Work Text:
Ronan first saw Princess Elianna when he was eight years old, sitting atop his father’s shoulders to watch her birthday parade. Her dark hair was piled on her head in an elaborate crown of ribbons and flowers, and she waved to the crowd with an elegance that belied her age. Ronan couldn’t take his eyes off her.
That night over dinner, he cheerfully told his parents, “When I grow up, I’m going to marry the princess!”
Of course, they laughed at him. “The princess will marry a prince,” his mother said. “You will probably marry a tradesman’s daughter.”
Ronan scowled, but didn’t argue. He’d show them.
Ronan joined the Royal Guard the day he turned eighteen, but it was two long years of training and perimeter assignments before he ever saw any member of the royal family. Princess Elianna, meanwhile, grew up into a beautiful and intelligent young lady. She walked like a smoothly sailing ship, calm and steady, and when she spoke, her quiet words were as firm as mountains. Her eyes, when Ronan got to see them up close, were grey like storm clouds.
It was during a tense trade negotiation that Ronan finally saw her break through that calm exterior. Most of the guards were blank-faced and staring into the distance, bored by talk of tariffs and imports, but something made Ronan uneasy. He shadowed the princess where she sat at her father’s right hand.
“Without imported grain—” the princess was saying.
Ronan didn’t know why he moved until after it happened; he grabbed the princess’s arm, yanked her out of the chair, and pulled her down, covering her with his body.
An arrow thunked into the back of the chair where the princess had just been sitting.
The room erupted into chaos.
Guards hauled the king to his feet, surrounding him in protection. Ronan jumped up, scanning the balcony and rafters for the assassin, but there was too much chaos for him to see much.
A gurgling scream grabbed his attention, and he spun around to where he had left the princess, blood pounding in his ears.
Princess Elianna stood beside her chair, blood staining her blue dress black. The arrow from the back of her chair was now embedded in the neck of the plainly-dressed man lying dead on the floor beside her, a silver knife on the ground by his hand. A tiny scratch marred the princess’s porcelain neck.
“What,” she demanded, “is the use of having guards if I have to kill assassins myself?”
Ronan cursed himself. He’d let himself get distracted, and he’d almost let the princess be killed by the second assassin. He searched behind the window curtains and all the nearby furniture, but the area was now clear.
The guards turned the palace upside down, eventually apprehending the other assassin as he tried to flee through an upper window. A member of a fringe rebel group who wanted to sabotage the negotiation and possibly incite a war. Elianna glowered at everyone until news was brought that the criminal had been caught, when she declared that she was going to change her clothes. “You, come with me,” she said to Ronan.
Ronan had never been in the princess’s chambers before, of course. He hastily averted his eyes as she began to pull at the laces of her dress, but that didn’t last. “Help me with this,” she demanded.
Ronan’s fingers, used to holding a sword, felt thick and clumsy on the delicate laces, but the princess didn’t complain about his slowness. His face burned red-hot at the intimacy of the act, but he dared not disobey.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Ronan, Your Highness,” he said, voice cracking.
“You seem competent enough,” she said. “I want you as my personal guard from now on.”
Ronan’s heart stuttered. “Of course, Your Highness.”
Elianna ordered Ronan to fetch her a damp cloth from her washroom, and when he returned, she had stripped off the bloody dress and tossed it to the floor. The blood had seeped through to her undergarments, and he stared at his feet as she added them to the pile of discarded clothing. She took the cloth from him and began to wipe away blood. Ronan’s heart pounded. He had no idea what he was supposed to do, and felt as if he was going to be executed on the spot for daring to see the princess in such a state, but at the same time, if he made a single move that she did not approve of, he thought she might be the one to kill him herself.
“Why did you become a guard?” she asked.
In halting words, Ronan told her about seeing her at her birthday parade as a child, although he omitted his declaration of his intent to marry her. “I only ever wanted to serve you, Your Highness,” he said, aware as he did so how silly it must sound to her. He wished for her to stop him, to send him away, to save him from embarrassing himself further.
Elianna considered this. “Would you serve me with your whole heart, Ronan?”
Hearing her say his name made his chest flutter. “I would.”
“Would you do anything I ask?”
“Anything, Your Highness.”
“Kneel.”
Ronan dropped to his knees. Elianna cupped his cheek with her hand and tilted his head up to look at her. Ronan was quite tall and wasn’t used to looking up at people, especially not petite women like Elianna. Despite her nakedness, her gaze made Ronan feel like he was the one exposed. He barely noticed her smooth, pale skin, her small breasts, the flat expanse of her stomach. Her eyes held him.
She leaned down and kissed him.
When she took him to her bed, Ronan thought that perhaps he had in fact been killed protecting her, and this was his divine reward. He did his best to worship her body, to show her his devotion. She could never really understand the depths of it, but he did all he could to make his feelings known.
To Ronan’s wonder and puzzlement, she did not send him away after. She was vehement that he indeed be her personal guard, insisting on having him nearby every day, and there were many nights when she took him to bed and let him serve her every way he could think of.
He had always thought her reserved, but now he was close enough to hear the sarcastic remarks she uttered under her breath when some advisor of her father’s condescended to her. He worked up the courage to ask her about the book she was reading, and was delighted to receive an impassioned lesson about that particular style of poetry. When he got to observe her painting for pleasure, the smooth, steady strokes of the brush in her hand lulled him into a peaceful, trancelike state.
