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“Sir Leon, on the other hand,” Arthur trails off, leaning forward to look down the table at his first knight. “Is the third son of one of my family’s strongest allies. He’s a skilled diplomat and the kingdom’s finest warrior – aside from yours truly, of course. He’s tall and by all means quite attractive if that should matter to you at all.”

Mithian smiles, elbows Arthur in the ribs in a way she hasn’t done since they were small and turns away if only to hide the blush she can feel warm her cheeks. 

. . 

Arthur stands and excuses himself from the table shortly thereafter, pressing a kiss to her cheek and plucking the date from her fingers as he leaves. Mithian laughs, heart clenching with a fondness she only ever feels here, in Camelot. She didn’t grow up with much of a family, certainly never had brothers to tease her and drive her mad, and is thankful that Arthur has taught her that kind of love. 

She watches Arthur weave through the room, his body held loosely, an easy grin on his face, and marvels that the boy who pushed her into a pond upon their first meeting has grown into the man before her. He is simply Arthur to her, and by the easy camaraderie he shares with those in the hall, she supposes that is how they view him too — a king, certainly, but also a friend, their smiling faces turning towards him like flowers towards the midday sun as he passes. 

He lingers at a table once or twice, ambling away with his shoulders shaking with laughter that leaves his face rosy, before finally coming upon the farthest table in the hall, the one full of his boisterous men who are well into their cups. 

Arthur’s hand looks a comfortable weight atop Merlin’s shoulder as he leans forward and gets caught up in the conversation of his men. She watches them, Merlin and Arthur, her fiercest friends and closest confidants, and thinks of the empty threat she made of carrying Merlin off to Nemeth with her. But in truth, she can’t imagine Merlin anywhere other than Camelot, at Arthur’s side.

She was being truthful earlier when she ribbed Arthur about giving Merlin a proper title, a proper place at court — because she knows, even without proof, that everything about her visit so far as been Merlin’s doing: this feast; her welcome, and the way it was Merlin who first stepped forward to greet her; the way Arthur’s speech tonight was warm, perhaps even a bit funny. She doesn’t know when it happened, this change from him simply being Arthur’s manservant to something more, only knows that it did. She can feel his presence in every corner of the castle, and surely that alone warrants, well, something .

They only leave when Merlin twists in his seat and glances up at Arthur, and though she can’t make out the movement of their lips — if they speak at all — they share an entire conversation in just that glance, a language all their own playing out between them until Arthur’s finger’s flex atop Merlin’s shoulder and they depart. 

Mithian refills her goblet before she rises, moving down the half-empty table. “Sir Leon,” she smiles, settling herself in the seat beside him. 

“Princess Mithian,” Leon offers his own warm smile in return and begins to rise in greeting, but Mithian stops him with a gentle hand upon his forearm. 

“Mithian,” she insists, pressing on Leon’s arm until he sits comfortably back in his seat.  

Much to the chagrin of all her various childhood tutors and the older men of her father’s council, she’s never enjoyed the stuffy formalities of court, frowning at and dismissing any use of titles or honorifics in her presence. As far as she’s ever been concerned, she was simply born to favourable fortunes, but that’s never meant she was better or deserved more deference than anyone else for it. And besides, she considers Leon close enough to a friend — and, should Arthur have his way, her future husband — that such a formal address rankles her. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say hello to you earlier,” she says earnestly. “This is the first moment I seem to have to myself since arriving.”

“Oh, I know better than to stand in Merlin’s way when he has gossip to share,” he chuckles. “Did you need anything?” Leon asks, manners snapping back into place once his laughter fades. He reaches towards the pitcher of wine on the table and motions to fill hers. 

“No, thank you, I’m fine.” Mithian says as Leon turns to refill his own goblet. She sips from the cup she’s brought along with her, silently studying the man next to her as the wine curls across her tongue. She’s known of Leon for nearly as long as she’s known Arthur; he has always existed at the periphery of her life and her friendship with his king. 

She tries to catalogue all the things that she knows about him. She knows that he is at least seven summers older than she is, and thinks that it’s odd he hasn’t yet married (although the same could be said of her at nearly eight-and-twenty and still unwed). 

She knows Arthur has carried a true flame for the other man for as long as he’s known how to put voice to such desires and wonders if Leon knows it as well. She knows, thanks to the gossip Merlin whispers to her, that like Arthur’s, Leon’s affections also swing both ways (apparently expertly so, if the drunken boasting of his former lovers can be believed) and finds herself curious to know if perhaps he and Arthur ever… 

She knows now, thanks to Arthur’s clumsy attempt at matchmaking, that he’s the third son of noble birth and therefore stands to inherit little, if anything at all, and muses whether that, perhaps, explains his near-holy devotion to both Arthur and his kingdom. 

She knows, if she now allows herself the luxury of such thoughts, that she finds him quite attractive, and wonders what color his eyes truly are; knows they seem to shift from green to blue to grey with every blink. She wonders what his lips might feel like upon hers, how the neat clip of his beard might feel scratching across her cheeks, between her thighs. 

Mithian abruptly shakes the fantasy from her mind, blinking rapidly until the real Leon swims before her eyes. “I’m simply seeking your company,” she says at last, watching the way he pushes a hand through the hair falling across his brow, the way one of his errant curls snags around a finger.

“Mine?” His grin is slow to spread but when it does, she finds it hard to ignore the sudden flutter she feels within her stomach when he looks at her. “I am at your disposal, my lady.”

“Mithian,” she corrects again. If this had been Arthur, she'd have punched him squarely in the arm by now, and though she and Camelot’s first knight are friendly, they aren’t necessarily friends; nor does she think Leon would ever land a jesting blow upon her in return, as Arthur would. “Perhaps you may lend me your thoughts about a conversation I had with Arthur earlier.” Leon quirks a brow and nods, leaning ever-so-slightly towards her. 

“He thinks we should be wed,” Mitian says quickly, all her bravado disappearing under Leon’s steady gaze. She means for it to be a bit of banter after a night of relevery, but instead feels herself holding her breath, waiting for his reaction, whatever it may be. It turns out his reaction is less than what she hoped — she catches him mid-sip and by the time she finishes parroting Arthur’s words from earlier, Leon splutters, wine spilling down over the rim of the goblet as his face burns a bright shade of scarlet. He swallows and shudders in a breath before coughing it all up again, tears crinkling the corner of his eyes. 

“A lesser woman than I would be offended you find the thought of marrying me so disagreeable, Sir Leon,” she teases, thumping along his back until his fit subsides. 

“No,” he rasps, drawing his hand across the back of his mouth. “I…you certainly…I only —”

He pauses and she watches the gentle flutter of his lashes as he closes his eyes. He breathes deeply, slowly, shoulders relaxing as he composes himself, and Mithian chews at her lip, her fingers twisting into the skirt of her dress, suddenly eager to mimic his actions from earlier and push them through the hair sweeping low across his brow and discover what his curls might feel like wrapped around her fingers. 

“Arthur,” Leon sighs. “He — ”

“Oh, you needn’t make excuses for him,” she assures Leon. “I told him it was a preposterous idea,” she lies instead. 

Mithian plucks another date from the platter in front of Leon, her fingers instantly sticky with their sweetness. She catches the way Leon’s eyes trail the movement, thinks she catches a quick fire in his eyes, pupils dilating as she wraps her lips around the fruit and bites down into its chewy flesh. 

Leon clears his throat, swallows thickly. “Surprising,” he amends, his hand atop the table drawing into a fist as she licks the last of the fruit from her fingers. “The suggestion is simply surprising, my lady.”

On the heels of such an acute rejection to the thought of taking her as a wife, his continued use of her titles feels like a thoughtlessly cruel barb. “I assure you, Sir Leon, I am no more your lady than anyone else’s. Please,” she insists, rising to her feet. “Just Mithian.”

“As you wish,” he says slowly, and for a beat she thinks he’ll call her ‘my lady’ again, can practically see the words rolling across his tongue. But to her surprise, a small smile tugs at his lips as he catches her hand and dips his head to press a kiss atop her knuckles.

Her name sounds like honey on his lips when he finally bids her goodnight. 

. . 

Breakfast has come and gone and the church bells in the lower town have tolled a new hour and yet Arthur still has not come to collect her. Mithain paces her chambers impatiently, like one of the hunting dogs leashed in the courtyard below, their long noses turned to the sky, twitching as they catch a scent on the crisp morning breeze. 

“Fine,” she sighs to herself, slipping her arms through her worn leather riding jacket as she stomps out of her chambers and across the castle to Arthur’s private quarters. 

“Arthur,” she singsongs, knuckles rapping incessantly on his door. “Arthur, rise and shine!”

Mithian presses an ear against the door and hears no sound. Pulling back with a frown, she bangs on the door with her fist, hard enough to rattle the sturdy iron hinges. “Come on, Arthur! You’re late and everyone is waiting!”

She leans her shoulder to the wood but finds it stubbornly unmoving, even rattles the handle to confirm that it’s locked. She’s about to send a quick kick to the door when the latch finally clicks, Arthur’s sleep-rumpled hair and naked chest filling the open gap between the door, his face pinched in frustration. 

