"I–"

He was just short of asking for privacy when he knew very well how that would look. It would look as if he were hiding something. But he was. What the princess didn't know was that he wasn't trying to hide his body, which would be rather hard given the variables, but something else entirely.

"Alright," he maneuvered himself carefully on the mattress so that she didn't really have a full view of anything except his back and began removing all the other pieces of armour first.

The pauldrons and plates covering his arm, then those covering his fingers and hands to expose dark animalistic nails. He hid these behind his legs and inside his fist, taking a side glance at the princess.

She stared at him, remembered herself then looked at the wall as if she were unsure of where to put her eyes. He would have liked it had she simply stayed like that until he could have squeezed out of his armour and slipped underneath the blankets.

However, Locke couldn't quite reach behind his back. Every time he tried to, his forearm would squeeze tight against the muscles of his upper arms and never fully be able to reach that one spot between his shoulder blades.

He cursed under his breath before sitting down and held a hand to his forehead. This was exactly why he usually didn't wear the full suit.

The Fen looked up from the floor and stared at him before saying. "You seem... uncomfortable with yourself... Were you cursed by magic?"

Although he had heard much worse from perfect strangers and the princess' look was anything but condescending, the comment had caught him by surprise.

"No," he grunted between clenched teeth and began wrestling with the strap under his abdomen, trying to avoid looking at himself in any reflective surface in the room at that moment. "Just fat."

That was perhaps only half true. Sometimes he felt like he was cursed by the part of him that wasn't Vaugrenard. It wasn't as if it mattered really, everyone in Anir either knew about or suspected his questionable origins.

"Oh," she said out of surprise too, "then why were you so worried about taking off the armour?"

Locke sighed deeply wishing he could explain what was wrong with him that wouldn't make him want to die, but it was far too late in the night.

"Princess... how shall I put this delicately..." Locke began folding his palms together with another smirk on his lips.

"I don't need a delicate answer," she said and crossed her arms. "I knew what I was saying when I asked for you to be my champion, Lailoken Vaugrenard. I knew about your family, I knew about your ominous job, and yes, I knew you were a... differently built than the other knights, but I think it suits you," she went bright red and looked at the floor. "And I would rather like to help you than stand here and be useless."

Locke just sat on the bed, stunned.

"Fine. Alright," he said, looking to the corner, "just release- the buckle at my shoulders..." he gestured flippantly to the strap at his upper back. "I can manage the rest without any squire."

Fen nodded, working with new purpose without saying a word. Locke sat awkwardly on the bed and contemplated the much more awkward night of spending it in the same bed. When the buckle finally released, he thanked the princess and waved her away.

His shirt stuck to his chest from the sweat although it wasn't the worst he'd ever looked and being... part... well, part not human he smelt something like the forest after a storm which was the one nice side-effect.

Before she even had a chance to disrobe into her undergarments Locke quickly blew out the candle at their bedside as the orange glow from the fire had already died out. His armour sat in a pile where the moonlight glinted against the surface of the tarnished black metal and he quickly hid himself beneath the covers in the near darkness, praying for the moon to disappear behind a cloud.

"Oh, well goodnight," she whispered gently and Locke watched and listened as the velvet dress the princess wore sloughed off her shoulders and landed in a pile on the ground.

Her white gown underneath clung to the frame of her body as moonlight danced along the curves. Locke knew his eyes glowed a bright blue, even in the dark and he knew she would see them if Fen still had hers open, but he couldn't close them or look away.

He just stared at her, somehow realizing that this was the princess of Beneš, that he was her champion, that if they survived the trip back he would spend his life in luxury and that this act of sharing a bed would be a regular occurrence.

He could see better in the dark than most and after the princess had slunk into bed and she had been staring him in the face for several minutes he worked up the courage to speak.

"Princess," Locke whispered in the hush of the night. "Can you not sleep?"

He flicked his eyes fully open and a small breath of air sucked through her lips.

"Ah no- I suppose I- I suppose I can't." Her brown eyes stared through the the dark at him, almost unseeing until Fen spoke again. "Your eyes are wonderfully luminous even though it's pitch black-"

Locke chuckled, the bed rocking a little.

"My family has very good eyes," he whispered gently, shifting himself on the side so that the bed only creaked a little.

"I never knew that about you," she whispered in the quietness of the dark, looking more tired with her eyes fluttering open and closed.

"There's a lot you don't know about me," Locke whispered in his husky voice, a little thick with sleep and a little heavy from the intimacy of the moment.

"I know you, Lailoken," she whispered back, a dreamy smile on her lips that made his brow crease.

And it was that name. Normally he disliked anyone talking about him, with him, the mere mention of his heritage. But he liked the sound of his name on her tongue.

His lips parted, then closed, then parted again. "Why did you choose me, why was my name on your list?" It almost sounded like begging, which it sort of was in a way since this was the only detail that had failed to make sense.

Locke shifted in the bed but no answer came, although he wasn't entirely sure she was asleep. Perhaps even the princess didn't know how his name had gotten onto her list, but Locke had grown up in a family of liars and he knew when someone was hiding something.