The Runaway Paladin and the Half Fae Duke

Sien finished his meeting with the Emperor and immediately made his way to his room, believing that he would find Ritt there, only to find out that Ritt wasn’t anywhere to be seen. An angry, animalistic look filled Sien’s face as the realization that Ritt must have been taken somewhere else dawned on him. He knew he should have expected as much to happen, especially with the duplicitous Prince out there running around, but he’d been much too distracted by the course of the day’s events for him to properly account for it.

 

Roughly loosening the neck of his jacket, Sien rushed out of the room to find Ritt.

 

~~~

 

Sien was capable of offering an almost endless abundance of kindness to those who were honest to him. It was one of the reasons that he’d let his uncle speak so rudely to him for so long, and one of the reasons that he’d been so willing to take Ritt in and give him a chance in the first place. In fact, there’d been a number of occasions during Sien’s life where he’d been quite courteous to those he’d met who’d seemed to tell him nothing but the truth.

 

But of course, that was only at first.

 

To date, only his uncle and Ritt had been able to keep from lying to him for more than a few days. Even children would eventually find some reason to lie, and the Fae blood inside of Sien would not abide any of it. He could of course be a bit more tolerant to it than the other more full blooded Fae, or so he’d heard, but it still stung him to feel someone speaking mistruths in his presence. It was an irritation that was impossible to ever truly grow used to or simply look past. Sien could only count his lucky stars that he was a half-breed in such situations; At least he didn’t have to feel the full force of the fury that he’d heard the Fae were prone to at a lie.

 

Still, being already upset and then being repeatedly lied to was beginning to bring Sien up to a boiling rage.

 

Every person that he passed by and attempted to ask about Ritt's location only lied to him, and the few answers that he'd managed to get were so uniform and coordinated that Sien couldn’t help but quickly figure out who must have been behind Ritt’s kidnapping. It made sense that he would have been the one to take Ritt away, considering no one else would be brave enough to pull such a move against Sien. Sien couldn’t help but sneer at how silly and flustered he’d been to not immediately realize who the culprit must have been.

 

Finding where in the palace the Prince would be was easy. There had been more than one occasion in the past where the Prince had invited Sien to come along to his little ‘salon meetings’ with the nobles who liked to fawn over him. He’d been tricked into going there by the Prince once in the past before, but upon learning what kind of boot-licking, ass-kissing affair that he’d been dragged into, and realizing that the Prince had only brought him there to try to feel superior, Sien had quickly left. Still, from him avoiding the area like the plague from that point on, Sien was exactly aware of where the Prince would have taken Ritt.

 

As he furiously marched towards the salon room, the wind carried the overly loud voices of the frenzied nobles into Sien’s ears. He heard all of their cackles, all of their sickeningly morbid questioning about what Ritt had seen, and all of their demanding and urging. He hadn’t even made it to the room yet, but he’d already grown absolutely disgusted by their actions towards Ritt. It was enough for murder to flash in Sien's eyes. He seriously considered striking down a few of the jackals, just enough to make an example out of them.

 

But then, when he heard Ritt’s sweet, sad, and sincere answer to the nobles, it was like something grabbed onto Sien’s heart and held it in place for a moment.

And as if to mirror that feeling, all the other sounds seemed to still themselves as well.

However, the sound of the dissatisfied nobles once again becoming aggressive quickly woke Sien back up to the situation.

Bursting into the room and seeing a few of the nobles reaching out towards Ritt, Sien immediately shouted without even a single thought.

 

“Hey! What the heck are all of you doing to my Ritt?!”

 

All heads in the room turned to look at him, each with a mix of different expressions. He was used to seeing the varied looks, to the point that it sickened him, whether it be those who presented him with shock, fear, fascination, or even the fake smiles that nobles often masked themselves with. Truth be told, he hated those fake smiles the most, however; At least the rest of the reactions he usually received were genuine. He’d rather nobody ever smile at him ever again than have the only smiles he was ever shown be fake.

 

But there, in the middle of the crowd of nobles, was Ritt, smiling the most sincere smile that he’d seen in decades at him.

 

