Chapter Text
1375, Prague Castle, Bohemia
Sigismund 7 | Wenceslaus 14 | Markvart 15
The halls of Prague Castle were cooler than expected for a summer afternoon. Built of thick stone and royal precision, it held the heat at bay the way it held power — behind carefully measured walls. On the tapestries, saints watched from high places. Below them, politics played out with quieter colors.
Among the many nobles gathered for the summer court was Jan von Aulitz, lord of a modest holding in western Bohemia — a man whose name would never sit beside electors or kings, but one who had stayed in favor long enough to matter.
His lands were not vast, but they were old. The Aulitz bloodline stretched back to loyal knights under Přemyslid banners — a family known more for swords than for gold, for grit rather than silk. Jan had kept the family name in good standing through war, tact, and a refusal to overreach. That made him useful to kings.
He had brought his son, Markvart, along with him this time. He had ridden in at his father’s side, straight-backed in the saddle, wearing a red chaperon pulled low over his brow, the tail coiled neatly over one shoulder. It made him look older. More severe.
Charles IV, Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, was no fool. He ruled through chessboard vision — always planning two sons and three steps ahead. With Wenceslaus barely into adolescence, and Sigismund still clinging to the edge of childhood, the emperor had begun thinking about who might surround them when he no longer could.
He had asked for Markvart by name.
Not because of noble blood — Aulitz was minor, almost forgettable — but because of the boy’s reputation.
Even at fifteen, Markvart was already spoken of in court circles as a prodigy with the blade. Not graceful, not elegant — but dangerous. Practical. Exact. Soldiers at tournaments remembered the boy who shattered a noble’s shoulder in a sparring match, then offered him the splint afterward.
“If my sons are to be kings,” Charles had said, “let them learn what loyalty looks like when it stands on two legs and holds a sword.”
At least, that’s how it was told in court.
So now Markvart stood, not in court robes, but in the castle courtyard, sweating into the collar of his linen tunic, waiting beside a practice dummy. Not a guest. Not a servant.
A tool being appraised.
**
The clang of wooden swords echoed in the courtyard, dull thuds striking against the worn practice dummies and the thick summer air. Somewhere above, a falcon screamed — a sharp note that split the stillness. Sweat clung to Markvart’s brow as he stood at the edge of the practice yard, leaning slightly on the blunted training sword that felt laughably light in his hand. He’d long since grown past its weight.
A servant had pointed him here after his father vanished into the vaulted corridors with the Emperor’s steward. "The princes are out in the yard," the man had mumbled, as though that explained anything.
He hadn't expected to be left with them.
The older one — around Markvart's age, Wenceslaus — sat on a shaded bench, his thin legs crossed beneath his robes. A folio of vellum rested in his lap, and he was sketching a horse’s leg with the kind of focus that made Markvart uncomfortable. He didn’t look up even when the swordfight crashed just meters away.
The younger one — Sigismund — was a little red fox in velvet, shirt clinging to his back, curls darkened with sweat. He threw himself at the wooden training dummy with a kind of feral joy, growling and gritting his teeth like it was real steel in his hand. His blade struck the straw-stuffed torso again and again, knuckles white, eyes glowing with something not quite childish.
Markvart watched, arms folded.
"You're gripping it wrong," he said finally.
The prince froze. The dummy swung limply back from the last blow.
Slowly, Sigismund turned to face him, expression unreadable — not embarrassed, not angry. Just curious. His lips were a little parted, a flush across his cheeks. “Am I?” he asked.
Markvart stepped forward, already regretting opening his mouth. "You're forcing the swing from the shoulders. That’s fine if you want to hack wood. But a man’s not a tree. He moves. He strikes back."
Sigismund’s head tilted, fascinated. “Show me.”
Markvart hesitated. Wenceslaus turned a page in his book, never once looking up.
“Go on,” Sigismund said, stepping back and extending the sword hilt toward him with both hands — formal, almost reverent. He was small for seven, but wiry — and there was something in the way he held the blade. Not childish, not afraid. Like he meant it. It made Markvart’s stomach tighten.
He took the sword.
“The weight should fall into the line of the body,” Markvart said. “Here.”
With practiced ease, he adjusted his stance, raised the sword in a high guard, and let it fall with a whip-crack of motion that knocked the training dummy off its base. It hit the ground with a thud, straw bursting out at the seams.
Sigismund’s eyes widened, then narrowed. He looked at the fallen dummy as if it had dared to insult him.
“That’s how a knight strikes,” Markvart said.
"I will be a knight," Sigismund answered, tone flat, matter-of-fact. "Better than anyone."
"You’re a prince."
"And what is a prince," the boy said, stepping closer, “if he cannot fight for his crown?”
Markvart didn’t answer.
The boy stared at him, unblinking, as if memorizing the angles of his jaw, the slope of his brow. Something about the silence between them stretched — not awkward, but electric, like a sword just before it strikes.
Markvart cleared his throat and looked away.
“Try again,” he said, holding the sword out. “With your arms loose. Use the weight.”
Sigismund obeyed.
Wenceslaus sighed audibly from the bench, closing his folio with a snap. “You’re wasting your time, son of Aulitz. He doesn’t listen. He breaks everything.”
