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fairy_circlesTitolo: The Altean Captive Prince
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Rating: safe
Personaggi: Lance McClain, Keith Kogane, Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane
Pairings: Shiro/Lance
Disclaimer: Voltron e tutti i suoi personaggi appartengono a Dreamworks & Netflix.
Note: Scritta per la fanzine "You're my chance" di MultiEleonora96 (qui lo shop per il pdf)
Captive Prince AU
Traduzione: Myst
Word count: 4253
Lance opened his eyes and struggled to focus on his surroundings. He couldn’t recognize anything familiar. His head ached and the floor underneath him wavered in a such an odd way, he wondered if perhaps it was him who was feeling terribly dizzy.
It took him a few minutes to realize that his wrists and ankles were shackled and tied by chains to rings fixed on the rough wooden wall at his back. He must have been asleep or unconscious so far, lying on those coarse planks.
All around him were piles of crates, barrels, and bales of fabric, suggesting that he was kept in some sort of storage room. By adding the incessant rocking, he deduced it had to be the cargo hold of a ship. What he couldn’t fathom was why.
As he leaned against the wall, his eyes closed, waiting for the buzz in his head to stop and for the panic of discovering he was chained in an unknown place to let him catch his breath, memories slowly came back in short, confused flashes.
Altea’s royal palace, Lance’s home, had been attacked. The war that had been flaring up between his kingdom and the neighboring Daibazaal had eventually torn down the Altean defenses and taken over its lands.
He had seen dozens of soldiers swarming the palace, taking hold of courtyards and halls, destroying everything they could put their hands on. He had seen servants fall under their unforgiving swords and arrows.
It had been his older sister, Allura, the heir to the throne, who had left him in the hands of their most trusted servant so that he could save him from such fury.
Coran had acted swiftly, trying to hide Lance from the hungry eyes of the enemy army’s commanders. To capture the prince, second in the line of succession, would have been too succulent a booty, and the Altean trusted counselor had declared himself ready to give his life to prevent it.
The man had taken the prince to a secret room, one of those that could only be reached through passages inside the walls - just like in fairytales - whose existence Lance didn’t even suspect. There Coran had shown him what, at a first glance, looked like simple make-up jars. He had rubbed some sort of colored cream on Lance’s face to hide the vibrant blue marks on his cheekbones and smudged his hair with a sticky, dark substance to make it unrecognizable. After that, Lance’s rich royal garments had been replaced with simpler, humbler clothes.
It would have been the perfect disguise to make him pass unnoticed through the Galran rabble that had invaded his home, Coran said. Lance had retorted that he had no intention to run away alone and leave his sister and parents behind. But Coran wouldn’t hear him: Lance had been entrusted to him by Allura herself and Coran would do anything in his power to take him to safety.
Unfortunately, things had not gone as Coran had hoped. A Galran patrol had caught up with them and dragged them away with the other surviving servants. Lance had fought them with all his strength, as he heard the good counselor beg the soldiers to let him go. He had struggled and scratched and bitten, until a dull pain in his head had put an end to everything, plunging him into darkness.
And now he found himself there, chained inside the cargo hold of a merchant ship bound to who knew where, presumably to be sold as a slave and prisoner of war, destined to an uncertain future. He had no idea of what had happened to his home and his family, he didn’t even know if any of them still lived. This thought rekindled the knot in his stomach that wouldn’t leave him alone.
The only positive side in that awful situation was that, since he was still alive, nobody had discovered his true identity.
The hand he raised to delicately touch his face made the short chain tying his wrists to the wall jingle. The make-up covering his Altean marks was still intact, he was still safe under that aspect.
If only he had known where they were bound to, to whom the ship belonged, or any other information, he could have planned his escape. He didn’t know how yet, given the chains blocking him, but he was certain he could find a way out. He must go back to Altea, he must discover what had happened to his family and take revenge on the assassin invaders, who had destroyed his life.
He couldn’t say how much time had passed since when he had regained consciousness when the door of the room creaked turning on its hinges.
Lance froze, cowering against the wall in the useless attempt to make himself invisible. The light coming from the corridor was scarce and oblique as if it was night outside and the environment was lit only by a candle. His hypothesis proved correct at the moment when an imposing silhouette stood out in the doorway, holding indeed a small oil lamp.
In the pale light, Lance caught the glimmer of armor, a big sword at the man’s side, and a tuft of hair streaked with white on his forehead. His features were hard, his jaw square, and the line of his eyebrows cast a dark shadow on his eyes. All in all, he looked threatening, and Lance curled on himself. He had to survive to escape and find his family. He wasn’t going to surrender to any kind of torture.
“Hey, are you alright?” the man asked, bending over him, with a voice that didn’t sound like a torturer’s at all. “I’m glad to see you’re awake, I feared you were sick or that those barbarians beat you too heavily.”
Lance dared to lift his eyes from the knees he was holding close to his chest. He met two grey and sincerely worried eyes, which looked completely out of place in the martial appearance of the warrior.
