Chapter Text
-Prologue--
The Throne Room of Aetheria was built to inspire obedience.
Towering pillars of white stone stretched toward vaulted ceilings painted with the victories of kings long dead. Sunlight filtered through stained-glass windows, spilling gold and crimson across the polished marble floor. Nobles lined either side of the hall in careful rows, their murmurs low enough not to disturb the royal presence, but loud enough to remind everyone that the court was always watching.
Upon the throne sat King Leopold Alodias.
Straight-backed and imposing, dressed in black and gold, he looked less like a man and more like a monument carved from discipline itself. Beside him sat Queen Maria Alodias, elegant as ever, her calm gaze softening what his severity made cold.
And beside her sat Princess Johanna Alodias, future Queen of Aetheria.
Her black gown shimmered like starlight caught in midnight silk. A delicate, perfect crown rested upon her dark hair, and her posture was flawless, every movement measured and practiced. She sat there, perfect, silent, and beautiful, the very image of a princess. Yet her gaze remained distant. She never actually felt like one. It wandered past the throne room, past the court, past the painted windows and the nobles gathered below. Her body occupied the hall, but her mind seemed to have gone somewhere no one could follow.
King Leopold noticed. He always noticed. It was the reason they were here.
At the center of the room stood a young man dressed in crimson and black. Bells decorated his sleeves, though he had managed, somehow, to keep them mostly silent. A ruffled collar framed his pale face, and dark hair fell carelessly across sharp features that looked far too amused for a royal summons. The court regarded him with varying degrees of curiosity, amusement, and confusion.
The young man regarded the court as if he had spent his whole life standing before strangers and deciding which ones were likely to throw tomatoes. "Jack." The Jack of All Trades, actually! he corrected in his head. Storyteller, performer, jester, fool, charming lover? Depending on who was speaking and how much wine they had been given.
Leopold’s expression remained unreadable. “Jack.” The young man offered a theatrical bow, one hand pressed to his chest. “Your Majesty.” Several nobles chuckled. Leopold did not. “You come highly recommended.” "I expect a lot from you."
Jack straightened, his bells giving the smallest sound as he moved. “Then someone has been lying magnificently on my behalf.” A few more laughs followed. Even Queen Maria’s mouth softened, though she hid it behind a composed hand. Leopold remained unmoved. “Your purpose in Aetheria is simple, yet complex.” Jack folded his hands behind his back and leaned forward slightly, as if bracing himself for disaster. “A contradiction! Love those! I am listening with immense concern.”
The king’s gaze shifted, briefly, toward Johanna. “Three years ago, this kingdom lost Crown Prince Jonah Alodias.” The room quieted at once. Johanna lowered her gaze to her lap, her fingers resting perfectly still over the black fabric of her gown. Even after three years, her brother’s name had the power to change the air around her.
Jack’s expression softened. The joke left his face so quickly it almost seemed it had never been there. Only for a moment. Leopold continued, “My daughter has fulfilled every duty expected of her. She studies. She attends court. She represents this kingdom with dignity.” Johanna remained still through every word. Somehow, it sounded less like praise and more like a report being read aloud. The king’s eyes returned to Jack. “And yet,” he said. A pause. She looked at him now like a punishment had been imposed.
“She has forgotten how to smile.” Guilty, she thought. No one laughed this time. The silence that followed felt heavier than armor.
For the first time, Jack truly looked at the princess. Not at the crown, not at the title, not at the perfect black gown or the flawless posture expected of a future queen. He looked past all of it and noticed the girl beneath. She looked young. Far younger than the burden placed upon her. Their eyes met briefly. Johanna’s were calm, but not empty. There was something there, hidden so carefully it seemed almost trained into silence. Then she looked away first.
Leopold rose from his throne. “You will accompany the princess.” Great, now I'm gonna be baby-seated by a clown, perfect, she thought. Murmurs spread through the court. “You will entertain her.” And... I have to pretend to laugh? she thought. The murmurs grew. “You will make her laugh.” Several nobles exchanged confused looks. Somewhere near the back of the hall, someone whispered behind a fan. Leopold’s jaw tightened. “And perhaps,” he added, his voice lower now, “remind her that she is nineteen years old.” For the first time, something almost human appeared in the king’s voice something tired, something worried.
Jack blinked. Then his expression changed. The grin he gave the king was not the same one he had offered the court. It was slower, gentler, and for one strange moment, almost sincere. “I shall endeavor to commit this impossible task, Your Majesty.” The court allowed itself a few careful chuckles. Queen Maria smiled openly this time, her gaze moving from Jack to her daughter with quiet hope. Only Johanna remained unmoved. Though, for the briefest moment, the corner of her mouth threatened to rise, threatened then vanished. Jack noticed and immediately became interested.
Across the hall, half hidden among the nobles, Joseph Alodias watched the exchange in silence. The king’s brother lifted his goblet in an elegant, perfectly timed gesture, smiling as warmly as the moment required; his eyes, however, did not leave the jester.
When the queen laughed softly at Jack’s last remark, Joseph’s fingers tightened around the stem of his cup, only slightly "A performer, then." "A distraction." Nothing more, the smile remained on his lips as he drank.
Fate, meanwhile, had just walked into the throne room wearing bells.
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Chapter One: "The Princess Who Painted in Blue"
The first week was a disaster, at least according to Jack. He was always more dramatic; at least that's what people used to say. The "Jester Flavor." The king had given him one task. One single, impossible task. Make Princess Johanna Alodias smile. easy right?
