your ruin, my ruin

Princess Corrin was still stifling yawns behind a slender palm, and Gunter privately thought she looked all for the world like a sleepy kitten with fangs lining such a maw. His little charge had a well-known hatred for getting up early, and this hour was no exception as he stoically steered her towards the private rooftop arena in the endless darkness of the Northern Fortress. She was a princess of Nohr, this cold dark land smothered by fields of stars. 

She was also its prisoner, trapped in this lonely fortress by a mad king’s wishes; orders that the old veteran knight also followed, to a point.  

Train her, the king had commanded. And so he did, but not strictly for that empty throne.

These days the waifish little princess bristled with excess of questions and curiosity, noticing irregularities in the staid routine of the fortress, day in and day out just as he had trained her—but it was something quite different when Corrin narrowed and unleashed those sharp red eyes at him with suspicion when they stopped just behind the outside doors. 

“You know something, sir. Prince Xander doesn't usually get me up at dawn for a duel… what's going on?”

“If you win, I’ll tell you, milady." The old knight told her serenely, tightening one bracer of hers with detached efficiency before meticulously checking the layers of leather and Nohrian steel as her combat instructor. Jakob had done well to pound out the dents in the armour from her last duel, and even he had to admit it was immaculately mended and shined by the butler.

The little sleepyhead princess was awake and alert now—but by her twisting hands she was fretting far too much about the upcoming duel. Privately, the veteran thought she already lost.

Lady Corrin was far too observant for herself at times, even when she didn't recognize her extraordinary nose for patterns and the subtle currents of people, and that trait might very well become her undoing with this duel. 

This was no mere training session. This was a hidden test as was everything in Nohr.

“What if I can't beat Xander? You know how strong my brother is…”

“You can't think like that, Lady Corrin.” The old knight murmured while kneeling to methodically check her armour plates as was rote. 

“Then what—” Her hands twisted as she stuttered, and this time he interrupted his routine to enfolded her slender fingers in his own black gauntlets, lowering them as if in prayer.  

“Listen to me.” Gunter met her eyes squarely and she did not look away. There was bravery there; and yes, there was skill too, honed by his hand—but that alone would not be what it took to win. “If I may be so bold, Lady Corrin, he is not your brother for this duel. Your objective is to survive .”

Something flickered in the young woman’s eyes.

“Sharpen your mind-knife.” He murmured. This was a critical lesson for her, and instinctively, she seemed to understand the weight if not the heft. “You can picture such a thing, yes?'

Corrin nodded.

“Imagine it as the closest and surest blade to your heart and soul that you wield. Every time you feel that raw helpless rage when you want to tear into something, you hone that edge. Every time you have felt helpless—or you have seen someone else defenceless—you sharpen it with that conviction.” He dug deeper. “Hone it with every scrap of resentment you have felt at being left behind in this fortress, and strike to kill.” 

At that mention, she swallowed and for a moment he thought she would draw away; but the little princess did not—still holding onto his gaze.

“When the time comes that it matters, like this—wield that knife as your sword.” Her brows rose to meet in the middle, and it was perhaps, a new revelation for her. “You musn't hold back. Sharpen your mind-knife, Lady Corrin.”

This time, she nodded again with conviction, and a new fire kindled in those blood-red eyes.

Satisfied, the old knight stood, feeling his age as knees voiced their opinions about stone floors and metal armour. He wouldn't be able to do this for much longer, but it was a moot point now, as he watched her shoulders set and as she walked the last section of the parpets in silence with him. You always had a survivor's eyes, a wistful, darkly amused part of him thought—and the wolf within his breast smiled toothily in answer.

As he trailed the princess out from the darkened tunnel to the starry endless night, the Nohrian royals stood waiting on the end of the platform.

The only one worse at keeping a secret than his little princess was Elise, the youngest royal of Nohr at fourteen. Too young to remember the devastation and bloodshed that scarred the rest of the royal siblings, the blonde girl ran over in innocent excitement to meet Corrin halfway; and with a grimace Gunter thought perhaps it was just as well that she already knew what was to come. 

One of the other royals—the next shortest in mage’s armour and a tome in his hands—peeled away from the group to walk primly by the old knight’s side, his collar ruffling in the light breeze. This was Prince Leo, the craftiest of the bunch with a fox-like gaze that observed all and missed none. Leo's eyes flicked over to the old knight as they stood by the parpets a respectful distance away, and watched the the young white haired princess and the strapping blonde crown prince cross swords—silhouetted against the bright yellow of the stained glass lights around in the eternal night.

It would have been a beautiful scene, had the stakes not been so high.

"I have concerns that my sister’s other tutors may have been... lacking." Blunt as always, the mage-prince by his side stared intently as the spar started in earnest, the only giveaway concern being fingers drumming along the spine of the tome and the old combat instructor had to resist looking back with an eyebrow raised in disapproval. 

You should have been concerned five years ago. Gunter heard the insinuation that the little prince didn't dare voice even in this isolated rooftop; that King Garon had deliberately sabotaged her learning—and worse, the boy was right.

“Shall we let Lady Corrin demonstrate for herself?” Upon his barely audible murmur back, the boy quieted. 

Have a little faith, Gunter thought sardonically. Really, the royals did her no favours by being so overbearing. 

The old knight had spent sleepless nights mulling over the potential reasonings of the old mad king of Nohr, Garon. Insecurity was a potential, and not an unreasonable concern after whole wings of the court capital had been painted in blood in vain attempts to curry slim leverage, as after all power struggles was a way of life rather than an optional dalliance. The specifics didn't concern the black knight as in the end. The fool had neglected to realise that he had left a little sword in somebody else's hands for nearly a decade, and Gunter had not wasted the time.

With a great victorious clang of blades, Corrin wrenched away Xander's practice blade, and laid her own against the crown prince’s throat.  

It took all of his will not to smirk in open victory.

Leo gave a whistle, and Gunter did not miss how the prince's eyes lingered over him for a beat too long afterwards, as the other royals sprang towards Corrin in celebration. It was plain as day that the children had not expected the sheltered and absentminded princess to be this far along in her studies.

With a halfway ironic bow, the mage-prince inclined his head his way. "Knight, I suppose it is safe to tell you that my sister will be recalled back to Krakenburg with this unexpected outcome. Our majesty King Garon wishes to see her most surprising progress in person, and the Court will wish to celebrate."

Krakenburg.

Court of the gluttonous orgies of blood and power and those who squandered their very souls on the altar of ambition in obtaining both. Land of cruelty on the end of magical whips or the end of a laced word with the weight of death balancing the silver scales of judgement. It too, was a land of breathtaking extremes from the startling beauty of the red-glowing stained glass, and the stairways that sung with choruses to hide the screams from the mage-torturers.  

Krakenburg.

Gunter knew the cesspit of snakes all too well.

He had not missed the cloying sensualism of the court filled with candles, incense, fabrics, anything to fill the empty nights and emptier hearts.

Krakenburg.

Where he had met Lady Corrin for the first time.

__________________

TEN YEARS EARLIER

Under a sky of endless night and rivers that ran with endless blood lay the proud nation of Nohr. Castle Krakenburg nestled at its heart like an engorged black spider within its web, the inverted tower reaching deep into the pits of the cracked earth. Distant war-drums rumbled at all hours like the slumbering breaths of an ancient dragon, nested in armies that camped outside the ringed stone walls of the capitol. Aside from the obsidian that coloured their infamous armoured plates, Nohr's legacy was conquest amongst the ruins of nations—the black nation had seen better days, and in leaner years turned towards violent means to keep any of the old glory and power.

After all, power was the only currency that mattered in the blighted land, a lesson that Gunter knew crucially well. Power and blood, both of which stained his hands as he exited the dungeons of Krakenburg. 

Gunter cleaned the knife in his hands, wet droplets trailing his black boots and joining the countless others on the blood-slick stone floor. He had received orders that interrupted his latest work of interrogating a captured traitor brought back to the heart of this black land in order to gain valuable information about Nohr’s enemies. 

This was messy, ignoble, bitterly undignifying work that one did not assign knights to, and he took no pleasure in inflicting the pain. It was also intentional; he had been cleaning Garon’s messes for years as punishment for his one and only defiance. 

He snapped to attention as the mage that waited outside the dungeons came within view; this not just any mage, then, and was in fact Iago himself, right hand to King Garon.

Iago was unmistakable with the strange golden mask that the stringy-haired chief mage wore along with his black and red robes—this new vizir was an enigma that had ascended the ranks quickly in the fallout of the old Nohrian court. Gunter did not trust the greasy bastard further than he could throw him, and the feeling was quite mutual by the sneer of contempt that Iago gave as he brushed past.

“Strategist. Another Faceless to escort?” Tonelessly, Gunter began to wash his own hands with the cloth he had taken from the previous dungeon chamber. It wouldn't do to have the armour rust with the redness smeared up to his elbows, for the good that the rapidly stained cloth was doing. 

Tidiness was always a sign of discipline and without discipline, an army was no different than the crude violence of the Faceless—mindless golems that were another peculiar Nohrian cruelty—there was already precious little difference between the two when it came down to it.

“Not this time, knight.” Iago purred in response, looking almost strangely disappointed, and Gunter believed it. 

This sadistic tactician had achieved a coveted status as second only to King Garon, advising him on all decisions and wielding fearsome power of his own in the court where mere suspicion often meant a brutal and agonising death, if one was lucky. Once, the old knight had been in that coveted position, second only to the king with full honours. 

Once, he had been unaware of what sacrifices of the soul it took to remain in that position.

Oh he had been so unaware.

“It seems you have learned your lesson.”  Iago’s unwholesome smile pointedly curved, eerily mirroring his own thoughts, and the old knight stiffened despite himself. “Our King has been pleased with your work these past few years. Your next mission will take even longer, a prisoner escort of a fashion. Have care, knight. This girl is… special.”

Iago's long, spidery-skeletal like hands flicked out, motioning over a glowing red wall much like the strange glass floor that they walked on. With a ripple of a spell and runes that lit up, the red light began to open a passageway. If he looked beneath his feet at the similar material, he would only see a dizzying height below, slightly obscured along with sharp wrought obsidian.

Gunter did not care walking on these glass floors of Krakenburg's court, preferring the reassuring solidity of iron or blessed dirt itself; having been acutely aware of assassination attempts by way of mages leaving traps with false floors for an unwitting soul to fall through. While those messes were more common in the fallout of the old court, such events were still occasionally known to happen. 

Iago flicked his hand again while bending in a mockery of courtesy, and gestured the old knight through the darkened corridor as if he had a choice. 

Gunter followed stoically, pocketing the bloodstained cloth in his belt.

As if anyone had free will in this cursed court—was his thought as darkness enveloped them. Dimmer but more natural mage-light flickered ahead, mimicking torches without the need to refresh oil or wax. Most useful thing the bastard mages had ever done; they only seemed to have talents for violence and destruction otherwise. Of course, the same could describe him as well.

“This one is young still.” Iago murmured, finally deciding to drip more information out along with derision lacing every word. “She is a tender, precious thing to fall into our King’s lap, hardly useful yet. Your task is to escort her to the Northern Fortress—yes, that lonely castle—and train her in the ways of the blade until King Garon approves. She is not to leave the premises under pain of death.” 

Once more, the strategist beckoned him through a barred and locked doorway, and the veteran knight followed into a small dingy cell. 

He had expected a girl the age of a squire. Perhaps untested and understandably afraid at being kidnapped, but a prisoner at least grown into their own skin. 

He had not expected someone barely older than a toddler.

The first detail that struck the old knight was her immediate defiance, and flash of dirty white hair as the little girl pressed up against the far wall—eyes trailing their every motion with a an animalistic quality of being hunted.

The second detail was her blood-red eyes, far too sharp and slitted and marking her instantly as somebody other than a commoner off the streets. 

She was at risk of starvation, cheeks gaunt with the malnourishment that had gone on for quite some time, and a closer glance revealed that she was possibly older; the sunken-in feverish look made it difficult to tell in the darkness. She did not cry like most children her age would have in the abject misery surrounding her, nor did she give signs of the tantruming sort, the old knight noted upon surveying the empty cell. 

Against every smarter instinct that urged him not to go against the orders, Gunter felt stricken. This child was a born-royal; and the only possible scions that were important enough to command the Nohrian king’s attention was one from the far western kingdom of Hoshido, that mighty and powerful land blessed by sun and abundance. 

Hoshido would not take kindly to one of their own spirited away by force, or treated so inhumanly.  

While second-guessing the king meant certain death, preparing defences against also-certain rescue attempts were his domain, and the old knight did his level best to carefully brook the murky waters.

Gunter felt a small pressure up against the back of his boot, and looked down to see the strange child’s blood-red eyes staring at the mage. She had been flattened around the walls, and after a moment he realised she had been putting as much between herself and the mage as possible.

Strange, that she would consider him worthwhile as a defence.

“Strategist... should I be concerned about rescue attempts? When her previous handlers…” Carefully, he avoided the implications, staying neutral as possible. “...hear of this—”

Iago smiled with teeth. “Perceptive. They won't rescue her; it's been a year with no response. This little princess has been left alone to die in a mausoleum of her enemies spinning ghostly tales of our own. Quaint, isn't it? She won't even know when we're done with her, the poor little moppet.”

Said girl was still clutching his black boot like it was a lifeline. For all intents and purposes in the hell of pain and unknowns and starvation that she had lived in that last year—it was.

Again, he reconsidered his first assessment of her.

That she had survived Garon's attention for so long and still not cracked into a quivering pile retreated from reality itself was an achievement that even grown men had failed, ruthlessly broken and shattered beyond recognition into hateful shadows.

“When does my Lord Garon require her transfer, Tactician Iago?” Gunter stoically murmured as a distant scream of pain echoed beyond the stone walls.

“Tonight, under the cover of darkness.” Iago smiled, and there was an ocean of cruelty within it as the mage took out a whip at his side and held it out. “Do try not to spoil her, hmm? She will be pliable to a degree with the mind wipes we have been administering, but she will need a taste to become obedient. Lord Garon would be most disappointed otherwise.”

Interesting, was the old knight’s only thought; the mad king was holding her for some future end.

This girl was a weapon handed to him hilt-first, much like the whip that he took without a word, and the fools didn't even realise her potential to be nurtured as a seed to uproot the rotted tree from within. Defiance here was either shattered beyond repair or tempered into the sharpest of swords. So was dignity. 

He would give her both, with this blessing of years of solitude and isolation—and the conviction of hatred that drove him.

“It will be done.”

__________________

It had taken some time that first night to avoid Garon's spies in the hallways of the Northern Fortress, and Gunter knew it would take weeks if not months before he could cleanse the small, quaint formerly-abandoned castle from the taint of Krakenburg's eyes. 

Who—he thought, not for the first or last time—was this princess that Garon thought so important to arrange a castle for, surrounded by a magical barrier of secrecy, and yet not to keep her close? He was not such a fool to think sentimentality or affection could be in the old Nohrian King’s vocabulary. 

This was a political prisoner, a weapon to be used at a later date when she was more useful. For now, she was simply a liability to be watched over by a senile washed-up failure of a knight. 

Or so the old king thought. Garon had become dangerously sloppy, if he had not learned to keep his most dangerous enemies even closer to the heart.

Gunter was standing in front of the wooden doorway that marked the little princess' new rooms, armour filled with smuggled plates of food. Hard tack, and potatoes along with a rare treat of a fruit. Garon had given orders of bare sustenance to be given to the princess, but the old knight had seen the state of the little girl and her rail-thin form was dangerously close to starvation as is. It would do him no good if she could not even lift a sword or keep from fainting during lessons out of sheer hunger.

Classic bribery was also a consideration that the old knight was not above, and so Gunter hesitated outside the aged dark wood with a gauntlet on the handle, listening. 

A guard down below held watch over the tower, and would not hear anything quieter than a shout. There was no sound in the bedroom suite beyond, even if the old knight pressed his ear up closely against the wood. With that cold reassurance of privacy, he opened the door slowly with one hand afterwards, observing the room first before slipping in. 

The veteran froze a heartbeat after.

The child stared at him with those vivid blood-red eyes all but glowing in the dark, her shoulders hunched forward as if ready to dart away at any second with a surprising speed. No, he realised as his own adjusted to the gloom, she was looking slightly past him by the door as if waiting for more people to enter—

With fear.

Gunter bent down slowly, so intent on the child that he didn't notice his bad knee screaming at him on the cobblestones. Dismayingly, she skittered back under the bed like an animal at the motion, and did not seem to recognize him from before. 

Mind wipes. Iago had mentioned once, later, that mages were performing regular mind wipes on her.

"Easy, easy..."  The old knight murmured in the darkness like calming a badly spooked mare in a moor-fog. The words were not as important as the sing-song rhythm that no predator made.

"Easy... I'm not going to hurt you."

Her eyes drifted with an unfocused manner long enough that he wondered if the mages had done irreparable harm to her mind, until her focus jerked and fixated on the bread in his hand with obvious hunger.

"Yes, there's food here. Do you want some, milady?" 

She flinched once at the sound of the metal scraping over the stones as he slowly sat against the wall, but it was a minor one. He'd take it.

Gunter was watching her reactions out of the corner of his eyes, using a trick he had learned with village cats, a long time ago. The old knight was fond of cats, of any animal—people couldn't stare straight at them or they'd melt into the land like ghosts. There was something equally feline about this strange princess, how her sharp red eyes dilated with interest at the food on the plate and how she would stare at him briefly before glancing down at it, testing his reaction.

She was ravenously hungry, or she wouldn't have even been staring at it for so long. He motioned with his own plate at her, strange bedfellows at an even stranger, absurdist theatre of dinner, very intentionally not watching her.

He had hoped that bringing his own food would show her it wasn't poisoned. Gunter had a cynical idea how the mages drugged her before their magics, and the kind of complex, violating spells that needed drugging, given the reports he had just read on this strange child.

And what Garon's mages had been doing to this child-prisoner for months.

He took a tight breath, and led the thought out with it.

The next time the old knight opened his eyes, he heard the softest scrape of victory, and was rewarded with her shoving pieces of her own bread in her tiny mouth. More like a wharf-rat with an absconded hoard of crumbs than an errant royal-born, but he would take the victory.

"Enjoy, Lady Corrin." Gunter said softly.

__________________

Later, Gunter awoke with a start, instantly awake. 

Another streak of lightning struck jaggedly across his eyeballs, something too similar to mage-fire for him to ever sleep soundly during a thunderstorm. He had somehow fallen asleep here, much later that night in the tower, and a storm had been pelting the old dark stone for hours at this point. But it wasn't that.

Looking down, he had awoken to a shift of the softest, imperceptible weight against his side.

The now-sleeping child had willingly crawled to him with trust—he stared down with surprise—having judged that this strange scarred man with peculiar taste in food was not like the thunder nor the mages with their smothering fabrics, nauseating incenses, and ozone of magic. Illuminated by another flash, Gunter could see a small shaking hand holding to the leathers on his belt. 

Nameless emotion threatened to close his throat.

Very slowly, with the utmost care, Gunter shifted his arm until it was held protectively outside around the child so the sharp edges of his black armour wouldn't bite in her skin, if it pressed at all.

There on the floor, the old knight and the small waif dozed fitfully for the rest of the storm as it slowly turned into a soft hiss of rain.

__________________

It was three weeks later, and the Princess looked even more waifish if it was even possible.

Corrin was seven years old, he had finally learned from his few trusted sources in Krakenburg. They still never dared mention a word as to where Garon had found her, through those scant few letters and by the guarded vagueness in the spidery caligraphy, he would never learn. She was—unlike most seven year olds—severely antisocial, bordering on selectively mute at times. The child acted, frankly, more like a feral animal some days than an actual child of her age, but there was improvement seen already with every day as he visited her tower.

The visits were strictly speaking; not part of Garon’s orders.

Lady Corrin—and he thought of her as such now, as part of giving her back old dignity that she must have known before being kidnapped—was under the bed when he walked in, but freely wriggled out with an exclamation of happiness that her strange armoured man had come back with more food. The old knight had discovered food and kind words were more reliable than anything else in encouraging the remnants of her humanity back to the surface.

She was in a good mood today by the way she sat primly on the bed and kicking the edge with her bare heels until he lowered the plate enough for her to sniff it delicately, and she made a face. Against everything, he chuckled wryly at her pout, and as she stared balefully upwards at him.

'Potatoes aren't my first choice either, Lady Corrin, but it is our lot currently. Fancy lamb, personally."

Princess Corrin blinked at him somberly—and it could have been his imagination or him loosing it from his decades of warfare finally—but with a faint air of dignified approval at his choice of meats. He sat back with a minor clatter of armour and belts, and a plate that miraculously didn't spill his own portions across the stark slate floor, and sighed.

Gunter was a bloodied knight who was far more used to the chaos and the ragged screams of battlefields than a tiny tower with this scrap of a traumatised girl that still broke out in flinches if the door so much as cracked at the wrong time.

He didn't have a damned strategy for how to handle her.

There was no drills, no bone headed teenagers to box over the head, no brutishly violent ways to dismember or torture an enemy until the all-clear was given and those foppish nobles signed useless pieces of paper that meant nothing after the next war, the next and the next—

He was a man of orders and violent action, and Gunter genuinely considered if he was going insane by talking to the air the past weeks and being an even worse babysitter to her than the mages, or in his case, all those other boys that had been his to mould into sharp weapons.

So he talked. And talked, and talked at her more like a particularly skittish cat, because at least that was a pleasant thought.

'There's a runt that joined us today, Lady Corrin; the boy’s a mouthy white haired brat who wants a bloody job, if you can believe it. Does everyone in this backwoods think I run an orphanage…" Belatedly, he realised it wasn't proper to run his mouth in front of children, at least ones far younger than his mop-headed recruits that he had beat into instruments of war in another life. He scrubbed his face. 

"You didn't hear that."

Gunter heard a faint girlish giggle from somewhere behind where she was perched, and the back of his neck splotched with dull embarrassment. Like cats, this one was a lot more clever than she let on. He'd have to be careful in the future.

Nonchalantly, the old knight continued and reached around to his belt. "I brought something else today."

At that, her attention was piqued, even with the half-eaten potatoes and peas in her hands, and she slithered down to within his view again. There was an unpleasant stillness to the sounds of her movements that belied caution, however. Fear. She didn't wholly trust yet, and he was glad to see it. Caution and awareness would serve her well the rest of her life.

And maybe—just maybe he thought—that could be what they could start with.

"Keep eating, milady." He gave her a dismissive wave with one hand that would likely have him lose the limb at the court for insolence. There were advantages to this remote assignment; if she was the only noble that he would have to answer to for the rest of his life, it wouldn't be so bad. "You need to get out more. Not outside of the castle, but you need to feel the wind.”

Gunter took the leather ball in hand that he had brought along for this particular test. 

"You know what this is?" 

The idea of a toy had come to him a few days before, when she had bit him and drawn blood. 

That in hindsight, had not been one of his finest moments when attempting to cajole and coerce her out from underneath the bed for a healer’s visit, to ensure that the little girl was healthy and hale despite the mad king’s treatment of his prisoner in the year prior. The two of them had been running late and the old knight’s patience was wearing thin after fruitless hours—and he had sworn up a blue streak when those sharp vicious teeth—fangs, really—of hers had dug into his bare veined hand when reaching in roughly, more like a cornered varmint.

Bleeding profusely and seething with rage, the old soldier’s mind alighted upon the whip that he had been given back at Krakenburg, along with the little girl. It had been a very nice leather whip, the one that Iago had handed to him; clearly the Emperor's own, and one that Gunter had seen him use before on his own kin. His orders had been to make her obedient.

He, thought with venom, was a man of orders. 

Gunter the hand of Nohr that didn't fucking flinch at Garon's commands except for the one and only time so long ago, when it had cost him everything. 

He had walked down the hallway in a thundercloud of wrath, pretending not to notice the visible full body shudder of the guard-knight that had always stood at the base of the tower. He had taken out the keys, he had opened and shut the door with the whip loosely coiled in hand, on—on orders.

And it had been her innocent, stricken face that had paralyzed him as surely as a bolt of mage-lightning; that beatific face that still lived for the simple joy of seeing the strange black-armoured man come back with a full plate of food, day in and day out. 

He very nearly had not been that same man as he had, walking in. The leather whip, however, had gone missing. Oh yes, it had been a very nice leather whip, he thought with a little malicious and boyish glee at destroying something so nice. 

Raising an eyebrow at the silence that stretched while he had been ruminating like an old senile fool, Gunter waited until she said the words, bouncing the leather ball lightly in one gauntlet. 

"Bounce-ball. For outside."

She spoke slightly more, now. A scarce few words, and only to a select few people (fine, only to the lone knight), but there had been progress. The rest ... could be worked on.

"Very good, milady. Here, catch."

Her reflexes were quite good despite the occasional haziness of her mind; the toy ball thumped once against the slate floor, and straight into her two tiny hands that looked bird-bone fragile still. But she had caught the awkward one handed throw, and the radiant smile his princess returned eased his heart in a way no vice could.

Yes, this was something he could work with.

Corrin was twelve now, and like most children of her tender years, lived in fantasy worlds. 

Unlike most peers of her age, she was still cloistered to the fortress by the sentencing of a mad king much like him, and the old knight made do as much as he could within Garon's orders, even bending the definition quite severely at times. 

And so the venerable knight brought her a stream of gently used books when he could, and they became her constant companions in the unavoidable times he was called elsewhere in the draughty fortress. The reclusive princess was still deathly afraid of most strangers despite his gentle efforts to socialise her across the months but trusted the worn pages, and subsequently her studies and language proficiency improved with the voluminous amount that she read, whether it was with his tired raspy voice and her sitting in his lap, or the child stretched out on the floor with the tome propped on the plush red carpet, alone. 

So vociferous was Corrin's reading that her room began to look like a miniature library after some weeks with stacks alarmingly tottering on the tables. She also developed an appetite for drawing, and this too he subtly incorporated into her daily studies as he did with games of catch with the ball. Corrin would need an unorthodox hand to pull her out of her shell, and he was prepared for what it would take.

He had learned through his decades-long military career that Illustration was useful with leadership and soldiery; reading maps, creating strategies, learning how to read the kinds of charts posted in a war-room rotunda, deciphering the army sigils and insignias from each other on ratty banners in a pre-dawn march, as well as being more culturally aware of the world around her. As a young royal, she would have to have that awareness for survival. 

Over a span of days while pointing out locations on a massive map he had filched from the castle study and spread across the stones of her bedroom floor, he taught her about the two rival nations of Hoshido and Nohr. Several toy blocks pinned down each corner of the dry vellum in her room, and—

“What’s a rival, sir?” 

Gunter gave it thought, the old knight stretched out on the floor along one side with veined fingers drumming on the raggedy edges of the map. God, how to explain the bitterness of war in a way that a little girl would not be frightened by, and without the needless hatreds that blinded  the echelons of the nobility. 

It was an impossible task, and still he tried.

“An equal but an opposite. Have you watched sword-sparring practice in the arena?” The old knight paused, scratching at his scar idly as she nodded. “Tis much like that. Sometimes rivals fight to the bitterest death. Sometimes all that carrying-on is a mere farce in preventing more bloodshed. Sometimes it’s a mix. There is worse than an honest rival, milady.”

Well-honed senses prickled at the awareness of new eyes on them, and Gunter sharply glanced at the door.

Flora peeked around the wood shyly; the little young maid was in training and already quite professional in her studies to become a retainer. The pale haired maid must have been there eavesdropping on them for a few minutes, judging by her line of sight—and was studying the large map rolled across the floor with awestruck interest. Gunter called her in after Corrin waved; any little bit of company that the shy princess accepted without fear was welcome and a boon. 

That rainy afternoon in the gloom, Gunter taught the two little girls all the principalities that dotted across Nohr. The moppets were better students than most soldiers, and he would never show it, but he took genuine delight in their attentiveness and the incisive questions that both pelted his way, taking care to give thoughtful responses back. 

Gracious, they were downright ruthless at times.

In one of the pauses when they were planning excitedly amongst themselves about future trips, his hand trailed over the name of his old destroyed village, and trembled in the briefest weakness of grief. 

They did not notice.

__________________

The next day as he walked in, Gunter should have been mildly alarmed to see dozens and dozens of drawings strewn out around her quarters depicting an enraged blue-and-silver dragon setting people on fire. Such pictorial violence was not becoming of a little girl much less a princess, other members of the court would have doubtlessly said. One of the older castle nannies had ran out of her room aghast and whimpering under her breath about the princess having such unladylike impulses and imagination for her sex. Gunter smirked instead, bending down to find yet more of the scribbled papers underneath in layers, and the fiend busily at work scribbling the next, lost in focus. 

“Do tell what’s happening in these masterpieces, milady.” He did not mind little princesses with defiance. Corrin would have to kill in cold blood one day. 

Said little girl was on the floor again with legs kicking absentmindedly.

“You won’t be mad?” 

The thread of meekness tinged with concern tugged at his heart. He knelt beside her with black armour clinking. 

“I promise. Tell me.” 

“I’m the dragon.” With the biggest grin on her face, Corrin eagerly pointed to a particularly vicious sketch with an open-mouthed fanged beast, and thrust it in his face for the old knight to stare at with fond bemusement.

“You look marvellously fearsome there, princess.”

She giggled at his reply, and then sat against his knees and boots contentedly. Reaching over, Gunter picked up another sketch that looked a little more ruthlessly drawn judging by the holes in the paper when the charcoals had punched through, and saw that the drawn figures were on fire.

“Who are the other hapless souls there?” 

She shrugged. “Mages.”

Ah. 

“You do know in those fairy tales it's usually the knight that..." Gunter amended the more final word in his mind. "...well, fights the dragon, milady.”

“Not in my story.” 

His lip quirked. So stubborn. “What happens here afterwards, then?” 

Corrin chewed on her lip. “I dunno yet.” 

“You don’t know.” Gunter gently corrected the childlike grammar, and then stood with a groan as his knee gave a sharp stab of pain. He had almost forgotten he had climbed all the way to the lonely tower to fetch her for an errand; the steep stairs would be the death of him and his bad knee one day.

“Can I figure it out later?” Corrin pleaded, recognizing his glance towards the doorway. 

“Yes you may, princess. Now come with, I believe it is time for your music lessons…” 

__________________

A few weeks later, Corrin gave him a picture. 

It was part of the collection when he had asked her about the dragon, but one of the unfinished sketches. On the sheaf of paper he now held in trembling gauntlets, she had scrawled a black knight beside—and here, he looked closely, to make sure he wasn’t going blind in his old age—no, the scrawled knight was all but riding the dragon, waiving a hand-axe alongside the winged beast.

It had been a very long time since he had smiled, despite himself.

__________________

Perhaps it had been too soon to teach the bloody children about life outside the castle.

The rascal that was Princess Corrin was standing in front of his study desk, guilty as sin itself and utterly unashamed of it. Exploring was suddenly the only activity that she, the new butler in training, and the maids were interested in—coincidentally running the old knight ragged with paternal worry. Playing nonsense games of hide-and-seek inside the fortress was tolerable provided they did not bother the older staff overmuch. However, venturing outside the grounds and the safe walls was as dangerous as it was against explicit orders from the Nohrian king, and Gunter would have to nip their boundary-testing in the bud, as they had finally crossed a line. It was for their safety.

Giving her a steely glare down the length of his nose, Gunter clasped his clawed gauntlets in front of him. This was to be a proper dressing-down.

"What happened with Maid Felicia and you yesterday was regrettable; I have your punishment for the unauthorised excursion. Maid Felicia has her own separate punishment."

Lady Corrin stood straight and unbowed at the judgement, biting down excuses.

"Understood, sir."

"You will report to the sparring area outside the armoury at dawn tomorrow. You will also, henceforth—" He raised a threatening eyebrow, forestalling any protests. "—report to me at that location at dawn, every other day for the next season, until the harvest start."

"Yes... sir."

The answer was sullen as he expected from a chronic late sleeper, but it was crisp. Good, she's learning.

"May I ask a question..." Idly, the old knight gestured, and she blurted out the next half even before he had finished. “Why can’t I go out?”

“It is King Garon’s orders.” 

Corrin pressed. “When can I go out, then?” 

“That’s two questions, milady.” Two vivid red eyes relentlessly stared at him with the intensity that only stubborn children could have, unsatisfied until the old knight heaved a sigh and rubbed his nose from an oncoming headache of too many bloody questions. “I don’t know, milady. He is sure to relent, eventually.”  

She gave him a sulky look. Gunter sighed again and leaned forward.

“Milady, the quickest way to obtaining freedom is to keep on with your studies. Learn as much as you can. Impress your royal siblings when they come for the yearly assessments with your speechcraft, your swordplay, and everything they inquire about.” 

“And then I can go out?” 

Have mercy on me. Not unkindly, he murmured back with a dip of his head. “Perhaps.”

“Can’t you tell them that I’m progressing?”

His eyes flickered back down at her. 

So she was learning about the subtleties of what it took to survive in such a deeply amoral and power hungry world, and likewise the unsaid leverages and compromises that all souls needed to bargain. The little miss would also need this for Krakenburg’s court as an adult, and he did not envy her for the responsibility there. 

“Possibly, milady.” 

Gunter stared at her for long enough—just to see whether she would waver and grow uncomfortable in the three-beat stare that he had used with his own soldiers, a long time ago. 

“Prove it to me.” The old knight finally murmured, eyes flashing in challenge, and he was rewarded to see something similar in hers. “Prove that you have the self control to learn, to not wander without others noticing. To beat myself and Prince Xander in duels when he comes to test you. Prove it quickly, and I might reconsider.” 

__________________

For years Princess Corrin had always trailed behind her peers on speechcraft and etiquette in particular. That was partially his fault for indulging in occasional quirks such as roaming the grounds still shoeless, and partially out of wariness with the mind wipes. And yet, Gunter had been certain in her ferocious newfound focus and determination that she would soon surpass the most studious Krakenburg royal. 

He was not disappointed. She was indeed progressing now; something about a present face did wonders versus absentee persons that called themselves family, undeservingly so.

Her confidence too, was growing; she had become friendly with several of the house staff, and endeared herself to the rest of the castle guard. That disarming innocence was a weapon all of its own, and it had worked wonders on even the most hardened grizzled soldier who Gunter had caught more than once in the act of waving a fond hello to the little white-haired moppet.

Little Corrin had even become fast friends with the young servants in training—Flora, Felicia, and Jakob. They were also far too young to be growing up in a cold draughty fortress isolated in the far north, but kept each other company by playing endless games in the hallways and living in their own worlds. For the most part they stayed out of trouble. 

However, there were instances when they began to toe lines again. 

Thus it did not surprise the old knight when Felicia had come up to his side, curtsied, and exclaimed promptly that she could not find Corrin. 

The princess was doubtlessly exploring the grounds with the new squire boy she had included in her ever expanding menagerie of friends, or had been tardy with the gardeners studying the names of every plant. He would have to discipline Jakob for losing track of her (again), and it was only when Flora—the maid’s twin sister—ran up in a breathless panic that Gunter hesitated.

The blue-haired young woman never panicked. 

“I've found a guard who’s seen her last, sir.” She gasped for gulps of air, clearly having the foresight to run around the castle in laps in search for clues for the little princess. Respect rose as much as controlled worry.

“Easy, now. Who?” Gunter replied sharply, kneeling to her level.

“Gatekeeper.” 

Damn, far too close to outside of the grounds.

“Felicia, tell the man-at-arms to meet me there immediately, and then find Jakob. Flora, follow me.” 

__________________

Corrin hadn't know the flora and fauna that resided beside a creek-bed. It was a whole new adventure to skip past small stones in the riverbed, laughing as she skidded lightly on the last one and as Silas caught her wrist at the last minute and gently pulled her ashore.

The boy had been her companion of late—Silas the squire-in-training assigned to the northern fortress two years back. Her disciplinarian had graciously allowed the boy to serve as a bodyguard and to observe the rhythms and happenings of the castle as part of his training, and it had not taken long before he had become a fast friend with so very much in common, not the least of which was their shared curiosity of the outside world.

Being a minor noble, Silas had seen so much of Nohr, she learned partially with envy and wonder. During the afternoons after lessons, he would escort her to the dining hall and share stories of wandering his home city and watching festivals with street performers, and before long they were making a list of places that he would take Corrin to, once when...

... once when she was allowed out, the thought died in her mind. 

Whenever that would happen.

But then she brightened: it didn't matter what was allowed as Silas was taking her out that very moment, and the cloud of pensiveness swiftly vanished with a squeal of joy as he took out food items from his knapsack with a wink. She hadn't realised how much time had passed in the hours away from the fortress.

The two of them ate a picnic beside the river, him somehow finding fresh herbs and mushrooms to garnish their coleslaw with. Corrin peppered him with questions of how he knew which plants to look for; so many questions that she was afraid he would be overwhelmed and wouldn't want to go out again with her, but the young knight just glowed in response, relishing the attention.

Too soon, it was time to go as the eternal night sky started to grow deeper with the darker blues that heralded the true sleeping hours to come.

“I had so much fun with you…” Corrin started, lightly walking along a raised root above the forest floor like it was a parapet edge, marveling at the gentle and soft green moss underneath her bare feet. The hints of summer out here was even prettier than she ever remembered. Jumping down, she gave the proper Nohrian curtsy she had just learned the last week, beaming. “Thank you so much again for this…”

Silas gave her a wide, easygoing smile. “It was nothing. I know the guard rotation which makes sneaking out easy. and you need to go out more even if it's just close by. Being stuck inside there all day isn't good for you.” He leaned over, giving her a gentle shoulder nudge, and a theatrical whisper. “Just maybe don't mention this to anyone in there, yeah?”

“Too late for that, kid.”

A rough voice shouted out behind them, and Corrin barely had time to partially turn and shriek in horror when gloved hands bodily seized her and Silas.

Adult hands. 

Oh no—

At first she thought bandits, but when she saw the gloves and insignias of Nohrians like them, her heart sank further. Silas was pleading with the other guard, a sallow woman with cruel eyes.

“I can explain this—!”

“You'll be explaining your flagrant disobeying of the rules to sir Gunter, and not a whit sooner.” The scouting captain ambled up, a stern older man that she had given freshly baked cookies to once. He unwound a cord of rope and chuckled, continuing.

“That knight’s the most pissed I've seen him, kid. Didn't think miss golden princess could ever get under his skin; I'm impressed.” The guard let out another menacing chuckle. “Might as well say bye-bye to your precious friend here—don't think you're getting out again, girl.”

Corrin flinched, and then sucked in a half sob. She was ignoring Silas' frantic gestures to stop now, hoping that any weight of her authority could be a miracle now, with a pleading warble of words through more tears. 

“Let us go, please—”

“Overruled, princess.” She found herself hoisted up with ropes around her bare wrists. “Now shut it, lest we attract attention from real bandits.”

__________________

The crown royal siblings were coming inside a week on a surprise visit and it was his own goddamn fault he had lost her scant days before.

With his luck, it had started to piss rain which further dampened any scouting efforts and bogged down horses and their riders that would otherwise be the scouts best chance to quickly cover a large area. He did not have the luxury of time for planning search parties far and wide. Garon had always had an unhealthy interest in the little red-eyed princess kept alone and away as a prisoner, and if he knew…

If that mad king knew her bloody indiscretions—Garon would visit new horrors on her like she had only tasted before. The mercy of having been forgotten would be heavenly sweet in comparison.

Gunter envied her, in that one vindictive moment. Oh how he wish he had been forgotten. The Nohrian king’s attention meant nothing but despair and  of soul-deep mutilation, of the same rot that lurked in the open abscess of Krakenburg—

“Ho, they found her!" 

One of the watchguards at his side cried out, and Gunter easily traced the sight line from the joint of his finger to the the flame-signal rising above the treeline a short distance from the castle. Even as the hiss of the rain once again took over, the veteran knight stared icily as the pack of guards drug the two miscreants back onto the pathway and then the wooden drawbridge leading back into the castle. 

How selfish she had been to put all of their lives at risk for such a foolish outing; it all seemed so meagre for the devastation that Garon could visit on them. That the king had done before, to entire villages in retribution for the merest slights.

As he began to stalk along the parapets and down the rain-slick stone stairs, a captain and another scout—heaving with exertion but experienced enough to only swallow once before a smart salute—met him halfway to deliver his own report.

“Sir, I was part of the forward party that found them. Apparently that young noble squire, Silas, took her out. Some kind of field trip was their excuse. The gatekeeper just finished interrogating the guards on rotation; the boy knew the exact time between the shifts to slip out, and admitted to it easily enough on the way over.”

She was selfish, yes—but the squire that the girl had swayed had committed even worse sins. He had defied the king’s explicit rule, and had known better.

More importantly: he could be made an example of, to dissuade such further foolishness.

“Have them moved to the training grounds for this demonstration of what happens to traitors, and keep the civilians away.” Gunter murmured, and it was with a slow grave blink that the other captain marked the true meaning of his words. “Your axe, captain.” 

Grimly, the other soldier unsheathed the blade and passed it over hilt first before pressing his own thumbs back through the links of his belt.

This was not the first execution that both of them had presided over.

The pack of scouts with the two prisoners had just made it into the the sandy soil of the sparring arena when he stepped down the last of the stone steps to the hard packed dirt ground, the staircase curving naturally the outer ring. It did not take long for the old black-armoured knight and the captain to stride up, through the messy puddles of rain. 

Even with the drizzle, he could see that Corrin was staring at him with the saddest eyes full of fear, mud all over her. He wondered briefly if the fear would ever leave those stark eyes.

Should have thought of that beforehand, princess.

He had to give her credit; the princess had the gumption to try to reason with him, wavering as her small voice was. Surprising, for one that had been so feral and terrified just mere years ago. 

“Please don't—”

Gunter ignored her as he strode past to the silent boy, hefting his axe.

“For your blatant defiance of King Garon's orders, squire Silas. I sentence you—” In one smooth motion, he laid the axe blade against the boy's throat.“—to death.”

“NO—”

She shrieked, the cry splitting the air, and she tore out of the guard's hands with vicious force, forcing both of them to the ground.

“No, no no no—”

She was sobbing now with unintelligible wracking cries and screams so loudly that one of other younger guards flinched, clearly bothered at the display of emotions. Gunter's gloves flexed once as he raised the axe-blade up high, taking the time to analyse the cleanest angle as he stalked around. Moments had passed before he realised the soft crying had stopped, and his gaze flickered over.

She had fainted.

The other guard was swearing under his breath, panicked, pulling gently at her arm and lightly patting her face for a response.

It would be so easy.

He could see his own reflection in the wide-eyed horror of the boy's eyes, a black pillar of unforgiving brutality (much like one he had begged for mercy from).

And yet—

Discipline had to be brutal for the lesson to stick, (much like justice, or was it even?).

And yet—

These children did not know the horrors that discipline kept away, (and there had been other children, once, with that same look of fear).

And yet…

Minisculely, his hand trembled. 

Tenderness in Nohr was always similarly executed by those still standing. It was always the one immutable law in the black land.

Some forgotten sentiment made him pull the blade away.

“Exile, then.” He whispered loud enough for the captain of the guard to hear, who nodded with a sensible grunt as Gunter passed the axe back over, as simply as nothing had ever happened.

“It would be in poor form to execute a minor noble without a full investigation, after all.” The man casually agreed with a flick of a hand to shoo away a fly.

Corrin was still on the ground. It was fucking unseemly, and something in him twitched.

"Get OUT!" The black knight bellowed.

Everyone fled.

__________________

Everyone—save one.

Gunter watched listlessly as an old woman healer padded her way to Corrin, and knelt with her hand extended. He sat on the log in the courtyard until the sounds of nature ebbed back into life, and slowly bowed his head into his hands. The healer wisely did not comment on how it was painfully obvious his hands tremored still, outside of their gauntlets.

"I will take the Princess for the next two nights. She will be under my personal watch and aegis." That steady murmur did not brook argument, nor did he pick one.

His eyes were closed. He bled exhaustion, she noted with a clinical frown of disapproval, and old, old terrible pain that festered. "You, on the other hand, need rest. Don't you think I don't notice those bags under your eyes."

"I am not a child to be coddled, Healer." There was a dark edge to his growl in response, a snap of wolf-hounds and a testy whip.

"No, you fool-knight, you are a toddler that is reacting to stimuli, not thinking straight as we need you to. Go to bed. This castle will not fall apart in that time, given your usual detail."

"Are you done, nag?" He just sounded weary, now.

She tilted her head like a hunting dog, utterly unafraid. He was reminded that even the bitches of hunting dogs had teeth and could tear a man's arm off if their litter was threatened.

"Are you?"

He grunted again in annoyance, working the kinks out of his shoulders to mask a sudden embarrassment. Goddammit, the ould witch was right. His neck cracked loud enough that she raised an eyebrow at him.  

And at last, she nodded with firm dismissal.

"You may retrieve the Princess once you have rested and apologised to her. Good day, Sir Gunter."

__________________

When Corrin woke, she could faintly hear sweet birdsong out of the high windows. 

Not the shorter but elegant floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows and red velvet in her room atop the tall, lonely tower. She was elsewhere then, and it took a moment to dawn on the little princess that she was in the healer’s quarters given the quiet serenity and the clean sheets that covered her in a warm cocoon of sleepiness. A swift glimpse around showed Corrin that there was no-one else in the warm light brown of the hall.

Events of the past day slowly came back to her muzzily, and Corrin shook her head, trying to piece together everything. SIlas, the lunch by the river, the execution—

She shuddered.

“What would be the matter, my dear?” 

One of the older lady healers stopped beside the bedside and sat lightly on the far end of the cot as her habit creased. Her face was leathery and rough, but there was a warm kindness to her that instinctively made Corrin crawl over the sheets and lean against her side after a gesture of welcome. Something about the body warmth was reassuring.

“Silas….” 

The name floated like a leaf on a still pool, and she blinked groggily.

“Was that the name of the knight fellow? He’s alive. I’m Healer Alaine, by the way.”

She liked this healer; there was no prodding for words in the moments after, and the older woman gently mentioned what each and every procedure was for when checking for injuries. There was no surprises and little by little, Corrin sleepily relaxed in the surprising peace and quiet. It was almost like the small chapel that nestled in one corner of the fortress, except not as oppressively quiet or severe. 

She flinched again at the last thought, as a flash of black armour seared through her mind’s eye. Alaine looked up with practical intent, having been in the process of washing her feet. 

“I’m sorry… I remembered what happened.” Mumbling, Corrin had to look away from that inquisitive gaze. "I don't want to get in trouble…”

Disarmingly, the healer tilted her head like one of the friendly dogs that wandered in the courtyard. "Why on earth would you be in trouble?”

"He looked... angry. I disobeyed him." There was no need to clarify who they were talking about, his was pillar of a presence that cast a shadow even here. Shockingly, the healer rolled her eyes and resumed the gentle ministrations.

"Sweetheart, he panicked."

Corrin blinked.

"Panicked?"

"Yes, milady. grown men are daft dolts, especially stubborn soldier boys like him."  The cutting words were softened by the smile tugging on the healer's cheeks, packing up the washcloth. "Bless him, that knight loves you like his own. He deserves a box on the head, but he did not mean evil that day. Did you want to see him?"

"I… think so."

"Yes or no, dear. If you're not ready, there's no wrong answer. You won't be in trouble." Alaine gave a sly look, and nudged her shoulder companionably, having sat beside her on the bed again with a plump rump. "If anything that overgrown boy is the one in the doghouse, I've made sure of that. Ripped into him for his moronic act yesterday." 

Corrin didn't understand what she meant by those words, but by the slight teasing edge, she figured it was an adult matter between them both.

"I want… to see him." Hugging her knees, she had to look away. She missed Gunter, despite the maelstrom of emotions still wrestling in her heart. For the disciplinarian he always was, his steadying presence had never been far from her side. Alaine gave a brisk nod to one of the other waiting healers who curtsied and trotted out of the solid oak double doors to the side. Leaning back on the medical cot, the woman closed her eyes in rest, looking remarkably like a contented cat.

"You know, your old knight is honestly the one scared that he's in trouble with you."

"What?" Gunter, scared?

"Not in the same way, my dear." Alaine sat there by her in the bed, reaching out a hand to brush her hair with a companionable briskness, untangling the strands from the deep slumber. "And he won’t ever show it to you, I guarantee it. But take it as a secret from an old hag who knows his type.” Her gnarled hands paused, and then rested on Corrin’s shoulders. “Don't tell him I said that, mind; that one has a crusty reputation he's proud of."

A tired smile almost slipped out at that, but then double doors opened with a creak.

Healer Alaine called out, loudly and unabashedly. "Look who the devil dragged in."

She did not look up as she heard his familiar boots clicking against the smooth stones, surprisingly light. Immediately, Gunter dropped to a knee in front of her cot with his tailcoat fanning on the stones, now eye-level with her. "Healer Alaine. Lady Corrin." Dare she say, his voice was quietly hesitant. "How are you feeling today?" 

Still, she did not reply or look up.

Said healer poked her once with an elbow, but even now, she did not reply. Under her eyelashes, Corrin could see a rueful smile tugged at the corner of his scarred lips, almost despite himself. 

"I’ll let you two talk privately… there's been a soldier moaning about a rash in the privates I've been procrastinating on. Have at it." Healer Alaine fibbed easily, and vanished.

After the doors closed again with the passage of the healer, it was quiet there in the infirmary. 

Dust motes swirled in front of the mage-light that filtered down, one of which was a slender beam of half light in between them, partially illuminating the armour of the old black knight who was still kneeling in front of her. 

It was not as if she wanted to hurt him, not intentionally.

But she also did not know what to say.

Gunter stood first, and leaned his armoured hip against the cot opposite of her, slinking back into the dark. Crossing his gauntlets, he was a mountain of black armour and steel amongst the white clean sheets and freshly laundered healer’s rags. 

As always, they made for a strange pair.

"Knight Silas will not be around for a very long time." Gunter spoke warily, curiously unable to meet her eyes now when it was just the two of them. "He is alive and unharmed. This lapse of events will not be mentioned to your royal cousins who are scheduled to arrive in days."  

He sighed, and there was something in him that seemed to give up on a particular dead end. Maybe the silence was getting to him at last, and her heart twinged.

“Lady Corrin.... I am only trying to protect you." His lips twisted morbidly, and he rubbed a veined hand over his loose skin. “Far worse can happen than death. You'll understand one day, Or not, I hope.”

He seemed so much older, just then, and Corrin tentatively wondered what could be possible that was somehow worse. Resentfully, a spiteful part of her mind threatened to comment that she still wouldn’t know either way unless if he let her out. But this she swallowed, remembering the glinting steel of the axe still, and how it was too similar to the black armour that he wore there amongst the starched sheets.

“You were… somebody else, then.”

Gunter’s lips thinned.

It had been the first words she had spoken since he had arrived.

“And that will always be me as well, Lady Corrin. I am a soldier.” 

It was not the soft, vague answer she wanted to hear. She wanted him to deny it, pretend that it was somebody else as well, a figment of their mutual imagination strewn on the wind. 

Standing slowly from the cot, she felt somehow even more lost than before.

“Are you ready to go back, Lady Corrin?”

Still not meeting his eyes, she stepped the three steps closer over to him, lightly sat on the cot next to her oldest knight, and hesitantly leaned into his side.

She could not hide from those piercing, severe eyes, nor she could hide from the part of her that very much wanted to stay like this, pausing life like one of those photographs she had seen in a book. 

Not quite fully to an understanding, but at least he was now something different than the sensation of that frightening mask he had slid on, that day with the axe. His was a habit of shifting into somebody else—too much and too quickly at times, and it frightened her. Tentatively, she nodded against him, still loathe to give up this warmth. 

This was the old knight she knew.

With a final pat on her shoulder, Gunter slipped off the side of the cot, and jerked a tilt of the chin towards the other end of the hall. 

“Go thank the healers for their time and efforts.” Not unkindly, he glanced down at her, arms crossed while leaning against a nearby column. “I’ll wait here for you, Lady Corrin.”

Hesitating, she toed at the reassuring stone floor with her bare foot, still unable to meet his eyes in case if he shifted back into that other man. 

“You promise?”

Somehow, she knew he understood the real question and this time, Corrin risked a glance his way when his low whisper came back.

“Always.”

Princess Corrin was the tender age of sixteen now, and presumably preparing for Yule.

Every midwinter when the cold was the harshest, the Northern Fortress celebrated Yule—that mixed season of emotions with generosity of gifts and time alongside good cheer over gluttonous feasts—like the rest of Nohr. It was always feast or famine in the black kingdom, Gunter thought, and briefly mused if Hoshido even had a similar occasion. With endless bounty, there would be no need to celebrate the fruitful times. And yet, compared with Krakenburg’s celebration trending towards an orgy of drunken revelry and carousing of every vice imaginable much like Carnivale, the old knight much preferred the modest midwinter celebrations to be held in three days. 

In the Fortress, the planned festivities were held in the lavishly decorated dining hall of the castle with the burning of a massive yule log hauled in from the nearby forests and exchanged gifts and stories over spiced apple cider. Overall, the evening was a tidy little celebration for both young and old to enjoy without overexerting themselves to fits of unwholesome foolishness.

Mostly. The old knight paced inside the spacious entry hall by the gatehouse, well lit with twinkling torches, and balefully watched as the uncharacteristically cheerful maids decorated the castle railings with boughs of evergreen. Naturally the women were gossiping up a merry storm amongst themselves like the oldest of village elders; of who was bringing a partner, who wasn’t, and—  

“Gunter, can you help?” 

The soft voice interrupted such sentimentalities, floating from one of the tucked-away adjoining rooms. Glancing around the open side door to the tiny powder room, he saw flitting movement by the mirror; Corrin had been trying out a new slate of additional gifts to her menagerie of a wardrobe.

Princess Camilia had left her a gift early along with the rest of the Nohr royals in apology for the absenteeism, instructing her to open the black-and-gold package three days before the main Yuletide celebrations itself. It was a poor substitute for their company in Corrin’s mind, he knew, but he was secretly grateful for the relaxed atmosphere without the royals. Personally, he preferred the quieter holidays that meant less work for the army of maids and butlers and less being at attention hand and foot on royals who, more often than not, did not even notice the thankless patience. 

Little did Gunter know that Camilia’s present involved a beautiful black dress for Princess Corrin. The same dress that the young lady was wearing, twisting gracefully on a wood stepstool. At her throat, a stunning Cheve ruby was ringed by an ornate clasp, along with soft crushed black velvet vividly accentuated the curves of her shoulders and hips which were a striking contrast to her feathery white hair that almost shimmered in the candlelight nearby. Intricate traditional Nohrian embroidery laced up her arms and at the hemline, transforming her silhouette from the surprisingly mischievous scamp he had always known to something approaching a noblewoman right out of the capitol.

All of it didn’t hold a candle to her artless beauty. Gunter’s mouth was far too dry; the whole ensemble was quite flattering on her. 

Too flattering.

“Flora had to help Felica make the apple cider in the kitchens, and um…”  

With her words and gesturing at the expanse of skin, his gaze flicked down to what the problem was; specifically the last three remaining clasps needing to be done up under her slender neck, just out of reach of her fingertips. He blinked; the old man had clean forgotten what she had called him in for. 

Even in her childlike naivety she was stunning, and Gunter did his concious best to lay his eyes on everything but her. Suddenly distracted, he turned towards the doorway in preparation for a swift exit.

“...milady, I’ll fetch the maids for this.” 

He should not be in the same room with her alone; it would already cause a scandal in Krakeburg being an unchaperoned male so close to the princess in such an… uncovered state, regardless of his station as her oldest knight. 

“You're right here, you do it, sir. Save them some time.” Princess Corrin rolled her eyes at him; even with a glance over her shoulder the knight could see her impertinence in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. 

“It wouldn't be appropriate.” Gunter hissed, glowering in his black armour that he had polished just for the festivities with both eyes and the black plates glinting in warning.

This time, his little princess turned around in exasperation with her eyebrows meeting in the middle with furrowed confusion. Gesturing with a loosely-held fanciful hairbrush that cost more than a village vineyard, she pointed up to her hair that was faintly glowing like snow reflected in the stars. “You do my hair all the time.”

“I—” Teenager logic was as damned aggravating as it was correct. 

Gunter gave her his best gimlet stare, the real kind, the three-beat stare that used to make his soldiers scurry away with frantic swears and salutes. 

And still, the damned princess was unmoved. Unafraid. 

Had he lost his touch? Finally, giving a fervent and absolutely-not-panicked glance at the closed door and praying that she would not cause a further scene, the old knight fumbled with the delicate, dainty threads. How these damned complicated strings held up such tight clothing he would never know, muffling a curse or two. 

She smiled beatifically at him, heedless of Gunter stepping away as if she were an open flame. 

“Now, was that so hard?”

Time was, he would have laid a gauntlet on her shoulder in silent reproach. Now he suddenly felt clumsy as an old man, and kept his hands locked behind him, ramrod straight at attention. 

“Stay out of trouble, princess, until I return from this last patrol.” 

“You don’t have to say that like I’m a child, sir…” Corrin replied sulkily, her pale chin jutting out with narrowed-eyed annoyance, and this time it was his turn to roll his eyeballs to the heavens in sheer aggravation privately, behind her. First she acted like one, and then the moppet had the audacity to self-style herself as an adult.

“Fine. Keep Jakob and the maids out of trouble then, milady?”

Instantly she transformed into a beacon of sparkling joy, and grinned with delight. “I can do that.”

“Good luck.” Gunter replied sardonically, striding out of the double doors on his way to the courtyard. “You’ll need it.” 

__________________

Echoing snarls of a wolf pack was Gunter’s first awareness somebody was in serious danger. Sound carried in these remote northern reaches of Nohr, especially with the abyss of a canyon ringing the fortress as a natural barrier of defence. Normally the residents enjoyed the relative safety behind the thick walls. 

But these howls were too close. 

He was a third away from the main gatehouse when he saw the frenzied pack and their even more agitated prey scrabbling for vertical distance.

A tiny human form—barely larger than a child—hung from the castle walls by a grappling hook. One arm also hung limp, clearly wounded from the evidence of a bloodstain arc smeared against the stone walls. The scent of fresh blood or motion must have attracted the wolves, he thought, whether or not the intruder was sneaking about on nefarious matters. 

The wolves howled, en-masse in one eerie baying ritual calling for blood and split bone. Gunter roared in challenge against the pack in turn with an ancient war-song for war and ruin, silhouetted against the eternal night as a mass of black armour, and charged.

Four wolves immediately peeled off with shudders of urgency, sensing a sharp change of tide in their fortunes and darted away into the snow banks that encircled the chasm beyond. Three stayed, and one life was brutally, instantaneously snuffed out—impaled on the end of his spear with entrails dribbling, jerking spasmodically in the last throes as Gunter and his steed thundered into close quarters.

Wolves in Nohr were vicious man-eaters in the lean winters, but they were no match for a trained knight and more importantly, a war-horse worth its weight in gold. His steed viciously kicked out with steel-shod hooves, ending another of the beast’s life with a sickening crunch of bone. The lean beast dropped like a stone, slid, and tumbled off the canted edge of the chasm to the endless night of its grave. Gunter heard the strange ragged child yelp something in fear on the high thin wind, and he whirled the steed around to face the last remaining snarling wolf.  

This bristling beast was desperately hungry or had tasted man-flesh before to be so bold. It was circling, patiently waiting for an opening with saliva drooling in anticipation and red eyes.

Watching its haunches with steadiness, the old knight almost pitied it and the fearlessness. Some fools of soldier-boys could learn from the beast and its honour untainted by ruthlessness. He watched and grimaced as his lance glanced off its shoulder, skittering against bone. A poor hit, and one that sent the animal yelping and dragging itself back into the dark forest before the next death-blow could land. 

Soon, a trail of red blood was all that remained in evidence.

Gunter watched as the cloaked figure gingerly slid the last few feet down the base of the wall. This fool was white-haired, eyepatched, and surprisingly nimble with a bum arm and blood loss on top of probable shock, he warily noted, urging his war-horse much closer. A thief or spy, most likely. The steed snorted in shared suspicion in the crisp air of the snowy mountains, steam and fog billowing wetly from its nostrils.

Gunter’s still-dripping lance froze mere inches from his heart, and the boy shuddered back against the unforgiving stone. 

“Hey…! You save me, and I get cold steel as your hospitality?” 

“Come now, you could be a trick or an illusion.” The old knight evenly replied, his lance still hovering mercilessly over the boy’s chest. One jab against the panting chest would be all it took. “And you are doubtlessly an intruder.”

The eyepatched figure wheezed. “I am in too much pain to be an illusion, black knight. Listen... I'm going to cut my hand on your lance, nice and slow. Illusions can't replicate new wounds, yeah?"

Gunter stared at the boy. He hadn't met anyone else with an appetite for masochism that could match his own. You learn something new every day.

"Idiot child.”

"You could say that again." The white-haired dusky moppet coughed wetly, somehow looking more aged than he did at that moment, much like the tiny hermits that had a habit of living on mountaintops dispensing questionable wisdom. Slowly, very slowly, he padded through the foot of snow near the end of Gunter’s lance that the old knight extended cautiously. And just as slowly, the boy wrapped two fingertips briefly around the end of the wicked and bloodied blade. He held them up against the biting wind.

Fresh blood, a thin trickle from the shallow cut in the flesh. 

So he wasn't an illusion then, and in hindsight, Gunter strongly suspected one of Garon's men wouldn't be quite as reckless as this child. There was something to the earnest naivety that felt like a desperate tool’s desperate fool, freely casting around for scraps of weapons in the shapes of men.

Gunter was off of his horse in a single breath and barely managed to catch the moppet before he collapsed. 

Blood loss. He fished out a vulenary with steady gauntleted hands, uncorked it, and managed to pour half of it down his throat before the cloaked body started coughing and spluttering like a toddler, a spray of spit landing against the old knight’s face, dripping along with pink flecks of blood.

"Try drinking."

"Ghack! You do anything else … but give orders and barbs… old man?"

"I should wash your mouth with soap, boy."

"Niles."

"What?"

"Name... Niles... if my beautiful face perishes... tell Leo."

Prince Leo. One of Princess Corrin’s Nohrian royal siblings that stayed almost exclusively at Krakenburg’s court. Suddenly a great many suspicions came together like a shattered mirror put together piece by piece, and Gunter could begin to sketch out the reasons as to why this strange boy was creeping around the Fortress. And to why this retainer was so immediately knowledgeable about the old knight’s suspicion of illusions. The child-prince this retainer served was quite adept with the dark magics, possibly the greatest magician of the youngest generation.

Gunter hauled up the boy—wiry, more dense with muscle than he looked, but chronically underfed in a way that made the knight privately concerned—and laid him out on horseback like a sack of potatoes. By the lack of complaints, shock was settling in; always an ill sign for health.

"Talk to me, boy." Gunter gently slapped Nile’s cheek repeatedly with his gauntlet, rousing him back into wakefulness. The returned one-eyed glare and snarl was good, and the old knight dumped another vulenary into his hands before getting back onto the horse.

"What... want me to... read bedtime stories to you..."

"This Leo of yours. Tell me about him."

__________________

Judging by the swiftness and real urgency of the healers that descended on Niles like white ravens of death, it was a very good thing that Gunter had brought him back so swiftly.

"Blood loss." Healer Alaine confirmed afterwards in his study that evening. Her rough face glowed from the candlelight and from the dim fire that burned across the room. For all of the severeness the sharp shapes of her habit gave her, there was kindness on her pensive features. "Possible infection from a wolf bite as well, but that should not be an issue now. Niles, the lad said? He'll live, and we'll turn him loose when he's proper enough to travel."

Gunter grunted in acknowledgement, penning the details down into the letter he was sending to the little blond prince that he remembered as Leo. He’d trust the white-haired retainer to pass it along; there was good sense in maintaining relations with royalty.

“You mentioned a wounded wolf?” 

“I’ll deal with it.” A beat, and the old knight put down his pen beside the inkwell. “It’ll make for a convenient lesson with the Princess before the festivities.”

“Mm.” Alaine fearlessly perched on his desk for such a stocky woman, tracing the edge of the stained dark wood. "What is it about you collecting an orphanage out here, old knight?" She smiled warmly, in an unusually good mood with the festivities. "First it was the Princess, and then the maids, and then that little rascal. You’ll be adopting litters of kittens next, and there goes your crusty reputation you worked so hard to maintain."

He leaned back in the chair wordlessly, his neck creaking from the long day and being hunched over the writing. Gunter had wondered the same, though with considerably less grace than the old lady healer. She tilted her head in silent companionship, scanning his desk and space with a studying eye. Some sentimental object must have been a hint, and she turned back to face him. "You have a family?"

"We're no longer in contact."

It kept more questions away than: they were murdered on orders, and I watched.

A razor sharpness in his voice must have told her not to pry further and she simply nodded once, taking in the privileged information. Perching her head on a propped elbow, she surveying him instead. "Either way, you've been good to these dears, your atrocious discipline notwithstanding. They’ll miss you when it’s time to go."

He ignored her last comment. "It's a hard world."

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, yes, yes, and you're a hard man. Spare me."

Gunter came perilously close to snorting with exasperation. Healers were almost universally fearless. He supposed when one faced with as much death and screaming suffering as them, there was nothing left but morbid humour and an appreciation for life when it did come their way. So it goes.

Healer Alaine yawned, and didn’t bother to hide it behind a hand, rather flapping it with good nature in his general direction as her legs swung off the tall, forboding desk. "It's late. Don’t stay up past your own bedtime, I know you boys."

"Healer..." He started, and then looked up at her properly, pulling aside reading glasses to meet her own intelligent, perceptive gaze. "Your work is appreciated. We would be exceptionally worse off without your skills, both magic and more… communal."

Everyone in the Northern Fortress knew that their protector was tight with words, and even tighter still with outright praise. Smiling, she waved back one last time as she walked out, her shadow meeting with Felicia’s who had just appeared around the corner expectantly to walk her back.

__________________

Corrin awoke, watching the dainty snowflakes fall outside the large windows of her tower room.

Jakob had relayed the message that her routine dawn lessons with Gunter were moved back a day, with the whole day occupied by an unknown blank, much like a new chalkboard. Such discrepancy to her schedule was strange, and even odder still when her butler briskly took out layers of her thickest cold weather gear and laid them out on her bed for her to dress in.

"I get to go out today...?"

"His orders, milady." 

Even trying to pry additional information from her loyal and usually gossip-happy butler proved fruitless; he didn't know anything useful other than the venerable knight was especially grim, and that it involved horses. Normally Jakob was eager to spill details of juicy rumours about the outside world as soon as he was buttered up, but it seemed he was emulating the clammy strangeness of the day as well.

She stamped down a hope of being let out of the castle for once, if it involved horses.

Maybe she could even see Lilith, the new stable-girl again. Maybe it was simply as her protector being in a foul mood, and them needing to patrol or forage for extra stocks in the castle. He had been teaching her advanced lessons like supervised animal tracking lately, after all.

Just some practical field experience, she tried to get her mental image of Gunter to murmur, and failed miserably.

By the time she was hurriedly escorted outside the looming stone gatehouse by a shivering and lightly swearing Jakob, her favoured pony was outfitted up for a ride. The grey and white steed was dwarfed by Gunter who was already seated on his monstrously large black-armoured war-horse and staring down at her with foreboding ominously. 

If she squinted, she could imagine his horse with the same bad-tempered squint of an especially disgruntled sergeant, and the striking similarity almost made her giggle in lonely humour. And yet, Jakob was right. Gunter’s mouth was set in a thin and severe line with none of the teasing that she was usually able to work out of him. The black-armoured disciplinarian flicked the reins of the pony in her direction, unreadable and looking more like a statue with the grey swirl of snow beyond.

"We will not be back until close to dark, Princess. Should you have any needs, I suggest you take care of them now. Are you ready and outfitted with your cold weather gear and sword?"

"Yes sir."

His emphasis on sword made Corrin's stomach twist. 

"'Tis time for your lesson; perhaps your most important yet. Come with."

__________________

Hours later, Corrin oddly felt like a carrion crow vainly clawing at meagre scraps of information from her old knight. All she had successfully torn from him was a clipped sentence about a wounded wolf that had been spotted, and that part of her task entailing tracking the dangerous beast down. 

Strangely, he did not add to the rest, leaving a powerfully foreboding sensation in her stomach.

The tracking part was easy enough; the meandering trail of blood that they had followed grew more red and messy, with the reluctant horses methodically trodding along the endless waves of white snow. Corrin was sure that they could gallop to the very edges of the mapped world, past the Ice Tribe’s frigid domain to the north, and it would still be that suffocatingly ceaseless white that could drown an entire army in her imagination.

She blinked with a jolt when she saw a larger patch of the wolf's blood ahead—faintly smeared and smudged from the snow and the stinging ice on her eyelashes, but all too real.

And fresh. By the way her pony’s ears flicked back against its skull, it smelled the wolf nearby, within a distance on foot.

Something was off; her mentor wasn’t quite so reticent with worlds in the warm security of the Fortress. For all that the castle was beginning to feel claustrophobic, it was a known entity with patterns of routines. Abruptly, the shambling mass of his war-horse ground to a halt, and his gravelly voice drifted down to her. 

"Tell me, Princess, what are the different types of killing?" Gunter sounded bone-weary in a way she had never heard before.

"Excuse me ... sir?"

Her eyes slid up to her venerable knight now staring ahead ponderously, a thousand miles away and oddly flattened like a smeared image on a faded tapestry.

She suddenly felt very, very alone. For all of his usual strictness, her beloved black knight had a steady, unjudging warmth that was utterly absent in this particular snowfield journey—and was replaced with lethal winter. She had forgotten how bitterly cold midwinter could get; and still, the chill that bit at her bones felt more human than her old guardian did at the moment.

"Types of killing, Princess."

"Um..." A beat as she racked her head. Her instructor emphasised types, not methods, and she had read many such types in the books he had lent. She had not expected to be forced to recall the details; normally both her maids and royal siblings kept her away from anything so upsetting.

"M-murders ... I guess they're different than executions..."

She tried not to think of Silas with his eyes squeezed tight against the after-image of Gunter's axe held high, and failed, cringing slightly away.

The worst part was—she knew he noticed.

"There are murders of passion, correct." Gunter went on, unbothered. His war-horse crunched the snow and a small branch that sounded unsettlingly like brittle bone. "Which are distinct from executions from the authority of the crown. Also distinct from unsanctioned vigilante executions, and the varied murders of wartime."

At once, she knew from his toneless words that he had seen every kind. She told herself the shiver was from the cold.

"There are also mercy killings. Do you know what such a term means, milady?"

"I don't think so, sir."

"Very good; you know your limits. In that case, today's lesson..."

The leadened cold in her belly sharply shifted to queasy dread. He jerked his head at the blood-trail of the wolf. 

"We are close to this wounded beast. You will take your sword, dismount, engage the beast, and put it out of its misery. That my lady, is a mercy kill."

Violence was supposed to be loud, aggressive. Not ice-cold quiet like a blade slid between her heart by gauntleted hands that she loved.

"I-I—" She shuddered. "I can't, sir."

His face abruptly flickered to blank, hard stone. The thin trail of something close to old grief had even been closed off like a cell-block door, and she was struck with the unnerving realisation that this is what her new friend had seen. Not her guardian and protector, but a black knight who could be a remorseless executioner.

"I won't! I can't!"

"This wolf very nearly attacked one of your brother's retainers earlier today, did you know?"  There was a dangerous edge to his voice, razor quiet. "Beasts that have hunted humans will attack them again. Moreover, you are prolonging its pain with every mewling hesitation of yours."

She flinched again at the sudden whip-crack of contempt in his last words, and the battlefields that were reflected in his dead eyes. It was not aimed at her, this time, but it was a warning.

"What's the problem, Princess?"

There was an ugly taunt to his contempt, now. Distantly, he was goading her, testing her, even trying to help her in a twisted way by making her lose her temper.

"Why does it always have to be k-killing?! Can't we heal the wolf!" Her voice nearly raised in a strangled whispered shriek before he had a chance to respond, hooded eyes fixated on her. "I know! All right, I know, I know, it can attack other villagers, but can't we let it go just this once? It didn't mean anything, Gunter!"

"Have you heard what a dying man sounds like?"

His remote voice cut her to the bone.

She wasn't even sure he was talking to her anymore, or talking to ghosts in the trees.

"A dying woman? A dying child? They scream and beg less than you'd think. With pain, yes. Fear, a little, and rage if they've seen their loved ones violated in some way. In my experience it's the young men who cry out for the comfort of their mothers. Mostly, they all ask for dignity. This creature too—will die with or without your hand. If you refuse, it will die alone, and in greater pain than not."

Gunter shuddered, bringing himself out of his awful trance. He didn't meet her eyes.

"And that is why, Princess Corrin, we kill for mercy. Love. And if not that—respect. We are less than beasts, absent that."

They were both silent for many heartbeats as the wind mournfully howled around them in grief.

It was then—through the frozen silent tears stuck in her eyelashes—that she saw the black outline of the monstrously large wolf between the slender trunks of the birch trees. The creature was on its side with eyes closed; and for a second she dared hoped that it was already dead, put out of its misery. Maybe it already bled out—

Corrin almost forgot time itself until Gunter bent towards her suddenly and drew her own sword from horseback. 

The thin rasp of steel shocked her almost as much as the sudden intrusion and intimacy, him laying a hand so boldly on her weapon, and so swiftly at that. She should feel…something, Corrin thought numbly with a surprised hitch of a breath, but did not react other than to lay a calming hand on her pony’s neck as the horse skittishly danced back once. 

With deceptive limberness in the bitter cold, Gunter flipped her sword over one-handed. It flashed in the reflected light of the snow like quicksilver, and the flat of the blade thudded in his gauntlet cleanly. She would have found his grace spellbinding had the situation not been so grim and had his expression not been so carved from ice. There was no hurried impatience as he tapped her own frozen mittens with the offered hilt. 

