I think this is the closest thing this site has to a DW-style 'personal journal' option right now, so... tah-dah.
Fiction: Original Fealty Kink Thing, F/M, 2K Words
(I wrote this for the write_now community, but I thought I might as well crosspost it as a sort of test of how posting to Imzy works. I may or may not stick it up on AO3 eventually, depending on whether I still like it in a day or two.)
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Lately, Lelia had taken to smearing goldcoil venom on her food. Not much, never more than a drop or two added to the skin of the fresh sweet yams or soaked into the still-warm bread, but it was more than enough to leave her panting and sweating for hours after and to drive Liv absolutely insane with worry.
His sense of decorum kept him quiet far longer than it should have--a week and a half of watching her suffer and sob after every meal she took--but finally he could bear no more of watching his chosen master suffer. When he delivered her meal, he watched her retrieve the small silver bottle, watched her gently pull the key to unlock its cap from within the voluminous folds of her robe--and then seized her hand before she could bring one to the other.
For a moment, there was only silence between them. Liv's heart was pounding with the impropriety of what he was doing and with the feel of her smooth wrist under his calloused fingers. In an instant, she could call the guards and have him thrown from her quarters and beheaded in the street; he would more than deserve it for touching her without permission.
Finally, Lelia turned to stare up at him. Her mouth was curved in a harsh line, Blessedly she looked more confused than outright furious with him. "Liv?" she asked.
There was a second in which he wished for nothing more than a chance to rewind the seconds: unhand her, return to his post, and pretend that he had never dared do something so foolish in the first place. But the thought--the memory--of her suffering drove him onward. "I believe," he said, as quiet and humble as he could make himself sound, "that when one is nearly killed by a deadly venom, one generally tries to avoid contact with it rather than imbibing it at every possible opportunity."
Liv had expected anger at his words, or perhaps a dismissal; she was hardly obligated to listen to what he said. Instead, though, his master's gaze dropped to the floor and she pulled in on herself as though she wanted nothing more to disappear entirely. "Ah. I apologize, I wasn't thinking. I shouldn't have done this in front of you."
"What? No!" The words slipped, unbidden and far too informal, from his mouth. If she was going to be downing strange toxins, she had better do it in front of him, where he could at least make sure she was not about to die from her efforts. "Please, that's not what I mean." He huffed out a frustrated sigh. He'd served great rulers and cruel warlords alike without a single misstep, and it was this young woman of all people who was causing him to twist his words. "I only--you know that this is what I am here for, right? You do not need to fear that venom so long as I am with you."
It was one of his many duties: guard the young empress from attack on the streets, watch her in her lessons to make sure her teachers held no secret grudge against her, taste her food before he brought it to her to be sure it held no unfortunate surprises.
(Unfortunate surprises like goldcoil venom, as it had only barely a month ago. Those had been an unpleasant few days, caught straining in the grip of a toxin that would have killed any being less magically-strengthened than him (would have killed his Empress, had she tasted it), but he had survived.)
Far from comforting her, his words seemed to distress Lelia worse. She twisted in his grasp to glare up at him, her face contorted in a snarl. "You nearly died, Liv!"
"I..." He didn't know what to say to that. It was truth, but it was also not something particularly worth mentioning. He'd nearly died a thousand times before in the service of his masters, and none of them had reacted by ritually poisoning themselves. "Is there something you would like me to do differently? I can watch the servants prepare your food, if that would help."
Perhaps she was worried he would let something slip past him, or that he wouldn't feel the effects of the next poison until she'd already eaten the meal. It stung, to know she didn't trust him, but it was only to be expected after he'd shown such weakness against the venom.
"That's not it," Lelia said. Her voice was barely a sigh and her eyes looked oddly glossy. "I don't want you testing my food at all, Liv."
He hissed. The words hit him like a cavalry's charge; it was all he could do not to fall to his knees under their weight. He didn't realize he had tightened his grip until he felt Lelia squirm.
"Liv," she said, voice choked, and he released her as if he'd been burned.
A moment's pause, another, to run the possibilities through his head and figure out if there was any salvaging this failure. Four hundred years of service, sixty-one masters, and he'd never--
He'd never been dismissed from service so completely.
His knees hitt the floor. His forehead followed a moment later, pressed against the bare wood. "Please, empress." His words were husky with shock and fear and something else he didn't quite recognize besides. "Please, I swear. I meant no disrespect. Anything I can do to right the wrong I've committed, ask it of me and it shall be done."
(It wasn't his job to like his master. He served the royal family, loyally and without pause, no matter who they might choose to have on the throne. And yet, despite that... he liked this one. She was clever and kind, and at only sixteen she was already blossoming into the kind of leader her father had only wished he could be.)