“Oh for the love of…!” His anger dissolves between one blink and the next, a blush rising to colour his face, making him look boyish. “Apologies, Mith,” he softens, one hand moving to muss his hair before coming to rest at his nape. 

She waits expectantly, but Arthur says nothing, makes no further move, and the two of them regard one another like a curious puzzle. “Well,” she prompts at last. “Are you coming? The rest of the hunting party is — ” 

“Oh, erm,” Arthur shuffles, almost nervously, and angles his body to fill more of the small gap of the cracked door. “Go. Without me. I’m feeling under the weather.”

Arthur looks flushed, certainly, and dark circles mar the delicate skin under his eyes. But she also catches the purpling circle of a bruise on his chest, the tell-tale puffy, red tracks of someone else’s fingernails down his stomach. Mithian pushes the back of her hand against his forehead and Arthur startles like an unbroken gelding, tries to shake off her attention and push her from away the threshold of his chambers. She rises to her toes while she pretends to fuss, the swell of their bickering voices growing louder until she catches a glimpse of a long, pale arm, dusted with dark hair hanging off the edge of his bed. 

“Under Merlin, more like,” she snorts.

“Don’t look so smug,” Arthur huffs as she finally lets him bully her into the corridor. “It’s unbecoming of a princess.”

Mithian only grins and flips him one of the many un-ladylike gestures he taught her in their youth. “I’ll be sure to tell the others you won’t be joining today,” she crows. “I do hope you feel better. Be sure to get plenty of bed rest .” 

Arthur says nothing, simply glowers and shuts the door in her face, and Mithian lets her laughter carry her down the hall and out to the courtyard where the rest of the hunting party awaits. “Arthur won’t be joining us today,” she announces to no one in particular as she tugs on the straps of her horse’s saddle. 

“Princess Mithian — ”

“Just Mithian,” she corrects, although whatever further argument she meant to levy on Camelot’s first knight dies in her throat as she turns and finally catches sight of him. 

She can’t recall ever seeing Leon’s tall frame adorned in anything other than a full shirt of mail. It’s why, she tells herself, his appearance today leaves her a little breathless, a little flustered. Leon wears nothing more than a dusty brown tunic, its sleeves rolled above his elbows, laces loose as they cross along the deep cut down his chest, with its curls as soft-looking and auburn as those atop his head on display. Although she, too, is dressed for comfort. Long gone are the days when she used to wear pretty silks and tight stays while hunting in Arthur’s company. Today, her own loose tunic is belted at the waist, two daggers hanging at her sides atop slim trousers that are tucked into sturdy, leather riding boots. 

Mithian blinks, tries to shape words across her tongue that suddenly feels stiff and awkward in her mouth. “Your tunic,” she blurts instead. “I mean, that is to say, you, erm…are you not worried about being attacked?”

Leon shrugs, his forearm casually resting atop the pommel of the sword strapped to his hip. “The king’s woods are no more of a danger than my own chambers.”

“And what type of trouble do you normally find yourself in, in your chambers?” Mithian teases. “Strangers lurking in dark shadows, ready to pounce upon you while you sleep?”

“No,” he smiles, and she’s beginning to note the many colours of his grins: this one feels decidedly lecherous. Leon ambles towards her, bends down to her ear on the pretence of checking the provisions saddled to her horse. “I tend to do the pouncing,” the low timbre of his voice sends a curl of arousal straight to her core. 

One day, she will learn that if she wishes to jape like a man, she should not be so flustered when such talk is reciprocated. 

“Well.” Mithian clears her throat and runs a hand down her plait as Leon straightens, patting her horse’s flank. “Perhaps, then, if Arthur won’t be joining us, a full hunting party isn’t necessary? What about just you and me today, Sir Leon?” 

Before he can answer, Mithian curls her bottom lip between her teeth and whistles a sharp, short trill. At the sound, one dog breaks from the rest of the hunting pack and comes to sit in front of her, its brown eyes wide and doe-like as its tails arcs along the stones. 

“Hullo, Cavall,” she coos, crouching down to greet Arthur’s beloved hound. Mithian scratches Cavall behind his ears before pressing a kiss between his eyes. It’s an indulgence that, were Arthur here, would make him roll his eyes and call both her and the dog terrible things, a fond smile tugging at his lips. 

Mithian stands and gestures for one of the men to hand over his crossbow and balances it against her hip as she swings up into her saddle. 

“ Va t’en ,” she tells the dog, watching as he sprints through the citadel’s main gates. She twists in her saddle, her brows rising up in both question and amusement in face of Leon’s own, which are pinched in a scowl. “Are you coming, Sir Leon?”

“My lady,” he begins to protest, but Mithian simply spurs her horse forward, one hand wrapped in its reins, the other holding the crossbow steady across her lap. 

“Suit yourself,” she calls over her shoulder. “Although I certainly wouldn’t want to be the man who has to tell the king I rode off alone.”

Despite the clatter of her horse’s hooves along the cobbles of the courtyard, she catches his muttered curse and she laughs as she follows after Arthur’s dog. 

. . 

In her haste to ride off and leave Leon wrong-footed, Mithian might have, if she were to admit to such a mistake, grabbed the wrong sort of crossbow from the awaiting huntsmen. She much prefers those of a more compact size, and this larger contraption feels cumbersome in her arms. It’s also perhaps a bit too much for such an outing, considering now that there’s only the two of them, they’re unlikely to be able to manage dressing down anything larger than an errant doe. The weapon wobbling in her grip was clearly meant to fell a boar or even a twelve-tined hart. 

She catches the faintest flash of mottled gray amongst the verdant foliage of the forest floor, and quickly takes aim and fires, the shot pulling much farther to the right than desired. Mithian curses and grabs another arrow but already, her arms are fatigued and wobble as they try and wrench the string back to the bolt clip. 

“May I?” Leon asks, finally stepping beside her. Mithain pushes the back of a hand across her forehead, upsetting the sweat-damp wisps of hair that have escaped her plait, and sighs, nodding. 

He clicks the string in place easily, gingerly resetting a new bolt within the tiller before extending it back towards Mithian. She shakes her head, body slumping in exhaustion, and motions from him to keep hold of the weapon. “I do not admit this so easily, Sir Leon, but I find myself defeated by such a crossbow.”

“Defeated? Not a word I’d ever thought I’d hear from you,” he teases gently. “Go on, take it up again.”

Mithian does as he asks and Leon steps in front of her, adjusting her grip on the weapon, nudging her elbow just so, his fingers brushing up her arm to press at her shoulder until she shifts, spine straightening. Leon steps back for just a moment, his gaze heavy as it sweeps to take in her new stance, and it is all she can do to not shift under such a heady assessment. 

Leon lifts his hand again, but it is not the weapon or her posture he seeks to fix; instead, she feels the brush of his fingers across her cheeks and sliding behind her ear as he draws loose strands of her plait away from her face. Her breath hitches, crossbow wobbling, and suddenly she feels him along her back, the touch of one of his hands under her bent elbow, the other atop hers where it’s wrapped around the trigger, scorching her with the heat of a wildfire, leaving her nearly dizzy. 

“Steady on,” Leon laughs. Mithian tries, but she has never been less interested in hunting in her life, not with the way her senses are suddenly assaulted by his scent of clove and myrrh and something deeper underneath, no doubt thanks to the sweat that peppers his brow and darkens the linen at his armpits. She can feel the faintest scrape of his beard, the errant tickle of a curl along the side of her neck, and it’s not so difficult to imagine them so intimately pressed together like this, in different circumstances. 

Leon is patient, waits for her breathing to steady before quietly coaching her to take aim and sight the nearest tree, firing when she’s ready. 

This she knows how to do — how to hold herself still, emptying her mind of all thoughts in the moments between setting her sights and firing off a bolt. Mithian coaxes the trigger back on her next exhale, her heels digging into the loamy soil as the bolt fires off. 

It lands true, quivering on impact with the tree trunk, but it still fires with more power than she’s used to, and she rocks back with the force of it. But Leon is there, his hand sliding from her hip to press against her stomach, keeping her steady against him while his own body absorbs the ricochet from the fired crossbow. 

“Perfect,” he murmurs, his lips dusting along the shell of her ear. 

Mithian’s eyes flutter closed at his praise, a deep ache thrumming between her thighs, and for a moment she images twisting herself in his arms until she’s able to fist his tunic in her grip and bully him backwards until his back meets the sturdy trunk of a tree. For once, she curses the way she’s not wearing a skirt, how, if she was, she’d be able to simply gather the fabric about her waist, her legs around Leon’s hips, her lips along his jaw as he fucks into her. Or perhaps, thanks to her trousers, she could instead sink to her knees before him and pull his cock from his braies, drag her tongue down his steely length before drawing him into the heat of her mouth. 

“My lady?” he asks, breaking her reverie with a start, the unloaded crossbow clattering to the forest floor.  

“Mithian,” she chides. “Perhaps that’s enough hunting for today, Sir Leon.”

. .

