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They didn't scream.
That was the first thing the gray-haired executioner remembered as he tightened the knots on the gallows. In twenty years of work, he had heard everything: pleas, curses, sobs, promises of mountains of gold. But these two climbed the scaffold in silence. As if they weren't walking to their deaths, but to a rendezvous they'd been waiting for their whole lives.
In a way, that's exactly what it was.
No one had ever taught Jabber etiquette.
In the Lower Quarter, where houses clung to each other like rotten teeth and children knew the value of a copper coin by age five, bows were useless. There, survival belonged to the one who could strike first, not to the one who could bend his spine gracefully.
So when the royal escort rode into their dusty square on a spring morning, and the herald proclaimed that His Highness the Crown Prince Zanka Nijiku had deigned to grace the village with his presence, Jabber didn't even think to bow his head.
"Hey, you!" one of the guards roared, raising his spear shaft. "Can't you see who's standing before you?!"
Jabber turned his head slowly. He looked down at the terrified halberd.
"I see," he said hoarsely. "A man on a horse. With a crown. So what?"
Behind him, someone gasped. The guard went pale. And the prince — the very prince about whom legends were told in the capital (cruel, flawless, winner of a knight's tournament at sixteen) — suddenly laughed.
Not condescendingly. Not falsely.
But the way people laugh who haven't heard genuine laughter in years.
"Stand down," Zanka ordered quietly, dismounting. He was a couple of centimeters shorter than Jabber, thinner in the bone, yet every movement carried the steel spring of training. Stepping almost toe to toe, he looked up — and that look burned. "What's your name?"
"Why do you want to know?" Jabber crossed his arms over his chest.
"Because I saw you take down three of your own villagers with a shovel when they tried to steal a bag of grain from an old man." Zanka nodded toward the dirty brawl that had just died down at the other end of the square. "Idiotic nobility. I thought it had died out long ago in holes like this."
"Not dead yet." Jabber grinned. "But among you capital folk, it's definitely extinct. I've heard about you. They say you personally broke the necks of anyone who cleaned your boots badly."
Zanka didn't flinch. Only something flickered at the corners of his mouth — a shadow of a smile that no one but Jabber noticed.
"They exaggerate," the prince replied. "I clean my own boots. And I only break the necks of those who deserve it." He paused. "Will you tell me your name, or shall I order it beaten out of you with a whip?"
"Jabber."
"Just Jabber?"
"Isn't that enough?"
And Zanka, the blood prince, heir to the throne, feared by half the kingdom, felt for the first time in years a strange warmth spreading beneath his ribs. The kind that made him want to laugh again.
Or stay in this stinking village forever.
They met two more times after that — no longer in public, but stealthily. The first time by the river, where Jabber went fishing and Zanka supposedly got lost while hunting. The second time in a ruined chapel at the edge of the forest, where they both came to see if their first meeting had been a dream.
It hadn't been.
Even years later, Jabber couldn't explain what exactly had hooked him about that thin, arrogant aristocrat with the manners of an ice dragon. Maybe the way Zanka had removed his gloves without a trace of embarrassment and waded into the muddy river to help haul the net ashore. Maybe the way he listened — truly listened — to stories about a burned roof on the third house and widow May's sick son.
And by morning, royal carpenters had arrived at the widow's door, along with a heap of fresh straw. No explanation. No payment.
"That was you," Jabber said at their third meeting. It wasn't even a question, just a statement.
"It was," Zanka didn't deny it. He sat on the windowsill of the ruined chapel, the moonlight turning his skin silver. "And don't look at me like that. I have more money than I can spend. If you don't waste it on idiotic wars and golden toilets, there's enough left for roofs."
"And for feeding an entire village?" Jabber stepped closer. Very close. Close enough to smell expensive soap and fresh leather. "Because since your visit, the storehouses are bursting. Meat, flour, medicine. People think God sent it."
"Let them think that." Zanka didn't pull away. "God doesn't care. But I do."
Then Jabber did something he had never done before. Gently, as if handling someone made of glass, he took the prince's face in his rough, calloused palms. Zanka flinched. But didn't recoil.
"You're strange," Jabber exhaled. "Of all the people in this kingdom, you're the strangest."
"Is that a compliment?" Zanka whispered.
"It's the truth."
And in that half-ruined chapel, to the howl of the night wind, they kissed for the first time. Awkwardly, roughly, with clashing teeth and stolen breath. Jabber kissed the way he fought — headlong, until lips bled. And Zanka kissed the way he learned fencing: timidly at first, then pouring his whole soul into it.
When they finally pulled apart, Jabber laughed hoarsely.
"If your daddy finds out, he'll have both our heads."
"My daddy's been dead for a year," Zanka said indifferently.
