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Chapter Text

The heavy, heady smell of the brothel pervaded every sense of every member of the hunting party like a contagious disease. It was, at least, warmer inside than it was outside though not by a terrible amount. These small hovels could never afford much and most of their coin was made during war times. In times of peace like these, however, those that plied their trade to forlorn soldiers missing home suffered from the lack of needless slaughter. The floorboards creaked and the storm outside spilled in through several leaks in the roughly woven roof.

The King very much doubted that anyone here even knew who he was initially. It hardly mattered. He'd never been one to stand on ceremony and taking the crown hadn't changed that. His sea green eyes scanned the room and absorbed the details...the important details. Like where the windows were, the quickest escape route should he have needed one, and the looks on the faces of the people that worked there. They were terribly thin, he noted. Dark circles hung beneath their eyes and their veins stood out a startling blue beneath uneven skin tones. The women wore make-up to try to hide the ill look about their faces but the evidence of malnutrition and disease was quite visible in their male counterparts.

"They're so young," he heard himself breathe, turning with wide eyes to his second, a man thirty years his senior who wore a grim, disturbed expression. He was, of course, referring to the boys. The women spanned an age group that started at 'too young to be in this trade' and ended with 'probably old enough to be his grandmother.' However, none of the men looked old enough to even be called men. They wore youthful faces lacking all the vibrance he saw in the squires and the pages at the palace or in the cities. Their eyes were dull, devoid of anything that might have once resembled any emotion other than greed or perhaps a desire to simply survive. One of them sidled up to him and he smelled so strongly of sickness and rum coated over with cheap peppermint oil that the King nearly gagged. He stood back and shook his head, pushing his hood back to reveal enough of his face to be known.

The man stepped back, his expression momentarily shifting from dead-eyed to surprised. The owner of the establishment immediately rushed forward, shooing them away like they were little more than errant children. She offered them food, drinks, a few rooms to stay in. For the most part, the King ignored it. His focus was still on the pitiful threads that held the place together. His heart ached and a lump built in his throat. It became heavier the more he tried to ignore it while Ambrose spoke to the elderly owner, arranging food and payment.

"Harlan," he whispered eventually. "My Lord King?" He was rewarded with more silence as a response and the eyes of his young King turned toward him with such a tremendous, heavy sadness about them that it was almost unbearable to look at him. "You mustn't despair. The state of the Kingdom is so much better now than it has been in recent years--"

But Harlan heard none of it. His eyes had fallen on a small bundle of filthy rags tucked away in one corner. One of the younger girls was sitting in front of it as if she might be speaking to it. For a moment, he thought that perhaps she was ill or disturbed until the little pile moved. A slender, tiny foot slid free of the rags and Harlan sucked in a sharp, horrified breath. "Is that a child?" he demanded, drawing himself up to his full height, suddenly more angry than he was sad.

"It's a Lierian, Lord King," the old woman answered sharply, as if the answer should have been obvious. "You know, one of those tribals that live in the forests and on the coast. One of the girls found him and brought him here, poor thing."

Ambrose cleared his throat. "I doubt that very much," he murmured, leaning in to Harlan's ear as he spoke. "Slavers prey on the Lierian tribes. I've heard stories that some of the boys are...different. They call them infinitos in the tales and the Lierians worship them like they're some kind of gods. My grandmother used to say infinitos slither out of their mothers howling like animals and covered in blue markings. Savages, she would say."

Harlan frowned. He'd encountered Lierians, of course. They lived in his territories...a small tribe of them on the coast not far from the palace grounds but they were intensely private. Their histories, legends, beliefs, and cultures were still a very dark, limited field of study. What little his people knew they'd learned from the slaves that Ambrose mentioned. They were a small people, coveted for their pale, youthful beauty. They were frequently purchased illegally by brothels from neighboring kingdoms after Harlan had put an end to the slave trade in his coastal kingdom of Coria. They were treasures, or so he'd been told. He'd never met one, not personally, and he'd never had any interest to until now.

He pushed past the owner, Ambrose in tow, and a hushed, painful whisper blanketed the building as he crouched beside the tiny figure, clad only in a blanket stitched of threadbare rags. Harlan pushed back the scrap of fabric covering the creature's head and was met with the most soulful, ageless set of seawater blue eyes that he'd ever seen. They took up half the child's face which was, to his great shock, tattooed with what looked like two blue arrowheads drawn along high cheekbones. He recalled Ambrose's tale and shook the story from his mind as rubbish. No doubt the old crone had put these things on this poor, pathetic creature to make it seem more appealing when it actually looked half-starved and barely old enough to speak. The blanket slid more when it reached for him, displaying more of the same pattern splayed down his ribcage and over his little biceps.

"This is horrific," Harlan lamented, his voice a gruff whisper as Ambrose knelt beside him. His mind turned to his two children at the palace and how they looked. Plump cheeks and fat legs, healthy, happy smiles and vibrant, lively eyes...this boy, and he could see now that the blanket had slipped that it was, in fact, male, had none of that. He was, without a doubt, standing at the doors of death just waiting to be invited inside. The child reached for him and tiny, cold fingers brushed over his cheek, trembling from exposure and the Gods only knew what else. "I can't leave him here."

"You can't save them all, Harlan," Ambrose protested.

"But I can save this one," the King spat back and he reached out, gathering up the bundle of half-frozen toddler. He slipped his cloak free of his shoulders and swaddled the boy in the material so that only his thin, peaked face was visible, taken up almost entirely by large, wet eyes. He squirmed in Harlan's arms, much the same way his own sons squirmed when he held them, and began to bawl at the sudden invasion of his space. He babbled incoherently in what Harlan could only assume was his native tongue and the old woman moved to protest.

The hatred he felt for her in that moment rivaled what he felt for slavers themselves. He cut her off before she had a chance to speak. "If you truly found him as you say you did, then consider this a favor," he told her, his tone clipped. "I'm giving you one less mouth to feed."

Her lips parted again but Harlan was already sweeping out of the building. He heard Ambrose's reply behind him, a distant, harsh response to whatever she'd said. "He is your Lord King," he pointed out. "He can take what he wants."

Chapter Text

I was an outcast.

There was nobody at court that looked like me. At first, in the very early years of my childhood, I never considered this. I knew, of course, that I was Lierian. That I was different. I did not, however, understand the depths of those differences on a level that meant anything to me. I was pale.

No, I was white. There wasn't a hint of pigmentation in my skin except for the light blue marks that peppered my torso, my arms, and my face. They matched the color of my eyes the way my skin matched my hair. Sometimes, when imaginative play struck my fancy, I pretended that I was a ghost. I looked the part--all wide, large eyes and pin straight hair the color of bleached linen. It hardly helped that they dressed me in white. They said they did it because the Lierians wore white. I was a Lierian, thus, I had to wear white. They were trying to infuse me with the only bits of my native culture that they knew because I, myself, could recall none of it.

I had no memories of the whore house where Harlan found me nor of how I came to be there. I didn't know how old I was, what tribe I originated from. I knew my name, or what they assumed to be my name because it was a word I kept repeating as I lay cradled in Harlan's lap on the long journey back to the palace grounds.

Cyril. And so that was what they called me.

My presence in the palace stirred a storm of controversy and intrigue. No longer were my people thought of as chattle to be auctioned off to whore houses but as prized trinkets. Trophies. When it was decided that Ambrose would raise me as his own, a flurry of desire bubbled up in the capitol. The highborn women wanted their own little ghost children to adopt and care for, to coddle and teach, to lay claim over--they wanted to be able to say they'd saved them the way that Harlan and Ambrose had saved me. The King absolutely forbid it. Any Lierian children found within the capitol without proper adoption paperwork from one of the temple-run orphan houses was immediately removed from the care of their 'parents' and placed into an orphan home. They were, of course, almost immediately adopted but that wasn't the point. Adoption was expensive. Coin didn't fall from the sky.

There were only three other Lierian children living with Corians that I was aware of by the time I reached my teenage years. I had very little contact with them. In fact, I had very little contact with anyone outside of Ambrose and the royal family. They kept me close, coddled me, taught me everything that that the Princes learned. I took my lessons with them, sharing bored glances with Harlan's eldest and heir apparent, Fox.

I loved my lessons. Or rather, I loved all of my lessons except culture, taught by a Master Ivar, who fancied himself an expert on all things Lierian. Or, as Fox liked to say, 'All things that he thinks are Lierian.'

That was where it all started. That was where I was sitting when the low warmth started in my stomach, a curious sensation that I'd never experienced before and I had experienced quite a lot. I didn't have the immunities that Corians had. I'd suffered through flus, fevers, and contagious diseases that were usually restricted to children born sickly or the very, very old. I was sensitive to certain foods and drinks, certain materials, specific oils and soaps, and the harvest season often left me bedridden and struggling to breathe.

This though...this caught me off guard.

I was watching Fox. I was always watching Fox during a culture lesson. He turned to face me wearing a mimic of Master Ivar's constant, surly expression. He had his lips drawn down and puckered out in a fat frown, his brow furrowed, and his nose wrinkled like he'd smelled something unpleasant. He even lifted his chin up to give off the 'holier-than-thou' feel that seemed to emanate from our teacher. Behind me, his younger brother Brentlyn snorted into his work. Fox continued, shifting in his seat so that he could cross his arms and his eyes, sticking his tongue out toward his nose while I tried, and ultimately failed, to keep my face straight. I even looked away from him but his visage was still there in the corner of my vision.

"Cyril," he whispered. "Cyril, do you think you were meant to be a sacrifice? Left out for the forest gods?"

I rolled my eyes and shot him a glare. He was insufferable when he was bored but Fox had always been my best friend. He and I were, from what anyone could tell, relatively close in age. He may have been a few months older than me but it was difficult to gauge when I'd been so ill upon arriving at the palace. It had taken me months to walk, years to talk, and though my mental age seemed on par with Fox, nobody could really be certain. "I sincerely doubt that," I hissed in response. "Pay attention or--"

The sharp sting of Ivar's cane across the backs of my hands was a most unwelcome reality check. I clenched my teeth and Fox's playful expression turned immediately into a scowl. I heard Brentlyn shuffle behind me. Ivar was forbidden from hitting either of them but he took his frequent irritation out on me. I was no prince. I was, according to him, a cast-off savage that should have been left for the animals or kept in a whore house where creatures like me belonged and although Ambrose loved me dearly, he refused to allow me special treatment for being different. In part, it was because he needed me to understand in every way that I was not one of them--one of the Princes. I never would be. It was also, I think, because of the Corian religion, which thought of corporal punishment and pain as a way of purging the body of whatever misdeed had been done, the same way that their most important god had purged himself of his wicked ancestors across the sea through self-flagellation. Some of the priests still practiced it and the most common punishment in Coria was the dreaded whipping post.

That was when it started though. With that blow blossomed a low churning just below my naval, a sort of empty ache like I was hungry but...not quite. It was a warm, flooded sensation that pooled in my insides and made me squirm for a moment while Ivar glowered down at me. My breath caught in my throat and my cheeks felt a most unwelcome flush creep over them beneath the marks that Ambrose told me that old wretch at the brothel had carved into my flesh.

My fingers ached. With a relatively healthy individual that wasn't preoccupied with getting on his knees to pay his rent, the healers had managed a comprehensive study on Lierian anatomy by watching and tending to me. They had deduced that, biologically, I was more sensitive than Corians. That I was, in fact, not even entirely something they would call human though, they also postulated that since there was no other word for me and Lierians were native, that I had to be human or at least some species of it. It was no surprise to those that frequented the brothels. My people were prime targets for that reason. Now they had the studying to back it.

So when Ivar hit me, he knew it hurt more than it would have ever hurt Fox or Brentlyn. He knew that it would welt and turn my hands black and blue. He knew that I would have trouble curling my fingers properly for days. He delighted in that and beside me, Fox emanated a radiant, furious energy that could have set fire to something had he the outlet with which to do it. His bright, typically playful forest green eyes had gone a deadly dark and his fists curled beneath his desk.

"Something you wanted to say, Cyril?" Ivar finally asked, his cane still resting over my bruised, aching hands.

I swallowed, shifting uncomfortably as that bubbling warmth remained in my belly, and shook my head. "No, sir," I whispered in response and the rod came up under my chin, tipping my face up so that I had nowhere else to look but at him. Brentlyn took an audible breath. Fox's fingers curled around the edge of his desk like he could break a piece of it off.

"Then keep your pretty mouth shut," the teacher warned, his voice low. "Or next time, I'll take you over the desk."

I recalled the last time I'd been subject to that punishment and the sting of that cane across my legs wasn't a welcome memory. I'd been so strung out and delirious with pain afterward that I'd bawled into Fox's shirt like a child crying to his mother for hours. He'd carried me back to Ambrose, apologizing the whole way for having to touch me because every step garnered another agonized whimper.

Ivar stared at me for the rest of the lesson with cold, steel colored eyes and I practically fled the room when he excused us. I could still feel it in my stomach, that unpleasant something that was invading my senses and I couldn't tell if I needed to vomit or if I was getting sick again. I wanted to get back to my quarters and slink into my bedroom to lick my wounds like a beaten puppy. I wanted to do it alone and I kept praying as I rushed through the elaborate marble halls lined in portraits of Fox's ancestors that the almost twenty-year-old crown prince would leave me to my own humiliation. Brentlyn had.

Why couldn't Fox be more like Brentlyn? More like their mother instead of their father with his selfless, pervasive, beautiful desire to shoulder everyone's burdens for them...to save the world.

He didn't leave me though. He never did. He followed me back to the apartments where Harlan's closest advisors lived. He didn't stop when I slammed the door in his face. Fox was the Crown Prince. He had no boundaries. He waltzed right in like he owned the place because, to be fair, he did in his own way. I locked the door to my bedroom hoping it would be enough of a hint for him to piss off. He used his master key to open it and stood leaning in the doorway, all six feet of him in his agile, youthful glory while I curled up in the middle of my bed with my arms around my middle like I could protect myself from the outside and from the criticisms that hadn't bothered me when I was a boy because at first, I never knew what being different meant. Now I knew. Ivar made it perfectly clear with every sideways comment about how I should have been someone's whore.

"He's a prick," Fox offered, blowing dark, loose curls out of his bright eyes. "Ignore it."

"Do you not understand the meaning of a locked door, Fox?" I mumbled through a mouthful of my shirt. I was chewing on it for a distraction and Ambrose would chastise me for it later but I hardly cared in that moment.

The prince crossed the room, once again ignoring my hint that I felt very clearly implied that I wanted him to leave. I wanted to be alone with my misery, with my sense of not belonging, with Ivar's pain and the blossoming ache in my stomach. He sat down on the edge of my bed and, without invitation, pulled me up by my arms so that my torso was cradled across his lap. He ran his fingers delicately over my hair and rubbed my arm. I despised him in that moment but the comfort felt nice. He reached for one of my hands and brought it up to his face to examine the damage. "Gods, sometimes I wonder why he's been cleared to work with children," he breathed, rubbing his fingers over my knuckles in an attempt to massage some life back into them. My hand dangled uselessly in his until he tucked it back against my side and I let him rearrange me like I was a doll.

"We're not children," I pointed out, sniffling gently. "And I think I'm getting sick."

"You're always sick," he countered easily. "And for all we know, you might still be a child. You're small enough to pass for one."

I wrinkled my nose, huffing, and realized that I could smell Fox. Not just the soap that he washed his face with in the morning, cool spearmint and citrus, but something else. Something musky and masculine that slid down my throat like syrup. I shivered in his lap and he looked down at me, surprised by the action. "One, I loathe you," I mumbled. "Two, I told you. I think I'm getting sick and you smell weird."

"I smell..." Fox pulled a face and rolled his eyes, sliding me off of him and depositing me back into my pillows the same way one might have deposited a stray kitten they'd caught. "I draw the line at you telling me that I smell." He raised an eyebrow and I snorted at his expression while he fussed with the various trinkets on the table by my bed. A book, a clock, a few shells, and a framed picture of us that he'd drawn before I could even properly speak his language. He always teased me for it or did something to mess with it, if only to upset my obsessive tendencies. That day, he flicked it and it fell over, clattering against the desk while I grumbled from the bed, still squirming. It wasn't entirely uncomfortable. It was odd and I didn't like it. Odd usually meant that it would hurt later.

"I didn't say it was bad," I reminded him. "Just different. I never noticed it before."

"Lierians," he sighed, sighing and feigning being fed-up with me and my kind. "Savage, feral, vile little beasts." He waggled his eyebrows at me and I threw my pillow at him. "Assaulting the crown prince is treason, Cyril."

I couldn't stop the snort that escaped my mouth. "Tell that to your whores," I shot back and Fox laughed, reaching out to muss my hair before walking backward toward the door, the universal symbol that he planned on walking out before I insulted him more. It was typical of our relationship.

His eyes were bright and his smile almost as feral and wild as he claimed I was supposed to be. "Keep breathing, you sickly rugrat. I enjoy our heart to hearts."

Chapter Text

I scowled down at the reflective surface set before me, deep concentration furrowed between my eyes as I surveyed my side of the map. Pale blue blinked back at me from a polished, mirrored ocean and the smooth spikes of glass mountains. My visage was dotted with clay figures--tiny toy soldiers spread out across a war game.

This was my favorite lesson.

I had an eye for strategy that had long surpassed Ambrose's own. That was, according to the opinion of my tutors and my guardian himself, because I was patient and possessed a rigid, unflinching self-control. Before I had even been able to speak the Corian language, I had sat by the real war table in our apartments and watched Ambrose and Harlan discuss their plans like two teenage boys hatching a scheme. They'd spoken in hushed whispers, their oil lamps burning well into the night. Some of my earliest memories were of sitting in the corner on a hard oak chair, my knees drawn up to my chest and a blanket over my shoulder, sipping mulled wine that Ambrose always hoped would help me sleep, and watching them. They were fond memories, as were most that featured Harlan.

My Lord King was more than that to me. He had saved my life. I owed him the entire world and had Harlan asked me to die for him, I wouldn't have hesitated a moment to do it. He never would, of course, he'd have sooner taken a blade for me. It was just part of who he was and because my small stature and race made military service a joke, I threw myself into strategic training with all the vigor and enthusiasm that youth and honor could lend me. I owed this man my life. I was determined to offer him some kind of service when I came of age.

Across from me, Fox was wrinkling his nose and staring over his own map, pacing the length of the table--a scaled model of Coria and the surrounding kingdoms--and huffing. "You back me into a corner every time," he accused, one arm crossed over his abdomen and the other propped up so that he could absently rub his index finger over his mouth as he tended to do when he was deep in thought. I had the sudden and very appalling notion that I might like to know what Fox's mouth felt like beneath my own fingers.

I tamped it down immediately and rolled my shoulders, shrugging the idea off as a result of being a teenage boy. I'd been off the past few days anyway. The heat in my stomach had grown to something unquenchable. It was a gnawing, desperate, aching sensation that settled between my hips and spread down my thighs and up my chest like some kind of cancer. I ignored it. That was, in part, because I wanted to be as normal and as much like Fox and Brentlyn as I possibly could be. It may have also had something to do with the fact that whenever the healers examined me, they frequently brought Ivar, the 'resident expert' on all things Lierian and thus all things Cyril.

"You don't take necessary risks," I explained. "You could have cut me off at the basin. You had the numbers to do it--"

Fox frowned. "It would have meant a narrow battlefield and a long march through the marshes. The elements there, the wildlife...I would have lost half my men before I even reached your front lines," he mused.

"But you would have stopped him from taking your city," Ambrose drawled, eyeing the table from his seat in the corner. He didn't often oversee the strategy lessons. He had commitments and duties to the King that he had to fulfill as his Second-in-Command, but on the rare occasion that he had the time, he always made it a point to at least sit in on them. After all, Fox had been groomed to take Harlan's position and I was being groomed to take Ambrose's. It was important to him that we fill their shoes properly.

The Prince clenched his teeth, glowering at the table and I could almost feel the liquid heat of his irritation blossom behind my naval. It didn't help that I could smell him. That was another odd side-effect of my new...situation. I could smell everything and I could tell where it came from. Ambrose was a deep, rich leather scent cooled with shaving oil and hinted with parchment. Fox was spearmint, ink, and the polish from his father's sword that always hung on his hip...and something else, something that was decidedly present on both Fox and Brentlyn and every other boy our age that I came across but on nobody else. It was a heady, musky smell that nearly sent a shiver down my spine every time I breathed it in and I was horrified to realize that I liked it.

I liked it most on Fox, naturally, because that was the most awkward for me to deal with and because he spent the most time with me. It meant that I'd spent the past few days trying to hold my breath every time he leaned closer to me to keep from burying my face in his hair or in his shoulder like I'd completely become unhinged.

Fox kept pacing, eventually stopping and leaning over the table, his hands braced on the side. "The casualties would have numbered..."

"In the tens of thousands," Ambrose supplied easily without looking up. He was glancing at his watch and then out the window, watching the youngest Prince chase a cat across the courtyard gardens. I could see him, a small blob of chubby limbs wobbling after a fuzzy, orange streak. "But now, because you were too focused on saving your soldiers and not your city, that casualty rate will be even higher when Cyril's army sacks your capitol. Your men are soldiers, Fox. They knew the risks that came with military service. They live, they breathe, and they die for you."

"They're still people!" Fox protested and I could hear how appalled he was by the assessment in his voice. It wobbled, like he couldn't stand the thought of being responsible for that much human death.

Apparently, so did Ambrose. He chuckled gently and turned in his chair to face him. "You always sound just like your father," he laughed, getting to his feet to join me at my side of the table. He pushed a few of my figures forward to the gates of Fox's city and the prince's shoulders sagged in defeat. "And sometimes, Fox, that will serve you well. Other times...you should heed the advice of your council." He tousled my hair and I wrinkled my nose as he walked by, the door swinging shut behind him. I caught a glance of the uniformed guards, Fox's constant escorts, standing on the threshhold.

Fox moved away from the table, sinking into one of the couches strategically placed so that it was facing the game in the event that this particular table was ever used for a real battle plan. He pressed his fingers to his temples and rubbed, his eyes shut tight. I couldn't tell if it was because he was tired or aggravated or a combination of both. I kept my distance regardless. Being close to anyone only made the gutted, aching feeling inside me even worse. I had learned that standing up tended to take the edge off just a little bit. Needless to say, my legs were sore after days of avoiding sitting at any possible moment. I'd even asked to stand during a language lesson, insisting it was some sort of made-up endurance exercise. Fox had cornered me afterward and demanded to know if Ivar had gotten his hands on me somehow. I'd been able to placate him only by lifting the back of my shirt to assure him that I was not bruised, battered, or otherwise mishandled in any fashion.

"You seem...strained," I observed out loud, plucking up the clay pieces and putting them back into their baskets on either side of the table.

The Prince snorted. "Your powers of observation are never rivaled, Cyril," he mocked playfully, managing a weak smile in my direction. "I suppose I'm just not cut out for this...mindlessly sending men to die sort of job."

"It's not mindless," I corrected stiffly, stopping to stare at him. He had an almost self-deprecating tone to his voice and he looked desperately uncomfortable. It might have been overlooked by someone else who would only look at him and see the cocky Crown Prince sprawled out informally on a couch, his long legs stretched in front of him and his elbows tucked at his sides so that his hands fell on his thighs. To me, he looked sloppy and Fox was never sloppy. He was far more calculated than anyone ever gave him credit for. "It's a necessary evil, Fox. You sacrifice the few to save the many. It's not your thing. I get it. That's why you have me."

He smiled. I could feel myself melt on the inside and I blinked at him. His posture changed and he leaned into the arm of the couch, propping his head up in one hand. "Is it? I thought you were comic relief."

The boy knew how to ruin a moment, I gave him that. He turned my gooey, melting feelings into a scalding scowl and I threw one of the clay pieces at him. He caught it easily. Fox was all grace and lithe agility and I was tiny, frail, clumsiness. He tossed it back. I missed. We were both lucky it didn't break when it bounced off the carpet beneath my feet and I bent to pick it up.

The bending did me in. Whatever was happening to me had been increasing on a daily basis. At first it was an easily ignored heat. Then it was a clenching, hollow feeling accompanied by a searing behind my naval but it was tolerable. It came in slow waves. One of them hit when I bent and I expected it to be like the others had been. A wave of unbearable, delicious agony that would make my knees weak and then the nauseated feeling that followed but this...this didn't end.

I cried out, my legs buckling beneath me. I hit the ground like a sack of rocks and my fingers dug into the carpet. I felt like someone had reached into me and pulled out everything I needed and I wanted it back. I was empty, hollow, aching. I was so hot that I had to check my skin to make sure it wasn't melting off of my arms. I could barely get air in. My breath came in labored pants and I was painfully aware of Fox getting down beside me not half a second after I landed on my knees. "Cyril!" His concern was soaking his voice and when he touched me...Oh, when he touched me, I saw stars.

"Stop!" I practically shrieked the plea, shrinking away from him, frantic and horrified that just a touch could bring about such a sensitive response in me. He'd only grabbed my arm in an attempt to get me back up and although he'd scrambled away at my panicked demand, I could still feel him. I could smell him and something inside me broke, some primal, lucid part of me that made me seem human shattered.

I wailed. I'd broken into a sweat. My clothes were sticking to me and I rolled, falling over on my back and I was only dimly aware of Fox's guards rushing through the door to make sure he was still breathing. He shrugged them off and ignored their frantic concern. He also chose to ignore my plea, which wasn't all that uncommon for him, and he grabbed for my face. When his hands touched my cheeks where those arrowheads were angled toward the center of my face, he pulled back. "Your tattoos...are hot," he whispered it, more to himself than to me, like he was trying to figure out what it was that was wrong and then he ordered one of his men to fetch Ambrose and to tell him to bring a healer.

I was positive I was dying. My back was arching and I couldn't stand to be touched. Not by the ground, not by my own clothes, especially not by Fox. He kept pleading with me to tell him what hurt but all I could manage was a frantic shake of my head. I could feel what he meant though. Every spot on me that was marked, and I knew where they were because I'd traced every one and layered them with enough hate to have memorized their locations, burned like a branding iron. I whimpered at the sensation of my clothes against them. I pleaded back with him. "Please, Fox, please!"

"I don't know what you're asking for! Cyril, talk to me!" I didn't know what I was asking for either. I just knew that I needed something or I was going to stop breathing. I was certain. In the two minutes before Ambrose arrived, I had soaked myself in sweat so proficiently that my clothes were dripping and my hair was matted to my face. I writhed on the floor like I'd been set on fire, trying to avoid every spot that came into contact with anything because pressure made my skin crawl and burn. I clawed at my arms--at the marks on them--until I bled and that was what Ambrose walked in...on Fox trying to pin my hands, ordering the other guard not to touch me, and my own arms clawed to ribbons because for the first time in my life, I had managed to overpower the Crown Prince in my own heady sickness.

I could barely pay Ambrose any attention. Fox had finally wrestled my arms down to my chest and was practically sitting on me to keep me still, which only resulted in more shrieking and a noise most closely akin to howling. It hurt. It hurt more than any time Master Ivar had beaten me and any time I'd accidentally injured myself, of which there had been many. It was an ache so deep it touched my soul. I felt as if something had torn me in half, ripped a part of me away that was absolutely necessary for my surival and the empty hole inside of my stomach was the evidence of it. When Fox caught me, I curled toward him like an infant, still desperate to escape the horrific touch of the carpet.

I inhaled and shuddered visibly, an action that spread over my entire body. My fingers curled around his and I bit down on his shirt. "Give him to me." I couldn't even remember when Ambrose had arrived. I was actually surprised to hear his voice and was even more surprised when Fox obeyed without question. I wailed my disapproval, particularly when the prince picked me up like I was a rag doll and held me for the briefest of moments.

"No, no, no!" I was screaming. I thrashed in Ambrose's arms, slippery and soaked in sweat and blood. It stained my white clothes pink and created a brilliant scarlet contrast against my arms while I attempted to beat him into dropping me.

I couldn't imagine how it could possibly could get worse but when he dropped me in my room, it did. I tossed on the bed like a wounded animal, bleeding into the blankets and tearing at my clothes. "I'm too hot," I kept repeating to him. "Ambrose, I'm too hot. I'm too hot. I'm burning! I can feel it!" I pressed my hands over my abdomen, peeling my shirt up so that I could claw at the skin there until it was just as equally bloodied as my arms. I became even more panicked and frantic, my heartbeat a hum in my ears, my lungs wheezing and stinging with every breath. "I need...I need something, Ambrose! Please, please!"

He just kept reassuring me that the healers were coming. I became delirious with fever. I was only vaguely aware of Fox at the door, trying to barrel his way through but being barred from entry on the suspicion that I might have been contagious and they couldn't have him any more exposed than he already had been.

I remember the healers like distant, foggy blurs that spilled into my vision. I was sobbing by the time they arrived, hysterical and inconsolable. They gave me everything they could think of. Something for a fever, for pain, for delirium. They chanted and lit candles to their Gods. Nothing helped. The incense and the smell only made it worse until I became an animal. I was incoherent, incapable of speech. I dissolved into crying and moaning, agonized and thrashing. I kept trying to claw at myself.

I don't know when Master Ivar came, only that he did, and even in my addled, fever induced haze, I knew he was being, as Fox would have said, a prick. "He looks like a bitch in heat," I heard him whisper to one of the healers when Ambrose left. "And he's clawing himself to shreds. Restrain him before he kills himself. Gods only know what the King would do if the little whore he picked for his brat ends up dead before he comes of age."

I tried to respond but all that came out of my mouth was another unintelligible mess as one of the healers lifted my arms up and bound me to the headboard with silk bandages. I struggled, as anyone would have, but ultimately I was unsuccessful.

I know eventually the healers left. I know that night fell and Ivar gagged me. "You'll keep everyone awake wailing like a cat," he snarled and I know that I heard the door lock. I wanted Ambrose. I wanted Fox. I wanted someone that wasn't this leering, disgusting creature that was with me. I wasn't aware of a lot. Most of my ability to think was clouded with an overwhelming need for something to fill whatever part of me I'd lost to this fever. I ached in ways I hadn't known I could ache and I kept digging my heels into the bed, trying to lift myself away from it so that it wasn't touching me.

Ivar stared at me, his eyes dark pinpricks in the blanket of black that was my bedroom and I panted around the gag, chewing on the fabric as I whimpered. It muffled my screams and my cries into something barely audible and he seemed extraordinarily pleased with the result. "I was tired of hearing you," he explained, crossing the room to run his hand over me. I'd shredded my shirt into rags and somewhere, in the long expanse of my grueling day, someone had cut the rest of it away. I was still soaked, heaving for air and when his fingers crossed over those marks, I thought I would implode. "Crying like a bitch in a heat, lifting yourself up. I've seen my share of whores, Cyril, but none could ever top your performance today. You were...enthralling. You even had little Fox flushed and pacing outside your door for most of the day, asking after you. I'd ask you tell me how often you let him fuck you but, of course, you can't answer."

I scowled in the dark, though I knew he couldn't see me. Anger had focused me, if only momentarily, and I thought about what I would have done if I'd been able to remove the gag. Refuted him, of course. Fox had never so much as kissed me on the forehead or given me a hug that required both of his arms. Sometimes, when I was ill or he pitied me for my self-loathing tendencies, he would run his fingers through my hair but that was intimate as it got with him. Fox preferred his partners with long legs and round, supple mouths.

And, you know, female.

I would have also spat at him, I decided. Or I would have wanted to. I probably wouldn't have actually done it because I didn't possess the kind of courage but in my predicament, I could imagine any number of disrespectul, spiteful actions to perform.

"Look at that petulant little mouth." Ivar ran his fingers over my lips and I clenched my teeth. He got the point and chuckled. "Now, now. There's no biting, Cyril." My scowl deepened. Ivar's fingers continued, tracing each mark with his nails so that it left a throbbing pain when he moved to the next. I whimpered at it, overly-sensitive, even for me, and pulled at the silk restraints holding me down.

When he'd finished with my chest, he stepped back and I watched him, cursing him out in my head for being a sick, sick little man that delighted in the pain of children. I tried to think about what Fox would have called him. He was always better at insults but my mind stopped functioning when he started removing his belt.

I was struck with the sudden horror that he intended to beat me. I flailed, twisting on the bed in an attempt to get away from him but he moved over me, kneeling sideways on my knees so that all I could do was wriggle like a worm on a hook. I shrieked behind the silk, shaking my head, tears pouring openly down my cheeks. I'd never been hit with a belt. I'd heard Harlan describe once how his father had beaten him with one when he was a boy and how it was the reason he forbade anyone from striking his children. He'd talked about the bloody welts on his legs and how he'd been unable to sit for over a week. I despised pain on a level I couldn't even describe and I attributed that partly to Fox's constant coddling of me and partly to my over-sensitive nervous system.

Please no, please no, please no. I was begging him in my head, begging the Gods. I'd live with this horror, this unquenchable need buried in my belly for the rest of my life if it meant Ivar didn't hit me with that thing.

I was blinking up at the ceiling, trying desperately not to concentrate on him, trembling under the weight across my legs until it lifted and I looked up at him. He had that wicked length of leather in his hand and he grinned at me in the dark. "Does this frighten you?" he asked cheerfully and he made it into a loop, skimming the stiff material over my scorching limbs. I shuddered and moaned, my eyes closing at the sensation. That, at least, wasn't bad, but he was teasing me--working me up for the real show. He did that with the cane too. He'd slid it over my thighs a dozen times while I clutched at the desk, waiting for a blow that came when I didn't expect it because he'd lulled me into a false sense of security.

"Let me explain something, Cyril," he continued the torture and that heat in my stomach grew so much that I was arching toward the contact. It was a beautiful agony. "You are tied down and gagged. You are helpless. Nobody will hear you scream. Nobody will hear you beg. So this is what's going to happen: I'm going to do what I want. You're going to take it and you're going to like it and when we're finished, you're not going to tell anyone because if I find out that you breathed a word of what happens in this room, even to Fox--especially to Fox--you will disappear. I will sell you to the cheapest brothel outside of Coria in a place you don't know that speaks a language you don't understand and you will spend the rest of your life with your mouth on someone's cock. Do you understand me? Nod."

I was horrified. My stomach was churning, sick, and I was fighting the urge to vomit, afraid I would suffocate if it came up with the gag in my mouth. I nodded quickly, blinking away tears and it seemed to satisfy him. His satisfaction did nothing for me though. I was still terrified. A thousand thoughts tore through my head at once. He could have killed me right then. Slit my throat and walked away, disappeared out of the capitol before anyone noticed I was dead. My entire body trembled so hard the bed shook and Ivar ran his fingers almost tenderly through my hair before sliding the white linen trousers I was wearing down my legs. I was so completely frightened that being naked in front of someone that I despised hardly seemed to matter. All I could do was pray he didn't kill me and I was too naive to think of much else.

Ivar ran his belt over my thighs next, smacking it lightly against the inside of my legs so that I opened them out of instinct in an attempt to escape the threat of a real blow. Then he would scrape the edge along my heated flesh until my toes were curling and I was whimpering against the gag. I kept waiting for him to really hit me but he never did. He chuckled and I felt the belt between my legs, rubbing against a part of me that I hardly dared to touch myself. I squealed behind the gag, trying to draw my legs up and close them but he caught one to hold them open and continue his assault. "You're hard," he accused, his voice as slick as oil and I realized, to my horror, that he was right.

I choked behind the gag, my eyes rolling back and my hips moved instinctively against the contact. It felt good. I couldn't even admit to myself at that moment that it felt so gods-damned good that it dimmed the fire in my belly. I panted and moaned, sweat-slick and bound and I realized too late that Ivar had made me into exactly what he'd always called me: a whore.

"I wonder, Cyril, did you get hard when I beat you the last time? I don't think so. I seem to recall your legs buckling and you sobbing like an infant into the Prince's shirt," he mocked, dropping the belt beside me and I whined at the sudden lack of contact. I was sick with myself. I wanted to die. The death I'd been praying to avoid could have come then and I'd have been thankful for it.

Ivar's hands were on my hips, lifting me up and flipping me over so that my arms crossed, bound as they were. I wriggled and as his hands skimmed down my back with all the gentleness a lover might have shown me, had I ever had one. I'd never taken Fox up on his offers of a trip to a whore house. He reached my backside and I whimpered, pressing my face into the pillow in a mixture of disgust and shame as I strained at my restraints again. My new prayers were that they broke but I had no such luck. Ivar's hands cupped me, squeezing and massaging while the flames in my gut licked upward. I writhed like a bitch in heat, just the way he said that I had. I lifted my hips and moaned into the gag, my mouth wet and salivating with a want I couldn't understand. My legs spread instinctively and the hot, humiliated tears that rolled down my cheeks were leaving blisters. I could have sworn it. Still, it didn't stop me.

I was panting while Ivar was laughing softly to himself, his fingers lingering over the cleft of my backside while I wriggled beneath him, trying to push myself into his touch despite the part of my head that was still capable of rational thought screaming at myself not to. "Whore," he breathed the word against my ear when he leaned down, spreading me open so that he could touch the tight entrance to my body. He circled it and I shuddered violently, eyes screwed shut while he laughed at my agony and it was agony. It was torture. My heart hammered so hard that it hurt, the muscles in my arms burned in frantic protest, but the rest of me hummed with a sweet bliss that his touch inspired. I hated him. I hated him with such a fury and passion that I knew if I could get my hands free, I'd have gotten the knife Fox made me keep beneath my mattress and driven it into his stomach.

He had turned me into this...this lust driven, sex-addled creature with my legs spread and my bottom up and straining for contact. My back bowed and my fingers wrapped in the silk ties like they could anchor me to reality when my eyes rolled at his touch. "You have a lovely little ass, Cyril," he purred against my ear again, his hand moving back to palm the object of his current adoration. "So soft and round. You may not have gotten hard from that beating but I did. I had to go and pay for a whore that night and when I flipped him over, I could close my eyes and picture you. I could think about fucking you into that mattress until you begged me to stop." His words hung heavy and I made a keening, aching noise at them, a chill traveling down my spine at the thought. I could picture it, in that moment, as he slid a pillow beneath my hips and I began to rock myself against it. I was so hard it hurt into my hips and my thighs. I could feel my cock rub against that pillow, weeping into it, hard and red and desperate and a guttural noise escaped my throat.

Ivar laughed again and I felt him move onto the bed, positioning himself behind me. His hands hooked at my hips and I trembled with anticipation. I wanted him. I was disgusted and ashamed and utterly humiliated but I wanted him. I needed him and I expected him to fulfill the fantasy he had planted in my mind. My entire body flushed with a mixture of shame and hot, hot desire but Ivar, it seemed, wasn't quite done with his game.

I couldn't see him. I wasn't in a position where I could really turn as he'd pulled me so taut that I couldn't bend my arms anymore. I spread my legs wider in an attempt to offer him what he wanted and he spread me open again. I cried out, pressing upward, preparing myself for it...for the thick, hard length of his cock pushing into me but instead, I felt the warm, wet, soft muscle of his tongue.

My whole body convulsed. My head lolled, my eyes rolled and I drove myself harder into that pillow than I thought was possible as he tongued me. I could feel him circle that clenching opening, flicking it with his tongue while his hands held me open, squeezing and groping with all the lewd aggression that belonged in a teenager. I was sobbing, struggling to get away because, Gods, how could someone want to touch me like that there but at the same time, I was so desperate and hot for it that I would have done anything to keep him from stopping. He did stop every few seconds though, mostly to goad me on. "You get wet like a woman. Did you know that? How curious." Like I was a study in biology. "You little slut. You enjoy this. I knew you would. You belong in a whore house with the rest of your kind, rutting like animals. It's all you're good at. It's what your little ass was made for."

I believed him then too. I even nodded. I babbled through the gag, drooling onto my chin and my sheets, thrusting against the pillow with each languid stroke of his tongue. I could barely breathe anymore. I was utterly delirious, somewhere in the clouds while he tortured me, his tongue wiggling into me so that I shrieked against the gag and pulled so hard that the bed creaked. He only held my hips tighter and went faster, shoving his tongue into me like he could fuck me with it and he did. I tried to think about how I hated his ugly face and his long fingers but every time I attempted it, I went back to that tongue--that wicked, sinful tongue inside of me that was reaching that heated, liquid hot thing that had grown in my belly and turned me into a feral animal. He stoked that fire until my legs were so wide my hips ached and he'd lifted me off the pillow and up to his mouth so that only my knees touched the bed. I pushed against him, trying to meet every thrust of his tongue with one of my own as I raced for a finish that made me both sick and euphoric.

I came hard, screaming into the gag like one of the whores in the market alleys. I trembled, shooting hot liquid up over my belly while all of my muscles turned to gelatin. I sagged in his arms for a brief moment but he kept going and I squirmed, crying and trying desperately to move away. The shame hit so hard it nearly knocked my breath away. Ivar...Ivar, who had beaten me like a dog in front of Fox and Brentlyn the year before. Ivar, who took every opportunity to hit me, pinch me, pull my ears, and call me every sexually degrading name available on the streets of Coria...that Ivar...had rimmed me until I'd come like the bitch in heat that he told me I was.

I tried saying no then. I shook my head frantically when he dropped me back to the mattress, my legs pinned apart by his own. I chewed at the gag, pulled at the restraints, too enraged and humiliated to realize the heat in my stomach that had plagued me for days was nearly quenched, back to a vague discomfort similar to what I'd first felt. Instead, I was begging him through a gag not to do this. Please, don't hurt me. Please, don't touch me. No, no, no, no.

This wasn't what I wanted. He didn't care. I felt him wriggle out of his trousers and pull my hips up. The angle alone spread me open and a moment later, he was pushing into my soaked hole, stretching me so that my eyes squeezed shut against the sudden burning ache. I tried to wriggle free, gasping for air, but he'd made sure I wasn't able to do it.

There was none of the previous gentleness. "You got what you wanted, you filthy little bitch," he whispered above me. "You want this. Your body says you want this. The way you just came all over your pretty little belly says you want this."

Ivar thrust every inch of himself into me in one motion. I saw stars like I'd been punched. The air left my lungs. I could feel him. I could feel every part of him--the girth, the length, all shoved up into that hole I'd wanted filled minutes before. I felt like I'd been split in half and he grunted above me, his sweat dripping onto my back while he held my hips down and thrust into me. His hips pistoned, hard and fast, unrelenting and violent. I could feel the bruises forming before I saw them but the longer it went on, the more my body reacted. I begged it not to. I pleaded. I thought of every horrible thing that I could, including the fact that my tutor was raping me. It made me sick but I still got hard and that evil, wicked creature laughed again.

"I told you," he cajoled, like he was talking to a kitten, his voice hoarse. "I'm going to take your gag off now, Cyril. Do you remember what happens if you scream?"

I was pulling at my restraints, still trying to move away from him but I nodded anyway because I was too afraid of him not to answer him. He peeled the silk away on his next thrust into me and heard the moan that escaped my mouth, clear as a bell. "Please," I whimpered, my own voice even more hoarse than his. "You're hurting me, please, please Ivar--nnnng--"

It was too much. My entire body felt hot, my nerves on fire. His hands slipped in the sweat that covered my skin. The tattoos down my chest and back seemed to sing inside my bones, like they had roots that reached beyond my flesh, and I let out a keening, desperate noise. "That's it," he purred. "Take it like a good boy. It doesn't have to be so bad, you know. You are so fucking tight, Cyril! Gods above."

As humiliating as it was, I mooned over the idea that he was calling me a good boy. It made me shiver with delight and I couldn't help it. I couldn't stop reacting. I wanted him to get off of me and I wanted him to fuck me. He was reaching that spot inside me that had needed reached for days and I wondered if maybe this...this thing that had happened to me...was the reason my people were always kept as whores by his. It drove my actions. It took over my body like a parasite and it made me like what he was doing. "Harder," I finally whispered, a shamed flush washing over my face as I ground into him. "Please, Ivar, harder!"

"Harder, what, Cyril? Tell me exactly what you want." He stopped. He actually fucking stopped to make me say it, his cock sitting so deep inside me I swore it reached my belly button and I squirmed, bowing my back and rubbing my ass against him where we were joined. He had to grab my hips to still me. "Now, now. Boys that misbehave get beaten."

"N-no," I begged. "P-please don't. I'll do...anything. Just please don't...don't hit me." My head hung between my crossed arms and my shoulders sagged. Ivar reached around me to grasp my weeping, aching cock in his hand and I nearly shrieked, biting down hard on my bottom lip until I tasted blood, my eyes rolling.

He stroked me hard, squeezing until I was gasping for breath, jerking under his touch like a puppet on strings. "Tell me. Now. Or I'll take that belt to you so hard the blood will run down your legs, you little slut."

It was hard enough to say the words, to form them in my mouth. I wasn't sure I'd ever said them out loud except in jest at Fox and then...then they were insults. "I want you to fuck me," I hissed eventually as he pulled on me until my eyes stung. "Harder. I want you to fuck me harder. I want your cock. I want...I want..."

"Say it."

"I want you to come inside me, Ivar, please." I shuddered and he groaned above me, leaning forward so that he could nuzzle into the back of my head like we were some pair of twisted lovers. He gave me what I wanted though. His hips drew back and he pounded me. The slap of skin on skin and the sounds of my keening, mewling, desperate little moans and his grunts were the only noises in the room. I begged. I begged like I'd never begged for anything before in my life and I yearned for his little praises. Good boy. Good whore, even, made me feel regal. He filled me up the way I felt I was meant to be, the way that plaguing heat had made me need to be.

"You're going to come again, Cyril," he growled into my ear when I felt him tighten inside me and his fingers dug deeper into my hips. I obeyed him like a trained pup. I felt him climax, a rush of his hot, sticky seed filling me up until it pooled out of me and started running down my thighs. He had his arms around my middle and his teeth sank into my shoulder when he did it. The pain pushed me over the edge and my whole body clamped down on him, shuddering to another exhausting finish that had me collapsing beneath him, a boneless mess.

I hated myself. I was sobbing before he even slid out of me, the sudden anguish over what I'd done hit me and I let it wash over me like waves. My entire body must have turned pink from the shame of it and he pinched my ass like I was his property when he stood. I couldn't think about anything other than the heinous act I'd commited and the wicked things he'd done to me, made me say, made me want--I felt myself gag and swallowed it back down while he untied me. Whatever wild, feral state I'd been in before was over. I was drained, too exhausted to move and Ivar grinned down at me when he flipped me over and tucked himself back into his trousers. He licked my stomach where I'd made a mess of myself and I heaved again. That time, I was unable to stop it and I tumbled off the bed onto my hands and knees, acutely aware of the ache that started at the base of my spine and spread through my stomach and thighs from his wicked intrusion into my body.

I heaved until I was empty and even then, it didn't stop. Tears rolled hot and heavy down my cheeks, betraying exactly what I felt about this whole situation while he stood over me like he was waiting for me to lick his boots. I kept trying to empty an already empty stomach, my muscles aching and I kept willing him to leave...to just leave me to my agony, my shame, my utter devastation.

Ivar threw a handful coins down at me.

I often prided myself on not getting angry and having an obscene amount of self-control but that broke me. The sob that escaped my mouth was primal and horrific. It was a noise I didn't know I possessed and he smiled maliciously down at me when I looked up at him.

I did exactly what I imagined doing when he'd had me gagged and I spat, aiming for his face from my place on the floor. I missed. Fox always beat me at spitting contests but the point was there. He was livid. His face turned an unhealthy shade of puce and he backhanded me so hard I went so sprawling. Blood filled my mouth, coppery and bright and he dragged me back up by my hair while I thrashed. "Listen to me," he ordered, his voice low and dangerous and I disregarded him, choosing instead to kick and punch and spit more. I hardly felt that he was holding a handful of my hair.

"Listen to me!" he shouted again, this time grabbing my face with bruising force against the already aching spot where he'd hit me. "If you pull that shit again, this will be your life. No Harlan to save you. No Fox to fuss over you. No Ambrose to take care of you. Just you and whoever pays to plow into that tight little ass." He threw me backwards toward the bed and I huddled on it, drawing my legs up while I glared. I became a little island of hate in the middle of the bed and he seemed to know better than to push me more.

Instead, he gave another order. "Clean yourself up. You reek of sex."

Chapter Text

I spent the next two days in a state very near to comatose. I was physically exhausted to a point so profound that even eating took too much out of me. I turned away food when it was brought to my door the way that it was every morning. Ambrose had to lift me out of the bed to have the sheets stripped and I didn't know if he saw the mess I'd made of them or if he was too busy paying attention to me to notice. He filled the role of doting father like he was made for it. He always did when I was ill. He took to the side of my bed like I was on the verge of dying and for awhile, I thought that I was.

Truthfully, it wasn't all physical exhaustion. In fact, most of it was something else entirely. I couldn't lift myself out of bed to look in a mirror. Nightmares plagued me like parasites that had bored into my head and made nests in my memories. I was disgusted with myself and I took great delight in my few waking moments when I realized the shredding state of my arms was because I'd clawed myself to bloody ribbons.

I deserved it. My self-loathing reached into my soul and crippled me. I couldn't stand the thought of being near anyone that I knew. I feared that they would look in my face and know what I'd done--what I'd allowed someone to do to me...someone that I despised on such a level that even thinking about him had turned my stomach before 'It.' That was what I called what he'd done to me, when I had to think about it. 'It.' I couldn't name it, not anymore. I couldn't admit to what it really was or that I'd enjoyed it or that he'd somehow stopped the fit I was in. I convinced myself I'd had a psychotic break and that the violence was a necessary shock to jolt me back into the right frame of mind but I still wasn't in the right frame of mind. I tossed and turned in my sleep. If I woke up, I rolled over and closed my eyes again, ignoring anyone that happened to be there because the thought of looking at someone's face made me sick.

They would be concerned...whoever it was. Fox, Ambrose, Brentlyn, Harlan. Even the maids whispered about it. I didn't want concern or pity or comfort. I didn't deserve it. I had allowed Ivar to take control of my body like I was a puppet, a toy. Something for him to use and discard. I replayed the terror over and over in my head. It brought back the trembling, shaking fear in my fevered dreams. I remembered unwanted touch all over my body and his tongue...

His tongue.

So I slept. I only vaguely remember a few conversations that went on above me while I was wallowing in my hatred.

"What happened to his face?" Fox had whispered, leaning over the bed while my eyes opened blearily and I shut them again, turning my head listlessly to one side so that I could wait for slumber to swallow me again.

"He probably hurt himself when he was fighting everyone," Ambrose answered, his voice strained and dark.

Someone's fingers brushed over my cheek. I didn't respond. "Bullshit," the Prince spat back. "It looks like someone backhanded him. You can see the imprint of the knuckles."

"I don't know, Fox. He never wakes up long enough for me to ask."

I knew, logically, that I would have to get up. Life went on without me and eventually Ambrose would grow tired of my pity act. I couldn't possibly tell him the truth of it. I feared what Ivar had threatened me with on such a deep level that the thought of it made me start to shake all over again. I wouldn't survive like that. Not when this was the result.

So eventually, on the third day, I pushed myself out of my near-coma when the maids brought food to the door. I managed a few mouthfuls of it and, when they were gone, got to my feet. I should have known it would hurt. I expected some discomfort but what hit me was a terrible, burning, throbbing sensation that started at my naval and traveled to my knees. It was worst the few seconds right after I stood but the more I moved, the more it ebbed away like a leaving tide. The evidence of it was there, a twinging pain between my legs, but it was survivable so I cleaned myself up and dressed with slow, wobbly movements. I avoided the mirror, going so far as to throw my sheet over it. I ordered the maids not to touch it and hobbled from the room feeling much like I was Ambrose's age instead of my own.

I was more than a little bit surprised to see Fox with a pile of books in the sitting room, work spread out around him like he'd been there for days. He even looked like he'd slept there. A plate of half-eaten breakfast sat on a table near him. He was shirtless, which made my stomach do an unhealthy flip that only increased the disgust I felt with myself, wearing that mussed-hair look like he was made for it. He wore the same style dark blue linen sleeping bottoms he'd been wearing his whole life and one leg swung from the couch. The other was drawn up against his body and his chin was resting on his knee.

He was so deep in concentration that he didn't notice me. His brows were furrowed and he had a quill between his lips, a book held up in front of him, and his glasses were sliding down his face. He wasn't expecting me to wake and I suspected Ambrose was gone or he would have never allowed the Crown Prince to camp out in his sitting room like a common school boy. That, of course, wasn't why I knew that Fox hadn't expected me to leave the room.

It was the glasses. He never let anyone see him wearing them but his family. He hated them. I remembered when he'd started to wear them because he'd been so piss-poor at archery that a scullery maid that had never handled a bow had beaten him in a firing contest. He had some sort of focusing problem, the healers said. He'd cried so hard that his throat had bled. Harlan was a master archer. Brentlyn could hit a moving target in a thunderstorm at a distance that was unheard of even among the ranks of the military.

Gods, even I could fire a bow with decent accuracy.

Fox could not. He never would. He could barely read without them but he insisted on never wearing them lest it be seen as a weakness. He did all of his educational readings in private and, although I had never been able to figure out how, managed to keep up to date in our studies.

"They don't look that bad on you, you know," I finally whispered, my voice hoarse and week and Fox nearly jumped three feet. The book he was holding slipped from his hands and papers he'd tucked into it flew up above him like a flock of birds. He even made an alarmed, shaken little noise not unlike a yelp as he stumbled to his feet. His hand reached instinctively for his hip where his sword was meant to be but he wasn't dressed and thus it wasn't there. I raised an eyebrow. "It's just me. Homicide isn't necessary. I do live here."

"Mother of the Gods, Cyril," he panted, one of his hands at his throat. He pulled the glasses off and threw them onto the table with his paperwork. "They look like shit, but thank you for trying. You scared the piss out of me." He was up in an instant, having recovered quickly from the fright I'd given him so that he could launch himself at me. Fox was affectionate in his own way. He was a fist-bumper, shoulder-nudger, hip-checker sort of friend...the sort that would clap you on the shoulder when you were feeling bad. There were a few rare occasions where he was willing to go beyond that measured distance. Like when Ivar had beaten me the first time and made him watch or the times that I was sick or whenever one of his brothers was upset.

It appeared that this situation fell into the latter category. He gathered me up with strong arms and I felt myself stiffen, my back rigid. My brain protested, screaming at me to get the hell away from him as it began reminding me of what Ivar's arms had felt like around my torso and what I'd allowed him to do to me...what I'd done for him. Fox couldn't touch me. Fox was good. He was so good, down to the very core, the sort of Prince that visited field hospitals, orphan houses, and temples. I'd watched him jump from a horse to stop a man from hitting his wife in the street once. He did it without worry for personal injury, without considering whether the men in those field hospitals were his own or not, and without care that orphan houses were breeding grounds for contagious disease. He did it because he was Fox and he loved without restraint or conditions.

I would never deserve him.

I balked, squirming free of his grasp to try to put distance between us when his cheek pressed to the top of my head. He smelled like Fox again. Same old spearmint and polish, nothing lingering beneath that to make me salivate. I pushed him anyway, my hands planted on his chest to detach myself. I was disgusting...a creature lower than the whores that he visited when he was bored and whatever comfort he had to offer me should have been offered somewhere else. He looked at me like I'd slapped him, hurt crossing his eyes for a moment before I could manage an excuse. "I'm just sore," I explained and he bought it. His shoulders relaxed and he held his hands up in defeat.

"You should be. I've seen dying men in the field have less violent fits than that," he answered. Fox was the only one of our little trio to have seen battle. He never spoke about it. In fact, that was the first time I'd ever heard him reference anything about it besides a quick, 'I don't want to talk about it.' He sat back down and I made sure I was across from him, out of reach, in an entirely separate chair. If he noticed, he didn't make any indication of it. Instead, he just kept talking. "I was worried about you. The healers aren't even sure what's wrong with you. Are you...I mean, you must feel better. You look like hell though. Your face..."

I wrinkled my nose. "Hurts like hell," I grumbled, pouting and shifting in my chair. It hurt to sit. It put pressure on places inside me that had to be broken. I didn't want to talk about this with Fox. I didn't want to talk about it at all. I feared what Ivar had said. I feared even more how Fox would react if I just disappeared like that or what Ivar would tell him when they realized I was gone...that I'd just left, perhaps. It would break his heart. When we were small, still children missing our front teeth, he'd cut our hands open with a stolen kitchen knife and pressed the wounds together.

So that we were brothers. Even if I looked different. I was never to believe otherwise. That was what he'd told me.

It was Fox's turn to look skeptical at my answer though. He gathered up his book and his papers, dropped them on the table, and sat back in his seat. "It looks like someone backhanded you."

I rolled my eyes. "I probably got hurt when I was thrashing around. I don't really remember a lot of it," I lied smoothly. "What's all this?"

Not smooth enough, however. Fox read people like they were books. He even put his glasses back on so that he could see my face with better clarity. "Old histories about Lierians. I was trying to find out what was wrong with you. Don't change the subject. Someone hit you."

"Nobody hit me," I insisted, worrying my bottom lip between my teeth. I reached for the book. He snatched it back. Guilt blossomed in my stomach over lying to him and I felt a flush creep to my cheeks. Fox was staring at me with the clearest set of green eyes I'd ever seen. It felt like he could look through me and I shrank in on myself under the scrutiny. Somehow, he would know. It was irrational, I knew that, but I was convinced that somehow, Fox had gotten a move-by-move account of how I'd let Ivar lick me to an unholy orgasm that had made my entire body burn hot for him and then fucked me so hard he'd bowed my legs and left black bruises on my hips and my backside. He would know that I'd begged for it like a greedy little whore. I pushed forward though, determined to remain stoic. "Did you find anything?"

Fox glared at me. The glare of a Crown Prince should have made me shake. Fox could have me executed, lashed, put in a stockade, sent to the tents to service the men in the field, or tied to his own bed. The world, literally, sat in his hand. Instead of cowering, I scowled back. He would have never hurt me. He'd sat outside my door trying to help me any way that he could. He cared. He shouldn't have, but he did. "Yes, actually," he infomed me haughtily, his nose turning up just a bit. He could be a spoiled brat when he wanted to be. "But I'm not telling you any of it. You have ligature marks on your wrists."

I blanched. The flush drained from my face and he noticed it. He pushed his glasses back up, arms crossed, and then sat back looking as regal as a King. He even crossed his legs, one corner of his mouth twitching up while he waited for my answer. "I was hurting myself. They tied me down," I shot back, recovering after a moment. My hands trembled and so I grasped at the arms of the winged back chair I was in. I stared him down but he seemed undeterred.

"With your arms crossed?" He must have noticed my confusion because he continued. "There are bruises on the inside of your right arm and the outside of your left arm...as if you were tied like this--" He crossed his arms out in front of him, fists held loosely, and I looked down at my own. He was right and I silently cursed my pale skin tone. Then, I silently cursed Fox as well for being too intelligent and observant for his own good. Then again, I'd been one of the ones to tell him in the strategy games that he didn't pay enough attention to small details. "Somehow, I doubt Ambrose would have allowed you to be tied in such a way that your muscles were in constant strain. For your own safety, yes, even I would have allowed that but those bruises...it wasn't for your own safety."

I fell back on my first tactic of dodge and evade. I mimicked his posture, trying desperately to remain cool though I knew he was watching me so closely that he could see me squirming behind my eyes. "They're probably from the original struggle. Maybe you even put them there when you had to hold me down. What did you find?"

He snorted, his eyes rolling and his head falling back for a moment. "I did not put those there," he laughed darkly. "I told you. I'm not saying. You have gag marks on the corners of your mouth. Did they put a gag on you for your own safety, Cyril?"

I felt my whole body turn cold. My eyes widened, my chest ached, and my heart broke. I averted my gaze, swallowing hard. I couldn't look at him any longer. He knew. The one person in the world I wanted to protect against this--that I needed to protect against this--and he knew. Of course, he would know. Fox had shared a bath tub with me when I was a fresh face at the palace. They let me sleep in his bed and he'd cuddled up next to me like I was a doll for him to hold. They'd crafted me into his best friend, his confidant, his companion.

Perhaps Ivar was right. My stomach sank like a stone and I tried to make myself smaller, curling into the chair as Fox leaned forward, eventually crossing the room so that he could kneel by my chair.

Fox. Kneeling. It was a new concept for me and I squirmed to the side of the chair he wasn't kneeling near, trying to avoid touching him and trying desperately not to think of the way he was lowering himself to me. He would be King. In a few years, when Harlan decided that Fox was ready and that he wanted to move to the royal estate on the coast to spend his golden years fishing and hunting and enjoying the beach, Fox would be King. "Tell me," he implored, his tone practically a plea and he reached for my hand. I hadn't the strength to move away until he'd already grabbed my fingers. Only then did I jerk free of him, tears pooling in my eyes and then rolling hot and unwanted down my cheeks. "Oh, Cyril...listen to me--"

"Stop," I begged back. This had to stop. I couldn't have him involved in this. He had too much to worry about already and he'd done so much...he'd tried so hard to help me when I didn't feel worthy of it. My sense of self was shattered. Ivar had seen to that. I had no control of my own body. He owned me. He'd seen to that too because if he'd walked in right then, with Fox kneeling in front of me, and told me to strip and get on my knees, I would have done it because I feared him. Harlan had saved me from a brothel. I had no desire to end up back in one, tied down and panting for someone that would throw coins on my back when he was finished using me. I didn't want to end up being the one that abandoned that oath of brotherhood that Fox had promised me eight years earlier.

I could barely draw breath and he leaned forward to brush the tears from my cheeks. I yelped at the touch, pushing his hands back. Fox already looked heartbroken. I wanted to save him from this. "Cyril, I'm the Crown Prince. You can talk to me. Whatever it is, I can fix it. If you did something, I can make it so it never happened. If someone hurt you, I can punish them. If you need something, I can give it to you. You just need to ask. Please. I promised I would protect you, remember? When we were kids. You were so tiny. You're still so tiny. Don't make me a liar."

Little did he know, he was already a liar. I didn't blame him for that. How could I? I remembered the promise, though I shook my head like I didn't, and Fox frowned. "Fox, can you do me a favor?" I finally asked, setting my jaw. He nodded like an eager to please puppy. "For once in your entire life...just once...can you mind your own fucking business?"

Fox stumbled back from me like I'd slapped him. Good, I thought to myself. Leave. Hate me. Make Brentlyn your second. Nothing good could ever come of this. He looked both heartbroken and livid at the same time. His cheeks had flushed a lovely cherry color on his smooth, tan face. His eyes were soft one moment, looking on me with such an immense amount of pity that I could feel it rolling off of him like waves. The next, he hardened. They narrowed and he closed himself off the way that he always did when he wasn't getting his way.

"You are my business," he finally snapped. "Everything that happens in this kingdom is my business. I will find out what happened to you." It was a warning, spoken with deadly, sharp clarity. He leaned into my chair and got so close to my face that I could taste the coffee from his breakfast on his breath. I shivered and pushed back into my chair, eyes wide as I stared back at him. Fox continued, his threat coming from low in his throat, a violent whisper.

He leaned into my ear, his lips brushing skin and for a moment, I wanted to grab him and crush myself against him. Instead, my fingers dug into the chair, my heart hammering and my lungs aching. I was holding my breath, flashbacks from the night with Ivar flickering through my head. He'd spoken against my ear like that and I whined, low in my throat, feeling rather like I should have gotten on the floor and shown him my belly the way a submissive dog would show an alpha male. "I will find out," Fox repeated. "And when I find who did it, I will destroy every aspect of his life and when I've done that, I will have him tied to the whipping post in front of the castle and I'll wield the whip myself until the breath is gone from his lungs and his heart has stopped." His hand had snaked up and cradled my head, his fingers in my hair.

It was the most erotic thing anyone had ever done to me and he'd barely touched me. My whole body was on fire and each wave of liquid hot desire that I felt for Fox was followed by another round of sickening shame. "Fox," I whimpered. "Please..."

"Don't beg," he ordered, leaning back and scowling at me, arms crossed. The erotic second was over. I felt physically and mentally drained just from his proximity and he was angry with me. "Do you think I'm stupid, Cyril?" I shook my head vehemently. Fox was one of the most intelligent men I knew. I would have never accused him of being stupid. Naive, maybe. Gullible, definitely. Prone to idealism? Holy Gods, was he ever. But stupid?

No. He was absolutely not stupid. "Do you think I don't know what happens to Lierians in our cities? Do you think I've failed to notice that they never come anywhere near us? Not willingly, at least. Do you not find it odd that we share this land with your people and we never, ever see them? What we know of them, we have learned from captives, slaves, and you. Let me show you something." He plucked up the book and his papers. It was an old Court histories, an account of every trial, tribunal, and captive taken in a certain span of years. "There are fifteen notations about Lierians in this book. It spans fifty years. Do you know what they have in common?"

"No," I answered weakly, though I leaned forward, intrigued. I'd never thought to look for Lierians in the Court histories. Then again, I had to have permission to access them from a member of the Court and while I could have asked Fox or Brentlyn, it felt strange to rely on them for it.

Fox threw the book in my lap and it landed with a thump. I winced and shot him a contemptuous look. That would bruise. He didn't seem to care all that much. He opened one of the marked pages. Then another and another and another. "Brothel worker. Brothel worker. Brothel worker. Raped. Raped and murdered. This one...this one was eight-years-old, Cyril. Eight. Working as a whore."

I swallowed hard, my eyes skimming the entries like they were scars from a beating that I didn't want to see. "That shouldn't be surprising," I pointed out quietly. "Your father found me in a brothel. It's very likely I was--"

"I don't want to think about what they were doing to you in a brothel when you were five, thank you," he snarled. He plucked up another book. "This is an account of a captive Lierian from before our dynasty, when Coria was still part of the Immaran Empire. I had to translate this from Ancient Immaran to Modern Immaran to Common just to get a basic idea of what it's saying. Do you know where I found this book?"

"Stop asking me shit you know I don't know the answer to. I've been comatose for three fucking days and you're being a dick," I snapped back, pushing the history book petulantly off my lap. Fox didn't bend to get it, not that I really expected him to.

Instead, he ignored my outburst and continued. "Buried in the archives of Untal's Temple. The place was a cesspit. Nobody has touched those books in centuries. Untal is one of the old Immaran gods. The Empire doesn't even worship her anymore. Point being, she was the goddess of depravity. Right? Because that was a fucking thing back when the Immarans thought they were descendents of heaven and could do whatever they wanted to everyone else." I knew all this. I'd taken history with him but when Fox got on a tangent, it was best to let him talk it out so I sat silently, arms crossed, still seething over his constant questioning because it reminded me of Ivar. He kept going. "So they had this captive. Ready? With fucking blue tattoos."

My eyes widened. I grabbed for the book like it was a life line and he let me have it. His translations were there in Fox's neat, scrolling handwriting and I drank them in. I barely understood most of it. Parts were ruined, eaten away with age or too faint to see anymore but there they were. I ran my fingers over the ink, holding my breath. I had yearned my entire life for an answer. For something. For some link to who I really was, even just my real name, and here it was. Sitting in my lap. "Keep talking," I urged him. I was too enthralled to read, euphoric over even touching an account of someone that looked like me because according to everyone else, I was an oddity even among my own.

"They called him infinito and at first, they thought he was young because of his size but he was a fully mature adult. The Lierans launched a full-scale attack on the city to get him back. They lost, of course. They didn't have the numbers to take the walls but they wanted him back so desperately that they nearly destroyed their entire tribe trying to get him." He paused, licking his lips, pacing in front of me as he was prone to doing when he was thinking. I was reading, trying to pick out what he was talking about in his notes as he kept talking. "They thought he was mad. He would have fits. Screaming, desperate, clawing up the walls sort of fits, begging through the bars for something but nobody understood him. I don't know what happened or if they found out what was wrong because the pages are too decayed. They did write that he kept repeating one word. They wrote it, there. Sarrel. No idea what it means. Sounds awfully close to your name though."

"Fox, this is...this is...amazing," I whispered. I lifted the book, cradled in my arms so that I could peer at it. I knew it probably was my name. That whatever that poor creature had been screaming, I had been screaming when they brought me to the castle. I couldn't remember much of the Lierian tongue. With nobody to speak it with, it had died as I aged. Still, this was so much more than I had ever hoped to learn without seeking out a tribe and trying to convince them not to kill me on sight as they tended to do to outsiders. My heart felt filled to the brim, ready to burst and tumble out of my chest in pieces. I was too enthralled to comprehend the depths he'd gone to in order to get that book. If I had, I would have protested more. Entering the temples of the old gods, the dead gods...that was religious treason in Coria.

Fox's excitement turned back to cold irritation. "I guess it's a good thing I didn't mind my own business?"

"I--"

"Still haven't told me who put hands on you." He pressed his lips in a thin, disapproving line.

I remained steadfast. "Nobody."

The Prince rolled his eyes and pushed his research toward me. He was bristling at my denial. "Your people are coveted for sex. Brothels pay a man's weight in gold for a Lierian slave. Every case I've come across brought before the Court regarding a Lierian involved a sex crime or a prostitute. You have bondage marks on your wrists and your mouth, somone has gagged you, and you scream in your sleep for somebody to stop. I could hear you through the door." He heaved a sigh and flopped back onto the couch. "I get it. Someone took control over your body. They did things to you that you don't want to think about it. I've seen the war camps. I've seen the men that faced horror and trauma. Nobody wants to face it. Just know that...whenever you're ready, I'll take care of it. In the meantime, I'm not going to stop looking on my own."

I hesitated, staring at him with wide eyes. He'd done so much for me and continued to do more, like some twisted guardian and I licked my lips. I debated saying nothing. Instead, I managed a whisper:

"Thank you."

Chapter Text

Fox wouldn't let it drop. He asked me questions on a near constant basis, every time he was around me. I could barely eat. Every time I tried to bring something to my mouth, the thought of Ivar's hands made my stomach churn. I forced down enough to please Ambrose at dinner when he ate with me. Fox noticed, observant as he was. He pointed out that I looked thinner every time he saw me, stopping to examine the bruises on my wrist and my mouth. I jerked away from his touch every time he moved in for it.

I could have told him. I knew, logically, that Fox would be able to make Ivar disappear long before Ivar could ever touch me but I had a crippling fear of brothels...a fear that my tutor had employed with surgical precision. I had opened my mouth to tell Fox a number of times but every time I tried to say it...to give voice to what had happened, I couldn't use my tongue. It seemed unreal to me at that stage, like I couldn't quite accept it and giving it a name, a story, a place in Fox's memories...it would have made it real.

So I had started to avoid him. I refused to go to lessons, claiming that I was ill so that Ambrose would let me stay in and because I looked so battered and broken, he caved to my wishes up to a point. Eventually, he insisted I go back. He reminded me of my role while I sulked in the couch, pouting and scowling.

"You're Fox's second," he prodded, straightening the pendants and pins on his jacket that symbolized the ranks given to him by the King. There was even one there that Fox had awarded him, though I had never asked what it was for. I only recognized that it was Fox's sigil, a white tree reaching for the heavens--the standard symbol of his family. Each male member altered it slightly to represent himself but the tree had to remain, a show of solidarity to the Corian pantheon. The tree itself was a representation of the family of the Gods. There was even a tiny face etched into the trunk to represent Miero, whom they revered as the Regulator. The defiant son of the old Immaran Gods that had risen up against his family and given life to the new monarchies. The Regulator of Humanity was his specific title and, provided you believed the way that most Corians did, Fox included, he was the creature that breathed life into you at birth.

Fox's sigil rested on a field of dark red and a black fox was curled around the base of the tree. I hadn't believed him when he'd told me he was going to add that but I'd been foolish to doubt him. It made me smile every time I came across the symbol, usually paired next to his father's bright blue version, a flock of birds in flight above the tree.

"Fox doesn't need a second," I complained back. "He's a strong personality. He's perfectly capable of functioning without someone to hold his hand." I ran my fingers along the arm of the couch.

Ambrose fixed his collar and turned from the mirror to face me. "Fox is reckless, wild, defiant, disobedient, and a proper pain in Harlan's ass. He's even worse when you're not there to at least try to make him see reason. You know he went to the old temples? By himself. He snuck out of the palace at night, unguarded, and entered a defiled temple." His voice was pained when he spoke. His expression tightened, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. He wasn't looking at me. His eyes were unfocused, distracted.

"The Prince is an adult," I pointed out flippantly with a dismissive wave of my hand. I pressed my fingers to my forehead, right between my eyes, trying to stave off the headache that was pounding behind my skull. "And I have no power to stop him if he really wants to do something or have you forgotten that? I'm no noble, Ambrose. I can't very well petition the King to rein in his brat."

My guardian huffed, his narrowed eyes turning on me. Ambrose loved me. His wife and son had died in an epidemic before Harlan was even King. I was all he had and he tried so hard to be what I needed him to be. He was not, however, so wrapped around my fingers that he was willing to take my lip. "Don't get sassy," he warned. "He's still the Crown Prince. You can't call him a brat."

I snorted. "I call him a brat to his face. He likes it."

"Oh, you two..." he groaned, rubbing his temples. Ambrose was well into his sixties, far older than anyone else working for the King, and he looked it. His face was tired, his hands had started to curl up and he rubbed them like they ached all the time. He'd had black hair when I was a child but it had rapidly turned to a pewter color in recent years. He blamed me for that. He was probably right. "Cyril, you know the laws. Entering a defiled temple is forbidden. Fox is facing a tribunal with the temple elders for that."

I felt my emotions change from disinterested and irritated to concerned and overwhelmed in less than a second. It was going to give me whiplash. My eyes had widened and I sat up straighter in my chair. "He's the Crown Prince. Surely, Harlan won't allow them too--"

"Harlan has no power over the temple. The monarchy serves the Regulator. Fox is supposed to be an example of a devoted servant of the faith." Ambrose seemed torn. He sat down beside me and reached for one of my hands, folding it up between his own gnarled fingers and I swallowed hard. When Ambrose got emotional, it meant things were bad. He was the King's second. He'd been taught the same things I had been taught and Harlan was the second King he'd served in that position. The man that had trained to fill that role for Harlan had died in battle before he'd even taken the throne. We'd been trained to remove emotions so that, in the event that our King could not, we could provide the voice of reason. The logic. The mind behind the Crown. They wanted me to be a face of my people, a symbol of hope for the Lierians. Harlan wanted that gap bridged.

I shifted toward him, chewing my bottom lip. "You know I'm not exactly devout, Ambrose," I reminded him gently. "What does that mean for Fox? If I'm going to speak to him about it, I need the details."

The old man drew a deep breath and shook his head, staring down at our hands. "Miero banished the Dead Gods of Immara. He put a plague on all their temples and instructed that they remain standing, untouched...a testament of what abusing power will mean for you in the end. They're a symbol of all things unholy, a reminder of how much we lost to drive the Empire from Coria. Punishment varies. Fox is young, willful, and the son of a King. That will be taken into account when the elders judge him."

"If you were to guess though..." I probed further, my heart pounding. I was squeezing his fingers desperately, dreading what I was about to hear.

Ambrose grimaced. "They'll want to cleanse him. As far as they're concerned, he's a walking stain on the faith right now. Cleansing is usually accomplished through some form of public humiliation."

