This was treason.

Not in the sense that the court would prosecute a criminal but in the quiet, marrow-deep betrayal of everything he had sworn to be.

A knight should not desire.

A commoner should dare not imagine a future with the arms of a royalty.

He knows that he’s someone born from a lowly family, residing near the farthest parts of the poorest village; in the Northern part of the empire where the nobility dare not step in lest they wish sickness and suffering.

He remembers the frost that clung so vividly to his childhood home like a dying man’s grip, remembers hunger so deep it gnawed on his bones, the wind howling through rotted shutters as if to remind him of his place in this world.

And now that he clawed his way into becoming the man he was — into the royal guard through mud and blood; a mongrel granted polished steel and a post at the palace’s gates.

It should have been enough.

It should have been everything.

And yet, he allowed himself — his heart to commit such treachery.

That gaze was strangely unsettling, unnerving. It looked at him. No, through him, as if he was more than who he was.

As if you knew him more than he knew himself.

He remembers the first time he caught that lingering gaze. It felt like candlelight in a darkened room, warm and beckoning, and so strangely human that he could scarcely breathe. He remembers the faint smile on that face. A smile not meant to be diplomatic and calculative for courtiers and foreign dignitaries, but a smile so small and real that it feels devastatingly familiar.

He knows that was the moment he should have killed his own feelings.

It had taken root in him instead, violently and perpetually, akin to a stubborn weed that flourished in every unguarded moment.

It grew in the quiet corridors where he watched your silhouette drift past in the hush before dawn, the hem of royal robes whispering secrets across polished stone. It thrived in the practice yard, where he could sense your gaze lingering on him from the gallery, so gentle it made his chest unbearably warm. And it unfurled in the dark, in the solitude of his narrow quarters, where he pressed a trembling hand over his heart and cursed it for betraying him.

Still, he had done nothing to tear it out by the roots.

Was he such a hopeless man who yearns to believe he could be seen? That he was not any man who served as a blade for the empire, but a soul worthy of being remembered?

But may God help him for even he, himself, cannot afford that hope he longs for.

“We can't be together, your highness.” He turned his head. If he looked furthermore, he would be in ruins. “It's late. You must return to your room.”

Your gaze was heavy, full of emotions that he cannot afford to decipher. There you stood again — standing so closely the lantern gilded the softness of your expression.

He watches you remain.

His hand twitched, aching to reach for yours. To trace the curves of your face, to memorize every line, to brand the memory on his palms so he would never be able to forget what it felt like to cherish something so special.

Instead, he takes a step back. And another.

Then, he speaks:

“I am nothing compared to your highness.” He confesses, a painstaking truth and prayer. He hates how his voice broke. “You are what this empire covets, a future ruler that will lead thousands of people. If you keep looking at me like that — I don't think I’d be able to turn you away.”

Please, leave.