“It's time, milady. Either you give it this mercy or you don't.” 

With a shudder she dismounted. With another shudder, she sucked in a breath as her heart hammered like a frenetic rabbit stuck in a trap.

Corrin got the sinking sensation that he would never respect her again if she backed out, and guiltily—that pained her far worse than the act of violence they were calmly discussing. She stared begrudgingly at the black wolf who panted with the harsh laboured breaths of a beast already in its death throes. Its half-lidded eyes were glazed over with pain, watching them now, so far gone the once-proud creature didn’t seem to even recognize or shy away from the two strangers. Any feeling of annoyance at the beast for putting her in this position washed away like a snow-melt river as she suddenly felt very, very selfish.

With a last blink, she forced away the thought of the wolf as an animal, and grasped at the thought of it as a task.

She could feel things later.

“I don't… have the strength to kill it cleanly.” Corrin mumbled halfheartedly while standing in front of the beast, shoes sinking in partially melted snow from its heat. Her vision swam briefly and only came to place when she felt rather than heard the snow crunch slowly under his harsh black boots. Gunter’s formidable presence came to a stop behind her, a mere arm’s length away.

“Think, milady, how would you do it all the same?” His surprisingly warm murmurs were above her ear with his breath frosting and tickling on her neck, and she shivered at how his gauntlets braced her around both of her arms.

“The heart.” She could scarcely feel the empty words coming out of her mouth. “One stab should… be clean. Easier than the skull which has bone.”

“Correct.” 

Risking a glance up, she saw the black knight stride past to loosely circle the wolf at its belly with his tailcoat fluttering in the bitterly cold wind, remarkably like another predator with a hypnotising precise stalk she had never seen before from him. 

He now wore the mask of a mentor as an ill-fitting skein, as armour black as his own. 

Gunter’s eyes flickered over to her, searingly intense despite the frost and the snow-flakes that tumbled between them and turned the outside world into a blanket of white. In his gaze, she saw the executioner jarringly overlaid, that killer more-real than any other diamond-hard facet she knew.

And then he blinked, and he was her old knight once more with the illusion swept aside; with a cold clawed gauntlet extended out in offer. She met that level, observant stare from his thin nose reddened slightly from the cold, and saw as he jerked his head once at the wolf in acknowledgement. 

“I will help you to ensure the strike is clean, milady. But you must be the one to initiate the act.” 

With fumbled footsteps in the snow, Corrin slowly circled around the beast to join his side. There was little now that she could do to drag out the time for her own discomfort, and anyways, wasn’t she missing the entire point that he had laid out for her? Wasn’t this about putting aside one’s own squeamishness for doing the right thing?

Chiding herself, Corrin unhappily eyed the wolf. How oddly vulnerable was that bared furred chest, and how big its teeth were. 

The point of her sword dipped slightly as she raised it, uncertainty and wariness drooping her arms. A breath later and Gunter’s gauntlet closed around her sword-grip with the oddest gentleness; her hand trembled under his shared grip.

“Remember those times that you felt helpless and begged the world for somebody to right the wrongs. Remember when they did not.”

She swore she could feel his heartbeat within those black plates, so close like they were embraced.

“Hold onto the rage that remained, and strike.”

With one desperate sob and surge of strength half borrowed from him, Corrin plunged her sword into the wolf as hot blood spurted out to splash on her cheek.

She held as her blade broke skin, sinew, and heart.

She held as the living being jerked and writhed viciously, almost wrenching the blade out of their grasp. 

She held until the great beast stilled for the final time.

And then fainted soundlessly.

__________________

Sensation bled back from the darkness as somebody wiped the blood from her face.

The tenderness felt like the warmth of a hearth-fire, and Corrin realised she was half-leaning against one of the bone-white birch trees with her venerable knight huddled in front, stained cloth in hand. He was kneeling close enough she could savour his warmth, wanted to bend towards it even with awareness half flickering out of existence.

Despite it all, and the haziness that clung to her, she saw his eyes glittering with vicious pride. She was limp, bereft of any strings that held her aloft. And yet, the sensation was not unpleasant, being cupped and carried in his armoured arms in the moments thereafter.

There she stayed, falling into a dreamless sleep in his lap, on top of his warhorse with her back against his chest as they rode slowly back to the castle.

__________________

One week later, Corrin blew out the candle beside her bedside, content with the day.

No lessons were scheduled for that week and so she had a rare span of free time, often helping the maids and Jakob in between the nights of celebration or rest. Now on the other side of the evening feasts, the denizens of the Fortress were mostly enjoying the warm hearths rather than the outdoors, everyone only doing the bare minimum tasks needed. It so happened earlier that day that the thoughtful Felicia had prepared an extra bundle of herbal teas for the nun that lived in the little chapel on the grounds—and she was perhaps one of the only ones in the fortress to willingly volunteer delivering them in the cold, relishing every opportunity of being outside. 

To others, it was a frozen lonely wasteland. To her, the endless heaps of snow was an enchanting wonderland.

Laying back on her bed, she smiled at the memory.

A distant crack of a whip had startled her with a flinch, enough to almost slip on the snow and to briefly forget her errand. 

With some amount of curiosity and trepidation, Corrin trotted away from the chapel to the private sparring grounds where she thought the sound had come from. Moments later, snow sleeted down on her nose as she scented the crisp air tentatively, undecided of which direction to go. Snow muted smell as well as it did sound.

But not sight—distinctive black armour at the corner of her eye flickered with motion, and she heard the crack again, with an echo of another flinch.

Corrin blinked as she watched, fascinated at Gunter's motions.

Despite the cold, he moved with the oddest grace and surety in his drills, none of his gestures wasted as the tip of the whip danced with almost inhuman speed.

It was a span of a few more breaths when he stilled, evidentially seeing her there, and he seamlessly transitioned into a short bow.

Found out, she approached.

“S-shouldn't you be inside, sir? I don't want you catching cold…”

He was amused at the comment, crossing his arms with a hidden smirk and dancing eyes. “Concerned about me, princess? I'm touched.”

Snowflakes landed on his silver-lilac hair, an odd little note of softness in contrast to his handsomely sharp jawline. Shyly, Corrin looked away while attempting to find words; she had never noticed how lean he was. It struck her she didn't really know what Gunter did in his spare time either, other than drills; her old knight knew her entire life and here he was still a mystery to her.

“Everyone else is resting…”

“Drills wait for no one, certinally not for the lazy." He approached her leisurely with long boot-steps and a contented sigh. "Besides, an old man like me prefers this tranquillity. Now, may I inquire what brings you out here, milady?”

“I heard the, um, whip…”

In the heavy silence of the snow, he studied her with a side-flicker of a glance. Carefully, finally, he murmured.

“Forgive me if this is too forward for an old knight, but I noticed you flinched at the noise.”

With a nod, she chewed at her lip. “I did. It's... odd.” Trailing off, she perched on the fence-posts by the stables to stall for time, now more at his eye-height. “I don't mind watching you with it, but it's like the noise…”

Is a ghost from a time I don't remember, was what she almost said. Uncannily, he nearly read her mind.

“Mm. if I had to presume, you may have had a bad experience with such a weapon a long time ago. The body often remembers when the mind does not. It… is not an uncommon experience with soldiers.”

She fell silent, fascinated at such a grim topic, and how the words rang true to her sensations. Having it laid so logically out made the jumpy skittishness feel less oppressive. At that moment, sitting there on the stable-post with legs kicking, she wished she could sit there and listen to him for hours.

“Acclimation is when one deliberately chooses to reduce that instinctive response. As you can imagine, princess, most soldiers want their responses to be predictable. Typically this is done with slow training with whichever weapon was the issue. Would you like to give it a try, milady?”

“Me?” Corrin asked in disbelief, and she saw the tiniest smirk in the corner of his scarred mouth again as he held out the whip silently. 

All she could think was how scandalised Xander or the maids would be if he saw this scene. This side of weapons and warfare was not becoming of a princess, she was constantly told. Duels with blades were considered honuorable for whatever reason (hypocritically, she thought), and the only kind of weapon that others encouraged, but not the reminders of the more sordid corners of what conquest meant; it was simply too unpleasant for someone who had been cloistered away.

Maybe she wanted the unpleasantness.

But Gunter was unruffled, and his logic made a certain amount of sense—he was her combat instructor after all, and was this not combat? 

With a swallow, she tentatively took his leather in her hand. 

It was warmer than she would have assumed, likely heated from his grip. The sound, too, was not unpleasant as she swished the coiled material back and forth experimentally before he corrected her stance professionally with a touch against her wrist and a murmur.

Corrin smiled fondly at the rest of the memory, laying back against the sheets with a soft thump.

She had enjoyed that moment with him, alone in the snow and learning under his hands until she did not flinch anymore.

Indeed, the space between them had changed after the lesson with the wolf, even in that short week. While she would not go as far to say as her severe, venerable knight had defrosted, there were hints of approval that glimmered in his eyes that she had never seen before, especially when she challenged herself with lessons she never would have dared before.

And there was... more, Corrin had to admit. Feelings she was hesitant to prod at except when alone.

Gunter was quite unlike like the other stable-boys the maids whispered about lecherously when they thought she wasn't around. Her knight was also not like the ones in the randy paperbacks that she stole from the cooks, young and boringly baby-faced with altogether too many muscles in the wrong places. 

No, he was—she thought with a fluttering, warm feeling low in her stomach, as her toes curled in her sheets, free in this private moment—he had a handsome leanness with his lines, and a fearsome countenance which made it all the sweeter when a twinkle of good humour shone through, especially when it was after a comment she had made or won a rare sparring match.

She liked earning every one of those looks, these days, and spending time with him.

There was always a oddly warm satisfaction afterwards, sharp and heavy at the same time.

It was a similar sensation when—

Some nights, she wanted to see what he looked like out of his armour and to touch him as she had started to do to herself, late at night with daydreams under her blankets.

Bonelessly, she sank into such a fantasy.

She sat on the fences, letting her lazily feet swing over the stones and the rubble, and shyly watched him at his drills under her lashes. It was summer now, with him fully out of armour for once and in a half-buttoned shirt she had only seen once in a previous year. His shirt clung to his chest in revealing ways, and she wanted to stroke the whisps of hair she saw.

He called out, parade ground voice scratchy with tease after sparring. The slight sheen of sweat on his face and the way he panted as he approached made her stomach twist. Not bad, but … too warm, too tingly, swoopy with a rush of heat—

It felt good, warm and desirous, and especially so when she thought of him like this, when the scene blurred again slightly. The two of them were in the stables now, sheltered from eyes and in a great deal of a more private space than before. He stalked closer and suddenly his presence was overwhelming, crowding closer than she had ever felt before. She could smell his sweat and musk even more intensely; uniquely masculine and heady in a way that made her hands ache to roam over him.

<Congratulations on the victory.> 

The old knight all but purred, pulling off pieces of her armour like he had done in the past after spars. 

Yet unlike those past spars, she was tense still, restless with a different kind of energy, and he must have felt her then, as unlike the past his gloves lingered over her skin, and she shivered into the touches. Boldly, she touched one of his bare forearms, guiding him around her hip until those big, big gloves sat on either side of her hips, holding her comfortably, fingers just overlong that they reached around to flex possessively, pulling her in to his waist as his mouth bent to her neck.

She felt the top of the leather whip brush her thigh as she curled her legs around his waist, and trembled at the divine friction.

It was wrong, she knew in a distant way, as her finger slipped down to the hot wetness. And that one hesitation abruptly vanished as her whole body eagerly trembled fever-deliriously under her touch. Except it wasn't hers; she imagined it was his now, along with his deep voice that rumbled, and sent goosebumps along her neck—

<I have something better for you, Princess, to take this edge off.>

He shifted slightly above her, and she felt a new sensation press against her, delicious friction between her thighs against that tight heat of her core. A whimper escaped from her lips as he stroked once, long and luxuriously at the slickness that was now there.

Gunter pressed his lips to the side of her neck again as her hips tentatively began to rock on his gloved fingerpad, shocks of new pleasure beginning to mount on each other with overwhelming sensation. Arching bonelessly into how his scarred lips continued to suck and nibble along her neck, not really caring about how he implemented that, as long as the friction as she writhed around his finger did not stop, oh she was building up now to a rhythm, harder and deeper—

<We should secure you, princess.> Gunter murmured at her earlobe, scarred lips sending heat right to everywhere that mattered, when she nodded hazily. 

<Please, please—> She whined, and the scene blurred again slightly, once more, until it solidified with her hands pleasurably bound above her in a comfortable knot with his whip, and Gunter standing above her with that crooked smirk, satisfied with his handiwork, hooded eyes trailing her possessively. It was impossible not to shiver helplessly under that penetrating gaze. 

Gunter began to kneel slowly warm big gloved hands sensuously trailing down her every curve and caressing her in places she hadn't known felt so good, driving smaller moans from her like the once when he cupped her breast and squeezed slightly. A flicker of motion later, and he had deftly tugged aside her panties, leaving her crimson and bare to him. 

The absence of his gloves were keenly felt briefly as she arched again with want, need (repositioning, stuttering, loosing the rhythm as she touched herself and found it again)—

His face was level with her hips now, thighs splayed to either side of him. She could see more of his chest hair from this angle, eyes widening. A half delirious moan escaped from her in in anticipation as his silver-lilac hair brushed her thighs as he surged in with the bright-eyed intensity of a predator focused on prey.

She felt his thin nose there first, and then so much more as he began to mouth at her luxuriously, like in the books. Oh, but it was so much better with him—lapping gently at her, in her teasingly, pleasurably drinking her in as she writhed once as a new raw bolt of sensation surged through her, at once pervasive and tightening. Her breath hitched as she touched herself faster, arching, becoming undone as she imagined him there, grey-lilac hair tickling her thighs.

<Sir—>

She was rocking with his talented tongue so shamelessly now, thighs thrown over his sweaty shoulders, Crashing waves of pleasure spasmed through her, far more intense than she had ever felt before. Corrin melted into her touches, and against the imagined outline of his hands caressing her skin in the aftershocks as she rode against his tongue—

—to oblivion.

Dizzy happiness swam over her as reality slowly bled through again.

Corrin stared at the ceiling for a long time afterwards, panting and completely unable to move a single inch much less a heavy limb even as slightly wet drool covered her pillow.

Oh. 

Oh.

She had never known this feeling, this whole new world.

Corrin was seventeen and watching her distorted reflection in the shiny-steel of the teapot whistling merrily on top of the stove. After an hours-long and gruelling lesson on tactics between maps strewn across the table, Gunter had seen the exhaustion on her face and gently suggested tea-time as a break. 

He pressed harder with lessons these days. Even now, when they were expecting a visit from the other Nohrian royals inside of hours. 

“You’re pretty predictable, sir.” Corrin remarked at last, drying her hands on the little tea-towel that the maids had made one winter. The two of them were in the kitchens, more spotless than usual ahead of the anticipated visit, and she knew it was about to get quite busy. “If you ever miss tea-time, I’ll know to be concerned.” 

"Routines are the bedrock of civilization, milady." Gunter’s scarred lip quirked as he leaned back against the counter, and at first she heard the off-hand comment as a joke, but after a while realised he was serious with a touch of whimsy. The quick flash of his sardonic smile after proved the assumption true. “Riddle me this, princess: around how many days would a city last should an enemy mage spirit away all food?”

“No more than a week.” Corrin murmured back after a moment, watching the steam blossom against the dark tile backdrop like a rain cloud. 

“Correct, three days to be precise. Whole nations have fallen after such a time in chaos…” He observed the tea with an off-hand braced on his hip, “...and that is one of a great many reasons to enjoy the simple pleasures of life that we do have, and to stay vigilant.”

It was a grim topic to be having while peacefully steeping tea but Corrin found she was enjoying it; her venerable knight enjoyed talking. Sometimes she got the sensation that others assumed the old man was closed off or intimidatingly severe, and she wondered if they had ever seen him in good company and truly relaxed like this.

Other times, she was glad they didn't see this companionable side of him. Corrin increasingly did not want to share her mentor’s attention with others these days.

The shrill whistle of the pot broke her attention and she smiled when she saw his veined hands sneakily lay out some cookies along with lining up the teacups neatly, absentmindedly humming. Gunter always had a sweeter tooth than he ever admitted.

His eyes twinkled in paternal humour when they were both done pouring out the tea. “Shall we give the honour of a taste test to a neutral third party?” 

“Old man, I'm not falling for that again.” Jakob muttered from behind, finishing up the last of the clattering and now stacked dishes. The white porcelain sparkled against the bright sun filtering from the kitchenette window. 

“Jakob, you don't even know how it'll taste!” Corrin stamped her foot on the wooden floor-boards only to get a wry chuckle from him.

“See, I know too much to be the tester you need.” The butler smirked back with a lazy dismissive gesture, completely unafraid. “Try Flora, she's just around the corner.”

“I heard that.” 

The butler rolled his eyes at the faint answer, and mouthed it was worth a shot, milady at Corrin.

Between giggles at the fond exchange, she bit her lip. “Maybe we ought to all taste it at once.” 

“Quite fair, and a sound idea, milady.” Gunter’s deep voice cut through the wisecracks as he served the freshly steeped cups of Corrin’s tea to five places at the dark wood table. It did not take long before all of the friends crowded around, eager to participate in the moment of levity. 

They were an odd bunch, but she treasured them all the same. 

A flutter of nervousness danced in her stomach. What if it was garlic instead of cloves that she had ground in? What if it had been oil instead of fresh honey—

“We should drink it on the count of three.” Jakob rapped the table impatiently. 

“It’s not a race, Jakob.” Felicia chimed in, the pink-haired maid munching on a cookie in advance, and wiping crumbs from her lips. Says you, Flora mouthed, as sisters often did, and it was Gunter who raised up his black-gauntleted fingers authoritatively, counting down silently. 

They drank in unison. 

Absolute silence stretched over the table.

Until a loud choke and a strangled hack broke it. 

A sound escaped from Gunter’s direction like something between a heaving alley-cat and a drunk soldier, and he bent over. The jerk forward nearly upended the rest of their teacups and Corrin almost tripped when she leapt up in concern, running over to his side.

He hacked twice—and only when she saw his smirk and the roughish twinkle in his eye did she realise he had been playing them all like a fiddle, cackling under his breath in that peculiar way old men did, and Corrin flushed scarlet, slapping him lightly on the arm.

“Gunter! You—I should—” 

“You were quite convinced I was poisoned there, Lady Corrin.” For somebody so usually stoic, his smirk was endearing. More than that, she thought privately while making a face at him—handsome, even. 

Both maids were giggling behind their dainty raised teacups, barely keeping the liquid in the porcelain from sloshing around. Meanwhile Jakob rolled his eyes to the heavens, and took another sip of the tea with exaggerated disdain at the antics around him. She hid a smile as she returned to her seat and smoothed her dress out; the butler was sometimes more the adult than all of them put together. 

“A decent start.” Jakob finally proclaimed, and Corrin beamed with pride at the resulting round of nods. Her dear butler did not give undeserved compliments, and it was gratifying to feel somewhat of use in their domain; something akin to giving back as they had always done rather than always being waited on. 

Their individual tasks were happily forgotten for a blessed few hours as the four of them simply talked as equals, and it was only when the watchguards called out the royals’ arrival that their moment dissolved and everyone sprang for their duties once more. 

__________________

As always when the Nohrian crown siblings visited, the banquet dinner feast lasted overlong.

They were all too young for the kind of drunken carousing that the Nohrian court engaged in liberally—small mercies—but the endless chitchat and court gossip were wearing his nerves thin. Then again, the old knight supposed he could not begrudge them the time together.

The worst part was, he was not going to have one whit of sleep until the royals and their ilk were away from the castle. Gnawing on his lip as he paced outside of the banquet hall, his gaze swept uneasily over the throngs of new servants, maids, and retainers. Gunter was not so cut off from the court that he did not have his own eyes and ears, and they had whispered quite unpleasantly that there were other guests in the Fortress that night.

Corrin was due for another visit by Garon’s mind-wipe mages. 

With a cold dread, he had confirmed with his own sight the gaggle of mages amongst the child-royals who were oblivious to the company that travelled with them to the Northern Fortress. Their kind always wore black robes, golden masks, and a faint stench of their dizzying incense that always trailed unpleasantly for hours.

The old knight did not trust many, but he had told Corrin’s retainers of his plans—Jakob, Felica, and Flora. Corrin’s retainers were all still children, barely of age for advanced classes, not stealthily tailing royal court mages who could kill them all with a flick of a hand and a breathed word of malice. Gunter did not like using children for such a dangerous game but he had no options, and a gaggle of maids and butlers would be the last kind of personnel that would give any suspicion to a royal mage drunk on arrogance and the promise of a good night. 

The likes of them considered anyone not of the Court to be less than human. 

“Old man, have you seen Princess Corrin lately?” Jakob sidled up with a plate of half-finished appetisers, slightly out of breath from the ceaseless dance of serving food. These nightly banquets always brought the most neurotic side of the gangly butler to the forefront, and he could not blame the sweating boy. Serving royals hand and foot with expected snivelling lip service was a gauntlet that Gunter was grateful he was too old for; these days he would be liable to snap at them like a bad-tempered hound. “Not like her to miss a chance to bond with Princess Elise and others.” 

“I had assumed she was with the royals. I personally saw that Princess Camilia brought her to the table three hours ago.” Gunter’s reply was testy in the implication that both of them had missed something so important from right underneath their noses, and the old knight took a chance to peek around the column at the extravagantly laden table to confirm. Not there.

Fuck.

Jakob was continuing to babble on at a squeakier and increasingly more nervous pitch; he was of the age when his voice was due to crack soon, as well as in the habit of making questionable choices in personal grooming like growing out his long white hair. 

“Well yeah, but she missed the cheese course an hour ago and she’s always there for those. Maybe something didn’t sit well?” 

Alarm rang in the old knight’s mind. The brat was shrewd enough to be correct, for all of his barely concealed panic of a situation rapidly going out of hand. Corrin never missed any moment of these dinners, being so lonely at the Fortress for what little company came her way. 

“Spoilt food doesn’t take hold this early… drop everything else, and look for her. Recruit anyone trusted and let the newest maids handle the royals.”  

Jakob nodded with urgency and mild panic bobbing his throat. “Do you—do you think—”

“We don’t assume, boy—not when every second counts. We act.” Gunter hissed at him viciously with his own mounting panic, shoving him further down the servant’s hall none too kindly. The white-haired butler swore at the trembling silver tray in his hands that teetered alarmingly but finally picked up the pace, almost sprinting down the last two-thirds with heels slapping against the stone. 

Just in time—a mage flitted around the other corner as the butler left, narrowing his eyes at the retreating figure. 

That sneering disdain was familiar, as was the flicker of suspicious eyes beneath a black hood that marked the mage as an elite straight from Krakenburg. Not just any ponce with an aptitude for street magics, but likely one of Iago’s own henchmen with the power to prove it. 

"Your little runt-Princess is growing, ser knight." The mage's eyes were bright under the hood, too sordidly bright in the glow that filtered in from the main dining hall, in a way that made Gunter bristle instinctively. "Shapely now, she'll be ripe and ready for child and bitc—"

The mage choked, breath cut short by a black gauntlet and an even blacker fury in the knight's eyes.

"Finish that sentence—" Gunter squeezed his hand around the man's throat with lethal intent and shoved him up against a wall one-handed in rage. “—and you won't have a tongue or prick to spew your sodding shit—"

"B-b-bastard pig!"

"Enough!" Healer Alaine stood behind them with arms crossed, white robes billowing like a war banner and bristling with a raging forest-fire in her eyes. “You lot going to carry on with your degenerate racket in the presence of a holy woman? No?” 

There was a crackling dead silence that one could cut with a broadsword. 

She barked out again like a growling guard-dog.

“Go to her tower. Now.” The ice-cold implication in her voice and grim knowledge in her eyes made his veins freeze.

His face drained to sheet-white. Garon’s mages had already gotten to her. 

His fucking foolish plan of surrounding her with the royals all night had spectacularly failed, and his little princess had paid the price for his absence, and the old knight whirled to sprint down the hallway with haste.

Two hours. It had only been two hours . Maybe the boy was right, maybe it was spoilt food. Or overstimulation, she had always tired quickly with social activities—

The guard that was stationed in front of her tower staircase was nowhere to be seen.

Fuck.

Gunter took the stone steps two at a time, he hadn’t known he still had the energy, and swore with a long streak of profanity as his bad knee almost gave way near the top—

"Corrin -!"

An awful silence answered him, and the old knight didn’t even bother with a knock at the door, a surge of bile and fear ricocheting through him as he distantly noted the unlocked and ajar door—

Corrin was motionless on her bed, partially clothed in her nightdress and so very still. 

She was badly lethargic or outright fainted; a bad sign.

Like a grim battle-healer, he inspected her for obvious wounds as discretely as possible without disturbing her, and found spidery trails of blood streaked across her arms. Blood magic by the looks of it, meant to immobilise and restrain by the crude and smeared runes that were left. Gunter was by no means a mage, but he could recognize the same shapes from his readings.

Quickly retrieving a damp wash-rag from the washroom connecting to her suite, the old knight washed the runes off as gently as possible to avoid infection, steeling his mind blank to not shake apart with black fury on the spot. Crude displays of emotion would not help her in his failure.

Tenderly, in those long bleak moments of silence, Gunter worked the stained cloth down to her hands. Her discoloured fingernails grabbed the old knight’s attention, and he took a clammy hand of hers to inspect it closer only to realise there were splotches of blood and flesh under the nails and—

She had fought back.

His little princess had fought back with everything she had, and in that moment, pressing his forehead to hers was the only gesture he could do to keep himself from tearing down the stone steps and seeking the mages to smear them across the ground in a wash of cold blood and hatred.

It was then she woke with a shuddering gasp, inhaling air like the once-dead. 

Her slender bird-like arms frantically flailed, halfheartedly clawing at her own arms, at him, or away—

“Easy, easy Corrin.” Gunter murmured, voice low and thick with feeling as he so gently kept her from digging her nails into her own flesh. 

Something about his whisper made her still, motionless as a statue.

He too, froze, paralyzed with fear that she had forgotten him, that something was terribly wrong with her mind, that she thought he was one of them—

Shaking with disorientation, her hands reached out hesitantly, and it was then that he saw her tear-stains in the moonlight as she lunged forward at him, scrabbling for his armoured chest in comfort.

As she curled and trembled in a fetal ball on his armoured lap, Gunter hesitated, feeling powerless in a way that made his throat close. 

It was only when those tiny hands pulled his own armoured gauntlets tighter around her in an unmistakable gesture of childlike need for comfort that the old knight embraced her, rocking her on her bed. Softly, softly, he hummed an old soldier's cadence as her fists balled in his hair by the nape of his neck.

And at last, she listlessly fell into sleep.

It was hours later when she was dead to the world in dreams and back in her bed under the blankets that he heard the quietest, gentlest knock on the door outside and then the slim face of Healer Alaine peek in questioningly.

Moments later, he slunk out in the hallway with the old stout healer beside him, face grave in the torchlight. Still gripping the bloodied washcloth in his shaking hand, Gunter thrust it under her nose for emphasis, tight fist shaking in fury.

“This was under her fingernails, healer. Tell me why they should still be alive right now.”

Her face flattened to stone, and she sharply glanced with piercing cold eyes that belied frightening intelligence, much like a raven. “Evil work. Why do we allow this?”

“I cannot presume to know Garon’s…” The words died on his tongue; anything would be a bloody fucking disgrace. The healer was staring at him with that penetrating look.

“He said the mage’s work was for her protection, same as not allowing her out.” Gunter smiled thinly, slash-sharp with white teeth in the near total darkness. “She’s a bloody political prisoner.” 

He laughed once. 

“Do you know how difficult it is not to tell her why? You and I know Garon's madness, and here I feared she would never forgive me for that little escapade from before with that squire, crying every day.” Gunter laughed again hollowly with inaudible bitterness, back sagging against the stone wall with his face in his hands.

“Sending away her dear best friend like the old bastard I am.” He simpered with a thread of cruelty, starting to laugh further. “Maybe she'll forget, with this—” 

Healer Alaine stepped closer smoothly and in the next moment, after a clap of sound leaving his his face stung it took a further heartbeat to realise the bitch had slapped him.

He felt the corners of his mouth lift up in a humourless smile, raising an sardonic eyebrow down at her. At least one of them was decent, he decided while rubbing his jaw ruefully. Not a poisonous snake like him all nested beside his little princess with venomous fangs so far embedded in flesh she couldn't feel the difference anymore.

“You cunt, pull yourself together.” Alaine whispered with such viciousness that he blinked in surprise and stilled, watching her. “You may be a ruin of a man, but pull yourself together into something that she deserves. Gods know she has no one else.”

He was only an empty suit of armour holding a shell of hatred together for use. Decency was an unknown to him after Garon had robbed him of everything he known along with any ghost of dignity. And yet—something about the burning fire in her eyes ignited something in him.

Perhaps this too, could be part and parcel what would pierce that dark reign. 

“Do you swear to protect her from Garon?” Stepping closer, she grabbed his hand that still held the cloth, and squeezed it like a vice. There was no love or mercy in it, and he was grateful for the violence. The healer had strength that far outstripped some soldiers. “Swear to me.”

He met her stare with viciousness of his own, and grinned like a wide-eyed mad wolf.

“They will never touch her again. Not ever.” 

“Again, knight.” She shoved him back against the wall with strength that nearly rattled his mind in his armour, and he crowed out a dark throaty chuckle, breathing out the first words he had truly meant in two decades.

“I swear on her name, I will protect Lady Corrin to my dying breath.”

Healer Alaine gave a grunt of approval, finally satisfied. It was quite remarkable how the healer shifted back into somebody so unassuming, under those robes. 

Much like him; they were kindred spirits of sorts behind a thousand masks.

“Go, be with her for tonight. I will relieve you in the morning.”

__________________

He awoke sharply, blinking at the light sensation of the princess hesitantly tracing his facial scar.

Startled as much as he was, she leaned back with surprise and almost fell back against the floor had Gunter not caught her easily.

They stayed there for a moment regaining awareness—the old knight seated on the equally ancient overstuffed chair, and Corrin loosely curled on his lap with a curious expression on her face.

“Princess?” His heart skipped a beat, acutely aware of her frail form between his ruthlessly sharp black metal gauntlets as he steadied her. “Do you still remember who I am?”

She nodded slowly. Mouthed his name. That was a good sign, Gunter thought distantly. The old knight genuinely didn’t know whether he would have gone after Garon’s mages and hunted them in cold blood if she didn’t remember.  

“You were snoring.” She told him in that snotty teenager-like voice, the know it all. Gunter gave her an askance expression. 

Really. Of all things she had to notice?

“I was— I was not, milady.” 

“Were too.”

“Were—was—”

And she was laughing, he gave the softest splutter of a chuckle until they were both laughing, until she was leaning against his side as a warm little lump and he could feel prickles of not-tears by the corners of his eyes. 

“What’s that ring, sir?” 

She was unusually curious and talkative for not even a full day after a memory wipe. Maybe the ould healer was right, and they had unintentionally cut short the mage’s work, leaving the evilness unfinished. Bodies and minds were resilient. Corrin’s even more than most—ever since that cell when the old knight had first seen the malnourished princess, he knew she had a survivor’s eyes. 

“Hrm?”

She pointed again to his ungloved left hand, with her head still nuzzled on-top of his chest. 

Ah. 

“A tale for another time, milady.” Gunter did not want old sorrows to dash their moods, not this morning.

And mercifully, she did not press further.

__________________

From there, he spent the the next days tending to her.

The royals had left in the day after without saying their good-byes and Gunter cynically wondered if they had been chased off by orders, and too afraid to push back with the weight of their authority for one last act of decency—or if they had simply forgotten.

Instead, he and the old healer took turns watching over the little girl, and slowly Corrin regained that former spark. 

__________________

Exactly one month after that night, Gunter found her by one of the guards in the courtyard. 

Lost, and on the verge of tears in frustration by her slightly pink face. Not that the other men would know; the princess kept her composure better these days as she was a young woman now, after all. Gunter walked her away from the others, shielding her with his body from any curious gazes by the other guards. 

He was conscious about the princess’ dignity especially at the tender age of seventeen. Had she been any other royal, she would have been introduced to the Court’s tender mercies by now, as hers was an age that the court started busily talking about marriages. Some days it felt like Garon did him and the little princess an unintentional favour sending them both far from the nest of snakes.

Even with his careful guidance and with the knowledge that he and Healer Alaine had unintentionally cut short the mage’s work, their princess was affected by the partial memory wipe. 

Corrin always exhibited the most symptoms in the days immediately after, and Gunter was sickened to observe there was a pattern. Memories of her closest people came back first with associations of scents, taste, and touch being exceptional at recalling memories. Favourite hobbies came swiftly after.

Places were harder to remember. Her speech was the trickiest of them all, when she chose to say more than a sentence to the guards or her maids. Sometimes… she forgot time, as she did now, watching the pace of castle life with wary, wide eyes and a hint of fear behind them. 

Gunter pitched his voice low and even to avoid spooking her. 

“Your notes, milady. What do they say?” 

At his words, she blinked owlishly at the sheaf of papers in her hand, as if they had been conjured up by a caravan-mage’s trickery. 

Truthfully, he had made her write those notes. Cajoled, coerced, used tricks like their games of catch that mercifully she did not forget—he had the scamp write down directions from his descriptions in hopes of encouraging those memories to respond.

“Follow the wall on your right to…” Her wide red eyes looked up, and he saw the spark of recognition, ever so briefly. “The… mess hall?” 

“Indeed, milady. Do you remember what awaited you there?” 

“Chocolates!”

Despite himself, Gunter hid the tiniest of smiles. “Show me where to go, my princess. I’ll follow your lead.” 

The girl twirled ahead with ethereal lightness in the relative privacy of the cobble-stone path that twined around the meagre herb garden within the castle walls. Resolutely, the old knight followed behind with eyes scanning the smears of yellow light on the horizon as he observed the bustling castle life from a distance in the gloom.

Some days it all seemed so placid. Picturesque, even, and it was easy enough for the scene to almost blur into happy memories of his own village, so long ago, before…

Wearily rubbing at his lined face with a hand, the thought led him to another. 

“Lady Corrin, do you remember the rules of the fortress?” It would not do for her to forget in a clumsy series of events, and for them to attract her father’s attention when they had avoided suspicions so narrowly. Not when she was still so tenderly vulnerable. 

As ever light on her bare feet, she came to a graceful stop next to a trio of ferns. Her lovely red eyes were distant now with a duller sheen as her own mind drifted while childishly chewing on her lip with a sharp fang, pondering the question.

“I can’t…” She frowned. “Something about the tower…”

“You musn’t go outside the castle walls.” Trying to mix sternness and gentleness, the old knight continued gravely. “Not without my knowledge. King Garon has commanded this, until he has decided you have shown your aptitude with combat.” 

As always, he pinned her crestfallen eyes with his own gaze until she gave a reluctant nod. 

Gunter decided later when they were seated at a table, nibbling on the promised chocolates—soon, he would take her outside on supervised horseback rides in hopes that it would forestall any future unplanned adventures by the miscreant. His little sword would not cut with needed ruthlessness if she were so dull from boredom and inaction.

Corrin was eighteen now, and blinked in front of the floor-length mirror in quiet surprise at the passage of time. Behind her, the beaten silver reflected her chambers in utter disarray. So distracted she was about winning Xander’s duel that all her other chores and tasks had slipped in the excitement, ever so slightly.

But she had won.

With the sudden changes of the Nohrian king summoning her, it wasn’t surprising. Jakob was now down by the courtyard being a wonderful conductor (and more importantly to her, distraction) to all the hustle with her royal siblings, directing the last-minute decisions and additions to the travel itinerary planned. The two loyal maids that tailed him in tandem were preparing snacks in packaged little wax-paper cubes that could easily be stored and kept for many days, the same kind favoured by soldiers and merchant travellers.

And Gunter…

In the commotion, her old knight had opted to slip away and personally help her pack up for the last time, oddly enough. Several massive, perilously tottering stacks of knick-knacks and books laid scattered around the steadily dwindling larger pieces of furniture, some to be sold and some to be taken with her to Krakenburg. Quickly, with the assistance of her venerable knight, the chaos was contained and soon enough there was only a small, manageable pile of sentimentalities remaining. While his company had been unexpected, it was a welcome surprise to have his canny mind to pick out critical essentials for the long journey.

Gunter nodded over at the modest stack of books on her bedside after giving the tomes a sensible once over. 

“You'll be bringing these in the carriages, milady?”

“Oh yes, especially that top-most one. It's the story about the underworld beneath Nohr.” She smiled fondly at the black embossed cover; the eerie little myth had become one of her favourites as of late.

Parts of it seemed so hauntingly familiar with a river that split through life and death, with ancient terrible magic that lurked even further in the gloom—and yet she was equally drawn to the romance between the goddess that chose to live in the underworld with the mysterious lord there. 

“Sometimes you learn more from the classics than you expect.” His brows went up in suspicion as his gaze rested on her, and then back at the book. “That said, I don't recall giving that book to you, milady…”

“You, ah, didn't….” Flaming, she remembering how she snuck the tome out one evening on a dare from her butler when he had been cross at her. Their little childhood games seemed so silly now, in the distant past. “I may have stolen it from your library.”

Corrin had expected him to look at her askance with annoyance or severity but oddly enough, her old disciplinarian barely gave any sort of negative reaction. Fair enough, his relaxed shoulders seemed to say with a minor twitch of an armour plate, and she was secretly pleased at the little success of the mischief. Sometimes, she felt, her old mentor seemed to encourage little rebellions and bending of rules. The sense that he wanted her to think and not blindly react. It was a welcome respite from how everyone else always treated her—like she was not capable of such thought or defiances. 

“My my... the little princess turns out to be a thief…” Tilting his head back, she caught an actual to goodness wink from her old knight, so subtle she almost missed the look. “I should question how you managed to find your way in there…?”

Corrin innocently observed the courtyard beyond the window to keep her face schooled; he didn't need to know about her various tricks to sneaking past ill-at attention guards, or bribing them as Flora had taught her.

“Mysteries, sir.” 

“Mm. Now this, I also recognize.” His scarred face bent down with fondness as he gently pulled out a well-worn wooden chessboard out of a drawer with two tugs of his armoured glove. “Care to play while we clean the rest of this up, milady?” 

This offer was sincere, and she graciously accepted with delight; it really had been a long time since they had played, generally by the fireside after lessons on the coldest of days when even sparring was ill-advised. True, he almost always won with a deceptive amount of foresight that frankly baffled her at times, but those made the rare moments when she turned the tables on him all the more sweet. 

Corrin could not resist a victorious grin upon winning the first match.

The second victory went to him, with an answering satisfied smirk briefly splitting his scarred lips. That time, she shook his hand over the board, more graceful in defeat than success. In the lull as he set up the pieces once more, opting for black, she asked the question that had been bothering her mind the whole last night. 

“What’s your secret, sir?” 

He leaned beside her bedside dresser, one armoured elbow propped lightly upon the ornately carved dark brown wood, contemplating the double meaning of the question.

“Plan long term with single-minded focus, milady.” With a sigh, he shifted to the other hip. “It sounds deceptively simple, but so many fail at this one task. Distractions will abound, both in this game and life at Krakenburg… do not let them cloud your instincts.” 

Corrin pursed her lips and hesitated. That answer too, was laced with multiple meanings and directions.

“Distractions like…”

Some nameless emotion flitted across his eyes, too quickly to pin down. “Orders. People. False opportunities that are traps beneath the smiles. Much can be accomplished when your enemies think that you are blindsided, or bluntly—too naive to notice. Play them as the fool instead.” 

The rest of the afternoon passed as they conversed, playing once more to break the tie; it was the rare day for her where she hoped that odd little moment of quiet company never ended.

He won the last round, and Corrin was inwardly tickled to see an smug smirk on her old knight. 

It was a good look on him.

__________________

Flying with Camilia was also an entirely new experience. 

“Hold tight, dear.” the wyvern-princess had said with that cat-like smile and a mischievous wink. This princess—her oldest sister and the Nohrian crown princess that terrorised the skies from her undead wyvern—felt far more at home here than anywhere on land, Corrin thought as frosty breath rapidly evaporated from the near free-fall. “We wouldn't want you to fall when your freedom is so close!”

Up close, the wyvern rider had the same reserve as the painted porcelain cat that Flora had once given her for a birthday. Corrin's hands had nearly frozen to her ebon armour at her waist, but it was worth it to see the splendour of Krakenberg from her soaring wyvern for the first time. She thought it rather looked like an enormous version of one of those black spiders that she befriended in her rooms, when Jakob wasn't looking. She'd hide her spiders from his neurotic cleaning as he wouldn't understand that they were always friends. 

Friends to talk to and far more real than the imaginary friends and ghosts that always stalked her mind.  

The wyvern banked closer, flapping the great black wings once, twice, thrice on the air currents.

"It's so beautiful..." Pretty white lights surrounded the inverted castle remarkably like the ripples of moonlight on top a babbling brook, and Corrin only belatedly realised with wonder they were the surrounding homes and establishments that always dotted around the paper castle maps that she studied in her lessons. Gunter had taught her how to read a map, and why cities were laid out in order—but seeing the sprawl from above was entirely unique.

So distracted with the sights, she almost missed Camilia's chuckles tinkling like a glass chandelier, before she whispered an order to the wyvern. With a roar, the undead beast started its slow descent into the dizzyingly deep circular pit, as if it was ashes returning to ashes.

Perhaps in another way, she was as well.

As they starting the descent now, with spires rising, Corrin was suddenly afraid. those spires didn't seem as pretty before, now, weaving in and amongst them like jagged dragon's teeth arising from a great maw in the ground. she had never been afraid of heights, but suddenly she was afraid of one piercing the wings of the great undead beast and sending them spiralling to a quick—or even worse—slow death from the fall.

Shifting behind Camilia, she tried to forcefully nudge her mind to more pleasant topics, a trick that Flora had taught her, once, when they had been waiting for lessons together.

Or if not pleasant, then useful.

“I have a question, if you have the time…”

“Always, dear sister.”

“What do you do for somebody you..." Chewing her lip, Corrin sifted through different descriptions, settling on the vaguest. “You care for? At least here in the court?”

Camilia looked over her shoulder with casual curiosity. “My little sister being so thoughtful... are you intending a surprise gift?”

She heard the unsaid question of whom, and carefully sidestepped it by not answering. Maybe she could get him a gift in the local shops nearby much like the village that she had explored with him on horseback a few months ago. A fruity treat, the kind they could eat on the way to a lesson or a ball. but then she stopped; that wouldn't make his work any easier, and with a huff Corrin wondered if such silly outings would make the old knight’s work more stressful, watching over her.

The only time she saw him truly relax was when they played catch with the little ball in empty halls or outside on the grass with just the two of them. With others, he always seemed to slip over a perfectly stoic mask.

“Nevermind.” Corrin mumbled again, seeing the landing strip that the older princess was angling the wyvern towards, already partially filled with several black-armoured figures standing beside it as a welcome party. Several of these she recognized as her siblings—Leo's light blonde hair, and Xander standing beside him with his legendary sword glowing at his side.

Too quickly, the wyvern landed gracefully with its slender tail swishing up a current of air behind them, Corrin could hazard a guess that a few soldiers had lost their lives to underestimating the great beasts. She suddenly felt so small among the vicious peaks of spires of Krakenburg and the eerie flickering red lights of the fabulously ornate ebony work, a far cry from the simple stone blocks that made most of the solidly reassuring northern fortress. Her fortress looked like it had been crafted by people from the local village and the soldiers, real people, not inhumanly intricate work that had to be done by mages.

Elise was running up the side of the steep bridge to greet them, waving at her already, and a dismounted Gunter was over talking to Xander—with her sharp ears listening in—about the crops. Famine, he had mentioned to her once in the fortress, as the lesson on current events and geopolitics came back. Unrest often came after famines.

Camilia was already shushing the two, murmuring that it was too unpleasant to mention in front of princesses, and the moment was entirely lost as they began to walk towards Krakenburg's castle, and the throne room where King Garon awaited them.

Her father.

Strange, she thought, as the gloom overtook them—Corrin wondered if that was the real reason, or if unpleasant topics like the famine were not allowed by the court itself, and her stomach squirmed again with forbidding unease.

__________________

Corrin sank to the bottom of a shadowed column, fatigued from the endless attentions of the court.

She had stolen a bundle of grapes from an unguarded servant’s platter headed to who knows where and snuck away to an empty red-tinged hall. It had been hard slipping away from her siblings’ watch, but frankly, they paid far less attention than her old knight’s discerning eye. To their credit, they were likely busily preparing for the evening masquerade, likely thinking she was with one of the others.

It was not—strictly speaking—how she knew a princess should act, with all of the sneaking away. But this was all so much at the same time, far more than any rare party in the Northern Fortress where she at least knew all the people, or at the very least all the nooks and crannies she could hide in for a few minutes respite until her head cleared. 

Munching on the purple grapes that stained her hands with a sticky sweetness, Corrin guiltily reflected on all that had happened since her audience with King Garon. She had been adorned a new sword in that sickly-green tinged reception hall, along with a trial of executing Hoshidan prisoners with it.

A trial that only in hindsight—and in the silence amidst the red-and-black glowing dark corridors of Krakenburg—that Corrin knew she had failed in bluntly refusing that order. What the price was for this specific failure, she did not know and the fear clung to her unpleasantly, much like the memory of the mages. It was not the way she wanted her first moment with King Garon to go, and it had only been by Leo’s swift thinking that the situation had been resolved at all. 

Resolved—that too, tasted just as bitter as the memory of her father’s expression when she had refused, cold and angry. Why did he want more killing?

Was it not enough they were prisoners, useful as bartering chips as Gunter had mentioned once in a strategy lesson—

Unwholesome motion caught her eye when she swallowed the last of the fruit; it could have been possible trick of the eye, but it looked like one of the red-glowing walls had rippled oddly.

Some sixth instinct made her stand in a light crouch; her old knight had warned her many enemies resided within the walls of Krakenburg, and it was with belated fear that she realised being alone was just as precarious as having a foe in front of her. Perhaps more, in some ways.

Her worst fears were confirmed when the shadows nearby manifested itself in the form of a mage’s outline, and Corrin stepped back warily. Maybe he was one of Leo’s retainers, sent to fetch her back wherever he was.

A glint of a golden mask told her otherwise.

Only Iago wore that distinctive headpiece, the vizir that Xander had warned about with a low whisper in her ear. He had erratic movements like birds of carrion searching out opportunities, Corrin thought, and as she tried to step back without seeming like she was fleeing. But he was too fast for her hesitant steps like an oil slick running over a pan, threatening to spill over and promising pain.

Iago slithered up far too close in a way Corrin could only describe as oozing malice, and despite her lack of knowledge about the court, an instinctive part of her mind shrieked this was not a time to be alone with the strange man. The mage's tongue lapped the air, as if tasting her suspicion like a snake and coming to an unwholesome conclusion.

"Look who's here… you've grown, haven't you? Not enough to realise what a brat you've been to His Majesty."

His greasy fingernail tapped her twice warningly on the nose, and Corrin shuddered back at the cloying touch with her back scraping against the rough stone wall behind. A small, frightened cornered animal in her mind continuing to shriek for any distance. There was danger in the way that he did not fear, and was so forward.

Corrin could not restrain herself from scrubbing at her nose instinctively; and froze in the moment after the faux-pass with uncertainty. In response, an ugly sneer crossed Iago's face like spiders, and he bent down to her eye-level. There was no kindness in the gesture, and his black locks draped like a curtain between their faces as he whispered with malice.

"You should know better than such open defiance. Perhaps it's time to amend your faulty memory, hmmm?"

He reached out to grab at her and smelled like them—

Suddenly acrid beneath the cloying heavy sweetness that tasted of red-and-black pain—

Of hands that held her down as she fought with tooth and claw—

With vicious instinct, she dug her nails into the mage’s exposed flesh, drawing a thin yowl of shock, and used the flinch to fling herself further back against the wall. 

Motion flitted at the corner of her vision, and the mage suddenly rippled further away from her. 

"Hold, Strategist."

"And what—" Iago's snarl smoothed to mere restrained contempt. "—is your business here, knight?"

Gunter?

His was a black pillar of a protective presence in front of her now, and Corrin nearly sunk to her knees behind him in sheer relief.

"Princess Camilia has immediately requested the presence of Princess Corrin." Gunter’s icy tone would have made hardened veterans flinch, and yet her own heart only sang with fondness. "Should I inform her and the king that you are defying direct orders?"

A sibilant hiss emanated from behind the strange golden half-mask that glimmered strangely in the half-light, as if the sallow face was reluctant to let go of fresh prey, or a blood sacrifice. This was not Gunter's first dealings with the mage by the unnatural stillness of his voice. And just as comforting as that thought was, a bleaker one remained: how often were others preyed upon in Krakenburg?

Too many, was the answer she instinctively knew, and shuddered again.

With a snarl of frustration, Iago stalked off in a fit of dramatised contempt, only followed by her venerable knight’s ice-chip gaze. He only blinked when the swirl of robes had vanished, and turned towards her, standing stiffly at attention. 

Desperate for her old knight's solid warmth around her, Corrin reached out, but shrank back when he stepped away with the most minute shake of a head.

"Not here, Corrin." Gunter's tense whisper by her ear was low but razor-edged with an apologetic bow. "I promise you are safe now, but there are too many eyes watching; wait until we're with Camilia."

His eyes were a mass of motion, a warning in itself as she shivered again, watching fearfully down the corridors. Moments later as he led her away, Gunter murmured softly again. “Lady Corrin. did he hurt you?” 

“I… I don't think so.”

“I suspect he was not expecting you to fight back and attract attention, milady.” His mouth thinned. “Certain predators rarely do. You did well.”

“Really?”

The whole time at Krakenburg it felt like she was doing everything profoundly wrong; letting feelings get in the way of the cold calculus that her siblings were so good at. It was a surprise to hear otherwise from him, and doubly so when Gunter inclined his head in wordless acknowledgement. Part of her wanted so desperately to learn how to execute those feelings and reactions, to become unfeeling enough. Survival felt easiest then.

“Doubtless the strategist will never be an ally, especially with that confrontation. Still, you should never have to accept such indignities.”

She was quiet for a moment as her heart beat back to an unsteady rhythm, walking side-by-side with her venerable knight.

“My mind never screamed around you. Not once.” Corrin mumbled at last. The words fell out of her mouth like graceless wooden blocks, and it was hardly all she wanted to say, but it was close enough to the truth that it felt needful enough to bare to the still air. Gunter’s eyes did not stray from his watchful, restless observance of the path in front of them, but his gauntleted arm brushed hers once, gently. It was distant enough that he could pass it off as a stumble of a foot in the darkened hallway, but her mentor never made such accidents, especially in such situations.

He had heard, and she smiled to herself.

Even the way he walked was different than the Northern Fortress; she hadn't realised her old disciplinarian had comparatively been so relaxed in the cosy castle. Here, he reminded her of a tense wolf, all teeth ready to strike at the faintest hint of a dangerous shadow.

It made her ache even more to cling to him until there was nothing between them.

It was not until they had crossed the threshold to Camilia's sensual and luxurious quarters draped in red, and two armoured guards closed the double doors behind them silently that she felt her hands stop shaking. Corrin tilted her head at her old knight until he glanced down. 

Safe?  

He gave the tiniest of nods with a jerk of his handsome chin.

“Little sister!”

Perfume hit her sensitive nose like a wall before Corrin heard the padded footsteps against the plush carpet, and Princes Camilia appeared in the foyer, dressed up in furs and with a calculating glint in her eye despite the carefully arranged worry in her features. 

"Iago evidently found her alone in his majesty's antechamber. I discovered them in a... disagreement, and immediately took her here as per your orders from earlier, milady." Her old knight pointedly explained and glanced meaningfully towards the older wyvern rider and battle-tested princess—there was some strange, adult communication that took place between them, as the next sound was Camilia hissing with a lip curled in contempt.

"Oh my sweet little darling." Camilia murmured. "I'll keep you overnight if you'd prefer."

One of her hands reached out unthinkingly for an embrace, and Corrin jerked away, flinching instinctively with bowed shoulders. Tension spider-webbed through the air and like a splintering glass mirror, shattered along the lines into shards so fine that they cut viciously. Stung, Camilia flinched back, and was not quick enough to hide the simultaneous shock at the rejection.

“Chocolates.” Faintly, she thought she heard an edge of steel in the old knight's dry but firm rasp, a vague crossness aimed at Camilia. "They do wonders for the nerves if you have them, milady. Tea would also do." 

Beneath that subservient mask was the old battle-ragged wolf with a silent growl of disapproval.

“Of... course, dear.” Camilia bent down, slower and more deliberate with caution this time. "What else can I get you, my little sister?"

Words stuck in her throat with nerves still jangling, this time flavoured with a strange resentment. 

"Just that." It was not right, the words were too revealing, she knew with frantic impatience while skirting the holes in her mind. “It’s okay, I’m sorry. It’s been a long day…”

The words were more of a cover, like sweeping up a mess under sheets or a rug to be unpleasantly discovered later but hidden in the moment. And it worked far too well, Camilia’s eye-shadow softening in crescent moons of approval, and finally she stopped staring with eyes that dug for breaks between the armour.

Gunter was keeping one eye trained on the ornate double door, as if he didn't quite trust the wrought dark metal to keep the darkness away. At this point Corrin didn't either, shaken by Krakenburg's welcome. 

"I'll stand guard for the first watch if you'd prefer, Lady Camilia."

"Beruka will take care of the watch tonight. She knows his illusions and her presence would arouse less suspicion than yours. I'll have Selena fetch you immediately should... an event happen."

The old knight nodded and straightened, scarred lips pursed.

“By your leave.” 

He was not pleased with the turn of events, Corrin could read plainly from the way he stiffly bowed towards Camilia's way before leaving. But he was altogether less frighteningly menacing than the black wolf that he had seemed in the hallways, all but snarling in warning to keep others away. Theirs was a wary trust to the same goal, a bright line of glittering black armour against an even darker night and the monsters that crept and tested the wall with slimy claws.

All of the words were said so lightly, as if arranging a tea party instead of—Corrin shuddered.

"Camilia?"

"Yes dear?"

"Has this happened to you?" Corrin knew there was no need to clarify what this meant.

"You don't need to worry over such ugly things, little sister. Would you like some more sweets instead?"

In the end, Corrin didn't know what other answer she would get, and quietly despaired.

__________________

After the second day of braving Krakenburg’s court, Gunter held his princess fast asleep over his shoulder, closing the door behind him.

She had done well, needing minimal guidance from her siblings through the banquet held in her honour of return and greeting the dozens of minor nobility hoping to curry favour with somebody so close to the throne. He had watched from the shadows, ever cautious for an assassin's blade or potential of poison—such violence was hardly an unknown in the court.

Alone, Gunter silently padded through the rest of her ostentatious suite in red and black, and Princess Corrin remained dead asleep in his arms as he carried her to the equally overly elaborate bed.

As the old knight had expected, the overstimulation had left her exhausted and wishing an early evening, and only the hardest of hearts could deny the sweet princess such a well deserved respite especially after the brief spar with the prisoners the first day. Of course, he winced, anything was better than that fiasco of openly defying Garon on the first day. Kindred royalty had been executed for less, and it had been a near call with that damned tactician whispering lies in the old king's ear. 

Ruefully, the old knight thought that perhaps he should have lent more importance on political savvy during their many lessons, and not quite encouraged such instincts of rebellion. His little princess would be useless being his sword if she misstepped so foolishly again and was dead at his feet. And yet—the old knight also considered with hum to himself, that such savvy only came with many years of painful experience. This little girl might not listen as closely to an old man’s whispered words of advice of caution. 

And caution was very much necessary in this court of poisonous spiders—Gunter did not trust the merest maids, not here in her quarters where a word of comfort in private could be twisted into something sinister. Jakob on the other hand was trustworthy—but the boy had not spent three decades surviving in the decadent court knowing where the knives were pointed.

Corrin barely stirred when he laid her in the bed, clothed, minus the shoes he had tugged off earlier wearily. She made it as if to reach out for the sudden absence of the body heat of his arms, but Gunter flicked a blanket over her sleeping form and she stilled, curling up on her side as was her favourite position. He looked away. 

He was dogshit tired.

Carrying her across her spacious suite would have been a substantial challenge for somebody half his age and well—he was getting up in years, with a full’s day of court nonsense and standing around in full armour that he still wore. She too, was no longer the fifty-pounds sopping-wet moppet of her childhood. 

Quietly, he slid down the side of the bed, and with a muted groan of an old man, sat his arse on the floor as he had done dozens of times after comforting her from those long terrible nights after the mages. Gunter leaned his head back on the mattress wall, and winced as his abused knees throbbed.

He would guard her with his life. 

Oddities of oddities, despite being the snake amongst the nest of craven snakes, using her for his own ends. He was sharpening her as his own sword, and it still had no goddamn bearing on the tenderness Gunter felt towards the girl lately. 

She had hugged him outright in secret, after he had returned to pick her up from Camilia’s quarters. The warmth was burning like sin still, against his fingertips and somehow through all five layers of armour. God, he couldn’t remember the last time somebody had touched him with happiness and not violence. He still smelled the sweetness of her scent on his gloves. 

And… in turn she made—his mind stuttered—

You made life worth trying, again. You have ruined this shell of a man, Corrin.

He didn’t know when it happened, and he didn’t particularly care. Somehow he never thought he'd feel that sensation again, anything other than being a leadened emotionless millstone, grinding on and sharpening himself for one last brutish rush of blood, and at last, the sweet black release from it all. When did you make life hurt again? Damn you.

Death was a comfort, had always been that anchor, and here you, you and your damned specialness mangled that one certainty—

Halfway through the thought, he realised the thoughts were audible as a whisper, a begged confession of sorts to little miss sleeping beauty softly snoring above. He knew without looking that she’d be drooling on her pillow in the sorry sleep of the dead. 

It was apt, in a twisted way.

You’ve made me a fool, thrice over.

Mouthing it here, in the darkness of Krakenburg’s night—

I love you.

Old men shouldn’t fall in love with young women. He knew that, he’d rather choke on his own blood and sword than to bear that shame in the daylight, to risk her rejection, as she should—

I love you.

The night deepened, and turned into the early-waking hours, and still he slept there—guarding her as a black knight against the even blacker hearts of the court.

__________________

Prince Leo had once again used his canny mind to bend the court’s rules. 

Garon had ordered her to kill in cold blood, and despite everything—the little blonde princeling’s silver tongue had narrowly slipped them both free of that particular noose, as well as the prisoners. Her brother had quietly murmured she got off lucky, as they had watched the Hoshidan prisoners run to their new-found freedom.

Corrin did not feel very lucky, suddenly keenly missing the once-claustrophobic Northern Fortress and viciously aching for the the privacy to scream into pillows that she couldn't do more than to free two souls. She did not feel so lucky, either, when King Garon had raged at her incompetence and given her a punishment in return.

Go survey the abandoned fortress in the Bottomless Canyon and return, he had said with cold dead eyes. Orders were orders, and Corrin found herself walking on the dusty trail winding down to the Canyon far on the eastern side of Nohr, feeling very alone. She was technically not alone, of course; being escorted by her old knight, her butler, and a man picked by the king who all trailed behind.

King Garon would not send her on a suicidal errand.

Would he? A voice in her mind answered darkly and it was enough for her to stop briefly, with her hands flexing in restless energy. The voice sounded much rather like that very same old knight of hers, always shadowing her steps with words of caution and his steady composure when it came to the court. She was beginning to understand with icy fear just how needful and layered every warning was.

But Garon was her father. Stern and distant, yes—but surely he cared enough to…

To what?

He had never visited her in that cold fortress, not once, unlike her siblings. The mages had always come under his name. 

How would other fathers act, Corrin wondered, and her mind flitted back to the books she read as a child, those precious few windows open to other people’s lives that were as distant as any of the more fantastical fairy-tales she read alongside. Books given to her by Gunter, in those early days and on every birthday of hers. He was stern too, yes, and disciplined her when she fell behind in lessons or lost her composure—but even with her hazy memories, there were memories of care and affection and patience from the venerable knight. Gunter—she knew with certainty that trandescended the tattered fabrics of her memory—would never send her on a suicide mission. Or order her to kill without reason. 

It felt… disloyal, perhaps, to consider that she felt safer with him (and yet it would feel even more disloyal in a different way to think anything differently). 

After all, this errand was a test of her real loyalties, Corrin bitterly considered. She was not so naive enough to be oblivious to Camilia’s looks of pity, or the hints that Leo dropped when he had scolded her for not killing the Hoshidan prisoners on orders from the king. This too, was further orders from King Garon in punishment for her defiance. 

With a huff as she felt the shale rocks bit in her feet, she decided to look on the bright side. 

With this little expedition, at last she was away from the court, and also still away from the cramped castle before. She was seeing new corners of the kingdom she had never laid eyes on before, and the sights were wondrous to behold. Camilia had all but gasped in horror when the words of the Bottomless Canyon was mentioned as her next destination, but Corrin did not see reason for terror. It was haunting, perhaps, with the eerie yellow-green sky as a backdrop against the craggy black stone rearing up to either side of them, and distant thunder rumbling. But looks could be deceiving, and now, with no one else around, it felt safer in what felt like a very long time to voice her concerns to her venerable knight who rode on his war-horse right behind her.

Walking backwards slowly to face Gunter on his mount, she took a deep breath.

"I don't understand... Why wouldn't my father show those prisoners any mercy?" Surely of anyone, her old mentor would understand.

Corrin wracked her mind, but not one moment of the stark situation would make sense, even after playing the events of the past day countless times. Killing unarmed prisoners was a mockery of every lesson that Gunter had given her, like if she played by different sheet music than everyone else, and had fumbled the tune hopelessly. "Did I hear something wrong—"

"We do not question King Garon's wishes. We simply carry out his orders."

Corrin frowned at his blunt statement.

"But why, sir?" It was deeply, profoundly unlike him to be so unquestioning. Her old knight stopped his warhorse with a click of hooves on the treacherous shale. She saw him heave a sigh, mentally chewing over which answer to give her back. None looked particularly satisfying.

"Lady Corrin... Nohrian court life is very different than what you've grown up with." Gunter said with slow deliberation. "It is ruthless, and you've been sheltered from the worst of the infighting in the past."

Questions upon questions threatened to spill out. Corrin stared ahead on the narrow slate pathway, picking her steps where the loose sharp shale would hurt her feet the least, feeling nearly every bit as lost as the twisty switchback outcroppings they inched along.

"Infighting? With who?"

"You wouldn't find such mentions of it in your books, milady, but ten years ago there was a spate of court struggles that some call the Concubine Wars." His scarred lips twisted. "Many died. Your existing siblings are the only ones that survived of many who were murdered by those who sought Garon's approval."

"What?" Aghast, Corrin tried to think of little Elise, running from invisible hands and daggers. Against the roiling cloud-shadows on the jagged cliffs of the Bottomless Canyon that flickered in between lightning strikes, she could dimly imagine the flickers of Leo throwing mage-fire back against assassins. In a sick way, certain whispers of the maids started to make sense. "Why?!"

"Power." Gunter gave a mockery of a smirk back at her, eyebrow raised appraisingly. "Power and survival, milady—what else do we all fight for?"

There was a wobbly split second of silence before the next words fell out of her mouth like a toad squirming from a cat's mouth.

"Decency?" Corrin croaked, feeling like a foolish child.

The silence grew heavy, until loud thunder from the dark yellowed skies rumbled ominously in long rolls that sounded like war-drums. Gunter twitched the reins again with authority, his steed trotting ahead to scout. She almost missed his sardonic murmur against the crack of the hooves.

"Milady, you're the first one I've heard to say such a thing."

No one's moods had improved when it started to drizzle lightly with acrid rain, even by the time they could see the abandoned fort deep within the dark twisty walls of the Bottomless Canyon.

Jakob was sullen, glaring up at the ominous bruised green skies every so often like they had personally offended his sense of finesse and fastidiousness. Corrin privately thought he looked adorable in a pathetic way; rather like a sopping wet puppy in need of a bath and with fur and silks sticking out all over the place, sulking all the while. 

Hans—their ex-felon escort personally handpicked by the Nohrian king—had ranged far and wide doing an adequate enough job at scouting that she started to relax. They had not run into a single enemy patrol so close to the Hoshidan border, or even a stray wolf and Corrin even wondered briefly if maybe her father had given her an unexpected kindness with him after all. The leather-clad berserker had been stoically silent the whole trip, doing his level best to ignore them like they were a gaggle of children tagging along for a field trip to the butcher. Perhaps the brawny man was only interested in ensuring the mission was a success in order to secure his freedom afterwards in exchange for a task well done. 

And Gunter—

If her old black knight waspishly complained about the canyon one more time, she was going to bite his head off.

"My lady, we should do our due diligence, and then leave. There is a foul—"

"I'd like us to enjoy this freedom sir.” Her knight had been uncharacteristically dour about the surroundings the whole way down the winding narrow paths and bridges and it was truly grating on her mood. Forced cheer had never served Corrin wrong and anyway, she was over with his strange irritableness towards the canyon.

“We’re outside the Fortress after all, and a change of scenery is rather nice at times, wouldn’t you agree?”

She gave him a rare fixed look, almost daring him to argue. He visibly bit back a retort before smoothing his face into granite, with his jaw working over a different answer.

"Apologies, my lady." Gunter replied curtly. 

It was then that the first Hoshidan spotted them and sounded the alarm.

__________________

His own luck went from bad to worse that day.

He had found her taking a breather by the bridge, gulping in great wheezes of air as her hands shook from the adrenaline. 

Hans had viciously struck him off the flimsy bridge in a attack none of them saw coming. 

Gunter’s last thought as he fell down the dizzying abyss of the ravine was: what a fool he had been to hope for anything else other than a painful, lonely death.

(And yet, he did not want to die.)

__________________

Gunter awoke to find himself in endless grey fog. 

He blinked, choking and shuddering in icy black water that flowed around him, and sat up abruptly to find himself in the middle of shallow flat wetness that stretched on, mingling with the fog. A surprisingly strong current tugged around his heavy black and silver armour, threatening to pull him under like thousands of hands dragging him further to the underworld. 

This river wanted his life. 

And yet—a resentful heat in him rebelled against the idea of giving up that last final time—and so, choking, the old black knight wearily pulled himself to his knees despite the temptation to sink endlessly down, taking great care to find steady purchase to avoid slipping and going under. One knee, and then the next; a misstep would be precarious despite the flow only cresting at his waist. 

Coughing the last remnants of the bitter water up and feeling the icy water sluice down his clothing and limp hair, Gunter took stock at the emptiness.

Swirling thick fog obscured his vision, distorting anything beyond a spear’s range regardless of which way he spun. The steed that he had ridden from Krakenburg was nowhere to be found. Just as well; Gunter half imagined he was in a deserved purgatory, and the bleak surroundings did little to dissuade him of the thought. 

It was also mercilessly cold. The chill went down to his very bones, aching in a manner that even no brutal Nohrian winter could match. The old knight slapped his gauntlets together in an attempt to feel his numb fingertips again, any kind of warmth, and the sound of metal against metal echoed loudly enough to make him wince. 

Any enemies around would be alerted at the sound. 

And yet, his eyes fell on a shaft jutting out from the river mere steps away. Miracle of miracles, his hand-axe had somehow made the journey with the distinctive ebon handle reassuringly above the eddying waters in surprising defiance and steadiness. The old man stared at it in exhausted disbelief before hefting the faded teal grip; it too, had not suffered any major damage from…

The fall. The canyon, the battle—

Where the hell am I?

Gunter looked up again with more bleak urgency this time, and nothing but an eerily flat horizon answered. 

Uneasily, he saw there was nothing to map a sense of direction on, save for the ghostly hints of a distant shorehead on the far side rising into the endless grey. Seeing no other option the knight began to trudge forward slowly, groping to the bank with ripples extending behind him in a wide wake.

While his armour had saved his life countless times in the heat of battle, the heavy metal plates were a deathly hindrance now in this otherworldly land, weighing him down with every footstep and causing faint splashes. 

It was his motions that betrayed him.

Too late, out of the corner of his eye, he saw faint silhouettes rise out of the black-grey waves. Gunter gave a pathetic wheeze, laughing darkly at his fucking luck . 

Here, even in the greyness of purgatory, he was being stalked by nightmare of war. Instinctively, he knew these soldiers were no longer alive in the strictest sense of the word, with empty gazes that stared beyond him to an afterlife they so desperately wished to claw towards and to also send him to with them. 

The bodies that rose out of the river were wreathed in unholy purple flame that danced above the waters. They jerked in unison as if puppeted by invisible strings, but the shadow-weaponry that they all held were ruthlessly sharp, and no mere children’s toys. Gunter knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the shambling husks could still fight as viciously as their living selves—if not better for lack of humanity and hesitation.

So could he.

Gunter readied his hand-axe, a black knight of ruin facing off against the hoards of the dead in this otherworld. Spreading his hands wide, he beckoned the dead in one last morbid dance and a duel to the last one standing. It was a fitting hell for such as him, the fallen black knight weighed down by unmentionable sins and failures, and it was the first time in decades that he felt the mask of tightly held composure and restraint he always wore shed and crack off like a scab. 

It didn’t matter now. Nothing did.

The black knight decapitated the first swordsman that charged with a roar of fury, shattering his blade in an earsplitting crack that echoed like thunder. Twisting and whirling like a dervish of war, he tore off another limb with the steel in the frenzy of battle and bloodlust, attacking and attacking with not one least care for restraint or a sense of life.

He started laughing wildly as the now-solid bodies fell around him, splashing back with low screams into the black water. Most did not rise again, choking and drowning on the deceptively swift current. One clawed for his boot in desperation, and he cleaved the hand at the wrist with a sickening crack of white bone that shattered at the force of the steel. Bone splinters sank beneath the ripples like maggots burrowing in carrion.

He was going mad, a distant part of his mind warned reproachfully as he decapitated another with a backhand, the head and body splashing in a messy arc of water and blood, and a darker rage in him did not goddamn care, not now—when everything previously worth existing for was interminably far away, and something he would never feel again.

Taking as many with him—even if it was not the singular madman that most deserved a sword through his heart for taking everything precious of his—was also fitting as his last watery grave.

You won't see her again, an old ghostly-familiar gentle voice inside his mind whispered with weary urgency. Not if you continue like this.

Gunter viciously tore through an undead wyvern's wing with a half-splintered javelin striking true, sending the great beast careening with an earsplitting shriek and a crash of a wave on top of two more of the dead. And still, more of the dead advanced, shrieking in their own battle-rage.

He ran through a slim form—another swordsman—hilt deep with another stolen sword in his off-hand, hearing a slow sigh as lungs exhaled their last breath and great globules of blood slickened his black gauntlets and splashed hotly across his face, making his mad snarl even more possessed. 

There were three left, Gunter saw in the blood-haze, and he grinned to them in a feral skull-mask of death. Three was manageable.

Like a berserker, the old great knight charged towards them, with battle-lust shaving decades off his age. And yet—the soft whisper persisted, undeterred as if a calm eye in the storm. 

Have you forsaken your duty?

He blinked. 

The undead were at last felled and he was staring at his shaking hands unblinkingly.

Panting, and wiping off spittle off of his face and lips with a bloodied gauntlet and making nearly as much of a gory mess of his face, Gunter surveyed the battlefield. The ever-present carrion crows of Nohr descending to feast on the remnants of the dead absent even here. There was nothing here, in this strange otherworldly land, and that was somehow the most unsettling part by yet. 

That distant presence touched his shoulder, again, urging him onwards, and Gunter stood in those bloodied waters for a long moment. 

Later—sweating, shaking with exhaustion and the last throes of adrenaline, he crawled up the bank of the river in a morass of blood and grime and on all fours, looking very much like one of the dead themselves. The fog was thinning now, though it was hardly a reassurance as his head swam suddenly as he unsteadily made his way to the treeline.

Drip, drip.

A particularly wet splotch of red dripping from his armour distracted him, and the old knight looked down to see that it was his own, and not others. It wasn’t until that split second moment that Gunter distantly realised he was in real danger.

Not from flame-wreathed undead, or the exhaustion that stalked him. 

Drip.

He whipped his gaze back suddenly, and the motion nearly made him nauseous enough to fall over like a gnarled, ancient tree giving up the ghost. As it was, he collapsed to the ground, shaking and cursing under his breath at being such a fool—

Drip.

Gunter looked down at the open angry-red gash on his forearm, raw nearly to the bone. With frantic urgency, he tore off a strip of cloth at his waist with his teeth, spitting out more blood. He would not be so stupid to make it this far and be ended by the mundane danger of blood loss.

He would endure.

__________________

Nightfall was coming.

The wood was dry, and that was about the only positive about this accursed land. Gunter threw another stick on the blaze by his feet, and watched listlessly as it belched into a gasp of flame. He would have to get up again to forage for a larger log to last through the night or be resigned to the cold dew condensing in droplets on his armour in the morning. Neither scenario was particularly appealing, and the old knight found himself keenly missing his old Nohrian army tent. There at least, the cots were dry and there was some meagre semblance of privacy.

Strangely, his mind drifted to a distant memory of his little princess standing at the foot of Garon’s throne. Back to when this fools-errand started and when her slip had cost them this.

No—he couldn't blame her. 

Damn it all, he had done the very same thing, the exact same defiance. 

It was another, far older memory from twenty years ago that threatened to burble up and drown him in old sorrows and that he choked down ruthlessly, strangling the bleakness out. 

Both he and Corrin had both defied Garon openly—and paid for it dearly. Him with the loss of his wife and children, and her with the loss of him. He laughed bitterly at the irony, and wondered if his little princess was paying for it still, or if she had already made her way back to Krakenburg minus one of her original party. 