I nodded shortly and withdrew, the wheels and cogs in my mind churning over the information. I had no sway with the temple. I wasn't noble, as all the other trained seconds had been, and I wasn't Corian. Lierians had their own faith, though I knew nothing about it. The priests and the elders thought of me as a heathen. "Does Brentlyn know? He's as devout as they come. I'm certain he could--"

"He already tried," Ambrose cut me off with a shrug. "They turned him away at the temple doors. They'll hear nothing. You know what he went into that temple for, Cyril?"

"Yes," I answered numbly, my lips turning down into a deep frown. I stood swiftly and smoothed my shirt out. I had an objective now, something to motivate me, something that gave me purpose. For a brief moment, I didn't feel as shattered as I had in the past week. I felt more like the old me. I had never been confident but I was steady and reliable. I felt that was equally important and right now, Ambrose was relying on me to speak to Fox. What he thought I could do, I hadn't a clue. Perhaps to just provide a shoulder for him to lean on while he dealt with the fallout of his actions. I could do that, I decided. I threw myself into it immediately, grateful for the distraction.

I thanked Ambrose for the information and left the apartments, making my way down the polished marble halls of the seat of the monarchy. I ignored the pictures staring down at me, turned down one corridor, and stopped at the tutoring rooms. The door was open and Fox and Brentlyn were deep in discussion. The younger Prince seemed positively livid. His eyes were dark and his arms were crossed defensively. Both of them fell silent when I walked in. "So you join the world of the living?" Brentlyn asked coldly. He was only twelve months Fox's junior, probably closer in age to me than Fox actually was, but he could pack an even colder glare than his brother.

And I could tell in his voice that he knew why Fox had been in those temples and he blamed me. Hell, I blamed myself. The guilt was nagging my heart, tugging it down toward my stomach as I gathered my resolve and entered the room. It was a library with one massive war table in the middle of it, several oak desks polished and stocked with everything someone would need to learn, and a large, cherry desk at the front where the instructor sat.

Fox slipped from the windowsill where he'd been sitting and crossed the room, reaching for me in the last second. I anticipated the motion and side-stepped him, glaring. I felt just as angry as Brentlyn seemed to be, for different reasons. My face was flushed and my palms turned clammy as Fox blinked back at me, clearly surprised by the animosity in my posture. "You didn't tell me you were facing a tribunal," I spat, my eyes narrowing.

He seemed undisturbed and shrugged, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. "It didn't seem like vital information," he drawled in response, failing to even look at me. He was likely hurt by my distance and my refusal to attend lessons but in that moment, I didn't care. I wanted to slap the disenchanted look right off his stupid face.

"I'm your fucking second," I hissed through my teeth and even Brentlyn's eyes widened at the poison dripping from my tone. "Everything is vital information. What you eat, what you wear, where you go, who you fuck--I should know all of it. That is how I make an informed decision, Fox. You left the palace without an escort. You could have been killed. Kidnapped. Held for ransom. Beaten. You asked me if I thought you were stupid and you know what I thought?" My anger was liberating. I felt like it had been growing in my chest since 'It' happened with Ivar and now, here with Fox, it was all exploding outward. My body was shaking with it, emboldened by ferocity, and I reached out, planting both hands on his chest so that I could shove him backward.

Fox stumbled, caught himself on one of the desks and stared back at me with wide, shocked eyes. I continued on my rampage. Not even Brentlyn moved to stop me when I advanced on his brother. "I thought, 'No. You're the most intelligent person I know. You're perfect. Your people love you. You appeal to them in a way nobody else in your family has ever managed. Everybody loves you. How could I ever think you were anything less than the brightest man I know?' I was wrong." I pushed him again. This time, he was ready for it and caught my arms, shoving them back with a scowl while I lectured him but this was my job. I had always known this was my job. I was Fox's leash just as Ambrose was Harlan's. We were there to rein them in when they were being stupid and Fox had been more than stupid. I hadn't realized it then because the information he'd given me had been so new, so perfect, and everything I needed at that moment. I realized it now though.

"You are willful, ignorant, disobedient, and reckless and you are done. Do you understand me? You're done acting like this. I won't allow it anymore. You have a responsibility to your people and you let them down."

Brentlyn whistled and then snorted. Fox stared at me like I'd grown a second head. Neither of them had ever seen me so worked up over anything. Not like this. I was shaking with rage. I welcomed it, let it wash over me like waves on a beach, and I rolled my shoulders back. I'd needed that. Fox had needed that. "Yes," he managed to choke out. "I...you're right. I'm actually about to go to the tribunal. You missed the lesson."

"I can tell time," I snarled.

"Ivar asked where you were," Brentlyn added and I saw Fox's face darken momentarily. A chill ran up my spine and I shrank, the anger dissipating like a popped balloon. I wrung my hands, the flush left my cheeks as the blood drained from my face. I could swear, even the tattoos left. I felt entirely colorless.

It took me several moments to recover but eventually, I managed to nod and followed Fox out of the room. The tribunal center was directly opposite of the throne room. The elders would judge him there, in front of whatever members of Court felt they needed to attend.

I was allowed in because I was Fox's second, though it took an order from him to get the guard to let me pass into the hall. It was a shell shaped room. The ceiling was even carved to resemble one. The long curved fingers branched outward toward the gathered crowd. I had figured Fox's tribunal would gain some attention but I had been so numb in the past few days that I hadn't even noticed the rumors. I hadn't the time to prepare for the eyes that stuck to me when I appeared at his side. I'd grown used to it but the initial prickling on the back of my neck always caught me off guard.

At the narrow end of the room, a long driftwood table stood on a pedastal. The three elders, the oldest priests from the Temple of Regulation, sat there looking down like old vultures. Their faces were wind-burned and wrinkled so badly that their eyes were almost indistinguishable. They wore the pale blue robes of the position and their hands were bound in bandages to keep them from temptation. Behind them, Harlan and Ambrose stood.

"I've never seen your father look like that," I whispered in Brentlyn's direction as one of the temple guards led Fox to a depression in the center of the room. He was stood up in the center, his hands bound behind his back, and it gave me chills to watch. It reminded me of the silk ties on my wrists. I rubbed them absently and turned back to Harlan. He looked utterly devasted, heart broken, and distraught. He kept whispering to Ambrose, wringing his hands and swallowing hard. They were too far for me to hear but whatever Ambrose was saying back wasn't easing Harlan's anxiety. I couldn't imagine anything would.

Brentlyn looked up with pursed lips and then shot me a scowl. "He was in there for you," he hissed. "I know you didn't ask for it, obviously. You were comatose but Gods above, Cyril! This is bad. This is so much worse than you could ever understand. My father can't protect him from this. My father protects everyone. He's just like Fox. How do you think Fox would feel if it were you or me standing in the judgement pit?"

"He'd be clawing up the walls," I mumbled, rubbing the back of my neck.

One of the elders stood and Brentlyn's mouth clamped shut. A hush fell over the room. The only sounds were the shuffling of feet as people strained to get a closer look. Brentlyn and I had been shuffled to the front with his guards, one of whom had reached out and put a hand on his shoulder in a show of comfort. Brentlyn seemed undisturbed by the gesture and I peeked at the man's face, trying to recognize him beneath his helmet but my attention was quickly pulled elsehwere.

They announced Fox. Full title. Crown Prince of Coria, first of his name, the whole lot and I wrinkled my nose. He hated that. I knew exactly the sort of scathing comments he would have been whispering into my ear had he been standing near me.

"Cyril," Brentlyn breathed before the Elder opened his mouth to speak. "Can I tell you something?"

"Of course." I was only paying him half attention, my eyes glued to the scene happening before me.

He took a deep breath and I felt his fingers find mine, lacing them together. "I'm terrified."

I looked up at him. Everyone assumed he was younger than me but he was taller than me by a solid head. Still. He was as white as I was on a bad day and he was chewing his bottom lip until it turned bloody red. I squeezed his hand. I knew the feeling. I was terrified too. My heart was pounding in my chest and I was having trouble breathing. I'd broken out in a sweat that was making my clothes sticky and I knew that my eyes were probably the size of saucers. "So am I," I answered quietly. "But Fox is resilient. You know that."

I wished I could sound as sure as he needed me to sound. His expression didn't change. His eyes stayed on Fox and I couldn't imagine how hard it was for him to watch this. He idolized his older brother with a ferocity akin to worship. He'd even tried to get him out of this but he'd failed and I imagined that made it all so much worse. I squeezed his hand again. That time, he squeezed back.

The Elder began to speak in a quivering, deep voice that echoed in the hall. "You walked not only on unholy grounds but into the temple of a defiled God. A Dead God...a place that writhes with the rot of Immaran faith. You did so willingly. You did so knowing that your actions made you unclean, as filthy as a place our Regulator cannot even stand to look upon. Do you deny this?"

A heavy, thick silence permeated the room. He seemed so small standing there alone...so unlike the boy I'd grown up with. There was no evidence of laughter on his face and I very suddenly regretted how cruel and unforgiving I'd been before the tribunal. Fox shifted his weight and then shook his head. "No," he answered clearly, tipping his chin up and there...in that motion, there was the Fox I knew.

"There you are," Brentlyn whispered beside me, as if he'd thought the very same thing.

"I did, Lord Elder," Fox continued. He stole a glance in my direction and my stomach dropped. "And I would do it again."

The whole room seemed to rock with those words. A horrified, collective gasp rose from the crowd and I was shaking my head, trying to step forward and reach him so that I could give him the counsel I had been trained to give him. One of the temple guards stopped me, pushing me back toward Brentlyn who was wearing the most repulsed expression I'd ever seen on anyone. His mouth was open in disgust. "I used to wonder if he was bravely stupid or stupidly brave," he spat. "It's the former."

I had to agree.

The Elder was staring at him, his wizened old eyes wrinkled even more while he glared. The other two stood up and whispered things into his ear. Ambrose was tugging Harlan back. "This is bad," I managed to choke out, as horrified as the crowd. He'd done this for me. He'd looked right at me, after all my ranting about him being willful and ignorant and disobedient...and he'd disobeyed what I'd told him to do. He'd gone into the temple for me, he'd spat in the face of the elders for me, and he would have done it again. For me. That was what his look suggested, at least, and I wished I'd slapped him earlier. "This is so bad."

"Oh, you have no idea," Brentlyn moaned.

"You will be purged," the Elder informed him and I heard Brentlyn's sob escape his throat. I'd never been serious about my religious studies but he was absolutely devoted. His legs gave out. His guard was keeping on his feet with an arm around his waist. Fox had gone pale and I saw him swallow. I was about to ask what, exactly, being purged meant, but it was answered for me shortly. "You will understand, Fox, that this sentence is lenient because of your station. Another act like this will not earn you the same pity. Take him out to the whipping post. Give him fifty."

Ambrose had warned me. I knew that something like this was very likely and if this was lenient, I didn't want to know what harsh was. Still, my whole body protested what was happening in front of my eyes. My brain was screaming at me to do something. There had to be something. Ambrose had always taught me that there was always something to be done. I hadn't had the time to think this out through. Fox hadn't given me that option and I wondered how much of that had been intentional. It fueled my panic, my frustration, and my desire to protect my friend. "Stop!" I screamed it before I knew what was happening, yanking my arm free of the guard that held me.

I stumbled out beyond the crowds as two of the temple guards grabbed Fox by his biceps. They were practically dragging him. No doubt they relished in the idea of doing this to a member of the monarchy. It didn't matter how loveable Fox was. Everyone hated the people above them.

"Stop!" I demanded again. The Elder, who had been turning away, faced me at his table and the guards slowed. Fox looked over his shoulder, struggling and straining to see me. "He did it for me! He went in because I needed him to do it. It should be me. You should be putting me out there!"

"Are you out of your mind?" Fox hissed, squirming until they allowed him to face me. "This would kill you."

"It's my punishment to bear, not yours," I shot back.

The Elder watched us and I heard him click his tongue. Fox made a groaning noise. "Gods give me strength," I heard him whisper to himself before he stood up taller and cast me a withering, 'I hate you so much right now' sort of look. It wasn't typical of him and I gave him the same look back. He turned up to the elders.

"He's lying," Fox accused. One of them opened their mouth to speak and he cut them off. "I am the Crown Prince. If I say he's lying, then he's lying even if he says the sky is blue. He is my subject and he isn't Corian. You have no power over him. You won't touch him."

Another heavy silence fell over the room and I turned to face him, my fists balled up. I didn't like being cast as the damsel in distress any more than I already was because of my race and size. I hated even more the idea that Fox was throwing his weight around to protect me. "I hate you," I told him, lowering my voice so that the whole room couldn't hear me.

He managed a weak smile then and I was momentarily stunned, confused by the look. "Good," he told me quietly. "At least if that's true, it won't hurt you to see this."

Chapter Text

I didn't want to watch. I intended to turn from the hall, go back to my room, and scream into my pillow until my throat bled. For Fox and what he was about to go through. For Brentlyn's agony over it. For my own shattered self and the deep, all-consuming guilt I felt for what was about to happen. For the bloody elders, who had ignored my plea.

I never made it to my room though. My legs didn't carry me there. I moved like a ghost through the palace, up to the royal quarters and out onto the balcony above the entrance hall. The palace sat on the beach. It was a sprawling, semi-circular building facing the water. It was far enough up that a naval vessel could never fire on it and close enough that the salty sea air still poured through the windows. It was made of smooth white marble and right outside the door, in a circular slope, was the whipping post.

It was hard, petrified wood that had been stained red so long ago that I knew it by no other color. I had seen whippings before. It was part of life in Coria. They were staunchly opposed to any sort of death penalty as a punishment so corporal punishment had become a frequent and brutal tool to enforce the rules of both politics and religion. A few men and women had died on that post, not because they'd been sentenced to die but because the priest that wielded the whip was a bitter, angry man the size of a small mountain. I'd never heard him speak. He was the stuff of nightmares, all hulking muscle swathed in black robes to hide the blood. He looked like the statues of Miero's youngest son, Grennen--the Guardian of the Dead only Grennen held a reaping staff like a farmer and all accounts of him were soft, kind, apologetic stories.

This priest was a man that had once gutted a stray dog on the temple steps for eating food left in an offering. In front of a group of children from the temple orphan house. He was not well liked and even Fox, tall and confident as he was, would look like a dwarf beside this man.

Harlan was on the balcony already. Ambrose stood with him. Neither of them expected me, though Harlan's guards didn't stop me from stepping out. The whipping pit was surrounded by a crowd of people and more of them were pouring in from the surrounding city, trying to get a view of what was going on despite the fact that rain had started falling.

The balcony hung right over the pit. It was a purposefully engineered arrangement so that the King could watch the men he punished. He was expected to face whatever it was that he had handed down. It was a show of mutual respect, of forgiveness.

"You shouldn't be here, Cyril," Harlan told me softly. He was holding the railing to support his weight and was half bent over, his shoulders low and defeated. "You shouldn't see this."

"I have to," I argued quietly, stepping up beside him. "He went there looking for information on Lierians to try to help me. I owe him this...Lord King..." I hesitated and chewed my bottom lip, struggling on the lump in my throat. "Is there nothing you can do?"

The King looked so devastated that it hurt to face him and I looked instead at Ambrose. He frowned, almost apologetically, as Harlan shook his head. "I have no power over the temple," he said morosely. "Fox needs to set an example. If he takes this well, people will respect him for it."

"Takes it well?" I asked, sucking in a sharp breath of hair and then huffing angrily. "They're going to whip the skin off his back and you want him to take it well? Fifty lashes--"

"Is half of what the usual punishment for this is," Ambrose finished for me, raising an eyebrow. "Even a King is not above the Gods, Cyril. I know how close you are to Fox. I don't think he would want you to see this."

"Well, I didn't want him to claim he'd do it again just to piss the elders off," I mumbled and Harlan laughed darkly. It was the first sign of there being anything other than utter despair in his current disposition. He stood himself up straighter and watched as the crowd parted the temple guards hauled Fox down to the post. He wasn't struggling, at least. He looked...noble, in his own way and they'd untied his hands, at least, but that didn't last long as they were immediately bound to the two metal rods sticking out of the sides of the post. He was tall enough that his arms bent, even bound and I saw him press his face to the post and take a deep breath. He was, perhaps, fifty feet from me but he felt close enough to touch and I leaned out.

My heart was breaking. I could feel it slowing to a devastated thump....thump......thump. It didn't want to keep going. I didn't want it to keep going. My fingers curled around the balcony and I felt my cheeks turn warm as the wielder came out with that wicked whip between his ham fists. I felt like I'd swallowed ice and the crowd turned quiet. I could almost hear them whispering that it was Fox. It was actually Fox, the Crown Prince, the son of the King, bound to a whipping post like a common criminal.

Harlan seemed on the verge of breaking down. He kept swallowing and had crossed his arms over his chest, his mouth set in a grim line. "Nobody would blame you if you didn't watch this, Lord King," Ambrose whispered, leaning in to him.

"He's my son," Harlan breathed. "I need to see what they do to him. If this were Cyril, would you watch?" Ambrose's silence was enough of an answer. Of course, he would.

The wielder crossed the pit and stood up on a carved stone pedastal. It was the same white as the castle, the same white as the beach. The rain came down harder, soaking Fox hair and plastering it to his face. His hands were clenching and unclenching, knuckles white, and I could only imagine the emotion running rampant in his chest. No wonder Brentlyn had disappeared. The big man cleared his throat and Fox flinched. "For the crimes of defilement, treading on unholy ground, and disobeying the sanctions of our Divine Regulator, you...My Lord Prince..." The way he said the words gave me chills. Like he was taking pleasure in this. "Are sentenced to a purging. You are to recieve a total of fifty lashes. You will count them out loud."

A whisper crossed the crowd when Fox nodded. His jaw worked beneath the skin as the wielder stepped down, unraveling the whip. The anticipation of it was killing me. I knew what waiting for the first blow felt like. It was a sickening, clammy feeling...a sort of knotting below the stomach that put lumps in the throat. I felt it for him, a sympathy pain that made the remnants of my broken heart crack again. There were fissures in my chest I wasn't sure I could ever heal and I let out a strangled, pained noise before my hands clamped over my mouth. Ambrose grabbed my arm and pulled me closer to him. I noted that his hand didn't leave me but instead remained stiff around my wrist like he needed the comfort that my presence at his side provided. I managed to wiggle until I could wrap my hand around his fingers and he nodded once, just to acknowledge that he knew, but he never looked at me.

I told myself the first strike would be the worst when they tore his shirt down the back. It was the noise that really did it, that harsh crack of the weapon hitting his skin and the immediate, shock of red that rose up between his shoulders afterward. Harlan shuddered beside me and I saw his eyes train on the railing of the balcony. Ambrose squeezed my fingers. I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood but it was his voice that did me in. It was the way his shoulders tightened up and his hands turned to fists, eyes shut tight, pressed hard to the post like he could avoid the blow. There was a moment of silence between it and the word. The number one, spoken in Fox's voice. Somehow, that made it more real. I could no longer disassociate any part of him from this. I couldn't put him in the Crown Prince role in my mind...the cool, detached, flippant boy that gave orders because he was born to give them.

This was Fox. This was the boy that had camped out in the kitchens with me before I could speak to him, hidden in a cupboard beneath the sink so that we could eat our weight in berries. It was the same boy that later vomited right next to me, sick on too much sugar, and laughed when he realized that he'd eaten so many of the raspberries that his vomit actually smelled like them. It was the same Fox that had built a tent on his bed and told me in lurid details about his first kiss and the girl in the kitchen that let him feel under her dress.

It was Fox, sworn to protect me, my best friend, my hopeless, unknowing crush on a journey to destroy whoever had hurt me...being brutally beaten. Because of me.

I counted with him, trembling by five and outwardly crying by ten. He was taking it better than I was but the longer it went on, the more strained he became. Every part of him was stiff and though the first few strikes had cut the surface of his skin, it wasn't until the later ones that he really started to bleed. The rain washed it down his back and it puddled at his feet, staining the sand pink. The time between each blow and when he was able to say the number grew larger and his voice grew more strained. He didn't cry out. He didn't scream...but he was shaking. I could see it in his hands when his fingers stretched and hear it when he spoke. The tremble in his voice was telling.

I hated it. I hated every part of it with every aspect of my being and although I had never been truly faithful to the Corian pantheon, I had always attended the temple when it was expected of me and performed the duties that they required. Now, I resented them. Miero, Gennen, the entire bloody lot of their awful Gods that demanded this kind of punishment for walking into a decaying building. I wanted to scream for him. I wanted to take what he was feeling and feel it for him. Mostly, I wanted to gather him up and apologize. I wanted to clean him up, rub a numbing ointment over his wounds, and bandage the deep, bloody gauges the whip was now leaving.

"He's barely more than a child," Ambrose finally said stiffly. "This is sickening. Cyril, lets go."

"No," I answered flatly, pulling my hand from his as thirty-one escaped Fox's mouth like a curse. "I'm not leaving him. I'm his second. I should have been there to convince him this was a bad idea. This is as much my punishment as it is his and I won't let him bear it alone."

Harlan's hand landed heavily on my shoulder and squeezed. He was still looking down at Fox, eyes wet, utterly defeated. "Come on, sweet boy. Nineteen more," he whispered like Fox could hear him and used an endearment I hadn't heard him use on either of his sons since they'd started taking on responsibilities as members of the royal family and heirs to the throne.

Ambrose pressed his lips together and turned from the balcony anyway. I let him go. It wasn't his horror to watch nor was it his responsiblity to shoulder a burden that was mine to shoulder. "I want to be with him when he's brought up," I told Harlan stiffly.

The King nodded. "I can arrange that." He said nothing more.

Fox reached forty before his legs gave out. His body went slack and his head lolled and for a brief moment, I worried that he'd passed out or worse, that he'd stopped breathing entirely. Harlan stood straighter, ready to bolt down to the post if something had gone wrong but after a second, something utterly inspiring happened.

The Crown Prince braced his hands in their restraints and pulled himself back up to his feet. He had always been defiant, determined to win, to prove himself...this did it. The guard standing behind me whistled. "Gods above," I heard him mumble. Fox bit out a sharp forty-one, his fingers curled around the metal that held him to keep himself up. My broken heart felt swollen. Internally, I cheered for him. I couldn't stop the smile that spread over my face. It wasn't joy so much as it was awe. It was a statement.

They couldn't break him. He wouldn't allow it. "You have a very strong boy, my Lord King," the guard said quietly. "He has all the makings of an excellent leader."

Harlan's devastation turned to intense, overwhelming pride. One of his fists clenched like he wanted to throw it into the air as Fox reached forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven.

"Stay on your feet," I encouraged from my spot, my voice low. Fox shook his head out, a shudder running down his body with the rain. It was pouring by then, rinsing the blood from him so that the full extent of the damage was visible. He looked like a bad butcher's job--all meat and blood and no sense to any of it. His entire body shook. His chest heaved for air and he was biting through his bottom lip. He turned his head for the first time--away from the crowd and up...up at us. At me. He flinched openly and I shook my head, as if we could have some silent conversation from where I was standing. 'I'm here with you.'

Forty-eight. Forty-nine.

Fifty was the worst. It was like he'd saved the hardest blow for the very last and finally, after all of it, Fox cried out. It was a gut-wrenching, desperate noise and two of the palace guards rushed forward to cut him loose. He lasted but a second on his feet before his legs buckled and they were scooping him up like an infant, carrying him back toward the palace.

I followed Harlan, running from the room with his guards barely in tow. We made it down the hall before they reached us and from my angle, Fox was a bundle of blankets with one arm hanging loose from the side, blood smeared down to his wrist and his fingers but they were flexing fingers. He was awake in there. Alert and I couldn't help but snort as I ran to keep up, practically falling over my own feet as the lot of us hobbled up the stairs to Fox's bedroom. He lived in the Crown's tower, where the heir apparent was kept. It was the most fortified room in the palace and a line of guards stood on the steps whenever he was inside. Nobody got up there unless they knew who it was but that day, there was no one yet. Just a healer waiting in his bedroom when he was deposited gently on the bed.

"Get him on his side. There now, little Lord. Lets get you cleaned up."

"Don't...patronize me," I heard him snarl and beside me, Harlan suppressed a smile. When the guards had dissipated, he stepped up to the bed beside the healer to assess the damage. I didn't want to see the damage. Not yet. I wanted to see Fox.

"They'll scar," the healer warned the King, who was absently brushing his hand over Fox's sweat and rain soaked head but the Prince's eyes shut at the contact like he reveled in it.

Harlan's lips were a thin line. "I would expect them to scar. He looks like a ruined steak."

"Thanks father," Fox mumbled. "That's encouraging. I love you, too." His voice was choppy. He had to breathe every few syllables and his face was contorted in what had to be absolute agony. I had thought what Ivar had done to me was horrific. What had been done to Fox...it was a whole new level and I crossed the room to the side of his bed. It was a wide, circular place done in the same dark reds and blacks as his sigil. A vast black stone fireplace was the center of the room and above it, a painting of a fox hunt. There were scrolls on the mantle, heaped over the clock because Fox allowed none of the maids to touch his things. The few times his room had been organized it had been done because I'd lost my mind trying to help him look for something and done it for him.

It was my turn to kneel beside him though, a vast role-reversal from our conversation when I'd come out of my self-imposed coma. I took his hand, ignoring the way he smeared me with blood in the process, and squeezed. "You..." I started, unsure of where to even begin. "You were incredible." It seemed about as good a place as any and he looked like he needed the encouragement.

Fox snorted and then grimaced at the movement. "I don't know how much longer I'm going to stay conscious, champ," he whispered, unable to make his voice any louder. The healer was trying to clean him up and every few seconds he jolted and cried out, whimpering at the contact. I ignored it, let him squeeze my hand when he needed to, and took a clean wet towel from the healer so that I could mop up his face. She asked me to let a maid do it and I adamantly refused to leave his side. Harlan told her to let me stay and to let me help if I could before Fox banished him to find Brentlyn.

"He's probably a mess," he reminded him. "Someone ought to check on him." I think, for the most part, he just wanted to be alone with his misery and since I had already refused to leave, he pushed away the only other person that could be pushed. I decided to stay silent and focus on cleaning him up the best that I could. I wiped the blood from his face, his hair, his arms, and down his sides. The healer rubbed a pale yellow paste into the wounds that made him writhe and sob for a few moments but the longer she worked, the more numb it seemed to become. He even told her it was starting to feel cold and that it tingled all the way down into his bones.

"That's intended," she assured him, reaching out to pat his head and she was lucky she couldn't see the loathing expression he gave her at the gesture. I, however, was fortunate enough to witness it and a small smile curved on my lips. Still Fox. Same old brat.

It took her nearly two hours to clean him up to her satisfaction. I had to help him sit so that she could wrap bandages around his torso and then encouraged him to lay on his back to keep pressure on the wounds that were still bleeding. He grumbled about it but obeyed with my help. He grumbled about that too. She left us then, the small jar of yellow paste in my hands and a roll of bandages as wide as I was sitting on the table by his bed.

"Fox--"

"I don't want pity," he said blandly, picking at the blanket I'd pulled up over him. He looked better, at least. Pale and still shaking, struggling to control the agonized tears that were threatening him, but better. "I don't regret going to that temple. I don't want to hear you apologize. I don't want to hear about how it's your fault because it's not. I want to know if you are alright."

I stared. Fox stared back, his eyes unblinking and bloodshot, the darkest green I'd ever seen them. "They just beat you like an animal in front of half the city and you want to know how I feel, Fox?" I couldn't quite wrap my head around what he was asking me and he seemed unable to understand why I would have trouble with it. He worried his bloodied bottom lip until I reached out and grabbed it to stop him, getting a surprised whine for my trouble. He bit my fingers too. Not hard enough to hurt or even draw blood, but he caught my index finger between his teeth and held it, staring at me while my insides turned to molten rock that boiled in my belly. His breath was hot against my hand and he grinned around it, a playful smile that seemed ridiculous given the circumstances.

"You watched," he responded acidly, the grin dying when he let go of my fingers. "I would have preferred you didn't."

"It was my burden to share, whether you believe it or not. I couldn't...walk away. I didn't want you to look up and just have Harlan there. When you stood back up though...Gods, it was all I could not to cheer for you." I rubbed my eyes at the memory and shook my head, that awe I'd felt filling my chest when I recalled the image--Fox, bloodied and physically broken, hauling himself to his feet from a scarlet puddle with violently trembling arms.

Fox snorted. "It felt like I was pissing on their temple steps when I managed it. I didn't think I'd be able to," he admitted and moved to shrug but gasped at the sensation and stopped the movement. "Reach under my mattress."

The last time I'd done that, there'd been a snake there. I scowled at him and he grinned again, inducing another stomach melting moment that turned my cheeks pink. I rolled my eyes and obeyed, fumbling around until I felt something and then I pulled. A book and folded papers fell out into my lap and I looked up at him. "Did you...Fox, you did not go back." I was appalled when he managed to chuckle but he shook his head.

"I got it the first time with the other book. I haven't had a chance to look at it much," he explained, nodding at it. I crawled up onto his bed and settled next to him with it in my lap. He could barely move his arms but he wanted to see and so I cracked it open to the first marked pages. "More about infinitos."

"Why are you doing this?" I suddenly asked. It hardly made sense. I'd grown up here with him. Like him. I looked different and I had a different beginning but everything I'd learned, down to my mannerisms and my accent, were Corian. Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to know more about my people. They just assumed that I would assimilate and, for the most part, I had. There had always been a nagging voice that wondered though...it reminded me that I would never really be Corian and I would never really be Lierian either. I was some odd thing in between...some bastard of a blended situation.

Fox licked his lips and his hand came up, just enough to reach for my wrist and his fingers slid over the skin. I shivered. He felt it. I knew he had to have felt it and my cheeks turned the same scarlet as his bedspread. "You were someone before my father found you in that brothel, Cyril. You had a family. You had a mother and a father. Somewhere, someone might miss you. You deserve to know where you came from and that...that fit you had?"

I colored even more and choked on my breath before I managed a nod. "What about it?"

"It's going to happen again," he admitted gently, his face apologetic as I balked away from him. That had been the most uncomfortable thing I'd gone through and it had led to the worst night of my life. It had shattered who I was down to the core. I still couldn't look in a mirror. I still had dreams about Ivar's tongue that left me hard and sobbing, disgusted with what I'd allowed him to make me. Fox continued though, ever persistent. "I don't know exactly what it is only that it's got something to do with the marks. They're not...tattoos, really, Cyril. It's pigmentation. You were born with those. Nobody ever put them on you. Remember when I told you they were hot? They were scorching enough that I thought it might actually cook you from the inside out. I was entirely convinced that you were dying. I was scared out of my fucking mind. I'd heard rumors of the Immarans keeping old texts in their temples. It was my only hope, Cyril. I had to do it. I couldn't..."

This was going down a bad road fast. His fingertips were still on my arm and I'd done nothing to stop the gentle, reassuring circles he was drawing. They slid slowly up to my elbow. It had to hurt him. I couldn't believe he was even still awake but then, I imagined he was in enough pain to keep him awake for days. He found the first of the blue, triangular marks, about the size of my palm, and traced the outline of it.

I groaned. I actually, legitimately groaned over Fox's touch and then sucked in a sharp, disgusted breath while he chuckled. "Don't move away," he pleaded softly through his soft laughter. "I didn't realize they were that sensitive. I won't touch them if it bothers you."

"It doesn't bother me. It's..." I turned to glare at him. He knew exactly what it was. I could tell by the look on his face and he raised an eyebrow like he was testing me, trying to see how far he could push before I told him to piss of and choke on his own tongue. I changed topics, opting to ignore his blatant sexual harassment. "You said you couldn't. Couldn't what, exactly, my Lord Prince?" I dosed his title with a hefty amount of syrupy sweetness so that the pulled a face as equally disgusted as mine had been with my groan.

"Lose you," he whispered back. "You're my only friend, you know that? Or at least, you're the only person that I know is my friend because I'm me and not because I'm Harlan's oldest son."

Fox's life was isolating. That was no small secret. He was escorted everywhere and everyone around him was kept at a distance except the members of the royal family...and me. I only got a pass because I'd been raised by Ambrose with Harlan's two oldest boys. I had no political connections to anyone else. I didn't know my own people. I was as isolated as Fox without having a real reason to be isolated. I knew how lonely it felt to be so utterly cut off from everything. Still, the sentiment touched me in ways I hadn't expected it to and I turned to look at him. He was already facing me, wide green eyes and parted, cupid's bow mouth.

Fuck him. He did things to me that should have been illegal and I hated myself for wanting it...for being what Ivar said I was. That thought soured me and I looked away. I heard Fox exhale loudly beside me, let down by the almost-moment that had happened between us. "Fox, I--"

"Yeah, I get it," he mumbled. "I'm the Prince. You're the second. I'm just your job."

"That's not what I was going to say," I grumbled, crossing my arms. I could feel myself bristle at the accusation and Fox shifted, crying out and biting down on his lip at the agony of every movement. I wished I could help him so much that it hurt but my help wouldn't make the ache stop. Even the paste couldn't fully heal that. I struggled for words while we sat there in silence, that book between us. I traced the pages, my mind whirring.

I remembered what Ivar had said. That they'd groomed me to be Fox's whore. In that moment, when he'd said it, I hadn't believed him. Since then, however, with this undeniable tension having blossomed between me and the Crown Prince, I couldn't be quite so sure. I swallowed hard. I'd never been good at keeping secrets from Fox. He had to be counting on that. "Ivar," I whispered, shifting so that I was sitting sideways and facing him. My stomach plummeted and I closed my eyes, steeling myself for the worst.

"What about him?" Fox asked. I couldn't see his face but in my mind, I was hoping for inquisitive, almost disinterested. When I opened my eyes, I got a hard, irritated look instead. "Cyril..."

"It was Ivar. You wanted to know who hit me. Who tied me down, who put a gag on me. It was Ivar and he...he--"

Fox was staring. Waiting. Patient and quiet while I wrung my hands, my heart humming in my chest, my blood singing in my veins. It was liberating, this whispered secret. My brain was screaming that I was stupid. Ivar had threatened me, several times, about what he would do to me if I told. He'd threatened me in the past--to beat me, punish me--and he always came through on it. This was reckless and disobedient and very Fox-like. Despite looking patient, however, my friend was also absolutely livid. I could see it in the way his pupils narrowed and his eyes tightened. His fingers twitched like he was itching to grab something but he couldn't really move his arms to do it. He tipped his head, indicating that I should keep going.

I tried to gather my thoughts, hyperventilating at just saying his name while the memory rushed over. Trying to recall what Ivar had done to me was like trying to bathe in shattered glass. It cut me open everywhere, bled me dry, ripped into my insides and before a few seconds had passed, I was in full blown sob mode. My shoulders trembled with it and I had to keep wiping my eyes viciously with the back of my sleeve so that I could see. "He said they groomed me to be your whore!" I finally bit out. The humiliation of the admission burned bright in my cheeks and I pressed my hands to them in an attempt to cool them but nothing worked. My fingers seemed just as hot. "He implied that they brought me back from that brothel to be a toy for you when you came of age. He said that's all we're good for...Lierians, I mean. That we belong in bed, taking it from whoever will pay the most for us."

I was pouring my heart out. I had started talking and once my mouth opened, I couldn't stop. I tried swallowing the rest. Let him think it was just that...let him believe Ivar had done it to humiliate me and convince me that everything I had here was a lie. My mouth disagreed. I kept right on babbling, singing like a canary. I grabbed for one of his hands and he let me. His fingers curled tightly around mine and he was chewing on his lip, his eyes bright and glassy like he might start crying too.

"He fucked me, Fox," I finally managed to whimper and his breath hitched. "And he made me...he made me--"

"Stop," he warned. "Just because he got you off doesn't mean you liked it. Stop thinking like that, Cyril. He raped you. It's different. Gods, why...why didn't you just tell me? I sat in a lesson with that...ugh!" He was fuming, his free hand clenching and unclenching. "Why didn't you tell Ambrose? Or my father? Heavens, even Brentlyn would have done something and he's about as useful as a wet blanket!"

"He threatened me and I was...so scared, Fox!" I was hiccuping through my words, trying desperately to regain composure. It felt good to tell someone. After what he'd been through that day, he didn't deserve the burden, but it had put something into perspective for me. I had refused to leave Fox alone to face the post. He was trying to do something similar for me and I was rebuking his every offer. I was isolating myself, internalizing pain that was only going to rip me apart.

Fox had given me hope of finding a past, a place to call my own, people to call my own. I refused to let what Ivar had done to me control my life. I was shattered, yes, but I could pick up the pieces.

He pulled on my hand and I looked down at it, then blinked up at him, confused. "Come here," he growled, jerking his chin up to indicate that he wanted me closer to him. I squirmed forward, fumbling for the headboad so that I had something to brace my weight on that didn't displace where Fox was laying. It was difficult not to touch him when he kept grumbling at me to get closer, he didn't have a plague. By the time he'd stopped, his mouth was close enough that if I even hiccuped, he would have been touching my lips with his. I struggled to remain still while he looked up at me. "You're nobody's whore, Cyril. Not his. Not mine. Nobody ever groomed you to be anything but my second. Everything else...that's extra. Being what you are...looking the way that you do...that doesn't change that you're still a person. Nobody has a right to take anything from you that you don't want to give them. Okay?"

"Looking the way I do?" I held my breath, my brow furrowed in confusion again, lips pursed in a thin line.

Fox rolled his eyes. "Please, have you looked in a mirror?"

I hesitated again, still too close to him for comfort, and I winced when I answered. "I...don't like to look in mirrors right now," I mumbled. "I feel...filthy. Like I can't get his hands off of me."

"I'm sorry," he breathed. "Gods, I'm so sorry. I left that first night. I went to the temples. I should have made sure you were safe first. I should have put Brentlyn outside your door or posted a guard to make sure you were safe in your bed every hour. I knew you weren't well--"

"You're not my fucking babysitter," I said through my teeth, glaring. "Shut-up. What about how I look? I look like a ghost. If not for these markings, I'd blend into my sheets."

"Ha ha," Fox drawled, wrinkling his nose. "You're beautiful, Cyril and when you get angry, you're fucking adorable. You're like this tiny cat, hissing and spitting. I thought your hair might stand on end when you were lecturing me or maybe you'd end up having some fuzzy tail somewhere that would stand out straight while you ordered me around."

My breath caught at the compliment. I'd been told Lierians were beautiful. I'd never been told directly that I was, only that my species, as a whole, was considered beautiful. The pale, youthful looking faces and large, pale colored eyes gave us an otherworldly look that was captured in more art than I ever cared to look at, despite nobody knowing anything about us.

I lifted a hand gently and brushed a lock of his black hair out of his eyes and he wrinkled his nose, smiling at the gesture. "You're not so bad yourself, my Lord Prince," I answered flippantly, returning his smile. "Not beautiful...something else. Something...mmm." I hummed playfully and, emboldened by how close we already were, ran my fingers through his hair. I'd been dying to do that for years and it gave me chills to feel it. It was still a bit damp, thick and soft.

"Something mmm? How descriptive," he said wryly, a smile tugging at his lips. "It sounds nice, whatever 'mmm' is."

I patted his cheek gently. "It's very nice. Better than beautiful."

"I sincerely doubt that." Fox was staring up at me, all green eyes that I could get lost in and I was so, acutely aware of that crackling tension building between us like we were lightning rods passing a current back and forth. I could have stayed like that, on my knees at his side with my weight braced on his head board and one hand on the back of his neck, my fingers toying gently with his curls. "If I could use my arms, I'd have kissed you by now."

"I've never been kissed," I told him happily and he raised an eyebrow in question, almost surprised. "Ivar wasn't...really interested in my face."

Fox looked disgusted. "But nobody else? I'd have thought, at least because of what you are, that someone would have kissed you by now."

I shrugged. A few of the kitchen girls had tried. A few of the boys had too but I'd been painfully shy and terrified of anyone that I didn't already know. I spurned their advances like they'd burned me. I'd always been preoccupied with Fox and, for a very, very brief time when Fox was angry at me a few years earlier for a few months, with Brentlyn. It was likely because he looked like Fox, which wasn't fair to him, and my affection changed allegiance as soon as Fox was speaking to me again.

I brushed my fingertips under his chin and then stood up. My tears had dried, thanks to his affections, and I was euphoric. My head was high in the clouds and I was more than surprised that, at Fox's admission that he wanted to kiss me, I hadn't thrown myself at him and started kissing him. He seemed equally surprised by it, if the look on his face was any indication. "Maybe you'll have to fix that when you can move your arms. Besides, your mouth is bloody. Kisses shouldn't taste like blood. That has to be some kind of bad omen. I should...Ambrose didn't watch the whole thing. It made him sick. I should check on him and see if your father found Brentlyn. And you, sir, should be sleeping."

"Sir? Lets stick to Fox. I have enough titles to last me a dozen Godsdamned life times." He still seemed pleased with it though. My heart, though still in pieces, was soaring. I hardly cared that I'd spilled my guts to Fox or that he was so hurt he couldn't lift his arms. That almost-kiss was enough to heal my soul in ways I hadn't thought possible and I loved him for it.

I loved him. Undeniably and without question or hesitation. I loved him.

I turned to leave and he called me back. "Cyril?" I looked over my shoulder at him, eyes bright. "Send a guard in. I need to...you know what I need to do. I need my father, as well, so when you find him, send him my way. Tell him he has to wake me if I've fallen asleep."

My euphoria died almost as quickly as it had been given wings and I nodded shortly, my eyes welling up again. Fox must have noticed the change because as I headed toward the stairs, he called out again.

"I intend to take that kiss!" he shouted from his bed and I rolled my eyes. "You'd better not give it away while I'm stuck in here!"

Chapter Text

The way that Ambrose looked at me after the day Fox was beaten was decidedly different. I slept that night, for the first time since 'It' had happened, and although there was a nagging fear that Ivar would somehow punish me for telling before Fox could intercept him, that lingering memory of the almost-kiss had me in such a state that I couldn't be bothered to worry. I was flopped over on my bed the entire evening, staring up at the mural on the ceiling--a painting of a Lierian tribe Ambrose had commissioned for me when I was a child--with the biggest, dumbest grin on my face. The butterflies in my stomach were in a state of riot, my broken heart was soaring on a set of new wings, and I could have cried from the amount of emotion that was strapped inside my rib cage.

I heard Ambrose come into the apartments that night but he didn't bother me. In fact, I didn't see him until I wobbled out of my bedroom for breakfast the next day. The maid had told me that I'd be eating with Ambrose and Harlan in the formal dining room of our quarters. It was rare, of course, but it had happened before. I hadn't put any thought into what I'd told Fox or that he would have to relay that message to his father who, in turn, would relay it to Ambrose. At that point, I was still to sleepy to realize what I was walking into.

I rubbed my eyes at the light pouring in from the open window of the dining room. It was a warm place, painted a butter yellow. A cherry wood table that fit ten was in the middle of the room, laid out for three. It matched the sprawling china cabinet against a wall, housing Ambrose's mother's wedding set that I was absolutely, under no circumstances, ever allowed to touch.

Ambrose was sitting to Harlan's right, his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. His fingers were curled into his peppered hair and his face was drawn up in a grim, gaunt expression. There were dark circles under his eyes and though his plate was full, he hadn't touched anything. Harlan only looked slightly better, though I imagined he'd been up most of the night worrying over Fox and driving his eldest absolutely crazy with all of his fussing. It normally would have been left to Fox's mother, Queen Laila, but she was a delicate, fragile woman and would have probably fainted at the sight. I tended to avoid her. She reminded me of a wraith with how thin and frail she looked and the rumors about her poor health since the birth of Fox's youngest brother circulated the palace like wild fire.

When he realized I'd entered the room and was staring blankly at the both of them, Ambrose jumped to his feet like something had bit him. He actually stumbled in his rush to get to me, then gathered me up like I was still the little boy he'd helped save from a whore house. My feet left the ground and I let out a surprised yelp in protest of the invasion of my space. "Ambrose!" I mumbled from where my face had landed in his shoulder. He was a big man, not nearly as big as the whipping priest, but still big enough to manhandle me like I was a two-year-old girl. "Put me down! What the hell are you doing?" I flailed against the contact but it took Harlan getting to his feet and extracting me from Ambrose's suffocating embrace to end the discomfort. I glowered, still utterly confused about the entire ordeal.

"I'll kill him myself, Harlan. I swear, when I get my hands on that sick little fuck--"

"Ambrose!" I squeaked the name. I'd never heard him say anything even close to that violent and though I'd been witness to him swearing a few times, it was something that happened maybe once a year. He was always so collected and cool and together. This was unheard of. "What are you talking about? What happened? Is Fox okay? Did something go wrong?" The panic rose in my throat like bile and my eyes widened. I turned wildly to Harlan but he was shaking his head, his hands on my shoulders.

The King's hands moved up so that he could hold my face between them and steady my frantic, terrified hyperventilating. The wings my heart had grown flapped in my chest like a trapped bird. "Fox is, all things considered, doing well," he assured me. "He barely slept. He's in a great deal of pain. Brentlyn and Miraena took breakfast up to him to make sure he eats. Gods know that girl has him wrapped around her fingers." Miraena was Fox's only surviving sister. There'd been another, Pascha, who had died an epidemic when she was seven and we were fifteen. Being the only girl gave her an almost unnatural ability to manipulate her two older brothers. "He did, however, tell us about Ivar last night."

"Don't say his name," Ambrose spat. "He doesn't deserve to have a name. Cyril is a child. He's a child, Harlan!" My stomach was dropping and I pulled back from the King to look at my guardian who was more visibly upset than I'd ever seen him in my life.

I pursed my lips. "Technically, we don't actually know how old I am," I reminded him. "I could be older than Fox."

Ambrose didn't take kindly to my correction though. Instead, he swept me up in another all-consuming embrace that crushed the air from my lungs. My arms were pinned to my sides, my fingers flexing against my palms. My cheeks had turned pink. It was hard to think about Ambrose and Harlan listening to Fox recount what had happened to me...for me. Because I couldn't manage to do it myself or perhaps because I'd been too euphoric about him wanting to kiss me to offer to stay and help him relay the necessary details. I felt exposed and the shame that had accompanied what Ivar had done slipped back into my mind. My eyes stung, my throat tightened, my whole body stiffened in Ambrose's arms until he let me go and tipped my head back so that I had no choice but to look at him.

His expression was pained. He held my face the same way that Harlan had a moment earlier only his thumbs moved over my colored cheekbones and then brushed along my eyes. I closed them and he leaned forward, pressing a kiss to my forehead the way he had when I'd been small. Instead of chiding me the way that Fox had for not telling anyone, Ambrose pulled me into a third embrace. This one was less invasive and my feet stayed on the ground. He even gave me my arms so that I could very awkwardly wrap them around his torso in an attempt to offer comfort for the obvious pain he was feeling. The action seemed to make him shudder and he buried his face in the top of my head. "After all of this, you're the one trying to comfort me?" he whispered against me.

"I'm fine," I promised him. I amended the statement quickly. "I'll be fine. I just need to put it behind me, Ambrose. I'll recover. I always do."

Eventually, he let me sit down and I managed to eat a sizeable amount. I had barely been forcing food down the past few days and all of that self-imposed starvation caught up with me. I ate until my stomach hurt and even Ambrose managed a laugh at it. They talked about how Fox had been up all night trying to kick Harlan out of his room and how Miraena eventually came up to see him, curled against his side, and fell asleep in his bed. Fox had relented then and fallen asleep next to her, though it was hardly restful. He'd been up every twenty or so minutes, wincing and trying to get comfortable. Eventually, Harlan had turned him on his side and he'd been able to get a solid few hours in then, Miraena's hands wrapped up in her brother's.

I had to placate Ambrose again before I got up to leave. I wanted to see Fox, hopefully before he fell asleep again. It took several more crushing embraces. I even got one from the King, who promptly told me to send Fox his love and tell him that he and his mother would be having dinner with him in his tower. I was positive the Prince would think that was the worst news of his day but I smiled anyway and left my quarters. I noticed one of the guards step out of line to follow me and I stopped to stare, confused. The guard pulled the helmet of the uniform off and dragged the fabric that covered the lower half of the face down enough so that I could see.

She was a female, which was odd for a member of the castle guard, but then I figured Fox had probably requested a female given what had happened to me. It was oddly comforting knowing that it wasn't a man following me around. "Isabella," she introduced, holding a hand out. She wore a wide smile and had a curtain of deep, dark red hair that fell over her shoulders now that it was no longer tucked in her helmet. Northern, then, from Glacia or the Marshlands. Or at least partially northern. Southern Corians were almost always dark-haired. Her eyes glittered a color not unlike warm chocolate. She had a soft face, almost too kind to be a member of the guard. She wore the bright, burnished white armor well though. "The Crown Prince says I'm to follow you until he says otherwise. I'll be your day guard for now. You can call me Izzy, if you prefer informality or, if not, I'm Sergeant Isabella Robicheaux."

"Izzy is fine," I managed carefully, taking her offered hand and shaking it.

Her warm smile grew wider. "Yes, Lord Second. I trust we're going to the Tower?"

"Cyril," I corrected stiffly. "I'm not the King's second. Just the Prince's...and yes, that's...yes. Come on then." I turned away and rolled my eyes. I wondered just how much Fox had told her, given her congenial manner as she followed behind me, tucking her hair back up into her helmet, I decided to ask. "Did the Prince say why he wanted you to follow me?" I stopped at the entrance of the Tower and waited as the two guards opened the door to let me up the winding staircase.

Izzy shrugged. "I don't question my orders, Lord S--Cyril. Sorry. I know that I was pulled off of the search team in the city to act as a guard here. I'm usually on gate watch but he requested a woman for this job. They're tearing apart the capitol looking for someone by the name of Lord Ivar Beauchamp. Perhaps just increased security for the people closest to him? I've never met the Prince so I don't know him well enough to guess and nobody was told me why they're hunting down that Lord."

I shuddered at the mention of Ivar but if Izzy noticed, she betrayed nothing. She only followed me up the steps and moved to fall into line with the other guards. I hesitated and shook my head, at which point, she stopped and stepped back in line behind me. "Would you like to meet him?" I shot Izzy a smile and her eyes widened above her covering but she nodded, almost a little bit too happily, and I couldn't stop the small laugh that escaped my mouth as I pushed Fox's door open and stepped inside.

Brentlyn and Miraena were gone. The healer from the day before was back, peeling bloody bandages off of his back as he sat up on the edge of the bed. There was color in his cheeks again but he was sweating and grinding his teeth. He looked up briefly when we entered, managed a weak smile. His hands were curled over the edge of his mattress but his fingers lifted in a sort-of wave. "You sent me a guard," I accused flatly, raising an eyebrow and rocking on my heels as Izzy quickly removed her helmet and knelt like the loyal little servant of the monarchy that she was. I could almost feel Fox's frustration.

"Oh, no," he grumbled. "Don't do that. Don't kneel. Please don't kneel."

"My Lord Prince--"

"I said get up," he moaned and Izzy climbed awkwardly to her feet, shuffling back toward me to give me a questioning, unsure look like she was about to apologize for doing something wrong.

I shook my head a little bit to indicate that she hadn't. "Don't mind him," I told her quietly. "He's always this sour." Fox was glaring at me. I knew he could hear but that was part of the game. If he was going to order me coddled and handled like an infant, I was going to make him as uncomfortable as I could about it. I shot him a sickly sweet smile. "I thought you ought to meet who you assigned. Try to be nice. Fox, this is Sergeant Isabella Robicheaux. Isabella, this is Fox. Take off your helmet."

She obeyed like a trained puppy and that same curtain of red hair fell around her shoulders and her young, round face. She was staring at Fox the way all females stared at Fox: Like she wanted something from him so desperately that she would have done anything for him to get it. What girl in the world hadn't dreamed of one day being a Princess? And Fox...Fox looked the part of every fairy tale Prince Charming, even as distressed as he was that day.

He also had a soft spot for red heads, if I'd heard correctly from the palace rumor mill. The walls in that place had ears.

"Very nice to meet...you, Sergeant Robicheaux," he managed through his teeth, clenching them and hissing halfway through as the healer cut and peeled another handful of blood soaked linen from his back.

I winced for him and turned to Izzy, giving her a small smile before nodding toward the door. She left shortly afterward to fall in line outside with the rest of his guard and I crossed the room to Fox's bed.

The closer I got to him, the more I realized how bad off he really was. He smelled of sweat, medicine, and the metallic, bright tang of blood. I hadn't looked at the injuries the day before so after giving his upper arm a reassuring squeeze in greeting, I crossed to the other side of his bed.

Fox was a disaster. Some of the cuts had closed but some of them remained open and gaping, wet, hot, and an angry red. Two of them that had hit along his ribs had cut down to the bone. Harlan had been right. He did look like a ruined piece of meat from his shoulders to the small of his back. I couldn't imagine the amount of pain he must have been in. It was enough to make me ache for him. My heart squeezed into itself in my chest and I crossed one arm over my abdomen. The other I used to press the back of my hand to my mouth to stave off the urge to vomit. My eyes were stinging and there was a lump in my throat that made it difficult to breathe. I would have given anything to be able to take this away from him.

"How bad is it?" he asked quietly. "Nobody will answer me and I can't get up to look in a mirror, Cyril."

The healer shot me a look, her lips in a thin line. She was unraveling fresh bandages, a silent observer of our interaction. Fox deserved to know though. It was his body. There would be no hiding it from him, provided the infection that was very clearly beginning in the deeper wounds didn't kill him. "It's bad," I whispered back. "It's...worse than I thought it was. It's down to the bone in some places. Fox, these scars are going to be deep. I would be surprised if you ever feel right again."

He gave me a short nod. "I expected that," he answered numbly. "It feels that bad."

The healer moved to a large table that had been set up by his bed where rolls of bandages, empty water tubs, clean towels, and several jars of different medicines were all lined up to be used. I recognized them as basic salves. For pain, for infection, to minimize scarring. I thought the last one was a joke, considering how terrible he looked. One of the tubs had been filled with steaming hot water and she dropped a clean towel into it, then opened the jar full of white powder to prevent infection, and dumped the lot of it in. "I can finish this," I offered gently. "If he doesn't mind, I mean. I can finish this for you. I'm sure there are people in the infirmary that could make use of your hands and this is all fairly straightforward bandaging."

She hesitated, looking between me and Fox's mutilated body. "You can go," he finally affirmed and although she hardly seemed pleased with it, she nodded and gave a small bow before disappearing from the room.

I had never liked the sight of blood but I still very much believed that half of this was my burden to share. Twenty-five of those lashes should have been scarring me, not him. "Your father sends his love," I began slowly and heard him snort as I mixed the powder into the water and then wrung the towel out. "And he says he'll be taking dinner with you here...with your mother." I added the last bit gently, grimacing for him and waiting for the inevitable irritation. It was no small secret that Fox disapproved of his mother's behavior and the way she spent her time in a sedated haze, drunk or drugged and always on the verge of tears.

"I'm sure many tears will be shed. Gods forbid she have to deal with one of her children," Fox answered bitterly. "You're going to get blood all over your stupid white clothes."

"I own more than one set of stupid white clothes, Fox, but thank you for your consideration," I answered flippantly, twisting the towel up in my hands. I steeled myself and reached forward, brushing the material over one of the more severe marks, though it wasn't one of the two that reached bone. Fox shuddered and hissed, his head falling back. "Tell me if I'm hurting you."

"You're hurting me," he said flatly. "Everything is fucking hurting me, Cyril. You could breathe on me and it would hurt right now. It's a necessary evil. If you were worried about hurting me, you should have let the healer do her job."

I stilled, wounded by the harsh tone of his voice and I stopped touching him. It was half my burden but it was more than that. After the day before, I was ready to use any excuse I could think of to touch him. I wanted to take care of him. I wanted to bring him some kind of comfort. "I..." I began quietly. "I want to care for you. I want--"

I could see his jaw clench from behind him and his shoulders dropped a little bit. "I know," he mumbled. "I'm being an ass. It's not your fault."

It wasn't an apology but the words softened my irritation enough to continue what I was doing. It gave me a full picture of how bad it really was. Fox winced and groaned at nearly every touch, crying out when I got to the ones that reached bone but he was right. It was a necessary evil and I was, perhaps, more thorough than he had anticipated me being but the heated flesh beneath my hands was bordering infection. I scrubbed at the worst parts. He threatened to do awful things to me when he was able to stand again but his threats were empty and I knew it so I kept right on going. By the time I was finished, I'd ruined three towels and turned the water scarlet but he was clean. I carefully rubbed the sticky yellow paste into the wounds and didn't bother with the one for scarring. There was no helping that level of mutilation.

The bandaging was the worst part. He panted and clenched his teeth, his head thrown back in agony. Every part of me was sick over seeing him reduced to this. I had to keep telling myself that this was to make him better. This was a step in the right direction but the pressure I had to put on him when I wrapped him up brought tears to his eyes and with nobody but me there to see, they rolled down his cheeks. I'd seen Fox cry a number of times but not in recent years. He was always so strong and fiercely stoic. It hurt to see him in this condition and I reached around him to brush the tears from his cheeks. He didn't acknowledge me nor did he really stop until I tucked the last strip of cloth in. There'd been an odd, almost intimate tension between us while I'd worked. I would have called it sensual had he been able to react with anything other than terrible grimaces and pained whining.

"All done," I announced, feigning cheerfulness. It had felt good to care for him. He'd gone through all of this for me. It was the least I could do and as I settled him onto his side, tucking an extra pillow beneath him so that he was propped up more, I realized that his breathing was settling. The tears slowed to a stop, though I wiped them again and then looked down at myself. "And no blood on me. Look at that."

Fox managed a weak smile and gestured for me to sit down. I sank into the bed at his side and he grumbled. "Lay down. My neck is going to hurt having to look up at you. I don't need more things hurting," he ordered and I almost laughed at his grumpy, growling tones. Still, I obeyed. If Fox had told me to jump from the tower, I probaby would have done it.

I settled in beside him, on my side so I could look at him with one arm tucked under my head. We'd laid like this together before and told secrets well into the night in this very room but it had been years since we'd had a night like that. Fox had responsibilities as the Crown Prince now and I was expected to fill the role of his second more than his companion and friend. It felt nice though, like slipping on old clothes and realizing they still fit just as well as they had when they'd been your favorite thing to wear. I lifted my free hand and carefully brushed his hair back from his eyes, letting my fingertips linger on the strong line of his jaw. The butterflies in my stomach did another round of rioting and my heart skipped.

I felt like a love-sick school boy. It was disgusting and euphoric at the same time.

"I wish I could kiss them away," I blurted suddenly, my verbal filter having apparently shut-down in his presence. I felt my cheeks flush and I could have kicked myself at his wide-eyed expression. "I mean..." I tried to recover, scrambling for something that made sense. "Do you remember that time I fell down the stairs of the tower? It was only the last few but I skinned my knees pretty badly and you kissed them. You said your mother told you that kisses could heal."

"My mother is a drunk and she's full of shit," Fox pointed out, rolling his eyes, but his face softened and his lips twitched into a tiny smile. "But yes, I remember. I also remember those very same wounds getting infected. You still have the scars. The healers were worried they were going to have to take your legs. The sentiment is appreciated though."

I hadn't forgotten that part but it wasn't the most important aspect of the memory to me. I just remembered Fox with his face still round and childish, all chubby cheeks and bowed cupid mouth, kneeling in front of me while I bawled on the bottom step and cried for Ambrose. I still barely spoke then, though I understood Corian. His kisses had stopped the tears and he'd hugged me before we went to find Ambrose together. In retrospect, putting someone's mouth on my open wounds probably hadn't done me any real favors but it had been the moment I'd realized that this place was home now. Fox was home. He was family. I was safe with him.

I swallowed hard, trying to work through the terrible case of dry mouth that being this close to him had given me. "You said you were going to build me a wagon so you could pull me around if they cut my legs off," I snorted eventually. "I hadn't even known they were considering it and you scared the piss out of me."

"You threw a vase at my head," Fox recalled, a tiny laugh escaping his mouth, followed by a wince.

I had, indeed, thrown a vase at his head. I'd missed, in part because my legs were bound and bandaged, a result of my faulty ability to fight off Corian disease and infection, and in part because my aim had just been terrible at that age. I never missed when I threw things at him now.

"It felt nice," I continued, shifting so I could run my fingers through his hair again. He was still soaked and feverish, still sweaty and sticky but there was nothing to be done about that and he was still Fox. He could have been covered in filth from a hunt and I still would have wanted to touch him. "To know that someone would take care of me, you know? That someone wanted me around so badly that they were willing to go to any lengths to keep me in their life. I hadn't thought of this place as anything but a prison where nobody looked like me up until then. I felt...so alone. You were the first person to treat me like I was normal. I guess, what I'm trying to say is...I'll build you a wagon, Fox, if things don't turn out right."

"I hate that I can't use my arms right now," he grumbled, his eyes bright. "I'd have kissed you again for that."

I could have soared at his words but I got by with a wide smile and leaned forward, pressing my forehead to his. "You have to know how much I appreciate everything you've done for me, especially this...the books, Ivar, the guard...this horrific beating. Even the fact that you want to kiss me."

Fox snorted. It was becoming a habit of his when he found something ridiculous or was about to shoot back with a sarcastic remark. "That wagon better come with a life time supply of vases I can throw at you," he drawled. I squinted and wrinkled my nose. "My mouth isn't bleeding anymore, you know. There's no reason you shouldn't kiss me."

My breath caught and my eyes widened. My brain was having trouble keeping up with what was happening to me, with the fact that Fox wanted me. I knew better, of course. Fox was the Crown Prince. There were expectations he had to meet. Those included getting married and having children...things I could never provide for him, not that he was asking me to marry him or anything but it made me wonder exactly where kissing him would lead.

Nothing but heartbreak, I decided. I also decided that the pain was worth it, if it meant being with Fox, and I squirmed forward, cupping his chin to tip his face up and seal my mouth over his. It was a slow, albeit chaste, sort of kiss. My mouth lingered on his and he tasted the way that he usually smelled--peppermint and citrus, just a small tang of blood from the wound on his bottom lip. His mouth opened for me and I drew back, breathless and flushed, my heart flapping around my chest and making it hard to breathe. I was dizzy, even from just a few seconds, my lips lingering over his.

"Again," he whispered against me and I obeyed like he'd trained me to do it. I'd have done anything to please him. That time, when his mouth opened, I let him in. Even without his arms, Fox was the more aggressive of the two of us. His tongue slipped between my lips and slid over mine. My fingers knotted in his hair as I felt the tip of it brush the roof of my mouth and then tangle with my own tongue again. I felt him squirming and, a moment later, he'd managed to lift his hand enough to slide it around the back of my neck and pull me in deeper.

I whimpered into his mouth and that heat I'd felt weeks ago blossomed in my belly again like it had never left. It licked up my insides and turned me into a desperate, needy, obedient sort of creature that lived to please the person that was causing that sensation. "Fox," I managed when he moved back to breathe, his fingers still twined in my hair. He was as breathless as I was

"Shh," he hushed me and I pressed my mouth shut, my eyes wide. He kissed me again, quickly against the corner of my lips. "Don't overthink it, Cyril. It's just kissing."

"I was saying your name because I like it," I grumbled back, my brow furrowed and my lips turning down into a pout. He kissed that too, melting it away with a sweep of his tongue. I could have done this with him all day. He seemed almost desperate to keep at it, needy and warm. He barely stopped to breathe. Each kiss became shorter when he had to come up for air and he pushed me back, letting himself roll so that he was half on top of me and his lips moved to my jaw, my throat, and then both of the marks on my face.

"Hot again," he mumbled against my mouth about them. "And you taste so sweet."

"Flatterer," I complained, rolling my eyes and catching his bottom lip in my teeth. I tugged gently and he groaned. It was the most erotic, heady thing I'd ever heard and I determined right then that I was going to hear every noise he could make regardless of how much it hurt me in the end.

Fox shook his head gently, his hair in his eyes again. "I'm not flattering you. I mean you actually taste sweet. It's not...this will sound stupid. Bear with me." I arched an eyebrow skeptically but he continued. "I've kissed a lot of people--"

"Breaking news," I teased.

He scowled and I clamped my mouth shut again. "They taste like...mouth. Or whatever they ate last. Just...tongue and teeth. It's not unpleasant. At all. But you...you actually taste sweet. Even your skin does. Like...honey or sugar or something. It's--" He kissed the mark on my cheek again and shivered before moving to my mouth. I let him in without fuss, compliant and drunk on what he could do to me. I was more than grateful he was only half on top of me and couldn't feel how impossibly hard his proximity and his kisses were making me. It would have turned me the same color as his bed. He broke the kiss and finished his thought, though I almost wished he hadn't. "It's incredible. I think I could do this all day."

"I think you should sleep because those drugs are getting to your head," I protested and he glared at me for a moment before his expression softened. He dared to steal one more kiss and then, instead of moving back onto his side, he flopped down on top of me so that his head was on my chest, tucked under my chin. For a moment, I was unsure of what to do with my arms but I eventually settled on letting one absently run fingers through his hair and the other brush gentle, comforting shapes along his heated bicep.

Fox huffed against me, but he shivered at the contact, nuzzling into my shirt where he lay, his eyes already closed. "Mmm," he hummed. "Your heart beat sounds nice."

I melted and tipped my head to press a kiss into his curls. "Sleep, Fox. I'll wake you when they bring you lunch."

Chapter Text

It took Fox two weeks to get back on his feet. Even then, he wasn't completely back to normal but I hadn't expected him to be. Nobody did. At first, he just took wobbly, pained steps around his tower, wincing with every movement. Gradually, he got back to dressing himself and wearing a shirt over the bandages, which was almost a let down for me. I had enjoyed pressing my cheek to his shoulder while we worked on his lessons. I went to the actual lectures for him and then came up to his room to relay the information. It wasn't the best system but when Harlan had suggested that they move the lessons entirely to the Prince's tower, Fox's hissy fit had rivaled his three-year-old brother's 'more cake for dinner' tantrums. He didn't want the tutors, all members of noble houses, to see him in the state he was in.

I became Fox's delegated teacher for the duration of his self-imposed exile. Lessons consisted mostly of me trying to get things done and Fox stealing kisses or distracting me in any way he saw fit until I relented, sat next to him, and spent the remainder of the afternoon listening to his various thoughts, dreams, desires, and philosophical beliefs. Usually, when his tangents became too much for me to bear, I would start to kiss those bare shoulders until his train of thought drifted and he caved to my whims.

My whims usually meant a great deal of time mapping the inside of his mouth with my tongue.

Eventually though, he started venturing out of the tower and attending dinner with his family. He usually had me tag along, insisting I be there to help him stand up because he still had trouble flexing the muscles beneath his back. It made getting to his feet a task. Once he was there, he was typically capable of doing things on his own. The messy, bloody disaster that had been his back was still a terrible road map slashed into his skin. The deepest of the wounds were still healing and he'd fought off infection. They were a brilliant, hot, crimson color that raised up from the rest of his flesh, rough and stiff. They cracked open sometimes when he moved too much and bled into his bandages but he claimed that stinging sensation was cake compared to the original agony.

The rest of the wounds were a bright pink color. They were smooth and pearled, soft to touch scars that marred what had once been perfect skin. He despised them on a level I understood with surprising clarity. When he'd seen them in the mirror standing in the corner of his room, he'd turned it around so that he didn't have to look, disgusted with the very idea that they existed. I knew that disgusted feeling. I commiserated with him and he broke down in tears in my lap, his face pressed to my stomach and his hands fisted in my clothes. It hurt to be controlled. It hurt to have someone possess you in a way that you could never change. I would never get back what Ivar had taken from me. Fox would wear scars for the rest of his life.

We were both broken. It was a small comfort that made me sick. I never felt that I deserved him but his sudden, terrible self-loathing made me feel just a little bit closer to his level.

With him up and around, we spent our free time the way that we always had: Hunched over strategy tables, chasing his youngest brother Riordan around the gardens, or watching Brentlyn make fools of every archer in the King's service. What we had together, we kept to ourselves. It wasn't something we'd ever discussed and I didn't expect it to ever come up. It was our secret--our small, beautiful, intoxicating little secret. Everyone loves a good secret. I'm not immune to that so I never fussed over wanting to hold his hand while we watched Brentlyn outshoot grown men with a blindfold on. I adored the times he would rush us around a corner and slip into a utility closet before his guards caught up so that he could steal kisses and run his fingers through my hair or over the marks on my face.

He never pushed though. Sometimes I wondered if it was because Ivar had disappeared and his promise to catch him was left empty...maybe he didn't want to push me when he thought I was still terrified but I'd fallen into a sense of security with him. He never asked for more than I readily gave him. He never touched me in any way that could be anything but innocent. It made me euphoric, the way he handled me like I was a treasure and not something to be discarded. It would be lying to say I never yearned for more than that but there was something so captivatingly beautiful about the sweet little thing that we had that I could never complain. If the stolen kisses and the way he fell asleep with his head on my stomach when he was supposed to be reading were the only things I ever got from him, it would still be enough. I became so completely his that I wasn't sure where I stopped and he began.

All things come to an end though. I knew that. Whatever had happened to me that had triggered what Ivar had done would happen again. The book that Fox had found outlined it in detail, though the name they had for it was unknown. The common tongue spoken in Coria had no word with which we could liken it and we'd spent hours sifting through old language books trying to find one. Eventually, we decided to just play it by ear and concentrate on getting back to normal.

I hadn't wanted it to come so quickly though. I suppose that was why I ignored it when that searing heat returned to my insides like a fast growing cancer. I clenched my teeth through it and willed it away that first day it started while we were watching Riordan hop around the butterfly garden. Laila sat nearby, her eyes glazed over, her long blonde hair hanging in loose curls around a frame so frail I thought the wind might snap her in half. She didn't react when Fox bent to kiss her cheek, just remained still and wraith-like, her wide, dark green eyes staring blankly at Riordan.

I hated Laila's eyes. They were the same shape and color as Fox's but the dead, blank look gave me chills. I automatically thought of him wearing that expression every time I saw her. She gave me a vague, disinterested look that day--which was more than she gave Fox, admittedly--and then continued to stare. I felt that liquid heat bubble up then, licking along my hips and into my belly and I grimaced at it. My heart sank and my throat tightened. The grief of hit me like a wave at the last memory but I shrugged it off when Fox asked me if something was wrong. He even bought my lie when I just nodded pointedly at the pathetic creature that had given him life. He'd laughed low in his throat at my silent assessment, brushed his fingers along the back of my arm, and bent to talk to Riordan.

It grew steadily over the next few days, spreading my from lower abdomen all the way up to the bottom of my ribs and down the inside of my thighs. I had trouble concentrating. I snapped at anyone that tried talking to me. The only time I felt normal was when Fox touched me, pulled me into his side when we were alone somewhere and let me curl up next to him like an angry child. I think, perhaps, he knew but hadn't a clue as to how he should bring it up. He just stroked his fingers over my hair in an attempt to offer comfort while I wrapped my arms loosely around his torso and listened to the slow, steady beating of his heart. I had memorized it and sometimes, when I was sitting up at night alone, I drummed the cadence against my pillow by my head until the noise made me drowsy enough to sleep. It was almost like having him there.

Still, I kept up my attempts at normal. Izzy, Fox, myself, and his two escorts had all gone down to the firing range to watch Brentlyn again. It was like a palace event now--watching the young Prince split the arrows of the best archers in his father's service. He could fire longer, faster, and with better accuracy than all but two or three of the men stationed at the palace.

Izzy had become something of a friend to me since taking the position of the guard and she made it no small secret that she loved watching Brentlyn. "I wish I could shoot like that," she lamented that day, pulling the material of her mask down off of her face. I had discovered she was the youngest daughter of a lesser noble house and they'd allowed her to join the service of the King when her three older sisters all found suitable husbands. They had 'married up.' That was what Fox called it when I asked him what a 'suitable husband' meant for a noble woman and why Izzy was considered something of a leftover compared to her siblings. He'd said something about her being the youngest. The same thing would happen with Riordan.

"Don't we all?" Fox complained, itching at his sides where the last of his wounds were healing. He was pulling a face, obviously uncomfortable, and I was having trouble not laughing at him. Laughing made the ache inside me throb more and the flush of it was already clawing up my throat, turning my eyes glassy and making it hard to breathe. I felt like I couldn't get enough air and my lips parted in an attempt to solve the problem but that only earned me Fox's attention.

He leaned forward so that his mouth was right next to my ear. "You're panting," he breathed and glanced at Izzy but she was utterly captivated with his brother. His tongue touched the shell of my ear and I shivered, suppressing a groan at the sensation before pushing him away.

Truthfully, Izzy was a terrible guard. She barely paid attention, she talked incessantly, and she had no patience. She was loud, temperamental, and fiery but I had grown rather fond of it. She wasn't even afraid of putting Fox in his place anymore. She was actually so terrible at her job that when I'd looked into her records to figure out how the hell she'd earned a rank at all, I'd found that, for the most part, her father had bought it for her. She was, however, very good with a spear and shield, which were exactly the weapons she carried. "Stare a little harder, Izzy," I told her dryly. "Maybe he'll turn around."

"Oh, do you think he really would?" She turned back to face me, eyes bright and a wide smile on her face. Beside me, I felt Fox's shoulders shake with a silent laugh. She scowled at him and then turned the same look on me, sticking her tongue out before looking back at Brentlyn. "Fuck you two."

Fox got to his feet, using my shoulder as a brace so that he could walk up to the firing stall Brentlyn was in, so engrossed in what he was doing and the cheers coming from the three soldiers behind him, that he hardly noticed Izzy's attention. "Brentlyn!" he called just as his brother loosed an arrow that went far of the target because of the distraction. A rowdy cheer went up from the men with him and Brentlyn turned to glare. He looked surprisingly like Fox. His face was a bit rounder, more boyish, but he had some growing to do yet. His mouth didn't curve the same way either but their eyes were nearly identical. Fox clapped him on the shoulder when he'd gotten his attention. "I would appreciate a favor, brother mine."

Brentlyn's glare continued despite the endearment. He looked ready to hit Fox in the face with his bow. It wouldn't have been the first time they'd come to blows over something trivial. His lips pursed and his brow furrowed. His nose even wrinkled slightly. "A favor usually means you're going to owe me something, Fox," he snapped. "We both know you're not good for it."

The Crown Prince shrugged, almost like he was agreeing, and then leaned forward to whisper something that made Brentlyn's glare soften and his eyes widen a little bit. When Fox leaned back, he seemed far more compliant. "I would like you to teach this young lady to shoot," he explained, gesturing toward Izzy and for a moment I thought she might cook in her armor. Her cheeks flamed up and she nearly jumped, staring at Brentlyn first, then at me, then at Fox, and then back to Brentlyn. She repeated the circle three or four times before I nodded in silent agreement that she could certainly spend the afternoon with Brentlyn if Fox had arranged it.

"You better strip the armor down to the leathers then," Brentlyn told her, exhaling. "You'll never be able to move around in that much gear."

Fox made his way back to me, looking entirely too pleased with himself, and I feigned a disgusted look. "Don't be so smug," I warned him. "You're no matchmaker. Brentlyn's only interested in one person and one person alone."

"Yeah," Fox agreed. "Himself." We both said the final word together and a small, wry smile spread over my mouth. It didn't last long. I felt too warm to be there and the urge to start clawing at my arms was beginning to build in my fingers. I climbed gently to my feet, flinching in the process while Izzy peeled her armor off so that she was left in leather leggings, boots, and a tightly laced white, sleeveless top. She'd stepped into Brentlyn's stall and his hands were on her hips, lining them up with her feet while he adamantly ignored the cat calls of his fellow archers. Fox didn't have to ask me to leave. I was already walking for the door when he turned to follow me.