Sigismund ignored him completely. His next swing was better — too wide, but faster. The dummy staggered under the hit, and Sigismund beamed. Just a flash of teeth, but it lit something in his face. The air around him vibrated with that boyish, reckless pride.
Markvart couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Again,” he said — more command than suggestion now.
The boy’s swing came faster.
**
Sigismund swung again. A clean arc this time. Not perfect, but precise — the kind of improvement that came not from talent alone, but obsession. He was panting through his teeth when he lowered the sword, curls stuck to his forehead like black ink strokes.
Markvart stepped forward to the young prince without being asked. Quietly, he took the weapon from his hands.
“You learn fast,” he admitted, resting the blade on his shoulder.
“I watch,” Sigismund said. “And I remember.” He said it like a threat.
Wenceslaus finally rose from his bench, robes whispering as he crossed the courtyard, brushing his hand against the stone pillars like he was counting them. He glanced at Markvart once — a passing look, flat and unreadable — then settled near the edge of the practice yard.
“You’ll hurt yourself if you don’t pace,” he murmured to his younger brother. “There’s time enough for swords when you’ve grown some meat on your arms.”
“I don’t need meat,” Sigismund snapped. “I need edge. Markvart has it.”
That startled Wenceslaus — not the tone, but the name. He looked sharply at Markvart, as though realizing only now that he wasn’t a servant.
“You’ve met?”
“No,” Sigismund said before Markvart could speak. “But I’ve seen him.”
He turned back toward the older boy with that same unsettling intensity. “Your father brought you to court when I was a baby. I saw you. You looked bigger then.”
Markvart blinked. “You were swaddled in a blanket. You couldn’t possibly remember—”
“But I do,” Sigismund interrupted. “I remember your boots. They had black trim. No one else wore boots like that.”
Markvart stared at him.
The boy stepped closer, chest rising and falling. His eyes gleamed with a kind of madness that didn’t belong to children. “I remember everything.”
Wenceslaus let out a breath, quiet and exhausted. “God save us.”
Markvart lowered the sword.
“You’re sharp,” he said to Sigismund. “Too sharp, maybe. The world’s not a game of blades.”
“But blades win it.”
A silence fell between them. The air was hot, too dry. Far off in the corridors, a bell tolled once — lunch, perhaps, or the changing of guards.
Sigismund stood stiff as a drawn bowstring.
Markvart gestured toward a nearby stone bench. “Sit. Rest.”
But the boy didn’t move. Instead, he asked: “Do you think I’ll make a good king?”
The question dropped like a stone.
Markvart hesitated. He glanced at Wenceslaus, who had gone very still, hands folded in front of him, eyes narrowed just slightly.
Sigismund stepped forward again, and now he was so close that Markvart could see the freckles across his nose, the shine of sweat near his hairline, the delicate flutter of his lashes when he blinked.
“I want to be a warrior-king,” he said. “Like Alexander the Great.”
Markvart’s voice rasped, harsher than he intended: “You’d better hope the world lets you.”
Sigismund smiled — slow and predatory. “It won’t have a choice.”
There was no good reply to that. Markvart turned away, back toward the training dummy. It lay in a twisted heap on the ground, straw spilling from the seams like viscera.
“You should get your sword restrung,” he muttered.
“I’d rather get a real one,” Sigismund said behind him.
And then — unexpected — a hand curled lightly around the cuff of Markvart’s sleeve. Small fingers, still sticky with sweat and dirt.
“Will you show me again tomorrow?”
Markvart didn’t turn around. The warmth of the boy’s touch bled through the linen. It was nothing, really. Just a gesture. A child asking a favor.
But it clung to him like a claim.
He gave a slow nod. “If I’m still here.”
“You will be.”
And when Markvart finally glanced down, the boy’s fingers were still on his wrist, light as feathers. His eyes were locked onto him with a devotion that felt older than his years.
**
The castle halls after sundown were quieter than Markvart expected — not silent, but hushed in that thick, ceremonial way, like a chapel during prayer. Candles flickered in iron sconces, their flames curling shadows against the sandstone walls. The evening had cooled, but sweat still clung behind his neck from the hours spent in the yard.
He’d been trying to find his father. A page had mumbled something about wine with the royal steward and “not to be disturbed,” which was nobility’s way of saying stay out. So Markvart wandered instead — not aimlessly, but not with purpose either. He walked like a man who didn’t know what to do with stillness.
He passed tapestries of battles too stylized to be real — Bohemian knights with faces like saints, their swords glowing gold. None of it smelled like blood or fear. None of it rang like truth.
He rounded a corner and nearly collided with Wenceslaus.
The older prince had changed out of his robes and wore a simple tunic now, dark blue, laced at the collar. He held a rolled parchment in one hand and what looked like a half-eaten plum in the other.
Markvart stepped back. “Your Highness.”
Wenceslaus waved a hand. “Don’t bother. I’m not in the mood for titles.” He took a bite of the plum and wiped his hand on the tapestry beside him — some saint mid-beheading, now streaked with juice.
They stood in silence for a moment. The air smelled faintly of ink and summer rot.