Their secret held for eight months.
Eight months of night journeys, stolen minutes, notes passed through a blind beggar (who could actually see better than a hawk). Eight months of Jabber teaching Zanka how to start a fire without tinder and scale a fish. And Zanka teaching Jabber to dance — well enough that he stopped stepping on his partner's feet.
"I will never take you to a ball," Zanka said, spinning him in an empty barn lit by a single lamp. "You'd disgrace all the royal blood."
"I never asked to go," Jabber growled, feeling his skin burn beneath his tattered shirt wherever the prince's fingers touched. "Your balls are nothing but a gathering of squabbling snakes."
"Exactly." Zanka stopped abruptly, pressing himself against Jabber's broad chest. "That's why I want you there. Not as a guest. As a blade at my belt. As someone who'll watch my back when those snakes decide to strike."
"And as a lover?" Jabber asked quietly, point-blank. No aristocratic evasions.
Zanka froze. Looked up — and there was something in his eyes that made Jabber want to drop to his knees.
"You're already my lover," the prince said. "But if you show up at the ball as my lover... they'll kill us before dessert is served."
They both knew it was the truth. In this kingdom, where marriages were arranged by contract and the word "shame" weighed more than a human life, loving a man from the lowest class was a death sentence.
And still, they kept coming back to each other. Like addicts to a needle. Like moths to a flame.
They weren't exposed by a guard, a spy, or even a jealous courtier.
They were exposed by a child.
A little girl from that same slum, with sick eyes. Zanka had paid for her treatment — secretly, through proxies. But the money took time to arrive, and one day the girl, unable to wait any longer, went to the palace herself. She simply walked through the service entrance because the guards were staring at a fairy on the neighboring street and didn't notice her.
She wanted to thank the prince. In person. And she found him... in the guest tower. Where Zanka and Jabber, not hearing her footsteps, lay embracing on a narrow bed.
The girl didn't understand what she had seen. But she told her mother. The mother told a palace cook. The cook told the head chef. And the head chef served Lord Goka, head of the Hell Council, who had been looking for a way to break the stubborn prince for a long time.
Two days later, a scandal erupted in the palace.
"Do you understand what you've done?" Lord Goka's voice trembled with righteous anger — or repulsive acting; Zanka had always suspected the latter. "With a peasant! A commoner! And this is the heir to the throne?!"
Zanka stood in the middle of the audience hall — in manacles. Yes, he, a prince of the blood, had been chained like a common thief. Jabber had been taken to the dungeons an hour ago, and Zanka had heard him snarling and breaking guards' jaws until a dozen men finally subdued him.
"I don't understand," Zanka replied calmly, "whom exactly you're accusing. Me for choosing a man with a heart rather than a bloodline? Or yourself for missing the signs for eight months?"
Goka went pale.
"You will watch your tongue, whelp. I would never have spoken to our father that way!"
"Our father is dead, brother," Zanka cut him off. "And if he were alive, he'd have you hanged for how you've mismanaged the treasury." He smiled — cold as a winter tomb. "But let's get to the point. What do you want? Abdication? Exile? Or have you already sharpened the axe?"
"We want justice." Lord Goka composed himself. Four other councilors stood beside him. All in black, like crows on carrion. "By the laws of this kingdom, adultery with a person of the same sex is punishable by death. And if that person is also of low birth — death without the right to pardon."
"Fine," Zanka nodded. So calmly that Goka's eye twitched. "Lead me to the scaffold."
"You... you won't beg for mercy?"
"From you?" Zanka laughed. And that laugh was more terrifying than any threat. "I'd sooner eat off the floor than kneel before the likes of you." He turned to the guards. "Take me to Jabber's cell. If I'm going to die, let it be in the same cell."
The councilors exchanged glances. Goka hissed something but nodded. To deny a prince's last request would be to turn even those now sitting in the hall against him. The execution had to look just, not vengeful.
So Zanka ended up in a damp dungeon, where Jabber lay curled on the straw, bruised, with a split lip — but alive.
"Come to save me?" Jabber rasped without raising his head.
"No." Zanka sat down beside him, pressing shoulder to shoulder. The manacles clinked. "I've come to die with you."
Jabber finally looked at him. First in confusion. Then with such longing that for a second, Zanka regretted not being able to truly hold him.
"Fool," Jabber exhaled. "Foolish prince. You could have abdicated. Lived somewhere at the edge of the world. Found a girl, had children..."
"I don't want children," Zanka interrupted. "I want you. And if I can't have you in life — I'll have you in death."
Silence fell. Somewhere above, water dripped. Rats rustled.
"I would have liked children," Jabber suddenly said, barely audibly. "Not my own. I'd have adopted from an orphanage. Three of them. Named them after... after the stars."