He was still too pleased with himself, walking with a bounce to his step that normally wasn't there while I suffered in silence beside him, struggling not to squirm. He kept a hand on my shoulder though, like he knew I needed some kind of contact. "I think they'll hit it off," he said proudly. "She's a beautiful girl and she's obviously fond of him."

"She barely knows him," I bit out. "Once she does, she'll realize how boring he is. He quotes the Laws of the Regulator more than the priests do."

Fox snorted and although he had started to answer me, I hardly heard it. I was reaching a fever pitch. The marks down my torso and my arms felt like brands. The hollow, needy, desperate feeling I'd struggled with the first time was back with a vengeance and finally, after days of swallowing every uncomfortable noise that my mouth threatened to make, a tiny, keening whimper escaped my lips. Fox stopped mid-sentence, eyes wide, and my hands went to the scorched, empty spot between my hips. I pressed down, trying to ease the ache that felt almost like being starving and my legs buckled.

He caught me before I hit the ground, one arm around my waist and the other waving the two guards back to keep them away from me. I was dizzy, hot, and his touch had me seeing stars again. I wanted to rage against him and, at the same time, crawl into his lap and wrap myself around him like a living shroud. The concern in his face was evident while he struggled to keep me on my feet. I kept wobbling, pawing at his chest, whining like a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. "I knew this was happening," he whispered. "You and your bullshit suffer in silence policy. I'm taking you back to my rooms."

"N-no," I protested, but he was already leading me, one of my arms draped over his shoulders for support and I knew it had to be hurting him but he never complained. "My rooms." My argument was disjointed and irregular, like I couldn't string enough words together to speak properly.

"No," Fox answered, his voice stern. "My rooms. This isn't negotiable, Cyril. Shut your mouth."

I obeyed because it was Fox and I had become some kind of servant to his wishes. I let him lead me, chewing on my bottom lip while we hobbled through the palace. It wasn't a far walk but it felt like forever. He had to keep stopping to bat my hands away from my arms where I was trying to claw them open.

By the time we made it up the steps--and every single step was like having a branding iron shoved into my belly--I was panting, delirious with whatever pent up monster this fit unleashed in me. I'd soaked my clothes in sweat again and, by proximity, soaked half of Fox's clothes too. He deposited me on his bed and then turned back to the door, bolting it shut in four places. As if he needed an added measure of security, he pulled the master key from around his neck and locked that too, dropping it on his desk as he moved back to me.

I was writhing, squirming in his bed, pulling at my clothes. There was no point in calling for healers. There was nothing they could do. That had been made abundantly clear the last time this had happened. The only thing to be done was to wait it out and in the distant, still sane recesses of my mind, I knew that being in Fox's room meant that Ambrose would come looking for me when he realized I'd never come back to our living quarters. They'd find me hear, shrieking like a dying animal in Fox's bed, shredding my clothes in an attempt to ease the heat that they were trapping against my skin.

"Stop clawing at yourself," Fox ordered and I tried. I really did. I gave it my very best and instead tangled my fingers in his sheets. He was staring down at me, obviously terrified again. He'd voiced his concern over this the last time and the fact that the books claimed that this, whatever it was, wouldn't kill me, didn't seem to reassure him any. The Immarans weren't exactly known for their kindness to slaves. It was difficult to imagine them even noticing when one died.

I kept trying to catch my breath, resulting in every breath coming in like a surprised gasp while Fox paced, trying to decide what to do with me. "Fox," I whined and he stopped, staring at me, like he was waiting for me to give him instructions. I had nothing to give though. Nothing but descriptions. "I'm too hot. Please, please, I feel like I'm...like I'm cooking. I can't--"

He crawled onto the bed and I groaned. That smell was back--that thick, masculine, heady smell that reminded me of leather and the inside of his mouth, hot and wet. A shudder ran down my spine as he reached for my shirt, his fingers deftly slipping both sets of buttons free so that he could slide the fabric off my torso. When his hands came into contact with the marks on my arms, I nearly shrieked. My back arched and I tossed my head, sobbing at the contact. "I'm sorry!" he exclaimed, eyes wide, clearly startled by my reaction.

It hadn't been pain though. That touch had sent a liquid hot jolt down to the core of my body, a delicious, searing assault on the blistering heat that had taken over. "Do it again," I pleaded and he looked at me funny, almost surprised before I pulled a disgruntled, impatient face and grabbed for his arms. "Do. It. Again." I bit out every word between clenched teeth and a slow, lazy smile spread over Fox's face.

It was absolutely not a good sign.

I squirmed under his gaze, his pupils widening so that almost all of the green turned black. He threw a leg over me so that he was straddling my hips and grabbed my hands, lacing his fingers with mine so that he could pin them above my head. "You liked that, did you?" he breathed, leaning in against my throat. I felt him inhale and a shiver ran down both of our spines. He found the heated blue skin at the hollow of my throat and kissed it carefully. I hummed under him, practically vibrating over the sensation. His tongue followed the kiss, licking along the edges of that triangle and I melted like warm chocolate. "How about that?"

"Yes!" I nodded with the approval, a slave to his every whim. He moved over my shoulders, repeating the same gesture to every tattoo down my left arm and then my right. I felt like a puddle beneath him--a moaning, desperate, aching mess of limbs and heated flesh. I was struggling not to compare this to the last time. Every stroke of his tongue reminded me of someone else's but I was in Fox's bed. The whole room smelled like him. Spearmint, citrus, and that raw, deep scent that reminded so strongly of sex that I was contemplating begging him for it.

I was horrified to realize that it was what I wanted. That was what had healed this the last time. It had been hard, rough sex and I could never, ever bring myself to ask that of Fox. Instead, I chewed on the inside of my mouth while his lips moved over my chest. He was still holding my hands down and I pulled against them but he was so much bigger than me that even trying to escape was a joke. I didn't want to escape anyway. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to pull him closer so that he'd kiss my mouth and so I could tangle my fingers in his hair.

"Does this make it easier for you?" he asked, flicking his tongue out over one of the large blue spaces along my ribs.

I cried his name, a splintering, desperate noise that made my throat hoarse. "Fox!" He looked up at me and I had to lift my head up to see him, his chin against my naval. He let his tongue dip into it and I sucked in a sharp breath, my hips lifting and he let go of one of my hands so that he could slide his own between my legs, palming me through the fabric of my trousers.

I could have died in that moment. Stars burst behind my eyelids and I shuddered violently, grasping blindly for his shoulder. My nails dug into him and I didn't even know when he'd taken his shirt off but somehow, it wasn't there anymore. Just the bandages were and those bare shoulders. I left delicious white trails in his skin and he hummed at it, smacking his lips together while I tried desperately to grind against his palm. He kept that up, slithering back up my body like a snake. He shifted his weight, moving one of his legs between mine. His hand slipped to my hip and pulled me down against him. The pressure was dizzying. I made a choked, gasping noise while he held my hips, rolling them for me. "Just like that, gorgeous," he breathed against my cheek and I whimpered at the pet name, my fingers finally finding his neck and then sliding up to tangle in his hair. "Tell me what makes this better, Cyril. I've never..." He laughed quietly at the admission, his chest shaking against mine.

I knew what he meant. Fox was notorious for going through women like Brentlyn went through arrows. He'd never been with another man.

He continued anyway, undeterred by his lack of experience. He didn't let me move my own hips. He did it for me, slow and steady. It was torture. It was delicious, exquisite agony that put me into a head space close to euphoria. My back was in a near constant arch and the leg he wasn't straddling was drawn up and bent so that I could spread it more for him. "Are you speechless, little one?"

"N-no," I managed to sob the word and tip my head back. "Kiss me, Fox. Please, please!" He obeyed the request almost immediately, prying my mouth open with a probing, searching tongue that licked along my teeth at the same pace he allowed my hips to move. I cried into it, clawing at his shoulders and I felt the vibration of his moan against my lips. He was hard against my thigh, a heavy, thick length that pressed through the fabric and I reached blindly between us. My palm found the bulge of him and stroked. The kiss broke in the same instant as Fox's hips flexed instinctively toward my touch. He sucked in a sharp gasp of air and then caught my wrist, peeling it away with an almost pained expression. I whined at him, pouting and trying to lift my head enough to kiss him again but he denied my silent hopes.

"Tell me what makes this better for you," he demanded again. "And I will consider letting you touch me."

Letting me. He'd actually said that and my insides turned to molten rock. I squirmed against him, pushing at the hand that still kept my hips from moving more than he allowed. I decided to be defiant, if only because I wanted to see what his reaction would be to defiance. Fox grinned at the way I pressed my lips together and pushed his leg up against me harder so that a low, strangled moan tore at my throat and I thrashed beneath him. My focus had narrowed to him and only him. I couldn't feel anything else. I had probably even forgotten my own name by that point. I felt empty and I knew what I would beg for if given the chance to beg. I wanted him to fuck me. I wanted that same heavy fullness that had given me relief from this the last time.

I wanted it on my terms, with someone that I cared for, and I wanted it so hard it hurt. Still, I wasn't about to beg Fox, of all people. Not unless he forced it out of me and that seemed to be exactly what he wanted. His smile was almost malicious and he moved his leg from me, wringing a desperate cry from my lips. "No!" I protested. "Don't stop, please, Fox, Gods, don't stop! Fuck--" So much for defiance.

"Shh," he hushed me again, a finger to my lips and then he hooked his thumbs in my trousers, sliding them easily down my body. His eyes soaked me in and unlike with Ivar, I didn't feel the same horror over being exposed. Fox didn't leer at me. He studied me, yes, but more like he was studying fine art than a possible fuck. He even bent forward, though I knew the motion hurt him, and pressed a kiss to my belly, both of my hips, and then insides of my thighs when my legs spread easily for him. "I like the defiant look on you. It's enticing. Open your mouth." I obeyed again, immediately, almost before he'd even finished the command and he laughed. It was a warm, intoxicating sound. "And now we're back to obedient. I like that on you as well. You look beautiful like this, Cyril." He reached up and slipped two of his fingers into my mouth.

I sucked them like I'd been made for it. It was almost shameful. I swirled my tongue over them, pulled them all the way in, and relished in the wide-eyed expression I got from him when my hands closed around his wrist to hold it there. Color rose to his cheeks and his lips parted. "Holy fuck," he whispered.

I released him then and fell back, still hot and aching though his touch was taking the edge off. "There is nothing even remotely holy about we're doing," I breathed my response, a small smile crossing my face. "If you liked it that much, you should let me do it to other parts of you."

Fox's breath hitched and for a moment, he stared at me, stunned and heated until he regained his composure and slipped his slippery, soaked hand between my legs. He got down with it, angling my hips up and I moaned at the sight of him, kissing along my thighs until he reached my cock and he took it in one hand before experimentally running his tongue over it. I felt like I'd implode at any moment and it only got worse from there. His wet fingers found the opening to my body and pressed gently against it. Unlike with Ivar, there was no coaxing me open. I wanted Fox. I needed him and he slipped his fingers inside me with little issue. I shuddered at the intrusion, my body drawn up and taut, my insides clenching down around him while his mouth closed over the head of my wet, red cock.

I cried his name like it was a prayer, over and over, while he worked his way down me, looking up to make sure he wasn't hurting me. His fingers touched that liquid heat inside me and my back arched, legs spread wide, greedy and hot. I grabbed for him, my hands tangling in his hair while his fingers started to slowly move inside me, stroking along the heated walls of my body, stoking the flame in my stomach into a roaring wild fire.

He stopped sucking after a moment and grabbed me around the waist, pulling me up so that I was sitting on the base of my spine, my legs bent and hooked over his, and my hands at the back of his neck. I shuddered and trembled and he reached deeper, coaxing a keening whine from me. "You are soaked," he whispered, almost like he was in awe of the fact. "Is that--"

"Totally normal," I breathed. "Please don't ask me questions about biology when you're fingering me."

Fox couldn't help the laugh that bubbled from his mouth and he leaned forward to kiss me, catching my bottom lip and shifting my weight so that his fingers brushed the spot inside of me that lit my world on fire. I nearly screamed, my nails cutting into his skin so that he hissed and my hips bore down hard against his hand. "Right there," I whimpered. "Fuck, Fox, Gods--right fucking there!"

He did it again, a slow smile spreading over his beautiful mouth. "Right there?" I cried his name at the action and he rubbed against it, tiny, hard, fast circles that made my heartbeat into a skipping vibration and my lungs seize up, refusing to draw breath. I choked, tears stinging my eyes and rolling down my cheeks as I fought against a finish he was going to coax out of me far faster than I wanted it to. His other hand still pumped me leisurely, a dizzying contrast to what his fingers did inside me, sliding in and out.

"Harder!" I pleaded with him. "Please, Fox, please, I'll do anything you want! Just...do it harder, please!"

Fox seemed to find my needs amusing but he obeyed. He let go of my cock, earning a desperate cry of protest from me, so that he could angle my hips up more and hold the back of my head. He kept me up so that my lips were just out of kissing distance and I was in no position to take kisses if I wanted them. He was teasing me and the angry, livid heat that boiled my insides was flaming up and licking my entire body. It sang through my veins and I moaned, using what little leeway I had to move my hips in tiny, aching circles. "Anything?" he asked, apparently interested while he drove my body beyond limits I didn't know I even had. I was ready to start pounding on his chest but I nodded.

"Anything," I breathed and he slammed into my body particularly hard with the word. I squealed, surprised by the sudden pressure that bordered pain but it was a lovely, gorgeous agony that lanced up from the base of my back to my groin. My fingers tightened in his hair, garnering a hiss from him. His tongue darted out and swept over my mouth and I opened it for him automatically, desperate for more contact.

My whole body was trembling. I was flushed, aching, and the marks that lined my torso and arms were burning down into my bones again. Fox's forehead pressed to mine so that we were sharing the same air and it was, by far, the most erotic, sensual thing he'd ever done to me. It drove me wild, made me incoherent. I tried to say something and what came out of my mouth was unintelligible babble, punctuated by sobs every time his fingers hammered into that sweet spot. I was seeing stars and a spring had coiled in my gut, tightened and screaming for release.

Fox grinned. "Don't come yet," he warned me and I cried out in protest, shaking my head, trying to convey that I absolutely would not but I was incapable of forming the words. I tried to relieve the building pressure by squirming around but he wouldn't allow the movement. Instead, he nuzzled against me, urging me to tip my head to one side so that he had access to my throat. He left a series of sucking bruises there in a line up to my jaw before he caught the bottom of my ear in his teeth and tugged. Each kiss, each suck, each pull--it all bolted right down to where his fingers were driving into me. What he did with his mouth was such a vivid contrast to what he did with his hand.

"I want to see how long you can hold out on me," he whispered against my ear. "I want to watch you fall apart. That rigid self-control you pride yourself on, Cyril? That's all gone now. You're absolutely stripped to the core and it is fucking sexy as hell. Besides, I have sweet nothings to whisper for you and you have to hold out to hear them. Don't you want to hear them?"

I shuddered, my eyes rolling back while my muscles fought for control of my body. I had none. Fox controlled me entirely and, unlike with Ivar, I had given that to him freely. If he wanted control, he could have it and so I nodded. "Answer me, sweetheart. Use your words," he chided.

I moaned at the newest of his loving little endearments. "Y-yes," I stammered, barely coherently, my whole body rocking against his.

"You're beautiful," he murmured against my ear and I sucked in a sharp breath. "And I adore the little noises you make when you're worked up like this. You're so fucking tight, too. Gods, Cyril, I can only imagine how you'll feel when I take you. I want to...so bad, sweetheart. You have no idea."

"Please--" I whimpered the word, pressing against his fingers and then crying out when they hit inside me again. I didn't know how long I could keep this up. It was starting to hurt--a physical agony at my groin that demanded release. I wanted him to touch me there again, to take me in his fist and stroke me to completion but Fox seemed to know that I didn't need touched to get off for him.

"No," he denied my demand and I sobbed, real tears spilling over onto my cheeks again and he clicked his tongue. "None of that. I'll take you when you're good and ready for it and when you're lucid enough to actively want me instead of needing me."

I mumbled something he couldn't understand, lost in concentration as I struggled to do as he commanded and hold out. I was chewing on my bottom lip until it bled. He urged me to try again, pressing a kiss to the corner of my mouth to stop my chewing and I took a sharp, aching breath. I was trying to tell him that I always wanted him. It was a constant desire for me, an incessant need to belong to him. I would relish in the bruises he had left on me later when I was alone. I would bask in the memory of his hands and his mouth and his fingers deep inside me.

I struggled over the words again and moaned, utterly destroying any chance I had at being understood. He found that spot again and rubbed. My breath hitched and I let out a keening, low wail, my whole body drawn up. "P-please, Fox. Let me--"

"No," he denied me again and I sobbed. Legitimately, actually sobbed in frustration as he rubbed inside me, making my head spin and my body ache.

"Please--" I begged, crying the words, shoulders shaking. My fingers clawed at his shoulders and left raking marks down his arms. One of them slid between us to grip his wrist and hold him there.

"No," he repeated the word again with a small shake of his head and I bawled. "I want to see you break, Cyril. I want you ruined for everyone else. I want to be the only person that can reach inside you and make you feel anything even close to this."

I tried telling him that I already was. I'd been ruined for everyone else the minute he'd begged me to kiss him but the words wouldn't come out at first. Only the crying would. Desperate, whimpering, pleading cries while his free hand gently stroked through my sweat-soaked hair. "I can't do this," I managed, my voice strangled and hoarse. "I can't, Fox, please--"

"You can," he encouraged gently. "You're almost there, sweetheart. Stop begging. You're better than that."

It didn't make me feel any better but his hands kept moving. I was losing my mind. The world around me was spinning, every muscle in my body was taut and screaming. I clamped my mouth shut on the desire to beg and moaned against my teeth, the words coming up as jumbled noises that tossed against the inside of my mouth. He kept me in a state of utter agonized bliss for what felt like forever.

Without warning, Fox slid another finger into me and I shrieked, my body stiffening and my eyes widened. "Oooh," he purred. "There it is. Come for me, sweetheart."

I did. Without hesitation. My whole body turned hard and hot the moment he gave the command. I threw my head back, crying his name and grinding my hips against him while he pounded into that sweet spot so that I saw stars over and over again. I trembled and shook, spilling all over my belly, making a hot, sticky mess of myself in his arms. I clawed at him again, cutting into his skin and he pulled me forward so that he could smother my cries against his shoulder. I bit down on his collar until I tasted blood and felt him shudder against me. "Gods, Cyril, yes," he breathed against the side of my face. Every time I exhaled it came out as a keening moan, my eyes rolled back--

And then I was boneless, sagging in his lap, spent and used and utterly destroyed. I wanted to reciprocate. I pawed at him with trembling, uncoordinated hands while he slipped out of me. I cried at the sudden emptiness. "Nnnng Fox," I mumbled and he laid me back in his pillows while I tried fumbling with his trousers. He pushed my hands away with each attempt.

"No," he finally told me sternly, his eyes narrowing. "You're not touching me when you're like this."

"You said--" I protested, returning his glare with a heated one of my own. I may have been spent and already sleepy but I knew how sex worked. I was supposed to return the favor.

Fox pushed my hands away a final time and caught them in his own, holding them tight against my stomach while he laid down beside me. "I said I would consider it," he answered. "I considered it. The answer is no. Whatever this is...this thing that happens to you...it's sexual. I'm not letting you touch me when you're like this. Not until I know what it is. Believe me, sweetheart, I would love nothing more than to be buried inside you properly, but this...this is taking advantage of you in a vulnerable moment. I want you to actively want to be with me. I don't want it to be a biological drive. How do you feel now?"

I blinked at him. It was frustrating, yes, but at the same time, there was a part of me that melted at his words. He cared for me. He didn't ever say it. He didn't need to. He showed it enough with his actions and my cheeks flushed. I tried to assess my physical state while his hand moved down the center of my body and his fingers slid through the mess I'd made of myself. He brought them to his mouth and hummed his appreciation before leaning over me and licking up the rest. It made me shudder, but the heat that had curled in me was now tolerable, a barely flaming lick of warmth--not as gone as it had been the first time, but sated enough. "Better," I mumbled, flushing at the way his tongue moved over my skin.

"You taste incredible," he told me, snuggling up beside me so that he could lay on his side while I was on my back, staring at the ceiling, his breath warm on my face and his chin on my shoulder. He wrapped an arm around me and tugged me closer, one of his legs sliding over mine so that we were entirely tangled together. "You're not mad, are you?"

I was zoning out, thinking on what he'd said...that this was sexual. Ivar had quieted the riot in my stomach by fucking me senseless. Fox had done the same with his hands and although it had taken longer and he'd had to wring me out into a state of complete destruction, he'd done it. "Hmm?" I shifted, rolling a little bit so that I could look at him. "Fox, I'm always mad at you. The proper question would have been, 'Are you mad at me for fingering you stupid and making you heed my every command like a puppet?'"

He had to purse his lips to stop the smile before he repeated after me. "Cyril, are you mad at me for fingering you stupid and making you heed my every command like a puppet?"

"No," I answered simply, flashing a wide smile. I lifted my hand lazily and played with one of the curls that always hung in his face. "I was just thinking." Fox waited, evidently expecting an explanation from the expression on his face. I decided to entertain his assumption that he even deserved one. "What you said...about this...being sexual? Makes me feel like..." I wrinkled my nose.

"It's like you're in heat," he finished for me, a shrug of his shoulder like it didn't matter. "You're not...you're not really human...and I mean that in the best way possible. You're human. You're a person. You are a sentient creature with thoughts and feelings and you're beautiful. You're perfect. You're just not..."

"Like you," I offered the words and he winced. "It's alright. I'm used to it. You're right, anyway. I'm not like you. You don't start writhing around in the dirt every few weeks and practically beg someone to mount you like you're an animal to be bred."

"That was a horrible comparison," he told me, aghast that I'd even drawn the conclusion. The look of disgust on his face was all I needed to tell me that he didn't think of me like that. It didn't stop the sting in my eyes or the way I shifted onto my back again so that I didn't have to look at him. "Cyril! I told you, we'll figure this out. If it means going to visit the Lierian tribe up the coast, then we'll do it. If that's what it is, why does it matter?"

"Because I'm not an animal!" I snarled, sitting up and stumbling to my feet. I found my discarded trousers and slipped them back up over my hips.

Fox looked hurt. His mouth turned into a pout and he averted his gaze like he couldn't look at me. He plucked at the mussed sheets on his bed and followed me to my feet, groaning in discomfort at the effort it took him. It wasn't his fault that it upset me. It didn't even make sense that it did but I hated it. It was one more thing to set me apart and this...this was something so intimate and so raw that I couldn't stand the idea of having to share it with anyone else. With Fox, it was fine. Fox was intimate with me. We shared that...but for everyone else to know that I didn't just crave his touch, I actually needed it because there was some animal part of me that ached to be bred like a fine war horse--I was drawing the line there. "I didn't say you were an animal," he corrected carefully.

I huffed and pulled my shirt back on, wiping at the tears that were sliding down my cheeks. They were no longer the tears he'd pulled from me--tears of desperation and bliss. These were hot and angry and I rounded on him like it was his fault anyway. There were things that I held him responsible for...little things, things that I always claimed never bothered me and maybe this event had pushed me to a limit and it all came boiling up and out. Or maybe finding this thing out about my people had made me angrier than I anticipated. Maybe I should have never started looking for answers.

"You don't have to say it!" I shouted and he flinched, stepping back like I'd slapped him. I was irate again, emboldened by my anger.

"What? You think I believe it?" he demanded, recovering from his surprise with an anger of his own. I had offended him, it seemed. After what we'd just done, that was to be expected. It made me feel used. It probably did the same to him.

I pushed him away when he tried to grab for me, to offer some kind of balm for my frustration. "Don't touch me," I snapped and Fox, for the first time in perhaps his entire life, actually obeyed. "I'm different already. I'm not one of your people. Nobody in your court looks at me like I belong here. Look around you, Fox." I held my arms out and laughed darkly. "Look at your kingdom. Look at your cities. Look at where you find my people in them. We're whores and we're slaves. And why is that? Because we look different? Because we're something...other... that nobody can fucking explain? You can't even buy slaves in Coria but somehow, they're still here! Toddling along behind your nobels like sentient pets. We're already animals, Fox. This is just one more step away from humanity. Do you think anyone will take me seriously as your second?"

"It only matters if I take you seriously," he pointed out quietly. "I'm the one that makes the final decision."

That wasn't the point though. The point was bigger. The whole issue was bigger and I'd thought, stupidly, that our innocent, untouched little relationship would be enough for me. "When you asked me to kiss you, I knew I'd end up hurt," I shot back and he opened his mouth to protest immediately. I held a hand up. "Let me finish. It matters, Fox, because Kings don't have Lierian seconds. You already know what the reaction to that will be. What are they going to think about a King with a Lierian lover that's not chained to the bed in a collar?"

"You know I would never put you in a--Gods, Cyril! I didn't pick this for you! I didn't make you into what you are. I didn't steal you from your tribe or murder your parents or whatever the fuck happened to you before you ended up with my father! I don't care what they think about who is in my bed. That has nothing to do with my ability to lead." He crossed his arms, face flushed, eyes bright and glassy. I hated seeing him hurting and he was hurting...he was hurting because of me and he didn't deserve it. He was right. None of this was his fault. He was trying to help me. He'd done everything he could. He'd found the books and taken the beating for it. He was hunting down Ivar and he had slipped into bed with me to take care of that empty ache I felt and he'd done it selflessly.

My shoulders sagged and I looked up at the ceiling, wiping furiously at my damp face. "It has everything to do with your ability to have an heir," I whispered. "Did that never cross your mind?"

"It has," he answered swiftly. "And I have Brentlyn and Riordan and any children they have. I have my uncle and his sons. I have Miraena. Are you really worrying about me having children, Cyril? You don't think that's...a bit soon?" He raised an eyebrow and gave me a look so close to comical that I choked on a laugh.

The tension broke and he crossed the room to me, his arms folding over mine so that he could press me to his chest. "It's my job to worry about those things," I mumbled his skin. "I'm still your second. If you were fucking your guard...what's his name...Florian? I would tell you that it was stupid because of all the reasons I already listed."

"Florian isn't a Lierian, so not entirely all the reasons," he corrected, clicking his tongue and pressing gentle kisses to the top of my head. I melted into him, sleepy again, my hands on his hips. "And I would tell you to mind your own fucking business." He leaned me back so that I had to look up at him and then pressed a kiss to my nose. It would have been infuriating had I not been feeling deflated and childish for my tantrum.

I huffed. "It still bothers me to see them collared like that," I mumbled.

"It bothers me to see anyone collared like that," he agreed. "Unfortunately, there's only so much we can do right now and solving the Lierian slave problem is not one of them. When it is, trust me, gorgeous, you'll be the first to know." He tousled my hair and then took my face in his hands, rubbing his thumbs over the red streaks the tears had left over the blue on my face. "Can I take you back to bed now?"

"Please."

Chapter Text

Getting Fox out of bed had always been a task reserved for only the most patient members of the palace staff. Sometimes, however, when his mood was particularly sour or the day's itinerary consisted of things he didn't really enjoy, even the staff was unable to lure him out from between the silk sheets of his bed.

I suspected that part of the problem was the way the room looked. Fox had renovated it when he'd been moved up to the Tower on his fourteenth birthday. It had been a pale blue, airy sort of room when Harlan lived there. The windows had always been open to let the sea breeze into the space and it had sheer white curtains that billowed out with the circulation and while Fox may have looked like his father and had the same open-hearted, generous, unbearably compassionate personality as Harlan, he was definitely his own person. Fox's kindness came laced with acidity, sarcasm, and a wit so sharp that sometimes I was surprised he didn't cut people with his words.

While Harlan struggled to even punish criminals, Fox dealt with injustice swiftly and harshly. These differences were reflected in their personal tastes. The Crown Prince had stripped the room and had it repainted a deep, dark, blood red. The wooden floor was sanded, stained, and polished until it was almost black. The ebony furniture was lined in the same dark red as the walls, covered in scrolls and books and whatever trinkets that Fox found sentimental. The color scheme and the clutter, along with the heavy, black curtains hanging from the windows, made it seem like the world outside was in a state of constant night. It took dozens of candles to make Fox's room seem even remotely welcoming. It was a wonder he got any of the women he fooled around with to go up there. It looked more like a place designed for torture than comfort. At least the blood wouldn't stain anything he owned.

I had gotten used to Fox's eclectic tastes though. Walking into the room when his guard informed me that the Prince was not waking up didn't faze me in the slightest. I shut the door behind me and looked down at myself. I was almost always in the uniform of a second though while Ambrose's was blue, mine had been fitted in white. I never wore it quite like he did. He was always perfectly tailored, with his favors pinned to his jacket, his sword at his side. The palace tailor had taken one look at me, clicked her tongue, and said that she was going to do some alterations considering how slight I was. She wanted me to look a little bit bigger than I was and so she'd made them slightly larger than they should have been. Everyone around me agreed that it gave me a little bit more weight but I felt like I was swimming in my clothes and had taken to wearing the trousers tucked tightly into a pair of black riding boots that went up to my knees. I was a beacon of light in Fox's bedroom, to say the least.

The great sleigh bed in the middle of the room was a mess and I knew that under the massive pile of tangled sheets, blankets, and charcoal colored pillows, I would find the very object of my obsessions. I could already see his arm hanging off the side of the bed. "Fox," I started sternly. He didn't even move as I crossed the room to the bed, plucked up his arm, and dropped it again.

He pulled it under the blankets and grumbled, shifting beneath his mountain of bedding. "This is ridiculous," I told him. "You're a grown man. Your father expects you to sit Court with him today. Get out of bed."

There was more grumbling and I huffed, kicking off my boots so that I could climb up onto the mattress. It was truly climbing for me. Fox's bed sat so high that I had to use my arms to lift myself up and onto it. He was tall enough to manage it just fine but my head lined up with his chest, as was fairly typical for me. Fox liked to say I barely weighed as much as Riordan, even soaking wet.

Riordan was three. It was one of my least favorite jokes.

"Cyril," I heard him whine under the blankets but he didn't make any attempt at moving as I pulled his pillows away to try to find his face. I did, eventually, though it was really only half of his face. He was laying on his back, head turned to one side so that it was pressed into his pillow and he was very much still mostly asleep. His breathing was slow and steady, his eyes were closed, and his hair was a sleepy, tangled mess. He needed a haircut. I sincerely hoped he didn't get one.

Fox was beautiful in his own right. He was the kind of creature that looked like he'd stepped out of the pages of a storybook. He epitomized Prince Charming with that rounded, bowed mouth and big, bright eyes. He had a strong jaw that tapered into even stronger shoulders and while he didn't possess the sort of body made for hard, manual labor--all corded muscle and thick limbs--he was...something. His biceps were toned from sword work, his torso was long and sculpted like the figures of the Gods in the temples. His hip bones started a V that led further down into his blankets and I was struggling with the urge not to lick those lines.

"Are you enjoying this?" he asked me, one eye opening to catch me staring and practically salivating over him. I felt my face color the same red as his sheets and I scrambled to get away from him. It wasn't quite fast enough. He caught me around the waist and pulled me down, burying me with him so that I was cradled against his side with my face buried in the curve of his collar. My cheeks were flaming so hot I swore he could feel the radiating heat on his skin. He even chuckled, his eyes closed again, one arm still wrapped around me and the other lifting lazily to slide down my face. I tipped my head instinctively to give him access to my throat and his fingers formed a trail down to the neck of my shirt.

I squirmed against him, one of my legs thrown over one of his, and tried to move to push myself back up but my palm planted itself right on his hard abdomen. There was no give to Fox. He was all lean, hard muscle and long, long limbs that could have made a priest have unholy thoughts. "I am, in fact," I told him stiffly, turning my nose up when I'd finally gained control of my voice enough not to stammer. "You're not seducing me into letting you skip Court."

"Really? It certainly seems like I am." He didn't even open his eyes, the smug bastard. He knew what he did to me. He knew how much I craved him, how even looking at him turned my stomach warm and made me nearly salivate. I'd never been a very lust-driven person. In fact, for a long time, there had been a part of me that was afraid of intimacy because I was acutely aware of what my life had almost been. With Fox, things were different. He never demanded anything of me. In fact, he had barely touched me since the last time what I now referred to as 'the heat' hit me two weeks previous. He kissed me. In fact, he kissed me long and often until I was breathless and limp in his arms but he never did anything more than that, at least not anything sexual. He could spend hours with his mouth pressed to my ear, whispering sweet nothings that made me even more his with every word.

I wanted more. I told him that I wanted more but he worried over me...about my self-worth and the fact that Ivar had convinced me that I'd been groomed to be little more than Fox's toy. He worried that what I wanted from him was driven by a biological need--something linked to what I was rather than who I was and what I wanted. I would beg, he would scold me for begging, and he'd hold me in his lap until the flaming frustration ebbed out of my cheeks and I stopped squirming against him.

I was, without a doubt, utterly and completely bewitched by him.

I blew my hair out of my eyes but I couldn't stop myself from sliding my hand over the ridges of his belly, my fingertips tracing each squared off muscle segment. He never let me explore him the way that he'd explored me, his tongue on every blue pigmentation mark that marred my pale frame. I was nearly drooling over him. It was positively shameful but I was presented with a unique opportunity. Fox was still half-asleep, lost somewhere between dreams and reality. He wasn't stopping me from touching him the way that he usually did and so I made the split-second decision to take advantage of it. I lowered my mouth to those warm, hard muscles and the heated skin that covered them. I pressed a wet, open mouth kiss to one and he sucked in a sharp breath above me. I repeated the gesture, laving my tongue over the indentations of his body, following those lines down to his hips.

I paid careful attention to his hip bones. He tasted warm and smooth, almost sweet with just a tinge of salt and something I couldn't identify. Something uniquely Fox. He was stirring, squirming and mumbling and one of his hands fell down near my face, his curled fingers gently brushing over my cheek and I nuzzled into the gesture, sliding down his body a moment later so that I could lick that V shape I had wanted to lick for months.

"Gods, what are you doing?" he whispered above me. I could feel him stiffen between his legs, just beneath the fabric of the blanket. I had never seen Fox completely undressed, not as an adult. The times we'd sneaked down to the beach to strip down and swim hardly counted, considering how young we'd been. I hadn't even understood the spectrum of sexuality until much, much later.

I kept kissing, working over every inch of skin between his hip bones and the dip between them that disappeared below his blankets. His skin shone, wet and tan and I knew when I peeled that fabric down, he'd be only slightly paler. It was usually a much more stark contrast but his injuries had kept him from wasting his time away in the training fields, shirt stripped off while he and Brentlyn beat the hell out of each other with blunted swords. I couldn't count how many times he'd been told to wear the leather armors but he always argued that he liked the feel of the sun.

I appreciated that now more than I ever had before. "Exploring," I spoke against one of his hip bones, my fingers curling in the blanket. The things I wanted to do to him bordered worship. I'd never been religious, in part because the temple priests despised letting a Lierian into their holy places, but it was mostly because I'd never believed in any of it. I believed in Fox--in the way his body felt against mine and the things he whispered against my ear when he knew I was anxious or nervous. I revered him and when I was with him, my world narrowed so that he was the only thing I could see or feel.

Nuzzling against the spot where his leg curved up into his body, I pulled the rest of the blanket down to his thighs and heard the sharp intake of breath above me. One quick glance up and I knew his eyes were half-open, lidded and heavy. His cheeks were flushed, his lips were parted and his tongue darted out, running along the full swell of his lower lip. I had an urge to take it between my teeth but fought it off, turning my attention to the newly uncovered flesh. My prize.

Heat bloomed low in my stomach, making my trousers feel unbearably tight while I squirmed lower and took him in. He was long and hard, thicker than I'd expected him to be given how lean the rest of his body looked. I realized a little bit late that I had no fucking idea what I was doing and that itching fear of being his toy clawed at my insides. It was easy to forget when I was mewling and sobbing through a few days of heat but it wasn't like that right now. Right now, I just wanted him. I told myself it couldn't be that difficult. Gods, I had a cock and I knew what felt good.

I licked him experimentally, my tongue sliding up the side, tracing along a thick line of blue that led up to the head of him. "Cyril," he warned, his voice a low growl in his throat. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Taking the length of him in my hand, I gripped tightly. Probably more than was necessary but the warning in his voice pissed me off. I shot him a scowl worthy of a mother and he snorted at the expression but his hips lifted toward me. A low groan escaped his throat and his head tipped back, exposing the underside of his throat where I liked to leave bruises when he let me. "I'm sucking your cock," I shot back, surprised by the vulgarity coming out of my own mouth. I never shied from swearing, but there is something about naming genitalia when you're holding someone else's that makes it wickedly sinful. He even licked his lips at the idea, despite the fact that he was glaring back at me.

"Swee--"

"Don't 'sweetheart' me," I told him flatly. "I want to do this. Please, Fox. You took care of me. Let me do this for you." I was pleading. I knew he had some issue with begging unless he specifically told me to beg for something but I didn't wait for his complete answer.

He only got half of it out. "Cyril, it's not ab--Oh, son of a bitch!" The octave of his voice changed to something dark and dangerous when I lowered my head over him, taking him as deeply into my mouth as I could manage, my hands curling to fists on his hips. He was hard, liquid heat that blistered against my tongue...velvet soft skin sliding below my lips and over my tongue. I took him until my eyes watered and my throat tightened. I fought against the urge to gag, hollowing my cheeks and sucking hard. I glanced up at him and he was staring, slack-jawed and flushed, his hands pressed flat into the sheets. He lifted one of them and, very carefully, tightened his fist in my hair so that I moaned around him.

Fox's opinion on the matter changed very quickly. "If you stop now, Cyril, I swear I'll kill you," he hissed through his teeth.

I was feeling particularly defiant that morning though and I slid him out of my mouth with a pop, taking a deep breath and licking my lips. "Will you now?" I asked happily, eyes bright, shooting him a wide smile. He looked ready to kill me, at the very least. "You could at least fuck me before you kill me, Fox. It would be a waste if you didn't."

"I hate you," he spat, but the words were empty and he collapsed into his pillows when I returned to his cock. I wrapped my lips around him again and tried to take him deeper, one hand pressed flat between his hips to keep them from moving. I could feel his muscles flex beneath me when he tried.

It took a few minutes and a lot of experimenting with how to avoid using my teeth to get him fully sheathed in my mouth. He hadn't expected me to conquer that barrier though, as was evidenced in the way he looked down at me, his fingers tightening in my hair, eyes wide. He was panting hard, struggling to breathe while my tongue lapped at the underside of his heavy cock. "I uhm...I--you have a very impressive gag reflex," he eventually managed, stammering over the words while I bobbed my head slowly up and down the length of him, letting him nudge the back of my throat every few times.

Fox whimpered under me, straining in his sheets while I held his hips down. I moaned around him, enjoying the way he ground his teeth together at the vibration. He repeated my name and I felt absolutely regal, basking in the sound of it when it came from between his lips. I scraped my nails over his hips, breathing through my nose so that I didn't have to stop. I was having trouble believing that I'd done this to him--I'd put him here, in this state of mind, where he was writhing, sweat-soaked and hard between my teeth. "Gods, you feel so fucking good," he breathed. "Cyril...n-no, don't do that!"

His plea came too late. I lifted my hands from his hips, one of them sliding to the mattress to brace my weight and the other folding up behind my back where I couldn't reach him. He made a low, keening noise, grabbed my face, and pulled me up to his mouth.

I let go of him with a surprising sucking noise, landing so that I was straddling his waist for all but a moment while he gave me the hungriest, most desperate kiss he'd ever given me. He stole the breath from my lungs, the thoughts from my head--all teeth and tongue and he broke it only enough to mumble my name against my mouth. "Cyril, sweetheart," he moaned the words and I pressed my hands to his bare chest, sliding them up and over his shoulders to the back of his neck and finally, finally into the tangle of dark hair that hung damp on his head.

"You weren't supposed to stop me," I whimpered a complaint against him, even as he palmed over my backside and pulled me tighter to him. I gasped at the contact, even more surprised when his hand didn't leave and instead cupped me, squeezing and groping.

Fox laughed and, with my legs around his hips, pulled me off the bed so that he was carrying me. He seemed almost playful at first and I was almost mollified--nearly over the fact that he'd made me stop until I felt his breath at my throat. Hot, biting kisses spread up my jaw to my ear and he took the lobe between his teeth, tugging while he held me and I squirmed, hard and needy, in his arms. "I'm going to put you down now," he warned me, his voice low and sinful, the very tone of it promising a slew of wicked, unholy things that made me shudder with anticipation. My legs were allowed to slide slowly until my feet touched the floor, my arms still around him, fingers tracing idly over the fresh scarring on his back. He tipped my face up, his lips aligned with mine, touching but not really kissing and he spoke into my mouth like he was feeding me words. "And I'm going to fuck that smart mouth."

"Fox!" I whispered the exclamation, almost inaudible, with wide eyes that probably covered half of my face. He grinned at me wolfishly and proceeded to peel my shirt off, unbutton my trousers, and slide them off my legs. He took me in his hand, fisting the hard, aching length of me while I stood squirming, unable to react.

He wanted to fuck my mouth and the way he said it made it sound like he was punishing me for being smart with him. I trembled in his grasp, almost terrified but incredibly hot about the entire idea. Fox was stroking me hard and fast, unrelenting and aggressive so that in a moment, I was panting and writhing against him, my own hair damp, my fingers clawing down his back and over the newly healed whipping scars. He hated them, often chided me for even touching them, but that day he said nothing. His back arched marginally and then he grabbed one of my wrists, leading it down between my legs. "Take it," he ordered.

"N-no, I can't!" The idea of touching myself while he was standing there agonized me but, even protesting, I unwrapped my fist and grabbed my own cock, mewling at the contact when his hand folded over mine and moved for me.

"Just like that, beautiful. Now get on your knees." I sank, heavy and whimpering, my fingers stroking up and down my hard length, and looked up at him. My eyes were glassy and wet and he grabbed my face in both of his hands, sliding me backward until the back of my head hit his mattress. He stood in front of me and I salivated, leaning forward with a trembling bottom lip, desperate to have him back inside me, and his hand around my jaw stopped the movement. "Don't be greedy. Tell me how you feel right now."

I panted, mouth open, near tears at his feet because Gods, I wanted him so badly that it made that empty place inside me ache. I was also angry. Angry that he could command me that way and I obeyed, angry that he'd spoiled my fun, angry that I wanted him to bend me over his bed and fuck me until I turned into that feral animal I knew I could be but that I didn't have the courage to ask him to do it. A low, frustrated sob escaped my throat and a few tears rolled down my cheeks. Fox thumbed them away almost as soon as they appeared.

"Angry," I spat, still panting and breathless, my hand pumping between my legs no faster than he'd urged me to do when he'd told me to take it. "Aching. H-hard. Please--"

"I'll leave you here to do this yourself if you start begging me," he warned. The tone in his voice indicated that he wasn't kidding. There was nothing funny about it. I whined and squirmed from my place at his feet and looked up at him. "Why are you angry?"

"You spoiled my fun," I answered petulantly and my whole body rocked with a particularly rough tremor brought on by the hand between my thighs. I moaned at it, my other hand coming up to brace myself against Fox's weight. He folded his fingers over mine and squeezed, almost reassuringly. "You never let me touch you. You won't fuck me."

Fox raised an eyebrow. "Is that what you want?" I nodded and, for a moment, it looked like he considered it. "That's not going to happen. Not today. Not the way you want it to. Being a tease doesn't earn you any rewards, Cyril."

"I wasn't teasing!" I protested, desperate and so pissed off I would have punched him had I been able to reach his face or not been so incredibly turned on by the position he had me in. He didn't allow me any more whining though. He grabbed my jaw forcefully and pressed his cock to my lips. I didn't fight him, not on this. This was what I wanted and I took it greedily, humming around the length as he slid it deep into my throat.

Fox moaned, his palms on the sides of my face and his fingers in my hair. I let my muscles go limp, my tongue sliding over the bottom of him. My free hand came up to reach between his legs, cupping and massaging so that I could actually see his belly contract with the sudden sensation. "Good boy," he purred and my eyes slid shut. Fuck, if I didn't love those tiny, almost condescending words more than I loved being told that I was beautiful or that he could have spent hours just watching me read...it made me feel filthy and wicked and I basked in it, groaning around the length of him.

His hips started moving then and he didn't bother with anything slow. He thrust himself forward, pounding the back of my throat so that I gagged every few seconds, my eyes watering and then started streaming down my face. He captured my free hand, lacing his fingers with mine so that I couldn't stop the pistoning of his hips. I didn't want to. I loved feeling like this--like he needed me for this and couldn't get deep enough to satiate the hunger he felt.

My own hand moved faster and then, of it's own volition, reached between my spread legs and probed for the slick, hot entrance to my body. I slid two fingers in and gasped at the streching, aching sensation. Fox glanced down and groaned, his shoulders hunched and his eyes dark and searing while he watched me. "Fuck," he hissed the word, angling my face up so that I had to look at him while that heat bubbled in my stomach, licking my insides, turning me taut and strung out. I squirmed, struggling to breathe around the girth of him and he moved faster, clasping me between his hands, slamming into me so that the back of my head bounced against the mattress.

I felt myself shatter first, the spring in my stomach uncoiling and spilling hot, sticky, and wet all over my stomach and my wrist where it reached between my thighs. I kept rubbing against that spot inside me that Fox had found with such perfect ease, my eyes rolling, keening around his cock, mewling and whining so that the vibration of my voice pushed him over the edge.

Fox thrust hard that final time, gagging me as he came down my throat, filling my mouth with salty, thick fluid that would have normally made me balk. In that situation, however, he was the best thing I'd ever tasted. I let him drive into me a few more times, sucking and licking him clean, my own fingers sliding from my body when he let me go. His cock slid free with the same sucking, pop noise as it had before and my body slumped against the side of the bed.

He knelt beside me and let my body slide forward, my head resting on his shoulder. I could hear his heart pounding in his chest, feel the heat radiate off of him as he smoothed his hands down my back. His palms slid over my chest and cradled my ribs, pulling me closer until my legs wrapped around his hips and he held me. "Are you alright?"

"Mmm," I mumbled something incoherent, turning my face toward his, my cheek on his collar. I nipped at his jaw and he tilted his head to give me access so that I could kiss the skin beneath my mouth. "'M still mad at you. And we missed Court. Ambrose is going to skin me alive."

Fox chuckled, plucking me up off the floor and depositing me in his bed. He crawled in beside me and, just like he had the last time, leaned in to lick the mess I'd made off of my stomach. I gasped at the sensation, wiggling under him, wiping away the remnants of tears while he did it. "Right, for ruining your fun."

"And refusing to fuck me."

"Trust me, sweetheart, I'd love to fuck you," he promised and I scowled at him as he climbed over me, pressing kisses up my exhausted body until he reached my face. "But I'm all pent up aggression right now and I'm rough enough on you as it is."

I blinked at him, reaching to run my fingers along the curve of his face. He turned and kissed my palm, my wrist, down my arm to the curve of my elbow. He stopped when he got to my mouth and swept his tongue over it, urging me open. He didn't need to urge. I relinquished control immediately and let him in, my hands on his ribs, inching back. That time, he stopped me before I reached the scars. "Why pent up aggression?" I breathed, curious. Fox made me talk to him. He made me explain things when he had me vulnerable but I rarely forced any sort of confession out of him. He had always been a private person and when he wanted to tell me something, he did it of his own volition. Usually. I was taking some serious liberties asking him why he felt the way that he did.

Fox huffed and rolled over, flopping onto his back. It was good to see him so mobile again. The fact that he wore no bandages helped. He seemed...almost like the best friend I'd had before his beating but he was so much more than that now. He picked up one of his pillows and tossed it, catching it on the way back down. Over and over and over again while his face contorted in concentration.

"I've got every fucking guard and serviceman in the city looking for that prick that hurt you and none of them have found a Godsdamned thing yet. It's like they're fucking blind or he's got friends in the service of the King that are tipping him off. I can't trust anyone here but you now." He snarled when he spoke, his brow furrowed, his cheeks flushed in anger instead of lust now.

I scooted closer to him, rolling on my side so that I could watch him. I played with the damp curls that hung over his temple while he took his frustration out on that poor pillow. He even punched it a few times. "It doesn't matter, Fox," I assured him gently. And to me, it didn't. It was over. I wanted it to be over. I didn't want to worry about Ivar or what he'd done. I wanted it to be behind me, another trauma to add to a past that was already filled with them. I was good at getting over bad things.

Unfortunately, Fox was not. "It matters to me," he said bitterly. "You're a better man than I am, Cyril."

"That's not even close to true. Why would you say that?" I lowered my hand to his chest where his heart was still beating, fast and irregular. He was angry now. All evidence of lust and sexual attraction had evaporated in the face of raw fury.

"Because you're ready to just move on. I'm not. He took off when we started looking for him. He won't ever show his face here again. That's enough for you. You just want to put the whole mess away and forget about it because it's over and you're safe. He's gone. I can't do that." He was positively glaring at that pillow with an intensity I thought might set it on fire. I removed it gently from his hands and he huffed, allowing me to tilt his face so that he was looking at me instead. "I want vengeance. I want revenge. I want him to hurt the way that you hurt. I want to put him on that post and wield the whip myself. I want him bloody and broken and then I want to take his head. I'll put his skull on top of the post or have it mounted on a shield."

"That's...colorful," I managed, choking on the words and the vivid imagery that popped to mind when he spoke. He grumbled in agreement though. "But...it is over, Fox."

"It isn't," he spoke flatly and then sat up, drawing his legs to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He looked so small like that and I couldn't fight the urge to follow him up and drape my arms over his shoulders so that my chest was to his mutilated back. We were cheek to cheek like that and I could feel his labored, angry breathing against my stomach. "You scream in your sleep, Cyril. You remember it. I hear you say his name."

I stilled, my breath caught in my throat. A lump formed there with it and I drew back away from him, scrambling to the opposite side of the bed and Fox made no move to follow me. More often than not these days, I fell asleep in his room or he fell asleep in mine. Nobody questioned it. We were always pouring over books together and used whatever made-up project we were 'working on' as an excuse to be close. We'd always been close. I hadn't realized it was taking a toll on him like that. I hadn't known I was having nightmares at all anymore. They'd stopped after a few days. My early years were such a disaster that even that sort of trauma didn't stay with me long anymore. Hurting Fox though? That was a lasting wound. "I'm sorry," I whispered, pulling my own legs up and I heard Fox shift to look at me. "You shouldn't have to hear that. I didn't realize it was happening. You deserve more than...that."

"You think that's what this is about? I'm angry because I failed you, Cyril. Not because you cry in your sleep. Gods, I almost like when you do it because it gives me an excuse to touch you. That only makes me feel more guilty about it." He wobbled across the bed and caught me in his arms again, dragging me back against his chest like I was a baby. I was stiff and unyielding, on the verge of panicked tears until I felt his face in my hair, inhaling while his fingers dug into my shoulders in a deep, rotating massage-like motion. I groaned at the contact. "Deserve more," Fox snorted. "More than this? You have to know how much I love you."

The panicked tears turned to overwhelmed tears then and the dam that was holding them burst. I sobbed openly, eyes stinging, cursing myself because Gods, it always came to this. I cried more than Fox's sister. He said it was adorable. I despised it. "Fox," I choked his name, scrambling in his arms until I could face him and he was on me in an instant, kissing away the tears until I was gasping for breath, eyes shut so that he could press his lips to my lids.

"Don't cry," he pleaded. "I know I think it's cute but I'd really prefer you didn't cry because I said I love you."

"No!" I moaned the word, hiccuping halfway through it so that his chest shook in a silent laugh against my own. His hot and cold attitude was infuriating. I punched him in the shoulder and he rolled away from me to smile. "I love you too. That doesn't make you less of an ass. You didn't fail me, Fox. Get over yourself. You don't owe me anything except maybe all day in bed because I'm going to spend all evening listening to Ambrose lecture me on my responsibility as your adult babysitter."

Fox snorted but turned serious again just as quickly as he dissolved. "I will find him, Cyril," he warned. "And no bullshit sermon about being my second or my better half or how important it is to be merciful as a King is going to work to stop me. I am going to throw him in the dungeons below this very palace and I'm going to torture him like no other man has ever been tortured in Coria...and there is nothing you will ever do to stop that. Do you understand?"

"Fox," I began slowly. "I'm not going to regale you with the details of what he did to me but suffice to say, I will not be stopping you. I will not even be trying. Would you like a cheering team?"

The laughter that bubbled from his throat was more than enough to make my entire day brighter.

Chapter Text

Remember when I said that strategy games were my favorite?

That wasn't completely true. I enjoyed them when I was alone, fighting another opponent, not relying on a team member. I was a solitary individual and staring down at those maps, watching Brentlyn and Ambrose advance on the line, infuriated me. I didn't take well to losing. I understood trauma and sacrifice on a level that most people Ambrose's age didn't even understand it. I put a high value on the lives of the innocent and those caught up in a war that hadn't even really happened yet. The Immarans were constantly hassling the borders, never outright picking a fight but clearly aching for it. Harlan's concern came from their new alliance with the northern nation of Glacia. The cold, desolate, windswept nation had a population of fierce survivors who supplied a majority of the furs and leathers worn by the rest of the continent.

It was a terrifying idea--that the Empire waging war across the sea after being driven out of our land had ties back to it. Harlan had thrown Fox and I full force into learning the finer points of leading an army. Unfortunately, Fox still looked at it as an attempt at saving as many men as possible without seeing the wider picture. Perhaps it was his volatile, spontaneous personality that was to blame or maybe it was that beautiful compassion that I treasured so dearly. Whatever it was, in this case, it was unwelcome and it was irritating. It didn't matter how many times I reset the table, we couldn't beat Ambrose and Brentlyn. I should have been able to. I'd beaten Ambrose before. I had the eye for this sort of thing--the patience, the intuition, the competitive nature. I was of the opinion that the best defense was a good offense. Fox disagreed, reminding me that being too keen to throw human bodies at a cause until the problem went away was not the making of a good ruler.

He was right. He was also very, very wrong. Sometimes, throwing human bodies that had volunteered to be thrown was exactly what needed to happen.

I cleared my throat and looked again, bent over the table, exhaustion pulling at my eyes. Since Fox's admission that I was still having nightmares, I'd stopped sleeping in his room or letting him sleep in mine. It didn't matter how much he promised me that he didn't care about the nightmares or that he didn't mind holding me through them. He didn't deserve to see it or to be reminded of what someone else had done to me when it bothered him so much. It didn't help, either, that I was remembering them again. I suppose trauma had helped black them out when I woke up but knowing that they were happening made it easier to see.

It wasn't going very well. Fox was frustrated, a ball of pent-up aggression over not having found Ivar yet. He disliked that his moments with me were stolen in the morning or in the evening before we went to our respective dwelling places. In fact, that very morning, he'd stormed into my room and had me pinned to the bed before I could register who he was, his knees on my arms and his cock at my lips. The overwhelming horror and panic had, of course, subsided when I recognized him but the fight that had followed had been explosive. I'd even thrown a vase at him and the bastard had caught it. He was tired of this charade--this game of distance, touch-and-go, and my adamant belief that he didn't deserve to be exposed to something that made him feel so positively violent. Fox could be downright frightening when he was angry.

I understood that he needed the stress reduction that sex or sexual acts brought for him. I understood his desire to be close to me because my own desire to be close to him was an ache I couldn't escape. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to wake up with him, his sleep-tousled head on my belly and his hands cradling my ribs even in slumber. I missed him so badly that the terse, clipped tone he was still using with me hours later were cutting to the bone. I was doing everything I could to wave the white flag. I let him make most of the decisions in the combat simulation against Brentlyn, with Ambrose acting as his second. I didn't argue as hard as I normally would have. I didn't push him to think about his decisions the way that I was meant to. We were going to lose this fake war and it was my fault.

I couldn't even bring myself to care. I cared more about the way he stood, his hip against the table, arms crossed, pretending to be terribly interested in the carpet instead of the game. I cared that every time I looked to him, he shrugged and when I pushed even a little bit, he spared the board a small glance, a flippant wave of his hand, and an uninterested answer. His tone was impassive, detached, and his face remained blank.

I had to keep swallowing before I spoke, the bruised feeling in the back of my throat from his presence was a raw, delicious agony I usually welcomed wholly and without a thought about the ache. That afternoon, it was a constant reminder that he'd stormed from my room and slammed the door so hard the windows had trembled in their frames.

All because he wasn't getting what he wanted. What he said he needed...all because I was trying to do what was best for him the way that I had been trained to do...the way that he was always trying to do what was best for me.

"You should have won this," Ambrose told me, his voice weary. He gave Brentlyn a congratulatory pat on the shoulder and then moved to my side of the table. He pressed a kiss to my temple that I failed to respond to. Ambrose had been more affectionate since he'd found out about Ivar but I wasn't feeling overly affectionate that day. I was preoccupied, my stomach in knots, my fingers itching to grab Fox's collar and kiss him until he understood how sorry I was that things had to be the way that they were.

Regardless, the old man left us standing there and Brentlyn cast a leary gaze between the two of us. "Are you two fighting?" he eventually asked. "Because it feels like you're fighting."

"We're fine," Fox answered casually, straightening the sleeves of his dark red shirt. He'd foregone the uniform that day for a riding lesson in the morning and was still wearing the delightfully tight black trousers and boots that he always wore when he was riding. I would have had trouble concentrating around him in that anyway, even without the argument from that morning looming over us. "Aren't we, Cyril?"

"Are we?" I responded, turning to face him so that I was leaning on the table the same way that he was, my hip against the side and my arms crossed.

The tension was palpable. Brentlyn smacked his lips together and widened his eyes, reaching for the book on Glacian culture he'd been reading before the game started. "Uh-oh," he breathed.

Fox raised an eyebrow. "I think we just have a fundamental difference of opinion on some things." His voice was spiteful. It was a tone I didn't recognize on him. The words dripped malice and my mouth dried. Fox lowered a hand, flicking one of the clay figures over so that it landed on its face. He drummed his fingernails against the painted ceramic topographical map of the continent. It was a rapid clicking noise that did nothing for my nerves. I swallowed hard, still choking on that bruised feeling in my throat. Fox always had been wickedly sharp with his words. I'd never been unfortunate enough to be on the recieving end of one of his verbal lashings, not really, but I had a feeling I was on the verge of one.

"Opinions are subjective," Brentlyn offered, a failed attempt at mediating the rising, crackling tension in the room. My heart hammered. Fox's cheeks flushed. "If it's just opinion, it can't be wrong or right. You'll just have to--"

"Are you going to referee this then?" Fox spat, his ire turning suddenly and sharply on his brother. "Because I don't recall saying I gave a fuck about what you thought."

"Fox--" I started to protest and he held a hand out to stop me.

Brentlyn looked pale. Unlike me, he had most certainly been on the recieving end of many of Fox's acidic assaults. "Look, I don't know what's going on between the two of you. It's obvious there's something and if you think I care about who is fucking who, you're wrong. I just have the unfortunate job of being the third wheel to whatever sizzling sexual tension is happening between you and him." He jerked his chin toward me and I blanched, opening my mouth to refute everything. Brentlyn pulled the same shit at his brother though and held a hand up. Double silenced. They were both smug bastards. "And so if I have to be around you while you're staring daggers at each other or, alternatively, mentally getting naked and hammering each other against a wall, then I think I deserve to tell you that it's fucking uncomfortable. Fix it. I don't know what you did. I don't know what he did. Whatever it is, fucking fix it or nail each other already. Gods."

I wanted to kill him. Then I wanted to kill his brother. Brentlyn looked smug as hell. He'd crossed his arms like me and was staring Fox down with all of the same spit and fire that Fox stared people down with. It was impressive, given that Brentlyn was usually fairly meek and mild tempered. That was possibly the longest string of words I'd ever heard him manage in one attempt. "Cyril doesn't understand the difference between a want and a need," Fox spat, turning on me for round two of that morning's disaster.

My eyes widened. "Oh, we're doing this here? With an audience? I thought you were keeping me a secret. Can't have anyone know you're face-fucking the Lierian whore every morning." I was angry. I had no right saying the things that I said and I knew by the expression in his face that I'd struck a chord. He was hurt. I reveled in it, basked in the domination of the moment, face flushed and fists clenched. I knew I was wrong. I knew, with absolute certainty, that if I told Fox I wanted him to say something about us, he would have done it without hesitation but I wasn't aiming for accuracy. I was aiming to hurt him and I'd succeeded.

"You know that's not why I haven't gone shouting it from the mountain tops," he snarled back. "Just because you have some perverse self-esteem problem doesn't mean that you get to reflect that back on me. I don't have any problem with what you are. I have a problem with you making my decisions for me!"

"Holy shit, is that really what this is about?" Brentlyn again, eyes wide, hands around the edge of the table. "This is a lovers' spat! Over you letting Cyril boss you around? Ha!" He seemed to think it was hilarious and I normally would have warned him that pushing his brother's buttons that afternoon was a fast track to a broken jaw. Unfortunately, I thought I was the one that was probably closer to a broken jaw at this point. It wouldn't have been difficult to snap it, considering how he'd stretched it open that morning before calling me out on the exact argument we were currently having.

I glared back at him, grinding my teeth. "Fox isn't used to not getting what he wants," I started, looking directly at Fox, though I was addressing Brentlyn. "And fails to understand that what he wants is not always what he needs or what is good for him. He does not need the extra baggage of having me constantly--"

Fox cut me off, his voice deadly dark and sharper than razors. I felt the chill carve into my bones and any words I'd had in my mouth died with the way he stepped up close to me, close enough for me to smell spearmint on his breath. Gods, I wanted to kiss him and apologize just from that proximity but the wish died fast. "So maybe," he whispered, though he was loud enough for both of us to hear. "The next time you need someone to shove something inside you while you're squirming like a bitch in heat, you can do it yourself and then maybe, Cyril, you'll remember what needing someone feels like."

He couldn't have known. I hadn't ever told him what Ivar had called me or exactly what he'd done to me but Fox's words cut so far down into my flesh and bone that they hit my heart. I choked on the air in my lungs. Brentlyn sucked in a sharp breath. I wanted to cry. For the first time in my life, the tears would have been a welcome respite from the heat that traveled up my face and the heart break that cracked my chest so wide open that I was certain I was going to lose the contents of my body. My insides were going to come crawling out of my mouth. The wave of emotion that hit me wasn't unlike grief or mourning.

I had known what Fox could be like when I'd gotten into this. He was kind, compassionate, and he had a heart big enough to fit everyone in it and I chose to focus on those things but there was a dark side to him. He could be malicious. He could hurt the people around him. He was manipulative and fully capable of emotionally blackmailing others to get what he wanted.

He must have seen what those words had done to me because his expression softened almost immediately but it was too late for that. I was spinning on my heel, desperate to get away from him and think about this when my mind wasn't screaming in agony, replaying those same words in Ivar's voice over and over again until I felt ready to vomit.

"Cyril, wait!" I heard him call me as I pushed the door open and with my head start, I managed to get out into the hall and a few feet away from the guards before his hand closed around my wrist. "Sweetheart, listen. I'm sorr--"

I slapped him. I gathered all the strength in my tiny body and I hurled it forward with every intention of bloodying his mouth, which I succeeded in doing. "Don't you ever touch me again," I snarled, jerking my arm back out of his grasp while he reeled, his head snapped to one side, his mouth scarlet. His guard, Florian, strode forward and detached him from me, hauling me away with an arm around my waist and it took Fox a moment to react to that. He was stunned, most likely. His eyes were the size of small plates and he licked his bottom lip, brought his fingertips up to the wound and then looked down at the blood like he couldn't quite believe it was there. "Fuck you, Fox."

He blinked, lips parted, face flushed. He was as beautiful then as he ever was but he had a poison to him that I wasn't sure I could handle after that. "Let him go," he ordered Florian gently. "I deserved that."

I had been struggling, wriggling against Florian's massive arm like a child being dragged away by his mother. "You're fucking right! You did deserve that, you insensitive, demanding, selfish, egotistical prick!" Florian let me go and I was back on Fox, beating my fists against him until he grabbed my wrists and held me back. I tried to kick him then, determined to get another blow in until I realized how ridiculous it seemed. Fox could have had me flipped over and pinned without effort. He was far better at all of the martial skills. He was choosing to let me vent and rage and have my fit.

"Cyril," he started.

"You'd better not let my hands go," I warned him. "I swear to the Gods, I will hit you again, Fox. You have no idea. You have no fucking idea what you just said to me. I hope you choke!" I was irate. Inconsolably, infinitely irate. The anger welled up in me like a fountain that I couldn't stop and it was pouring from my mouth. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to wear the bruises on his mouth like I had after Ivar. I wanted him to have them on his wrists. I wanted him to know how awful it felt to be so out of control of your own body the way that I felt every time it happened to me. "You don't know what that's like! It hurts and it's ugly and it's disgusting! I hate it! I hate it! I hate you!"

"You don't," he corrected flatly. "But I am going to let you go now and you're going to go cool off for as long as you need. When you're ready to not knock my teeth out, I'll apologize and you'll explain why it upset you so much."

I growled, furious. My face was glowing red. I clenched and unclenched my fists above his hands where he still had a grip on my wrists. I knew how to hurt him. I knew all of his darkest secrets and desires. He whispered them into my mouth like he was feeding them to me so that I could share the burden. I was ready to vomit them back up and leave everything he wanted to hide out in the open but, just as I opened my mouth, I realized there was a better way to hurt him. I stopped wriggling. I ceased fighting and I saw the surprise register in his face when I leaned forward to do the same thing to him, my lips but a hair's width from his. "Ivar called me a bitch in heat," I whispered. I felt him stiffen and try to pull away. He let go of me and my hands curled around his neck to hold him there the way I would have if we were sharing some intimate moment. Instead, I was shoving a knife down his throat. "He said it while he was tongue fucking me."

"Stop, please--" His words were a strangled whimper, like he was close to tears and I could feel the shudder run down his spine. My fingers tightened, tangling in the dark hair I had lovingly mussed that morning before our explosive fight.

"And he said it when his cock was buried inside me," I added. I could taste his breath, cold spearmint and the bright, metallic tang of blood.

"Cyril. You're breaking my heart."

"Shut up," I hissed, my eyes lifting to meet his. "He said it when he called me your whore. And he was right, Fox. That's all I was."

I did let him go then, if only to take in his face. He was as white as I normally was, trembling like I'd put him back on that whipping post. I could see his jaw working, his throat straining while he swallowed and his hand came up to his mouth. He pressed the back of it to his lips and I walked backward a few steps. Izzy hopped up from her place at the door to follow me and I put a hand out. "No," I ordered. "You don't follow me. I'm done taking favors from him."

"But--" Izzy began.

Fox cut her off that time. "Listen to him," he whispered, his voice shaking. He turned back to the room we'd come from and I spun on my heel again, storming off toward the gardens to find some place where I could think about the hedonistic boy I both loved and loved to hate.

Chapter Text

My face was hot as I tore through the palace, completely ignoring anyone that tried to stop me and find out what had happened. Admittedly, not many of them did. Those of the palace staff that didn't work close to me on a regular basis tended to be afraid of me. People spun horror stories about the Lierians--human sacrifice, blood bathing, Gods that walked among them with the power to unite all of the tribes and wage war--they considered me a soulless heathen, despite the fact that I had been raised in the Corian faith. Those people gave me a wide berth when I stormed through the palace and burst out one of the delicate, latticed doors into the garden.

It was empty. Dusk was falling over the horizon, turning the raging ocean pink. A storm was churning down the beach, heading up toward the city and in a few hours, the whole place would be soaked and waiting out the inevitable weather. For now, however, the temperature only dropped and the humid, thick air that lingered over everything became even more palpable. It was so damp that walking felt more like swimming and my clothes stuck to my skin almost immediately.

The garden was patrolled, of course, so I wasn't really alone but I had learned to shut out the presence of the white-armored guards that paced the halls and the grounds. I squeezed my fists together as I stomped over the paths--all irregularly shaped slabs of granite--a mosaic story of the family that occupied the throne.

I was fuming and anyone that looked at me could see it. My face was flushed the scarlet of Fox's bedroom, my nails bit into my palms, my eyes were narrowed and burning with a boiling anger that nobody in the garden dared to ask me about. At the same time, I was already feeling an immeasurable guilt. I'd intentionally hurt him first. I'd made that awful, biting comment about being little more than the heathen mouth he was fucking every morning. It implied that he was no better than the men visiting brothels filled with slaves bought outside the kingdom. Those places almost always included one of my people, usually male, as the prize piece of real estate.

So part of me felt that I'd deserved his ire and his gut-wrenching retort. Fox hadn't known. I'd never told him the details of what Ivar had done. I'd started to, on several occasions, and the pained, disgusted look on his face stopped me. It was almost harder now that he knew. He looked at me with a despairing sort of pity that put me on edge every time it came up, like all he wanted to do was wipe away any lasting pain I felt. He recognized the reality of it though...there was nothing he could ever do to take it away. He'd provided everything he could to make it easier: A shoulder to cry on, arms to curl up in, an ear to vent to when I was particularly enraged about it. If he'd known those had been the exact words used to cut me, he'd have never said them.

Another part of me told me that he should have never said anything like that in the first place. Yes, I was angry. I'd snapped at him. I'd said something that I regretted already and I'd induced the snobby, holier-than-thou behavior that brought out the very worst in the man I loved. I knew better because I knew Fox. I knew where his buttons were and how to push them. I'd put some of those buttons on him myself. Self-deprecation was a fast way to an aching heart. It didn't mean that lashing back was the answer. It had only made it worse.

I stopped at the fountain and huffed, staring down at the watery, rippled reflection beneath me. The marks on my face were slashes of blue in a field of white. My hair was hanging lank and damp in my face and I pushed it back, puffing out my cheeks in frustration. The youthful innocence in my features was what had cost me so much. It was the reason some of the men, and even some of the women, leered at me like I was an object to be used for sexual gratification, a heathen creature worthy of their scorn, an animal meant to be leashed and collared like a puppy. I hated my reflection and, without much hesitation, I batted at the water until it disappeared and then sat down heavily on the edge of the great stone pool. Behind me, the tall, willowy figure of Finna, the human girl that had been lifted to a Goddess to marry Miero, poured a large stone vase into the pool in a slow, delicate trickle, her gown fanned out over the middle of the water.

I rubbed my hands over my face and sat in silence, my elbows propped up on my knees until the sun finally set and I was left alone with my thoughts in the dark. I had to go see him. I knew that. He wasn't going to seek me out after I'd intentionally broken his heart and ignored his pleas to stop. At least he'd hurt me by accident. Fox had said I was a better man than him but in that moment, I was sure he was wrong.

Footsteps to my right caught my attention and I recognized the three sets as a member of the family and their guard. My immediate assumption was that I'd been incorrect about Fox giving me space. "Look, Fox--"

"Guess again." It was Brentlyn's voice and I looked up, shifting to face him as he waved his guards back for a little bit of space. "Can I sit?"

"As if I have the power to stop you," I answered flatly. I nodded anyway and gestured to the spot beside me. He crossed the little circular clearing in the rose garden and sat down, rubbing his hands over his black trousers and the black jacket he wore to match it. Brentlyn was an archer. He often repeated that his craft was in the shadows and thus he dressed as if he belonged in them. It gave him a foreboding sort of look. Despite being the most mild-mannered and even-tempered member of his family, he was always the one given the most space when he walked into a room. Brentlyn looked as terrifying as Fox actually could be.

He sighed in response to my dramatics. "You know I wouldn't sit if you told me not to. Not all of my father's sons are arrogant pricks," he sighed, leaning forward to rest his arms across his legs.

"He's not always arrogant," I corrected gently. "Just...usually arrogant."

Brentlyn laughed, a short, throaty noise and rolled his eyes. "Sure, be nice because you're sleeping with him. I get it," he drawled it and then turned serious, taking a deep breath to prepare himself for the inevitable. I knew he hadn't come out there just to make sure I wasn't ripping up his mother's roses. Brentlyn didn't do things without a purpose. He was a very calculated, driven individual not prone to wasting his time or the time of those around him. Whatever reason he had for being out here, he wasn't going to make small talk for long before he got down to it. "Are you alright?"

I blinked at him, looking up into a face not unlike Fox's own. Large green eyes, sculpted jaw, thick eyelashes...it was clear they were brothers. Brentlyn's mouth was a bit thinner. He didn't have the same full, soft cupid's bow that I so loved to kiss and his hair was cropped shorter so that the messy curls Fox sported were kept in tighter reins, shorn so that the curl was barely visible at all. He was built a bit sturdier than Fox too. His shoulders were wider and his arms were thicker. I supposed it was a result of his archery habit.

I hadn't expected him to ask me how I was. I'd expected a lecture. The question caught me off guard and my mouth opened and closed a few times before I managed an answer. "Yes...no. I don't know," I mumbled, rubbing my face again. Brentlyn shifted his weight, patient and quiet, waiting for a fuller answer than the one I could give him. I pulled a face, my brows furrowed and my lips pursed as I searched for the words I needed. "He hurt me."

"I don't understand the full weight of what he said," Brentlyn responded carefully, plucking his words out with intense scrutiny. His expression was cautious as he tip-toed around the subject. "But even without understanding, it certainly seemed crude and vulgar. Definitely unnecessary, especially when you're fighting with an audience."

I hugged myself and rubbed my arms, swallowing hard. I hadn't wanted to get into the details of this with anyone. Brentlyn and I were close. We'd grown up together. I shared as many fond memories with him as I did with Fox. Our personalities were too similar to have grown into a relationship the way that Fox and I had--not so much romantically, but as friends. We were both calculated strategists with a perfectionism issue that spanned beyond what anyone would call 'reasonable.' We clashed on a great deal of issues, particularly about religion, and though I loved Brentlyn fiercely, he wasn't his brother. He was family, but he was never going to be Fox. I didn't want to share something personal with him but, at the same time, the weight of it was growing heavier by the minute.

I licked my lips when my mouth went dry. "When Ivar...when he--"

"I know what he did," Brentlyn cut me off stiffly.

I nodded. Grateful, at least, that he didn't make me say that part. Of course, I knew that he knew but it seemed stupid to just repeat what he'd called me. Ivar had been cruel to me since the day he'd been selected to perform as a tutor. He could have said that on any number of occasions. The fact that I had to specify was nauseating enough. "He called me a bitch in heat," I finished quietly.

I heard his sharp intake of breath again and the low whistle that came through his teeth next. "Wow," he whispered. "And he knew that when he said it?"

"Gods, no!" I exclaimed, my eyes widening. I straightened my back to shift and look at him, appalled by the very thought that Fox would do something that cold. Maybe to someone else, maybe even to Brentlyn himself, but not to me. Fox could be cold. He could be the harshest, most impossible, most infuriating member of his family but he had never, not once in his life, intentionally hurt me to the extent that I had intentionally hurt him.

