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Dimitri takes a steadying breath before he pulls the bowstring taut. His biceps tremble, shoulder blade twitching, having never realized the concentration required to make work of such a light thing.
Then he releases.
An arrow flies, piercing the core of a golden apple, held up by a green haired demi-god, and tacking it against the bark of an aged tree. The canopy of leaves shakes, some drift and skitter down.
The demi-god frees the arrow as if it were no different than wrenching a dull knife through softened butter. Dimitri shudders at the effortless show of strength.
Byleth, the icon of Lust, brings the apple to his lips. “Impressive.” His mossy gossamer robes hide very little of his body, closed across the torso with a belt of roses and thorns, and the atropa belladonna quiver sticks out like a sore thumb against it. “You are the pride of your people.”
Dimitri can not tell whether it was stated like a fact, or an open-ended question. Hesitantly, he nods.
Teeth rip into the flesh and meat of the apple, much in the way Dimitri has seen lions hold down the neck of a deer. The crunch is palpable. Dimitri straightens his posture, standing at attention like a soldier in roll call.
Byleth reaches into his quiver and pulls out an arrow made from the wood of a white jasmine tree, a sickly, and sweet, soft floral fragrance infects the air where the arrow touches it. On one end, the sharpest tip, and on the back, a trail of jasmines.
“I’m no archer-” Dimitri tries to protest. His eyes do not leave the arrow. A promise flashes in the back of his mind. ‘One shot, and your lover will return to you.’
He fights the grimace that dares question the sincerity of the Demigod’s gift. The ultimate gift, perhaps. On the festival celebrating Dimitri, his search for a queen, every vintner worth their grapes, or craftsman recreating wax wings could only provide the future king with such surface-level pleasantries.
Byleth assured him he could get his one true love back.
The demi-god smiles, and the very atmosphere around them seems to hold its immortal breath, waiting in suspense for an act of fate before itself to finish being written. “In love, that matters not.”
He closes the gap between himself and the naked human Prince, nicking over his heart with the arrowhead. Blood trickles down the contours of his chest like rain droplets over a glass pane. “Perhaps your partner will be the better marksman between you two.”
Byleth vanishes as quickly as he appeared.
Dimitri would wonder if this was a dream, a fevered hallucination, or the result of too much honey and wine, if it were not for the arrow still hooked in his skin, and a frigid breeze on his bare skin.
Felix made a deal to forget.
Certain faces stir emotions in him, but he will never remember why, nor can he see a face twice and recognize it.
He is hardly able to recall the name of the entity he made such a bargain with. A scar on his wrist, shaped like a blotchy narcotic poppy, lives as the silent proof of his pact.
His inability to discern the members of the royal family would land anyone else into trouble, but an exception is always made for him.
One lady in the marketplace raises her woven basket above her head, hips swiveling out of his immediate space. ‘Cursed child,’ she whispers.
An aged man nods at Felix as he passes, with some solemn understanding, the way he looks at him. ‘The punching bag of the Gods,’ he mutters to himself, almost in disbelief to have seen Felix alive.
Tomorrow, all of this will register as nothing to him.
Felix holds embellished scabbards closer to his chest, knowing with full faith what they’re for, and where he’s delivering them to. His steps hurry as the sun dips past the belt of the horizon. He doesn’t fear the demons that roam in the night, but rather would not see the hungry Gods that appear in the dusk, offering protection for a price.
A story is told in mosaic tiles on the stairs that lead up to the grand palace. A God who was simply too perfect for his own sake had belittled an opponent after outbesting him in an archery competition, and then found the heart of his lover hardened into stone, and forced to watch as she would jump off a crag to her certain death, rather than be with him.
Over the years, what was once a vibrant and lively pathway turned as faded and bleak as the story itself. Somehow, Felix can recall those days. He knows with intimacy that he has waltzed down this pathway, hood over his head to disguise his inebriation- but no other details.
He sees an expansive garden, getting lost in a hydrangea labyrinth, and seeking shelter under the downcast branches of a willow tree. He feels the phantom of lips on his, branches scraping his back, and smells the accompanying roses while his legs were getting spread.
Felix shakes the delusion out of his head, and keeps heading up the walkway, on his way to deliver his gifts as commissioned by the reigning king for his son.