"Liv." A moment's rustling and she dropped to the floor beside him, knees on the wood and her robes pooling around her. It was a servant's position, not a ruler's, and had he been in her favor still he would have protested it.
As it was, he dared protest nothing.
She swallowed and said again, "Liv." Her slender hand reached down to curl around his cheek and pull his head upwards.
Her eyes were the first thing he noticed. They were no longer merely glossy; she was outright crying. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Her hands were shaking, just slightly, andthe rest of her trembled to match them.
"Master," he said softly. Confusion and shame warred within him. He knew he had caused this somehow, but he no longer felt wuite certain how.
She smiled at him, soft and shaky. "Please, Liv. It's not that I don't want you to serve me anymore"--her hand tightened just slightly against him--"it's only that I don't want you to be in such danger doing it. I thought... I thought that if I made myself immune to goldencoil, perhaps it would no longer be necessary for you to taste for it."
There was an underlying issue there, but Liv, ever-practical, choose to focus on the most obvious first. "It's not just goldencoil I'm meant to guard you from. There's nightshade, and myota, and widow's draught, and--"
"Well then, I can become immune to those too!"
Liv laughed, more from shock than anything else. "Empress, it would take you a lifespan several times my own to become immune to every deadly substance out there. Far better to let me tak care of such things."
At that, her face screwed up into a frown. "I don't want you to."
Reason, apparently, had fled the room, and taken her sisters Sense and Logic with her. "There are several million people, empress, who would be displeased to see you die in your youth simply because you refused a taster."
"I don't care!" Lelia snarled. Her sudden anger poured through the room. "I would be displeased to see you die in my youth simply because I could not protect you!" Her voice dropped to a sigh, her rage fleeing as quickly as it had built. "You care for me, Liv, and I know you'd do the same for anyone with my title but it feels genuine enough to me nonetheless. Can't I care for you too?"
Liv stopped, swallowed. Open his mouth and then closed it again. He'd been struck speechless, and she hadn't needed so much as a spell or a potion to do it.
I care for you, she said. As if she meant it, as if she thought of him as more than yet another perk of the throne, more than a living weapon for her to command at her whim.
Four hundred years of service, and he had no idea how to respond to this.
Finally, hesitantly, he moved his head to press a kiss against the inside of her wrist where she still clutched at his face. It was a touch more intimate than his station allowed, but it was no great impropriety compared to all the others he'd already committed.
"Empress." He sighed. "I... thank you. I'm glad it's you who was chosen to rule." He chanced another glance up at her eyes and saw them still red with tears. "Please, understand--I want to protect you more than anything." He saw her mouth open to protest once more, and hurried his next words along. "Not just the empress, but you. You're already a better person than most I've served, and given some time I think you can be a better ruler than them too. There are things my body can take that yours simply cannot; that doesn't mean you've failed me if I become injured."
Lelia sighed heavily. "I know," she said. "But you're the only person here I can trust anymore. If I lose you too, I don't know what I'll do."
The pain in her voice was palpable, and no wonder: it had been her own cousin, a favored one, who'd slipped the goldencoil into her meal. A chance at the throne could turn even loved ones into vipers.
"You will perservere, I am sure," he said, and smiled at the little disapproved huff that got him.
Lelia ran a hand through his hair, scratching at his scalp. His cheeks burned at the touch. "That's hardly comforting, you know."
It was a meaningless gesture, he reminded himself, one a human might give a dog (or a friend, his treacherous brain added). Simple touches meant more to someone who recieved them so rarely. Pathetic.
"I apologize," he said. "If it is any comfort"--he let the magic that held his body together ebb and rise to the surface, let it shine in his eyes and curl through the air between them--"I do everything in my power not to die."
The tension held, stretching between them, then suddenly broke with Lelia's bright laugh. "I'll hold you to that," she said, looking down with a smile to meet his magic-bright gaze (the mark of a being that wasn't even human, and yet she stared at him without a hint of pity or disgust in her eyes). "In return, though, promise me this: if there's anything I can do to protect you--anything that won't bring risk to me," she added hastily at his disapproving stare, "then allow me to do it."
It was a ridiculous promise, the sort no ruler would ever make to their guardian. And yet. And yet. Here Lelia was nonetheless, offering him such care as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Well," he said, trying and failing to keep the fondness from his voice, "under the circumstances, I suppose I can hardly refuse."
And yet, in that instant, he knew: this was the empress he would die for if she needed and die with if she did not. This was the woman he wished to follow to her grave.