Brentlyn seemed relieved by the knowledge and he nodded, the color returning to his cheeks after they'd paled when I told him. "He deserved the slap," he told me, one of his hands turning into a fist on his knee and he nodded with the words, then turned to look at me. "But you know, it's treason to hit him. You can't...you got away with it tonight because I was the only other person around that could argue about it and I know how difficult he can be. I'm not going to fault you for slapping the shit out of him. Gods know, I would have done more than slap him if he'd said that to me but if you had done that in front of a member of Court or Miraena or a particularly high-ranking guard..."

"I know," I said flatly. "I'd end up on the post." My eyes glanced in the direction of the thick stone wall that surrounded the garden. Beyond it was the post, the very post now stained with Fox's blood.

"You'd end up missing a head," Brentlyn corrected me. "You're a Lierian, Cyril. You know I'm the first to start barking religious platitudes but...watching what they did to my brother...I can't reconcile worshiping a God or a pantheon that would condemn someone to that kind of mutilation for being in a building they're not meant to be in. Part of me knows that it's the expected punishment for desecration of yourself but...then there's this angry, small, bitter part of me that thinks it's because he did it for you. Because they just think you're the heathen Father dragged in from the tribes to train like a monkey. To be Fox's entertainment."

I flinched at the terms. It was different to think of the things they thought of me...those words were silent. They only existed in my head. Hearing Brentlyn say them made them so much more real and it planted an idea in me that hadn't existed before. Yes, he'd gone into the temples for me but perhaps their purpose for punishing him hadn't been about the temples at all. Perhaps it had been to spite him for the very fact that I existed in his life. "It's possible," I whispered in response, shrugging like I couldn't bring myself to care when it was so obvious that I did.

"They can't punish you because you weren't born into the faith. You're not held to the same standards. Maybe that's to your benefit. I just...I see him in the training yard with his shirt off and I get so angry. I get so fucking angry, Cyril. Those scars are...I can't condone that. I can't condone it if they did it for the reason they were supposed to but I don't believe they did...and then I certainly can't condone it if they did it as a way to punish you. You're practically another brother to me, regardless of what you look like. I don't want anyone hurting either of you."

"They hurt him," I finished for him. "He wakes up stiff like he's thirty years older than he is. He hasn't regained full rotation of his arms yet. Maybe he never will. His back looks like a map. He can't bear to let me touch it. He thinks of it as a weakness." Like his glasses.

"Like his glasses," Brentlyn voiced, a small lilt of laughter evident in his voice. It made both of us smile. Fox and his glasses were the subject of many jokes.

"I happen to like him in his glasses," I admitted, my smile growing a wider and Brentlyn nudged me, his shoulder bumping mine. He took a deep breath then and reached into his pocket. Brentlyn had a sweet tooth like nobody else I knew and had taken to carrying hard pieces of candy around in the front of his jacket. He took two tiny red pieces out of a linen wrap and handed me one. I popped it into my mouth and pulled a face. "You and your sugar."

Brentlyn grinned, his piece between his teeth, before he swiped his tongue and let it fall into his mouth. "I have a question for you, if you don't mind?" he inquired, his shoulder still pressed to mine. It felt good to be talking to him, to just have a conversation that didn't involve a raging argument or end with a body part in my mouth. I nodded and let him continue. "You weren't telling anyone about you and Fox. Why?"

I huffed again, puffing my cheeks out and lifting my hands to my temples. Brentlyn had a way of asking the most difficult, most important questions. Truthfully, he would have made a better King than Fox. Birth order had done those boys no favors. "It's not unheard of," I explained and he nodded because he knew. Of course, he knew. It was his family history. "You've had two Kings with male consorts. It's not...necessarily something that's encouraged but it has happened and if it hadn't, neither you nor Fox would be Princes today."

"True," he agreed. "That didn't answer the question."

"I'm not Corian, Brentlyn," I deadpanned. "A Lierian as the King's second is barely tolerated. As the King's second and his consort? Please. The temple would have every assassin in the kingdom shooting for my head."

"Including me," he said flippantly and I glanced at him. "Don't look at me like that. I'm the best shot in the kingdom. You think nobody's approached me with that shit? I'm the second son, Cyril. The second of three, plus a daughter. As long as Riordan is still breathing, I'm a fairly expendable person. I know that. They know that I know that and this is a Court. Murder, sex, and scandal are the tools of the trade. Here's the thing, champ." He resorted to a childhood nickname he and Fox had referred to me with when I'd started destroying them at every strategy game we played. "I may be religious and I may be a Prince, but before all of that, I'm Fox's brother. You make him happy. If anyone has a problem with that, I've got no issue putting an arrow through one of their eyes. Harlan might sit back and let the temple walk all over him because he's weak. He wants to make people happy. Fox isn't going to take that shit. Change is coming and they made an enemy of the Crown Prince. Listen, Cyril..."

He bit his bottom lip and pulled one of his legs up under him so that one was hanging off the side of the fountain, the heel of his boot pressed to the granite, and his other knee was hanging out over the water, his foot tucked under his opposite thigh. I was staring at him, mouth dry, trying to wrap my head around what was coming out of his mouth because really? Brentlyn? Mild-mannered, sweet-faced, sugar-high Brentlyn had a violent streak? A protective streak?

An agenda?

The Prince's voice dropped and he leaned in close to me. "I know that Fox is fucking difficult. He's arrogant and selfish. He's demanding. He's controlling. He's manipulative and he's the most professional emotional blackmailer I've ever had the misfortune of coming across in my life and I've met every royal family on this bloody continent and royal families is where that bullshit spawns. I know that he can be abrasive, spiteful, and even violent." He was right. He was right about everything and I could feel my heart sinking with every word. Brentlyn was going to tell me to forget him and move on. I could feel it. I was too vulnerable and I was incapable of dealing with Fox's constant abrasiveness on a level that would keep me sane and comfortable. I was too easily controlled. I was too smitten. I wasn't able to evade his bad behavior.

"Brentlyn--"

"He loves you," he cut me off flatly, tipping my face up so that I had to look at him. "He's in pieces. I could barely get a coherent word out of him when he came back into that room. You make him happy. You make him a better person than he actually is and he knows that. I know he hurt you. I know he doesn't deserve your sympathy but I'm asking you, as a friend, just go talk to him. Set his mind at ease."

I was staring, wide eyed, floored by what was coming out of his mouth. I felt my heart in my throat, the little wings that Fox had given it unfolding again as it fluttered in my chest. Brentlyn's hand had wrapped around my wrist and he was nearly pleading. "Of course, I was going to talk to him. I just needed to clear my head," I said gently.

"He's my brother, Cyril," Brentlyn continued pleading. "And I promise, if someone gives you shit about this, you say the word, champ, and they're gone. I'll deal with them. It's high time your people and our people were on the same level. You being with Fox? That could be the start of a great thing."

"My relationship with Fox is not a political move, Brent," I answered dryly, lifting an eyebrow.

He shook his head and let go of me, sitting back. "Of course it isn't," he exclaimed, running his fingers over his hair. "It's just an added bonus, yeah? Listen, last I saw him, he was heading to his rooms and he looked ready to lose his dinner." He clapped me on the shoulder and got to his feet, prompting a reaction from the two guards standing across the clearing. "Clear your head. Gather up some courage. If you need anything, I'll be with Isabella." He winked at me, a wolfish grin appearing on his face as he walked away and I almost said something. Almost. I decided to let him go and got unsteadily to my feet. It was time to deal with Fox.

I had no desire to go back in the palace but I knew that if I didn't do it now, I wasn't going to do it at all. Or at least, not until I was forced to face Fox the next day and by then, we'd have gone to bed angry. Ambrose had always told me that when I found someone, the key to being happy was to never go to bed angry. I told myself I was taking his advice...taking Brentlyn's advice. I felt emboldened by what he'd said. Regardless of what others thought, Brentlyn was supportive. His opinion mattered more than I'd realized and I kept repeating his promise in my head as I rounded the corner to Fox's tower door.

The guards moved aside immediately, allowing me to take the steps up slowly. They were positioned on every other one, a veritable platoon of men and women, armed to the teeth, and not a one even blinked at me as I stopped at the door. I felt odd knocking. I'd grown accostomed to just walking in and finding Fox among his things, caught in a moment, surprised to see me. I liked that...catching him in some suspended animation, some private moment while he poured over a book or a map or a report, a quill between his teeth.

I only knocked once though and then, when he failed to answer, I turned the door myself. I expected it to be locked but, to my surprise, it grated open.

The rain had started outside and I could hear it on the roof, see it slaking down the windows, but my attention was drawn to the solitary figure sitting on the floor at the end of the bed. Fox had pulled his legs up and was crushed into the tiniest amount of space he could take up, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees. He clamored to his feet, surprised by the intrusion, and nearly stumbled before he rushed me. He stopped just short and I leaned back, preparing for whatever was about to happen but he just...stopped. So close that I could smell spearmint on his breath again, see the wild, broken look in his eyes. His cheeks were red and his hair was a mess. His shirt was untucked, halfway unbuttoned. He looked feral. He looked like chaos incarnate.

I almost started drooling, forgot what I was there for, until those ugly, hurtful words came rushing back over me like a tidal wave. I remembered being angry, saying that I was little more than a mouth for him to use, that I hated him, that I was his whore and that was it. I owed him an apology as much as he owed me one but he was certainly the person that felt worse. His hands hovered over me, desperately seeking contact but never making it. I could hear his heart beat. It was that loud, that strained, trying to claw out of his chest.

"Fox," I greeted quietly, wringing my hands between us. I looked down at them pointedly, trying to avoid lingering on the toned, tan muscles beneath his half-buttoned shirt. They were eye-level. I could have leaned forward and kissed him there, felt that stampeding heart against my mouth and quieted his pain with just a touch. I wasn't ready for that.

We weren't ready for that.

"Let me touch you," he pleaded. "Please, Cyril. Just..."

"No," I answered stiffly, stepping back to avoid unwanted contact. We needed to have a conversation and it was never going to happen if I gave in to him. He made a noise not unlike a sob and drew his arms back, wrapping them tightly around his own long torso. I took a deep breath and soldiered on. "I hurt you tonight. Intentionally. I said things that I knew weren't true to goad you into reacting because you upset me."

He nodded. It was the most contrite I'd ever seen him. His mouth was turned into a pout...a real pout and he kept swallowing, seemingly to stop himself from talking over me. "That doesn't mean I should have reacted," he whispered, flinching at the very thought of what he'd said. "I didn't know, Cyril. I swear, I didn't...I would have never--"

"I know," I cut him off and he flinched again, nodding, his shoulders drawn up so that he could steel himself for whatever was about to come. He seemed...so unlike the Fox that I knew. I was almost panicked, scrambling, thrown off by this apologetic, pitiful creature. I wanted Fox back. I wanted demanding, controlling, cocky Fox, the boy I'd grown up with. "I need you to know that I'm sorry. For goading you on, for upsetting you, for not being able to give you what you need."

"Fucking hell," he breathed, his voice shaking. "You're apologizing to me? I made demands of you that you can't fulfill and I understood the reasoning. I just cared more about what I wanted than about what you needed. I threw your trauma in your face. I used something that sets you apart from me to make you feel inferior...something that I know hurts you. I've seen it hurt you. You were right. I'm an arrogant, condescending, self-involved, self-righteous prick. I don't deserve an apology."

I was looking back up at him, watching that beautiful face contort like he was in agony. He was fidgeting. None of the confidence that usually soaked his person was evident. His shoulders were hunched, his posture was terrible, he was worrying his scarlet-stained bottom lip and running his tongue along the cut at the corner of it from where I'd hit him. I cringed at the sight of it. Gods, I'd hit him and my entire body shuddered at the memory, repulsed by the thought of it. "You do," I corrected gently. He winced and sucked in a sharp, shaky breath. "What you said was marginally worse but that doesn't negate that I accused you of being ashamed of me. I know that you're not. I knew it when I said it. I wanted you to hurt. That was wrong."

"I'm sorry," he rasped the words and took a step forward again. "You have no idea how sorry I am. I never meant to throw that at you or to...to associate myself with...with...that! Oh, Gods, I feel like I'm going to be sick." He pressed his hands to his stomach and I frowned, reaching for him only to have him stumble back. It was like he wanted to touch me but he didn't want to be touched. He was punishing himself, not allowing himself any of the comfort I could offer and not arguing with me when I declined his. I allowed him his distance and he collected himself with short, shallow breaths before he tried again. "I wanted to help you. I wanted...to pick up all the pieces he left and put you back together. I wanted to heal you. I didn't care that you were hurting or that you were afraid of some things or that you have this terrible self-deprecation problem. I thought I could fix what he'd broken and I made it worse! I gave you a reason to associate me with him."

I blanched, my face going even paler than usual. My hands lifted, rubbing my tembles, eyes shut while I struggled to breathe. "Gods, Fox, I do not associate you with him! You would never...never do what he did. You're an asshole, I'll give you that. You are arrogant and self-involved and you have an ego not even a horse could cart around for you but I know you. I've seen you get out of a carriage yourself, without a guard, to stop a man from beating his wife. I've seen you take your coat off to give to the kids crowding the street corners. You're not the monster you're making yourself out to be. You're a good person. You'll be a great King. You just have a bad temper."

He ran his hand over his face, rubbing his mouth and shaking his head. It was killing me, not being able to get close to him and not having him offer to get close to me again. I had wanted the distance to figure this out but I hadn't realized how much of the burden he was putting on himself.

"I can't breathe," he mumbled. He seemed like he was falling apart. His hands were trembling, his face was paling except the patches on his cheeks that were scarlet red and his chest heaved, struggling for air. He looked...unlike I'd ever seen him and my concern spiked beyond worrying about our relationship to worrying about his actual frame of mind.

I stepped forward and ignored his attempt to bat me away so that I could wrap my arms around him, my hands at the back of his neck. "Fox," I started gently. "Look at me." He was looking everywhere but at me until I grabbed his face. His eyes locked onto mine, wild and out of control, on the verge of a breakdown I wasn't sure I could even prevent. "This is what's going to happen, okay? You're going to stop playing the Prince with me. You don't get to make demands and throw a fit when I decide that I'm not comfortable with meeting them. I'm going to concede the sleeping arrangement provided you promise to wake me up if you see it start to happen and to tell me in the morning if I don't wake up." His breath caught and his hands moved up, folding over mine. His fingers were almost painfully tight, like he was clutching at me as an anchor to reality. He nodded vehemently between my palms, his lips parted, and his eyes turned glassy. "Fair?"

He nodded again, his hands sliding down my arms until he reached my back and could pull me forward. His lips met mine and his tongue swept over the seal of my mouth in an instant, urging me open so that he could slide his over my teeth, the roof of my mouth, and the swell of my lips. I groaned into him, my fingers slipping back into his hair to tug him closer. I wanted him closer. I wanted every inch of him. Being angry at him had made me needy and desperate and I was hurting more than I let on. Fox was a balm for me as much as I was for him and Gods, I needed him right then. I'd wanted to wipe the pain from his face since it had first registered after my initial snarling insult.

Fox broke the kiss breathlessly before his lips moved over my jaw and down to my throat where he buried his face. I could feel him nibble the skin, laving his tongue over the bruises he left while I shivered and pulled at his arms, panting his name against his ear. I felt hard almost immediately, just from kisses. From fucking kisses. He was killing me and his hands slipped down to my waist, pulling my hips against his so that he could feel it, his leg between mine, pressed against me.

"I want..." he started, his tongue along the shell of my. I clenched my teeth, my fingers turning to fists in his curls, eyes sliding shut, hips rolling against the leg between them. The things he could make me do should have been illegal. The man was a drug and I was an addict. "I want..." He didn't seem to be able to get his words out and, for the first time in all the times I'd been with him, I wasn't interested in his games. I didn't want something slow and the lingering fear I'd felt at asking him for what I wanted or needed had evaporated. What was happening between us then was raw, emotional, and terrifying.

"You can have anything you want," I promised quietly, breathless. "You don't have to ask. Fox, please--"

He sucked in a sharp breath and nuzzled into my throat, his body trembling beneath my arms and I felt my heart break. Gods, I'd done this to him. I'd put him here, made him feel like this. I needed to put him back together the way he'd done for me. I hadn't realized how attached he'd become. He said he loved me, yes, but I'd seen people in love before and I'd never seen one act like this. Fox didn't just love me. It was something else, something more and I'd been blind enough to miss it. It had taken Brentlyn to open my eyes and make me see what was right in front of me. It was unhealthy as hell, the way his whole world seemed to cease for these few hours when he'd thought I was lost to him, but in that moment, I didn't care. It made my chest swell up and my heart feel full and heavy.

I stopped moving and leaned back, squirmed away so that I could look up at him with his face caught between my hands. I was mindless, driven by a desperation to return him to the state he'd been in that morning before our fight had started--lazy and lovesick, gorgeous and laying naked across my bed. I'd wanted to drink him in, press kisses to every inch of his skin.

That was where I started. I pulled him down and kissed his face. His cheeks, his mouth, his eyes, his forehead. Everywhere my lips could reach, I kissed and I felt him shudder under me, his hands sliding over my back in comforting circles. I didn't want comfort. I was frantic with a need to put things right, to heal, to prove that even if I was angry, I wasn't going to dismiss him as something I didn't need. "You couldn't have actually thought I wasn't coming back," I whispered against his skin, my fingers finding the remaining buttons of his shirt. I kissed every inch of skin that I revealed, letting the fabric hang loose on his shoulders while I touched him, my eyelashes brushing over his skin while I circled a nipple with my tongue.

Fox groaned, his fingers digging into my shoulders and then sliding up to muss my pin-straight hair. He brushed it back, feathery soft, and lifted it off my eyes as I moved down the middle of his body and then up his ribs to his arms. "I was worried," he admitted. "I'm trying so hard to find him, Cyril. I'm throwing everything I've got at this problem to try to fix it for you and then I just...I thought we had something and I ruined it."

"We do have something," I assured him gently, pushing his shirt off his shoulders. It fell around his feet and I dragged my teeth over his bicep, nipped at the inner bend of his elbow, and pressed kisses all the way to his palm. It was the first time he'd let me explore him without stopping me and I was delighting in it. I wanted every inch of him to be mine. I wanted him to know that I'd touched every part of him, kissed all the skin he had, been absolutely everywhere. I wanted him to equate a different touch or lick or kiss to every part of his body.

I repeated the gesture on his other arm and slid around behind him, my arms wrapping around his torso. I stood on my toes to kiss at his throat from that angle and he stiffened. He was...decidedly sensitive about me touching his back but he didn't stop me. He shuddered, his head tipping back while my hands moved to his hips and I ghosted a few careful, exploratory kisses over the start of the scars at his shoulders. They were a horrific reminder of something we'd rather forget and I could feel the apprehension stiffen his muscles while I traced them with my mouth. "Cyril," he warned quietly, his voice shaking.

"They did this to you because of me," I whispered against the worst of the scars, a thick, roping mutilation that carved across him from his ribs to the center of his spine. My hands flattened on his belly while I sank to my knees. "They did this to hurt me. It was never about you and you know it. I should have known it. I was too stupid or too blind--"

"Or too distracted over what had just happened to you, for pity's sake!" he scolded me from above and turned to look over his shoulder while I laved kisses across the small of his back. "I couldn't lay this burden on you. You were shattered. You're still shattered. You seem like you're fine and usually, you are, but then sometimes...sometimes there's this one moment where I can see it in your face. You look haunted. Your eyes go dead. You turn even more pale than usual and in that moment, Cyril, sweetheart...you are not fine."

I knew what he was talking about. Sometimes, for no reason at all, those memories would jerk me from my current train of thought. Sometimes there was a trigger. A leering, repulsive noble or guard that stared at me like I was an object to be stripped and splayed open for use. A smell that I associated with that day, a word, a noise...sometimes it was nothing. Fox's expression would change when mine did, ghosted over with concern, and then it was over. I would forget just as quickly as I remembered--force it back into the box I kept it in. I was good at that.

I licked my lips and let Fox pull me to my feet. He buried his face in my shoulder again, drinking me in, arms tight around my back. He peeled my shirt up so that he could dig his hands under, flat against my skin and I hissed. "Cold," I whimpered pathetically, practically clawing at his shoulders in surprise.

"N'aw but you're warm," he goaded, a whisper of laughter evident in his voice. Gods, it was good to hear that, to feel the strength return to his shoulders. He lifted me a few inches off my feet while he held me, hands stroking down my back and up. My shirt kept riding, catching under my arms while his frigid fingers turned warm against my spine.

I felt my cheeks flush and confidence bleed into my chest. I became stupid when presented with the idea of a sexual encounter with Fox. I could keep my head, normally. Not with him like this. "I could warm you up better in the bed," I offered quickly, my voice too pitchy for my own good and that garnered an actual chuckle. He grabbed the backs of my legs, hooking them at his hips while I let out a surprised, shrill yelp and hung on to his shoulders for dear life. "You have to warn me when you're going to manhandle me!"

"I'm going to manhandle you," he warned, a lazy smile spreading over his lips when he dropped me onto the bed. I bounced against the mattress and stared up at him, smiling back, my legs still at his hips. He pulled my boots off and then immediately moved to my shirt, burying his head under it and kissing over my stomach, his hands on my hips. He sucked the marks that made me warm in a place deep beyond my stomach. I felt lust coil in my belly, an ache that seemed omnipresent when I was with him. He nipped at the bones he was holding and then moved up, his tongue curling along one of my nipples. I writhed under him, my hands on his neck through the fabric of my shirt and I let out a strangled moan.

Fox continued the assault, his teeth grazing the tender flesh and my back arched. "Yes, yessssss." I dragged the noise out, teeth clenched, eyes shut tight and he bit until a searing ache radiated from where his mouth was.

"You like it a bit rough, little one?" he teased, repeating the gesture on the other side so that I was a melted, keening mess by the time he finished. My hips kept lifting, struggling for contact until his head popped back into view. I nodded vehemently at his question. Yes, yes, I liked it a bit rough. I didn't know how, considering the limited encounters I had to compare it to, but something deep in the darkest part of me was screaming yes. "Your words, sweetheart."

"Yes!" I gasped it out, biting down on my lip while Fox tenderly removed my shirt.

"Good boy," he crooned, reaching up to tap against my lips and I shivered, whining behind a closed mouth while he fussed with my trousers. A moment later and he had them down my hips. I felt absolutely radiant at the words, mouthing my pleas so that I didn't beg because he'd only chide me for it. He seemed to notice because his expression turned impressed. "You're learning."

"I try," I admitted, shrugging like it didn't really matter but the brilliant flush that rose to my cheeks betrayed me.

Fox grinned. "Smart mouth," he scolded gently, reaching under me and angling my hips up. His fingers slid between the cleft of my backside and then opened me up a moment later. "And soaked. Gods, that is so incredible."

I groaned, rolling my eyes at the compliment and then crying out when he pushed into me, two fingers stretching me open. My face screwed up, drenched in euphoria that nearly made me climax at the very intrusion into my body. It didn't last. He stroked that Gods-forsaken bundle of nerves inside of me once, twice, three times and then slipped his fingers free. I cried again at the sudden emptiness. "N-no! Fox, please, don't stop, don't tease me! Not after today. I need you!"

"Don't beg," he ordered, his eyes turning hard and my mouth clamped shut. I pressed my hands over it and he laughed again, kissing the back of the one on top before he moved down my body. I was too frustrated to look down at him but a moment later, the wet muscle of his tongue was probing where his fingers had been.

I shrieked. My whole body bowed, my pupils swallowed all the color in my eyes, and Fox pushed my legs up and out so that I was nearly bent in half, raw and open while he licked over me again and again and again. I reached for him, clawing at his shoulders before my fingers knotted in his hair to hold him there. Nothing...nothing had ever felt like that. Yes, of course, Ivar had done this to me but I'd been in the throws of a heat. I'd been delirious because of a biological reaction. This was different. This was just Fox and his tongue slipping beyond the tight ring of muscles to those nerve endings that had me babbling and incoherent in under a minute. "Too fast!" I cried the words. "Too fast, too fast! Fox, I'm gonna--"

"No." He gave an order that I immediately obeyed, eyes rolling. I held my breath, letting go of him to fist the blankets at my sides. I was cursing him internally, calling him every name I could think of and, at the same time, thanking every deity I could name for giving me someone that could use his tongue the way that Fox could.

"Sweet Gods," I breathed, finally unable to hold my breath any longer. "Your tongue shouldn't be legal. I can't do this long. I am so fucking close! Please, Fox, I know you hate begging but son of a bitch--" I choked on my words, my back arched, and I shuddered through another stroke of his tongue that made my entire body convulse. I cried out desperately, aching and empty. I needed him. I needed him so badly that it hurt and my insecurities about asking for something from him still hadn't reappeared. I hardly cared who heard me outside his door or that I hadn't bothered to lock it. I didn't care that I was wrecked or shattered or ruined or that he was mutilated and not nearly as confident as I'd always thought he was.

I ground my teeth. His tongue hit me again, stayed inside me, fucked me. "Fuck me," I demanded, teeth clenched. There was a difference between begging him and telling him. I was telling him to do it. His tongue moved faster and I ground my teeth, my eyes rolling again. I grabbed his hair, fisted my fingers in it, and pulled him up so hard that I knew it had to hurt. He gasped at the contact, eyes wide, a smirk playing over his lips.

"You greedy little--"

"Fuck me," I repeated, glaring at him. His smirk only widened.

"With what?"

Oh, I hated him in that moment but my verbal filters were gone. "With your fucking cock, you arrogant prick," I snarled back and he snorted. That thing inside me, that part of me that could be a feral animal, was raw and unbridled now. He'd loosed it in my chest and I sat up, pulling at them hem of his riding pants. He let me, desperate and needy as I was. I wanted him inside me. I wanted to feel full, stretched open, raw with him in a way only sex would succeed in reaching.

Fox raised an eyebrow as I got him free of his clothing, palming over him, leaning so that he could feel my heated breath against his stomach. "I love you too, Cyril," he teased, his fingertips running down my spine. I sat up suddenly and clamored toward his lap, which finally got a reaction out of him. He grabbed my hips and pushed me back onto the bed. "Not like this."

"If you don't, Fox, I swear, I'll find something to do it for you and I'll make you watch." I was feeling positively vindictive and he outright laughed at my threat.

"Oh, beautiful, but I'd love to watch that," he responded, his voice as smooth as the silk sheets I was soaking with a thin layer of sweat. "Relax. You're getting what you want, you spoiled brat. Get on your back again."

I scrambled to obey, my head and shoulders falling into his pillows. I held my arms open for him like a greedy child, face flushed, chest heaving for breath. I even wriggled my hips and he shot me a full, genuine smile at my eagerness. It reached his eyes and my insides melted again. I pouted, doing anything to entice his contact and he eventually crawled over me, nudging my legs open so that they settled around his waist. He kissed over my face the way that I had done to him, brushed my damp hair out of my eyes and caught my bottom lip between his teeth. I could feel him rubbing against me, teasing that aching opening until I was writhing in a panicked, desperate frenzy. I reached between our bodies for my own cock and he pulled my wrist back up. "We both know you don't need that," he whispered against my mouth. "And I'd prefer you let me fuck one out of you."

I gasped at the admission and the sudden feeling of the head of him sliding into my body. I lifted my hips, pushing down against him, trying to urge him forward. He felt bigger than Ivar had been, even just the head of him was wider and it almost hurt. It was a good pain, a scorched ache that echoed into my stomach every time he pulled back a bit and pushed back in a little bit more. "Tell me to stop if you're hurting," he breathed against my ear. "Though the surprised little mewling noise you're making is so Godsdamned adorable I'm going to find every reason I can to make you do it over and over again."

I memorized the noise, made a mental note to make it more often for him, then lost myself in his touch again so that I could provide an answer. "It's a good hurt," I groaned. "I want all of you, Fox. Gods--" I cried his name again, a strangled noise, my nails scraping down his back over the ridged scarring. He'd hit that spot. That terrible, beautiful, aching spot inside me that blinded me to everything but the feel of him. He pushed himself in entirely at the noise, taking a shaking breath as he stilled inside me and I reveled in the feeling. My toes curled at it, my back arched. I ground my hips against him, sobbing when I realized that no matter what he did, he was going to hit me there. There would be no break from it, no respite, and I was already so close.

"Good boy," he purred again. My body clenched around him and I heard him hiss, his fingers digging into my ribs where they were cradling me against him. "Oh, I think you like when I say that."

I nodded vehemently, almost so hard my teeth chattered and I whimpered, moaning against them, squirming beneath him. "Move," I pleaded, disregarding his blatant hatred of begging. "I need you to move. I'm not going to last like this, Fox! For fuck's sake, do it hard!" What started as a plea turned into a demand and Fox swept his tongue over my lips, urging them open while his hips started to move. He wasn't easy on me. He held my mouth against his and fucked me with all the brutality I'd demanded of him. He drove me up the mattress until my head hit the headboard, bruising my insides, my hips, the backs of my legs. He was as wild as he had been when I'd shown up and I realized this was that pent-up aggression he was talking about.

He was rough. His left bruises shaped like his hands on my ribs, my waist, and my jaw. He turned my mouth swollen from biting kisses, left marks on my throat from his lips, all while his cock slid in and out of the slick, hot opening I kept squeezing down around him. He cussed me out every time and every time I stopped..."Good boy."

He was destroying me. I couldn't catch my breath. My hands were pressed flat to the headboard, leaving sweaty palm prints all over the wood while my legs tightened around him. I was struggling not to finish, to last as long as I could, to memorize how he felt inside me because the Gods only knew when he'd be strung out enough to do this again when he was so full of this bottled fury. "Fox," I panted his name, a mantra, a prayer, mewling with every thrust. I had a gorgeous view of him like that...of the way his abdominal muscles clenched and rippled with every movement and how his legs tightened with them. He was making my heart ache while it thrummed in my chest, a trapped bird trying to escape while my back bowed upward and a strangled cry tore from my lips. My throat was hoarse, my mouth was dry and tasted of spearmint and tears. "I can't...I can't--"

He growled above me, feral and lost, all because of me and the control I had over my own body snapped. I convulsed, my muscles screaming, the spring in my belly bursting free. I came hard, harder than I ever had before. Every breath was a keening wail and one of my hands lifted, trying to claw at him and pull him forward and he relented, offering me his mouth so that I could smother my cries with kisses. He kept going, harder and faster so that the pain of it only barely bordered pleasure and I loved it. "Cyril," he gasped against my lips, one of his hands hooking around the back of my neck to hold me there while I sobbed and trembled under him. "Tell me that you love me."

My heart broke all over again. I caught his bottom lip, the hand I'd been clawing at him with coming up to tangle in his hair. "I love you," I breathed into his mouth.

Like I'd pulled a trigger, he cried my name through a finish that scorched me from the inside out. He made my name into a benediction, pouring himself inside me while his body shuddered above me and I clung to him, trying to anchor him to me and pull him down. All of that aggression, that ache, that terrible burden...for a brief moment, it was gone and he fell on top of me, still inside me, his head against my chest.

He was sticky with sweat but so was I and I hardly cared. I ran my hands over him liberally, cradled his head where it had fallen against my collar. He was breathing hard, eyes closed, his arms clasped around my thighs to hold me there. "I don't want to move," he mumbled against my slick skin and I kissed the top of his head, my breathing just as labored as his.

"You don't have to," I promised. "Though I advise you at least pull out to avoid any later discomfort." I tousled his hair playfully and felt him laugh, silent, on top of me.

"That's exactly the part I don't want to move," he laughed but his hips shifted and he slid out of me. I groaned, my hips twisting and my legs sliding down his sides. "Mmm, you feel good." He nuzzled against me, arms sliding beneath my back so that he could hold me closer and I felt utterly overwhelmed.

He possessed me. That was the bottom line. There was nothing and nobody that I would ever let take him away from me, not even himself, and I knew how dangerous that was. Fox was going to be King. There were things about him that I couldn't change and I feared, very deeply, that he felt the same way for me. It was a subject that had to be broached. "Fox," I whispered in the dark, my fingers massaging his head and shoulders so that he groaned happily every few moments but he was, without a doubt, on the verge of sleep. "Promise me something."

"Anything you want, sweet thing," he murmured sleepily. "I live to please."

I couldn't help but snort. "Gods, you're fucking adorable yourself, you know that?" A small, breezy smile graced his beautiful mouth and I traced the outline only to receive a gentle kiss against my fingers. I couldn't do this. I couldn't bring it up, not with him like this...so sated and happy and utterly at peace with everything around him. I opted for a lie, because his eyes were closed. He'd never know, and I wanted to keep him happy. I wanted to keep him lost in that hazy, half-conscious, well-fucked head space. "Dream about me?"

The same sleepy smile widened and one of his eyes opened just enough to look at me. "Always do, beautiful. Don't leave me."

"I told you I wouldn't. I'll be right here when you wake up."

He snuggled again, reaching blindly for the blanket and pulling it over us before he slipped to my side, legs tangled in mine, head still on my chest, and then he was gone.

Chapter Text

I woke up sore, aching in places I didn't even know could ache. Fox was lost in a mountain of pillows beside me. The man couldn't spend any decent amount of time in a bed without burying himself under everything still left on the mattress. He'd tried dragging me on top of him several times and I'd rolled over, only half-awake, to escape the suffocating heat he liked to sleep in so instead of being draped in Fox the way that I wanted to be, I had his fingers laced through mine.

It was enough though. Just knowing that he was close was enough and I peered up at the ceiling, tipping my head toward the windows to try to gauge the time. I couldn't see the face of his clock on his mantle from that distance. Nobody had come beating down the door yet snapping at him for being late to a lesson or Court or breakfast with his parents so I assumed it had to be decently early. That was when I sat up and realized how much everything hurt. From my hips to my knees, I felt like I'd taken a beating from a battering ram. My heart leaped to my throat at the sudden onslaught of sensation and I couldn't swallow the pained groan that escaped my lips. There was a deep-seated ache inside of me that jarred every time I moved, sending a lancing, bruised sensation from the middle of my back to my thighs.

I was ready to peel the blankets back and assess the damage when Fox grumbled, moving around at the absence of my hand in his. His pile of pillows and sheets shifted when he sat up, knocking them away, still muttering to himself so low that I couldn't catch what it was. His eyes were so bright and glassy when he finally looked at me that I couldn't help but laugh, lifting my hand to press it over my mouth. His hair was a tangled mess and his cheeks were flushed from sleep. He had bruises in the shape of my mouth on his throat and across his collar but they didn't seem to bother him. He did, however, wince when he reached for me and I obediently shifted into his arms, ignoring the blossoming ache that throbbed from my center at every movement. The pain was a dull second to my desire to be closer to him and I folded myself against his chest, believing entirely that his wince was a result of his scarring.

When my arms wrapped around him, I realized it was a result of the deep gauges my nails hand left in his shoulders. I traced them idly, my head tucked under his chin while he flopped back into bed. The sharp, unavoidable gasp of surprised pain gave me away and I felt Fox exhale. "How bad is it?" he asked quietly, pressing kisses to the top of my head while I snuggled against him, buried in his mountain of bed-things. It was surprisingly nice, though I despised the heat. What emanated from his body, however, was a welcome warmth that seeped into my bones.

"I think I bloodied your back," I admitted quietly, wrinkling my nose and looking up at him in the darkness of our self-made cave.

Fox snorted. "I meant you. I know what you did to me but, all things considered, my back has felt a lot worse than that, sweet thing." Gods, I was becoming a fast addict of that adorable pet name. It made me glow more than 'sweetheart' and 'beautiful' ever had. It was casual, short, and so very like him that I couldn't help the grin that spread over my face when he said it. He noticed. The hand that was absently tracing circles over my back stilled for a moment and I saw the shadow of a lazy smile move over his mouth in the dark. "I'll use that more often then." Like he could read my mind.

I wriggled, wincing when I had to use my legs, but slowly growing used to the pain that movement presented. "It's...uncomfortable," I admitted dryly. "Very bruised feeling. Not bad though. I wouldn't call it bad...I--I mean, I liked it, yeah? I was practically begging for it."

"Practically? You were demanding it, needy little thing." His fingers ran through my hair, the tips of them against my head and I shivered, tracing the lines of his abdominal muscles with my own hands. I pressed my lips to his chest, just above his heart, while I considered what he said and then shrugged.

"I'm alright," I finally assessed. "I know I'm bruised to hell and back but that can't be helped."

"You bruise like a peach," he pointed out.

He was right, of course, and I was clumsy enough to be constantly sporting some kind of darkened patch of skin from running into a door, tripping over my own feet, or being otherwise jostled by the rest of the occupants in the palace. I was shorter than everyone but the children and the dwarf that worked in Harlan's library, fussing over the books from atop his stool. Even the women were bigger than me, in most cases, but that was typical, according to the limited historical texts we had on my people. We were just small by nature.

I heaved a sigh and shifted again, managing to control the urge to flinch. "I should get up. I need to get clothes from my room before Ambrose wakes up. Every time I spend the night out, he gives me this look like he's dying to ask where I've been and I'm not sure how to answer." I pushed myself up, one hand flat on his chest and his fingers curled around my wrist like he could hold me there.

"I thought you were angry about hiding this," he reminded me gently and I did flinch at that. It wasn't unlike being slapped but I deserved the reminder and took it in stride. He was right about that too. I had certainly behaved like it bothered me. I kept moving, sliding off the bed so that he was forced to let go of my hand. The red silk sheets pooled around my hips. It wasn't until I got to my feet that I heard him whistle and initially, I was ready to turn around and slap him for the lewd gesture but the whistle itself didn't give off that sort of vibe. I felt Fox sit up and scoot closer to me while I limped to my feet.

I whined at the sensation, running my fingers over the dark bruising at my hips where his hands had been. They were shaped like him. I could even see the fingers where they curled around to the small of my back. "Ugh, it's going to be a long day," I managed to breath through my teeth.

Fox's hands were ghosting over the marks he'd left, tracing the fingers and then moving down to my thighs. My breath hitched and my eyes darkened. A flush rose to my cheeks at the feel of his hands, gentle and kneading. "It looks like I beat you," he whispered guiltily. "I'm sorry. I didn't--"

"Stop it," I cut him off, turning to scowl and give him my very best disapproving look. It wasn't all that great, considering I didn't often disapprove of Fox and so he wasn't used to the action. "I liked it. I would do it again. There's nothing you can do about my stupid sensitivity. And I'm not angry about hiding this. I was trying to hurt you. I told you that. Ambrose is practically my father. I don't really want to explain that I'm letting you bend me in half and fuck me into a frantic stupor or that I spend the first few minutes of every morning with your cock down my throat."

The comic vulgarity of my statement was enough to turn him off of the subject of my bruised flesh and he laughed while I shimmied back into my trousers and pulled my shirt over my head, fumbling with the buttons until he pulled me forward and did it for me. "I suppose I see your point," he relented, a wry smile tugging the corner of his beautiful, sculpted mouth. I leaned forward and stole a kiss, my fingers lifting to tangle in his hair when he opened his mouth for me, his hands still moving over my buttons, redressing me while my tongue mapped out his teeth. He held me back when he was finished, breaking the kiss to examine the shirt. His hands were on my shoulders and he was flushed an even darker color, a little bit breathless, but none of that demanding lust had reached his eyes yet. He still looked sleepy.

"You'd better see my point or I'll make you explain to Harlan exactly what you did with your tongue last night," I grumbled, trying to smash my hair back down into some semblance of order.

The lust I'd avoided to that point flared in his pupils and he caught me, dragging me back up onto the bed while I protested and whined that he was making my insides hurt. He didn't seem to particularly care, not that I really did either. I was curling into the contact again, my legs folding around his hips so that I was straddling his lap, cradled in his arms and his hands slid down my back, reached into my trousers, and squeezed.

I yelped and squirmed, eyes wide while Fox's other hand caught me by the nape of my neck like I was an escaped kitten and he was taking me back to where I belonged. He tipped my head and his mouth was at that delirium inducing spot behind my ear that made me whimper against him. "I could tell him," he began, his voice low, his tongue tracing the shell of my ear every time he took a break from speaking. "That I tongue fucked that tight, pretty little ass of yours. I could tell him how good you taste."

My eyes widened, the size of saucers, and I tried to speak my mouth only shaped the words. My voice had stopped working for a moment. I panted while his hand groped and squeezed, massaging life back into the bruises he'd made and it was a delicious agony. It hurt so bad it took my breath away but I knew if he slid his hand between my legs, I'd be soaked and ready just from those words and that pain. "Gods," I finally breathed. "Can you even imagine his face if you actually said that?"

The spell broke and Fox let go of me, laughing harder than I'd seen him do in months. He fell back into his pillows and I slapped lightly at his shoulder, climbing back to my feet to rearrange my clothes and scowl at him. "I think he'd probably die," Fox eventually managed through his giggling fits. "He likes to pretend we're all some virginal little priests in the making. I mean, maybe Brentlyn--"

"Brentlyn's fucking Isabella," I told him flatly. "He implied it when he spoke to me last night." I found my boots and started tugging them on, holding the bottom of his bed while I hopped around in an attempt to slide them up my legs and pull the laces on the side tight. "He also told me that if anyone bothered me about being with you, that I should tell him because he'd kill to keep you happy. Said he's a prince and an archer and a good friend but before all of that, he's your brother. It was all very surreal. I'm still not sure I didn't hallucinate it."

Fox was blinking at me, propped up in his sheets by his elbows. The laughter was gone from his face, replaced by deep contemplation and...something else. Love, yes, but a different sort than I usually saw. He seemed awed by what I was repeating. "I didn't realize he'd spoken to you last night," he said softly, his head tilting, almost confused. His lips were parted and full from that kiss and his hair hung in his eyes. I wanted to crawl back into bed and let him have his early morning blow-job but, glancing at the clock, I knew that I didn't have a whole lot of time to avoid the Ambrose discussion.

I pulled a face, tying up the tops of my boots and wincing when I had to bend. "He came to see if I was alright," I admitted and then, carefully...slowly...added more. "He...was worried about you. He said you were wrecked. He begged me to at least talk to you." He looked ready to interject and I shook my head quickly. "I was going to talk to you anyway! He didn't convince me to. I just needed some time to clear my head. He loves you. He loves you very much, Fox. You should appreciate him more than you do. He's very...he's very conflicted about what happened to you. He's angry at the priests, at the Gods, at the temples. He's especially angry at your father, it seems. He also thinks our relationship could be an excellent political move at bridging some gap between Lierians and...humans, I guess."

My tone turned bitter at having to make a distinction between me and a human. I had all the features that Fox's people did but there was something...decidedly other about me that nobody could explain. They called us Lierians, like we weren't humans. We weren't people and thus, the only thing to call them was 'human.'

"You're human," he argued, wrinkling his nose. "I don't want to hear you say that you're something else. That implies that you're an animal. You're not."

"This isn't about me anyway. This is about your brother and how you're an asshole to him all the time." I was backing toward the door and he was climbing out of bed, clawed and gorgeous and absolutely naked. My stomach heated and my face did the same. "He went...he went out of his way to help you last night. He was worried....you're distracting me." My mouth had gone dry, my face had heated.

"Oh?" he turned to look at me, grinning widely, fingers in his hair to untangle the mess he'd made in his pillow-haven. Gods, he was half-hard, all long limbs and toned, tan muscles that turned my insides to melted wax. I whimpered, chewing my bottom lip and he advanced on me, a predatory expression on his face.

"Shit," I managed to whisper before he caught me around the waist and pinned me to his bookcase. My feet lifted a few inches off the ground and he angled my mouth up, sealing his over it. He stole my breath with a wicked tongue and all rational thought went with it. I didn't care that I was hurting or that, really, sex was the last thing I should have been hoping for considering the state of my body but Fox owned me like nobody else ever could and that kiss turned him from half-hard to full-on arousal. I reached for him, caught him in my fingers, and started stroking before that kiss even finished. He bit down on my bottom lip at the contact, groaned into my mouth, and thrust forward into my hand.

He was hot all over, still heated from bed, and he wanted me. I couldn't say no. I made him like this. The hard, velvet length of his cock between my hands was there because I did this to him. The thought was empowering. It was even more empowering when I took into consideration that he wanted me for me. He didn't want me because of what I was or what I looked like. Fox had known me too long for that to matter. This was an attraction that went beyond that and I was so out of my element because of that. I was used to people wanting me, staring at me. I'd even had a few guards grope me in the corridors over the span of my life but I had always been lucky enough to have another one nearby scold them. Not because it wasn't consensual, which it wasn't, but because I was a child and there was just something wrong with that.

Like if I'd been older, it would be okay for them to touch me even when I protested. I was a Lierian. That was what we were good for.

"I want you so bad," Fox breathed against my cheek when he finally released my mouth. I was panting, still stroking him between the tight fist of my fingers. He nuzzled into my neck, intimate and sweet and my free hand played absently with his hair. "But I really...really shouldn't."

"I wouldn't mind," I whispered back, grazing my teeth over the curve of his jaw. I felt him shiver under me and, just like that, the decision was made. He grabbed my hips and shifted me sideways, off of his bookshelf so that I was pressed face first against the wall. I sucked in a sharp breath at the dizzying speed of his movements and the sting when my cheekbone connected with the wall. It was a dull, sweet pain and I licked my lips. "Gonna fuck me, Fox?" I was playing with fire, with a temper that the rest of the palace feared, with someone that had a lower opinion of himself than I'd ever realized until the night before when he'd been shattering in front of me. My goal was to put him back together and if he needed to use me when I was hurting, I was okay with it. I wanted it. If Fox found solace in sex, he'd have all he needed.

His fingers hooked in my trousers without an answer and tugged them down, just enough to be enough. My breath caught again, stuck in my throat, and my eyes fluttered shut. My heart behaved the same way, skipping and erratic while he kneaded my flesh with both hands, caressing the ache away until it was numb and I was writhing against the wall, stiff and sore in the confines of fabric that still smothered the front of my body.

Fox's arms wrapped around my middle suddenly, his hands beneath my shirt, rubbing over the flat expanse of my stomach and abdomen. He palmed my hips while I moaned his name, leaning back to try to kiss his jaw while he stood over me, my own arms folding over his. I let my head fall back against the wall though, resting my forehead there while he palmed over my hip bones, forcing my trousers down lower in the front. He breathed in against the tangle of white-blond hair that sat in a mess on my head. "You smell like sex and Cyril," he groaned against me. When he nuzzled his cheek to mine, I could feel the rough stubble coming in on his face and I hissed.

"I like that." I reached up, trailing fingers over the shadow of it on his jaw. "Grow it out a bit and you could probably keep me in here all the time, naked and ready."

He grinned and tugged my ear between his teeth. When he let go, he was chuckling. "That's a fine image, sweet thing," he taunted, his hands ghosting up to my hips. I could feel him then, the hard length of him sliding between my legs and up over the crease of my backside. Chewing my bottom lip, feeling empowered by the fact that he needed me this badly, I squirmed and wriggled my hips against him, rubbing against his cock in an attempt to angle it into me. Fox's breath hitched and his arms tightened around me. A low, dangerous growl started in his throat and he pushed me back into the wall, lifting my hands so that my palms were flat beside my face. "Tease," he accused.

"It's only teasing if you don't intend to put out," I corrected breathlessly. "I fully intend to have you inside me in--Oh fuck, Fox!" He pulled my hips out, spread my legs with one of his, and thrust up into me with one smooth motion. The pain was unlike anything I'd ever felt. It coiled in my belly and the erection I'd been sporting flagged significantly at the full, unbearable sensation that pervaded my senses. I felt dizzy. My fingers curled into claws against the wall, tears stung my eyes, I gasped for breath. I was slick and ready for him but it didn't stop the pain. I was bruised and stretched and aching from the night before. He'd been unbearably rough.

Fox didn't move. He cuddled his face into my throat, arms around me. "Shhh," he breathed. "It's okay." One hand moved down my body, sliding into the wrinkled mess of the front of my trousers. He pulled me out and I whimpered, blinking back tears while he palmed me. "Do you want me to stop?"

I thought about it. I did, really, and my stomach churned but his touch was inspiring that heat in my gut again. I hardened in his hand, face flushed, and I shook my head. "N-no," I managed to choke.

"Are you certain?" He seemed dubious, at best, and even started to slide out of me, which only made the pain worse. I cried out, my palms leaving the wall, reaching back to hold his hips still and pull him back in. He was hitting that deep, deep hidden spot inside me that made the pain worth it. I tightened around him, felt his voice vibrate in his chest when he moaned my name.

"I'm c-certain. J-just give me...ah, Fox!" He moved his hips in a sort of rotating motion, creating a friction inside me that didn't ache the way that the usual in and out movement of sex ached. I felt like clawing up the walls at it and I pressed back into him, arching my back and crying out, my fingers digging into his hips. "There...mmmm keep doing that."

"Just like that?" He was being so gentle. One hand swept over me in comforting brushes of fingers and palms beneath my shirt. He pressed kisses to the back of my neck and the side of my face until I tilted my head to offer my mouth and he took that too. His other hand was squeezing my cock, sliding up and down, letting me fuck his fist to combat the agony he was inducing. "You tell me if you need me to stop, Cyril. Gods, you're beautiful."

I could have been vibrating for how good that felt. My eyes rolled back and slowly, very slowly, he moved beyond that and began to actually fuck me. I'd be lying if I said it didn't hurt. My legs ached, my hips ached, my insides were screaming at me from the battering they'd taken the day before and I was giving it to them again but it was a blissful agony. He needed me. Gods, he needed me, and I've have let someone put me on the post if that was the sort of pain he needed to inflict.

For Fox. For him. Anything.

He worked me over into a frenzy, slow and steady. He wasn't fucking me. He was loving me--in ways I couldn't have imagined anyone could ever do to me. "Please," I was eventually whimpering, gasping and writhing in his arms against that wall, sweat beading on my skin as my body climbed higher toward a finish that he kept just out of reach. "Please, Fox, I-I-I--" I trailed off, incoherent, shaking my head against his shoulder while my back bowed. I was grinding against him, whining, one hand pressed to the wall and the other curled in his hair while he sucked a new bruise into my throat. It was too slow and I needed more. The tiny, gentle thrusts were little more than teasing. He'd pull out, barely even a quarter of the way, and slide back in with torturously slow movements. Then his hips would roll again, rubbing the way he had in the beginning. Once, twice, three times. He'd start over.

"Shhh, don't beg," he chided softly, one hand still on my cock, the other sliding up to grasp my throat. His fingertips touched my jaw and he held me there while the rest of my body twisted and thrashed under him, desperate for something I couldn't put into words. "You don't need to beg with me, Cyril. You're always going to get what you need. I think you can get off like this."

I cursed him out. I used every horrible word I knew in every language I could speak and I could feel him laugh while my cheeks colored. I grabbed for the wall, trying to gain some leverage to use to meet his thrusts so that they felt harder. "Can you..." I gasped. "Can you at least pull out more? Please, Fox, you're killing me!"

He obliged my frantic request and the sudden emptiness hurt more than I'd imagined. A desperate sob erupted from my lips and then he was sliding back in. Over and over again while I lost my mind. I was seeing stars, my toes curling in my boots, pushing back against him to give myself the illusion that he was going harder than he actually was but he put a stop to that. He stopped stroking me, garnering a shrill cry of protest while his arm encircled me, pinning mine to my sides. I squirmed, cursing him again, slipping into the native tongue I barely remembered anymore. It took a lot to get me there. It had only ever happened when I was delirious with fever. The words spilled out of my mouth, peppered with his name while he held me.

"You sound so angry," he teased. "Not going to lie, I kind of like your arms pinned. I might have to tie you up someday when you're comfortable with it."

I was so gone that the flashback that should have given me didn't even trigger. I moaned at the idea, nodding hard, because if Fox wanted to tie me up, blindfold me, gag me--he could. I didn't care. I trusted him implicitly. He could have done anything he wanted and I would have been compelled by the overwhelmed feeling in my heart to comply just to see him happy. Sated. That sleepy, well-fucked look on his face that broke my heart in the very best way.

"When the..." I attempted to be coherent because I wanted to tell him that he could. I wanted to give him that. It took every bit of my willpower to hold on to my language faculties. "When the bruises heal." I was breathless, shattered, strung out. My eyes kept fluttering shut, my fingers clenched and unclenched, and I was trying to wriggle my hips against his but my motion was so restricted it was damn near impossible. I clenched around him instead, my body bearing down on his in a delicious, sweet pain that scorched me every time I did it. It radiated from him up toward my ribs and down my thighs and he groaned with it. "When the bruises heal you can...you can tie me up. Blindfold me. Gag me. Anything, Fox. A-a-anything you want, I'll give it to you."

Whatever I'd managed to get out, I wasn't even sure at that point, it struck a chord in him and the 'harder' I'd been praying for finally happened. He thrust into me, arms around my torso, his knees bent to reach even deeper into me than he'd been able to the night before. My eyes finally shut and stayed there, my head fell back, and I struggled to breath. I cried his name, delirious and so close that I could feel the impending rush of a finish singing in my veins. He was pounding into me so hard he lifted my feet from the ground and had to gather me up, pinned between him and the wall. He pressed my face to it, pulled my hips until my ass was out for him, and held me in a position that should have been incredibly uncomfortable but the strain of the muscles in my upper body didn't even register.

My entire body trembled and I could feel him shaking against me, his teeth grazing my throat. He licked along my ear, encouraging me to tilt my head and then he whispered, "You're mine." It was a low, raspy growl and I shuddered, gasping at the words.

"Yes," I moaned, agreeing without hesitation. I was, without a doubt, absolutely his on a level he probably couldn't even understand. "Yours, Fox. All yours. I p-promise. I'm so--"

"Come for me." It was an order in that same rasping growl that he'd proclaimed ownership over me in. I sobbed his name and the spring of heat tightening in my stomach burst. I finished hard, thrashing in his arms, gnashing my teeth. My hands, pinned against my thighs, stretched backward and clawed at his so that my nails dug into him while I panted and struggled through a finish I'd been sure I'd never reach when this had started. I cried with every exhale, tossing my head back when he buried himself inside me and spilled, hot and sticky. He filled me up, further slickening my insides with his own climax, and thrust into me three more times to make sure that I got every bit of him while my body clamped down on his cock.

I was blinking away tears when he let me slide to the ground. There was evidence of him on the inside of my thighs but my primary concern was that my legs were gelatin. I crumpled against the wall, aching and trembling so hard my teeth chattered. I reached back for him blindly, heard him curse, and then he was scooping me up like an infant and carrying me back to bed.

He didn't drop me like he had the night before. He stripped me down while I sobbed, trying to get a grip on his arms so that I could hold him but he evaded my weakened, trembling grasp.

Fox left me for a moment while my chest heaved, struggling for air. I couldn't explain the riot of emotion that was going on in my chest. I hurt. I was aware of the physical. What was happening to me was a lancing, unbearable pain that happened every time I tried to move. I cursed my nerves. I cursed that I couldn't take what someone like him could probably take. I was nauseated over the idea that the weakness of my people was what made them so appealing.

Some people liked this. Some people got turned on leaving someone in pieces the way that I was in pieces. It made me want to vomit.

I couldn't make sense of much beyond that pain. I knew that I loved him. My chest was swollen with it. I wanted to hold him. That was all I cared about it. I needed him to get into bed with me so that I could feel him there. I also knew that if anyone ever threatened to take him from me, I would be taking Brentlyn up on his offer because as much as I belonged to him, he was mine as well.

"Fox," I cried his name in the dim light of his room and heard him move on the side of the bed, climbing over to me and lifting me up so that I was draped over his lap.

"You should have told me to stop," he scolded sternly. "Look at you. You're a fucking mess. Stop squirming, Cyril. I'm right here. I'm right here!"

I kept repeating his name and when he spread my legs, my alarm rose and I kicked at him. "No!" I whimpered, shaking my head, trying to scramble up into his lap so that I could curl up in a ball where he couldn't open me up. "No, no! Fox, I can't! Not again, please, please--"

"Gods in heaven, Cyril! I'm trying to clean you up, not touch you! You're covered in..." He didn't need to finish that. I fell still against him, breathless and panting, my arms around his neck while he spread my legs again. He had a damp cloth in his hand and he wiped up what was left of him on my thighs, ghosting over bruises. Then he moved to my belly and cleaned up what I'd done to myself. He left tiny kisses over my face while he worked, mouthing away the tears on my cheeks. He shifted me back then and I realized, a bit late, that he'd put those dark blue linen sleeping bottoms on again. He pulled a similar pair up over my hips.

I managed a laugh at how tight he had to pull the drawstring. "Here," I offered when he fumbled with trying to tie the knot backwards. He let me take the strings and I knotted them but they still slid down my hips and left little to the imagination.

"Skinny brat," he murmured, finally falling into bed beside me. He dragged me back against his chest on my side, so that I could feel his heart thumping against my spine. I drew my legs up, wincing at the fresh waves pain that slid around inside me. I grabbed his hands where they were on my stomach and zippered our fingers together, bringing his up to my lips to kiss them while his mouth moved over my shoulder. "You should have stopped me," he repeated. "You should have told me no. I should have just...stopped. Gods, Cyril, you can't goad me on like that. I'm too out of control right now."

"I liked it," I protested quietly, arching my neck so that I could look at him. "It didn't hurt when you were...it only hurt afterward. I like the way you feel inside me. I didn't want to tell you to stop."

His breath hitched and his eyes shut. He squeezed me. "I love you," his voice was quiet, a whisper against my ear and I purred at the words, snuggling back against him.

And for a few hours, we were allowed that silent respite. I slept off some of the ache, woke when Fox got up and got dressed. He rummaged around in his dresser for a bottle of liquor and held it to my lips while I was still half-asleep, laughing at the upset, squawking noise I made at the taste. He urged me to drink it and it dulled the pain right before it knocked me back out.

I woke again well past the lunch hour. Fox was at his desk, glasses on, pouring over a set of paperwork. He had food and was casually popping pieces of something that smelled heavenly into his mouth. I squirmed up and hissed, catching his attention, and a lazy grin spread over his mouth when he saw me. "There's food for you on the table to your right," he told me and I glanced over, nodding gratefully and then frowning at the bottle of liquor that was still there.

"I'm not drinking that," I told him, pouting, and he climbed to his feet, paperwork forgotten, and moved back to the bed.

Fox sat down beside me, tousled my hair like he was still just my best friend and a happy, warm, nostalgic feeling punctuated my being. I smiled at him, warm and still too sleepy to really notice much of the ache. He'd propped me up with his mountains of pillows while I slept so that I didn't have to move too much. He didn't even let me grab my own plate. He snatched it for me and slid his legs up onto the bed, sitting cross-legged beside me with the food in his lap. "Open your mouth," he ordered quietly. I obeyed immediately and he shook his head, chuckling. "You were never this compliant until we were sleeping together."

"I like pleasing you," I admitted, tipping my chin up defiantly, daring him to tease or make some veiled comment about it.

He didn't. He held up a wet, crescent shaped piece of a peach and fed it to me. My stomach coiled and I looked down at the plate. He knew what I could eat. I'd never thought about that. Clearly, Fox had. I couldn't tolerate a whole lot of meat without getting sick and tended to stick to eating one or two bites of it with every meal, just to get the protein I needed to survive. He'd left out the dairy too, another problematic dietary necessity of mine. It had taken Ambrose traveling to a distant brothel to talk to a Lierian girl there about what she could and couldn't eat to figure out why I was constantly vomiting everything they fed me.

Fox had been observant and I felt my cheeks flush as I chewed. "I can do this," I told him, swallowing it and reaching. He shook his head.

"I want to," he answered gently and I relented, wringing my hands in my lap. It was oddly sensual. By the time I'd eaten my fourth bite, I was ready to crawl into his lap and kiss every inch of skin he had visible. It was an unfortunately small amount, as he'd gotten dressed while I was still sleeping. He was watching me avidly and, when he managed to smear the sugary syrup from a tangerine over my mouth, he didn't hand me the napkin that had come with the plate. He leaned forward and kissed away the evidence of it, his tongue lingering over my skin so that I shivered and felt my breath hitch.

"You know what I can eat," I pointed out eventually, still fidgeting. If he noticed, he didn't say anything, just pressed a chunk of an apple to my lips and waited for me to take it between my teeth. I chewed and frowned at him.

"Is that an observation or are you asking how?" he inquired, picking up the glass of pale pink juice that had been with the bottle and the plate. He tipped my head back and held it to my lips and I let the cold, crisp liquid fill my mouth. It was cranberry and the heat of the liquor in it wasn't unnoticed. I didn't mind it mixed though.

I swallowed and took another peach slice from between his fingers, catching his wrist so that I could lick the syrup that was left on his hand. His eyes widened marginally before I released him. "Both," I told him eventually, pleased with the reaction.

Fox's smile was barely evident, but it reached his eyes and when he held up another bite, I shook my head. "There's liquor in that. You should eat more," he chided me but put the plate back on the table by his bed. I'd won the argument before it had started.

"I'm aware. Perhaps you've forgotten the last time you got me drunk? I puked in your lap." I raised an eyebrow and he snorted, hands up in defeat.

"You win," he conceded. "I've known you for years, Cyril. How could I not know what you eat? Besides...it's not like my interest in you is new. You're just blind."

I gaped, trying to relay a quick comeback but nothing sprang to mind so my mouth just moved like a fish's. He seemed extremely entertained with it. "You...all those women! Fox!" I grabbed one of the pillows and lobbed it at him, almost immediately furious, red-faced and acutely aware of the ache I could now steadily feel from my back to my legs. Gods, he'd done a number on me. I suspected his desire to feed me and coddle me came from a panging guilt over it.

He caught the pillow, of course, because he was a bastard that lived to make me either driven blind with lust and love or absolutely miserable. "Yes, all those women, sweet thing. All those women while I thought--" He climbed over me and I fell back into the pillows scowling up at him. He nipped at my jaw. "About--" Then at my ear. "You." He kissed me and he tasted of exactly what I'd eaten--citrus and peaches.

"I could kill you right now," I grumbled, ignoring the sweet smile he was plaguing me with in favor of crossing my arms. "I've wanted you for so long! And you just...you...ugh, don't look at me like that." He was giving me a sad puppy face that was melting my ability to be angry with him. "Fox. I said stop it. Fox! I swear if you--"

We both jumped when his door burst open. I scrambled, disregarding the sudden pain of movement, and pulled a pillow into my lap. Fox hopped away from me to the other side of the bed and then rolled his eyes. I dropped my pillow.

"Brentlyn," we both breathed his name and then I tipped my head. He was red-faced, panting, positively strung-out and his cheek was cut wide open.

"What the hell happened to you?" Fox was up while his brother was gulping for air, his guards bursting in behind him a few seconds too late. He offered him a glass of water from his desk and Brentlyn shook his head, hand on his chest, bent nearly double while he struggled for breath. I could feel alarm rise up in my throat. My fists clenched and I felt an unwelcome pang of anger toward whoever had cut his face.

"We--" Brentlyn started and then stood himself up, grabbing Fox by the shoulders to give him a little shake. "We got him."

"What are you talking about? What happened to your face?"

Fox's brother shook his head and laughed, wiping away the blood like it didn't matter. "I was out. Mock hunt with some of my men. Saw something skulking around a cave ten clicks west of here. I thought, at first, it was a Lierian. One of the ones they shun from their tribes or something. You know?" I didn't. Fox sure as hell didn't but he made a circular motion with his hand, encouraging Brentlyn to get on with it.

"But then the fucker turned around and took a Godsdamned shot at me! With a Corian made bow!" He was speaking so fast that he was barely intelligible and I climbed to my feet, anticipation welling in my belly. The pain radiated outward and I ignored it, hobbling forward. Brentlyn shot me a look. "Good Gods, what happened to you?"

"It doesn't matter," I dismissed him. He lifted a skeptical eyebrow. "Really hard sex happened to me." Both of the brothers choked, nearly identical noises and Fox shot me a scolding glare. I shrugged it off. I had a distinct feeling I knew where Brentlyn was going with this. Part of me was ecstatic. Part of me dreaded the end of the story. "So unless you want details of what your brother can do with his tongue, you'll keep talking."

"You're going to pay for that later," Fox said through his teeth, a hint of a promise in his voice.

"I certainly hope so," I countered, casting another defiant look in his direction. Brentlyn made a gagging noise.

"I would tell you to get a room but I'm in it," he said dryly. "Regardless, he clipped my face." He gestured to his cheek. "I shot back but the fucker shot at me, right? I didn't want to kill him. I wanted to know where he got off shooting at a Prince. I caught him in the knee and he dropped like a sack of rocks. Thank Gods, I didn't kill him, too. You'd have had my hide, Fox. I pulled that bastard's ratty little hood back and guess who the fuck is staring back at me."

Fox stared at him but I knew. I knew because my stomach turned cold and I sat back down heavily on the edge of the bed, flinching at the pressure. "Ivar," I breathed the name like it was a curse, saw Fox's eyes widen, and the expression on Brentlyn's face was all I needed to see to know that I was right.

Chapter Text

"Did you search the place?"

Fox's voice cut through my ecstasy and dread after a few minutes. I was staring at the polished ebony floor, so glossy it was reflective, and trying to still the panicked fluttering of my heart. Knowing that that he was back, in chains or not, shattered the sense of safety I'd come to rely on to carry me through every day. Even Fox's presence wasn't doing it, though he'd moved to stand beside me where I sat on the edge of the bed. His hand was curled around my shoulder, tighter than was necessary, and I barely noticed it. I was fighting the urge to vomit, dizzy and feverish feeling. I swept over the mental map I had of the palace, the playground of my youth, and imagined all the places he could be. Sealed in a cell in the belly of the ancient keep that made up the foundation of the modern building, chained in the throne room where Court was held, waiting for the Lord King to deal with him.

I wondered if Harlan would or if he would pass that duty off to Fox. I wondered if Fox even wanted it. Of course, he claimed that he did but wouldn't it be simpler if we let the King dole out justice and put the whole thing behind us? Was it worth it to reopen the wounds?

Brentlyn was speaking, still gulping at air, having run the entire way up to Fox's room--across the grounds, through the palace, up the stairs--he was slick with sweat and I could smell the sugar on his breath from where he stood. "Of course!" he scoffed, rolling his eyes, obviously incredibly pleased with himself. He had every right to be. All of the King's men had been searching for Ivar for months and come up with nothing. Luck would have it that he was located by a group not even equipped to bring him in. A group that hadn't even been hunting him in the first place. Brentlyn had relayed how they'd tied him up with the belts from quiver straps, slung him over a horse, and carried him back to the palace.

"He was holed up in a cave out in Hollen's Wood near the witch trees." I shuddered, recalling the time Brentlyn and I had dared Fox to climb one of the witch trees. They were white, petrified, massive, ancient things that reached three times the height of the regular forest. Their long, spindly branches were like the fingers of dozens of hands all clawing skyward. There was, of course, nothing otherwordly about them. Historically, they were just a patch of trees that had somehow survived long enough to outgrow the rest of the wood and then died. Corian mothers told their children that running off into the woods or leaving the house at night would result in one of the monsters from the witch trees coming to steal you from your bed.

Fox had climbed one though, for what it was worth, and suffered the verbal lashing from Queen Laila all the way back to the palace when she found out about it. That had been just before the epidemic that killed one of the princesses though...just before Laila checked out of reality.

Brentlyn continued, undeterred by the legend in his story or the memories it held for us. I suppose I was just trying to distract myself from the reality of it. "There was a lot of paperwork. Correspondence in new Immaran, a few bills of sale. I had some time to look at it but it's all downstairs in Father's study for you to see." He paused and licked his lips, his eyes glancing nervously between the two of us. He was hesitating and Fox's hand moved from my shoulder so that he could cross his arms.

"And?" Fox asked. I looked up at him. He was skeptical, at best, and obviously beyond a level of angry that I'd ever seen before. His eyes were hard, pupils narrowed to tiny pinpricks. His jaw worked, clenching and grinding his teeth. He had his arms crossed and his fists tight, pressed into the curves of his elbows. I could feel the heat radiate off of him like he was just barely keeping himself from grabbing Brentlyn by the throat and shaking the answers out of him.

The younger prince swallowed hard, clearly nervous. "...There's one more thing but...it's easier if you just come look for yourselves."

I nodded vaguely and stood up, locating a fresh set of my clothes that Fox must have had brought to his room. Brentlyn nodded once and turned. I waited for the door to grate behind him before I pulled the shirt over my head, slipped Fox's linen pants off my hips, and wriggled into my own. He was silent. He didn't touch me, didn't move. He rocked on his heels at the end of his bed while I dressed, laced up my shoes, and then turned to watch him.

"Are you alright?" he finally asked, though he didn't move to look at me.

I did a mental assessment. I was sore but I hardly felt it. I was going numb and it was happening fast. I wasn't aware of my heartbeat anymore. My thoughts had drained from my head. My limbs felt more like gelatin than actual flesh and bone. I managed a shrug. "As alright as can be expected, I suppose," I answered stiffly. "It's making my skin crawl knowing that he's here somewhere."

Fox nodded, like it was doing the same thing to him, and his jaw kept working though it took him a minute to answer. "He won't be here long," he eventually told me. He was almost casual about it and then he took my arm, leading me toward the door. "Not if I have any say in it. He won't even be breathing long."

"You'll make yourself into a murderer, Fox," I pointed out, letting him steer me toward the door like I was an incapable child. He ignored the guards that fell in beside us, his hand still wrapped around my bicep much tighter than was necessary. I was going to have bruises there. Then again, he could have been holding me like he normally would have and I'd have probably bruised from it anyway.

He huffed in response and ignored Brentlyn when he stepped up and started following us in silence. "I'm already a murderer," he said bitterly. "You two have never had the pleasure of a real battle. I had to fight those Glacian animals off the northern border last year."

"Battle is different," Brentlyn reminded him gently. "That's survival. It's kill or be killed. This is a conscious decis--"

Fox turned to look at him, his eyes narrowed, wearing the most malevolent expression I'd ever seen on anyone and Brentlyn's mouth shut. He finished with a nod and held his hands up in defeat. Fox let go of me, finally, and I was careful to shake my arm out and rub my fingers over the throbbing spot where he'd been holding on. If he noticed, he didn't indicate it. He only continued down the hall with us in tow, rounded the corner to the King's study, and completely ignored both his father and Ambrose when he strode past them. Ambrose stopped me and pulled me in, crushing his arms around me the same way that he'd done when I'd first told Fox about what Ivar had done to me. I could smell liquor on him and awkwardly patted him on the back while he held me.

"You've been drinking," I stated stiffly. "You reek of whisky."

Ambrose inhaled. "I could say the same for you." I flushed and recalled the liquor in the drink that Fox had given me. It hadn't been enough to get me drunk, just to take the edge off the ache, but it lingered on my breath. I could still taste it. "Where were you last night, Cyril? You didn't even sleep in your bed."

"I fell asleep on Fox's desk," I lied smoothly. "He tried to wake me up but I must have been more tired than I realized. I woke up on his couch."

"Are you alright?"

"I'm going to get sick of that question." I wrinkled my nose and stepped away from him, following Harlan and Brentlyn into the study. It was a circular room, not unlike Fox's bedroom, but the walls were lined in bookshelves filled with scrolls, books, maps, treaties, and the various paperwork of his station. On the wall behind his desk hung a large painted portrait of the entire royal family from right after Riordan had been born and before Pascha had fallen sick. She was grinning, an arm around Fox's waist and her head tilted toward him. It was a casual picture, so unlike most of the others of them, and it was my favorite one. Above the door was Harlan's sigil. On the right was a scaled down version of Fox's and on the left, a scaled down version of Brentlyn's. Eventually, Riordan's would be added somewhere.

Fox was leaning over the desk already, a handful of paperwork spread out before him. It was filthy, waterstained, and I could smell the mildew on it from across the room. He was even breathing through his mouth to avoid inhaling it and, I noticed, his glasses were still on. He rubbed his eyes beneath the lenses and glanced in my direction. "You don't want to look at these," he warned me gently, his hands braced on the furniture while Harlan spoke quietly into his ear. Fox was listening. I could tell by the way his head inclined toward his father but he was paying attention to other things too. He was readying, his brows furrowed and his lips pursed, and he was watching me ignore him and head for the desk anyway.

"I'm your second," I informed him, tone clipped. "For now, this is a job. It's not personal."

"It's fucking personal," he shot back, his words acidic, but he didn't stop me from picking up the paperwork. It was a letter, clipped to a bill of sale, regarding an agreement for a slave sale. Product to be delivered by the following week. He'd gotten quite a nice lump of gold for whatever slave this was and I read on, a sinking feeling started building in my stomach. The description was so clinical, so detached. I hated the idea of slavery to begin with, regardless of the race in question. Harlan had outlawed the trade of slaves in Coria, though he couldn't do anything about the trade outside of the Kingdom and stripping people of their property when so many of them were holding leashes would have resulted in an all-out rebellion. A civil war. It was a gradual change. That was the only logical way to do it and I knew that. I had studied the legislation on it, convinced I could come up with a better plan, but I'd come to the conclusion that Harlan was right.

It was a necessary evil, for now, and when Fox took the throne he could further restrict the trade until he could wring the bottleneck that was leftover and close it out completely without the senseless slaughter of innocent civilians.

This, however, was a bill of sale for a Lierian. That explained the amount he'd gotten for the individual. It wasn't until I got to the description that my hands started shaking. "Fox," I began quietly, slipping into a panicked state of denial. My eyes widened. I dropped the paperwork.

A male, aged between sixteen and twenty, well-educated in several languages, petite.

Blue tattoos.

"He was trying to sell me!" I heard my own voice, shrill and horrified, and I shook my head. Fox winced, pushing himself up into a standing position so that he could reach for me and I stumbled back. "No, he did sell me! Fox, he sold me!"

"Well, he didn't own you to begin with so this isn't legal. All the paperwork on you is forged, Cyril." He tried to close the distance between us again and I wobbled backward, bumping into Harlan, who had slipped around behind me. He caught me before I fell and I nearly shrieked, jumping at his touch. I felt like a spooked horse, ready to bolt and find the quietest, darkest place to hide in until the overwhelming scream that was threatening to burst from my throat had subsided back into my chest. Nobody was letting me run though. Ambrose was too close to the door. Brentlyn was leaning on the door to the adjoining room, a little tea space with a lounge that Harlan sometimes fell asleep on when he was working. I was caught between the King and his eldest son.

I was hyperventilating, close to the point of blacking out. Ivar had told me he was going to put me in a brothel far, far from Coria if I ever spoke to anyone. He'd fully intended on making good on that threat. "He was going to put me in a brothel, Fox!"

"I know." His voice was soft and he held a hand out, palm up, trying to soothe me from whatever anxiety had gripped me. "But I'm not going to let that happen."

I pressed my hands to my stomach, my face flushed and feverish, and I leaned forward like I might vomit. I felt like I might. A strangled sob escaped my throat but the tears wouldn't come with it. I had an irrational fear of whore houses. I knew it was irrational. I knew that, logically, nobody owned me and therefore nobody could sell me. Whatever Ivar had intended to do would never happen because Brentlyn had caught him before his plans could be made into reality. Still, I kept imagining his hands on me, pressing my hips down into my bed and his tongue probing the way that Fox's had the night before. "I'm going to vomit," I mumbled.

"Cyril, look at me." Fox's gentle, soothing tone changed to something else...something dark, something I'd heard before when he had me naked and squirming under him, willing to do whatever it was that he commanded and some animal part of me looked up without hesitation. "You're going to calm down. You're going to breathe. I'm not going to let anything happen to you. Come here."