They eat quickly at the bank of a nearby pond, Leon’s trousers rolled to his knees as he tosses stick after stick for Cavall to happily paddle after. They pass a wineskin between them, and though the wine does cool her, steadies the roil of nerves churning holty in her core, she does not fully trust herself with wine on her tongue in Leon’s presence. She’d like nothing more than to make a proper picnic of it, to stretch out her limbs and doze in the dappled sunlight, perhaps with her head upon Leon’s lap, his fingers gentle as they brush across her temple. But such luxuries are for other people — they’ve already stayed too long and responsibilities await them both back at the castle: for Leon, training with his men, while a private audience with Arthur and his council to work out a new trade agreement between their two kingdoms awaits her. 

“Ready?” Leon asks as Cavall shakes water from his coat, errant droplets pelting Mithian like rain. She nods and follows him back towards their posted horses. 

“Arthur says your families go back many years?” Mithian asks later, breaking the silence between them as they guide their horses onto the dusty road that will lead them back to the citadel. “That your father and his were boyhood friends?”

“If two such men could ever acknowledge such a thing as friendship, yes,” he concedes. At her confused look, Leon continues, “The late king never cared for anyone so closely, and my own father cared only for power. They were well matched, but to call their relationship anything less than political is a stretch.”

“And the rest of your family?” She prompts. “Arthur said you are your father’s third son?”

Leon nods and shifts in his saddle. “Yes. Fourth and youngest overall, too.”

She grew up alone, not even a single sibling to keep her company. But to have lived with three ? Her heart flutters at the thought. “What was that like?” 

Leon says nothing for a while, his gaze distant, lips pressed in a thin line. “Lonely,” he says at last, and that she can understand. In the stretches where she wasn’t being shuffled from neighboring kingdom to kingdom under the banner of strengthening friendship both present and future, she was often alone, her only company the retinue of adults whose job it was to care for her. 

“My father never liked me, didn’t really even want me,” Leon admits. “My sister…she’s his favorite and much older than I am. She was meant to be the last. But then I came along, an unwelcome surprise.”

“Well, I am glad you are here, anyway.” The confession seems to slip past Mithian’s lips before she can think better of it. She’s glad, too, that the summer sun has already kissed her face today and will hide the blush that spreads across her cheeks. 

Leon quietly urges his horse ahead of hers and they ride the rest of the way in silence, the castle’s sturdy stone walls growing ever larger before them. Mithian notes the strong line of Leon’s back, the sway of his hips in the saddle, the way his hair flashes between copper and gold in the sun. Were it not for his roughspun tunic, he’d look almost regal atop his horse, and she finds herself wondering if he’d look better with a circlet of gold or silver nestled atop his curls. 

“I’ve only just decided, Sir Leon,” Mithan says, once again disrupting the quiet between them. “Brown doesn’t suit you.”

“No?” He frowns down at his tunic, tugs at where the afternoon’s sun has made it cling to his chest.

“No,” she agrees, spurring her horse on faster and passing him by. “I think you’d look much nicer in the green of Nemeth, though.” 

Leon’s bark of laughter is loud and unexpected, and Mithian can’t help the wide smile that settles across her face in response. She spares a glance over her shoulder at him, his face a portrait of incredulous joy, and she spurs her horse on faster, the wind pulling at her plait. 

She doesn’t need to look back again to know Leon’s encouraged his horse to do the same. And she knows, even without looking to confirm the truth of it, that if she were to stretch out a hand, he’d be just a breath away from her touch.  

. . 

It’s Merlin who raps on her door the following morning, a wide, sunny smile crinkling his eyes when she swings the door open. 

“Good morning!” he greets, pressing a kiss to her cheek. 

“My, my. Someone looks as if they got out of the right side of the bed this morning,” she jests, looping her arm though his as they walk down the corridor. “Perhaps a royal bed at that?”

Merlin laughs, face flaming as they pass in front of a large tapestry she remembers Arthur knocking a suit of armor into, the point of the ceremonial visor catching a loose thread and rending a giant hole in the middle of the scene. “A gentleman never kisses and tells.”

“Good thing you aren’t one!” Her gentle ribbing is met with another peal of laughter from Merlin, his head tipping back as he leads them down a flight of stairs.

Mithian knows the castle well enough to notice that wherever Merlin is meant to be bringing her, they’re certainly taking quite the ambling route to get there. But she doesn’t mind, and indeed slows her own steps until she’s able to needle every last sordid detail from Merlin’s lips. 

“Well,” she says at last as they step out into the sunshine, “if he weren’t so like a brother to me, I dare say I’d be jealous.”

Merlin only blushes and catches her hand, raising it to sweep his lips across the back of her palm. “Arthur invited you to watch training today,” he says, nodding out towards the field where Arthur leads his knights, all in various stages of undress under the summer sun, through a series of stretches. 

“Oh,” Mithian frowns, looking down at the brocaded corset of her dress. She’d much rather be participating than watching, but dressed as she is, she resigns herself to a morning of simply spectating. “That’s…nice.”

“No,” Merlin disagrees, settling himself down into the grass, the sandy stone wall of the keep at his back, “he’s simply an oaf who doesn’t know how to ask for your company any other way. It’s sweet, I suppose.” 

Mithian laughs, settling beside him. All in all, it’s a pleasant way to spend an morning and she wonders, if she were to have agreed to Arthur’s marriage proposal all those years ago, if this is what her days would have looked like — hunting until she tires, a small picnic beside a lake, a quiet afternoon at Merlin’s side watching Arthur train. She can’t picture the same sort of future for herself in Nemeth and briefly mourns the life she turned down. 

“He’s showing off,” Merlin teases. Though the book he’s brought along lies open in his lap, she notes he hasn’t turned a single page the entire time they’ve been here, his gaze fixed to the bobbing crown of blonde out on the field. 

“For you , clearly.”

“Arthur? Oh, of course he is. But I meant Leon ,” Merlin says with a pointed look, his shoulder pressing into hers. She notices nothing special in the knight’s movements, his footwork neat, his attacks with his sword precise and free of any of the fancier flourishes she knows most braggadocious men are prone to. But perhaps Merlin sees something she doesn’t. 

Mithian sighs, resting her head upon Merlin’s shoulder. “I see Arthur’s put the same nonsense into your head as well.”

“He has a point.” Merlin shrugs, jostles her so she raises her head to meet his gaze. “You two are well matched.”

“Leon is…not entirely unpleasant to the eye,” Mithian admits slowly. “But marriage?”

Merlin only hums in response, leaning closer to her side. “You and I both know you needn't be married to…explore such attractions.”

She’s saved the embarrassment of a response by Arthur calling her name and motioning for her to join the small group of men clustered around him. 

“Sir Erec is struggling in his training with daggers,” Arthur says, casually tossing a dagger in his hand and catching the blade easily between his fingertips. “I was telling him you’re quite adept with them and was wondering if you’d give us the honour of a demonstration?” 

“Arthur,” she sighs. She does, actually, want to, but she’s in a gown, a pretty one at that, having gotten dressed that morning with no other thought on her mind than that of the delicate peaks of Leon’s lips, half a mind on how he might react seeing her so done up. She glances at him now and some small part of her is satisfied to find a small, fond smile tugging at his lips. 

Arthur throws the dagger, sending it tumbling end-over-end through the air towards her. And briefly, she is aware of the collective gasp from the men around them; sees Leon jerk forward, body angled towards Arthur, his grip tight around his sword; sees too the way Merlin’s arm reaches towards her as if he may help, despite the many yards between them. But it all matters little. Arthur wasn’t wrong about her prowess with these weapons: Mithian plucks the dagger from the air as if it were no more than a leaf tumbling from a tree. 

“Fine,” she relents, sticking her hand out for a second knife. 

Arthur gives a whoop of joy, drawing another dagger from the sheath at his hip and pressing it into her waiting hand, dropping a sweet kiss to her forehead as he does so. “Don’t spare them, even for a moment,” he tells her, nodding for the suddenly green-faced Erec to step forward. 

She assesses the knight’s talent in the few heartbeats it takes for him to gather the nerve to advance towards her. Mithian spins away from Erec’s attack, drawing the edge of her blade across his arm — not enough to bleed, but enough to slice through the padding of his gambeson. It’s only another short moment longer before she’s fully able to disarm him, both of his daggers falling down into the grass. 

“You’re too timid, Sir Erec,” she chides, bending to collect his fallen weapons.

“You…you are a wo-woman,” he stutters. “I didn’t want…”

“I’m a woman who doesn’t wish to kill you. You may meet others who don’t share my opinion of you and won’t hesitate to slit your throat.” The young knight looks close to tears and Mithan sends him away with a quick flick of her wrist, nodding towards Arthur to take his place. 

The king sticks his hands up, grin tugging at the corner of his lips. “You have my blades, remember?”

“Borrow another pair,” she huffs, impatient. 

“Leon,” Arthur calls instead. “You’re not too afraid to fight a woman, are you?”

“A woman? No,” Leon says, moving to square up against Mithian. “ This woman, however?” He pauses, rotating his sword in his hand, a wolfish, predatory glint in his eyes as they rake down her body. Here at last, a glimpse of the arrogant first knight, his sweet words and charming manners, until now, doing well enough to disguise his cocky ego. “I will take pleasure in finding out, I’m sure.”

“Though I am a woman ,” Mithian spits the word like a curse, “I assure you, sir, I am no delicate flower.”

