Knight 'n Gale

Chapter 11

"No way, no way... no fucking way!" Cedar could only curse in silence with a distant look plastered across his face.

The news of being betrothed to the Crown Prince was a huge shock to him.

Looking at his dumbfounded expression, Alexander gave a light chuckle as he sat beside his knight.

As Cedar felt his movement, he automatically sat up as if there's a spring on his back in an attempt to avoid the prince.

However, as his vessel was still weak, he got dizzy and fell back, only to be caught by Alexander's arm.

"Ohoh~ being jumpy already?" The Prince asked, his voice full of amusement. "Don't worry. I won't do anything to you..." Then he smiled at him while their face were only a few inches away. "For now, that is."

Cedar momentarily blushed but frowned after. "Your Highness, that... that's a given. Since we're both males. Haha..." With an awkward laugh, he tried to calm his racing heartbeat.

"Hm?" In a casual manner, Alexander held Cedar's face with his right hand, tilting it so that their eyes will meet. "But this kind of relationship isn't unheard of. Besides, we've been together for so long. We even had baths together before and--"

"Stop right there." Cedar interrupted him as he turned his head and withrew himself from Alexander. "This... this is ridiculous... why would I become your fiancé? When did that happen?"

Aren't you and Cedar sworn brothers? The best of friends? When did it become a romantic relationship?

While Cedar was questioning him, the door opened and a familiar figure came in.

"I can explain the details to you." A tall, beautiful guy with long, silky, mint hair wearing a white robe walked closer.

"Kuk!" Cedar was confounded. It was clearly the screenwriter he's working with before he died! "Ky--"

"Good evening, your highness..." Thankfully, he cut him short as Cedar was about to blurt out another name.

For a moment, their eyes met and they both paused for a second.

"Your higness, the Royal Secretary is waiting for you." The doppelganger of the screenwriter bowed before the Prince.

The Crown Prince gave a sigh as he smiled at Cedar. "Well then, I will leave you for now."

As Alexander passed by the white-robed man, he stopped briefly and patted his shoulder. "Fill him up with the details. I'll leave him to you."

"As you wish, your royal highness."

Alexander kept an eye on him for a while without uttering a word. On the other hand, the blonde guy remained unperturbed until the Prince went out of the door.

He then turned to Cedar before extending a hand.

"I'm Yrhan Evviar." He introduced himself. "I am a high priest of the Elven race and I happen to be inside the palace when the commotion started."

Cedar was still in a daze for he wasn't used to Yrhan's thick voice. In his memories as Gale, this elven high priest is Kylie Dawn. A gentle and soft-spoken person.

A female.

"Hey, are you listening to me?" His face suddenly popped up in a hair's breadth. His demeanor changed 180 degrees from what he showed to his highness as his tone towards Cedar was laced with irritation.

"Yes!" He got startled that he unconsciously spoke in English.

Hearing this, Yrhan's eyebrows twitched and as he straigtened up. He asked with a doubtful tone. "Oi, are you sure that she's gonna be ok?"

"She'll be ok. Just let her organize her thoughts and don't scare her with your dagger looks." A ball of light suddenly materialized into a tiny figure, revealing a palm-sized Caerus.

"It's you!" Cedar beamed at the mini god who flew to him and was now sitting on his hands.

"Yep. It's me. And this grumpy kid is the only one who can keep your vessel from deteriorating."

"I'm not a kid, you chibi god!" Yrhan protested.

"...though he's a bit disrespectful at times, he's a good kid." After hitting Yrhan's head with an over-sized steel hand armor over his fist, Caerus grinned at her. "Back to our topic, this high priest here will be staying with you."

"Does that mean that he--"

"Yes, I know your circumstances." Yrhan cut him short yet again. "Thanks to you, my peaceful days had ended."

"Don't mind him. He already rested his ass for three hundred years so it's about time I put him to work."

'Th-Three hundred years old and you called him a kid? What am I? A fetus?" He thought but didn't voiced it out.

"Anyway, your vessel took a large amount of poison and we couldn't expel it out of your system. More over, if we used Asclepius' powers to heal and revive your male form, the fragment of your soul will be extinguished and the original soul will return. Meaning, if your sense as Cedar returned, Gale will perish." Caerus explained.

"Wha-what do you mean? Isn't this me as well?"

"That's exactly the reason why." Yrhan chimed in. "Even though you have a doppelganger in the multiverse and every single entity is a piece of a single soul, the consciousness varies. You were only able to live because one of your vessel had lost its soul fragment because it's already his time to depart and you only gained his memories because of Hecate's magic that allowed you to use the information left within his brain."

Looking at Cedar intently listening, he continued, "You can think of it as a large water jar. The water inside is the soul. Then it was poured into multiple cups. Those cups were the fragments, distributed in each universe. Since one cup had been returned to the jar and was empty, the water that was from another broken cup was able to be saved. However, the drained cup had cracks and was about to break as well since it already served its purpose. So, when it came in contact with the death-god Thanatos, the cracks became bigger and without my powers and the Prince's rare blood to bind you, you will surely die."

"What? The Prince also had something to do with it?" He asked with a confused face. "Does he--"

"No, he doesn't know that your consciousness was the female counterpart of his knight." Again, Yrhan interrupted him. "However, what he knows is that if he didn't cooperate with me, you'll turn into a mist of blood before him."

Cedar kept quiet for a while, still trying to understand everything the high priest elf had told her.

"The Prince... what did he do to save me?" He mumbled.

Cedar abruptly glanced up when an information from the original host's memories popped up inside his head. "Wait, is that the reason why I became his betrothed?"

"Yes." This time, it was Caerus. "As you might already know, there are some peculiar laws and tradition in this world. One of that is when two persons consumed each other's blood, they will be bound to each other for eternity."

Hearing this, Cedar was stumped. How could he not know? In Cedar's memories, it was a common thing in a wedding for a couple to place a drop of their blood in a cup of red wine before drinking it together.

It's not just a matter of being betrothed. Doing so means marriage!

"What the hell?" He could only laugh dryly. For a Crown Prince to do such a bold move just to save his knight... she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

(A/N: The explanation about the soul/gods/multiverse/etc. in this story is, although quite similiar, it is entirely different from what you can google so do not expect a factual information. XD

Thank you for reading!)