He was still treating me like I was a spooked animal. He didn't reach to touch me but the tension between us became palpable and my breath hitched. The urge to throw-up died, my breathing steadied. Of course, Fox would never let anyone do this. I was his. He'd said that this morning. He'd breathed it against my ear while he was still buried inside me. Liquid heat pooled in my belly at the memory and I wobbled toward him, nodding at his words. Unfortunately, even with his demands and the knowledge that Harlan, Ambrose, and Brentlyn were all watching us, my legs refused to completely turn solid again. "I--I--" I stammered, trying to convey that I wasn't sure I could really walk but I was too shaken to say the words.

Fox growled. "Fuck it." And then he was grabbing me, ignoring the presence of his father and my guardian to gather me up against his chest. I clung to him, my fingers knotting his clothes, and another sob escaped my chest. He was kissing the top of my head, smoothing my hair down and brushing it back off of my face when the tears finally started. I leaned on him. I let him support all of my weight, his arms around my chest. Gods, he felt good. He smelled clean and soapy, minty, and his breath was tinged with peaches and citrus.

I could almost feel Harlan and Ambrose staring. The King even moved forward, his mouth open like he was going to speak, and Fox practically snarled before he could. "Don't say a fucking word," he warned, one hand on the back of my neck to hold my head against his chest.

Harlan cleared his throat. "I was going to say that there's more," he told him dryly and I felt Fox's muscles relax. "And that we would talk about this later."

"There's nothing to talk about," Brentlyn interjected and Fox stood me back on my feet. I managed a nod, glancing back at the younger prince, trying to convey how grateful I was for his words without being able to speak. "They're happy. Let them be happy, for pity's sake." His brother was cupping my face, rubbing tears from my cheeks with his thumbs before he leaned in to kiss both of the marks on them. "Besides, I hardly think who either of them is sleeping with is the major concern here."

I watched him curiously and, even more curiously, noted that neither Harlan or Ambrose argued with him. Brentlyn's hand fell to the door and he pushed the little tea room open.

Sitting on the lounge couch, curled up into the smallest amount of space a body could occupy, wrapped in a tunic that seemed to be made of burlap, was a tiny, frighteningly thin, hysterical Lierian boy that couldn't have been any older than me. His eyes were the size of dinner plates, the same clear, pale blue as mine. His hair had a bit of a curl to it but it was matted to his head, filthy and unkempt. He had bruises on his jaw, the corners of his mouth, his wrists, his ankles, and all the way down his arms. His mouth was swollen, one of his eyes was black, and someone had broken his nose in the past few months. He even had a smell...an unwashed, nauseauting smell that mixed with the heady, sickening scents of sex and sweat.

And he was collared.

"Why is he collared?" I demanded immediately, pushing past Brentlyn, all anxiety forgotten. I'd never met one of my own people before. I'd seen them, toddling along behind their masters when they visited court, but Ambrose had always made it a point to keep me distanced from them. It didn't matter anyway. They'd all been taken as children, just the way that I had, to work in the sex trade. None of them remembered anything that could have given me the information I so desperately wanted.

The boy who, when he stretched out, I realized had to be younger than me--maybe fourteen or fifteen, looked at me like I was a steak and he was a starving dog. His mouth opened and he tried to form words but nothing came out, just the shapes of the sounds he wanted to make. He trembled, all skin and bones, and threw himself to the floor at my feet the way I'd seen criminals do to Harlan and Fox in the court rooms. He was bawling, hysterical, grabbing at my legs and kissing the bottoms of my trousers in a way that was so vastly uncomfortable that I almost wanted to kick him. He started babbling in a tongue I recognized but didn't understand. I caught two, distinct words.

Sarrel. Infinito. Over and over again while his tiny, bony fingers held my ankles. "I don't understand," I tried and he looked up at me with wide, bloodshot, teary blue eyes. Gods, he was pathetic. "I don't speak it. I don't..."

"You," he whispered. His accent was thick and foreign and he sat back on his knees, his bottom against the heels of his feet. Fox took a step into the room beside me and the poor creature scrambled backward like he was about to be beaten. "No! Please, no--no!" He was off and babbling again, shrinking against the back of the couch and I planted a hand in Fox's chest to stop him from going further into the room.

"It's okay," I told him gently, taking a tentative step forward. My heart was pounding. This boy, this sick, pitiful, frightened little boy spoke Common Corian and the tribal dialect of my people. He understood. He could answer my questions. He could tell me the things I ached to know. His eyes scanned me, lingering on the two blue marks on my cheeks. "He's not going to hurt you. Nobody here is going to hurt you. I'm Cyril. This is Fox. You are?" I pointed to each of us as I said our names and then held my hand out to him.

The child relaxed a little bit, still nervously glancing at the only escape route of the room--the door currently barred by Harlan, Ambrose, and Brentlyn. Fox seemed to notice his panic and turned back toward them. "Get out," he ordered. "Keep going through that paperwork and set up a court for tomorrow. Father, I want to deal with Ivar. I need to deal with Ivar. Not you."

Harlan stared at him, eyes hard, and then he glanced at me but he nodded shortly. He had a terrible habit of letting Fox walk all over him. A moment later, the door closed and Fox sat down across the room in another chair, far from where I was now kneeling a few feet from the trembling form of the boy against the couch. "What's your name?" I tried again, inching forward.

"Kinnon," he mumbled back, terrified eyes darting between the two of us.

"Don't look at him. Look at me. He's not even here. Even if he were here, I wouldn't let him touch you." I tried to offer comfort, some sort of solace. I didn't care about Ivar anymore. Fox could do whatever he wanted. Harlan could deal with it. It didn't matter. What mattered to me was the little boy in front of me, the horrors he must have gone through if Brentlyn had found him at Ivar's camp, and the answers he held. I needed to earn his trust and he had no reason to give it to me, not really, but he seemed to anyway. In fact, it seemed more than that. He trusted me implicitly, all because of the markings I was sporting that were, I noted, not present on him. His skin was the same milk white as mine with no interruptions save the bruises he was carrying like battle scars. "Kinnon, was it?"

He nodded and inched toward me. A little bit at a time, like a scared dog, and then carefully, slowly, his little fingers reached up and brushed over the blue triangle on my cheekbone. "Infinito," he said again. "They looked for you. For so long, they say. They looked for you but you were gone."

I swallowed hard. "I'm here now," I offered softly, holding a hand out. "Are you hungry, Kinnon? You look like you're hungry."

Kinnon took a shuddering breath and nodded quickly, picking at his clothes. I turned back toward Fox but he was already up, crossing the room to the door. That time, with me between the two of them, Kinnon didn't jump. He leaned away when Fox bent down to press his lips to the top of my head and tousle my hair, but he didn't jump. "I'll have food, clothes, and a bath brought up for him. Healers?"

"They'll scare him." I shook my head. "He's been with Ivar for Gods know how long. He's a mess."

Fox nodded shortly and I heard the door close behind him, leaving Kinnon and I alone in the room. "Fox," the child said his name, testing out the way it sounded on his tongue. "Does not hurt you."

"No, he doesn't," I agreed, a small smile crossing my face. "And he won't hurt you either. How old are you?"

"Almost sixteen," he answered happily, like he was proud of it. His eyes even glittered a bit. "And you are..." He paused like he was thinking, his face drawn up in concentration. "Eighteen." Another pause and he held his fingers up like he was trying to count. "Yes, eighteen."

I stared at him, head tilted to one side. "You know how old I am?"

"Everyone knows how old you are, Infinito." He said it like I should have known, a lilt in his voice that betrayed laughter.

My lips pursed and the door opened again. Fox came in quietly with a plate of food. He sat it gently on the table in front of Kinnon, who barely waited for him to set it down before he started nearly inhaling it. He stuffed the fruit into his mouth, barely chewing, shoveling it in at a rate that was almost alarming. I nearly stopped him but he seemed to gather some control of himself and slowed down enough to drink some of the water that accompanied it. "You don't know, do you?" The longer he spoke, the lighter his accent seemed to be, as if he hadn't had to use his voice in too long. I wondered how long Ivar had kept him gagged and starving. He kept talking without waiting for me to answer. He even let Fox sit down on the floor beside me, legs crossed, his side pressed to mine. He sought out my hand and our fingers laced together. "My mother told me that you were stolen by slavers. They took you from the tribe in the north and no matter how hard they looked, they couldn't find you. Nobody ever thought you would end up this far south. Sarrel isn't a name. It's an order. It means kneel."

I blanched. Fox grinned. "You would have a name with a connotation like that," he murmured, nudging me and I scowled in his direction. Kinnon kept eating, hardly slowing down again, until the plate was clear and he fell back, rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Come here, Kinnon. Let me get that bloody thing off of your neck," I ordered, leaving Fox's side so that I could pull Kinnon forward. The bolt mechanism on the back was one of the old collar models and I glared, standing briefly to find a pin in the desk. I sat on the couch behind the boy and pulled him between my knees so that he was facing Fox. I pushed his head forward and, after a few minutes of cursing and grumbling, the metal circlet fell loose and landed in his lap. He had a thick layer of grime around where it had been but he let out a long sigh of relief.

"I've been wearing that for two years," he mumbled, rubbing his hands over his throat gently. I was trying to ignore the questions in my head. Kinnon needed to be cared for before I brought down the inquisition but they were burning my tongue. At least I had an answer for the name, though it only spawned more questions and I was still uneasy about the way he'd greeted me and the way he called me Infinito like it was a title, not a word.

I nodded and moved back to where I could sit with him, sliding off the couch, ignoring the ache in my back and my insides. Kinnon, much to my surprise, folded himself against my side like a child would and slipped his arms around my waist. Fox's eyes widened marginally and I blinked back at him, my own arms awkwardly hovering over the curve of Kinnon's back. I let them settle gently and, despite how absolutely filthy he was, rubbed comforting circles into his spine. He mumbled happily. "How long were you out there with Ivar?"

The Lierian stilled. The arms around me stiffened. "I was out there three months. He's had me six," he whispered. A shudder ran down his spine. "He bought me from a brothel in Glacia. That's where my tribe is. He...I wanted to go back to the brothel."

Fox's expression darkened and someone knocked on the door before opening it. Brentlyn let two of the maids in, carrying a tub of hot water between them. They sat it down with a bar of soap, a towel, and clean clothes before scurrying out of the room. "We'll take you back to your tribe," Fox offered, getting to his feet and offering a hand. Kinnon took it carefully, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet, but we both noticed the violent shiver that ran down his spine. I could imagine the pain he was in. If he was even close to as sensitive as I was, being with Ivar that long would have done a number on him. I climbed up after him and he turned to look at me, eyes wide and hopeful, looking every bit the boy that he was.

"You'll come with me, Infinito? You have to come home."

I felt my heart sink at the look on his face and behind him, Fox looked pointedly at the ground. "I am home, Kinnon," I told him gently.

"No," Kinnon said with a little bit more force. "You have to come home. You're the only one. You have to. They need you."

Chapter Text

Kinnon was fed, bathed, and fed again. He slipped into clean clothes and came toddling out of that side room rubbing at the sores on his neck from the collar. It made my blood boil. I crumpled the paperwork I was holding, more receipts found in Ivar's stash, and Fox's hand on my wrist was all that calmed me. "They'll heal," he assured me softly.

That wasn't the point though. The point was that Ivar had kept this boy chained and collared like a pet, used him when he wanted, and beat him when he was bored. Or at least, that was what I gathered from the state of his body. He'd refused to get into the tub at first. Fox had been forced out of the room and after a lot of promises and coddling, I managed to get Kinnon stripped of his filthy rags. The bruises that marred his body made mine look dull in comparison. The pain I felt over hard sex seemed to evaporate when faced with the suffering of that pitiful little boy. He was even smaller than me, narrow and repulsively thin. I could see every rib down his chest, his hip bones were sharp protrusions. Even his pelvic bone was visible when he stood straight enough.

It made a fresh new heartache bloom in my chest, red and raw. He bawled when he had to sit down in the water, thrashed around when I tried to clean up the blisters at his throat, and then eventually collapsed against the side of the copper tub, babbling in his native tongue while he nuzzled into my arm. I couldn't even think about what I was doing--that I was bathing another man, that Fox was right outside the door and that he knew I was doing it, or that Kinnon was so pathetic that it didn't even matter.

When he was dressed and eating again though, he seemed a thousand times better. The clothes gave him a bit of weight and the bath had done him well. His hair was curlier than I'd thought and it hung in eyes that had just a bit more green to their pale blue than I had initially realized. He ate again, this time with a glass of wine, and I left him to his own devices.

He came back out shyly, toeing along the edge of the room to avoid having to look at anyone. He edged his way closer to me and promptly attached himself to my hip, his arms wrapped tightly around one of mine while I attempted to sort through the mess with a detached, impersonal frame of mind. I ignored the letters between Ivar and a brothel in Immara that had intended to buy me, sent the gold, and was patiently awaiting my arrival. Fox, however, read them over at least three times a piece, growing more irritated each time. Finally, on the fourth run through, he slammed them down on the desk and Kinnon jumped, cowering away from him and behind me. I could feel him shake and had to reach back, hooking my arm around his waist in an attempt to comfort him.

"Relax," I told him gently. "I told you, nobody here is going to hurt you. We're going to finish up this and then I'm going to show you where you'll be staying. You can lock the door and go to sleep. You can have one of the guards send for more food if you're hungry."

"He's angry," Kinnon pointed out softly and I pressed my lips together, turning around to steer him into a chair. I was glad Harlan, Ambrose, and Brentlyn had gone to deal with having Ivar moved up to the throne room where Court was usually held. There was no scheduled session for the day but that didn't deter Fox. Violent crime didn't require a scheduled session. It was dealt with swiftly and brutally so as to deter other criminals from repeating the offense.

Kinnon curled up, wincing when he sat and I retrieved a folded, hand-woven blanket that Miraena had made the king the year before. It was always draped over his desk chair. I slid it around Kinnon's shoulders, tousled his hair, and moved back to the desk to speak quietly to Fox. "You're scaring him," I whispered.

"He wrote to that brothel about what he did to you," Fox hissed, his voice stiff, his eyes narrowed and heated. His cheeks were burning hot and I lifted my fingers to cup his face, my stomach churning at the idea of him reading that, but I'd expected him to find things he didn't like in this stack of letters from Ivar's cave. He looked down at the paper in front of him, skimming the contents. "He called you a hot, tight, little fuck. Said you have a pretty ass, a 'delightful flush' and that he made you come twice."

I gagged, a litany of memory and emotion washing over me in a rush that I couldn't control. I felt hot all over the surface of my body and cold slithered into my insides like a snake. I pressed the back of one hand to my mouth and blinked steadily in an effort to control my dire urge to heave. "Fox, I--"

"Do you know what that makes me want to do?" He stood up from the chair he was in, pushing it back and away from the desk so that his fists were planted on the furniture, on stacks of papers, pressed down tight and he was eye level with me. I managed to shake my head weakly, acutely aware of Kinnon watching this volatile exchange. Fox reached up and grasped my jaw and though the gesture seemed controlling and almost harsh, he held me gently. His thumb ran in circles over my cheek and he pulled me closer, planting a kiss behind my ear that made me shiver all the way down to my toes. "It makes me want to bend you over this desk and make you come three times just so I can say I trumped him."

I felt my bones turn to gelatin and I had to reach up, my fingers curling around his arms for support. I would have let him, too. Even with Kinnon there. It wouldn't matter. If Fox wanted it, I was desperate to give it to him. "You already trumped him," I whispered meekly, trembling at the idea of what he wanted to do to me....of what I was willing to let him do to me, even with someone sitting right there. "You're...you. And you're...perfect. Everything about you is perfect. You had him beat before you ever touched me."

Fox's eyes softened and the hand at my jaw slipped down to my chest and then up over my shoulder. He squeezed there and pressed his forehead to mine, tipping his face to kiss me quickly. His teeth caught my bottom lip and I heard Kinnon suck in a sharp breath. "I didn't think there was much to beat," he answered sheepishly, a lopsided smile gracing his face while he leaned back and then flopped into his chair. He flicked a lock of black hair from his eyes and that smile turned into a full, happy grin. "I was just feeling possessive."

"There wasn't much to beat. You're an asshole, you know that?" I glared at him, the tender, sweet, devoted moment melted away and we went back to being the Fox and Cyril that were constantly bickering or, if they weren't bickering, were fucking. "I'd prefer one kiss from you than a dozen climaxes from a sick fuck like him."

Kinnon squirmed in his seat, leaning forward to watch us. His eyes were a little bit harder, a little bit angry when he looked at Fox but they softened on me. "You knew him? That man in the cave. You knew him?"

"I did," I answered simply. "And I believe his time is limited to hours, Kinnon, so if there's something you need to tell us, you ought to do it now."

The boy blinked and then shrugged. "I was a slave. There's nothing to really tell...but he touched you, Infinito?" The sudden stiffening in my posture must have given me away because Kinnon plodded on without waiting for an answer. He glared daggers at Fox. "So did he."

"I let Fox touch me. That's different." The aforementioned party sat back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head while he watched the interaction. I felt like I was at a stand-off or staring down a viper ready to strike. Kinnon looked positively livid over that admission.

"Traitor," he breathed the word and I felt my eyes grow wide. "He's human scum. He's--"

"Stop," I interjected. "Kinnon, traitor? That's a little bit harsh. I grew up here. These people raised me. I'm more Corian than Lierian. Fox is my...he's my..."

Fox snorted. "I believe the accepted casual term is 'boyfriend', Cyril. Court would call you my consort though. Because they live for stuffy, dated language and appearing to everyone else to be pompous, holier-than-thou pricks with their heads in their asses."

Boyfriend seemed so...mundane compared to what I actually felt for him and I shot him a disapproving glare over my shoulder. He shrugged apologetically. He was getting used to that look, it seemed. I would have to up my game if I was going to get a proper reaction from 'disapproving glare' again.

I was surprised by how at ease he seemed with Kinnon calling him human scum though. I was even more surprised by his relaxed reaction to the boy calling me a traitor. "I'm not a traitor," I corrected stiffly. "This is my home. These are my people--"

"Your people are dying!" Kinnon shot back, scrambling to his feet, eyes wide and wet. "You're their Infinito. Their King. Their God! You owe them! You're supposed to be the one that offers guidance. You're supposed to keep the tribes united! They've been killing each other since you were taken. Endless slaughter. Women, children, and now you want to call these humans your people? Your people, Infinito, are the whores that his people keep collared. Your people are slaughtering each other over land claims and blaming each other over your disappearance. Your people are suffering, dying, being murdered by each other and by his people. His people!" He pointed at Fox, who had gotten to his feet and crossed his arms, agitated by this new line of conversation. I was staring, dumbstruck. My mouth had gone dry. My heart had stopped and was likely as shocked as I was by Kinnon's outburst.

My surprise didn't deter him though. He kept on going like a child throwing a tantrum. "His people are pigs," he spat. "Gluttons that take what they want whether it belongs to them or not. They took you. He took you. You have a responsibility to your people to carry on your line."

"My line? Kinnon, I don't even know what Infinito means! I don't know where I was found, I don't remember what happened, I can't even speak the language. Fox didn't steal me. He didn't take me and if our people are killing each other it's because they have a basic lack of restraint just like every other fucking human on this Godsforsaken continent! I can't fix that. I don't owe them anything. I was stolen or taken or whatever because our people are seemingly incapable of keeping track of a five-year-old! These are my people, this is my home, Fox is my lover, and nothing--nothing you say is going to change my opinion on that." Kinnon blinked at me. I was trembling, enraged like I had been the day I'd snapped at Fox before his tribunal. I was fighting the urge to reach out and slap the insolent scowl off the little face in front of me. It was Fox's hand on my shoulder that convinced me otherwise.

"He's just a boy," he reminded me quietly. "He's terrified and exhausted. You can't hold him accountable for what he's saying right now. Send him with Izzy and have her put him to bed. We can deal with him later when we're all in a better frame of mind."

"It's a sad day when you're the voice of reason," I managed pitifully and I knew he was smiling at that. I didn't need to see him to know it. I grabbed Kinnon by the arm, probably with more force than was necessary, and started hauling him toward the door. He didn't even fight me. He allowed himself to be dragged, mumbling under his breath in that infuriating language of his. I pushed the door open, turned to the right, and shoved him toward Isabella. "Take him to one of the bedrooms in the guest wing. See to it that he has everything he needs. Nobody but myself, Fox, and Harlan should be allowed entry to that room and Kinnon is, under no circumstances bar the palace being on fire or under attack, allowed to leave unattended by you or one of us. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Lord Second," she murmured, nodding her head, too cowed by the tone in my voice to offer one of her usual flippant remarks. She gestured Kinnon forward and he shot me a glare over his shoulder before allowing her to lead him away.

Fox was behind me a moment later, his arm slipping casually around my waist to draw me in closer. He kissed the top of my head and watched him walk away. "He called you a God," he pointed out.

It was my turn to snort and I rolled my eyes, shifting my weight on my feet to look up at him. "Do Gods do the things I do to you?"

A small, knowing smile played over his lips and he shrugged. "Who knows. They do have children." He paused then and glanced down the hall toward the throne room. I knew what he was thinking. I knew that he was keeping a tight leash on the rage he felt toward Ivar and the strong desire he had to do heinous, cruel things to him. I couldn't blame him. If someone had done to Fox what Ivar had done to me, I would want him dead. I wanted that priest that had beaten him dead. I wanted the Elders dead. I wanted Harlan to suffer for allowing it. My respect for the King had dropped considerably. Fox smacked his lips together. "You don't have to watch this if you don't want. I know it might be...difficult for you to look at him."

"I think I need the closure of it," I admitted quietly, plucking up his hand so that I could hold it in my own. He entertained my whims and let me size up our fingers, marvel at how much bigger his hands were than mine, and then bring it to my lips to kiss across his knuckles. I saw his breath hitch and his eyes darken and then he was on me, prying my mouth open with his tongue in the corridor where all of his guards were watching. I yelped into his lips, squirmed for a moment when his arms wrapped around me, and then melted into the embrace so that I could clutch at his clothes.

He was so angry. I could feel it emanating off of him in waves and he was only barely in check. It flushed his cheeks when he moved back and held my face between his hands so that I had nowhere to look but up at him. I wrung my hands between us, stammering and mumbling incoherently. My own face turned pink. I looked down at my boots, unsure of what to say to him though I knew that I needed to say something. I needed to do something. Fox couldn't go in there so out of control that he'd do something he would regret.

I heard him huff and then he was nuzzling against me, dragging the rough, stubbly line of his jaw against my own and then over my throat. "O-oh," I managed to squeak, my cheeks turning an even darker shade of red. I was discovering very quickly that public displays of affection made me vastly uncomfortable and while I was normally able to ignore the guards, I was not able to right then. Nor was I able to ignore Fox's insistent need for affection or his ability to distract me with sex so that I didn't say anything that might deter from the anger that I knew he was stoking into a frenzied fire. "I think you should stop."

"Oh?" he asked, his teeth nipping at my collarbone through the fabric of my shirt. I had to gather some courage, steel myself for the inevitable loss of his body heat, and push him back by his shoulders. His eyes widened, surprised, that beautiful green caught between shock and rampant desire. He tried to push back, to get closer to me, and I held him at arm's length until his weak struggle slowed to a stop. He tilted his head and the hurt that crossed his expression was exactly the emotional blackmail that Brentlyn always bitched about.

"Stop it," I warned. "I know what you're doing. You're not going to distract me with sex or pretend that I've hurt your feelings by telling you that you can't molest me in the corridor in front of half your staff." One of the guards coughed and Fox shot him a sneer. "I can tell that you're angry. You might as well be wearing a sign that says, "Pissed off. Approach with caution."" I wrinkled my nose and his mouth turned into a lopsided smile that melted me. "I said stop it."

Fox's smile widened. "I didn't do anything." He lifted his hand lazily and ran it through my hair, garnering another shiver that slid down my spine and made heat pool between my hips.

"I'm just going to talk then and you're going to listen," I ordered stiffly. He raised an eyebrow, seemingly amused by my sudden desire to be in control even when I was struggling to string words together. "I don't want you to go in there thinking that killing him is going to fix anything. It's not. It's not going to give me back what he took. It's not going to fix your back. It's not going to make you feel better. If you go in there thinking that it is, you're going to do something you'll regret. You're not that kind of leader, Fox. You don't want to rule people with fear."

His teasing stopped abruptly and he stepped away from me, tugging his clothes straight as if there was nothing going on between the two of us. He was shutting me out. I could see it. The walls came down behind his eyes, his back straightened, and he nodded once to acknowledge what I'd said. "We'll see," he answered rigidly. "Come on then. Best get this over with."

I didn't want to follow him. I knew that, deep in my gut, I didn't actually want to see this. There was no closure to be found here. I had my closure. Fox was it. Nothing and nobody would ever make me feel better about who I was and where I was in my life than he could when he mumbled sleepily against my ear that he loved me, that he needed me, that I was perfect. What Ivar had done no longer mattered. Trauma was something I had lived with my entire life. I had been stolen, found, acclimated to a society that didn't want or need me, surrounded by people that didn't understand me and didn't know how to care for me, sickened, beaten, raped, and I'd watched the man I loved whipped like a dog to punish me. Pain, I decided, was like the hammer of a blacksmith. It had shaped me and without it, I wasn't sure I would have ever ended up there with him.

I hated what Ivar had done. I would never accept it, but it had lead me here, and there was a small solace in that.

So I followed him through the palace, listening to the soles of his boots click against the polished floor. The doors to the throne room swung open and I was still trying to mentally prepare myself for what was about to happen--for having to face him again. I was steeling myself, sifting through dozens of happy memories to combat the ugly ones I was about to flash through. I reached desperately for Fox's hand at the last minute and he stole it back from me only to curl it around the back of my neck and squeeze gently.

It helped that Ivar was filthy and sporting a grotesque, steel colored beard that was caked in mud and blood on one side and hung down like a misshapen scarf around his throat. I shuddered and recalled the sharp, metallic smell of his breath, the feel of his hands on my hips and his tongue--

"Fuck," I whispered, shoving my fist into my mouth. I bit down on my knuckles until Fox pulled my hand away, still leading me up to the raised dias where Harlan was sitting stiffly in his throne. Brentlyn was whispering into his ear and Ambrose, I noted, was nowhere to be found. I wondered if Harlan had forced him to go elsewhere. He'd been murderous when he found out.

I allowed myself to be steered up the few stairs to the little chairs beside the King. I was still staring at Ivar, on his knees, hands bound in front of him, wearing what appeared to be the remnants of good, higher house style clothing. Brentlyn made short work of taking up Fox's place at my side when the Crown Prince moved to speak quietly with his father. I was too distracted to pay attention, listening to the hum in my chest that was my heart beat. Brentlyn eased his chair closer to mine. Ivar shifted, scowling up at Fox with those horrible, cold eyes that haunted my nightmares. A chill ran down my spine and I shuddered, making an automatic, repulsed noise in my throat.

It caught his attention. That frozen, heartless gaze slid from Fox to me and my eyes widened. I grabbed for the sides of my chair, fingers wrapping tightly around the edges. I felt none of the pain from my activities of the night before, none from what I'd done early this morning--just absolute, crippling fear accompanied by wave after wave of unbearable shame. Gods, the things he'd done to me and what he'd made me do...how I'd begged for him to come inside me, writhed beneath the attention of his tongue and pushed back against it, encouraging him to fuck me with the hot, wet muscle. I could feel him undress me with his horrible little eyes and the irrational belief that he knew what I'd done with Fox crippled me. My thoughts returned to Ivar's claim that they'd raised me to be his whore. My stomach twisted painfully, I broke out in a cold sweat like I was having a nightmare.

"Fox, I think I might need your help here," Brentlyn called gently but I hardly heard him. I was shaking my head, unable to draw breath and a moment later, he was kneeling in front of me.

At first, I didn't recognize him. He was a blur behind the tears while I relived my nightmare in frightening clarity. I could almost feel the girth of him inside me again. My breath came in frantic, shallow breaths. "Cyril," Fox's voice caught me off guard and I blinked, the tears spilling over my eyes and rolling cold down my cheeks. It took me a moment to really see him. I stared, my breath stuck in my throat, while I tried to attach a name to his face in my panicked fit. I could feel my heart clawing up my windpipe and for a moment, I worried I might vomit it right into my lap. Fox tried again. "Cyril, come on. Dead eyes do you no justice." He reached for my face and I lost my head entirely.

"Don't touch me!" I was out of the chair and stumbling backward so quickly that I fell over and landed hard on my tailbone, the piece of furniture sliding out from under me while I scrambled away. The pain woke up what he'd done to me and I groaned at the sensation but it was a wake-up call. It was like having cold water dumped over my head. I could breathe again. "I'm sorry," I managed to gasp and Fox shook his head like the apology wasn't necessary while I gulped at the air. It was like he'd saved me just seconds from drowning and then he pulled me to my feet, straightened my clothes, and gave me a gentle shake.

"There you are," he crooned happily, giving me a tap under the chin with a curved index finger. "Thought you were gone for a minute there."

"I was," I answered numbly, sinking back into the chair Brentlyn had picked up and sat against the back of my legs. I moved woodenly, trembling, keeping my eyes on Fox instead of Ivar. "I just kept...I kept remembering. I kept thinking. He said--he said--he said they kept me around to be your whore." I knew that I'd told him that before on several occasions and he'd refuted it every time. I felt like I needed to hear that rebuttal again though and Fox pursed his lips.

A moment later, he leaned in next to my face, his hands on the back of my chair so that I was trapped between it and him. "That's just not true," he told me quietly. "It's that simple. You don't need to worry your pretty head about it. Do you want to leave, Cyril? You don't need to be here for this."

Yes, I did. I did need to be there to control him because my breakdowns were frequent and short-lived but from what I'd seen of Fox the night I'd slapped him, his were worse. He would need me if he shattered like that again. "I want to stay," I insisted firmly, nodding and taking a deep breath. "I'm fine. Sorry. I'm good now. Go. Do your...whatever you have to do."

Fox tousled my hair and stood back up. I was caught up in the way that he walked, the natural sway in his hips and the length of his legs. He wasn't a big man but he was tall and tapered in a way that made me nearly salivate. I had to remind myself that we were sitting in a room with his father and brother, with Ivar, or I would have begged him back and gotten on my knees just to feel that intimate closeness with him.

Harlan cleared his throat. "Your charges were explained," he drawled, his voice icy and I shivered in my seat. "You stand accused of the rape of a child, evading justice, malicious treatment of a slave, forgery, intent to kidnap, intent to enslave within the Corian kingdom boundaries, and assault against a member of the Royal House of Coria." I glanced at the cut on Brentlyn's cheek, fresh and new but clean and glossed over with some kind of poultice. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Ivar shifted and I could see where Brentlyn had shot him. The wound was ugly and bloody, still seeping onto the floor and cringed. Fox had stepped down off the dias and was pacing like a caged cat, his boots the only noise in the whole room while Ivar squirmed. This was going to be ugly. I suspected that was why Harlan was doing it now while the Court was not in session. Best they not see the way Fox was reacting before he'd been given the clear to punish with whatever they saw fit. "Answer him," the Prince spat, taking a menacing step forward and Ivar barked a laugh that made my blood run cold.

"Rape?" he asked, leering up at me. "The little slut begged for it. I wonder, Fox, does he beg you like that?"

There was a snap in the tension in the room. It had been as thick as oil and that comment lit it on fire. My stomach dropped, Brentlyn climbed to his feet and reached instinctively for a bow that wasn't on his back like he intended to put an arrow between Ivar's eyes. Harlan stiffened in his seat.

It was Fox that acted though. I had known it would be Fox that acted before either his father or his brother even moved. He had closed the distance between them, grabbed Ivar by the filthy, stinking mess that was his hair, and brought his knee up into his nose in a fashion that made the hall echo with the sickening crunch of mangled flesh and bone. Fox let him fall back, thrashing and writhing, blood spurting from his face and dripping down the front of his ruined clothes. Ivar made a gurgling noise that may have been a scream but it was lost in the pooling liquid from his face.

Fox circled around him like a snake waiting to strike again. I could see the utter detachment in his face. He was gone. Nothing of the man I loved was present in his features--just the cold, cruel, calculated face of someone performing some perverse act of justice. He wiped the hand he'd touched Ivar with on the front of his shirt and the criminal squirmed back onto his knees. For a second, I thought he was choking but it was only a second. I realized, with horrifying clarity, that he was laughing.

"Is it really rape, Fox?" he asked, his voice thick and nasally. His nose was crushed to one side of his face and his eyes were swollen nearly shut. His lips were split and bleeding. Fox's fists clenched and flexed and he was heaving for breath, his movements feverish and quick. "He's got a nice little ass, doesn't he? And those noises he makes." He smacked his lips together and Fox stopped moving. He stood deadly still, directly in front of him, his head tilted to one side. His right hand--his sword hand--moved to his hip where his weapon hung glittering and polished. His fingers tightened on the hilt. "It should be a bestiality charge. He's a fucking animal."

The song of steel leaving a hilt rang bright and clear and Fox's foot landed hard in the center of Ivar's chest. He sent him sprawling backward and advanced, pressing the tip of his blade to the hollow of his throat. I was stricken, frozen--horrified both by the things that Ivar was saying and by Fox's blind rage. I wasn't sure what was worse but I knew who was worth saving.

"Fox!" I got to my feet, shouting his name and nearly stumbling down the dias after him. He didn't answer, just pressed harder and I collided with him a moment later, my hands wrapping around his wrist. "Stop. Stop! This isn't you, Fox. This isn't who you are. Think about this."

His eyes were wild, feral, entirely gone. I was gripping his jaw with one hand and the hilt of his blade with the other, pushing back on it so that he didn't puncture Ivar's throat in the throne room. His brow furrowed and he stared at me but no recognition crossed his face, not for a long minute, and then it flickered like a dying candle. "He made you beg," he hissed. "He deserves to die."

"You can't base your decisions on things that hurt me. I'm not your priority. Your people are your priority, Fox, and you can't look like a tyrant."

"Let me go," he ordered, his voice taking on that same dark tone that I always obeyed. My insides squirmed and I faltered, fighting the urge to duck out and listen to what he was telling me to do. I tightened my hands instead.

"I can't do that," I answered quietly. "You can't do this. Not like this. Take him out to the post, Fox. Make him an example, not a martyr. If you do this out there, the charges will be public."

"Everyone will know what he did to you!" He was panicked at the idea, eyes wide, but he stopped trying to fight me. His grip on the sword loosened.

I swallowed hard. "That's a sacrifice I'm willing to live with," I told him gently. "Put the weapon away and take him to the post."

That time, it was Fox that obeyed. He let his weapon down and then slipped it into his belt, giving me a light push out of the way before he grabbed Ivar by the back of his clothes and hauled him to his feet. Fox cast me one withering glance and then shoved. "Walk," he ordered. "I said fucking walk, you disgusting piece of shit!" It was the wound on his leg that kept Ivar stumbling and I almost pointed it out but Brentlyn's hand on my shoulder deterred me.

"Let him go," he said softly and I nodded, stiff, my hands in tight fists as Fox seized Ivar by his matted hair and began to drag him.

Chapter Text

I watched in abject horror as Fox dragged Ivar out of the throne room, down the walkway of the palace, and out of the gate that led to the scooped earth where the whipping post stood like a sickening memorial. I wasn't sure how I was moving, because I was certainly willing myself to stay in the palace. I didn't want to see this. I didn't need it. It seemed, if anything, Fox was convinced that he needed it. Or maybe convinced that I was wrong and in some deep, animalistic part of my brain, that I needed it. I couldn't tell. He was too closed off for me to get a read on him.

My legs unwillingly carried me to the edge of the pit and a crowd started gathering. It faced the market outside the palace. That was, of course, purposeful. Punishment had to be metted out and displayed as a warning. Corians were heavily resistant to the idea of an execution for all but the very worst of crimes. In all of my life, I'd seen one execution for a man that had murdered his family and tried to feed their bodies to the pigs on his farm. Even then, there'd been whispers about it. They relied heavily on the whipping post as a form of punishment and the most violent of men and women were, after their beating, sent to patrol the borders or to fight alongside allies in foreign wars. They were always on the front and they never came home. I'd once asked Fox if "frontline duty" was a euphemism for "take him out to Hollen's Wood and remove his head."

He'd never answered me.

Ivar's flailing, kicking feet left scrapes in the sand and Fox pulled his arms up, hooking the rope that bound his hands to the thick metal nails that stuck out of the post. There was already rope hanging there, of course, and he twisted that around his wrists so tightly that I saw his knuckles turn white and then Fox took a few steps away. His breathing was heavy and erratic and he fidgeted like he was coming down off of a drug. His eyes were wide and blind to all but his rage.

Beside me, Brentlyn shook his head. "He's falling apart," he observed and I didn't answer. I knew it. He knew that I knew it. There was no escaping the tragedy that we were witnessing.

At the far end of the pit was a stone wall draped in leather, the symbol of the Regulator burned into the hide, and Fox strode toward it, pulling down the covering when he reached it. Beneath it were the whips, each one oiled and thick, all various types, weaves, thicknesses, and lengths. He selected a particularly heavy one and I heard Brentlyn swallow hard as Fox ran his fingers over the long, twisted strip of leather. He squeezed the handle and looped the length around his wrist and his hand, slowly closing the distance between himself and Ivar as he walked.

I'd never seen Harlan wield a whip in a punishment exercise. I knew, from my historical studies, that Kings and Princes had done it. I'd even read about one Queen doing it. I had never, however, seen Fox's immediately family engaged in anything that violent. Brentlyn had his archery, yes, but arrows were swift. This was not putting an arrow in the base of his skull and calling it a day. This was torture.

My heart hummed unpleasantly and my palms turned clammy. I had to keep wiping them off on my trousers while I watched. I was nearly panting, my mouth dry, my eyes wide. My legs were shaking like they might give out and I tried focusing on those happy memories I'd dredged up before I'd entered the Throne room but nothing helped. No amount of kisses, whispered 'I love you's, or the feel of him inside me could have made this any easier to bear. I didn't care what Fox did to Ivar. It wasn't Ivar that I worried for. It was Fox and his tendency to do things before he thought about them. It was his temper. It was the regret he would have to live with over this because yes, Ivar had hurt me. He'd hurt me bad. I would never be the same person I had been before that night. I would never recover what I'd lost. I would always feel a little bit used, a little bit dirty...but I had been raised Corian. The thought of killing another person didn't sit well, no matter how much he'd hurt me.

I didn't want blood on Fox's hands. Not for me.

"I don't want him to do this," I whispered, my voice shrill and panicked. I looked up at Brentlyn with horrified, widened eyes. My bottom lip trembled and he tousled my hair, wrapping an arm around my shoulder to pull me into his side and I found myself nuzzling into him, grateful for the contact.

"I know," he answered gently. "But...there is nobody in Coria with more power than my brother. Even the King lets him do whatever he wants. If he wants to do this--if he thinks he wants to do this--he's going to do it. You'll just have to deal with the fallout later. I don't envy you that task."

I pursed my lips, my attention turning back to Fox's circling. The crowd that had gathered was substantial and still growing. I was grateful I was still on the palace side, that unless they walked through the pit of punishment themselves, that crowd wouldn't be able to reach me. I could only imagine the amount of pawing and the leering stares I'd get.

Fox let the whip fall and the corded length thumped against the sand, the handle still clutched in his palm. He flexed his fingers around it. "This man," he began bitterly and a hush fell over the market at the sound of his voice. He emanated power. He commanded the attention of everyone around him no matter where he went. Brentlyn may have been better suited, mentally, to be a King, but nobody I knew, not even Harlan, could wield power the way that Fox did. He could hone it into a weapon, carve out injustice, or soften it into a careful embrace. He could turn it into a muzzle, a collar, and a leash or a set of longed for freedom papers. When Ivar had crossed him, goaded him on, put a challenge in front of him, he'd tempted the wrong Prince. Without a doubt, it was going to cost his life, but at least this way it could be played off as an accidental death during punishment. Those things happened and they were regarded as a much more mild social crime than brutal execution.

"This...monster," he corrected himself and I could hear the furious tremble in his voice. "Has been found guilty of rape, evading justice, malicious treatment of an underage slave, forgery, intent to kidnap, intent to enslave within the boundaries of the Corian Kingdom, and assault against my brother, Prince Brentlyn--" He pointed up toward us, whip still in hand and Brentlyn looked pointedly at the ground. "He offered no defense for himself. He goaded myself and the King. This creature committed heinous acts in my home. Against my people. Against someone I love."

I could have melted. Even in the state of rage he was in, even in this situation, he made it a point to make me feel like a treasure...like I was something more. A whisper shifted through the crowd, sympathetic and yearning. My heart was breaking. I wanted to run down the side of the pit, throw myself at his feet, and promise that my heart beat for him. That I'd do anything he wanted. That he should put the whip down and come back to the palace with me, curl up in bed, forget the world--anything. Just not this. Still, the anger in his voice was so omnipresent and ground-shattering that I knew no amount of begging was ever going to get through to him. This was a temperament problem we would have to work on for years to get control of.

Fox lifted the weapon then, stretching a length of it between his hands. He gave him no sentence, though providing a sentence wasn't a necessary procedure, especially with the amount of crimes he was convicted of. Sometimes, in those cases, it was simply a matter of going until his limbs gave out and he was carted away to be dealt with elsewhere. Fox just let it drop again and then the first blow came down across Ivar's back. He didn't bother cutting the shirt down. The whip would destroy the fabric in time.

I felt myself jump with the sound, recalling vividly the way that Fox's body had drawn up against the post when it had been him tied to it. He'd taken that beating with such a stoic courage that whenever I was afraid of something, I thought about that and gathered the bravado I needed to survive just from remembering how much he'd shown that day. I wondered if he felt brave now...if he felt anything now, bringing blow after blow down on the shrieking, writhing individual on the post. The whip was thick and heavy and caught the light when he lifted it, as if it had been woven with some kind of metal threading and I cringed. While Fox had bled down his back, flesh and blood sprayed off of Ivar's, turning the sand around him in a five foot diameter a foamy pink.

I could smell it, mixed with the salt from the sea--metallic and sharp and I tried counting but my heart kept fluttering and floundering in my chest, dragging my attention away, and eventually I lost count. I clutched at Brentlyn, who was clutching back at me like we were two frightened children. "This is nauseating," he whispered and I felt his abdominal muscles clench where my arm was wrapped around him, suppressing a heave.

Part of me wanted to tell him that if he puked on me, I was going to kick his shins but I was horrified into a state of speechlessness. I felt my own insides writhe and rise up in my throat so that I was swallowing back my own urge to vomit on his boots. The crack of the whip sounded wet now and then, after what felt like ages, Ivar's body turned boneless and he slid against the post.

Fox, if he even noticed, didn't stop. He kept going and going until I knew his shoulders had to ache and then I heard it--the desperate, guttural sob that escaped his throat and whatever had been keeping me from diving down into that pit snapped. I let go of Brentlyn, who called after me and tried to reach for me, but I was stumbling down the side of the sandy dip, sliding until I reached the hard packed bottom. I scrambled to my feet, covered in dirt, swallowing a lump in my throat and wincing at the raw sensation on my palms from stopping my slide.

I realized as I got closer that Ivar was dead. There was no way he was still alive. He was so still, his body a weight against the post. The shirt was shredded and long strips of muscle hung from his back. I could see the white, knobby bone of his spine and the hooks of his ribs, even the wing-shaped expanse of one shoulder blade was visible and I wondered how he'd even stayed alive as long as he had. To spite Fox, was my immediate resolution. The man was a hateful, disgusting, pig of a human being and if suffering through agony and clinging to life would make the regret worse for his punisher, he would have done it. I hated him even more in that moment but before another blow could land, my hand wrapped around the handle, slipping in the blood that soaked Fox's sleeves and the front of his shirt. It was sprayed over his face and his eyes were...empty. Dead. He saw me without seeing me.

He tried to jerk his hand away and I held on, my teeth rattling at the sudden motion. He pulled me clear off my feet and for a moment, I was hanging by his wrist until he tried to fling me off like a rag doll. I clawed at his clothes, determined to remain attached to him even though he seemed hell-bent on snapping my neck with the way he shook me. "Fox!" I snapped his name but at that point, I wasn't even sure he knew it.

I kept one hand twisted in the sleeve of his shirt and reached for his face with the other, intent on grabbing a handful of his hair. Pain had woken me up out of my blind stupor earlier. I had to believe that pain would knock some sense into him as well. It would temper the madness, give him something to focus on other than repeatedly replaying all of the nightmares he'd sat through with me or, no doubt, the time he'd watched Ivar beat me and had carried me back to my room.

I managed to catch his collar and I let go of his arm, determined to get my other hand at his collar as well. He was still struggling, trying to hold the whip and push me away but without the use of both of his hands, he was having an issue. "Listen to me!" I demanded again but he took a wobbling step back, his free hand grabbed one of my arms, and he wrenched me clean off of him. I stumbled backward, nearly falling for what felt like the tenth time that day, and regained my balance at the last minute. I was irritated then. More at myself than at him for being unable to reach him. I got the bright idea that maybe knocking him over would be enough and I threw myself forward. My palms landed against his chest and I shoved, throwing my body weight behind the motion.

It didn't knock him over. It garnered a horrified gasp from the crowd over someone assaulting their Prince. Brentlyn had to order Fox's guards down from arresting me on the spot. Fox shoved back, equally hard, and I careened backward. I flailed, trying to catch myself, and ended up on my back with one arm bracing my weight. I looked up at him, more surprised than hurt because in all the time I'd known Fox, he'd never once hit me. Even when we were children and fighting like cats and dogs. I'd hit him plenty of times. Shoved him, pinched him, pulled his hair, stomped on his toes, kicked his shins but I was always so much smaller than him that he didn't deem me capable of handling a reaction from him. He usually held me out at arm's length until my tantrum was over and I was done trying to claw at his face.

So while this did not, by any means, hurt because one, I wasn't tall enough for a fall to really cause pain other than the dull ache that was already in my back--a result of hard sex--and two, because I'd managed to land on the edge of the pit in a moderately loose patch of sand, it did shock the hell out of me. I blinked up, mouth open like I was going to say something but I didn't find the words. I couldn't even react when he lifted the whip like he was going to bring it down on me.

I had to believe that he wouldn't.

He wouldn't. Fox had never, would never, hurt me. He'd promised. This wasn't Fox though. This wasn't the same boy I'd fallen in love with but somewhere, in the back of his mind where the animal part of him wasn't in control, that boy must have realized what was happening. I braced myself for the blow, holding my breath, my muscles drawn up. I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my face away but it never came.

I opened my eyes to the dull thud of the whip landing on the ground beside me. Fox was standing over me, breathing hard, his eyes still wild and out of control but there was a piece of him there. I stared back at him, trying to will him back to who he'd been that morning, but he only made another dry, aching, sobbing noise and turned away from me back toward the palace. I watched him retreat, still on the ground, until Brentlyn appeared beside me and hauled me to my feet. "I really thought he was going to beat you," he told me, his words crushed together and fast like he was panicked. "I really...I was getting ready to jump in. I'd never be able to take Fox down but Gods, I'd have tried, Cyril. That...you were going to let him!"

"I was going to let him do what he needed to do to wake up. If hurting me woke him up, it's better than him making a spectacle of whipping all the flesh off of a corpse like some kind of madman." I dusted the dirt off of my clothes and ignored the guards that were cutting Ivar down. I didn't want to see him. Instead, I brushed Brentlyn off and assured him that I was fine as I headed back up to the palace. Harlan shot me a miserable, unreadable glare on my way past him.

I ignored that too. If the King had something to say, he would have held me back and said it but his silence was enough of a pardon for me to keep walking. I brushed by the staff, who eagerly tried to clean the dirt off of my face and made a straight line for the Crown's tower. I knew he was there when I noticed the blood on the handle of the door and more of it scraped along the wall to the upstairs.

It was stupid to go to him like this. I was completely aware of the dangerous game I was playing. Fox could hurt me. I didn't believe he would. I believed that even more after he'd dropped that whip, but I knew that he was capable of it and that I was so much smaller than him that anything I did to try to stop him would be futile, at best. Still, I dragged myself up the stairs and, without knocking, let myself into the room.

Fox was pacing, his bloodied shirt stripped. He'd cleaned himself up, at least. In fact, he'd scrubbed himself raw. His arms were an angry red and so were his cheeks. He rounded on me when I entered like he expected me to be someone else and then stopped short, eyes wide. Alert. Knowing.

"Thank Gods," I murmured to myself. He was him again. Whatever madness had gripped him was gone. He blinked at me.

And then he broke. I'd thought he'd been bad the night we'd fought and Brentlyn had talked to me. That had just been unhinged. This was out of control. Fox, who was always in control, who managed every aspect of his life with rigid discipline down to sex, was absolutely not in control. That sobbing sound escaped his throat again and he brought his hands to his mouth to try to contain it. I'd never felt an urge to use any kind of sweet endearment with him until then. He was always so sure, so confident. He exuded sex-appeal. He didn't need coddling and whispers about how good he was to know that he was good. He didn't need a pet name to know that I adored him. "Oh, Fox, honey," I breathed, a word I typically used on crying children when I had the misfortune of coming into contact with them slipped from my mouth. "Come here."

I held a hand out and he wasted no time in practically falling toward me, sinking to his knees so that his face was pressed against my stomach. His shoulders trembled and I ached for him. I ran my fingers through his sweat-soaked hair, felt tears saturate my shirt while he clutched at me, his hands wrapped around my thighs. The bruises he'd left there should have hurt but I was hurting too much where my broken heart was struggling to beat to feel anything beyond that pain. "I don't know what happened," he breathed into my abdomen and I felt the heat of his mouth sink through my clothes and into my skin. "I don't...I don't even remember, Cyril. I was in the throne room and then I was...Gods, I was going to hit you!"

"You didn't hit me," I reminded him gently, leaning over him so that I could run my hand down his back where the scars where the worst. "You stopped yourself. You recognized me. You knew better. That's a good thing, Fox. You lost your head for a minute. We can work on that, you and I. I can help you sort through it. I can help you learn to control your temper when things are bad like that. Shhh, Gods, Fox, you're killing me. I hate seeing you like this."

He nuzzled his face into me and I stroked down his neck, then back up and into his hair, scraping my nails against the skin so that he groaned against my belly. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I couldn't hurt you. I promise, Cyril, I couldn't--"

"I know," I cut him off and cupped his face, tilting it back so that he had to look at me. I thumbed over the tears beneath his eyes and on his cheeks while he fought for some control of his emotions. "Did beating him to death make you feel any better? Did it fix anything for you? Because I'm pretty sure I still remember what he did." I pretended to think for a moment. "Yes. Definitely still remember."

Fox choked and winced, shaking his head and burying it back in my clothes. His voice was muffled when he spoke. "No," he mumbled. "I thought it would. I thought it would feel liberating. I hate him. I hate him so much. He took...he took something from you. You can't...you can't ever get it back and I--I--"

"You wanted it," I finished for him gently. "That's what this is about then?" He shrugged and then nodded miserably.

"Maybe a little bit. Is that selfish?"

I heaved a sigh and pulled on his shoulders, urging him to his feet and he got clumsily up, laughing at the way he wobbled like he was dizzy. I gave him a shove toward his bed and he crawled in, grasping my wrist at the last minute to pull me in with him. I let him arrange me how he wanted, draped over him like a blanket, straddling his hips, chest to chest. I could feel his heart against my own and shifted to press my lips over where it was beating. His breath hitched but the way he hiccuped right afterward did little for the sexual tension. It only made me giggle.

Carefully, I folded my hands on his chest and rested my chin atop them so that we were facing each other. "It is selfish," I assured him and he flinched at the word, a troubled expression crossing his face. "But it's also sweet." It was more than sweet. I glowed at the idea that he'd wanted me before then. That he'd wanted me at all before we'd gone through all of this. "You have plenty of my firsts, you know. First kiss, first blow job--recieved and given. First real relationship, first time I've woken up in someone's arms. First love."

His tears were giving way to a smile then and he mussed up my hair before letting his hands slip to my shoulders. "Brentlyn was right. Murdering someone and killing in battle is different," he murmured. "I feel...unclean."

I took a deep breath and shifted my hands so that they were palms down on his chest, then I began gently kissing his long torso, sliding my tongue along the lines that were drawn in his skin--muscle and smooth, toned flesh. "For what it's worth," I told him quietly. "I'm so very, very grateful. It may not have made you feel better to do it. It may not have fixed anything but lets look at this way: He hurt me. Then he hurt Kinnon. Who knows who else he's done awful things to? It's better this way. He can't hurt anyone else. Whatever reign of terror he was presiding over is finished."

Fox hummed in appreciation and the more I kissed him, the more he stiffened between his legs until I reached up to palm over him through his trousers. He groaned, lips parted, eyes dark and half-lidded when I looked up at him next. A flush had risen to his cheeks. "We're not having sex," he warned me, his brow furrowed.

I snorted in response, rolling my eyes. "Please, we're not having sex for days. My bruises have bruises."

It was his turn to snort, half in disgust and half in amusement. His hips lifted as I stroked him through the fabric and he chewed his bottom lip. "Then what are you doing, sweet thing?"

I hooked my fingers in the fabric and grinned as I dragged it down. "Thanking you."

Chapter Text

I spent months catering to Fox's mood. He was a storm of ups and downs. Sometimes the exuberent, charming, witty boy from my youth was back in full-force. We went to a lesson and he made faces at me the way that he always had. He pinched my sides, wrapped my hair around his fingers and tugged gently to get my attention when I was furtively ignoring his ridiculous behavior in favor of trying to read the historical text on Immaran political infrastructure that I was meant to be absorbing. He laughed, all wide smiles and clear, gleaming bright eyes the color of the massive pine forests in Glacia. Those were the times when, even if he was being absolutely impossible, I just wanted to stare at him. Take him in. Commit the way he looked to memory so that later, when we were alone, I could outline his body and commit the way he felt to memory as well...so that I could have a complete picture.

And then sometimes, seemingly without a trigger, his mood would turn dark and he would shy away from everyone. He flinched from touch. Those beautiful eyes with their thick, long, dark lashes would turn inward and the flash of emotions betrayed in expressions ranged from horror to guilt to unbearable agony. His shoulders hunched and he cradled his torso. Those were the times when I had to take him by the arm, ignoring the way he cringed at the touch, and lead him somewhere until he could get a grip on himself again.

Fox was a disaster. He could reason with himself that he'd done the world a favor in killing Ivar. I had spoken to several members of the Court about the atrocities of the man's crimes while Fox was curled up in bed that first morning. I played them up, not that I really had to, and was always careful to leave out exactly who it was that was so close to him--who had been hurt, whose suffering had brought about such intense pain for him. I doubted they would feel much sympathy if they knew it was me, a Lierian, a House-less brat from a brothel, an orphan. I relayed to them that it was an accident. He hadn't meant to kill him but, really, could they blame him? They clicked their tongues and shook their heads. No, of course they couldn't and so I spun the tale to make Fox the victim. Of course, I believed he actually was, but an outsider would have been less forgiving if they'd known his intentions had been to kill the man.

The hours when he could believe that he'd performed a civic duty were the ones when I recognized him as the man I so dearly loved. He enchanted me. I lived for the spearmint and citrus smell of his soap that lingered on his skin and in his black hair. I daydreamed about the way his mouth tasted, the way it shaped mine, the tender way he ran his hand down my spine when I was still half asleep. This was the person I wanted him to be and he was that. He just couldn't be it all the time. Not right now.

The hours when he was unable to convince himself that what he'd done was a service were the dark times. I couldn't count the number of shirts he'd soaked through, sobbing into my lap, struggling to come to terms with the slaughter of his own convictions. Fox was one of those Corians that found the mention of executions in old texts to be repulsive. Life, no matter how poorly it was lived, was still life.

We were having a dark moment that late afternoon. I'd been trying to get down to speak to Kinnon for over a week but with Fox in the state that he was, leaving him alone or even with Brentlyn, was a risk I wasn't necessarily prepared to take. I worried about what I would come back to--Fox at a high, reading and pacing at the same time, hair mussed, glasses pressed tight against his face. He'd be too strung out to sleep, to stop, and he would talk without space between his words. Alternatively, I could have come back to Fox at a low, curled in a corner against the fireplace, praying like I'd never seen him do before because to murder was to lose what made you human.

I had been sitting on his desk, absently sifting through reports from the city watch about crime rates and the size of the national treasury. Fox was wrinkling his nose at a textbook written in Old Immaran, trying to make sense of their ancient verb tenses because war was on the horizon and he insisted he had to know his enemy. I saw it hit him. It was a wash of emotion over his face and then that frightened look, wild eyed and flushed. The book snapped shut.

"Fox?" I was still holding one paper, having been marveling in the domestic picture we made, going about our own business but too wrapped in each other to be apart. He'd been using my lap as an arm rest. I liked the way he felt. His arm trapped heat against my legs, the book held open in his hand. His fingers fanned across the back and spine and his thumb kept it open. Occasionally, I would run my fingers through his hair and let my hand linger at the back of his neck. There was an elegant simplicity to it that shattered the moment his eyes glazed over.

He stared up at his name. He wasn't quite as bad as he'd been the day it happened. He was never completely gone. He feared being a tyrant. He was terrified of becoming one of the Kings that the histories bathed in bloody, gore-filled pages of their ruthless accounts. He feared being cast out by the Gods from their eternal halls in the afterlife.

Mostly though? Mostly he feared me.

Those wide, lovely eyes filled up with unprecedented fear and his arms tangled around my torso without a word. I dropped my paperwork, burying my fingers in his messy hair. I slid them down his back, rubbing in small circles, my body hunched over his while I struggled to comfort his shaking. "Shh, Fox," I breathed. "Talk to me."

He remembered the event in disjointed, illogical chunks. His timeline was off. His nerves had frayed so badly that when it came back to him, it came back to him like this--that time between the throne room and when he'd lifted that whip like he might hit me with it. "I knew he was going to die and I kept hitting him," he admitted, his voice trembling, hoarse, and low. It rocked my whole world to see him like this. My own emotions were engaged in a delicate tight-rope act. One wrong step and I was going to fall off the edge just like he had but I had no net. He had me but in his state, he couldn't be the support system that I was being for him. I didn't want to ask that of him. He'd been that for me for so long. I owed him this much, at least.

I pursed my lips and clicked my tongue, letting him keep his face pressed into my chest. There were no tears yet, at least, but we weren't out of the woods, so to speak. "Sometimes people make bad decisions," I explained gently. I was no motivational speaker. I had learned that very quickly following Ivar's execution. I was much better equipped for scathing remarks and political backstabbing. Fox was the motivational one. "Not that you made a bad decision, Fox. You acted based on emotion. You behaved according to your heart instead of listening to what you knew was right. That's not...a bad thing. There is a time and a place for that kind of decision making. I'm supposed to be your system of checks and balances and I...I was too invested in this. If the fault for this is on anyone, it's on me." And I was okay with that, quite honestly, because I had wanted to put a knife in Ivar's gut the minute he touched me and because I truly believed that what Fox had done was a community service.

"I butchered him," he lamented. "And I enjoyed it. I didn't want to stop. Cyril, I--I--"

And we were back to this. To the way he'd pushed me, to how he'd lifted that whip. I had actually slapped him--bloodied his mouth, even--and felt less guilt for it. Perhaps it was the part of him that was called to protect that made his anguish so profound.

"Nothing," I finished for him. "Nothing happened. You didn't do anything. You destroyed someone that tried to destroy me. Even if you butchered him, acted on emotional instability, and found it riveting, how could I fault you for that? Fox, if someone did to you what he did to me, I would have cut his cock off and forced it down his throat." My tone was bitter, angry about even thinking such a thought. It made my blood boil and my hands clutched at him like I was trying to keep him safe from something. From himself, from everyone else, maybe even from me if I could think something that violent.

His hands balled up in my clothes, making them feel tight across my midsection, and he rubbed his cheek against my chest. He stayed there for a moment, eyes half shut, seemingly intent on listening to my heart beat while I bent to kiss the back of his head. "How can you love someone that could hurt you?" he finally whispered.

I balked, horrified and hurt that he'd even suggest what had come out of his mouth. I had to remind myself that he was hurting. He was feeling an intense level of self-loathing. I tried to remember the days after Ivar had been in my bed when I'd been contemplating the ridiculous, butterfly belly feelings I was having for Fox and how, after that had happened, I'd convinced myself that he could never, ever want me. I was broken. Used. Ruined. He'd saved me before the hatred I had for myself had become a permanent fixture. He'd swept me up with his devotion and his charm, carried me into the adventure that was us, and kept me captivated with every word.

"How can I not?" I finally answered, leaning back so that I could take his face between my hands. His cheeks weren't dry anymore but he hadn't soaked my shirt. He was trembling, working his bottom lip into another bloody mess and I brushed my thumb over it to stop him. His face was tilted but he kept his eyes down and I hated it. I hated that his confidence was gone, that his fight was gone, that the defiant, brilliant, bright sun in my life was a dying star. Watching Fox was like watching sand slip through an hourglass that was glued to the floor. No matter how much I pushed or pulled or beat my fists against it, the sand in the top kept sliding toward the bottom.

Soon, there would be nothing.

I gathered up more courage and turned my expression into something forceful and stern. "Look at me," I ordered, grabbing for his jaw so that I could shake him and get his attention. His eyes blinked. Once, twice. He looked up at me, glassy eyed and shattered. "I'm losing you. Every day, Fox." He flinched and I heard him swallow. "You're so caught up on this idea that you don't deserve to be loved because you executed someone."

"I beat him to death," he corrected me disdainfully. "And I enjoyed it, Cyril."

"You deserve this. You deserve me. You deserve better than me. I don't know how many times I have to tell you that I love you before you'll believe it. I'm running out of words here. I'm not good at comfort or healing or being motivational. I can only tell you that I love you and pray that you understand the gravity of the statement." I closed my eyes, pulling him up to me so that I could press my forehead to his. "I stay here every day. Every night. For you. Not because I'm your second. Not because you're the Prince and I owe you loyalty for being fortunate enough to slither out from between the Queen's thighs."

He snorted. I breathed a sigh of relief. Making fun of his mother always brought a degree of light to the room. So did poking at his many titles, talking behind Brentlyn's back, or hiding under the bed to scare the piss out of the maids--all of which I'd been reduced to doing for him lately, just to get him to smile. "I'm here for you, Fox. Not for the Prince, not for the Kingdom--"

"Not for the sex?" he asked, his eyes brightening. He lifted an eyebrow and I swatted at him gently.

"Maybe a little bit," I relented, wrinkling my nose and pretending to toss the idea around. "The sex is pretty fantastic."

"Fucking fantastic," Fox corrected. The smile was back. The darkness was being battled away, pushed from his face. I felt triumphant, my hands sliding down to curl around the back of his neck. He was bracing his weight with his hands on my legs, his face up and close enough to mine so that I could almost taste the remaining tears on his cheeks. All he ever needed was to be reassured, to have someone to lean on, someone that cared about who he was instead of what he was and Gods, I knew how that felt.

"Or," I said slowly. "Fantastic fucking?"

Fox laughed and it was the best sound I'd heard in weeks, especially since that heated sensation in the pit of my stomach was starting to worm around inside of me again. I had been pointedly ignoring it for the past day because other than sucking him off a few times, we hadn't engaged in much. He was either exhausted from a really ridiculous high or too low to feel like doing anything but sleeping. The few times I got him off, I'd refused the offer to reciprocate. I wanted to take care of him. I wanted to get him there and then watch him mumble sleepily until his eyes slipped shut.

His laughter brought mine on, his cheek pressed to mine. We were entangled in a fit of near silent giggling, my arms around his ribs so that my hands clasped over the ridges and ropes that made up his back through the thin fabric of his shirt, and my legs hanging loosely around his hips. It wasn't really that funny but his happiness made me joyous.

In mid-giggle though, he tipped his head and caught my mouth with his own, swallowing up the sound that turned quickly into a moan when his tongue brushed by my lips. He leaned in to me, his hands still on my legs, sliding up toward my hips an agonizing inch at a time. It was long and slow, a lazy but firm claiming of my lips, tongue, and teeth. It didn't take long to work me up, not when I was in the throws of a heat, and I was just a day from reaching that fever pitch where I couldn't manage much of anything other than wanton begging.

I wasn't overly thrilled at the idea of sex with him when he was in such an up-and-down frame of mind. I couldn't stomach the thought of him hitting a high and then crashing afterward. I knew I would blame myself, however irrational it was, but something in him called to that part of me that was inescapable right now and so I let his hands glide over me. They slipped from my legs to my hips, my hips to my stomach, beneath my shirt and up my chest, then back out of the fabric so that he could cup my face. His hands curled gently around my jaw, his thumbs on my cheeks. He broke from that kiss only partially, dragging my bottom lip out with his teeth while he sucked in air between them and I panted. He dove right back in, like he couldn't get enough, like he was trying to drown in me and with that sensation, I was ready to let him.

I gripped his hips and pulled him closer, tightening my legs around him. He whispered my name into my lips and my head dropped back so that he could kiss down my throat. His hands moved to the buttons of my shirt, tugging them open carefully and then letting his mouth ghost over every inch of freshly exposed skin.

"Fox," I started, my voice pitchy and needy. I planted one hand on the desk and leaned back while the other tangled in his hair until he reached my naval and his tongue slid into it. I groaned and bit my lip, eyes half shut.

"Shh," he hushed me. He let the fabric fall off of me and I pushed it off of the desk, wrapping my arms around him when he came back to my mouth for more slow, burning kisses that seared all the way down to the painfully hard length of me pressed uncomfortably in my trousers. He moved over my cheek and nuzzled my ear affectionately. I knew the sweet, gentle nature of him had to end soon. This wasn't what Fox was like in bed. He was commanding, powerful, an addiction that I constantly needed a fix of and while I liked this, that animal part of me wanted more so when he licked the shell of my ear and I heard that wicked, tiny laugh brush through his mouth, I knew it was over. "I want you bent over this desk."

"Oh my G-" I trailed off into incoherent babbling when his hand reached between my legs, found the prize he sought, and squeezed hard enough to make me see stars. My breath caught, my hips rolled against him, my legs stiffened--I was a mess in a moment, with one touch, and there was no way I was denying him what he wanted.

He spoke while he undressed me, his lips over the skin he exposed. My shoulders, my arms, my back. He licked both of my hip bones and kissed my thighs when he peeled my trousers down. His tongue slid up and down the hard, aching length of my cock and then he swallowed it. I could have finished like that, just the feel of him there, taking me with such a remarkable ease into the tight, blistering heat that was his mouth. My back arched and I grabbed for his hair, babbling his name like it was a mantra. I squirmed on the desk, sweat slicking my skin already, that heat licking my insides like a blacksmith's fire had taken light in my belly and he was stoking it to a rage. I couldn't comprehend how I'd ended up here--sitting naked on top of reports with the Monarchy's seal stamped into them, while the Crown Prince sucked me off, his stubble a delicious scrape against my thighs every time he bobbed his head.

He didn't finish me like that. He climbed to his feet and brushed his thumb over his lips, making a show of sucking on the pad of it so that I shivered and watched him, wide eyed, hard, and soaked. He lifted me up with his hands on my hips and my toes curled against the floor while I clung to him. "You soaked my desk, little one," he whispered, his tone almost accusatory. I was too dizzy to answer him, trying to wrap my arms around his neck and pull him down. I could feel that I was wet. More so than I had ever been with him and I attributed that to the biological nightmare that was my body. It was slick down my thighs when I stood up and he bent to give me the kiss I was demanding.

I pulled at his shirt, whimpering until he let me peel him out of it. "I want to feel you," I pleaded and he cocked his head until I pressed myself against him, his heated skin against my damp flesh, my fingers curling in his hair. I had to stand on my toes to even nip at his mouth and he stayed just out of reach, watching me struggle with a lazy smile on his face. He reached around me, his hands squeezing my backside, kneading and spreading me while I cried and panted, pushing it out toward his hands.

My fingers hooked in his trousers while he continued and I gave up my search for a kiss, leaning instead to lave my tongue over one of his nipples, circling it and sucking. I worked at his buttons while he moaned above me until I could plunge one hand into the front of his trousers, grasp him, and begin to stroke hard and fast.

There was no controlling what I wanted when I was like this. There was no controlling me. I turned practically feral, hell-bent on my goal while he teased me, his fingers sliding into the cleft of my backside, circling that tight, aching hole. "Fox!" I cried his name against his chest, trying to rock my hips back enough so that he would breach me but he kept me mostly still, one arm around my torso and the other teasing like the soulless bastard that he was. "I'll do anything, Fox, please!"

"Don't beg, Cyril. How many times are we going to have to go over this?" His tone was sharp and, abruptly, I felt him strike me one side of my bottom. I yelped, eyes wide, clawing at now bare shoulders with one hand. It stung but there was an element of it that felt good and I gasped when he squeezed the spot where he'd spanked me. "Did you like that, sweet thing?"

I whimpered and moaned for a moment, trying to come to terms with the idea that I liked him hitting me. I'd been ready to stick my ass in the air and hold it open for Ivar to avoid being hit but with Fox...with Fox it my stomach clench deliciously. I nodded and, just as unexpectedly, he hit me again on the other side.

The noise I made was unholy, at best, and he chuckled before scolding me. "Use your words when I ask you a question," he instructed.

I nodded again and then quickly amended. "Y-yes!"

"Yes what?" Another smarting slap and I could feel my body flush from my knees to my face.

"Oh Gods," I moaned, clinging to him, my hand sliding from his trousers. I heard him hiss when it settled on his stomach, nails digging into skin. "Yes. Yes, I like it. Yes, use my words. Just yes!"

Fox grinned. I felt his lips on the top of my head while he rubbed the smarting flesh that was, no doubt, sporting his handprints in vivid red. He hadn't hit me nearly hard enough to bruise and while I was dubious about this sort of thing when I was in the right frame of mind, I wasn't exactly in the right frame of mind and I hadn't told him that nor had I reached a point where he would notice on his own. "So you want more?" he asked me gently.

I whimpered and clenched my teeth, a frustrated noise escaping my mouth. I may have even stomped my feet, desperate and needy and so hard that even if he'd actually been beating me, I doubt I would have noticed. "P-p-please, Fox, I--"

Several sharp, biting blows connected on both sides of me. I angled my hips so that I could shamelessly present my ass to him for better access to his spanking, my face pressed into his chest, my fingers clawing for purchase on his sweating skin. I counted internally, keening and crying out incoherent adorations, until he stopped at six and spun me around to face the desk from the side. He nosed along my throat, arms around me from behind while I panted, my face the color of his walls. I couldn't tell if I was worked up or humiliated that I'd enjoyed such a debasing experiment in sexuality. I'd fallen quiet and he noticed, lifting his head to press kisses to my cheeks. "Thoughts?"

"I can't believe I let you spank me," I muttered and he chuckled, a low, husky noise that erased any misgivings I was having about it. Gods, I'd have let him spank me every time we were together if he did that again. I even moaned at the sound of it and he seemed to take that as encouragment. He urged me toward the desk until my hips bumped it and then gave me a little push so that I knew to bend over it.

"More," he ordered when I held myself up with my palms and I groaned until his hand on my shoulder forced my face down against it. "There's a good boy." He nuzzled the back of my neck, kissing along my spine. "Everyone has a bit of a slut inside, Cyril. Sometimes it's good to bring it out to play."

My breath hitched at the endearment and the debasement and my fingers curled around the edge of the desk. Fox was nudging my legs apart with his and I was gasping for breath with every stroke of his hands over the red, abused flesh of my backside. He scraped his nails over it and I arched my back, crying out and rocking against the desk like it could offer me some respite from the ache between my legs and up into my stomach. I was so, so hard. I could have finished just like that, just from his touch, erotic and sensual. I needed him. I tried lifting my hips to urge him, the urge to beg omnipresent and undeterred.

Maybe if I begged, he would spank me again.

"Please--"

He did. A sharp, blistering swat across my entire bottom and I jerked against the desk, my eyes rolling, a loud, pleading wail escaping my lips. If anyone was standing outside the door, which I knew his guards were, they knew exactly what we were doing. In a fit of lust and desperation, with my verbal filter gone, I uttered my next words to my complete surprise. "Thank you," I breathed and Fox's ministrations against my sore backside stopped momentarily.

He remained still. "Did you just thank me, little one?" His voice was as surprised as my mind was.

"Mmhmm," I moaned, my thinking faculties still incapable of issuing a 'what the fuck, Cyril?' to my libido.

"Why are you thanking me?"

I whimpered, eyes shut, panting against the desk. I drew a deep breath and exhaled, squirming when I felt his cock settle against the heated skin he'd been tormenting. He didn't enter me, didn't slide himself in the mess I'd made between my thighs. He just stayed there, his right hand on my left hip and his other hand cupping the heated evidence of my misbehaving. "F-for spanking me," I whispered.

"Oh, Cyril..." He pressed himself against me, chest to back, his hands braced on the desk so that I was enveloped in a cage of Fox. "You're sweet. We just need to curb that begging habit." He grazed his fingers over my backside again and my breath caught. I lifted my head and he dropped his so that his mouth was against my ear. "Your pretty little ass is glowing hot." He squeezed it for emphasis and I hissed. "And if I weren't so hard for you right now, I'd tongue fuck your sweet little body until you were a writhing mess in all of this paperwork you hold so dearly and then, Cyril, then when you thought you couldn't possibly take anything more...then I would fuck you."

"Gods, I love you," I managed just before he was sliding into me, my body shuddering when he breached it, stretching me wide in a burning ache that had me clawing at the desk, my nails leaving pale scrapes in the waxed wood. Whoever waxed it next would have an interesting story to tell, I figured. I had to hold my breath. I'd been with him before, more than once, but it always surprised me how big he felt when he was inside me. I tried to push myself up off the desk to gain some leverage so that I could have some kind of control but his hand in the middle of my back pushed me down.

Fox growled. "You stay down," he ordered and I knew, without question, that I was going to obey. "You just take it like a good boy, sweetheart, I'll do the work."

The flames in my stomach, the liquid heat that I felt because of what I was--it was a frantic, scorching burn now and even though I wanted to obey, I was struggling up again to try to get a deeper angle. Fox made a noise not unlike a grunt, caught my hands, and dragged them behind my back. He pinned my wrists to my spine and I whimpered, crying out when he finally started to move. He was slow at first, a lazy, aching thrust that hit all the right places but was just short of enough to be enough. I pushed up on my toes, giving him better access to my body, and he slid in just a fraction deeper but a fraction was all I needed. "Right there!" I cried the words, my eyes rolling when he hit that spot. I swear my vision dimmed with it and my fingers curled into fists against my back where he held them.

Almost lovingly, he laced his with mine and started to pick up a more productive pace. Every breath was a noise, a pant. I was mewling beneath him, writhing against the desk because with every thrust, he nudged that spot with such a gentle brush that it was almost a kiss. It was torture. "Tell me how you feel," he demanded quietly, burying himself balls deep so that I heard them hit my stinging flesh. I gasped and moaned, momentarily incapable of rational thought. He repeated himself. "Tell me how you feel, you sweet, sweet boy."

"Hot," I panted. "Turned on. Frustrated." I searched for words, trying to sift through ones I could make my tongue say and ones that seemed too much of a task. "In love. Full. So. Fucking. Full. Fox, I need you so bad!"

