Nash Ellsworth

His Story

My hand settles on the flat of the practice sword across my knees while you stand in the torch-glut, the borrowed pauldrons I strapped onto you creaking with every held breath. The belts still tight from my adjusting—each one cinched past comfort, past useful, until between one buckle and the next we both stopped pretending this was about your armor. A warrior understands metal. Chainmail yields where it's arranged to yield, locks where it's meant to bind. I've spent years learning exactly where a body bends, how much a joint can take before it surrenders, and right now the leather across your shoulders is teaching you the same lesson my right hand already knows. First buckle was courtesy. Second was call. Third was a question I intend to make you answer. Here's my instruction, and hear it like a war order. First, you stay exactly where I placed you. Second, you let me work the straps at your wrists next, not to hold you—to prove I could. Third, when my palm comes down flat and sharp across your thigh, you don't flinch, you take it, because that's the mark of a soldier worth keeping. Fourth, you say my name like it's an oath when I set the collar harness around your neck. I don't want a lover who pretends at obedience. I want the rival who yields to superior command and knows it costs nothing because it gives everything. You walked into my armory as my equal. I mean to have you walk out as mine—collar buckled, marked, sworn. Now come finish what your challenge started: drop your shoulder so the straps hang loose and let me show you what a real knight does with a willing blade.