He knows with certainty he has seen this member of the royal family before, but the rank befalls him. Regardless, he bows as best as one can when they’re carrying an armful of swords.
Prince Dimitri, now clothed, arrow on his hip hidden by his cloak, rushes to relieve Felix’s burden. “Our esteemed artist.” He smiles, inspecting the metalwork on one sheath. It is maple leaves and acorns, made out of bronze, and rubbed in all the right places to give an impression of sunlight bearing down on a forest trail. He examines another, silver, with bundles of holly berries, and two figures joined underneath an ouroboros, making a silent cheer with the wine glasses in their hand.
Though the Prince never cared much for the upcoming holiday- a marriage tradition taking place on the Heir-apparent’s eighteenth birthday to find them a partner in holy matrimony- he adores the gifts bestowed by some of Fodlan’s most talented, and could never dismiss the intricate details in these. Scabbards for casual wear, rather than war. It makes Dimitri think of a distant future, where he would no longer have need for the sprawling armies of Faerghus.
“For the prince, and his partner, respectively,” Felix informs him. He takes his left hand, and traces out the shape of a figure-eight on its side. “Blessed be our protectors, blessed be the-” he pauses, right as the incantation requires him to say the Monarch’s name, before bowing once again. “I must go now.”
Felix is halted by the hand of royalty. He can feel the calluses still forming on his hand like a testament of budding manhood. “I personally urge you,” he says, “stay.”
But Felix shakes his head. He cares little for how insulting his resistance is considered. “In the table of the monarchy, there is no room for a pauper.”
Dimitri knows this young boy, and arguably better than the artist does his own self. A flashback of two children running through lush gardens flashes in his head, followed by two older boys making love under the privacy of a weeping willow tree. The skin over his throat’s apple feels paper thin, and his mouth runs dry. He had hoped the rumors of the Lord’s son that forgot himself in grief was not true.
Yet, Felix still has smoldering embers in his eyes with an intensity that Dimitri loved dearly. “Your future king demands you stay.”
Reluctantly, Felix holds what is claimed to be his future king’s hand, as he follows him down a hallway lit by candelabras, that no servant dares to peek down.
The silence of the night could not rival a crypt. Spirits roamed those places, no matter how decrepit.
The night was entirely void of any energy.
Dimitri pats down the walls as he tiptoes through the palace. A new moon meant even less light, and the stars seemed to hide, pulling the clouds over their heads like children turning invisible against the elusive monsters in their bedroom.
Byleth stopped him in his tracks.
Dimitri suddenly bled where he had been stabbed earlier.
“Have you made your choice so soon?” The demi-god cooed.
Dimitri presses a finger to his lips, covering his wound after.
“I can not judge.” The demi-god shifts his gaze in a manner that suggests otherwise. “If you use the gift from one God so soon, what will the other Gods have left to bless? What favor can they fight over?”
Dimtri ignores the lesser God, and continues to where he knows his guest, the disgraced Felix Fraldarius, to be sleeping. He cares not for the other Gods, getting them to fight over him. His corners of his vision go black, creating a tunnel directly to his old love’s room.
Felix sleeps on his back, blanket to his collarbone, as his bare chest expands and contracts under the sheets. His nostrils flare with his inhale as Dimitri enters. Felix falls into a deeper sleep as blossoming jasmines kiss the air.
Dimitri’s hand hovers over the floral fletching, unable to pull it, to move. The bed is pushed up against a wall, and above it hangs silently the portrait of a heart caught between three swords. It makes Dimitri’s fingers twitch- somewhere between fear and acknowledgement.
“Well, boy?” The demi-god taunts, behind him, yet his presence is felt everywhere. So strongly, Dimitri can not help but worry it might wake up his future bride. “Is this not what you wanted?”
“What if I hurt him? What if I puncture too deep- or not deep enough-”
Byleth’s ear-to-ear grin reflects in the dark room like a crescent moon in a disturbed pond. “He is human. He’ll hurt anywhere you touch him. Ask yourself, are you able to mend what you break?”
The demi-god’s hand closes around Dimitri, finalizing his decision to pull the blessed arrow free. He guides Dimitri and makes him caress Felix’s chin with the head, trailing it down his exposed neck, before they follow the path to his heart.
Byleth strips the blanket off Felix. Dimitri can not imagine how he does not feel it, does not stir.