“You’re from Aulitz,” Wenceslaus said finally, not as a question but a memory pulled from somewhere. “The castle by the woods.”
“My father’s holdings, yes.”
“You’re good with a sword.”
Markvart stiffened slightly. “I train.”
“I watched. You’re better than our instructors.”
Markvart didn’t reply.
Wenceslaus shifted, resting his back against the cold stone wall. “Sigismund likes you.”
That sentence sat in the air for a long time.
Markvart kept his eyes forward. “I don’t think he even knows me.”
“He will,” Wenceslaus said. He rolled the parchment between his fingers, then looked at it, scowled, and dropped it into a nearby brazier. The edges caught instantly.
“He’s a fire,” the prince went on, watching the flame eat through the vellum. “Always has been. He burns through toys. Burns through friends. He'll burn through this place, too, if you let him.”
Markvart said nothing. The warning sat uneasily in his gut, like a blade half-drawn. He didn’t like how certain Wenceslaus sounded. Didn’t like that he almost believed him. He looked away. “He’s a child.”
“No,” Wenceslaus said, quietly. “He only wears a child’s face.”
The paper blackened in the fire. Wenceslaus didn’t watch it burn — his eyes were on Markvart now. Cool, unreadable.
“Do you like him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“But you will.”
Markvart stiffened again.
Wenceslaus tilted his head. “Just… be careful what he sees in you. He collects things. But not for the joy of owning them.”
Markvart frowned. “Then why?”
Wenceslaus didn’t answer. He pushed off the wall, tossed the plum pit into the brazier with a soft plink, and walked past him.
At the end of the hall, he paused.
“Do you know what he asked our uncle last winter?”
Markvart turned his head.
“He asked what kind of poison worked fastest.”
Then Wenceslaus vanished into the dark, robes trailing behind like ink spilled across the stone.
**
The guest quarters were cold.
Not from draft or stone, but from the quiet — the kind of thick silence that settles when too many old walls press in at once. Markvart had left the door cracked. The fire had long died, but the faint orange light of torches still flickered in the corridor outside, their glow breathing gently across the floor.
He sat on the edge of the cot, half-dressed with his night cap, polishing the dull metal guard of his travel dagger with a square of linen. He wasn’t tired. He didn’t know how to be, in this place.
A soft knock. Not on the door — on the wooden frame just beside it.
He rose before he even registered the sound. Opened the door fully.
There he was again.
Sigismund. The red fox. Barefoot, in a thin linen nightshirt, curls tousled as if he’d been wrestling sleep. He looked up at Markvart without a word, eyes rimmed dark but sharp as ever.
“Your Highness, what are you doing here?” Markvart asked, low.
“I wanted to see your sword.”
Markvart stared. “It’s almost midnight.”
“I’m still awake.”
The boy stepped past him without waiting for permission. Like he owned the room. Like he owned him.
Markvart shut the door slowly.
Sigismund wandered over to the table where the sheathed sword lay across a folded traveling cloak. His fingers ran over the worn leather grip. He didn’t draw it — just touched. Lightly. Reverently.
“Is this the one you used in real battle?”
“Yes.”
“Against whom?”
“Bandits. Border raiders. Once, a robber knight.”
Sigismund turned to him then, hands still resting on the hilt.
“You’re not afraid of blood, are you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“A knight shouldn’t be.”
Markvart stepped forward, arms crossed. “And you?”
The boy’s mouth curled slightly. “I want to spill it. That’s different.”
Markvart froze — not from the words, but the calm with which they were spoken. Like it was a prayer.
“None should be unafraid of blood,” he said, quieter now. “Every killing is final. It costs something. Even for kings, Your Highness.”
Then Sigismund moved to him.
The shift was slow, deliberate — bare feet silent on the stone.
“You said I was sharp,” he whispered. “Sharper than I should be.”
“I said you learn fast.”
“You meant both.”
His small hand rose and touched the center of Markvart’s chest — just a press of fingers, nothing more. But the weight of it dragged everything downward. Like a seal. Like a brand.
“You’ll serve me one day,” he said softly. “Not my brother.”
Markvart looked down at him. “I serve your father.”
“You’ll outlive him.”
The silence felt like it pressed in from all sides.
“I’ll remember this,” Sigismund added. “Your sword. Your eyes when you promised you’ll teach me again.”
“You should sleep,” Markvart said, voice hoarse.
“I will. But not before you say it.”
Markvart frowned. “Say what?”
“That you’ll be mine.”
It wasn’t a command, but it wasn’t a question either.
Markvart said nothing.
And still, Sigismund smiled. The kind of smile a wolf might offer to a butcher — full of promise, not gratitude.
“I’ll make you kneel,” the boy said. “One day. Not to shame you. But because I can. And because you’ll want to.”
He touched the edge of his father’s signet ring to Markvart’s cheek, leaving the faint impression of the seal. A mark. A promise.
Markvart turned away — not because he was angry, but because he suddenly, horribly, wasn’t. A chill moved over his skin.
Behind him, the door opened.
Soft footsteps padded away.
Then silence.
Only after the torches in the corridor sputtered did Markvart realize he’d been holding his breath.