Zanka didn't answer. He just laid his head on the broad shoulder. And so they sat until morning — two men in chains, making plans for a life they would never have.
The morning of the execution dawned sunny. This, for some reason, angered Zanka more than anything else. If he was going to be killed, let the sky weep, let mud squelch underfoot, let the wind howl a funeral song.
But instead — blue sky, fresh green on the trees, birds chirping. A real mockery.
They were led from the dungeon at seven in the morning. Jabber's legs were shackled — he was still dangerous. Zanka's only hands. A symbolic gesture: the prince wouldn't be completely humiliated.
The executioner — a gray-haired man with a face like old bark — waited at the foot of the scaffold. Nearby, gawkers crowded. Half the city had come to see the heir executed for loving a peasant. Some wept. Most jeered.
"Don't look at them," Zanka said as they started up the wooden steps.
"I'm not looking at them," Jabber answered. His voice was steady as a bowstring. "I'm looking at you."
The staircase creaked under their weight. Twelve steps. Twelve seconds for Jabber to remember everything: the first fight, the first kiss, the first time Zanka had called him by name — not as a servant, but as an equal.
"Will you say the last words?" the executioner asked when they stood beneath the crossbeam. Two ropes. Two nooses.
"Yes," said Zanka. He turned to the crowd. The wind tousled his hair, and in that moment he was beautiful — like an engraving on a medal, struck for triumph and death. "I, Zanka Nijiku, having abdicated the throne one minute ago (no one had announced any abdication, but he announced it himself), declare: this man is my family. Not by blood. By choice. And if there is anyone in this kingdom who considers that a crime — remember your face today. Because tomorrow you will wake up with the same faces. But I will die with a clear conscience."
The crowd murmured. Someone applauded — and immediately received a slap from their neighbor.
"Your turn." The executioner nodded at Jabber.
Jabber was silent for a long time. He looked at the horizon, where beyond the hills lay a strip of forest — the very one where the ruined chapel stood. Then he turned his gaze to Zanka.
"I regret nothing," he said simply. "Not a single day." And added, more quietly, just for the prince: "The dancing was terrible. But I would agree to dance with you for eternity."
Zanka smiled. Truly, without a crack.
"Put on the nooses," the executioner ordered.
They put them on. Jabber's was almost too large; Zanka's fit perfectly, as if custom-made.
"Are you afraid?" Zanka whispered.
"No," Jabber answered. "Are you?"
"Only at the last moment, you'll break free and grab the executioner. That's just like you."
"I'll try to control myself. For your sake."
The executioner raised his hand. The crowd fell silent.
Zanka did something he had never done in public. He reached for Jabber as far as the ropes allowed and kissed him. Roughly, greedily, with the taste of blood from a split lip. Jabber kissed him back.
"Oh, you..." someone from the council in the front row choked out.
"Drop it!" Goka roared.
The executioner swung his hand down.
The trapdoor opened beneath their feet.
Their bodies fell with a dry crack of broken necks. But even in that fall, lasting only an instant, Jabber managed to grab Zanka's hand. And Zanka squeezed his fingers in return.
When they were pulled from the pit to show the crowd, their hands were still intertwined. Guards tried to pry them apart — in vain. The death grip proved stronger than iron.
"Cut them off," Goka ordered with disgust.
"We can't, my lord," answered the head guard. He was young and, it seemed, the only one who didn't look away. "By custom, the bodies of the executed must be buried whole. So the soul doesn't suffer."
Goka grimaced but waved his hand. They were buried in a single grave — hastily, without honors, at the edge of the suicides' cemetery. Dumped, covered, a crooked cross placed — and that was all.
No one came to say goodbye. Except the little girl with the sick eyes.
She brought wildflowers. Laid them on the fresh earth and whispered:
"Thank you. For my eyes. And for not being afraid."
Then she left.
Lord Goka was overthrown three years after the execution. The old regime collapsed under the weight of its own greed. The new king, Lord Enjin, a longtime friend of the Nijiku family, declared an amnesty and pardoned all who had been executed for political reasons.
Zanka and Jabber were posthumously rehabilitated. Their names were carved on a marble slab in the main cathedral. Beside them was written: "For a love that knew no class."
But the real monument stood at the edge of that very forest, near the ruined chapel. The girl whose eyes had been healed grew up and placed two stones there. One roughly hewn — in honor of the peasant. The other smooth, polished — in honor of the prince.
Between them, someone always left flowers. Or a ribbon. Or simply carved two names joined by a heart into the bark of the nearest tree.
They say that on full moons, footsteps and laughter can be heard there. They say two men dance among the ruins. One dances poorly, the other perfectly.
But still, they never let go of each other's hands.