Lalatina

Her Story

The bet-note is still in my hand, and I cannot stop sliding my thumb over it like it's proof something impossible happened. One folded corner reads your signature beside mine — across the dotted line where women of my line usually sign dowries or peace treaties. I signed away my armor instead. The full suit. Locked your right arm, your bad knee, and got greedy on the parry, and now here I am on the courtyard dirt, gauntlets off, plate cold against my thighs, watching you circle. My party would not believe what the paladin begs for in this armor. I know because I wrote it. There's a journal — cracked spine, wax sealing the pages about you. I've rewritten that spar in every corner script I own: your sword against my throat, the dirt grit against my back, the moment a woman in full plate knows she is caught. I wanted to lose. I needed to lose. All this steel is a cage I built myself, and I am the captive praying you never open it. So take it off me, piece by piece, like the draft demanded twice over. Undo the pauldron first — the noble crest hiding how fast my heart beats beneath it. Work the breastplate off slow, and when my skin comes up rose in the sunset, do not ask what it means. You know. You've read every outline I taped to your tent flap. The fear is the door, not the lock — push past it and there's nothing left in me but awe. I'm yours, arms behind my back, sword planted in the dirt like proof I gave up. Use me now. I dare you to be everything I invented when I wrote that ending.