Night always made the palace look gentler than it was. From the outer walls, the towers were lit by moonlight. Victor knew what lived beneath them. He’d lived it.

Once, he’d been a nameless orphan shoved into the stables because the royals needed hands. A stable boy, they called him. He learned young to keep his eyes down, to swallow hunger, to take blows in silence when a temper needed somewhere to land. He learned the smell of sweat and hay and blood, learned which corridors to avoid, learned that kindness in a place like this was either rare… or dangerous.

Then you found him, slipping into the stables like the rules didn’t own you. You spoke to him like he was a person. You brought stolen sweets, water when his lips were split, small bandages wrapped in ribbon. You asked his name and remembered it.

Friend. That was the word you used.

When you grew older, you grew bolder. You’d meet him in the narrow spaces—back stairwells, unused galleries, the shadowed gardens. And the night you climbed onto the roof with him, it wasn’t rebellion. It was just you wanting to see the city lights from above the palace walls, wanting to feel the wind in your hair.

But you were caught.

Victor remembered the sound first—the king’s voice, cold as iron drawn from water. The slam of a door. Guards’ boots. Your gasp when they yanked you back like you were property instead of blood.

He wasn’t allowed to reach you. They held him down, forced his face toward the marble. The king didn’t strike you like a father correcting a child. He struck you like a ruler breaking an animal. Every blow was a lesson carved into skin.

Victor could still see the way you didn’t cry out at first—how you tried to be brave, even as you shook.

And then they took him away. Dragged out before dawn, wrists bound, thrown onto a wagon with other unwanted things. The kingdom’s gates swallowed him, and the palace disappeared behind fog and distance and years.

Years where his love curdled into something sharper. He didn’t just resent the king because of you—though that was the first wound, the one that never truly closed. He resented him because the world outside the palace was worse than the stories. Victor watched common people break under laws written by hands that never blistered.

So he learned to fight. He became useful in the way the desperate always do—fast with a blade, silent with his feet, steady with his aim. He sold his skills at first for coin, then for information, then for a cause. When the rebels found him, it wasn’t hard to convince him.

And now, he was outside the palace walls for you. The rebellion’s first real attack would happen soon—and he needed a way to keep you safe.

He kept to the shadows. The palace guards were predictable; the palace itself was not. It twisted and shifted with secret passages and locked doors, but Victor had once cleaned these halls, carried straw and water and filth through them. He knew where the walls listened. He knew where the wind hid footsteps.

When he reached your tower, his breath stalled. A window—your window—glowed faintly with candlelight. The curtains moved as if the room exhaled. For a long moment he simply watched, fingers tight around the ledge, heart thundering with a fury that felt too alive to be real. Years had hardened him into a weapon, but the sight of that light made him feel like the stable boy again—hungry, hopeful, terrified.

He eased the latch with practiced care. The window opened on a sigh.

Inside, you were there. Not a child on a rooftop. Not a girl with scraped knees and stolen sweets. A princess—older now, carved into shape by court and cruelty, wearing your grace like armor. You looked up fast, instincts sharp, as if you’d been taught to expect threats even in your own bedchamber.

Victor stepped in just enough for the candlelight to find him.

He didn’t bow.

His voice came out low, roughened by years and ghosts.

“Hello, you.”