Chapter Text
2 YEARS PRIOR
Your father's death came and went with haste.
He was a noble man, the King. After your mother's death, he took control of Piltover and led with proficiency. There was never a moment where he wasn't thinking of the people, rather than himself. Your mother was born of royal blood, and married your father against her parents will. And together, they lead beautifully.
You said that all in the obituary, before he was lowered into the ground to rest next to the Queen. It was one week prior that he was joking about your queenhood, and the following week he was dead, only bringing that joke into reality.
Everything moved too fast for you. Your father died, you hosted his funeral at the castle, and five days later you were being crowned. The coronation was a dull thing; the colors weren't as bright in your eyes, and the dress was simply another designed to make you look ready to assume the duty of Queen. You weren't.
You couldn't find joy in the occasion. While most girls dreamt of their sweet sixteen, you spent nights dreaming about your coronation. You've had the colors picked out since you were 12 - a gorgeous mix of yellows and pinks, and even some light blue. Spring colors. However, as a young girl, nobody told you what had to come before the coronation for it to happen.
As your eyes drilled holes into the floor and your knees splintered from the old wood of the church steps, the royal priest placed your crown atop your head, finishing the ceremony with the exchange of the sword of state. You rose, he blessed you, and it was over. You could retreat back to your quarters and simply not attend the party, stating to the townspeople that you had fallen ill, but they should enjoy the party in your absence.
And now, you were Queen.
What came after that might've even been worse. Upon taking over the entire kingdom and all duties, you also took over the responsibility of Sarah - your younger sister. At 13, she was a brilliant thing, but also a hell of a lot for you to handle. To you, she was a rebellious child who channelled her guilt into sneaking out of the castle and piercing her ears.
You wouldn't pretend like it wasn't a burden, all of it. Sometimes you spent hours thinking about what it would be like to go back to when you didn't have to fret over foreign relations and the Piltover school system, when both of your parents were alive. There were nine years before your sister existed, nine years that you clung onto like a crutch.
You remembered the day your parents found out about Sarah's existence clearly. Your mother told you in your bedroom, and you were excited. You had no idea what would happen five months later, when your mother had an emergency birth at 22 weeks. She died that day, and so did your excitement.
It took you years to stop resenting your sister. Like most kids did, you blamed her for the death of your mother, but you never told her. After years of therapy, you worked through your resentment, but her constant presence and reliance on you led to the feelings creeping back up your spine, and you knew then that you had to do anything in your power to stop them.
PRESENT
“Elora,” you yelled from your writing room, as you continued to glance over a law that is on track to pass. She arrived in front of you in a moment's time, hands behind her back with a small smile. “I need you to find a knight for my sister. Organize interviews for the coming day and make sure to run background checks.”
“Yes ma'am.” She nodded and turned on her heel, quickly leaving to begin researching and organizing. You required the knight quickly; in a few short weeks, Piltover would be hosting its annual creation ball, that you had to plan all of. You needed Sarah safe and off your plate, so that you could focus on passing legislation and planning the biggest event of your royal career.
After countless attempts at reigning Sarah in, you had finally given up. You had put her in therapy and in public school, given her a royal advisor, and even offered to pay her to act right, and nothing managed to get through to her. You hoped that, now that she was 15, she would've moved past this part of her life, but she has yet to.
This was the one thing that she was absolutely against. She insisted that she didn't need a person, especially a man, following her around all the time. She hated the idea of someone posted outside her door. But her wants were too late for your needs - she would be dead by 16 if she kept up the way she was acting.
You would need three of them - each taking eight hours shifts to cover all 24 hours of the day. You had three, and you hardly noticed them. Sarah's guards would be no different, and you wouldn't take her no as an answer.
The first interview was nothing less than abhorrent bland. It was a man, of course, who barely met the qualifications and basically had to talk Elora into letting him interview. He failed knight training because of drugs, and had to retake it at much too old. He wasn’t in shape, and he refused to refer to you as Queen, rather than princess. You asked him to leave quickly after.