From what Sien had seen, Ritt was rather on the less expressive side. He made plenty of facial expressions and it was easy to guess what he must have been feeling at a glance, but even those expressions were quite subdued. A majority of the smiles that Sien had seen Ritt give were quite soft and muted, although Sien had still been able to understand the vast amount of emotion behind them. But this smile that Sien was seeing right now was by no means subdued or diminished; This smile practically beamed with how happy and grateful that Ritt was to see him. It almost shouted to Sien how glad Ritt was that he was here.

 

It was like finding a lone, beautiful flower amongst a pit of awful weeds.

Ritt struggled past the hoard of nobles that were in his way, trying to find a path through the wall of them that would let him go to his savior.

 

“Sien!”

 

Like that call was some kind of signal, Sien immediately started marching towards Ritt, practically parting the sea of nobles as he went. However, just as he was about to make it to him, the Prince moved himself into Sien’s path, looking as jovial as ever.

 

“Oho, cousin Sien! How wonderful it is to see you here! I thought that you’d never-”

 

“Shut it, Reece. I don’t have time for this right now.”

 

The glare that Sien leveled on the Prince as he marched past him was enough to chill the him down to his bones for a moment. If it weren’t for his pride, perhaps the Prince would have given up trying to talk to Sien right then and there out of instinctive fear. However, many years of seeing such things from Sien made the Prince able to snap himself out of such cowardice quite quickly. With a small puff of annoyance, the Prince turned to look at Sien, narrowing his eyes as he watched his cousin checking over and fretting about Ritt.

 

“By the Gods… With the way you came in here, one would have thought that we’d done something more than ask him a few questions. Oh, is it that I shouldn’t have been feeding your pet without your permission or something? What, does he have some special food restrictions that we didn’t know about?”

 

The Prince looked around at the other surrounding nobles, signaling them to back him up, and a handful of the brave and stupid ones quickly came forward, jumping on the possible chance to gain a bit more of the Prince’s favor.

 

“The Crown Prince is right! We were simply enjoying food together!”

 

“Yes, and it’s not uncommon to share a few friendly questions in such an atmosphere, is it?”

 

“We only spoke a few words to him! There’s nothing strange about that, Lord Tavril!”

 

“It’s not wrong to be curious about such an interesting person, is it?”

 

Sien, who’d been focused on making sure Ritt was completely okay, and had seemingly been ignoring the group, suddenly smirked incredulously and slightly turned his head to the crowd of lemmings.

 

“Hah! ‘Interesting’? Who do you mean, Ritt, or me? Because it seemed like I was the one you were the most curious about.”

 

The surroundings turned quiet for a moment, as those whose bravery had swollen up before quickly shriveled down when faced directly with the notorious Sien’s gaze. They covertly gave pleading stares towards the Prince, hoping that he would break them out of the situation he’d goaded them into. But when the Prince simply gave them an impatient look back as if he were telling them to continue, they all quickly regretted how silly they'd been for jumping forward when told, risking themselves just for some flimsy thing like gaining the Prince’s ‘favor’.

 

Seeing that not a single one of the people who’d stepped forward were willing to truly confront him head on, Sien rolled his eyes at the horde of cowards. He despised that such spineless nobles had the nerve to try and interrogate Ritt over him. It was obvious that the Prince had spurred them forwards into doing it, but Sien knew that even if the Prince weren’t there, the overly curious and gossip-ridden nobles still would have rushed Ritt down to get whatever scrap of information from him that they could, although perhaps they wouldn’t have been quite as pushy about it. There’s even the chance that, were they not in such a salon-type of meeting, and had instead come across Ritt in smaller numbers, they would have tried all manner of unsavory things to the man that they deemed ‘just a commoner’, regardless of who he belonged to.

 

The thought of it made Sien’s eyes narrow in absolute revulsion.

 

Sien knew well enough that he would have to stay here for another day. Ritt should have been safe enough if he stayed in Sien’s room, but he needed more assurance than that; After all, there was every possibility that the Prince, the Emperor, or even possibly his Uncle, might attempt such silly games with Ritt again while he wasn’t there to see it. What he needed was to do something, to show these silly nobles something that would remind them why he’d been feared by them so much in the first place.

 

And as his eyes scanned over the idiots that surrounded him with their mouths uncomfortably clamped shut, he noticed a particular noble’s face. Luck must have been on his side, as there stood the exact target that the Emperor had painted for him.

 

He couldn’t help the wicked yet angelic smile that grew itself onto his face.

 

“Oh hang on a minute… Don’t I know you?”