I should have taken the damn dragon’s blood. He wheezed pathetically, wiping a hand over his face and over tears. I should have. Gods, his family would be alive if he had, and who would be more deserving to be dead than he? He was a fucking failure of a knight, unable to protect his slaughtered wife and children from a king gone mad, unable to protect his princess, and should the night go sideways, there was a very real chance that death would take his own as well. 

He’d welcome it, and—

He listlessly leaned back on the mossy tree in this little hollow he had found, betwixt several overhanging boulders and shrubbery and the smallest spring that burbled. There was nothing to do but to fitfully shiver by the meagre camp-fire he had constructed and wait for the slow oblivion of sleep, and Gunter did not want to be alone with dangerous, lonely thoughts at that moment. Throbs of pain from his crude stitches up his forearm made themselves known, and he winced. He did not want to be with this pain either, or from the tension and ever-present paranoia of watching for the unholy enemies wreathed in fire.

The next stray thought was that he could go for a wank.

He'd hate himself in the morning as he always did while washing the shame-stink off, but fuck if there were options. It was less permanent than the other oblivions at hand, and it would be enough. Something halfway to distracting and pleasant to warm his bones even through the filthy, obscene lies he told himself as the old man mechanically fumbled for his trousers with his good arm.

It did not take long for him to conjure up a mental image of his little princess bouncing on his lap, little night-shirt slowly being hitched up, up up her beautiful delicate legs by his big hands.

She had grown into such a beautiful woman. 

His prick stiffened right up at that, as it always did with traitorously quickness, and his ragged pants grew as frayed as his will as his imaginary fingertips fumbled at her nightshirt buttons.

My good little girl, you know what to do, he thought lecherously at her, and as if fantasy-Corrin did hear him croon, she snuggled up to him as she slowly, oh so slowly trailed a hand down his fly and to his cock with a naughty lick of her lips as if her hand was in the cookie jar and they were both in on the joke.

He imagined the scent of her feathery hair as he moaned again, louder, hips twitching, heedless of everything except the trail of fire as she would stroke the thatch of silver at the base of his cock, and his little princess trailing a fingertip up to his swollen head. he imagined taking her tiny hand in his calloused one, teaching her, as with everything, exactly what to do, hips rutting against her (his) strokes—

His face was hot with shame and as his hand quickened and found its rhythm, and he thought of her pretty little hands fondling back down to his balls with a slow caress. He wanted to feel the silky texture of her panties grinding against his length, impossibly wet and sticking to her rump with friction that tasted of sin—

(Not long since dried and crusted as the pair he had filched and left in a dark corner before they had left the Northern Fortress.)

"Fuck —Princess, oh Princess—"

His shaking hands fingered those silk panties, as he had done, stroking her where it made her whimper against his bare chest with want and desire and wetness as she dripped down his finger—one, then two, knobby joints slick with her desire, and then finally jerking her panties aside for his erection to enter, tangled and heady with blinding desire, and to feel her tighten around him as he plundered her, grinding her ass against his throbbing cock—

"Please—" He moaned. "Oh my sweet, please—"

He half howled, half snarled, as his hips juttered with come that splashed his hands and the grass in front, furious at the fantasy slipping.

"Princess, oh, oh—oh —"

With desperation he clawed at the fantasy-Corrin, now flat on her back in her childhood bed with his hips snapping into hers wetly with the final stuttering, shaking thrusts he could manage, him hilt deep as she milked him with her own cries of shaking pleasure, ropes of his come mixed with his imagined name.

At last, at last, he was limp, shaking, and a stinking panting mess of disgust and despair.

Gunter very, very carefully thought of nothing as he cleaned himself.

That night, he slept like the dead.

__________________

Gunter dreamed of an odd golden ruin of a pyramid sitting on top of a floating island.

The ancient crumbling pyramid was large enough to be a sprawling complex to house a large city, well fortified and doubtlessly held hundreds of cleverly crafted and deadly traps for the unwary intruders as most ancient catacombs. Deep inside the ruins in the very innermost chambers was a nearly-empty reception hall with one singular throne in it. 

Gunter sat on the stone throne, hard black armour as unyielding as the slabs below.

His little ghostly princess was in front of him, dancing silently in the empty hall to some music just beyond his hearing. She tilted her head inquisitively at him, having seen him for the first time. With restrained ladylike delight, she daintily skipped up to the old knight on the throne, her bare feet the only noise aside from the echoing water droplets monotonously plinking endlessly. 

After sweetly curtsying to the old knight, she perched lightly on his knee as she had always done in the past. She handed him a delicate flower—a white lilly upon closer inspection—giggling with a secret and surprise.

His hands trembled as he took it from her soft fingertips, undeserving of such a gift or her endless kindness. 

GIVE IN.

The voice echoed in his mind, as throbbingly forceful and all-encompassing as standing next to a gong rung with earsplitting vigour. Gunter flinched, shuddering from the sheer power and the malice that emanated and made the very foundations of this dream-world shiver. 

<Who..?>

Looking around revealed no strange intruder. The Corrin in white ignored the strange distorted voice, or seemed not to hear the oppressive echoes that still rung in his mind.

GIVE IN.

Testily, he mentally snapped back at the voice in an effort to silence it, if simple ignorance was not going to stop the crude repetition.

<Not interested.> 

Really, the dream had been quite pleasant otherwise. He would have been content to sit and watch his little princess through the night.

The world shivered again, and warped—

GIVE IN.

—and now, she was kneeling now between his thighs with his trousers pooled onto the floor. 

Her beautiful tiny lips were kissing his cock-head, laving him with the flat of her tongue with her saliva and precome mixing, suckling at his member like it was a new treat. This was not—

This illusion-princess was bolder. This bitch did not need guidance by his hand, he swiftly thought with panic. 

This was not his Corrin—

GIVE IN.

The voice throbbed again in his nauseous mind, and he felt his cock respond with a shudder of horror and arousal.

<No—>

A cold distant part of him knew this was some dream or curse, something more than just a dirty old man's fantasies to keep warm on lonely nights. Some place where his soul skittered dangerously on the edge of the blade with an unfathomable abyss to either side. This was real and un-real both in a way that a mere wank wasn't, for she was sucking at him now, wetly, with a tongue just a little too long to appear fully human. 

<Stop, damn it—>

This motion felt too good to be his tender and clumsy little princess, his hips already shuddering their way with her halfway to climax, he realised with horror.

<Please, stop, please—>

Everything shattered.

He awoke with a migraine that blurred his vision as much as the tears in his eyes. 

Gunter did not notice the blackened petals that faded into smoke as he got up, violently retching on all fours. 

__________________

Morning came and went for several days, and Gunter wandered as a lost man.

A fever raged through his sapped body making subsequent nights even more miserable than the first, sweating and shivering through the sickness and the infection by the smallest fires he could manage in such a sorry state. If he had not found an abandoned but still serviceable lance to use for walking and to fitfully forage for healing herbs, and honey to slather on the wound to accelerate healing, he genuinely wondered whether he would have laid down and never gotten up again. 

There was a very tired part of him that considered such an act several times. 

Once, Gunter sagged to his knees in lightheaded exhaustion beside the riverbank, and he wavered, eye-lids fluttering and so sticky with the remnants of blood and fever-sweat. 

The world swam again.

It would be so easy.

It was only with the hallucination of her pained expression that he dragged himself up again, swearing profusely. 

__________________

It was on the third day that he staggered towards a more promising cave system.

Exploring the cave system was an ordeal in his weakened state, but Gunter took it slowly, using willes and stealth to his advantage instead of relying on his beleaguered body. Twice, he was able to slip by soldiers wreathed in purple flames, grateful for his black armour that was now impossibly dirtied with river mud in unintentional camouflage and intentional soot for good measure.

Judging by the fresh imprints of tracks on the sandy bed nearby the mouth of rocks, there had been activity either by the invisible shimmering soldiers, or new intruders. This network of caves was most likely a system of tunnels to explain for the activity, possibly even a highway for the strange folk that resided in this land.

The slight chill in the caves and the darkness were somehow reassuring in the isolation, and also had a strategic advantage with the darkness. If he stayed silent he could rest unmolested by the invisible soldiers that patrolled until he was either dead or alive after the fever burnt through.

There no other outcome possible, really.

He was so goddamn tired.

His knees splashed into the rivulets of the subterranean creek, and clumps of mud washed away with old crusted blood that threatened to rust his armour. An equally old conversation with Corrin came to his mind, and he almost sobbed with sardonic laughter as he splashed the chilly water on his face in a desperate hope to wake up properly.

Hold the mind-knife, he had once told the mischievous princess when she had been hesitant to raise her sword against somebody. He searched for that rage, again—

—and couldn't find it.

Couldn't goddamn care.

Corrin would likely kill Garon, he thought with looping nausea and exhaustion, nodding to himself. He had done well enough to sharpen her into his sword.

Don't give up. That ghostly voice all but echoed in his mind, and he hated himself with the peculiar kind of disgusted resentment only a survivor could.

He should—

He should want—

It was so fucking impossible to care, now—everything was such an abyss with the sorrow. it was easier to walk around it, when there were distractions, and not faced directly with the terrible loneliness.

Corrin, he thought. He needed to…

Gunter collapsed against a mossy boulder, sagging to the side with the lance in arm's reach.

There, he slept.

Corrin ran further deeper down into the caves, following the blue-haired dancer ahead on pure faith.

Time moved strangely in this land, Azura had warned; and she was still unprepared for just how strange this invisible kingdom was, that rested deep and beyond everyone's awareness. Recent events were already confusing enough after spending the last few weeks in a whirlwind succession of held hostage as a political prisoner and then a honoured guest of the Hoshidans, only to be followed up with being branded as a traitor when she did not refuse her Nohrian loyalty. 

Perhaps the title of honoured guest was not so different than captured princess; only a gilded cage daubed in gold instead of iron.

Jakob, her sharp-tongued, brave, loyal butler—and then Azura, the mysterious dancer and songstress who was fast becoming her new friend—had found her after being abandoned and left to die by both nations and they had fled with her to this in-between world that only the dancer had known about.

Down, down far below the crevasse of the Bottomless Canyon that still haunted her nightmares with no warm, solid body or touches to wake her out of. 

Jakob had nearly laughed with disbelief when Azura had gently murmured the only way to reach this kingdom was to jump down the Bottomless Canyon; and Corrin had nearly done the same in bitterness. 

You won't die if you jump. Azura had told her, far above the Canyon as they had all gripped the bridge-ropes tightly in desperate uncertainty. Some traitorous part in her heart had leapt at the smallest chance that Gunter was alive —and yet, surely he would have appeared before now if he was. Surely fate itself wouldn’t be so cruel to play such a trick. 

It had been weeks, after all.

She had jumped, truthfully not caring if it was a trick or not. It would be a quick end all the same.

Despite the cruel sharpness of the canyon walls, the three of them had remained alive instead of dashed upon the stone and found themselves awake in a silent world. In awe, they touched strange bright-green grass that belonged on even stranger fog-wreathed floating islands connected by labyrinths of ancient stone blocks, rivers, and cave systems that stretched for miles.

This was an underworld eerily similar to the one in the book, Corrin thought not for the first time after they had quickly disposed of new flame-wreathed enemies before they could call an alert out to any others nearby. Her heart ached at disposing of people so viciously and quickly without a chance to sit down, but when she took a closer tentative look at the bodies, the expression on the dead archer and mage was one of startling relief and Azura had touched her shoulder in cold comfort.

“Anyone wreathed in these flames is not truly alive.” The songstress murmured, eyes closed in respectful prayer when Corrin glanced over her shoulder in unease. “Do not grieve for them; rejoice in the fact they have finally found peace in final death by your hand. They will surely kill you otherwise.”

She shivered as an old memory threatened to surface; of her mentor gently murmuring the same. And this hope too—she deadened, numbed, and weighted down to the bottomless waters of her own soul until the thought was simply another unpleasant mirage to ignore day in and day out.

She was tired of being numb, tired of being hunted and fleeing in frenzy—but there were much worse feelings than simple listlessness and besides she had others to watch over now, following Azura and Jakob as they wound through a cave system that the blue-haired dancer seemed to know quite well. What they needed now was not time but shelter far away from the warring nations shedding blood that was on her hands. 

Azura had urged them forward with the barest hint of—

A metallic sound echoed in the caves, and Corrin came to a dead stop.

She had always had been able to hear clinking of armour when the ever-observant Jakob had failed to notice the subtleties. Sharp hearing and sharp eyesight in these dark caves served her just as well as avoiding soldiers in the Fortress as a little girl sneaking around the watchguard to slip and stargaze from the roof on warm nights. A deeper sound came somewhere around the same place as the armour—not the light clinking of chain-mail but heavier plates, and then a wracking cough.

The cough echoed quietly in the caves, accompanied by a distorted splash. It was just around the corner then, and likely beside a small underground rivulet that had branched off from the larger river that Azura had furtively led them beside.

Some instinct told her that this new presence was not one of the invisible soldiers—those undead fought until fatal wounds claimed them, not felled by minor ailments—and still she hefted her blade, too jaded to run in so naively. Corrin stepped lightly over the shale that turned into sand, and then glanced around a particularly damp and moss-wreathed boulder.

There, on top of one of the water-beaten rocks on the other side of the shallow cavern, an old familiar black-armoured form sagged, lance held outwards in one hand defensively and the other arm a mangled, mutilated mess of dried gore.

She stared.

Stared at the black and silver armour that Corrin knew better than her own, and of that grey-lilac hair her fingers always ached to run through.

“You're wounded.” Corrin mumbled, in pure disbelief.

Surely this was a dream.

His eyes flickered down to his arm, and gave a listless flick of a shoulder-shrug in return.

Gods, it was exactly the look he would always give.

“I'll live…” Gunter grunted quietly, but did not resist when she surged forward with shaking hands to press a vulenary against his ugly wound and so gently to clean the scabbed mess gently with waters from the riverbank, afraid to touch him for fear of his black armour dissolving away into a particularly cruel dream.

It was the first time she had seen him so nakedly vulnerable with energy sapped enough he didn't even lecture at her for the sloppy bandaging, her hands trembling in relief bordering on disbelief.

He was alive.

Gunter was alive.

He was here, breathing unsteadily with a rattle under her hands, grey as a ghost but very much alive as a man of flesh with blood that dripped down her own fingers now, and Corrin had to resist a powerful urge to fall onto his chest plate and sob with tears that already threatened to splash onto him like a little girl inconsolable with feelings.

I missed you, sir.

It was not until his eyes flicked over that she turned a splotchy red with embarrassment and fear, not realising she had murmured the wavered words out loud like some, some—

Limply with great trembling effort, his gauntlet found her cheek and brushed it, both of them not even paying attention to the smear of mud and blood that he smudged on her with shockingly tenderness.

The touch was enough.

Corrin was sure if he hadn't been in such a fever-ridden delirium he wouldn't...

Touch her, and it was all she could do to not sink between the surety of those cold greaves and gentle touch of his black gauntlets.

I missed you, I missed you—

His features blurred with unshed tears and she had to take a moment to swallow unsteadily, before bending to press her forehead against his bare shoulder in a moment of weakness. He was burning hot to the touch with fever. Jakob would mend him once when they got back to camp. Gunter would make it.

He had to make it. 

“Jakob’s here.” Grateful for the sudden memory of distraction, she kept talking, loathe to separate from him all the same. “So is Azura, a new friend. They’ll heal you.” 

His eyes flickered over to watch her wring out a new cloth, again. 

“I should… have known that boy… would be too stubborn to quit.” Despite the teasing weak rasp, Gunter was more cautious, she thought. Hesitant would be a better word, with his fever-bright eyes drinking her in with a quiet searching neediness in contrast that was almost painful to see in the old stoic man's face. “How did you…”

“We had to run here after, um, I was branded as a traitor by both Nohr and Hoshido. It’s a long story.”

A ghost of a smirk passed over his nearly cadaverous face at her words, some inside joke of his, and her heart flopped in a nearly painful way. How he could look so handsome despite being at death’s door, she would never know. 

“Unsurprising.” Gunter wheezed, too tired to chuckle outright by the pained wince. “Makes both of us, after a fashion… I should warn you Garon always hated me.” 

Corrin blinked owlishly, laying a clean rag of cloth on his forehead and daubing away old blood and mud by the grey of his temples. It wasn’t like her old disciplinarian to be so open. Despite everything he continued, even at her questioning eyes that didn’t dare to ask for more. 

“He despise me for refusing to take dragon’s blood, once... Do you know what that means?” Gunter was falling back into his old lecturer cadence. That felt like a good sign Corrin hoped with more of a fanatic’s fervour, willing reality to bend to her will. His gaze bore a listless hole in the cave after she gave a shake of the head in reply. “It would have meant becoming his most trusted retainer, the highest of positions, and would require absolute loyalty to the king. I refused.”

Coughing, he continued, almost rambling in the fever delirium. “It would have meant leaving m-my wife. My family… I will never forget his resentment...his rage….”

“You had your reasons.” She replied softly, eyes wide. “A better king would have understood.” 

At that, he gave a nearly hysterical wheeze that broke into more coughs. It was blasphemy, Corrin knew. And there was a small stubborn, fiercely proud part of her that still stood by it, by the way some nameless emotion flickered in his eyes before he looked away. 

He was quiet for a long time afterwards, far too long with ragged breaths that evened as he carefully inspected the half-mended wound from her ministrations and bandages. Plucking up the courage enough to lay a hand on his plates again, Corrin looked by the cavern exit, belatedly realising that it had been some time since she had gotten separated from her friends.

“Do you have the strength to…”

“Don’t discount me yet, Lady Corrin.” Gunter stood, after a light press down in the sand with the spear in his hand, testing his balance. He limped slightly, but she was reassured to see him standing without assistance as he gave another step, a solid black pillar beside her. Despite everything, renewed vigour shone in his eyes and at last he gave a lopsided sardonic smile her way. “I may be an old man, but I’m not in the grave just yet. Lead the way.” 

__________________

Sometime in their separation, Princess Corrin had grown into a fine warrior and an even finer leader. 

Why he had told her about the dragon’s blood offer in that quiet moment before they had reunited with her two other retainers, he would never know. Gunter had not intended to let slip those words, but it was always so damnably easy to tell his little princess every little thing. 

There was a part of him grateful to be free of one less secret. 

Now they were both traitors, and the black wolf within his heart gave a sardonically toothy smile again at the irony. It was poetic, this shared trait with her.

After the last of the battle, Gunter led the ragged foursome out from the darkness of the cave system to his initial meagre camp beside the odd black river, camouflaged by a screen of branches he had hastily scattered. Calling it a camp was an overshot for a bedroll and a shaded glen by one of the many springs that dotted the small floating islands, but it would suffice for their weary souls for the one night. Quickly he and Jakob set to work attending to the flames with the boy skillfully catching four silvery, wriggling fish with his equally slender and swift throwing knives. 

That night as Azura led the conversation, they feasted on the fish and a tender young buck that Corrin had cleanly felled with her sword. She had come a long way from the little girl who hesitated at slaying a wolf, Gunter thought in the aftermath with pride as he grimly skinned it. 

All the while during their feast of survivors, the songstress spun incredible tales about the invisible kingdom of Valla that this cursed otherworld was called. Even more fanciful tales about how the Bottomless Canyon was not a dead ending for fools to be killed on rocks, but a portal to this kingdom, and one that was only open every few decades. And greater still, ancient dangers and an enemy called Anankos that had masterminded the conflict between Nohr and Hoshido for centuries. Every one of the revelations would have re-written history books, founded entirely new collages of thought, diplomatic crisis, shaken the known world to its very foundations. 

And the only thought the old knight could muster was that Corrin was alive and next to him in the flesh. He had nearly forgotten the softness of her lips when she smiled radiantly, contrasting her beautiful sharp, inquisitive restless eyes that always consumed the world with ceaseless wonder. She had missed him, and the briefest, most fleeting mental image came unbidden to his mind of greedily, gently running his old calloused hands across her flesh, how her soft skin would prickle with eagerness as he kissed her, made love to—

Gunter felt her heartbeat through his bare forearm, and knew that he was a dead man walking if anyone suspected the new-old longing that quickened his own heart. 

“Last bite of meat is up for takers.” Jakob speared a tender portion of the deer haunch that was still warm from the embers of the dying fire, the best for last. “Milady? Corrin, Azura?”

“I’m full; you have it Gunter. You’ve spent all this time alone in this world and I’m worried about you.”

Why couldn’t she have been less perceptive for once. “Milady, I couldn’t—” 

“But I insist.” 

Azura was gently smiling also at the exchange, and nodded wordlessly as an echo to Corrin’s words. Jakob was the only one that looked less than impressed and gave a pointed stink-eye back at the old knight. With rare embarrassment, the old knight didn’t fight the generosity; the fever had sapped his strength and health alarmingly, and maybe rubbing it in to the suddenly grousing butler also was a factor—

Corrin’s fingertips brushed over his bare knuckles while passing the dripping, warm meat, and he almost dropped it gracelessly at the frisson in the touch.

Oh he was a dead, dead man. 

“If that’s the last of these revelations, then do we have a plan for how to proceed forward?” Gunter very carefully turned over the haunch of meat in his hands, examining it for gristle. “I doubt this Anankos will give us the luxury of time, and we have this portal to the Bottomless Canyon closing in months.” 

“Azura mentioned that the Hoshidans might be slightly more receptive, and I’m inclined to agree after spending those days in their company. They were kind and… open.” Corrin demurred. “I’d like to seek the Hoshidan royal siblings out first.”

“That’s all well and good, milady; but we’ll need resources, gold, arms, armour, and preferably a base for such a lengthy expedition. We will run into skirmishes.” The old knight wearily voiced, excruciatingly aware that their plans constituted no mere field trip.

All three of the others shared a secretive glance and Gunter raised an eyebrow sardonically, deliberately taking his sweet time in chewing the tender meat. Finally he swallowed and stared in disgruntled exasperation at them, waiting. 

Jakob was the first one to crack, but retained enough presence to smugly smirk back.

“Don’t have a heart attack, old man, but there’s another surprise coming your way.”

__________________

True to the butler’s word, the foursome took a detour back on their way up to the living world. 

Up, down, into—directions seemingly had no meaning in this world, save for the endless floating islands that stretched into the horizon, and the faintest shimmer far above, much like the surface of the ocean. 

Corrin only had to breathe a word once when they had cleaned up after the meal, and a shimmering portal suddenly encased them all in bright, holy light with runes swirling and blinking in and out of existence. Gunter blinked at the sudden dazzling brightness, and the next sensation was sand under his boots and a faint breeze threading through his hair. Looking ahead, the new sight almost took his breath away.

This—was similar to that river of death, but not. 

In front of him was an island in the crook of an endless river that disappeared into fog on either side, the small patch of land bright and fertile with promise. On top the small triangular isle that jutted defiantly out from the running waters, high stone walls of a Nohrian-style fortress rested, and an equally familiar drawbridge beckoned them to walk in. 

“Our new home.” Corrin smiled with the words ostensibly for everyone, but his breath stilled when their eyes met briefly as they passed under those stone walls. Reassuringly, she closed her eyes at him briefly, so much like a cat padding confidently in its own domain and greeting one of its own.

He had… not expected to be missed, and the thought weighted on his mind in an odd, uncomfortable shape much like a stone on a rocky seabed. In all of his years left in this world he had not expected to have his presence wanted again by another warm body, much less her, and…

He shoved the thought aside; they were being led around the castle and there was work to do.

Later, the old knight was feeling distinctly more at ease inside of a proper base rather than in the wilderness; being on the inside of the walls of a fortified and crucially, friendly, outpost of civilization did more than anything to make him feel like a civilised man again, a composed knight that could slip back on the subservient mask again with weary resentment, and carry on. 

It would be defensible after some effort, Gunter finally assessed with the knowledge from the tour. 

Despite the ethereal location the walls were thick and sturdy true Nohrian stone, built to be resistant against mage-fire and all manner of physical weaponry. The hard-packed ground was both suitable for small plots of soil to farm to resist longer sieges, and also to place offensive weaponry or to store long rows of tents should their camp need a bolt-hole far away from both nations. 

Three nations, now, he amended. 

Was this also in Valla? He was less sure about the logistics of exactly how the magical teleportation worked, but Corrin had assured him that no one else could magically appear in the fortress itself. They would always have forewarning if there was a surprise assault on the astral base, and limiting the number of attackers from three nations down to one was already a substantial improvement to most defensive structures.

Useful, that. Gunter tried not to think too hard about the extraneous magical poppycock. 

__________________

A few days later with preparations complete and back in familiar lands, they were now officially in enemy territory in Hoshido—and all Corrin could morosely mope over how her old knight had studiously avoided her since they had reunited.

Oh, Gunter was very subtle about it; he never did anything overtly or cruelly. She hadn't even noticed his absence at first during the long march on foot, especially with him scouting ahead on his war-horse to check for traps by ninjas or to warn them off the road when airborne patrols flew through. 

Yet, as the days wore on as well as their steady distance from the Bottomless Canyon lengthened, Corrin was surprised that he had not resumed his post by her side as an advisor, or settling back into the easy companionship they had had in the Fortress days of her childhood.

Had something changed?

She almost asked Jakob if she was losing her mind, but withered at the last minute. Corrin was a big-girl princess now, and if she couldn't directly ask her beloved old knight a comparatively simple question she wouldn't be able to summon the courage to reconcile two countries from decades of warfare now, would she?

Thus it was so that she found herself with clammy palms and a buzzing mind in the eternal dawn before they reached Fort Jinya. 

The Hoshidan fort was small, nondescript, and barely an outpost meant to be a stop-over on the camp’s meandering quest to find more allies, but she had resolved she was going to talk to him before the battle or never. 

His avoidance had… hurt, if Corrin was honest with herself. Even Lilith—the little dragon-sprite that was the new guardian and keeper of their astral fortress—had even mentioned he had stopped by her shrine to offer a daikon as a treat once or twice, and she hadn’t even been aware that anyone else knew of the fey dragon nestled in her wooded shrine, let alone well enough to know her favourite treats. That meant nothing, she told herself. Gunter was observant, of course he was going to explore every inch of the castle; in fact it would be more surprising had he not been aware of the being— 

She was so consumed with her thoughts and self pity that Corrin nearly ran into his solid wall of black armour nose first. 

“Eep!”

"Milady." He looked down at her with a pensive frown, turning fully around. Her old knight was the very picture of the strict instructor like old times, with arms crossed behind his back and a severe and unamused expression. She was faintly reminded of why even veteran Nohrian soldiers gave him a wide berth.

He was intimidating.

Somehow in her grief that blurred the last days and weeks together, she had forgotten that tiny detail. Very large detail, her mind gave a hysterical giggle. Very tall and broad and…

"Gunter, do you have time...?" Corrin trailed off again, losing her nerve somewhat. He inclined his head in professional acknowledgement, completely oblivious to her mind that scattered like an upturned basket of kittens. "We haven't talked since ..."

"Of course. I have neglected a few matters to discuss with you as well.”

Well, at least he said it in so many words. Maybe this wouldn't be quite so hard. Corrin took a deeper breath to settle herself and the mismatched pair began to walk together on the pathway around the camp much like taking the old well-worn route around the Northern Fortress in easy conversation.

"It's just so much has changed since we were sent to inspect that abandoned fort..."

"Indeed. You've grown stronger, Lady Corrin.” Gunter’s deep voice was quiet with a hint of a dry rasp. Her old knight always had a lean patrician quality like an old lion, and yet she was also thankful that he looked far healthier than even just a handful of days ago when they had found him in Valla. She would never mention it to him to preserve his dignity, but he had looked frighteningly gaunt and genuinely old for the first time, back then.

"I wouldn't be here without you and everyone. And the Yato..."

His eyes trailed her sword at that line. "Mm. May I?"

Their gloves brushed against each other as she surrendered her new blade, curious for his reaction. Watching her black knight give the sword a few experimental swings to test the balance was an odd pleasure that Corrin had deeply missed since his absence, she realised. There was something exceptionally comforting in his approval, with a competent mind that would not let her inexperienced mind miss a crucial detail. His odd grace despite the heavy plates was lovely to watch too, and she let her eyes linger on him as he tested the weight and edge carefully.

"There's something else, actually, that you need to know."

Gunter raised a brow while still observing the sword meticulously, inviting her to continue.

"When I was in Hoshido during our separation and saw..." Corrin could not say the word mother for the late beautiful queen of that nation who had sacrificed her life for her, not just yet. "...Queen Mikoto murdered in front of me, the incident awoke a latent draconic form that I never knew I had.”

The memory was more like a dream now, between the assassination on an otherwise beautiful day of touring the royal capital of Hoshido with her newfound siblings of the country Nohr had always been at war with. Corrin could not help but feel it was her arrival that brought that calamity to an otherwise serene and peaceful nation, as if she was a harbinger of war. 

Fitting for a warmongering Nohrian, she thought derisively at herself.

It sounded so fantastical like an over-active child’s imagination and she cringed away slightly, feeling like Gunter should admonish her for wasting his time with ramblings. Magic had rules and precedence, not breaking all rules of reality so senselessly. “The grief became … too much for me at the moment, and that form tore out of me. I feel it now, but it’s too far away for me to reach. It happened once shortly before in a…” She faltered. “... similar incident.”

When I thought I had lost you.

The old knight was listening, chin anchored on fingertips. It was a mark of how much had changed that he simply took in all the new information without a derisive laugh or look of total disbelief. Then again Gunter had always believed her, and had been there for her in her worst days unfailingly. His kindness was not the cloying warmth of others with a hidden cost or agenda, but a steady faithfulness like a lodestone that anchored her. 

"I know it's hard to believe, sir. I swear it's true; Azura can also—"

"I believe you, Lady Corrin. Dragon’s blood runs within your veins after all." He replied simply, rubbing his chin in thought, and handed back the sword hilt-first. "You did imply this unique draconic … form seemingly came out under times of emotional duress, correct?"

Corrin nodded as he silently passed back the blade, and re-sheathed it by her side with rote memory.

"Interesting." He murmured, watching her movements with calculating eyes. "Could be useful if..." Trailing off, Gunter seemed to catch himself.  

She beamed up at him, and even her venerable knight looked taken aback at her positive reaction. Corrin supposed it was one of many such oddities in their relationship, to talk so freely about weapons of destruction and death, when everyone chattered about tea parties and court nothings at her and expected her to care. They had never even extended the offer of inviting her to court until she was suddenly in favour again, and why would she?

"You're the only one that thought the same, sir.”

“Hrm?” 

“Usefulness.” She smiled again, at him this time. “All the Hoshidans kept trying to comfort me, or to pretend like that form didn’t exist. I… confess all I could think of is it’ll help me keep anyone I care from dying, ever again.” Corrin paused, nibbling her lip as she searched for the exacting words. “Like the old dragons I used to draw… it’s me, I can protect everyone.” 

He tilted his head. “How does it feel, milady?”

She started at his question. It was the same gentle line he had always asked after the days Garon’s mages had performed their memory-rituals on her. She almost started again when realising that no-one else had asked her such. Not in Nohr, not in Hoshido. 

Gods, she really had missed him and his insight.

“It feels good… like I’m a weapon, and not helplessly on the sidelines. Finally .”  

"What are we, if not weapons—" Her black knight’s own lip quirked as he gave a rare shared smile back at her. "—to be used for our purpose?"

__________________

They fought a quick and unavoidable skirmish at Fort Jinya, inadvertently recruited Princess Sakura of Hoshido, and retreated successfully back to the astral fortress that marked their new home between the ceaseless rivers of fate. 

Strictly speaking, it was a highly successful battle.

Especially successful for the first real bloodied fight that he had seen the gentle Princess Corrin lead, and the old knight had gone looking for her with her old childhood leather ball in hand after he had checked the rest of the premises of their newfound and strangely magical base. There were no casualties and Corrin had convinced one of the Hoshidan royals already to her strange cause with nothing more than sheer will and grace. Generals were promoted for less.

And yet.

For all of the success in the battle and for all of her brave face she gave the other three, her morale had been quietly and severely shaken by the insinuations of traitor and liar from the enemy Hoshidan soldiers. The young redhead royal, Sakura, had believed her faultlessly—but Corrin needed other charismatic leaders by her side as well as seasoned generals and retainers if she wanted to recruit more allies, not children even younger. 

Gunter was eminently aware of the burden that holding secrets exacted. He did not want to see the same malaise take root in her.

Since the last skirmish, Princess Corrin had a restlessness about her that he recognized through one of her many tells since childhood. True, she hid it better now as an adult between layers of carefully ingrained curtsies and drilled manners from lessons; but it was her bare feet that always undid her whether it be through a wriggle of fidgety toes or tracing invisible pictures onto the ground. Convincing her to wear shoes was a battle that others had long since given up on, and one he hadn't even tried. She had her reasons; if she wanted, she would tell them.

He found Corrin by one of the barren pathways.

As he approached, Gunter tossed her their ball underhanded without a word. She caught the deceptive throw reflexively, blinked at the leather ball now nestled between her hands, then at him owlishly before he responded with a sidelong gesture with his chin.

"Come with. Pardon an old knight's forwardness, but you look like you could use a proper gossip session, as it were."

She brightened at him with open gratitude, and eagerly sprinted to his side.

It was not long down the dusty trail before he rapped on the toy in her hands with a gauntleted knuckle. “Do you recognize this ball, milady?”

“We used to play catch quite often in my childhood, sir.” There was a note of fondness in her voice at the memory. “It took a minute to remember…I had no idea you kept it all this time.” 

Sentimental old man.

Perhaps he was. 

“We’ll need to stretch properly before another game of catch, but I thought you might appreciate seeing a familiarity after so much has changed. Sometimes it’s worth remembering happy memories.” 

He knew they made for a strange pair, the old knight in sinister black armour, and the waif of a princess by his side quite companionably, both at once ethereal with her grace but sharp with her features and brilliant red eyes that could be unsettling to some. More moments later down the wooded pathway, she started talking about the battle, as Gunter had known she would. She always did, given enough patience, time, and trust.

He pitied the fools who had never bothered to gain her trust, and there were many. Child's play, as it were.

Their loss, his gain.

"I'm not asking them for anything beyond a talk. They called me a... sister, their blood, all of them, and I grew up with them, with Xander and Camilia and they won't even return the..." She thumbed the ridges and divots in the toy ball that she was still clutching, frowning. Not at the leather, but through it to the recent memories. "Did all of that time mean nothing?"

Her voice trailed off to be replaced with his booted paces along the dusty road.

"It hurts, sir." She ended with a plaintive note. "It feels like I've been cast aside."

"Perhaps the royals are occupied with their duties." He spoke mildly, almost flippantly. "Perhaps their spurning is not intentional as it seems."

"You don't believe that." Her chin jutted out with stubborn impudentness, and an involuntary smile came perilously close to playing on his scarred lips. His little princess had a habit of nearly reading his mind, and there was a part of him that enjoyed the growing intimacy. He generally preferred to be alone, but hers… was a company that he did not mind.

"Surely, milady, you have been prepared for them not to believe." He replied, more softly.

"If only it was just that, Gunter." She frowned, creases between her brows forming, and he had to fight an absurd urge to caress her gently with his gloved thumbs and to smooth her worries away. "I could handle that. Really, I could, sir. But they don't even... care. At least other than Sakura. They don't even value all that time together as children for one honest conversation. Like I was nothing more than a child's… puppet."

She swallowed at the last word, seemingly startled at the force.

Now you see, a vicious gleeful spitefulness surged through him. 

But even after all this time, Gunter remained silent. He—if not his beloved little princess—had to be mindful of those invisible puppet-strings that ensnared them all, or they would slit his own throat as surely as a garotte wire.

"Princess, our birthright is our duties, and our duties mark us all our lives. I have mine in service to the crown through you, and you have your own special birthright along with your royal siblings." He licked his lips before continuing with the sternness of a well worn lecture. He had to get her to understand this.

She would not survive this world otherwise.

"Mere wants of an individual do not enter the picture, milady. Just as it is a grave taboo for a commoner to marry a royal, despite all of those saccharine and insipid tales in your smuggled books you think I don't know about—" She flushed an angry pink, and he resisted the urge to grin in the petty victory. "—so too, is it a grave sin for us all to ignore the duty to our birthright. Your siblings are simply following the rote path laid out to them by fate." 

Corrin made if as to interrupt, and he cut her off again.

"Traitors..." He called out to her in a parade-ground voice at the booted click of a perfect right-face, feeling his eyes sharpen to the viciousness of a hunting hound. "Abdicate all of that. Worse, they threaten that divine structure. It is a royal's duty to ensure traitors to the throne are crushed and eliminated before even more threats entertain ideas." His brows rose mockingly. "Pray tell, princess, what is a royal without her crown?"

Corrin was already shaking her head.

"No one, and no life is that expendable." She retorted back firmly, so stubbornly naive as always. 

Fool, fool, fool— His mind chanted.

That conviction was profoundly irritating, he thought in a grudging, growing frustration to shake her for such relentless optimism. Gunter started again sardonically, sweeping an arm wide to include them both.

"You're as expendable now to an empty throne as I am to you—" 

"Not to me." Corrin replied sharply, her red eyes defying him with raw force. He froze, a winter's ice water in his veins, teetering on an endless cliff on the question of whether she had found him out, at last. It would be a relief to me —he thought with a wild and breathless laugh of abandon.

Against everything, her soft fingertips brushed the creases between his chestplate, and a tenderness—long since dead—uncurled within him with a pained, terrible shudder of mewling yearning. The rest of her slender form followed, and he swore he felt her warmth through the cold black steel as her arms clasped around his waist.

The damned thing about life—his mind froze on the thought like a looping, glitching pictograph he saw once at a fair—was it hurt. Life was fleshy-red and fragile from the very first squallings of an infant onwards, and so vulnerable to the slightest bruising.

(And the next stuttering thought: he wondered if she had ever bruised herself against his armour—)

"Not you. You are never, ever, ever expendable to me." She was mumbling like a protective mantra against a curse quite childishly, and Gunter didn't have it in him to correct her.

"I—you—That's ... different, milady...." He murmured softly whilst stroking her silky pale hair with a gloved palm and it was true. Gunter had known that she was different than the rest of everyone's profound wretchedness the moment he had seen her in the cell.

"I would lay down this body for you, Corrin, every time."

But still, she shook her head, almost frantic in how she held him tighter, resisting his efforts to rock and soothe her agitation away.

"You don't get it, sir." Her hands were tight curled little fists, yet not of anger. "—I don't ever want you as another sacrifice." she choked on the last word, like he was being particularly dense. "I need you. I need you here, if you would have me."

Oh princess, he thought. You have me. More than you ever know.

I would ruin the world itself and lay it next to mine own black-heart at your feet for you.

And Gunter cradled her in the silence that he could not break.

__________________

Later, in his tent, he dreamed.

Gunter was standing guard outside of Garon's private wing of this summer palace, the one the Nohrian king used to hide his favoured lovers away from the court’s eyes and ears. There had been many such names for this wing among the soldiers, all inappropriate to repeat in front of honest women. This king’s mind was not on court politics just at the moment, being rather occupied by the curvaceous guest who had flitted through minutes ago. The old knight could hear soft peals of laughter behind the lacquered doors and then breathy moans and sighs almost immediately after.

It did not take long for him to feel his prick stir, even as he had counted and re-counted the checkerboard floor tiles listlessly while pacing. He knew this routine.

Gunter fitfully tossed, and sank into a deeper sleep.

He was now sprawled in that same gargantuan tub of Garon's, ostentatious in gilded gold and obsidian and worth more than an entire village's harvest in one year, if not ten. It was obscene. 

It was still nothing compared to her slender, naked form wandering into view at the foot of the tub, towel fully divested.

Gunter took a moment to observe the gift of Garon’s daughter, his little princess. 

She was beautiful, of course; but not in the careful, passive, and the dark knight thought with equally dark lust—insipid—ways that the court described all pure princesses like passive interchangeable dolls. No imagination to the poetry, no ink spilled on the feathery white locks that tumbled down her tenderly young curves, whole and free from the ravages of time or hedonism. The court poets did not describe the filthy ways this little girl had gasped when he had touched her in hidden places for the first time, or how her muffled cries of pleasure intermingled with his name could stir an old man’s blood.

No, Corrin was his little princess now, and she was clambering into the bath to join him with want in her wide, lovely sharp red eyes. 

His cock was bobbing visibly in the warm water before she had settled herself fully in the steaming water. She giggled, fascination wrestling with shyness as she stared openly at his considerable manhood with a virgin’s blush.

<It won't bite.> He had murmured playfully with hooded lust as he watched her touch his swollen head with a feather-light finger. <Take me in hand like one of your practice swords, my princess.>

Here, he did not have to worry about anyone overhearing her ministrations, or his voice.

She touched him again, curiosity not sated, and— oh—he knew the exact moment her simple curiosity blossomed into desire, when she stroked his throbbing flesh with a longer experimental caress all the way from his root and wrung a lusty burr out of his throat. She looked up at him, his sweet little girl fascinated and eager to please at his response.

<Do you like this, sir?>

<Very, very much.> Gunter rasped, seeing stars as her strokes slowly grew more rhythmic with her budding confidence. She added more of those lovely slender fingers, massaging the sensitive foreskin underneath. He let his head fall back against the porcelain rim, and groaned now, louder and unabashedly at every one of her rhythmic strokes as he stiffened, so swollen now.

<That's it, princess, harder, steady now—>

The tiny buds of her nipples were now pert with arousal. Her pink lips were parted with sweet whimpers. <Sir, I want—>  

He corrected sternly. <May I.>

<Sir, may I-I, please…> She stuttered, and fumbled at articulating her wants. Her hips that rolled in an echo of his own told the truth instead, making the water slosh dangerously close to the lip. The maids would have quite a mess.

<Clarity is a virtue, my love.>

<Please, please, sir, may I…>  She whined, needy, looking everywhere but his eyes out of bashful shyness at crude words for sex and pleasure she did not know the names for. He took pity on her, at last, when she whined again with his name, louder. His engorged prick was eagerly reddened and thickly swollen now. 

<Lift up, my good girl, and let me guide you.>

She straddled him awkwardly, knees slipping once against the slick sides of the rim as her tiny hands fumbled against his broad chest. His big hands guided her hips above his own, above the water’s edge, and when her slick folds brushed his considerable cock when she slipped again, they both cried out at the sensation of flesh against flesh.

At last, she made it, almost on all fours with her thighs spread out a mere fingers-breadth over his waiting cock, and her pert breasts now within easy reach of his wandering fingers. 

He thumbed one of her rosy nipples in not quite a twist, and she cried out once as her instinctive shudder of the hips sank her an inch deep into him unthinkingly; then louder, much louder as the waves of pleasure hit her in the seconds after.

<Please, oh, oh, oh—!>

<Shh, shh, princess—> He crooned. <Good little girls must be seen and not heard.>

He could see the outline of his name on her pink lips that were parted in breathy whines, rocking onto him faster, once, twice. His grip tightened on her hips, halting her motions with a threatening squeeze, hard enough that there would be intentional bruises left in the shape of his handprint. He throbbed at the thought, and she bit back an answering moan, needy and demanding. 

This daughter of Garon's was so spoiled. He would have to teach her patience. 

Another virtue, as he stripped the girl of her own.

<Not so fast. Princess. Lay down on the bed, and part your legs for me like a good girl.>

She obeyed, and it did not take long for him to follow her, nude and dripping to the oversized royal bed, stalking her trembling form with intent as she laid back, facing him with those wide eyes. Her cunt had flowered for him and him only, slick and flushed red, her folds throbbing with the same heartbeat that trembled her thighs. She parted her legs hesitantly, remembering his commands half a heart-beat later. 

<Wider.>

One day, Garon’s daughter would follow all of his orders to the letter, and he shivered at the thought of breaking her in so fully, when she would sink to her knees and service him at a mere gesture. 

Her only warning was his hands roughly dragging her hips towards his. Gunter drove into her with his whole length at once, ruthlessly, and this time he did not chastise her shriek of pain-pleasure that echoed throughout the chambers.

He would take what he had been owed. Flesh for flesh.

He took—he thrust—

His hips snapped with hers in unison, more quickly now. She was echoing his rhythm now, breathily moaning higher and higher as he felt her tighten on him, her dripping, slick cunt sweetly milking his cock.  

He shuddered out a particularly forceful thrust, deeper, harder, roaring in satisfaction— 

<Good girl, come for me, my princess.> And he felt her climax in response to his words, shaking, moaning, writhing like a whore on him rather than Garon's unsullied daughter—

His sweet, sweet princess, Gunter thought as he drove in harder—

He awoke in his tent, and tasted blood as he finished himself off with silenced, vicious curses of shame.

__________________

The camp was dispersed now in the refuge of the cool shade of the Wind Tribe's sandstone structures, and Gunter could do nothing but replay their disastrous skirmish on the stone steps of the Eternal Stairway. It was too hot to do anything but think.

He should have known something was off when he and and that Hoshidan-turned-fellow-traitor, Kaze hadn’t run across ninja patrols in some time. If the sudden fog in the twisty cavern had not been another hint, then Faceless golems so far inside Hoshido’s borders should have been an obvious tell that there was trickery afoot and that the looming battle-golems were not what they seemed to be.

Fool.

He slammed a gauntleted fist against the thick wall as the wind picked up. Goddamn, they had misjudged badly that day. and he had to ensure that they would not make the same costly mistake again. There wouldn't be a second chance.

“What’s wrong, sir?”

Either his hearing was going or the wind had masked Corrin’s approach; he chose to believe it was the latter. Very carefully, Gunter stepped away from the edge of the stone bridge thrown in sharp darkness of the shade. 

It was a long drop down.

“The Faceless ambush, yesterday.” He massaged his smarting eyes that so disliked the desert sun and the stinging sand, feeling very old and tired as a shell of a man. “We are quite fortunate that the Wind Tribe decided to settle their score in a test of strength rather than revenge. I wish to avoid us relying on mere luck next time. Miss fickle Lady Luck has a nasty habit of calling in debts at the most inopportune times.” 

Corrin padded closer, and lightly leaned her back against the sandstone building. She held their ball easily in one palm, her slender form backlit by the setting sun, and the gentle curves of her small breasts all too emphasised by the black dainty armour she wore. What counted as it, at least. She was a truly beautiful woman now, with her white feathery hair all but a halo around her… and she had said something, waiting for his reply now.

Get a grip, old man.

“... Milady?” Gunter did his level best to inject the right amount of puzzlement, blinking. 

“Who do you think was behind the deception, sir?” 

"I'm not a betting man, but if I had to cast my chips ... it was Nohrian illusionry at work." He shouldered the wall with arms crossed, glancing down at her and looking away quickly as she fiddled with the leather ball. "While Hoshido is currently hostile, they are only passively hostile to us, and they have nothing to gain from increasing tensions or trouble on their borders. Nohr does. Divide and conquer.”

"We're being spied on by them, then." She was clever, far more on the uptake than than most suspected. Darkly heartened; Gunter smiled inwardly—being underestimated had its advantages, and he had taught her every one of them. "Either a rogue force from Nohr, or..."

Or somebody with royal backing and resources was watching them. Nothing happened in Krakenburg's court without the implicit approval and the hand of Garon. No, she wouldn't like that other possibility, not at all. But his little princess needed to come to the conclusion by herself without his tacit nudges.

"Try not to fault the Wind Tribe too much, my lady. Nohrian magic is especially cruel and has a habit of playing with one's senses. The vermin around Krakenberg's court have many such vile games that lead to endless suffering for the unseen and those on the streets."

"You've seen this type of illusion before, sir." It was as much of a statement as it was a question, and the black wolf in his mind bared its bloodied fangs with vicious pride at her discerning mind. 

Oh yes, she was becoming a fine weapon.

He leaned against the wall with an outstretched elbow, other hand braced on his hip.

"In another life, Princess, I managed to catch such a deception just the once. Noticing it likely saved my life. Watch people's feet, if you suspect trickery… many mages focus on the facial features, and lose patience for how the form makes contact with the ground." Gunter kicked the toe of his black boot against the stone floor to make the point. "Observe the sharp shadows in the sun, and how they meet people’s forms most predictably. Typically Nohrian illusions will use the cover of fog or darkness to make up for such sloppiness in their detail. Use this to your advantage, milady."

She was staring at him, head tilted like a badger-hunting hound observing an oddity. What he would give to rummage around her thoughts, just once. 

Did she suspect?

There were many such things to suspect.

“Living in the court sounds… dangerous.” Corrin spoke softly, barely audible over the stiff breeze. “And exhausting. So very different than our time in the Fortress. How my siblings have kept such a brave face...” 

“You get used to it after some time.” It was both a hard truth and untruth, as dismissive as it was. 

Corrin made as if to murmur something in return, and then thought better of it, dipping her head in an agreeable nod. Instead, she stayed with him for a moment against that sheltered wall, content in the mutual silence as they watched the wind-mills spin endlessly along in the harsh desert sun. Such intensity made his eyes water even in the comparatively dimmer evening, long used to the endless cold gloom of Nohr. Whereas she… was practically basking in it like a beautiful sunflower thriving after being miss-planted in a bad patch of soil. 

She had never belonged in Nohr.

Garon had been a fucking fool for thinking that this tender young vine would do anything but usurp his entire regime. He supposed it made him the old gardener with shears in that scenario. 

“Would you… like another game of catch, sir? It’s been a while.” 

He had never noticed how earnest her eyes were, so wide he could drown in them. Gunter shifted uneasily, scratching at his hair to look away. Worst part was, he didn’t not want to fall in. The light must have been getting to him. The healers had fussed once at him about sunstroke being something to watch out for in his advanced years. 

“Best not risk it with the wind and the heights. Maybe later, Princess.” 

“Right…” She gave another nod, and then awkwardly transitioned to a short bow, the Hoshido kind, still clasping the ball to her chest. She had been practising their mannerisms of late with Kaze and the little Hoshidan redhead princess; it was a good thing that she was socialising again with peers of her age, and that there was more of them around. 

And yet—if he had to say, she almost looked deflated.  

“I’ll see you when we march tomorrow, then, sir.”

It had been a perfectly acceptable reason. It was a reason, not an excuse. 

Why was it, then, that he felt an uncharacteristic and profound pang of loss sweep over him as she walked away slowly?

It had been going so well, Corrin thought, as a flying knife from behind sliced past her cheek and thonked itself into the wood posts she was facing. 

She had her steadily amassing camp. She was being so patient with convincing and cajoling her allies one by one (Corrin tried not to fantasise about convincing them at bladepoint. No bloodshed, mind, just a little bit of creative intimidation weighted behind the pretty-please and the batting of harmless eyelashes.) She could even be patient during the hours-long polite listening of pontification in exchange for drinking in the new sights and food dishes of lands formerly exotic.

It was going so well until an opportunistic Nohrian mage had ambushed them in the dining hall of Izumo, the supposedly neutral nation whose capital now looked more like a toddler’s temper tantrum over food than an austere, dignified nation ruled by an eccentric prophet. Somewhere in her mind, a voice that sounded suspiciously like her old knight muttered something about a clusterfuck under his breath and the coarseness of it made an idiotic grin break out on her face, until she realised Jakob was elbowing her hard in the ribs. 

Repeatedly. 

Her attention rattled back to reality—and the butler beside her—like the shattered mug she subsequently tripped over. Jakob gave a withering look at the porcelain like it had personally offended him.

“Milady, I’ll take out the mage to the right if you engage the swordsman.” 

“Deal! One, two, three—”

“Wait —!” The squawk came, and Jakob grabbed the wood-splintered knife and threw it back in the chaos of the dining hall, earning him a pained shriek. Corrin’s stomach flopped at the sound. 

It was all too easy to forget this was war, not a friendly spar.

A flash of steel tearing through the paper walls caught her eye; Gunter had favoured a hand axe lately, and his pragmatism was paying off in the close quarters fight. 

“We need to take out the enemy leader.” Corrin panted when she had lept the last few feet to comparative safety. “End this fight quicker.” 

He looked down with amused fondness. “You’re not going to need me anymore milady, with how well you’ve been remembering my lessons.” Her old knight jerked his chin to the side, gesturing to the paper sliding walls that the Hoshidans preferred. “I daresay he’s holed up in the next room over. Another illusion mage. Bastards to fight indoors.”  

“What if he’s not inside…” Corrin chewed on her lip while considering stratagems, and then a lightbulb went off. “They’re all about deception, right? What if he’s waiting outside letting his men weaken us while staying comfortably away from danger, sir.”

“Only one way to find out, princess.” 

With a great wrench, Gunter shoulder-smashed through the thin walls with his black armour easily tearing holes through the light wood and paper. Corrin followed him, strongly suspecting that he was riding on the adrenaline of the battlefield and would feel the activities the next morning. The man clearly was in his element, although the poor building would need some reconstruction.

All humour evaporated when she saw the tell-tail black robes and a distinctive cap of the Nohrian mage. The small cringing man squealed as he barely dodged a swift chop from Gunter’s hand-axe, nearly as surprised as they both were with hasty backpedals.

Zola . She remembered this one with searingly vicious clarity, what he had been called back in those moments of utter dread before the mind wipes, back before when she couldn’t remember. The mage’s wrists blurred in one last desperate attempt of a spell and then everything was suddenly too bright—

So so so bright and she was trapped, held down, child again, on the bed—

Faces looking down, she had failed—they were holding her down, the dread, she knew what was coming- had to fight—

Tear—

Rip—teeth and claw, anything—

And then came a marrow-deep blinding pain, a violent vicious fish-hook tear that ripped through her flesh like fingers that touched her where none should—

She attacked, again and again, frantically clawing and shredding at anything that was fleshy and red with unbearable oppressive heavy feeling and weeping with old minefields of dread. Until the next sensation was being pried away away from the mess of entrails and sobbing, throat raw and dead and torn aflame from screams. Her head was black minefields, minefields, one step away being certain death—

Hands enveloped her.

His armour was a simple good-ache that grounded her, brought her back slowly, agonisingly ashore to a steady embrace that held her tight, tight.

“Good girl.” he murmured, and like a switch she instantly went limp when held by his strong, warm embrace, whimpering pathetically in the aftershocks of the all-consuming terror, shaking in shock—

"Easy, easy. It's over. they will never touch you again. It's over.”

She could feel the warmth in his arms even through Gunter’s armour. Strange, how she always knew that sensation of his instinctively. Reality began to flicker back like cold fragments of ice, piece by piece; and upon blinking again she saw her butler’s worried expression hovering over her knight’s shoulder, white-faced with flecks of blood.

Jakob stared, and for the first time in her life Corrin cringed away from the presence of his uncomfortable gaze, resentful at the new intrusion. Gunter growled something, low and dark and rumbling with punitive, protective menace, and then remarkably quickly they were blessedly alone again. She was dripping blood all over his iron solidity, and still her old mentor cradled her tenderly as an newborn infant like he had done it thousands of times before.

"W-what..."

“Easy, good girl, come back to me. Talk to me."

The velvet-quiet whisper was almost inaudible, and yet his words kept her anchored like a lodestone, slowly becoming more aware of the ground and the distant sounds of calm reigning once more. 

It was with nothing but a quieter, dizzying wheeze that she choked on a reply. Pressure clawed at the back of her throat. 

She barely managed to shove off of his armour in time.

Corrin violently retched and still he held her, one gloved gauntlet cradling her hair aside and the other held out for her to cling to so she did not follow the expelled waste straight down to the dirt. 

Finally, she sagged against his dark steadiness and for several blessed moments, closed her eyes as he rocked her from side to side as her trembles slowly subsided. 

"I'm... I'm...." Okay was not the right word but it was the only thing that looped. "Okay..."

"We need to clean you, milady."

Blood dripped all over him like carnage from an abattoir and it finally occurred to her how she must look, but there was nothing in those steady eyes except a soldier's calmness. “I think you may have alarmed your butler. Ripping the hearts out of foes with that terribly useful draconic form of yours might have a tendency to do that.”

"Oh."

He had the audacity to chuckle, and suddenly she was hysterically wheezing with him now that some of the oddness had passed, and still she was lightheaded after the moment had passed, trembling again at his side.

In fond response, Gunter tousled her hair like he had done when she was a little girl. The sensation of his solid armoured palms against her head did more to anchor back to the world of colour than an entire night’s sleep. 

Too soon and with finality, his gauntlet came to rest on her shoulder while stepping away—pointedly but not unkindly putting space between them before other eyes could see their aberrations, and an odd black hole opened in her heart at his physical absence. 

“Do you want me to talk for you, Lady Corrin?” Her venerable black knight was effortlessly slipping back into that stoic mask like a wolf seamlessly back into sheepskin. 

A glance of his flickered over to the doorway where she could hear Jakob approaching from, taking his sweet time sourcing rags and clearing the area of other foes.

She nodded mutely, suddenly exhausted.

__________________

That evening the nation of Izumo celebrated with a feast as they had always done in the face of trials and tribulations alongside celebrations, and Corrin knew something was wrong with her.

Wrong was perhaps a touch melodramatic, she relented, but she felt distant, clammy, jangly. It was a very bad time for her to be sitting in these pointless six-hour-long banquet feasts with toasts to a list of names she didn't know. On a good day, she could force herself to care. On a good day, sometimes the food was even worth it, she could converse with the best of them, all passive eager eyes and ears curious to learn about a distant culture or the intricacies of Hoshidan glass-blowing.

Corrin did not remember the last time her mind had been this bad. Years, at least.

And he had been there the whole night the last time, when the only thing she could taste was blood and iron bars of terror in her mind.

Sakura found her stalking silently in the wooden hallway, and she mentally cursed at herself for being found so easily when she wanted less existence than a candle’s shadow.

It was not Sakura’s fault, she reminded herself in a frantic repetition and litany of words fashioning itself as a crude leash around her rabid mind; company of the youngest red-head Hoshido royal was lovely with the etiquette lessons. In the daytime.

Not now.

"Do you remember mother's new year’s feast in our childhood? It was wonderful, like this."

"I...I don't..." Jangly nerves became a field of white snow.

Heedless of the looming razor-wire, Sakura pressed on with a child’s disregard. "That's all right, remember how the lantern-lights were twinkling in the gardens like fireflies—"

"I'm sorry, I don't want to." The truth fell out of her mouth like lead, landing crudely on the floor with a dull splatter and mess and damn, it was another thing to clean up now. "I don't want to remember."

She mumbled another I'm sorry like it means something. It did not, not to her empty mind of minefields, but sometimes the empty words she had learned with too much effort worked. 

It failed this time with Sakura too young to see the exit for what it was. The littlest princess blinked, more out of confusion than real hurt, and the glimmer of another conversation threatened to rear its ugly head out of the past. Corrin beheaded the memory, frantically.

"Why don't you want to?" Too close. The littlest princess was too close, stepping into the minefield, the warning-wire invisible to her eyes, and Corrin backpedalled for space.

Sakura had not traversed enough battlefields—either in minds where carrion birds circled, or on the cratered dust where the real winged beasts pecked at rotting flesh—to know the warning signs for what they were. Childlike curiosity and naive clashed with old scars, and tore them open again in the clumsiness, festering wounds again. Shoulders tight and drawn back, Corrin shuddered away, cornered.

"Why would I want to remember everything when it was all pain—" Sakura was a child, and did not deserve this, she hissed at herself in a silent rebuke. "I'm sorry." Corrin cut herself off, tasting blood, real blood this time on her bitten lip. She would not know of the mages, did not even know anything of the bloodshed that day, of how just bad of a time it was to step here in this empty graveyard of memory and ghosts. Her nerves screamed, and it was all Corrin could do not to flee down the wooden hallway, away, away, away—

He wouldn't ask such a stupid thing. He would have seen the wire for what it was.

"T-that's okay." Sakura stuttered, finally sensing the no-mans land she found herself in, floundering and lost. The script again. Corrin seized on it. 

“No, forgive me.” She bowed to her knees, the Hoshido kind all low and respectful, trying to echo words of reassurance and apology with every curved motion like a willow tree bending to unmerciful wind every exhausting time. “It’s just a bad night. I’ll go to bed early.” 

“I… I hope you feel better soon.” 

“Sakura, I do want to hear, eventually, just—not now.”  Not now echoed like a screeching broken musical toy for children, and she viciously strangled it again, silencing it on the jagged, lethal edges of her mind.

But it worked when even the gesture had not, and the child-princess lightened again with a smile on her face, and it was enough. She did not want to cut at the soles of feet of innocents with the smashed pottery of her mind, even unintentionally. 

“That’s okay… I’ll cover for you if anyone asks where you, um… went.” 

“Thank you.”

Please go, please go—

They traded a word of good night flawlessly.

She waited a full three breaths until Sakura padded around the corner, the red-head royal eager to return to the light and sound.

And then—hunted by memory, Corrin fled to her old knight’s quarters.

It did not take long to locate the rooms as she rounded the corner just two doors down the red-and-brown hall from her empty suite. Being alone was not an option right now, as her mind screamed, loud enough that she twitched on the spot, almost skidding on the slick hardwood floors. 

Corrin tapped at his door, mutely.

Silence.

Again she tapped more insistently, and mumbled.

“Need you, sir.”

Something must have worked because the thin bars of wood and paper slid soundlessly on well-oiled railing and Gunter eyed her cautiously. Her old knight was in the black taunt shirt that passed as casual-wear along with the nondescript black trousers he always wore under the armour.

“Can I come in?” Corrin whispered again.

The old man glanced to both sides of the empty hallway with a look she had never seen before; something akin to wary suspicion. Something in her hunched-over stance must have convinced him as she saw the faintest flicker of softness over those scarred, lined features as he gestured with a head jerk and stepped back, face vanishing in the darkness of the room.

“Make it quick, milady.” 

Slipping in the spartan quarters after his brisk whisper, Corrin felt vaguely voyeuristic; she had never been inside his rooms before. This was the nondescript Hoshidan style that was popular among the eastern coast; she knew she was not aware of the cultural differences between Izumo and the older nation to truly tell—but there were odd little hints of her venerable knight in the dim space all the same, once her eyes adjusted.

One scroll was laid out on a smaller night table beside a chair with a still-steaming teacup beside; if she had to guess he had been reading before she interrupted. A curl of fondness squeezed around her heart as her eyes lit upon the familiar stack of black-and-silver armour beside his bed, tucked neatly out of the way to avoid being a tripping hazard. Not a single piece was out of place, and she knew he had always checked each and every one with ritualistic precision to maintain the spotless integrity. There was no one more obsessive about details in the camp than her old disciplinarian.

Warmth and rough hands on her face jolted her out of the observations.

Gunter had gripped her chin suddenly and authoritatively; tilting her head up to face the faint moonlight. “You’re bleeding.”

Suddenly that low remark with his smooth voice seemed like the least important one possible, and it took every ounce of her will in the ruins of her mind to keep a carefully composed face as he examined her closer with a penetrating gaze. 

“Bit my lip.”

“Hmph.” A handkerchief magically appeared in his other hand as he knelt with a slight groan. The gentleness that he blotted at her lip was at complete contrast to the sternly composed crags of his face, and Corrin greedily drank in that odd intimacy that chased away the shadows of her heart.

And yet, he was going to send her out, afterwards—she could tell from his carefully guarded expression—and her mind panicked at being alone again. 

“Can you hold me for a little bit?” It hurt, having to ask for that. Gunter hesitated again with enough of a set to his sharp, broad shoulders that she knew the venerable knight was going to say no, and she pleaded once more with need. “Not long. Just a few minutes. I just….”

This time he hesitated with a stern gaze. Even with him kneeling and looking up at her, it was formidable. 

“Is this about this afternoon?” His low voice was rough as he examined his handiwork for the last time while paternally lightly brushing a thumb across her lip, and stood again. 

Was it the mage? Corrin nodded, understanding the ask.

Her venerable knight heaved a sigh while threading a hand through his grey-lilac hair with an odd and slightly exasperated gesture, and then sat on the low cot with another groan that old men always did. 

“Come over here, milady.” Carefully, so very carefully as to not spook him any further, she stepped in between his arms propped on his knees, and leaned against Gunter’s reassuring solidity as his arms loosely held her in closer. 

“This isn’t appropriate, princess…” 

Corrin was maybe imagining it, but his voice sounded strained, murmuring somewhere above her hair. She could feel his chin flexing to the words, and noted with some amount of amusement that he didn’t precisely step away either despite the warning. Gunter was a man that very much had both a vicious bark and bite, but there were times when the old black wolf was remarkably amendable. 

“You’re just holding me.” She murmured sleepily with one eye opened, silently trying to convince him. “We’ve done this how many times before, Gunter?” 

He was seated on the knee-low Hoshidan-style cot with Corrin standing in-between his slightly parted knees, and still he was almost a full head taller than she was and the realisation made her mind swim. It was a pleasant, swoopy feeling. Giddy, Corrin chased it, frantic to be anywhere else. 

She let her head flop on his chest again. “I don’t want to think about that mage tonight.” 

Minute by minute, the man finally relaxed in what felt like a true miracle. 

His big, masculine hands against her back felt good and his touch burned and crackled with warmth, not the touch that left her cold and feeling a million miles away. Corrin wanted to drown in his calloused hands and caresses, even the touches he never wanted her to notice, that slow heady flex of his fingers massaging circles into her shoulders. Gunter never treated her like she was made out of spun artisanal glass, too fragile to even be touched.

He had relaxed just enough he had started rocking her minutely, like old times. Although it was more of a side to side waver whilst he was on the bed, it was enough. She sank into the bliss of the embrace, and the contact she so craved. Her deft hands drifted. She had missed falling asleep with his scent all around her, and with the rise and fall of his breath, and the only time when she felt safe—

(He had said he loved her that night so long ago when he thought she was asleep, right, she was only going to do something he wanted all along—)

So slowly, so he wouldn’t notice, she wormed her hands as close to his own skin as possible, feeling muscle flex underneath that layer of a black tunic he always wore under his armour. With the barest perceptible moves, she flexed her fingertips against his warmth in the the smallest, shallowest echo of his own touches. Still, he did not react to her explorations.  

Feeling emboldened, she stretched to her toe-tips and dared to nuzzle his soft neck with the tip of the nose, so feather-light that it could have been a hair’s touch. His veined neck was the only slice of skin he ever bared with her while always being encased head to toe in black armour. It was right there, he was holding her—

(It was wrong.)

"Corrin." He stilled abruptly. A thread of cold steel edged into his voice, warningly.

(It was wrong—) 

She pressed her lips more boldly to his neck, entirely punch drunk on desire and fantasy. 

Her old knight tasted unimaginably better than her dreams. Woodsy, warm, with the hint of after-battle sweat and very male musk that made her want to lick and nibble at him and had her mind dribbling to unwholesome thoughts like—

"Corrin." He choked, heat in his voice as she tasted him immediately again, feeling the opportunity slip away. "Stop."

(She wasn't wrong.)

"Why should I stop, sir…" she slurred, catching one more nuzzle against his crimson flesh. Corrin was rewarded with the most ragged intake of his breath, even as she felt his hands fumbling for her shoulders to push her away.

(She could feel his erection, a solid log of heat and pressure against her thigh, she wasn't wrong —)

Gunter pushed her off roughly, and all she could think was his grip was so strong that she wanted to feel him and the solid heat pinning her up against a wall and him fucking her rhythmically until he tore his name out of her with raw lust. She wanted to fight that delicious grip and lose. And break on her black knight and his flesh and feel him use and claim her with desperate need—

If she only closed her eyes, she could pretend his iron grip on her upper arms was the start of something more pleasurable. 

But that would be a lie.

"Corrin. you're- you're- indecent. You're hysterical, or poisoned, or sick—" His chest was heaving as if he had run for miles.

Gauntlets forgotten, he was pressing a brisk hand up to her forehead in a wild attempt to suss out her temperature, instantly transformed into the caretaker again, the consummate cold professional, and she was incandescently angry, suddenly. How quickly he could shove aside that budding moment of something that she felt robbed of, entitled to—

Corrin’s own eyes flashed and she surged up to grab his collar, embarrassment heating her face and words.

"Don’t treat me like a child that can't have wants, if you don’t want me, sir. As somebody that can’t want y-you—"

He suddenly shoved her away, brutally, much harder with a burst of force that sent her staggering back several steps.

She stumbled, almost falling, and Gunter stood with uncoiled menace in the same moment with cold eyes glittering in anger. Corrin almost tripped over her feet again when his black gauntlet roughly shot out to grab her by her nightshirt collar, all but dragging her to the doorway that he wrenched open with another disjointed, uncoordinated yank, almost right off its wood tracks.

Oh he was furious.

“Princess. You are going to leave right now and go straight to bed. I am going to bed.”

With another authoritative wrench and a barely restrained hiss, he all but threw her unceremoniously out into the hallway, and her back thudded off the other wooden wall before she reluctantly repositioned herself, and stood there in the empty hallway with arms crossed behind her with head hanging in moroseness. Gunter went horribly silent, there in that doorway to his dark room. His severe glare down at her cut through her soul like a death-blow of a broadsword.

She felt so small.

“This will not happen again. Understood?”

No sooner than she had given a silent jerk of a nod than the door snapped shut, and she was left with hot prickles of tears forming freely in the corners of her eyes.

That night, Corrin cried herself to sleep.

__________________

He slept like absolute shite.

That was to say, not at all, and Gunter knew he was going to feel it later that day. He dragged his hands down the loose skin of that face reflected in the mirror with a low groan.

Gods help him. He gripped the sides of the basin, shaking. Gods, he looked as old as he felt.

He was going to hell, and Gunter spared a genuine moment or two considering whether he should desert and jump down the Bottomless Canyon again for good. More efficient than hanging himself. It would even be darkly poetic, and he gave in to a brief moment of true morose pity if a court poet would spare a scrap of a poem for him.

Plans. He wearily thought. Jumping was one. Hanging himself was another. He leaned his face on the chilly glass of the mirror with a dull thud, watching his breath fog out his reflection mercifully. Why, why, why did that god-damned girl always seek him out.

It had to be simple ease of access.

Little girls were notoriously shy about such … adult matters. (Although she had been anything but shy—) He was simply the closest warm, male body for her to act out on. Experiment. Safe precisely because he was unavailable, too old, and too much of a fucking father figure to be at all desirable. A hysterical wheeze escaped his throat; it made a particular logical sense.

There were many boys in the camp who were of more appropriate age and status for her true affections. Jakob, that runt for one, had long since had his beady eyes on her—he distinctly heard the basin crack slightly under his grip like he was throttling the boy himself—and she had known Jakob nearly as long as himself.

A sketch of a plan began to form in his mind. 

Yes, if that—devil-girl, his mind waspishly snarked, unable to even say her name—voiced who exactly was the amorous interest she truly had her eyes on, he could recover the fig leaf scraps of his dignity and simply choke down everything as he had always done. Force all of his highly inappropriate fantasies down with the miserable pile of resentments that kept him shambling onwards like a smiling revenant fueled on spite. He'd nurse his eternal secret flame for her, but there would be professional distance and fucking peace at last. Yes. She would be safely off limits again, and his dignity as well as her honour would be reconciled, and there would be—nothing—more to the matter, he thought with a truly venomous streak. He looked down and swore at the cracked basin. Worthless piece of clay. 

Gunter finished shaving, only by a miracle avoiding drawing blood with his shaking hands and the naked blade, and stalked off.

When he found Corrin around the back of the mess-hall tent, he was pettily smug to see she looked just as bedragged as he was. Her hair was a lively disaster, bizarrely sticking out every which way like an exotic fluffy caterpillar he had seen once in Garon's pet zoo where he liked to take his favourite whores to. 

Corrin's wide red eyes met his for the briefest moment, as she always searched out for him instinctively. She had the decency to immediately look away apologetically from his withering glare. The girl was about to slink away in embarrassment when Gunter reached out and clenched a none-too-gentle gauntlet around her shoulder, pinning her precisely in place. 

No, he wasn't going to let her off that easily, not after she had made a bloody fool of his heart and anatomy.

"Morning, milady." Gunter said, obscenely chipper.

"Sir..."

Gods help him, every time she said that word now, he wanted to bend her over on the spot without a fucking care with who or what was around. Rut into her and make her unravel on his prick on the spot, every shred of decency be damned. And even after a mechanical wank before a brutally ice cold shower earlier that morning, he wasn't sure whether his disobedient prick would have a care for decency or timing. Not that the little monster ever did.

"After the lunch hour, meet me in that glade to the right of the camp." He stared down his nose, drilling her on the spot with a gimlet eye. “Understood?"

Oh yes by that quaver of fear, she knew she was in trouble. Gunter was going to make her stew in that fear if it was the last thing he did, if only in the revenge for the sleepless night, and for, for the—

He stalked off. 

__________________

Gods, he's going to kill me.

It was noon already, and it was true what everyone said about dread making time erratic as an arcane curse. Corrin was pacing a well-worn path among the leaves near the outskirt of the camp as she wrestled with her own emotions in the luxury of a private moment before the … well.

One-half of her mind, the one that still tasted his salt-sweat across the beautiful veins of his neck like it was burnt into her mind—thought that night was still totally worth it. The other half of her mind was steadily feeling more sorry for him. Her face heated; beginning to feel queasy in the sense of shame that she had flagrantly crossing the invisible boundaries to his privacy that he had always drawn, and that he kept to so diligently with quiet dignity.

Her stomach flopped, and Corrin felt modestly sorry for herself, too, if the old martinet Gunter was still there and planning a particularly brutal punishment.

It had to be a punishment—she knew him, she knew that look, that he was planning some horrible discipline right out of a soldier’s nightmares. Probably running laps around the camp until she collapsed, like she saw Jakob suffer from several times in his training under the ruthless knight. Her young butler had ended up in the healer’s tent the last time he had fainted from exhaustion right on the dirt track, and she suspected the healers had tore into the old knight for his pugnacious, brutal training. 