“I brought you something to drink and eat. I imagine you must be hungry,” he went on, lowering the oil lamp to light up a small tray with bread and water.
Lance wanted to refuse the enemy’s food in disdain, but his stomach chose precisely that moment to remind him he hadn’t eaten since the day before. If it had been just the day before.
“Where are we?” he dared to ask, his voice feeble.
“On the Black Lion, Daibazaal’s fastest ship, and I’m Captain Shirogane of the Royal Guard,” the man answered.
So it wasn’t a merchant ship, but a warship. This made the possibility of an escape even thinner. Furthermore, the fact that the man was the captain of the Royal Guard made Lance fear that his identity wasn’t as safe as he had thought.
“Will you kill me?” he asked, without being able to conceal the tremor in his voice. “Did you bring me my last meal?”
Shirogane shook his head with a surprised look.
“Of course not! On the contrary, you must arrive healthy in Daibazaal, you are a gift for our prince.”
Lance must have turned white, because the soldier put a hand on his shoulder in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture.
“Serving at the palace of Daibazaal will not be so different from doing it at Altea’s, you’ll see. The prince is not a bad master. What’s your name?”
Lance let out an inward sigh of relief, thanking the gods that his disguise had not been discovered. Being mistaken for a common slave could probably save his life.
“Lance… sir,” he answered tentatively, using the nickname only the ones closest to him dared to address him with.
He took in a shivering breath and steadied himself to ask him the question that he cared the most for.
“Sir… I beg your pardon… did Altea fall?”
The captain lowered his eyes and nodded. He looked sincerely contrived.
“The Royal Palace was partly set on fire. I saw the bodies of King Alfor and Queen Melenor with my own eyes. There is no trace of Princess Allura and Prince Lancelot. I suppose they’re dead somewhere, too. Now that Altea doesn’t have a sovereign anymore, it will be given over to one of the governors loyal to Regent Lotor.”
The captain went on talking, speculating on the possible future political consequences, but Lance had stopped listening. His parents were dead, his sister lost, if she was still alive, and his home did not exist anymore. The knot that squeezed his stomach prevented him from swallowing another bite and forced him to roll into a ball, to stop the sobs from coming out.
Only when the captain left the hold, leaving him alone again, Lance lay on the coarse wooden planks and cried all his tears.
Daibazaal’s royal palace turned out to be a completely different place from how Lance had imagined it. He had pictured huge, lavish halls, architectures full of frills, and a great show of opulence. He couldn’t have been more wrong. The arcades they were going through to reach the inner courtyard might be imposing, but the structure they supported was linear and slender, with an austere building made of dark, translucid stone projecting from it. Despite the chains tying his wrists and ankles and the awful situation he was in, Lance couldn’t help being fascinated.
The whole convoy that had left the Black Lion had stopped in front of a large warehouse and most of the goods had been unloaded there. General Sendak, who had also been traveling on the ship, had been greeted with all honors and swiftly taken into the palace. Captain Shirogane, instead, had waited for everything to be orderly arranged before reporting.
Lance had been shoved into a corner together with a dozen other people whom he had not recognized, clearly awaiting what would be decided about them.
“No, he must not stay with the others.” He heard Shirogane cry out while he was coming back. “He’s a gift for His Highness the Prince, a personal slave. I will take care of bringing him to His Highness.”
As he said so, Shirogane took the end of one of Lance’s chains and dragged him along.
As soon as they were far from indiscrete eyes, he immediately stopped pulling him and turned to him with a serious face.
“You won’t do anything foolish, right?” he said, with the voice of someone who had understood many things.
Lance hoped it wasn’t about his identity, and he faked a mix of deference and confusion.
“Don’t make that face. I know you’ve been meditating on an escape for the whole trip from Altea to here. Everybody does, and I can understand, believe me, nobody wants to be a slave. But this is the royal palace; if you make one wrong step you will be killed immediately. They’ll first kill you and then ask you questions. It would be a real pity to lose someone like you.”
Lance lowered his head slightly and nodded, wondering what those last words meant.
“I won’t do anything foolish.”
The prince turned out different from what Lance expected, too, perhaps because, until then, he had only seen portraits of the heir to the throne and current regent, Lotor.
Prince Keith didn’t have his older brother’s flowing silver hair nor his penetrating blue eyes, but he still had the purple skin typical of the Galra race living on Daibazaal. Keith was smaller than the more imposing captain Shirogane, but about Lance’s height. Two catlike ears, covered in soft fur a tone darker than his skin, peeked out from raven black hair that reached his shoulders. His eyes, however, were what caught Lance’s attention. He was unable to tell their color; they seemed a changing mix of gray, blue, purple, and the shade of the sky at dusk. Everything in his features underlined that the Prince was a half-blood, but that didn’t seem to disturb the man’s lofty expression as he welcomed them in a small audience chamber.
“I see that you return triumphant, Shiro,” he said, pushing back the cloak covering his shoulders, thus revealing the breastplate of a dark armor underneath.
Shirogane immediately knelt before him, forcing Lance to do the same with a jerk of the chain.