“We shall see,” Leon challenges. 

Mithian breathes in deeply, pushing the air out slowly through her nose, and feels her heartbeat steady with each successive breath. Leon makes no move toward her, his eyes curious, inquisitive as his hands flex around the grip of his sword. 

She watched him long enough today to know he favors his right side and has a wicked little trick with his backhand swing that, more often than not, sees the edge of his blade kiss his opponent’s neck. Leon’s height is an advantage, as will be his considerable reach of his arm, but she’s shorter and lither than he is, and her two blades are lighter, more agile than his sword.   

Mithtian makes the first step towards him and Leon responds in kind, swinging his sword in a wide, lazy arc that she easily bats aside, her quick footwork instantly setting him on the defensive. Mithian ducks under Leon’s swings, landing taunting jabs to his back and ribs as she twists around him. They’re dancing around one other, each attack only half-hearted, assessing. 

“Get on with it, you two!” Arthur jeers, the rest of his men taking up the cheer. 

“You’ve been managing well,” Leon says, his next thrust with his blade slow enough for her to catch and deflect. 

“You’ve been holding back,” Mithian counters.

“As have you.” 

“Perhaps.” Mithian indulges in a shrug, sure that Leon won’t press her in an attack at that moment. “Listen to your king, Sir Leon. Come on,” she grins. 

Leon rolls his shoulders and she can see then, the way he shifts from fighting for fun, sparring for sport, to fighting with real intent. His next round of attacks is faster, more forceful, but she manages each one, letting her feet carry her around the field.

Mithian stumbles and Leon presses his advance, swinging his sword with brutal speed down towards her as she struggles to correct her balance and plant her feet. Mithian brings her blades up and crosses them, catching the downward arc of his sword, but the force of it shakes her arms and steals her breath. They remain locked, Leon bearing down and Mithian holding him back with every ounce of her strength, until suddenly he relents, drawing his blade away and flipping it quickly in his grip. Leon brings his pommel quickly down onto her shoulder blade, enough to bruise and drive her to her knees. 

Leon falters and Arthur spies his hesitation while Mithian presses her hands into the ground, back bent as she tries to pull air into her heaving lungs. 

“She’s as fierce as Boudicca, that one!” Arthur calls from the sideline. “You do her no favors by holding back, Sir Leon!” 

As if with Arthur’s permission, Leon attacks in full, his larger blade meeting her smaller pair again and again to drive her back, giving her no room to advance into his space. He barely looks fatigued, his face little more than a serene mask while her arms begin to tremble. Mithian can feel sweat roll down her back, between her breasts, and her fingers begin to cramp from where they’re locked around the blades’ grips. 

Leon disarms her as if she is nothing more than a pesky fly, leaving her with only one dagger to stand against the unrelenting, precise attacks of his sword. He manages to press into her space, little more than the lock of their blades between them, and she feels his leg slide between her own and knows he means to tumble her to the ground, but unable to stop it anyway. 

“Yield, my lady,” Leon growls, his voice steely and cold in a way she’s never heard before. His hips pin hers to the ground, his grip around her wrist feeling tight enough to bruise. “I do not wish to see you hurt.” 

“You would do well not to underestimate me, sir,” Mithian warns, thrashing beneath him. 

“You’ve done well enough, but you are a princess, whereas I have been training to kill since you were in leading strings.” Mithian cries out as Leon twists her wrist, the dagger falling from her grip and landing in the grass above her head. “Do you forfeit?” 

And there, against her thigh, she can feel the thickening length of him. She rolls her hips simply to feel the drag of him against her and notes the way his pupils blow wide in response. She rocks her hips again and again, ignoring the ache between her own legs, the desire to shift below him until he settles between her thighs, the shape of him pressing against her core. Leon’s breath hitches, eyes momentarily closing, and it’s enough of a distraction that Mithian’s able to reach for her fallen dagger and drive the butt of it into his side. As he twists away, she wraps her leg around his thigh and flips them, settling her weight firmly atop his chest, her forearm pressing tight against his throat.    

“I am my father’s only child, heir to a kingdom that rivals Camelot in size and wealth and power,” she tells him, anger trembling her voice. “I was able to ride a horse before I could walk, and even though I’m no great swordsman, your king taught me how to throw a punch. My daggers are deadly and my aim with a crossbow is true.”

Mithian shifts up onto her knees, the new angle allowing her to bear more of her weight down upon her arm across Leon’s neck. “I may be a princess, but I have killed more men than you may ever give me credit for, my lord .”

As quick as she pinned him, Mithian rises, throwing her remaining dagger down into the grass, near enough by Leon’s head to cause him to flinch. “Arthur’s wrong. I could never marry a man who thinks so little of me.”

. . 

“Oh!” Mithian freezes just inside the great hall, the echo of her exclamation bouncing off the stone walls before it’s swallowed by the scrape of a chair across the worn wooden floors.

As she has encountered nearly every morning since her arrival, she was expecting to find the hall full of noise, Arthur and Merlin seated across from one another, Arthur’s closest circle of knights joining them, platters of half eaten food running the length of the table. She wasn't, however, expecting to find Leon alone, rising to his feet at the sight of her. 

She thinks for a moment to turn and leave, and while she certainly can’t avoid him forever — at least not while a guest of this court — she can, at least, seclude herself away in her chambers and break her fast alone. 

But it’s her name, from him, said simply, that arrests her movement. 

“I’m sorry,” Leon says. Mithian turns back toward him, hands fisting the embroidered linen of her skirt as her stomach swoops at the sight of him. “I underestimated you, made a flippant comment based on little more than your sex. It was wrong of me, and I am sorry, truly, for the offence I’ve caused.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that, has never heard such an earnest apology, least of all from a man. But she believes him, knows his words are not simply to stroke either of their egos or absolve him of any wrongdoing. He looks, at the very least, like his words, their fight, have weighed on him — his normally tidy curls cast a frizzy halo around his head, shadows smudged under his eyes. 

“Your face,” Mithian says at last, moving toward him. She gestures to her own cheek in a mirror of the place where Leon sports an angry scab surrounded by a mottled bruise. “What happened?” she asks softly, coming to stand before him. Her fingertips gently trace along the wound marring the peak of his cheekbone. 

Leon flinches at the touch, but his fingers wrap gently around Mithian’s wrist when she tries to pull away, his cheek coming to rest softly against her palm. “I was distracted, after you left,” he admits as her thumb strokes gently along his cheek. “I didn’t move out of the way fast enough and got caught by Percival’s gauntlet.”

She hisses at the thought, feels a small pang of guilt at how her own anger, however justified, might have been the cause of such an injury. Mithian takes a small step forward, her hand coming to rest upon his chest, an indulgent touch she means to reassure herself that despite the wound on his face, that he — that they — are well. 

“I’m sorry, too,” she says with the steady thump of Leon’s heart under her hand. She doesn’t quite know what she’s apologizing for — for their fight or her quick temper, or perhaps simply in sympathy over the strike he took across his face. 

The tilt of Leon’s head is slight, the drag of his stubble in her hand jarring, soothed by the press of his lips into her palm. “You deserve a man who will love every part of you,” Leon says, speaking into the cradle of her hand, each word dragging his lips across her skin. “Someone who will not shrink away from the warrior queen you must be.”

“And does he?” Mithian asks, her voice, when it does not catch in her throat, no louder than a whisper. She feels his hand come to rest at the small of her back. “This future husband you may have in mind for me?”

“I imagine he’s certainly beginning to.” 

This close, she can see it — the hunger in his eyes, the desire that she thinks must be reflected in her own. And she sees the challenge in them too, daring her to be the one to break first. Held in his arms, his hand a steady anchor at her back, his body an intoxicating warmth pressed along her own, she can think of no reason not to surge to her toes until she may finally learn what the pillow of his lips feels like, how the sweep of his tongue may send shivers down her spine, how the taste of him might stoke desire deep within her core. 

His breath ghosts across her cheek as his eyes flick over her shoulder, his hands falling from their embrace. She’s confused, momentarily hurt by yet another rejection from him, until the doors to the hall bang open. She clears her throat, smoothing her hands down the bodice of her dress as she turns to smile at Arthur and Merlin, craning her neck for Arthur to place a kiss upon her cheek as he passes. 

“What have we been talking about?” Arthur asks, plucking a grape from a nearby platter, his teeth sinking through the thin skin with a snap as he takes his seat. 

“Leon’s cheek,” Mithian says easily. “Must have been quite the training session after I left yesterday, what with the injuries you two sport,” she adds, gesturing towards the dusting of marks she spies on Arthur’s chest, barely concealed by the loose tunic he wears. “With Leon’s wound and the many blows you must have taken yesterday, Arthur, you really must go easier or there will be no men left standing to defend the city.” 

Arthur’s face flames a pleasing shade of rose and Merlin sputters the sip of water he took as she was speaking before his deep laughter fills the hall. 

. . 

“Arthur seems quite pleased we are getting along,” Leon notes as he escorts Mithian the long walk back to her chambers. 