1378, Prague Castle, Bohemia
Sigismund 10 | Wenceslaus 17 | Markvart 18
It was three days after the death of Charles IV.
The bells tolled like a wound being struck.
Their sound rolled across Prague like thunder in a black sky — twenty-one deep-throated chimes from the tower of Saint Vitus, each one measuring the space between one breath and the next. Between one king and the next.
Markvart stood in the nave of the cathedral, unmoving. He had no tears for Charles IV. His father did — old Jan von Aulitz had wept openly during the processional mass, his hands trembling as he clutched his rosary. But Markvart had seen death too young, too often, for grief to come easily.
And yet.
There was something in the air that felt heavier than mourning. Not grief — expectation. The kind that made your skin crawl and your hands twitch toward the hilt of a blade.
Beside the altar, Wenceslaus knelt, draped in red and gold, his new crown a glinting weight on his bowed head. He looked like a boy wrapped in iron.
Sigismund stood behind him.
Not kneeling.
He was taller now, lean and wolfish. His ginger curls were no longer soft but tied back tight. Ten summers on him, and already his eyes scanned the gathered nobles like a tactician mapping a battlefield. He wore no visible grief — only calculation.
Markvart hadn't spoken to him yet. The Aulitz men had arrived only that morning, their horses still foaming, their cloaks still dusted with the road. There had been no time for reunions. Only silence, ritual, and the scent of lilies wilting beneath too many candles.
Now, the mass was ending. And Sigismund was moving.
He cut through the crowd like a knife — graceful, direct, not stopping to greet a soul. When his eyes found Markvart, he came faster. No smile. No hesitation.
He stopped too close.
“Come with me.”
No greeting. No title. Just that.
Markvart gave his father a glance. Jan was deep in prayer, eyes closed, lips moving.
He followed.
**
They walked the echoing halls of the cathedral’s cloister in silence. Footsteps whispered over the stones. Mourners’ voices drifted distantly behind them like smoke that couldn’t quite reach.
Sigismund didn’t speak until they reached a side chamber — a reliquary room lit only by a single stained-glass window and the gray-blue gloom of dusk.
He turned.
“It should’ve been me.”
Markvart didn’t answer. He stood straight, hands behind his back, his cloak still stained with road dust.
“Don’t lie to me,” Sigismund said, pacing now. “You’ve seen what he is. Wenceslaus. He barely speaks. He paints horses and forgets to eat. How will he wear a crown?”
Markvart’s voice was calm. “He is the firstborn.”
“So was Cain,” Sigismund hissed.
Silence.
Then softer, quieter: “If the realm is ruled by softness, it will rot. They call him pious, but it’s not piety. It’s cowardice dressed in incense.”
Markvart allowed the outburst to hang, unchallenged. Then: “This isn't a contest.”
“It should be.”
And then he turned to him fully, eyes like flint, voice cutting low.
“Tell me true. If kingship were earned — if it were given not by blood but merit — would it be mine?”
Markvart held his gaze.
He wanted to say nothing. He wanted to say no. But then he remembered that face from three years ago — the barefoot boy pressing fingers to his chest, whispering that he would kneel. The boy had become a storm, and storms didn’t ask for truth — they demanded loyalty.
“You would win it,” Markvart said finally, “by force, if not favor.”
A long breath from Sigismund. A flicker of something like satisfaction.
“I want you with me when I do,” he said.
Markvart frowned. “Do what?”
“Take back what’s mine.”
He stepped forward, and this time he didn’t stop at polite distance. He came so close their chests nearly touched.
“Do you remember what I said the first day we met?”
Markvart’s throat felt dry. “You threatened to make me kneel.”
Sigismund smiled — not a grin, but something darker. “That wasn’t a threat.”
And before Markvart could step back, the prince sank suddenly, gracefully, to one knee.
Not the soldier kneel. Not the knight’s bow.
This was theatrical — reverent, almost perverse.
Sigismund looked up at him, one hand raised.
“Now you.”
Markvart didn’t move.
Sigismund’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Kneel. I command it.”
“I’m not your servant.”
“You will be.”
Markvart’s jaw locked. But there was something in the room now — not fear, not awe, but gravity. Like this moment would be remembered in years, in chapters, in songs if Sigismund got his way.
Slowly, he bent the knee.
And when he was level, eye to eye, Sigismund reached out. Fingers — still a boy’s hand, but lean, cold — cupped his chin. Tilted it upward.
“You’ll be my hetman,” he said. “You’ll kill for me. Die for me.”
His thumb pressed against Markvart’s lips.
“And when I am king,” he whispered, “I will not ask for loyalty.”
A beat. And then—
“I will take it.”
**
That night, the Aulitz stayed in the guest quarters of the Prague Castle.
The cot was too short for Markvart, eighteen and already built like a man grown.
Markvart lay staring at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head, boots still on. The stone walls around him felt like they leaned inward the longer he stayed awake. It was the same room from three years ago, though the cot had been replaced, the tapestries newer, the sword on the table now his own — longer, sharper, well-used.
But the weight in the air? The pressure?
That hadn’t changed.