And yet… for Gunter being such a hard man, Corrin could not shake the naked vulnerability on his face that night, with desire and real shame waging a civil war on each other, among other impossible cocktails of emotions. Or the stark pain intermingled with want in the thudding heartbeats she had felt on his wrists when he forced her away. She wanted—Corrin decided then and there—only the chance to explain herself and to apologise. She could handle anything else.

She really hadn't meant to hurt him.

Corrin forced out any distracting thoughts as she walked straight to the glade, after taking one last squint at the sun with dismay. The trees blurred in her peripheral visions as she wiped away the threats of tears, and sniffled back, hard. She was not going to think about her wants, she decided as she stepped over a root. She was going to take whatever methods he had chosen, and bear it in silent dignity because he deserved better than a whiner, a crybaby girl, or a lovesick fool that shied away at the first sign of a challenge. 

Her beloved black knight, after all, had taught her that no one—no king or assailant, could not break a person if they still had their wits and dignity. 

She was going to do him proud if it was the last thing she did and even if he didn’t realise it. The thought warmed her heart oddly, and she held onto the brightness like a protective amulet, stepping around a boulder that hid the glen from the camp. A squirrel chittered at her from the top of the stone and darted away, surprised at her sudden appearance. Another day and she would have happily followed the furry creature.

True to his word, Gunter was standing unmistakably there in the centre of the glade in full armour as always.

The black plates were pretty, the shine and hints of silver almost sparkling in the dappled sunlight that filtered down from the the high green canopy like a cathedral’s soaring ceiling. His back was ramrod straight, a military perfect at-attention stance, with not a grey-lilac hair or speck of dust out of place. Even his black boots had been shined, and they crunched against the dirt and the smoother moss around. His expression was neutral, and he met her eyes freely and with acknowledgement as she walked up steadily.

'Afternoon, milady. Catch?" Gunter said mildly as she approached within five paces, procuring their childhood ball seemingly out of thin air. He tossed it at her one-handed, a brisk but relatively easy throw.

Corrin stared at the leather ball that thudded between her hands like it would writhe back out into whips that it had been, or snakes. Was he just going to pretend that last night hadn't happened? A wilder thought entered her mind: had he been doing this all along? 

Pretending?

Gunter was very, very good at acting and she wondered how many people knew just how well.

"If you wish, sir." Corrin replied, as meekly as possible.

The only clue she might have oversold it was a twitch that rippled over his beautifully lined jaw. Others would have likely blinked and missed it but for her, his reaction was clear as day. 

However, Gunter said nothing, and walked her deeper into the dense Mokushu forests with a jerk of his handsome chin to follow her. She would hold her tongue until she figured out what he was up to.

Princess Sakura had murmured to her that the ninja woods felt gloomy, but Corrin was fond of these woods; the dim lighting felt safe and secure and very much like the forests around the Northern Fortress, only far more lush and green and filled with the sounds of woodland critters all around. She was absentmindedly listening to the trill of birdsong and the crush crush of her old knight’s boots against the loam when his deep voice roused her from the meditation.

"Today, let us revive an old deal from your childhood. If you miss a catch with the ball, you'll have to do as I instruct. Same goes if I miss a catch."

"I remember this deal..." Corrin blinked at the ball still in her hands. It was fascinating what came unbidden to her spotty mind all these years. "You always used this one when I was refusing to study or train..." It was only due to many years of schooling her face that she didn't go some kind of funny colour a split second later. 

There it was, his plan and the ambush he had laid for her. He was watching her face now with an appraising eyebrow raised, arms still crossed behind his back in stoic professionalism. In hindsight, Corrin didn't think she hid her response at all, and she thumbed at the leather in her hands peevishly.

"Exactly." He murmured, tone unreadable, and his palm shot out to catch the ball effortlessly one-handedly as she threw it over to him. 

The black-armoured knight took two steps back, glancing behind him to survey for roots and other such trip hazards along the forest floor, and then tossed it back at her with a deceptive pass-and-a-twist around his back. 

For his age, he was much, much more nimble than anyone else would have suspected, too.

She too, had learned this simple game had many dimensions beyond training or company, even if it was those traits too. Corrin caught the returned ball with a thump, and then threw it experimentally slightly to one side, closer to the glen opening. Her eyes trailed him with an ache of fondness as he caught the leather ball with a flash of silver passing through in the dappled light. 

They exchanged another pass, silently.

Once, he had mentioned to her that professional soldiers trained in endless drills honing cooperation, coordination, and other long words she had forgotten. Gunter, she realised with new aching awareness, had spent all that time and many years of her childhood patiently bettering her nearly every day. It made her quietly horrified and sickly shattered again with how she treated his boundaries that last night. 

Never again.

She thought she caught the returned throw. 

She really almost had it, jarred out of her memories; but it fell out of her palm and unceremoniously bounced off a root she nearly tripped over in the same ungainly wobble. The ball rolled along the leaves of the forest floor, and only stopped when he trapped it with his big black boot. He tapped it again knowingly, cocking his head at her. 

“You missed, milady.”

Limply, she sighed. Somehow it seemed inevitable, and she was sure that he had set her up somehow. “I did, sir.”

He was staring at her with an unreadable expression. "I would have you answer a question, then. Is there anyone in camp that you have particularly strong feelings for?"

She would not lie. 

She would not lie, even if it meant that his certain and formal rejection would forever spell the end of her childhood fantasy. So this is how it would end, unmercifully concise and professional. Corrin deserved this punishment. No—he deserved honesty. This wasn't about her, she tried to tell her heart. Corrin took in a shaky gulp of breath. Blurted it out before she could ruin the moment or prolong the pain.

"Gunter, it's, well... you." 

Always you.

Gunter went absolutely still as a stone statue.

So still, and for so long that she was beginning to wonder if something had happened, if he was okay, if he had a stroke—

“This would be exceptionally poor timing for a joke, milady.” He murmured finally, testily. 

Curiously enough, Corrin had expected his resistance, and cautiously met his gaze. For how observant he was in every other regard of her life, from protection to humour and instruction, anything relating to feelings was a blind spot that he stubbornly refused to pick up at. Maybe it was a better thing to have her words out in the naked air after all.

Corrin shook her head and breathed with sincerity. “It’s not a joke, I swear to you. Tell me what I need to say for you to believe me.” 

Please believe me.

He stepped closer.

Gunter thumbed her chin up with the side of a gloved knuckle, forcing her to meet his hard questioning eyes, and his sudden bodily warmth made her mind go all woozy around the sides. Corrin knew she was flaming red as well now, but did not hide it this time.

"You're serious." He said flatly. His jawline was working minutely, so tense along with his rigid shoulders that she wanted to step closer and comfort him in that moment. But Corrin needed to do something else, to say something else.

"Gunter, I would not lie about something as dear to me as you. And I'm sorry, truly sorry for what I did to you last night." She took in a shuddering breath, the heat in her face making it hard to think much less say the right words. "I crossed your boundaries, I disobeyed you..." Her heart was thudding in her throat. "...and I was foolish in hurting you unintentionally, and I'll gladly take any punishment."

His hand abruptly fell away to massage the bridge of his nose, eyes pinched shut and she instantly missed his firm warmth. Corrin hadn’t realised she was so sensitive to his touches. "I... save that thought for later." He muttered distractedly under his breath, almost to himself.

"You're serious." He repeated almost disbelieving, staring up and down at her with the oddest, bewildered expression.

In the decade since she had known her old man, she had never seen him at a complete loss. She had also never been so close to hear his breaths so erratic. Within the distance of a lover’s embrace, he was not the intimidating mountain of unfeeling black and silver armour that everyone else saw and warily engaged only when strictly necessary. Corrin only saw the lonely man underneath that shell, trembling, and achingly touch starved. 

“I am.”

His palms seized her shoulders, but his grip was not with the disgust of the night before, and her heart sang. He opened his mouth as if to reply, swallowed, and then tried again. 

"You don't see this body as ..." His scarred lips and face twisted, and he looked away awkwardly and down and there was the flush of old terrible self-conscious shame again, and it broke her heart even worse than the first time. "...s-something unavailable to experiment on before..."

Gunter was strangely choked, with oceans of emotion layered in that deep voice that she heard now. His thumb pads were caressing the bare skin on her arms with such loving circles she didn't think he even knew he was doing it. 

Had that been what he thought her affections were?

"I love you, Gunter." Corrin said simply. She wanted so badly to stroke the grey strands of his hair that her hands shook, to give him that touch he so craved—

The need was unbearable, and she took the risk in pressing her fingertips against the black chest plate; half in silent apology, half in comfort. He did not move away this time, and she smiled up at him invitingly. He swallowed again with ragged open-mouthed breaths and with something new lurking in his eyes. Fear, yes—but it was different kind; full of tender want and desperately needy, and soft.

"Corrin…." She hadn't realised he was stooped towards her with his armoured shoulders hunched up as if he was warding a strike from her or somebody ahead of time. His gauntlets still gripped at her, and she might have been imagining things, but no: he was drawing her imperceptibly closer into his arms.

"I thought …” Gunter murmured thickly, even more quietly this time, his head dipping closer to hers. Hesitated. “I would be taking these feelings of m-mine to my grave...” And yet, his nose lightly trailed hers, his eyes closed in prayer. “I care for you so deeply. I-I musn’t…"

His lips brushed hers a second after, hesitatingly, and then—

oh

he was kissing her —

Corrin’s mind swam as the palm of his other glove was abruptly cradling the back of her head and she tasted him, his scarred lip moving with increasing urgency and desire across hers, igniting a trail of fire she would never forget. 

He kissed her lightly that once, breath hot on her lips—and then dipped in slower and far more sensuously as she giddily responded with a surge of her own lips and tongue eagerly seeking his. Someone moaned with desperation, and all she could feel was his rough glove tighten on her hair, claiming her harder against his openmouthed kisses, with his own tongue plumbing her mouth oh so very confidently and reverently. Her own hands roamed for purchase, anything to claw him closer and taste him in return with her mouth and body.

He was slow but deliberate, and she could feel his stubble at the same time she could feel her own heartbeat in the echo of his leading ministrations against her throbbing lips, and it was the most divine thing Corrin could imagine.

They parted for an attempt at breath. 

He was smiling wryly now, a very self satisfied smirk tucked into one corner of his lined cheek, and a thumb of his that caressed her own cheek in turn. 

“Ah, that felt so good to finally say…” He rasped, with his eyes dancing. And do. 

“I love you, Gunter.” Corrin’s head swam and she rested her cheek blissfully against his chest—she never had a real chance to savour how warm and solid and so wonderfully masculine her old black knight was, who was embracing her with both muscled arms, his hands stroking across her back and through her hair with the knowing tenderness of decades between them. 

He kissed her once again on the forehead with searing promise; and with a great giddy feeling of her stomach, she realised the old man was quite enjoying getting the chance to make up for time, in this special way. 

She was also becoming acutely aware of how intwined she was along the length of his entire broad body, practically sprawled out to the point her shaking knees couldn’t support her own weight, and giddily thought about how absurdly indecent they would look to somebody else, her with a man old enough to be her father. Something terribly naughty and coy in her made her wriggle a hip-bone around his own, and she could feel heat within him uncoil.

Her eyes sparkled as she tilted her chin up again. “May I have another, please sir…” 

She shivered at his deep chuckle that rumbled quite pleasantly under her whole body, and the hint of—oh yes, the fair amount of interest smouldering underneath. Gunter dipped in with eager haste and it was another long few moments before they surfaced with both of them panting with satisfaction and her lips all but throbbing and tingling, this time from the gift of the lightest teasing nip from her smirking lover. 

Some small critter swooped past them.

It was a tiny plump orb of exotically colourful plumage that shrieked past their heads like a toddler and they both flinched with a quick duck, having been heedlessly indulgent in their own world. It took a few shaky breaths before they realised it wasn’t a shuriken or an imminent attack. Distantly, Corrin remembered they were technically in enemy territory, and it was a mark of how utterly distracted Gunter was that he had forgotten as well. 

The contented smile faded from his face as he clearly had the same unsettling thought, glancing around the glade with both gauntlets moving back to a neutral position on her shoulders. He looked a little dazed. Corrin could relate; never had she thought that their lives would take such a turn.

“I apologise if this is too much to take in at once…” Gunter was murmuring unsteadily, mirroring her thoughts so closely she let out a small hysterical giggle, still wondering if she was dreaming. He glanced down at her askance with an eyebrow raised, and she noticed his hesitation. 

“Are you afraid of this?” Corrin asked softly as she stroked his chest-plate again, knowing he couldn’t feel her lightest touch through the metal, but wanting to give some semblance of comfort anyway. 

She felt his breath hitch, a testament to the state of his chaotic emotions for somebody so composed. He covered his lined face with both hands, rubbing hard and blinking away. 

“Corrin, you are a princess, and I am nothing… ” his smooth, deep voice wavered again as he stared blankly into the trees past her vision, “....but a dirty soldier with delusions near three times your senior, what am I thinking—” 

Her venerable knight was perilously close to panicking, she realised with dawning incredulousness. He had only ever panicked once before in her entire life. 

"I raised you! I know my place in this story, damn it!" He shouted out suddenly, and Corrin flinched at the raw and jagged shame that tore his voice. "Old men like me don't… don't deserve—"

Gunter sucked in a breath, and practically choked on the next words.

“Corrin, this is wrong, I shouldn't—do you know how much everyone would hate me for this on top of bloody everything—"

Not as much as you do yourself. She thought, moving in to comfort him, to hold him as tenderly as he did those so very many times and he shuddered with revulsion, almost staggering and pushing her away with his face covered away from her in shame.

He gave a hysterical, near maniacal laugh. “I should be executed for this. Jakob, that runt would kill me with the rustiest of his knives. I should let him—"

"Gunter, I'm not asking any of them. I'm asking you. What do you want?"

She saw as he shuddered in a tortured breath, briefly turning away from her. Even after wiping a glove over his face, his eyes were bright with the sharp prickles of unshed tears.

“No one—" His voice cracked. "No one has ever asked me that. Not without a price. Damn you."

Her venerable knight wavered for the longest moment.

She saw his answer in his eyes, bright with tears, Shining, and so very vulnerable.

And then he surged.

His scarred mouth seized on hers again, this time with frenetic passion, a second before his hands cupped her face like a man drowning, hard and unyielding and with a tremor of terror and panic like she was a vision, a she-demon, and not flesh and blood. She felt her back abrade against the tree as he all but half collapsed against her, roughly wrapping her legs around his hips to brace her higher as his lips consumed hers.

And oh, he was hard with desire, his erection so deliciously hard, and his hips bucked in unison with hers when she squirmed on him and rode him shamelessly, frantically. He groaned into her mouth, her name, she realised—Corrin, Corrin, Corrin—and her own hips ground against every white-hot stuttering thrust between five layers of clothing and armour.

"Oh-, oh Princess- oh—"

He was going to come, her beloved old man, and she smiled with unbearable fondness in between his kisses in the crook of her mouth, her jaw, open-mouthed lovemaking with his tongue making sin of hers. Oh she loved her old knight carnally, with his hands gripping her ass and driving her against him, and she shuddered against him with pleasurable sobs as he climaxed prematurely and messily on the prayer of her name still, with her hands gripping his hair.

He sagged against her with the longest obscene groan, utterly bereft of composure, and it was all she could do to guide them safely down the trunk to something other than a graceless heap of limbs on the forest floor, his nose nuzzling in the crook of her neck as she panted.

When they separated, her very reluctantly to see if he could stand at all, Gunter looked ready to flinch away at the slightest rejection from her.

He was staring down at her with the most pained mix of naked need and shame she had ever seen from a grown man, let alone someone always so composed.

He trembled.

Then he collapsed to his knees in open-mouthed worship.

So tenderly as to not spook him, she stroked the side of his pocket-marked cheek and the beautiful wispy strands of grey, tugging the faintest ghost of a smile from him.

But it was genuine, and that was all she needed.

'Marry me, Corrin." He mouthed almost inaudibly with the reverence of a man who had just found God. "So h-help me—"

"I love you, Gunter, and yes—always yes."

It was not what she thought the maids' daydreams of a proposal would be. She could see his spend, faintly as a darker stain against his trousers—him with his knees parted and abased at her feet, sheet white and trembling and tearstained, with his hands tenderly curving around her back—and there was still that lurking fear behind his eyes.

And yet …

He's mine. Something warm and incandescently protective and possessive in her heart stirred and murmured. Mine, mine, mine, to have and hold.

She stood there, stroking his beautiful hair. Corrin stood there with her black knight on his knees, his face buried in her neck as he wept in silent joy, and his arms clasping her tight against his heart for many shared heartbeats afterwards.

One eternal sunset later, Gunter cast a baleful eye towards the piss-yellow sky.

Securing the ruined town of Cyrkensia had been a nightmare.

Mopping up a battlefield with door to door killing was miserable business at the best of times, and two thunder mages in tandem had scored nasty attacks on Corrin in complete surprise. It had only been by sheer luck that Jakob had seen her fall and manage to take out the strange new enemies wreathed in flames before tending to her with a heal.

Grudgingly, Gunter had to admit that the butler acted with utmost professionalism, even with the three-way disaster zone of the ruined town and these new strange undead foes that marched on with single-minded blind viciousness. They were new to everyone, except him—he had recognized the dead warriors as the very same in that eternal river, so long ago. 

That was beside the point when his princess was injured, and it was his own damn fault.

Only stopping long enough to rip off off his blood-soaked armour, the old knight made a beeline for the healer's tent and was secretly grateful when he saw an exhausted Jakob emerge. Good, somebody else had the foresight to keep eyes on her in this failure of his.

"Status?" 

Nerves were frayed enough he could not hide the vicious maw-snap in his voice. For once, the boy did not bristle back, and remained remarkably professional. 

"She's stable for now, turns out it was a classic thunder shock. Small burns." Jakob wearily shook his head. “But old man, they're talking about having to sedate her with a sleep staff and she's not letting us near—”

Gunter swore.

He shoved past the butler.

"Uh, they're—"

"Put her together, piece by piece—" the looming black reaper enunciated with the softest, coldest, and most lethal hiss in his voice that Jakob had ever heard. "—like a shattered doll each time as I have done, and then you can get in my way."

Some instinct pulled the butler to a dead stop.

Gunter barked out viciously as he ripped through the tent flap, surprising one healer so badly the bastard almost tripped over on the spot. Corrin, Corrin, there she was—was curled up in a tight fetal ball staring sightlessly into the mass of people, trembling like a wind-swept leaf and they were all crowded around her, such fools.

Stepping in between with his body, Gunter grabbed the last scrambling healer by the scruff of a collar and all but threw the man out bodily. Silence reigned once more remarkably quickly thereafter. It did not take long before naked relief flooded back into her eyes when she crawled over towards him on the cot, as he sat there hesitantly. This time, she ensconced herself in his lap before he allowed himself to wrap his arms around her slender form.  

It was… improper. Every time he held her like this was improper, the old knight berated his heart and still he bled for her, and still he felt helpless as a man. 

“I came here as soon as I could.” He murmured gruffly into the soft curve of her neck. He felt her nod as the moments slowly passed there in the quiet as he rocked her tenderly.

Discomfited by the slow burrowing of the unhappy seed of knowledge they were in the healer’s tents, liable to be discovered at any moment and not in private, the old knight made to stand after mere moments, but found himself all but pinned into place with her stubborn reluctance to disentangle herself from his lap.

“Corrin…” He rasped. Gunter would rather go through a whipping than to separate from her in that moment. But it was for her sake that they must. Fortunately, she seemed to understand the reasoning, and slunk back onto the cot with fluid grace as the old knight stood at guard a more appropriate distance away.

Also fortunately for her, Jakob chose the moment to poke his head through the tent flap. 

On another day, the blanch of absolute terror as Gunter’s gaze swivelled down on him like a hawk would have been amusing. The old knight was not inclined to be amused at that particular moment, or share in the moment, and icily murmured with laced menace. “Do you feel confident picking up the healing work?”

“I… ah yeah.” The butler coughed discretely, slipping through with a stave in hand and gestured absentmindedly at it as an afterthought. “Yeah I know how.”

“Then get on it.”

“Thanks, geezer.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Corrin grin at the sarcasm despite herself, and for the first time since that morning, something iron-cold in his heart unclenched. 

Safe, the wolf in his heart seemed to grumble with finality, no longer baring white fangs at the world, and standing guard. 

Safe.

“You two...” She breathed with the aftershocks of adrenaline as Jakob knelt down with surprising gentleness in front of her. With relief, Gunter was pleased to see that the tension-lines in her delicate shoulders did not re-appear as the boy efficiently observed the burn. “Will never change, I suppose.”

“He won't.” The old knight and the butler said in unison, followed by a beat with even more perfectly timed glares at each other. At that, Corrin had the audacity to laugh as the butler took her arm.

With more jealously than he would ever admit to, Gunter sourly eyed that touch between them.

It was all he could do not to lean in and inhale the scent of her hair with dizzying relief, and tip off the butler that there was anything more to their budding relationship. Damn it all, all he wanted to do was take the other slender hand of hers in his old calloused ones, and he could not even allow himself the simple gesture.

The itchy sensation of helplessness soon grew unbearable while he silently watched Jakob and the healing, and so he got up with a small groan to pace in the cramped tent, barely large enough for five paces and an about-face with thumbs hooked through his belt loops.

“Is the old man annoying you, milady?” Jakob murmured a few moments later. “Because he is with me, I'd be happy to throw the geezer out too.”

At that smart remark Gunter glowered poisonously; but Corrin flashed a secret, sweet smile back over the butler's head and disarmed him as flawlessly as any fencer. 

“He's fine Jakob.” She kept murmuring reassuringly, and all the while Gunter held on to that smile reserved just for him, spitefully, possessively. “He cares.”

“Yeah right, milady.”

“Keep working, boy.” Gunter hissed back waspishly, eyes cast to the heavens. He had an image to maintain, after all. 

“My work—no thanks to you—is actually complete.” Jakob bit back, turning around and finally fixating him with a glare of his own too. “If you'll take the time to observe and praise my work, you'll see her burn has been properly bandaged.”

“It doesn't hurt…” Corrin murmured with that beautiful velvet voice, almost surprised.

Jakob stood, facing her again with a brisk nod. He was always pleased by a job well done. “As long as you don't poke and prod at it for the next two days it should heal by itself. Now I suppose I'll need to track down those healers the geezer behind me tossed out, milady.”

It was remarkably good timing, in hindsight, for Corrin to interject before he could. 

“Thank you… I appreciate you. Both of you. Gunter, would you stay for a moment?” 

Behind Jakob’s back, the old knight bent with a sarcastic bow, not bothering to hide the smirk of satisfaction in the petty victory.

__________________

Alone with her secret lover after Jakob had left, Corrin sighed.

“You are so…” Aggravating, a small part of her mind wanted to murmur with the most tender fondness. Her oldest knight and her most loyal butler always snipped and snapped at each other, far too alike in so very many ways. Sometimes she wished they would get along more easily, but if that wish was made true; they wouldn’t have been her loveable dolts. 

She felt his concerned stern stare pause on her, nearly a physical weight and presence; and all Corrin could think is how much she wanted his bare hands on her instead. He was pacing again and truth be told, she agreed with Jakob—the motion was not helping and driving her slightly batty. It was almost as if the old knight didn’t know what to do with himself, tearing himself apart with worry, and a flash of an idea crossed her mind. 

There was something else he could do.

“Would you hold me, sir…?” 

There, a use for the restless energy, she dared to hope.

Her muscular black knight had the audacity to raise an eyebrow, over her as he stepped leisurely closer, so much that she had to tilt her head so far back to meet his gaze that her neck almost ached. 

Another lazy smirk crossed his scarred lips; something she realised with a shiver of happiness was more common these days. 

“Are you really trying that trick again on me, milady?” 

Corrin licked her lips, remembering the last time… and then something withered and died as her mind belatedly remembered how that moment had ended. She looked away. “I’m sorry, sir, if that’s not what you’d like—” 

He grimaced with heavy brows and glanced furtively over his shoulder at the tent entrance as if debating on how much time they had, and then with some exasperation back at her. “Do you, or do you not want me to—”

“Please, sir.” She begged with wide aching eyes, and that was enough to crack through that flickering, longing hesitation in his gaze.

The cot dipped as he kneed into the thin mattress first, and further still as his weight sank in beside her as a mass of masculine warmth and solidity. Curiously limber, Gunter managed to climb neatly over her, and for one pleasurable second Corrin basked in the sensation of his weight hanging over her with his strong arms to either side of her protectively. The sheets tugged and twisted over her, and it was suddenly acutely warm and downright overpowering with his solid mass pressing up against her back. 

It was one of the rare times she had seen him out of armour, and oh, she could feel every plane of his muscles deliciously against her back even through her thin nightshirt, badly wanting to roam her fingertips over every inch of his taunt body. 

Patience, Corrin chided herself; she was not sure just yet with how much attention or touches her venerable knight was comfortable with, and it was early enough she didn’t want to push her luck. He had slept in the same room with her back in those long pain-hazy nights after the memory wipes, but this was the first time that she had invited Gunter—as a man—in her own bed.

And she was intimately aware of the difference now, with her skin tingling with pleasure as he curled around her protectively. Strangely, he was the one that made the first move lying beside her, laying a heavy arm over her hip with his thumb rubbing at her prickling flesh.

"I know what you're doing, princess." His rasp was hot and heavy by the shell of her ear, and she shivered at the seductive tickle of his scarred lips, and even more at his big, veined hand very slowly in the process of—and this she blushed at with a surge of giddiness—wandering over her dressing-gown, not nearly so hesitant now. Every slow caress of friction sent a bolt of awareness and shock so strong Corrin could barely follow his purred words. “I know what you have been doing, you coy girl."

"Sir—" 

His hand clasped over her mouth, smothering her, and one of his fingers stroked the side of her lips once in a way that would have had her melting to the floor had she been standing.

"My question." His voice went low as a growl, lanced with heat. Oh he was serious. “Is when you'll get cold feet; I'm not a good man, Corrin." To mark his words, she felt his fingertips slowly trail down from her lips to the vulnerable dip underneath, his thumb and forefingers stroking either side of her neck with firmness. 

I’m not a good man. She felt so delicate and hazy with lust against his calloused hand; fragile with every throbbing heartbeat at her throat pulsing against his touches. Corrin had seen soldiers tear out throats with their clawed gauntlets stained red, and for one razor-edge of a second she deliriously imagined how his black-armoured claws could tighten into her sensitive flesh. She thought she’d faint on the spot with the thought of him scraping red raised marks, the sweet pain-pleasure of his black metal gauntlets digging into her—

Corrin moaned under his touch, and went beet red at the involuntary sound a second after. Gunter gave a bass chuckled behind her ear, as if that one noise had confirmed a notion.

“Mm. And I am a man.” 

His other hand gently trailed along the inside of her thigh, and Corrin’s breath hitched before she realised he was parting it for his own muscled thigh to press in between hers. At the same time he dipped in for a smouldering kiss from the side at the corner of her mouth, and a louder raw mewl of need shuddered out between her lips before she could swallow the sound and the shame that followed it out. 

“Shh, You don’t want the others to hear us, do you?” His palm pressed against her lips, flattening against her mouth. Obscenely slipping in a fingertip between her lips, he silenced her further as she choked on the taste of his sweat and musk. 

Such commands were proving exceptionally difficult when her splayed legs meant she could feel every throb of desire go straight to her pussy, every grind of friction against his, and she felt so dirty starting to ride shamelessly on his muscled thigh, sure to mark his black trousers with wet splotches of her own desire and a dark side of her relishing the thought of him so stained, so marked by her.

Obeying, she was acutely aware of how his other hand was groping towards her breast and nipples with none too much tenderness. He started to stroke her pebbled flesh through her top, clearly experienced enough to know her most sensitive skin, and she moaned something approximating his name again, writhing in his arms.

She felt his hardness straining, tantalisingly close, and she wanted—  

Her shaking fingertips pressed his veiny hands down her side, feeling his loose skin and pressed his gnarled, knobby fingertips just past the edge of her panties where she had touched herself to fantasies of him, intentions as clear as she could make without immolating on the spot. 

She heard outside footsteps. Healers.

No, no, nonono—

“Princess? Are you decent, we need to…”

“No!” Corrin all but warbled frantically, casting a panicked glance back at her black knight spooned up against her in the comically small cot, and who was now swearing under his breath, palm dragging across his lined face, casting eyes up to whatever god that had evidently decided to smite them for the sins of pride and lust simultaneously.

“I-I need a minute, please—” 

Somehow her old knight fumbled his way out of her cot over her, both of them almost colliding as they entangled in the sheets in a fit of haste. Seeing no better immediate exit, Gunter ducked bravely under a tent flap with a shocking act of nimbleness; and at that Corrin knuckles pressed tight over her mouth to stifle giggles between a snarl of pent-up frustration.

“Almost there—” 

Trying to mask the sound of fabric against the tent entrance by smoothing down her sheets, oh gods the sheets and how did she get drool in her hair—

“We can come back another time…”

It was a near thing, not throttling them.

__________________

Despite the interruptions, Corrin had always healed fast, or so she had been told. 

She did not know whether it was mere good fortune and fate smiling on her, courtesy of her latent draconic abilities, or some unknown cause altogether, but the healers had pronounced her fit that very next morning, and sent her back out to wander through the now-familiar astral base, busier than ever. 

Still, she kept to the lesser-known and quieter paths that snaked their way through the masses of tents and structures. 

"A word if you would, Lady Corrin." So attuned to her old knight's quiet rasp, she heard him across the general chatter of the base camp and her heart gave a fairly vigorous leap of unbearable fondness.

Gunter was standing perfectly at attention against the furthermost wall of the base, both gauntlets interlocked behind him in that steady position, back now in the full armour that encased him head to toe in a lethal shell. Suddenly remembering the last position they had been in, her cheeks flamed against her will. He coughed discreetly. 

"About that." 

Corrin almost spluttered at how neatly he read her mind.

"About what, sir?"

It was his turn to raise an eyebrow scathingly down at her, shifting slightly in place to cross his arms.

Really? His immaculate, ramrod posture seemed to say. Still, he stayed silent. After three heartbeats he exhaled roughly, exactly like a skittish war-horse, and it hit her. He was nervous—her old knight, her beloved guardian who had stared down enemy generals and ancient wonders of beasts and the fathomless chaos of battles—was as nervous as a schoolboy on approaching topics such as feelings, and god forbid, desire.

"Don't... Please don't make me spell it out, milady. That flagrant scene in that tent."

"Did you enjoy it, sir?"

She was rewarded to see a flush of splotchy heat along his neck as he quickly prayed skywards with a silent plea at her shamelessness. He looked positively ready to flee the space. Was about to, before she grabbed his arm.

"Gunter, I'm... not asking to embarrass you." She belatedly realised now was not the time to tease him. "I liked it. Rather a lot, actually, and I am enormously fond of you, and I want you to keep doing more of the same with me."

"That is... exactly the issue." The acid prickliness of his words could rival a phalanx of spearmen, and she let go apologetically. 

He clearly recognized the stubborn look on her face and quickly cut in before she responded, looking almost pained.

"Corrin, please. Let me finish. It would be so much easier if I did not… want this." 

His was a strangled whisper, and she wanted so very badly to give him the comfort he needed. Even brushing her fingertips against his gauntleted arm in encouragement would be too much.

"There are passionless marriages among your kind. Among nobility it is rather the norm; some loveless, some not." Pausing, his eyes flicked down to hers and stayed. "I am... not capable of such unions. Not with you."

Her breath stuttered—there, there was the naked, primal desire she remembered from the tent. His gaze trailed further down pointedly. "There are many acts I want very much to do with you." His deep voice grew husky, "A great many, deeply pleasurable acts that I have been imagining, and indulging in for far, far too long."

She shivered, and it was not from the wind.

He swallowed hard in turn, and faced away to break his gaze, closing his eyes. Gunter's back was ramrod straight, and it was several moments later before she heard a second deep exhale as he centred himself again.

"Princess." He was pacing now in a semicircle, scanning the surroundings like the observer he always was. Clearly old habits were hard to break, and he always defaulted to his role as a protector. "If I may ask a favour, before..."

"Before we proceed?"

His jaw twitched at her impertinence, exasperated, but let it slide.

"One night. Take tonight and think, reflect, as I've taught. Consider honestly what you are willing to give and lose. Don't be a fool and rush into this, milady."

Gunter was closer now, as he gave one last look over his shoulder. Much closer. It wasn't until his shadow was practically on top of hers that his armoured gauntlets roughly gripped her shoulders like a vice and with deeply masculine firmness, dipping in.

"I care for you too much to let you make a mistake on my behalf." He growled, breath hot and deep with a rumble by the shell of her ear.

She felt his stubble and nose sear a trail by her jawline a second before his scarred lips as he dipped in hungrily for a stolen kiss, devastatingly potent. She tasted his desire tasting hers, nipping at her own soft lips, a raw echo of what he had been imagining, just before—

"Sir..."

And as always it was over too soon, but as Corrin gasped in pleasure, she was rewarded by a renewed twinkle in his eyes, and a lazy smirk playing over that handsome and surprisingly tender mouth.

She was more than a little breathless and dizzy. But she did not miss how his hooded eyes lingered on her lips for a second too long before striding away, or how she was not the only one who was breathing hard.

She savoured the taste of his scent the whole way back to her rooms.

__________________

It was a quiet evening, and yet she was still tired enough from the healing that she was glad to have seen that Jakob dusted the room and changed the sheets in her absence.

Corrin missed her loyal butler, but tonight... she needed to be alone.

She had laid her sword fondly alongside the wall, gently placed the bag of potions beside the night-table, and silently blown out the bedside candle.

Corrin was now in her bed with her endless thoughts that always circled back to her old knight. Of course they did. But to her credit—she tried.

She tried to imagine Niles' hands on her instead; and flinched.

She liked Niles a lot, had an enormous affection for him in this strange easy alliance built on cheeky crudeness and defiance. He, of anyone in the camp, had a roguish charm that she was endeared and attracted to, and could see how it could bloom unexpectedly into mutual lust. Possibly into trust over time. But it was not... love.

Kaze, then.

She liked Kaze too, in a different way. She could even grow to care for him as a husband; it made a certain kind of sense. He was kind, he was caring, he was easy on the eyes, it would make sense politically in tying the bonds of Hoshido and Nohr together, and it felt nice…

And then she abruptly imagined his hands possessively on her, muscled and veiny, and much older, and already so confident in stroking the most tender parts of her body, and instantly felt a molten rush of heat so strong she involuntarily cried out on her fist, incandescently grateful for the privacy of the room.

It had not been a chaste noise, even muffled.

I want you, Gunter.

Deliciously—knowing it was trouble—she imagined those same black gauntlets groping her breasts and peaking nipples with the slow erotic tease of an trusted lover, She imagined one of his calloused hands gloveless and dipping down and down until her hips jerked to his rhythm of fingertips. She imagined his voice by the shell of ear again and the way he darkened and roughened on my dear and good girl. How her body would respond to these new orders, legs spread and grinding against his thick muscled naked thighs, and whimpering and going so slick against his straining trousers and feeling the friction-heat of his own desire.

She shuddered again, a full body roil at imagining the only man she had trusted her whole life, groaning and thrusting in mutual pleasure and finally filling his seed in her—

I want you, I want you, I want you—

Corrin was quivering tight like harp-cord, a panting, shivering wreck, and so out of her mind with flaming lust she genuinely considered crawling out of her embarrassment into his quarters (and onto his lap) to put her out of her misery.

Just one word from him would break her so pleasurably into shards of heaven at that moment.

Just one word. She couldn't bring herself to bring herself to climax by her shaking hand, wanting so very badly for his heat and his hands and his length—

She swore to herself, and smiled in the heartbeat after.

You utter idiot.

Gunter, how do you think anyone could compare?

__________________

Gunter knew that she would not change her mind. 

Watching the odd little trinket glinting and twisting in his bare hands, the old knight chuckled ruefully with disbelief at the situation he found himself in now. Hell would freeze over before his little princess would change her mind on anything once when she had set herself on a mission. It was one of her endearing traits, one that made her a rather charismatic leader on knife-edged paths few would dare tread on. 

Darkly, he wondered how much of that trait—the sheer stubbornness—she had inadvertently inherited from him. The night was young and it was enough of a walk to spare such a thought or two as he slowly made his way towards the glen surrounding her quarters, and his mind was simultaneously as blank and layered as a snow-white blizzard with many such ponderings.

Of all choices for her to silently back away from, it should be this one. 

Their… relations were not decent, both from her end or his. The freshly-purchased pregnancy charm looped on silver chains in his grasp shimmered against the dark night, and Gunter wheezed, rubbing at his lined face with shaking hands. 

He was her oldest knight. Her most loyal knight, sworn to her as a stoic sword and shield as a protector. Mentor, instructor, father figure, caretaker—all positions of trust and titles he served—and all crucially roles where lines were not meant to be crossed.

He had crossed every one of them.

Old knights of his age did not, should not, dream of fondling and bedding their princesses like some randy stable-boy with no control or composure over their pricks. Old knights did not know—and he choked out another wheeze tinged with shame—the exact pitch of their liege’s whimpers, and they most certainly did not fantasise in perverted detail every night exactly what caresses and filthy words a specific little princess desired to break apart in sheer pleasure at his hands. 

And the worst sin of all, old knights should not greedily ache for more of those mutual carnal touches, night after night.

Gods, he did not think he was capable of such feelings anymore, not with the decades of grief and rage scarring over his heart or dousing the cold embers of desire. He thought viciously—he thought he had executed any notion of wants from his traitorous heart in an effort to be an unfeeling sword until the end. 

Gunter did not dare consider what he was capable of with his princess in front of him waiting for him to consummate their inappropriate little union. Her nude, begging for his hands to commit unspeakable acts upon her in those sweet lilting whimpers, writhing for his cock, when just one of her filthy moans reached into his mind and wrenched away any difference between madness and reality. Everything except the sensation of her warm wet cunt would feel—tight and clenching against him as he took her as his. His prick stirred eagerly at the thought, and he swore a litany of curses against his palms. 

You little monster.

He should be the one worrying about such practicalities such, such… as his stamina, for one. Getting it up for her was evidently a non-issue entirely, and he briefly took the time to thank the fates for such tender mercies on such an elderly man, but Gunter was the regrettable age when other such concerns were necessary, and he almost broke out into a fit of wheezes that—

That she wanted to— 

With him—

If he had not felt her desire beneath his own veined hands, several times over, he would have called fate itself a liar. And yet, his age or the decades-long watch over her had been no deterrent. You little temptress would be my ruin, he thought fondly.

“Gunter, is that you?”

Fuck.

“...It is, milady.” Only long decades of schooling his face from Garon’s court kept his professional composure intact. He might’ve only twitched slightly from the folded-arms position. 

She appeared slightly behind and beside his elbow, smiling up at him. Corrin would be the one person to know exactly just how rattled he was from the twitch, and there was amusement dancing on her face that implied so, although she was too polite to say anything outright to preserve his dignity.

"Lady Corrin, I brought you something." If Gunter waited one moment longer, his nerves would fail him. Cold practicality urged him forward when the rest of him quailed. “A… charm to ward off the… potential effects of our choices tonight.” 

The love of his life took his hands, held them for a beat so lovingly, and then reached for the charm that he held out. As he watched, Corrin put the pretty piece of jewellery on with the tender smile she reserved only for him and Gunter felt terribly like a lovesick boy again. He swallowed, suddenly unable to meet her eyes and started to pace, only sparing a glance to see how the bauble looked on her.

Gold was beautiful on her—but then, he always knew that. He was far from an inexperienced man, and yet there was something about her tender innocence that wrecked his heart. 

"I am assuming you would wish for us to have uninterrupted years before..." Something quiet and heavy cracked his words with pain when simple embarrassment would not. A flicker of recognition and sympathy stirred in Corrin’s eyes, and bless her; she simply nuzzled against his chest in company without hurry, rush, or excessive fuss, giving him time to find the right words.

There was no right words. Not for the yawning abyss in his heart. 

And yet, she was... owed something. Not everything, but an explanation of sorts.

"Corrin." He swallowed, embracing her slowly. "I was married once, a long time ago." He closed his eyes, burying his face in her hair and her scent to ward away choked emotion. "That life... does not exist any more. Will not be able to exist ... again."

How could she possibly have affection for him, much less anything as pure as her radiant love?

He was old, ruined, scarred, like a ghost or an unwanted raggedy weed greedily soaking in her warmth and tenderness quite undeservedly. Gunter was meant to be a footnote to her history, at best taking on the role of the dutiful mentor, or a noble death in protecting her. There was no possibility that he could make anything up for her, his failures. He took her hand and kissed the palm of it in silent apology.

"M-my past does not... change... my feelings for you, Corrin." Gunter breathed while cradling her hand against his lips and he knew again at long last what it was like to bear terrible pain willingly in the name of profound love. He trembled; going beyond the threshold of no return, knowing it deep in his bones. "You make me so happy, Corrin."

"You still want this, sir, as much as I do." Her lovely light voice murmured in return, soothing his very soul. 

"Gods, yes." Something terribly close to fondness twisted his mouth as he bent down to gently kiss her forehead. "More than you, this old man guarantees it."

“I find that quite hard to believe.” Her eyes danced with good humour again, and a nameless shadow lifted from his heart for the first time in decades. The sorrow was still there; so too, was the rage and the darkness. She was not anything as crude as a replacement. 

And yet… for her, he would walk on a new, uncertain journey. 

She made him want to live again, after all this time. 

"Would you stargaze with me a little, Gunter?" Her tender fingertips caressed his lined cheek, and he was hopelessly lost in love again, his own intertwining with hers.

"Lead the way, my love."

Deep Nohrian nights were truly stunning in a way that lighter Hoshido evenings could never match, Gunter mused privately, even with the unchanging dark sky. Repetition could never erase true beauty. And still, even the starry fields above paled to the slender miracle buried halfway down and against his side.

Corrin had long since abandoned her perch on the grass, instead curling in the crook of his arm with her hand freely caressing his chest in small loving intimacies. His princess had been pointing out the various starry constellations and assorted stories that he had taught her in lessons as a child so long ago, but focusing on her lovely lilting voice was quite difficult when her touches felt more akin to trails of sensual fire, quickening an old man’s blood in ways he thought had been lost.

“I rather liked that myth with the lord of the underworld.” Corrin murmured brightly, tracing patterns in the creased skin of his bare forearm and stealing his breath away all the while. “That book I stole from your library… he always seemed more interesting than the others.”

Crooking an eyebrow, Gunter took her bait knowingly.

“Interesting?”

That blush of hers was visible even in the semi-darkness. “Older and mysterious, and so handsome much like somebody else in front of me tonight…”

It was his turn to feel a heat creep around his neck, but it was not a displeasurable sensation. She was generous. Far too kind to an elderly man who never should have voiced his own desires to begin with. While laying his chin tenderly atop her feathery hair, Gunter exhaled a tight bitter breath.

There were practical topics that had to be broached, first.

He could not give in to his own sordid passions before trying one last time to convince her in seeing sense. The way his princess stroked him already in the cover of the darkness stretched his self-control to the limit, and Gunter did not dare consider where his own hands would wander along her curves later that night, should she breathe an invitation. Already, his were trembling. Already, he was so weak, a hardened man of war and violence struck by the barest gentle touches.

Swallowing once to whet the abrupt dryness of his mouth, Gunter took her slender fingertips in his, stilling hers as he cradled her warmth. 

"Corrin… while I appreciate your generosity, there are certain… advantages to courting men of your age beyond my meagre offerings to your marriage prospects. Not to be inappropriate to your station and sex—"This entire situation is inappropriate, a devil on his shoulder cheerfully added. "—but there is the matter of other health considerations with age, princess. Put simply, I will grow frail and die much sooner than you even if the war was won tomorrow."

He did not want to deceive her, more than he already was. 

There were many bleaker secrets of his heart she could not know or guess, and it was moments like this that he cursed his years as an additional weight that she would have to bear. Instead, Gunter continued to steadily gaze at the stars as he approached the next subject like a well-worn lecture of old.

"Then there is also the practical matter of everyone—you and myself included—considering me your father figure more than husband material, not to put too fine of a point on it."

Like most royals, Corrin had a habit of pretending certain social laws were not such an immutable law, and simply mere opinion. While she had been companionably silent at his murmurs, Gunter’s eyes flickered over to see the soft curve of her jaw twitch in a way that meant she was going to be stubbornly dismissive about such a concern.

With sardonic blandness, he continued with his own whimsey before she could voice her objection. "Or should I say that is a notion your devious mind has already toyed with?"

Corrin flamed such an instant, invigorating shade of crimson by his chest that he could see her go dusky even in the starlight, and the old knight smirked with the taste of smug victory.

"Sir..." After several tries of licking her lips and not quite meeting his eyes, and most definitely avoiding the last point, she managed to squeak out with some amount of firmness. "If you are truly trying to dissuade me from. Ah! Romancing—"

"Seducing, more like." Gunter supplied dryly with terrible fondness. Now on his side watching her and if it weren't for the last dying gasp of proprietary, he'd caress her beautiful lips until they were red and plump and swollen for more kissing and ruinous sin.

"Seducing you, you are doing the most rotten job possible. If I knew you better, I'd say you were trying to throw this argument entirely."

"How so, Princess?"

"You're enjoying this, sir."

And that was the problem. All of his happiest moments were in her presence; his body ached and burned for her in that very second. Those wide red eyes of her bore into his very soul, laying him bare and she did not flinch at the sinner she knew him as. 

"Gunter, make love to me."

He drew in a shuddering breath. "I'd corrupt you…"

She didn't know, she didn't know what she was getting into, it'd be kinder for her to have lovers on the side when he inevitably couldn't sire— Feeling an absurd surge of possessive violence he knew that was an egregiously stillborn lie on a mountain of denials he was trying very weakly to convince was even in the playing.

"Gunter…"

Stalling for time and awkwardly shifting above her for purchase, he swallowed thickly. "I'm old, Corrin.You can't possibly d-desire—there is nothing here—"

The lightest touch of her fingertips by his cheek shattered any last stammering hesitation.

"Gunter, please kiss me."

He broke at that. 

Of all things she could say, he broke at that.

Drowning in her scent and touch as she surged up to him, Gunter pressed his scarred lips to hers out of desperation. The old knight felt her thigh snake over his hip, joining them more tightly as he deepened the kiss and as she buried in closer. Somehow in the movements one of her slender hands had wormed under his shirt, caressing his bare chest. It had been so long since he had been touched with simple kindness much less with the heedless pleasure of lovers, and he could not help but groan when those damned slender fingertips slid under his shirt. 

“May I touch you, sir—”

“Please.” Gunter begged, falling back against the grass as her heat shifted and snaked over him. Corrin was straddled so indecently over his hips now, her whimpers of want and needy desire becoming louder as she rocked on his lap shamelessly chasing mindless pleasure, and he let her and it was carnal sin ripped from his fantasies wrought into flesh. His hips rutted under hers as she found his tenting hardness, and soon her quickened breathy hitches were in rhythm to his own mounting groans.

Rolling them both over in the tall grass, Gunter took the darkest pleasure in hearing his little princess now whimpering high and thin like an animal in heat when he pressed his weight down, gently but possessively grinding his erection so nakedly on her. He wanted her to feel him between her legs, thrilling at every one of moans coming out of her pink lips worshipping his name, and sweetly begging for more of him.

He would not last long, not here, not like this.

"Princess. Your room, inside . Before I am …" A shockingly sensual caress of her fingertips along his collarbone tore an answering approving growl from him as he panted over her, soaked deliciously through to the bone with sweat. "... More undone by you."

This time he caught a little bashful smile from her, and oh she was so proud to unravel him.

Pinning her with his own level gaze, the old knight stood and stalked her back to a nearby tree. This time he pressed her harder against the trunk, his hands and lips greedily roaming slow and sensually until she begged to the heavens from his teasing affections, completely overcome with need.

It was not long before Gunter was smirking, carrying her in his arms when they approached the door of her quarters. Her own slender hand darted out to fumble at the doorknob with rote instinct of routine, and he chuckled.

"Allow me." With a murmur in her ear, he was rewarded again by a beautiful bell-like giggle as the door opened into the safe near-darkness beyond.

When he stepped through, Gunter spared a brief glance around outside to ensure they hadn’t been spotted. Carrying her over the threshold felt like a threshold of a different kind, a new irreversible chapter in their lives.

He had been in her rooms many times before, certainly, and had witnessed many events at her side as her oldest retainer. And yet now, he stepped through as someone else altogether.

__________________

His heady, warm protective scent enveloped her as her oldest beloved knight carried her across her quarters in the darkness, and little by little Corrin’s heart settled ever so slightly. 

It was—in hindsight—deceptively crafty for Gunter to stride to the one overstuffed chair that always lingered in her room, his strong arms easily holding her by his chest. The only other open sitting area available was her bed, and he must have felt her heart flutter in a panic out of her chest at the thought of—well.

She loved him; there was no doubt. But this night felt quietly momentous, and Corrin knew he felt it too, by the too-still steadiness in his hands now.

Despite her nerves, when her old man settled in the chair with a dignified groan befitting of his years, Corrin smiled inwardly at his casual noise of relief. Still nestled between his veined arms and in his lap, she nuzzled up to his throat and leaned in for another heedless kiss. Gunter obliged; warm lips devouring hers with sensuous patience that did not dull the heat underneath, free from the judging eyes of others. There was the faintest thread of neediness from his touches; and a shared sensation of slyly getting away with this affection in private. 

Moonlight struck his lined features and the lilac hair that was gleaming silver in the dim room; with his full life written on his beautifully lined face, Corrin thought he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. Lifetimes could pass and she would still be trying to convince him of the same; and so she would have to settle for loving him with tender kisses and touches that he was deceptively receptive to, husky breaths quickening in his broad chest when she slipped her hands under his shirt and threaded through his handsome trail of hair she had seen glimmers of.

It was only some time later when they parted with heavier gasps that it occurred to Corrin she was straddling him quite shamelessly. 

Still, she could feel the remnants of his hardness press between her thighs even through layers of clothing, and she had read enough of the midwifery books to know what it meant for his pleasure. At that, a small blush crept back into her cheeks and as if reading her mind, Gunter reached out with light fingertips that tickled her chin until she was forced to meet his gaze. His low murmur was so very level with calm and surety, somehow flavoured with gentleness despite his striking hatchet-like face.

“Talk to me Corrin. Do you still wish this?”

Taking an inhale through her nose, she tried to borrow his steadiness. It was a good question, and it was not his fault that her heart nearly exploded like feathers of a dove attacked by a falcon.

"I-I haven't, um..." Swallowing with embarrassment, an urge came over again to bury her face in the crook of his broad shoulder, even with the comforting steely warmth holding her fast by her chin. Only the sharpening firmness of Gunter’s rough fingertips held her still, anchoring her more like a lodestone as thoughts swam and swooped. Flaming a shade darker and shyly looking to the side, she fiddled with his shirt collar in distraction. 

"I don’t know what I’m doing…but I-I like it when you tell me to do things..."

“You don't say.” The dry sardonic drawl from her old combat instructor would have sounded sharp to anyone else, save for the twinkle of amusement in his eyes. She liked his tease; that constant of how her old man showed his rough affection even when she had been only a lonely girl. Low enough she almost missed the words, he purred again with the barest stroke of his thumbpad trailing down across her jawline. “Do continue, by the way.” 

“What—” 

Her disciplinarian gave a quirk of the eyebrow and a small nod down. One of his creased, warm hands enveloped her own by his throat, and she realised he was slowly unbuttoning those shirt collar buttons with her, though far more expertly than her own shaking fumbles, the starched black fabric falling away from his handsome neck. 

Even more gently, Gunter’s own veiny hand reached up to her face with his knuckle tenderly stroking her cheek, before deftly undoing one clasp of her shirt. Then two, and three of the clasps fell away as the thin fabric shifted from her skin slightly. 

But when she thought he would continue disrobing her, pushing aside the thin fabric to bare her breasts as she would have expected a man to do, his big hand slipped away with an oddly tender and chaste gesture as he simply caressed her arm lightly. There was something so disarmingly old-world about his patience that her heart gave a wobble at the touch. It was obvious now that Gunter did not want to startle or hurry her with almost excruciating gentlemanly pace.

At that, Corrin swallowed again with a nameless want and impatience starting to edge out that flurry of nerves kindled in turn by his steady iron-clad control.

His now bared throat felt almost scandalously naked in the semi-dark, uncovered from his usual tightly fastened attire. With a shaky swallow to collect the remnants of courage, Corrin leaned in to kiss that tender vulnerable dip of his, where hints of his broad, bared chest were, breathing in his scent with unbearable need. Encouraged onwards with the lowest rumble of masculine pleasure, she pressed another open-mouthed kiss against his creases with the lightest tease, and tasted the faintest remnants of sweat against his skin.

Voice wavered in a murmur as she stroked his grey-lilac hair with one hand. “I want you, sir.” Drawing back to meet his so very level eyes, she repeated her words, stronger this time. “If you’ll have me.” 

Gunter tilted his head again like a hunting hound with that hidden smile dancing around his scarred lips and Corrin realised her knight was observing her more closely. His intense gaze bore into her much like those moments as her old combat instructor—searching for cracks in the rhetoric he always found, disarming her as surely as those little practice wooden swords. She shivered under the weight of that knowing experienced gaze, seeing some darker impulse stir in those creased eyes. There was a knowing intimacy deeper than their fumblings in the healer’s tents before.

“Close your eyes, Corrin.”

What that bass voice commanded was not what she wanted to do compared to greedily drinking in the tantalising spread of glory of her old man, but with a light anticipatory exhale and shiver, Corrin obeyed. A heavy palm laid over her bare thigh and with disarming, excruciating intensity in the comforting darkness behind her eyelids, she felt his rough thumbpad stroke tenderly along her prickling bare skin, instantly quieting her frantic thoughts into pure, sensuous heated focus that left her limp.

“How does it feel, princess?” Embarrassingly, her muffled encouragement tumbled out more as a moan while her legs trembled under his sensuous, firm caresses. He chuckled. 

“Oh very well… ”

With shocking alacrity that stole her breath away, those rough fingertips danced up the inside of her thigh, and she squeaked in pleasure. His heat felt unbearably good, that hot weight of his palm sending stronger shivers until that fingerpad found the swollen tenderness between her thighs and gave an experimental stroke, and the world swam with sudden, molten woozy heat as Corrin clawed at him in a surge of lust.

“Sir… ”

His maddeningly consistent touches sent shocks of a kind so strong she had never felt before, echoing and reverberating and multiplying throughout her body until sensation itself transformed into raw vicious, ravenous hunger. A long whimper erupted out of her, needy and high, as she rocked slowly into the stronger strokes from that one fingertip.

With mortifying clarity, she felt Gunter’s big hand shift deftly, and suddenly his gnarled fingertip was inside, twisting aside the fabric of her panties and sinking into her hot slick slowly, tenderly.

“Oh, oh—oh—”

“Relax.” He breathed by her ear, voice low and hard with control. 

She ground and squirmed with him against the friction of his slick knobby knuckles feeling so sensitive and throbbing, trying desperately to at all remember his command amidst the upheaval of pleasure.

Oh he was in her, another finger joining the next, stroking slow and expertly inside her as he spread her, dripping just as much as those nights where—and here, her mind stuttered—where she had fantasised about him, this very scene—

Corrin cried out louder when he nuzzled again at her bare breast, nipping in a daring tease—shuddering down, down, harder against his fingerpad as her body gave a full body shuddering throb in response as he mouthed and licked at her, nakedly bold. In response, she rode mounting waves of pleasure on him, whimpering with want now, tight as a wire and bashful at loosing all semblance of control. He was a singular need so strong that she felt molten and heavy in his hands—

Something in her with white-hot heat broke apart like a sun shattering gloriously, and she cried out in the night air with his name heavenly in her lips.

Breathy whimpers subsided as she trembled, further still when his heavy arms embraced her as she melted against his masculine solidity in pure bliss of the aftershocks. 

When she roiled experimentally, high and heady off of muzzy pleasure, Corrin heard an answering masculine curse. Distantly she felt his palms against her ass clench her more firmly around her lap and instead of his talented fingertips between her thighs Corrin now felt his swollen girth renewed. Impishly, she rocked her hips against his own again and was rewarded with a deeper growl that barely masqueraded as a strained chuckle.   

Even more deliciously, his voice now sounded wrecked and, and—distracted —

That old black pillar of a disciplinarian was starting to crack for her and the headiness of that forbidden knowledge was too tempting. Vaguely her hands clawed at the back of his neck and through his beautiful strands of grey-lilac hair, Corrin’s own hips squirming harder down against the throbbing, heated outline of his erection, searching him out.

“I want you, sir—”

Inside me, claim me—

The low intake of breath and the sudden movement and press of their bodies against each other as he got up—holding her tightly against him—nearly broke her again and she moaned against his chest, half with abrupt intention and anticipatory greed at more of those touches.

She did not mind being snared by his competent hands, Corrin's mind turned over as he carried her to her bed, before her thoughts dribbled out like water between curved palms, and before he tenderly laid her out on her own bed, his own big palms pressing hers to the sheets as he bent down for another searing kiss.

It felt beyond natural, arching and baring herself to him with that same demanding need that pulled at her on and on like a fisherman's reel as he began to unclothe her with quickened earnest. It was not long before she was nude, and he very nearly was over her. Gunter was watching her with hooded eyes with an intoxicating sense of satisfaction that rippled across his bare shoulders as he worked his trousers off. The heat behind his gaze was all too similar to those times as her combat instructor, but with a physical frission that flayed her pleasurably.

“Please—” She whimpered louder. “Please sir—”

“Turn over, love.” On cue at his smooth command the heat within her belly inflamed in a raging fire, and her hips squirmed once more as he chuckled outright in her pent-up frustration. Sheets slid under her arms and thighs as she felt so clumsy, pinpricks of lust and sensation against the chill of the night air doing battle over her skin. She felt so exposed, shivering again nakedly, and gasped outright when she felt the bed dip behind her as he kneed down with imposing weight.

Gunter was a big man, powerfully built under the armour, and even with him shifting behind her, she could feel his lean muscles flex, and oh—

oh—

He sank into her slowly, his cock stretching her tightness inch by inch, with deep audible groans of pleasure that erupted from his throat. 

His blunt cockhead was so big and she was so wet and slick for him that the friction was tempered by white pleasure bolting through her. She was taking him now, he was so powerfully built that it was impossible to forget now she was at the mercy of a man who knew violence as well from decades of training as well as caretaking, and she squirmed half away as his cockhead found her and began to press in deeper, stretching her, making her writhe— 

Gods, he was so intimidatingly big — 

“Be still.” he sharply hissed low by her ear, a thin thread of a command snaking through as he stilled in her while bent over, still firmly holding her against his own hips, her caught red-handed mid-squirm. 

His heavy palm squeezed once at the join of her hip, half a warning. Dutifully, slowly, she roiled her hips back up against his girth, melting against the way he slid back into her easily with how slick she was. This time her old knight growled in approval by her ear, hot unsteady breath deep and terribly wrecked. “Relax. It will be easier if you relax.” 

Gunter filled her this time with his whole length in one motion, still slow with the merest edge that bordered on pain and she cried out higher than before as he finally buried himself to his root with a long low growl of fulfilled desire. It was impossible not to cry out high and thin with pleasure as he leisurely pulled out and pressed again, half a counterpoint, half a test—-

Any other sensation was submerged by flares and waves of pleasure as he began to thrust rhythmically, deeper, testing her as she went limper around his throbbing cock, she could feel his belly hair against her ass, his balls lightly against her pussy. Calloused hands guided her sensitive hips against his own with thrusts as he eased them into a unmerciful, staccato rhythm.

"Sir, sir, ah, oh —" She was reduced to piteous whimpers and on the cusp of her own pleasure, grasping at sheets.  

Salty sweat dripped down both of them as he bore into her, bent over her and rocking harder with slower sharper thrusts now until she broke—with one louder cry, coming and clenching with a writhe spearing herself deeper on him. 

He groaned loudly as she clenched around his throbbing girth and she lost herself on him all at once, a gush half of heated embarrassment and half of pure lust that surged through her whole body at being speared through, sobbing in ecstasy—

With his own throaty snarl of pleasure, Gunter followed, filling her with his own hot come until she begged no more.

__________________

Later that night, Corrin nuzzled up against his bare chest in bliss and listened to her lover lightly snore in exhausted satisfaction. 

His raspy purr was an endearing companion as her hand trailed along the handsome creases of his hairy chest and belly and strong arms. Trailing along every darker vein as well, mapping out his sleeping body with such aching fondness that she would have bent over to kiss each and every crook with tenderness, if the motion would not have woken her tired old man up. 

Such sweet nothings would happen with time, she promised herself as her fingertips also tenderly touched the laced network of pale scars across his flesh; some were raised in a ropey ridge, while others were a flat old shine criss-crossing his finer body hair and nearly invisible except to the naked eyes of lovers. 

Her beloved protector had so very many scars, and she wondered when the last time he had allowed anyone to see him so… openly. 

Gunter, like most men of his generation, did not care for vulnerability. Being able to give and receive this affection was the rarest kind of gift she knew she had been allowed, and she wanted him to feel nothing but happiness. He was everything that she expected, wanted, and then some. And Corrin was so very desperate for more. She almost moaned outright at the memory of her tightness and folds giving way to his cock, and all but writhed against his soft naked side, a silent plea to indulge her.

She could feel his chest hair tickle the overly-sensitive skin of her own breasts and a low heat in her belly suddenly flared again. For a sensation and an experience that she was so new at, lovemaking somehow felt far less intimidating with him to guide her through intimacy, and through this new fire that coursed through her. She wanted to pleasure him and more, so badly. And yet—she was damnably, tenderly new enough to this that her hands ached with indecision and uncertainty of what exactly to do. 

One of his eyes glinted sleepily in the moonlight, and she knew that Gunter had caught her watching him. Corrin blushed, but did not look away.

“What’re you looking at?” The old man murmured with fondness and perhaps, a hint of apprehension.

“You, sir.” There was no way to hide the sigh of desire that laced her voice, and she didn’t even try. His responding low, smoky chuckles just made her flame even more and this time, he pressed up with his elbows, smirking at her. 

“Would you like to learn how to touch me, princess?” 

"Please…" 

He sat up slowly to gently lift and position her over in his lap with a display of strength that made her go limp in feverish want and her mind break apart in wobbling desperation. Already slick and dripping against his legs, she felt his loose skin and the sheets shift under her until with the patient understanding of lovers—she was comfortably cradled on his lap, hips spread wide across his own hairy thighs. Stretching in such a new way was curiously not unpleasant, and a sordid corner of her mind thrilled at the forced vulnerability, she could not hide her most tender corners of her body from his hands if she even tried , gods she was so open for him—

Abruptly she felt the side of his prodigious cock slide invitingly closer with heat between her legs, and shuddered against his warm friction, already so wet and—

"Fuck —"

"My, my, language." She could hear the deep thread of amusement in his tone, and her face heated with mortification. His tongue tickled the edge of her ear, and Corrin could not do anything but moan in the face of such dark promise.

Fascinated in the haze of lust, she watched as beads of precum formed on his wide and blunt cockhead presenting itself between her thighs. Corrin had seen a Hoshido battle-club once up close in the armoury, when somebody had left it on the overflowing counter. The wood had been strangely warm to the touch, lightly ridged. It had also been intimidatingly thick and heavy, and she was reminded again at the association as she hesitantly stroked light fingertips against his girth, feeling him throb underneath in answer, and she shuddered with desire at the sheer waves of pleasure the simple movement gave. 

He gave a noise at her exploratory touches behind her, a low and naked groan flavoured with unvarnished want at the same time his creased palms settled with warm weight at the crook of her hips. It gave her a heady rush of heat that Gunter no longer felt the need to hide behind his shame here in the protective cover of darkness.

She ached to run a finger over his swollen cockhead and taste what he felt like.

“Sir, would you s-show me how to…”

“How to pleasure me?” His masculine presence was so all-encompassing that his breath was somewhere over the top of her hair—she could vaguely feel his chin above her hair, when he looked down in amusement, as she nodded lapsing into muteness when cruder words failed her. 

“Like pleasuring yourself, the sensation is better with—mm.” Corrin did not have to look up to feel the crooked smirk as he trailed his palm up one of her slender wrists, seizing it, and bringing it up to his lips. Kissing her knuckles with endearing tenderness as he wrapped his other arm around her, hand settling on her belly, he continued. “Let me demonstrate, milady.”

His warm lips suddenly, deftly enveloped her fingertips and sent such a wave of low, heady pleasure that she arched against him, his hairy chest, his everything—

"Sir-ah, ah—!"

She could feel his low chuckles resonate all over her fingertips like the vibration of hums, his tongue expertly teasing her wet prickling skin, and when he sucked at her, Corrin writhed . In muzzy pleasure, she felt his big, veiny hand wrapping around her hand—her own fingertips now filthily slick with his saliva as in unison, their fingertips wrapped around his cock, stroking—

He was curved and stiffening just so with tensed swollen skin that she could feel every throb as his own flesh responded. Gunter groaned again, louder, more possessively and again, in answer she writhed against his throbs and shallow thrusts, a building echo to his own positioned like this.

"Sir, oh gods, sir… "

"Tell me what you want, my princess." Purring by her ear, he teased a rough fingerpad over her hard nipples and she lost her mind to shards of white with a shriek. Every sensation of his pads swiping over her nipples were connected straight to her pussy, and every involuntary squirm of hers was slowly building into heat of another orgasm.

Gunter was still waiting for her reply, she realised. He was smirking again now, and Corrin’s stomach writhed like a bag of submerged marbles in the knowledge.

“I-I need you sir, I need you—” she whined, still too shy to use the obscene words that truly wanted to tear out of her.

His big warm hands flattened over her hips and teasingly ran down the innermost crook of her thigh in response, taking his sweet time.

She felt his calloused fingertip began to rub gentle circles against the bud of her sex in the same rhythm in how she stroked him, and she came on the spot, sobbing with pleasure and reality warping around the shared touching. Feeling their sweat-slicked skin press against each other, was overwhelming now, with Gunter pressing under her, over her, around her—

“Follow my rhythm, now…” He panted behind her, his own hips twitching now, but unfailingly stroking, 

It was not long before she came again against his touch and his thickness between her thighs, his seed spurting and mixing with hers in a mess of fluid, and there was nothing but fleshy bliss and the pleasure of new lovers between them.

In the small office that he had been provided, Gunter leaned back against the chair and whistled smugly. 

He was quite regretful at having to return to civilization after the exceedingly pleasurable nights in the bedroom prior. For a decrepit old man, he hadn’t done so shabbily savouring sensual parts of life that he had denied himself for so long. A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he reminisced privately; her touches had ignited a flame in him that he thought had been lost entirely to decades of bitterness, and it was all too easy to imagine new pleasurable explorations.

Alas, memories—pleasant or no—still did not magic away the need for paperwork. 

Gunter sighed, and collated his notes from conversations with the latest few recruits and new faces. He rose from the small wooden desk, stretching as his joints clicked. 

Regularly interrogating Corrin’s staff for their trustworthiness and loyalty was an old ingrained habit of his, and he was finding it a trickier task to keep up with the new people that were filling the ranks of their impromptu campaign. What had only been a fistfull of hired swords had quickly grown into something approaching a respectable strike team. Their numbers were still nowhere near the strength of a full army battalion, at least without the help of hired mercenaries, but they were agile enough if a light raid was called for.

Corrin's charisma was something that had to be seen to be believed. The old knight tucked the borrowed pencil into a pocket, and was briefly considering sparing the gold in the coffers to spend for food supplies or extra hired swords when he heard somebody whistling around the corner. 

A quick look revealed it to be a very familiar white haired adventurer in a faded blue cloak; Niles, unchanged from that day since he had been beset by the snarling wolf pack in the Northern Fortress. By the quick blink, the eyepatched adventurer was just as surprised to see him again. 

"Why hello. It's been a while, old man."

Gunter’s brows shot up. “I assume Lord Leo sent you to investigate our progress.”

“You’re to the point as always; let's just say I'm here to keep your princess on her toes. If I keep him updated, the more the merrier.”

"Hmph. What changed?"

Niles cocked his head, playing coy all the sudden. Gunter had to lightly resist the urge to grab him by the scruff of the neck like a misbehaving puppy and to shake the answers out from him, but retained the self control to cross his arms and continue impassively. 

"Prince Leo would not have sent you unless he felt like Lady Corrin was of more interest than his own personal safety." He was familiar with this type of game.

Niles rocked back on his feet in patently fake surprise; he was very good at such facades of emotion. "Oho, that —glad to see your senses are sharp as always. A man can't spill all of his secrets now, but let's just say that Princess Corrin has been attracting attention from all corners with her chatter about invisible enemies, and not strictly speaking from sympathetic ears. I'm assuming this is one reason for your interrogation." This time, it was the old knight’s turn to serenely and deliberately ignore the hidden bait; the adventurer had the gall to roll his single eye after the notable pause. "...and here I was trying to be generous with information, old man. You do have an endearing habit of being your liege's bad cop."

"Speak straight, boy."

The corner of Niles’ mouth turned up. It did not strictly count as a smile. "Does rooting out all of King Garon's spies and turncoats in the early days watching your princess in the Northern Fortress ring a bell? Impressive work by the by, finding all the traitors in the way of Lady Corrin. Makes you the one possible weak link to be a traitor if you asked my professional opinion."

Gunter raised an eyebrow while shouldering against the door-frame affably. "I have served my liege since the very beginning, faultlessly so by her own words.”

“That’s not a no, old man.” 

Said old knight smirked. “You’ll have to trust me.” 

“Here’s another tidbit for you, since I’m in a generous mood. There’s at least one more Nohrian royal coming this way rather soon. Your Princess has more friends in high places than I had thought.” 

“Noted.”

“Not even a tip or thank you? My, you’re a hard case. No hard feelings in turn.” Niles gave a sarcastically cheeky salute, and vanished around the corner. 

He could stand to lose some attitude, but the black knight was grudgingly more grateful of him than he expected. A solid fighter with a perceptive pair of eyes and an even sharper mind was always good to have around.

Gunter knocked his knuckles on the wooden edges of the inner doorway, lost in thought as he consulted his mental list of tasks for the day. The eyepatched adventurer had been the last of the significant new recruits, and the whole camp had merrily descended into a festive mood as the evening marched on. There was something to be said about camping in an actual village with the comforts of life rather than the wilderness of Nohr.

Yes, he could bear to leave the rest until the next day, after night watch. 

There was only one more task. Her.

Corrin was nowhere to be found that afternoon during the mildly celebratory air of the inn that they had camped around, which the old knight thought strange. Distantly alarming, even though she was a private soul much like he was. Old instincts and routine were hard to slough off, however and he started towards the most likely secluded spot.

She had secured—clever princess—a small room for the two of them a little out of the ways, and a short walk up half a stairwell. The room was ostensibly under his name, close by but separate to her quarters. Her empty quarters. 

His real room for the two of them was small enough to slip in and out with nobody the wiser, although the bed was still amusingly tiny for his large frame. Still, a small price to pay for privacy and a lack of questions, and there were advantages to sharing such a tiny bed if one had their mind for activities other than sleeping. 

The old knight was still smirking at the thought when he wandered in, and had closed the door before realising the room was not as empty as he had assumed. 

Corrin was wearing absolutely nothing at all as she displayed herself to him shyly on the floor in front of him. Gunter blinked, once. His mouth went awful dry at seeing her pretty nude thighs so splayed with abandon, and he let his gaze linger and sharpen pointedly as she shivered under his attention. 

Gracious, he could get used to this view just fine.

“My my. What would be the meaning of this?” Shouldering the door-frame as a captive audience, he did not hide the vein of smoky approval in his raspy reply. At her sudden blush that spread across her pert little breasts, his leer grew wider. 

“I-I remembered something you said, sir…” Corrin demured, and he watched with great interest like the dirty old man he was at how those beautiful thighs trembled. “Um. Saving the thought for p-punishment later. I didn’t want to assume, but if you’d like t-to have your way with me…” 

By the incandescently dark blush, she knew exactly what she was asking for, despite her quavering words trailing off. He cocked an eyebrow at her, stalking forward with possessive interest. Close enough to grip her chin and cheek with more intent, she breathed out a ragged, aroused gasp at his touch.

Bending her over the bed suddenly held quite the appetising appeal. Spreading her thighs too, and he nudged at the tender flesh with his armoured boot as a silent command, gratified to see her instantly respond.

“Do you know what it means to service your oldest, most faithful knight, milady?” He growled huskily, scarred lip curling at feeling parts of himself stir already. “Thank him for his loyal duty in the most intimate fashion?”

Carefully, so she couldn’t look away shyly, he lifted her chin up with a knuckle of his, so her lips were mere inches away from his codpiece, and his little princess flamed at the implication. Not so naive, then.

Gauntleted fingertips trailed her jawline, scraping her there oh-so-lightly in teasing approval; with that knowledge, she had unquestionably fantasised about this very scene, he amended. He would have to inquire after that, another time when his hands were on her and when he had the privacy to wring the answers from her pretty little lips between her sweetly voiced begging.

“I-I think so, sir.”

“You think so?” Chuckling darkly, Gunter sharply gestured down, now raking the metal claws in her hair, grabbing a fistfull of the feathery strands. “By all means, show me, my princess.”

Oh he rather enjoyed how she looked there, completely nude and crawling closer between his boots and with her delicate little hands stripping off his codpiece and working his tenting trousers down with surprisingly speedy eagerness. His mind stuttered—since when had she so expertly known how —and a bolt of hot pleasure went straight to his cock when he felt those soft tugs and pulls increase as the buckles fell away. 

“Sir… ”

For all of his vaunted self control, a rough groan tore from him when she unsheathed him, and his shaft sprang forward into her caressing fingertips. 