The evening’s dinner was a casual affair, just Arthur and his chosen circle dining outside as the sun slipped behind the castle’s western turret. They settled themselves across a sea of blankets on the tournament grounds, a visiting troupe of players erecting a small stage and entertaining them well into the night with their bawdy skits and songs.

But no sooner had their meal been laid than Arthur and Merlin had made a hasty exit, thanks in no small part to an errant drip of honey that ran down Merlin's hand as he happily hummed around a mouthful of bread piled with soft cheese. Arthur had caught Merlin’s forearm, trailing his tongue up Merlin’s wrist and across his palm before drawing a honey coated finger between his lips. They slipped back to the castle with barely a word of a goodbye. 

The rest of their small group had already paired off, leaving her alone until Leon moved to sit beside her, as natural as if he truly belonged there. It was pleasant to spend an evening, eating and drinking and laughing by his side, letting their bodies occasionally brush against one another as they shifted, the cover of the falling night disguising the way Leon’s hand may have fallen atop hers time and again, the way his arm bore some of her weight as she leaned against him. 

In between the echo of their footsteps along the stone, she thinks she can still hear the distant strum of the lyre and lilt of a song, though the words are lost in the breeze. 

“Well, I suppose if Arthur is pleased about it, we must put an end to our friendship at once,” Mithian jokes, pleased to hear Leon’s quiet chuckle of a laugh in response, although she finds herself unable to share in it. Somehow, without notice, she finds she can no longer picture her days here in Camelot without Leon a heartbeat away. And perhaps even more distressingly, her remaining days left in his company can be counted on a single hand. 

“He does seem quite intent on seeing us wed,” Leon muses.

“I’ve been engaged three times before,” she tells him. “Why should I believe our engagement should end any differently?”

“Well, for one, my lady, we are not yet engaged.”

“Must you be so serious all the time,” Mithian laments, squeezing at his forearm. It would be so easy, their arms looped as they are as he escorts her towards her rooms, to slide her hand down his wrist until their palms touch and their fingers tangle together. 

She has never before wanted to hold hands with the men who have been her suitors — though Leon is hardly a suitor — but those men have never been this man, their hands never this hand, with its spattering of freckles and echoes of old scars painting constellations across the back of his hand, hair like finely spun honey dusting his knuckles, the occasional crescent of dirt under his nails. 

They stop at the door to her chambers and under the intensity of his gaze, Mithian straightens her spine, although it still does little more than bring her in line with his chin. “The second thing?” She prompts. “You were starting a list, I believe?”

“The second,” Leon says, bracing a hand above her shoulder, trapping her between his chest and the door to her chambers. “None of the other men to whom you have been betrothed has been me. ”

“You do think quite highly of yourself, sir ,” she quips, though her breath catches in her throat as he leans down towards her, further pressing into her space. 

“Only because I’ve received no complaints, Highness.” His lips draw the words atop the fluttering pulse behind her ear before Leon sets his lips upon her skin at last, dragging them down the curve of neck and across the top of her exposed shoulder. She does not moan, doesn’t make a single sound, if only because there is no air left in her lungs, her body frozen between each press of his lips upon her. When his lips at last meet the fabric of her sleeve he pulls back and dips into a subtle bow, cocky smile tugging at his lips. “Good night, my lady.”

She doesn’t respond, hardly waits until his back is turned before stumbling into her chambers, knees as steady as a newborn foal. Inside her dimly lit room, Mithian leans her weight against the door, barely waits for the latch to click shut before she draws her skirts aside and drags her fingers along her core, fingers growing slick as she strokes herself. 

She rolls her hips, fucking herself down onto the fingers snug within her cunt as her thumb circles her clit, each press of her thumb sending sparks of pleasure shooting through her body. 

It’s not long before she comes, a silent scream held tight within her chest, the fantasy of Leon’s curls wrapped around her fingers, his head between her thighs, tumbling her over into a bright, sudden climax. 

. . 

“Merlin,” Mithian muses the next morning. She awoke after a night of fitful sleep full of auburn curls and a devilish smile, to discover desire settling hotly between her thighs, pooling at the tips of her breasts, no relief to be found until she once again stroked herself, legs trembling, body arching off the bed in pleasure. “Suppose I were amenable to Arthur’s matchmaking,” she says, running a hand through the basket of lavender they’ve collected and inhaling the heady perfume. 

Merlin says nothing, simply loops his arm through hers as they amble out of the woods and begin to make their way back towards the lower town. 

“I…desire him.” Mithian glances at Merlin quickly and studies the basket in her hands to hide the creeping flush she can feel rising up her neck. “More than expected. And I find myself…not entirely eager to be without his company.”

Merlin laughs, nudging his hip against hers. “ Not eager to be without his company ?” he mocks, fingers needling her sides. “I’m swooning on his behalf. Truly, Mithian, you are a hopeless romantic.” 

“Fine!” Mithian relents, batting his hands away. “What do you want me to say, Merlin? That I want him to take me to bed and make me scream? And then I want him to carry me back to Nemeth and make me his wife? I want to sit him in my throne and kneel before him until he screams. I want him to fill my womb with his children. I want to never spend another day without him by my side.” 

Cavall whines and Merlin picks up an errant stick, throwing it a handful of paces before them. The two of them watch as Cavall races out to fetch the stick before running back, happy to walk between them once more. 

“You can have that, you know. All of it,” Merlin says, his hand stroking along Cavall’s sun-warmed head. “And you deserve that kind of love, too.”

“If only wishing made it so.” 

“Mith,” Merlin sighs, turning to her at last. “Leon’s a knight . He can’t — Look, despite how much it may rankle you, you are a princess . Leon can’t propose, not to you. You have to be the one to propose to him.”

It all clicks then: the mixed signals she thinks he’s been giving her, the way his attraction has burned hot and then cold; the many times he’s hesitated or pulled away. She realizes now he was simply waiting for her to act on her desires first. 

“Bloody knights are too stubborn and noble for their own good,” Mithian mutters. Merlin laughs, escorting her through the cramped, busy streets of the lower town. 

All her life, her marriage has seemed a foregone thing, something discussed without her input behind closed doors, the wedding contracts all but signed before she even met her betrothed. She’s never before willingly considered a suitor; has never never before had the freedom of choice in such matters before. 

Although that isn’t to say her father denied her a chance to marry for love, to find the kind of relationship he had with her mother. But all her life, until now, it mattered little. For Mithian, marriage and love were always separate things: love or duty, happiness or responsibility, being a queen or being a wife, a mother. 

She thinks, for the first time, she may have found a way to have both. 

Mithian smiles, sharing in Merlin’s laughter. Because for the first time, the prospect of it all doesn’t sound nearly as terrifying as she previously thought. 

. . 

“Sir Leon,” Mithian greets sweetly, dipping down into a curtsy as he pushes through the tent’s heavy canvas flaps. 

“Mithian,” he startles, although he recovers quickly, matching her formal greeting with a neat bow of his own. “My lady, I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”

“Of course not,” she grins, rocking back on her heels, “then it wouldn’t have been a surprise, would it?”

Leon sets his helmet on a nearby table, his usual nest of curls flattened and plastered along his forehead, his face nearly the same colour as his surcoat thanks to the midday sun and the armour still buckled down his long limbs. “What are you doing here?” Leon asks, working his gloves from his hands. 

“I wanted to see you,” Mithian says, moving beside him to pour fresh water into a basin. She fishes a rag from its depth and wrings it out before pressing it against his brow. 

“You don’t need to do this,” Leon protests, even as he seems to sag into the touch. “I have squires who —”

“Yes, you do,” Mithian notes, gently wiping the cloth across his cheeks. “But I sent them away.”

“My lady…” Leon sighs, breath hitching at the shock of cold as Mithian moves the cloth down the back of his neck. 

“Mithian,” she sing-songs her own name back to him. “Besides, armour can’t be any more difficult to undo than a dress, and I do that myself every day. Laces and buckles are all the same, no matter who wears them.”

When he doesn’t seem to raise any further arguments, Mithian leaves the rag at his nape, cool water slowly slipping below the sweat-ringed collar of his gambeson as she grabs for his forearm, making quick work undoing the fastenings of his vambrace and the rest of the spare plating on his right arm. 

“You’ve done well so far today,” she notes, her knuckles brushing along his neck as she works to loosen the straps of his gardbrace. 

Leon moves a hand to her hip, his thumb absently stroking her side. “I might have been trying to impress a certain woman in the crowd.”

“My,” Mithian smiles, her attention focused on the more intricate plating covering his left shoulder, “what a woman she must be to inspire such prowess.”

“She is, indeed.”

Mithian hums an aimless melody as she divests Leon of his armor, piece by piece lifted by her attentive fingers until he is able to draw his hauberk over his head. She means to kneel and ease the bindings of the poleyns at his knees, but Leon catches Mithian by the elbow, drawing her to her feet. “I can manage those, my lady,” he says gruffly. 

“Next time I desire to drop to my knees for you, Sir Leon,” she dares, turning to absently arrange his pieces of armour on the table, “you would do well not to stop me.”

“You shouldn’t speak to me like that,” Leon grunts, his eyes pressed tight as he pinches the bridge of his nose. 