“The attack was successful, Altea is ours,” he said gravely. “As a sign of the positive outcome of our campaign, and as a demonstration of our conquest of the Altean centers of power, General Sendak sends you this slave as a gift. He was captured inside Altea’s royal palace.”
For a moment, the prince’s eyes turned to Lance, who immediately felt a shiver of hostility, and then focused back to Shirogane.
“Bring my thanks to General Sendak for his… refined gift,” he said.
Was it sarcasm seeping from his words?
“I wouldn’t know what to do with another slave, right now. Bring him to the harem, I will think about him in due time.”
The captain stood to attention and took his leave with a rigid military salute.
Only when they were far away, in a desert, seemingly never-ending corridor, Lance dared to ask about his fate.
“What did he mean by harem?”
They had nothing of the sort in Altea, but then again, they didn’t even have slaves in Altea.
The captain offered him a faint smile.
“It looks like the prince decided that you will be a pleasure slave.”
That unexpected answer, with all the implications it brought, made Lance turn white. If they expected him to remain silent and do nothing while that wannabe prince used him to let out his perversions, then…
“Hey, hey, don’t worry.”
A hand on his shoulder made him brusquely aware that he was shivering.
“Prince Keith is not a bad person. From what I know, it rarely happens that he calls for one of his harem slaves. He’s way more interested in fighting and sword training than bedding and the like. Between you and me, I think that you were lucky in your misfortune to be gifted to him. He won’t harm you.”
Lance stared at the man in front of him with incredulous eyes. Until that moment, he had thought that everyone around him was an enemy, deserving an awful death for what they had done to his home. But maybe he had been wrong to think they were all the same.
“Why do you do this?” he asked hesitantly. “I’m just a war prisoner, you have no reason to be kind towards me.”
Shirogane smiled - and this time, with more warmth.
“You have no fault in this and you are afraid. It would be inhuman of me to show you no mercy.”
It might have been stupid - it surely was - but for a moment Lance felt safe.
Life in the harem proved to be way less frightening than what Lance feared. That did not mean he had given up searching for a way to escape or to get his revenge, but at least it didn’t seem like anybody wanted to attempt on his life, nor - oddly enough - on his virtue.
Furthermore, he had discovered that the harem slaves had a vast assortment of beauty products at their disposal, and that made it possible for him to maintain his cover.
By living all together in the same rooms, he had soon grown to know all his fellow prisoners, both boys and girls. There were Ezor, a half-blood Galra with multicolored skin, who had been born to slavery and had ended up there because she was aesthetically “peculiar”, and Plaxum, a girl with sky-blue skin and big eyes, who had been captured during the invasion of the Realm of Baku and then gifted to the prince by the general leading the campaign as a sign of victory, as it had happened to Lance. There were Ryan, a big, silent, and grave boy, with the dark skin and hair typical of the southern islands, and James, who was always grumpy and apparently in a perpetual bad mood, who came from the lands beyond the sea.
From what Lance had gathered by talking with them, none of them had ever been with the prince, save for James one time - but the boy hated for it to even be mentioned and harbored a deep hatred toward Keith.
Lance had been taken by anxiety one time only when the prince had called him and the court maids had forced him to wear skimpy clothes and a golden collar with a tiny chain fixed to it. The servant escorting him had pushed him into the royal ante-chamber and left him alone, his heart in his throat, frozen on the spot at the idea of what could happen to him.
However, the prince had called him in hastily, ordering him to serve dinner, without sparing him a look.
“Don’t delude yourself, I have no intention of doing anything to you. I only needed someone to take my personal servant’s place momentarily,” Keith said at the end of the meal, distractedly cleaning his hands. “We stand by the law of the strongest in Daibazaal, and you are too scrawny to survive. Your only chance was joining the harem, but do not think that it will grant you any advantage. I don’t care for that kind of pleasure.”
Lance felt a sudden relief at those words. For a moment, and for how absurd it might be, he wondered if the prince might have said them precisely with that aim.
“James doesn’t seem to think the same,” he found himself saying, before realizing how stupid it was.
Keith lifted his eyes and glowered at him.
“James should be careful what he wishes for if he doesn’t like what he gets.”
A shiver went down Lance’s spine, and he didn’t dare add anything else. When he was dismissed, he walked away in a hurry.
The evening’s too many emotions had left him exhausted, and more than ever convinced that he had to leave as soon as possible. Perhaps, as Captain Shirogane had said, the prince was not a bad person, but it didn’t mean he was not dangerous. The last look he had shot Lance and those words that sounded like a warning had made him wish to flee as fast as possible.
As he was hastily heading toward the harem’s rooms, with his head low, hoping to find some peace there, he ended up stumbling upon a pair of soldiers, who were returning from a watch patrol on the walls. They were talking loudly and laughing coarsely, careless, for they were far away from the high official’s rooms, and probably drunk.
Lance flattened himself against the wall, hoping they would not notice him, but he couldn’t help hearing their nasty jokes about Altea’s fall and about the bloodshed in the royal palace, nor them making fun of how his mother had begged for her life to be spared. Those cruel words brought tears into his eyes and fueled his rage out of control, wiping out his fear and pushing him to attack them. All he wanted was to make them shut up and punish them for the wrong they had committed.
