybe it’d be a mercy…
And maybe Martyn had taken his oath to the crown a little too far into his heart. His long blonde hair whipped behind him as he turned again, digging frantically through crates that he’d managed to stash into his cart before he’d fled, and found one of the crates at the bottom of the pile he’d shoved frantically aside to still be faintly glowing.
He scrabbled at the wooden lid so far his fingers ached; he felt a nail break, but he ignored it. Pried the thing open to see a few more of the precious bottles. Small, thick glass bottles with rounded bases that were filled with a syrupy, glowing substance, like molten gold.
The knight hurriedly grabbed one of the bottles out, ignoring the ringing in his ears.
How long had it been since he’d eaten?
How long had it been since he stopped to drink?
How long had it been since he’d slept well, slept anywhere aside from on a thin pallet on the floor because there was only one narrow cot of a bed in this outpost, and his King needed it more.
His King, his King.
With mottled gray skin now.
Eyes closed, had been closed for so many weeks, and yet he hadn’t lost weight, hadn’t stopped drawing the sharp, hitching, rattling breaths.
His hair, once dark and rich, was also gray and thin, but that didn’t stop Martyn from yearning to run his fingers through it.
And what’s this about a Knight's vow of his heart…?
Martyn scoffed under his breath, shaking his head to himself as he stepped forward and uncorked the bottle. He carefully slipped an arm under his King's prone form, lifting his upper body enough to tilt his head forward. Carefully pressed the bottle to his lips.
Lips I’ve thought of more than I’d like to admit.
During better times.
When Martyn had been bright-eyed, and Ren, his King Ren, had been everything. Kind and generous, firm and wise, personable, lovable, a good King.
Ren had been a good King.
So what had happened?
Some damn curse.
Martyn swore it. He didn’t know where it had come from, or quite when it had hit, but he knew it had to be a curse. His King, his King, his beloved King wouldn’t have started raving like a lunatic otherwise.
Some people claimed he was sick.
Some people claimed he was finally showing his true nature.
Others declared he was at last taking power as he should, dominating as he deserved…but those were the ones who always profited.
As the King's right hand, Martyn had no choice but to bow his head as the demands grew more drastic, as the indulgences became staggering, as the monarchy began to gain more hateful glances by the day.
He could’ve left. Others had.
I couldn’t leave him.
Not then.
Not now.
Martyn was able to get a few pathetic dribbles from the bottle past Ren’s lips before it started to spill from the sides of the King's mouth. He frantically wiped up what he could, tried to save it, but some of it still dribbled off the chin with the perpetual five o’clock shadow and into the fabric of his nightshirt.
There isn’t much left.
He’d stolen a year for this medicine.
And was it the King's decree?
Stars, no. He didn’t even know I’d done it. He was to far-gone to even recognize my face, half the time.
Martyn felt his throat tightening up as he corked the bottle and set it aside. Then he looked down at the cot again.
At Ren again.
“Would you do me the honor of a dance, m’hand?”
“That would be most improper, milord.”
“Ah, but didn’t ya vow to always aim ta please me?”
“…I did, sire.”
“Then don’t break my heart this fine evening.”
“A-Agh…!”
Martyn felt a tightness rise up the back of his throat, hitching and stuttering, and he could feel himself tearing up. Held it back. Forced it down. He hadn’t allowed himself a single tear over this, not over this.
I won’t grieve him till he’s truly dead and gone!
And maybe he’d thought it would be kinder to send his beloved King there himself. And maybe, in darker moments, he’d thought he’d follow him.
But milord would be furious if I led us both into the dark like that.
His body felt exhausted. Broken. His skin was ashy and pale, his face constantly drawn with tiny aches and pains that had built and built. His stomach growled constantly, he knew he’d lost weight, and his eyes sometimes simply refused to focus.
He was tired.
So tired.
Loyal hand?
I’m a failure…and?
And what? What else was there to do? To take by torture, to tear apart a love you’d seen in ounces when you’d gone to that village.
That avian with the golden wings had looked at him, at the light mage, in a way you swore you saw for just an instant in your beloved Kings eyes, pale blue, private skies.
Stop tellin’ lies!
To give him notes and books as if that could ever be penance for how you’d hear his screams.
Sit outside that iron door and listen to every single one, force yourself to be there, to hear his agonies and the following sobs, to torment yourself.
For your choices.
Your choices.
Martyn put a knee onto the cot, and crawled in. Pulled the thin blanket up over the two of them.
Rested his head on Ren’s chest, his beloved Kings chest, now grayed and ashen, and perhaps soon Martyn would be a match if this kept up.
Only a few bottles left.
“On bent knee, to serve you with all my most willing heart, my King…” He rasped, before the tears became too much. Spilled over his cheeks and soaked the undershirt Ren had been wearing when Martyn had loaded him into the wagon. When he’d passed out during one of his maddened ramblings, but then hadn’t awoken come morning as usual.
No crown on his head jauntily tilting one of his dog-like ears.
No cape from his back, strong broad shoulders.
Just a man.
A man I love.
“…I vow.”
For the first time, Martyn fell asleep beside his beloved. Cried himself out, sobbed his lungs empty, let his tears soak the shirt, mix with the molten gold that had fallen there.
Something sparked.
Something fizzled.
But Martyn was already crying in his sleep, so he didn’t see or hear it.