“I think I could use a kiss from you, my princess.” Gunter was a little breathless. He forgave himself, considering the moment. His beautiful princess on her knees about to service him was a… delectable enough excuse. Hard to fault an old man there, really.

Corrin looked up so sweetly as she kissed his stiff cock-head wetly with her plush little lips—

He was fairly sure the world went white around the edges when her deft tongue lapped at him, right under his head, and he was groaning now, louder, mangled with curses that erupted from his throat, gauntlet tangled up in her hair out of desperate balance, and he groped at her for purchase, hips twitching erratically.

“No teeth, milady.” He barely had the mental capacity to thickly gargle out basic primers quickly, lest the mood was spoilt by a clumsy misstep. “Use your lips… take me whole…”

In lusty, possessive instinct he gripped his glove in her hair to pull her mouth around him, and her enthusiastic reaction nearly undid him on the spot as her reddened lips laved his own equally flushed length, her mouth throbbing and flattening around his swollen flesh.

The metal was in the way of grabbing the roots of her hair by the fistfull, and he brought the inner buckles up to his mouth to rip the bloody thi—

"Sir, please—Ah! Don't, don't take those off…."

He flexed his other gloved hand in her hair and growled. "These gauntlets do it for you, Princess?"

Her answering shiver of pleasure at his firm tugs was enough of an answer even if it weren't for the way she sucked in a hot breath over his sensitive foreskin, wringing another involuntary lurch forward from his hips. It was far harder to keep his arousal in check than he remembered, clenching his teeth in a silent snarl.

"Y-yes sir," she stuttered, blushing terribly and looking all for the world like she’d rather swallow it back. Gunter was considering a few other debauched uses for her pretty little mouth already smeared with his precome when a stray thought pricked his mind. 

“This armour do it for you as well, milady?”

“Please, gods, yes sir.” She bit her lips immediately after the words slipped out, almost moaning on the pleasure in the thought. He was not going to last long, again, cursing his own straining, weak flesh inside the heated sweet hell of his mind.

New plan.

"Bed. Face down and arse up, princess—" Gunter briskly ordered, before his nerves failed him.

It was faintly obscene how quickly Garon’s little girl scrambled at his barked orders. He watched as he stalked behind her as a black shadow, his mind filled with filthy ideas at how she'd sheath herself on him at one gesture, once when she was taught.

Before she could position herself right on the narrow bed, he grabbed her hair and bent her over as he had done hundreds of times in his fantasies, his stiff cock brushing her thigh, and sloppily smearing his precum on the back of her thigh in dark possessiveness.

“Fuck, sir, please—”

Out of perverted reprisal, he ran his other gauntlet—sharp, armoured, and just as disappointingly old and human under the black metal as his glove—along her bare back, digging the metal claws enough that she writhed, arching up into his palm with breathy whimpers and whines that tore out of her—

"Don't squirm, milady..." He rasped with sick glee. There would be wicked, red scratches on her back left the next morning marking where he had been and staked his claim on this beautiful innocent territory. "This old man may not be able to resist himself..."

She was panting his name out in pathetic little whines, so close to climax herself. 

“You asked for a punishment, love.” Gunter growled as he strained over and behind her, his bulging cockhead teasing her swollen folds as she shuddered against his girth and his heavy black plates with every shiver of pleasure. Finally, braced with her thighs spread across on either side of his armoured hips, he managed to grunt out. “Don’t come until my command. You want to please me, don’t you, my princess?” 

“Oh god, oh god, y-yes sir—” 

“Again.” He purred, pressing into her agonisingly slowly with his crown catching against her throbbing flesh, until she cried out, begged for his mercy—

One of his hands—the bare one—curled around her hips, gripping her more tightly against his chestplate, starting to rock them together in a rhythm of his own that slowly built, his armour faintly clinking perversely. 

The rhythmic slap of the leather fabric by his thighs grew louder and louder in the sex-drenched air as he speared her, slower shallower thrusts into her increasing in delicious intensity as she mewled, pretty pert little ass giving way. 

Gunter thought with sin-vicious pleasure of how it’d look to anyone who had the unfortunate luck to wander in their room to see the absolute debauchery of him, screwing this beautiful tender young thing that happened to be Garon’s very own daughter—not just as as a dirty old man, but as her oldest retainer and guardian. Unfortunate, he almost cackled to himself with amusement, the horror, and he throbbed in answer—fuck—

She felt his desire too, her cunt milking his length again and again, and all but wailed.

“Please, please, please —!”

Chuckling, he crooned by her ear and bent over further briefly to get better leverage, with his gauntlets mercilessly squeezing her thighs hard enough to leave welts in the morning. “My turn, my little princess.”

His length rutted into her warm wetness with impunity as he growled, low and deep, feeling her clench against him—and she writhed at last her moans wild and hysterical in breaking. She could do nothing but sob, completely broken with pleasure and riding entirely on the aftershocks that spasmed around his prick. 

There, her cunt all but milked his length, again and again and her whimpers escalated into a full throated shriek as he bore into her ruthlessly in answer, much faster, throbbing, spilling, convulsing with a roar—

Head thrown back in a vicious, victorious snarl, he emptied in her, sagging afterwards with delirious pleasure.

Sweating and panting, the old knight collapsed beside her on the narrow cot, and it was very long minutes before either of them had the mental fortitude to speak in a language other than breathless pants and loving light nuzzles.

When he could form the shape of words again, Gunter looked down briefly, and gestured with sardonic amusement at the number of armoured plates still on his person. 

“I may require your hands… removing this armour, my lady…” 

Oh he could get used to this.

Before long, she was kissing him against a backdrop of his half stripped plates, her slender, small fingertips pawing against his chest hair and pressing him and his flesh down, and they were lost again to that pleasurable, sweet rhythmic heat. 

__________________

They made passionate love again and again by the candlelight while sequestered in the cozy inn-room during those leisurely evenings in Notre Sagasse.

Well. 

It was cozy to her and outright cramped for his height, but her black knight hardly complained while being entirely distracted by their mutual exploration. One unforeseen benefit to staying at the proprietorship of the inn was being spared the worry of her maids or Jakob finding out about her secret bedroom liaisons with her oldest and most loyal retainer. 

Corrin may have been stalling for time.

She wasn’t ashamed of him, precisely; but she frankly savoured this secret between them like naughty caresses under the table mingled with knowing glances above. Gunter had been her protector, mentor, and yes—father figure, an unwavering pillar of stern authority and discipline encased in armour for her whole living memory. There was a power to seeing that same severe disciplinarian so unhinged at night under her exploring fingertips and mouth, groaning her name and utterly wrecked in naked vulnerability as an experienced man of flesh laid bare in dark desire. 

Typically, Corrin knew, such a sheltered princess didn’t have these kinds of thoughts.

Such a sheltered princess, so nice and utterly absent of thought and fragile, still helplessly pure and protected from the worst horrors of war by those long years cloistered, like a delicate flower. Not to be touched but not so protected from repeated violations of her mind, she thought with rare contempt. 

Well then, she’d take back her own choices and mind if she wasn’t allowed anything else. 

She had ignored some of the sidelong leers that the soldiers had given her, in the mess halls and when they marched on those long, lonely roads. She wondered what they would think if they heard her begging as old venerable Gunter stroked her in places reserved for a virgin’s marriage bed. Of her spread on his lap, speared by him hilt-deep as they moaned in climax together, his deep bass barely disguising her incoherent mewls of pleasure as she clawed at his chest hair in lust.

She wondered what the Hoshidans would think when she sat through the insufferably long war meetings every day pondering over potential allies, keeping herself awake only by filthy daydreams of how the old grandfatherly knight standing by her side would fuck her raw that evening until she was sobbing on the sheets and smeared with his come.

(She wondered what he would think, too.)

He had been right, after a fashion.

If this was corruption, she never want to go back to that flat, blank-white world of waiting for her mind to be cracked open like an egg, as some passive doll to be seized and and scooped out over and over as a child too young to realise what was even happening. Never again would she wait for that bloodied-fingertip clinging feeling hanging over an abyss, waiting for the cold clinical words by anonymous mages, of whether something had to be done to her.

She would choose her pleasurable ruin by his hands, the only hands that had protected her, guided her, crafted her, honed her, and now—seduced her as surely she did him in return. There was power in breaking—so tenderly, by her choice—in those black gauntlets that were the only strong and warm arms she trusted in the whole wide world. 

Ruminating, Corrin found herself stroking Gunter’s considerable girth with her own fingertips as both of them rested completely nude in a warm nest of their bedspreads. Her cheek was pressed up in bliss against his broad chest, and she nosed at the ruff of his silver hair.

Touching him in his most sensitive place was fast becoming one of her favourite habits, and she trailed her hand from the coarser patch of hair at his root to the tip. 

Yet—his manhood was soft still, and while she found it a gentle intimacy and an honour to cup him so openly and tenderly in her palm, his bodily interest generally had more… appetite, by now. It had been some time since their last coupling, and she was interested in more.

“Am I doing something wrong, sir?” 

It was the jaw-twitch in reply that made her observe her old man under her lashes more closely. Several mixed expressions flitted over his scarred face like cloud-shadows scudding over an otherwise clear moonlit sky.

He blinked, and then sighed with forced evenness and something approaching resignation.

“It’s not… you.” Gunter looked up, steadily avoiding her gaze. “This will happen. More frequently with my advanced age.” There was a tinge of bitterness to his voice that roughened it, and the lines around his face felt somehow deeper even in the dim distortion of the candlelight.

“Please allow me, my princess…” Her old knight finally addressed her sardonically as he shifted under her gently away from her hand, though the softer expression did not reach his eyes or wholly erase the wince. “There are a great many other methods for satisfying needs, and this night is young still.” 

With surprising tenderness, Gunter kissed the sensitive curve of her breast. His scarred lips brushed over her heart as he slowly manoeuvred around and down to the lower half of her body, sheets falling away from his strikingly muscular body at the movement. There was no-one more diligent in the camp to training at the crack of dawn as him, and his dedication showed in the deceptively ferocious libido she found the old man had been blessed by, much to her giddy delight.

Reaching for his broad shoulders above her, Corrin could feel the muscles ripple and flex under the loose skin as he repositioned himself over her, still not quite meeting her questioning gaze. 

“But I want you to…” I want you to be happy.

“Your pleasure and mine.” He repeated with more force somewhere around her hips, his big rough palms securing her on either side. Knowing that final and pointed tone from her childhood, the conversation was closed as as surely as a lessons-book. Further thoughts were interrupted when his thin nose dipped down her inner thigh along with light nips, making the world go hazy again in sensual heat as she melted bonelessly against his searching, teasing tongue.

__________________

They dozed through the dinner together, her cocooned against his side in his tight arms as a melted mass of post-coital limbs like wax that had burned and softened together in union.

Gunter had a night watch shift in the early hours of the morning. He had opted to stay in for a nap before waking a few hours later, bare-chested and smugly murmuring about the many advantages of a private room versus a shared tent in the open like his old army days. His black armour was stacked neatly beside the bed, and it struck Corrin that she would need to come up with a delicate way of alerting Jakob when they eventually made their way back to her quarters, of when it was safe to come dust.

Corrin hazarded a guess that her young butler would be less than thrilled to see his armour so blatantly in view beside her bed being so prone to bouts of hysterical jealousy and overprotectiveness. The armour was a statement of staked territory that even a sheltered, forgetful simpleton like herself or a dog would understand: mine. While Corrin was mildly exasperated, she found it hard to fault her talented old man when her skin still tingled from—she swallowed, obscene thoughts suddenly dancing luridly against the background of her mind, so vivid she felt a jolt of pleasure run through her like the time she had accidentally touched a thunder-tome and been lightly shocked. Not now, not now. 

Instead, she tenderly kissed her sleeping lover on the brow until she saw the lines in his face soften, tucked one of his wispy grey-violet strands behind his ear, and gently closed the door behind her with a click and a smile.

Making her way outside through the rickety stairwell sagging around the building, Corrin took a moment to watch the moon hanging so brightly on the sky. The night sky and stars was so different than in the far northern reaches of Nohr where she had spent all of her life up until a scant few weeks ago especially with the eternal red dawn silhouetted against the buildings and distant crags of the Bottomless Canyon. 

So much had changed, since that first mission. She had her independence, her newly-won sword and a sense of purpose at last; her purpose, not handed down as unthinking or cruel orders from others. She had her retainers who trusted her, and more allies waiting in the wings. But most importantly—

Him. Her venerable knight, her bedrock. Gunter had been by her side from the very beginning, a silent guardian looming dangerously by her side and ever watchful in the cold nights of Nohr. She shivered there on the stairwell, pleasurably remembering the ghost of his touches. She had always enjoyed his silent protection and company, but loving him like this was a happiness that felt unattainable for so long.

Happiness. She sighed, the shadow of a conversation nagging at her mind. 

Corrin had read midwifery books and the secret books the hedge-witches passed around to each other, the very same books that Healer Alaine had slipped under her doorway under her yearly medical exams when she had innocently asked the good lady about certain topics on health. She had seen the fleeting look of embarrassment and shame on Gunter's face, that last time before he had pleasured her. Corrin wanted him to be happy and satisfied as she was. And the book had implied there were such workarounds.

Movement caught her sharp eyes. A familiar shadow flitted around the corner right in front of her towards an alleyway, framed against the moonlight with a ragged cape and pale-white hair.

Being Prince Leo's retainer, Niles was a man most familiar with the sordid and the type of secrets that stayed within the realm of night, and so it did not surprise her he was at work and active in these late hours, likely sending a message to his Prince of what all had happened. He was also an incorrigible flirt and open deviant, which might work with Corrin for the first and only time in her life.

Perfect.

She marched briskly over to the cloaked adventurer, doing her best to not look like she was also slinking around the village for illicit tasks.

__________________

Niles was surprised to see the Princess march so business-like up to him. He was even more surprised when she tugged on his cloak edge and all but dragged him around a corner, away from potential eyes and ears.

"I have a question for you, Niles." Corrin breathed out through her nose like a fidgety pony. "An ask, actually. Hypothetically."

The white-haired adventurer had the audacity to cackle out loud, and she would have seen his mirth crease around his eye even behind the eyepatch. "Oh this should be good, milady. Sure, hypothetically, what's up?"

Corrin opened her mouth. Closed it. She tried three times getting the words out, and then gave up with an uncharacteristic and very unladylike swear.

Interesting. Niles rubbed his chin, fully invested. She was shy about the topic, and such a mystery was irresistible as a teetering milk-bottle on a ledge to a tomcat. He snapped his fingers. "Okay, let me try a game that works with Master Leo. Do you need a man killed?"

"No."

He ran down his skill sets, ticking off his scarred fingers one by one. "Tortured, captured, interrogated for information, kidnapped, humiliated—"

"No, no, no, not that. You're getting colder. And you repeated one." Corrin caught on quick. Hell, he thought she was enjoying the game. "No violence. Related to your other um... skills. Interests?"

Niles grinned cheekily, winking at her. "This is frisky bedroom business isn't it?" His grin got more mischievous and catlike. "Or else you wouldn't be coming to me, it'd be your eternal shadows Jakob or Gunter—''

Corrin went suddenly white as one of his blood-drained corpses, her pretty lips puckered like an inviting arsehole. He raised an eyebrow; she sure as hell hadn't gone pale at the first name.

And Niles gave one long, low thoughtful whistle. 

The Nohrian princess had been spending an awful amount of time with the venerable old knight lately, even in the short time since he had arrived. Alone. And the inn-maids had been gossiping about some interestingly young, very loud , and very feminine noises from a room signed under his name for a fossil so old and dry.

Not quite as desiccated as everyone had assumed, apparently.

"Him, huh?"

"Shut up—!" Corrin hissed with surprisingly draconic vehemence, and Niles briefly wondered if she was going to clap a palm over his mouth or stab him with that freaky dragon hand (not that he'd object)—

"Hey, hey, hey, I'm on your side—"

Remembering herself, she shrunk back with her arms crossed over her stomach almost fetal-like, and actually looked so piteous and awkward that something in his heart eased up. Then two stray brain cells of his collided.

"Ohhh..." Her ask was so obvious in retrospect, with the embarrassment especially over her new lover. Even more obvious when she blanched and backpedalled.

“It's not like that—! ”

“Lady, I'm not judging.” He actually wasn't, even as funny to shit as this situation was, and exaggeratedly clapped both hands on her shoulders to steady her. Either she'd mangle his intestines or it'd calm her down, and Niles didn't particularly mind either scenario. "Not judging you, not your old man. Tell me if I got the following right, yeah?"

She calmed down.

He noted with great interest that she didn't deny that they were an item.

“You're having a grand time with him in bed.” He licked his lips, delicately picking his next words to avoid her decapitating him on the spot. She was extraordinarily prickly about her new lover and it was fucking adorable. "Both of you are into each other. But fleshy meatbags being meatbags, sometimes bodies don't always listen when you’re in the mood, especially his given everything, if you get my drift..."

Her reluctant little nod was all he needed. He patted her shoulder sympathetically.

"Niles, please, I don't want to embarrass him, forget I said anything—"

"Relax, I got just the thing for both of you. Real subtle; there's a tea that solves this, easy." She squinted at him suspiciously, and he exaggeratedly put a hand over his chest. "Cross my heart and hope to die, in fact you're welcome to stake me yourself if it doesn't work. Heaven knows I'd welcome it."

"A tea?"

"I'm shocked your old man doesn't know of it already, he just needs to drink it before you two go to town. You got everything else you need there, milady?"

"Umm..." Her hands twisted.

"Lube, pregnancy charms, chastity cages—" He helpfully supplied.

"NILES!"

She did take a swipe then between outraged squeaks, and Niles cackled for a long time as he danced away. But she was laughing merrily now and was not nearly as strained or meek as when she did when she first dragged him back in the desolate alleyway. You really have it bad for him, don't you?

"I got you, milady, your illicit package should be ready in the next day or so. You know where I am if anything else pops up." Heh. 

"Niles, I appreciate this, tell me if I can recompensate—"

He airly shrugged. "No payment necessary, and I owe the prick a favour anyway. Hell, maybe he'll remove that stick up his arse now he's boning you down like a dog with a bone, eh?"

"I am not going to give that the dignity of a response." Corrin sniffed in mock haughtiness, and it was all he could do not to nudge her shoulder back with good natured tease.

If only all nobles were like her.

True to the adventurer’s cryptic comments that her old knight had relayed, Prince Leo himself arrived that very next day on horseback with a haughty expression that promised brisk efficiency.

Takumi—the legendary archer and youngest militant prince of Hoshido—had an ardent suspicion of anything or anything not from his homeland. Thus, it was not terribly surprising to Corrin when he had murmured with a hawklike glance towards the Nohrian prince that it was time to call a war-table session—both to strategize and regroup with more than half of the royal representation from each of the rival nations now present under her command. Underlying the archer’s words was a clear vein of scepticism about how this tender little alliance would take shape with the slight majority now skewing Nohrian. 

Corrin knew that Takumi still considered her more of them by blood than Hoshido, and tried not to hold it against him. It had, after all, barely been weeks since their lives had mutually been upended with the awareness of long lost siblings. Trust, real trust, took years to bloom and cultivate at the best of times, let alone in the middle of a war.

Even disregarding the sharp archer's suspicions, Gunter had agreed when Corrin had privately gone to him afterwards to steal some practical advice along with a long, pleasurable kiss of lovers in the shadows. While ensconced in his muscled arms, he had murmured that the records room would be appropriate for such a war planning space; the unused archives had both the acoustics and privacy to serve such a meeting in spades, and could be used to store maps for upcoming missions. It was good advice, and made her terribly ache for the years where she had his undivided attention with combat lessons in her tender years.

If her oldest knight had left her a little breathless in the aftermath of the advice-giving between his daring gauntlets and experienced tongue, no one commented on that or the slight flags of heat on her cheeks. Why, if anyone noticed, they likely assumed she had taken some other younger lover in the camp, and Corrin bit her lip with barely concealed smugness. There were many times she truly wanted to see the complete shock on everyone's faces if they knew whose name she cried out in the dead of the night as he claimed her. Sometimes, by the way the corner of her old mentor's eyes creased in possessive mirth, Corrin knew Gunter entertained the same thoughts when he appeared little else but an stoic man lost in thought.

Also true to her old knight's words, the records hall had been used sparingly and was a remarkably good choice for the war-room meeting once Jakob had conjured up a beautiful oak table, perfectly fitting the circular, severe space. Corrin complimented him on the find and the white haired butler was still faintly beaming with pride when the first attendees filled in, making themselves at home with scrolls and drinks for the next few hours.

It was to be a long meeting.

The Nohrian representatives in black and gold armour arranged themselves along one flank of the table from youngest to eldest: Elise, Leo, and Camilia. In a closely matching mirror of white and red, the Hoshidans filed in with Sakura and Takumi lightly sitting on the additional cushioned stools that had been procured by Jakob. Her ever-faithful and peerless butler could magic up furniture no matter where he went, and the tall stools disguised the fact that most of them were, pointedly—barely of age to be leading such a war campaign. 

Corrin’s eyes scanned the rest of the room: Kaze stood beside the Hoshidans, the ever diligent ninja holding a quill pen at the ready and ready to take copious notes from the hours-long meeting bolstered by a fresh mug of green tea. Niles, giving a cheeky two-fingered salute back and utterly unafraid among the royalty, slouched back against the wall behind Prince Leo with his hooded eye also cutting through the masses, no doubt analysing and gleaning new information. Azura, the dancer draped in blue and white and beholden to no nation, perched statuesquely on a stool beside Corrin with her lashes closed in a silent prayer of respect or thanks. It was always one of the two with her.

And lastly, Gunter.

Black pillar of strength beside her side for all these years, just as steadfast and comforting of a presence he had been since her childhood when nightmares plagued her. He stood beside her and slightly behind, one professional pace away but still close enough she could feel his steadying heat without turning around.

“Thank you all for your time. I’d like to start with a summary of our accomplishments as a unifying force.” Corrin spread her fingertips on the polished wood of the table. “Most recently, the legendary Yato—my sword and peerless gift from the Hoshidan lands—has recently been blessed with power from the Rainbow Sage who happened to be one of the last dragons living among mankind, and also mentioned of the invisible enemies that we must be on guard for. He has since passed in peace.”

Rest well. 

“May I see this sword?” Leo interjected quietly, shifting briefly around the table and reaching out a dainty gloved palm for the blade. 

“Certainly.” 

“This Rainbow Sage also mentioned several other divine weapons critical to augmenting the Yato’s power.” Takumi added, painting context as confidently as an ink master while the other princeling studied the weapon closely. “It does not seem a stretch to assume these would be our own divine weapons wielded among the royalty, and would also include both Prince Ryoma’s and Prince Xander’s swords.” 

Corrin inclined her head in gratitude for the clarity. The legendary archer had been one of the most surprising but oddly loyal allies as of late. His prickly words could never be called soft, but the incisive quips were always paired with a keen mind that eased the fog of war. 

“Most curious.” Prince Leo handed back the sheathed sword with a brisk nod towards Corrin’s way. She received it hilt first as the little blonde prince re-assumed his position on the stool with restrained poise. “I have word that the Hoshidan Prince Ryoma and Princess Hinoka are en-route to the Bottomless Canyon.” 

This he said slyly towards Takumi, and Corrin was tickled to see the frisson developing between the two rival, young princes.

She wasn’t the only one amused. Niles chose the moment to gave the briefest wink to her, and Corrin all but rolled her eyes back at the eyepatched adventurer. The timing there was anything but coincidence, and it was obvious as day which retainer of his Leo had heard that morsel of a rumour.

“Your information is correct.” Takumi replied sourly, looking like he was in the process of sucking on the pineapple that strangely resembled his grey ponytail. The Hoshidan archer squinted further suspiciously. “...as are your sources.”

Smiling, Corrin continued. “The time has now come that in one week, the skies will change over the Bottomless Canyon, and all will be made clear to everyone who has given their trust. In three days we will march for the Bottomless Canyon and I will finally be able to show the invisible enemies that have beset us and our nations this whole time. My only humble request is a little more patience.” 

“We trust you, my sweet dear.” Camilia murmured. Elise, the littlest blond princess by her side, nodded eagerly with her fingertips still in the bowl of sweets somebody had left in the middle of the table. 

“The only one left unaccounted for is the Nohrian Prince Xander.” Kaze interjected quietly, twirling the quill with thought. “Time will tell if he joins. There is still hope.” 

Corrin gratefully inclined her head towards the soft-spoken ninja’s way, and the table dissolved into a half-dozen scattered thoughtful conversations. 

“By your leave, and well done.” Gunter leaned in for a brief whisper by her ear along with a chaste touch on the small of her back, and Corrin took the risk in smiling back at him openly with the haze of chatter as a partial screen. While she was not a child or a stammering untested speaker these days, his silent company had been appreciated, and she knew he had approved of her performance if her instructor had considered it worth his while to give any praise. "The watchguards have their night report prepared for me. I'll see you afterwards, milady."

"I look forward to hearing the summary personally." Corrin replied dryly, enjoying this game now, and did not miss the tiniest of smirks that played in the corner of his lips.

__________________

"Welcome back, my love. Dare I say you'll find this of interest?"

Her old man sprawled smugly in the new overstuffed recliner that he had claimed in her rooms, and Corrin noticed two things in quick succession.

The first: Gunter had changed into more casual attire rather than his standard heavy plates into a loose evening robe she hadn’t seen yet. The robe was undone at the neck enough to show off gratuitous hints of muscles, and for her eyes to linger at his magnificent silver-furred chest. Her mouth went dry, and she tried very hard not to think of where her hands suddenly wanted to roam, to touch, to caress as she sat in his lap, and to stroke as she felt up his—

Blinking rapidly, she tore her gaze from her smirking old knight to the second: a nondescript tray of teacups neatly organised, a new package, and parchment with the cord it had been tied in.

That he had been gesturing at all along before she had gotten... distracted.

"I don't suppose you know anything about this note, or this gift?" His question was a little too casual. She also happened to notice at that exact moment that only one of the teacups had been filled, and partially drunk. Something vaguely tugged in her mind; a previous conversation about teas with certain properties beyond healing.

Gunter offered the parchment with two fingers quite smugly. With mild dread, she took the thin paper from his hand and unfolded it to read the vaguely spidery handwriting.

For taking your lover on a nighttime romp, and for paying a debt. 

Just drink it, old man. —Niles

Corrin dropped the scrap like it had sprouted the wiggling hairy legs of a tarantula, flushing various shades of pink and hiding her face between her palms with a muffled shriek.

"Niles! Oh gods, I'm going to kill him."

Gunter throatily laughed as he stooped from the recliner to re-fold the cheap parchment neatly. He was still cackling as he leaned back to regard her fondly.

"That would be my arena of expertise, milady." One hand of his smoothed the laugh lines away, the corners of his eyes crinkled up in humour and handsome age. He thumbed at the letter casually. "Really, I should be offended at the insinuation but the boy seems to mean well, likewise his... informant."

She went scarlet again at the pause of his last line, one of his grey brows arched sharply and meaningfully at her. It would have been accusatory had it not been for something rather more hungry in his hooded eyes. Gunter’s muscular thighs were spread in arrogant invitation, and twitched wider as her gaze dipped down despite her better instincts. Baser instincts, more like, given how her eyes suddenly couldn’t tear away from the very obvious, heavy outline of his desire.

"Come here, my naughty princess." He ordered with a husky purr, and she did, sliding bonelessly down to her knees between his.

Oh, she did.

__________________

Hours later as he shuddered and ground into her, and she felt her slick and his seed drip in rivers down her thighs—as he dove into her deeper, her voice long gone and shot from shrieking his name over and over in white-hot pleasure of his torturous teasing, she thought she heard him murmur 'that bloody brilliant brat'' punctuated with each frantic thrust deeper and deeper and split her—

__________________

It was some interminable time before they both surfaced, delirious with pleasure. She had wailed—

"Two days?!"

“I suppose it would have been only one, my love, had you managed to wander outside the door that time..." 

Corrin flamed. Even worse when she caught Gunter openly eying at where precisely the blush spread. Really she had intended to go to the war-room meeting. Corrin had dressed for it, said goodbye to her disgustingly smug lover who had still been sprawled stark naked in that peculiarly masculine way and at half mast on her bed. She had her hand on the doorknob to slink out, barely able to walk to the damned door without wobbling on her legs like a newborn fawn—

Until his hands had deviously slid around her hips and down, down, down over her panties and stroked her hyper-sensitive sex through the fabric with a single teasing finger in a way that made her knees buckle on the spot and instantly dripping and swollen and writhing around his calloused pad.

Corrin had whimpered when she felt his body heat behind her, his big hands roughly grasping her thighs and spreading them wide to seat her on his massive cockhead again. She could feel his searing, pressing heat of his crown bulging through the panties like they were nothing, and was already mewling with animal need as she braced her elbows on the door, arching against his sloppy thrusts from behind.

His lips nipped hotly at her earlobe. "That's it, my good girl, come for me—"

And she was gone, incoherent as her orgasm tore through her.

__________________

Her beloved knight was murmuring something about the damned room, again, and it took far too much effort to reel her over-active mind back, even with his lovely purr.

The room.

"Huh?"

"Or did you want Jakob to see this?" He gestured lazily to—and she blushed at—the absolute trashed wreck they had made out of their sheets among a few pieces of furniture.  She really, truly hadn’t known that lovemaking produced quite so much… fluid. 

She hoped it didn’t stain.  “Oh god…” 

"The boy always fancied you, my lady. I would be most entertained by his reaction when he sees the evidence that this senile old stallion tupped you invigoratingly."

"Be nice." Corrin gave him the lightest and limpest of smacks on the arm, and he had the audacity to give a full throated and obscene cackle. Gunter was now nuzzling his thin nose along the highly sensitive skin by her ear again in a way that, frankly, made reality blank out, and he was pressing her down in the bed again, and his manhood was making itself known to her again eagerly.

"And most thoroughly. Wouldn't you say so, my lady?"

“Please—” Corrin whined, her legs already wrapping around him.

__________________

Gunter was whistling now (endearingly, horrifically off key), back from a discrete outside errand of taking their soiled sheets in for an anonymous wash. Eventually Flora and Jakob would be smart enough to put two and two together, but Corrin was not prepared for that talk just yet, and absolutely not around that mountain of circumstantial evidence that he had so gallantly offered to dispose of. 

The evidence. Corrin made a face; she had been scrubbing at a handful of the more obvious stains on the furniture with a concoction he had procured out of thin air and tossed to her with amusement. Not for the first time, Corrin wondered what her old man did before becoming a renown knight in Nohr; he knew suspiciously more about a butler’s work than anyone else other than Jakob.

A quick glance around the room told her that Gunter was now in her bathroom; clothed in the dark layers he typically wore under his black armour and just about finished with shaving, twisting his head to check on his handiwork in the mirror. 

She stared open-mouthed from the floor, transfixed. There was something fascinatingly erotic in the way his muscular shoulders filled out the tiny side-room, how she could see them shift and tense through the fabric, and how tautly deft he was given the confined space. Her eyes drifted down at how his shirt rode up ever just so, enough to show the sliver of skin and tufts of hair that trailed down his stomach and lower, both at turns sinewy and soft.

Corrin bit her lip. She watched him run fingertips several times through his grey-violet hair — preening just so, rather proudly — and it was only when he he turned to exit that she hurriedly pretended to scrub at the stain in the dark wood before he could catch her, flushing red. 

He sat down with a groan into the recliner near her bed and settled in, his boot heels clicking on the floor a second later. 

It was a very nice view of him from the floor, Corrin thought. 

“It seems the army’s preparations to decamp and move out for the Bottomless Canyon are nearly complete. Jakob informed me that they’re loading the wagons now, and will be ready within hours.” 

She leisurely got up and padded closer, giving a slow nod with understanding. 

“There is another matter that we should discuss, milady.” He glanced down his nose at her, not unkindly, but with a deliberate and stern tone that made her straighten up. This was her old instructor from her childhood days. “Take a seat.” 

Corrin instantly perched on his armoured knee. 

“Do not mistaken this for displeasure at the turn our lives have taken. Quite the opposite.” Gunter rubbed a gloved hand over his face, mangling the loose skin in a way she recognized as him stalling for time in a delicate subject. “But we will need to treat our personal lives and activities with… discreteness, going forward.” 

“I don’t want to keep you a secret, sir.” Corrin replied peevishly, watching her toe trace a pattern in his boot. “You deserve better.” 

He groaned. Mumbled something that sounded perilously close to: I almost believe you when you say it like that—

Gunter looked skyward and gestured vaguely up in frustration with a hand. “You do realise the powers that be are not going to be pleased with your personal choices, milady. You need allies—both from Nohr and Hoshido.” 

“So?” She hated how childishly petulant she sounded. 

Gunter stared back at her, a hint of steel and faux intimidation behind a disgruntled noise from his throat that also sounded perilously like: I am trying to be delicate—

"They will look at you in the same way they do now with the word traitor burning on their lips. And they will with worse to impinge your honour, Lady Corrin, and it will be my fault—"  

"Gunter. Stop, please." Words were ineffective compared to a weapon that always struck true against him; so she climbed into his lap like she had always done since little, palms stroking his papery cheeks, and kissed him slow and sweet until his breath went ragged, and their brows were pressed together in tenderness. 

There were still tension in the raised tendons on his hands, but he was smiling wistfully now with crows-eyes of pleasure, and he was altogether less rigid than the rigour mortis of a dead man. An improvement.

"So persuasive…" Gunter rasped with fondness as she stole another, lighter touch of lips on his, this one producing a smirk that played in the corner of his mouth; and she kissed that and his scar too for good measure. "Too bad you couldn't use this charm on everyone, but this old man shan't share you for all the world's treasures—not now, not ever..."

She nuzzled her cheek against the soft skin at his throat, satisfied, and even more so when he wrapped his arms around her, fingertips seeking out her tight shoulder blades as always.

"If word had to get out ..." 

Gunter was considering contingencies, and here she had nearly gone to boneless sleep on her lover. He had worn her out. “...My druthers would be your siblings finding out first, and from us directly. Privately, my lady. Most other miscreants within their spheres of influence should fall into line with their authority, as always.”

Corrin’s heart lurched. “Telling them?”

Gunter looked down at her sadly like she had confirmed an unpleasant assumption of his.

"You git, I'm not ashamed of you.” she had grabbed one of his heavy armour pauldrons out of instinct, wanting to rattle any such notion from his skull. "Is it so strange I wouldn't want to share you with the world either?"

He sighed tensely, unconvinced. 

'You make a case, my lady. Either way, it may be that this decision is out of our hands. I have a strong suspicion that Prince Leo is aware; he was always cunning. Let us seek his audience before we travel."

__________________

In another world, Gunter would have been happy to serve the little blonde prince.

For all of his deliberately veiled darkness that he shared with Iago's mages, the princeling's eyes were wide and bright with clarity and the awareness of what it took for decency to survive in the too-cruel world. It was reassuring to such an old knight that someone so full of youth would also not be disheartened at what it took to retain decency in the world. Or be too averse to the sordid methods that it took—blood would always be paid one way or another.

As it was, his soul was already sold to others. Sometimes, with the princeling's intent looks at him, he wondered whether Prince Leo knew more than even his lover did.

"Sit down, please. Tea?"

Gunter saw Corrin struggle with the barest imperceptible grin in the corners of her mouth. He nudged her bare foot with his boot.

"No thank you, Brother, this should be short." She took a breath, steeling herself like girding herself for battle. "This will be quick, but important… we think you should be be aware, of… um."

He would also need to work on her directness. Or lack thereof.

"—A personal decision, my lord." He added diplomatically with an inclined nod of respect.

Leo glanced briskly between the two of them like he had a foul headache and he would like nothing more than to be elsewhere. "Yes, I'm unfortunately aware. And?"

Corrin made a strangled little noise. 

"And?!"

"What Master Leo is saying, hello to you two, by the way—is nothing escapes his attention through the likes of such dastardly rogues as myself." Niles was leaning against a column with the smuggest shit-eating grin that Gunter had ever seen the brat have. "Princess, you have exotic tastes to be sure, but rest assured my Prince already knew after our chats. Really, I could have saved you lovebirds a walk."

"... I need a moment." Corrin murmured faintly.

"As amusing as all of this is—" the utter sarcasm that dripped out of Leo's cutting words were truly impressive, for somebody so perfectly poised with a delicate teacup in his hand. "—Please tell me that you have considered the political ramifications of such a... ill advised decision. We are at war, and while everyone's attention is turned elsewhere, they will not be distracted for long."

"We will cross that bridge when we get there." Corrin joined in with renewed confidence. Despite the ribbing, her eyes shone with steadiness. "Brother, just like what we have done with every other decision that you and I also have made in the last weeks that would have been unthinkable a season ago. Please trust me, and us, with the same trust you have graciously given me all these times."

It was all Gunter could do to not beam with pride at her.

"Well… that meeting went about as well as I had hoped." Corrin murmured to her oldest knight as they walked along the shale-slate mountain pathway, the horse’s hooves crunching some distance behind them.

Gunter strode by her side with black gauntlets clasped behind his back, deep in reflection. In this leg of the trip he had divested from riding his war-horse to the Bottomless Canyon, giving the reins over to one of the still-healing fighters who had suffered an arrow wound. Corrin strongly suspected her lover wanted to linger by her side in a way that was difficult from an armoured war-horse, and had lent the steed elsewhere as a helpful afterthought. With so many royals and retainers from both nations joining them as of late, there had been more minor injuries after each battle as the skirmishes inevitably grew more vicious.

That absent thought led her mind back to the meeting with the Nohrian prince, Leo; her brother had not been visibly angry at least, and she could handle the rest. The blond princeling had read them the riot act with his particular brand of stoic waspishness, but he had pointedly avoided any mention of Garon's approval or Krakenberg's court, a mercy that Corrin had appreciated and knew was uncommon for the young prince to extend. 

In his words, and in Nohrian words—it was almost a blessing of a kind. I will not interfere with your choices.

"One down, three to go, milady." Her beloved knight had been quietly pondering the same.

"... Actually, sister Elise already knows, sir."

"Does she now?" His deep voice was tinged with intrigue, and Corrin smiled at the memory of the younger blonde princess dancing up those stone steps to the Sage's fortress, giggling merrily as her pigtales gently swayed in the brisk wind up on high. Princess Camilia had been soaring above on her wyvern, scanning the path ahead for an ambush while the two grounded princesses talked like the old days. 

"I didn't mention you precisely by name, but Elise is..." Corrin words trailed off softly. "... observant. She sees things nobody else does, through her books, and by watching.”

It was true. Elise was younger than all of the Nohrian royals being a tender age of fourteen still; hardly somebody expected to find in the healer’s tents working alongside the battle-healers with her magical skills, much less taking along on a war campaign. 

And yet… those occasional and endearing scatterbrained qualities was not dissimilar to how everyone had viewed her as well, not too long ago: only a sheltered little girl who had been locked in a tower for the majority of her life. Elise—despite all appearances—had been watching Corrin with those clear eyes. She had seen what none had not, yet. 

“She mentioned I looked lighter recently, less sad; and was curious. I told her I had found my shining knight." When she looked up at him with a soft and full smile, her venerable knight was staring down at her with an unreadable expression with the lightest of breezes ruffling grey-lilac hair at his temples. “My protector as the love of my life. Sister was very happy to hear, and I think she’d be delighted to talk with you as well.” 

Gunter’s steps slowed as he took the barest of glances behind them over his black-armoured shoulder, eyes sweeping in an observing, protective watch. Satisfied, he twisted back to her, and she was gratified to see his handsomely lined face soften with rare feeling. 

“My silver-tongued princess has such a way with words.” He rasped fondly, close enough to take her hand in his gauntlets, raising it up to his lips for a chaste kiss on her knuckles.

Giddily, she nuzzled into the shelter of his armour when he ducked in, still closer for a stolen kiss, deeper, and away from prying eyes—

—and a raptor screeched above in interruption; their eyes trailed the bird’s flitting shadow and towards its call as it banked between the high cliffs and the approaching gloom of the Bottomless Canyon. 

Thunderheads roiled ominously in the distance.

Reluctantly, Corrin let him break off, the moment lost as he instantly transformed into that stoic, severe black knight again with one flicker of an expression. 

"I always hated this place."

Corrin laid her head against his arm sympathetically. She was becoming rather less fond of it too.

__________________

As luck would have it, Hans was waiting in the narrow opening by the bridgehead between the black canyon’s high walls. 

In the shadowed darkness far above, Gunter smiled with a predator’s viciousness.

Truth be told, he had almost forgotten about Garon's henchman; the very same odious thug that had scored an embarrassingly lucky hit on him in the last encounter and knocked him off the bridge beyond. Hans’ meagre mercenary force that had been waiting in ambush closer by the canyon entrance—a scouting camp, no doubt paid for by the Nohrian crown—was easy enough to clean up. Jakob was already back there busily tasking himself with those final battlefield executions.

It was nearly just the three of them now—himself, his little sword, and the bald mushroom of a henchman waiting in the soot-black canyon walls beyond the scant handful of soldiers that remained.

Corrin threw herself again at an archer and smeared the once-a-man against a wall effortlessly. One more down of the dwindling force, and it would not take long for the others to follow like shorn weeds. She moved with inhuman grace now, felling two more mages with quick succession, and his heart burned with terrible fondness towards her all the more as he followed diligently with lance in hand as her shadow of death. 

His little sword danced a silvery trail of death ahead of him, and the luxury of watching was intoxicating. The black wolf in his chest bared bloodied fangs in approval at the viciousness; Gunter knew what was coming, and perversely did not want anyone else to partake in this intimacy. The beast beneath her skein was tugging, pulling again, at the old reminder of rage and grief, nearly as familiar now to her as it was to him. 

He would give this gift to her.

Hans was scared now, blustering with empty lungs and even emptier forbidding air at his sides. Surely he was reminded of how perilously easy it was to find oneself walking off the unsteady planks.

"Hiding behind your bitch, old man—"

Gunter throatily laughed derisively and slow as a hunter's call, the sound echoing in the canyons. It was enough that Hans stiffened with his grip on the long-handled axe pointed their ways. 

The black knight was close enough to see those knuckles whitened with fear.

"Hiding, Hans?" Gunter crooned, eyes bright in the semi-dark. "I do believe one has to have a sporting chance to qualify as hiding.” His little sword’s red eyes were as bright as a hunter's moon as she circled behind him, scenting fear from the mutual prey. “My dear fellow, you are simply a dead man walking."

He did not miss how the odious thug risked a glance at the rickety bridge behind as if stealthily ensuring an out. Little did the henchman know that there was no escape this time.

It was such a terrible pity, Gunter thought with sardonic amusement as he crossed his arms behind his back, that such a feared convict of Nohr would be slain so easily by an old man and a little girl. If that was the best that Garon had to offer as challenge, then the cretin did not deserve the title of king. Then again, that old fool had been slipping to not see the peerless weapon that his lover now was.

“Lady Corrin?” Gunter stepped aside, not even bothering to break stance as he called out. "After you."

She did not typically care for killing, he knew, but his princess all but stalked past him with the sure-footed steps of a predator, intent on the enemy beyond. Just as he trained her.

With two vicious strokes of her blade, Hans’ lifeless body fell.

His little sword stood in a pool of the remains with a snarl of victory, and privately, it was the most beautiful sight he had seen. 

__________________

All Corrin could feel was the hot wet blood dripping off of her spattered face as she staggered towards one of the high shale canyon walls, and how good it had felt. 

It was not right. But it was good.

The roar of hot blood that rushed and adrenaline slowly stilled to become the thudding heartbeat in her wrist and she spared a glance at her shaking hands pressed against the canyon walls. Hans had been nothing, but for a time it had felt like he had taken everything dear from her. Still unsteadily wheezing from the exertion of the kill, it was a curious realisation that that ghost of a fear had stayed with her for so long. 

She heard boot-steps close in and knew without turning that it was her old beloved knight. Only he would dare to step close when she was in this state. 

Gunter’s breath was hot and hard against her cheek as he crowded around her from behind suddenly, his gauntlets flattened out over her bare hands. Pinning her fingers to either side of her on the rough black stone, he pressed against her roughly, almost darkly protectively the darkness of the canyon wall. She felt deliciously smothered there, vulnerable and feeling his armour all but crush her to the shale stone of the canyon wall, and let herself go limp against his solidity with fluttering eyelids.

Then she felt his tongue flick out, teasing against her jawline sensuously—oh, he was licking at the rain-diluted blood on the corner of her mouth, rumbling with filthy pleasure as he continued lapping, tongue teasingly exploring at her prickling skin.

Corrin barely moaned out a tiny fuck please, sir— and then he was on her, his black armor pinning her savagely against the stone wall with his hands insatiably roaming down and scraping into her flesh with far more sordid intent than he ever gave the impression of.

Faintly, she heard the sounds of his belts clinking and releasing, a muffled curse behind her, and then him hot and stiffly swollen, pressing along her inner thigh as his gauntlets greedily and eagerly hitched her thighs over his hips, spreading them as apart as his erection ground her mercilessly against the black stone. Her pussy was so sensitive already, slick and tender and craving him.

Barely moaning out an incoherent ineedyou, she could distantly feel his groping gauntlets pulling her panties aside, both of them already of one mind grinding in rhythm together.

There was a thousand reasons why they shouldn’t —

She felt sensation of his touch in that soft join between her hips and thighs, a little loving circle of his armoured thumb that was both an invitation and an ask of sorts, before she felt his hot cockhead press eagerly past her entrance. In response, she keened out embarrassingly with overpowering need, her cunt throbbing around him as he began to gently work in deeper with grunts. 

“We shouldn’t… ” She could feel his deep chuckles trail by her neck in answer now, and he nipped hard enough between thrusts and loving nuzzles to wring a gasp from her, and she tried not to loose herself to blind pleasure at how she felt him throb in turn, already half buried in her slick. “You want this, princess.” Gunter gutterally groaned out as she clenched and twitched around him, savouring the friction as he thrust in with a another pleasurable shudder. “I can feel you. You want me.”

This time he sucked on the skin of her neck, nibbling harder. The worst part was, she could feel her old venerable knight smirk with pleasure as he gave one last loving nip, just a little overly-hard with rough tease that forced a ragged cry out.

He shifted and paused before drawing back out with a disgustingly satisfied masculine groan, his sticky precum and her slick dripping down her thigh. 

Corrin whimpered pathetically at the sudden absence of his comforting weight, only to earn a deep wicked chuckle in return. Sagging deliriously backwards in his arms, her oldest knight took her tenderly, murmuring.

“Over there…” He rasped, voice thick with distracted need. “Should work better for both of us…”

Beside them and still slightly sheltered under the overhang was a flatter boulder, and she immediately understood his intention, crawling up it on all fours, panting. He descended on her instantaneously, armoured black greaves and gauntlets on either side of her impatiently groping for her hips, hungry.

She had almost lost him here in this very canyon, Corrin thought almost with wonder as waves of pleasure tore through her as she felt her oldest knight move back in her, groaning, almost smearing her across the stone with his prick in their passion. 

He was laughing now in the rain with ecstacy, low and rough under the thunder with his head thrown back as he fucked her harder, without a single care for how their frenetic coupling would look to an interloper, grinding into her now with slower, more forceful intention as he neared climax already.

“Harder, sir—”

He obliged, now chasing his own climax as she seized around him, stars erupting in her vision as she squirmed heedlessly on his every renewed frenzied twitch, his girth and throbs rutting in even more eagerly. Pleasure flared and pulsed as her hips thrust with his, heedless of anything else, and she felt him come first with great pulsing erratic gouts of come as he filled her. She followed with high whimpers before he sagged against her and down with his own release. 

Too soon, they were both shuddering and gasping with satisfaction in mutual messy spend on the low, flat boulder. Between those ragged bouts of panting, she was smothered in his scent as surely as his armour and tailcoat were now strangely shielding her from the rain, enveloping her.

Under his darkness, she felt so protected that it was as heady as the lust itself.

With a shaky groan—both from the pleasure of afterglow and of the old indignant pain in his knees, she knew—Gunter crawled off first, working his way downwards wheezing with the occasional wry chuckle, and Corrin turned over on her back ungainly to watch him shamelessly.

“I may ask for you to massage this old man’s knees when we get back.” A slow sensual kiss pressed against her thigh, and she saw his eyes crease with amusement, the gentleman. “This was always easier on the joints in a bed. With a mattress.”

“I’ll kiss them better for you sir, always.” 

That earned her another kiss, and a nuzzle of his nose in a far more sensitive place. As if he shared thoughts with her, her old disciplinarian murmured into her bare pussy, licking a line of fire that had her warbling out flagrant sin mixed with prayers. "I'm so proud of you."

A wail broke through as she came again when the flat of his tongue flicked against her with mischievous intent, bringing an overwhelming wall of pleasure along with his drenched grey-lilac strands messily tickling her thighs, the most wonderful sensation along with her being spread out over cold metal of his armour.

Never had she thought she would know him so intimately, Corrin thought deliciously with sin, not like this, as she spread her thighs even wider for him, hooking her legs around his neck guard for leverage and feeling the cold steel press on her nakedness in delightfully private areas.

"Good girl. Good girl."

One fingertip of his gauntlets caressed between her bare cunt-lips as an sly afterthought, and the filthy tickling sensation of the cold steel in contrast made her writhe before he neatly tugged the impossibly soaked fabric back over her in an absolute mockery of modesty.

God, he even had the audacity to bend down, chuckling as he nosed and inhaled her scent through the fabric, his thin nose wrenching a prolonged moaned warble out of her as he kissed her there one last time, and she came on him again.

After, with the widest grin as he wiped his face clean with a gauntlet, Gunter stood to his full height.

It wasn’t fair, she thought while watching him preen smugly, slicking loose strands of his lilac-grey hair back with one hand while adjusting his armour. Like effortlessly shifting to the imperceptible difference of another mask to his usual stoic professionalism, he made it look so easy when she was still in pieces from the aftershocks of her orgasms.

"Bastard." Corrin croaked, finally mustering the strength into her limp and shaking limbs to slide herself off the slick boulder. 

Even with his gloved hands tenderly steadying her on the ground, her own feathery hair was hopelessly tangled and standing every which way as he—with no small amount of amusement—gently worked out the worst knots just like how he brushed her hair back in the old days.

"Now, milady, that is no way to thank your oldest retainer for his substantial, gracious efforts in affairs of war.” Gunter chided as he teased apart one particularly stubborn knot of strands, humour dancing in his eyes and his lopsided scarred smirk. “And elsewhere.” Once her hair was judged acceptable by his ministrations, she felt his gauntlets tickle playfully down her armour while expertly repositioning her plates. 

Wickedly, he gave a hearty, final, filthy smack on her ass.

“Fuck, sir—” 

“That feel good?” Gunter murmured as he bent lower with an eyebrow raised, low and rough and sensual. He still gripped her there, and gave another playful squeeze, and she tried not to acutely focus on how one of his big hands was enough to hold her. “…You might listen to me more if I bent you over my knee, and gave you this attention…”

He had fucked her senselessly not a minute before, and she was already going molten again, limp against his black armor and his muscled embrace and dizzily considering if they had time for—

“Lady Corrin!” 

Jakob’s voice called from a great distance away, or so it felt in the canyon’s echoey walls, but she jumped all the same—flushing scarlet in the face as Gunter let her go with a sensuously lazy chuckle. Her venerable knight’s dark eyes flashed like a cat in that shared secret, a wink of tell-tale satisfaction peeking around the professional mask he slid back on effortlessly.

Just in time, for Jakob scampered around the rocks with his head on a swivel while checking for possible ambushes remaining. Corrin heard faint motion behind her as Gunter merely retrieved his hand-axe from a corpse with a squelch, whistling absentmindedly to himself, all the world like a sentimental elderly man lost in thought.

“Lady Corrin.” The butler bowed smartly, glancing around the bridge. “I thought I heard something thisaway—”

At her side, now, Gunter was a black pillar standing at attention, no different in professionalism other than the faintest ghost of a smirk playing in the corner of his scarred lips.

“You did, correct.” The black knight replied baldly, and Corrin resisted the urge to kick his boot savagely given how she knew the man was taking an enormous, smug pleasure in the blithely misleading response, especially when it came to his rivalry with the butler. “We were just disposing of Nohrian mercenaries, led by our now deceased friend Hans.” 

“Good riddance then.” Jakob replied with satisfaction, recognition of the Nohrian henchman flashing in his sharp eyes. “I only wish you left him for me to deal with, given your advanced age.” 

“Be quicker next time, boy.” 

“Let’s head back and set up camp.” Corrin interjected, still feeling painfully, nakedly scandalous, even with the heat in her cheeks now down to a low simmer. Even with him just standing there, there was a hint in the miniscule swagger in his hips that made her want to drag her lover into her tent and ride him to very pleasurable exhaustion through the night. “Who knows what else we’ll find around here.” 

“Indeed.” Gunter drawled with a whisper of affection into the shell of her ear when Jakob had turned away. “Many sordid fiends around these parts.”

This time, Corrin kicked his boot and received an snicker from him.

__________________

As was becoming habit in the steadily growing army, there was a circle of bored soldiers by the sparring grounds watching various feats of combat and betting. 

Corrin briskly walked with Azura from the main strategy tent having finished discussions with the royals early, calculating how much time they had until giving up on the two eldest princes of the nations to arrive. A few days, but time was running out sooner than she’d prefer. 

Excited chatters and jeers from the soldiers cut through Corrin’s contemplation, a different tone that made her take notice with a furrow of pensive and instinctive consideration. They sounded much like the jackals that had tracked them through the deserts of southern Hoshido, and she briskly sped up to wade into the sea of bodies, only to see—

Standing on top of the loose sand that covered the sparring arena were two very familiar figures circling each other. 

She narrowed her eyes. Jakob and Gunter were always usually at each other’s throats, but their stances were different here; sharper, this no friendly sparring match. 

With a leadened squirm of her stomach, Corrin could guess at what happened far too easily; her secret relationship had been found out by the butler.

“This isn’t where you want to be; please leave.” The blue-haired dancer murmured, subtly shifting from a more passive stance to one that drew eyes as she parted the crowd like a minnow through a river. For the briefest moment, Corrin was envious at the easy authority. 

“Please go.” Azura said quietly again, and faintly glowed with power enough that the crowd took notice and began to slink away. Whether it was in fear of such magic or simple common sense, it was not long before before the sparring grounds were eerily empty, having been so full mere moments before. 

The only others that stayed were a pair of ravens cawing on top of the pennants that marked the outer ring of the camp, and Princess Hinoka who nodded their way briskly while leaning naturally on her naginata. “We’ll have to split them up. I’ll take the butler.” 

With weariness, Corrin turned from her and the dancer at her side to the two men beyond still glowering at each other across the loose sand. 

"She. Chose. Me." Gunter enunciated through the widest shark-like grin she had seen on him, looking remarkably like a black wolf circling her poor butler who looked ready to shake out of his skin with possessive fury. "Not you. Me. Stand down, boy, or are you going to do anything other than glare, and run back under skirts for a good cry?"

“I bet you can’t even get it up, old man.” The butler jeered back, lip curling in derision and looking oddly like he was enjoying the jabs, prodding viciously and probing for weakness like the knives he favoured in battle. Perhaps there was something to that.

Gunter grinned, and Corrin started fast-walking towards him in dismay; she knew the delight in his eyes was going to do no favours for Jakob or for herself for that matter.

“Really, can’t manage anything more creative? You might want to be careful cleaning her rooms next time, whelp.” He gave that short head jerk, still smirking awfully wide down at Jakob, and she was going to throttle her old man, absolutely strangle him given the leer that was creeping through, and his darkly menaced growl. “I’ve tupped her on every surface you’ve touched, and a few you haven’t.”

Even as sheltered as Corrin was, she flinched as the butler darted in for a punch that struck true.

A sickening crunch of bone rang out with an earsplitting echo.

Oh for god’s sake.

Corrin hissed in sympathy, or maybe it was a little in exasperation or some colourful combination of both as she closed in on her old knight, who staggered back from the force but still stood. Digging for a spare handkerchief that her siblings had always insisted on, she could distantly hear Hinoka holding a hollering Jacob back, and the songstress trying in vain to distract him. 

“Sir, are you all right—” A gargled gag sounding remarkably like a barn-cat expunging a hairball interrupting made her turn around and belatedly go a shade of pink at the slip of her choice in words. There were times when her endearment for him was innocuous; in front of Jakob already truthfully assuming the worst was not one of them. 

It did not help that Gunter’s gauntlet snugly fitted around her hip in a rare and blatantly possessive manner that could never pass for anything but lovers. Moving away and batting his hand aside would just make the whole scandal worse, and so Corrin meekly held her stance, dabbing at his broken nose before the blood could get any worse. 

The worst part was she enjoyed those touches. Some dark, secret, spiteful part of her that she didn’t even know existed uncurled with a low lazy, satisfied warmth. Despite the unseemly dribble of red pouring from Gunter’s nose not even the least bit staunched by her handkerchief, his eyes shone with delighted and possessive triumph that she could not pretend was much different than her own. 

“You—” Jakob spluttered, wiping blood from his gloves with a shaking snarl and sending the droplets to the sands. Hinoka grabbed Jakob’s shoulders again, hauling him back bodily with tense muscles and a professional stance borne of one who was raised with combative brothers. “You and—and that geezer—”

Hinoka and Azura to their credit did not react; if anything, they looked just as exasperated. It was only Jakob who was trembling like a leaf in some righteous combination of fury and disgust. And yet, somebody had to be the adult and so Corrin closed her eyes before breathing out a calmer breath. 

“Jakob. Go to your tent, get some rest. Just… forget about all of this, as best you can. I’ll talk with you soon.” 

“Is that an order, milady?” Her butler stiffly replied and in another world, she would have flinched at the bitterness that crept through. Corrin ached with sympathy, but separation and distance would be the kindest. 

At least, she fervently hoped. 

“It is.”

He gave a savage jerk of his chin remarkably much like her old knight, and quickly vanished as he stalked off in the eternal gloom. Azura and Hinoka shared a world-weary glance of unexpected comrades, and with short but professional fare-wells also serenely vanished. 

Without the promised entertainment, it was just her and Gunter remaining in the corner of the sparring yards with torches flickering in the night. Corrin wordlessly handed her old knight another handkerchief as he grinned back at her, unrepentant. 

Crisis over, she started to march him towards the healers tent.

"I've heard women fancy a broken nose. Perhaps I should keep it." His eyes were dancing with good humour even though she could see him enduring the smarting pain.

"You didn't have to rub it in like that."

"Oh, but I did, my dear." Gunter sighed with resignation, tilting his head back slightly enough to ease the flow of blood. "There will be challengers to this decision, and your jealous butler will not be the last one. Boys see red when they see the object of their affections with someone they consider… lesser. Weaker. Much like a misbehaving brat, firmly addressing these incorrect notions will give us peace more quickly." He paused, coughing, and adjusted her rapidly reddening handkerchief on his dripping nose. "There also may have been some personal satisfaction involved, my lady."

"I'm sure." Corrin replied dryly, steering him in a beeline to the entryway of the healer’s tents authoritatively. With rare grace he acquiesced without a single grumble. Perhaps his nose stung worse than he let on, or he was still bolstered by the strange good humour. 

His next words were drowned out by the frenetic alert of the guards—and it took Corrin a moment to realise they were happily shouting that Crown Prince Xander had at last, ridden to her call after all.

The healers were professional and tidily quick in the act of magically mending his broken nose even with the general camp excitement of the Crown Prince arriving to their aid. 

One of the white-robed healers was muttering how such injuries of pride were becoming more common with the rowdy soldiers and impatient soldiers from both rival nations in such close quarters, versus grievous injuries of war. Gunter sourly supposed it was not very befitting of his own professionalism to show up with such a wound; he needed to set an example for the younger blockheads in a vigorous attempt to keep order and discipline. 

Discipline was even more crucial in these knife-edged days when former enemies and bloodied soldiers were spending every waking hour in close quarters; the old knight had no illusions that many of them had fought on the same battlefield on opposite sides, and that the whole camp could erupt into seething tensions over old grudges or quarrels at any day. 

Such matters, he mused, might’ve just become a non-issue with the arrival of the last Nohrian royal.

Crown Prince Xander—young black diamond and star of the Nohrian kingdom—was a powerfully built figure, especially on horseback where he preferred to lead the ever-shifting tides of warfare from. At twenty-nine, he was in his prime and a lion that boasted the reverence of the army and the grudging respect of the mages guild for his matchless prowess in the battlefield. 

Xander was also Garon’s favoured weapon to use to bring miscreants into line, an association that the old knight had never forgotten since the days of the Concubine Wars.

The very same blonde princling had been pacing outside the healer’s tent for him, strangely enough, and glanced up with recognition when Gunter strode out. He was thankful that his nose was not bloodied now as an embarrassment, small mercies, though the old knight was sure his luck would run out soon.

As if reading his mind, fate obliged. 

"Sir Gunter, a word in private, if you will."

“Of course, your majesty.” 

Trailing respectfully a step behind and to the side in the customary position, the old knight followed the prince further into the twisty dark recesses of the volcanic rocks that made the canyon, beyond earshot of the watch-guards who were long since distracted to even care about their conversation. Everyone was either paying attention to the circus amok in the camp or too uneasy by the Bottomless Canyon’s endless gloom to care about two figures slipping away.

Gunter would have to lay into the watch-guards for their slip after this conversation. 

“I would have your thoughts on Princess Corrin.” Xander’s expression was smooth and polished. Too smooth. “I have reports that you have spent considerable time with her as of late.”

The trap was carefully worded, carefully deniable. And yet, Gunter was all too aware of court politics to see the naked dagger ensheathed in the other hand, behind the open hand. It was fitting that this prideful lion would be the one of the royal siblings to come with this particular threat at hand. Gunter had known the court would make its opinion on their relations clear, at some point.

“Milady Corrin is a natural leader and well equipped to lead this force.” Gunter replied back with the dryest neutrality. “She has bridged tensions that will benefit Nohr and its citizens immensely in the coming years.” 

Xander gave a pitying smile. “With all due respect, sir knight, I am referring to more personal time.”

Gunter stayed silent, waiting. The prince was not done, and it would not do to interrupt the inevitable dressing-down that came from the highest ranks. He grimly considered with the darkest humour it was a warped honour that somebody no less than the crown prince would consider the dalliances of such an elderly knight worthy of his time.

"Girls like her are... flighty." The worst part was he could tell by the Prince’s pitying expression he meant the words as a kindness. Xander fiddled with the cuff of his white riding glove, a half smirk playing on his face in an obvious attempt at the unsavoury male bonding that went on behind doors. "You do know silly chits like that with fancies, whims of fantasy, and such adorable little crushes. Wonderful when they're young flowers, simply wonderful to remember such beauties exist." 

Gunter tasted raw hatred on his tongue as the Nohrian prince continued, oblivious. "In time these girls will bloom, and they too have their own purpose with proper marriages as according to our esteemed tradition. And that one is simply too..." There was a gleam in Xander's eye as the crown prince licked his lips, such a predatory gleam the old knight had to suppress a powerful urge to rip the royal's throat out on the spot with his gauntlets. "Simply too unique, as a true flower among many such blossoms in Nohr to be picked so willy-nilly. Her future will be just so."

To be wasted on someone like you, was the clear threat. A desiccated ghost of a commoner that didn't deserve a single touch of hers.

If Xander had been any other Nohrian man, honour stipulated that the old knight would strike him down on the spot. You truly are one of Garon's own, and a fitting legacy for him.

'I'm disappointed in you, Gunter. Nohr will not be kind to the choices made here." It was the only glance that Xander deigned to meet his with. And still, the old knight stood with his gaze burning into the cliff wall slightly to the right, his jaw flexing with cold fury. There was nothing the old knight could act on except take the barbs on the chin with stoicism of a stone statue. Any such open defiance would be the certain death of his lover’s strained little alliance. 

In that moment, It was the only thread of reason that restrained his hand from acts of cold violence.

"My lady Corrin will make her own decisions, as she has always done." Gunter replied flatly with an abyss of malice flavouring every syllable. And I will ensure that to my last breath, scion of Nohr and blight upon this world.

Xander looked askance, almost looking boredly disappointed at the reminder.

"So she will."

"Is there anything more, my lord?"

The prince didn't even meet his eyes now, fluttering a hand in clear disdain. "No, I suppose that will be it. Dismissed."

Your delicate little flower has bloomed under my hand, so strong and beautiful that you come running to her feet like a bitch in heat, Gunter ached to hiss in his ear as the old knight stiffly stalked past the crown prince. You, my tender royal, are ensnared in her garden now, in ways you are eternally blind to—that same garden I have tended for decades—and your grave will be buried there, at her feet.

At her feet and mine.

But he stayed silent.

For Corrin, for his love, for her plans, for his plans—Gunter stayed silent, and fervently begged to any god or devil that would listen that his revenge would taste as profoundly sweet as he had fantasised for decades.

__________________

Much, much later that night after he had long since been asleep, Gunter dreamed again.

He dreamed this time of Krakenburg.

Not the graveyard of decency that he had walked in those decades past, but a future Krakenburg; this particular inverted castle was exquisitely outfitted for a magnificent masquerade and decked in colours of festive celebration—Nohrian royal colours of red and black.

Red, like the blood-deep pools of his lover’s eyes.

Black, much like the armour of the other nameless man that his princess had been betrothed to; their soon-to-be union the cause of the celebration.

Gunter wandered the halls, searching for her one last time.

Doubtless she had hidden away if only briefly to escape from the oppressing sensations and attention; his princess was predictable to a fault. He hunted her silently through the faceless crowd like he would prey between birch trees in midwinter.

Only once or twice did a shadowy unimportant figure turn his way, and he was equally unperturbed on his mission. Doubtless they expected the likes of him to always be on guard like a good toy-soldier standing at attention, chivalric duty always on his mind.

He knew of the rumours, the more sordid gossip that flowed after a few bottles of the sickly-sweet wine preferred in the highest echelons of Krakenburg's court. Regardless of who or where the words originated, they followed a predictable routine. 

It went as thus: the old venerable knight guarding Princess Corrin as her shadow for a decade was much too old of a fossil to be a threat to her virginity, impotent in his elder years as the march of time wore on, and yet still deserving of the jealous hatred of randy men who would kill to have such unrestrained access to the young tender princess. 

A story as old as time. They thought him like a midwinter river, frozen up and shrivelled.

How pitiful, that they did not know the currents still ran true and steady beneath the winter years, his blood only running deeper like a hunter's patience.

Even in such an auspicious celebration where she was the guest of honour, Gunter did not see Corrin amongst the masked patrons, or in the pristine white gown she would only wear on this singular fateful day. 

White as the last color to contrast the rest; Nohrians knew full well the value of purity.

Gunter rounded an ebon column, and the scene before him rippled hazily like still water consuming a stone—

Now a magnificent table ladened with a king's feast spread before him like a whore’s legs.

Veritable years of laborious, arduous work went into the ponderous delicacies and dishes meant to satiate all sorts of fleshy appetites and desires in an orgy of gluttony—

Except every one of these gilded and meticulously plated meals were withered and rotten, maggots crawling over the carcasses of the glazed pig and roasted boar like they did the ribcages of fallen soldiers in battle, creamy bone splintered and cracked open by axes and wildlife.

Upon that very same wrought table in a delicate halo of silver-white hair that fanned around her porcelain-doll-like face—quite unlike the rest of the spoils in the fetid mountain of decay—was a sleeping Corrin.

Silently advancing, Gunter removed his own mask, the unnecessary little thing shattering on the ground. The attempts at illusions and entertainment were playthings of children who did not know where the real prize was.

The sleeping princess awoke when he laid a finger on her tender rosebud lips.

<Shh.>

She made a hesitant move as if to crawl away from him, but his claws seized her hair and arms, trapping her. Between his black gauntlets, her heart beat like a rabbit's—soft, delicate, and infinitely precious as life. Moreso, with how easy it would be to snuff out.

But those were fantasies of lesser, uncreative men. 

No, he would add to her life as a fitting legacy for the two of them, that some bastard of a royal did not deserve to touch. He would plant his seed in her; he of the dead, more like the spoilt rotten food that fell away than of the living, let alone the soft innocence of his lover, soon to be mother of their child.

At the thought of Corrin heavy with his own child, he stiffened.

The scene blurred to his own quickening desires, and now she laid bonelessly under him, white skirts hiked up to reveal her cunt, and mind half gone as she writhed against his girth with breathy pants of need. 

<No—please, sir—>

She was slick already, betraying herself as he buried himself in her with a long slow possessive growl.

She spasmed once, shuddered, and that was all the real resistance she gave. Her cunt clenched around him, hungry for his reddened prick, the little liar, but no, he was going to make her beg when she wanted it, and fill her when she didn't.

<Sir, sir, oh—>

Inch by inch, her trembling thighs spread, growing more limp with each successive thrust as her mewls grew louder. Slowly, through the wet thrusting snaps, he felt her rhythm shudder to his, fingernails scrabbling uselessly against his armour plates as he sheathed himself fully in her.

He fucked her for hours.

He could feel her mind now, so receptive and pliable now. Broken through with the tiniest shard of feather-faint resistance through the haze of lust as she squirmed around his girth with sobbing eagerness, crying out as she tightened at his every throb.

He knew the second she gave in, limp around him in her slick, so eagerly receptive as he thrust into her demandingly deeper with each unhinged grunt of his in climax as his balls slapped against her.

She was his—

Corrin screamed his name at every mounting thrust and as he finished in her. She clawed at the table-sheets deliriously, a bitch in heat as he speared her, hips viciously snapping against hers, spilling judiciously in climax.

His seed spilled out of her clenching hole in the throes of pleasure, her limply grasping the linen cloth for the useless illusion of modesty as he watched her writhe.

She was his and there was nothing, nothing that anyone could do as he sagged onto her with malicious glee, curling a finger around her cunt and through the liquids as she clenched around his digit again. No more than the mere proof of her soon-to-be swollen body was needed for their unholy little union to be consecrated, if not spiritually than in the most base laws of nature.

MINE.

With lidded eyes, his hand stroked along her belly, above her womb—

—and the world shattered.

__________________

Gunter staggered out of the tent, cold, clammy sweat the only sensation he could feel amidst a overwhelming nausea. 

YOU ARE MINE.

<Who the seven hells are you—>

Fuck, his head split so badly he couldn’t even tell if his own words were audible or not—

Great big black spots opened in his vision only to have thousands, tens of thousands of eyes staring back unblinkingly. He clawed at his face, bright vivid ribbons of unholy colour lancing over his vision like a dream writ real, too real.

With open-eyed horror, he realised he was not dreaming, not this new darkness that edged his vision and that he was drowning in, sinking in with panic. Shaking his head violently, he groped for purchase, anything to—

Corrin—

He needed to get to her—

I AM THE FORGOTTEN DRAGON. THE BETRAYED KING.

Corrincorrincorrin—

I AM THE ENTOMBED GOD.

…

I AM ANANKOS.

They fell.

Willingly, they all fell down the canyon, one last time. 

One by one until the invisible kingdom and its ghosts swallowed them whole.

__________________

Valla was so bright.

The unnatural quietude also felt monstrously heavy, a weight that made Corrin want to close her eyes and lay upon the ground to sleep for eternity instead of watching the Hoshidan honour guard dig the grave with dry eyes. 

They had not made the jump down the Bottomless Canyon without casualties. 

Strange; she had known Scarlet, the bright-eyed wyvern rider from Cheve for only one battle, and yet her odd death while falling through the canyon had sent a ripple of unease that spread to everyone, no matter how guarded they were or how many deaths they had already seen. 

There was a traitor in the group for Scarlet to be killed in the fall. Not by being dashed upon stone, but with the clear markings of a magical attack.

That more than anything frightened battle-hardened soldiers more than simply facing an enemy head-on. The mysterious attacker had appeared out of nowhere, along with the strange, echoing oppressive voice. Even when Corrin closed her eyes, all she could see was the flame-wreathed attacker, blurred in the motion of the fall and hatefully directing that first fatal blast at her—only narrowly missing by inches. Had she fallen mere steps away, she would have been the one being lowered in the grave, not Scarlet. 

It was a thought that stayed with her long after the impromptu funeral was over. 

Long after since her siblings from both nations had left the quiet grassy knoll, and retreated closer to the large island with boulder-stones dotted throughout the reassuring solidity as meagre cover. She was still thinking when the white-and-blue clothed dancer approached her side during a rare break. The royals had finished discussions about their next move, and Gunter had left to take the first watch as the camp settled down for needed rest. 

“Anankos’ power is strong in this land… we should be careful. It does not surprise me that he would also block our connection to the astral fortress to weaken us further.” Azura was pressing a graceful palm to her temples, massaging away an apparent headache. “Strange. I feel a similar malignant force nearby, almost… like it's among us.”

An icy streak of fear sluiced down Corrin's back. “Can you sense where? Or who?”

Could it be what killed Scarlet?

“No, nothing that specific, unfortunately.”

Azura sounded uncharacteristically weary, though it had been a frenzied past few hours with no time to rest, much less take a shaky breath of relief. The dancer had been nearly in demand as Corrin in calming everyone, burying the dead, resolving small disputes in matters of royal obligations, and the hundreds of other requests as controlled panic slowly adjusted to calmer order.

It was a true pity that their force would not have the shelter of the astral base that everyone had grown to appreciate, with Lilith’s warm protectiveness imbued in the very stones. Something about this invisible kingdom put Corrin’s teeth on edge with how disarming the calm felt; a false deception with how exposed they all were to attack—from any side, and from any time. There would need to be constant set of watchguards, and a much smaller ring of tents. She had to protect them—the risk of repeated failure was too high, and Anankos’ forces too close.  

Tents it was, Corrin unhappily settled on the lack of their lodging options, and wondered how Gunter would feel about that development, as the old man had grown quite appreciative of the privacy of a room, and hoped that he wouldn’t take it too badly. 

