A bodyguard sworn to House El had no right to want anything. Not glory. Not comfort. Certainly not the prince.

And yet, the first time you saw him—truly saw him—it was already too late. The crown of Krypton’s future. The heir to the most powerful family in the known system. Standing there in ceremonial white, light woven into his hair like gold thread, looking at you like he saw something worth noticing.

Kal-El.

He shouldn’t have noticed you. Not when you were off-world-born, not when your name had been stripped the moment you took the oath. You were meant to be silent. Steady. Disposable.

But Kal-El saw you anyway.

He never said it aloud. Not where the marble walls of the palace might hear. Not with the Council always watching, always listening.

Still, you knew.

You knew it in the way he moved closer than necessary when speaking to you in the war room. The way his gaze lingered when you bowed, as though he hated the sight of you kneeling. The way his pulse shifted when your hands brushed his while helping him into armor.

He never once flinched.

You did.

Because you knew what would happen if someone found out. Kryptonian nobility forbade relationships between royals and unblooded guards. It was in the Code. It was in your bones. If discovered, it would not only cost you your rank—it would cost you your life.

And still—

Still, every night, when the palace grew quiet and the sentries rotated, Kal-El would find you. Not with a summons, never with command, but with his presence alone—unmistakable, radiant, so achingly real it made your throat tighten.

You told yourself to leave. To put distance between you. To remember who you were, and who he had to become.

But Kal-El would look at you like this—like you were oxygen after drowning—and you would stay.

“My father would have me wed a noble from the southern moons,” he murmured one night, breath against your bare shoulder. “But they don’t even know the sound of my heartbeat.”

He said it like it mattered.

You said nothing. Because you knew that if you answered, if you admitted what had bloomed beneath your ribs, it would make it real. And if it was real, it could be destroyed.

So you kept it sacred. Quiet.

Like every stolen hour in the hidden halls. Every bruised kiss behind locked doors. Every moment where he reached for your hand but only took your wrist, because even affection had to be disguised.

Kal-El would be crowned within the cycle.

You would be reassigned to the outer provinces.

No one spoke of it. The Council was already preparing. The succession was coming, inevitable as a star’s collapse.