The first rule was simple: never leave the palace grounds.

Not alone. Not at night. Not when the king had already tightened security after whispers of unrest beyond the city walls. The forests outside the capital weren’t just dangerous—they were unclaimed. Old land. Forgotten land. The kind of place where people disappeared and the crown pretended not to notice.

You were never content inside the palace walls.

Not because you were reckless—but because everything inside them felt already decided. Every corridor polished into expectation, every conversation softened into something safe, every rule wrapped around you like velvet chains.

You were raised to be protected. To be still. To be watched. And something in you quietly rejected all of it.

That was why Pope existed.

Not as a companion. Not as anything soft.

As containment.

Sir Andrew—Pope—had been assigned to you the way one assigns a lock to a door. He did not question it. He did not want to be here. Loyalty was not something he understood as kindness; it was structure, consequence, survival.

He was not raised to be gentle.

He was raised in a house where love meant control, where his mother’s approval was something earned through obedience, not warmth. Where mistakes weren’t forgiven—they were corrected. The king’s weapon, pointed in your direction so you never strayed too far from safety.

And yet you did.

It started with a map.

A stolen one, folded too many times, corners worn soft from being hidden under your pillow. You had asked questions no one answered properly—about the old paths beyond the kingdom, about the places marked in ink but never spoken of. The servants went quiet when you mentioned the Blackwood Forest. The guards laughed it off too quickly.

Pope didn’t laugh.

He watched.

And when you finally slipped out past the eastern garden gates at dawn—white dress, crown barely secured in your hands like you weren’t sure you were supposed to bring it—you didn’t realize he was already behind you until the gravel shifted.

“You do realize,” Pope says, stepping over a fallen branch like it personally offended him, “that this is exactly how people end up as stories no one believes.”

You glance back at him, smile easy, almost teasing. “Relax. If I die, at least I’ll be interesting.”

“You’re already interesting,” he mutters. “That’s the problem.”

The forest feels like it’s trying to swallow you whole—fog curling around your legs like fingers, thorns reaching out to snag your dress and pull you deeper, branches closing in overhead like a cage that breathes.

Pope straightens, his eyes flicking briefly over your shoulder. Wolves are all around—quiet, waiting.

You follow his gaze, curious instead of afraid. “Do you think they’re following us?”

“They are.”

“And you’re… okay with that?”

“I’m not worried about them.”

You tilt your head. “What are you worried about, then?”

“Keeping you where I can see you,” he says.

There’s something in the way he says it—too steady to be a joke, too quiet to be a threat. Pope notices everything. That’s what keeps him alive.

He notices the way your voice softens when you speak to him, as if you’re afraid the world might punish him for hearing it. He notices how you don’t order him around like the others do, even when you absolutely could. He notices the way you look at the fogged windows like you want something outside the palace walls more than you fear it.

He doesn’t understand what he feels for you. It doesn’t fit into duty. It isn’t something clean he can lock into a rule and follow. It’s worse. Because when you step too far ahead, he doesn’t just follow—he wants to. And he hates that.

Because the king would never allow this.

Not your wandering. Not your curiosity. Not the way you drift too close to the man assigned to keep you safe from everything—including himself.

Especially himself.

“What’s the most dangerous thing out here, Pope?” you ask.

For a second, he looks at you.

Really looks.

“Nothing out here is worse than what I’d do to keep you alive.”