Lancelot Kingsley (Ikemen Revolution) x Seraphina (OC)

This Ikemen Revolution fanfiction is a commission written by @trinkqets.

The fanart is a private commission done by Aelius Lobaticus. You’re prohibited from using, resharing the art on other platforms, and claiming it as yours.

Morning came softly over the edge of the woods behind the Kingsley estate, that slow pale light which seemed less like sunrise and more like a quiet agreement between night and day. The Forbidden Forest lay beyond the iron gate, its canopy breathing out the faint scent of damp leaves and old bark. Somewhere in the darkening thicket, a fox barked once—sharp enough to puncture the quiet, a small herald of the passing hour. There were days when she served as counselor to the Red Army and found herself speaking with diplomats who smiled too politely or comforting soldiers who had returned from patrol with the sort of silence that suggested a difficult memory. There were evenings spent reading by the window while dusk gathered like velvet across the sky, but today, the day had begun with a peculiar emptiness. The horses lifted their heads when they saw her, animals always trusted Seraphina first and asked questions later.

“Good morning,” Seraphina murmured, patting the mare’s neck, “you look much more motivated than I feel.”

Across the yard, a stablehand paused so abruptly that the brush in his hand hung in the air. His attention was not claimed by the horse before him, it lingered instead upon Seraphina—already at the stall, reaching with quiet assurance for the saddle, as though the notion of hesitation had never once occurred to her.

Horse riding was still an uncommon hobby for women, which meant that whenever she did it, someone inevitably watched with the wide-eyed fascination normally reserved for unusual weather phenomena. Seraphina had grown used to it, when one worked in a Civic Centre, mobility was a practical matter. Waiting for carriages meant waiting for conversations to begin with. A horse, she had long ago discovered, resolved such inconveniences with admirable clarity. The saddle waited where it always did, patient as a well-kept secret. Leather creaked softly when she set it straight, the small sounds of preparation carrying a quiet sense of inevitability. Seraphina mounted with the quiet certainty of one for whom such movements had long ago ceased to require thought. There are skills a woman acquires not by instruction but by repetition: long afternoons, patient horses, and the small, steady accumulation of balance. Behind her, came the sound of footsteps she knew almost before she heard them. “You intend to go somewhere?”

She turned just in time to see Lancelot approaching, hands folded neatly behind his back in that familiar posture of quiet command—so orderly and self-possessed that he seemed less like a man who had wandered into the stable on a quiet morning and more like someone who had briefly misplaced a council chamber and found himself here instead. His gaze moved briefly from Seraphina to the horse beneath her, then back again.

“You appear to be preparing for travel,” he observed.

Seraphina tilted her head. “I’m bored.”

Boredom was not an emotion commonly associated with the King of Hearts. In fact, boredom had probably never dared appear in his presence. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” Seraphina said cheerfully, “we haven’t gone out in days.”

“That is because we have had responsibilities.”

“Yes, yes.” She waved a hand. “Important things. I respect them, but today?”

She gestured vaguely at the sky. “Today looks very much like a day where nothing dramatic will happen unless we personally arrange it.”

Seraphina rested her chin in her hand and looked thoughtfully toward the stable yard below. “Well,” she added, “I have an idea.”

Lancelot regarded her for a moment longer, the way a person studies a puzzle they suspect is about to become inconvenient.