__________________

Gunter was already pacing in her personal tent when she padded through the entrance.

“This isn't even hers." Wood scraped over stone, and he moved a crate with irritation over to a smaller stack at the back of the tent. It struck her how quiet her venerable knight could be despite the heavy armour that he had on; even with the thick steel plates he barely made a sound as he opened another chest, and she watched with curiosity.

Beyond the haphazard crates was a hasty cot erected on the other side, and altogether the space was barely enough for the two of them to stand. Corrin's eyes narrowed at the singular small cot. 

On one hand, she supposed she ought to be grateful that nobody else but Jakob had caught onto their relationship. A bigger space for them to sleep on would have lead to more questions than answers and a delicate dance of figuring out who to discretely inform and who they should be informed by. Corrin was not so naive to know that some of her friends that would take the news better from her than him. On the other hand, something tight twisted in her heart that it even had to be something to worry about, and there was a reckless part of her that wanted to be done with the secrecy.

"Milady." The creases by his eyes softening in a side-glance was the only acknowledgement from the old knight; he drummed his fingers on the last chest and shut it with a snap, sharper than it should have been in the silence. "Someone did a rubbish job of setting up your tent; I suspect it is that butler." 

There was a pause when Corrin thought he was going to add to the sentence by the look of annoyance mixed with wry resignation. Instead, he sighed, propping a forearm over one of the crates. "And there is the matter of the sleeping arrangement. For various reasons I would advise us to stay in separate tents for this leg of the journey. We should be more..." Restlessly, Gunter searched for the word, rubbing a hand over his eyes before gesturing. She saw tired, bruised bags under them for the first time. Had they been there before? "... private than we have been about our dalliances. We need to focus more on the coming battles."

"Why? It's not like everyone doesn't know about us.”

Her old knight grimaced and uncomfortably sat opposite of her on a small stool. Already, she missed the creature comforts of their private rooms, spacious in comparison to the cramped spaces and the flimsy fabric; the change felt like an ill omen much like ravens that had been circling above during the funeral. 

Gunter replied, muffled. 

"I know. That is what I am trying to protect you from, milady..."

Really, she didn't see what his issue was. Jakob had already vented and aired out his concerns (mostly) and between him and her Nohrian royal siblings, there was not many opinions she frankly cared about. Not these days when everyone had been wrong about everything. 

Instead, she gave a quizzical head tilt back to him. "Do you... not want this?" 

Us?

"Come now, Corrin, you do know how this must look?" His voice was strained as he clasped hands to his chin in unhappy contemplation, resting wrinkled elbows on his knees while giving a pointed look at her. "In another world, you young thing could be my grandchild, much less my child. And the acts that this dirty old man wants to visit upon you even now are highly inappropriate. Much less to a princess." 

His eyes flicked down across her body, intent clear as his lip curled. 

A small part of her wanted to snip back defensively, and she pushed the feeling down with some effort. Gunter was most likely ill at ease with this strange world considering his last time—involuntarily—in Valla, and she couldn’t blame him for being unsettled. Some pressure tickled uneasily close to her senses that felt like an oil slick she had seen once as a child, before it had been set on fire by battle-mages and frightened her away. 

But his words still stung and like a fool, she couldn’t help but needle further.

"Who does this… matter to?" Maybe there was somebody specific she could talk down.

"Everyone. Your royal siblings, down to the simpletons under your command." Gunter tersely breathed with an unpleasant edge as he stood and rubbed at his lined face again, seemingly half distracted. Her stomach squirmed as he continued with a dismissive gesture, the tent feeling unnaturally claustrophobic. "What if it was my time with you in the Fortress that made you like this..."

At that, Corrin recoiled physically. 

"Gunter, I always enjoyed our time even then. It was isolating, yes, but—"

"That's exactly the issue." He hissed back with an ugly edge, half turning with hard eyes narrowed in focus. "I raised you, Princess. Raised you like my child. Kept you in that tower in the dark, on orders."

And I am not one anymore. 

Battling her rising frustration, Corrin strove to keep her voice even. "You didn't have a choice—"

He laughed as he cut her off with a sharp mocking caw like a carrion crow; long and low enough that Corrin instinctively bristled, feeling something sharp and vicious lurking under as he strode back towards her.

"We always have a choice as you have been showing everyone with your merry adventure. Regardless if it's easy or not, then again, ease always meant a different thing to you royals." Gunter’s face smoothed as he glanced back down, tilting his head with the coldest smile—a masterclass in changing masks. “Do you ever wonder why you don't remember your dear childhood friend? That fool of a squire, Silas?”

There was the hidden glinting arrowhead; and he continued easily as if he had never heard her. 

“I trained you to forget about him, when you wouldn’t stop crying at his absence after I sent him away. The others simply followed my lead. If you knew half the things I've done to you…” He leaned in oppressively with his full height, voice low and dangerous despite the sing-song mocking. “But you don't do you? That's just it, isn't it, love—how can you trust when you don't know me?” 

Sometimes—

Despite his control, sometimes his mask slipped, and she was the only one to know him well enough to notice. And what she saw now was a mask that sloughed off temporarily to reveal endless shells that once held the heart of a man with only malice remaining. 

It frightened her cold.

“Forgiveness, Corrin, is such an empty gesture otherwise. If there is ever a final lesson between us, let it be that.”

Final? Fear transformed into something clawed and raw, raking her heart and robbing her of composure and clarity. To her embarrassment, she felt hot tears slip as her own voice wavered, shrinking back.

"You didn't have to say it like that…"

"Clearly, Princess, I had to! What will you not understand?! You... foolish girl will forgive anyone and everyone, even, even—" Gunter caught himself, and she watched again in silent horror as his face abruptly twisted rippled into an glacial mask of subservient resentment writ in stone. “Forgive me. I should not argue with my liege so openly.” 

“Gunter—”

“No, don’t continue. It might undermine your authority among your followers should anyone hear my concerns.” 

At that, he had the actual gall to give the bitterest poison-root nod at her, stance rigid with both arms behind him. Only his flashing flint-hard eyes of quiet rage betrayed him.

“Your orders, Princess Corrin?” 

He threw the smooth words at her like a sharp-edged weapon, and it took her several moments before she could choke back a reply that wasn’t something she would regret. 

“Just… go.” 

He stalked out.

Corrin sat there in his tent for long moments afterwards, hiding her tears in one of his shirts, her heart cut open and flayed like knives had visited upon her. 

__________________

Gunter was on night watch, and some would have called it a beautiful night. 

It was not a Nohrian night with thick columns of thunderstorm clouds, bringing rain that drenched Krakenburg with such an apocalyptic flood of water that the sewers inevitably overflowed, bringing a stench the hastily erected incense lanterns could never mask. Or the bitterest of blizzards that swept in overnight and buried entire villages in mass graveyards to be written off in the next census. The dizzying great expanse of blue was not a serene Hoshidan night either, from the stories he had read as a page-boy. There was simply too much of it. 

Skies weren’t meant to be both above and below, Gunter came to the conclusion after kicking a pebble out and down from the grassy island on the air, and watching it fall for a very long time. It was unnatural.

He was still contemplating the speck that it had vanished into when he felt, rather than saw, another presence ripple into existence. The great whoosh of a wyvern’s wings flapping like an overgrown bat confirmed his assumptions a moment later. Pity those beasts were always so vulnerable to arrows that tore and shredded through their skin; much like horses, they were deceptively and so terribly fragile if one had spent a lifetime learning how to hurt things. 

By the burning eyes of the undead wyvern and the scant armour of the rider, it was Princess Camilia. Gunter hefted his spear—there was always the possibility it was one illusion of many in this strange and accursed land. 

"Who goes there?"

Peerlessly graceful—like a delicate beauty of a dancer from the opera halls given an axe and allowed to take revenge on her sordid patrons—Camilia jumped from the winged beast, landing on the meagre grassy plain with bent knees. 

"We should talk, dear. It's been long overdue, wouldn't you say?"

The wyrm winged off, circling the air currents closely like a vulture. Gunter felt remarkably observed, as if she was assessing him like a particularly rotted piece of carrion. No illusion magic could replicate vivid emotion, and so he laid aside his spear, having a suspicion what kind of chat she was here for. It wouldn't be pleasant.

She at least got straight to the point.

"I know men like you too well. What do you want from my precious little sister."

"Ehn—?"

There was no warning before her axe blade darted at his throat, and he jerked his neck back out of instinct. Gunter backpedalled swiftly to avoid the deadly steel drawing blood, and even then it was a near miss as she marched him back at blade-point, further into the shadows of the floating island.

"Has it occurred to you that she would be the same age as your child? Younger?" His back knocked against a stone wall, hard, as the metal axe-blade at his throat glinted in the moonlight. Her voice was remarkably even for the disgust that layered over it. "Do I dare ask how long you have been desiring my sweet princess locked up alone in that tower with no-one but your eyes?"

"I never—" He hissed with fury.

"Liar." She tilted her head, observing him with flat eyes like a spider observing prey. Judging whether it ought to be crushed. "Really, darling, I don't even want to know. You want more from her than sex, that I know. What is it? "

He took a shaky breath in, mindful of the bloodied steel at his adam's apple. Rock and a hard place, as it were. 

"Do you think I have not told her every one of those exact concerns?" His eyes glittered as he laughed sardonically, earning another deeper nick to his throat. Gunter winced. "Do you truly assume I am so shamelessly opportunistic—"

Camilia's lip curled derisively, which was answer enough.

"Of course you do." Gunter replied bitterly, carefully raising both hands. "Go on, your mind is made up, Lady Camilia. Off with my head."

She rolled her eyes. "The only reason I have not taken your head yet, dear, is our adorable little Princess would be so tragically sad." Her clawed cat-like gauntlets flicked a strand of a hair back, and she looked much like one observing a mouse with that hooded look of bored disapproval.

Weary of the stalemate, he tersely exhaled.

"Lady Camilia. I swear on her name I have never, and will never lay a hand on Corrin against her will. If she gives the slightest indication—run me through. Right here." He took the risk of leaning forward with the axe, and to her credit, she allowed the motion. He smiled at her with an abyss of malice. "Run my heart through with my own blade. I would thank you with my last breath."

"I'll hold you to that, and so will my beastie." She pursed her lips, and finally, finally, lowered her axe quietly. "You still haven't answered my question."

"What..." And then he remembered. "... do I want from Lady Corrin?"

He laughed.

And then he couldn't stop cackling, bent over double with a spasm until he spat hateful choked wheezes on the back of his gauntlet and he could meet her eyes again with quiet rage in his veins. "Do you know she is the only person alive on this accursed world who has ever asked me that?" He asked, hoarsely, his blood-slick hands gripping his own armour, and shaking. " What I want? Have you ever asked that of your own retainers? The ten-thousand nameless dead and the living to the crown? Have you ever thought of them, once?"

Such defiance from a commoner would have him struck down in Krakenburg's court with the swiftness of divine retribution, but the old bitter knight was past caring .

"Leave me be, Princess; or kill me if you wish. I am done."

Only the quietest rustle of wyvern wings told him that she had left. 

Just as well.

__________________

Days later, Corrin knelt behind a darker line of a wild screen of greenery, the smallest bit of alone time she could find while catching her breath. 

It was still within eyeshot of the camp watchguards, she wasn’t a naive child or fool to wander carelessly, but her tent made her itch with anxiety and too many memories of being locked up, feeling claustrophobic and always waiting like a doll in a known place where people could bother her about their stupid petty nothings—

On paper, everything was… fine, Corrin had to admit. 

After Scarlet’s death there had been no losses, and it was heartening to see the Hoshidan and Nohr royals collaborate so openly and with sustained if begrudging tolerance, even. Wonders of wonders, although sometimes she wondered with deep resentment if this lovely delicately growing collaboration had come at the cost of being too late. If only they had listened sooner with open hearts.

She wanted to trust this Anthony, this sweet new orphaned Vallite child that had found her in the last day out of sheer luck while fleeing the shimmering, flame-wreathed dead of the land in a panic. He had clung onto her armour, and for that one brief moment, Corrin felt purpose again in protecting him, something so simple but breathtakingly reassuring in comparison to the increasingly impossible tasks asked of her. And yet—every time that she decided to trust the Vallite child, her eyes found her way to one of the endless pools of water dotting the land, and saw his eyes.

Her old black knight’s eyes and severe face reflected back at her in the ripples, ruthlessly judgemental. He would not trust so easily. He would be right, a hard-edged voice in her mind mixed with a lonely—

Corrin slapped viciously at the watery pool, sending splashes and watery shimmers scattering until there was nothing left but a muddy, smeared patch, dark with moisture. 

She started as a sudden, gentle hand closed around her arm.

“My friend, may I have a moment of your time?” Azura caught her, rousing her back to this otherworld ruled by the dead.

Corrin wrenched back her arm, annoyed at the sense of unwanted touch that interrupted; feeling her mind crawl away from the stimulation like a hissing, agitated cornered beast. No, she really did not want to give a moment to anyone else, but the graceful and kind dancer was one of the few souls in the camp that she should always try to make time for regardless of how her aching heart wanted to hide in the dark and simply be alone and miserable in listlessness. 

Instead, Corrin tried to embody the perfect princess with a practised blank smile and a porcelain mask to match, not for one moment betraying the ache. 

“What can I help you with, Azura?”

“I actually wanted to talk to you about that, my friend. Something weighs on your heart heavily.” 

The mask had a crack, then. Or Azura was deceptively perceptive, with the dancer surviving two vicious courts of rival kingdoms that hated anyone unwilling to surrender their independence to the utmost loyalty. Likely the latter, and she knew she was being uncharitably cross with someone who only meant well, and who was doubtlessly the one other person who would be able to sympathise. 

It was easier to slap that reminder into her mind than her heart.

(I miss you, I miss those nights of listening to your heartbeats while—)

“It’s personal.” She drew her knees into herself and stared listlessly into the open skies above and below. 

“Is it about Gunter?”

Corrin flinched; could she not have any private thoughts? 

“And?” Her mind skipped, and faintly fluttered over an absence of a conversation, or at least she thought that she hadn’t told the dancer of their relations just yet. “Wait. Since when did you know about…?”

Azura gave her a curious little side-glance. "You are not the most subtle of us, my friend. Besides suspecting your affections for him since Izumo, there was that moment with Jakob before we jumped into the canyon."

"Oh." It seemed everyone was more observant than he was, a petty part of her mind snipped back, still seeing his sharp, judgemental eyes in those watery ripples. We had a fight as a reply sounded too harsh and made Corrin even more heartsick for her old lover. 

"We had a... recent disagreement."  The listless words were dishonest in a different way, but her heart was too bruised for anything else. Azura gently held her hand, more slowly this time, and this time she did not draw away from the touch.

"Would you like to talk about it? Though please, don't let me pry if you’d rather not."

No sooner than the words died on the dancer’s lips than her eyes burned with silent tears flowing, and Corrin clung to her old friend, shaking with wretched shuddering sniffles.

Afterwards when the sobs had turned into unsteady hiccups, she murmured. "I love him, Azura. And I don't know what I did… He hurts."

"You hurt as well."

"Yes, but...I don't know…." Trailing off lamely, there in the shade of the green, she fumbled for the only question that came unbidden. "What would you do?"

At that, Azura exhaled with an uncharacteristically hesitant breath, and looked away. 

Corrin was immediately suspicious. 

"Azura."

"There is a darkness in him." A weary retort had sprang to her lips with the scripted reply when the dancer squeezed her hand, cutting her off. "Please don't mistake me; you have truly lightened his heavy heart in profound ways I think neither of of you are aware of just yet. Your love for each other is a blessing that fate has given. But still... I would talk to him. Sooner, rather than later."

Corrin blinked owlishly. 

That had not been the sentiment she was expecting, and the sincere kindness had left her strangely deflated. It was easier to be defensive, when everyone assumed the worst about their relationship. Kindness hurt in a different way, and far deeper.

"What do I even say?"

“Love and grace go a long way, my friend. Ask Gunter how he would have you two mend this wound. Work with him.” She paused, clearly debating on something. “Don’t let him become… isolated.”

“Do you know something?” It sounded faintly accusatory, but Corrin was tired of the secrets upon secrets that everyone seemingly nursed. Just once she wanted somebody to lay everything on the table. 

“Anankos will use every weakness… of every one of us…” The dancer paused. “I apologise. That must feel thoughtless with matters so personal and near to the heart.” 

The dancer was not wrong, but it was a much easier and smaller hurt to viciously ignore, and Corrin was almost grateful for a different kind of annoyance to distractedly feel as it bubbled up instead of the bone-deep misery that had stayed with her like a sickness across the days. 

“I’ll talk to him.” She muttered, paused, and heated with embarrassment at how ungrateful that must sound, and released a breath until she could meet the dancer’s sad golden eyes with nothing more than light gratitude. A princess must always be prepared to give words of sincere thanks. Your crown is held aloft by the ten thousand nameless that work tirelessly to maintain the flow of such power that you wield. The deep ghost of words came unbidden to her mind. Do not do them and their dignity the disservice of spitting in their efforts with a lack of yours. 

“I… thank you.” 

The dancer smiled with genuine reassurement, before nudging her forward.

__________________

His eyes flicked up from the papers in his lap when a damnably familiar and slim form slipped through his tent flap.

"I see privacy is a concept that does not exist in this accursed land. Or as a concept in your thick skull, Princess." 

Gunter pinned her with a ruthless glare beneath the waspish words, and to her credit she did not flinch back or flee like so many hardened soldiers had done even as the barb hit home. He was dogshit tired, his head ached, and he didn't want to talk especially to this she-devil that haunted his heart and who was the very cause of his snake-vile mood.

"I'm… sorry, sir, is this a bad time?" At least she had the grace to look apologetic. 

“Now she asks.” Gunter grimaced, his mood and moment spoiled, and dismissively gestured as he set the papers down irritably. "Irrelevant. State your business, milady." Her gaze flicked up to him, and he hated, hated the softness of pity behind them. 

Oh he hated how much he craved it, in turn. 

He leered at her instead, looking down at her through steely irritation. "Or is this about the plan with this new Vallite boy leading us into this castle like cattle to slaughter? Ill advised if you had asked my opinion, Princess."

"You know it's not that. Spare me the lecture, sir." Her gaze was even more level than his, and much calmer.

She was the only one alive that he would have not thrown out of the tent with instant rage at the insubordination, and even then it was a near thing. The arms of his chair creaked at his vice grip and his silent snarl. 

Corrin did not flinch.

He hissed like a bruised viper again when her quiet, bare footfalls came closer and the back of her hand stroked his lined cheek tenderly, fearlessly. And still, she did not flinch.

"Gunter, I've wronged you." His eyes closed and it took every muscle in his decrepit body not to dissolve into her touch or give a ragged sigh. A distant, exasperated part of him snarked that the old disciplinarian had well and truly gone soft when she climbed into his lap like a barn cat claiming its favourite warm spot and he uttered not one disgruntled sound of protest. All the while, she kept stroking his faded hair by his temples with her fingertips. Since when did this bold, devious minx know me so well?

She was looking … past him, slightly, but wistfully, with her cheek now pressed somewhere in the crook of his neck. He could feel her jawline flex against his loose skin as she murmured. 

"I love you, and I'm sorry that things ended so badly when we last talked. How can I make this right with you?"

Gunter tried for a long time to say something, anything , and failed with shame prickling at his flesh, and dead air in his throat. He settled for kissing the palm of her hand as she caressed the scar that bisected his lips, once. Then again, longer as he gently slid his calloused fingertips along the back of hers, intwining their fingers and cradling them against his papery skin. 

Corrin snuggled closer, her upturned little nose tickling the side of his throat quite pleasurably, tracing his shirt collar with clear intent. 

May I?

He gave a jerk of a chin that barely passed as a nod. Please.

Gunter's heart thudded with a double-beat when her hand dipped down and tenderly massaged his bare chest under his shirt. Her hand was so warm.

"I have... not been my best for you as of late, my lady." He hoarsely whispered into the thin silence of the tent, his own arms pulling her slender form tighter on his lap. He owed her that much.

"I know, sir."

Gunter snorted inelegantly, and gave a wry half-smirk down at her. 

Deserved that one.

She stroked the silver hair on his chest with more intent as he felt his shirt buttons fall apart, and his now sharply lurid thoughts slid sideways. And down, past her flexing fingertips, the coyness dancing in her eyes that was very much not shy about touching sensitive places of his, and further down still.

"Consider me properly chastised, my lady." 

His hands tightened around her pert little ass. Squeezed it, kneading until she sighed audibly with shameless pleasure. Gods, she was so warm and round, and fit right into the palm of his hand. "Perhaps I should make up for my incompetence to my princess." Gunter’s voice went husky by the shell of her ears, raising goosebumps that he tasted in the next stolen second, his lips nibbling her tender flesh as he let his hips grind into hers with filthy intent.

"I-I would like that very much, sir." Corrin gasped. Her nails were digging into the nape of his neck, a sure sign of her arousal if the openmouthed and increasingly sloppy kisses on his chest were not sign enough. She always started drooling when he fucked her senselessly, or about to.

Like now. 

"Mm." With her legs coiled around his waist, he rose up from the chair, and like a good soldier-boy on a mission, carried her over to his cot. 

Gunter tumbled her down and against the hard mattress—finally fucking being useful for once—all the while slowly but mercilessly humping her with rougher full body thrusts, and Gods, she whimpered with such an animal whine that he felt himself leak with precum through his trousers.

“Corrin.” He grunted with a clipped strain. “My belt.”

Her fingertips groped against his tented pants like a drunkard, and a dark, deep possessive growl unfurled from his chest with pleasure. He surged up, straddling her slender form on the cot and pressed her trembling hand against the thick outline of his hard cock, outside of his trousers first, and then slipping her hand in as he threw his head back.

But Corrin was taking too much goddamn time, and he reached around to yank out the belt in one swift motion. In the next breath, he grabbed her searching fingertips roughly, pinned them well above her head against the creasing sheets, and looped the leather around her slender wrists in a hasty knot. It wasn’t meant to hold, but his firm fist that clamped over her wrists and pinned her in place with warning would.

Gunter chuckled down against her throat when he felt, rather than heard her moan again with even more desperate tense need, writhing. Bending down briefly while kneeing the cot, he gave a hot nip of discipline against that sensitive skin at her neck with enough teeth to leave a lovemark, and she arched against his hips and swollen, reddened cock, shuddering with want. 

Something old and hateful in him surged—like he was an elderly, blind, deaf-striken man with rotted abscesses in the place of teeth searching with desperate, unconquerable wild yearning for any pleasurable sensation.

“Go faster next time, my princess, and I might show you more mercy...” He traced his tongue down the shell of her ear, her beautiful lush-pale hair tickling his lips as he laughed, low and slow with dark promise. “...Or maybe I won’t.”

He was rewarded with a strangled gasp that meant Corrin was restraining herself from keening out his name with embarrassing loudness. Oh she liked it with no mercy, didn’t she, being borne down by a desiccated man halfway into the grave.

Good, she was trying to keep her wits. 

Good, he thought evilly, he would test her self control there as well as an impromptu lesson.

"Try not to make a sound." One of his hands hastily tore the black panties off of her. Something ripped, and Gunter did not feel reproachful in the slightest. "You might find this ... a challenge …”

A bony wandering finger of his that slid between her cunt lips revealed she was already sopping wet for him, and it did not take his calloused pad more than a handful of strokes to send her over the edge of that abyss with muffled cries as he massaged her slick, throbbing sex. This girl, this princess that led the stars of both nations, spreading her legs to such a black heart traitor, belonged to him—

Mine, mine—

He felt his cock throb with impatient desire against her warm thigh and he sheathed himself in her without warning, thrusting slow and deep , filling her in the next motion, grunting out a guttural rhythm as she tightened around him again, their moans mingling.

Gods, she took him so easily, and she made him burn. Bonelessly, she matched him faster thrust for thrust, eagerly taking his girth, tears of pleasure leaking from her eyes as she arched and bucked with every more erratic inch taken. 

He roared with desire as he came inside of her in hot, messy waves, hips snapping against her slender form with enough force to break her in his too-soon climax.

There, he fucked her until his seed filled her entirely, spilling out, and they sobbed and collapsed together in sweat-stained bliss.

The dark depths of the ruins swallowed the meagre would-be army; unwholesome red and purple mage-fire soon being the only illumination available to light their steps. They were guided by the boy through the twisting maze like a shepherd with sheep—only to be stricken with shock and dread when the child’s eyes had glittered with victory upon proclaiming his loyalty to Anankos, more of the flame-wreathed undead suddenly closing ranks around.

All except one.

Gunter watched his little princess realise the Vallite boy had been a traitor all along and it was all he could do to not burst into wild maniacal laughter behind everyone’s backs.

You, page-boy, play act upon a throne whose seat is already occupied, the old knight thought with sardonic gleeful malice, eyes bright in the gloom as Corrin begged one last time for the brat to reconsider.

I told you so, was another uncharitable set of words he almost hissed in the shell of her ear, softly like a wraith hell-bent on haunting trespassers in this tomb. Traitors know their own, he silently added with a lover’s dripped croon that he would have whispered in the crook of her tender flesh. His foolish little girl was pleading with the Vallite boy like the brat was still redeemable, and it was all Gunter could do to not sneer behind her as her eternal shadow that would surely damn them all. 

Sometimes, he wondered what her face would look like the moment he let all of his cards fall, scattered on the table like the winds in a last grand performance.

Would she cry? Scream, beg?

Or would she retain her dignity, and at last, long last, fulfil her purpose as his blood-dripping sword to be wielded to the very bitter end?

Wielded during the first battle, Nohrian steel either shattered on the spot under the intense pressure, or lived to be used as a peerless weapon often long outlasting their own masters, handed down generation by generation as treasured heirlooms and keepsakes with a bloody legacy. Once, like those blades—he thought she was to be wielded against Garon.

Now—he knew she would be wasted on the empty puppet that was all that remained of the mad king’s image. 

No, he thought with a pleasurable shudder. Kill me, love. 

He would go to his knees for her baring his dripping throat on her blade, and welcome it with divine rapture. Like a holy man struck in ecstasy his thoughts wandered, and—Gunter’s only warning was three sinister black droplets dripping around the boy smouldering with black smoke at his feet.

His eyes widened at those acid drops.

He had seen that before.

"Corrin, get back —”

One gauntlet yanked her back just in time to avoid a lunge by the Vallite boy, teeth snapping more like a wolf than a human, and he knew what was coming. Knew it with bone deep certainty at the inhumanly powerful shriek that poured out of the child’s throat like a banshee-devil.

The shriek went on. And on.

Everyone flinched back with hands pressing over bleeding ears, even the royals as the Vallite boy's strange sick laughter mixed with heaving sobs as the child sagged backwards, slipping and dripping on the strange slick, with strange black droplets running in rivulets down his body almost like veins embedding themselves in, under the skin, viciously spearing into spikes that broke through the child’s flesh—

Except the boy was melting like a wax figurine along the spikes, fingers distorting with healthy pink skin turning a dead grey-green, veins splitting the skin into patches of skin, and the heaves turned into a long high shriek of pain as the skin grew shiny-swollen like an infected abscesses, and it was here that even Gunter had to look away shielding Corrin’s eyes hastily and imperfectly with an arm, pressing back against the stone wall whilst curved protectively over her before they heard bones snapping alongside the wet pops of splintering tendons as the sinewy white strands sent a spray of flesh across the space.

The shadow of the boy grew larger and larger still looming over the troops, so gargantuan now Gunter felt it eclipse any light from outside that fell on them, and yet he could feel the newborn Faceless’ spider-like gaze slowly locking on him like a physical presence as he stared back up in horror. He had killed hundreds by his sword, he had prepared to die on a battlefield for the vast majority of his life, and yet—

The flesh writhed over a sudden metal mask that grew out of the skin like mould on a bloated rotten carcass that had been left on the battlefield for days on end, partially devoured by animals—

And the Faceless was laughing-howling like one, now, between sounds he now recognized as bloody words— 

<You are me. You will become me, Anankos-touched.> The words sinuously slipping in his buzzing mind behind the black hole in place of the yawning maw twisted like a briar patch with trapped rabbits in yowling terrible hunted pain, behind those glowing eyes—

<More like me than THEM.>

And then between the final series of snapping bone and the smaller pops of tendons and ligaments breaking like echos of a morbid applause, the crackling splintering voice vanished underneath that evil keening, overwhelmingly present howl, and underneath it all, the wailing of a child in terrible pain, crying out for his mother and father—

Begging for the pain to stop.

Everyone scattered, unsheathing weapons and Gunter could do nothing but run forward—clawing and frantically, desperately diving in closer until rough hands threw him back into safety and—

Her slender fingers touched him, gripped him around the waist like a vice; and like a lodestone, sensation came back again. Her pale hair was especially like a ghost in the alternating red and purple gloom, so vividly like Krakenburg along with the distant screams and clamour of a battle being met that it disoriented him further.

“I heard my son—” He choked out in that small silent space between just the two of them, feeling wetness on his face. Dammit, he couldn't afford to loose it, not now, not like this, clenching his weaponless hand into a fist behind his back to stop the shaking.

”It's nothing.” Gunter flatly snarled again like a whip, viciously, red-raw in slivers between the wire-tense black dread; Corrin was stepping back now, and before she could open her mouth and say anything incriminating, he spat out.

“Kill it.”

He could see his stark, haywire fear reflected in her red eyes.

At last, she nodded, and all charged en-masse. 

__________________

In that lull after the battle, the old knight found himself standing alone on a bare hill with a chilly wind rustling through his hair, soaked to the bone with sweat. 

The others—as always—would assume he was a simple senile old fool who preferred to be alone. Gunter would let them believe that lie. He was staring listlessly at the strange golden pyramid that haunted his dreams and steps, here at last in front of him in the flesh. And true, the glade was devoid of human presence, except for a faint buzzing and constant ringing in his ears and the ten-thousand red unblinking red orbs that half-lingered in his vision. 

Reality pulsed, and peeled back.

SOON.

As in moments before in the dead of night, the sheer crushing unholy weight of the voice dragged him down to his knees, too broken to remain defiant in the face of that gaze.

With the awareness of the damned at the gates of hell, Gunter knew this ruin was the end and the beginning, and there was nothing he could do , having come up with no clever counter, no plan at the last hour save for the singular most precious card in his hand. Truthfully, the old knight felt most like a transparent hollowed-out shell of a spider that he saw once, bloated and infected with so many parasites writhing beneath its skin that it was a dead creature walking.

Quite like that Vallite child, turned into one of the faceless monsters. 

Gunter had known where the unthinking golems came from; he was no naive fool and seen Nohrian courtesy to prisoners, even witnessing the transformation once or twice before. 

Anankos-touched.

It was coming for him, a similar fate if not the same, and for the first time in a very long time he was afraid.

He snarled, seeing the purple flames that always wreathed his hand when he was alone, tauntingly. A reminder of who owned him in a naked demonstration of not to toe the line. Always he had been owned, and he spat in useless hatred that the cycle was repeating. With defiant madness, he reached out with his mind and for the first time felt a barrier, the same sensation that had choked him like a slave collar since falling into the canyon again. Or since the first time, with thudding heartbeats far too loud, it was impossible to remember now, and this too—he knew was the fell demon’s influence. Unblinking, those thousand eyes stared back at him, coldly watching. 

There was no reaction, even as he pressed harder on that veil, but Gunter did not dare to go as far and try to rip it lest he attract the full attention of the eldritch being. Already, his vision blurred at the edges with blackness in warning. 

With cold conviction, he had known there was only one weapon that could pierce through. 

Gunter had known that truth all along the moment he laid eyes on the Yato, that holy sword in her hands. A sob of a laugh tore through his lips, and then again, and again as he started laughing manically there until the sounds turned into tears, alone. 

She should not have to suffer for his sins, for his arrogance, but here he had failed her again.

Out of sheer stubborn instinct, one more gasp of spitting defiance and rage, Gunter got up on his knees, an old man scrabbling for one last wild desperate hope that he could warn her and right everything—

With a vicious pulse of nausea and a retch of blood, everything blurred.

Gunter collapsed.

__________________

He was being shaken awake by Jakob with the glow of a healing staff suddenly blinding in a flare of light. Disoriented, the old knight moved to swat away the irritation, and found his arms strangely pinned to the ground.

Found himself against the ground. Sound suddenly came back all at once, and it took a second to decipher the babble of the butler who was very nearly panicking. 

"Old man, you didn't die on me now did you?!"

Dirt pebbled by the side of his face, stinging enough that he winced. Damn, he really had fallen flat on the ground. 

“Where am I?”

“Right outside the camp.” For once, Jakob was prompt in his reply. The silk-clad butler’s face was red with annoyance but beneath the scowl he could now vaguely see in the spots of his vision, Gunter saw a fleeting look of fear warring with relief. Once, he would have been touched by the concern. Why the boy always insisted on dressing in expensive silks during a battle-field campaign, the old knight would never know. 

"...must've tripped." Embarrassed, Gunter unsteadily got up on his knees, which were as always, on fire; and did his level best to scrape off the dirt, rubbing at his lined face with a gauntlet. It came away tacky, and he had to squint again at the beaten metal between the black spots that lingered in his vision. 

Blood?

Jakob squinted, bristling slightly with the stave clenched between both hands. "Some thanks, sheesh. You were out cold old man, and don't even pretend otherwise—"

He was running out of time.

"Ignore that. I need you to listen for once." 

Jakob made as if to argue, the twit, and Gunter grabbed him by the shirt collar as he stood to his full height, dragging him closer with laboured effort. The boy did that funny squawking noise that the old knight had remembered from the fortress days, when they had spent weeks and years together shaping him into a fine butler. 

They seemed so long ago now. 

“The hell—”

“Listen. Promise me… promise me that you’ll protect Princess Corrin. No matter what happens.” He did not care for how harsh and laboured his own words were. Gods help him, he sounded like an elderly man in his grave already, and when did the Jakob grow to be almost as tall as he was.

"Y-you sure you didn't hit something—"

“Do you agree or not?”

“That’s not even a question, old man, I don’t need to be reminded of my loyalties.” Jakob blinked rapidly in genuine confusion, choking slightly, and Gunter loosened his grip on the collar. “What the hell is this about—”

"There's no deeper meaning to this."

Liar. But Jakob didn't need to know, not about the abyss in his mind and the ten-thousand unblinking eyes that stared back from within the tattered shreds of his sanity. Absentmindedly remembering the butler did just potentially save his life, Gunter let go.

Jakob wheezed out a curse, rubbing his throat.

“Protect her. With you life, swear to me—” 

“Jakob, there you are! Guess who just joined… Gunter? What’re you two…?” 

Corrin was staring at him now, curiously, with those red eyes that were far, far sharper and more cunning than they had any right to be. Flora stood professionally at her side, watching the exchange with a chilly gaze as well.

“Are you—”

“It is fine.” Gunter snapped, and glared at Jakob in case if he dared to argue. 

For once, the butler seemed oddly distracted and rather uninclined to talk at the moment while simply rubbing at his throat with embarrassment.

__________________

The strange golden stones that lined the dungeon of Anankos' giant castle ruins reminded Corrin of the giant cisterns she had seen once as a child in a picture book.

To her, the cavernous cisterns with their impossibly tall and soaring columns into the darkness above had always felt like they would be a marvellous playground to play hide and seek with Jakob. Here, however, with ominous massive metal drainage covers dotting the floor with dull carvings that reminded her unsettlingly like a Faceless' circular mask—and with the upside-down medusa face at the base of every pillar with hateful and distorted eyes staring back at hers—it felt distinctly less like a playground to get lost in and more like a prison.

The rest of the small strike force followed close behind, fanning out. They were still close enough with the mage-lights dotting the walls that they could see the distant forms of each pair of warriors slowly checking possible rooms and corridors for surprises. 

Within earshot, should there be trouble.

Regardless there was an odd sense of relief at finally closing in on this mythical task that she had been set. Corrin was here with her dearest allies, all brave and strong and united against the silent dragon, whatever form he would take. They would defeat this enemy that had hurt so many, and afterwards she could finally get away from the uneasy emotional distance that spanned between her and her oldest knight.

Oddly melancholy, she kept close to Gunter's side; he had silently opted to stay by her side as always as a dark guardian, and no one had pressed otherwise. Frustratingly, even with the hours of walking through the fortress side by side, there had been no good moment to broach thornier topics. 

More timidly, she was afraid of what his reaction would be.

“What do you think is up ahead?” She carefully asked, faintly distracted by the oppressive smell of water everywhere. 

But it’s dry…

“We should be prepared for anything, milady.” Like the fleeting memory of Krakenburg, his head was on a swivel and paying attention to every flicker of movement around. Finally, he gave a cursory nod back at her, deep voice steady as his creased eyes full of care. “Traps... possibly collapsed corridors... more of those invisible enemies. it would do us well to take this slowly.”

“We’ll have to set up tents inside the ruins…” Corrin murmured unhappily by his side, thinking ahead. 

“Indeed.” He frowned when the mage-lights flickered briefly once, and sharply turned. “Milady—” 

The tense word was all he got out.

This time they were suddenly plunged into total darkness.

“Gunter—”

Smothered by the inky blackness that did not change when she called out for him, a sudden panic rushed through her veins; the unnatural darkness had abruptly cut off sound as well. Clawing out aimlessly for him, her eyes couldn't even pick up vague motions of outlines. Even waving a hand in front of her own eyes was worse than useless, and made her start to doubt existence itself.

Magical darkness…?

It had to be. Stumbling uselessly once and then twice, Corrin tried to fumble her way towards a wall, towards any reassuring remnant of solidity to re-orientate herself—still nothing. 

It was not a noise, but some sixth sense—

—a sixth sense of powerful, unseen eyes watching her, suddenly freezing her in place like a rabbit scenting a predator.

I AM THE BETRAYED KING.

The sensation of an oil-slick spread again, heavy and unrelenting.

Terror in her heart, Corrin realised she was not alone, separate from the others, and clenched her sword.

I AM THE ENTOMBED GOD.

A searing flash hit her eyes, and she fainted.

__________________

Shapes above her moved, and his face blurred into slow clarity.

“Corrin.” 

Gunter’s eyes were bright in the half-darkness; but she could see the golden stone ceiling above again. “Thank goodness... you're coming to.”

His deep voice sounded as if it came from far away, reeling her back to the land of living and light; she shook her head to centre her thoughts. It had seemed so familiar— that potent oil slick in her mind. While shaking the last of the dizziness away, she realised Gunter was continuing to talk while staring past her and kneeled protectively over her; his creased neck distractingly handsome in the thin sliver of skin visible above his armour.

“—down the corridor. I'll chase after them; wait here and recover.”

“No.” Corrin blurted suddenly. 

She needed more time. something horridly unsettling was crawling over her skin like a centipede. Perhaps the feeling was a remnant of the magic; and besides, her mind thought frantically—if there was a being strong enough to take her down, she did not want that strange force to attack her lover as well.

(Would it?)

She seized his cold black and silver plates above for sudden, desperate comfort. 

"I'll go with you. There's something I need to check..." At her halting whispers, his perceptive gaze dipped back down, watching with concern. "That attacker sounded…like the same one in the canyon. When we all fell."

A tidal wave of water hit her nose like she was undersea; everything smelled like the magic that Azura used sometimes, threaded through with that darker oil-slick smell. Suddenly his usually comforting presence felt oppressive, and Corrin moved timidly to get up and move away.

"Are you sure?" The old knight’s tone was sharp as he stood as well with a small groan. Turning around and watching under her eyelashes, she saw he too, was observing her with the steadiest gaze. 

Scratching at her arm, she looked down the hall. 

(She could not meet his searching eyes.)

“I… yes.” Frowning, she prodded at the ghosts and memories littering her mind. “...I heard the same words after Scarlet and I jumped from the bridge. Before whatever it was attacked me, just then.” 

He laid a heavy gauntlet on her shoulder and this time, she desperately leaned in to his masculine solidity, nuzzling the remnants of cloth underneath his shoulder pauldron to breathe his scent. She ached for the warm big man underneath, the one who had always reassured her at her darkest hours, and he willingly held her close.

“Then...this same one is trying to catch you while you are separated from everyone. Our original suspicion may be correct, Lady Corrin. Your attacker could be part—”

He paused and shifted under her, listening to the tomb air.

Soon, she too, heard commotion and the shouts of their fellow companions down the dark hall. 

And unmercifully as always, bloody battle was upon them once again. 

__________________

Corrin watched numbly as her Hoshidan siblings grieved the fading remains of Sumeragi, their father freed finally from the silent dragon—

—and she hated that all her mind could think about was: her brave, handsome black knight, restlessly pacing slightly behind her.

Craving his strong arms around her, rocking her like she was a child again with murmurs that no one else would have to die; and she’d believe him.

__________________

So I'm Vallite royalty.

Sleep eluded her still after the desperate battle and the revelations from old ghosts. Corrin fiddled with the sheet corner.

Why did it have to be me?

The notion of yet another legacy felt like an unbearably crushing weight at that moment. In some ways, it felt like fate was laughing at her; cruelly answering her childhood wishes of wanting to escape the Northern Fortress and become somebody of importance, rather than living in exiled impotence.

Responsibility for lives, her lover had told her once as a child, is the heaviest burden one can carry, milady. Far heavier than carrying a boulder, or buckets of water to and from a village well. And so many have not learned this precious lesson, or the value of simple dignity for the common folk. They always remember who wields it well.

Nosing her pillow morosely, Corrin sighed. She had been holding onto the end of the war as a time to spend with her beloved knight in peace for his final years, not overseeing the reconstruction of ruined kingdoms. Corrin fitfully tossed and turned for minutes that stretched and ticked on, but like a rubber toy band, she felt impossibly tight and ready to snap—

Until her eyes alighted on an unfamiliar, small, vaguely circular shadow in her tent.

Stretching from her bed to roll the shape over one-handed, the tactile sensation of the worn leather told her that it was the little ball that Gunter had made so long ago in the Northern Fortress to entertain her as a child. How it had stayed with her still, she would never know. In either case…

She got up, ball in hand.

Maybe he would appreciate some company.

__________________

They had uneasily settled on sleeping in separate tents—

Fine.

That was a lie. She and her oldest knight had made love, and... the frenetic nameless war went on with their own wants shelved aside until the nebulous end of this Anankos. Gunter had been the first to admit that the separation had weighed heavily in their argument but it was starting to chafe at Corrin too; she did not like this sensation of a nameless void in between them.

It would have been embarrassing to be so needy with his touches like a child, had she not been long past the sensation of shame. And so Corrin carefully made her way to her old knight's tent.

It stood alone, tucked away by the rabbit-warren of dark passageways that they were resting in, near the entrance of the odd stone fortress. His was in the old Nohrian four-pole style, with the faded purple-red trim that he had once patiently explained belonged to his old army brigade, a rare memento from a time long since passed. Corrin smiled at that distant memory; her cross-legged on the cobblestones listening to her combat instructor spin stories about the brigades; their history, the insignias, and those souls that he had fought with long before her time. She remembered seeing the glimpse of the same faded sigil tattooed on his shoulder; him proudly flexing the muscles under the tattoo until she giggled, fingertips tracing the faded ink on his bare skin with childlike curiosity.

With a melancholic twinge, she realised that he had been staying further away from the rest of the camp of late, taking more night watches and not eating with the rest of the dwindling troops. The venerable knight was always a habitual over-worker, but for a brief span of time before they had leapt back in the canyon, Gunter had seemed more... at ease than she had ever seen him before. Corrin was selfish enough to hope that she had made some improvement to his life, both in stolen moments of tenderness and affection, and—in private, skin against creased sweaty skin in deliriously pleasurable union.

What went wrong? She swallowed, and slipped through the tent flap uneasily.

It was dim inside, but her eyes adjusted quickly enough to the gloom. Corrin glanced around his spartan tent; unchanged from the last time she had visited him, save for the single candle that sent wavering shadows along the fabric walls and lent a lurid air to the scene. Gunter was kneeled on the floor with weapons arrayed on the floor as he took stock and cleaned the sharp implements—her having interrupted the odd little ritual. Corrin’s eyes skated uneasily over his many glinting hunter's knives, his sword, hand axe, lance, and then at last—froze on the coiled whip in his gloves. 

“Would you…” In that moment frozen in time, she felt foolish for childish wants. “...play catch with me, sir?”

He glanced up with an odd sideways look. Not judging, but there was enough of that wolf-like glittering observance in that hard hatchet-face that she stilled under much like a doe. Standing languidly, it was only then that she noticed he was only armoured up to his waist with a snugly fitted black shirt on, the top two clasps distractingly undone. In the dark, his shoulders were so broad that he easily filled the space with charged authority that made it impossible to think straight; only his eyes seemed to burn with a strange fever.

“Let me tell you a story instead, Corrin.” His whispered sing-song reply snaked in the air, as gloved fingertips uncoiled the black leather of the whip. “Curious about this, aren’t you?” 

He strode forward with those long, slinky booted steps and she sucked in a breath, suddenly feeling lightheaded. 

“Whips are made to break others, princess. They exist only for restraint, discipline, and pain.”

And oh—the looped whip caressed her under the vulnerable skin of her throat as Gunter slowly tilted her heated face up, forcing her to meet his ruthlessly smiling gaze. Something about the pressure of leather to her tender skin nearly made her knees weak, and there was a slow answering burn in his eyes that undressed her possessively.

He started to walk her back, gloved fists holding the whip-length across her throat, cornering her and forcing Corrin to stumble back to breathe. Her back hit the stone wall with a sharp scrape as he crowded in; she hadn't realised how close it was. Pinning her there roughly with his overpowering body, his hot breath crooned by the shell of her ear.

“To which, did you know your father ordered me to whip you, so long ago?"

His teeth were so white.

“What…?” She slurred, body tingling with fire. Her old combat instructor was pressing harder on her throat with the whip, now, and the leather felt sublime tucked under her chin, exactly like a caress from his gauntlet, vanishing the image that came unbidden to her mind as her vision wavered in the corners. It was not the distant Nohrian king that she pictured first in split-second confusion. 

Her old scarred combat instructor clicked his tongue, dark humour hooding into a sardonic look of disapproval at the wrong answer. Instantly, she craved to regain that approval. 

“I'm sorry, sir…” Corrin breathed, half a boneless whimper. 

“Mm.” He was waiting for more; and like bending molten iron, his words alone made her want to arc bonelessly to his desires. 

She moaned again, breath hitching out involuntarily. “Forgive me, sir…”

“I made you, my beautiful little girl. Beg for me.” He smiled viciously with all teeth as he crooned, chuckling throatily as his nose traced a fire-hot line along her neck with a warning nip. “Beg for my mercy, Corrin.”

Forced on her toes by him, she shuddered against his hairy chest as he nipped again. “Please sir—” 

"I’ll be honest, I almost whipped you.” His lovely deep voice purred after a pause, nuzzling the side of her curved neck with perverse fondness. “And I would have done it so easily.”

Briefly satisfied, he released her from the whip—and Corrin buckled, writhing against every plane of his taunt, muscular leg that pressed in all of the worst ways between her trembling thighs on the way down. 

”Thank me, my sweet little girl. Thank me for my mercy in the only way you can.” He growled again and she knew what that hard-edged tense rasp meant; sending her fumbling to his full trousers with alacrity. In the next moment as her fingers found his swollen reddened flesh, she tasted his cock shyly with the tip of her tongue flicking out, full and sensitive with the weight of dizzy shame.

She wanted to please him—

Again, she licked his length with longer, more exploratory strokes, and the loud bass groan of approving pleasure above her was unmistakable.

She lapped at his veined flesh, soft sweet little nothings between kisses, worshipping him before nuzzling up his length until his grey-wiry hair tickled her nose perversely. One heavy glove ruffled her hair in gentle encouragement as she sucked at his crown until saliva dribbled down her chin, and took him stiffening even deeper in her mouth.

She sucked his girth harder now, cheeks hollowing with every bob of her head. Corrin's jaw ached and burned as dignity was forgotten and she melded herself to him, swallowing his cock whole and so deep until she saw stars in her vision, guided by low purred words of encouragement.

He shifted then, pulling her away with an obscene wet pop; and she gaggled in relief of air, drooling spit mixed with his precome smeared across her mouth as a marking.

She was limp from desire and shame as he ensconced her and rocked her tenderly in a mockery of their tender moments from before, dragging her gently over to his bed, across his lap. Corrin nuzzled in, and—

distractingly, the thought came from before.

(Father—)

and she did not—

she did not push it away—

The taste of his scarred lips was divine as he drew her closer, breath an intrusion in her own mouth as his tongue leisurely plundered her with desire. Gunter kissed the corners of her lips with reverence and love; and she savoured his protection and approval, hot with shame.

She wanted him, coveted him with every burning fibre of her body even with the knowledge she could never breath a word of this to anyone out loud. Ensnared there on his warm big lap where he had read her countless stories; Corrin was so slick as she ground on his cockhead, so far gone she could only give filthy little ruts between pants.

‘Tell me how much you need me, my sweet little girl.”

“Oh please, sir, fa-fuck—”

Crimson with shame at the near slip until his gauntlets gently, indomitably spread her thighs wider across his hips,  she felt herself stretch around him as he sank into her ruthlessly, fully, groaning as his throbbing cock slid wetly into her drenched cunt like a sword for a too-small scabbard. Corrin moaned again, fear twisting savagely to pleasure as she involuntarily chased it with a flutter of her hips even though she knew it was against the rules—

It hurts, she wanted to tell him. You hurt so good—

Waiting for his words—

“That's it my little girl.” Gunter’s smoky voice rumbled as she took his root again, him thrusting in her crudely, harder, faster, seeking his own pleasure—and she keened at the friction, feeling him throb with fullness inside her as she obediently matched his ruthless rhythm. One thick glove stroked at the nape of her neck in time, holding her limp in place like a kitten, and she arched against his touch with instinctive ravenous need. 

She'd be good for him—

Bolts of pleasure frayed loose as Corrin whimpered slowly giving way, him forcing her pleasure out despite wanting to obey. Her mewling whines hitched higher and higher as she rocked against him with every unrelenting thrust and roll of his hips as he pushed in, gloved iron grip forcing her still as she shrieked his mangled name him as her body tightened up involuntarily for her orgasm.

At last, he murmured his approval, and she could not stop from embarrassingly convulsing and tightening around him, moaning his name over and over, clawing at him. 

He groaned between increasing thrusts, faster and frenzied as he approached his own climax—and too soon, she came with him again, undone and incoherent in a mass of moans and writhes as he spurted with waves into her.

She shuddered on his lap, chasing the echos of pleasure with her thighs spread wide over his creased hips, face buried deep into his chest whilst feeling him throb in her, slick seed spilling out and across her in a masterwork of sordid affection.

The last thought that uselessly circled her mind was: 

There was nowhere else to go. 

She gave a whimper, curling even closer, and he shushed her with a thumb gently smoothing over her lips.

There was no where else she wanted to be, smothered in his arms; and the darkness took her.

__________________

Time blurred and stretched like gauze on an open wound. And then it tore like the very same white threads of a bandage, splintering apart like prickling daggers against her eyes—

Corrin awoke first.

She was now face-up on his lap, stretched out like she had been sleeping peacefully with him on a grassy knoll, but the golden, unwholesome stone pressing in on them forced that daydream to be a lie. 

Quickly, she turned; he sat there at the base of the wall in a daze. 

His eyes were open but unseeing, like he had fallen into a trance. She touched Gunter's cheek tenderly and found it was wet, his eyes red-rimmed. Something was terribly, starkly, profoundly wrong.

He shuddered into wakefulness at her quiet insistence and the sound of his name on the third time, and recoiled with a jerk and a terrible shudder.

"Gunter!"

"Why are you still here—" He hissed, staring blankly at her face. His eyes flickered to her neck, and widened. Down, back up again, with horror. "Oh God. God. Dusk Dragon, don't tell me—"

She touched her throat, and it stung, bruised.

"Gunter, it's okay, what—"

His voice cracked as a shaking hand came up to hide his face, roughly shoving her away and off his lap with the other gauntlet. 

"Don't. Please, Corrin, please, Gods, please don't."

She tried again, softer, more tenderly. "Gunter—"

"Don't look at me like that—" He very nearly spat in rage at her, his voice cracking again but this time with the force of a whip. Now curled up inwardly, he rocked akin to a fetal position or a crouch to spring and flee away from, at total odds with his menacing black armour. He hissed again blindly through both hands that trembled, this time in low, naked desperation mixed with genuine terror, and she could see the whites all around his eyes. 

"Corrin, kill me."

"What."

"Kill me, before I—" He tossed his head side to side with eyes that searched for escape, haunted. Her old disciplinarian was barking orders now in a raw panic, and she could barely understand him between the frenzied garble of words. "I can't tell you. Kill me."

"Gunter, this is another t-trick of this castle we're in." Corrin desperately clung to any notion of reality as she watched in horror as her old knight slowly but surely tear himself and any dignity to pieces. "It's a trick, it's not you, it's not me, w-we need to go back to camp, we'll be safe there—"

Something bleak and dark and unknown was yawning between them, and growing wider.

"Gods, if you have any shred of misplaced care for me, kill me now, before—" He was begging now as if he hadn't heard her, unsteady on his knees and sheet white. He looked like he was going to be violently sick, groping at her shirt collar with frightening intensity.

"Nothing you could do could make me love you any less, Gunter…"

"it's not fucking—that—" He spat, shame convulsing over his face like thousands of spiders crawling over him. "I will ruin you, Corrin."

He full-body lifted her up again with both hands as he surged upwards, shaking her by the collar, barely outdone with a whole body tremor in fear and rage. "I am ruin! There are ancient forces at will here that you know nothing about, little girl—"

Where did he get this strength ?

"Gods damn it all, if you trust only one thing I say, I will ruin you. Kill me before I dishonour you!"

She had not the faintest, damned idea what had possessed him, and took the first stab of a notion into thin air, frantically. "Nobody's going to think any less of you, sir—"

The words skittered and slid ominously, like they were having two simultaneous, but separate conversations like a lover’s first spat over pointless nothings, and she wanted so very badly to seize onto him, the real him. She felt like he was slipping, slick blood through fingers to a bleak, black abyss where she couldn't follow.

It frightened her to the core.

She was beginning to believe him; it was not that—that scene, her mind helpfully papered over with a real edge of panic—and it was not wholly a magical trick of the castle, something was, and had been horribly wrong.

"They won't believe you." He whispered, voice tight but distant with dread, replying to a different ghost of conversation. "Much like they didn't believe you about Valla. They'd be right on this one."

"Sir, why are you so hell bent on believing the worst about yourse—"

Corrin knew instantly that it was the worst thing possible to say. 

The words, intended as comfort, struck as hard as a spear-edge into his heart, and he staggered away from her. He thrust her away, and she barely managed to collapse on his cot.

And then he manically laughed.

He actually threw back his head and laughed, and laughed so hysterically until she was afraid he would be sick or choke on spit, shoulders shaking in—was he crying?

For the briefest second, she saw bottomless pain well up in his eyes before something tender, wounded and vulnerable abruptly died like embers smothered with a vicious, violent kick of a boot.

"Gunter—"

He straightened, lips twisting in a mockery of the cruellest smile, and there was a total absence of mercy in those eyes.

His vicious, fixed glare that levelled on her was ice-cold and remote, as lethal as that day when she had killed that wolf so long ago, and she knew as clear as day that he had drawn upon his hardest emotional armour against her.

"Little girls like you have such an exasperating habit to misjudge wolves in sheep's skin, and it will be your undoing, my lady." Gunter gave an exacting, contemptuous mockery of a bow, not an inch more or less than court appropriate, and strode for the tent exit. "I will take my leave. Good day."

She was suddenly horribly afraid.

It sounded like a good bye. She lunged forward.

"Gunter, stop—"

She had almost entwined her arms around him when he grabbed her wrist, pulling her back savagely away with a twist. He squeezed ruthlessly until her joints ached, and she flinched at the glimmering, sick pleasure in his eyes.

The black metal of his fist hurt. He dug the sharp edges in, warningly, sensuously.

"Don't be inappropriate."

She could barely stutter out the words through tears that threatened to flood her eyes. 

"Gunter, I love you. Please, what happened—"

He stared, but it was not at her; it was seemingly through her as if she didn't exist, was a ghost. For some reason, that hurt far worse than if he had shown any emotion.

"I came to my senses. Now may an old man have his peace?"

Horrified, she didn't resist when he let go of her hand unceremoniously.

He left, and she did not follow.

As he had known, the door opened upon a very familiar throne hall.

And a very familiar throne.

The royals continued to step in with apprehension despite a thick fog settling ominously, and Gunter smiled to himself. It would not be long before they all would be smeared across his boots; the fools would never learn and he'd have to teach them the most priceless lesson of all.

With a smile and a beguiling tilt of the head; he split from the group, undetected.

Corrin strode forward alone in puzzlement, turning in the empty hall with the Yato blazing in her hand. Doubtless the holy sword sensed his malignant presence, trying vainly to warn her. 

It did not take many steps for him to approach behind her. With the same smile, he leisurely closed in like a cat savouring the hunt. 

This little field mouse had been clever, surviving far past longer than he would have guessed; but it was now time for this stubborn little mouse-princess, this cursed thrice-royal to learn what it meant to be crushed. To learn what it was like to be trampled with the rest of them.

Corrin turned, sensing his presence.

Before she could face him, one gauntlet of his curved around her shoulders to press her close to him.

The other curled around her throat.

There in his arms and like the lovers they were, he knew her expression even without seeing. Doubtless too, she could feel him thinly smiling.

__________________

“You've been quite the useful puppet.” 

It was his voice—

Corrin went numb as he continued. She was so close she could feel his calm heartbeat. "Gathering these royals from Nohr and Hoshido… quite clever, Vallite royalty. Now shall we put them to the sword as they deserve?"

A dozen emotions surged through her mind in that frozen, heart-stopping second.

He’s gone—

A mere pebble could have shattered the silence that spread between them.

“You—” Ryoma broke first, bellowing as he unsheathed his blade with cold fury. "TRAITOR—!"

Corrin tried to turn limply; not even for freedom, only to see his face and to hold him between her hands, surely this was a terrible dream—

And fate gave the cold mockery of red, real pain in reply as Gunter sank his sharp metal claws warningly in her shoulder, enough she bit back a whimper. Nodding towards Azura, he continued mildly as if he hadn't heard the outburst. “That one is Vallite royalty too, no less. Why else do you think these two would lead you astray to this seat of power?”

"I did not, what—" Corrin weakly blurted, before Takumi blurred and a sudden searing flash of turquoise blinded her.

Time slowed.

She stared as Gunter stumbled and jerked behind her slightly like he had been struck and in the next rapid distorted blink as vision swirled back, and with horrible fascination—Corrin stared as his shoulder flesh rippled back into that black and silver armour she knew better than her own.

Sinew twisted inhumanly, smoothed with black smoke, and then there was no wound.

He’s gone.

Distantly, something metallic clattered to the floor. She knew even with his gauntlet choking her that it was the arrow, and his answering deep chuckles behind her sent hot, heavy prickling shivers down her spine.

He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone—

“I wouldn't do that if I were you.” Gunter purred with predatory malice beneath the calm tone.

His other clawed gauntlet snapped once and unleashed a monstrously large fireball that sent her siblings arrayed in front staggering, and herself flinching from the heat that roiled. Another sweeping gesture from him and immense, bone-crushing magical sigils and pressure savagely surged downwards to pin her siblings all on the floor helplessly. 

Only she was standing there on the stairs to the empty throne, with him behind her, gauntlet heavy around her throat.

"I would never betray my friends…" With the softest wavering reply, Corrin continued despite the ocean of dread or the wetness she felt on her face. "...or you. Anankos is controlling you somehow, Gunter, please stop this madness—”

“Controlling?” He snarled, and she could feel her lover’s hard breath against her face. “I am him. ”

Ice sluiced down her back, and that greasy black oil slick of a presence in her mind echoed, overlayed with his voice, despite the words. (And a glimmer of hope surged, that it was not him—)

“You're still in there somewhere, sir.” She breathed, her words surprisingly steely now, only quiet enough for him to hear. “Please come back. Please please fight, I—”

“You think me like those puppets.” Gunter hissed, cutting her off—

—and savagely, he shoved her to the floor.

Corrin sprawled face-down to the stones in absolute shock. Spluttering, helpless in indignity and disbelief, she felt sharp stone cut under her hands; and his shadow approached.

“My, are we surprised?” He nudged her neck with his black boot. “This really was too easy…”

He leaned down on her bare throat with the sole of the boot, licking his lips, just enough for her to gag out a breath as she tried to roll over and away; and she could not suppress a shiver of pleasure when she arched up to grope for freedom from the merciless pressure. After a beat, he acquiesced, still watching as she weakly wheezed there, shaking.

“What are you doing—”

The old black-heart knelt, disarmingly gentle again as he fisted a gauntlet in her hair with a cackle. “Isn't it obvious? You're trapped, beautiful.” He whispered into the shell of her ear, too quiet for the others. “And you still protect and defend your dear friends with such earnest words. Why do you still protect them with such bated words? They would have cast you aside as soon as you were no longer useful to them—and they did.”

He laughed louder as he stood and tilted his head like the hunting hound again; arms thrust wide to encompass the royals beyond. “Or did you forget about that already, Corrin? When I was by your side, watching each one of them reject your words as you do to mine, now?”

At that, she flinched visibly, and he revelled in it.

"I believe in you—" Corrin dared to voice, steady as a tomb staring up unflinchingly to his own, narrowed creased eyes full of hate. "—Not Anankos.”

“Get up.” He snarled down at her with sudden spitting viciousness; and with a start of surprise, she scrambled up, skin-flesh prickling with terror at the sudden physical malignant presence she could feel everywhere.

Anankos has him. Somehow, some way, and she needed time to figure out how—

The pale fog was thicker now, too; almost opaque on either side of the long hallway, and disguising the pools of black water that were scattered throughout the broken stone. Uneasily, Corrin jerked around to glance behind, and saw that the royals had finally wrest off the magical attack from him, but were frantically fighting waves of the invisible dead rising out of the water like vengeful ghosts.

Leaving her alone with him, and he too—was like a vengeful wraith, the paleness of the fog accentuating his black armour sharply as Gunter loped along the narrow path straight to her.

“You would be the one simply incapable of not believing in people." He raised an eyebrow in mocking, sauntering arrogance as he called out while nearing, a sadistic smirk splitting his scarred lips. "What if I simply broke you first, Corrin. What then?" 

Stepping into the tighter ring of flames with long loose predatory strides like the black wolf he was, her oldest knight circled her close enough to bend down to her ear. “What if I knew how to break you, love?"

With an easy snap of his clawed hand, a ring of flames roared into existence around them, sucking out all the oxygen. She swayed again, dizzy with an impossible cocktail of emotions. 

“Why, Gunter?”

He actually took a moment to contemplate the thought, something she was not expecting.

“Your impossible belief in the goodness of everyone.” It was the measured but severe calmness that stabbed at her heart the most; how only a few moments earlier, his tone could have easily been mistaken for gentle tease in a lecture. “What better proof than this, that humanity is rotten to the core, and should be obliterated by Anankos?”

He’s gone—

Like the other possessed dead they had fought.

“I've known you my whole life— ” She choked back, raw panic flavouring her words for the first time.

“Have you?” Gunter sharply retorted like a professor, and his reply stopped her cold.

If only you knew half the things i've done to you; he had said once.

“Please don't make me do this, sir...”

He laughed, deep and long as one of his clawed hands crossed his side to uncoil his whip with a leisurely shake and stepping back with seductive grace.

"Such foolish, idiotic naivety—still. If thinking as you do will be a comfort as your life fades, then…" He flicked the snake-like weapon with a sudden vicious twist of the wrist, the sudden snap against stone echoing in the fog. "...be my guest.”

Her only warning was a whistling crack, and then the column next to her shattered into a thousand pieces, the rocks and shale ricocheting and slicing her face in a dozen different white-thin streaks of pain even as she dove for the stone floor in cover.

She stared dumbly at the broken pillar before her, heaving.

It could have been her instead, flayed to the bone with his whip.

No—she simply couldn't believe it—it wasn't him. But when she dove and rolled to the side with her slipping alarmingly near another one of the many pools of water in the fog, avoiding another inhumanly fast whistling blow—

—every graceful motion was his.

Down to how his wrist flexed, how his eyes tracked her with an utmost focus and a calm, almost humoured patience of a teacher that was as much as a predator that she knew just as well; ever since she was a little girl watching him spar in the wintery grounds of the Northern Fortress for hours when she was supposed to be abed.

Logically, she should treat it like a spar. 

Cold ruthless logic had served her well on the battlefield before, and she had sparred with him countless times. But her heart quietly bled as she ducked another vicious snaking flick of the whip that sent stinging stone across her arms. Her venerable knight advanced far more swiftly than anyone would guess with his age, and she dodged back again while waiting helplessly for an opening in the hands of that perfect offence that trained her.

That had loved her. 

Gods, he was inhumanly fast, the whip an impossible blur of vicious snake-like strikes that cut through the fog like a knife through flesh. Corrin deflected the next strike, sending him slightly off balance as the tip of her blade sheered off half of his shoulder pauldron. On the backhand she managed a stinging shallow slice across skin, and heard him hiss like a viper as she darted away. Gunter recoiled like she had slapped him across the face and then slowly turned back with an executioner’s grin, touching the blood on his temple with reverence. 

He tasted her blood sensually as she stared, tongue flicking out and lip curling with sardonic, smoky amusement.

Reason fled, caution with it—leaving a heavy pool of heat and he chuckled, leering down at her.

Up and down that fogged hall they darted; her just a fraction too quick for most of the stinging whip-marks to land fully, weaving in and out of the columns and using them to her advantage. Her black-heart traitor twisted and lashed out with inhuman strength behind the whip strikes in turn, also using the long, narrow hall to his advantage in a mockery of their many times sparring. 

Even with the holy Yato guiding her, it only took once for her to misstep.

Corrin took a split second too long to dart to the left, and the tip of the black whip wrenched her wrist with such viciousness that it sent her sword flying as she screamed, skittering across the stones with a sickening clatter.

Yanking her close with another flick, he pressed her to a column, bearing her down with his strength and heavy armour, eyes glittering with malice in the darkness. 

"I will tear every piece of innocence out of you.” Gunter purred again and as if reading her mind, one of his gauntlets snaked around her throat, stroking her flesh with a lover’s tenderness, and tilted her chin upwards with a large hand encircling her throat. She moaned helplessly as she felt the sharpened edges scrape against the skin under her skin. A mere press of an inch deep by her lover, the only man that had touched her, and her lifeless body would be bleeding out by his boots.

One clench, and he could snap her neck. 

Instead—distractingly panting with sweat-streaked lilac-grey hair by his temples falling into his eyes—he slowly tightened his grip.

Her skin tingled, and Corrin swallowed.

There was far more than a ruthless desire to win behind the smouldering heat in his eyes that met hers.

Shame forced her eyes away as she savoured the black, bleak warmth, weakly scrabbling at his arm as the gauntlet indomitably squeezed tighter around her neck, pinning her ruthlessly like a bug against the high column. Voids grew and swam in her vision. Head forced back, she whimpered as her clawing fingers uselessly skidded off of his armour. 

As the darkness closed her vision, only a blurry dim haze now—Corrin despaired. It was so much harder now to summon up any will or strength.

One arm limply fell away. Then the other, moments later.

Use your mind knife. An old beloved voice murmured in her mind with gentle strength and severe eyes, far away from that cursed throne hall. Can you promise me that?

I can't, sir—

That hard gaze turned towards her; but it was not cruel. Would you give me up that easily, love?

Shuddering with desperation, Corrin called out blindly for anything that would answer, any magic; and something flared with holy urgency. A sudden surge of strength flowed in her veins, just enough to loosen his grasp and sob in a breath of beautiful air. 

It was not him.

It was not wholly him, that stranger in the hall. One of her arms tensed, clawing harder at him. That evil malignant, omnipresent being that corrupted him.

It was not him—

Viciously she lashed out with howling rage, focusing every ounce of will with a kick downwards, claws raking against his armour, abruptly shoving him away with inhuman strength—

Distantly, Corrin heard something snap with a sickening wet series of cracks, and heard him roar, rear back in pain as she half-sank, half-fell to the hard stone floor; knees bruised, throat bruised from the metal, gagging for air as she heard the clang of armour plates hitting the slick stones.

Her shaking hands were not human; claws stared back at her as she wheezed, tears dribbling freely in great sobbing gulps in relief of wonderful air. Corrin laughed, half a scream of defiance to the air. She could be ruthless, too, shaped as a child with his very same bloody hands. Stone and sand scraped under her wavering claw-like fingers as she got up, limping and scooping up the Yato, the sword blessedly not far away.

The fog had thinned enough to reveal Gunter half collapsed over the throne, spitting curses. One leg twisted unnaturally out in such a nauseating angle that it was clear she had shattered his knee; and with it, much of his deadly grace and danger.

Corrin tilted her head as she advanced closer to him, unerringly unafraid for the first time. Here, his eyes widened for the first time, a wounded wolf scenting a changing tide.

“How are you this powerful…” The black knight hissed hatefully, crouching by the throne. “This...isn't over yet...Anankos…”

“I will not let you do this to yourself, Gunter.” 

At her words, a bloodied gauntlet splayed out to aim purple fire at her. Easily, she deflected the attack with the Yato, and it was harmlessly swallowed up in one of the eerie, still pools of water. "Give it up, Anankos."

She felt the song in the vibration of the stones under her feet before she truly heard it from Azura closing ranks behind her, softly singing the ancient rhythmic dirge that came forth once again as a refrain.

Corrin hummed in time, holy power flowing through her veins as the dancer’s hand briefly touched her shoulder in gentle solidarity. 

Before them, the black-armoured traitor hissed balefully, and full body flinched like the gentle notes were causing him physical pain. 

Something about her lover’s flinches wrenched at her own heart like the pain of bone splinters; and with bloodied sword in one hand, Corrin ran forward in a raw need to protect him. The need for touch drove her protectively closer, out of pure instinct, needing to shelter the only man she had ever loved against the eyes of—

Some nameless emotion glimmered in his eyes, and time froze. 

The only sensation she felt was his body jerking with a slight spasm as Gunter’s heavy weight stumbled forward in her arms, almost if by accident.

He smiled at her, eyes closing in the briefest moment of old adoring tenderness as his gauntlets caressed her hair—

—and then she saw the flash of the Yato’s blade as it dug through his armour, flesh, and armour again, bone white amongst streams of his blood, and his gauntleted hand over hers, as he drove the blade in.

He slumped onto her body, deadweight dragging them both down to the floor, and him further onto the blade. She thought she heard the echo of her name on his pale lips, through a cough of blood that dripped on her face. 

Sound retreated. 

A raw wail broke out, a mutilated shriek tearing through her throat—

Her knees buckled, sagging as she clawed at his body. 

She saw the cracks of the stone splinter too late; and the ground shattered underneath them, swallowing them in inky black darkness of water.

__________________

Don’t go, don’t go, don’t—

__________________

Spluttering and shaking in disorientation, Corrin came-to in a distorted mirror of the cursed throne hall above. 

Finding herself swordless and clawing herself out of the pool of water, she glanced around with petrified unease. Instead of the golden-green stone columns with the upside down serpents-face, all she could see were the pale blue of icy walls and columns; dizzyingly translucent with lurid magical patterns shifting in a way that made her queasy. 

Sudden movement caught her eye—Gunter nearly motionless by the replica of the throne also made of that strange pale ice with black smoke streaming from his body and coughing blood. 

Those narrowed, severe eyes stared at her with pure disbelief and contempt. 

A massive bloodied gorge dripped black ichor from his stomach. 

He was still alive, in this moment frozen in time, but—it had been real.

Corrin shuddered back with convulsions of revulsion, curling up as she dry-retched through sobs with an overwhelming need to snap off her shaking hands, in horror of what she had done to him— 

Her eyes could only sear the air in useless search for the real him, her black-armoured beloved protector; not the stranger in front of her. He had to be in here somewhere, even if it was just the faintest clue—

This new ceiling was open to dead skies above, and she abruptly felt the omnipresent weight of thousands of eyes focus on her as a holy intruder in an evil ruin. Corrin trembled with rage in her soul. For doing this to him, and for so many of the needless fallen.

Corrin could not help but notice Gunter’s spidery gauntleted hands were shaking as he hauled himself up by the throne weakly. With black smoke leaking through his armour and ashen as his lilac-grey hair from blood loss, he looked unsettlingly like one of the dead. 

"You...." His eyes widened in shock, and then he began to laugh tiredly, beautiful deep voice wrecked with exhaustion. “Am I such a failure I didn't finish myself properly—”

Whatever he was about to say next was cut off by a clap of words like thunder.

I AM THE FORGOTTEN KING.

The echoing voice rang so loudly she full-body recoiled from the sheer omnipresence that shook the foundations of the ice, cracks spiderwebbing out.

Sudden images of ghastly faces pressed against the mirrored icy walls, endless echos on top of the other. There were so many faces; some she knew and some she didn't. Just as quickly as they appeared, they changed into an infinite array of scenes, moving and shifting underneath—

Not scenes, memories, Corrin realised as she recognized the flashes of the current scene playing more clearly against the mirrored ice. 

And blushed.

His memories; more precisely their first time making love, and she could not help but stare fascinatedly at the view of their entwined flesh from her lover’s eyes. The scenes against the transparent mirrored walls stretching on either side of them were Gunter’s most precious memories, now shifting into more lurid erotic fantasies that Corrin turned half-away, mortified and trying not to feel flattered despite everything, at how often she recognized her feathery white hair between the fingers half-covering her eyes not giving any lick of modesty. 

Any small pleasurable, morbid voyeurism was shattered when the ice and the magical sigils crackled with a sinister energy again.

