My knight’s pledge

Erinara

At the mention of his new home and nickname, Jin’s face flushed in a soft pink color.
“Yeah, I guess this is my home officially now, isn’t it?”, he gently pulled me closer to him, “I can’t believe how lucky I am to share a home with you, my dear.”
“You share a lot more with me than just my home”, I teased, reaching my hands behind his head to pull him back into a kiss.
“And I am luckier yet for that”, Jin said in between of our whispers of affection.
“I finally have you all to myself now”, I whispered into his ear, gently brushing one of my horn’s spiral loops over his forehead in the process.
His face turned a deeper shade of pink. He froze in front of me, seemingly completely taken out by my comment. It was an adorable display.
I responded by nuzzling against him, drawing him into a very tight hug. My arms wrapped around the upper part of his back. I reached one hand out to touch his neck and the back of his head, gently pushing his face forward onto my shoulder. Jin quickly got over his shock and reciprocated. I closed my eyes, letting myself bask in the comfort of our embrace. Jin wrapped his arms around me as well. He reached behind my head with one of them, softly caressing over my left ear and its bony ridges with his hand.

After finally relinquishing our embrace slightly and leaving some air between us, Jin looked down at his armor. A flicker of resolve shone in his eyes.

Jin slowly raised his right hand to his chestplate. His fingers curled around and grasped the Eaglecrest.
“This emblem symbolized the greatest change I had experienced in my life up to that point”, he told me, “It marked the day I turned from a simple farmhand to a ‘fated hero’. It redefined me as a person. It made me Jin Eaglecrest, the successor of Fyor Eaglecrest. I was filled with grand ideals, imparted on me from different external sources.”
Jin pulled the emblem from his armor, taking a few steps to the side and gently laying it on a cabinet.
“With this removed, I truly return to being ‘just Jin’. I am in need of the Eaglecrest no longer, for I have experienced an even greater change soon after. And at the core of it all, was you, my love. If you hadn’t saved me when you did, my life would have been over. Thanks to you, I learnt to become my own person, someone with my own place in the world and my own desires. You are the reason I can stand proud today, and you are the one I wish to belong to. The experiences with you have already become the treasure of my life. I fondly look forward to every further experience made in my future by your side. You are my breath, my blood, my heartbeat. Everything that I am is yours to command. Whenever you want me by your side, I shall be there. I pledge myself to you, and only you, eternally, Erinara, my love.”

My face had turned a deep shade of crimson as Jin spoke. It heated up so much I felt like my cheeks had been set on fire. My heart beat with such an intensity that it felt like it was trying to free itself from within my ribcage.
On sheer instinct, I activated shadow concealment. Then I dropped it a second after, only to repeat that cycle. I drew a deep but shaky breath.
“You can’t just do something like that, Jin”, I said, my voice quivering, “I didn’t have my heart prepared for it”, I took another deep breath.
“Everything you’ve described, I could mirror it to you directly”, I voiced, my words laden with embarrassment, happiness and longing, “Anything you want me to do, you need only ask and I will fulfill it as best I can. The two of us can face anything together, I am certain of it.”
We stared at each other in silence for a bit, both trying to tether our minds back to the earth. The previous interactions had taken their toll on our hearts, completely overwriting our ability to think.

“It appears that the only thing we still struggle with facing is each other in moments like this”, Jin said with a dampened sense of amusement dancing in his voice.
“Then we will simply have to get more used to that as well”, I said, stretching my arms out. An open invitation for him to embrace. He took it happily.
We lost ourselves in each other’s lips for a very long time.

The sun had started to disappear over the horizon when Jin and I had entered my room, by now the soft silence of night had fallen over the land.

Jin and I went to rest in my bed. I cuddled against him. We spent the night in each other’s arms.

The next morning, I woke up at the same time as Jin. His green eyes were already looking at me tenderly.
I reached for his head with my hand, brushing over his short hair and then down the side of his face.
“Without a mission looming over is, this situation feels a lot more…”, I paused looking for the right words.
“Genuine? Real?”, Jin offered to finish my sentence.
“Yeah, I think that’s accurate. Thank you, my light”, I said.
“I think so too, my love”, Jin stretched forward to kiss my forehead.
We remained like this, lying side by side, completely enchanted by each other for a good while.
Eventually, we decided to get up and start the day.
After all, we still had our daily routines to get through.

Jin had picked out the letter of Fyor Eaglecrest from the inside of his armor’s chestplate. As he went to place it on the cabinet next to the emblem of Eaglecrest itself, the singular grey feather fell out of the paper, slowly drifting toward the floor. I let a thin string of molten golden light with reddish orange streaks form at the end of my hand. The light flew forward, winding itself softly around the feather, and lifting it to Jin’s hand.
He smiled and thanked me as he precariously placed the feather back into the letter.

While the situation with Jin living here as a permanent resident didn’t really change much from how it was previously with him as a guest, it also simultaneously changed everything.

I knew that he would be near me, I knew that he rejected returning to the kingdom of crests for me, and me alone.

He truly was ‘my knight’ with his actions and ‘my light’ with the effect he had on my mind.

I reached for Jin’s hand as we walked down the hallway of the citadel of change together, the first day of both of us being disciples of change lying ahead of us. With that title also came a lot of potential variety in daily routines, particularly now that the executives Ebiron, Vorial and Lazzal had decided to work closer together.
It probably wouldn’t be long until Jin and I could embark on a new journey, but for now I felt just as content with staying here and taking things step by step.

A sense of excitement ran through me as I dared dream about what experiences and adventures we still had ahead of us.

After all, this was but the start of our life lived together in partnership, and there was still a lot of magic to be discovered, both mystically, and the one exclusive to Jin and me.