His first punch hit one of the guards’ jaw, but the second never found its target, as it was blocked by the second soldier. After a moment of surprise, the man recognized Lance and chuckled, holding him still.
“Look at what we have here, the Altean slave. I didn’t recognize you,” he exclaimed with a mocking smile. “What is it, is your pride hurt? Weren’t you among the ones crying and begging for mercy?”
He twisted Lance’s arm behind his back as it was nothing, and the boy almost screamed out of pain.
“Altea, homeland to beauty and culture,” the other soldier went on, rubbing the offended jaw. “A real pity that it will all turn to ashes. You’d better get used to this kind of talk, it’s what losers deserve, after all.”
Lance tried to free himself, growling and jerking the arm held by the soldier, with the only result of having the other arm blocked in a painful hold.
“You are a harem slave, now, didn’t they tell you how it works? The prince might not like certain things, but we, who fight for Daibazaal, have the right to get our rewards from time to time.”
Lance froze when a rough hand slipped on his naked skin under the short skirt he was wearing.
“You can’t! The harem belongs to Prince Keith!” he tried to protest as he was shoved against the wall.
“Do you really believe he cares for a little Altean slave? It’s known that his highness thinks that the harem and its members are just a useless waste of space.”
Pressed against the wall and painfully held with his back to his aggressors, Lance trembled in fear and in the awareness of what was about to happen. He could feel the coarse hand gripping his wrists, the two soldiers’ warm and alcoholic breath on his neck, their hands touching in places no one else had ever dared… he closed his eyes and wished he could die.
The moment after, he was free.
Incredulous and void of strength, he collapsed to the ground, while a way too familiar voice roared in his ears.
“Report, soldiers! What were you thinking?! Attacking like this a royal slave and… presenting yourselves drunk on duty! Your lack of discipline will not go unpunished!”
It was Captain Shirogane. Lance couldn’t believe it.
“We were provoked, captain!” one of the guards vehemently protested. “This dirty insect dared to attack us. Not to mention he’s walking around dressed like that, outside the harem. He was obviously trying to seduce someone.”
At those words, Lance felt his eyes burn. He had been forced to dress - or rather, undress that way. He would have never done it of his own initiative, and least of all to attract that kind of attention. He hated the sole thought that someone might touch him, force him against his will to...
“Lance would never seduce anyone because he belongs to me! Now go away! You will be informed later of the measures taken against you!”
Only when he had heard the rushed steps of his aggressors fade away, Lance dared to lift his head from the corner where he had collapsed.
Shirogane was bending over him and offered him his hand.
“Are you alright? I’m sorry for what happened, those two will face hard consequences,” he was saying.
Lance was still trembling and he struggled to stand and accept the cloak Shirogane was wrapping his shoulders with. He started and grimaced when he moved his arms.
“Come to my rooms, I’ll give you an ointment to ease the pain. Don’t be afraid, I won’t harm you,” Shirogane added seeing Lance’s alarmed face.
It was enemy territory and danger could await him beyond every corner, but Lance trusted the captain. He had always been kind and somehow reassuring to him.
“Thank you,” he murmured, “for not leaving me in the hands of those beasts.”
Shirogane circled his shoulders with his arm and kept him close while they walked through the corridors to the military’s lodgings.
“I could never. Lance, you… are special. I thought so from the first moment I saw you. I want to protect you if you’ll let me. I want to keep you safe.”
Shirogane left him only when they reached his rooms, and even then, it was only for the time necessary to find the medicine.
“Is that why you said I belong to you?” Lance asked, blushing despite himself before sitting on the bench that was showed him. “I thought the harem was the prince’s property.”
“It is, but he doesn’t show any interest in it, so the soldiers take the chance to let out their lowest instincts on the slaves. That’s why they’ve learned to find a protector among the higher nobles or officials. This way, they have the guarantee they won’t fall prey to those who want one thing only.”
The captain’s hands began sliding on his reddened skin and Lance allowed his shoulders to relax as he massaged him.
“You would do this for me then?” he asked.
“Only if you want it, and of course I won’t touch you. What matters is that the others believe I do.”
Lance opened his eyes and turned to look at him, while hope - which he hadn’t even known he had nurtured so far - began to bloom again.
“You are the enemy…” he murmured.
“And you are an innocent,” Shirogane answered, bending towards his ear until his lips brushed against him. “I can’t bear the sight of you suffering, not with what you make me feel. I could do really foolish things for you.”
Lance felt a wave of heat burn his cheeks and he leaned against the captain’s chest, while Shirogane’s arms surrounded him sweetly.
“I like you,” Shiro whispered. “You don’t deserve to be here. I will find a way to make you escape, I promise you.”
Lance’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Really?!”
“Really. I want you to be happy.”
As he turned between the captain’s arms to seal his lips with his own in a burst of enthusiasm, Lance could not know how much that promise was going to cost them, nor that it was to be the first step toward reconquering his lost kingdom.
