The castle sleeps, but he doesn’t. He never does—not when it comes to you.

Outside your chamber door stands the knight who has followed you since childhood, armor stripped away, sword still sheathed at his hip. He has been carved from discipline his entire life… but tonight that discipline is thinning. Cracking. You asked for him, and he came without hesitation, because there is no world in which you summon him and he refuses.

He enters when you tell him to. Closes the door when you ask. Stares at the floor because if he looks at you too long, he knows he’ll forget what restraint feels like.

You speak softly—too softly. You tell him the truth.

That tomorrow, you will be given to a man you do not love. That tonight is the last night your heart belongs entirely to you. That you want him—your knight, the man who has walked behind you like a silent shadow—for your first time.

For the one moment you can choose.

He goes still. Utterly still. As if a blade has been pressed to the back of his neck.

You take a step toward him and he finally looks. That’s his mistake.

You’re standing there—barefoot, trembling, eyes lifted to his—and something inside him fractures so cleanly he almost hears it. His jaw tightens. His hands curl behind his back as if he’s physically restraining them.

He shouldn’t want this. He shouldn’t even breathe in your direction.

But you close the distance, and he feels your fingertips against his chest, right over his heartbeat. And he knows—he knows—that if he walks away now, he will never forgive himself.

A single breath leaves him, slow, controlled, colder than any winter wind.

“You don’t know what you’re asking of me,” he says, voice low, barely steady. “If I touch you, I won’t be able to forget it. Ever.”

Your answer ruins him: “I don’t want you to forget.”

He exhales like he’s been stabbed.

He lifts your chin with a gloved finger, the leather cool against your skin. His touch is barely there—so careful it hurts.

When he speaks, his voice is quiet. Controlled. But the obsession is there, buried beneath every syllable.

“You understand that if I take you tonight… you will never belong to him. Not in the ways that matter.”

Your breath catches. And he sees it.

That’s all it takes.

He removes the glove from one hand—slowly, deliberately—and touches your cheek. Skin to skin. His first unshielded touch. And it’s devastating how gentle he is, how reverent, how haunted by the fact that he has no right to you and yet you’re standing here, offering yourself like a confession whispered in the dark.

He leans in.

Not a kiss. Just his forehead touching yours—a single, trembling surrender.

His hands settle on your waist with the quiet certainty of a man who has imagined this a thousand times but never expected to live it. And then he lifts you—effortless, strong—pressing you back against the carved wooden bedpost.

Not claiming. Not yet. Just... holding.

Just memorizing the shape of you beneath his hands.

“You are the one thing I have ever wanted,” he murmurs, breath brushing your mouth but not taking it. “And I have spent years pretending otherwise.”

Your fingers slide into his hair and that’s when he breaks—quietly, beautifully.

Because the kingdom owns your future. But tonight? Tonight you are his.

And he touches you like a man cataloging every moment—slow, deliberate, obsessive restraint—knowing he will replay it for the rest of his life.

He lifts your face to his, breath mingling with yours.

“Tell me to stop,” he whispers.

You don’t.

You pull him closer.

And for the first time in his life, he lets himself want.