Mithian bites at her lip, a pregnant silence growing between them, and waits for him to say something more, but Leon simply scrubs his hands down his face, fingers pressing at his temple, something unreadable on his face. Or, no, not quite unreadable (and already it should seem odd that she can see through the cracks in his steady facade to the man underneath; that she has come to understand him so well over the past fortnight) but rather the flash of one too many emotions at once for her to be able to read a single thing clearly before his face smooths, his shoulders rounding as he composes himself. 

“Leon…” Mithian starts, taking a small step towards him. Leon still says nothing, his chest heaving as if he’s only just walked off the melee field. She moves to lay a hand upon his shoulder, means to draw him from whatever reverie he has fallen into, but he flinches away from her touch. 

Swallowing past the sting of yet another rejection from him, Mithian draws a long strip of fabric from her bodice and extends it towards him. “I only meant…I wanted to give you my favor, Sir Leon,” she says, her eyes fixed to the twisting nest of green fabric piled in her hand. “I had hoped — I wanted — you to wear it. To show to everyone that you are mine.”

He looks at her at last, the shock and intensity of his sudden attention stealing her breath. “My champion,” she amends. 

“My lady, please… ” Leon rasps, his hands curling into fists at his side. He looks pained, distraught, as if her very presence is a torment to him.

“I’m sorry I caused offense, my lord,” Mithian says softly, tucking the ribbon away before gathering her skirts and dipping into a quick curtsy. She keeps her gaze fixed to the stretch of grass between them for fear that, were she to look upon him again, her resolve might wobble and spring hot tears born of longing and shame and rejection. 

Mithian turns her back to him, her mind simply set on escaping with the tatters of her dignity and wounded pride, and longs, for the first time since her arrival here, of being anywhere other than Camelot. 

She almost doesn’t hear it then, when Leon calls her name, the sound of it as sweet as a sparrow’s song on a summer day.

Leon catches her hand, his touch gentle as he tips Mithian’s chin until she meets his eyes. “I desire you, in every way Mithian,” he murmurs, his thumb drawing a meandering path along her cheek. “You are smart and brave and fierce, and you make me laugh like no other. You are the most incredible woman I have ever met and I am trying to keep myself from saying something — from doing something — that one of us may regret. And then you go and taunt me, filling my mind with desires I cannot act upon —”

“Who said you couldn’t act upon them?” Mithian interrupts, a small frown furrowing her brows. “Certainly not I.”

Leon’s hand sides from the curve of Mithian’s waist along her back, coming to rest upon her other hip as he reels her towards him. Her name, when Leon speaks it again, is little more than an exhale, and she thinks she could spend hours listening to him say nothing more than her name and never tire of the sound: sometimes directed towards the sky as his head tips back in laughter; other times impish and teasing, or curt and clipped; or like now, quiet and tender and full of things unspoken. 

Leon’s lips seem in no rush to find and claim hers in a kiss, content to drag up the column of her throat, nipping at her ear, her chin, before she feels his breath ghost across her lips.  

Mithian has often found that with the other men that she has pulled into dark corners or into her bed, the anticipation of their kisses was often better than the reality. But once again, she is reminded Leon is not those men. Every one of his glances steals her breath, every smile he shares with her sends a shiver down her spine, every touch — the sweep of his knuckles along her hand, the press of his chest against her back, his hands at her hip, the small of her back, her shoulder, her stomach — feels like a brand upon her skin.

It’s not all that surprising, then, that the first press of his lips against hers makes her smile. The nip of his teeth, the stroke of his tongue against hers coaxes soft sighs as she wraps her arms around his shoulders, at long last discovering the feel of his curls coiling around her fingers.

Mithian arches into Leon’s embrace, and with a small, encouraging tug to the hair tangled in her grasp, guides his head to deepen the kiss, tasting her fill of him until she is nearly breathless. 

“I am mad for you,” Leon pants, his lips upon her throat.

“And I for you,” Mithian admits, her heart performing acrobatics at the tender smile that spreads across his face at the confession. 

Leon captures her lips in a kiss again, no longer chaste, but a ravenous slide of lips and swirling tongues that she matches gladly. He lifts her as if she is no more trouble than the cuirass he sweeps from the tabletop before placing her down upon it, his hand coming to rest behind her head as she hooks a leg around his hip, her heel digging into his arse to tumble him closer. Though her skirts bunch up her thighs, the drape of them stands in the way of drawing him against her core, and Mithian instead slips a hand between them, her palm dragging down the stiffening length of his prick. 

“Mithian,” he breathes, his forehead dropping to her shoulder, his hands flexing upon her waist as his hips rock into the friction of her hand. “By the gods.”

“Leon,” she gasps, her hips bucking to match the roll of his, but finding no relief to the aching pressure building in her. “I need you,” she whines, her hand squeezing gently along his cock. 

“You have me, my lady,” Leon says as he draws Mithian to the edge of the table. His hand dips below the hem of her many skirts, brushing along the curve of her calf, the bend of her knee, before inching up her inner thigh, the graze of his fingers sending shivers down her spine, her skin prickling with gooseflesh despite the day’s stifling heat. 

While Leon’s touch is gentle, the hand upon her soft skin is rough, hardened with callouses. It’s a hand that speaks of a lifetime of work, of skill and patience and mastery. And it should be strange that she instantly feels so safe, so protected simply from the touch, the feel of a hand upon her skin. And yet, it is there in the warmth of his palm saying I have you , the press of his callouses vowing I will never let you down , and in the graze of his fingers that write a million promises across her skin. 

A flutter of anticipation settles in her stomach, though Leon seems satisfied to keep his hand on her thigh while he licks into her mouth once more, his thumb a light caress that moves no closer to where she wants him to touch. 

“Leon,” she keens. “Leon, please, I —”

“Shh,” Leon soothes, pressing sweet kisses to her lips despite her fire, her hunger, to deepen them. 

His fingers slide at last between the apex of Mithian’s thighs and slowly stroke the soft, wet heat of her cunt, his thumb teasing as it slowly draws lazy circles around her clit. Mithian moans, unabashed in the pleasure she feels and takes and chases from his skillful attention. 

And maybe Arthur was right, after all. They are as well-matched in this as they are on the training ground with blades in hand, Leon anticipating her needs before she even gives thought to them. Before her hips can move to find the pressure of his hand, he is there, his fingers pressing inside her as she ruts against the heel of his palm. And when her breath hitches, gets held in her chest, and she is unable to speak with the overwhelming want of it all, Leon braces his free hand upon the tabletop beside her, leaning over her to bring his lips to the shell of her ear and gives voice to her own desires. “I know, my lady, I know. But the first time I fuck you, it will not be here, on a table, in the middle of a tournament.” 

His nose follows the line of her cheekbone then sweeps down along her jaw. “I will be hard in my saddle thinking about this. The way your cunt squeezes at my fingers, the way you sound, your breathy little cries as you fuck yourself on my hand.”

“Yes,” Mithian rasps, her nails scraping down his neck. She clutches at his nape, her hips bucking down to meet each slide of his fingers, each stroke of his thumb across her clit. Leon nips at the swell of her breasts, the scrape of his stubble across the tender skin spurring a surprising jolt of pleasure in her core that tumbles her over into a shivering, breathless release. 

“Beautiful,” Leon smiles and Mithian laughs, tugging at his tunic until his lips meet hers again. She reaches for the hard line of his prick, but Leon catches her hand and draws it away instead. “Later,” he promises, placing a kiss on her wrist.

Sliding from the table, rumpled skirts falling down around her, Mithian stoops to pick up the discarded strip of fabric and loops it around Leon’s bicep. “You fight for Nemeth now,” Mithian says, tying the favor in a quick bow. “As its future queen, I command you not to let me down today, Sir Leon.”

“And if I win today?” Leon asks, his hand coming to cover hers atop the band of green “Do I receive a reward?”

Mithian pretends to consider the question, tapping a finger against lips that still buzz with the memory of Leon’s own upon them. “Come to my chambers tonight to find out.” 

“My lady,” Leon bows, looking up at her through his lashes, his lips cocked in a grin. 

Mithian spins on her heel before the temptation to stay and fold herself into his arms roots her to the spot. But she pauses at the tent’s threshold, twisting back towards him, her head tipped as she regards him. “I was right,” she muses. “You do look better in green.”

. . 

“I hope you have not come to collect a reward,” Mithian says later that night as she opens the doors to her chambers, her voice steady despite the nervous flutter that swells to life within her stomach upon seeing him, as if she were a tittering youth half her age. She bites at her lip, hiding her smile and leans against the jamb of the door, a pose which he matches, her shoulder, his chest, the toes of their respective shoes almost, but not quite, touching. 

She had been less than ideal company at dinner earlier, remaining quiet through most of the meal, paying little attention to the raucous conversation around her, half a mind still inside Leon’s tent, heart thumping wildly within her chest at the mere memory of his hand upon her thigh, the scrape of his rough beard, the deep, teasing timbre of his voice in her ear. And it didn’t help that despite her best efforts, her eyes kept meeting Leon’s across the hall, each glance, however brief, containing an entire conversation meant just for her. She had startled from her reverie only when Arthur laid a hand upon her own, his blue eyes dancing with mirth, brow arched and expectant, waiting for a reply to a question they both know she didn’t hear. 