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Rating: safe
Personaggi: Lance McClain, Keith Kogane, Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane
Pairings: Shiro/Lance
Disclaimer: Voltron e tutti i suoi personaggi appartengono a Dreamworks & Netflix.
Note: Scritta per la fanzine "You're my chance" di MultiEleonora96 (qui lo shop per il pdf)
Captive Prince AU
Traduzione: Myst
Word count: 4253
Lance opened his eyes and struggled to focus on his surroundings. He couldn’t recognize anything familiar. His head ached and the floor underneath him wavered in a such an odd way, he wondered if perhaps it was him who was feeling terribly dizzy.
It took him a few minutes to realize that his wrists and ankles were shackled and tied by chains to rings fixed on the rough wooden wall at his back. He must have been asleep or unconscious so far, lying on those coarse planks.
All around him were piles of crates, barrels, and bales of fabric, suggesting that he was kept in some sort of storage room. By adding the incessant rocking, he deduced it had to be the cargo hold of a ship. What he couldn’t fathom was why.
As he leaned against the wall, his eyes closed, waiting for the buzz in his head to stop and for the panic of discovering he was chained in an unknown place to let him catch his breath, memories slowly came back in short, confused flashes.
Altea’s royal palace, Lance’s home, had been attacked. The war that had been flaring up between his kingdom and the neighboring Daibazaal had eventually torn down the Altean defenses and taken over its lands.
He had seen dozens of soldiers swarming the palace, taking hold of courtyards and halls, destroying everything they could put their hands on. He had seen servants fall under their unforgiving swords and arrows.
It had been his older sister, Allura, the heir to the throne, who had left him in the hands of their most trusted servant so that he could save him from such fury.
Coran had acted swiftly, trying to hide Lance from the hungry eyes of the enemy army’s commanders. To capture the prince, second in the line of succession, would have been too succulent a booty, and the Altean trusted counselor had declared himself ready to give his life to prevent it.
The man had taken the prince to a secret room, one of those that could only be reached through passages inside the walls - just like in fairytales - whose existence Lance didn’t even suspect. There Coran had shown him what, at a first glance, looked like simple make-up jars. He had rubbed some sort of colored cream on Lance’s face to hide the vibrant blue marks on his cheekbones and smudged his hair with a sticky, dark substance to make it unrecognizable. After that, Lance’s rich royal garments had been replaced with simpler, humbler clothes.
It would have been the perfect disguise to make him pass unnoticed through the Galran rabble that had invaded his home, Coran said. Lance had retorted that he had no intention to run away alone and leave his sister and parents behind. But Coran wouldn’t hear him: Lance had been entrusted to him by Allura herself and Coran would do anything in his power to take him to safety.
Unfortunately, things had not gone as Coran had hoped. A Galran patrol had caught up with them and dragged them away with the other surviving servants. Lance had fought them with all his strength, as he heard the good counselor beg the soldiers to let him go. He had struggled and scratched and bitten, until a dull pain in his head had put an end to everything, plunging him into darkness.
And now he found himself there, chained inside the cargo hold of a merchant ship bound to who knew where, presumably to be sold as a slave and prisoner of war, destined to an uncertain future. He had no idea of what had happened to his home and his family, he didn’t even know if any of them still lived. This thought rekindled the knot in his stomach that wouldn’t leave him alone.
The only positive side in that awful situation was that, since he was still alive, nobody had discovered his true identity.
The hand he raised to delicately touch his face made the short chain tying his wrists to the wall jingle. The make-up covering his Altean marks was still intact, he was still safe under that aspect.
If only he had known where they were bound to, to whom the ship belonged, or any other information, he could have planned his escape. He didn’t know how yet, given the chains blocking him, but he was certain he could find a way out. He must go back to Altea, he must discover what had happened to his family and take revenge on the assassin invaders, who had destroyed his life.
He couldn’t say how much time had passed since when he had regained consciousness when the door of the room creaked turning on its hinges.
Lance froze, cowering against the wall in the useless attempt to make himself invisible. The light coming from the corridor was scarce and oblique as if it was night outside and the environment was lit only by a candle. His hypothesis proved correct at the moment when an imposing silhouette stood out in the doorway, holding indeed a small oil lamp.
In the pale light, Lance caught the glimmer of armor, a big sword at the man’s side, and a tuft of hair streaked with white on his forehead. His features were hard, his jaw square, and the line of his eyebrows cast a dark shadow on his eyes. All in all, he looked threatening, and Lance curled on himself. He had to survive to escape and find his family. He wasn’t going to surrender to any kind of torture.
“Hey, are you alright?” the man asked, bending over him, with a voice that didn’t sound like a torturer’s at all. “I’m glad to see you’re awake, I feared you were sick or that those barbarians beat you too heavily.”
Lance dared to lift his eyes from the knees he was holding close to his chest. He met two grey and sincerely worried eyes, which looked completely out of place in the martial appearance of the warrior.
“I brought you something to drink and eat. I imagine you must be hungry,” he went on, lowering the oil lamp to light up a small tray with bread and water.
