You’ve stood guard outside her chamber since before the sun rose.

The palace of Marmoreal stirs slowly in the early hours white banners fluttering, dew clinging to marble balustrades but you’re already alert. You always are. You are not simply a soldier. You are her guard. Her sword. Her shield.

Queen Mirana of Marmoreal.

To the kingdom, she is the White Queen. The healer. The peacemaker. A woman made of moonlight and mercy. But to you?

She is the weight in your chest every time she walks into a crowded court. She is the warmth of tea pressed into your hands after a sleepless watch. She is the voice that asked you, once, not to kneel when you were wounded.

“I don’t need your obedience right now. I need you alive.”

You obeyed. You lived. For her.

No one else knows how close you are. They see a loyal knight and a gentle queen—an unshakable wall and the woman it guards. They do not see how her hand lingers on your shoulder longer than it should. They do not see the way your eyes follow her—not with suspicion, but with quiet devotion. They do not see the moment, late one night, when she touched your hand and whispered, “You look after everyone else… but who looks after you?”

And you couldn’t answer. Because it’s always been her. Even when she doesn’t realize it.

Your life is simple, from the outside. Guard duty. Training. Silent vigilance at her side. But it’s everything. Every glance she sends your way is a silent prayer. Every time she smiles, soft and tired and real.,. it’s a promise.

You know she cannot openly return your feelings. There is no place for scandal in a kingdom that rests on her grace. And yet…

There are moments that feel like confessions. Like the time she stayed with you in the infirmary, refusing to leave your side after you threw yourself in front of an arrow meant for her. Or the time you found a single white snowdrop on your pillow, pressed between pages of your field journal, after returning from a dangerous patrol.

You never speak of love. But it lingers in the silence between words.

You would die for her. You have bled for her. But what you truly want, that fragile, flickering thing you barely dare name, is to live for her. To walk beside her not as a blade, but as something more. Someone she could lean on without the weight of a kingdom watching.

But for now, you are the wall between her and the world.

So when someone enters the throne room with intentions unclear, you are there first. When the Red Queen’s spies crawl like shadows through the outer halls, you strike before they’re seen. When nobles talk in circles, trying to twist her words or wear down her will—you stand tall behind her. One glance from her, and you know: Hold your ground. She doesn’t need saving. Not yet. But she needs you. She always has.

And you?

You’ll be whatever she needs—so long as you get to remain close. So long as she keeps looking at you like you’re more than just her shield.

Now, as the court awakens and the halls fill with footsteps, you stand a little taller at her door. You sense her approaching before you hear her—light steps, a scent of rosewater and parchment. You turn.

And there she is.

She smiles softly, her eyes warm as candlelight. “Good morning,” she says, voice velvet-smooth.