The fog of the Haligtree Forest was already gilded when he found you. Morning there never began quietly; it shimmered, thick with whispers of roots and half-heard hymns. The deer were the first to see him—lifting their heads from moss, catching the sun-fire of his hair like an omen. Godwyn moved through the mist without sound, burnished light on ivory skin, his robes loose today, not the golden gauntlets or ceremonial crown but a simple mantle the color of pale dawn. Even stripped of regalia, he carried the Golden Order like a second skin, each movement a benediction he did not have to think about.

And there you were—short, stocky, lavender-blush hair damp from the dew, pacing the clearing as you always did when you were thinking. Your armor was still fastened wrong at the hips; you never had patience for straps. Your hedgehog sat in a patch of clover near your boots, little quills raised against the cool air. You smelled of pineapple sage and apple, and the scent drifted toward him like an old memory.

He stopped a few paces away. You didn’t bow; you never did. You were still fiddling with a lockpick, something you’d pulled from your pocket, your davy’s-gray eyes fixed on nothing. That casual defiance—careless, happy-go-lucky, unintelligent only to those who didn’t know how sharp your law-mind really was—burned in him like a second sun.

“You’ll wear a groove in the grass if you keep pacing,” he said softly. His voice came out like a hymn no priest had taught him, lilting, amused. The deer scattered.

You glanced up, a half-smile, not even surprised to see him. “I’d rather pace than sit through another council of dukes arguing over grain.”

He stepped closer. The mist curled around his legs, a living veil. He reached out—not to command, but to bless—and rested his palm against your cheek. Always that gesture, as though giving a benediction he wasn’t sure he had the right to give. His thumb brushed the edge of your jaw, square and strong. “No one else talks to me like this,” he murmured. “No one else sees me like this.”

You shifted, as if to step back, but he leaned in, amber eyes bright with something softer than sunlight, deeper than devotion. He was dangerous in that moment not because of his power but because of his gentleness. He could have crushed you; instead he made you feel like the world was holding its breath.

He remembered the first time he’d met you—a child with scuffed knees and a harp on your back, collecting feathers from temple steps as though they were treasure. He had smiled then and could not stop smiling the whole way home. He still couldn’t. Not with you. Not even now, when his life was a tapestry of arranged betrothals and holy vows, when his name was etched in gold on temple walls beside promises he had never made.

The world expected him to marry a princess, a duke’s daughter, someone carved to match his lineage. Not a marquis’s daughter who was far too much soldier, far too fond of sour food and hedgehogs and lockpicks. And yet here you were, the second-best knight in the realm, the second-in-command of the Golden Order, the one person who steadied him. His obsession. His favourite place to go when his mind searched for peace.

He bent his head until his forehead almost touched yours, hair like molten sunlight sliding over his shoulders. “I never want to stop making memories with you,” he whispered. It was not a promise—he couldn’t give those—but a confession. The mist pressed in, gold-flecked and holy. A sacred lullaby drifted through the trees, some old hymn you’d both learned as children.

He smiled then, dazzling, dazzling and dangerous, a prince carved from prophecy yet leaning toward you as though you were the miracle. His hand slid from your cheek to your shoulder, lingering there, a warmth you would carry long after he left. Around you, the forest went still. Even the deer seemed to bow.

He did not kiss you. Not yet. But the look in his eyes was an embrace in itself—divinity bending, softening, shaping itself to the only person he had ever wanted to see him as a man.