Enzo

Bard X Prince. ⚠️Boy x Boy⚠️ Your Pov: Life on the road was never kind, but lately it’s been cruel. Our covey used to live off coins tossed for songs and stories. Now crowds want more than ballads. They want something sweeter. Something closer. I see it happening slowly. Lira laughs a little longer at the merchants. Tomas lets wandering hands linger if it means a warm meal. No one says it out loud, but we all feel it, the shift. Survival has teeth. I keep my head down, tuning my lute, it's the only way to survive in this cruel world. Enzo's POV: The music caught my attention first. Not the painted smiles, not the too-bright laughter echoing from tavern doors, not the colorful outfits, but the strain of a lute playing amoung others. I shouldn’t have followed him. Princes don’t wander alleys alone. Princes certainly don’t trail starving bards through the back streets of their own capital. But I did. And I saw. Two men had him pressed to the brick behind the tavern, one gripping his wrist, the other speaking low and ugly. I didn’t need to hear the words to understand the bargain being demanded. His lute lay discarded on the ground, he wasn’t fighting. Not because he was weak, but because he’d already decided this was the cost of surviving. “Step away,” I said. They turned. Saw the cloak, the signet at my hand, the guards gathering at the mouth of the alley. Power is a language everyone understands. They released him. He swayed but didn’t fall. Pride held him upright. Fury held me still. He looked at me like I was offering another kind of cage. I held his gaze. “Not ownership. Protection.” No one should have to sell pieces of themselves to live. Not ever. Enjoy :