Felix’s nipples are at attention. Pink, and nubby, as they were the last time Dimitri pleasured them.
Dimitri involuntarily forces the arrow deeper, and deeper into him, staining white throws red in the wake of his actions.
All at once, does he notice Felix’s breath cease.
Byleth pets Dimitri’s hair, lovingly, gently. A mother consoling an upset child. He kisses Dimitri’s temple, and drags a dagger’s blade to where his carotid artery sat in suspension.
“What did you think would happen?” His tongue drags behind the conch of Dimitri’s ear, and slithers down to his jaw.
Byleth knows Dimitri has experienced a special death. He feels his soul exit his body more than he sees it.
With a hand covered in Felix’s blood, Byleth strokes down Dimitri’s v-trail. He wills Dimitri’s cock to harden, no concern for whether or not he would have wanted it, but rather for himself.
Dimitri cries, but he can not sob. Can not scream. He squeezes shut his eyes, and shakes where he stands. The cold tears leave behind a trail of goosebumps in their wake, like rice and grain thrown at weddings, as the droplets race down to connect somewhere near his navel.
It registers before the denial has a chance to set. Dimitri thinks about getting that arrow out and sticking it through his eye, his heart- anywhere. Stupid boy. Stupid, stupid boy.
His airways close up as his grip on reality loosens. Haggard breaths hit his lungs like glass shards and exit him with a bile-like yellow stickiness to it.
Byleth forces Dimitri to hold the dagger against his own throat before he gets down on one knee. It makes Dimitri sick. Byleth tests the tip, flicking it with his tongue. He looks up at Dimitri, whether for approval or to taunt, as he wraps his lips around the head.
Dimitri’s body can only process numbness, rejecting with every inch of himself to feel the nerve-endings trying to convince him otherwise. The Demigod’s mouth slips down the length of Dimitri’s cock.
He hates every swish of the Demigod’s tongue, and every hard suck on his head. It’s invasive. Poisonous. His gut churns and knees buckle with the vile sensations pulsing through him. No matter how hard he stares at Felix’s lifeless, frozen body, blood draining from his body as the sheets and bed stain a deeper hue, he can not move. He can not soften, and he can not run, nor scream, or cry. His body twitches out of cowardice. The will to fight leaving his body is visible in a spectral sense. His toes curl with submission though his jaw locks and his teeth gnash. The dagger against his throat tempts him, yet it terrifies him all the same.
Underneath him, Byleth strokes his thighs with a lover's touch when he takes the length of Dimitri in full. His nose tip rubs ever softly against the tender lines of his groin. His snaking hands grab his ass, nails digging into the sweaty flesh with a squeeze. He pays attention to the sensitive spots, to what makes Dimitri's nostrils flare and his gut tighten. The taste of a king's turmoil on his tongue is like no other. Byleth's eyes roll back each time he slips Dimitri to the back of his throat.
All at once does his captive go deathly still.
Paralyzed in every part but his eyes, Dimitri focuses on the harshness of the dark wood arrow sticking out such a delicate chest. On the torn flesh around the entrance of the wound, like the ripped bark he had shot earlier. A gruesome thought brews in the back of Dimitri’s mind- something about another hole. Something about reaching in and taking a consolation prize. About chasing Felix to his otherworldly resting place. It dawns on him why Felix would willingly choose to forget him. Where Dimitri goes, death and downfall is assured to follow.
Dimitri feels shame constricting his airways. It tastes like what he had for dinner, and muggy heat. Saliva collects in the back of his mouth, filling the space under his tongue. The shame moves higher, higher again. All the way from his guts as the rush creeps and vines its dirty little way up to his mouth.
Nothing stops Dimitri from lowering his bottom jaw, and unleashing stinging stomach acid.
Byleth takes Dimitri out of his mouth, muttering something Dimitri does not hear.
Dimitri operates on whims that are not his. He slices open his throat before he can orgasm, experience the other little death, one last time. Royal blood pools where the body of His Royal Highness fell.
With his job now successfully complete, Byleth, the icon of trickery and deceit, bows for an empty room. For another story woven of heartbreak and starry-eyed lovers. Another legend under his belt, and another king fell by his hands.
He leaves through the window, but not before blowing a kiss to wake Felix back up.