Lance wanted to refuse the enemy’s food in disdain, but his stomach chose precisely that moment to remind him he hadn’t eaten since the day before. If it had been just the day before.
“Where are we?” he dared to ask, his voice feeble.
“On the Black Lion, Daibazaal’s fastest ship, and I’m Captain Shirogane of the Royal Guard,” the man answered.
So it wasn’t a merchant ship, but a warship. This made the possibility of an escape even thinner. Furthermore, the fact that the man was the captain of the Royal Guard made Lance fear that his identity wasn’t as safe as he had thought.
“Will you kill me?” he asked, without being able to conceal the tremor in his voice. “Did you bring me my last meal?”
Shirogane shook his head with a surprised look.
“Of course not! On the contrary, you must arrive healthy in Daibazaal, you are a gift for our prince.”
Lance must have turned white, because the soldier put a hand on his shoulder in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture.
“Serving at the palace of Daibazaal will not be so different from doing it at Altea’s, you’ll see. The prince is not a bad master. What’s your name?”
Lance let out an inward sigh of relief, thanking the gods that his disguise had not been discovered. Being mistaken for a common slave could probably save his life.
“Lance… sir,” he answered tentatively, using the nickname only the ones closest to him dared to address him with.
He took in a shivering breath and steadied himself to ask him the question that he cared the most for.
“Sir… I beg your pardon… did Altea fall?”
The captain lowered his eyes and nodded. He looked sincerely contrived.
“The Royal Palace was partly set on fire. I saw the bodies of King Alfor and Queen Melenor with my own eyes. There is no trace of Princess Allura and Prince Lancelot. I suppose they’re dead somewhere, too. Now that Altea doesn’t have a sovereign anymore, it will be given over to one of the governors loyal to Regent Lotor.”
The captain went on talking, speculating on the possible future political consequences, but Lance had stopped listening. His parents were dead, his sister lost, if she was still alive, and his home did not exist anymore. The knot that squeezed his stomach prevented him from swallowing another bite and forced him to roll into a ball, to stop the sobs from coming out.
Only when the captain left the hold, leaving him alone again, Lance lay on the coarse wooden planks and cried all his tears.
Daibazaal’s royal palace turned out to be a completely different place from how Lance had imagined it. He had pictured huge, lavish halls, architectures full of frills, and a great show of opulence. He couldn’t have been more wrong. The arcades they were going through to reach the inner courtyard might be imposing, but the structure they supported was linear and slender, with an austere building made of dark, translucid stone projecting from it. Despite the chains tying his wrists and ankles and the awful situation he was in, Lance couldn’t help being fascinated.
The whole convoy that had left the Black Lion had stopped in front of a large warehouse and most of the goods had been unloaded there. General Sendak, who had also been traveling on the ship, had been greeted with all honors and swiftly taken into the palace. Captain Shirogane, instead, had waited for everything to be orderly arranged before reporting.
Lance had been shoved into a corner together with a dozen other people whom he had not recognized, clearly awaiting what would be decided about them.
“No, he must not stay with the others.” He heard Shirogane cry out while he was coming back. “He’s a gift for His Highness the Prince, a personal slave. I will take care of bringing him to His Highness.”
As he said so, Shirogane took the end of one of Lance’s chains and dragged him along.
As soon as they were far from indiscrete eyes, he immediately stopped pulling him and turned to him with a serious face.
“You won’t do anything foolish, right?” he said, with the voice of someone who had understood many things.
Lance hoped it wasn’t about his identity, and he faked a mix of deference and confusion.
“Don’t make that face. I know you’ve been meditating on an escape for the whole trip from Altea to here. Everybody does, and I can understand, believe me, nobody wants to be a slave. But this is the royal palace; if you make one wrong step you will be killed immediately. They’ll first kill you and then ask you questions. It would be a real pity to lose someone like you.”
Lance lowered his head slightly and nodded, wondering what those last words meant.
“I won’t do anything foolish.”
The prince turned out different from what Lance expected, too, perhaps because, until then, he had only seen portraits of the heir to the throne and current regent, Lotor.
Prince Keith didn’t have his older brother’s flowing silver hair nor his penetrating blue eyes, but he still had the purple skin typical of the Galra race living on Daibazaal. Keith was smaller than the more imposing captain Shirogane, but about Lance’s height. Two catlike ears, covered in soft fur a tone darker than his skin, peeked out from raven black hair that reached his shoulders. His eyes, however, were what caught Lance’s attention. He was unable to tell their color; they seemed a changing mix of gray, blue, purple, and the shade of the sky at dusk. Everything in his features underlined that the Prince was a half-blood, but that didn’t seem to disturb the man’s lofty expression as he welcomed them in a small audience chamber.
“I see that you return triumphant, Shiro,” he said, pushing back the cloak covering his shoulders, thus revealing the breastplate of a dark armor underneath.
Shirogane immediately knelt before him, forcing Lance to do the same with a jerk of the chain.