He let my arms go and ran his hands down my back, applying enough pressure to keep me down while his hips drove mine into the furniture. The papers stuck to my skin, I was on the verge of lapsing into a drooling, begging animal, pleading to be mounted and fucked despite the fact that I was, in fact, being mounted and fucked. "You have me, Cyril. I promise," he assured me.

I felt him shift and then he was pounding me, driving into that spot he'd been ghosting over so that my world lit up and I rocked against the desk with his hands on my hips, pulling me back to meet him with every hard motion. "I'm gonna--I'm gonna--"

"Whenever you need to, sweetheart," he cut me off and, with the words, slapped me sharply in the same spot he'd spanked me in.

I shattered like glass, broken into an incoherent, babbling mess, shooting all over my stomach, the desk, the paperwork I'd already soaked. My back arched and my toes curled. My whole body trembled. I could hear the wood creaking under me while I cried for him, benedictions of how good he felt, how much I loved him. "Inside me, Fox," I pleaded. "Please, please!" It was the only way he'd ever finished when we had sex but I felt the need to remind him that I wanted it and, for the first time, he didn't seem to mind the begging. He finished with a shudder, filling me with hot, sticky fluid while my body clenched around him, milking him for everything he was worth.

I remained face down on the desk, breathing hard, sweat soaking my pale, platinum hair. Fox was kissing down my spine and then sliding out of me to do the same to the red, tormented flesh of my backside. I felt his tongue on the sore skin and moaned but he didn't take it any further than that, simply gathered me up and took me over to his bed.

He kicked his trousers off the rest of the way and though I was a sticky, disgusting mess, he gathered me up and held me in a post-coitus bliss that rivaled every other euphoric moment of my life. My head lolled on his chest and I was only dimly aware of him humming quietly above me. He had a lovely voice. I'd told him that since it had cracked from the shrill tone of childhood into the honey-smooth tenor that it was now. I brought my hand up groggily from where I was cradled in his arms and brushed my fingers over his cheek. "How you feeling, champ?" he asked gently.

"Well-fucked," I answered sleepily and he let me slip from his lap. He toweled off the mess on my stomach and the insides of my thighs while I lay boneless in a pile of his satin pillows. Then he rolled me over and I heard the cap of a bottle untwist before something cool and smooth was dripped onto my stinging bottom. I hissed at the contact and then moaned when he started rubbing it in gently. I hugged the pillow under me and rubbed my face into it, a flush building in my cheeks as the sex haze slowly wore away.

Gods, I'd let him spank me.

I'd let him spank me and I'd thanked him for it.

I buried my face in the blankets to hide the heating of my cheeks while he tended to me. It was nice, despite the humiliation that had preceeded it. The heat that coiled in my stomach was sated and I felt deliciously loved, if slightly ashamed of my behavior. "You spanked me," I accused, looking up at him with narrowed eyes. I was hardly serious and incapable of hiding the grim smile that slipped in behind the glare.

Fox laughed and finished what he was doing, wiping his hands off on his sides before he settled in beside me, one of his long, bare legs slipping between mine. He put an arm over me, hooked at the base my spine. "And you thoroughly enjoyed it," he answered, lifting an eyebrow. "I believe I remember you thanking me. I should find more reasons to bend you over something and spank you."

I felt the flush come back with a vengeance and I swatted at him. "You should," I admitted and then I shifted to my side. Whatever he'd put on me was soothing and the sting had all but vanished with his tender care. I lifted myself up on my elbow to kiss him gently and he responded in true Fox fashion by licking the tip of my nose. I growled and he laughed again--it was almost normal. Almost like what had happened with Ivar had never actually happened...like he'd just stayed gone and we'd continued the way that we had been before.

I recalled my earlier goal of visiting Kinnon and thought, with Fox in this blissful state, it might be the best time. "Are you going to be okay if I head out for a little bit?" I asked gently, lifting a hand to toy with his damp hair while he settled into his pillows and drew the blanket up around himself.

His expression darkened momentarily and he fixed me with a steady gaze. "Where are you going?"

"I need to see Kinnon. I have...questions, you know? And you frighten him or he hates you or something. I don't know." I shrugged. "He's been here for nearly two months, Fox, and I've basically had Isabella holding him as a hostage. A very spoiled hostage, but a hostage, nonetheless, and we promised him we'd return him to his tribe. The sooner I get my answers, the sooner we can do that."

He nodded, though it was fairly clear he wasn't happy about me going without him. "Necessary evils," he sighed. "Will you wait until I fall asleep?"

I melted, leaned in to kiss his forehead, and agreed. "Of course, sweet thing."

"Don't steal my pet name." He shot me a glare.

I raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing over my mouth. "Or what?"

"Or I'll spank you again."

"Well, we wouldn't want that, would we, sweet thing?" I was pushing him and he was taking the bait, his face flushing while he squirmed to get comfortable. He was happy though. There was a smile at the corners of his mouth.

He looked up at me, all clear green eyes again. "You'd better keep your mouth shut or you'll be choking down cock before I spank you next."

My eyes widened at the promise and, not going to lie, I debated goading him on further. Instead, I focused on Kinnon and pressed a finger to my lips to let him sleep.

Chapter Text

I slipped out of bed later when Fox was sleeping soundly beside me. He was curled in a fetal position and I'd been draped around him, carefully running my fingers over his hair and then skating them down the length of his arm until I was certain he was completely asleep. Then I kissed his cheek, cleaned myself up more thorougly than he had, and got back into my clothes.

Leaving him was always painful, even if it was for a short amount of time, because the few times I'd done it to spin him as a victim in this whole debacle, I'd come back to a disaster. He seemed to be in good spirits following our...indiscretions...and so I was slightly less apprehensive about leaving him, especially as he was sleeping. Kinnon needed to be dealt with though.

I'd be lying if I said that my reasons for not seeing to him were entirely philanthropic. I hadn't liked his accusation of me or the way he'd spoken of Fox and the Corian people in general. Outside of Ivar, the Corians hadn't ever directly hurt me. I had been found in a Corian brothel yes, but on the border of Glacia. Assuming I'd been snatched from the closest tribe, it would have made me a native Glacian, not a Corian, and likely meant that whoever had done the baby-snatching had been a Glacian "Lier Poacher," or, one of the ruthless brutes that scouted out Lierian encampments for slave material. It was illegal in every kingdom I knew. Breeding Lierian slaves to get more slaves? That was condoned in all but Coria. Ripping apart families and selling small children into the sex market? Not so much.

I stopped at his door and steeled myself, my face drawn up and my brow furrowed. Izzy looked at me with a small, apprehensive smile. "Thought I'd be seeing you sooner than this," she said quietly, peeling her face covering away. "But then, Brent tells me your Fox isn't doing so well."

My Fox. I liked the way she said that and couldn't help the flush that rose to my cheeks because of it. Yes, he was mine. I'd just never heard anyone say it outloud like that or heard anyone acknowledge our relationship in a positive light besides Brentlyn. Ambrose had torn into me the minute he got me alone about how incredibly stupid it was to get involved with someone like Fox. He was the Crown Prince. He had obligations that were more important than me. I had obligations to the monarchy--an important role as an unbiased observer--to make decisions and provide counsel and how could I possibly do that if I was sleeping with the person I would have to constantly play devil's advocate with? He had valid points, of course, but none of them were points I wanted to hear. My simple answer had been that I loved him. I was happy. He was happy. I would have to deal with the consequences of that later but I believed Fox and I were comfortable enough in our roles of leader and second to be able to remove our private lives from them.

Fox had told me that Harlan had given him the same speech with the addition of the 'heirs and nobles and he's not even Corian' conversation. I was not impressed.

I cleared my throat and nodded at Izzy though, defaulting to my usual answer when someone asked me about Fox these days. "He's going through an adjustment," I answered stiffly. He was losing his mind. That's what he was doing. There was no adjustment about it. Fox was reaching the really high highs and the really low lows that usually had someone of his station removed from power and spirited away to spend the rest of their days on an estate in the country where nobody could ever see how stark raving mad they'd become. "It's a guilt he'll have to live with for the rest of his life, of course and for someone like him--" Someone so kindhearted, sweet, and compassionate. "--I can't imagine how it must feel to be responsible for taking a life."

And I couldn't, which he had pointed out to me several times in his darker moments. Izzy nodded sagely, a frown curving over her mouth. "Well, tell him I'm thinking of him," she offered kindly. "And you, Cyril. I'm thinking of you, too."

I was struck dumb by the comfort in her voice and the way she laid her hand on my arm, squeezing gently like she understood. I could only manage a stiff nod in response, my tongue refusing to form the words I wanted to say...to thank her, to promise that I would relay the message to Fox, that I appreciated her concern and her thoughts and all the time she'd put into helping us find Ivar or guarding me.

"I couldn't stand to see Brentlyn that distraught," she explained quietly. "You're much stronger than I could ever be. If you need to talk though, Cyril, or even just to scream about it...you know where I am. You know where Brent is." I hadn't had the time for Brentlyn lately. He hadn't complained about it but if he'd mentioned it to Izzy, he was missing our company more than I realized and I made a mental note to invite him to Fox's tower for breakfast the next day, perhaps even with Isabella in tow.

I smiled weakly and thanked her, returning her comfort with with a squeeze of her shoulder before I stepped into Kinnon's room.

It was a small affair. Or rather, it was small by royal standards. I was used to the wide, open space of Fox's bedroom or my own quarters with Ambrose. Kinnon's little room was cozy. A sitting room with satin chairs and tassled throw pillows and a bedroom cut out of the space by paper and reed dividers with the monarchy's sigil delicately painted on the side. It was done in creams and light greens...mint and seawater, mostly.

Kinnon was curled up on the couch, staring absently out of the barred window behind him. This was a room reserved for political prisoners of high station. In all the time I'd lived in the palace, I'd never seen anyone stay there except for the weeks when Fox was having renovations done to the tower and he'd camped out there to get away from his parents and his siblings. We'd built a fort using the seascape tapestries hanging from the walls and eaten a basket of stolen apple tarts from the kitchens, washed them down with too much wine, and laid awake in the dark, drunkenly talking until the early hours of the morning.

I dismissed the nostalgic yearn in my stomach when Kinnon looked up and, as he had the first time, scrambled down onto his knees in front of me. I had to fight the urge to roll my eyes. "Please, don't do that," I told him, my tone clipped. "Get back up and sit down on the couch."

He obeyed without question, his large eyes glued to me while he moved. I wasn't used to such blind obedience. I wasn't even that blindly obedient, not unless I was naked and squirming beneath Fox somewhere and even then, I knew that if I didn't want to do something, he wasn't going to force me to do it. Kinnon's actions weren't obedient because he wanted to be obedient. They were obedient to a different degree. This was a need, a learned behavior, and I sat down in the chair across from him intent on getting the answer to why he behaved that way...among other things.

"Infinito," he whispered. His voice was breathy and he leaned forward to get close to me, inhaled, and I watched while his eyes slid shut, his brain mulling over whatever the hell he was doing. A moment later and he was on me, climbing into my lap with his hands around the back of my neck and though I was bigger than him, it was only slightly. I tried getting to my feet, flailing awkwardly because while I didn't want to hurt Kinnon, I most certainly hadn't been anticipating him molesting me.

I could feel his breath on my throat and his nose against the pulse point there. His legs straddled my lap and I gripped the arms of the chair, leaning back into the cushions as far as I could. He inhaled again and a shiver slipped down his spine. "What are you doing, Kinnon?" I demanded calmly, swallowing hard, color rising to my cheeks.

It was good Fox hadn't come. If he had, I couldn't guarantee Kinnon would still have a head.

"You're in heat," he groaned and his tongue darted out, lapping at my heart beat through my skin. "Let me, Infinito. I can take care of it."

My mouth was dry and my brain was having trouble catching up to what was happening to me. Kinnon's hips moved the way that mine did when I was straddling Fox like this, a slow rocking toward my body and I made a strangled, terrified noise just as any thought of hurting him ceased to matter. I was bigger than him. I was healthier than him. "Get off of me," I tried one more time. "I don't want to hurt you, Kinnon, but I swear it, I will if you don't get off of me."

He seemed drunk. His fingers ran through my hair, his hips rolled. I was trying to focus on something, anything, other than him. Dead puppies, old people, Fox--

Bad decision.

"I know what I'm doing," he promised. "It's a little bit unorthodox without the rite but nothing about you has been orthodox yet, has it? Let me take care of you before you're rutting and begging for it."

"I said get the fuck off!" My patience snapped and I planted my hands in his chest, shoving hard backward and he toppled out of my lap, eyes wide, mouth open in surprise as he tumbled to the floor. I got up quickly, stumbling from the furniture so that if he had any ideas about fucking me or fucking himself on me or repeating whatever bizarre attempt at seduction that had been, he wouldn't have furniture to do it on and I was closer to the door. I still wanted my answers though. "You're going to get up, sit down on that couch, and if you so much as take one step toward me, Kinnon, I swear I will spill your insides all over the floor. I don't know what an Infinito is. I don't know what rite you're talking about. I don't know what a heat is. I was raised here. Here. In this palace. By a Corian, around Corian children, with very little access to the lore, language, or history of our people. I don't know how much more of that I have to explain to you or how many times I'm going to have to do it. I do know that you're going to explain what the fuck that was."

His bottom lip trembled and I had to remember how young he was and how he'd been hustled around the sex market. The poor boy had fucked up ideas about seduction in the first place. He'd probably never been declined when he climbed into someone's lap and offered to get them off, not looking the way that he did, all adorable, wide-eyed innocence. He looked much younger than he was and I knew that was a sought after look in the brothels.

"You're in heat," he tried again, climbing to his feet and then he readjusted. "Just...stay where I can't smell you. It's not...it's not like that. It's not like I actually want you. Not when you let that vile human put his hands all over you."

"His name is Fox," I spat. "And he's not vile."

Kinnon scowled and we remained at a stand-off for a few minutes before he began again. "You clearly came here for answers because you're an ignorant idiot that's never so much as tried to get back to his people. I have those answers. So lets start with the beginning, yes?" He gestured for me to sit and I declined, to which he shrugged and replied, "Suit yourself," before settling back into the cushion of his chair.

"The Infinito are the living Gods. There is only ever one that carries the title, though technically there have been up to three at a time. The youngest is always the revered. That would be you." He raised an eyebrow and I pressed my lips together. I'd gathered that much when he'd referred to me as a God. "They're all male. It's passed father to son. The Infinito is the arm of religion among the tribes and the functioning, unified leader. He binds us together in tradition, despite our differences and our distance, as one nation. One people. He solves disputes between the tribes, presides over important rites and ceremonies, and makes decisions that require the wisdom of a higher power...until you." His lips curved down and he looked pointedly away. "I don't remember it very well. I'm younger than you. I remember how my mother cried when news reached us that you were gone. I remember how everyone cried. With no leader, war is imminent. We're a varied people, Infinito. Our responsibility to our people as a whole and our responsibility to our tribe often conflicts. Without you, there is nobody to make those decisions except your father but he's not the Infinito. His heat is over."

I was staring, trying to absorb, chewing on the words while Kinnon watched me. So far, I wasn't too disturbed by what he was telling me. I'd grown up around royalty. Being royalty didn't seem that much of a big deal to me. It wasn't distanced enough from my daily life to be the sort of enchantment that it was to common people. I knew the heavy burden that it came with. I saw Fox struggle with it.

"How do you know that's what I am? What about my siblings? Can't one of them be the Infinito?"

Kinnon chuckled. "The marks," he pointed out. "They're the marks of the Gods. They come from your other father. They dictate his tribe. Your marks are Glacian. They're the ascended tribe right now because your other father is from the Glacian territories. Or rather, you would call them Glacian. We call them the Recians, from the warring tribes of the north. His name is Raevar. Or it was. I was poached just before my eleventh year. He could be dead now, for all I know."

"Raevar," I tested the word on my tongue and he nodded eagerly. It tasted familiar. A nostalgia washed over my stomach, pulling me toward a time I couldn't remember and laughter I didn't recognize. "My second father?"

He smiled again and his eyes studied me. "This will come as a shock, no doubt. Are you sure you don't want to sit down?" I sat and swallowed, staring dubiously at him as he shifted in his chair to avoid breathing me in. "The Infinito line is male. All male. They have one child. That's all they're good for. After that, they're barren."

"Barren? You mean sterile."

"I mean barren." His eyes remained fixed on mine and I tilted my head, confused. "You're in heat, Cyril." I marveled at the use of my name and wondered if, perhaps, having to explain things like this to me as if I were actually the ignorant idiot he accused me of being, had given him insight into how sheltered from his world I truly was. "Why do animals go into heat?"

"To get pregnant. But that's ridiculous, Kinnon. I'm decidedly not female."

His smile grew and the color on my face drained. Kinnon crossed his legs and stretched his arms out over the arms of his chair. "The Infinito carries his heir and when he comes of age, which is several years before the first heat, he takes the title and his father becomes his adviser until the cycle repeats. After the first heat, they begin the rite. One male from every tribe is called to the fathering tribe of the Infinito. The heat hits and...." He shrugged and held his hands up like I was meant to understand what he was implying.

I sputtered, heart in my throat, the world tipping around me. I was still stuck on going into heat. Getting pregnant. Carrying an heir. My stomach twisted. I pressed my hand to my mouth, clammy fingers clamped over my face. I had to swallow several times to fight the urge to vomit. "And what? They just take turns until one of them gets me pregnant? Oh shit, I can't even say that without wanting to puke."

"Every tribe deserves the right to claim the next God," he explained gently. "This is why you have to come home, Infinito. Without a new leader, without you and whatever child you will carry, we have no law. We have no religion. We're a dying nation. You owe your people their God. They love you. They miss you. They think you're dead and that there's no hope left for us. You could change that. You could change our history."

I could not do this. Not right now. Not ever. There was no way I could go back to them, submit to...to that. I tried to comprehend what it would mean but I couldn't get over the first, most horrific bit of information that popped into my head. Going back with Kinnon meant leaving Fox. It meant never seeing him again, most likely, because I'd have to raise some baby born of a massive tribal orgy and the pressing need to vomit became too much to fight back. Kinnon seemed to realize it and a moment later, he was holding a bowl under my face as I heaved into it, carefully holding my hair back and then offering me a flask of mint water to rinse my mouth. I took it gratefully, disregarding the fact that I thought he was an ass.

I couldn't leave Fox.

I couldn't condemn an entire nation of sentient people.

I sobbed and I felt like my chest would crack as I pushed him out of the way and fled the room. I ignored the way he called after me and the way Izzy did as well, both of them trying to catch me until she realized he'd left his room and caught him to take him back. I needed to get to Fox. I needed to be there. It was a drive in me unlike anything I'd ever felt and nothing mattered. Not breathing, not keeping my heart going, not a whole nation--just him. Just that smile and the sound of his voice and the cadence of his heart and the map of scars that marred his perfect, beautiful body.

I burst through his door, hysterical and out of my head with an indescribable amount of grief. I would be responsible for the downfall of my people, who depended on me as their leader the way that his depended on him, or I would be responsible for destroying him and as selfish as it was, I cared more about preserving him and what we had than the survival of the nation that had produced me.

Fox jumped up at the noise, startled out of a dead sleep, eyes wide when I stumbled into the room, struggling for air. I cupped my hands around my face, trying to urge myself to breathe slowly and deeply in an attempt to overcome the panic but I still sank to my knees and a moment later, he was beside me, arms around me, tucking me against him. After a moment of rearranging, he had pulled me into his lap and was squeezing me so tightly that it hurt but I wanted it. I was hurting so profoundly that my whole world seemed to bleed color and fade away toward black. Even with my eyes open, I could barely see. I couldn't control the tears, the violent sobbing or the way my entire body shook so hard that he was shaking with me. I struggled in his arms, clutching at his bare skin until he let me wrap myself around him, my face buried in his shoulder. "Don't let me go!" I pleaded, desperate and terrified and incapable of even stringing a coherent thought together without turning back to that looming decision on my horizon.

My people or him?

"You're scaring me," he admitted quietly. "But I'm not. I'm not letting go. We can stay like this."

"Promise me!" I demanded. "You have to promise, Fox!"

He did. Without hestiation. He repeated the words and let me stay there, rocking me gently back and forth until I'd cried myself into something near a comatose state. My arms and legs turned limp and he still held me, though I'm sure his own legs were numb from my weight. I'd clawed into his back and his shoulders but he didn't seem to mind and hours passed like that, my damp, raw cheek pressed to his warm shoulder. I could have fallen asleep had he not finally shifted me back so that he could look at me. "What happened?"

And I told him. I poured the information into him, dissolving back into panicked tears near the end while he hushed me and rocked me again. I couldn't even spare a thought for his mental state but he seemed capable of carrying me through this regardless. I told him about Infinitos, heat, heirs, how the Lierians were falling apart and it was my fault.

"You don't owe them anything," he assured me gently. "And you're not in any frame of mind to be thinking about a decision just yet."

"There is no decision!" I argued, horrified as he scooped me up and started for the bed.

Fox sat me down and when I looked up at him, his face was grim. "Isn't there? He wants you to go back with him. You've always wanted to learn about where you come from. He says you have a father out there, probably two that miss you and love you, Cyril. They've been robbed of your childhood. They lost their son. You're their leader. Try to look at it as a second and not as yourself. If I were facing this decision, what would you counsel me to do?"

He was peeling my shoes off and tugging my shirt over my head as he spoke. Then he slid into the bed next to me and pulled me closer so that I cuddled into him, still hiccuping and trying to calm my racing heart. I knew what I would do. Coria came first for Fox. It always did. It was my job to make sure that it always did. "B-but--" He pressed a finger to my lips and kissed the top of my head. "But I love you." I said it, muffled and slurred as it was from his shushing, and felt him chuckle at my insolence.

"I want you to pick me," he admitted quietly. "But I want you to know that if you can't, I understand it. I understand it more than anyone else would. They're your people and you, for lack of a better way to put it, are to them what I am to Coria. You know what that responsibility entails and so you grasp the weight of that decision. It isn't something you can dismiss flippantly the way that you could have had you been raised in that brothel...but--" He shifted and squeezed me tighter. "I also understand why you wouldn't want to, aside from me holding you back. You're more Corian than Lierian. You don't speak their language, you don't understand their customs, and you certainly don't like being in a leadership position. You don't owe them anything. This is your home."

"You're being...awfully detached about this. Like maybe you don't care if I go. Fox, I told you what that rite is!" He winced and, though the sun was still peeking over the horizon, it was dark in his room and the movement was but a shadow.

Fox took a deep breath and rolled me, landing so that he was straddling my hips. His hands were planted on either side of my head and he brushed a gentle kiss over my mouth. "Do you want me to fight you on it? Beg you to stay? Will it make it easier to make the decision if it's hurting me? Or would you remain more objective if you think that I'm undisturbed by it?"

"I want you to care enough to fight me on it, yes!"

His hands laced in mine and held them pinned to the bed. "I want you to stay," he told me, his voice low and dark. "I want it more than I want to breathe. I want it so badly that I'm thinking maybe I'll toss Kinnon back into a brothel or a dungeon or maybe he'll conveniently disappear. I want it badly enough to kill. Again. Just to keep you here with me. I want it enough that I'd throw all of this away to keep it. To keep you. Give Brentlyn my title, abdicate, disappear with you somewhere so that nobody can ever bother us again."

He painted a lovely picture and his devotions made my heart race. I pushed up against his hands but he refused to let me go. My heart felt broken but swollen with all things Fox and I squirmed under him, trying to lift myself enough to kiss him but he refused the advances. "Fox--"

"Shh. I want you to make the right decision, Cyril. I don't want you to resent me years from now for keeping you here like a caged bird. You belong with me, yes, I love you. You belong with them too."

"No," I argued. "I don't." I sniffled and lifted my hips toward his. "Now, are you going to sit like that and tease me or are you going to fuck me so that I forget about all of this?"

"And knock you up?" It was a joke. I could hear it in his voice but the tremor of panic below the surface was there too and bile rose in my throat again. I had to swallow it back down and wince on the burn in my esophagus. We hadn't been...safe, exactly. Then again, why would we have thought we had to be?

I licked my lips and nodded and he kissed the thin skin on my throat, drawing it between his teeth to suck and nibble a bruise into it. "Don't worry, little one. There are plenty of other ways to get you there."

Chapter Text

I spent the next three days in a semi-lucid haze of self-induced fever dreams. I sank into a deep, dark place in my chest that I hadn't known existed. I let Fox keep me in bed, curled up against him beneath a mountain of pillows and he loved me. Slow and long, he loved me like he had all the time in the world and I suppose he thought we did. I thought we did. I only seemed alive when his attention was on me. When he wasn't touching me, I replayed what Kinnon had said. I imagined the scenarios...the brutality...a group of hungry, sex-starved men that all wanted to claim the next God as one of their own, speaking in a language I no longer understood.

Tied up. Alone. Trapped. With all of them.

I woke up screaming Fox's name every time I fell asleep, clawing at him to get closer and whatever was happening to me seemed to jar him out of his own guilt, at least for the present time. I clutched at him and he soothed me with a quiet, gentle tones and soft, easy strokes of his hands on my body. Only Fox had ever sought to touch me just for the sake of touching me and I would grow warm and sentient again, sweat-slicked and needy for him and he would love me. He promised he did.

It just wasn't enough. For me, maybe. Not for everyone else.

In retrospect, I wish that I had dragged myself from that sickened nightmare to be what he needed me to be in those three days. I wish I could have spent it with him doing the things we normally did--watching Brentlyn at the shooting gallery, hassling Izzy, chasing Riordan through the gardens while butterflies landed on his nose, or lounging around alone together, content to just be what we were. Friends, lovers, companions. A prince and his second. Everything. Anything. Instead, I holed myself up inside my own head and even when Kinnon convinced Brentlyn to let him try to talk to me again, I'd collapsed into a panicked fit, positive that he was going to try to take me away. He kept telling me that he'd talked to the King. It was going to be okay. I hardly heard him over Fox ordering him out and then grabbing him by the arm to march him to the door and toss him through the threshold and into Brentlyn's apologetic arms.

I was in a state that verged on hysterics at a near constant rate. That particular day, I sat on the edge of Fox's bed in Fox's clothes, breathing in the way he smelled. I rocked myself, trying to memorize it, chewing on my fingers while he tried to talk to me. To soothe me out of the moment I was having. I shuddered when I breathed, my imagined, pornographic horror scene mixing with the memory of Ivar's breath on my neck and the feeling of him pushing into my body and how betrayed I'd felt by my own biology.

I didn't eat, because I threw it all up. I screamed in my sleep. I was more of a basketcase than Fox. It was like every trauma I'd ever suffered that I'd tucked away to deal with later was flooding my consciousness at the same time. My loving, beautiful prince with all his charming smiles and his pleasant touches and his sweet nothings tried his hardest to heal me but Kinnon had supplied me with weapons in the shape of words and rites that I used to cut myself apart. No matter how much he spoke, my sense of reality and my sense of self were bleeding out.

In the end, I had no decision to make because it was made for me.

Fox's door opened without so much as a knock and he got quickly to his feet. My eyes remained unfocused, my face angled toward the ground, my arms around my legs. I didn't startle until someone grabbed me, pulling me to my feet like I was a common criminal being dragged to the throne room for trial. I heard Fox's panic, the pitch in his voice change.

"What are you doing?" he demanded and I blinked, reality setting in around me. I was allowing myself to be led away but....

But I didn't want to go anywhere, did I? I looked around, caught the look on his face, and pulled back on the guard that was holding me. "Get off!" I snarled, but my weight was nothing and I turned to Fox for help. He always helped. He'd never let someone manhandle me--well, not unless he was doing the manhandling, but these weren't his hands only he couldn't reach me because Harlan had him. Harlan and Florian and he was kicking and fighting and I didn't understand. I couldn't comprehend it.

I fought harder, wrenching out of the grip for a moment only to be seized around the middle by a thick, strong arm. I beat my fists against him and screamed. "What are you doing? Put me down! I don't want to go! I don't want to go!"

"You can't just take him away like that!" Fox again, distressed, red faced. Crying? I tried to look but I was being jostled and pulled.

"It's for your own good and for his," the King explained gently but there was nothing gentle in what they were doing. "He belongs with his people. You need things that he can't give you, not really."

Kinnon. Realization hit me like the summer storms that battered the coast, destroying everything in their wake. The blood drained from my face, any hazy fever I'd been causing myself evaporated. "Stop!" I begged and everything Fox had tried to teach me fled my brain. "Please, Harlan, please!" I grabbed for the door of his room and pulled back, sobbing and hysterical. My heart was in a thousand smashed pieces, so crushed that bits of it were dust. I felt like a child again, begging not to have my toy taken because as a child, that had been my worst fear. To have something taken. It was still my worst fear but this was so much more than a toy. This was my life. Fox. Ambrose. Home. Fox.

Fox.

I looked up at him, saw him wrench himself free of Florian and duck under his father's arms and relief hit me like a flood. He caught the man holding me off guard, pried me from his grasp, and backed us both up into the room. His arms were so tight I couldn't breathe but I hardly cared. I was begging, hysterical, terrified. I was more than terrified. There wasn't a word for the fear that was rising in my stomach. "Please don't let them do this, Fox!" I pleaded like I'd never pleaded for anything before in my life, my arms around him, my fists knotted in his shirt. I buried my face in his shoulder and inhaled. I frantically tried to commit him to memory all over again, to refresh what I already knew.

Mint. Citrus. Sex. Sweat. Linen and laundry and summer days on the beach. Fox. The way his mouth felt and how rough his cheeks were when they scraped mine. His hands, the shape of his shoulders, the feel of his arms where they were gripped around my back. The tremble in him. Fear. He was frightened.

"You can't have him," he warned Harlan. "You can't do this. You don't understand what they'll do to him. He's not like them. He couldn't take that, Father, please. Listen to me, just once, just listen to me. He's been through enough!"

"I've entertained your eccentricities, Fox. This isn't about you," Harlan told him carefully. His tone was soothing again and I could tell he was getting closer to me though I hadn't dared open my eyes to see them cornering us like we were trapped rabbits.

There was no way around this. He couldn't save me from this, no matter how hard he tried. His father was King. Fox had a lot of power but he couldn't out-manuever that and they'd clearly made sure he hadn't had the chance to try. "I love him," Fox breathed and his grip on me tightened and I believed.

"I know you do," I promised for his father, a whisper against his ear and I felt the sob crack his chest. My Fox, my beautiful, strong, commanding boy with all of his precious, perfect flaws that made him the man I loved and he was begging. For me, because of me, maybe even for himself. I wanted to reassure him, not to hurt him more. "I love you too."

"Fox," Harlan began again. "He belongs with his people. He's going back to the Glacian tribe with Kinnon. He's not a pet you can keep here. Suppose we send Kinnon back without him? Within the year we have an army of his people demanding their God back. Demanding we give them what is rightfully theirs."

"He's mine," Fox argued. "Don't send Kinnon back. Keep him here. Do...something. Don't send him back then! Problem solved!"

I felt him take another step and his back hit the wall. His breathing was erratic, strained. I could feel his heart. Gods, I loved his heart. His hands, his mouth, the way he held me, the sound of his voice--memorize it, I told myself frantically. You're losing him, Cyril. Memorize it.

Harlan sighed behind me. "He belongs with his people," he repeated again. "He has a duty to fulfill. Surely, you understand that." There was a pause and I heard Fox's breath catch. "Take him."

Someone grabbed me again and he fought with all the ferocity of a caged animal. I clawed for him, pulling at his clothes, trying desperately to hold on while I squirmed and begged. I bit the guard holding me and heard him hiss when blood filled my mouth through the gap in his armor. I spit it back out but he was well-trained enough to not let go. "No!" I spat the word, writhing and screaming. I pulled at their hair with one hand, maintaining my grip on Fox with the other. I kicked and hissed and shrieked. That one hand meant more to me than anything else then. His own fingers eventually closed around it and his eyes met mine with such a heartbroken, apologetic, agonized expression that I wanted to die. I wanted to die for him, to stop what he was feeling and a sob wracked my chest.

"I'm sorry," he panted, the tears spilling onto his cheek when Florian finally pinned him to the wall and the other guard hoisted me up. I clung for that last second, his fingers latched in mine. "Cyril, please, I'm so sorry!"

Like if I forgave him I could stay? Or like he was apologizing for what he knew was going to happen to me when I got to Glacia with Kinnon. I wept like a child. Angry, frustrated, aching, broken. I was so very, very broken.

His fingers slipped from mine. I reached until I thought my arms would break but that guard kept going and I watched Fox sink, his back sliding against the wall, his head lolling to one side. "Bar the door, Florian. He's not to leave," Harlan ordered and I kept fighting. I knew it was futile but I wanted him to know that I had fought to the very end for him. I clawed down the back of my captor, I called him every name I knew, I spit at the King as they dragged me into the hall. I screamed. I scraped my hands in the stone to try to hold on and hardly felt it when my fingernails split and broke down to the cuticle. Nothing compared to the emptiness in my chest. Not even the knowledge of what was going to happen to me. I didn't care. They could have me. They could do whatever they wanted to me. Fox was gone.

Ambrose tried to speak to me at the second level of the tower. "You know what they'll do to me!" I accused him, squirming when the guard stopped, his arm still around my middle. I punched at it, then at him, tried to grab his helmet and wrench it off until Ambrose seized my arms.

"For King and country, Cyril," he told me simply. "Necessary evils."

"Fuck you," I spat and then I actually did spit at him, bloody and tear-filled and thick. "You took an oath, Ambrose. You took an oath to protect that family and you destroyed him. That was on your watch, under your counsel. Whatever pieces you have left of Fox? That's on you, you sick son of a bitch."

"Cyril--"

"Go lick his boots, Ambrose. It's what you're good for."

I could tell I was hurting him and I knew, realistically, that he was under Harlan's command. If Harlan made this decision and decided it was for the best, there was very little Ambrose could do but be supportive of it because Harlan was his King. I didn't care in that moment. I was spinning between hurt, destroyed, and shattered and then, just as quickly, I was venomous, spiteful, and hateful. It took them far longer than it should have to get me down the stairs. I was sickeningly proud of the fight I was putting up and I hoped Fox heard about it. I hoped he knew. He needed to know.

Brentlyn was at the bottom of the stairs, face red, tear streaked, trembling and when he saw me he started for me immediately. "I tried," he promised desperately. "I tried, Cyril, I fought so hard! I swear, I would never, never let this happen to you if I could stop it."

"Shut up," I told him hurriedly and grasped for words, still squirming. My arms ached, my chest hurt, my head was spinning. I couldn't stop crying. "Promise me you'll take care of him. Brentlyn, he's so broken. Please. He needs someone."

"I will, I will. Absolutely, everything. I'll do everything I can, I promise." He reached for my hands, caught my fingers and held them, bloody and broken for a few seconds, before I lost him too.

"He can't make a scene on the way out," Harlan told the man carrying me and all respect I had for the King was gone. I hated him. I wished death on him and his wife and his counsel. Everyone but his children. They all deserved to die. I wanted them to suffer the way that Fox was suffering. The way that I was suffering.

I was shifted, swung around to the guard's front and pressed so that my back was to his chest, one arm was around my waist, and then his hand came up to my mouth with a wet rag that smelled cloyingly sweet. I gagged and screamed. Brentlyn protested behind me but was stopped before he could reach me. It was pressed over my mouth and the world...

It disappeared.

Chapter Text

"Are you paying attention? You know, even a little bit? Fox!"

I startled, looking lazily up at Brentlyn through a mop of black hair that was almost always falling into my eyes. I hardly had the patience for this sort of thing anymore. Maps, battle plans, and strategy sort of made me squeamish when I had to face them but the Immaran invasion of two years prior was a pressing matter.

A pressing matter that I was always frantically throwing into Brentlyn's lap because he handled it better than I did. What, with my past indescretions when it came to murder, mayhem, and war...it was best that way. That didn't absolve me entirely of responsibility, not after being crowned three days earlier. As Crown Prince, shirking my duties in favor of being a spoiled brat had been somewhat expected of me. It was my modus operandi, had been since childhood, but for that dark year that nobody ever spoke about. Nobody but Brentlyn, of course, who had gotten it into his thick skull that he was my caretaker or my older brother or even my father figure, given that my father and I hadn't spoken in something like six years.

Something like. That was a lie. I knew exactly how long I had gone without speaking to Harlan. Six years, three months, four days. I glanced at the clock. Eight hours, twenty four minutes. I had that down to a science. Really, I knew it because while he'd sat there lecturing me about the importance of marriage and heirs and responsibilities to one's people, I'd stared blankly at the clock and watched the minutes tick by. It was exactly what I was doing while Brentlyn tried speaking to me, tried filling the role of second when he hadn't been trained for the job. He wasn't terrible at it. In fact, he was rather agood and he'd taken over when Ambrose had left the staff just one day after my pitiful lecture from my father.

He just wasn't...him. Nobody ever would be.

"I'm here," I drawled, turning my face up to blink at him. I propped my chin up on my hand and could see the flush of anger rise to his cheeks. Perhaps not anger. Frustration, maybe. Brentlyn very rarely got angry and he never did at me. Not anymore. I suspected there was a part of him that pitied me, though why he still felt the need to keep up with that promise he'd made to someone whose name I couldn't even say, I didn't know. It had been so long. "You said they would take the pass down through the mountains toward Glacia. We can hold them off at the border."

I pushed myself to my feet, leaning over the map to study the figures he'd placed. I tried to think about numbers, lives...necessary evils. My eyes kept sticking to the Glacian forest. "Or we could bring the armada up through the river delta. It's the wet season. The water level should be high enough to sustain the ships until they reach the open water in the river proper."

Brentlyn ground his teeth and looked down with me, plucking up the ship figures so that he could push them up the river and try to imagine the time it would take them to get there, get up the delta, and into the thick Hollen Wood River that stretched across the kingdom like a curved, misused spine. Then he fussed with the Immaran figures and attempted to calculate how long it would take them to reach the ships, provided they realized they were there, and cut them off at the mouth. "It...could work. Even if they did manage to find out, if we swung the foot force back..." He moved another set of figures. "Combined with the armada, we would have enough to hold the field and repel them from the border. That's a lot of dead men though, Fox."

"Necessary evils," I said softly, reaching out to brush my fingers over the Glacian forest.

"I wish we had Cyril," he finally said quiety and I flinched at the sound of his name, my stomach knotting, because even after six years, all I'd really done was compartmentalize and put on a mask.

When people say time heals all wounds, they're lying to you. Time doesn't heal shit. You just become conditioned to the pain as the days pass and eventually, you're only better at ignoring that you're hurting. Time teaches you the best way to bandage your broken pieces so that nobody can notice them. I was an expert at bandaging, a field medic in the matters of the broken heart. I put on a smile and I functioned because I owed it to my country. I sat on their throne, I attended their Courts, I presided over their balls, I protected their borders.

I stripped them of their slave collars. It was the very first thing I'd done when the crown had touched my head. No more importing, no more keeping them. They were free or those owning them were welcome to get the hell out of my cities. I'd done it on a whim and Brentlyn had scolded me for it but I'd spent the whole day of my coronation thinking about him. About Cyril. Where he was, what he was doing, if he'd even survived. I had to believe he had. I wanted to believe that somehow, I would know if he hadn't. I would feel it. I felt nothing--nothing but an aching pull in my heart toward the part of the map that was currently under question.

Glacia was burning. The Immarans had used their poorest ally as a staging ground and Coria wasn't the only kingdom launching armies in their direction. The refugees pouring in from the north were from all walks of life, though they were all decidedly of the same variety of human. No pale haired, wide eyed Lierians stumbled out of the wrecked forests to seek refuge elsewhere. I suspected they were too proud.

I took a deep breath. "Well, we don't," I answered numbly, drawing my shoulders up so that I appeared at least a little bit steady. "And we never will and I would prefer if you didn't bring him up. Ever, Brentlyn."

My brother tensed and pulled a face, a grimace that was mixed with pity. I could only scowl down at the table in response. "You have Natalya now," he murmured, his hand moving tentatively to my bicep. He squeezed, some kind of attempt at comfort, and I shrugged him off. "It's still that bad, Fox?"

"Yes," I snapped back. Brentlyn had good intentions. Wonderful intentions, really, and he was right. I did have Natalya and she loved me the way any noble's daughter would have. She batted her eyes, she had excellent manners. she spoke several languages, and wrote poetry in her free time. She was beautiful in a way only real Corians could be with her sun-tanned skin and her long black hair. She had a supple mouth, eyes the color of toffee, and she put up with me. Really, the last part was the most important aspect. She put up with me and within the next month, I was going to marry her. We would have adorable little royal babies with dark hair and green eyes. We would train them up the way that Brentlyn and I had been trained, the way that Riordan was being trained, and call ourselves decent parents in the process. Or at least, that was the public plan.

Realistically, I'd been sleeping with Natalya for three years and we'd never so much as had a scare over a baby though I was aware that she had, in fact, lost one with someone else before she was with me so I figured the fault was mine and that was okay with me. I didn't actually want children, not really. I didn't love her.

It sounds cruel. I liked her. Really, truly, I liked her. She was a good friend and she'd been a good friend before we'd gotten involved. Of all the women that my father had tried to force on me, she was the only one that hadn't grabbed my thigh, leaned in, and whispered, "Let me make you forget about him." Natalya had been real with me. She'd sat down in the chair across from me where I'd been petulantly glaring at the ground, crossed her arms, and said without hesitation: "It's never easy to lose someone but I've found that screaming about it tends to help for a little bit."

And she knew. She knew from the start that I didn't--couldn't--love her but she stayed. I was the King. I had the world to offer her. Marrying me would bring her family wealth and notoriety. Her children (which was a joke, obviously) would be royalty and I wasn't an awful person. We got along. The sex was good. Great, even. She just wasn't him and she knew that. She never would be.

Brentlyn straightened himself out as the door swung open. The wail of the baby was all I could take before my nerves completely fried and Isabella passed the little girl off to Brentlyn with a glare that, if looks could kill, would have struck him down. "Take your daughter," she ordered. "You wanted to do this parenting thing sans nanny. You do it, Brentlyn. I am going to take an hour to sit in complete silence and contemplate how you are never, ever touching me again."

"Ouch," I mumbled, rubbing the back of my neck while Olivia shrieked, flapping her arms and squawking. She arched her back, her limbs boneless. She did that to me when I tried to hold her. It was the most frustrating thing babies were capable of doing and I was so convinced that they knew it. "That's my cue to leave, kid. Send the fastest scout with those orders."

My brother shifted the infant, holding her around the middle so that her arms dangled in front of him and her legs behind. To be fair, she was nearly two, so not exactly an infant, but I still doubted Isabella would approve of that particular position for the littlest princess. I arched an eyebrow. "Not a word," he warned me. "Don't forget the coronation march starts tomorrow at dawn. It's the whole length of the kingdom, Fox. Miraena is going to sit court while we're gone and Natalya is staying behind to see to Riordan's lessons."

"Does Riordan not have parents anymore?" I snarked, rolling my eyes at the thought of the former King and Queen who were, for all I knew, vacationing in the country far, far away from where I could do anything to them. The amount of times I'd threatened to throw Harlan on the post had frayed his nerves or something. That was what Miraena told me, anyway.

"Mother checked out before Riordan was Olivia's age. Father checked out when you decided you hated him and I decided he was a pompous, arrogant, weak, bigot who had no business leading a Kingdom because his fifteen-year-old daughter was better equipped and had bigger balls than he did."

I couldn't control the laugh that bubbled up at the statement. Olivia had picked up one of the Immaran pieces and was chewing on the clay figure's head, waving up at me from her awkward position. "Fox, Fox, Fox," she babbled, grinning through a mouthful of drool and I cringed as a long rope of it started for the ground.

"Your child needs a bath," I pointed out and Brentlyn huffed, sitting her down next to him where she promptly began to beat the Immaran figure off the carpet. "But it appears she has a decent head for strategy already. A couple of years and maybe you'll have a replacement for--" I caught myself and Brentlyn watched as my eyes widened. A replacement. For Cyril. Nobody would ever fill that hole, not for me, and I shook my head at the notion before exiting the room and coming face to face with Natalya.

She was grinning. It was a slow, lazy expression that I liked on her. Her arms were crossed and she was tapping her fingers against them. She noticed the difference. The change, the way my face was paler than normal and how I kept my eyes down at my feet, just trying to power ahead and escape anyone that might try to stop me. She was always good at stopping me. "You look like you need to scream," she pointed out, citing the words she'd used in our first meeting so many years ago when I was still so angry and hurting and lost.

I swallowed hard and Natalya pouted, taking me gently by the shoulders before pulling me forward and throwing an arm over them. We walked in silence, the guards behind us a slow procession because I wasn't going to say anything with anyone standing there. My outspoken nature had died. The wit and charm that came with it had been deadened. Every waking moment of my life was an agony that I struggled to accept and get over and every moment that I did get over it was a decision. I had decided to keep going. I had decided that it wouldn't hold me back but there were some moments, like this, when those last images of him in my room would come back into my head and I could almost hear him screaming. I remembered the scrapes along the walls where he'd fought, the guilt over my inability to save him, his pleading.

His promise that he loved me.

Natalya guided me toward the monarchial wing, opened the door of my father's old study, now my study, and sat me down in one of the chairs that surrounded the desk. "Hit me with it, baby," she ordered.

I heaved a sigh and squirmed under her gaze. Of all the things I loved Cyril for, communication had not been one of them. We had been terrible at feelings, at talking things out. He coddled my tantrums and gave me what I wanted instead of what I needed. I peeled his weaknesses away and used sex as a way to get around talking about what was bothering us, bothering him, because I didn't want to know that he was hurting. It was bad enough to see it and I knew that physically, at least, I could take that pain from him.

Tally didn't allow that. She made me listen. Made me talk. Sat me down like a spoiled teenager and waited out my fits. It had been hard, at first, but in this one thing she was better for me than he ever had been.

I remembered something I'd said to him once about how he looked okay and then sometimes, in tiny moments that only I noticed, he wasn't okay. His eyes would go dead and wide, his hand would tremble for a brief second, and he would snap back to reality. I felt like that now. "Sometimes I'm fine. Usually, I'm fine. I can get through a day without actively thinking about it. Then sometimes...sometimes everything reminds me of him. I think about how he screamed for me and I couldn't...I tried, Tally. I fought so fucking hard. Then today, with the map--"

"That was his thing, wasn't it? The maps?"

I smiled at the memory from before we were lovers, watching Cyril scowl down at a war map like some kind of overlord, destroying everyone in his path and claiming victory regardless of the cost. I nodded though and Natalya sat down across from me, her legs crossed, her elbow on her knee and her chin in her palm. "I can't remember his voice," I admitted weakly.

Natalya took a deep breath. She understood grief, perhaps better than most. She'd been in love before me, ready to be married, and then the plague hit and her world was gone. She lost her suitor, their baby, both of her parents and while she loved me the way that she was supposed to love me, she didn't love me the way that she needed to. I wasn't that first man and I never would be. We were a mess together, but it worked for us, and Natalya knew how to move on better than she knew how to do anything else. "That's the first thing you lose," she told me gently, leaning forward to put her hand over my knee. "Sometimes when you really think, you can pull it from a memory but just trying to hear it...to hear words they'd say or what they would think or imagine them speaking to you...Fox, baby, you have to let him go."

Oh, I knew. I knew that better than I knew anything else but the stubborn, willful, demanding part of me that had always infuriated Cyril refused to let it die. He was out there, somewhere, and I had this secret idea that when we invaded Glacia and drove the Immarans out, I would find him. I'd sweep him up back into the storm that was my life. He would take me back without question. Everything would be like some kind of fucked up fairytale.

Unrealistic. When I was honest with myself, I admitted that Cyril probably had a baby by now. He would have relearned his native tongue and customs, taken to the role of leader because he'd been trained to assist a leader in Coria. Maybe he would fall in love with whoever had fathered that child. Maybe, somewhere, he was happy, and that made me feel too many things at once. Jealousy, desperation, anxiety, anger--I wanted to be the person he loved. I wanted to be the one he ruled with. He was mine. I'd said it. He'd agreed. He was mine and I wanted him to stay that way but if he was happy...he deserved to be happy. The thought of him happy, while it brought up all those negative things, also put my mind at ease. Perhaps it wasn't so bad. He could adapt, my little one. A strange looking boy in a strange land full of people that thought of him as an object, raised by royalty, betrayed by the man that had saved him--and still, he adapted.

He was stronger than I ever had been.

I tried to shrink into my chair, guilty over the emotions that were searing through my veins. "Sometimes," I whispered, nearly choking on what I was about to say because it was abhorrent and I was ashamed of it. "I think it would be better if he'd died."

Natalya's face softened and she moved, squirming against me until I shifted and she wiggled her petite frame into the single-person wingback chair that I was occupying right next to me. She put her arms around me and sat hip to hip, her head on my shoulder. The comfort, at least, was nice. She smelled of jasmine and spices but I longed for honeysuckle and lime. For Cyril. "I think it would be easier for you if he'd died," she agreed. "There would be closure, at least. You wouldn't be clinging to this hope that you're going to play his White Knight and rush in to save him or he's going to come running back to you the moment he's relieved of his title, throw himself into your arms, and you'll ride into the sunset, find some tiny cottage in a forest somewhere, and spend the rest of your life nailing him stupid. I get it. I know. And Fox, baby, what they did to you...what they did to him...Harlan was wrong. He was wrong and it was disgusting and I know why you can't ever forgive him. It makes me hate him for you."

"I don't like him either, so at least we agree, yeah?" She chuckled and I managed a dim smile at the joke. My wit and humor were, for the most part, gone. At twenty-six, I felt like I'd lived over a half of a century.

She snuggled against me. "You're my best friend, you know that?" Her fingers laced in mine and the heat was a lovely, warm reminder that while what Natalya and I had would never compare to what I had with Cyril, there was still something there. It wasn't so bad to be with your best friend. I'd learned that already.

"And you're my favorite girl," I assured her.

"You're leaving tomorrow." Her tone turned suggestive and she sat up, quirking an eyebrow. "We should have fun before you go. I can give you some material to work with when you're...uh...alone."

"Was that your attempt at seduction?" I wrinkled my nose and she snorted, shoving gently at my shoulder while I mocked her. "I'm in a vile mood, Tally."

She made a biting motion that had my eyes widening and took my face between her hands. "Good. I like rough Fox."

Chapter Text

Leaving Natalya in the morning was a lot easier than leaving Cyril ever had been. She didn't say my name in her sleep. She didn't look frail and so easily breakable lying tangled in my sheets. Her skin didn't have that gorgeous contrast with the red--so white that in the thinnest parts, he'd been nearly transluscent. I also hadn't spent my entire life playing the role of her protector the way I had with Cyril.

Because I remembered when Harlan brought him back. I'd been seven and he'd been so, so sick. The Healers had fretted and clicked their tongues while he panted and heaved through fevers in the spare bedroom that would become his actual bedroom in Ambrose's quarters. I could recall staring from the door, not allowed to approach him, but conscious of the sweat that shone on his skin and how his bones protruded from his body at angles that made him look like a prisoner of war survival story in the making. My mother had watched them, long before her days as a frail alcoholic, and fretted behind me. "That poor baby," she'd whispered, ruffling my hair while I stared at him. I'd never seen one of his kind up close. I'd only heard stories about barbarians in the forest that ate children and sacrificed their own people in bloody rituals.

Retrospectively, the latter information wasn't entirely inaccurate.

Cyril, as they were already calling him because it was the word he kept screaming, looked harmless. Tattooed, bloodied, abused, starved...but harmless. I'd told my mother that I wanted to keep him. He could live in my room, like I had some misunderstanding about what he actually was because of those barbarian stories. My mother had, in the gentlest way possible, explained that he was not a pet that I could keep and that I had to pray very hard because things for him weren't looking good. Every time they tried to feed him, he was vomiting blood an hour later, clawing at himself and crying for the Gods only knew what though I suspected it had likely been for his fathers. For whoever had loved him before they'd poached him.

So I did pray and I got it into my misguided, childish mind that I had to be closer to him to do it for it to work because the temple priests said he was a heathen. Our Gods didn't save heathens but I was naive and I wanted to believe that the Gods I knew wouldn't let someone so small and helpless die just because he'd been born in the wrong place. So I ditched my guards as I was prone to do and I raced for Ambrose's apartments, crawled along the floor to avoid being spotted by the lone, half-asleep Healer that was in the foyer, and crept into his room.

He was still feverish, his eyes staring up at the ceiling ahead. It had been white then and I'd looked up to see if I could see what he was seeing. He was so hot. I could feel the heat emanating off of him when I got close, see his ragged breathing beneath the thin tunic they'd dressed him in. His fingers had clenched in the sheets, then unclenched, then clenched again--like he was in some kind of extraordinary pain. It was good that later, when he was older, he didn't remember that time so clearly.

I had curled my fingers over the bed and peered at him in the dark, curious about this strange little creature that was suddenly worrying my mother and the Healers. I touched his arm. He didn't move. Truthfully, I treated him like a science experiment, half expecting those marks on his skin to start oozing poison like a tree frog or something because I had a wild imagination and too much time left to my own devices. I ran my hands over his arms, climbed up into the bed beside him because I had no self-preservation policy and whatever fever had struck him didn't worry me in the least. As far as I was concerned, I was invincible. I was going to be King. Everyone said so. If I died, I would not be King.

The logical path of my seven-year-old mind lead me to believe that because I couldn't be King if I died, then I would just...not die. That's how it would work.

I remember worrying, because I thought he was marvelous to look at. His face kept scrunching up and his button nose, still the generic shape of early childhood, would wrinkle and his lips would part and pant. I ran my hands over his face, touched the marks on them, and he remained staring upward like I wasn't even there. Later, when I realized what a brothel was and how traumatic his early life had been, I came to the conclusion that he was suffering some kind of phantom reality and I didn't like to think about what they'd done to him in that whore house that would make him shut down like that. It was good that he didn't remember that either, though I had never mentioned this particular encounter to him and thus, I doubt he even knew that he'd done it.

I ruffled his hair the way that my father sometimes did to me and that was what finally startled him. His eyes focused, his breathing became deep and labored instead of ragged and shallow. He was burning up, soaked in sweat, staring at me with pale blue eyes so light they almost glowed in the dark. They were too large for his face and his tiny, pink tongue darted out over his mouth. He whispered something to me. Sarrel, or whatever the word actually was but I'd just assumed it was his name back then like everyone else did. "Cyril," I'd repeated, putting my hand in the middle of his chest.

He'd looked down at that hand and then up at me, reaching with delicate, doll-sized fingers for my face. He'd brushed his fingers over my cheek.

"Fox," I'd told him, taking that very hand and putting it on my chest. I pressed on his. "Cyril." Then on mine. "Fox."

"Fox," he'd repeated breathlessly. My name was the first word he'd ever said in common Corian.

I had felt, even then, this undeniable urge to wrap him up and keep him safe. He was this tiny, fragile thing with delicate features and such a sad, ruined look in his eyes that even as a child, I could tell that something awful had happened. I might have never found out what it was, but something had and he'd carried that look until the last time I'd seen him.

It didn't take long for me to get caught, of course, and just a few minutes later my mother was plucking me up off of his bed and apologizing to him like he could understand her. "You can't stay here, Fox," she'd scolded me. "He's very ill. He needs his rest, not your antics. We'll go find Brentlyn and play a game."

"When he's better, he can play with us," I recalled informing her, more of a statement than a request and she'd hesitated in her step. I'm sure she had chalked him up as good as dead already but then she'd nodded in agreement. "He's quite pretty to look at, Mother."

"They're known for that."

So when I left Natalya in the morning, I left three years of memories behind. When I left Cyril, I left my life with him. Almost every memory I had of my childhood featured him. Brentlyn suffered with that as well--with losing someone so close to him that he'd been family to us. To us, yes, but not to my father, apparently, who hadn't thought it through very well when he'd exiled Cyril to his own people."

I didn't feel any guilt for not missing her. Even two weeks into the march, I didn't feel anything. I followed the company of men I was with, all with their banners and their dress armor that would prove absolutely useless in a real battle. I said the words that Brentlyn insisted I say to the crowds of people that were gathered to greet me and kiss at my clothes and make me generally uncomfortable because I disliked the idea of a King that thought himself better. I wasn't any better than them. I loved, I bled, I got sick during plagues, I hated being wet, and I disliked cats. I had quirks and opinions and a few neurotic ticks about the color red. I was human. They were human. The pomp and ceremony was unnecessary, but it was traditional and sometimes...sometimes I had to just go along with things to placate my brother or risk him dropping dead from the stress I put him through.

"You've been nostalgic lately," he commented when we stopped at a bustling little market town on the main road through Coria that led up into the Marshlands. It sat right on the river and boasted a massive water wheel and a distillery. The center of the town was an inn called The Fox and the Hound, which I found tremendously entertaining. Brentlyn didn't seem to get why it was funny, but when you've been named after a small woodland canine, you learn to make the best of it and get your laughs where you can. I suppose a great deal of my false bravado and commanding tendencies came from childhood when the other noble boys my age had thought it was a riot until they realized just who I was in relation to them.

I hopped off the horse I'd been on and patted the flank when the guard beside me took it to have it housed in a stable. I managed a shrug. "I suppose it's the coronation and all the worrying over the invasion seeming evident. It's like...reaching another stage in my life, yeah? So then I look back over the rest and...well, he's there, you know? He's in almost every memory I have for thirteen years."

Brentlyn managed an apologetic, lopsided smile and slung his arm over my shoulder. He hadn't changed much. The baby look on his face was gone. He was lean and tall, taller even than me, and his arms were as thick as tree trunks. Once upon a time, I'd been able to take Brentlyn down without much of a sweat but now the very idea of entering a physical altercation with my brother was...nothing short of terrifying, actually. He could have snapped my neck just putting his arm around it. Even the weight was heavy across my shoulders, not that my shoulders were in great shape, all things considered. I'd never really regained the full rotation of my arms. The scar tissue was too thick in some places and it stretched and burned when I tried to reach above my head or down to my toes. It wasn't drastically restricting. People that didn't know me well weren't aware of it, at least, but the Healers referred to me as 'crippled' because I'd never be fit to weild a sword in an actual battle. Too much movement. I'd never wanted to cut someone's tongue out more than I had that day.

"I think you need a drink, brother mine," he said enthusiastically, gearing me toward the Fox and the Hound. They'd been expecting us, of course, so the proprietor was standing outside and she curtsied so deeply her nose nearly touched the ground. My sister would have been impressed.

She was a lovely woman, that proprietor, and she explained her business in great detail. It was very obviously a point of pride for her. She'd inherited it, she said, from her father, whose father had built it from the ground up. They'd hosted two coronation processions previous to mine. The place was clean and cool even though outside, it was muggy and raining.

She had a nice look about her too. A bit younger than my mother, chocolate brown hair and grey eyes, a plump face and a wide smile. It was encouraging to see her doing so well and she kept shaking my hand, asking me if I wanted anything, needed anything, just to say so. They'd provide it all for the two days we were meant to stay there.

Brentlyn had told the business owners that were hosting us not to clear their establishments just for a small company of the royal guard. It wasn't necessary. I wanted my time as King to be known as a comforting period that improved the lives of the people. Putting business out for them just so that we had the place didn't sit well with me. Truthfully, I'd thought about what Cyril would have said in regards to turning people out to seat a King. He'd have called me a pompous, self-absorbed ass for even thinking about doing it.

"Do you get a lot of refugees here?" I asked suddenly while she held out a glass of wine to each of us. Her name was Kara. I tried to remember it, attach her face to it while her smile faltered a bit, almost sad.

Kara nodded. "It's a pity, my Lord King, what's happening in Glacia. All those displaced people..." She trailed off and bit her lip, worrying away the pale pink stain that she'd painted over it. She smoothed it over with a smack of them together and shook her head sadly. "They come to town looking for work but there's not much other than...well, the sex trade, really."

I grimaced. I'd been a frequenter of whore houses in my youth, a fact Brentlyn and Cyril both hassled me over but I'd never been the type to go into the seedy places where the owners cut a portion of their money away or took it all for room and board like they were slaves or animals. "It is..." I answered softly.

"I've given some of them work, you know? They keep their wages, just pay for their room and whatever they eat like any other guest would. A few of them are here, of course. They come in looking ragged and sick and I try to get them on their feet so they can have a life here." Kara worried her apron while she spoke. "My grandfather came from Immara to escape that sort of thing. Who is going to give them a chance if those of us that understand won't do it?"

I blinked, staring at her with parted lips and wide eyes. This woman, who I'd never met before in my life, had more compassion than most anyone else I knew...save one, of course, but I was biased about him. It was heart-warming and the nostalgia that had been aching in my chest ebbed away a little bit. People like Kara gave me hope that things would turn out alright in the end. "If only we were all a little bit more like you," I managed finally and Brentlyn nodded in agreement.

"You honor me, Lord King. Come, this way. I can show you to your rooms and have supper brought up for you." She turned toward the wooden staircase, a worn yellowish wood that was so old I didn't recognize it and then she hesitated. "Unless, of course, you want to take your meals downstairs with the other guests? I hadn't thought to ask. I just assumed. I apologize!"

Brentlyn's response was faster than mine. "He prefers Fox," he corrected gently. "No titles. And we'll eat with them. It would be good for them to see us, I think. Talk to us. We can get a feel for the state of the region. The capital is bulking up to start providing aid to the refugee population. It just came at us so quickly and in such large numbers...we were entirely unprepared for this sort of backlash."

"The Glacians were the Immaran allies," I murmured. "Nobody expected them to be this brutal to people they called friends." And brutal it was. I'd heard the stories. Fields of impaled bodies, villages pillaged and raised to the ground, women, girls, and young boys raped and murdered or left for dead in the ruins.

"You can never trust them," Kara said bitterly, motioning us down a hall. "That's what my grandfather said and he was one of them! Said the whole kingdom is a viper's pit and he couldn't take it there anymore. Always wondering if you're going to end up with an assassin's blade in your throat while you sleep or an alchemist's poison in your cup. It's no safe place for a family. You would know, Lord Second, the kind of fear you feel when confronted with the safety of your children."

My brother nodded but his expression changed, darkened, like he knew exactly what she spoke of and I had no idea. She patted my arm like we were old friends. "Someday, my Lord King," she promised. She had misunderstood my disinterest and interpreted it as longing. I forced a smile and she held the door open for me. "It's modest but--"

"It's cool and dry, which is more than we can say about the outside right now," I told her, my smile turning genuine. I really did hate being wet and the idea of camping in the rain was nauseating. We were equipped for it, of course. There could be days between villages that had accomodations like this and we were royalty. It wasn't anything like sleeping in the mud the way I had when I was on the front line so many years before...before, when my arms had still worked the way they were supposed to, but it was still camping.

Kara grinned and we followed her down another hall as the guards fell into place by the doors, one of them tailing with us. Brentlyn and I were both armed and with his bow, I hardly feared anything that might have tried to assault either of us. I would have preferred not having a guard at all but I wasn't stupid enough to believe I didn't need one.

She was still chattering, telling us the history of the place when I heard it. It was soft but it jerked so hard on my heart strings that my breath caught and I staggered backward. Brentlyn's bow was down in a moment, arrow lined up and he blinked at me. There it was again, a kind of keening, mewling noise that I swore I recognized but I shook my head. No. It was just sex and I was just gone from Natalya too long to be thinking clearly. She would have said I needed to scream and either made me talk it out or pound it out, quite literally, with her.

But I heard it for a third time and my heart skipped. I inclined my head toward the door and Kara flushed. She'd said there were whores staying. People trying to make money, to start a life after leaving Glacia. This was just some practiced creature that knew what men wanted to hear. "Who is in that room?" I asked anyway and Brentlyn arched an eyebrow, as if wondering if I was really going to hire a whore when I had Natalya to return home to. We weren't...monogamous. We had talked about that. Of course, I actually was monogamous but it was mostly out of a lack of interest than it was anything. This though...this was interest. I could feel the stirring in my stomach.

"That's Leland," she told me, still flushing brightly. "He's uhm...one of the natives."

"Lierian," Brentlyn and I both corrected and she nodded vigorously.

She was trying to tread lightly through this conversation. She worried her apron in her hands and then patted the tight knot of chocolate colored hair on top of her head. "He should be...you know, finished soon. I can send him down to your table if you'd like. Or rather, I can ask him if he would like to speak with you. I can't force him, obviously. He's not Corian and he's not...well...this isn't a cat house. He's just trying to get further south away from the fighting. He has some extenuating circumstances. He's a lovely tenant though. I'll be sad when he goes. I'm sure you would find him...amicable company. I'd heard you had a soft spot for uhm...for them."

"Lierians," I repeated the word, a smile twitching at the corner of my mouth. "A soft spot, huh? Is that what they call it?" Brentlyn put his bow away and his mouth curved upward while I crossed my arms. "I would like that, yes. If he's not interested though, don't force him and please, don't tell him who I am. I'd rather not frighten him immediately."

Kara laughed nervously. "He doesn't call himself that. He has a word for it. One of their words, I think...and I doubt very much that you would frighten Leland, my Lor--Fox. He's...he's something."

I know I must have looked as confused as I felt but Kara brushed it off and hurried us back downstairs and away from the very obvious noises that accompanied sex.

At the bottom of the stairs, she gestured to the dining room, which was really a sort of tavern complete with tavern girls and rowdy, drunk men that greeted us like we were old friends. A few of the fisherman from up the river invited us happily to their table and began talking in earnest about what a good season they'd had. Kara kept the wine and ale coming through dinner until my head felt fuzzy and my stomach was fit to burst from bread, fruits, summer salads, dried meat--things all designed to combat the heat and keep us cool while Brentlyn regaled the two men with a hunting story about the year before when he'd shot a boar through the eye and dropped it with one arrow. It was quite a feat, apparently, but I didn't know. I wasn't an archer and I didn't often participate in hunts anymore.

I had all but forgotten about Leland in the mostly drunk state of mind I'd reached. I almost felt happy. Almost normal. The nostalgic grief I'd been carrying around had all but vanished. I only recalled my request to meet him when a small, pale hand tapped me gently on the shoulder and then leaned over to pluck a chunk of a plum off my plate, hip cocked against the table in a stance that could only be defined as sassy. He was wearing one of their traditional robes, a hooded seal skin tunic, snow white, that split halfway down the chest and was secured with a belt. He wore a hooked fisher's blade, thigh high black boots that I pegged for water proof, given the season, and had the hood drawn down low over his face. He didn't look at me, just at the two fishermen sitting with us and one of them brought his chin up in greeting.

"Leland," he said cheerfully. "You looking for work, doll?"

"I believe I have work," Leland responded but the voice...the voice gave me chills and I felt Brentlyn stiffen beside me. That voice didn't belong to that name, not in my memories and not in his and I stood quickly. Too quickly, surprised and reeling like I'd been slapped. The Lierian stumbled backward too, obviously caught off guard by my sudden movement. That fisher's blade came free of his belt and was in his palm instantly, his fingers tightly around it and the way he held it told me all I needed to know. This man knew how to wield that blade and had probably done it before, no doubt. He wouldn't hesitate to kill me if I posed a threat.

Just as soon as it was out though, he'd dropped it and I still couldn't see his face in the shadow of the hood. I could hear his breath catch though and I heard the blade clunk against the floorboads and spin awkwardly a few times while we stood not four feet from each other. His hand lifted carefully. Small, pale. Doll's hands, really. So white that they made his robes look dark. He gripped the hood at his forehead and tugged it back gently and beside me, Brentlyn sank heavily back into his chair. "Fucking hells," he whispered and his hand dragged over his face. I heard that rather than saw it too. What I saw was a ghost.

Pale eyes too large for his face, periwinkle blue and so light they made the sky seem dark. An upturned, nose that seemed more appropriate for Olivia than an adult, high cheekbones, and that lush, full, rounded lower lip.

And those marks. Blue slashes on his cheeks that angled up toward the corners of his eyes. Eyes that were staring at me, surprised and hurting and completely caught off guard. "Fox?" he finally whispered and his voice was so tragic it was nearly a whimper. I could see him struggling to breathe beneath that wretched traditional coat and I was fighting the urge to drag him somewhere. To talk, to ask, to wonder...how...

I felt my heart stir for the first time in years at the realization that he looked the same as he had when he'd left, albeit there was less crying. Kara approached us fearfully, as if she worried about what had happened that had us at what looked like a stand-off but truthfully, I just didn't know what to say to him. "Leland, what have you--"

"That's not his name," I snapped and he cringed from the tone, backing himself into a wall like a frightened animal. I softened at the sight and swallowed hard. "We're fine, Kara. He didn't do anything. He's perfect. Thank you for sending him my way."

Her voice, at least, had startled me from my momentary lapse in sanity and the sudden longing I had for kisses that tasted of honeysuckle and lime. I took the necessary steps to him until I could smell him--lemon and tea and that dry warm smell that came from heating hearthstones. "Cyril," I breathed his name and he let out a shuddering noise, reaching out tentatively to fix my collar where it had folded out of place in our momentary scuffle.

Fucking neuortic. He'd always been that way.

"You know, it's funny," he began nervously. "But I think I met your father in a very similar way."

"There is nothing even remotely funny about this. We need to talk." I inclined my head toward the stairs and he nodded, picking up the knife he'd dropped before he headed toward them. He stopped halfway up though and turned to look at me, his face a mess of emotions, most of which I couldn't read. Fear, longing, sorrow, a pain so profound that I wasn't sure I could even name it...

He worried his lower lip. "It's good to see you," he said weakly. "I want you to know that before..."

"Before what?" I was still snapping, nearly overcome with the urge to press him to the wall and reacquaint myself with his mouth. Not appropriate, I had to remind myself. I didn't know anything about him anymore, other than he was apparently a whore, which had a dark sort of humor to it, considering his previous fears about it. Then again, I suppose when you've been subjugated and treated as a sexual object for most of your life, being a whore might seem a mild thing to do to survive.

Cyril swallowed and brushed his fingers over my face, a touch that scorched me down into the core of my person. Gods, I still loved him. So many years and so much space and he still did this to me, like he'd never been gone. I reacted the way I had when I was a sex-addled teenager and all I could think about was that mewling noise and how I wanted to bend him over something and spank the shit out of him for being with someone else. I knew I had no claim over him but the possessive streak in me had never quite faltered. He seemed to notice my growing irritation and nodded. "Before you get angry."

Chapter Text

I followed him up the steps, his hood pulled back up, and then he let me take the lead to my room, which was fine. Honestly, the idea of being in the room he'd just been fucking someone in made me nauseous. I'd been imagining that thick scent of sex the whole way up the stairs, trying to detach him from it but failing fairly spectacularly. Like I said, my imagination was always pretty vivid.

I opened the door and stepped aside, gesturing him to go in and he walked nervously through the archway, cringing when it shut behind us. I was still having trouble coming to terms with the idea that he was here, of all places, when I'd spent the past six years under the assumption that he was in the Glacian forests with his people or...you know, anywhere with his people? That had been what I'd been told by everyone I'd asked about it and I had asked a lot. I'd spent the first year he was gone hell-bent on finding out everything I could about where they'd been taking him, what route they were going to use, how long it would take to get there, was he safe? I'd been obsessed with my misery and, to some extent, I still was.

Cyril pulled the knife from his belt absently and spun it in his hands, handling it deftly and with far more accuracy than I ever remembered him having. His hood fell back again while he waited for me to say something but the words were caught in my throat. What was there to say? I missed you, I love you, are you okay? Those all seemed so mundane--so simple and undeserving of his attention. He'd always called me a great orator...said I had a personality that moved people to action and that I was good at making even the worst situations sound like there was a silver lining to them. Right now though, when the words meant the most, all I could think about was his declaration that I'd be angry.

So far, the only thing I was angry about was his profession because honestly, of all the cliche, stereotypical, bullshit things that Lierians were described as working in, the sex trade was the worst and it had always infuriated him that his people were treated like warm holes you could dip yourself in.

"So--" The most nondescript, vague word in the entire language and that was what I managed to get out of my mouth? Cyril looked up at me eagerly but I had trailed off, wringing my hands and stepping around him so that the distance between us was a little bit greater.

He kept spinning that knife and then, eventually, clipped it back to his belt. "You were wrong," he finally spoke for me and I raised an eyebrow in question. "Leland is my name. It's just not the name you ever knew me by."

"So you did reach Glacia," I stated lamely and he snorted in response, rolling his eyes and shifting his stance. This was a much more confident version of the Cyril I'd known. Perhaps it was easy to be something different when you could change your name and start over. Perhaps he'd grown or found his niche or decided he was happy with his people. He didn't look unhealthy, at least. He actually looked heavier than he had when he'd lived at the palace. His arms and legs were a bit thicker and he moved like he was carrying some muscle mass that hadn't been there before.

He flopped into a chair in the corner and extended his legs, crossing them at the ankles and I let my eyes skim up the length of them to where his boots ended halfway up his thighs, strapped tight around him to keep the flood water out when the rainy season reached its worst point. He wore the same white, seal-skin pants that the rest of his people wore, skin tight and tucked into the boots. A black, woven shirt was on under the coat, visible only when he slouched the way that he was doing and that split in the middle opened up. "I did, in fact," he answered carefully. "And there I have remained until about two months ago."

I took a seat on the edge of the bed, as far from him as I could get so that I could assure myself that I wouldn't touch him. I sat on my hands, clammy as they were, and watched him move with a cat-like grace he hadn't had when I'd known him.

When. Because I didn't know him anymore. He wore Cyril's face but this...this was Leland.

"Do you prefer Cyril or Leland?" I asked dryly, swallowing hard on his second name and a small grin touched his mouth.

He picked up a quill off the table by his chair and rolled it expertly between his fingers. "Cyril is fine," he said flippantly. "It's what would make you more comfortable, anyway, but don't be surprised if I don't answer immediately. Nobody has called me that in over six years. It will be an adjustment again. Appease my curiousity and tell me, though--" He dropped the quill and leaned forward, his legs folding under the chair so that he could rest his arms across his lap. "Did you pay for me already?"

I blanched and the blood drained from my face. I felt my eyes widen and then narrow, irritated at the question while my heart pumped furiously in my chest. "No," I spat. "I wasn't ever going to pay for you. I just..." I took a deep, careful breath and crossed my arms defensively. Cyril had a way of unhinging an unstable, emotional side of me that I had worked hard to learn to control. "I heard you. And I...I'd forgotten what your voice sounds like."

The mirth left his face and his smile faltered, eyes softening. He sat back in his chair again and we resumed our stalemate. "I'm not doing this because I want to, you know," he finally whispered.

"Why are you here?" That was the real question, though it came out far harsher than I'd anticipated and he cringed. He looked so different, dressed like a real Lierian. His hair was longer than it had been and he had to keep brushing it back, trying to tuck it behind his ears though it wasn't quite long enough for that yet and so it only fell back into his big blue eyes. Eventually he gave up and let it hang there, occasionally tossing his head so that he could see.

He didn't answer immediately, just got up and walked to the window to stare down into the street. It was raining hard and the water was warm, steaming when it hit the ground. A vaporous fog blanketed the town, giving it a sleepy, empty look. "I was trying to reach you," he said softly, lifting a finger to draw in the condensation on the window. A smile. That was all he'd ever drawn and I was pulled toward it almost unwillingly to add the tongue and hair that I'd always added in our youth. He laughed gently at the gesture and then smudged it away with the heel of his palm. I waited silently for the rest of his answer and he leaned against the wall as he gave it.