A cold, brutal wind abruptly howled through the hall from nowhere, half a scream and dirge forcing her back, with ice slicing thin rivulets of blood from her bare arms. The scenes in the mirrored ice shifted, crackling as the scenes tilted dizzily right into another—a far more unpleasant and darker scene of fire, wood, and the scattered remains of blood and unmoving bodies scattered across a town square. 

At the other end of the hall by the throne, Gunter’s head jerked sharply up and his stricken eyes widened in horror. This was another memory of his, Corrin realised with instinct; and shuddered at the screams of the almost-dead she could hear suddenly now.

The town square was only part of the half burnt remains of a village—with the glinting black armour of Nohrian soldiers standing around, or holding blazing torches as clear perpetrators to the arson and destruction.

The scene in the icy mirror crystalized, and she saw him there as a young man closer to her age without the scar. Her brave knight was brutally restrained on his knees by more Nohrian soldiers and mages of the highest ranks, encrusted dried blood streaming from his bare flesh.

Despite the marks of violence, he strained inhumanly for something out of frame, desperate screams silenced by a stripped throat. Obliging, the scene shifted, and she saw the outline of a village woman against the blood-red sunset sky, surrounded by the rest of the soldiers holding a child tightly against her, face away from the brutality.

I was married once, came the old words in memory. That life… will not exist again.

Absolute numb dread surged through Corrin’s veins.

She took a weak half-step forward in desperation, every single screaming cell in her body wanting to stop it, to protect him—

—for what she instinctively knew was coming.

One soldier drew a sword, and advanced on the woman and the child with impending violence. 

She did not need to see this.

She did not—

A sob threatened to strip her throat as Corrin buried her face in her hands, twisting fully away in the smallest act of private dignity she could give him. There was no need to see this deepest humiliation—not when it was used by another cruel assailant only to gouge pain and rob him of choice. The awful knowledge of death was enough, and a great sweeping snow-white clarity settled across her mind as shaking, numb fingertips covered her eyes.

Clarity of the grief her old knight had borne for decades alone.

Shaking fingers curled into fists, so tightly her fingernails dug in flesh with righteous anger. He had suffered so long, and she was going to end this. 

A new sound made her eyes skitter down the hall. That very same knight was doing his best to limp forward along the endless mirrors despite his shattered knee, clawing at the ice vainly as if to smash the scenes.

“What will it take, royal?” He howled to her and to the emptiness with the echo of a dreamscape as the greasy evil black smoke continued to rise from his armour. “Why won't you DIE?!”

And yet—Corrin now only saw hollow decades-old loneliness in his eyes, beneath the rage.

Brokenly, he laughed hysterically as he slipped down the icy wall as strength abruptly failed him. Corrin could not tell whether the earsplitting, scraping sounds were from his clawed gauntlets screaming against the icy wall as he went down in an undignified clatter, or from the thin pained hisses he was spitting out between words. 

Hesitantly, she stepped closer to him; the black smoke was thinning too. Slightly muffled by the floor, her old black knight sucked in another choked breath, and she knew from the agonised hiss and one armoured gauntlet curling limply under his body, uselessly over oozing bright red flesh that he was dying.

Despite the brutal, horrific humiliation to him—Anankos had unintentionally given her one advantage. 

Clarity.

“You loved them…. Your family and your village…” Corrin could scarcely feel the words escaping from her numb lips, feeling like there were shards of broken pottery clumsily against the skin of her palms, desperate to mend and hover protectively over him with infinite tenderness. “...and Garon took everything from you.” 

I should warn you, Garon always hated me. Again, the old words came back to her. 

Again, she remembered the old worn silver ring that he had worn back in the Fortress days.

Corrin swayed at the terrible clarity.

"I only befriended you for this… used you from the start…” He spat up at her with every scrap of naked loathing he could summon, eyes fluttering shut between pained pants. “You—you gave me gods-damned purpose when there was none."

Something cold and detached noted from a distance that the evil black smoke was all but gone. 

Without the smoke he looked… aged, worn now, exhaustion written in the deeper, sagging lines of his face and the bruised bags under his creased eyes. And yet altogether more human, far more like her handsome lover with softness writ as much as severity—now without the singular unnatural frozen mask of rage and malice.

She saw small dribbles of black oil-slick fading beside his gauntlet, writhing away like a worm.

Narrowing her eyes, Corrin lightly prodded the pool of inky black with her foot.

I AM THE FORGOTTEN DRAGON—

More hope bloomed in her deepest heart. 

It might have been her imagination, but the evil being sounded desperate—

“Your revenge.” Corrin blurted out suddenly to the bitter emptiness, ignoring Anankos as pieces of conversations and hints suddenly fitting together with awful lucidity. She stared at her knight like she would the steel of the Yato itself. 

The image that he had crafted her in.

“I was to be your eventual sword—used against Garon and the royals… If you couldn’t have your family back, you’d have this…” 

Even there prone and sprawled with his cheek pressing against the ice floor, beautiful lilac-grey hair matted with blood, she saw a flicker of his merciless smile curving like a winter wolf, and her old combat instructor laughed in the vicious clenched snarl. “That’s right—all of you. I will not understand the minds of royals. To you all, we commoners are little more than pawns in your schemes. Or weeds to be killed on a whim...” 

Coughing out blood more wetly against the bone-white ice, her old scarred, black-armoured traitor wheezed once in exhaustion as he tried to leverage himself up with one shaking arm, before collapsing to the floor unmercifully in a clatter of armour, ice so slick from puddles of his blood.

“It doesn’t have to be like that.” Feeling like a ghost in her own mind, and the emptiest heart, she stared blankly at the broken, unmoving man in front of her. The only thought looping incessantly in her mind was: 

He looked lonely. 

Abandoned as a shattered sword, cast aside by a monstrous presence who only saw a puppet useless with rust, and not her beautiful brave knight who loved and cared as much as he lost. 

There was a worrisome amount of red-smeared blood pooling under him, making her gaze skitter around him in helpless terror, but composure swiftly cloaked her in a quilt of snow-field steadiness as she limped timidly within arm’s reach of him. Gunter did not react as she knelt beside him cautiously. 

“People don’t have to be… cruel. We can choose to be different.” It all sounded so pitifully quaint.

Resentment, revenge…

“Do you even remember her still, sir? Would she have wanted this?” Corrin dropped to her own knees beside him, not giving one single good goddamn in the world if he was going to run her through with his own clawed fist. 

Quietly, she continued.

“Or do you remember your revenge more than her?” 

And this time—so quietly that if she was not bent lovingly, protectively over him—she would have not heard the sound that was closer to a broken, keening sob between wet wracking chokes on blood that now streamed freely out from his mouth. 

I AM THE ENTOMBED GOD.

Her lover flinched again at the overbearing wall of sound, shivering uncontrollably there as she caressed his mutilated, vulnerable body, and Corrin realised it was at the words.

I AM—

"Anankos!" Corrin snarled out to the air in challenge, beside her lover protectively with one hand outstretched. "He's mine!"

Mine, mine MINE— the holy word seemed to shimmer and blaze in the still air, and suddenly shattered the endless ice mirrors with a great upheaval and wrench of shards splintering and cracking all at once. Mine! Her words echoed with protection and love. Mine, mine! Corrin viciously thought against the silent dragon, filling the dead air with a warsong of her own with her own memories.

With him in the Northern Fortress laughing over tea. With him protecting her from the storms and the mages and their work, of his endless lessons in bettering her, of how he shielded her every time in the heat of battle between the spray of blood, how he had taught her how to swing a sword in protection, how he had taught her love, discipline, pleasure, and loss—

"He's MINE, Anankos!" Corrin screamed out to the air and another seismic shudder rippled through the black ice at her words, cracking it ominously, and she clung onto Gunter and his beautiful thin grey hair. Perversely, she took solace in his gauntlets clutching her like a drowning man with a death grip so hard it bruised as he dragged himself closer, sluicing black-blood all over them both like a mockery of holy water.

“Corrin…” He whispered with the wracking coughs of a dying man in her ear; she could hear the bubble of blood in his lungs and the tension in his throat. A gauntlet tried to grip her shoulder, slipping off limply, and he gargled urgently. “The mask, watch it—”

Corrin leaned back only to turn to see the whites of his eyes go wide in horror, and a sudden wrong-heated rush as something immense rushed up behind both of them.

It happened in a blur.

Gunter shielding her whole with his broken body in one last surge of strength—and the world shattered in one last thunderous crash all around them as something roared in defiance, anger, hatred, sensing prey escaping—

And they fell through

again

to another dark abyss.

They plunged into that icy dark pool like two falcons mated in an embrace of death. Ribbons of bubbles rose to either side of them in that abyss, and for a moment Corrin thought it would be their last grave.

Gunter wore that same strange, sad wistful smile from before like a badge of pride with his eyes closed. And even now—after everything, all she could think of was he was so handsome with his beautiful silver-lilac hair flowing in the dark water, and that she did not want him to die.

Not like this.

He was too proud, too stubborn of a man, her man, for him to go like this.

Like a minnow she dove down after his sinking form and pressed her lips to his, giving him any amount of air that she could spare, even at the risk of her own life. 

<Gunter, stay with me. please…> With her own eyelids closed, she did not notice her tears suddenly bubble and shimmer with emergent holy fire—

<Please, please, please.>

—holy fire that convescalated into vibrating white chords that surrounded both of them, unearthly beautiful with song pouring, and only when the light flared and pulse again with a cheery brightness did she stare in childlike wonder.

He was floating, falling slowly in the water with a pale-grey face, there alongside her with his tailcoat swaying in the currents, but now they both were enveloped by the warm, kind bright light that shone through the darkness and kept it and all sensation of drowning at bay. 

Tentatively, she sucked a ragged breath in, and dared to hope. 

She could now see Gunter more clearly with the steady light and wrapped her arms around him until she could still feel a faint heat and life within his reassuring solidity. Corrin took his face between her palms, bending down until their temples met and she prayed to any god or being who would listen. 

<Protect him, please.>

Her dragonstone floated past the water and she exhaustedly watched as the shimmering crystal pulsed curiously, silently as it crackled with new raw power. Tenderness pulled and stirred deep in her heart, and stretched like ribbons drawing something new out, but not unkindly. 

Asking permission, somehow—as if her dragonstone was answering her prayers.

Instinctively and with a long breath, she drew out her dragon form as she had done that once before in her darkest hour, and watched as it emerged from her… and separated from her. 

If the bubbles had not been lovingly enveloping her, her breath would have been stolen by the icy dark water. Corrin had never known what her dragon form had looked like, had never cared to see it. 

Beautiful, was the first word she could think. It was deer-like, slender and ghostly with spindly white and blue limbs that shimmered with ethereal grace. With divine surety, she understood that she was sacrificing that draconic form full of old terrible memories for him, and in that moment knew she was willing to give anything for a man who had already given everything.

Corrin could feel nothing but profound relief.

<Thank you.>

The blinding white light pulsed and before it enveloped everything again, the last vision she saw was the draconic figure slowly incline a graceful, proud head in gratitude. 

__________________

Corrin’s eyes opened to calm mist and a pale dome of wondrous stars above.

She was lying in the shallow eddies of an endless river, no longer in the strange dark abyss or anywhere that resembled Anankos’ distorted throne hall. Corrin gave a shaky exhale of relief; feeling more comforted than she had been in a very long time, and sat up in the shallow water. A shiver ran through her as she touched the clear surface and the sky itself seemed to ripple in response.

This was the in-between. 

The river that flowed between life and the final death in the astral realm, and the beginning and the end, away from malignant forces that had no power in this holy sanctuary.

Just beyond the length of her arms, Gunter floated face-up with small droplets of cleansing rivulets running down his black-and-silver armour, smoothing away the terrible twisted rage from before that seemed so far away. His breaths were concerningly shallowly but he was alive, and Corrin so carefully crawled over closer to him again while trying not to disturb the peaceful waters.

At the touch of her fingertips brushing away the clear water, his lashes fluttered open.

She knew to her bones that if she let him sink under this final pool of black water, he would never return to the land of the living.

He was whole and hale again for this brief liminal time, including his shattered knee and the fatal wound that had nearly bisected him; mended by some divine being in this land of the in-between. Corrin ached to bury her face against him, to stroke the cloth beneath his armour with a deep aching wish that she could heal his wounds with the same ease. 

“I'm tired. So very tired.” Gunter murmured wearily on her lap with a long shuddering breath, and she cradled her oldest, beautiful black-heart traitor.

“I know.”

Her fingertips brushed his temples with loving reverence, and they stayed interlocked together for some time, lapsing into silence.

She broke it first, pressing a cheek against his warmth.

“Would you come back for me?” 

A shadow of a pained wince etched his face like someone had stepped on his grave; and she amended her plea, even more tenderly. “I would not ask you back to unceasing pain. I can only promise to give you the happiness I can.”

“Corrin…what makes you think I want to return?” Her beloved knight’s piercing, severe eyes went soft with private emotion in a way that made her heart truly ache. “I love you more than life itself, and yet …you're not the only one that doesn't want to remember… so much.” He wheezed bitterly. “I betrayed you. By all rights I should be hanged. What am I without…” 

Her black-heart traitor murmured as his stare bore into the horizon, haunted and haggard as his deep voice trailed off. His gaze uneasily swept over her, stared for too long with a feverish intensity, and finally his eyes closed. “You might not care for what you find in this traitor’s heart. It has been… so long…”

She did not comment on how his rasp cracked with something perilously close to fear.

“The man you are…” Corrin finally murmured, genuinely taking a pause for thought long enough that she saw his eyes flicker back over to her. “Is the man that raised me with love and discipline. I don't think he's that much different.” Stroking the faded grey hair by his temples, she smiled tenderly. “You’re the same man I trusted and loved in our first time.”

Slowly, she rose into a half crouch facing the twinkling starry horizon, and then smiled back down at him, still between her hands on her lap.

“And you’re the same as the one who protected me, there at the very end.” When Anankos lost you.

He stared at her blankly with a hard flatness that her soul shuddered at, before he turned away. “And there’s your belief in people again. I never had a choice, then.” 

But this time, the rebuke had lost all of the vicious sting of malice, and was nothing more than ghosts of grief that passed harmlessly over her. 

“And I want you to have more choices. At living. Your pain does not.” 

At that, he was silent; so quiet for so long that the barest seed of doubt began to uneasily stir in her mind—

Until he shifted minutely up from her lap, and water began to stream off when his armour scraped the sands of the riverbed. So slowly, he got up on his knees, dripping small streams and rivulets with the weight of a thousand lifetimes haunting his eyes and on his shoulders. 

It had not been until now that she knew how very much he had borne all alone.

“I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you, sir. Giving you happiness.” Corrin gently started. "Away from everyone. In a place where we can take back stolen time together." With every word and the brightest conviction she had ever known, she took a step towards him. "I need the man who taught me everything who I know, who shaped me. I need your guidance. I need your strength, your wisdom, your experience. I need your desire that warms me at night to remind me why all of this pain is worth living."

He looked at a complete loss for words as she stroked his handsome, lined cheek.

"I need you as an equal, by my side. Or am I such a selfish, naive, idiot child to dream this?"

A flinch rippled across his face at his own echoed words, but Gunter did not draw away.

“Corrin… You’ve—grown, so much. I am unspeakably proud of you, and the courageous, beautiful young woman and leader you’ve become but… you don’t need this old man. Not anymore, not when I have so little time left.” He smiled bitterly, again. “Not when I have so many sins to answer for.” 

Her beloved black knight and traitor was trying to hold her away again, she felt with a pang of pain—his gauntlet on her shoulder holding her at arm’s length, still, with his last breath trying to protect her from him. The grip was trembling in exquisitely needy tenderness as it was heavy.

That more than anything broke her.  

“Would it change your feelings if I said I wanted you, Gunter, my love; wanted you for every one of those reasons and so many more?” 

He drew in a terrible, shuddering breath—and she felt him keen out with a wracked, choked sob, his composed mask shattering into a thousand pieces of lonely pain. Corrin took the chance; so tenderly she entwined his hand in hers and embraced him with her free arm, burying her face in his chest with the tightest grasp. 

She would never, ever let him go again.  

She felt the wetness of his tears on her hair. He was weeping openly now, tears sluicing down his scar, with eyes screwed shut. “Do you know how many times I have been broken for w-wanting, Corrin. Simply existing. Humiliated, cast aside until the end, alone—”

“I know. I’ve seen it. You deserve happiness too, my love.” 

“How can you say that—” Gunter cried out like a wounded animal, dropping to his knees. “—so sincerely when I’ve hurt you so much...” He was grasping onto her like a drowning man to an anchor, rocking her so tightly to his body that it was almost pain, and she savoured every moment.

“Is it so unthinkable that I could forgive you, Gunter?” She murmured, muffled through his hair, knowing that he heard every word. 

There was a long silence. 

“I-I love you, Corrin, I have always loved you—” 

She was kissing him frantically now, tasting their mingling tears on his tongue. 

Corrin had always thought the streaks of grey were endlessly handsome, even when it had only been a crush. She loved his scar too, and how handsome he was when his features went soft like this when she traced a fingertip sadly along its upper edge, after they parted. The ghost of a smile flickered around the lines of his face; Gunter had always secretly adored her attention, the peacock.

She knows he was hers when the old knight very slowly took her hand between his own knobby knuckles, and kissed it with such raw devotion that it shattered her quavering heart on the spot.

"You know this black-heart traitor. You know what I've done."  His eyes were still closed in shame, and yet his words did not waver.

"I do. Come back to me, Gunter."

And this time, he kissed her again in promise as the light enveloped them in blazing warmth again.

__________________

Corrin would forever be haunted by the rictus of terrible pain on his face when she came-to for the last time, back to reality.

Back in that unholy hall, splashed with blood and despair and with his maimed body and blood soaking her feet.

The wall of stench hit her first, and she gagged at the scent that was far too similar to corpses rotting on the battlefield. Gunter was choking on his own blood, coughing, and she tenderly took his matted hair, turning his head to the side so he could retch wetly, crying out with every spasm. 

It was her name, she realised with nauseous horror. 

He was crying out her name like a talisman through pain that would drive lesser men mad. His body spasmed once with pain and mending as Elise knelt with a healing stave, then again—and Corrin took his free hand that was scrabbling for blind comfort, tightly holding that black gauntlet with both of hers like a lifeline. 

Sakura and Elise were pouring every ounce of their healing magic into him, both dripping with sweat from the exertion but refusing to look away as the gaping stomach wound slowly knitted itself back together into approaching something less deathly.

Niles ran up, grimly setting his own position lower down Gunter’s form. With a tight intake of breath, he tasked himself with holding in the man’s disembowelled insides and here, Corrin had to look away, holding him down and burying her face in her lover’s blood-streaked lilac hair in horror as he arched in hoarsely screaming pain, throat stripped raw already.

There was so, so much blood.

"Healers, to me! We need every available healer NOW!" 

Xander bellowed the order ringing with authority, and instantly Jakob and Shura stumbled to their places beside the girls with staves tightly gripped and hands outstretched to link with the others. 

"Stay with me, Gunter, please."

White light poured out from all of them, and Azura knelt as well, half collapsing while weaving her own healing magic with a gentle voice that still rang with surprisingly steady conviction. 

At the songstress’ magic and a flash of the glowing stone hanging by her neckline, Gunter’s eyes fluttered shut and the grave lines of pain sagged into something more approaching dreamless slumber. At least he was no longer in such pain, she thought with frantic terror, gripping his gauntlet even tighter against her cheek as the healers kept at their work with even more focus. They would not have stopped if he was—

Niles was the one that reeled back first. Corrin almost panicked until she saw the jerk of a vicious, victorious nod as he slid down one column, blood dripping in sheets from his forearms. 

Niles of all people would not give her false hope. 

"He's got a chance of living now, if we—ow—get him to the healer's tents. I've seen idiot huntsmen recover at this point." The adventurer wiped his brow, heedless of the red that streaked him now, and looking dangerously sickly and dusky grey himself despite the teeth-clenched snarl of satisfaction. "Whatever you did... he'd be a goner without that."

It was all she could do to not crumple in absolute relief at that hope. Her eyes overflowed as she choked back a wretched sob, and it was a moment before she realised she had her lips pressed to the knuckles of her lover’s bloodied black gauntlet, clasping his hand in a death grip.

The world tilted. Hands reached out to her in turn, steadying her.

"T-thank you—" Corrin choked out. "All of you, tha—"

She fainted forward, and everything went black.

__________________

Corrin slept a dreamless sleep.

She heard commotion once, and hoarse shouts of agony in a dimly lit place, and then the voices of people and loving hands outstretched as the noises were soothed.

__________________

Once, she thought she felt his rough hand brush the back of hers, tenderly.

__________________

She came-to, both suddenly and not.

It felt much the same muzziness after the mind-wipe sessions as a little girl, but there was no stark terror with the lethargy bleeding away fear, only leaving a grim and focused heaviness that sank to her bones. Mostly she was very, very tired, and everything felt as equally heavy.

"Milady, you're awake!"

Jakob—oh she would recognize her sweet butler’s exclamation anywhere—was somewhere close around given his hushed excitement. She was in the healer’s tents, Corrin noted, and her head was throbbing with that woozy sense that meant the world would still tilt around if she sat up too quickly. Weakly, she tried, and immediately regretted the motion.

“Is he—”

“He’s alive, and stable.” Jakob’s face twitched in visible contempt directed at the old knight. “For what good that’ll do all of us.”

“Jakob.” Corrin wearily murmured without real heat, her head flopped back on the bed with the world slowly not-spinning. Their intergenerational rivalry would be as consistent until the actual end of the world, and she strangely took comfort in the consistency of grudges than bristling in defence of her lover. “Be nice.” 

“That traitorous geezer—” He caught himself, so painfully similar to her Gunter that this time her heart squeezed in fondness, and she smiled to herself. “Nevermind. How are you, milady?”

“Headache. Dizzy. Getting better. It’ll be fine.” There was a pause while he was giving her the strangest glances with a shadow of guilt, and it took far too long for Corrin to realise what was haunting her loyal butler.

"Jakob. I’m sorry, forgive me. I should not have treated you like so, before the battle…” By the flinch and the stiffness as he rippled back into composure, Corrin knew her guesstimation was right. But this time he was shaking his head rapidly from side to side, otherwise remaining stoic and remarkably composed.

“Desperate times require desperate measures, and I am thankful that whatever you did… there to him… worked.” 

“Still. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Apology accepted, milady.” And this time, Corrin relaxed, hearing the practical sincerity in his voice. Her beloved butler could and would hold a grudge to oblivion with anyone else, but not with her. This time, she made another slower attempt to sit up, and the whine of concern that escaped his throat didn’t deter her. 

She realised that the healers probably had assigned him the task to keep her in bed as a clever way to keep both of them out of trouble.  

"Jakob. I'd like to see him if you don't mind."

Another whine emanated somewhere from his direction, much like a puppy. 

“Please?”

As she had known, he relented with a grumble sounding remarkably like a forest toad voicing its displeasure, and she laid an affectionate hand briefly on his arm in silent gratitude for his understanding. Jakob quieted and with one last sigh and remarkably gentle gloved hands, helped her sit and inch forward enough that she could see who was on the bed immediately to her left. 

Gunter was deep asleep, and it was all she could do to not sag with relief on her knees beside his bedside. Instead, Corrin tenderly took her old lover’s hand in both of hers, and pressed her lips to them in a silent prayer of eternal gratitude, and for a swift recovery. 

“May I ask a question?” 

She almost thought she didn’t hear Jakob’s voice, much quieter this time. “Why…” Judging by where his gaze trailed to—both of them watching the sleeping face of Gunter—she could hazard a guess at his thoughts. Her fingertips continued to stroke the back of the papery veined hand so tenderly, hoping that her lover could feel her affections. 

Why him?

Why take him of anyone as a lover? 

Why take such effort to save the life of a traitor?

It was a good question, and Corrin took the quiet moment to take a step back and contemplate to herself, beyond the infinite love she had for her oldest knight. 

“He cared for us.” She said finally. “Despite fate’s fathomless cruelties to him, some that no-one else alive will ever know, he cared.” Her eyes might have been a little misty. 

You deserve happiness, Gunter. And I would rewrite fate itself to ensure that.

Something between an irreverent snort and a sigh escaped Jakob, but it was not malicious. 

"That conversation you stumbled in, before we went into these cursed ruins..." The butler was visibly uncomfortable, pacing nearly in a circle in the tight tent with his hands clasped behind his back in a pose that painfully reminded Corrin of her lover again. "He asked me to take care of you if anything should happen to him. The man damn well insisted on it."

All the air left Corrin's chest.

"I think he knew—" Jakob swallowed hard, grasping the rails of the medical cot, and glanced at the sleeping form again. "—bad things would happen. And I think he wanted to ensure you'd be in safe hands all the same." The exhale was nearly a pained whine as he drooped forward like a wilted houseplant, his thin white hair draped over his shoulder and especially stark in the dim light. "Why couldn't that old bastard make it easy to hate him."

"He cared for you too, Jakob, first-rate butler and all."

She didn't comment on how his breath hitched audibly in the darkness.

"You... You heard that? From that old geezer?"

"Gunter told me he was very proud of you, even with the… erm, punch. He was especially proud of that, actually."

"I'll be." It was quiet for a moment. Evidently that was one emotion too far for the butler, as he was rubbing his neck in embarrassment. and she swore he was actually pink in pride. "Anyway, milady, is there anything I can get you?"

"Please get some rest, Jakob." She smiled warmly at him, feeling strangely lighter now there was some semblance of understanding between the three of them, even if one was ever so slightly unconscious still. "We will need every bit of your skill in the next battle, and afterwards. I will need you. But for now... rest."

"Can't refuse my lady when she puts it like that." Jakob hesitated, and then put a hand on her shoulder companionably. "Same goes to you, if you can forgive an insubordinate butler."

Corrin gave his hand a gentle squeeze. "Always."

Corrin awoke violently to new voices.

Her eyes slid over to Gunter as was habit, and he was alive and—awake. His cadaverous skin was still a pallid grey, sunken in with new lines of pain and stress, but she could see recognition and clarity in his eyes as he watched the tent entrance towards the healers arguing with somebody. She was about to dart over to her lover when Ryoma strode in, lightning-sword in hand.

"Give me one good reason why this traitor is still breathing."

Rajinto was flickering rather ominously in the dim light, unsheathed.

"I wonder that myself." Gunter murmured soullessly, so quietly to be inaudible.

A holy fire of protectiveness bubbled in her heart as she bristled over him, and she took a step so bold toward Ryoma that he visibly blinked at her, distracted from his target.

"Please stand down, Brother. No violence, not here."

"... Right. Healer's tents, sure." To her greatest relief, he sheathed the lightning-sword instantly. Out of the very corner of her eye, she thought the old knight's lips twitched in an outright smirk at how meekly the samurai backed down.

"That still leaves the matter of this cretin." Ryoma's face hardened into stone when she bristled again instantly. "Need I remind you he killed Scarlet? Almost killed you? Betrayed you? Almost killed all of us?!"

"I will talk to you about that, Brother." She tried to remain coldly diplomatic, biting down uglier words to match his shouting. "—We will, I promise. Repartrations will be made. But not now. Ryoma, he is recovering from death."

Corrin emphasised the last words with laced warning. Ryoma gave her a cutting glare in response. It was plainly written on his furious expression as to what he was thinking, only too polite and trained in Hoshidan stoicism to say it out loud.

He should have stayed dead.

"Dears, dears, dears, if you are not a patient or a healer, this is not the time to be here." One of the older healers, a thin but severely dressed figure in white loudly clapped her hands at Ryoma behind him. The red-armoured samurai all but jumped at the crack of sound, though Corrin thought it was more at the sheer audacity of his authority usurped. "You are disturbing our wards."

She didn't have to look at Gunter to know he'd be deathly amused at the drama playing out by his feet, too. Corrin risked a discrete step closer to him, her hand searching for his, hidden by the bedside from the others. His immediate warmth from knobby fingertips that rubbed over hers soothed her like nothing could, and she stood straighter with her hand tightly clasped in his. 

Ryoma was still muttering apologies that were trying not to morph into excuses to the healer, and the good lady was having none of it. 

"Is this a mission critical discussion, fearless swordsman?"

"I—"

"Out you go."

"Excuse—"

"Yourself, yes."

With a rustle of armour, cloth, and the faintest snarl, he left.

A pin could have been dropped and heard by everyone in the healer's tents after the samurai had stalked off. It wasn't until one of the other wounded soldiers broke the silence with a series of pained coughs that everyone started to move again with efficiency.

Corrin gave a deep bow of respect to the healer as she approached. "I apologise for my brother, he's—"

"You have nothing to apologise for, sweetheart. Bless him, the prince simply needed a reminder that battlefield healers outrank everyone else when it comes to mending and matters of medicine. How are you feeling?"

"I..." The simple question took all of the fire out of her. How was she feeling? "Unhurt ... tired." The old woman gave her a very sceptical, pointed gaze as she observed and catalogued her own judgements; clearly used to soldiers downplaying maladies.

"...May I lay beside him for a moment?" Corrin weakly asked instead. She wanted to sleep, yes, but more than anything she craved her lover's damned touch.

"Mercy, what am I to do with all of you... Five minutes." The healer’s fading steps were remarkably sharp and precise as a soldiers, apparently judging Corrin’s own minor wounds to not be noteworthy. "And stay above the sheets!"

Gunter’s wry, quiet chuckle drifted from the bedside below. Corrin was already bending over and snuggling up against the length of his warm, solid side as he continued with a rough murmur only she could hear. 

"We haven't been the only ones to have ideas in healers tents, clearly." 

The amused words went over her head as Corrin single-mindedly buried her face into the crook of his neck. Her nose traced the faint spider-webs of his lines and veins that she had long since memorised, and she closed her eyes as she all but collapsed in shaking, shuddering relief against him, that he was alive —

"I'm sorry." She apologised again, her heart so bruised and bloodied that she didn't even know what she was apologising for, or to whom, this time. She kissed his bare shoulder, and then smushed her face against his comforting, warm broadness, her fingertips searching for his. Their hands clasped together on his chest above the blankets and the many bandages swathing his torso, and she clung against him as his coarse thumb-pad rubbed loving circles into the hollow between her shoulderblades.

"He was right, you know." 

She distantly knew Gunter was referring to the samurai. Viciously sidestepping that comment, she held him stubbornly tighter against her.

"Don't go there, please. I missed you. I c-can't..." She wasn't even conscious of the fact she was silently crying until one of his calloused fingertips brushed her cheek, and came away wet. 

"Corrin…." His free muscled arm encircled her shoulders, clumsily cradling her as best as he could while remaining flat on his back, immobile with the wound. She buried her face into the wispy strands of his silver-lilac hair, breathing in his warm scent in a fitful attempt to stop trembling like a leaf. 

"I missed you, I missed you—" She cut him off in one of the only times she didn't want to hear what he had to say, and could not stop in the panicked babble that rushed out of her. "We-we will get to everything, eventually, not now, I need you, I want you—"

His thumb-pad brushed her lips, and his other arm drew her in tighter.

"Easy, easy, love..."

She latched on his low voice like an anchor amidst a flood. It was long minutes before she could breathe again with steadiness. Evidently the healers had mercy on them and were tactfully staying away, tending to the others just out of sight.

"I'm sorry," She knew her face was a red splotchy mess as she was trying to dab away the wetness with the edge of a sheet, hardly what she wanted him to see.

"Corrin." He tenderly guided her face towards his with one of his big steady hands, and kissed her chastley on the forehead, slow and sweet. It was only then that she began to feel the mass of tension in her slowly dissolve. And his simple kiss broke her through the black ice of dread and fear. 

As Gunter’s big hands stroked the nape of her neck like he did so long ago when he rocked her to sleep as a child, she sobbed silently with absolute relief in his arms, clinging to him like a baby. 

__________________

Corrin was back in her own cot, contemplating every single stitch in the fabric ceiling of the tent when she heard footsteps. Softer than the healers and Ryoma, and so barely audible that it was bare feet or a deliberate attempt at stealth; she sat up warily and wondered if it was an illusion or an enemy ninja.

It was her friend dressed in pale blue and white.

"Azura!" They embraced lightly; she had not seen the dancer since that terrible day.

"Gunter, when you have the time, I'd like a moment to talk with you in private to hear your thoughts about Anankos. We know so little about our enemy at this final hour, and I know you have your own observations." The dancer smiled warmly at Corrin too with an inclined head. "My friend. We should talk soon, but if he wishes, I'd like to give privacy..."

"She stays." Gunter murmured gruffly with his eyes closed. At that, Corrin crossed the gap between the cots to help her old knight sit upright. She was pleased to see he only winced once at the motion of the pillows behind him for more support; his torso wound was healing rapidly. 

Task completed, she squeezed his hand in wordless affection and he brought their intertwined hands up for a chaste brush of a kiss on her slender knuckles. Azura smiled at the easy and mutual affection as she perched on the edge of the other bed.

"Please realise, I wished to give you both more time to rest before... this." The dancer sighed with the world-weariness that they all felt. "And time is the one gift we have least of, naturally."

"We would always make time for you, Azura." Corrin murmured, and Gunter assented. He had always been fond of her steadfastness as well.

"Thank you. If I may, please let me apologise, first. I had suspected Anankos' interest around you since the first time we met in Valla, so long ago."

Interest sounded awfully close to influence, but Corrin did not hold it against either one of them. She wondered whether she would have lasted as long as her lover with the full brunt of a corrupted being focused on her deepest wounds and secrets, and shuddered at the thought.

No, I would have not.

"I am deeply sorry for your sake that I did not mention this earlier. It may have saved us heartache. We will never know, but it has to be said."

Gunter gave a stiff nod. He had time during the recovery to come to the same conclusion.

"Anankos has—had—been aware of me for a very long time, milady. Much longer than most." He rubbed a gnarled hand over his face, wincing at the sore muscles for such a simple gesture, and at the painful memories. "Back in the Bottomless Canyon, that first time when you found me, you might recall myself mentioning the... dragon's blood gift that Garon offered, so very long ago. It is clear now it was a trap to become an unthinking vessel of the silent dragon’s, possibly of the undead. Unwittingly, I refused."

"He must have been so angry." Azura whispered.

"Very." Gunter couldn't help but wheeze a bitter laugh through his palm. "They both were. Garon's rage was ... more relevant to me, at that time. I did not know Anankos existed. I was a fool."

He paused, old memories clearly taking a toll on him. Corrin took a chance and leaned a head on his shoulder as encouragement. It was a mark of how deeply the pain festered that his free hand threaded through hers in the nakedness of daylight, searching for silent comfort.

"Like you, Lady Azura, I suspect this demon-dragon's influence was subtle. Perhaps tied to his seat of power here in Valla. Perhaps also tied to the... resentments that I carried. That I have carried for decades since that refusal, and the murder of my family."

His breath went harsh, and Corrin squeezed his fingers gently in encouragement. She had a suspicion what he was working up the courage to say.

"I had... infrequent vile dreams. Nightmares. Not anything of this world." Gunter looked away in disgust. "Suggestions of whispers in my mind. Migraines. Spans of time in my memory I cannot account for to this day. One of these gaps is when these hands—when I killed Scarlet."

Several other lurid memories twisted with searing clarity in Corrin's mind, and her breath stilled. His eyes flickered over to her, but did not say anything.

"I grew more aware of these spans of time as we marched onto his fortress. Make no mistake, my own hatreds were... driving this body." Gunter put his face in his other hand, weighed by the past. "My hatreds were the kindling and the fuel for his temptations which I took willingly. Let me be judged for every action; I will also bear the punishment willingly."

He pursed his scarred lips, and took in a deep breath as his eyes flicked back up to both of them. His voice was soft now. "That said, they are feelings I will not easily relinquish. To be blunt, Lady Azura, these resentments will always be who I am. I will not change."

The dancer gave a slow nod. 

"I have my own as well," she replied, equally as sombrely. "I will never fault you for them."

Watching the layered conversation between them, it hit Corrin for the first time that there were many similarities between the old knight and the young dancer. It was not long ago that everyone had viewed Azura as another traitor, even before knowing about the invisible kingdom. Bearing the weight of a hidden truth for so long and not being able to share in the burden with a single soul was enough to destroy a life and a mind, if only through the loneliness and heartbreak alone. 

She quietly grieved for their years lost to isolation.

"Anankos fed on true despair, loneliness, and deceit." Azura said simply, unintentionally echoing her thoughts. Her hand smoothed the sheets like ripples on a still lake. "Love and trust is anathema to what he has become. I have my suspicions that your happiness for each other kept him at bay for much longer than what could have tragically been. It should keep you safe for these next few hours."

"Should, milady?" Gunter repeated with the hint of mild—if professional—sarcasm. Corrin knew that her old knight did not like anything less than iron-clad certainty, and she admitted the words were not quite as reassuring as they could have been. 

Azura gave a sigh that sounded close to exasperation. 

"Do you have yet more secrets we need to hear?"

Gunter gave a resigned chuckle. There was no humour in it. "I have bared my soul many times over. If there was anything else of note, the demon would have used it by now." 

"Then there is your answer. He is also weaker now, forcibly removed with my song restoring you. I have my other concerns about this coming battle; Anankos retaking you is not one of them."

The old knight inclined his head in acknowledgement and in silent gratitude.

"Spend this night together, if you can." Azura gave the ghost of a smile, standing with liquid grace and the hint of closure. "I cannot think of anything more healing for both of you."

__________________

Good fortune had been watching over them indeed.

The healer overseeing his recovery had been mightily pleased at the swiftness of his recovery, judging by the much shorter length of time in the final inspection of the old man. Corrin had barely made it back from a short detour to her private quarters before an attendant was inviting her back in.

Gunter was seated on the edge of his cot and threading a hand through his lilac-grey hair; still impossibly mussed due to being bedridden, and the old lady-healer was busily packing her tools back in the cart with practised motions. Her fingers drummed against the footrest of the cot as she gave them both the final send-off.

"All clear, and he knows his medications to keep infection at bay. It would free up extra beds, and gods know your guests are a handful. Now, understand—no excessive activity for either one of you." The old woman pinned them both with a baleful, knowing look. "Am I clear?"

Corrin was better these days at hiding her inward amusement, but it was a near thing. Given her lover’s sudden smirk when they were a few footsteps away from the tent, she knew they were of one mind, and dryly whispered over to him. 

"I think we have a reputation."

Hearing him cackle in turn—truly laugh with enough deep, throaty force to send birds flapping from trees—mended her tender heart as surely as any stave did.

__________________

She had brewed some of Gunter’s special tea for him beforehand, discreetly placing it on the bedside table within reach. Neither one of them wanted anything that night save the quiet comfort of skin to skin intimacy.

"Do you know, all of my happiest moments have been here with..." He trailed off, lost in memories. By his voice, she knew without looking that there were unshed tears in his eyes, and that her old knight was deeply moved. 

He had not expected to still walk among the living after the last battle. 

Sometimes he stared at the world like he expected it all to be a ghostly illusion, and it was one such moment when Gunter stood there at the threshold for a long moment with her supporting him lightly for stability. She wouldn't breathe a word about it to him, but his newly acquired limp worried her. A twinge of guilt ran through her—after all, it had been her to shatter that knee.

"What would you like to do, Gunter?"

For a while she thought he didn't hear her as his eyes remained closed—but then came the softest response, his voice scratchy with emotion. 

"To listen to your heartbeat, Corrin."

She smiled, leaning her cheek against his muscled bicep in an affirmative.

With gentle and slow steps, she guided him to her bed, her heart squeezing as he groaned with relief at being off his feet. Corrin set her hands to work, helping him take the borrowed shirt and trousers off. She could see the quiet gratitude in his eyes as he wearily leaned his head against hers, still profoundly exhausted from the recovery and the... everything.

It felt like a shared nightmare that they had both awoken from.

Eventually they would—have to—talk about it in this world, but not this night. Not when he still felt far too fragile and could crumble to bloodied dust as a corpse, and not when she desperately craved the comfort of his arms to steel her for the coming battle. The last battle, one way or another.

She wanted to be selfish with him this night.

His own vein-laced hands made short, efficient work of her own clothes in contrast. Yet it was not the frenzied rush of new lovers exploring the dips and creases for the first time, but with the slow mastery of an artist and his tenderness savouring a muse-—she breathed a pleasurable sigh as his thumb-pad brushed against the underside of her breast with a lover's precision.

Nearly nude at last, they both worked their way ungracefully under the covers, her taking great care not to strain his wounds by guiding his gnarled shoulders up to where she was partially propped by a mound of pillows near the headboard. After shifting over her for a few moments, he sank the side of his worn cheek to the curves of her bared clavicle, one muscled arm wrapped around her back protectively. They laid there for a while, him taking the occasional sip of the prepared tea with Corrin stroking the sensitive nape of his creased neck and massaging his shoulders.

"This takes me back." He murmured wryly as her fingertips dug in his deliciously bare skin, kneading and chasing away at the shadows of tension that still haunted him, and she was rewarded with satisfied hums from her old man. "That first time in the healer's tents ..."

"I believe you called it our flagrant scene ..."

"Where, my dear, is the lie?"

She giggled with terrible fondness and his eyes twinkled up at her. After a moment, his hand drifted down to her hip, fingertips lightly caressing her skin until it prickled, and she savoured each of his rough callouses. 

As she knew he would do, that same hand slid languidly down her curves, fingering her panties that he was so fond of. Corrin couldn't help but bite down on her lip in mischief, feeling him fondle the fabric and her so lewdly. 

"You haven't changed one bit. Still endeared to them, aren't you?"

"Ever since I stole a pair from you in our castle, so long ago. You've married a panty-thief as well as a black-heart; horror of horrors."

"Gunter!"

He chuckled darkly against her flesh, his thin nose trailing an odd semicircle pattern above the tenderness of her breast, and she realised he was tracing her heart's position. 

Something in his expression shifted, and he pressed his scarred lips lightly there in reverence. "No more secrets." Gunter murmured against her sensitive skin, and Corrin suddenly ached at the bone-deep regret in those three words echoed back to her.

He had survived so much, some horrors that she had never known all this time.

To keep both of their minds from going to dark places, she cupped his cheek and stroked his lines with a thumb adoringly. "In that case... a secret for a secret. You should know I thought only of you in… er, fantasies, when I touched myself at night…"

Gunter's scarred lips quirked at that, even pressed against her breast, and he caught her eyes with a crooked eyebrow. "My princess." He sounded halfway between scandalised and delighted and she blushed slightly in turn, not quite able to meet his wicked grin.

“Don’t tease, sir. I’d rather you, um…” With shaking fingertips, she took one of his veined hands, and guided him between her legs, twitching against his touch and hoping he got the hint.

He did, as fingertips lazily tugged her panties aside, down, and then fully off.

With a leisurely flick of his wrist, she watched with scandalised amazement as the fabric landed somewhere in the vicinity of the bed, with him looking rather unperturbed if not downright humoured at the mess. Her old man was supposed to be the fanatically tidy one. He had even disciplined her once or twice for keeping such a messy room (an idea for later, that), and yet here—

Gunter arched an eyebrow down at her again, and chuckled as he nuzzled the corner of her lips. 

“For me, later. Your lover is impatient.” He rasped, nose trailing her jawline lightly, following increasingly more exploratory nibbles along her neck. A surge of heat bolted right through her at the sensation of his rough teeth and tongue, and she could not resist swallowing a needy whimper. "To which, how would these fantasies of yours go?"

“I’d beg for you…” She went crimson, panting as he growled in affirmation just right under her earlobe. "You'd kiss me..." 

“Then beg, beautiful.” 

She thought of his gauntlet around her throat, there in that deadly hall not a day before. The echo of that sensuously velvet voice of her black-heart traitor.

Darkly, she thought of him thrusting into her raw and hard, claiming her afterwards if he had won (as he would have done, she knew), and moaned his name into the dark, so loudly. With a heady rush (as she had known he'd also do), her breath was immediately claimed by his tongue. 

It was not a chaste or inexperienced kiss, searing with desire against her lips, hot and heavy. Maybe he knew what she was thinking, too. 

Hands roamed each of their naked flesh with hunger so intense she thought they might bury their wandering touches into each other. He was more possessive now, Corrin thought with dark pleasure as her fingertips by his neck dug in for purchase as she arched and writhed against him, sure to leave red welts in the morning—so was she. She understood the games he had been playing now.

Corrin only hesitated touching him when she heard a sharp inhale and a muffled curse. 

The old man would never admit to it, but the sound had sounded awfully like pain when he had attempted to brace himself with one arm. The briefest moment of fragile silence threatened to spiderweb between them until Gunter murmured over her, nodding up at her pillow. 

“Let me continue on my back. It’ll be… easier.”

With the practical understanding of lovers they shifted slowly in the sheets, and she was relieved to see her beloved old knight not retreat into the gloom that dogged him occasionally. He deserved to be happy, here, and she pushed him lightly back against her pillow with another openmouthed kiss to distract him, not wanting to strain his wounds or pride.

“I crawled from the grave to your bed... and still you desire this body.”' Gunter panted with a raspy thread akin to wonder as his broad shoulders fell back against her pillows. Despite his words, this time—that pinched expression was replaced with a relaxed and humoured look as she crawled up over him. By his hooded eyes flickering lazily down her body, he was doubtlessly savouring the view. 

“Some of us like this…” Corrin teased, running her hands down his silvered chest hair and also very much enjoying the view. He gave an amused snort at that, and her heart fluttered at how handsome his resulting grin was—it was even more sensuous when he groaned low and lusty as her hand trailed mischievously down to his erection, stroking until she felt him heavy and throbbing all the more in her palm. Oh, she could get used to how his face went slack with desire, jaw twitching, and the rush made her hips twitch against his torso with pent want.

“And I thought I was impatient, princess.” Gunter tapped her thigh, considerably distracted, and then gestured up. “Let me pleasure you with my mouth, first.”

It took her a moment to gather what he was implying along with the light but insistent squeeze of his hands, and Corrin went crimson. Crawling her way up, she straddled his hairy chest, trying desperately not to shake and shiver at the new sensations against her thighs.

“Higher.” Gunter ordered with a rough purr and soon she found herself straddling his face, past pink with embarrassment to a deep red blush as big hands teasingly spread her thighs wider across his strong jawline with a wicked smirk, fingertips tickling along the most sensitive flesh there on the inside as she twitched again with anticipation. 

She shuddered against him with a breathy shriek as she felt his stubble brush against her inner thigh, and his nose lightly exploring with unerring precision.

"Sir..." Broad, veiny hands gripped her ass and pressed her in closer. Lady-like dignity all forgotten, she whimpered as her hips shuddered uncontrollably against his breath, her hands clawing at his hair with mad desperation as she rode his teasing tongue unevenly, so tight already. "Sir, oh, oh, please—"

"My name..." He rasped with ravenous satisfaction as the flat of his tongue lapped at her wetness with a much longer and deeper stroke, and she shrieked.

"Gunter, please, please…"

He sank his nose and tongue into her pussy and worshipped her between her thighs until she came with messy, needy, wracking cries of pleasure, all too soon.

He was chuckling again as, finally, he let her thighs go and she parted with a great wobble backwards and breathy pants, completely undone. 

Higher reason rapidly fraying, Corrin scooted back down quickly and ungainly to straddle him at his waist now, his massive hands guiding her thighs wider, her skin on fire in every place that his fingertips were touching her and digging into her skin with purchase that would bruise so delightfully the next day, oh it felt so good—

"I need you, I need you—"

In answer, she felt his big blunt cock-head fill her between her legs, filling her, stretching her tight, slick walls inch by inch with savoured tease and she rocked and shuddered down against his length, eliciting unrestrained moans and long loud keening groans of pleasure from both of them—

He was needy tonight, demandingly tender, nakedly vulnerable as he thrust up into her, seating himself to his root, calling out her name with every full thrust—

Corrin… Corrin—Corrin—

He stayed in her for a long time afterwards with their warm sticky limbs wrapped around each other, loathe to separate.

__________________

Corrin massaged his shoulder lightly in bliss, there in the aftermath of coupling as they both dozed. Gunter stirred and nuzzled her neck with that beautiful thin nose of his. 

"Still thinking, my love?"

"I was thinking you've ruined me for any other lovers."

He throatily chuckled, deep against her skin in the way that made her pulse flutter, but she merely stroked his wispy hair at his temple in reply. Corrin had sorely missed this gentle time together. "You always mean it, every kiss, every touch..."

"Life and happiness is so precious, Corrin. The older you get the more you re-learn that fragile lesson."

"Gunter, if it's not a bad time... would you tell me about your family?"

Something tender flickered in his creased eyes. He was silent for a long moment and then nodded, bringing the back of her hand to his lips and kissing it in silent gratitude. 

Her beloved old knight must have seen the reasoning on her face; whatever happened in the last battle, privately, she wanted somebody else alive to truly understand and share in that weight and lonely flame that the love of her life held. 

Not to be alone in the crushing weight of memory until the very bitter end.

There in the dark by the faintest moonlight that streamed through the high window above, and with his lips pressed against her neck, Gunter softly murmured stories about his first love who then became his beloved wife—how they had met in the village harvest festival, and how he had courted her, and how her smile led him back from battlefield after battlefield as a young knight. 

The child that they had had, a gregariously sweet little boy who loved sunflowers the most of all.

And even later in that early morning—Corrin held him with her slender arms wrapped around his silver-lilac hair as he sobbed openly with great wracking cries and tears shining in the moonlight, and she knew deep in her bones that it was the first time he had allowed himself to truly grieve in decades. 

When he got up to take the last leak through the night, it was pre-dawn.

Gunter always preferred this time alone and away from meddlers; which included both the street drunkards and the nobility—most times, he couldn't tell the difference between the two aside from the quality of the soiled clothing. In his younger days he had often borne the thankless task of wrestling a minor nobleman back to the hands of their equally-tipsy retainers after a night’s worth of ill-advised carousing. 

This camp’s slightly more disciplined rabble from the evening's various hedonisms had long since wandered off abed, and if there was anyone else moving around in this delicate darkness, it was the small army of people who served without complaint—maids, butlers, guards, and the occasional healer rotating out of their shift. He could hear them outside now, beyond the one covered window in Corrin’s rooms. Like-minded common-sensed people with a sense of implacable duty and a respect for routine. 

Without routine, there was no order. Without order, there would be no dignity. He wandered into the small bathroom of hers, grateful for the privacy as he started the daily ablutions.  

Mechanically, he catalogued the various wounds across the various tasks of the early morning. Strip the old bandages off, shower, rebandaging the wounds, shave, and a brisk once-over of the rest when he was freshly cleaned. Gunter only hissed twice in ugly sharp pain as he carefully changed the bandages wrapped around his torso; imperfectly disguising the sounds as a high intake of breath and a thin, snarled curse. All things considered, he got off astoundingly lucky. He didn't care to mull on the specifics beyond, and he was grateful for the dim candlelight in the washroom for obscuring the rest.

Gunter tested his knee with a wince and a wobble towards the end of the ablutions. The joint would hold, he assessed finally, though he was less confident about pressing much more than his weight on it. However, when he reached down for the stained bandages that had swathed his torso overnight and would be disposed of, the world suddenly swam and he groped for the sink-bowl in front for steadiness. Fear sluiced through his shaking hands like icy water at the thought if Azura had been wrong about lingering remnants of the dragon’s thrall, after all.

And yet—the dizziness and nausea gradually subsided, and he shook his head once, hard enough to clear the blurred world at his peripheral vision. It took far longer than he’d prefer to settle, and he took several additional harsh breaths to listen cautiously in case his voice slithered back. 

Something to mention next time to the healers in private, but later. 

Corrin was only barely starting to stir when he started the work of putting on each of his black and silver heavy armour plates, one by one with the rote memory of decades. Gunter could always tell when his lover was waking by the way her breathing quickened, and how her nude body pooled subconsciously into the heat in the bed left by his absence.

Normally, most days—and he smirked lightly at the memories—she rather enjoyed the show he put on for her. Gods only knew what she saw in him in his twilight years, but he was vain, and still a red-blooded man enough to enjoy a woman's attention and lingering eyes. And he wouldn't lie, there was an intimacy in that ritual of her watching him girding for war. Like everything, their odd little tradition had started by pure accident, when he had caught her once pretending to be asleep with her peeking out from her pretty little lids; but his little lady voyeur was a rotten fibber and he had caught her out easily enough. He had offhandedly snarked that she should touch herself if she was going to be shameless enough to enjoy the sight of her old man in a state of undress so much, and that —

He grinned. That sincere, and delightfully swift response from her had been a wickedly pleasurable surprise, and the memories of her sweetly servicing him in full armour—minus a strategic piece—with the scent of sleep-haze still clinging onto her never failed to give him a swagger that lasted well through the end of the day.

But this time, Corrin stared at his armour and her beautiful heart-shaped face went pinched.

"Absolutely not. You..." Idiot man, he could see the words on her lips, but she bit them back. "You were—are—death walking."

He raised an eyebrow. Cinched the shoulder-plate strap with extra force than it strictly needed. 

"If I can stand, I can fight, milady." Gunter replied tersely. If his princess thought he was going to stay behind after being pronounced fit to serve, she was sorely mistaken. Fit was subjective, and he knew his limits better than her. 

Corrin breathed through her nose with a noise that sounded like a whine, a sure sign she was exasperated. Cute. Made him want to twist in the sword more, most times. This time, however, she made a visible effort to unclench from the nagging, fussed complaints he could hear rattling on the tip of her beautiful, talented silver-tongue.

With grace, his little princess sat up on the bed dragging sheets modestly (and quite unnecessarily) over her, bare legs crossed demurely crossed at the ankles. She was going for the tactful, diplomatic route this time, and there was a rotten side of him that was curious at how far that would take her. 

Corrin exhaled, looking dolefully up at him.

"I spent too much effort bringing you back, Gunter. Please consider staying behind, just this once."  

He shrugged; she wasn't going to win this with sugar and spice and everything nice. He was a hard man, and this last battle would need steel, not roses.

"Then I'm either an invalid, or untrustworthy. Take your pick." 

Right as the words came out, he inwardly winced at the harshness. But Gunter did not regret the words, and so he let them hang while resuming the tasks of tightening his bracers and gauntlets.

Oddly though, she softened further still at the silence without judgement or further nagging. Time was when she was younger and a great deal more impatient, that barb would have stirred a reaction from her. She was waiting him out, he realised with the instinct of lovers. 

Somewhere in this accursed war, they had both changed. 

With a terse exhale, he strode forward and gripped her shoulders with his armoured gauntlets and greaves; that wordlessly pained look from her was getting to him. "I am not— " He whispered through clenched teeth, enunciating every word. "Leaving you or your side. Ever again."

"You're scared." Something that would be thoughtlessly cruel from the local village bully was soft and simply observational from his lady love, and her hand was reaching up and out towards his cheek now, something becoming a tell. He couldn't tell if it was hers or his for being so needy.

Gunter sighed, and then he unsteadily sank to his knees by her bed in apology, closing the gap between them. This time, the back of her hand did caress the aged lines of his cheek, and the old man sagged into the unbearably gentle touch. 

"I am your sworn sword and shield, Corrin. This body exists for you, and to protect you." 

His murmured words were nothing but blunt, meagre instruments better wielded as barked orders in a battlefield, not for such delicate things like comforting his lover in turn, which he knew he was a rotten failure at anyways, but he tried.

Her light hands threaded through his hair and gently massaging his roots, and the old disciplinarian was a soft lovesick idiot boy again, drunk with fucking feelings, wanting nothing more than to shed his armor and crawl back into bed with her and make love to her until time itself blurred into an ouroboros of pleasure. Even his prick stirred hopefully at that thought. 

"I'm sorry… I just don't want to see you hurt again." He knew her and her lovely soft voice and when it wavered so damned well at this point that she was still unhappy, and was not the least bit surprised to see it reflected in her sad red eyes when he pressed their foreheads together. "Would... would you be open for a compromise then, sir? We can use your horse. Maybe for ferrying me or healers instead of engaging up close."

Fair. 

Quite reasonable, even, and he told her so, after a moment’s pause and deliberations. Truth be told, he had not been looking forward to the idea of hefting his favourite hand-axe with the wounds still so tender. His bad knee was shrieking piteously on the plush carpet as-is, even with the rest of his body pleasantly distracted.

"I am not your unreasonable grouchy old man at all times, princess…" He said more softly, with the faintest amusement and self deprecation. "Only when it comes to matters of your safety."

Her little breathless giggle in response pierced his heart, and Gunter kissed her slowly and sweetly on his knees in silent tender promise.

__________________

“Where are you going, sir?”

“War room session. The royals want to know the details about why your unforgivable traitor has suddenly has had a convenient change of heart.” It was described with humourless sarcasm, and a raw edge of pain lacing the words underneath made Corrin stop both of them in their tracks. 

“I wasn't told.”

Gunter’s lips slashed like a knife to the side, staring ahead. “They wouldn't tell you, not for this. They view you as too tainted by your old lover now… It's an excessive generosity in their view that they freely let me into your bed last night.” 

She did not like the sudden self-contempt that threaded his words or the shadow of wary, pained resignation on his features. “They’ll need to know about…” Here, his voice wavered for the first time, with eyes squeezed shut. “M-my family. The truth won’t line up otherwise, milady.”

There it was. 

Corrin stared in horror that he would have to bear the most vulnerable, private parts of his soul to a judging panel of royals who would not understand, who had not seen his worst memories so vividly, who had not seen the aching extremes of the love of her life, and traced each and every savage scar he bore, mind and body, and that had broken him already once.

She was already shaking her head, suddenly viciously protective of his dignity. “Then don't, sir, I'll—”

“You cannot protect me this time, Lady Corrin.” His gauntlets clasped with weight on her shoulders. “Please trust me when I say this. They will find some way to remove me from your side if they are not convinced.” Gunter’s eyes were haunted. “Whether it be instantaneous as killing a traitor or letting me rot in a cell while you fight this last battle, it is... necessary, that they know, to stay their hands.”

“Gunter, I'll—”

“Milady, would you trust me if you were in their place? Not knowing what you do?”

It was a deceptively quiet plea, and her answering silence was enough; Corrin winced as his lips curled in cruel, bitter victory. Once, she would have said differently. Once, she was a very different person, and that childishly naive Corrin had hurt a lot less from the thousand cuts of betrayals.

She was about to breathe out another weak try when Takumi abruptly appeared by his shoulder, eyes severe.

“Knight.” the Hoshidan archer stopped and gave the barest nod towards both of them. Corrin almost forgot herself and blinked at the unexpected glimmer of respect directed towards her lover. “Best prepare yourself. They’re out for blood, and will need every scrap of information to prove you’re free from the thrall.”

“Understood.”

Another brisk nod and then the Hoshidan prince left, slipping swiftly through the curtain of the tent entrance like a minnow. Corrin tilted her head inquisitively at the strangely generous comment that still hung in the dusty air.

Gunter’s gauntleted hands found his hips, and her old man watched the camp behind her distractedly, clearly thankful for the interruption. “We played chess together a number of times, right after Takumi joined your little merry crew.” He gave a brief, thin smile, not quite directed anywhere. “He was quite good for a Hoshidan. Much better than I expected; we have had since then an… understanding of sorts.”

But the wan fear did not leave his eyes, and Corrin ached for him.

“Would it help if I'm there, sir?”

“I…” He was restless, pacing now in small steps to the side.

“Do you want me there?” She asked even more softly with a different flavour as he rubbed at his face. 

“I do not want to subject you to the… unpleasantness...” Gunter trailed off after a heaved sigh, and yet Corrin could hear the but quite clearly. He was shaking his head now, though, even as he pulled her in a tight embrace with both arms. “I want you, my love.” And at that he smiled tenderly at the double meaning, now, down at her with restrained fondness. “Always. And yet it would do us both no favours. Let me take this one last trial alone.” 

Gunter tilted her face up with an armoured knuckle under her chin, and Corrin smiled at the echoed memories of their first kiss. This time, his handsome smile was full and sincere. 

“However, if this old knight may ask his lady love for blessing…”

He kissed her, and for the first time with naked openness in full view of the camp. 

This sudden passion was a defiance of his in another way at the royals—and she loved him for it, kissing him back as fiercely as she could while her fingertips wandered around to the nape of his neck exposed by his armour, threading through his silver-lilac hair. They were heedless as teenaged lovers, one of her thighs wrapped around his armoured hips and him dipping her back quite roguishly as they shared open-mouthed affection. 

Corrin was sure there were stares, and did not care.

When they parted at last for breaths, her beloved knight knelt unsteadily on his bad knee—and gently took one of her palms to lay one last searing, chaste kiss on the back of her hand as a declaration. I am yours.

“Come back to me, sir.”

“Always, my love.”

__________________

When Gunter staggered out of the tent, Corrin followed silently until they were both in a small private alcove within earshot of the camp. 

“Do you want company, sir?”

Corrin would never voice these worries to the dusty air, but his hands were shaking badly again.

“Please.”

The quiet answering rasp almost broke her heart in that stone-still moment and so gently, she moved to daintily sit next to him on that half-broken stone wall. Equally as gently, she laid her head on his armoured bicep.

“Do you know why I don't drink, Corrin?” It was in a tone of a man confessing, and so she stayed silent, eyelids closed and savouring the warmth of his muscled body. She thought she felt the faintest rasp of a strained, self loathing chuckle between those clasped black gauntlets. “I would have been in oblivion the entire time, my love. Twenty years and then some at the bottom of a bottle with my despair. Krakenburg, as you know now, would have doubtlessly taken advantage of that weakness.”

The last line, she almost thought she did not hear at all.

“I never forgot. Not for one day.”

Heartbeats stretched.

It was many moments later before he shifted again, wearily rubbing fingers one last time through his lined face.

Very slowly he stretched, and slipped off of the stone wall as surely as he shed off the weariness and into a newer mask. The transformation did not take long; he turned and one moment he wore the weight of the world on his shoulders, and in the next he wore a lightly amused expression she recognized as her old instructor and mentor. 

She had never noticed just how slinky her old man was. She had, however, realised with a new appreciation how artless of an actor he was. There was a sinewy grace about it that kept her watching; for the heavy black-armoured plates he preferred, he always moved with a dancer’s taunt precision. One of his hands flexed with a catlike stretch before he laid it against the stone wall.

A lone gauntleted claw of his began to sketch out a crude layout of the castle against the stone. Spindly light white lines began to lace each other as he scratched at the rough texture, and he drew the throne room that she was far too familiar with, and then a spider-webbed series of tunnels radiating outwards.

“Castle Gyges has many tunnels. You are familiar with some of them but it is with luck we have several routes to the surface.” The design was quickly taking on a complexity far beyond what she could keep track of. “Essentially, two main routes to take.”

“How do you know all of...” 

At her words, Gunter gave a crooked, sly glance back down; too haunted to be called a true smile, and with his raised eyebrow framed by the shadows—the answer hit her like a bolt of lightning smiting down from the heavens. Corrin suddenly felt foolish, afraid that it would send her lover back to much darker memories from when he was under the thrall of the silent dragon. 

“Oh.”

“Indeed.” He nodded back at the pictograph, thankfully too morbidly amused to care about her unintentional tactlessness. Gunter continued lightly in the odd intimate moment. “You might even say possession has its uses. Now, pay attention, my dear. This inside ramp that you all took is likely to be structurally unsafe by now, with multiple levels prone to collapsing.” One of his armoured digits traced a line just inside the throne room, a spindly scratch ringing the room itself. 

He was far too attractive like this, with his other gauntleted hand bracketing his other hip. The worst part she decided then and there, was the smug little swagger with his legs crossed.

“There is, however—” And this time he tapped at another line slightly further away from the innermost rectangular room. “—a little known tunnel that is a path straight to the surface and far less likely to collapse on us midway and send us to an earlier grave." He chuckled darkly, glancing back at her with an odd fondness. “It will take longer, and there are traps—mine of course—but I'll show you where and how we can disable those.”

Oh he was pleased, Corrin’s stomach gave a little wobble-flop upon hearing his husky purr laced with pride, and it was her turn to try very hard to resist a blink or any kind of reaction. 

He had been planning this betrayal for much longer than anyone had ever assumed, and she did not know how she would have responded to that knowledge, days ago. In the end, after a small huff, Corrin did not know what it said about herself that she didn't care, now. Only that they all arrived back with no more lives lost.

“You’re recommending the longer path, sir.” Murmuring with her chin across her arms and knees tucked in, she swayed on the stone wall as she watched up at him back. 

Gunter nodded with a professor’s approval. “There is also the element of surprise. Anankos is expecting you to be frightened, to opt for the quickest, easiest route.” 

And for you to not give us help. Corrin thought. 

The walls suddenly rumbled again, severe enough that pebbles clattered and echoed worryingly along the stone floor that stretched into the dark gloom beyond.

He stared upwards with a calculating look, restless gaze searching for any additional sounds or clues. The endless stone seemed even heavier and more threatening than usual, pressing down ominously. 

Gunter straightened, bracing himself off the stone and shedding yet another mask from that warmly suave lecturer she was intimately endeared to and back into the distantly cold knight, yet one who was a black-armoured protector. Now, she could only see the creased worry in the lines of his eyes adding to the bags under his eyes. 

“We need to get out of here now, milady. The quicker, the better. I would not trust this place past an hour… his power is growing again, even with Azura’s mitigations.”

Corrin nodded, reluctantly pushing off of the stone wall, and lingered by his side. 

“… Thank you.” 

It was not the right words, could never capture all the tender, complicated nuances striving in her heart towards her lover. Instead, she buried her face in the crook of his arm, that unarmored tenderness of his muscles where she could feel his warmth against the dark cloth and leather, and savoured his masculine scent.

I missed you, so much.

A gauntleted hand closed around the back of her hair, and slowly stroked the strands back as he had always done since she was a child. 

__________________

Moments later, Corrin walked back into that same antechamber and saw the royals hadn’t left after all, discussing amongst themselves. The royals. She was beginning to sound like her old man now and perversely she did not want to fight it, having willingly swallowed too much bitter knowledge to be so naive otherwise. 

“Brothers, we have a new option… There's another tunnel, straight to the surface that might be safer.”

“And how did you hear of this?' Leo asked, professional as always, but with an undercurrent of pointed scepticism that she shrunk away from inwardly. Corrin bowed her head, unable to escape the obvious implication. 

“Me." It was her black-armoured lover that replied, with muscled arms crossed. Gunter had silently followed her in, and instantly bore the weight of the dozen dagger-like gazes aimed his way. 

“Why should we even consider listening to this traitor, again?” Someone gave a muttered hiss, possibly Ryoma.  

“Because you have no other option, royal, not if you wish to live to see Hoshido again." Somehow, Gunter was the only man to make that title sound like the slur he intended it, and the red-garbed samurai—it was him after all—heard every defiant insulation, and bristled instantly.

“Control your—” Ryoma hissed with hatred, abruptly biting his last words at Corrin. Control your Nohrian dog, were the ugly words that almost slipped out. Indeed, the prince kept a level glare on her old knight like he had gone rabid. Instead, she edged closer to Gunter, back to him in a clear declaration of loyalties, staring warningly at the swordsman with narrowed eyes. 

I will not.

“Prince Ryoma. While I agree on principle, if these tunnels were truly a trap we would not have heard about them in advance like this.” Leo interjected, and Corrin could have given her brother a full-body hug in appreciation, despite his own clipped frostiness. It was swiftly tempered. “However. I will insist that you, traitor, lead the way.” 

Leo’s eyes cast briefly over the old knight. Gunter blinked once in slow irreverent defiance of the words at all, and deliberately glanced at her expectantly, in turn. 

For orders, she realised with a start.

From her—not from anyone else.

With that last gesture of his, Corrin knew with a bone-deep sensation that her venerable knight would never voluntarily obey a command—even on pain of certain death for the naked defiance—except from her. Every royal sibling of hers in the room saw that same re-alignment of loyalty as powerful as the cosmos and stars, and she was not precisely sure how to feel about that.

There was a twisted, heady rush of power to it. 

"...We'll lead, together." Corrin replied softly, diplomatically, threading the sword-edged tension—and only then did her old knight give a deep bow of acknowledgement.

“It’s decided. We leave in half an hour after preparations are complete, and will make our way for the surface.” Xander stood, and that was that. 

__________________

"Careful, love, there's a trap under that stone on the right of the path. Mined, magical explosive this time."

At his words, Corrin marked the deadly hazard with a bright magical glyph that hung in the air as an unmissable warning, the same as she had been doing for the last two hours for the caravan following them both some distance in the back. The clatter of hooves was a constant accompaniment in the background in the wide hallway, and Gunter was altogether grateful for the low-level noise instead of the oppressive mausoleum silence from before. Silence was an effective tool for madness and breaking people. 

Her lovely red eyes searched questioningly for his, after the last magical marker.

"When did you get the time to..."

He knew the question on the edge of her tongue before she had asked. His beautiful little sword was never not curious even to the total disregard of polite society, and it was one of her many traits he delighted in even more, these days. Enforced ignorance at the service of politeness was always a cover for snakes.

"Most of these traps have laid dormant for hundreds of years. Everyone under Anankos’ thrall knew of them, also from his… thoughts much like the map from before." He gave the acknowledgement with a side-to-side tilt of the chin and vein of dark amusement before looking down at her with unbearable fondness. "There were a few I added to. A little upgrade, if you will, my princess."

Very slowly as if not quite sure how to react, Corrin nodded, staring ahead with the most curious little expression.

She liked this, this odd little camaraderie with the known traitor and the black-heart villain still playing his part in the story. There was a smug flirtation in her eyes that betrayed her as he had done to all of those royals; low and sensual for all that she hid the new glances under poised modesty. 

Gunter took sin-vicious pleasure in that corruption of a different name. His little princess was too proper to utter any such scandalous intention into the cold bright daylight or the public lest she scandalise her siblings, and that was part of their peculiar game, he decided with a smirk to himself. He was the only one that knew of the kinds of wants she was only open with in the dark. 

Kneeling carefully to the stone floor with a groan, he stopped Corrin and then pointed to a dusty corner where an ancient chest stood diagonally from them, barely visible amongst collapsed rubble and dust.

"Give it your best guess, milady. Trap or chest?"

She gave the answer some thought, eying the surroundings around exactly like he had taught her so long ago in those days in the snowy Fortress. Looking for thin, almost invisible strands of tripwires, for disturbance of dust whether it be footsteps or tampering, and other such clues that was remarkably similar to tracking an animal. 

Observing was its own greatest weapon.

"Chest." 

His new war-horse at her side gave a great noisy snort seemingly in agreement.

"Very good, my princess."

With efficient alacrity Gunter stood and moved in to smash the lock of the chest, scooping out a healing stave that looked like it could be a priceless heirloom of a whole monastery with potent, ancient power. There were many such useful artefacts in this tomb.

"The traps..." His princess hesitated as he doubled back to her side while spinning the staff experimentally in his gauntleted palm and by her nibble against her pretty little mouth, was debating on sharing something carefully. "...Smell like rain. Anankos always did."

The statement briefly distracted his own mind from adding to those nibbles in the corner of her plush lips. Oh how he wanted to ruin them.

"Did I, Lady Corrin?"

"Azura smells like that same Vallite magic. Not you, now."

Well, that was something. An odd comfort that he was himself again at least. That his own resentments were still a part of him, and that he could trust that his darkest impulses were still his, and not manipulated from that abyss from beyond like before.

“We’re almost to the surface.” Gunter changed the topic to safer waters after a moment’s silence had passed. 

“You know that wouldn’t change a thing, right?”

… Or tried to, at any rate.

Old memories threatened to rise to the surface, and he bled them out mercilessly, waiting until they were corpse-white again like the ghosts of the fallen in his mind. “At some point there will be something that changes your beautiful, stubborn mind.” Against his will, his voice betrayed a peculiar quiet, tender weariness. “I only hope your ancient, elderly lover is in the grave by then.” 

“Sir, would you truly bet against me there?” She was grinning now, with the same kind of matching crooked smile, except the happiness on her was more a court painter’s divine muse writ in flesh. It took his breath away as she slowly worked her way around the stone steps until she was level with him, her fingertips teasingly stroking his lined cheek after dancing along his black-spiked shoulder with almost girlish tease. “Impossible unifier of kingdoms, slayer of dragons…?” 

Laying a mock palm against his chest with a raised eyebrow, he added. “Seducer of villains…” Gunter then kissed her with a chuckle on her forehead, before dipping down for a lower, sensual one. “You have a damned good point, my love.” 

They kissed long and sweet, swaying there on the stone stairway with him on the lower steps and with her above, embracing him with no fear. Savouring every moment, it was only when they heard the echoed footsteps from the caravan approaching that they parted tenderly—him as the old black knight of death, and her as the slender waif of a princess. 

The rest of the way while clearing the path, they held hands in the dark with the sweetness of new lovers. 

__________________

Once they were all on top of that strange golden pyramid, heaven and earth tore themselves apart asunder to reveal endless fields of starry skies. It was an appropriately unearthly backdrop for the massive, cosmically-sized skeletal figure of the demon-dragon that flew above.

Anankos.

That monstrous being that had haunted his dreams and mind for so very long.

An unearthly wind threaded through Gunter’s hair, a ghostly echo from those wing-beats and the silent scream from the dragon.  

Corrin—love of his life, star of his world—sat astride his war-horse in front of him easily, her back to his armoured chest as they both watched the earth remaking itself around them to become the last battle-ground that they would all rush and thunder towards. 

His hand rested easily on her hip and Gunter was selfishly grateful for the chance of this odd moment of intimacy between two warriors, the thrice over traitor and his little princess. If this was to be the end of the world, he could think of no other place he’d rather have his last breath. There was far worse than the honour of a good death. 

At last, Anankos roared in challenge, and the air shivered again at the demon-lord’s call with an army of the dead pooling up from the ground with those purple flames licking at their feet. It was time—and his love sensed it too, with one last lingering glance over her shoulder to meet with his. 