He hadn't spoken of the kneeling. Not to his father, not to the guards, not even to himself. But he felt it lodged behind his teeth like a memory of heat. The press of fingers on his chin. The way the boy — no, the prince — had said “I will take it,” like a knife sliding between ribs.
It wasn’t childish anymore.
It was ritual.
There was a knock at the door.
Soft. Three times. Too soft for a guard. Too deliberate for accident.
He knew before he opened it.
Sigismund stood in the hallway — still dressed in black from the funeral mass, though the coat was open now, the silk shirt beneath slightly crumpled. He looked less like a prince and more like a storm trapped in fine clothing.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, voice flat.
Markvart stepped aside. He didn’t invite him in. But Sigismund walked past him anyway.
He stopped in the center of the room, looking around as if measuring something invisible. The candlelight cast his shadow against the wall, long and sharp, like a sword raised mid-swing.
“Did I frighten you earlier?” he asked suddenly.
“No, my prince.” Markvart said.
Sigismund glanced back over his shoulder. “Then why didn’t you say no?”
Markvart blinked.
“To the kneeling,” Sigismund clarified. “You could’ve laughed. Called it childish. But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t think it was a joke.”
Sigismund’s eyes narrowed, then softened — but not with kindness. With calculation.
“You understand me,” he said.
Markvart leaned against the wall, arms folded. “I understand what you want.”
“Same thing.”
“No,” Markvart said quietly. “Understanding desire isn’t the same as feeling it.”
Sigismund approached slowly. His footsteps were soft, almost soundless. His eyes flicked once to Markvart’s mouth, then back to his eyes. His voice was low.
“You don’t want to serve me?”
Markvart met his gaze, unblinking. “I want peace. I want what’s best for Bohemia.”
Sigismund smiled — and it was a strange, crooked thing. “There is no peace for men like us.” He was only ten, yet already called himself a man. It was unsettling, that gravity in one so young — a hint of something dangerous taking root.
He was closer now. So close Markvart could smell the faint scent of old incense on him, mixed with sweat and court perfume. One hand lifted — not to touch, but to hover, fingers inches from Markvart’s jaw.
“I’ll be more than Wenceslaus ever could,” he whispered.
“I know,” Markvart answered. And he did. He knew it in the way one knows when a storm’s about to break.
“I want you there when I do,” Sigismund said again. “Not because you have to be. But because I choose you.”
There was a silence.
Then Markvart asked, voice flat: “Why me?”
Sigismund didn’t hesitate.
“Because I saw you wield your sword before I even knew what power was. Before I had anything. And I wanted you even then.”
His fingers finally touched Markvart’s cheek — just briefly. A brush. Not tender. Not testing. Just… certain.
“I’ll never forget that,” he said.
And then he turned, walked out, and left the door open behind him.
1387, St. Stephen's Basilica, Székesfehérvár, Hungary
Sigismund 19 | Markvart 27
Hungarian bells rang differently — sharp, high, and triumphant, like a blade drawn over stone. Their peals spilled over the red-tiled rooftops of Székesfehérvár, echoing through alleys still slick with trampled petals, spilled mead, and the sweat of restless soldiers. The people cried "Éljen a király!" in a dozen dialects, voices thick with wine, wonder, and wariness. Markvart barely understood the words — but he understood the tone.
And above it all: the bastard boy — nineteen now — was now a crowned king.
Sigismund of Luxembourg, second son of Charles IV, stood crowned beneath a foreign sky, not by sheer inheritance, but by maneuver — marriage to the queen, bribes to the lords, promises to the magnates, and the subtle threat of steel where words failed. There had been no decisive battle, no blood-soaked charge. But the blood had still been spent — in the margins, behind doors, in exchanges too costly to name aloud.
Markvart watched from the edge of the procession, among the Bohemian contingent — knights, envoys, noble cousins, all standing politely as if they weren’t watching a boy they once mocked now being gilded by a foreign crown.
Markvart was nearly thirty now. A man with a name that no longer needed introduction in most of Bohemia. Moustached, sharp-jawed, armor polished but unadorned. His chest bore Bohemian crest and nothing else. No cloak. No flourish. Just steel, leather, and a red chaperon that cast his face in constant shadow.
A knight’s attire. Not a lord’s. Not a courtier’s.
That was no accident. It was a statement.
When Sigismund had summoned the Aulitz to Hungary for the coronation, Markvart’s father had understood the obligation. Nobles bow to crowns, even inconvenient ones.
But when the newly crowned king had taken Jan aside and announced that Markvart would not be returning to Bohemia, that he was to remain in Buda, to take post under the Hungarian crown, the father had gone pale.
But he didn’t protest. How could he?
You don’t protest a king. Especially not when your family has two towers and a crumbling river road and nothing else to bargain with.
Sigismund had taken Markvart’s fate in the same tone he might take a horse, or a sword — admiring the form, not asking permission.
Markvart hadn’t spoken to him in person since they arrived. Not until this moment — after the crown was settled, after the cheering had died down, after the priests receded like shadows into smoke.
Now, in the quiet halls behind the basilica, he stood before the new King of Hungary — just the two of them.
