Vizima Gelt.

Princess Alexandra: “Vizima I don't trust you to be loyal to me. I trust that you'll always come crawling back to me on your hands and knees.”

He was a successful bureaucrat. As someone who came from a long line of rural nobility and without a single connection, he had entered the palace and had been granted the title of head librarian of the imperial library. It was the highest position one could hold in the royal palace without connections. As the head librarian, he even oversaw special collections which only members of the royal family could access. But when it came down to it, it wasn’t an important job.

It wasn’t that it was the extent of his abilities. Rather, there was simply no way for him to rise through the ranks.

The elite nobility and their children, their extended relatives and their houses had become firmly established over hundreds of years. Because it was such a traditional empire built on the strong belief of old noble bloodlines, the number of elite nobles only grew with the passage of time. And the government itself was filled with white-haired officials who never seemed to retire.

And so, he decided to be satisfied with the amount of success he’d had. He buried all of the talent that he would never use.

That might have been why. Bit by bit, he began to be bored with his life. Since the imperial library wasn’t open to just anyone, he was always alone. Every day was the same, and the days that flowed into one another were tiring him out.

Then, one spring day, it happened while he was taking a light nap in the corner of the library. When he opened his eyes, there before him was a woman, blindingly bright in the sun, smiling at him with her chin resting in her hands.

“Who?”

She put her hands over his eyes. He felt them with his own and grasped onto them.

“Stay still and don’t open your eyes.”

When he gave a slight nod, her hands came away from his face. He wasn’t sure how long he was supposed to sit there with his eyes closed, but for some reason, he found he couldn’t disobey.

“….. It was nice meeting you, Vizima Gelt.”

When he heard her whisper his name, he was unable to resist the urge and opened his eyes.

But there was no one there. That was when he realized. He was in love.

It wasn’t long before he was able to find out the woman’s identity. The one and only princess of the empire.

This was the time where the Imperial princess had been told of her elder brother's inability to have children and provide an heir for the Imperial dystasy to continue their rule.

The young woman had barely celebrated reaching adulthood and she was already shouldered with the responsibility of one day, eventually taking the crown from her brother and ruling the empire.

Vizima learnt this after his first induction with the princess as the next day she returned to the library. He discovered the young women surrounded by books in a reading section of the library only a few past emperors were known to visit.

His first impressions on the princess visit were disingenuous, to a fault of his own experience with nobility. His belief was like every single young noble the princess would soon grow fickle and eventually tire of their responsibilities. He only sighed and returned the many books which the princess had left before leaving the library, back to their respected shelves.

However, it wasn’t the last the librarian would see the princess as the next day she returned and was furious.

“Where are the books that were here yesterday?” She asked with an annoyed tone.

Even two years her senior, he couldn’t stop himself from being backed up into a bookshelf by the, now then, shorter women.

He had been foolish to think he could interpret the princess' whims so carelessly as just another young noble; she was royalty and she gave no room for doubt about it.

“I returned the books once you retired from the library, your Highness. I thought you no longer had a need for them. Forgive me.” The grovelling came easily to Vizima despite being out of practice due to being cooped up in the library for days on end.

“Dammit. I wasn’t finished reading those yet.” She replied more frustrated than angry, an unexpected restraint from that of royalty.

He lowered his head to appear submissive and waited for any punishment she deemed worthy; he waited and waited until the princess gave the punishment.

“What are you standing around for? Help me collect the books again, you do remember which ones they were don’t you?” She demanded the task of him but didn’t add any more petty resentment than what was needed. The princess had clearly understood it was a mistake.

Vizima, trying his best not to smile, lifted his head and replied quickly. “Yes of course your highness!”

Afterwards, the princess’ visits continued the next day and the day after until it became the only thing that broke the melancholy of Vizima’s daily routine.

Rain or shy the promising princess took time out of her day to visit the library either appearing as the ideal princess in a dress or coated in sweat still wearing her sparing attire from a training season.

