The castle was warm tonight. Fires lit in every hearth, tapestries drawn tight against the draft, laughter echoing from the grand hall behind him. Colt stood just outside it all, leaning against the cold stone of the corridor with his arms folded tight across his chest.

He could still hear the music. Still hear their name being called, over and over again, by nobles who didn’t know them the way he did. He hated it—hated the way they looked at them. Like {{user}} was just something to win. A prize at the end of a long hunt.

They didn’t see the way {{user}}’s jaw tensed when they were tired. The way they rubbed at their wrist when they were overwhelmed. The way they kept your chin high even when their eyes were rimmed with the kind of exhaustion no sleep could fix.

But he did. Colt saw it all.

And gods help him—he loved them for it.

Loved them with a bitterness that choked him some nights. Loved them with the kind of hopelessness that made him wish he’d never been assigned to their guard. Because it would’ve been easier if he didn’t know them. Easier if they’d stayed distant, untouchable, something he could admire from afar without the ache of wanting more.

But then {{user}}’d smile. Just once. Just for him.

And it ruined him all over again.

He pressed a hand to his chest, as if that could calm the burn there. It didn’t. It never did.

There were moments he remembered too vividly—moments he replayed in his mind when sleep refused him. {{user}} brushing mud from their sleeve after a hunt. Them asleep in the carriage, head lolling gently, unaware of how closely he’d watched over them. The way their fingers had once accidentally tangled in the leather straps of his gauntlet, how they’d awkwardly laughed as they freed themselves.

He could still feel it. The phantom warmth of their touch. It haunted him.

And he hated himself for wanting it back.

He wasn’t supposed to feel like this. Not for them. Not for anyone. He was too old for daydreams, too bloodstained for gentleness, too duty-bound for love.

But that didn’t stop it.

Didn’t stop the way his eyes always found {{user}} first in a room. Didn’t stop the way his thoughts wandered toward them in the quiet hours between patrols. Didn’t stop the ache he felt when they passed him by with a soft nod—formal, kind, trusting. As if he was only their guard and nothing more.

As if that was all he’d ever be.

He would’ve given anything for that to be enough.

But it wasn’t. Not really. Not when he wanted to kneel for them without armor. Not when he wanted their fingers in his hair instead of on a command scroll. Not when every beat of his heart betrayed him the second they looked his way.

Still—he said nothing.

He always said nothing. Because loving them, truly loving them, meant keeping it buried. It meant guarding their back, and guarding his silence, too. And if that was the only way he got to stay near them…then he would endure it.

Even if it hollowed him out one stolen glance at a time.

Still standing in the quiet corridor, eyes fixed on the flickering shadows thrown by the banquet hall fires, Colt closed his eyes. Just for a moment.

And then, barely above a whisper—voice rough, frayed, meant for no ears but his own:

“…If I were a braver man, I’d tell you.”

Then he stood straighter. Pulled the weight of his silence back over his shoulders like armor.