She apologized, setting aside the goblet of wine she hadn't really been drinking and stood, blaming the relentless heat and a long, exciting day for her desire to retire early. 

“Neither of you is as subtle as you believe yourselves to be,” Arthur had murmured as she leaned down to sweep a kiss across his cheek. Mithian only twisted his ear in response, Arthur’s resulting yelp turning eyes towards them, her exit no longer the unnoticed affair she would have wished.  

“I believe Sir Lancelot won the joust today,” she reminds Leon now. 

“He’s the best rider of us all. And there’s still the melee to come,” Leon shrugs. “Besides, I found myself quite distracted.”

“Distracted?” Mithian tuts in playful disapproval. “Simply intolerable for a knight of Nemeth. I’m afraid you’re not quite up to the standards to be a member of my Queen’s Guard,” she says with a smile as Leon’s hands fall to her waist, drawing her towards him. 

“And if I wish to have a different position in your court?” Leon asks, voice soft as he noses along the curve of her ear. 

Mithian slides her hands up Leon’s chest before settling her arms over his shoulders and hums, twisting one of his curls around her finger, pretending to mull the question over while Leon kisses down her neck. “What position do you desire, sir?”

“Perhaps a valet?” Leon muses, his hands falling away from her as he pushes off the wall. He bows deeply, gestures for Mithian to move first and follows her inside her chambers, shutting the door with barely a sound and standing stock-still, hands held behind his back.  

“Princesses don’t have valets,” she reminds him. “And you are no lady, so you cannot be one of my ladies-in-waiting.” Mithian considers him, one hand under her elbow as she taps at her cheek, letting her eyes slowly rake down his body. “You can be my cup-bearer? Seems a suitable enough job for a man of your skills.”

“Whatever you desire, my lady,” Leon says, dipping his head in deference, happy to keep playing at this little charade they’ve concocted, although the crooked smirk on his lips gives a second meaning to his words. “Although, I suppose I would prefer to be your servant so I could remain by your side always and make sure you never want for anything.”

Leon moves towards her at last, his steps sure and unhurried, and all at once, she feels like the deer she sighted in her crossbow all those many days ago; feels rooted to the spot, waiting for Leon’s next move, confident he will be the undoing of her. Under the unwavering heat of his gaze, she finds she no longer has any voice to return his jokes, although suddenly, those too have lost their playfulness, Leon’s words tipping towards something more serious, more sacred.

“I would spend my days waiting to serve you,” Leon says as he comes to stand behind her, his hands sliding down her arms. “I would pass my time remembering the feel of your skin under the brush of my fingers, and count the moments until I could feel such delight again. I would dream of what you would look like with your hair unbound as you step out of all your finery.”

“And would that be enough for a man of your station?” Mithian asks. 

“A man like me could only dream of such a life, my lady,” Leon says, his hands splaying out across her stomach, his lips feather-light atop her shoulder.

“I suppose you could practice then,” she says, the small tremor of her voice the only indication to how much his words, his presence have already affected her. “You may need to familiarize yourself with a dress such as this one. The bindings are a bit more complicated than most.”

“It is a very fine thing,” Leon agrees, his clever fingers working the pearl-tipped pins from her hair until it tumbles down her back. 

“Perhaps I picked it out just so you could take it off of me,” Mithian says, her voice barely above a whisper as Leon sweeps her hair over her shoulder and presses a kiss to the nape of her neck. 

She thinks she catches a quiet moan in response but she can barely hear over the roar of her own heart pounding in her ears. Leon’s touch is so light, his fingers so agile that she barely feels the tug of the knot being loosened, barely feels the pull of the ribbon through the embroidered eyelets that column her spine. “I didn’t know you would be so adept at ladies’ corsets,” she muses, sparing him a glance over her shoulder.

“I may have done this one or twice,” Leon says, breath ghosting across her cheek and sending a sudden pool of desire to thrum between her legs. “Besides, a very wise woman once told me laces and buckles are all the same, no matter who wears them.”

It seems to take both forever and no time at all for Leon to work all of the fastenings of her gown loose, his hands trailing in the wake of the embroidered silk as it slides down her arms, down her torso, off her hips, until it pools at her feet. 

“To me, like this,” Leon murmurs, his hand tangling through her chestnut waves. “You are more beautiful than the finest gown you own. You are more precious to me than any jewel you may splash about your neck,” he continues, placing a kiss at the hollow of her throat, naked now, but where earlier a necklace of twisted gold studded with tiny diamonds sparkled in the candlelight.  “Or upon your finger.” Leon catches her left hand and draws her knuckles across his lip, nipping lightly at the unadorned skin of her fourth finger. 

Down to just the thin cotton of her shift, she can feel the hard line of his prick as they draw together at last, the brush of his lips as wonderful, as dizzying as she remembers. Their kiss is a barely contained frenzy; heat and hunger, clashing teeth, tongues pushing, tasting, fingers scrabbling across one another’s bodies, seeking an anchor to keep them steady within the tempest of their desire. 

“Leon,” Mithian gasps, his tunic bunching in her fist as she pulls him closer, their hips rutting together. She tips her head back as Leon’s lips leave hers to map a course down her chest, her stomach, the nearly gossamer fabric of her shift bunching up to her hips as he sinks to his knees. 

Whereas earlier Leon was teasing, his movements ambling and slow, he wastes little time now, shifting one of her legs over his shoulder, moaning as he sets his mouth upon her, his tongue swirling around her clit. Mithian’s hands twist through his curls, her hips bucking down to meet the heat of his mouth, the long, indulgent lap of his tongue, and it isn’t long before her breath begins to stutter, her release unspooling with each press and flick of his tongue. Leon’s hands remain firm at Mithian’s waist, supporting her, keeping her steady as she shatters apart, his name on her lips as she comes. 

“Beautiful,” Leon says with a soft smile, an echo of the words he said to her earlier. Although this time, his lips and beard are slick with spit, with herself, the shine of it catching in the dancing light of the fire until he drags the back of his hand across his mouth. 

Mithian, too, mimics her actions from earlier and laughs, tugging at Leon’s tunic until his lips meet hers again. And as she did back in his tent, she reaches for the hard line of his prick, and this time, he does not catch her hand and stop her; instead, Leon moans as he licks into her mouth, hips rocking to meet each drag of her palm down his cock. Mithian’s hands are not as steady as Leon’s were when he undressed her, and they shake as she tugs the ties of his laces and as she pushes at his tunic until Leon catches her hands and eases them aside, pulling the garment over his head entirely.

They both moan as she wraps her hand around his velvet heat, her thumb drawing through the slick beading atop the head of his cock, easing the glide of her fist as she drags it down his length, pumping him slowly. 

Leon whispers her name, nipping at her shoulder as he slides his hands under her arse, her legs wrapping around his waist as he carries them over to the bed. Mithian quickly pulls her shift over her head and greedily watches as Leon slides his trousers and braies down his strong thighs. 

Later, she tells herself, there will be time to drag her lips across the mottled stripes of old scars on his arms, his chest, his legs. There will be time to draw her fingers through the pale hair dusting down his corded legs, counting wayward freckles as she goes. Time, too, to press him into the mattress or up against stone walls hidden in shadows, and learn the taste of him, the weight of him upon her tongue. 

There will be time, she assures herself, for all of that and more. But for now, she contents herself with propping herself up on her elbows, thighs falling open in silent invitation. Mithian reaches out for him, captures Leon’s hand with a squeeze as his lips find hers again, and reels him towards her until he kneels between her splayed legs. 

“Are you certain?” Leon asks, voice low, his thumbs sweeping across her cheek. 

“Yes,” she says, the word dissolving into a hiss as Leon bends and draws a rosy nipple into his mouth. She wraps her legs around him, her back arching off the bed as her nails leave tracks of red down his back.

“I would be a spinster were I not a princess,” Mithian reminds him, shifting beneath him until she can feel the head of his cock press against her. “My maidenhead is long since a thing of the past.”

Even still, Leon is nearly tender as he pushes into her, a surprised oh falling from Mithian’s lips and melting away into a breathless moan as he sinks fully inside, his forehead dropping atop her shoulder as he does so. 

She had fantasized, had hoped, their first time would be a feverish, ravenous coupling, leaving them both weak-legged and breathless, a quick, bright explosion to scratch away at the itch that’s been festering away under her skin since the first time he smiled at her from down the banquet table. 

And it is there, the hunger, the urgency, the need to be so claimed by him. She can feel it in the too-harsh bite of his teeth, in the dig of her heels into his thighs, the way her fingers dimple the strong muscle of his biceps, and can hear it in their panted breaths. 

It’s not entirely surprising to her, though, that Leon remains composed even now, even as she can feel the flex of his back under her hands, her lips sliding through the sweat that begins to dampen his hair against his temple; even as he showers her with the kind of wicked praise and strained curses that makes her toes curl. 

The feel of him over her, in her, is both not enough and too much. She feels like iron in a blacksmith’s forge, something immovable giving way, bit by bit, to something molten hot and dangerous, the sun in miniature, waiting to be shaped by a master’s touch, beautiful in its own way. 