Terribly, the rest of the interviews followed the first one steadily. You had two potential candidates lined up, neither of which you were particularly fond of, but it didn’t matter. They met the requirements, and that was what was important. But, with the rate that the interviews were going, you truly didn’t believe that you would ever find a third, and that was an issue. No knight would settle for twelve hour days, it was against kingdom policy anyway.
Your final interview of the day was late, and found you swiftly. You were tired, and damn close to simply asking Elora to do the interview for you. You feared that if this woman wasn’t exactly what you wanted, you would absolutely flip your shit at her. In between each meeting, plans crept up your neck and you scribbled as much as you could down before the contestant arrived, and you were desperate to hide in your chambers and sort through all of your notes. But you were far from that.
The woman that stood before you as Elora opened the door was nothing like you had expected. It wasn’t like you got pictures when you looked over the recruits’ files, simply just a handout from the knight academy that was hardly legible. She was extremely tall, towering over Elora and eating up the space in the room, and her muscle wasn’t that of anyone that you had seen before - man or woman. Elora looked over at you with rosy cheeks and a hinting smile before she shut the door and left you to your business.
It was almost sensual the way the woman bowed to your presence, but kept her dark gaze on your eyes. Even bent at the waist, she took up a grand amount of space, in the best way possible. It was as if you couldn’t look away, even if she was burning you. Your eyes begged for hers, prayed on hers. There wasn’t anything in the world other than you and the pair of eyes gazing back at you.
Her eyes were something of magic - a dark mix of steel greys that got darker as she scanned your face. They almost made you shiver, the way she was looking at you. Her eyes fit perfectly in respect to her face; the high cheekbones, sharp nose, broad lips, scar drawn across her cheek. It gave her the most perfect blend of masculine and feminine, put together in one. She was beautifully a sight for sore eyes.
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, my Queen,” she spoke low and smooth, taking your hand as she stood up. She left a kiss to your knuckle, something that none of the other recruits had even dreamt of doing. She had a sense of unrequited confidence to her that oozed, and it was drawing you in far more than you wished it was.
“The pleasure is mine,” you spoke before you could think, clearly your throat with haste to subdue the tension that she had created. “Please, sit,” you insisted, taking your seat as she took hers. You couldn’t help but watch as she sunk down in her chair and shifted her legs, letting them fall open wide. You swallowed, quickly averting your gaze to the paper in your hand with her work on it. “I must say, I did not have time in between applicants to look over your resume, but it is incredibly impressive,”
“That is the goal, after all.” She snickered, and you pursed your lips to restrict yourself from grinning. She had numerous highly selective and incredibly prestigious positions listed for her, and she passed at the top of her class at the academy, however, she graduated several years before any of the other applicants had.
“So, Sevika, I must ask what led you to leaving your post with the Kiramman’s? It appears as if you held the post for several years, and it's a highly competitive program, after all.” She sighed, shifting awkwardly and scratching the back of her neck.
“There was an incident that led me to become temporarily unable to provide them with the service that they needed. I chose to step down under the idea that I was not serving them to the extent that they needed.” You nodded slowly.
“May I ask what this ‘incident’ was?” You pressed. It could’ve been anything, with the vagueness of her speech. Slowly, with caution, she pulled back the partial cape that was covering the left half of her body. You had wondered why she was still wearing it when she appeared in your office, it was unusual and you were sure Elora had offered to take it.
Under it was a gorgeously mechanical prosthetic arm, one that looked as if it took years to build. “I can promise you, ma’am, that my injury doesn’t negate my ability to care for the princess. In fact, I believe that it makes me a stronger candidate-”
“Sevika, you aren’t ruled out of the competition simply because of a disability,” you insisted, softly. “It was the Kiramman bombing, I assume?” She nodded briskly. “I see. Well, moving past that, aside from the oath of Piltover, what does loyalty to the royal family mean to you?” You sat the paper down and clasped your hands on the oak table.
“Loyalty means everything to me, my Queen. There is nothing in the world that could make me turn my back on the post I’m assigned to. Nothing.” She insisted. You noticed the gap in her teeth as you spoke, and you almost forgot to listen to the words she was uttering.