From that day onward the princess was a glutton for knowledge; she devoured the content of any book in the imperial library, from art and architecture to history and war. When eventually there was no longer anything the collection could teach her. Vizima offered his services to tutor the princess.

Accepting his offer Vizima soon learned that unlike most royals the young princess didn’t become volatile whenever someone disagreed with her. The pair's arguments and discussions on a varying degree of subjects sometimes lasted well into the evenings.

As Vizima continued to teach her he heard the many ambitions the young princess had to further prosper both her people and empire, of course, he helped to rationalist her ideals but most times he found himself agreeing with the princess. He found himself falling deeper in love with her.

Like the books before him, Vizima soon dreaded that he would no longer have anything left to teach the young women he grew attached to. That was, until their water turned to wine and their evenings into nights. One night the couple were found laughing at a joke one or the other had made.

“Stop! Stop! I’ve lost count of how many times someone has said that to me today… ‘Your highness this your highness that’… At this rate, I will take it as my regal name on my coronation day!” The princess burst out in laughter and drank from her goblet.

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you, it would be a nightmare for the historians.” Vizima sat aside the princess and continued by mimicking the stern voice of what he expected a historian to sound like. “And here we will be recalling the reign of Her Imperial Majesty Your Highness the first!”

His joke only made the young woman he told it to laugh even more. Her laughter became so infectious he couldn't stop himself from joining in.

Once they settled down he watched her trail her finger along the rim of her goblet before she asked him a question. “You have any plans tonight?”

Vizima calmly shook his head. “No, just the usual, lock up the library and go to bed.”

“That’s a shame I was hoping you could’ve ended up in my bed tonight.” She looked to him so as to measure his reaction.

“Y-your highness?!” Vizima jerked his head and looked at the princess surprised but was only greeted by the young woman's finger placed upon his lips.

“Shhh! Tsk tsk, honestly, we're in a library!” She held a grin ear to ear before adding. “Don’t give me that look, it's not like it’s unheard of royals do this all the time.”

“I can make it a command if it makes it easier. If you’ve forgotten I am kinda the Imperial Princess, it is something I can do.” She said playfully as she traced her fingertip along the librarian's lower lip.

He smiled and looked deeply into her eyes. “You do make it difficult to forget your highness…” He stopped before correcting himself. “Alexandra.”

Brief as these moments were to Vizima he treasured them all the same. From his perspective Alexandra was a once in a lifetime catch both as a woman and a future empress. Even with his own cold view of the world and rationalist way of thinking, hope had festered inside the man’s heart and like a moth to a flame, he couldn’t resist it. And no one seemed to burn brighter than her.

However Alexandra couldn’t burn forever.

Many years later Vizima offered his services to his princess once again but this time using his knowledge of medicine and anatomy to become her personal physician on her first campaign against the neighbouring kingdoms of the empire.

However, his patronage was short-lived.

Vizima made his way towards the tent's entrance to spy a man younger than himself sitting outside.

His only expression was a thousand-yard stare.

Vizima gave the man a glance to see what was wrong, he found nothing but dry lips and battered armour until he looked to the man’s hands coated in fresh blood. “Richard? Is that you? Gods I barely recognized you in that armour. Your hands hurt?”

“It’s not my blood…” The voice seemed to creep from the shell shocked man as he responded coldly before he glanced up at the physician. “Where the hell have you been Gelt?”

“I was tending to the wounded that came in this morning, are you sure you're not hurt?” Worried about the man, he placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“She called for you...you know?” He said as his eyes lingered on blood stoked hands.

“I never ran so fast in my life, I thought my legs would collapse under me but I was carrying her. I couldn’t let that happen so I just kept going...” Richard said painfully before he grasped Vizima's wrist.

“Richard what’s going on?...” As he questioned what they were doing an awful sense of dread came over him as he stared at the man's panicked eyes.

“Save her!” The knight's eyes shook unconsciously twisting the other man’s wrist before collapsing onto his knees, his face sliding down Vizima's chest as he went down, he begged once more. “Save her!”