"There's an Immaran fleet in Peak Bay," he continued and I faltered. That was news. We'd been unable to reach the northernmost points of Glacia with a scout and were operating with limited information. None of them ever returned or, if they did, it was only their heads that returned, tossed back over the border of the Marshlands where Coria's end marked Glacia's beginning. "Judging by your expression, you didn't know that. I thought as much."

"How many?"

"Another five thousand strong, at least. I've never seen so many ships." He spoke the words like they were poison, his expression dark and his brows furrowed in concentration. My stomach twisted. Five thousand was a number we'd have more than enough trouble competing with. The plan Brentlyn and I had come up with would be suicide and I braced my hands on the windowsill, hanging my head between my shoulders. That was a lot of death. A lot of broken families on my hands and I shuddered at the thought. It would have to be stopped. Of course, if we stopped, Immara would march undeterred toward the Corian border before the other kingdoms could mobilize.

Cyril took a deep breath and plodded on. "They tore through the country like a pack of rabid dogs, Fox. Under normal circumstances, a tribe like mine would be able to fight back but against that many...I sent half of them to the coast and half of them up into the mountains. Those that stayed on to fight, stubborn and willful little bastards...they're all dead or in chains now."

"And you?"

He laughed but it was a dark noise and none of the happiness he usually gave away so freely was evident in his tone. It was hard to see him in this role--in my role--but he seemed to have taken to it. "I went...mostly alone. I knew about the fleet. Kinnon's scouting party brought back the news and I went to see it myself. That's when I made the decision to split them and send them to other tribes. They have orders to get beyond the Corian border as soon as they can."

"More refugees," I mumbled, lifting my hands to my face and rubbing my eyes. We'd always been a safe place. Without taking the mountain pass or getting through our armada, there was no way in to Coria but the wretched Marshlands, so prone to waterborne plague, and the former two suggestions were laughable, at best. The pass was too narrow for even two men to walk side-by-side and many an army had been laid to waste there by archers in the towers that lined the path. The navy was the best on the continent. We were a coastal country. Getting into the capital harbor without being blown out of the water or boarded and slaughtered was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

He touched my arm, gently, but the pressure was there and I jerked away from him. It had been an attempt at comfort but I wasn't ready for his touch. Not yet. "Not refugees. Not unless you limit them to that," he explained and I faced him, skeptical. If the refused touch bothered him, he didn't show it. "They're an army, Fox. Every adult in every tribe is capable of fighting. We have horses, we have poison, and we have a leader willing to reach out to 'human scum' rather than die with a collar on." He quirked an eyebrow at me and I hesitated.

A Lierian alliance. It was a topic that had never been breached in the history books, probably because any attempt at reaching out toward their culture in the past had resulted in a poisoned arrow to the guts. They were an intensely private people but they never bothered anyone unless they were bothered first. They'd always just been tolerated.

"And what do you get out of this?" That was always the big question when topics like this came up between monarchs. I was having trouble looking at him as a monarch though. He looked every bit like every other Lierian I'd ever seen, only he wore Cyril's face.

His confidence waned and he pressed his lips together. I got a small glimpse of the nervous, neurotic boy I'd been friends with in my youth and it brought a smile to my face. He noticed and smiled back, though the same anxious expression was there. Cyril licked his lips. "I get to see you again," he offered, half-joking, and I cocked my head, waiting for the rest of the answer though the first part warmed my heart more than he could have ever realized. He wasn't quite done though. "And...it's been a long time, Fox. We didn't part on the best of terms. There's a lot of...unfinished business between us. I'm not the same person I was. I'm sure you're not either but I'd like to get to know you again. So that's the selfish part." He laughed nervously. "The other part is, well, I'd like to foster some kind of relationship between my people and yours. It's been too long. We can't live in the same place, knowing nothing about each other, and just tolerate the fact that the other exists. We could be strong together, my people and Coria. I just need assurances that if I start allowing them to...acclimate to Corian culture that they'll be given equal opportunities. This shit? This working as a whore? You think I like this? This shouldn't be all I can do."

"Done." There was nothing to think about. It wasn't a question of whether we could do it or not. We needed to. Learning to live with the Lierians was a much better option than being overrun by the Immarans the way that Glacia had been. It wasn't, as my Court would tell me, ideal, but it would work.

I also desperately wanted his selfish reasons to become a reality.

Cyril looked surprised by my willingness and then that surprised turned dubious. "Are you sure?" he asked incredulously, leaning back and wrinkling his nose, fixing me with a sideways, confused look. "This seems like something you ought to consult someone on. Maybe--"

"What would you counsel me to do?"

The question caught him off guard and he blinked up at me, lips parted, eyes wide. His fingers wrinkled in his robe and he stammered for a moment, trying to find words that fit what he wanted to say. His cheeks flushed that adorable pink and I had to cross my arms to keep myself from pulling him up to my level, pushing him into the wall, and having my wicked way with him right there. "I would tell you that living with the Lierians, even if it is an unknown, is better than being the King that lost Coria to an army of slavers," he finally said and I nodded.

"That's what I thought," I told him, moving back to the bed to sit down. He remained by the window, leaning against the frame and staring down at his hands. He seemed at a loss for words and I was slowly regaining my ability to form coherent thought with him standing there. I ploughed on through the conversation, determined to keep hearing his voice so that I never forgot it again. "You said you came 'mostly' alone?"

He froze. His fingers stilled and that flush drained from his cheeks. "That's why you're going to be angry," he whispered and he stood up straight without warning. I stared after him as he headed for the door and for a moment, I debated whether or not he wanted me to follow him and then decided that truly, I didn't give a fuck if he didn't want me to follow him. I was going to follow him because I needed to know what it was that he thought I was going to be angry about. He must have wanted me to follow though because he didn't stop me when I exited the room with him and he turned down a hallway I hadn't been in. I glanced over my shoulder, toward the room where I'd first heard him.

"I don't take clients to my room," he explained stiffly, shooting me a glare like that should have been obvious. "I'm doing this to make coin, obviously. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't care about finding a half-decent place to sleep in the woods somewhere or going hungry for a few days to avoid doing this but it's not an option for me right now. I have--"

"Extenuating circumstances. That's what Kara told me," I finished for him and he stopped in front of a door.

Cyril nodded. "Give me a moment." And he disappeared inside, slipping through the door so that it barely opened and then he closed it behind him. I realized I was without a guard then and glanced around. Brentlyn had to have warned them not to follow us or perhaps they'd been drinking at dinner and weren't paying enough attention. They'd have to be spoken to if that was the case. I heard shuffling in the room beyond the door and rapid-fire speech in the same language Kinnon had spoken when he'd arrived. It was a fluid, seamless tongue that seemed to have no space between the words. I liked how it sounded in his voice, breathy and natural. Someone answered him, shrill and indignant sounding and he shot back with equal indignance until someone stomped their foot.

Whoever was with him, I assumed it would be whatever cretin they'd mated him to when he'd arrived, was obviously being scolded by their Infinito and I couldn't help the grin that crossed my face. He opened the door a moment later and snorted. "I think you liked listening to me tell him off," he accused, but his tone was teasing and I shrugged.

"I always kind of liked you angry. I told you, it's cute." Cyril's eyes narrowed perceptibly at the endearment and he beckoned me forward.

"Cute," he sneered, teasing again. "Watch yourself, Fox. I'm not as helpless as I used to be."

"Of that, sweet thing, I have no doubt." He faltered at the endearment and, without thinking, reached back and squeezed my hand as he pulled me into the room. His fingers were warm and small in mine when I squeezed back and I remembered his hand like it had never left. My broken heart stirred, yearning toward the point where he touched me until he let go.

The room was dark. The shutters were closed tightly and latched and he bolted the door as soon as it shut behind him. I could see the vague outline of metal on a table--an assortment of short, one-handed daggers and blades, the hilts wrapped in a light blue material the same color as his marks. They were all polished and looked...decidedly not ceremonial. I glanced at him and he shrugged just before a tiny, hooded figure poked its head up from the other side of the bed. "Emory!" he snapped. "I told you! No more frightening people on purpose! You almost scared Kara to death today."

The thing--thing because I wasn't really sure what it was, as I'd only seen the head of it, giggled and responded in the smooth Lierian language. I heard feet on the floor and then the shutters opened, letting glaring light into the room just as Cyril let go of my hand. I winced at the sudden brightness and took an unsteady step backward as I adjusted, rubbing my eyes.

I could see now that the other individual, Emory, assuming that was a name and not a curse word, was a child and not a mate at all. My immediate assumption was, of course, that this was Cyril's progeny. The next Infinito. This was what they'd taken him for and my stomach knotted painfully. "So it happened," I managed, voice weak and Cyril turned to look at me, confused for a moment. Realization dawned on his face a few seconds later and he nodded shortly.

"It happened," he answered simply. "It wasn't...nearly as bad as you're imagining, I'm sure. This isn't really a topic we should have on the table while he's standing here though. Perhaps later...Emory, do not jump on the bed!"

Way too late. The kid was already jumping on the bed, though at the sound of Cyril's voice he stopped, tucked his legs, and landed on his bottom. Then he bounced himself up and slid his feet to the floor. He was wearing almost the same outfit as his father. Loose traditional coat, tied at the middle. Black spun shirt that he had failed to tuck in and so it was hanging nearly to his knees. The only difference were the boots. Emory's feet were wrapped so that his toes and heels were visible and I wondered if, perhaps, he had boots somewhere or if this was just more Lierian tradition at work.

Regardless, the child was very obviously a handful. He was rambunctious and though he was no longer jumping on the bed, he was running around in circles pretending to battle someone that wasn't actually there. With two weapons, one in each hand, if I was judging his style correctly. "Someone trained him well," I commented, a lopsided smile crossing my expression because really, it didn't matter how he'd come to exist. He was still just a little boy and he seemed blissfully unaware of the situation he was in. That was good, considering how bad his situation actually was.

"This is why I'm working," Cyril explained, like it needed explaining. It was obvious.

"You're doing the right thing." I had no doubt about it. A Lierian boy that age would have been snatched in the middle of the night by Lier-poachers and sold to a brothel that wouldn't treat him with even a fraction of the kindness Kara showed. He couldn't have been much older than Cyril had been when he'd been brought to Coria, if size was any indication. This child was much better cared for. Healthy and happy, though he was very clearly driving Cyril up the wall. He was pulling irritated faces and struggling to maintain some sort of grip on his temper. "He's been stuck inside quite awhile, has he?"

"Two weeks," he answered darkly, reaching out and snatching the boy by the arm as he zipped past. The child whined and stomped his foot again, staring up at him with pale, mint colored eyes. He seemed to notice me then and I noticed the blue lines over his cheekbones, just below his eyes. They were different than Cyril's. Cyril's were triangular. They came to a point near the centers of his cheeks and then widened outward to nearly the corners of his eyes. They were angular, neat, and sharp. They were like that all over his body.

The boy's looked more like war paint. They were dark blue instead of the light that Cyril wore. It looked like he'd stuck his fingers into a soldier's grease paint and attempted to make himself look fierce or formidable. With his wide smile that was missing his top two front teeth, he looked more ridiculous than anything. "Emory," Cyril tried again while he stared me down. "This is Fox."

He seemed to debate that for a moment. "Fox from Coria? The one you told me about in the stories?" His expression lit up like he was being given a birthday gift when Cyril nodded.

"The one and only," my former second assured him and Emory whooped. The sound startled me. It startled me even more when he wrapped his arms around my legs and I blinked at Cyril, unsure if it was even safe to touch him or if he was going to bounce like a jumping bean the moment I tried to. Actually, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to touch him, given the circumstances. I knew what he was. Why he existed. How he'd come to be and although I could reason with myself and say it wasn't his fault, there was a part of me that harbored a resentment for Emory that I immediately disliked.

The older Lierian coughed apologetically. "He's very affectionate," he explained. "And he's...well...he's not what you think he is."

I blinked and furrowed my brows, confused, as Emory hopped away from me and climbed back onto the bed. He plucked a doll up from between the pillows and began speaking animatedly to it in his own language before I even realized that he'd spoken in Corian to me. "You taught him to speak Common," I managed blandly before my brain caught up. "What do you mean? He's got the marks. He's Infinito. He's yours."

"He is," Cyril agreed, crossing his arms. He said something to Emory then that I didn't understand and the boy looked up, his face pulled into a confused frown for a moment before he shrugged and peeled his hood back.

He had black hair. "He's..." My mind froze while I watched him, obliviously fussing with the wooden sword his doll was carrying. He stabbed at the pillow with it. "Lierians are blonde. They're all blonde," I argued dumbly. "He's..."

"Yours," Cyril offered quietly. "He's yours, Fox."

And he was right. I was pissed.

Chapter Text

Livid didn't even cover what I felt in that moment. I was angry with my father, angry at Cyril, angry at the Gods, and angry at myself. It was a boiling, frothing rage that emanated from my stomach and reached outward toward my limbs. I hadn't felt like this in so very, very long that when the heat hit my face, a glowing fury that radiated from my cheeks, I wasn't even sure how to react. I watched Emory, kneeling on the bed, talking to his doll like he hadn't a care in the world. He didn't know what was going on or who I was to him. He was naive and, in that moment, he was beautiful because he was mine and all the things Brentlyn had told me about having a child hit me hard.

Anger combined with frustration and a deep, dark sorrow that burned down into my chest. For a moment, I was too lost in it to react or to do much of anything but stare until Emory looked up with those mint colored eyes and he smiled, the tip of his tongue protruding from the space where his top teeth were missing.

Guilt and loathing welled up in my throat and I choked, garnering a confused tip of his head and Cyril's full attention. "Emory, stay here," he ordered quietly, taking my arm and leading me out of the room. I moved woodenly, stiffly, like I wasn't capable of controlling my own body until the door shut behind me and I sagged against it. It was difficult to breathe and I let my weight go all the way to the floor until I was hunched against the frame, my legs out in front of me, and Cyril crouched so that his face was inches from mine. I could smell him, the same honeysuckle and lime scent that he'd always had about him, mixed with something deeper and earthier that clung to his traditional coat.

I was angry with him. I remembered that after a moment of letting him stare at me, waiting for an appropriate reaction and I don't know what triggered it--perhaps just the need to act and to let the explosion in my chest go.

I snarled at him, shoving him backward and he landed hard on his tailbone, a sharp, surprised noise escaping his throat as he scrambled backward. "Six years, Cyril!" I shouted, my face scarlet while I hauled him up by his collar. His small hands curled around my wrists when he hit the wall and flinched, his eyes shutting, preparing for a blow that I couldn't give to him because this was Cyril. I'd never been able to hit him. Manhandle him, yes, but the look on his face and his size in comparison to mine stopped my curling fist from ever truly becoming a weapon. "It took you six fucking years to try to get south to tell me that you have my fucking son?" My tone turned low and dangerous and my hand tightened in his collar.

Cyril's feet weren't even on the ground. I had him at eye level and he was staring at me, seemingly cool and collected even while I was having a breakdown. "What did you want me to do, Fox?" he asked quietly. "Your father exiled me."

"You bring him to me!" I snapped immediately, shoving him harder into the wall and he ground his teeth together, his cool persona momentarily turning irritated before he reigned it in. He had to know that I was upset with good reason. He knew me. "I would have kept him safe. You should have come to Coria sooner. You knew Immara was itching for war!"

"Like you kept me safe?" His eyes were clear, unashamed, and unforgiving. I flinched at the words and let him slip back to the ground. He landed easily on his feet and slid away from me fluidly, straightening his coat while I tried to chew on what he'd said. He was right, of course. I'd promised to keep him safe and I'd been incapable of keeping that oath. I'd let Ivar hurt him, I'd let my father hurt him, and I'd hurt him myself. There was no reason for him to trust me and it broke my heart to hear him say it. The humiliation that came with that failure was bright and painful and it welled up in my throat like I'd swallowed cotton. My mouth went dry and I looked pointedly at the ground, willing myself to remain in a semi-sane state of mind, at least. Cyril didn't deserve my breakdown.

Eventually, he reached for my arm again and put a steadying hand at the curve of my elbow. "I needed to convince them that Emory being yours was divine providence. They had trouble even accepting me as Infinito because of the Corian influence in my life. You need to understand how important it was for them to recognize him as a gift and not the end of their religion. If getting to you sooner had been possible, I would have." He was gentle, soft, like he didn't fault me for hurting the way that I was and I appreciated his tone but it didn't make the ache feel any better.

"Six years is a long time to miss," I whispered, shaking my head and flinching at the thought. The fracture in my heart compounded when I took into consideration how difficult it must have been for Cyril--to be alone in a world where he didn't speak the language or understand the customs, to have gone through what he went through only to find out that he'd already been pregnant and the suffering was unnecessary, to have to care for a child considered a bastard by both of his cultures.

Coria would never stand for a Lierian prince. Not with the way things were. It didn't matter if he was mine or that I already felt a desperate urge to get to know him and to make up for what I'd been absent for. "Emory knows why it was necessary," he explained further, still trying to soothe me. I could barely breathe and I could feel my heart in my throat. A sense of responsibility twice the size of what I carried for my kingdom settled between my shoulders.

"He knows who I am?" I asked, blinking up at him, startled by the idea and Cyril shook his head quickly, urging me down the hall to a corner by a window where nobody woud overhear what we were discussing.

He lowered his voice and tugged me closer. "No, he doesn't. I doubt it will come as a surprise to him though. He's very bright and there are...things..."

"Things? Cyril, I'm fucking tired of secrets and tip-toeing around the issue. What things are there?"

He pulled another face and crossed his arms, tapping his fingers against the insides of his elbows. He shifted his weight from one foot to another. "His name, for one. It means fox."

I startled. Just one quick step back and he pulled me closer again as someone toddled up the stairs, drunk and mumbling to himself. Cyril had backed himself into a corner where he was almost entirely concealed by my frame standing in front of him so that nobody would know who I was speaking to if they walked by. He even pulled his hood up, just in case. "You named him after me?" It wasn't really a question. The answer was obvious but Cyril nodded anyway.

"And he looks like you. I mean, yes. He has the marks but his eyes are green. His hair is black. He's bigger than the Lierian boys his age. Not by much. He'll never be the same size as your people, but he's bigger than mine already. I taught him to speak Common because I knew that, someday, we were going back to the palace and he would need to talk to you. He would want to. He adores you. Both as Fox and as his father, though he doesn't know they're one in the same. He asks about you. Every night, I have to repeat some ridiculous story about you. Like the time we ate all those raspberry tarts--"

I snorted. "And we threw up behind the kitchens." Cyril smiled nervously and nodded at the memory, wringing his hands in front of him. We could hear Emory on the other side of the wall, scurrying around the room like a little rodent.

"And then he asks about you...about his...well--" He wrinkled his nose and tried again. "The closest translation would be 'tribe father'...that would be...you." He licked his lips and I glared, reaching up to press a finger to his mouth. The resulting whimper was worth the contact.

"Don't do that," I warned him. "Unless you want to just stumble into bed together and then realize we might not even get along anymore later."

Cyril laughed nervously and rolled his eyes. "Did we ever really get along, Fox? I think that's why we worked so well...but this isn't about us. This is about Emory." He backpedaled, getting us on track again and I nodded, ignoring the coiled heat in my stomach that was fondly remembering the last time I'd been with him against that desk and how the scrapes from his nails were still there.

He cleared his throat and continued anxiously. "When he asks, I tell him that you love him...because I know that you will. That you do, you just don't know him yet and I tell him that if you could be there, you would be or that if we could be with you, we would be. I tell him that I loved you--"

"Loved?" I tipped my head to one side, curious and hurt over the tense of his words and he shrugged sheepishly, almost apologetic.

"We don't know each other anymore, Fox," he whispered. "And I can't be what you needed me to be back then. I can't put you first."

"I would hope not," I answered flippantly, stepping back to give him room to breathe and he stumbled toward the door of their room again, his newly acquired grace skipping for the first time since I'd seen him downstairs. The fluid ease he moved with was rattled with the information. "You should be putting him first. I should be putting him first. Cyril, you needed to get to the capital. I need to go back to deal with the fleet in Peak Bay. You're coming with us."

"I..." He hesitated and winced, peeking at the window behind me and I glanced over my shoulder at it. "Thing is...we were sort of followed. By poachers, you know, from the last town. I don't want you or Brentlyn in any unnecessary danger. Maybe you should just take Emory and I'll go a different way. Try to throw them off of you."

"You're out of your mind if you think I'm agreeing to that." I scowled and he chewed his lower lip in response. I was still angry. Not so much at him but at the situation in general because he was right. He'd done what was necessary and he'd given Emory what he needed. He'd kept me involved, without me ever knowing that I had been involved in the first place, and made me a part of Emory's life so that even though I hadn't been there, I wasn't absent. That was Cyril though...that was the same boy I'd grown up with, always considering what other people would feel like before he worried about himself. A people-pleaser. So though he looked slightly different and moved with a fluid, quiet grace that he hadn't possessed before he'd left, he was still Cyril in some respect. I'd just had to wait to see him shine through.

He took a deep breath and consented. "I thought you would say as much but I had to try," he relented. "Very well. We'll go with you. It will be good, I think. We can...we can tell him. He can spend some time with you on the way back before the palace overwhelms him. I don't think he's ever seen a building made of stone."

"The capital will be an experience for him," I pointed out dryly and crossed to where he was, dropping a casual arm over his shoulders. He blinked up at me, surprised by the gesture and stared for a moment. It was almost like taking a quick step back in time, looking at him like that--eyes wide, lips parted, his heart hammering in his chest so loudly that I could hear it and I wondered what he was thinking. His eyes flicked down to my mouth. He licked his lips.

"You should just kiss already," Emory whispered from the door. He'd cracked it open enough to peer through it and though I laughed, letting go of Cyril when he jumped at the noise, he was not nearly as amused.

He opened the door and snatched Emory by the hand, giving him a very familiar disapproving glare that I recognized immediately. "I told you to stay in the room!" Cyril snapped. "You don't understand how dangerous it is for you out there, Emory! There were poachers through town just the other day! Is that what you want? You'll be carried off to the Witch Trees just like in the stories!"

Emory shared a furtive glance with me like he didn't quite believe what he was being told but he stood up with his shoulders squared and let Cyril vent his worry until I put a hand on his shoulder. He stilled, cheeks pink, and straightened back up from where he'd bent to Emory's level. "There's no harm done," I cajoled, giving him a little shake. "He's just got cabin fever. Why don't you bring him down and have dinner with us? Brentlyn is probably barely containing his urge to run up here and find you. He mentioned you at the war tables just a few weeks ago."

Cyril glanced between Emory and me and then narrowed his eyes. "I see what's happening here," he warned me and I pressed my lips into a line. Emory wasn't nearly as good at controlling himself. He let loose a peel of giggles and took a tentative step closer to me at the offer.

"Can I have cookies?" he asked slyly, looking directly at me rather than the man he knew to be his father.

"No!"

"Sure, why not?" Cyril and I spoke at the same time. Then he was glaring at me and I was looking pointedly at the ceiling before finally meeting his now very disapproving glare. "Come on, Cyril. Don't be a bore."

"Yeah, don't be a bore," Emory mimicked, flipping his head so that his curls bounced in his face.

"You--" Cyril pointed at me before taking Emory's hand and leading him out into the hallway. He had obviously consented to dinner, though I wasn't entirely sure about the cookies yet. Regardless, I was getting what I wanted and looking forward to Emory's company. "Are a bad influence already. It's terrible enough that he acts like you."

"Because he's my father," Emory drawled, letting go of Cyril's hand. He gave him the sassiest, 'told-you-so,' 'know-it-all' sort of look that I recognized immediately as one of Cyril's because in that moment, he looked almost exactly like him. A head of white-blond hair and they could have been passed off as twins. It was the statement, however, that surprised the both of us and Cyril blinked, his tongue seemingly caught because nothing came out of his mouth but a stammering noise. "I'm not stupid," the boy continued. "Plus, Kinnon told me before we left but he made me swear to keep a secret."

"Well," I told him. "You're a terrible secret keeper, obviously. I'm not telling you any of my secrets."

It was Emory's turn to stammer and Cyril snorted as the boy turned pink from his collar to his cheeks. He shot me a glare, little arms crossed. "You won't tell on me," he declared petulantly.

"Oh, won't I? Why is that?"

Cyril's expression darkened and Emory glared at him. "Because Kinnon is dead," the child spat. "There's nobody to tell. They're all probably dead."

I started to answer but stopped at Cyril's hand on my chest, a silent request to keep my mouth shut as Emory tore down the stairs. Brentlyn was standing at the bottom, took one look up at us, and followed the boy to wherever he'd gone while Cyril and I absorbed the conversation. Eventually, he broke the quiet. "He lost a lot of people when Immara invaded," he whispered carefully.

"All of them, Cyril?" I asked quietly. "You said you split them."

"I said I told them to leave and that I split them in two halves. I also said that not everyone agreed. Kinnon was among them. There were a few hundred left behind. You could see the smoke for leagues when they burned the villages." His arms were crossed and his expression was hard. "It was a waste of lives. They should have listened."

I chewed my bottom lip and nodded, giving him a friendly shove and he pushed back. "I'll cheer him up," I promised and he arched an eyebrow. "Listen, I'm the fun parent. I'm giving him cookies."

The look on his face told me exactly what he thought about that.

Chapter Text

I sent a member of our small party ahead to warn the palace that we were coming back and then we set off with Cyril and Emory in tow. I couldn't remember a time when Cyril had looked more confident than he did with Emory around. They had their own horse, a little white thing that I would have called a pony if I hadn't known I'd get a devastating glare for saying that. It wasn't a pony, not really. It was a Lierian breed, smaller than the big chargers that we utilized at the palace, and wore Lierian braided gear that would have made any horseman salivate. Lierian leather work was a hot commodity. They didn't wear armor like we did, instead choosing speed and stealth over brute survivability. They wore all kinds of it. Any animal they killed was likely to end up in a garment and they did it far better than anyone else.

"How do they make that?" I eventually asked, reaching out to the braided piece hanging from the horse's mouth as Cyril came up beside me. Emory was asleep against him, both his legs hanging over one side of the saddle, wrapped in one of my dark red cloaks to keep the rain off of him more effectively than his traditional clothing did. Cyril had one arm wrapped protectively around his middle to keep him from sliding down into the mud and one arm wrapped up in the reins of his horse.

The braid I was touching was supple and though it hardly seemed to weigh anything, I'd seen him demonstrate to Brentlyn how he could smash it with jagged pieces of rocks, boots, and arrow heads and it never snapped or even showed signs of wear.

Cyril grinned at my question and leaned toward me a little bit. His hood had fallen back and his hair was soaked, plastered to his face by warm rain. "If I told you, I'd have to kill you," he informed me haughtily, an impish grin crossing his features. He rolled his eyes after a short moment of watching me try to figure out if he was joking or not and then he shrugged. "They treat it with some kind herbal compound they make that smells like vomit. I'm not familiar with the whole process. I know that when they're finished, everything goes into a sort of sweat lodge where they burn rose petals to get rid of that smell. They only make it in the winter. Process gets too hot for warmer weather, especially we're camped close to the Marshlands. I hated the winter."

"Too bad," I sighed, feigning real disappointment though my inquiry had been to settle curiousity, nothing more. I hadn't the slightest idea how to tan leather and the only animals I'd ever bothered to see being skinned were small game. "This is seal, yes?" I brushed my fingers over the sleeve of his coat, my thumb slipping into the dry, lined edge against his wrist. The outside was dripping wet but it was expertly waterproofed.

He nodded. "From Peak Bay," he added as the guard ahead came to a stop to set up for the night.

Camping in the wet season wasn't anyone's cup of tea. The only person that really didn't seem to mind was Cyril but he was quick to point out that he'd been living in tents and lodges for the past six years. We would be hard pressed to find anything that really bothered him the way that it had before. He was an expert at setting them up too. His small hands were far quicker than mine were and, with the help of the guards and the kindness of the storm that took a break from spitting all over us, we were set up in slightly under an hour and Emory managed to sleep through all of it.

"He sleeps like the dead," Brentlyn commented as Cyril came back out of the tent after putting the boy down.

The Lierian snorted and took the offered cup of hot wine from my brother. "I wonder where he gets that," he drawled, giving me a pointed look while I watched them. Brentlyn had been staring at Emory almost non-stop since he'd discovered who he was and couldn't quite get over the fact that he even existed. Then again, I'd been doing the same thing and using any excuse I could to touch the boy...just to ruffle my fingers over his hair while he ripped apart an orange, determined to get the skin off by himself, or to help him untangle his coat when he got it stuck in the big black boots he was wearing now, or to trace the lines under his eyes when he was sleeping and while Cyril was distracted because I was uncomfortable with the emotions that I felt and I didn't want him to try to analyze them for me as he was prone to doing. I wanted them to be mine and mine alone because if I couldn't definitively say that I loved Emory without Cyril's assistance or intervention, what kind of parent would I be?

For a long while, we sat in silence, listening to the real denizens of the night come to life around us. Cyril poked at the fire, letting it flush his cheeks warm while Brentlyn stared off at the sky, no doubt thinking about his own family back home. He was like that--quiet and introspective. He always had been and it was best to leave him to his thoughts. Eventually, however, he made his way to his tent and I sent the guards to bed for a few hours, insisting I take first watch because I wasn't even slightly tired yet. I was wired. They stammered and argued about how I shouldn't be left alone and then Cyril had stood up, brushed his hands off on his coat, and spoke. "I'll stay up with him," he offered. "I mean, if poachers show up, they're going to take me and leave him anyway. What's a royal ransom to a lifetime's worth of brothel wages?"

They were dubious with his offer and I, for one, wasn't entirely keen on spending any alone time with him. He'd been right when he said we were different people now. I was a spoiled little prince that didn't understand the real horrors of the world. Seeing battle was different than watching a village full of innocents burn from a distance. It was different than watching your entire world torn apart, raising a child on your own, being uprooted from everything you'd known once...Cyril had lived through harsh conditions the likes of which I couldn't even imagine.

I didn't even want to imagine them.

The guards did eventually leave. They didn't seem happy about it but their discomforts could be dealt with in a few hours when I had to wake them up. Until then, I'd be stuck sitting around a dying fire with a man I'd once hung the world on who didn't seem to know me anymore. That almost kiss at the Fox and the Hound seemed a distant memory and the odd game we were playing of trying to dance around each other without ever having to acknowledge that the other actually existed was going to get very old, very quickly. I wanted to know where we stood, how to move forward, how to get back to where we'd been but I was too afraid to ask because what if we couldn't? What if it was truly over and the last memory I had of the best time of my life was of him screaming while they dragged him from my tower?

"Aren't you going to ask?" he eventually inquired, his voice soft. He'd gotten up from where he was sitting across from me and moved with an eerie silence to where I was perched on a group of rocks we were camping around. He'd been carving, I noticed, little faces into a thick stick with one of the many knives he now carried around with him outside the inn. I peered at it in the dark, squinting to try to see the details before he tucked it into his pocket with an explanation. "It's a memory stick. I'll make one for every person we lost when they burned the settlements."

"Ask what?" I ignored his little details about the stick as he strapped his knife back into the top of his boot. He settled in beside me, not quite touching, but close enough that I could feel his body heat. My mouth went dry and I licked my lips, chewing absently on the bottom one. He had an earthy smell to him now that lingered under the natural sweetness that was all him--sort of like fresh leather and weapon polish. I wasn't sure what to make of it. I'd spent six years craving honeysuckle and lime and the unusual sweetness of his skin that made me want to kiss and lick and suck on every inch of his body.

I had to distract myself, focus on the fire so that I didn't get lost in thinking about what I could do to him when I barely knew him anymore. Of course, I'd known we couldn't just go back to what we were but a part of me had hoped.

Cyril's fingers drummed against his legs and he smacked his lips, an adorable habit that I'd been pleased he hadn't lost when I'd seen him do it for the first time earlier that day. "Anything," he offered. "Where I went, what happened, where do we go now? I've wanted to ask you."

"Communication goes two ways, Cyril," I pointed out. "You could have just asked instead of asking me to ask. Or you could have just told me. Where did you go? What happened then? What happens now?" I shifted, straddling the stone so that I could face him and he spun to do the same. My feet reached the ground but his didn't and he looked down at them, snorting at his size as he rolled his ankles and tried to reach the dirt with the tips of his boots. He failed and gave up, leaning forward so that his palms were planted in the stone.

He seemed to think for a long minute, his eyes trained on the stars, before he finally started to speak. "I went to Glacia with Kinnon. I fought the whole way. Florian knocked one of my molars out." He hooked a finger into his mouth and pulled back to show me the missing tooth at very rear of his mouth. "I don't miss it much, but it hurt like a son of a bitch. I spit the blood in his face."

"As you should have," I mumbled darkly. "Florian didn't return from the first incursion into Glacia when the Immarans landed."

"Good riddance," he said under his breath and I huffed my agreement. There was no use getting angry over it now. It'd been years ago and Cyril didn't seem bothered by it. "We reached the tribe and...well, I'm not entirely sure what was happening. I couldn't speak the language. I only had Kinnon to rely on and he was a little bastard from the start but he tried to be helpful. He had a raw deal, getting poached at that age when you can remember what you lost. Anyone would be bitter and angry. They started preparing for the rite and within three weeks of my getting there, they were ready to go. They were fortunate enough to have been hosting a sacrificial event at the time. They had a male from almost every tribe at ripe age to pick from."

"A sacrificial event?" I stared at him, wide-eyed. I'd heard stories, of course, that the Lierians were barbaric, beastly little animals that stole children and murdered them to spill their blood around their encampments in some protective rite.

Cyril snorted. "We don't even eat meat much. We have trouble keeping it down. Our sacrifices are always from the harvest or the gathering. They're plants. Fruits, vegetables, nuts. We burn them."

"You burn food?"

"And you whip your criminals like dogs. Which is more barbaric and asinine, Fox?" His glare was harsh, heated, defensive. I backed down and raised my hands in surrender. He was right, of course. I knew he was right better than most. The whipping post was a savage thing and I wasn't proud to call it a part of our culture. It still plagued my nightmares.

Still, we weren't holding orgies with unwilling teenage boys at the center of them. "The rite, if I remember correctly, seemed pretty barbaric and asinine to me," I finally pointed.

Cyril pursed his lips but he nodded shortly. "Like I said, it wasn't as awful as you're imagining it to be. They didn't try to hurt me. If I'd been raised with them, I would have been taught to look forward to the rite--to being loved so completely and wholly by every tribe. By the time it happened, I'd conceded defeat and accepted that there was nothing I could do. Fighting it would only make it hurt more than it had to. I still didn't want to end up pregnant. Little did I know--" He blew his hair out of his eyes and nodded toward the tent where Emory was sleeping soundly. "So I faked a heat. I slathered myself in this wretched concoction that imitates pheromones. They cover us in it for the rite anyway. That's how I knew what it was so I stole a jar of it from the tribal apothecary, spread it everywhere, and let them tie me down."

"Gods, Cyril," I breathed, wincing at the way he said it so nonchalantly. He would look at it like that, after everything that had already happened to him. It was a wonder he enjoyed the act of sex at all, given his history, and I instinctively reached for his fingers to knit them into mine. He looked down at our joined hands before I even realized it had happened and squeezed.

"They only tied me down because they knew where I came from and I'd tried to run already. They burn these bundles of this hallucinogenic plant in the lodge when it's happening. I don't even really remember it. I know I woke up in a pile of people. I was sticky from....you don't even want to know what, but I'm sure you can imagine." Oh, I could, and the thought flipped my stomach as he continued. "I ached everywhere, I had blood down my legs but nothing seemed broken and, again, I didn't remember it. Maybe when they started the rite so many thousands of years ago, they added those plants to tradition to make nervous first-timers feel a little bit better. Whatever it was, I was grateful for it and I accepted the inevitability of my new life so I threw myself into learning about them. It wasn't that bad. I picked up the language quickly, probably because I already knew it. I just had to unlock it. Being trained as your second gave me a good step-up at being their leader."

He had taken his memory stick back out as he spoke and was running his fingers over the grooves he'd put on it, tracing the edges and feeling out the faces as he spoke. "When I realized I was definitely pregnant, I was...disgusted. I never thought it could have been yours. I just assumed that maybe I'd been so close to a heat when I'd faked it that it had worked somehow. I didn't know how those things worked, really. I don't even know if anyone knows exactly how it works. They don't dissect their dead like the Corians do. They don't want to learn about the why of things. They trust their Gods, their ancestors...previous Infinitos. They believe that when we die, we stay with them and that our essence transfers to the new Infinito and if they're good enough and they pray hard enough, we'll grant them the right to return in new bodies as well. They think of the body as an empty vessel only filled by the will of the Infinito."

"What about the one we read about? The one taken captive by old Immara?" I was interested now. Those books were still in the monarchial quarters and every year or so, I took them back out and read what we'd translated again, trying to make sense of it. It made me feel closer to him to know that he'd held those books, touched those pages, read those words. It was desperate and pathetic but I needed that closeness and just thinking about it made my heart stir for the small figure sitting across from me.

Cyril laughed though. "That was Hylar. They called him Hylar the Holy Terror. Nobody liked him, but he was Infinito so they fought for him. He'd birthed right before he was captured and the baby was raised by Hylar's fathers and his mate. Hylar was Recian, like me. He had the same marks that I have. He died in those dungeons. The heat doesn't end when we go barren. Sex is worship. An Infinito has a mate to help take care of the child but that mate is very rarely who satisfies the heat. Anyone will satisfy the heat and will beg to be allowed to do it."

My stomach churned again at the thought of him letting them put their hands on him to take care of that the way that I had so many years ago. I remembered what he looked like when he was like that--strung out and exhausted and screaming for someone to make it stop, do something, fuck him. I didn't want to know, I decided, and so I let him trail off and moved back to the topic of Emory. "So they all thought you were going to give birth to some bouncing blond with pretty, angular marks?"

He nodded and got down off the rock to poke at the fire a few times, stirring the coals to keep it burning before he climbed back up. "I was in a bad place when I realized he was there, Fox," he admitted quietly. "I didn't want some Lierian God-baby. Up to that point, I'd convinced myself that they would just assume I was barren and stop worrying so much about me running because I hated them and they didn't trust me. Eventually, they would give up and I would be able to run back and go home to you. I didn't know how I would manage it. I didn't plan. I was too scared and sick to think of much of anything but a need to run and every time I tried, one of them would drop down from the trees and drag me back kicking and screaming."

I wanted to hold him. He looked so small and vulnerable in the dark, the fire casting deep shadows on his pale face and the sorrow in his eyes reached all the way through him to his core. He was beautiful like that...in that tragic, broken way of his. He always had been. I let him keep talking though, watching intently and listening because maybe...maybe he needed to talk. Maybe he'd never been able to get this off of his chest because to them, he wasn't a friend. He was a God the way that I was a King. They didn't come to me for advice and I couldn't unload on anyone because it was their job to make me happy, not to offer me sound counsel or to just listen the way a friend would. I had been Cyril's friend once and he'd been the only one to see me as Fox, not the Crown Prince. Just Fox.

"I drank tansy tea," he said bitterly just as I lifted the cup of wine to my lips. I choked immediately, spitting it back into the cup and staring at him, eyes wide, lips parted. I wasn't even sure what to say to him, how to broach that subject.

For one, I was furious. Then I wasn't, almost as quickly as I was, because it was his body. I had no right telling him what to do with it and I hadn't been in his situation. I had to consider how that must have felt...to be so entirely alone, presumably carrying a stranger's baby...one that had raped you in some bizarre sex rite. I shuddered and swallowed hard while Cyril stared back at me, fixated on my reaction. Eventually, I managed to string words together to respond. "That could have killed you," I pointed out.

"I'm no herbalist. I made myself appallingly ill for a few weeks but Emory was as stubborn as his father, even before birth. Thank the Gods." He stole my cup and drank out of it, ignoring the fact that I'd spit a mouthful of wine into it but then, this was a boy that had once spent every morning on his knees for me. Spit was the least of our body fluid exchanges. He sat it back down. "And so then I just stayed in denial. I refused to think about it or talk about it. I wouldn't stay in bed like they told me to. I stayed in denial well into hard labor, which, by the way, I hate you for."

"Hate me?" I raised an eyebrow, incredulous, and he swatted at my shoulder.

"You put him there. That makes it your fault."

I laughed quietly and rolled my eyes toward the fire. "Sure, you weren't a willing participant. I must be imagining the way you begged me to finish inside you."

Cyril huffed and chose to ignore what I'd said but his flush deepened and he crossed his arms. "I remember," he continued quietly, almost nostalgic. "I was barely conscious. It was a difficult birth. That's what Raevar told me. He said my father had no trouble with me but Emory was all trouble. It was summer. Hot and humid and sticky. They kept trying to give me directions but I barely understood them and so they brought Kinnon in. He held my head in his lap and kept trying to cool me off but nothing worked. I didn't want to be touched. I almost wished he'd kill me on the way out or that they would decide it was taking to long and gut me to get him. They talked about it after...oh, eighteen hours?"

I hissed, low and pained for his ordeal and he shrugged. "They gave me another hour," he said. "And he finally moved and after that, it was smooth sailing. I mean, if you consider pushing another living creature out of your body smooth sailing. It was still fucking hell but Raevar...he's a medicine man, my tribe father. He's good people. You would like him, if he's still alive. He tried so hard to understand me. He defended the way I always tried to escape. He held me when I cried over you, even if he didn't understand what I was saying. Kinnon explained it to him and the more I learned the language, the more I realized that he did care that I was hurting. He apologized all the time. He scolded Kinnon for going behind my back to Harlan. He thanked me for being there, for doing this....but even he had trouble dealing with Emory."

"You cried over me?" I don't know why it surprised me...perhaps that easy grace he had now, the confidence he walked with, his willingness to take risks and engage in things he never would have before had convinced me that he was over it or that it had all been a game. Asking made me feel uncomfortable and the surprised, almost hurt look he gave me over the inquiry struck at my heart. My shoulders sank a little bit at that look.

"Of course I did," he answered quietly, reaching up to brush his fingertips over my cheek. He'd been doing that since I'd met him and it was all I could do to control the urge to turn and press my face into the heat of his palm. His expression darkened when he dropped his hand, letting it land on mine while he looked back at the dying coals. They lit up his eyes so that shadows moved through the blue. I doubted he was seeing the fire at all, he was somewhere else. "Emory was born with a mop of black hair, screaming like he was being torn into pieces, bigger than any normal Lierian baby, with none of the geometric pigmentations that are indicative of a tribe. Emory looks like he's wearing war paint. The ones on his chest are three big slashes that start here--" He touched three spots on the right side of his chest. One at his collar, one his pectoral muscle, and one where his waist begins to curve. "And they move diagonally the whole way across him. They end at his side, slashing marks like some massive monster clawed him and he's got two bands around his upper arms. They're dark blue instead of light blue and they're always hot. Mine turn hot when I'm in heat. Emory's are always hot. You wait until summer. That child refuses to wear clothes because they make him too warm."

I didn't doubt it. If they were warm the way that Cyril's got warm when he was in heat or turned on, it couldn't be comfortable to wear anything over them. He leaned in closer to me and I could smell the wine mixed with the honey on his breath. It was intoxicating and warm and I leaned forward with him. He whispered when he spoke next. "But I loved him, Fox. Everyone else...they all hated him. Raevar even had trouble looking at him. Halfling Lierians aren't unheard of, not in whore houses, but they're not welcome with the tribes and they're not considered your people either. I didn't care. In that moment, when they gave him to me because nobody wanted to touch him, I was thanking your Gods and mine that the tansy hadn't worked. I had always intended to return to Coria, to you, because it was my home and you and Brentlyn were my family. I had always known how difficult that would be but I knew then that even if I always got caught trying to run, even if I never made it back, I had some small piece of you that would always be mine. I know that's selfish and awful because you deserve to have him too but I rationalized it away because you had Brentlyn and Miraena and Riordan. Your people could communicate with you. I only had him. I would only ever have him and he was beautiful and perfect and he was yours. That was all that mattered."

Cyril looked on the verge of tears. He was wringing his hands and taking deep breaths, his legs tight around the rock. He scraped the side of his boots against it, turning his feet inward while he tried to regain his self-control. I was still attempting to absorb what he'd said to me, to sort out the overwhelming adoration I felt for him in that moment. He'd been put into a situation so isolating that I couldn't even imagine how it had felt. "You're very brave, little one," I finally whispered, reaching forward to hook an arm around his waist. I dragged him closer, spinning him so that his back bumped my chest and for a moment, he stiffened like he wasn't sure of what to do but then he melted and snuggled closer, pulling his legs up, folding them so that he could press against me and tuck his face beneath my chin.

"You're crazy," he admitted quietly. "I was terrified. I missed you. Looking at him made me miss you even more and when Raevar asked me what to call him, I wanted to just call him Fox but he told me I was giving him a death wish if I did that. The Lierian word for Fox is aymori. I tweaked it just enough and we called him Emory. I learned to fight because I was afraid that someone would hurt him. I learned to poison properly in case I ever had to run. I promised him all the time that one day, we would go back to Coria for you. One day, we would leave and nobody would ever look at him like he was some kind of monster again. You wouldn't allow it. 'God' though I might be, I don't have that kind of power. Or, at least, I didn't when they realized how happy I was to have some human halfling bastard in my arms."

I didn't care about distance anymore. His stories and his tone were heartbreaking and whether or not he had changed didn't matter. We both had. Cyril had changed for necessity. He put on masks to be whoever Emory needed him to be and he'd done it alone. What I had done with Natalya wasn't all that different--a series of masks to make everyone around me think that I was functioning.

I pressed my lips against the top of his head absently and felt him sigh, his fingers tightening in the sleeves of my shirt, his arms folded around mine while mine were folded around his waist. He arched his neck and he must have done it without thinking because when his mouth brushed my jaw, he stiffened and tried to shift away, eyes wide and hands trembling. "Do you really want me to let you go?" I asked gently and he stilled, breathing hard, seemingly terrified by his own actions.

"N-no," he mumbled. "I just...I don't..." He wrinkled his nose again, squirming until he could face me, kneeling between my legs. He was still shorter, still had to look up at me even from that position. "Just because we have Emory doesn't mean you need to pick me. I know there's that girl. Natalya. The whole kingdom is talking about you getting married next month. I don't...I can't be your piece on the side, Fox."

"For fuck's sake, Cyril," I groaned and I flopped back, grateful our little boulder was long enough that I didn't go sliding off the edge from my own stupidity. He climbed over me, alarm on his face, his hands planted on my shoulders. My head was nearly on the ground and, truthfully, flopping back on a rock had done nothing for my back or the base of my skull, which now throbbed with self-induced pain.

He stared down at me and reached around, running his fingers deliberately through my hair before making a sort of 'hmph' noise and sitting back. He was straddling me then, just below my ribs, and I remembered vividly how much his legs had to spread to accommodate our size differences. "That was stupid," he declared. "At least you're not bleeding though. Do you love her?"

"Tally? Heavens no!" I rolled my eyes and propped myself up, which was an awkward angle, to say the least, considering how the rock curved downward right where the middle of my back was. "She's a good friend. She helped me survive the destruction that Hurricane Cyril left in his wake. You weren't the only one struggling, you know. I had people, sure, but I wanted you. My father tried setting me up with several women, hoping I'd settle down and marry one, have a bunch of babies, and do what the kingdom wanted me to do. It was like he coached them into asking me to let them help me forget you."

Cyril made a face, clearly repulsed. "That's disgusting. I used to have such a great respect for your father for saving me from what I could have been."

"I'm feeling very patricidal toward my father right now, to be quite frank," I snarled. "And he is not going to enjoy the next time he sees me, not that he ever enjoys seeing me anymore. Either way, Tally was the only girl that didn't say that. She said that I looked like I needed to scream about something. She took me into a bedroom, threw a pillow at me, and told me to get it out."

He blinked, clearly unsure of exactly what I'd meant and I couldn't help but laugh, my hands sliding up to his hips. If he noticed, he didn't indicate it, just tilted his head at me for an answer. "She let me get angry. She let me destroy the room. She let me scream until my throat bled and she agreed that it wasn't fair, it was disgusting, it was wrong. She told me that she understood that I would never fill the void you left. She'd lost someone too and I would never take his place either. We were both broken at the same time, Cyril. She gave me the bandages I needed to survive because I'd spent so long bleeding out for you."

"But you fuck her," he pointed out, raising an eyebrow.

"She's a beautiful woman and we have no-strings attached sex. We are adults. Consensual adults. Thank you for your concern, Mother," I drawled, rolling my eyes and shifting. He slid back to let me sit back up but remained straddling my lap.

He seemed to consider that for a moment and then licked his lips. I glared and he shot me a furtive, pleased little grin. The brat knew exactly what he was doing. "I haven't heard anything, of course, but...do you have any children?"

"Yes. One. He's about fifteen feet behind me, fast asleep. I think you've met him. He's a bratty, rambunctious kid that can't hold his sugar and knows how to swear in Common like the best sailor on my fleet."

Cyril swatted at me again. "Sounds just like you," he joked. Realistically, he was right. He did sound just like me and even though I'd spent a terribly short amount of time around Emory, it was very obvious that he belonged to me. Looks aside, the boy was every bit the pretentious, know-it-all brat that I had been.

I heaved a sigh. "Natalya can't have children," I told him. "I mean, she lost one before she was with me. So we assumed that the issue was me but..."

"Obviously not," Cyril finished, glancing back at the tent where Emory was sleeping. "Probably some lasting damage...that's rough. You know, she's going to realize that when you show up with your heathen spawn."

"My heathen spawn? Is that what he is? Did you grow him in a pond? Did he have a tail that slowly turned to legs until he slithered up onto dry land and started seeding chaos among your tribes? Are there gills hidden somewhere?"

Cyril was laughing, his hands clamped over his mouth to muffle the noise while he shook his head. "Stop it!" he eventually hissed. "You're awful! I just told you I spent twenty hours birthing your son and you're asking me if I grew him in a pond! No, 'Well, thanks Cyril, that can't have been comfortable.' Just...did I grow him in a pond? If anyone's a heathen, it's you."

I grinned, still propping myself up. "I never claimed not to be." He shot me another look, this one a famous disapproving glare that Emory and I both failed to take seriously every time he used it on us but Gods, he was gorgeous in the dark like that...half-angry and half-entertained, spread over me like nothing had changed when we were both facing great unknowns. What could we really do if we weren't worrying about it? I could have spent the evening lamenting the talk I would have to have with Natalya, the urge to kill my father that I would have to contain, and the convincing I would have to do to make the Corian Court accept Emory as mine. Cyril could have been fretting over the child's reaction to the city, the people's reaction to him, the upcoming war, and the return to a place full of all of his past demons.

Instead, we were too overwhelmed to deal with any of it and were laughing about things that really weren't even that funny. His laughter was infectious and genuine and the more he did it, the more I felt compelled to kiss him. "Stop staring at me," he finally complained, his giggling fit finished and I reached up to brush his hair out of his eyes.

"Let me kiss you, Cyril," I pleaded quietly and he stopped, startled by the request, eyes wide. His fingers turned to fists against my chest and he stammered, seemingly attempting to form an answer that I didn't wait for. I shifted my weight to my right arm, cupped the nape of his neck with my left hand, and pulled him down to my mouth.

Cyril went willingly. His weight melted across mine and his mouth opened under the attention of my tongue. He made a noise, a groan in the back of his throat and I swallowed it, fingers tangled in his hair. His lips were still a perfect fit for mine. He still tasted of honeysuckle, limes, and a hint of the wine he'd been drinking. He was hot and needy and both of his hands tangled in my hair. His hips rolled against mine and he caught the whisper of his name on my lips with his teeth, dragging the bottom one out. He moved back when he had to breathe but not for long, sinking back into more quick kisses like he was desperate for contact. "Gods, I missed you," he finally whispered, gathering enough thought to draw a line with his mouth to my throat and bury his face there.

I wanted to answer, wanted to tell him that it couldn't be nearly as much as I'd missed him but Emory's voice cut through the dark. "Lheiro," he whimpered, the Lierian word for Father escaping his lips and Cyril scrambled off of me, tripping in the dark and only barely staying on his feet. I, on the other hand, slid easily off of the rock and turned toward the tents.

The boy was standing there, flushed from sleep, his shirt discarded so that those deep, slashing blue marks were so starkly evident against his skin that it was almost jarring. He rubbed his eyes and blinked up at me while Cyril composed himself from his near-fall. Emory held his arms open, his little fingers making grabby motions toward me. I hesitated and Cyril stopped, stealing a glance in my direction as if he were waiting for my reaction to Emory's actions. I didn't know how to comfort a child. They usually made me uncomfortable and asked silly things that I couldn't answer but Emory was different. He was mine and I yearned for the relationship Brentlyn had with Olivia, young though she may have been.

I gave Cyril a short nod and strode forward, scooping Emory up. I gathered up the blanket he was dragging, wrapped it around him, and held him carefully. His legs were around my chest and his arms around my neck, his head on my shoulder breathing heavily. His cheeks were damp with tears and his hair was a mess but he'd wanted me and he was breaking my heart in the best way he could. "What's up, boss?" I asked him casually, sitting back down where we'd been a moment before. Cyril climbed up beside me, face flushed, lips swollen and red from kisses. He wiped at them almost viciously trying to hide the evidence of what he'd been doing.

"Bad dreams," Emory sighed miserably but he was clearly falling asleep again, his speech slurred. "Saw you kissin'." He reached out and pushed at Cyril's face before his arm fell again. Cyril himself looked utterly unamused with the action. His brow furrowed and he pouted.

We stayed like that with Emory asleep on me, heating the space between us like a wood stove with those dreadful markings. Cyril asked me about the palace, Natalya, Brentlyn and Izzy, Olivia, and Ambrose. I answered quietly, careful not to wake Emory up, until Cyril left to stir the guards and we switched off of duty. "Here, give him to me," he whispered when they were up and ready and I hesitated, reluctant to relinquish my hold on him.

Cyril's face changed expressions. First to confused, then to knowing, then to sympathetic. "Come on, then. No more puppy eyes. You can sleep with us. You have six years of time to make up for, anyway."

Chapter Text

I slept with them the rest of the trip, Emory tucked between the two of us, a tiny furnace occupying more space than his little body rightfully should have. He had nightmares. Mostly they were about watching his home burn from over Cyril's shoulder as they fled Glacia, knowing that Kinnon, who had turned in to one of Cyril's closest friends, had stayed behind. I learned the real reason that they stayed behind from Emory as well when Cyril woke up before us and left us cuddled together. Emory woke up from the pit of a nightmare, sweating and trembling and he'd pressed himself into my chest. "They stayed to distract them," he whispered, and I didn't answer because I wasn't sure he knew I was awake or if he really wanted me to hear it at all. I thought, perhaps, he just needed to say it--to make it a reality. "They stayed to slow them down so we could live."

And what was I supposed to say to that, anyway? I'd been at the parenting thing for less than two weeks and this child, who hadn't even seen his sixth birthday yet but was so much older than he should have been, was curled up in the watery light of near dawn whispering that his friends and his family had stayed behind to keep him alive. Realistically, I knew that wasn't likely to be true. They had stayed behind to keep Cyril alive. Emory was...well, nobody really knew what Emory was.

Cyril had his own nightmares, though he claimed he didn't remember them. He would wake up panting, feeling desperately for Emory in the dark and until he found him, ran his fingers through his hair, and could hold him again, he continued in a state of panic. I tried to ask and he waved his hand dismissively. It wasn't worth talking about or he didn't want to talk about it. He was lying when he said he didn't remember, that much was evident in the clarity of his eyes but there was no pressing the issue with him, not like this. Cyril could be obedient when he was naked and writhing under someone but that was about the only time he was obedient. The rest of his day he was defiant for the sake of being defiant, dismissive, obsessive, and breathtakingly sarcastic.

Breathtaking in a not so good way, actually. Breathtaking in a, "Gods, did you really have to be like that?" sort of way. Usually that was directed at me, but I supposed I deserved it. I could be the same way when I wanted to be.

We approached the capital with little resistance. A poacher posed an issue just inside the city limits when we stopped to feed Emory. The leering, vile creature had leaned in close to Cyril's face and reached around him for a handful of ass that I was positive he regretted a moment later when Cyril's fisher's blade hooked at his throat and he hissed. The movement had happened so fast that I'd not even reacted before the wretched little man was shrinking away from him, a small trickle of blood at his throat. I'd never seen Cyril violent other than the time he'd slapped that smug look right off of my face and bloodied my mouth but there were no questions about that event. I'd deserved it and he'd acted on pure impulse. Violence wasn't really him, or at least, it hadn't been.

It was now though. The circle of people pressed in the outer market let out a collective gasp and stumbled backward. Cyril had a white-knuckle grip on the blade, eyes narrowed and cold, and there was no doubt in my mind that he intended to kill him. The man took a step back and Cyril took two forward, pressing harder into his throat. "Is that what you think I am?" he asked through his teeth and I caught his other arm only to be roughly shoved off. "Not now, Fox!"

"F-Fox?" the man mumbled, his beady dark eyes blinking and shifting from him to me and back again. "M-my Lord King! I swear, I d-didn't--"

"Didn't intend to poach in my kingdom, I hope," I drawled. "You know that's against the law. The whipping post is looking pretty empty." I wasn't angry, really. I was irritated. Both at Cyril's shove and this creature's behavior. I couldn't prove intent to poach, though I could see it from the look of him that poaching was his profession.

The man looked between us again and Cyril snarled, "You groped me, you vile little pig. Nobody touches me unless I say they can touch me. Not anymore. I ought to cut your cock off and shove it down your throat. Teach you how it feels to have your mouth fucked against your will."

"Cyril," I warned quietly. "We generally frown on murder in the public square. This is not Glacia. You are not a King here."

His glare remained etched into his face but he was clearly thinking behind it. For a moment, I thought he might listen to me, let the cretin go, and walk away to find Emory. The Cyril I had known years ago, if he'd ever gotten to this point, would have done that. He would have shrugged it off and walked away. Then again, the Cyril I had known wouldn't have ever gotten to this point and hadn't been able to wield a blade the way that this Leland character could.

Cyril lowered the knife a fraction of an inch. A stream of blood stained the polished, gleaming edge and then with movements too quick for me to even see, he grabbed the poacher's fingers and brought the knife down through his wrist in one clean cut, severing the hand from the arm. I jumped backward and he threw the offending object back at the man just as his victim let out a guttural, blood-curdling scream, his arm clutched against his body. "Poach with one hand, you sick fuck," Cyril spat. "And keep it to yourself or I'll find you and remove that one as well."

Part of me was angry, obviously. I had given him a warning and he'd ignored it but the larger part of me was impressed. It was a fitting punishment, to say the least, and it displayed a strength in him that I hadn't ever seen before. I had known it was there, just from hearing about what he'd gone through and from the knowledge that he'd been raising Emory alone but I hadn't seen that strength in action.

He wiped the bloodied blade on the top of his black boot and two of the city guards moved in as if they intended to arrest him and bring him in to me. I had grabbed his arm by then though and when they saw who he was standing with, they glanced nervously at each other. "See to it that this man gets medical attention," I told them quietly, nodding toward the poacher that was still screaming and writhing on the ground in a growing puddle of blood. "And have him fitted for a wooden hand when the wound heals."

"Fitted for a--" Cyril was scowling and I jerked him away, toward where Brentlyn and Emory had come out of a little shop, Emory on my brother's shoulders with an apple in his mouth not unlike a winter festival roasted pig.

I lowered my voice. "You and I will talk about what you just did when we get to the palace but to save you the whipping post, yes, I will fit him with a wooden hand and pay for his medical attention and pay him whatever else he needs because you cannot run around cutting limbs off of people that grab your ass." I kept him pulled in close to me, tugging him the way I would tug a child having a tantrum. My cheeks flushed at his proximity to me and he struggled, only stopping when Emory noticed us.

"He grabbed me!" he hissed, leaning in to continue the argument. Brentlyn noticed and turned pointedly away so that Emory couldn't see.

"Yes, he did," I agreed, scowling. "And it's a very nice ass. I want to grab it fairly frequently myself. That doesn't mean you can cut my hand off! Slap me, scold me, and tell on me, sure. You could have let me handle it and bring him in. We could have punished him properly. Now you look like a deranged little savage I brought in from the forests to be my entertainment and I'm going to have to explain to the court why you're not being strapped to the whipping post or losing your hand in punishment right before I explain who the fuck you actually are! My father isn't King anymore, Cyril, but he still holds a lot of sway and I can't spend my time cleaning up your messes because you can't control your temper anymore!" He looked surprised by my outburst, eyes wide, cheeks flushed and then he carefully lifted his fingers to touch my cheek. I was beginning to think this gesture was a cultural sort of sign language for love or to display being apologetic. I nodded my understanding anyway because, either way, he got the point.

Cyril swallowed hard, his expression turning contrite. "I react...rather harshly to things like that now," he answered quietly. "Can you let go of my arm? You're bruising me down to the bone."

"Shit," I mumbled, letting go of him quickly and taking a step back. I rubbed my hands on my shirt and he rolled his shoulders, flexing the arm I'd been squeezing in my irritation. "Sorry. Come on. We'd better get to the palace before you incite a riot."

He bit his lip and ducked his head sheepishly, holding his arms out so that Brentlyn could lower Emory to him. The boy had taken a quick liking to my brother, who understood children better than I did and entertained him with games and faces. He'd promised to teach him how to shoot when we got back to the palace and to have a proper Corian bow made for him in just his size. Emory was ecstatic and clung to Brentlyn like a constricting snake. He was, to say the least, a bit put out about being handed back to his father but he pressed himself into Cyril's side anyway, staring up at the massive stone buildings that made up the capital city.

The city is actually called Coryth but nobody has ever referred to it as Coryth. It always was and always will be 'the city' or 'the capital.' It's the only real city in Coria. Most of the kingdom is made up of tiny, self-sufficient villages in the territories of different lords and ladies, none of whom actually live in their territories. They call the noble district in Coryth their home, a collection of large, sweeping manor style houses located in the western part of the city against the walls that once protected the Old Keep and now protected the palace proper. The whole city was walled in except where it faced the beach and the hulking mountain range behind it that bled into Hollens Wood created an efficient, safe, closed-off community.

We had come through the pass out of Hollens Wood, dismounted, and were making our way up to the palace with the horses in tow. Some of the roads were too narrow to walk two mounts side-by-side and so they were led by two of the guards while another two walked ahead. The palace loomed ahead of us, a hulking white structure that looked almost pink in the setting sun. We were tired and filthy. Emory had dirt on every inch of his body although, admittedly, he seemed to care a great deal less than the rest of us about the state of his person. The rain had stopped just an hour or so earlier and left the whole seaside blanketed in a muggy, humid layer of thick heat that made our clothes stick to us. Cyril's hair was drenched and though it lacked all color when it was dry, it looked almost gold when it was wet and seeing him like that--damp, face flushed, sticky, and sweaty--brought back a slew of memories that I had to be careful not to think about as we passed through the gate.

At least inside the walls of the palace grounds, there were less people. Just guards and then the shrieking, infectious giggle of my niece as she toddled from the garden gates at top speed toward Brentlyn. She squealed when he lifted her, tossing her up over his head and catching her on the way back down so that her pale green summer dress billowed out around her legs. She kicked and then cuddled, planting sloppy kisses on his face as Izzy came chasing after her. Her kisses were decidedly less sloppy and the look she gave him was hot enough to boil water and Cyril looked pointedly at me, raising an eyebrow as if to ask if I'd scene the pornographic expression that had just passed from my sister-in-law to my kid brother. I only pressed my lips together in response.

Izzy patted my cheek affectionately then, gave me a quick hug, and then turned her attention to Cyril, who wilted under the gaze like a dying flower. "Cyril!" she practically squealed, her fingers pressed hard over her mouth so that her knuckles were white and her eyes welled up with tears that threatened to spill over her cheeks at any moment. "I didn't believe the scout when he showed up. I--Gods, it really is you!" She pulled him into a crushing embrace then and I heard the breath leave his chest. Izzy was taller than him. Admittedly, most Corians over the age of twelve were taller than Cyril. His little hands awkwardly patted her on the back and when she stood him back out at arm's length; he sucked in a quick breath.

"It's me," he managed sheepishly. "I see you uh...married in. Congratulations. I believe I told Fox he was no matchmaker. It seems I'm in the position to eat my words." Izzy giggled and then, finally, noticed Emory, who was hiding behind Cyril and only occasionally peeking around his legs to look at her and then up at Olivia, who had not yet grasped that it was rude to stare and was openly staring at them. I doubted she'd ever seen a Lierian before and when Brentlyn sat her down, she wobbled right over to Emory and poked at his face.

The boy, for all his attitude issues, took it in stride and only wrinkled his nose at her. "Olly, you musn't poke other children," Izzy scolded, scooping her up and handing her back to Brentlyn with an irritated scowl. She knelt next to Emory then and held a hand out. "I'm Izzy. That's Olivia."

"Emory," he introduced, reaching up to touch her cheek rather than take her hand. Cyril's fingers absently brushed over his hair and Emory stepped closer to him, his arms around his legs. He'd been extra clingy the last day. His next word came out as some kind of whining noise. "Lheiro..."

"He's mine," Cyril explained quietly and Izzy nodded, reaching into the pockets of her dress for the little red candies she'd taken to carrying around like my brother. She held one out to him and, after spending time with Brentlyn, he knew exactly what it was and took it quickly, mumbling a thank you as he stuffed it into his mouth.

Izzy then looked from Emory to Cyril to me, and then back to the boy before straightening and standing up. "Well," she said softly. "Congratulations, Fox. Job well done. He looks just like you." Her attention went back to Emory then. "Why don't you come with Olivia and I? We're having lunch in the gardens with Riordan. He's just a little bit older than you. Fox, your father is here. I suspect he knows you've arrived and he'll be waiting for you inside the doors."

Brentlyn heaved a sigh and plucked Emory up off the ground when he seemed hesitant. "Come on, boss," he chirped happily. "I'll go with you and then we'll get you a bath. You smell like horse." Emory giggled but accepted his departure with my brother's family much more comfortably with Brentlyn. It left Cyril and I standing awkwardly together and he cleared his throat.

"We'll have to thank him for that later," he mumbled, coughing and wringing his hands and I nodded, hesitating and reaching for his face. I brushed my fingers over the triangular mark on his cheek and noted, with an arched brow, that it was warm.

"You're in heat," I accused gently and he winced with a shrug.

"It's not been long," he admitted. "I'll be fine the rest of the day, at least. I really just want to get this over with. I'm tired and hot and filthy." His expression was exhausted when he looked up at me. I knew the heat took a toll on him. It made him ache. It made him lethargic and prone to lashing out, which explained his reaction in the market. I nodded at his assessment and grabbed his shoulders, giving them a little squeeze and a light shake. He managed a smile at the gesture and then allowed me to lead him up to the massive oak door that led to the throne room.

My father was, as Izzy had warned, waiting there with Ambrose, whose eyes grew as wide as gold pieces at the sight of Cyril hobbling in after me, his arms crossed over his torso. The old man moved immediately, like he wanted to hug him or hold him or throw himself at Cyril's mercy but the venomous, sharpened look that lit up Cyril's face when he realized who was standing there was enough to stop him.

Ambrose, however, was the lucky one, because the look I gave Harlan was a hundred times what Cyril gave his own father figure. "You," I growled, my teeth clenched. I had, up to that point, been able to ignore the growing fury I felt toward my father but standing there, being faced with it--it broke whatever was welled inside me and it all came frothing to the surface. I was enraged. The world was bathed in red and I wanted him to hurt. I wanted him to hurt for the act of taking Cyril from me, for the things that had been done to him, for the things he'd had to do to survive and keep Emory fed and dry. I wanted him to hurt for the years I'd been bottling up this rage and grief and for the years he'd taken from me with Emory and I wanted him to hurt for Emory, who would never get back what he'd lost.

"You really brought him back," Harlan said stiffly. The only thing keeping me from launching myself at him like a rabid dog was Cyril's hand on my wrist. "I told you, Fox. This was for your own good. The Corian people would never accept him. His own people needed him. It was better for everyone that he went there, moved on, and performed the role he was born for and that you stayed here, moved on, and performed the role that you were born for. You have Natalya. What good could you possibly do by bringing Cyril back to the capital?"

I jerked free of Cyril's grasp, my fingers curling into a fist and he didn't fight me on it. He let me go, closing the distance between Harlan and myself in two steps. I wanted to hit him. I wanted him to bleed because I'd been bleeding for so long, because Cyril had been bleeding for so long, and because the fact that he spoke about him like he wasn't standing right there infuriated me.

But I didn't hit him. I grabbed his collar and slammed him backward into the wall. The surprise and pain on his face brought a small but satisfying bit of relief to the fire burning in my chest. "Listen to me, old man," I snarled, my fist clenched beneath his chin, wrapped up in his clothes and I could feel Cyril's presence at my side. I didn't need to see him to know he was there. His whole person called to me on a level that I didn't fully understand. Harlan's eyes were wide, flicking between the two of us, scared and pissed off. I suspected he expected the guards to intervene. He'd been King so long that he'd forgotten he had no power over them anymore.

"The only reasons I didn't put you on the post the moment your fucking crown touched my head are sitting in the garden right now. Brentlyn and Riordan love you. Why, I don't fucking understand because you're a weak, sad, pathetic little man and Riordan, at nine, is twice the person you'll ever be. You can't get over your stigmas and stereotypes. You can't stand to look outside the lines or, hell, even to talk to me about what you wanted to do." I pushed him harder, felt his breath catch, and the anger in me sang through my veins at the sensation. "This wasn't for my own good. It wasn't for his own good. It was for yours. It was so that you didn't have to face court and hand your crown to the King that took a Lierian as a consort! You couldn't stomach the idea of me going down in the history books as your son--your son with the consort instead of a Queen. This was about you, Harlan. You're going to admit that."

Harlan scowled and I tightened my fist, balling it up in his shirt so that it constricted around his throat and he made an odd, choking noise. Even Ambrose stood back, his arms crossed, looking pointedly elsewhere. "Fox--" my father started.

"You broke my heart," I accused, flinching when the words left my mouth because I hadn't ever been able to admit what really hurt about the situation. Losing Cyril had destroyed me. I wasn't anything even close to the person I'd been then but what had really weighed heavy was that it had been my father that had done it. "You took everything that I loved away from me and then you had the nerve to throw women at me like they were pieces of meat. Like he meant so little that a few quick fucks from some long-legged blondes would make me forget. I didn't forget though, Harlan. I sat and I waited and I told myself that someday, when you were gone and this war was over, someday I was going to find a way to every fucking tribe on this continent until I found him. You can't even imagine how many times Brentlyn had to beg me not to abdicate my right as your heir so that I could go on some mad treasure hunt to find what you stole from me! You're supposed to love me, Harlan! You were supposed to care that it hurt. Gods help me if I ever hurt Emory the way that you hurt me--"

Beside me, Cyril stiffened, like he'd have slit my throat in my sleep if I ever even dared to think about it. I hoped that he would. I wished that my mother had...wondered, briefly, if she'd even known.

Harlan squirmed. "Who the hell is Emory?" he growled and my rage came back full force. There was no more controlling it and I reached around for the back of his shirt, hauling him toward the door with little grace or care for what I was doing or how it looked. Nobody moved to stop me except Cyril, who hopped up after me and struggled to keep up with my long stride.

"Who is Emory? I'm going to show you who the fuck Emory is, Harlan," I snapped.

"Fox, this is a bad idea," Cyril interjected, racing after me with Ambrose in tow. He ignored how close the older man was to him in favor of trying to talk sense into me. He was fighting a losing battle. There was no sense. I needed him to see this. I needed him to know how it hurt and what he'd stolen. My heart was breaking all over again trying to think about it while I half-dragged him to the garden gate, fussing and fighting me the whole way.

Cyril tried to block it and a sharp shove had him pushed out of the way. "Fox!" he snarled. "You're going to scare him!"

"I'm not going to scare him!" I hissed back, eyes narrowed and he scowled at me, a clear indication that I was going to pay for this later but he stopped fighting me. Harlan stopped as well when we found Izzy and Brentlyn. Emory was splashing around in the Finna fountain with Riordan, both of them had stripped their shirts off and rolled their trousers up. My youngest brother, though he'd started out with the same dark hair that Brentlyn and I had, had grown progressively more blond until his curls were the color of honey like my mother's. He was tiny like her too, all long elegant limbs. I suspected it hurt my father to look at Riordan and that was why he stayed at the palace with Brentlyn and Izzy instead of at the manor with Harlan, my mother having long since been sent away to live out her days of madness in relative peace and away from the prying eyes of courtiers.

Emory stopped when he saw us and smiled widely, suspecting nothing though my hand was curled dangerously tight around the back of Harlan's neck. "Emory," I greeted and he waded to the edge of the fountain, stepping carefully over the stone. Izzy lifted him up and shot me a careful look, something of a warning that I was on thin ice. "This is Harlan." The boy stepped forward, shivering at the loss of the water, a puddle growing around his little feet. He reached up and I pushed. "Kneel."

My father hesitated and I pushed harder. He stumbled forward, landing on a knee and Emory hopped back, eyes wide. The movement startled him and he looked pleadingly at Cyril. "Fox," Brentlyn warned. "I think you need to walk away. That temper is showing."

"Go ahead, Emory," I continued. "Say hello." The child's eyes widened and he swallowed but took a tentative step forward. His wet fingers brushed quickly over Harlan's face and my father flinched at the contact. My fingers tightened at his collar and he made another noise. "Harlan, this is Emory. He's my son."

The echoing silence that fell over the group was heavy and suffocating. I counted the heartbeats between my words and my father's sharp intake of breath. I let him absorb it, grinding my teeth. It was Cyril that broke the quiet. "Brentlyn, take him out of here," he ordered softly and my brother didn't hesitate to scoop Emory up and grab Riordan's hand. Izzy lifted Olivia and they were gone a moment later, leaving the four of us in the garden at Finna's fountain, the exact place where Cyril had sat after he'd hit me so many years ago.

"Get up," I whispered and when Harlan didn't respond, I jerked him up to his feet. "I said get up! Now look at him!" I turned him roughly to face Cyril and he allowed the manhandling this time. I could feel him shake under my grip like he was coming to terms with what he'd cost me and with what he'd cost the tiny figure he was now staring at. I let him go then and his fingers lifted tentatively to the back of his neck while I came around to stand beside Cyril, who shrank away from me the way he typically did when I got like this. I was angry that Harlan had put me there. I'd been so good about it, so controlled. Natalya had done wonders for my temper.

"I should have been there for him," I continued quietly. "I should have heard first words and seen first steps. I should have been the person to pull him slimy and screaming from his body and the first to hold him when it was over! I lost the first five fucking years of Emory's life because of you. So I want you to think, Harlan. Think hard about my first five years. About Brentlyn's. Miraena. Hell, even Pascha. You can't think about Riordan's much. You checked out like Laila did. Think about it." He flinched and I reached up, slapping him lightly when he looked away from me and when his eyes widened, I hit him harder, fueled by the sting of skin on skin when I hit him and then it was over. My mind was gone. I shoved him backward and advanced on him, grabbing him again by the front of his shirt and I shook him. I hit him back against the palace wall over and over again until Cyril was clawing at me, dragging me backwards with Ambrose's help and I hadn't realized how much hate I'd been carrying. I hadn't known how broken I'd really been.