And Sigismund smiled like the blade of a dagger unsheathed.
“You came,” he said, voice low, rich with the weight of too many tongues, too many lessons. He wore the crown still — not heavy on him at all.
“I wasn’t given a choice.”
“You could’ve fled.”
“Would you have let me?”
“No,” Sigismund said. “But I’d have enjoyed chasing you.”
He stepped forward, close enough for the candlelight to catch the faint line of an old scar along his cheek. He wore no armor, only the ceremonial crimson with the Holy Crown of St Stephen worked in gold thread across the breast, shimmering like sunlight on relics. Beneath the collar, just visible in the candlelight, a pendant of double-tailed lion of Bohemia gleamed against his chest — a memory of where he had come from, and what he had not yet given up. His eyes glittered like wine in candlelight.
Markvart didn’t bow. He stood tall.
“You summoned me here for service,” he said.
Sigismund gave a little tilt of the head. “Service, yes. But not the kind you’ve given others. Not just swords and blood and silence. I’ve enough dogs in mail.”
Markvart tensed. “Then what?”
Sigismund stepped closer — and this time his hand rose, fingers brushing the clasp of Markvart’s cloak, just barely.
“I remember your sword arm,” he said softly. “I remember your chest in the sun. I remember how the sweat rolled down your neck when you were too proud to wipe it.”
Markvart’s jaw clenched.
“And I remember,” Sigismund added, “when you knelt for me. Not because of God. Because of me.”
Markvart’s voice was low. “That was ten years ago.”
“I’ve not forgotten a breath of it.”
The air between them shifted. Not tension — something worse. Intimacy without kindness.
“I want you with me, Markvart,” Sigismund said. “In this palace. In the councils. In the field. Not as a knight. Not even as a general.”
Markvart stepped back — not out of fear, but clarity.
“Then what am I?”
Sigismund’s smile returned — slow, almost wistful, but too sharp at the edges.
“You’re proof,” he said. “Proof that I chose the right blade when I had nothing to offer but a name.”
He paused. Then, quieter:
“You don’t belong to Bohemia. You belong to the future.”
And then — without ceremony — he reached for the hilt of his sword.
Markvart’s hand twitched instinctively to his own.
“You once knelt for me,” Sigismund said, drawing the blade in a smooth, fluid arc that shimmered briefly in the candlelight. “Now rise with me.”
Steel rang against scabbard.
“Show me what ten years have made of you.”
**
They fought in the practice court behind the stables — far from the banquet halls, where the royal party feasted and roared drunk on wine and victory. Out here, only shadows watched. Long and lengthening. No audience but the fading light.
Sigismund wielded a longsword now. A proper blade. He was taller than Markvart remembered — broader, too — no longer a boy asking to be shown, but a man who had taken what he wanted.
His strikes came fast, strong. But impatient. The movement of someone used to being obeyed, not challenged. His footwork was good — not great. Too much ambition, not enough restraint. He moved with the confidence of one who knew no one dared wound him.
Markvart parried a high swing, twisted, locked blades with him, steel singing between them.
“You’ve learned,” he muttered, breath close.
“And you’ve aged,” Sigismund shot back.
A laugh escaped Markvart’s lips — brief, real, bitter. “Not enough to let you win.”
Sigismund surged forward again, more reckless. The air cracked with motion. The two met in a fury of sparks and gritted gravel, blades dancing, boots skidding. For a moment it was like the yard in Prague all over again — the boy who had growled at straw dummies, and the young man who hadn’t known he was pulled by the collar into games.
But that boy now wore a crown.
And when Sigismund overreached — just for a second — Markvart swept his leg from beneath him, slammed him down, and pointed his sword tip at the king’s throat.
Both men panted. One on the ground, one standing. Their breath fogged in the cooling air. Silence stretched.
Sigismund didn’t flinch. His eyes locked onto Markvart’s — not anger, not humiliation. Something deeper. Unmoved. Undeterred. Unbowed.
“I want you in my bed tonight,” he said.
Voice low. Certain.
Like he’d been waiting to say it since the first blow landed.
**
The chamber doors were open when Markvart arrived.
Open — like a trap set with silk and firelight.
No guards at the door. No servants. Only the low flicker of braziers dancing along the carved stone, and the smell of musk, wine, and something more human — sweat dried into silk, skin still warm.
Sigismund was half-naked on the edge of the bed.
He wore only a sleeveless shirt, laced loose down the chest, his legs bare from mid-thigh downward. His hair had been washed and left to fall around his shoulders — red-bronze, still damp, clinging to his neck. The crown was gone. What sat on that bed was not the King of Hungary.
It was the boy who’d once pressed his fingers to Markvart’s chin and whispered he would kneel.
Only now the hand could crush a man's throat.
"You came," Sigismund said.
Markvart didn't answer.
He shut the door behind him with the same calm he used to sheath a sword.
"You said you wanted service," he said flatly.
Sigismund's mouth curled. "And you'll give it?"
Markvart stood tall. “Command it.”
That did something to the king. Sigismund’s nostrils flared. He stood — slow, steady, as if rising not from rest but from a throne.
“You’ve no idea,” he murmured, “how long I’ve waited to own you.”