“And if another realm were to offer you money or land in exchange for betrayal, what do you see yourself doing, honestly? I’ll kindly remind you that all of these answers are private and not shared.” She didn’t have to think before answering this one.
“Like I said, ma’am, I value loyalty above all else. Once I’m committed to a position, there is nothing that could draw me from it, especially something like money or land. My commitment to you means more than anything.” You couldn’t help the warmth that flooded your cheeks, even though you knew deep down that she was just trying to butter you up into hiring her.
“If you did not morally agree with an order given to you by the princess or myself, how would you respond?” She thought for a moment before answering this question. You couldn’t think of anything morally or ethically wrong that you would ever order her to do, but the questions were left by your father from when he hired knights, and you trusted his judgement over your own.
“In either situation, I would bring that up with you. If I don’t agree with somethin’, I won’t just blindly follow orders. And if it's something that I can’t do, I will resign from my duties.” You nodded, scribbling a few things down on the paper.
“If you would like a straight answer, I’m going to hire you undoubtedly. However, I need to warn you before you accept this position that my sister is quite a… handful. She can be difficult to deal with and she doesn’t often listen to directions. It may be difficult keeping her in check and protecting her to the best of your ability.” She laughed, and you couldn’t imagine why.
“If you think she’s bad, you clearly haven’t met a young Caitlyn Kiramman. Man, was that woman a lot to handle. You couldn’t help but join her laughs at that one. You had known the Kirammans for quite some time, and it was a well known fact that Caitlyn was quite the trickster in her developing years, much like Sarah. But Caitlyn’s was rooted in grief, like Sarah’s.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but Sarah hasn’t healed from the death of our parents, and it can be difficult for her to regain control sometimes. So, that being said, if you don’t think this is the position for you, it’s completely understood.”
“No, I think this is definitely the position for me. I’ve trained in both physical handling and mental handling. I’m sure that I can meet all of your sister’s needs within my station. I won’t let you down, m’lady.” The name rolled off her tongue unlike any other, even though thousands of other people had called you the exact same thing. “It can’t possibly be that difficult with a boss as pretty as you.” You couldn’t escape the blush that the woman gave you.
“You’ll start promptly tomorrow with two other soldiers. I’ll train you for a portion of the day and my general will spend the rest of the day with you. It was lovely meeting you Sevika, and thank you for your service to our kingdom. I’ll see you tomorrow, Elora will show you out.” She rose with you, bowing once again.
“Thank you for the opportunity, my Queen.” She shot you a smile as she made her way to the door, where Elora was already waiting. Once Elora had walked her out, you let out a breath that you had been holding. The woman was more than attractive. She made you forget about the gala and how taxing your day had been - if you hadn’t taken notes, you would have zero recollection of anything she said. She was entrancing, enchanting, and you knew that this was going to cause a problem.
Elora found her way back into your writing room steadily after she presumably walked Sevika to the door. “Miss,” she chirped with excitement. “Now, that has never been my particular taste, but I must say that that woman was very attractive.” Elora was never the outspoken type, so when she plopped down in the seat across from you and fanned herself, you were more than a little surprised.
“I must agree,” you said, quietly. It hardly mattered whether you found her attractive or not. In fact, it mattered not. She was to protect your sister, and that was that. “She worked for Kiramman House, I would’ve hired her on the spot if I knew that. She’ll start tomorrow with Loris and Steb, could you make sure the Generals are aware that this is happening?” Elora stood, wiping her hands on the apron covering her dress.
“Yes ma’am, right away.” She left you with a suggestive smile as she made her way out of the writing room and away, and you stopped to think about it for a moment. Think about everything . This was the first person you had found undeniably appealing since long before your father’s death, and it made you wonder. Why her? Why someone who was the definition of off limits? You couldn’t bear the thought of distracting someone as qualified as Sevika from her work, not that you would ever explore that option in the first place.
You had come to a point in your life where you believed that the castle and the kingdom and all the needs of others were more of substance than your own. As a queen, you couldn’t see yourself settling down or bringing someone into your life who sought to slow you down. You had no room in your brain or heart to focus on another human being to the extent that they needed, and that was okay with you, at least for now.
But gods, did the woman have pretty eyes.