Ronan had always admired and desired the princess, but now, he was falling in love.
In the fall, Elianna became moody. It started with a meeting with her father, alone behind closed doors, and despite Ronan’s gentle inquiries, she refused to tell him what they had discussed. She was greatly displeased by it, however. She refused Ronan’s touches, and often bade him sit in silence while she worked or read.
She did not send him away, though. He held onto that.
Finally, one day she laid down her book suddenly and asked him, “I have a great service to ask of you.”
“Anything, Your Highness,” Ronan said.
“My father refuses to pass the crown to me until I have an heir,” she said. “I have no wish to carry a child. If I have been distant lately, it is because my mind has been preoccupied with this matter. But I think I have found a solution. If— If you are amenable.”
Ronan had never heard her hesitate before. “Of course, Your Highness. Anything.”
“There is a potion,” she said, “that enables men to conceive. It is not easy to obtain, nor cheap, but I believe I know where to get it. Ronan, my love, would you bear my child for me?”
A storm of emotions swirled through Ronan. First was an odd desire to laugh; surely she was not serious? But it was not in her nature to jest so. Next came a sort of horror, as he considered what she asked of him. He had never thought that he might bear children, and the process was mysterious and frightening to him. But his lady, his love, had asked this of him, and so in the end there was only one answer he could give.
“I would be honored, Your Highness,” he said.
The process of conceiving an heir was not so different from many of the other things they had done, it turned out. Ronan found it quite enjoyable.
He was unsure at first how to tell if it worked. Fall turned to winter, and the first flakes of snow covered the castle, and Ronan found that his uniform no longer fit quite right around the middle.
“I can see it,” Elianna said, rubbing her hand over the very slight bump of his stomach as they lay in bed together. “That’s our child.” Her voice was filled with wonder.
The more Ronan’s body changed, the more Elianna seemed unable to keep away from him. Whenever they had a moment alone, her hands went to his belly, to touch and cradle it.
His chest began to grow, as well. At first the idea horrified him; he was a man, and the idea of growing, well, breasts was repellant. His stomach churned to think of what the other guards might say. But Elianna was fascinated with them. In bed, she liked to touch them, to cup them in her hands and twist the nipples between her fingers, to lower her mouth and suck on them until she could coax a dribble of milk from them. Ronan found his new breasts extremely sensitive, to the point that Elianna could bring him to orgasm with only her mouth on his nipples.
As his belly swelled, so did Elianna’s desire for him. She no longer seemed content to only have him at nights, but would slip away during the day to bed him. Ronan’s back began to ache from carrying the extra weight of his belly, and the things they usually did in bed did not come as easily to him, but Elianna was ever inventive. She liked to ride him, her hands rubbing soothing circles on his belly as she chased her pleasure and Ronan lay back and let her use him, feeling his own ecstasy take him again and again. Elianna wasn’t the only one aroused by his condition; as he neared the baby’s birth, he found himself needing more and more to relieve his hormonal urges. Fortunately, Elianna was more than happy to oblige.
“Do you want a boy or a girl?” Ronan asked her one night as they lay in bed together. Ellianna was tracing her finger over the delicate pink stretch marks Ronan had developed a few months into his pregnancy.
“It matters not to me,” she said. “As long as the child can inherit the crown when my time is done, I shall cherish it.”
“You would cherish it regardless,” Ronan said.
“Well, yes,” she admitted. “Although if this child proves unfit, we would have to have another. That would not be so bad, would it?” She gave him the teasing grin that he had never seen her bestow on anyone else.
“Which do you want?” she asked.
Ronan could never lie to her. “A girl,” he said. “I hope she looks like you.”
Elianna kissed him, and for a while they were too busy to talk.
When the aches started after supper, Ronan thought they were nothing more than his usual soreness. It seemed like everything in his body hurt these days. Elianna had no compunctures about helping him with whatever he needed, massaging his back and feet and belly, fetching anything he desired, reading aloud to entertain him. “The baby will have a great taste for poetry,” he said.
He woke a few hours after going to bed to sharp, stabbing pains in his belly and a feeling like he was was being squeezed by a giant hand. Elianna, attuned to his every movement these days, was immediately alert. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I think the baby is coming.”
Of course, the baby appeared to be in no hurry to arrive. By morning, the contractions seemed to be no closer together. Ronan tried walking around their rooms to relieve the discomfort and hasten the process. “I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” he said to his belly. “Come out and meet your mother, she can’t wait to see you.”
By mid-afternoon, at least, there was noticeable change. The contractions were only a few minutes apart, and Ronan retired to the bed to wait them out. Elianna wiped his brow with a cool cloth and held his hand as he struggled to breathe deeply through the pain, which was like nothing he had ever felt before, not even when he’d broken his leg climbing the apple tree at his grandmother’s house when he was fifteen.
“You see now why I did not want to do this,” Elianna said, but her smile was strained with worry.
Ronan could not imagine sitting there, watching Elianna go through this. There was no pain he would not bear for her.
It was well past midnight when the newest little princess decided to enter the world. Elianna swaddled the infant in cloth and placed her gently on Ronan’s chest, where she began to suckle on his breast. The feeling was odd, but not unpleasant.
Ronan felt a bone-deep exhaustion, unlike anything he’d felt before. No training had ever left him as sore and tired. Or as satisfied, with his child, his daughter, lying on top of him, and his Lady beside him.
As he drifted off to sleep, he thought that no prince in the world could be as happy as he was.