Markvart didn’t move. His breath had settled into something shallow, his eyes unreadable. “Then take what you’ve claimed.”
His voice was hard. But the tension under his skin betrayed him — the way his hands twitched near the belt, the way his breath wasn’t quite steady. Not fear. Not lust.
Readiness.
Resignation.
Something between a vow and a dare.
Sigismund approached him, cupping his jaw. His thumb dragged slowly across the curve of it, then lingered at the corner of Markvart’s mouth. Affectionate. Or possessive. Or both.
“God, you aged beautifully,” he murmured, the words soft but full of teeth. “That moustache—how cute.”
“You’ve grown too, Your Majesty,” Markvart replied, evenly.
He looked at the red fox. Nearly twenty now. As tall as Markvart, shorter than him only by half an inch. Red stubble blooming across his chin like fire that hadn’t learned control. The heat in his face had sharpened — cheekbones rising, the softness of childhood burned away. The boy had become something dangerous.
Sigismund’s hand rose to Markvart’s head.
Without asking, he lifted the chaperon away.
There was a pause.
“So that’s what you’ve been hiding,” Sigismund said with a half-laugh. “Bald as marble. That explains the hat.”
There was no mockery in it. Only delight. And then he moved behind him.
Close. So close, Markvart could feel the heat of his breath across his neck before it reached his skin. Fingers unfastened the clasp of his cloak. The fabric dropped. A sound like a sigh. It pooled at his feet.
Then came the belt.
Then the laces at the tunic’s collar — slow, deliberate. Drawn out like a blade being unsheathed.
Sigismund wasn’t hasty. He wasn’t clumsy. He unwrapped him like something hard-won. A gift long desired. Touched only after the hunger had aged into something sharper.
Markvart didn’t move. Didn’t look at him.
He stared at the wall, jaw set, breath low in his chest.
The tunic slipped down his shoulders. Down his back.
And the candlelight revealed him.
All hard muscle and battle-worn grace. Pale skin stretched over broad shoulders, the curve of his spine marked with old scars. His chest was sculpted and bare — not just shaven, but entirely hairless, from collarbone to ankle. Not a strand across his chest, nor under his arms, nor down the sharp line of his legs.
The smoothness was unnatural. Unsettling. As if he’d been carved, not born. A white plane of skin beneath the soft pink of his nipples, which stiffened under the chill… and the king’s gaze.
“Porcelain,” Sigismund said, voice like broken glass. “A knight’s body with a eunuch’s skin.”
He stepped closer. His eyes dragged over every inch.
“You are full of surprises, Markvart,” he said, voice curling at the edges. “What else are you hiding?”
Markvart spoke without turning. “I have hid nothing, sire.”
That was the game.
He never had to lie.
He just never had to want.
The king’s hands moved down his back — as if touch alone could memorize the body he’d dreamt of since boyhood. He traced the line of muscle to the curve of Markvart’s waist, then lower, cupping him like he owned him.
Markvart didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak. Just stood, breathing slow and shallow.
“You used to hold me back with one hand,” Sigismund whispered, breath hitching against his neck. “You remember that?”
“I do,” Markvart said. Even now, his voice didn’t tremble.
Sigismund’s fingers dug in. “I wanted to be that hand. I wanted to be strong enough for you to want me.”
“You’re a king now.”
“I’m still that boy.” His mouth brushed Markvart’s nape—barely a kiss. A confession. “But I’m also the man who gets to touch you. Who will kiss you.”
Markvart turned slightly, just enough to meet his gaze. Eyes dark, unreadable.
“Say something,” Sigismund murmured, kissing the edge of his jaw. “Say you feel this.”
“I feel your need.”
A breath passed between them. Hot. Dangerous. Like a torch lit too close to oil. Then another kiss — deeper, wetter. Hungrier. Trailing heat down his neck.
“I want you open,” he said, voice raw. “I want your mouth, your cunt, your everything. I want to fuck you until you forget who taught me war.”
Markvart’s head tipped back, barely, a breath away from surrender.
Sigismund’s cock twitched under the linen. He stepped forward, chest pressed to Markvart’s back, and slid one hand down — lower — until his fingers curled around the knight’s cock.
Markvart closed his eyes. Breathed in.
Sigismund leaned in, lips to his ear, and said:
“You’re going to open your legs for me, soldier.”
**
Markvart gripped the edge of the bedframe. His knuckles were white against the carved wood.
Behind him, Sigismund’s breath grazed the back of his neck like a threat.
The king’s cock pulsed against his cleft, thick and leaking, already nudging the tight ring of his hole with no patience for ceremony.
“You’re quiet,” Sigismund murmured.
Markvart didn’t speak. He kept his gaze on the wall ahead, jaw locked.
The king's hands slid over his back — palms broad, possessive — down to the smooth skin of his flanks. He wasn’t marveling. He was measuring, claiming. They slid down over muscle and scars, following every line like a map of territory newly conquered.
Then those hands rose again.
And cupped his chest.
Callused fingers found Markvart’s nipples — pale, pink-tipped, small against the breadth of his chest — and rolled them, slow. Then pinched. Hard.