Leon stills, pulls out as he licks into her mouth, swallowing down her impatient moan of protest at the loss of him. He sucks down a stuttering breath as he rests his sweat-slicked forehead against her shoulder. “Your cunt is divine,” he says, voice strained as he peppers kisses across the jut of her collarbone. 

Mithian wiggles under him, impatient fingers scrabbling along his shoulders and sweeping through his hair. “Leon, please ."

Leon pushes back in and Mithian moans at the sensation, head falling back against the sea of pillows behind her, her eyes fluttering closed with each roll of his hips. He brings her to the brink and back again and again, pulling out with shaking breaths, his lips upon her throat, her breast, her stomach as he composes himself, easing off from the precipice of his own release. And when his hands settle at her hips and he pushes back in once more, Leon’s voice is nothing more than a rough rasp in Mithian’s ear as he takes her deeply, her hips rocking to match each one of his thrusts. 

Pleasure builds within her as if she were laying along the bank of a lake, its cooling waves slowly lapping at her, almost lazily crashing over her limbs, hypnotic and intoxicating, yet never pulling her under and away, away, away into star-white bliss. 

“More,” Mithian begs, her fingers dimpling Leon’s arse, silently urging, while her other hand slides between them to stroke herself. Leon groans, his hands pushing her thighs wider, a sharp blaze of hunger in his eyes as he watches her. 

“Oh, my love,” Mithian cries as she shivers through her release, drawing him closer, tighter, as her cunt flutters around him, earning a long groan from Leon in response as he follows her over, pulling out one final time to spill across her stomach. 

“My love,” Leon echoes, breathless, their foreheads tipped together, Mithian’s touch soothing as it draws down his nape.

. . 

“You should leave,” Mithian yawns sometime later, the glow from the nearly-full moon casting long shadows across their entwined limbs. She stretches in Leon’s embrace, although his arms only wind tighter around her, keeping her snug along his side. 

“I should stay,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her naked shoulder. 

“Leon,” Mithian chides gently, though her actions belie her words as she shifts to face him, reaching out to brush an errant curl off his forehead.  

“I don’t think it’s so scandalous for a man to be caught lying with his wife,” Leon tells her, the scratch of his beard across her cheek raising gooseflesh down her arms. 

Mithian laughs, heart fluttering at the thought. “Have you decided to marry me, then?” she teases, her nails scraping through the hair at his chest. 

“I don’t recall you actually asking.”

“And if I did?” she asks, though she buries her head against his neck, her words muffled into his warm skin. 

She can feel Leon shift beneath her, feels his thumb angle her chin towards him. “Ask and find out,” he says gently, despite the challenge he has just placed upon her, the unspoken answer he has silently offered. 

“Still,” she muses, certain even the dark can’t hide the blush that colours her face, “it would be quite a scandal should anyone find us so compromised.”

“Then I shall simply have to defend your honor. Good thing there is no better swordsman in all of Camelot.” Leon nips at Mithian’s nose, shifting them until she is caged within his arms, her back pressed along his chest. “Now sleep,” he urges her, pressing a kiss behind her ear. “You’ll need your rest for all the things I plan to do with you in the morning, wife.”

Even though Leon pleads for sleep, she can feel his renewed arousal press against the swell of her arse. “And if I am too impatient to wait for morning?” Mithian asks, rocking against him. 

“Who am I to deny my wife’s desires?” Leon says, his name a small gasp from Mithian’s lips as he trails a hand from her hip to stroke her.  

“Will you promise to wake me just like this every morning when we are wed?” She asks, breath catching in her throat as she tips her head back upon his shoulder. 

“Every morning, even when we are old and gray, you will wake in my arms with my lips upon you,” Leon vows, placing a kiss on her shoulder and pushing inside her. “And every night, you will lie in my arms after my cock has reduced you to nothing more than mindless babble.”

Mithian moans, drawing his hand until it lands atop her breast, a satisfied cry falling from her lips as Leon tweaks the rosy bud of her nipple between his fingers. “Gods, Mithian, your cunt. It is mine alone.”

She glances over her shoulder, her fingers twisting through his curls to draw their lips together. “Prove it, good sir,” she taunts. 

Leon growls, the sound more animal than man, his teeth sinking into the nape of her neck as he rolls over, bearing his weight atop her. He grabs at her thigh, sliding it up the bed until she opens further for him, his thrusts filling her more deeply, her breath stolen from her as his cock alights again and again upon that core of pleasure within her. 

She wedges a hand between her stomach and the mattress, fingers drawing through the coarse thatch of hair between her legs before they find her clit, the pillow beneath her cheek muffling her cries as she strokes at herself. 

“Fuck, Mithian,” Leon huffs, dropping his forehead to rest atop her back. 

Mithian pushes herself up, twists and paws at Leon’s chest until he understands her meaning and moves with the speed and grace of a man who has spent his entire life studying combat, training his body to be a weapon. Leon’s hand’s are a restless flurry of movement as Mithian takes his prick in hand, sweeping down Mithian’s back, her chest, her stomach, gripping tight at her arse, her hips, her thighs, as she sinks back down upon his cock.

“Say it again, my name,” she begs of him. 

“Mithian.” The gruffness of his voice is the only sign he is as affected as she is. “Mithian, Mithian, Mithian,” Leon repeats, pressing erratic kisses to her flushed skin every time her name falls from his lips. 

“Tell me I am yours,” Mithian gasps, her fingers tightly twisted in his hair. 

“You are mine,” he says, drawing her into the cage of his arms, his hands splayed across her back. “You are every thought in my head, every breath in my lungs, every beat of my heart. You are mine.”

“Tell me you are mine.”

“Oh, my lady,” Leon groans, his lips tracing the swell of her breast before nipping lightly. And for once it doesn’t sound like an honorific, a stuffy title she wishes to shed. For once, it sounds like a promise — my lady.  “I am yours,” he vows, readily. 

. .

“Good morning,” Mithian greets, stifling a small yawn behind her hand. 

“Red suits you,” Arthur taunts as Mithian slips out into the corridor, quietly closing the door to her chambers behind her. “Will you be wearing it more often?” 

“As your smug little face suits you, too,” she bandies back, folding her arms across her chest. Although, with Leon’s tunic nearly falling to her knees, she supposes she doesn’t cut quite the intimidating figure as she’d hoped in the face of Arthur’s early-morning haughtiness. 

Arthur tips his head back and laughs, the sharp bark of it echoing off the flagstones, his face relaxed into a boyish joy. “Did you actually need something?” Mithian asks, biting back her own amused smile. “Or are you just here to gloat?”

Arthur sobers and moves a hand from behind his back, a black satin pouch nestled in the palm he extends towards her. “It was my mother’s,” he says as Mithian fishes the ring out from the small bag’s depths. “Leon is my brother, and you are more of a sister to me than the one of my own blood. She would want you to have it.” He clears his throat, wraps his hands around Mithian’s until her fingers close around the bejeweled band of gold. “ I want you to have it.”

Mithian says nothing, the moment too simply too big, too tender for mere words, and crashes into Arthur, her arms tight around his waist, her head pillowed against the riotous thump of his heart as Arthur’s hand brushes down her chestnut waves. 

“Tell Leon,” Arthur says, clearing his throat as he pulls away at last, “that unless he wants to be on stable duty for the next fortnight, training starts in ten minutes.” He press a kiss atop Mithian’s forehead before he spins and leaves. 

Leon never makes it to the morning training session, misses the afternoon one as well. But for all his posturing, Arthur says nothing of it when they arrive hand-in-hand at dinner later, simply tips his goblet in silent celebration. 

. . 

“You know,” Mithian quietly muses as they slowly walk down the aisle. She had initially rankled at the idea, as if she were chattel to be given away. Besides, even this little bit of pageantry seems unnecessary with just the four of them in attendance: she and Merlin, Arthur standing alongside Leon. But Leon, mindful of the tailor’s pins lining the seams of a new emerald green surcoat, had simply corralled her into his arms, his nose tracing along the cut of her jaw as he reminded her I am yours . “Nemeth never followed Camelot’s lead in banning magic. Our library houses one of the finest collections of magical knowledge.”

Merlin blushes, nearly stumbles, but Mithian’s fingers dig into the rich, deep blue of his velvet doublet and steadies him. “I…I don’t,” he sputters. “That is to say, that’s very interesting, my lady, but I don’t know what use such a library would be to me.”

“It was a secret, for a long time,” Mithian says, slowing her steps even further. “Too long, probably. We were afraid of war with Uther, afraid to damage a friendship that meant so much. But perhaps it is time to herald in a new age.

“Think on it,” she urges, surging to her toes to press a kiss to Merlin’s cheek. 

. . 

Their vows, when they are exchanged, are simple things. 

There will be time, they agreed, for the onerous formalities of court and ceremonious declarations of love and fidelity. But for now, their closest friends beside them, a circlet of silver nestled in his curls, Leon simply tells her once more, “I am yours.” 

“You are mine,” Mithian echos, squeezing Leon’s hand tight within hers as the priest wraps a ribbon around their joined hands. “You are every thought in my head, every breath in my lungs, every beat of my heart. You are mine. And I am yours.”

. .