“The attack was successful, Altea is ours,” he said gravely. “As a sign of the positive outcome of our campaign, and as a demonstration of our conquest of the Altean centers of power, General Sendak sends you this slave as a gift. He was captured inside Altea’s royal palace.”
For a moment, the prince’s eyes turned to Lance, who immediately felt a shiver of hostility, and then focused back to Shirogane.
“Bring my thanks to General Sendak for his… refined gift,” he said.
Was it sarcasm seeping from his words?
“I wouldn’t know what to do with another slave, right now. Bring him to the harem, I will think about him in due time.”
The captain stood to attention and took his leave with a rigid military salute.
Only when they were far away, in a desert, seemingly never-ending corridor, Lance dared to ask about his fate.
“What did he mean by harem?”
They had nothing of the sort in Altea, but then again, they didn’t even have slaves in Altea.
The captain offered him a faint smile.
“It looks like the prince decided that you will be a pleasure slave.”
That unexpected answer, with all the implications it brought, made Lance turn white. If they expected him to remain silent and do nothing while that wannabe prince used him to let out his perversions, then…
“Hey, hey, don’t worry.”
A hand on his shoulder made him brusquely aware that he was shivering.
“Prince Keith is not a bad person. From what I know, it rarely happens that he calls for one of his harem slaves. He’s way more interested in fighting and sword training than bedding and the like. Between you and me, I think that you were lucky in your misfortune to be gifted to him. He won’t harm you.”
Lance stared at the man in front of him with incredulous eyes. Until that moment, he had thought that everyone around him was an enemy, deserving an awful death for what they had done to his home. But maybe he had been wrong to think they were all the same.
“Why do you do this?” he asked hesitantly. “I’m just a war prisoner, you have no reason to be kind towards me.”
Shirogane smiled - and this time, with more warmth.
“You have no fault in this and you are afraid. It would be inhuman of me to show you no mercy.”
It might have been stupid - it surely was - but for a moment Lance felt safe.
Life in the harem proved to be way less frightening than what Lance feared. That did not mean he had given up searching for a way to escape or to get his revenge, but at least it didn’t seem like anybody wanted to attempt on his life, nor - oddly enough - on his virtue.
Furthermore, he had discovered that the harem slaves had a vast assortment of beauty products at their disposal, and that made it possible for him to maintain his cover.
By living all together in the same rooms, he had soon grown to know all his fellow prisoners, both boys and girls. There were Ezor, a half-blood Galra with multicolored skin, who had been born to slavery and had ended up there because she was aesthetically “peculiar”, and Plaxum, a girl with sky-blue skin and big eyes, who had been captured during the invasion of the Realm of Baku and then gifted to the prince by the general leading the campaign as a sign of victory, as it had happened to Lance. There were Ryan, a big, silent, and grave boy, with the dark skin and hair typical of the southern islands, and James, who was always grumpy and apparently in a perpetual bad mood, who came from the lands beyond the sea.
From what Lance had gathered by talking with them, none of them had ever been with the prince, save for James one time - but the boy hated for it to even be mentioned and harbored a deep hatred toward Keith.
Lance had been taken by anxiety one time only when the prince had called him and the court maids had forced him to wear skimpy clothes and a golden collar with a tiny chain fixed to it. The servant escorting him had pushed him into the royal ante-chamber and left him alone, his heart in his throat, frozen on the spot at the idea of what could happen to him.
However, the prince had called him in hastily, ordering him to serve dinner, without sparing him a look.
“Don’t delude yourself, I have no intention of doing anything to you. I only needed someone to take my personal servant’s place momentarily,” Keith said at the end of the meal, distractedly cleaning his hands. “We stand by the law of the strongest in Daibazaal, and you are too scrawny to survive. Your only chance was joining the harem, but do not think that it will grant you any advantage. I don’t care for that kind of pleasure.”
Lance felt a sudden relief at those words. For a moment, and for how absurd it might be, he wondered if the prince might have said them precisely with that aim.
“James doesn’t seem to think the same,” he found himself saying, before realizing how stupid it was.
Keith lifted his eyes and glowered at him.
“James should be careful what he wishes for if he doesn’t like what he gets.”
A shiver went down Lance’s spine, and he didn’t dare add anything else. When he was dismissed, he walked away in a hurry.
The evening’s too many emotions had left him exhausted, and more than ever convinced that he had to leave as soon as possible. Perhaps, as Captain Shirogane had said, the prince was not a bad person, but it didn’t mean he was not dangerous. The last look he had shot Lance and those words that sounded like a warning had made him wish to flee as fast as possible.
As he was hastily heading toward the harem’s rooms, with his head low, hoping to find some peace there, he ended up stumbling upon a pair of soldiers, who were returning from a watch patrol on the walls. They were talking loudly and laughing coarsely, careless, for they were far away from the high official’s rooms, and probably drunk.
Lance flattened himself against the wall, hoping they would not notice him, but he couldn’t help hearing their nasty jokes about Altea’s fall and about the bloodshed in the royal palace, nor them making fun of how his mother had begged for her life to be spared. Those cruel words brought tears into his eyes and fueled his rage out of control, wiping out his fear and pushing him to attack them. All he wanted was to make them shut up and punish them for the wrong they had committed.