Markvart hissed between his teeth.
Sigismund leaned forward, lips brushing his ear. “No hair. No scars here. Just these pretty little teats.”
He twisted them between thumb and forefinger, rubbing slow circles until the flesh swelled and stiffened. Markvart’s arms shook. A low grunt escaped him, unwilling, animal.
“Look at you,” Sigismund said. “Moaning like a whore… but limp like a gelded horse.”
He glanced down and saw Markvart’s cock lay heavy and weary against his thigh, soft, unpersuaded. In another life that would have stung the boy king's pride. In this one it pricked something closer to amusement.
He wrapped a hand around it regardless, thumb slow, palm rough, giving a gentle stroke, then another. It thickened a little under his grip, half-hard when coaxed. A failing candle that flared only when cupped, then fell back to ember the moment it was let go. When he let go to brace himself, it softened quickly, as if relieved to be left alone.
Markvart gasped — a broken breath, sharp and too high — and his hips twitched forward.
A thick finger ran under his balls. His shaft twitched, half-hard now, but weak — like it wanted to rise but lacked the will.
Yet it leaked. A slow, shameless dribble of clear precum down the length of his soft cock like a secret trying to spill.
Sigismund wondered if it was possible for a man to come like a woman—wet, trembling, leaking without ever getting hard. And if so, then Markvart was shuddering beneath him more like a woman than a man.
Sigismund groaned. “You’re dripping from your tip like a cunt. Do you even need to get hard to come? Or do you milk yourself like a bitch in heat?”
“Just—” Markvart managed, words shredding, “just finish yourself, sire. Don’t… waste your strength… making me what I’m not.” He panted, words tattered.
“I will.”
Sigismund pushed in.
The head of his cock forced the tight ring of Markvart’s ass open with no care for tenderness — only spit and heat, no oil, no delay. The stretch burned. Dry, raw, sharp like a blade’s edge. Markvart’s muscles clenched, then gave, slow and brutal.
“God, you’re tight,” Sigismund hissed under his breath. “You were made for this.”
Markvart groaned, pressing his forehead to the wood, eyes shut, breathing like a man under a siege he’d chosen not to fight. His nipples throbbed. His cock swung useless between his legs, soft, wet, and pulsing.
Sigismund drove in deeper — hips meeting ass, balls slapping. He thrust again, again, hard enough to jolt Markvart’s body forward against the bed.
His hand slid around — gripped the knight’s cock. Soft. Dripping.
“You haven’t even gotten hard. And you’re leaking all over my fucking hand.”
Markvart grunted, hips twitching involuntarily.
“You like this? Getting used like a bathhouse whore while your cock hangs soft like a broken thing?”
Sigismund squeezed.
Markvart moaned.
“I said do you like it?”
Markvart hissed between his teeth. “I like… serving the dynasty. That’s what I was made for.”
That made Sigismund snap.
It was a breath. A broken whisper. The sound of pride cracking like ice under heat.
“Say you are mine,” Sigismund said, low.
Markvart stared straight ahead. “I serve the House of Luxembourg, sire.”
“No, say you belong to me. Not Wenceslaus. Not Bohemia. Me.”
Markvart’s jaw flexed. He held his breath, then: “I serve the House of Luxembourg.”
Sigismund’s hands tightened. “You will serve me. Only me.”
His thrusts grew erratic, savage. His chest stuck to Markvart’s back, sweat running down both of them in a sheen of ownership.
And then — the twitch. The thick pulse. The sharp groan against his neck.
Sigismund came inside him with a low snarl, cock jerking deep. Markvart felt it — the heat, the pressure, the thick stream of it filling him like possession made liquid.
But Sigismund didn’t stop.
His hand pumped the knight’s cock — wet, soft, obscene. Fingers teasing the slit, rubbing circles at the base of the head.
Markvart tried to hold it back.
But the tension snapped.
His thighs shook as his body spilled — not in a hard burst, but in a slow, helpless dribble, leaking down over Sigismund’s hand and onto the floor. His cock barely twitched as it came, soft all the way through.
Sigismund laughed darkly behind him. “You come like a fucked-out maid.”
He pulled out with a squelch — his seed dripping down the knight’s ass, thick and white.
Markvart didn’t move, hope gaping, red and raw.
The wood creaked under his weight. His chest heaved. His nipples throbbed. His cock hung wet and still.
Markvart nodded once, lips parted, chest still heaving.
He didn’t wipe himself.
He didn’t speak. There was nothing worthy saying.
He knew what kind of man Sigismund was now — nineteen years old, drunk on crown and conquest, full of fire and certainty, and too proud to understand refusal. A boy made king who had mistaken possession for bond, and obedience for love.
So Markvart said nothing.
Instead, he just stood there — his breath slowing, cock wet and limp, thighs streaked with another man’s release, his hole raw and open where the king had claimed him.
Still, silent, and loyal. As ever.
And he waited for the next command.
Sigismund stepped back and looked at him — a man ruined and radiant in obedience.
“Clean yourself,” he said. “Then sleep in my chamber. I’ll have you again before dawn.”
Markvart nodded once.
“Yes, sire.”
He didn’t even look back.