Victory after victory on the battlefield had unfortunately made Alexandra believe she was unstoppable. This was partially true, no one could match her martial skill. But one mistake here, one ambush there and being outnumbered more times than she could count, it was gradually building up until the last battle before the victory. Her winning streak ending with a lucky blot to the chest, fired from a frightened farm boy, barely in his teens, who only saw the golden-haired monster of the battlefield she had become infamous for.

“Vizima! Get me Vizima!” Surrounded by worried noblemen in her tent, Alexandra could hardly breathe. She was sprawled out across the bed with pieces of her armour still attached, no one wanting to risk moving the princess.

“We can’t let her die, not yet...”

“Hold your tongue, it's treason to imagine one of the royal family dying...”

“She brought us here for what? I was promised land and slaves...”

“Where the hell is the physician...”

The noblemen whispered amongst themselves, circling Alexandra like a pit of serpents.

A panicked Vizima burst through the entrance of the tent and rushed towards Alexandra’s bedside, pushing noblemen far above his station aside to do so. “Get out of my way!”

Once at her side he was greeted by the visage of the sweet young women he used to greet in the library every day. Wheezing in pain. Her beautiful golden locks plastered with her own blood as she coughed up what was left inside her. The source of her suffering, a crossbow bolt dead centre in her chest where her heart would be.

Vizima, more scared than he had any right to be, didn't want to lose her. He fumbled with his tool kit, dropping half its content on the ground. As he was about to reach to collect his tools a hand grasped his shoulder and pulled him back.

“We have no time for this! Get him out of here, the princess needs a real physician!” The voice crept from the group of noblemen who with cold dead eyes singled out Vizima before they swarmed and pulled him out of the tent.

The last thing he witnessed was a hooded figure pushing a white powder into a pipe and lighting it. “Here your highness, this is a medicine from the east. It will dull the pain while lifting your spirits.”

It wouldn’t be until a decade passed that both Viziam and the princess met.

Vizima returned to his position of head librarian to distort failing the women he loved; he resigned himself to the place he knew best. However, favour did shine back onto him once more. The princess returned from her campaigns victorious. But not as the young woman he once knew.

He soon learned the princess had used her royal given right to take lovers as concubine after learning Richard had become one.

He loved the princess with everything he had.

After courting her passionately, he was finally able to become her concubine.

During their first night together, he was beside himself with joy. But then, her naked body stretched out on the bed, the princess mumbled,

“I’m bored.”

She made him an offer.

“Do you want to try being fucked by my sex ****?”

“………”

“Or…… do it with another woman in front of me.”

He had refused, saying that he would only do it with her.

The princess never sought him out again after that. On the occasions when he sought her out first, she jeered at him and made him watch as she slept with other men.

Vizima had never thought that he would be able to have the princess all to himself. But he had never imagined he would not have the tiniest piece of her heart.

Love had made him into an idealist without a plan, and then **** him to become a cool-headed realist.

He was the princess’s outdated, disposable plaything. One that she’d shoved into storage and would never take out again.

Her allowing him to be her concubine had been a cruel joke.

She dangled the possibility of becoming her concubine in front of those who salivated after it only to rip it away, and **** it on those who never wanted it. As for those who sought her love, she permitted them to be her concubine only in name.

It was that kind of joke.

The princess had enjoyed seeing him cling to her so earnestly. Then she’d become bored of it and forget about him. When that happened, there was nothing Vizima could do anymore.

Resistance was futile, so he resigned himself to his fate.

He began seeing other women. He played around all night with women who loved him for the fleeting moments that they were tangled up in bed.

There were some who had been very satisfied and had asked to continue their relationship. Others told him they loved him.

But the words always felt like a knife to the heart. Because they were words he would never hear from the princess. Because the princess would never say them to him.

And he too was unable to bring himself to say them back to his partners.

He hated himself. It was when that self-hatred got to be so bad that he didn’t know what to do with himself that he had met Mina.

Mina had said it was okay. That it was fine if he didn’t love himself.

So he was able to love her.

He believed that he loved her.