Her hand grasped the hilt of the Yato at her side and for the first time since they had reunited; Gunter laid his own black gauntlet over hers in support. Gently, he bent over slightly to murmur in her ear. 

"I made you my sword.” He whispered and she shivered in answer, longingly. “Strike without fear.” 

Together, in one slow stroke they pulled the sacred blade out of its sheath by her side, shinning with holy white fire.

“Strike for me, my love, and strike true."

The Yato pulsed again with divine ribbons of energy wreathing the blade in a sudden blinding rush that made them all blink in the sheer intensity—and then the warmth spread to all of them, this meagre but brave force that challenged the darkness beyond, arrayed behind the two of them.

And they charged en-masse, one singular voice in defiance.

__________________

The few malicious glances shot towards Gunter’s way disappeared after the clash against Anankos’ final desperate line of defence had begun. 

Just as well; everyone was far more distracted with survival in battle against the strongest flame-wreathed enemies they had faced yet. The old veteran knight was under no illusions that such resentments had entirely vanished as his war-horse wove his way through the changing battle-lines with expert precision, and after he had pulled away one or two of the troops to save their necks from a swinging axe or an arrow that soared harmlessly into the stars beyond. In the blur, he recognized the falling star of Hinoka’s flaming red hair as she smote a foe from above, and stepped aside again to let a well-aimed shuriken from Kaze sap another target’s strength. 

He expected no thanks in return, and got none. This was simply the practicality of the battlefield taking over, professional killers standing shoulder to shoulder focused on one last shared orgy of violence and blades before they split ways out of the same necessity that called them together.

Always, he kept one eyes trained on Corrin who fought near the front-lines, a silver blur of singing ferociousness as she lept and darted flawlessly between the royals, nimbly spinning over Takumi’s endless barrage of aqua arrows always flawlessly spearing their targets in twain. In another flash, she was back to back with Xander, both of their blades carving past legions of those flaming foes in a dance too fast for untrained eyes to see, a trail of blood and mutilated bodies the only evidence in their wake.

In turn, Anankos shifted in a dizzying variety of forms that no mere mortal eyes were meant to pierce or see, and yet they all pressed through with confidence—

Until the demon-dragon summed up one last cadre of possessed ghosts from their pasts; the very last, the strongest, and the ones most likely to send them reeling back in horror.

Somehow, he knew this was coming, one ghostly form marching towards them in particular.

In those lonely nights in Anankos’ thrall and away from his lover, Gunter had wondered where one particular bastard had gone, and if the demon-dragon had not taken him much earlier. It felt almost like a morbid, poetic irony of fate itself that the old knight would still be the one standing by Corrin’s side in true flesh and blood and free from that dark influence, compared to…

Garon. The old rotted corpse-like Nohrian king.

Well, not a true corpse yet, but soon if he had his way.

By the way Corrin zig-zagged closer to his side from seemingly out of nowhere and her hunter’s-bright red eyes fixated on the king with lethal, unerring precision—his wishes would soon be answered, and something approaching a darkly satisfied leer crawled over his scarred face. Fearlessly, her level gaze assessed the new figure, and the old knight’s heart burned with vicious pride as he strode to her side. 

“Let me take him for you.” Corrin murmured, once more that sleek predator and shivering in answer.  Like so many other times they made an odd pair, her in nearly all white with a holy blade blazing at her side, and him as the black-heart as dark as his armour.

“Do it, love.”

Like his arrow, she shot forward. 

__________________

It did not take long for her to have the Nohrian king on the ground, throat at swordpoint.

He stared at that face he had long since thought he had memorised in the clouds of rage; it was unrecognisable. He stared at it long enough to see his own hard features superimposed. 

Gunter blinked it away, and realised that Corrin was now holding her blade out to him, hilt first for the first time ever. He stared again for a long time at the Yato, so surprised at the gesture it took a moment to fully comprehend the offer. 

“Closure.” She said simply.

There was a faint comforting warmth that seemed to pulse from the blade. Righteous, perhaps. Garon had killed his own wife and son, inflicted the deepest scars in his life and on his body with such a weapon. He held no fairy-tale sympathy or sentimentalities for the fallen ruler there on the floor, glaring blankly at him. This was to be like the many executions he had presided over, only one slightly more poetic.

Taking the blade, he had not expected this unexpected grace least of all from a royal who understood the tangled resentments and hatreds of his own heart. But then again—and here his long-dead heart squeezed with a tenderness that nearly shattered there—she was the sole steady soul to redefine his world, and the world he walked in.

With a twist of the wrist, Gunter flipped the blade; watching as it shimmered in the black starry sky.

The flat of the blade—once more—thudded against his palm in echo of that time so long ago when she had been a child mercy-killing a wolf beneath his own bloodstained gauntlets.

Like that time, he extended the hilt of the Yato back to her as an offering.

His eyes found solace in hers, those slow red eyes blinking wide in recognition. Gunter could not dare hope to redeem himself of his every sin at her feet and for the stains he had spilled on her, but he could start with this.

Bitterly, he smiled.

“My place is by your side, Lady Corrin; not in the past.” He laid a gauntlet on her shoulder, not missing how the other Nohrian royal siblings were starting to mass nearby in grim anticipation and witness, and his voice went quiet to a near whisper. “I trust you to end this wrong.”

He stepped behind Corrin as her guard, after she took the blade; and there, he saw her exchange a subtle nod with the eldest prince.  

Swiftly, after a salute with the weapon, Corrin unceremoniously drove the steel through the elderly, monstrous king with both hands.

Bone cracked under the blade and splintered, the same as blood that spurted along the channel, splashing at her face as the body spasmed once underneath in the throes of quick death. He saw her then as before, again, a decade previously when she had killed the wounded wolf. 

He watched silently until the demonic flames surrounding the body dissolved to the starry skies, and only then did Gunter close his eyes.

She did not speak again until many moments after the others had left, once more leaving the two of them as the strangest honour-guard. All that remained was the faintest hum of the fiercely glowing holy blade as she stepped back with grace, and then a slow footstep back again until she was by his side, shoulder brushing up against his arm. 

__________________

Corrin watched as her beloved old knight tilted his face back to the heavens in prayer, and for one moment, a light breeze from the heavens kissed his hair. She leaned against the solid black-armoured pillar of his side and her lover tucked her close, one arm embracing her around a shoulder. 

When she looked up just the once at his handsome craggy face lit by the stars, she could see the bright glimmer of private unshed tears.

For as long as she could, she let him have that peace of hard-won closure. It was only when Xander called from a great distance away that she nudged his side, letting her temples gently bump against his arm like a cat to rouse him from the moment. 

“One more to go.” She murmured as Gunter came to and glanced down at her with the fondness of his creased eyes.

“Careful, you're starting to sound like me, love.”

__________________

Moments later, the Yato pierced Anankos for the final time, and blazed.

Time slowed.

With the last clash and press of surging bodies, Anankos’ ghostly etherealness slowly failed, reduced from a soaring dragon to shrinking unearthly shapes and physicalities that mortals were not meant to perceive, much less pierce the divine defences.

And yet they did—until that orb of ten-thousand screaming slightless red eyes slowly closed and dissolved within itself as a mass of bubbles. Corrin hoped now that the spirit would escape to true freedom and peace at last in the afterlife, away from the chained confinement and the raw resentments that it had carried for far too long. It was too little and too late in some senses, but she could not find it within herself to feel anything else for the fell dragon. 

Much like somebody else dear to her heart. 

Corrin sagged against the flank of Gunter’s war-horse quietly, when there was no more to the spirit after the slow drizzle and drench of water, and after she saw the skies grow clear again instead of the ethereal cast of stars. Strange; daytime would always feel foreboding and dangerously open compared to the more intimate safety of eternal night. 

It was in that distracted trail of thought that she realised he too, was sagging; bending over in the saddle, and motionless. 

“Gunter?”

Silence answered—he was listless now, dragging partially to the side. 

Her lover nearly toppled over to the floor, only saved from landing head-first with her arms frantically slowing his fall—and it was then that she called out, frantic.

Healers descended on him again. 

The healers were stabilising Gunter again, and all she could do was to hunch over and cling to their childhood ball by the side of the tent, and not go to pieces. 

Even after all this time, the stubborn little ball had been sitting in his private tent. She chose to believe it was a sign that its creator would just be stubborn about living. It was a good thing that there had been battlefield healers right there, she told herself. They had seemed confident. 

There was a new tear in the ball, where the old and slightly cracked leather had torn away from the white stitches with a dangled flap. Corrin could not help but thumb at the strands, over and over like a prayer-charm.

"Milady."

Corrin looked up at the new voice sightlessly, with words that wouldn't come out.

"Do you want company, milady?" Flora asked again from above, kindly.

Corrin mutely nodded, and her friend sat next to her with skirts oh so soft, and gentle hands even more tender as they encircled her. There, they hugged together, eyes puffy and heavy with tears that wouldn’t shed.

__________________

It may have been her imagination or a trick of the morning light, but Gunter looked a healthier colour than that awful washed out pale grey than a day before. 

She slipped in through the corner that the healers had sectioned off with a hastily erected privacy curtain. Whether the gesture was out of respect or tacit practicality given the mild awkwardness of his status with the rest of the troops, Corrin was grateful either way.

She didn't want to think about what his prognosis would have been like without the best battle healers around. One of clerics, a kindly red-headed man in white robes had sat her down outside earlier in the warm sun and filled her in on what to expect with his recovery.

In nature, it would take weeks for the minor stroke to heal, if ever. With magical staves and trained healers, such maladies were shortened to a fourth of their time or even less, if caught early.

Gunter had been lucky; three healers had immediately stabilised him on the spot and negated secondary damage to his mind and body. Parts of the skin on the right side of his body would always struggle with numbness, and his leg would possibly drag, but that was the severest extent of his injuries with the stroke provided he followed the strict regimen.

Then came the bad news; his partially healed torso wound sustained earlier would delay recovery, as well as his knee that had needed reconstruction. First: three days of bedrest, along with hand-eye coordination exercises for him. Then: walking exercises and light monitoring for the next three, as well as other adjustments he would need to make to his lifestyle. The good healer had tactfully offered him a cane, but Corrin had known it would never be used out of stung pride. She didn't want to think about the arguments they'd have about when (not if) he'd go out to battle again on his beloved war-horse, much less trying to keep him in bed for that long.

All in all, she was grateful, if profoundly exhausted. She rested her head on Gunter's good shoulder, gently sinking into the papery warmth of his skin so not as to alarm or wake him. They were in the healer’s tents again, the mage-lights dim at some ungodly hour at night.

One of his eyes opened blearily at the contact. Her old knight hadn't been sleeping, then. In hindsight she could have guessed from the lack of of his endearing snoring.

"Flora will be taking turns with me, sir." Corrin murmured, tiredly referring back to their last terse conversation, when he had been more disoriented and first woken up. "You had a point about overtaxing myself, and listening to my own advice."

His lined face twitched; possibly a restrained wince, possibly not.

"I should not have worded that so poorly." His voice was a weaker whisper for someone so steady and stoic for her whole life. Corrin suddenly felt viciously protective over him.

"You were..." She fumbled for the right words; something to keep his dignity.

"A cantankerous old man, perhaps? Yours, as a matter of fact."

She smiled against his skin and then kissed his shoulder silently, ruefully. She much preferred this companionable silence than the eerie, manic strangeness of the last few days.

"You said it, sir. I brought you something else too."

With a happy flourish, she gently deposited the old and slightly dusty leather ball on his bandaged chest with a slight bounce, and he looked down with scepticism.

"I found it in your tent while tidying everything up. That is, if you don't mind me—"

He wheezed lightly in a way that she recognized as a laugh. Gunter didn't get many opportunities with those. The expression down at their childhood ball was the first true toothy smile she had seen on him since they had jumped down in the canyon on that fateful day.

"I'll be..." Thumbing at the tear and loose leather on the side, he studied the strands of brown fibres. "This is repairable. Fetch me a thread and a needle and I can have this right for you in no time, milady."

Flora was right, she inwardly thought with wry humour. Make the stubborn old man think it was his idea to help, and he went along without a word of complaint or digging his heels in. Clearly Flora had a knack of handling irascible patients, and she resolved to treat the maid to something for her kindness.

"I'll know you're in safe waters when you're giving me throws I miss, sir."

Gunter wasn't the only one to know how to dangle a carrot in front of her, either.

"Like old games of catch..." He gave her a steady look through one open gimlet eye. She wondered if Gunter saw through her little ploy, then, and if she had been too clever for her own good. He left it without a comment, though. "The healers say it will take a week until I'm on my feet again."

It was said matter-of-factly, without moroseness.

"You won't miss anything." She nuzzled deeper into his shoulder with contentment at the easy conversation, and gave him the lightest kiss. "I envy you, if anything, for not having to deal with the royals deciding how to break camp. Did you know they're territorial, too? I think I prefer handling barn cats."

His responding wheeze-laugh—stronger this time—was all she needed.

__________________

Flora, bless her, always seemed to know when she needed a spot of alone time.

She had spent the afternoon arguing with Ryoma, Xander, Hinoka, and Takumi about the thorny subject about what to do with—

That traitor—

Corrin winced at the raised voices still raw in her mind.

It was still better than when Camilia had looked at her pityingly, or glared at her choice of lovers with venomous contempt. Or when Leo had visited the healer's tent just the once, appraisingly looking the bedridden knight over with a calculating eye that left no illusions as to whether the mage-prince still considered him a potential danger, only left unscathed by his current status as an invalid. By Leo's glittering eyes as he walked out, Corrin knew that he would revoke that in an instant should it prove necessary.

In the end, the solution that they had agreed upon was efficient: Exile from Hoshido, and stripped of Nohrian rank.

Corrin had practically shouted her objections that it was not just. It was not how they treated somebody who laid down his life repeatedly for their joint cause, for somebody who had been by their sides from day one if not earlier than every one of the princes and princesses, and it was Leo who had regained order by coldly listing out every reason why it was still such a tender mercy—

A mercy that he was allowed to walk as a free man still, and not sent to the executioner's block. A mercy for them to not extract reprisal for the death of Scarlet and for their final battle.

And lastly, a mercy by both Nohrian and Hoshidan honour codes that they didn't brutally decapitate him on the spot in retaliation for being a red-handed traitor.

It didn't keep Corrin from tasting resentful bile in her mouth that they would cast aside his efforts so thoughtlessly. An old conversation with Gunter threatened to bubble up, and she almost laughed at how his point was being proven all over again—

Hypocrisy of royalty knows no bounds, she could hear the imaginary version of him wryly murmur in her ear. She was inclined to agree these days.

"Milady..."

Corrin was startled out of her reverie; Flora stood in front of her, subconsciously mimicking the hands-behind-the-straight-back pose that everyone from the old Fortress days would recognize. Her childhood maid was professional; she didn't fret, fuss, or look at her with pity, and she felt a surge of gratefulness in that moment.

"I'm sorry, Flora." Murmuring listlessly, her fingertips rubbed an twitching eyelid. "It's been..."

The maid gently took her hand between a set of dainty white gloves and knelt to eye-level, unperturbed by potential grass stains on her equally spotless leggings.

"When was the last time you had a break, Lady Corrin? From thinking about the war and looking after him."

It took an embarrassingly long time for Corrin to come up with a potential guess, and then even longer to remember the original question. She stared blankly ahead to the mess of beige tents in front of them, unable to put the two strings of thought together.

Flora squeezed her hand in solidarity.

"May I suggest we have a picnic when you have the free time?" Flora's eyes twinkled with steady and practical kindness. "Just the two of us and a little moment to relax."

"I... would like that very much, Flora. Thank you." Corrin wearily whispered in gratitude. She hadn't realised how bone deep the exhaustion went.

"Three shakes of a snow squirrel's tail, and I'll have something for you."

True to her word, Flora led her to a secluded glen not long after, and not far away. Mindful of the need to stay close to camp for security, the quaint scene was only around a crumbling block of minor ruins submitting to an overgrown mossy knoll, shaded by two equally ancient trees.

With well-trained efficiency—oh, Corrin's heart ached at how familiar it was, everything seemed to reminder her of Gunter these days—she was laying out a lovely square blanket with a basket of edibles and treats. She had no idea how Flora had sourced the cheeses, tomatoes, grapes, and cookies from a war-time mess hall in a strange land, but it was a scene right out of similar picnics in the few childhood memories she could access. 

As soon as the maid unrolled the blanket and started pulling on the edges, she stepped right in to tug it smooth. Corrin was so grateful that she felt tears well in the corners of her eyes; for all of the despair of the last few days, she was equally moved by the kindnesses of those who still walked by her side. Clasping Flora's hand with both of hers in a rush of emotion, she knew her newfound friend understood.

It was moments later, after they had been talking about lighter topics that Corrin pressed to a topic that was at the forefront of her mind.

"Flora, do you ever find yourself wanting to..." She trailed off. "Go somewhere? Do something other than what you're doing now?"

In their many chats over the past few days while Gunter had been sleeping and recovering, Corrin had discovered to her horror that she had not been the only one kidnapped by Nohr as political blackmail to keep other nations in line. Flora had revealed her personal story being spirited away from the Ice Tribe, and Corrin had spent a night or two lying awake wondering who else there might have been that Garon had stolen away in the night.

She resolved to find them, if they existed; and to put things right.

"Serving you along with my friends gives me purpose." Flora demurred, smoothing a glove over the hand-stitched blanket. "Though serving is not quite the right word." It was tranquil for a moment as Flora took a luxurious nibble of cheese, her eyes closed in happiness. "Like winter serves its purpose in maternally tucking the world to sleep in the blankets of snow... all for another year of bloom."

Corrin contemplated her words.

"Willing service out of affection, rather than… an obligation?"

Flora smiled. "Yes. And I enjoy your company, Lady Corrin. Yours, Gunter's, Jakob's... My world would be emptier without you. There was a time that I would have said differently... but it has changed."

"Really and truly?"

Corrin was beginning to learn there was a murkier line of that devotion than she had ever considered as a child, when everything was so starkly black and white. Nohrian and Hoshido, day and night, the have-nots and the ones who had it all.

"The Ice Tribe has my sister, Felicia, as a leader if you were concerned." Flora shrugged as she took another frozen grape. "Frankly, you of anyone knows how much of a double-sided dagger the responsibility of a bloodline is, much like my ice magic."

That was another way of looking at it. She was beginning to realise why Flora had always cared for Gunter in her own fashion; they both had a streak of pragmatism intertwined with every way they helped for others. Jakob too.

"I didn't want to assume."

Flora leaned against her shoulder companionably. Corrin realised she had missed such easy friendliness. 

"You care, milady. And I care for you in turn. It is a rare, precious trait. Now you simply must try some of these sweets... "

__________________

They had agreed with the healer’s blessing for Gunter to spend the rest of his recovery in her quarters, away from the ugly side-glances from the other patients. He was stable enough that the healers were no longer as concerned overmuch for sudden turns of health—this was now the slow recovery that required incremental daily discipline. 

You’re the only one he listens to, one of the white-robed healers had taken her aside with some amount of professional apology. And the other patients, well. It is hard to fault them when all they know is his unfortunate actions in the last battle.  

Unfortunate. It was worded carefully. Gunter could also be a difficult patient at the best of times much like other hard-headed soldiers of his generation, Corrin knew with a small amount of exasperation. Combined with the circumstances, the decision made logical sense. 

It still stung and crawled deeply under her skin that anyone would look at him so derisively; and in a painful irony, precisely on the eve that the royals had decided to host a feast to celebrate the demon dragon’s defeat. Again, the reasoning made sense as a way to commemorate their gruelling campaign and to further unify the two rival nations—food and good company being excellent diplomats—in hopes of a more peaceful future. 

And yet, celebrating without him at her side left a bitter taste in her mouth, and it was with relief that she bid farewell to the others.

When she slipped through the doorway quietly after a full day’s worth of helping the others prepare for the celebrations, she found Gunter dozing lightly, mouth slightly agape. A platter of food went untouched by his bedside, possibly given as a kindness by Flora before her shift was up. In the distance, Corrin could already hear the crack of Hoshidan fireworks and music from both nations. She would have to make a plan with the maid on convincing him to eat and to wheedle more appetising plates from the cook. Lamb chops would likely do the trick, the type of sweet-savoury meat he always was secretly fond of. 

He was shifting and twitching now, murmuring in his sleep restlessly. It did not look pleasant. When she sat down lightly on the mattress next to him and laid a gentle hand on his good arm, tracing his veins among the lean muscles, Gunter stirred.

"...You should be at the celebrations, milady." Blinking back into consciousness from the sleepy haze of exhaustion, she saw his strained, stern eyes crease with disapproval. Strange, she never had consciously understood that his choice of titles had always betrayed his moods, but it was somehow a tell she had known all along. 

Wearily curling up more closely beside him on the bed, Corrin fished out a branch of grapes to offer to his mouth and after a moment's deliberation, he bit into one silently without untoward complaint.

"I'd rather be here with you." She replied lightly, feeding him another one of the little fruits. Tonight, by the look of his deep lines and lack of humour, Gunter was a knife-edged bundle of nerves and bruised pride, and a delicate touch was needed for this conversation.

“Corrin, don’t…” His glanced at her despairingly, good arm halfheartedly reaching out to block hers. The other limb hung limp still.  “Don’t let me drag you down. I don't want you sacrificing your best years tending to a bedridden old man."

As if to punctuate his words, he flinched at an unfortunate loud crack of a firework and the crackles fading in the aftermath. Gunter was never a socialite by any definition of the word but he was lonely she thought, doubtlessly feeling rejected and morose over the appearance of such helplessness. Some days she thought he was taking the painful recovery and indignities in stride, but tonight was not one of them.

His good hand closed over hers where she had curled up by his shoulder. 

"I love you more than life itself, Corrin…" Here his deep voice went thick with feeling. "...but I need you to be prepared for this."

"If I choose this, does that choice mean nothing, then?" She too, had spent many hours of the last few days mulling over the nature of their relationship, waiting for his recovery. "You're the only one that's asked what I wanted too, Gunter. Did you even realise that, sir?"

He lapsed silent. 

“When you took care of me as a child… you were there in ways no-one else ever was. You didn’t treat me as some fragile doll to keep on the shelf or away from yourself. You taught me everything I know, how to protect myself, how to protect my friends…” Her voice went low as a whisper, but did not waver. “You gave me the trust and choice of breaking in your hands in the dark, when I desperately needed to be anything but that princess being fought over and torn apart by everyone wanting somebody else. Please let me give you the same honour.” 

It was silent for a long while afterwards; the only sound being a span of heartbeats shared across time, and the distant noises of celebration. It was only the slow rustle of sheets that interrupted it later, with the motion of him raising one of their intertwined hands to press to his scarred lips in worship.

“Before... Corrin, before you offer that… there is one last..." Gunter started haltingly, voice choked with emotion and murmuring over her knuckles. “I lied—there is one last secret.” 

Tenderly, she stroked the hair out of his brow.

“You will hate me for this.” His eyes closed with tight shame, and by the sudden self loathing that threaded through his broken words like barbed wire, knew he was working the remnants of his shattered dignity to throw it all down to the marbled floor for good, baring himself utterly on the altar of his soul given to her. “I am so… weak, t-to have kept this to myself, for so long.” 

He was shaking now.

The love of her life was curling in on himself, tense, shoulders flinching away, and Corrin could see by the self-loathing jaw twitch that he hated the indignity of his own body not even obeying for such a gesture. 

This was the last and heaviest secret, she realised. 

“Anankos. You need to know who Anankos was, is—” He spat, cringing away from her.

Even more tenderly, she held her fingertip to his scarred lips, silencing him there.

He was your father.

She had known that horror since that strange chamber of watery reflections and mirrors of his mind, the long looping shadowy memories and nightmares. Distantly, it had even made sense that Anankos would save the last, deepest wound possible to scar her old knight’s psyche out of sheer bitterness from beyond the grave. 

She would not let it.

“I know who he was.” Tracing his lips with a fingertip, and then raising it to his face; she wiped away the silent tears. “I saw it in your memories… I will never let anyone ruin what we have. Never.”

“Corrin, I am… unclean.” Truth haunted at his eyes as he glanced away, viciously digging at the open wound, choking out words like they were shards of glass embedded in skin. He had been prepared for her to reject him in horror, even now as the price of baring his soul. “Especially with… this. You have every right to n-not want to touch me as a lover, ever again—”

“It doesn’t change anything, Gunter.”

She had stared at that revelation in the eye then, and like so many others unpleasant surprises in the last few weeks—discarded it, deciding it was not worth even a reaction. Dead ghosts only had power that she chose to gave, and there were so many of them, always, in the graveyards she walked through and made.

“How can you…”

“We are not going to let it change anything, sir.” Corrin emphasised again fiercely enough that he blinked in mute surprise, and then again while rapidly blinking back tears. His long silver-lilac hair was a wild mess of a mane having being bedridden for days, and she threaded fingertips through the slightly greasy strands, clasping his creased face between her palms. “It’s over. It’s in the past. Anankos can’t hurt us any more.” 

He wavered, and she was losing him. “Can you promise me that, sir?”

“I…”

With promise, she bent in to kiss him, lightly, first on his handsome chin, and then on his scarred lips. So softly she moved, with exploratory slow, loving kisses until she felt him respond tentatively, as if he was a lost man a thousand miles away searching for his way back home. He was hesitant, tears of horror still glimmering in his closed eyelashes. A muscled, veiny hand of his trembled on the sheet; fisted there once, and then rose to stroke her on her back.

But Gunter did not push her away. 

She let her own slender fingertips drag gently down his nakedness and the handsome loose skin as they kissed, down past the bandages along the beautiful trail of his hair marching from chest to his manhood, feeling his stiffening heaviness pulse and throb tenderly under her touch in the same breath he gutterally groaned in her mouth as she continued to stroke him. This was honest in a way words couldn’t be, cutting through the shame like a holy sword. 

Please forgive yourself. 

She kissed him again with deeper hunger, swallowing his quickening and shuddering breaths—harsh and panting, until her beloved was trembling, torn out of equal mix of longing and shame. 

He parted first with a quiet pained hiss, at war with himself.

“Love, you shouldn't…” Despite his words, she could see the aching in his eyes—for connection, shared intimacy when mere words failed and died and rotted to disgust. And yet—

I want you, his body begged. He needed this, and every line in his body gave the same aching tenderness of his unsaid desires. Gunter needed this intimacy as a man, as her lover, every sensual caress reminding him of their many happiest memories together, and not left abandoned in the shadows of terrible memory.

So very carefully against his many wounds, she crept down his side, the mattress dipping lightly as she crawled down, and Corrin nuzzled along the side of his flank and to the inside of his bare thigh, kissing his beautiful scars and creases along the way down. 

“Please let me love you, sir.”

Trembling wordlessly, his muscled and scarred thighs parted in response. Gunter’s good arm was thrown in disarray over his face, both at once hiding in shame and yet unbearably exposed. 

She loved him all the sweeter for it, dragging her tongue along the underside of his stiffened length, and lapped at that unbearable sensitiveness under his cockhead.

Gunter abruptly groaned out from behind the back of his beautifully veined forearm—painfully long and low and guttural, and his creased hips arched and shuddered up with terrible aching lust.  

"Please, Corrin, oh please —"

She had never seen him so wrecked, so full of naked neediness with his swollen cock throbbing against his stomach and his knobby knees were askew, shaking for all the world to see. For all of how it drove her quite unhinged when her old lover groped dominantly at her hair to guide her to his cockhead with those big hands, leading this time felt—right, somehow. 

There was power in seducing him willingly, mutually pressing against that shame and past it, turning those shadows into even more blazing flame as their sweaty skin pressed against each other in the ecstasy of lovemaking.

He half howled her name again as a prayer when she kissed his cock in between with hot teasing breaths, and then mouthed around his generous uncut head more deeply, smiling around it as he strained towards her in pleasure, grunting even louder if possible. 

Corrin sucked harder on his veined redness with half kisses, half teasing sloppy licks all the way down and up of his length as she bobbed, letting her tongue and lips lap at and catch on his crown, riding him as he bucked erratically, so out of mind with raw want he could not find his own rhythm.

She deepened her kiss, inch by inch swallowing more of his length in, and oh he was so stiff, his hips thrusting hard and slow in a way that she knew he was already on the cusp of climax, leaking into her mouth and throat generously in fits and spurts.

“Corrin, I—oh—oh, I love you—fuck—”

One of her hands shyly trailed the back of a fingertip across his balls, playing with the sensitive loose skin there, cupping him, not minding at all as she dribbled and drooled all the way down her chin.

Gunter throbbed one last time, and came hard with a wretched unhinged moan into her waiting mouth, waves and waves of explosively hot, salty ropy come, and she swallowed each one with the same worship of gentleness and possessive satisfaction. When Corrin finally looked up from cleaning him with laps of her tongue, so satisfied, she could still hear every soft gargled inhaled gasp as he responded to every touch.

Her old man was actually blushing, face crimson behind both of his palms, and Corrin hid the fondest smile in return knowing that he would be terribly embarrassed at any indication that she noticed.

But there was a ghost of satisfaction dancing around his open lips now, and the crows-feet of lines around his eyes were creased in contented softness now. 

“My love, you make me feel..." Panting from the exertion, he looked away; now bashful and all she wanted to do was to run her lips over his beautiful neck and kiss him senseless all over again. "I-I confess, I never thought I would feel s-such happiness ever again..."

She climbed up across his chest, over his softening cock and the sheets that she drew around them both and he kissed her boldly, powerfully deep and relishing the flavour of his own spend against her mouth. 

“My brave, handsome, strong knight deserves some happiness tonight, too.” Corrin murmured lovingly against his scar. 

"Such a silver-tongued princess being far too generous to an old man ..." Gunter rasped, fondness tinged with a sad and guarded apprehension.

One of her hands slipped down, teasingly past her thigh and a low heat uncurled in her stomach at how his eyes flickered down quite sharply, not missing a single gesture. 

She could use that.

"It's not overly generous if it's true, sir." Shyly, she lifted up the hem of her skirt, baring her panties and biting her lip in that way he always stared at quite intently.

Gunter swallowed with raw interest, eyes suddenly dark.

"Do you truly know how much I think about you and your handsome body when I touch myself?" Her fingertips slipped under the panties, pushing them down around her thighs to bare herself, and she continued whispering, describing in great detail of his tongue, his handsome veined hands, and every part of her lover she enjoyed—

She shivered as his gaze sharpened into all but a physical presence at her words.

Corrin adored his gaze, but here she felt so sinfully dirty, having thrown her other knee gently over his side and suddenly finding herself straddled across her naked lover with panties thrown down and baring—and here, she was blushing red as a tomato— that. Heat pooled in her cheeks, and it was some amount of ironic realisation that somehow this felt more debauched than even just moments before.

She imagined his tongue between her legs in place of her fingers, generously lapping at her slick, and trembled against him with heated passion. 

This time—

This time it was her unravelling, imagining the flare and throb of pleasure of his cock slowly and rhythmically thrusting into her, She panted, mouth agape as her hand stroked faster—and then, almost went to pieces on the spot as one of his knobby fingers slowly trailed up the inside of her thigh, danced closer to her slick lips, and slid in judiciously.

“Sir—oh—" 

Her slick folds yielded to him as he added another thick finger, pressing both in slowly but demandingly in unison, and she shrieked. She rode his stiffness faster and faster, chasing her own pleasure and rhythm as her hips shuddered with instinctive need.

Corrin was dripping, overflowing out of her cunt even as his fingertips thrust harder, the friction-slick sounding obscenely loud in the silence, aside from their ragged breaths. It did not take long—it was too short—before she was trembling from the pleasure, toes deliciously curling in the anticipation as he bent closer with lust in his eyes.

"Come for me." he murmured, low and possessive husky breaths in her ear, pumping fingertips in deeply until she finally sunk her teeth into his shoulder to muffle a loud, long cry of pleasure as her orgasm shuddered through her.

At last, at last she too went limp, melting into that searingly warm space between his muscled, corded arm and his side. 

Gunter’s veined hand stroked her back possessively, smugly, mirroring the satisfied curl of his scarred lip. In turn, she contentedly petted at his chest hair again, feeling his heartbeat settle back into the firm even rhythm that always did the best at lulling her to sleep.

“I swear to you, my love...” His eyes were bright now, cleansed from the malaise that haunted him before, and she made a little inquisitive noise at that. 

“What happened in the past will… not affect our new life together...” Here, he pressed their temples together, cradling the back of her head with his good palm, smiling through his evening breaths. “I am yours, to the end of days.” 

__________________

Days later, it was his last time under Azura’s healing magic in the little dragon’s shrine.

Corrin was present as well, a graceful form perched on the moss-covered stone bench of the shrine, watching the ordeal with those clear red eyes full of curiosity and kindness. 

True, this little recent ritual was not an ordeal as much as him simply floating in the sacred waters and having the dancer sing under her breath for a few long moments in deep concentration. After the first few times in the waters with slow recovery and the last battle with the silent dragon, Gunter had managed to relax somewhat in her presence and the pale glow of the shimmering threads, closing his eyes in the peaceful solitude of the old stone shrine in their astral fortress. The songstress had given so much, and asked for so very little in recompense, much like another.

He was still struggling to understand how the fey girl had made her way through the world without being torn apart to shreds by either such royal court. Perhaps, like him, she had —and simply hid the scars even better than the old snake he was. And he had been the blind fool unmercifully gouging her wounds even deeper. Vallite royalty he had spat at her, back in the thrall as a curse. The dancer deserved an apology for that, and she would get it. 

When she was finished with the healing session, and the light of the magic had dimmed, gentle steady hands helped him back up and over the lip of the stone basin. Drying himself with the offered towel, he sighed before starting.

"I once thought you were a fool. It was I who was the foolish old man..." Very slowly, Gunter bent down to his knee, bracing himself alongside the same stone. Corrin blinked at the uncharacteristic gesture, and he continued. 

"I will never bend a knee again to anyone other than my love, but I have said unconscionable words to you, Lady Azura. It can never be made right in your lifetime, but name your price and it will be done.”

Interestingly, the dancer looked far less surprised than Corrin as she met his sharp eyes fearlessly. Like his love, she was one of the few who had clear insight, and the trait was more precious still in a royal. 

“That is something I wanted to talk to both of you about. Valla's future…” Azura gave a melancholy smile, heavy with responsibility. “...and the future that twines between the three of us.”

Gunter watched from his knees as she traced a finger gracefully along the rim of the shallow pool.

“I would like for you to have the crown, Corrin.” A slow blink of those red eyes was her only reaction as the songstress continued hesitantly. "I can think of no two people more aware of the cruelties of rulers in the past, and no one that I trust more than you and Gunter to make it right." She dipped her head, gaze heavy downwards—not out of embarrassment, but what the old knight saw plainly as bone-deep exhaustion. 

“I am happy to stay here among my Vallite brethren and heal the nation alongside you. And yet ruling has its own responsibilities, and I am…” This time, it was him that she faced, and Azura smiled in companionship. “...Frankly, my friend, weary of the hand that fate has given me. You know better than anyone of the weight. And what comes with it.” 

“I… Are you sure you want to do this, Azura?” Corrin reached out to hold one hand of the graceful dancer. “It’s your birthright. I would not want to make life difficult between you and everyone.” 

“You would be doing your friend the kindest gesture of them all.”

At her reply, Corrin gave a questioning glance over to him, clearly seeking his own thoughts. It was a novelty now, to be surrounded by royals who cared.

"Surely you don’t need a bitter, paranoid old man..." Gunter replied softly, standing with a small groan.

“All traits that will serve you and your love well.” This time, the dancer’s reply was easy and light for a topic so grim. "Oh, Gunter. I think that the people of Valla would greatly respect someone who has suffered under the hand of Anankos as much as they have. Fitting, isn't it?"

And after a moment’s worth of contemplation and a nod of acknowledgement, he saw her point. Like the dancer, he could appreciate the poetic and morbid irony to it.

Perhaps fate had a sense of humour after all.

__________________

It was one of many such mornings in his slow but steady recovery that Corrin laid in the crook of her lover’s good arm, tracing the prominent ridges of the tendons splayed across his hands. There was something indescribably handsome about the physical signs of Gunter’s experienced age, even with the bitter-sweet reminder of the march of time. 

"What would you like to do today, sir?"

Corrin would never grow tired of asking him such a comparatively simple question. More than anything, she ached for his happiness, something so fragile and hard won through their pyrrhic victory. Instead, she chose to think of them as little moments of dignity that she stole back for him; she had been inspired by Flora mentioning such nothings being helpful in her volunteer work in the healer's tents.

Gunter absentmindedly rubbed his chin for a half-second in thought, and then looked down at his hand. It only gave a mild tremor now, these days. 

"I think I am in dire need of that shave you mentioned the other day, milady." 

While he was not an especially vain man, he was a fanatically tidy one. His personal grooming going a little long in the tooth between the recovery had to irritate him, and it was with quiet smugness when she heard him freely echo the idea.

It was easy enough to clear the afternoon; Flora was not on the shift rotation that day, and there were none of the endless check-in appointments with the healers regarding his recovery. He had moved out of the healer’s tents to back in her personal quarters which made some social matters a great deal less complicated and fraught. As always, there was still the mountains of paperwork that Leo and Kaze had been feeding them regarding the rapid updates to the kingdoms, but an afternoon's break would hardly kill them. 

Corrin danced outside their room briefly to gather a list of shaving tools that he had mentioned and also to fetch them a plate of snacks. She had a hunch that they would be occupied for some time, especially given the rare break, and the doubly-rare good mood he was in. 

Hopefully the good kind of occupied, the sly thought entered her mind, and she didn’t dissuade the idea. She had missed her old man’s touches terribly.

A few minutes later, she perched on one of his bare thighs and was suddenly exquisitely, excruciatingly aware of his masculine heat that enveloped her. Gunter had always run hot temperature-wise, something she had discovered in the last few months of sharing a bed with him. Most nights they barely needed sheets or blankets with his body warmth, plus or minus various nighttime activities.

She tenderly traced his slack skin with the back of her fingertips, the first time that he had let her so close to the right side of his face after the stroke. Corrin loved how his rough stubble felt and tasted. Before he could get self conscious from the tender touches on the numb skin, she leaned in to steal a kiss from him. Mutual teasing and searching nibbles soon gave way to deeper, hungrier ones—greedy and interspaced with breathy, and in his case, scratchy panting and wandering big calloused hands. 

It was only when her fingertips lightly scraped down his throat, and the throbbing tenderness between her legs ached on the firmness of his thigh when he gave a deliberate throat-clearing cough. 

"Dare I say we run the risk of being... distracted..." He rasped, a hungrier look in his eyes battling with distinct humour. It was the only kind of look he got when they were alone.

Corrin went pink, looking away as she unscrewed the shaving cream jar with deliberate briskness and more force than she had intended. "Something for after, perhaps." 

"Mrm."

Slowly she took the cream, lathing it onto his stubbled jawline with firm circular motions. She massaged the lotion in lightly for several minutes, trying to ignore how his breath went ragged in the same moment that hers stilled.

Stroking his skin like this was an indulgence, she decided with another surge of possessive pleasure that ached in all the right ways and places. More than that, this act was a temptation that they'd have to indulge in, later. 

Now that there was a later.

"Breathe, love." He murmured, scarred lips nibbling against her wrist. She thought she felt the ghost of his tongue tease as well.

"Stop that." She said tartly, with the tiniest wet pwap of a swat against his cheek, and he smirked. "You know what you're doing." 

"You must be imagining things, princess." Gunter demurred with his smooth deep voice, now rippled into the picture of dry stoicism. 

"You, sir, better hope that I am not as distracted when I put steel to your throat." 

"Perhaps... your old man is into such an idea." His smoky and immediate reply opened up a Pandora's box of terrible, no-good, naughty ideas that sent her stomach squirming and squirrelly, and she had to mentally shut the lid down, hard.

Taking a page from her old knight's book, she responded flippantly. "Unlike Ryoma, I'd rather have you in my bed rather than the healer's tents again, preferably without a slit throat from shenaniganry. Behave." 

"Yes, marm." 

A wild set of giggles escaped from behind her knuckles before she could glare at him. Another set of giggles undid any attempt at her looking stern. "Whatever you do, don't call me that either again. Gods." Her breath hitched and stopped again when her eyes fell upon the glinting steel of the straight razor.

Corrin picked it up reluctantly, hefting its weight. Gunter had been instructing her how to handle the tool from his bedside with pieces of shaved fruit for the last few days as a way to pass the hours by, and and not too prideful in the knowledge that he would need assistance in personal grooming. Even still, laying cold steel on her beloved was a very different notion than slightly over-diced foodstuffs that she always fed to him by hand later (even if that last part mollified her lover’s bruised pride somewhat).

"Walk me through this one more time, sir." Her palms were clammy. Corrin realised that he had been craftily trying—and successfully so—to distract her all the while.

"Hold the skin taut from above, and stroke down. Start with small strokes until you find your rhythm." For such a subject, her venerable knight's dry bass eased her nerves like nothing else. She had always enjoyed his lessons as a little girl, even when the topics had gone over her head; the daydreams about him disciplining her in unwholesome ways didn't help. "If you must—start with the right cheek. I shan't feel mistakes there." 

"You of little faith..."

"Come now, you know I'm a damned realist, love."

She gave the lightest peck of a kiss on the tip of his nose, earning a crooked curl of the lip back, and set to work. 

His lessons had done their magic, and she had soon finished the repetitive scrapes and shaves on not one cheek, but two, and was working closer around his lips, mindful of the raised scar that ran across. Little wisps of grey hair fell away, and she occasionally collected them with the towel that laid on his shoulder.

She enjoyed this, Corrin realised as she hummed with concentration and as one of her hands gently tugged at the roots of his hair and tilted his chin up slightly. It was deeply satisfying about the earned confidence in learning a new skill, and there was something said also for the relaxed intimacy as her lover lay half naked under her hands; he yielded to her with surprising pliability, eyes closed most of the time in trust. His casual sprawl across the chair that reminded her of a large cat, taunt with coiled menace and authority yet loose at the same time. 

Even better was his appraising nod at her handiwork when she held up the mirror silently. 

"Not bad." His wizened eyebrows arched approvingly as he efficiently trailed fingertips over the now-smooth skin on both cheeks. "Very good, princess."

A real compliment from him was a rare reward—gods knew that Jakob would be near puce with jealousy—and she basked in it. The butler, she thought giddily, didn't have to work quite at him the way she did, and she was a tiny bit smugly pleased that he didn't partake in the rewards the way she did, either. There were private intimacies and rewards with her beloved black knight she never wanted to share.

Speaking of—

"Your throat, sir." 

Corrin had been looking forward to this last part, and judging by how his eyes sharpened with frisson, he had been nursing the same thought. A wider wicked smirk danced around his lips as Gunter tilted his head back, baring his throat with lazy arrogance.

After a moment’s hesitation of savouring the view, she ran a hand across his grey stubble, depravedly shivering in the intwined sensation of his masculinity and in the naked vulnerability of his adam’s apple curving her palm. Mere days ago, they had tried to—quite determinedly—kill each other. 

Not long before, he had been the one authority figure in her life.

Having Gunter growl with approval under her hand awoke all of the carnal whispers of heat that she had kept under lock and key. That desire threatened to flood back until she was underwater and drowning—she wanted to bite his throat, hard enough to make him gasp and buck under her hands and to grope at her in return with his veiny hands teasing. She wanted to lick the sweat off of him, nibble on him until she tasted him and feel him groan and roughly pull her on top of him in electric pleasure, feeling his generous cock throb between her legs until he could do nothing but give in to the need of fucking her raw—

Until an even better idea slid into her brain. Oh, it was a very bad, no good, simply evil idea—and the only warning she gave him was a mischievous, dainty sparkle of deviousness under her eyelashes in reply. 

Licking her lips, Corrin crawled forward and slid onto his lap in one motion.

Gunter's eyes went wide when her hips locked around his, seating herself on his hard cock judiciously, with only her panties separating them.

"Princess—" He gargled on open-mouthed lust, and she gave a little extra wiggle and roll of her hips as she ground against his stiffening erection with twitches—wringing out a deeply masculine, involuntary groan that erupted from his broad hairy chest.

"Now that I have your attention, sir, shall I start?" She was eternally smug to glance over to see his shaking knuckles had gone bloodless gripping the arms of the chair. 

Shamelessly, she lazily rocked her hips again against his in a rhythm, already feeling herself slick with unhinged, desperate want and felt his cock eagerly pressing against her. For one dizzyingly heated span of a second as she throbbed against him, Corrin thought they might frantically claw at each other in blind lust of lovers in the next moment, forgoing foreplay entirely. 

It had been so very long. If not in time, then in distance between their souls.

"Fuck—" He growled out with his beautiful lined throat arched back, low with heat and twitching in the ecstasy of temptation. 

"You may touch me the moment I lay this razor and towel down." Oh, this had been the best thought, wavering on her own edge of wanting to screw him senseless. "Try not to move until then, sir." 

She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the second she finished, he would descend on her and in her with primal lust and raw, naked need—and that thought Corrin had to consciously shove aside to resume the work of lathering her old man up. By the deep smooth chuckles, he knew her own filthy thoughts, and she blushed as she went to work.

Towards the end when she was scraping the last of his bristles off, Corrin spared the courage to finally ask the question that had been nagging at her mind the whole while. A way to pass the last of the time, as it were.

“Would you have killed me?”

It was a terrible time to ask, but then again it would never be a good time to drag up old ghosts.

He gave her the oddest smile in return; a little crooked from the stroke and from an intentional curl of amusement. Her lover always had a twisted sense of humour, she was beginning to realise.

“My love, everything hinged on you being the catalyst for my death. Not the other way around. It was my last card available to play…” Gunter chuckled, and it required substantial willpower to keep her mind trained on the conversation and not become exceptionally distracted by how the sensation of his low laughs tingled across their pressed flesh. “I made you my sword. Have I not told you that quite plainly?"

A question for a question. “Even to use against yourself?"

Maybe staring at his handsome throat was a mistake. Watching him talk—even with this of all topics—was downright erotic, and she had to lay down the shaving cloth and razor to even begin to collect her thoughts on this twisty conversation. She did not miss how his hooded eyes trailed her movements. 

“My little sword, some part of you always knew I was a liar that used you shamelessly. We both would not be here and canoodling in this chair together if you had trusted me completely.”

Corrin had to look away. 

Her lover was right, although she was still loathe to confirm it out loud in the bright glow of the sunlight that filtered in through the window. Dithering instead on a softer compromise, she relented. “I trusted you, sir. Anankos was possessing you as a puppet…."

Lightly dancing a knobby finger along her jawline, he gently turned her gaze back to him.

“Do you truly know if there ever was a difference—” Gunter replied, so softly, the backs of his calloused knuckles now stroking lovingly down her throat in a way that made small sighs of need burble from her. "—was there, my love?"

With a shiver, she saw the mirrored sincerity in his eyes. 

And with a darker realisation—that it changed nothing, not with her. Even after all this time, and after every painfully earned revelation—paid in blood, tears, and betrayal between them both.

"I should hate you." Corrin breathed against his hard jawline.

"You should." His scarred lips brushed against hers with the dark words, purring in even darker sensual agreement.

And in the next breath she was kissing him wildly, sloppily, her hips bucking around his in need as she clawed for the nape of his neck. Gunter did not mind her pulling at those grey strands with his own clawed hands seizing on her greedily. After quick manoeuvring, he ripped apart her panties with one frenetic jerk of his good hand, and she was bare to him after the silky fabric slid off. She didn't even know he had the strength still. 

Oh, she thought dreamily, I should tell him to do that more —

His staccato thrusts into her drove home, and Corrin thought she saw stars and supernovas burst behind her eyes with how deeply his very generous cock pulsed into her. On and on, until he filled her so ruthlessly, until every scrap of self control cracked and she shuddered helplessly on his every heavy, girthy thrust.

"Sir, please, oh—oh—"

Moaning, she felt her orgasm building as they both found their rhythm, deeper, harder, her spurting uncontrollably with pleasure around his length until she soaked his lap. Feeling how her slickness dripped down her thigh and his hairy own, she wailed as he pulsed and throbbed now with more intention, slower and sharper with rising animalistic growls.

“Need—you—”

She cried out his name when he came, and came and came with great gouts, rooting into and emptying into her mindlessly with mutual pleasure.

__________________

Many heartbeats later, she surfaced into bliss.

“I missed this.” Corrin spooned dreamily against his hairy chest, lightly shuddering still in the pleasurable tingling waves that always marked her intimate time afterwards with her oldest knight. “I missed you.”

Above her, he grinned openly. 

“Mm. We have all day to reacquaint ourselves with each other, love.”

She kissed the tip of his nose once with cheekiness, smiling. Corrin had forgotten how pleasant their nude, intertwined bodies always felt, and hummed with happiness against him as one of his big veiny hands stroked along her bare back. “Such a way with words, sir.”

The tenderness between her legs ached, quite insistently in that greedy-hopeful way for more of him, and Gunter must have seen the insatiable need in her eyes or her blush as his smirk deepened like the dirty old man he was. Corrin could not get enough of her delectable black-heart and truthfully, he had always reveled in her ravenous appetite once past his initial hesitation and disbelief. 

He was happy too—she could tell after she nuzzled his wrinkled throat with a light kiss. The creases across his face were no longer tight with caution or shadowed with worry; now only lined with handsome age and almost paradoxically with a renewed vitality. Gently, he picked her up in those big strong arms, carrying her to the short distance of their bed nearly effortlessly with regained strength.

Tenderly, he pressed into her again from behind with a mixed groan of sagging relief and indomitable lust, and they melted into pleasurable union once more.

Days passed, and it was time to say goodbye to most of the motley camp that had arrived in Valla together.

The royals of both countries had to leave with their administrative duties to their homeland stretched to the absolute brink by the continued absence. Even with the strange sensation of time flowing more slowly in the invisible kingdom of Valla, life carried on. Such was its curse and blessing, and Corrin rather felt both in balance on that day.

And yet, before their departure, they all held a hasty crowning ceremony to relinquish the ruined otherworldly country to a new ruler. 

It was Azura's idea to cement the passing of the torch. Questions would naturally arise from Corrin's absence on both nations, as well as her intention to decidedly and resolutely still not to pick a damned side. And such was agreed and rather unexpectedly, that the third option would be one that they would all commit to in the hopes of healing the decades-old scars.

Neither Nohr or Hoshido—but both with Valla being the neutral arbiter between them to balance the scales. And for Valla to be legitimate in the eyes of everyone, it needed a scion that could speak for both nations however tenuously.

Such it was that Corrin found herself being crowned by Azura, with all the royals standing at attention in the expansive throne hallway.

He was leaning by one of the side entrances, a smudge of proud black in the distance that always kept silent guard over her, and it was only then that Corrin realised that tears threatened to streak the pretty makeup that Sakura had applied on her cheeks with such joy earlier that morning.

"Not sad." She murmured to Azura who had bent down discreetly, nearly as in tune with her emotions as her venerable knight. "It's just... so much."

The dancer gave a wan smile in response to the half-truth, knowingly.

__________________

She had asked him once, years later whether he would have preferred—in another kinder and simpler world with less cruel choices—for her not to have accepted that birthright. 

You are by far my greatest pride and joy, Gunter responded with aching sincerity. In all that you have done, chosen, and have become.

Corrin never asked again; his steadfast faith was enough.

__________________

For all of her indignity on his behalf, Corrin knew that she'd truly miss her new friends.

While complex notions of blood and loyalty laid between them, it was still second nature to call the royals as such; it was worth it seeing Hinoka light up like one of her naginitas in the sun at calling her sister, or hearing little Elise's joyous giggles when she found her out for one of her endless hugs or a game of hide and seek when she needed to remember life.

Corrin would also terribly miss the retainers that followed them back to their various homes. She had already exchanged a moment's farewell with Niles, making him promise to send letters gossiping about everything and anything under the sun. (The adventurer had also blushed a dusky pink when she gave him a hug in thanks for his strange camaraderie.)

"You'll see me around princess, I've no doubt. Keep your old man out of trouble, yeah?"

Like Niles, they all agreed to visit when they could in-between duties.

Corrin knew that those visits would be equally as beneficial to commerce as it would be for personal reasons; the scattered people of Valla were steadily flourishing again after being freed by Anankos' neglect. Trade was booming, and they were already seeing the first merchants happily take advantage of it.

Miraculously, Azura had found calm pools of water in the wake of Anankos' flesh that led directly back to the countries of Nohr and Hoshido. These portals in the shape of pools were found—after a bit of risky research and held breaths—altogether to be less dangerous than jumping down the Bottomless Canyon, and did not abide by the strange rules of the crevasse. They could now travel freely and at will to what was being named the deeprealms amongst all nations.

Even with such good cheer and good news lightening her heart, the goodbyes were tearful.

__________________

And yet, not all were goodbyes.

A discrete kitchen nook by the mess hall was one of Corrin’s favourite spots to rest, and she stole it one morning before too many people had awoken. With practised efficiency she led Gunter to the small table and began to prep tea for the two of them as well as Jakob, Felicia, and Flora—the souls who were by her side since the very beginning.

Corrin laid out the teacups along with the mugs and cookies, humming with content pleasure as the old friends filed in. Gunter was already seated at the table with his face tilted towards the warm light filtering through the window like a svelte black cat; murmuring his thanks along with a slow blink of fondness when she finished.

Laying hands around her own mug, Corrin brightened as her dearest friends and retainers crowded around, already happily munching on the cookies and indulging in the simple pleasures. Jakob and Felicia looked no worse for wear, despite the last few days tirelessly helping with the logistics of royals leaving, and she gave her own companionable nod at Flora who waved back brightly over her mug. 

And beside her, Gunter's handsomly creased eyes twinkled in a shared glance as he rested his chin against his hand, gaze sweeping over the scene. 

“It’s good to see everyone here again. All of you are likely curious about our plans after… everything. Lilith has kindly offered this astral base be a sanctuary for Vallites in rebuilding the nation. I will be staying here with them for the next few years.” It was going to be long, hard work, but she was strangely looking forward to it compared to waging a frenetic war campaign. 

Gunter picked up with his smooth authoritative voice when she hesitated. “Additionally, every one of you have served with the highest honours; there will always be a place open if you wished to stay with Lady Corrin. You are also free to leave at any moment to return back to family, for any length of time.” 

“There is… one other thing.” Corrin was pretty sure that they all knew the truth of her relationship with her venerable knight to some degree, but somehow saying it out loud in the bright morning air was more nervy than fighting the silent dragon himself. His veined hand closed over hers in open solidarity, and squeezed gently. “Gunter and I have become… much closer in these last few months. He will stay alongside me in rebuilding Valla as my husband.”

Not a second had gone by before all three of the retainers spoke in unison.

"When's the wedding?” Felicia beamed, fingers wiggling with joy around her mug.

“I had guessed babies, personally." Flora smiled wistfully. 

“Come on old man, get on it.” Jakob snapped his fingers impatiently.

Gunter choked on the tea in complete shock, spitting a fine spray out as he spluttered into his mug.

“My tea's still not that bad." Corrin lovingly murmured to him, clapping him on the back until his coughs subsided. Flora outright giggled at the comment, her eyes crinkled in fond remembrance of a similar scene so long ago in the Fortress. In hindsight, those days had been surprisingly warm despite the cold constant winter.

Gunter thumped his chest with a fist, and wheezed back to Jakob. “Boy. You are going to give me another heart attack.”

“Good, somebody has to keep you on your toes so you don't go senile.”

To Corrin's surprise, Gunter let out a full throated cackle and grinned back at the butler. “You'll have your work cut out for you.”

“Bring it, old man.”

Her black knight smiled towards her with eyes twinkling, and she could not resist leaning against his broad shoulder lovingly, slender fingers interlacing with his.

"I think we just got told, love. We may need to plan that wedding sooner or later.” 

“Sooner, definitely.” 

They kissed lightly against a backdrop of cheers.

__________________

The little day-trek down to the pyramid ruins was her idea. 

To her old lover in one of those gentle days soon after, Corrin had murmured that it was time that they ought to visit the fell dragon’s throne hall just to confirm that their enemy was well and truly deceased, and likewise also undisturbed by malignant forces. The battle had been far too hard-won to take victory for granted. 

That statement was not entirely a lie (she had become quite adept at those now, like him), but the reality that gnawed at her mind was encouraging Gunter out of her quarters, while still enjoying his company privately away from any of the last eyes of the royals lingering around. It was a delicate balancing act and thankfully easier as time went on, but she did not want him to feel so emotionally isolated.

Her venerable knight was not a fool and doubtlessly guessed her ulterior motives, but did not give a single word in complaint. If anything, he was in a rare peaceful mood as he strolled beside her, a reassuringly tall black-armoured presence pointing out details she had never noticed about the ruins. 

Corrin found herself enjoying the quiet trek with him, walking slowly together down the dim golden tunnels that felt positively comforting compared to before. It was far easier now to appreciate the beauty of the ruins and the Vallite architecture that still dotted the cavernous throne room when there was no malicious, omnipresent energy. Gone was the smothering fog that had encased the columns and the hall in gloom and muffled the constant drips of water. Gone too, were the unceasing monotonous drips of water, replaced with birdsong and dappled sunshine that filtered through the open cracks above. 

A cluster of white lilies and pomegranates bloomed in the pools of water that had previously dotted the bloody battleground. Vines grew with tiny buds of seeds even so far down underground, and Corrin looked up with a hopeful smile to see blue sky in the ceiling where weak rays of sunlight filtered through distantly above. Strange, how she had thought that this unholy place would be always lifeless and filled with painful memories. 

Even the old throne bloomed with some of those delicate white flowers at the base, and it was with a surge of complicated feelings that she watched as Gunter approached the obelisk with slow curiosity. 

“What did it feel like?”

Gunter hummed in response, his long, graceful armoured fingers fearlessly and deliberately tracing the stone veins of the throne arm in meditative thought. There was only one question that it could have been; and after a while, she considered she was also the one person that would care at all.

“Much like dying, frankly.” The faintest amusement threaded his blunt words as he sat down quite slinkily on the throne like it was made for him. Corrin tried not to watch indecently as the seasoned veteran settled in with the smallest swagger of his shoulders quite authoritatively, facing her with a quirk of the eyebrow. By the way he gave a sly glance as he propped his chin up on one of those black-knuckled gauntlets, he knew the direction of her thoughts.

“Death at an accelerated pace, with all the rot that comes with it. Strange, I find myself more grateful for these hours alive with that curse reversed.” Gunter contemplated her in turn as his jawline worked with that smooth, deep voice. 

It had been right to ask; her old man enjoyed these whispered confessions, secrets of his soul and heart that would not cross the ears of another living person. Gunter crossed his legs in that way that only the most confident of men could with that unique grace, and she padded over to curl up on him, feeling comfortably safe and enveloped in his protective presence.

It gave her not a small amount of heady, ironic delight to sit there on his lap, in this throne, when he had commanded their presence as the singular foe days ago with immense power and very nearly overcome them all. 

Sometimes, she saw the echos of that power in the way his hooded, calculating eyes would crease like a bird of prey—like now as he observed the hall before turning back to her. 

“You should know I am still most grateful for your work in bringing me back. It is a debt I will never be able to balance, Corrin.”

Burying her face in her black-heart’s armour, she sighed as his clawed digits stroked through her feathery hair. There was something intoxicatingly relaxing to the contrast of how the heavy, dangerous steel pulled gently against the silky strands, and by how often the old man couldn’t resist playing with her hair in private, she knew her lover found pleasure in the gesture too.

“You say that, but I don't think I could have gone on without you, sir.” Whispering into the heavy ebon plates by his chest, she traced the delicate latticework of silver with a fingertip. “...and I know you think I could; but there is living and there is…” 

Lost, she floundered.

“Simply existing.” He finished softly, almost inaudibly with intimate shadows of grief behind those words; and even with her lids closed and resting comfortably against the chill of the plates, she knew he understood. Simply contemplating a world without him was enough to feel the cold abyss of true madness as a reflection in jagged shards of somebody that she could be, had nearly been. 

And he had gone through so much worse, for so much longer, lost all alone.

Shuddering, she pulled away from that thought. 

It was quiet there for a gentle span of heartbeats until he took one of her slender, vulnerable hands in a gauntlet, and smoothed his scarred lips against her prickling flesh in a wordless gesture of gratitude.

Opening her eyes, she saw Gunter was smiling now, down at her.

“About that…” 

Something warmer flavoured his gentle, gravelly voice, this time. This—she was not expecting, and Corrin blinked again as he lovingly deposited her from his lap to one of the stone arms of the throne. Her venerable knight unfolded to his full height, slowly stepping away. She would not lie at how her eyes lingered at his broad armoured shoulders as he turned smartly with military precision, arms crossed behind his back. Even as a little girl, she always thought that pose was so handsome on him.

Corrin’s breath stilled when he knelt slowly, to her.

Gunter gracefully bent down upon one knee without a waver or a groan, his adoring eyes fixed on hers, clear and bright.

“I have already asked for your hand in marriage, Corrin.” Tilting his head here and there as if settling on the words, Gunter gave a knowing glance around to the golden stone that had borne witness to an entirely different scene not terribly long ago, eyes crinkling in morbid amusement.

"My feelings for you have remained constant and true as the deepest of rivers, despite everything around us that has changed. I would not lie to you about these matters of the heart, then or now.” Here, he gave a little chuckle, and she was not so distracted to see how his fingertips fished out a small nothing… 

“Regardless, there have been many new revelations between us.” Still kneeling, Gunter met her eyes with a sideways lurking glance under a loose strand of grey hair that fell over his temples. This was not with regret or self-loathing, but eyes dancing with mutual cunning and sardonic amusement at their peculiar history, an ouroboros that only villains knew as their love song.

Her heart sang with affection towards him mingled with vicious pride, and his smile turned full and loving with creases coyly bending into handsome dimples as he continued. “Earned wisdom perhaps, about who we are. And... if you wish, what we would like to become, together.” 

He held the ring out to her, now, gleaming gold in a velvet box of black.

“Will you still marry me, my love?”

Gently, so gently, she tucked that loose silver-lilac strand back, her fingertips caressing along the handsome lines of his face, marvelling at the open and genuine happiness.

“Always and forever, every time you should ask, sir.”

After she took the ring in shaking hand, he embraced her fully to pick her up and dizzily spin around on the daisis together—and her heart felt like it would burst into an ocean of bliss. 

And again as Gunter ensconced her there on his lap, Corrin sank into the bliss that was his masculine, warm presence all over. 

“When should we have the wedding? I think the maids and Jakob would be very disappointed if they waited overlong, and your soon-to-be wife grows impatient.” She tapped him lightly on his armour to make a point and he throatily chuckled in the way that gave her goosebumps. 

“Soon. Especially if we want to keep all traditions.” It was impossible not to give a pleasurable shiver at the vein of eagerness in his deep reply, and it went even lower still with new heat as he purred. “You think highly of my control, love; but even your most loyal knight and soon-to-be husband has his limits with patience if we must keep our wandering hands from each other until then.”

It took her a moment to get the true meaning of his raspy words in conjunction with the raised quirk of an eyebrow down at her, and she went pink at the peculiar hunger that lurked in his creased, twinkling eyes now.

“I—yes. I would… very much like that.” Corrin stumbled over the words, blushing incandescently now, and by his widening smirk his teasing was fully intentional. She swallowed, giddy in ways she hadn't thought was possible still, after so much. “Before, um, that, may I request one last kiss…”

“Torment, tease, temptation.” Gunter murmured velvety. “Just like that, you bewitch the world and all of its traditions to your whims as easily as my heart.”

Poised and mischievous, Corrin raised her chin near to his level, still lightly perched on his lap.

“True, we shouldn't…” Heat pooled in her cheeks as she remembered the irony of where they were. Really, she should feel far more scandalised here, necking with her old disciplinarian and black-heart traitor in the heart of the tomb of their fallen enemy. She had always been the odd, precocious child with an affinity for death and the sordid. 

And in turn, he had always been the one to dance with her in that macabre waltz, even now, taking her hand and leading those steps with authoritative confidence when her nerve failed. He would never fail her in the end, and he never had.  

Gunter was smirking, her oldest silver-streaked knight and thrice over traitor who still looked so devastatingly handsome seated on that stone throne. “Do you know how often that phrase has not stopped you, my love, from doing exactly what you've always intended?”

His gauntlets thumbed her chin up closer to his, just shy of force. Corrin bit her lip, feeling the blush creep all the way up to her cheeks as she bonelessly melted into his touch. 

“You never have exactly stopped me either, sir.”

“And who am I to deny my wife's desires?” He rumbled with pleasure, as smug as a knife-edge of satisfaction.  

Stroking her slender fingers through his grey temples, she replied with a kiss, shivering in happiness as her black knight drew her closer to bliss.

FIN

While I’ve been familiar with the Fire Emblem series as a whole for two decades, I only played Fates (Conquest/Revelation routes) over summer 2023 and promptly lost my marbles over Gunter. Curiously, I found afterwards he is one of those characters you either love or hate; there really is no in between.

I’ll be honest, this whole fic was a compulsion. Possession via muse, if you will, for the cheekier ones in the audience. Somewhere during my first Revelation playthrough it hit me what a raw deal Gunter got in the game and metatextuality in fandom as well. Even in the “golden” ending, it’s arguably one of his worst experiences, and the game seems to imply he offs himself post-game in all the non-marriage endings. I’ve always had a weak spot for these oddball characters cast aside and, well… I have many, many faults but ignoring my muses when it comes for a calling to sit down and write is not one of them.

This fic started being written in August 2023, and ended in February 2024. It’s been exhausting. It’s also been absolutely worth it for the character, but I don’t see myself ever writing anything more than 15k in one go ever again. 

If you see any grammatical edits, ignore them; I don’t intend on revisiting this fic once when it’s been posted. Notes on individual chapters are as follows, though you don’t need to read them to get the fic. 

This fic is mirrored on www.kradeelav.com

Chapter 1: Soldier’s Orders

Akira Yamaoka-san of Silent Hill OST fame is a living legend; I happily nicked many of these titles from his tracks in a long-standing habit of mine. 

The interesting thing about this fic is whenever I get stuck on a scene not feeling "alive", my go-to was asking myself "what's the abuse of power here?". Cannot tell you how many times scenes were instantly fixed with that sticky-note reminder. 

Chapter 2: Blades Drawn

Silas makes a lot of noise about being nearly executed by the castle guards in his in-game supports after sneaking Corrin outside the Fortress against orders. I don’t think it takes a genius to put two-and-two-together that Gunter would be directly involved, likewise also with the gaslighting afterwards (also hinted in Silas' supports), and it made for a nice moment of drama and explicitly showing that he’s not a nice guy. 

Chapter 3: Mercy Kill

One interesting note is I added both the whip scene and Corrin’s fantasy in at the last minute. Sex fantasies are a reoccuring theme in this fic partially because they’re so bloody useful for pulling out feelings, fears, and wants out of characters who never would admit it otherwise.

For Corrin here, she’s struggling with a mix of repression and sheer lack of knowledge at her body/feelings. Quite a few girls her age fantasise about a specific kind of dangerous man that they can control and play with and "be threatened by" safely within her own imagination. Goes especially for her specifically as a release valve after her whole mind wipes and when a lot of situations are out of her control.

Chapter 4: Relapse

Healer Alaine was a one-off scene stealer that kept coming back for more; Gunter needed an adult foil in the first third that was as stubborn as he was, and she fit the bill, even though I regret there wasn’t a canon character that could work instead. Savvy readers will probably catch onto her being a (somewhat) open butch lesbian; there’s a marvellous book out there on lives of lesbian nuns back in the day that was essential for characterization.

Gunter’s aware, and doesn’t care; competency is one of the few traits he bothers about at all. 

Chapter 5: Changes

The chess scene was the first (needful) scene where I think you can tell these two would genuinely get along on a personal level, barring sexual chemistry or trauma bonding. Their age difference is less of a roadblock then it tends to be in modern-days where decades are sharply frozen in time via pop culture, but both of them being private souls that like talking over classics would be a way to fill in empty hours easily.

Chapter 6: Death

Is the voice hallucinations, or his late wife? You decide.

Setting anything sexual in the developing relationship after Gunter fell down the Bottomless Canyon felt pretty critical to keeping the ultimately redemptive tone here. I still want to write “bad touch” Northern Fortress Gunter but this fic was not the place. That said, the wank, while crude, had to be thrown in there to show the distinct difference between Anankos deliberately tempting him sexually versus an old man’s private fantasies. Shame is a hell of a weapon, and Anankos was absolutely going to use it.

Chapter 9: Love

Readers elsewhere will know I based good amount of Corrin’s mind-wipes based off of my own extensive experience with childhood anaesthesia/being in the ICU every year back in the day. Generally speaking children are resilient and/or you’re drugged up to your eyeballs in the initial event; it’s what the body remembers in the aftermath decades later that can be tricky to deal with when all the skeletons in the closet come out. I always had a headcanon that Zola was the lead mage directing the mind-wipes, and wrote Corrin’s extreme reaction as essentially a traumatic response. Playing with her dragon form as a physical manifestation of that/the grief (it has bandages for chrissakes) made a weird in-game hanging plot-point into something that felt a little more emotionally resonant.

I’ve also spilled many words elsewhere on how the class (power) differential is a Big Deal in Fates versus some of the other games in the series; Corrin unintentionally stepping past Gunter’s red line in the bedroom scene is a nod at how easy it is for royals to not even see how that could be an issue, even without his own personal triggers that she wouldn’t be aware of.

Chapter 11: Eros

Strictly speaking, I can’t see Gunter/Corrin having anything that isn’t a kink relationship; their supports alone in Conquest heavily imply daddy play to some degree (plus the infamous “the ball was a WHAT” scene), and both of them feel far too aware of the fun games involved in playing deliberately with their power dynamics.  

That said it takes me out every time in fiction when you have fantasy/mediaeval characters suddenly talking specifically modern BDSM acronym gibberish; if you ever see me bungling that, kindly take me out back and put me out of my misery. 

Chapter 13: One More Soul to the Call

Still do love what it says about Jakob’s proclivities that he knows exactly what “sir” meant in that context.

I very nearly didn’t add killing Hans in this fic, but in hindsight this fic needed those scenes in this chapter as catharsis. It also allowed villain!Gunter to glimmer through quite blatantly without ruining the whole plot twist, as one of my biggest reasons for writing this was to show how he always had that darker side from day one.

Likewise, writing the Anankos-specific “dreams” in progressing stages of Gunter willingly being complicit (to some degree) was intentional as a more subtle way of showing the real temptation. There’s a line in the JP-only Pelucid Crystal art book that mentions Garon force-fed him the dragon’s blood before sending him to the Northern Fortress (read: he was possessed all along, even while raising Corrin). While it’s an interesting insight into characterization, ultimately I wrote this fic with a slightly different interpretation. 

If you’ve ever had an ocular migraine, or weaning-off-of-anaesthesia dreams, that’s roughly what i’m imagining this moment of possession felt. It’s a distinctly trippy as hell sensation. 

Chapter 16: So Long Sentiment

This title is also nicked from a Celldweller song that quite possibly got the most replays in the background out of writing this whole fic in conjunction with Neuman’s My Name Is Ruin. 

Chapter 17: The Vallite King

Kinksters and old men are the most dramatic queens on the planet, it must be known.

Anyway, there was a chapter briefly planned in-between here and the one before where I dug into Anankos toying directly with Corrin herself vis-a-vis a Hexxus-like smoke form of Gunter, similar to what we see in the in-game confrontation. I’m truly sorry to see that scene go being the incorrigible villainfucker I am, but this fic was getting hefty as is. 

While Scarlet is a fascinating character, the plot point involving her flower did no favours to her or Gunter, so that got axed in lieu of being far more focused on his resentments against the royalty, and fear of rejection. Some day I would love to do a fic exploring their dynamic.

Chapter 18: Sacrifice

Thank you particularly to a very lovely comic server which will go unnamed for giving me the word “tailcoat” at 2am one night because I was having a hell of a time finding another word that wasn’t just “skirt”. You know who you are. 

The funniest thing about the chapter was I had planned the plot twist regarding Corrin’s dragon form before I even realised there was a niche FE13 support (Brady/Nah, I think) that mentioned this very trait was possible with dragons. So many of these odd little coincidences happened with this fic and so I simply took it as encouragement. 

Chapter 20: Anankos

One of the few things that truly bothered me about Revelation’s ending was Gunter bouncing back from a wound at his age that should have been fatal, on-site healers be damned. Adding in a (mild) stroke, shattered knee, plus a much lengthier set of recoveries felt like a decent compromise between having a happy ending versus ignoring how bodies fall apart. 

Chapter 21: To Have and Hold

That is indeed a stealth cameo of Rhys from FE9/10. 

I’ve always had the long-standing conviction that possession would leave emotional scars remarkably similar to sexual assault given the type of mental violation. This also had the semi-intentional result of paralleling with Corrin’s mind wipes which is also a violation of a very similar kind. Gunter’s insistence on dignity is, hopefully, a bridge between those two and the complicated kind of healing they both need. (He’s going to need it especially after Anankos laid that one little nasty land mine about the familial connection with Corrin. I always felt like he used the “at least I don’t have the biological connection with her” excuse to hand-wave some of his seedier choices, so Anankos deliberately murking that would feel… not great.)

One of the other bits to Gunter’s characterization I had to showcase in this whole fic was the tension of his own body being a taboo between his desire for Corrin; feeling your own body fall apart in the twilight years isn’t pretty. He’s exquisitely aware of that, and wants to protect her from the stuff that’s still coming.

On the flip side though, there’s nothing like that excellent tension to make insanely erotic frisson. Porque no los dos?

Chapter 22: Epilogue

As well-developed fictional characters do in fanfiction, Gunter insisted on doing the proposal again, and I wasn’t going to deny him that.