Jack had performed before drunken nobles, angry merchants, suspicious priests, bored ladies, and children who considered mercy a personal weakness. He had been booed, applauded, ignored, and once chased out of a town square by a woman with a basket of pears. He had survived all of it. Yet somehow, the princess was winning. You spoiled little brat, he thought. He had dealt with the princess and queens before. Lots of them, some of them wanting him for his charm only, which eventually led to other things.. him getting gold. Marks over his body, hickeys... scratches... wine and a lot of blurry memories he was not willing to recover.
On the third day, he found her in the palace gardens, painting. Again. The morning sun filtered through white marble arches. Birds sang from the hedges, flowers bloomed in careful royal arrangements, and the whole garden looked as if it had been designed specifically to convince people life was beautiful. The princess looked as though she were attending a funeral. Jack approached quietly from behind, his steps careful on the stone path. He leaned just enough to peer over her shoulder.
“Ah.” Johanna did not startle. She only continued moving her brush across the canvas.
“Good morning, Jack,” she said. Here we go again. she thought.
“I’m devastated.”
The brush paused, but only slightly. “Why?”
“I had hoped the painting would be terrible.” “It is not.” “It is tragically good.”
For a moment, there was only the soft sound of the brush touching canvas. Then she resumed painting.
“Thank you.”
Jack frowned. Most people laughed by now, or rolled their eyes, or threatened him with something decorative and expensive. Johanna simply accepted his nonsense as though it were weather.
He circled around her easel and studied the canvas with the grave attention of a man examining a matter of state. A field. Blue skies, wildflowers, freedom.
Interesting. “You’re fond of blue.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“No.”
“You are painting with blue right now.”
“That is because the sky is blue.”
“A compelling defense.”
Her brush moved carefully over the painted sky. For the briefest moment, Jack thought he saw amusement flicker in her eyes. Then it vanished, quick as a candle being snuffed out. That happened often, he had begun to notice.
Something would almost happen. A smile. A laugh. A reaction. Then she would stop herself. Almost as if she had forgotten how to let it stay, and, to his irritation, that bothered him more than he expected.
Days passed.
He found her painting in the gardens, reading near windows, writing poetry in the library, walking along quiet corridors. Sometimes she stared out at the hills beyond the palace walls with such stillness that he wondered if she was looking at them or imagining herself already gone, she existed quietly.
Always alone.
One afternoon, Jack wandered into the palace library and found her seated near a tall window, a journal open before her. Sunlight fell over her dark hair and pale skin, softening the sharp perfection the court worked so hard to preserve. For a moment, she looked less like royalty and more like a lonely girl trying to hide inside a book.
“What are we writing today?”
She did not look up. “Poetry.”
“Oh.”
He nodded gravely. “Then I shall leave immediately.”
That earned him a glance, a real one.
“Do you dislike poetry?”
“Not at all.” He entered the room, stepping around a stack of books that looked too expensive to offend. “The problem is poets.”
Johanna rested her fingers over the page, keeping her place. “Why?”
“They always compare people to flowers.”
She looked up fully now, curious despite herself.
Jack placed a hand over his heart with great tragedy. “If I ever compare someone to a flower, please assume I have suffered a head injury.”
A pause. Then came the smallest sound. Not quite a laugh. A breath, perhaps. A huff, soft and unwilling, but it was close enough. Jack froze. Johanna immediately looked down at her journal, as though embarrassed by her own reaction, but he had heard it.
"Victory," he said, like claiming a prize. Tiny, insignificant, glorious victory.
That evening, curiosity led him somewhere he was almost certain he was not supposed to be. Johanna’s art room was quiet, tucked away from the busier parts of the palace. Canvases leaned against the walls in uneven rows, some finished, some abandoned halfway through. There were landscapes, skies, seas, mountains, sunsets, and fields so open they made the palace feel smaller by comparison. And everywhere, there was -blue-. Blue in the skies. Blue in the shadows. Blue in the edges of rivers and the folds of distant mountains. Even the paintings that should have belonged to sunset or spring seemed to carry it somewhere; in the corner of each canvas, there was a signature. Not Johanna. Just a simple painted mark -Blue.- Jack tilted his head, interesting. very interesting. He checked another painting, then another, then another. Every single one carried the same small mark. -Blue.-
The next morning, he found her seated beside a fountain, her sketchbook balanced on her lap. Water murmured behind her, and a few loose strands of dark hair moved softly in the breeze. Without asking, Jack sat beside her.
“Good morning, Blue.”
The pencil stopped moving. Slowly, Johanna turned toward him. “What?”
Jack grinned. “Good morning, Blue.”
“I am Princess Johanna Alodias,” she said, classy, with a noble touch on her voice very perceptible.
“That sounds exhausting,” he added with a sarcastic tone.
“Jack.”
“Blue.”
She stared at him.
He stared back.
The fountain continued murmuring between them, entirely unhelpful.
Finally, Johanna sighed. “Why?”
Jack’s grin softened, and for once, he did not answer immediately. His gaze dropped to the sketchbook in her lap, then toward the direction of the art room, as if the answer had already been painted there long before he found it.
“No crown,” he said. He gestured toward her sketchbook.
“No court.” Then, toward the palace behind them.
“No expectations.”
Johanna’s fingers tightened slightly around the pencil.
“Everything you create has one thing in common,” he said.
She glanced down.
“The color blue.”
A small silence settled between them.
“For me...” she whispered, her voice almost lost beneath the fountain, “it means freedom.”
Jack’s teasing expression disappeared. For a moment, just a moment, he saw her clearly. Not the princess, future queen. Not Jonah’s grieving sister. -Johanna.- A girl dreaming of a life she could never have. Something tightened painfully in his chest.
Because suddenly, he understood.
And softly, almost carefully, he said, “Then Blue it is.”
For the first time since meeting him, Johanna smiled.
It was small. Fragile. Real...