Chapter Text
Maximilian didn’t know why she did it.
That one lone chance that she would ever have to get away from her father couldn’t be let to pass as she wasted away in this place. Each day her willingness to stay alive waned, waiting for the moment her father’s abuse would finally land that killing blow.
She knew her father didn’t like the knight. A reincarnation of wigrew that had slain a dragon, and now spent his days running errands for the king.
It was just a small sliver of a chance, and she was sure that he would refuse. He wouldn’t agree at all, she was sure. She was so stupid to think this would work.
A scared and alone duke’s daughter prostrating herself on the ground, tears leaking out of her eyes as her shoulders shook and her fingers tore at the grass.
How humiliating, some of his knights surrounding him as she did so.
Why did it come to this?
He really was the only man who would be able to save her and keep her safe.
“P-p-please,” she stuttered out. “Y-you are m-my only s-s-source of h-h-hope.” She dropped her forehead to the ground as the whispers between his men began. “I… I n-need someone wh-who will b-be a-a-able to k-keep me s-s-safe from m-my f-f…” she had to swallow before she said the word. “F-f-father.”
She heard footsteps leaving, and it was hard to swallow back the sob that rose to her chest.
Would they tell her father of this? She would never survive, and her father would cover up her death. His sickly daughter passing from an illness. It was in her veins to be weak, taking after her mother who died due to miscarriages.
She couldn’t bear to lift her head, waiting for all of the footsteps to leave.
“What can you offer the commander that he does not yet have?” A man’s voice asked.
Her shoulders shivered for a moment, and she swallowed back more tears, trying to take a moment to think and make her voice less shaky.
“A ch-ch-child.”
silence
Not one of his men moved or breathed.
“Get up,” a rough voice said.
She didn’t have the strength to follow his command, her bones seeming to melt at his words as she collapsed. Everything that she had was gone.
Surely he was refusing her. Why not? A sickly duke’s daughter who would have no worth. Her mother and aunt’s stories were well known. Women who died from miscarriages, unable to carry but one daughter each for her father before dying. Not even their mythical Roem blood could save them from such a wretched fate.
She would follow the same fate as her mother. Perhaps giving him a useless heir before dying. If she even gave him an heir before passing.
She couldn’t stop the sob from leaving her chest.
Maybe it would be easier to die out here.
“K-kill m-me instead th-then,” she said, even as she wondered how the words came out of her mouth. He was the greatest knight in the continent, it would be swift, and less painful than anything her father would do.
“A-at least I w-would die in p-peace.”
All she could hear was her sobs racketing through her chest.
“A child,” he said. “I will keep you safe from the duke. But you will give me a child.”
Everything seemed to stop as exhaustion hit her, not even able to move her fingers, she felt so weak.
She barely noticed the cloak being wrapped around her as she was lifted up into someone’s arms.
Ah, he agreed. And this feels nice.