His first punch hit one of the guards’ jaw, but the second never found its target, as it was blocked by the second soldier. After a moment of surprise, the man recognized Lance and chuckled, holding him still.
“Look at what we have here, the Altean slave. I didn’t recognize you,” he exclaimed with a mocking smile. “What is it, is your pride hurt? Weren’t you among the ones crying and begging for mercy?”
He twisted Lance’s arm behind his back as it was nothing, and the boy almost screamed out of pain.
“Altea, homeland to beauty and culture,” the other soldier went on, rubbing the offended jaw. “A real pity that it will all turn to ashes. You’d better get used to this kind of talk, it’s what losers deserve, after all.”
Lance tried to free himself, growling and jerking the arm held by the soldier, with the only result of having the other arm blocked in a painful hold.
“You are a harem slave, now, didn’t they tell you how it works? The prince might not like certain things, but we, who fight for Daibazaal, have the right to get our rewards from time to time.”
Lance froze when a rough hand slipped on his naked skin under the short skirt he was wearing.
“You can’t! The harem belongs to Prince Keith!” he tried to protest as he was shoved against the wall.
“Do you really believe he cares for a little Altean slave? It’s known that his highness thinks that the harem and its members are just a useless waste of space.”
Pressed against the wall and painfully held with his back to his aggressors, Lance trembled in fear and in the awareness of what was about to happen. He could feel the coarse hand gripping his wrists, the two soldiers’ warm and alcoholic breath on his neck, their hands touching in places no one else had ever dared… he closed his eyes and wished he could die.
The moment after, he was free.
Incredulous and void of strength, he collapsed to the ground, while a way too familiar voice roared in his ears.
“Report, soldiers! What were you thinking?! Attacking like this a royal slave and… presenting yourselves drunk on duty! Your lack of discipline will not go unpunished!”
It was Captain Shirogane. Lance couldn’t believe it.
“We were provoked, captain!” one of the guards vehemently protested. “This dirty insect dared to attack us. Not to mention he’s walking around dressed like that, outside the harem. He was obviously trying to seduce someone.”
At those words, Lance felt his eyes burn. He had been forced to dress - or rather, undress that way. He would have never done it of his own initiative, and least of all to attract that kind of attention. He hated the sole thought that someone might touch him, force him against his will to...
“Lance would never seduce anyone because he belongs to me! Now go away! You will be informed later of the measures taken against you!”
Only when he had heard the rushed steps of his aggressors fade away, Lance dared to lift his head from the corner where he had collapsed.
Shirogane was bending over him and offered him his hand.
“Are you alright? I’m sorry for what happened, those two will face hard consequences,” he was saying.
Lance was still trembling and he struggled to stand and accept the cloak Shirogane was wrapping his shoulders with. He started and grimaced when he moved his arms.
“Come to my rooms, I’ll give you an ointment to ease the pain. Don’t be afraid, I won’t harm you,” Shirogane added seeing Lance’s alarmed face.
It was enemy territory and danger could await him beyond every corner, but Lance trusted the captain. He had always been kind and somehow reassuring to him.
“Thank you,” he murmured, “for not leaving me in the hands of those beasts.”
Shirogane circled his shoulders with his arm and kept him close while they walked through the corridors to the military’s lodgings.
“I could never. Lance, you… are special. I thought so from the first moment I saw you. I want to protect you if you’ll let me. I want to keep you safe.”
Shirogane left him only when they reached his rooms, and even then, it was only for the time necessary to find the medicine.
“Is that why you said I belong to you?” Lance asked, blushing despite himself before sitting on the bench that was showed him. “I thought the harem was the prince’s property.”
“It is, but he doesn’t show any interest in it, so the soldiers take the chance to let out their lowest instincts on the slaves. That’s why they’ve learned to find a protector among the higher nobles or officials. This way, they have the guarantee they won’t fall prey to those who want one thing only.”
The captain’s hands began sliding on his reddened skin and Lance allowed his shoulders to relax as he massaged him.
“You would do this for me then?” he asked.
“Only if you want it, and of course I won’t touch you. What matters is that the others believe I do.”
Lance opened his eyes and turned to look at him, while hope - which he hadn’t even known he had nurtured so far - began to bloom again.
“You are the enemy…” he murmured.
“And you are an innocent,” Shirogane answered, bending towards his ear until his lips brushed against him. “I can’t bear the sight of you suffering, not with what you make me feel. I could do really foolish things for you.”
Lance felt a wave of heat burn his cheeks and he leaned against the captain’s chest, while Shirogane’s arms surrounded him sweetly.
“I like you,” Shiro whispered. “You don’t deserve to be here. I will find a way to make you escape, I promise you.”
Lance’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Really?!”
“Really. I want you to be happy.”
As he turned between the captain’s arms to seal his lips with his own in a burst of enthusiasm, Lance could not know how much that promise was going to cost them, nor that it was to be the first step toward reconquering his lost kingdom.