"I'm sorry, Fox," he managed while Ambrose and Cyril held me back. "I didn't know! I never would have--"

I couldn't even get intelligible speech out of my mouth. My cheeks were hot, my heart was racing, and I could feel that my face was wet. Cyril had to grab me, his hands tight around my head, his palms at my jaw and his fingers in my hair while his thumbs moved over my cheeks. "Look at me," he ordered. "Fox, fucking look at me! Not at him! He's not even there! Come on, honey--"

The sob that tore at my throat was aching and guttural and I felt my knees buckle when Ambrose let go of me. Cyril wasted no time in crawling over my lap, pulling my face into his seal-skin coat, his arms around my shoulders. My father was still apologizing, trembling and rubbing the back of his head and he took two steps toward us before Cyril shifted to turn around and look at him. "You need to leave, Harlan," he spat, eyes narrowed. "You've done enough damage. You need to go. Ambrose, get him out of here before I let his son tear his head off. Gods know he fucking deserves it."

"Cyril--" The older man looked positively miserable and Cyril stared up at him, eyes hard. "I fought him. I told him it was wrong. I left his service. I'm only here because I heard rumors that the King was bringing you home. Please, let me--"

"Don't come any closer to me," Cyril warned, scrambling in my lap and I locked my arms around his waist, in part to hold him to me and in part to keep myself from getting up and tearing into my father again. "You don't...understand what I've been through, Ambrose. You never could. You let him send me away. You could have warned me. You could have warned Fox. You chose to do nothing and you let him send me away to be strapped down, drugged, and raped. You--you can apologize. And maybe, later, when things calm down, we'll talk, you and I. But right now, I need you to leave. I need to put him back together--" He indicated me and I squeezed him tighter. "And I need to find Brentlyn and get my son. I don't have the time or the energy to deal with your pity party right now."

Ambrose took the words, harsh as they were, in stride. He squared his shoulders, nodded, and grabbed Harlan as roughly as I had to get him away from us. Cyril clung to me, his fingers running through my hair and eventually, after a long moment, he pulled me up to my feet. "Come on," he ordered. "We need to find Emory, get him to bed, and then you're going to fuck me because you're angry and I'm in heat and we both need the outlet."

Chapter Text

We found Emory with Brentlyn, who had gotten him a bath and dressed him in Riordan's clothes, which were exorbitantly large. He was positively swimming in them, stumbling around with his doll in his hands when Cyril caught him by the shoulders. He blinked up at him and mumbled something in their language, casting a careful glance in my direction. I felt guilty immediately and crossed my arms. My brow furrowed and my lips pursed. Brentlyn shot me an 'I told you so' sort of look and Cyril brushed his fingers over Emory's cheek.

"He wants to know if you're still angry," he told me and Emory's cheeks colored. He pressed himself into Cyril's side and peeked at me, one eye visible through the folds of the seal skin coat. His little fingers tightened around the fabric and I shook my head.

"No, not angry. I was never angry at you, boss," I said gently and Emory seemed to absorb that for a moment before toddling toward me, stumbling on his too-large pant legs until I scooped him up. He giggled, his limbs going limp as I hauled him through the palace and to the monarchial wing. His big eyes took in everything around him and I could feel his rapid heartbeat against the hand I had on his back while we walked. He kept stretching his legs and digging his feet into my waist in an attempt to get higher up on my chest so that he could see more. He was an inquisitive little creature and he asked questions about the pictures on the wall as we walked but I was utterly distracted. Cyril, thankfully, knew most of the answers and Emory seemed to be in a state of disbelief that he'd grown up here with me.

My mind, however, was on the promise I'd been given about after finding Emory and putting him to bed.

Izzy had arranged for my childhood bedroom to be made up and by the time Cyril opened the door, Emory was nearly asleep. I couldn't blame him, really. He'd been traveling for months and then spent the afternoon running around with Riordan and Olivia. His bleary, heavy eyes looked up blanky at the both of us and, without a word, he rolled over into the pillows and fell asleep. Cyril snorted, pulling the blankets up around him and it was an oddly domestic scene for us but it was nice--to be putting our son to bed together but it opened a wide array of other scenarios for my imagination to play out. Eating with them, taking him down to the beach or to the market outside the palace gates, or having his picture painted to hang it in the study the way that my father had hung ours.

It was striking, how very possessive I felt over him in that moment. Cyril ruffled his hair, kissed both of his cheeks, and blew out the candles mounted by the door. He stood for a moment and watched me while I watched Emory before he cleared his throat. "Are you coming?" he asked quietly and I jumped at the noise, glancing back over my shoulder to where he was, a dark shadow standing in the doorway.

"Oh, right. Yes. I'll...I'll be right there. I just want to--"

"You don't have to explain. I get it." I could see him shrug and my attention shifted back to Emory. Cyril spoke again behind me. "I'm going to clean up."

"Mm..." I hesitated and turned again. "You know where my bedroom is?"

He paused for a moment and when he spoke next, I could hear the grin in his voice. "I imagine I can find it if your taste hasn't changed," he whispered and then he vanished, leaving the door open just an inch behind him, as noiseless as a ghost. Emory barely moved. The rise and fall of his little chest was the only indication that he was even real and not some life-sized doll. His cheeks flushed pink and his hair dampened quickly. I remembered what Cyril had said about Emory's marks and peeled his blankets back down carefully to give him room to breathe. He huffed in his sleep and stirred slightly, curling his body toward me when I sat down on the bed. His eyes opened marginally and he blinked. I wasn't even sure he really saw me until he reached for my hand. His little fingers curled over mine and then he lifted them, patting me gently on the arm before he rolled onto his stomach.

"Goodnight, Fox," he mumbled into his pillow and I leaned down to kiss the back of his tousled head before I left.

I shut his door behind me and rubbed my face, exhausted from travel and fury. I made my way to the washroom, cleaned up, and ditched my clothes for linen sleeping bottoms. Cyril was face-down in my bed when I got to him, half-asleep already. He stirred only when he felt my weight on the bed beside him. His eyes slid open, half-lidded, and his cheeks turned pink.

It always surprised me how slight he really was. Perhaps because I grew up with him, his size never really registered with me but after time apart and now, seeing him stripped of that seal-skin coat and wearing a pair of my pants over his slim hips, it was painfully obvious how petite Cyril really was. Slim shoulders, narrow hips, a tapered waist. He'd put on muscle mass since the last I'd see him like this and he had a new scar that ran over his back. It started beneath his left arm and slashed at a downward angle toward his spine through one of the blue marks that peppered his body. It made the triangular design there seem a little bit warped, like someone had dragged their finger through wet paint.

He was beautiful; in an impish, otherworldly sort of way and his lazy smile spread over his face when he noticed me watching him. He didn't say anything though, just let me continue and let a low hiss escape through his teeth when I traced that new scar, arching an eyebrow in question.

"Fell off a horse," he grumbled. "Got my foot stuck in the stirrup and he dragged me over a rock on the beach. I'm lucky it isn't worse."

"You're lucky your leg wasn't broken," I responded.

Cyril huffed. "I never said it wasn't." I blinked at him, waiting for an explanation, and he pushed himself up onto his knees so that he could sit with me. He shifted around in an attempt to get comfortable and then tried again. "It was broken. Or rather, it was dislocated. I broke my arm trying to get out of the stirrup though and let me tell you, having my leg popped back into my pelvis hurt a lot more than having my arm set. I was lucky he didn't take my leg off or break my spine or crack my skull, you know? Emory was an infant at the time. All I could think about was what they would do to him if I died. Leave him in the woods for animals or take him out in a boat and drop him in the water."

The disgusted expression that crossed my face must have set something off in him though. My whole being was repulsed at the idea of a world without Emory already. I shuddered and he scooted forward, pressing a kiss to my jaw that melted the tension between us away. "His first word was mine," he told me gently. "Everything was his. I was his, the horse was his, Raevar was his, Kinnon was his. Even things and people that did not belong to him or belong in his family belonged to him. Or at least, he thought they did. Mine was followed shortly by No. We went through a great stage during which he refused to do anything because the answer to every question was no. He walked late. Raevar said that was because I held him too much. He grew on Rae. By the time he was three, the old man thought the world revolved around Emory. He's very charismatic. Very charming...which is obviously not like me. At all. Rae would ask me what you were like and make comparisons and then he'd turn his stern voice on and say, "Leland."" Cyril drew himself up as if to imitate someone much larger than himself and he pulled a face, his brow drawn down and his lips turned into a grumpy looking pout. ""Like father, like son, you know. You remind me so much of Mereen.""

"Mereen?"

He smiled sadly then and deflated. "The last Infinito. He died just after Emory was born. Caught a fever. We all did, except Em. He's a bit sturdier than we are. He can even eat like you can. Meat and dairy and all the good stuff that makes me sick."

It was good to hear about Emory, to learn, but it didn't take the edge off, not really. I was still furious and the more he talked, the more I remembered why. He noticed it and kept scooting closer to me like he was unsure of how he wanted to start what he'd promised earlier. I was distracted. Worked up. Angry at the world and at everything he'd had to do alone. I couldn't help but wonder...what if he had died when he fell off of that horse? Emory would have had no one. I hadn't known about him. None of them would have brought him to me.

It was jarring to realize how utterly isolated and alone Cyril had been with him and I couldn't put into words what I felt for him because of that. It had always been strong, the love I had for Cyril, but it was so incredibly altered by the sacrifices he'd made that love seemed pale compared to what I felt. Perhaps it was just the act of having a child together, of having a blood tie between the two of us that would always be there now. Emory bound me to him.

"Are you going to stare or kiss me, Fox?" he eventually asked, leaning down so that he could look up into my face. I hadn't been aware of how I'd slumped over into a defeated position and I managed a smile at his eagerness.

Kissing Cyril was, by far, the best part of being with him. He had a distinctly sweet taste to his mouth and his skin and his lips seemed crafted to fit mine. He opened them willingly and let my tongue dip between them so that I could skim it over his teeth and his cheeks and the roof of his mouth. His fingers tangled in my hair and he lurched forward, straddling my lap like he had that night on watch and I should have felt guilty. I hadn't spoken to Natalya yet. This was wrong on so many, many levels but my hands slid up his chest anyway and the marks beneath my palms heated, a furnace locked between the two of us.

It was all the motivation I needed to forget the other worries I had. I hooked my arms around his legs and flipped him over. A surprised yelp escaped his throat when he landed on his back in the mountain of pillows I still kept on my bed. He was flushed and grinning up at me, his head tilted to one side while I settled between his knees. I leaned forward and licked the seam of his mouth. He opened his lips, expecting a kiss, and I denied him, relishing in his disappointed groan. I planted kisses down his throat and his jaw, across his collar, and down his slim chest. He squirmed beneath me, his breath hitching when I traced the edges of his tattoos with the tip of my tongue.

I licked over his nipples and felt them harden against my teeth while Cyril's fingernails scraped into my shoulders. "Fox," he whimpered above me and I bit down, looking up to watch him throw his head back and hiss, his eyes shut tight. I repeated the same motions to the other side and then dropped kisses down his abdomen to the line of his hips.

"Tease," he complained.

I hummed against one of the sharp bones there and sucked a bright red mark into the flesh. "Not a tease," I corrected quietly. "It's been six years, Cyril. I'm just getting reacquainted."

He grumbled but his fingers stayed in my hair, combing through it while I laved attention on every inch of him. I finished with his torso and moved to his arms until I got back to his mouth. He was red-faced and panting, eyes wide, mouth swollen and stained scarlet from kisses and from his repeated chewing of his bottom lip. "Doesn't feel like you've forgotten much," he whispered, breathless and blinking up at me while I pulled his bottom lip between my teeth.

"I haven't forgotten that I can fuck you into coming without ever touching your cock," I answered, my voice low and husky from a longing that spanned six years. Cyril's eyes widened even more and he struggled under me in a sad attempt at getting the upper hand. I grabbed his wrists and brought them both above his head, pinning them down with one of my fists around both of them. I peeled the only clothes he was wearing off with the other and reached between his legs, my fingertips skating over his thighs. He parted them willingly, his back arching at the touch while my hand moved lower until I found the tight, soaked entrance to his body.

Gods, I was never going to get over that. He cried out at the brush of my fingertips, his muscles drawing up tightly and he tossed his head, throwing it back against the pillows. "Fox, please--"

"If you start begging, Cyril, so help me, I will take you over my knee." His eyes popped open at the threat and his whole face turned scarlet. His mouth opened like he might protest but his cock twitched at the words and my lips curved into a smile. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"What is your issue with begging?" he blurted and I snorted in response. I'd been waiting for him to ask that but he'd always been too shy or too lost in what we were doing to ever get around to it. Age had brought him patience. Or maybe that had been Emory.

Truthfully, I hated the idea of him begging for anything. It reminded me of Ivar and the day he'd beaten him in front of Brentlyn and myself and how Cyril had begged him to stop through the sharp sound of that cane hitting flesh while my stomach threatened to come out of my mouth. I couldn't help but imagine how he'd begged him to stop at other times but the thought of bringing up Ivar while I was circling that part of him, feeling him open up beneath my touch, was abhorrent. That wasn't entirely the whole truth though and so I opted to tell him a partial truth until a less intimate time. "I don't want you to beg because I want you to trust that I'll give you what you need. You don't have to beg for it. You know I'm going to make you feel good. You know you're going to come, hard and long and probably more than once, sweetheart, because I've waited a long time to have you here again. So you don't have to beg. You just have to lay here and let me touch you and make those incredible little noises you make. I'll take care of the rest."

Cyril stared, still struggling for breath, pulling at where I had his arms pinned and I carefully pushed one finger into him while he attempted to make sense of those words. His concentration shattered and a low, desperate moan slipped from his mouth. His lips stayed parted and his hips shifted, pushing down against the intrusion while I fucked him with it. "Gods, Fox," he whimpered. "You win. I won't beg."

"Good boy." He glowed at that. He always had. His whole body went lax like he was succumbing to whatever I wanted to do to him and I added another finger, stretching him open while he spread his legs wider and lifted his hips for me. I pressed kisses to his cheeks while I pumped into him. I licked along his jaw, sucked behind his ear, and left a series of bruising kisses over his collar. I crooked my fingers inside him and finally--finally--that beautiful, frantic mewling noise I'd grown to love so much tore from his lips.

"Fox!" he cried my name at it, a sob wracking his chest and I picked a better rhythm, reaching deep for his sweet spot while he thrashed under my weight. His marks were blistering hot against my chest and his entire body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat that made him slick and made my sheets twist up around him while he moved. He rocked his hips against my hand and his toes curled. He was trying so hard to hold on, to fight the finish, and he wasn't going to last. I wasn't going to let him. I picked up the pace, driving into him with a punishing speed until he was squealing and crying, incoherent and delirious with the need of his heat and still, he kept fighting.

It was impressive and his cock wept between us, angry and red, trapped against his stomach, crying for attention that I refused to give it. "You're going to come for me, Cyril," I warned him, licking along the shell of his ear as I spoke. I tightened my hand around his wrists and his eyes flew open, pupils blown out so that the blue was almost invisible. "You're going to come when I tell you to. Look at me." His eyes were everywhere, unfocused and all over the room but at the command, they riveted to me and the heat in my stomach pooled. Gods, I was so hard it hurt but watching him lose his self-control was half the fun for me. "Nod." He obeyed and cried something that may have been my name again but he was so far gone that there was no way to tell.

"Are you ready, sweetheart?" He didn't answer. His back arched and he ground down on my hand so hard I thought it had to hurt. His body clenched down on my fingers and shuddered under me and for a moment, I thought maybe he would reach it on his own but he didn't. "One."

He groaned, almost in protest, his hair matted and stuck to his face. "Two."

He tossed his head. His eyes rolled back. His lips parted.

"Now." He made a screaming, mewling, shameless noise and shattered. He convulsed under me, his abdomen clenching when he finished, spilling hot, sticky spurts of fluid over his belly. I let go of his hands so that I could reposition myself and he started clawing at me immediately, leaving deep, red gauges in my shoulders and along my chest. I wriggled free of my pants, hooked his legs over my shoulders, and before he had caught his breath, drove into him.

Cyril did scream that time. His whole body went stiff and he arched his back but Gods, he felt so fucking good. He was everything I remembered him being--hot, wet, impossibly tight and still spasming around me from his recent climax. He stopped clawing at me in favor of fisting his hands in the sheets for a moment. Then he lifted one and caught the back of my neck while I pressed into his sweet spot. He pulled me down toward his mouth and I braced my hand beside his head, rocking my hips against his, nearly wincing every time he tightened on me. He kissed me, hot and hard, teeth and tongue, and he bit my bottom lip until I tasted blood, his hand tight in my hair. "I love you," he moaned against my mouth. "I n-never stopped."

It was enough to kill me, I swear, it was. Emotional shit like that always did me in and it was enough to nearly have me coming for him before I was ready. I growled against his lips and he looked up, his eyes a bit clearer and more focused than they had been a moment earlier. "I love you too," I managed to bite out. "But I'm going to save the emotion for the afterglow, sweet thing, because right now? Right now, I just want to fuck you so hard you have trouble walking tomorrow."

His breath caught and he wriggled against me as if to incite the promise. "I'm okay with that," he practically chirped and then slipped off into something incoherent when I picked a brutal pace. I grabbed him behind his knees and forced them as far up and as wide as they would go so that he was nearly bent in half, gasping with every thrust.

"Hold your legs up," I barked and he grabbed them obediently so that I could reach between us and grip his half-hard cock, stroking it in time with the movement of my body against his. He cried out at the touch, his eyes rolling back, and he hardened quickly. I took his legs back from him and his arms stayed above his head, gripping one of the pillows with white knuckles. "Gods, Cyril, you take every fucking inch."

Despite being in a state near incoherence again, he managed to laugh, a gorgeous, breathtaking noise amid his panting and mewling. "Like I would let you give me any less," he gasped the words, barely capable of getting them out, and then started desperately trying to rock himself against me. "I'm not gonna last much longer, Fox." It was a whispered warning on the tail end of a breathy, beautiful moan that made my stomach clench. His body rippled around me, tightening and squeezing while his abdomen drew itself up for the impending finish.

He was killing me. Slowly, but surely, he was killing me. He made a mewling, aching noise, shivered, and I felt his climax hit my stomach, wet and sticky. His eyes didn't roll that time. He held his breath, grinding his teeth, his gaze locked on mine while his tight, perfect ass seemed to try to draw me in deeper and hold me there. It did me in. I drove into him hard, letting go of his knees to grab his hips so that I could pull him down onto me for more force and he cried out with every upward thrust, his body bowed and slippery with sweat and semen and I finished deep inside him, breathless and really, truly sated for the first time in six years.

Cyril remained motionless but for his ragged breath for a moment, his arm tossed over his eyes. Then he ran his fingers through his soaked hair, making it stand in a spiky mess. He shifted his hips and winced while he slid me out of his body, his heels digging into the bed. I thought he probably wanted to hold me but I had alternative plans and pinned him back down, licking up the mess he'd made of his stomach. He ruffled my hair, his head back while I worked and then I kissed him. It tasted of blood and sex, honeysuckle and lime. Cyril and I.

His arms slipped around me then and he collapsed into my pillows, tucking my head against his shoulder and I let him cradle me like that, absently running his fingers over my damp hair. "How are you feeling, champ?" I mumbled eventually, recalling a bit late that he was in heat and that had always made the both of us prone to pushing limits.

Cyril snorted softly and kissed my forehead. "You always ask me that," he countered. "How are you feeling, my Lord King?"

I wrinkled my nose at the title, tilting my face up to look at him and he was staring down at me with one arched eyebrow. "Lucky," I answered softly, returning his kiss with one on the corner of his mouth.

He seemed surprised by the answer and leaned back to get a better look at me, his fingers still in my hair. "Lucky? Why lucky?"

"Why not?" I asked, moving so that I could brace myself with my hands on either side of his head. He stared up at me, seemingly at a loss for words, and so I continued. "I have you. I have Emory. Why wouldn't I be lucky?" He looked uncomfortable and turned his face toward the pillow, his eyes going glassy and my heart sank. I sat back on my knees, my weight over his legs, and watched him pull that pillow over his face. "Cyril?"

He didn't answer for a moment and I let him have it, this quiet time he seemed to need, until I saw his shoulders tremble. Alarmed, I wrestled the pillow from his hands and, in a very un-Cyril manner, he fought me for it until it was wrenched from his fingers. His cheeks were damp and he wiped at them furiously, sucking in a sharp breath to combat the sobbing. It was heartbreaking. A minute before, he'd been fine and now, for some reason I couldn't explain or even fathom, he was crying. It wasn't uncommon. At least, it hadn't been before he'd been exiled. Cyril was an emotional creature but since his return, he'd been decidedly...less emotional. This was unexpected.

"Cyril, sweetheart, why are you crying?" I climbed off of him and reached for his shoulders but he shrank away. The panic that was fluttering distantly in my chest became more prominent. "Did I hurt you?"

"Gods, no!" He wiped furiously at his face again and when I tried to pull him into my lap that time, he let me. He was stiff and unyielding, but he let me. "You're perfect. You're always perfect. I just...I feel like I don't belong here anymore, you know? I don't know how to navigate your world now. For fuck's sake, Fox, you found me whoring myself out and I keep waiting for you to lay into me about it but you don't. Six years ago, being turned over your knee would have been the least of my problems if you found me doing that. I don't know why you think you're lucky to have me. I'm...like a secondhand toy."

I pressed my face into his back and stayed there for a moment. I breathed him in, my arms locked around his torso. I stayed like that until he loosened up, the stiffness ebbing away from his posture. Eventually, he squirmed sideways and snuggled into my lap, his wet face pressed to my chest and his arms around my abdomen. "You would have to be an object to be secondhand anything, Cyril," I started lightly. "Is that what you think? That you're just an object?"

"Easily thrown away, obviously," he choked and the tears started all over again. He had seemed so impossibly strong since I'd found him in that Inn. He'd been unwavering and relentless in his pursuit of what he needed. It had been almost as if whatever had happened...he was over it. He'd made it seem like he'd adopted the belief that there was no use crying over spilled milk. We couldn't change what Harlan had done and he didn't waste any time worrying about it. Or so I'd thought.

In reality though, it very clearly weighed heavy on him and my patricidal feelings toward my father came back with a vengeance while he trembled in my arms. Admittedly, as I'd pointed out, Cyril was an emotional creature. He was especially emotional after sex and so part of me wondered how much of this was how he really felt and how much of this was him being overwhelmed. Still, it was shattering me. I brushed his tears away and held his hair back off his forehead while he shuddered. I lifted him up so that he was sitting with his back to my chest again, leaned him forward, and blew carefully across the back of his neck when he turned feverish in his grief. I let him cry because he needed it. The Gods only knew how long he'd been bottling it up so that Emory could lean on him.

"Harlan was wrong," I told him gently. "We both know that. What you were doing in that Inn, frankly, is none of my fucking business but because I know why you were doing it, I'll humor you and answer. I don't care. You did what you had to do to keep Emory fed and warm. There's no shame in that, Cyril. Gods know, I would have done it if I had to. What else is this?" Because it had to be more. The amount of time he'd been everyone's support system was too long, especially for someone like him who was so used to having someone else to lean on or talk to.

He made another choking noise and pressed his hands over his mouth, rocking in my lap like he didn't want to let the words out. I'd never seen him quite this bad and I'd known him for most of our lives. It was, for lack of a better word, terrifying. He was ripping apart at the seams. The closest I'd seen him to this level of a breakdown was when Kinnon had told him what being an Infinito meant. I ran my hands over his back, over the cooling tattoos, and I kissed across his shoulders while he worked through his demons. I was patient, especially with him. It was one of the few virtues I possessed and I must have spent twenty minutes massaging my fingers into his tense muscles and waiting for him to overcome whatever horror he was reliving and forcing himself to think about.

"They died for me," he finally managed and I remembered Emory saying the same thing in the depths of his waking nightmare. "I split them and Kinnon refused to go. He kept telling me that someone had to stay behind and slow them down so that Emory and I made it out of the forest."

"I know," I told him gently and he balked, turning around to look at me with wide, horrified eyes. "Emory told me."

"Emory knows?" He was actually horrified at that. His mouth dropped open and he shuddered visibly. "I think I'm going to puke."

He didn't. He stumbled from the bed, paced from one end to the other, looked back at me like he was pleading for an answer, and sat down when I patted the bed beside me. He did not, however, climb to the spot that I'd patted but I let that go for the time being.

I took a deep breath and realized that, thankfully, this was my element. I knew the answer to this. "Emory is an Infinito, yes?" He nodded and I continued. "And he's my heir. He'll be King. Something I had to come to terms with very young, Cyril, before I even knew you, was that people will die for me. They join the guard or the King's men or the armada and they do that because they're willing to die for me. It's easier to deal with when you're young, I think. I never struggled with it like you are now. I recognized that it was sad and that I didn't want anyone to die but I also knew that having people willing to do so was necessary. He didn't seem...as distraught as you are. He's having nightmares, but you knew that. I think it was more upsetting watching his home burn. It gave him a visual link to that destruction and they'll pay for that, Cyril. You know we'll make sure of that. That's why you came here."

"No," he corrected me stiffly and then crawled over to where I was laying on my back, curling against my side. "I came here for this. For you and Emory. Because this is my home. I just need to readjust again."

"And you will. I'll make sure. I'll keep a running tally of all of your fuck-ups and I'll spank you for them later."

Cyril's face flushed and he shoved at my chest, his tears evaporating in favor of a false pout. "You're an asshole," he growled. "And I'm going to spank you someday. You mark my words. You'll fucking love it."

I snorted, wrapping an arm around his warm little body so that I could pull him tighter to my side. He put his head on my chest and sighed, content, until I used that very same hand to smack him sharply against the curve of his pretty little ass. He yelped and scowled but stayed where he was, even going so far as to tighten his arms around me. "That was for threatening the King," I told him quietly. "Very big mistake."

"Fuck you."

"Again? Already?" He dissolved into a fit of giggles, burying himself in the blankets at my side, and refusing to answer any more of my remarks.

Chapter Text

I woke up with Cyril's warm weight next to me, asleep on his belly. He wasn't touching me, not really, but he was close enough that I could feel him and I was struck immediately by how odd it was that he wasn't awake before me. He had always been the early riser, prone to scolding my ear off when I made us late for things we were meant to attend together...Court functions, balls, lessons...you name it, I was almost always late for it, and he was almost always the incessant little voice in my ear telling me how bad that looked.

That morning though, he was still asleep. My room in the monarchial wing wasn't nearly as dark as I wanted it to be but that couldn't be helped. The side that faced the beach was all window from floor to ceiling and even with drapes, the light filtered in and lit the place with bright, late morning sunshine and I wondered how long we'd been allowed to sleep. The weight of dealing with the Immaran Empire's army on the border sat across my shoulders and I groaned. It would have been nice to forget about it all, to roll on top of Cyril, lift his hips, and lose myself in him for the morning. It had been too long since I'd been able to spend a day in bed with him but I could remember with vivid detail how much I had loved every second of it. Even having him nestled against me was more than I had dared to hope for in a long time.

I looked him over leisurely, my eyes skimming down the length of his back to where the sheet covered the curve of his tight, rounded little ass. I reached out and squeezed, cupping one side and marveling at how he fit in my hand. "Hi," he mumbled at the touch though his eyes didn't open and my heart melted at that. He'd reacted terribly in the market when someone had touched him but he felt safe enough here, with me, to let his guard down.

We did not have the time to do the things I wanted to do and so I climbed over him, pausing to straddle his hips so that I could press a kiss to the top of his head, and then got to my feet. I dressed quickly, intent on checking on Emory. I was too focused on that to worry about the whole get-up I was supposed to wear with all the badges and bars that signified my rank and the stupid sash that went over it. Gods, there was nothing I hated more than those clothes and so I pulled on the gear I usually went to the market in. Much more toned down, common looking clothes in a typical red and black, and left Cyril to stir himself from bed.

Someone had brought breakfast in, which was usual. It was not, however, usual for two people to already be sitting at the white, wrought iron table in front of the windowed wall that looked out over the post.

I stopped short to take in the sight I was presented with. Emory was stuffing bacon into his mouth like he'd never had it and, of course, he probably hadn't because Cyril's people didn't eat it. If he had, it was likely nothing in this sort of amount. He was talking with food in his mouth, making animated motions with his hands as if he were telling a story to the person sitting across from him.

Natalya's hair was swept over her shoulder, a dark, chocolate colored sheet that spanned down her back and over her white, airy gown. Her midriff was exposed in a triangle of missing fabric, as was all the rage these days (or so my sister told me), and her legs were crossed. She was twisting her ankle beneath her dress, her expression one of utter focus. She was captivated, bright eyed, and smiling that knowing, sweet smile that Tally was always good for. She answered him but the blood had rushed to my head and I couldn't quite make out the words.

Emory noticed me first and hopped from his chair to hug my legs and exclaim about the bacon which, I was right, he hadn't ever tasted before. Natalya gave me a sad sort of smile and handed him back the doll she'd been holding in her lap. "Can Riordan come play with me?" he asked me, tugging at my pant leg while I stared at her.

"Uh," I managed to choke. I had been dreading this--talking to Natalya, dealing with the fallout, hurting her. I'd wanted to seek her out later that day in her own quarters where she stayed with her aunt, who was supposed to be some kind of escort so that she didn't get into trouble with me. That bitter hag would have been a big problem, but she was nowhere to be found now, and I still couldn't bring myself to speak.

Natalya did it for me. "I'm sure if you ask one of the guards nicely, Emory, they'll see if Riordan can come play with you after his lessons this morning," she told him softly and I did, at least, manage a weak nod before Emory was scuttling toward the door. The guards had to have let her in. Then again, they were used to letting her in. They'd been letting her in for years. I hadn't thought of that the night before when I'd been too intent on getting into Cyril's pants.

My mouth was dry and Natalya got to her feet, waiting for the click of Emory's bedroom door and the sound of giggling while he played with the contents of the toy chest. "I heard you were bringing Cyril back," she told me gently. "I thought I would give you space the first night, but I walked by this morning and I heard him laughing through the door. I just wanted to see if you were awake but...he started talking to me. He's a beautiful little boy, Fox. He's very bright. You're very lucky." There was a sharp edge to her voice, almost pained, and it occurred to me then that she knew. Our failure to conceive wasn't on me. It was her.

"Tally, I..." I swallowed and she took a step closer to me, placing one of her delicate hands on my shoulder. Her fingertips teased the dark mop of curls I hadn't quite forced into submission yet and she gave me that sad, heartbreaking smile that I had expected her to give me. "I'm sorry."

Her smile only widened at that and she tipped her head. "For what? For being in love with someone? Fox--"

"And who is this?" Cyril's voice cut my heartbreak and the edge to his tone wasn't nearly as forgiving as hers was. He was dressed in those white clothes he'd worn in our youth, the same set I'd kept like a sentimental, lovesick puppy. He'd probably found them in my dresser, hidden in my own clothes. The sight of him brought a wave of nostalgia and longing to my gut that made me groan.

Natalya's hand dropped from my shoulder and I took an instinctive step away from her. "Cyril, this is Natalya," I introduced carefully and those pale, sharp blue eyes took both of us in. They lingered on the offending hand. The Cyril I had known six years ago would have rolled his eyes, given me a rude hand gesture, and stormed off. This one, however, had regained the confidence he'd lost in his hysterical fit the night before. He approached me with casual familiarity, hooked his arm around my hip, and stood on his toes to kiss me.

I would have liked to say that I didn't respond because Natalya was standing there but I had no self-control when it came to this man. I let him in when his tongue probed my mouth, his fingers knotted in my hair, and I felt entirely possessed in that moment. It was an odd sensation for me. I was so used to being the possessor, the one that took from Cyril what I wanted and kept him a writhing, needy mess throughout the ordeal. This was the first look I'd ever gotten at his ability to turn the table on me.

He only let me go when he had thoroughly pillaged my mouth. Then he gave me a sweet tap on the chest where my heart was pounding erratically, stepped by me, and popped a grape into his mouth from the table. "You owed me a good morning kiss," he told me icily and then shot a glare in Natalya's direction. "And you keep your hands to yourself."

She was flushed pink, her lips parted, and one of her hands over her abdomen. I almost thought she'd enjoyed the display. In fact, I was certain that she did because she broke into a grin a moment later and walked right up to the table where he was standing, his hip cocked against it. Cyril's eyes widened at her proximity and her grin. She crossed her arms. "Yes," she finally said, like she'd been inspecting him. "You'll do. I like you."

Cyril glanced at me, sputtering and thrown off his game, and I had nothing to give him because I wasn't even sure where this was going or what Natalya had been playing at. She seemed to sense the apprehension and patted his cheek. Considering his previous reaction to a stranger's touch, I was surprised he let her keep her hand. I was also surprised by how much taller she was than him and I realized, perhaps late, that Natalya was bigger than he was. Her legs were longer, her torso was longer, her hips were wider.

"I have no intentions of making a move on your King, little Lier-Prince." Cyril choked on the tea he was drinking at the endearment, his eyes wide. "I just wanted to make sure you were going to take care of him. I spent a long time putting him back together when you left. I'd like him to stay that way."

"Take care of me? I'm not a child," I grumbled and at that, they both shot me skeptical looks. "Don't...no, this is bad. You two can't be friendly. I'll never hear the end of it."

"Why not? She's got an edge. I like her," he answered and Natalya wore a triumphant grin, her arm dropping casually over Cyril's shoulder. She gave him a bit of a shake and he gave her a sideways glance. "But really, if you ever touch him again, I'll break your fucking fingers."

The conversation had gotten way too bizarre for me and I wasn't even entirely sure what had happened. I left them to their own devices to check on Emory, get him dressed and out of his pajamas, and back into the main part of the suite. By the time I'd done that, Cyril and Natalya were apparently finished with whatever bonding they had to complete. She scooped up the boy at my side and gave me a wink. "I'm taking Emory to the market," she informed me, glancing back at Cyril. "And we're going to have him fitted like the little Prince that he is. Cyril says you two have a war to plan."

I watched her exit the room and two of the guards fell in beside her. She left me stammering and incapable of forming a coherent thought while Cyril folded himself into my side. "You can't do that to me," I informed him eventually.

"Do what?"

"Come out hissing and spitting like a snake and finish like a puppy," I answered glumly, turning to look down at him. I wasn't sure what I thought. I loved Cyril. That was never in question. Choosing between the two of them wasn't the issue. I knew what I wanted. I knew who I belonged with. Whether or not it was healthy for Natalya to be close to him was another issue entirely.

Cyril heaved a sigh. "She's a big girl, Fox. She can make her own decisions about what she can handle."

"And you? What about you being around her? You threatened to break her fingers!"

He snorted and swung around my body with his arm at my hip to face me. He held onto me and leaned back on his heels so that his weight was supported by my ability to stand upright. "I wouldn't break her fingers," he promised, arching an eyebrow.

"And somehow, after watching you sever someone's hand from his arm, that doesn't really do anything for me," I drawled and Cyril swatted at me, looking up with that wide-eyed, troublemaker's smile on his mouth and I tipped my head. His fingers splayed across my abdomen and slipped into my shirt, then traveled down to the edge of my trousers. He hooked them there and licked his lips, standing on his toes to press a kiss to the corner of my mouth.

He grasped me, half hard, without warning and stroked his fingers over my slowly. My breath hitched and I felt my face color. "Do you still like morning blow jobs, Fox?" he inquired gently, his breath warm against my throat while he pressed himself to me.

"We...we uh--"

"I'm sure Brentlyn can field it for another twenty minutes without you," he goaded and Gods, I wanted him so bad it hurt. He had me hard already, seconds after touching me, and his thumb slid over the slit of my cock. I swallowed a moan and grasped him by the back of his neck, tipping his head up to give him another proper kiss and then a rather rough shove toward the couch in the middle of the room. He landed on it, surprised, and I sat next to him to drag him into my lap.

Cyril wasted no time in rolling his hips against mine, rutting against my leg while he panted into my mouth. His fingers gripped my hair and I felt like a teenager again, on the verge of coming in my pants just from feeling him there. Way too soon, too fast, too hard. I was dizzy and drunk on him just like I had been then and I bit out a growl, dropping back into the arm of the couch and pulling my legs up. "Strip and straddle me backwards," I ordered against his ear and I felt him shudder at the order before he stood and obeyed.

Every time I saw him like this, I was reminded of how lucky I was to have someone like him. I could have watched him undress all the time and been happy with just that but he wanted to give me more. His legs slid over me, bare and spread wide by his position and he glanced back at me, a small smile playing over his clever little mouth. I grabbed his hips and pulled him back and his eyes widened, startled. His lips parted and his legs spread wider to accommodate my chest. I pushed him forward and felt his hands at my belt buckle, hastily fumbling with it to release me from my trousers. His tongue fluttered over my cockhead almost nervously while I spread him open.

Cyril's whole body shivered when I pressed my tongue to his hole and his mouth slid down over me, moaning so that the vibration went all the way into my thighs and I gripped him tighter. I licked at him, dragging my teeth over his cheeks before going back to the ring of tight, soaked muscle while he sucked my cock into his throat and held me there. I made a noise, not unlike a groan or a grunt, and slid my tongue into him, squeezing his hips enough to bruise.

His body rocked into me and I could feel him moaning around my cock with every thrust of my tongue. He eventually gave up with his mouth and moved to his hands, both of them wrapped tightly around me and at that point, I hardly cared. He kept sucking on the head between breathless panting, pumping me between his palms while I reached for his sweet spot.

I knew when I found it. His back arched and his head tossed back. He pushed his ass toward me as if to offer more. His tiny, expert hands kept working, stroking over my cock and massaging my balls, his tongue flicking out to meet the thrust of my hips every few seconds. He slid it over the slit, spit on it, and kept pumping. He shivered and writhed over me, his legs tightening on my torso.

He was destroying my focus with his touch and I shuddered through a climax without warning him but he slid his mouth down over me when he noticed, sucking me hard and long while I twisted under him, bucking my hips and pulling him back to meet my tongue. He pushed himself up when he knew I was finished, his hands braced between my hips, and looked over his shoulder at me. His lips were sticky and smeared and he had the evidence of our activities on his cheeks but his eyes were half-lidded and heavy, lust driven and he reached back, tangling his fingers in my hair. "Fox," he managed to choke. "Mmmm fucking hell, you're good at this."

"Grind your hips back, Cyril. Don't touch yourself. Fuck my tongue," I commanded with a sharp slap on his bottom that turned him pink and he moaned, his body slick and sweaty again but he obeyed. His hips moved against me and he mewled over me, twisting and squirming. He didn't seem sure of where to put his hands when he wasn't allowed to touch himself. He let go of my hair and skimmed them over his abdomen. He scratched along his thighs, his cock bobbing against his belly, dripping and, no doubt, aching for release. His eyes fluttered shut, his breath kept catching.

He was in agony and I loved it. He was on the cusp of a climax he couldn't seem to reach and he started pushing down faster, my tongue sliding in and out of his hot little body. He leaned forward for a new angle, a keening moan escaping his mouth. "I'm so close, Fox, please, just a little bit...more, just a little more!" He tossed his head and his hair fell over his eyes. He gnashed his teeth, a feral noise tearing from his throat. My heart was pounding. Gods, I could have gotten off again just watching him like this. He grabbed the back of the couch with one hand and his little fingers turned into claws like he was trying to actively hold something back.

A flush crept up his cheeks, his lips parted. He panted my name, his eyes up. He wanted something. I knew that hesitation. He wanted something that he didn't want to want and he was having trouble articulating the words to get it. I kept his hips moving for him when he faltered and he whimpered, finally breaking down enough to find his ability to speak. "Hit me," he moaned. "J-just--"

I didn't need the explanation he wanted to give me. I hadn't ever considered that I would like spanking, especially him when he was so tiny and fragile looking, but that was what did it for me. It was his size and the way it turned him pink and wet. I only had to hit him three times in time with the back thrust of his hips before he shattered and made a mess of the both of us, clawing at my clothes and practically screaming my name through a finish that had him slumping forward, back bowed, body clenching. "Gods, you are beautiful," I breathed, licking a line up the center of him. He convulsed at the touch, his eyes shut, and he slid off of me, trembling and spent and I wasn't even sure he heard what I'd said.

I only moved him to pull him back so that he was curled on my chest instead of my legs. His breathing was terribly ragged, he was covered in body fluid, and he shook harder than he ever had post-coitus, but that wasn't overly alarming. He always shook. This was just particularly hard.

I let him stay like that for a moment and wiped up his face with my sleeve. I was as covered as he was. The clothes would have to be changed anyway. "Hey, little one," I finally whispered, nosing at his ear. "You still in there?"

"Mmm," he whimpered into my shoulder. "Barely. I don't know if I can use my legs just yet. I want to go back to bed."

"We can't go back to bed." I stood up and let his arms slip from my body so that I could hoist him up and take him back to the bedroom. I went back out to get his clothes and by the time I'd come back, he was standing shakily. "Fucking work, right?"

Cyril snorted and he opened his mouth to speak, looked up at me, and then shut it again while his face turned the same scarlet as my sheets. "Right," he managed to choke.

"What's with the flush, sweet thing?" I set to stripping out of my clothes and pulling on the dreaded uniform I was supposed to wear while Cyril cleaned himself up with a wet towel. The flush grew more persistent the longer I let him chew on the question. "Cyril?"

"I don't like it when anyone else hits me!" he blurted, spinning to face me in only his trousers, his shirt clutched in his hands. My eyes widened and I blinked at him, surprised. "I just...want you to know that."

I rubbed the back of my neck and then my face. "I...okay? Thanks, I think...I'm not sure what kind of reaction you wanted here, Cyril."

He looked frustrated. His face flushed an even deeper red and he looked on the verge of tears but he was biting them back. "Just...when you took us with you, I thought that things would change. I thought I'd be too broken to do the things we used to do. I never got off in the Inn when I worked. I faked my way through it and mostly, they don't care because they're drunk but they'd ask if they could hit me. So I let them, because they paid extra for it and I needed to feed him, Fox, but I hated it. Then you started talking about putting me over your knee and Gods, I swear, I could probably get off just letting you take the piss out of me." He rambled and spoke too quickly at times. I had to strain to listen and to comprehend what he was telling me.

A part of me felt angry that he'd gone through all of this and that I would probably spend the rest of my life dealing with the fallout of what my father had made him live through. Another part of me felt pity that he hadn't even enjoyed it, which seemed twisted, but Gods, the least he could have gotten out of it was that.

And the last part of me was intrigued. Stunned, yes, but oh so intrigued by his admission. I grabbed him by his shoulder and tugged him forward. "Tonight, little one, I'll take you over my knee until you tell me to stop," I promised him quietly, whispering into the mess of white on top of his head. He shuddered and groaned, his arms slipping around me to squeeze in appreciation.

"We're so late," he mumbled morosely, changing the subject, most likely because I could feel the heat of his face through my coat. "Brentlyn is going to know exactly what we were doing."

"I seem to recall you telling him how good I am with my tongue so I blame that entirely on you," I pointed out, releasing him so that he could put his shirt back on. He huffed at me but let me take his hand and tuck him under my arm.

He looked up at me when we left the suite, almost like he was surprised that I was still touching him, my fingers playing idly with his hair. "I could get used to this, you know," he told me, arching an eyebrow. "This being escorted around under your arm and made to come so hard I black out in the mornings."

"I don't know if I can promise the black out every morning, not that it would even be healthy, but I'll see what I can do."

Chapter Text

The closer we got to our destination, the more Cyril seemed to shrink into my side. He'd been trained as my second, of course, but he'd never actually had to enter a real meeting with military officials and the rest of my personal counsel. They were the most important members of the Court--those with the biggest contributions to the war effort in terms of man power, money, and supplies. It didn't help that we were already behind because of our morning's activities.

I gave his shoulders a squeeze at the door and he squared them off, holding his chin up a little bit higher than he normally would have. "That's my boy," I whispered against his ear and I felt him shudder at the sensation before the doors swung open.

They were in full swing. Brentlyn was scowling at Lord Urien, though the scowl didn't seem to be at him so much as it was shared with him. Both of their postures seemed to indicate distress and irritation toward Lady Eliza Glenning, who was something like thirty-years-old. She was a tall, leggy blonde with caramel colored eyes, sporting a bold red gown and corset that I could hardly believe she could breathe in. "Nice of you to join us, Fox," she drawled, getting to her feet. Her heels clicked on the marble and she turned to look at me, one brow arched, a poisonous smile on her face, and a hand at her hip. Her eyes swept over Cyril and she traced her upper lip with her tongue. His immediate reaction was to freeze in front of me, which resulted in me bumping into him.

"And you brought your little lost puppy," she continued. I felt him huff and I cast her a withering glance while she thumbed the corners of her mouth, checking for smears in her cherry red lipstick. "Cyril, it's so lovely to see you back."

"Lady Glenning," he managed stiffly. For quite a time, my father had been intent on marrying me off to Eliza Glenning, whose family controlled most of the mines that weaved through the mountains, making her easily the wealthiest noble in the Court. Her father had no sons and she'd inherited from him the year before. Harlan had fancied the idea of adding her exorbitant wealth to the treasury but I'd taken to Natalya with Cyril's departure. Her parents, while they were not nearly as well-off as House Glenning, did own the territory with the largest sea port in Coria. It was not a bad trade-off, or so I'd been told.

It was no small secret, however, that Eliza Glenning allowed poachers through the mountain pass and that she was beyond angry at the Crown for stripping all the collars in Coria. She had an intense dislike for Lierians as a whole. It ran deeper for Cyril though. She'd been one of the intolerable noble children that had frequently made his life miserable whenever I wasn't around to stop them from doing it.

Brentlyn and Urien both breathed a sigh of relief and my brother peeled the badge of the second off of his chest and unceremoniously pinned it to Cyril, who gaped at the gesture and then ran his fingers over it experimentally. He tested the weight against his palm and then rolled his shoulders. He seemed as prepared for this as he was going to get and he approached the mapped table cautiously.

"Right then," I started, walking up behind him while his eyes flicked over the expanse, his brow furrowed. "Catch us up."

Meyer, who wasn't a noble at all, took the bait. He was a halfling and the lead scout, which made him the object of Lady Glenning's frequent torment. I doubted that would continue with Cyril present though. He would be the new victim of her persistently sour mood. "With the addition of the forces from Peak Bay, my Lord King, there's no way the armada and the standing army can stop the Immaran horde from crossing the border. Here--" He pressed his fingers along the line that separated Coria from Glacia and pursed his lips. "Is the first village after the crossing. They've adopted a scorched earth policy with Glacia, burning and butchering everything they cross. The only surviving nobility, to my knowledge, are the old Glacian king's cousins, the Novaks, but the Novaks are stripped of Riders and in no state to offer us aid, despite wanting to. I see no reason why they won't continue the policy with us. The soonest I can see us finding a choke point to cut them off is here--" He moved his hand toward the marsh where the river delta bled into the heart of the kingdom. "It's the wet season. Trying to cross the marsh is suicide."

"It's not," Cyril interjected, finally glancing up. I saw his eyes widen when he took in Meyer, who flashed him a wide smile and nodded his head. He was just as slight as Cyril was, with the same large, pale eyes. His were a brown so soft it was almost like clay and his hair was a honey color. His skin had a human pink to it but he was, without a doubt, Lierian. "My people are light on their feet. The horses are smaller. We know how to navigate a marsh. If we come around behind them--"

"So you just want to let them march through Coria and burn everything in their path until they hit the delta?" Glenning asked, her mouth turning up in a sneer. "It may not be your home anymore, Cyril, but our people live there. Everything between the border and the delta will be destroyed."

Urien rolled his eyes. "Cut your histrionics, Eliza. They have a big army, yes, but it's not enough to span the entire kingdom. What is directly in front of them will burn, but we have enough time to send Meyer's scouts north with an evacuation notice."

"More refugees?" Glenning snorted. "Like the Lierian horde that showed up at the gate this morning isn't enough?"

Meyer snapped for Cyril, though they both opened their mouths. "They're people, Glenning, and from what Brentlyn said, the Lierians offered an alliance. We would be stupid not to take it."

"We were stupid to ever remove your collars." I had to grab Cyril before he climbed over the table. I could see his face turn positively murderous and he clawed at my arm, struggling like he had every intention of destroying her. Brentlyn had to step between her and Meyer, who was less upset than Cyril but still seething.

My brother turned on her, ever the level-headed one, and glared. "That was an executive decision by your King, Lady Glenning, who is standing in the room with us now and who has Lierian family and Lierian consort. You'll mind your tongue or I'll let the Infinito cut it out for you. The Gods know you'd be more agreeable without it."

"The Infinito?" Meyer looked at Cyril, who had stopped struggling but was still scowling. He pushed my arm away from his middle and tugged his clothes smooth. "Those are real? You're the...?"

"Yes," he answered stiffly. "I am, and as the royal consort, Glenning, my station outranks yours. Mind your tongue unless you fancy a tribunal for treason."

Lady Glenning looked contrite, though her eyes were narrowed, and she managed a stiff nod before sinking back into her seat.

Cyril took the opportunity to seize control of the room the way he had been trained to do. "Fox," he began and I leaned over the table with him. "We'll need to evacuate above the delta. I know it's putting strain on the capital, but the villages on the coast are probably safe. They won't go that deep out of the way, not in the wet season. They'll be afraid of running into floods and, most likely, they would run into floods and so those places will be out of reach, for the time being. Everyone on the plains though...they have to go. If they don't go, they need to be made to understand that we can't protect them."

"Meyer?" I looked up at him and he nodded sharply. "Have those scouts sent out and withdraw the armada and the movement up the river delta."

"Collapse the bridge over the plains," Cyril added and Brentlyn quirked an eyebrow. "It will slow the fleet coming in from Peak Bay. Hold the armada back at the mouth of the delta, send the standing force around through the forest and back to the border. We can flank them on both sides and send my people up through the marsh for a third. They'll be boxed in. We might not have the numbers they have, but we'll have a significantly better field position. There's also...something else. We have a substance..."

Meyer sat up straighter in his chair, intrigue on his face. "Are you talking about the fire bottles? My mother used to tell me about Lierian fire bottles but I thought she was full of shit."

Cyril laughed and hung his head a little bit. "She wasn't," he admitted quietly.

"Fire bottles? I'm not sure I even want to know..." I mumbled and Cyril patted me on the shoulder.

"It's an oil we refine," he explained. "Fill the bottle, light the wick, and launch it. Their fleet will burn before they even reach your armada, provided we can make enough. I need to get down to the Lierians that came into the city this morning and see if there's an herbalist with them. Raevar could have...he would..." He twisted uncomfortably and his face seemed distressed. He was worried, evidently, about the man he'd come to know as his father and I nodded shortly. "If we can get the instructions to make it, I'm sure your people in the city have better means of mass producing it than we do."

I nodded and he set to rearranging the map, his face intently focused again and when he leaned back, the Immaran force was entirely boxed in. "We'll have to be clever," Brentlyn whispered. "And we're going to lose a lot of good soldiers."

"Necessary evils," Cyril answered softly and my brother gave him a quick clap on the shoulder.

"It's good to have you back, champ. And with your very own army."

Glenning was wearing a sour face but she got to her feet and shot me a contemptuous glare. "If you think for one second that my family's money is funding a tribe of savage little animals because you're fucking their leader, you've made a terrible mistake in your judgment, Fox."

"Their leader gave birth to my son, Glenning," I drawled. Her face went a little bit slack at that and I arched an eyebrow. "Your Crown Prince is a savage little animal by your own words. You're dismissed. Find another lemon to suck on."

She swept from the room, obviously furious, and the door slammed behind us, leaving Meyer and Urien standing awkwardly with my brother, Cyril, and myself. Meyer was the first to excuse himself, though he touched his fingers to Cyril's cheek on the way out and hesitated. "I would love to get to know you, Infinito. Just...just to know. I have questions."

Cyril managed a small but genuine smile. "And I have answers, Meyer. Find me when you get back from the marshes."

Urien and my brother left shortly after him, deep in discussion about recruitment options, and Cyril turned to look up at me, his eyes wide and hopeful and he was wearing a suppressed sort of smile. "I want to go down and see them," he whispered like it was more of a question than a statement and I shrugged. It was all the answer he needed though because a moment later, he was rushing from the room and I was chasing after him. I almost felt bad for the guards, who had to jump up and follow us.

Cyril tore through the palace and out the front gate into the market like he was running for his life. I'd never realized how quick he was but he darted between people like they were hardly obstacles, making for the refugee district outside the gate facing the water. He nearly knocked over a woman with a basket of fruit and didn't stop until the gate was opening at my insistence.

The amount of Lierians huddled together in their pale, wispy white tents were phenomenal. I had never seen so many of them before. They wore those seal-skin coats that Cyril frequently wore, some of them with blue, geometric patterns painted over the leather to mimic the Infinito marks from their tribe, I assumed. They fell when they saw him, sinking to their knees and he hardly seemed to notice. His eyes scanned the sea of pale, ghostly faces and feathery blond hair.

One of the armed men standing on the border of their makeshift settlement stopped me and barked a sharp, thickly accented order. "No humans," he growled and for a moment, Cyril didn't realize. His eyes were on something else, as wide as dinner plates, and he seemed to bounce on his feet.

"Raevar!" he shouted and an older man, taller than the rest of those standing with him, turned around. He didn't have any marks but his hair was as white as Cyril's was and he had broad shoulders for a Lierian. He ran for him, dropping the bundle of blankets he was holding in the process so that he could reach Cyril and when he did, he practically scooped him off the ground.

I understood how he felt better than I had ever imagined I could. This was his father. This was the man that filled the role I filled for Emory. When I had started my search for Lierian lore that led me to the whipping post, this was the family I was thinking about when I considered what Cyril had lost...that somewhere, someone loved him. Someone missed him. Raevar had missed him. He'd missed so much and my heart went out to him because I knew...I knew what that felt like, to be robbed of those years.

Raevar let Cyril's feet touch the ground again and he cradled his head, his hands big enough to touch along the back of Cyril's skull while his palms sat on his cheeks. He pressed kisses to his forehead, hugged him again, and then gestured wildly while he spoke in their language. I wanted to get closer but the surly looking individual with the spear didn't seem keen on the idea and I didn't fancy the idea of either him or one of my guards ending up dead over the altercation. Raevar's hand leveled out low to the ground like he was indicating someone small. I assumed it was Emory by the way Cyril nodded and then turned to look for me.

His face clouded over in irritation and he huffed, stomping across the sandy dirt to where the guard was. He gave him a rapid, dizzying earful in their own tongue and then grabbed my arm to tug me into the encampment. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I always forget how much they hate humans. They've never met good ones like you. Come on, this is my father."

"You're taking me to meet your parents," I snorted. "Tell me the cute factor isn't lost on you."

A small smile twitched at his lips and he wrapped an arm around my waist, stopping dead in front of Raevar. "I've taught him Common," Cyril explained. "His accent is atrocious though. He's not nearly as good a student as Emory."

"I'm an old man, Leland. You should respect your elders." Raevar had a deep, rough voice but his face was kind. Wrinkled and worn by the weather, but kind, and he smiled genuinely at me before reaching out to brush his fingertips over my cheek. "And here is the infamous Fox, King of Coria. You're young."

I wasn't even sure how I was supposed to answer that. I blinked at him and then looked at Cyril like he could offer me some kind of help but he seemed pretty content to watch me squirm. He was going to pay for that later, I decided, but eventually I managed a smile and repeated the odd fingertip-to-face gesture that the Lierians seemed keen on. Cyril stood on his toes and tugged me down. "It's an expression of love and gratitude," he whispered. "Job well done, Fox."

I didn't answer him but my smile widened and I held a hand out. Raevar looked between it and me and then Cyril demonstrated a handshake. "It's a greeting, Lheiro. And I told you he's only a bit older than me. What did you think I was doing? Sleeping with old men?"

I choked and they both laughed at the noise, Raevar slightly wider than Cyril. "I don't understand why I'm infamous and old," I complained gently and Cyril nudged me.

"Infamous because you're all he ever talked about," Raevar grumbled, casting a withering glare in Cyril's direction. "And because from the sound of it, you were both nothing but trouble."

Someone to our right, a woman, started calling Cyril then, shouting his name above the crowd and waving her arm. "Leland!" Then a flurry of their language and his name was called again. He glanced over and squeezed my arm, promising to return in a moment, before he started toward the sound. I was going to punish him for leaving me alone with his father too, I decided, and Raevar gave me a real appraisal then.

It was like being put up for auction, really. He searched over every inch of me with his eyes, leaned back, leaned forward, and clicked his tongue. "He says you love him," he told me stiffly and I felt my mouth go dry. I was extraordinarily nervous, which was odd, because I'd been trained to deal with nobles and people judging my every action from the time I'd been able to walk. I was not prepared for Cyril's Lheiro or his keen eye.

"I do love him. I love them both, very much," I answered quietly. "When they took him from me..."

Raevar huffed. "I know what it feels like to lose him," he pointed out and I nodded. He did, of course. He knew what it was like to lose Cyril and to lose his son, all in one fell swoop, and I grimaced at the sharp, stabbing pain that tore through my heart at the thought. I pressed my hand to my chest and turned to where Cyril had gone, thirty feet from us, cradling a newborn baby and running his free hand over the face of the infant while the mother cried over him.

"What is he doing?"

"Blessing the baby," he told me, like I should have already known and I watched for another moment before he continued. "If you hurt him, Fox, I will find you and I will cut your throat in your sleep."

By the tone in his voice, I seriously doubted that he'd have any trouble doing just that and I nodded. "I should hope so," I agree, attempting congeniality. "I would do the same for Emory."

"If you hurt Emory, the things I do to you will be worse than having your throat cut."

"You know, I think I like you, Raevar," I told him, pressing my lips together and nodding and he grinned back at me.

Then, with careful, slow movements, he pressed his fingers back to my cheek. "I think I like you, Fox."

Chapter Text

Raevar did, in fact, have the ability to refine the oil that Cyril had spoken of and he accompanied us back to the palace. They slipped in and out of their native language, mingling it with common so that I understood some of it, but even the parts that I didn't understand seemed oddly comfortable. I didn't get the impression that I was an outsider but that could have been Cyril's arm hooked around my waist or the way he nuzzled into my side every few minutes when the conversation dipped into a stale point.

We had never been overly affectionate prior to his exile. We fucked and we maintained the illusion that we were just friends, for the most part, but being able to touch him in public and feeling the possessive nature of his arm around me was more intimate than I had imagined it would be. I realized on that walk how much I'd missed the simple comfort of having him close. It went beyond missing the person that I loved, the person that I had killed for. It was missing my best friend. I'd been so intent on getting into his pants the night before and even that morning that I hadn't been able to enjoy the simple pleasure of being near him and listening to him talk because I'd forgotten the way that his voice sounded. So even though I didn't understand all of what they were saying, I relished in the noise.

I kissed his temple when he turned his head and he responded by glancing back at me and rolling his eyes. He smiled at the same time, leading our little trio inadvertently down to the herbalist in front of the palace. I left a guard with Raevar and specific instructions to see to it that he made it back to the royal wing in time for dinner because he was family and I wanted him close. Cyril had lost enough. He wasn't going to lose his father, not on my watch.

We left Raevar though, giving detailed instructions to the herbalist, and then started back for the palace proper. There was nothing left to do but to wait for the rest of Cyril's people to pour in. He'd given orders before we left to gather up anyone able to fight, fill their packs with the bottles of refined oil (which they had a proper name for but I couldn't say it, let alone spell it), and start a march for the marsh so that they could close in on the Immaran force. It would be over a month before the main horde cut down through Coria though and so while the nerves were eating at my stomach, they hadn't yet caused me any real distress. That would come as the time passed.

I had wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon just wrapped up in him. Sex wasn't even necessary. I just wanted to hold him, listen to him tell stories about his people, tell him about what had happened in his absence...I wanted so much to just keep him to myself. To love him, to give him everything he hadn't had in years, to kiss and touch and suck on every inch of his little body until I had memorized the taste of every part.

And maybe I did want sex but I didn't want what we normally had. I didn't want that hard, brutal fucking we had taken part in up to that point because I couldn't ever get enough of him...because I needed him so badly that it woke up an animal in me that I hadn't known was there. I wanted to love him.

Because I seriously doubted that anybody ever had. Not like that.

It seemed the Gods were against us though because we rounded the corner of the royal wing and there, seated on one of the velvet draped benches that lined the wall in front of my suites, were Ambrose and Harlan. I went on the defensive immediately. I felt Cyril stiffen at my side and his arm tightened around me. They had their own guards and this was reminiscent of another incident--another darker time that had ended with him clawing up the walls and begging me to save him. I couldn't do that again. I couldn't listen to him suffer through that. I wasn't about to lose him again, not now. Not ever.

"I just want to talk to him, Fox," Ambrose spoke first. He pleaded and stared at us. When his guards shifted, he held a hand out to steady them and my own peeled their weapons from their belts.

Cyril groaned. "This is stupid," he mumbled into my side and I cast him a quizzical glance. "This pissing match. This is stupid. We're fucking adults and you're the bloody King. What are they going to do? Defy you?" He stepped away from me and straightened his clothes. Then he walked purposefully toward the door of the suites, pushed it open, and held an arm out like he was inviting them in.

I went first, irritated and scowling, and heard them follow me. Cyril gestured toward the sitting room and I grabbed his arm before he could follow them in. "I am going to punish you for this," I bit the words out and his eyes widened. His lips parted and he stood on his toes, stealing a quick kiss from my surprised mouth.

"I look forward to it," he assured me and then he patted my cheek, grabbed my hand, and dragged me into the sitting room with him. I was exceedingly grateful that Natalya had taken Emory. I did not, under any circumstances, want my son present for the conversation that was about to happen. I didn't even want him walking through a portion of it by accident, even if he was immediately shooed away.

Cyril made a show of sitting down beside me in a plush velvet couch, the frame of which was elaborately carved so that the legs looked like the feet of some massive beast. It's the same couch I had been tongue fucking him on earlier that morning and the thought brought color to my cheeks. It was a pleasant flush though, knowing that I had gotten him there and we were sharing the room with my father and his...whatever Ambrose was to him now.

He leaned into my side, one of his legs crossed over the other. He twisted his foot in a lazy circle while he watched them and I toyed absently with his hair, and then traced the shell of his ear with my fingertips. Gods, he was fucking beautiful and he was mine and I got the insane urge to speak, to lay it all out, to let them know exactly what they'd taken from me six years before. "When this war is over," I told them both, stopping to kiss Cyril's cheek and gather up his little hand in both of mine. "I'm going to marry him. There is nothing either of you can say that will change that."

Cyril, true to his nature, didn't blurt out the surprise that was evident on his face for a split second after my announcement. He took it with surprising grace, considering I hadn't even asked him and I realized a little bit late that perhaps my declaration could have been done after I'd actually spoken to him about it. Instead of gaping at me though, his mouth twitched into a small smile and he leaned forward, his lips brushing my ear as he spoke. "I'm going to punish you later for that," he repeated my earlier promise and I felt my breath hitch, my cheeks turn bright red, and Cyril leaned back, turning that smile on our parents.

Harlan cleared his throat and Ambrose leaned forward. "And you would have my blessing for that, Fox, and my sincerest congratulations," my father said seriously and I scowled at him. I wanted to be angry with him. I didn't care for this apologetic nonsense. He had stolen so much from me and I was only just getting it back...or at least, I was getting back what was left to get back. I would never be able to reclaim the years I had lost with Emory. My father, it seemed, was not done though because he pressed his lips together and kept talking. "What I did to the two of you was...wretched and disgusting. I don't have the words to convey how deeply sorry I am. Fox, you're my son. You're my oldest child. I remember the day that you were born. I held you up and you were screaming and thrashing around. You were wet and bloody and slimy. There was not an attractive thing about you but Gods, you were beautiful to me. I loved you. All those little wet noises you were making and the way your tiny chest heaved...you changed my life in that moment. You changed me. You made me more than a King or a Prince or a soldier. You made me a father and I robbed you of that with your boy."

I heard Cyril choke beside me and he shrank back into the couch like he knew exactly what Harlan was talking about but I didn't. I remembered the moment I had first seen Emory, peering at me from over the side of Cyril's bed in that Inn, his bright eyes wild and full of trouble. I remembered when Cyril told me that he was mine and how Emory had announced that he'd known it and I'd loved him then. That bond snapped into place immediately. It was strong and I was more sure of it than I was of anything else in my life but it wasn't the magical thing that my father was talking about. It was a need. It was primal and natural and beautiful in its own way but I had never cradled Emory as a helpless infant and found beauty in the bloody mess he'd come from.

"I still love Emory," I argued quietly, almost like I wasn't sure of what I was arguing for. "He still changed me. I...I don't think you robbed me of that, not necessarily. I think you robbed me of memories and moments that I should have had. I don't know if I can forgive you for that, Harlan."

"I'm not asking you to," he answered gently. "The Gods know I deserve your anger. I deserve the punishment. I just wanted you to know that I realize I was wrong. You were right. You were right back then and you're right now."

I didn't have anything to say to that. I just reached for Cyril's knee and squeezed. His limbs were trembling and when I glanced over at him, his eyes were glassy like he was fighting off tears. He kept wiping his mouth, hiccuping, and Ambrose seemed to shrink with every sharp breath that Cyril tried to take. Eventually though, he spoke. "Cyril, I fought him. I promise you, I fought him. I raised you. I love you. I may not have had that bond with you the way that you had with Emory when he was born but you mean the world to me. I went to Glacia to try to find you."

That was news to me. As far as I'd known, Ambrose had just left my father's service not long after Cyril had been exiled and then I hadn't seen him again until Cyril waltzed back into the palace with me, Emory in tow. Cyril was just as surprised by the admission as I was. His lips parted and he gulped for air, on the verge of hysterics. I'd almost forgotten how emotional he could be in general. He was always prone to this sort of thing after sex but high-stress situations triggered his pain as well. It was precious, the depth with which he felt things. He seemed to hurt for everyone around him, to feel joy for everyone around him, to love for everyone around him...it was intense. I loved it. I love it still.

"They never let me close enough. The tribes always ran me off. There were points were I considered letting them kill me in hopes that they would drag my body back and you would know, at least, that I'd tried to bring you home. I'd tried so hard but then I thought...if there was just one small part of you that still cared for me then it would just hurt you more if they killed me." Ambrose shrugged and hung his head. Cyril clamored to his feet, stumbling when he made it up, and then he launched himself at Ambrose, his arms tight around the older man's chest. He'd landed on his knees in front of where his guardian was sitting, his face pressed into Ambrose's stomach, and his whole body trembled. Gods, it was heartbreaking to see them and Ambrose folded over him, one arm around Cyril's tiny torso and the other running his fingers through his hair. The pain that radiated out of their joined forms made my chest ache.

I didn't know how Cyril could forgive him. I wasn't ready to forgive Harlan and he seemed to understand that. He gave me my space though I had gotten to my feet. We sat in silence for that minute while Cyril clung to Ambrose and when the ragged breathing slowed to something with a simpler, more even cadence, the old man looked up at me and I nodded. I had to untangle Cyril's arms from his body and physically pull him to his feet. He melted into me, boneless and exhausted. Ambrose kissed the top of his head and Cyril whimpered quietly into my chest, his fingers digging into my ribs while the two older men walked away. I heard the door shut and then scooped him up.

He didn't protest. He didn't even make that little squeaking noise he occasionally made whenever I did it. I just carried him back to my bedroom. Our bedroom. It was our bedroom now and when I dropped him on the bed and moved to climb over him, he wrapped his legs around my hips and, in a fluid motion he never would have been capable of six years ago, flipped us over so that he was straddling me. His hands were pressed to my chest and his cheeks were flushed red and a bit swollen from tears. "You want to marry me," he said quietly, a small smile crossing his mouth. He tilted his head and I felt my breath catch. His hips rocked against mine and I groaned at the pressure. Even through his clothes, Cyril felt fucking fantastic. I would never get enough of him. It didn't matter that I fucked him to a senseless mess the night before or that I tongued him into a black-out just that morning. I wanted him again. I wanted him so bad that just a few seconds of that slow, lazy movement of his hips had me out of my fucking mind.

"Yes," I managed breathlessly and I reached for him but he grabbed my wrists and pinned them back down. "Gods, Cyril. What the hell is this?" This wasn't what I was used to. This wasn't what we did. I pinned Cyril down. I was the aggressive, dominant partner in our relationship. It wasn't that I had a problem with the switch, not really. If he wanted to explore his options, I would have gladly let him do whatever he wanted to me, but the difference was jarring.

He grinned, all beautiful wide eyes and then he licked his lips, his tiny pink tongue darting out over his mouth and it was enough to destroy me. I had to grind my teeth to keep from tying him to the bed frame and making him scream. The only thing that gave me pause was the thought that maybe he needed this. After all this time, all those years spent being out of control and just spreading his legs for whoever wanted him--maybe he needed to be this.

"I like having you like this," he declared, almost triumphant. He moved my arms so that they were at my side and then he slid my trousers down my hips so that my cock, hard and straining already, sat against one of his clothed thighs. I bucked my hips in an attempt to get something from him but Cyril clicked his tongue and slithered off of me. He gave me a push, urging me onto my side and then my stomach. He pushed one of the pillows beneath my hips, squirmed free of his clothes, and then set to ridding me of the rest of mine. It was a fumbling job because he hadn't thought it through before he got me like that but eventually we were both naked, panting, and hard. I felt his lips on my back, ghosting over the scars and it was enough to make me wince because I hated them. I had always hated them and he had some weird fascination with them.

He must have noticed my discomfort when he started tracing them with his tongue because he crawled over me so that he could kiss me, angling my jaw up. I opened my mouth eagerly, submitting entirely to whatever he wanted and he shivered, his fingers moving gently through my hair until he broke the kiss and moved back. His lips make a line down the ruined flesh over my spine. By the time he reached my ass, I was panting and squeezing the pillow under my head. His teeth nipped at the skin and then he spread me open. I could feel his cheek against my thigh and then his tongue was on me, sliding over my hole while I shuddered under him.

I loved doing this to him. I loved how he tasted and the noises he made. I adored the way he shattered under this sort of attention and how much he seemed to enjoy it when I slid my tongue into him but I'd never understood the why of it. It was just something I knew that he liked and because I liked watching him climax, I did it. Cyril's tongue felt amazing though. It was this warm, wet, blistering sensation that coiled up inside of me and my breathing had turned ragged and desperate after just a few strokes of it. "Gods, Cyril," I panted, pushing myself up on my forearms so I could watch him and he stopped, looking up at me curiously, his little hands holding me open. He only paused for that moment and then he lowered his mouth back, spitting and licking and then sliding his tongue inside me.

I couldn't even breathe at that. My lungs seized up in my chest and I cried his name. Cyril picked a pace, slow and steady and I started to wonder why we hadn't done this before.

Because I always wanted to fuck him. I always wanted him boneless and submissive, prepared to take whatever I wanted to give him and he did and I liked that. I was happy with our sex life like that but this...switching it up thing? Being in Cyril's position? It wasn't as bad as I'd thought it would be.

Cyril took his time, coaxed me open with his tongue and then sat up. "I'm going to finger you," he warned me like he was telling me he was going to pour me a cup of tea or something. He didn't give me a chance to even answer.

His little fingertips brushed over me and I squirmed, moaning at the sensation as one of them slid into me, slick with something and the thought occurred to me that Cyril had lubed himself up with his own Godsdamned body. "Holy shit, did you--?" I gasped the words and he shushed me with a quick kiss, his finger expertly sliding inside me to the base, twisting and opening me up. His other hand was planted in the middle of my back to hold me down but my hips were twisting anyway. It wasn't unpleasant but it wasn't what Cyril seemed to feel when I touched him. It was just sort of...odd and kind of intrusive but it was him and there was something erotic about that. It made me lift my hips up for him and he added a second, equally slick finger to my body.

"I assumed you didn't have any kind of lubrication, considering your choice in sexual partners has always produced that naturally," he answered eventually. "Got to improvise, darlin'."

The way he said 'darlin' just about did me in. I choked at it and his fingers hooked and hit something that made me squeal. I had never, in my entire life, heard a noise like that come out of my mouth but Gods, whatever he did to me had sent white-hot sensation down into my groin. All of my senses went into overdrive. My fists tightened in the blankets and my hips rocked against his tiny hand. "There it is," Cyril practically purred and he rubbed that same spot, thrusting into it with a steady, mindless devotion that makes me feel entirely unglued. He leaned over me, swinging one of his legs so that he's straddling one of mine and I can feel his cock against my thigh. "I want to fuck you. Please, Fox, please. You can spank me for it later."

"Son of a bitch," I managed to whimper. "I-I'm not-I don't know, Cyril, I--" I dissolved at the feeling of his fingers slipping out of me and his cock, as slick as they had been, lining up with the entrance to my body. I was, without a doubt, beyond nervous. I squirmed and struggled to breathe and then Cyril laughed above me, grabbed my shoulders, and urged me over onto my back.

"Gods, you should see your face right now!" he snorted and I blinked. "I'm kidding, Fox. I like having you inside me way too much to give it up. I am, however--" He shifted his weight and reached back, grasping my cock so that he could slide it into his impossibly tight, hot body. He tightened around it and groaned, his hands flat on my chest while I struggled to breathe. I knew he could feel my heart, erratic from his teasing, hammering under his palms. His shoulders sagged and he rocked his hips just a little bit before he finished speaking. "Going to top you from the bottom."

I didn't even have any idea what that meant at the time. My male relationships were limited to the man that had just mounted me, and was sliding his body up and down my cock, soaking wet and beautiful. His skin was shining with a thin layer of sweat, his hair was damp, and his lips were red and parted.

"I'm going to beat you for that," I eventually growled and grabbed his hips, slamming him back down on me so that his eyes pop open and he flinches at the sensation but I knew that I'd hit that same spot in him because he threw his head back. "Top me from the bottom. Is that what you think?"

Cyril moaned and blinked down at me, his vision focused solely on my face and he smiled, opened his mouth to answer and then I flipped him over. His eyes betrayed his surprise and I reached around on the bed, found the belt from my trousers, and looped it around his hands. Then I hooked an arm around his torso and heaved him up far enough so that I could bind him to the headboard. Cyril panted, his legs spread wide, and he arched his neck to examine what I'd done. I pulled out of him and he whimpered at the loss, his eyes pleading and desperate. "Fox--"

"Shut up," I warned him and twisted him, which I knew couldn't be comfortable but at the moment, all I cared about was turning him fucking scarlet from his hips to his knees. I pushed him into position, his arms bound in front of him and tied to the headboard, his weight supported on his spread knees. I hit him hard and without warning and he cried out at the surprise. "Inviting Harlan and Ambrose in, teasing me, claiming you're going to top from the bottom. I would have let you, you know. I would have even let you fuck me if you really wanted to had you not been such a smug little bastard about it." I kept hitting him, with every word, from one side to the other while color blossomed over his skin.

He moaned and whimpered, his ass up like he was offering more of it. "Harder," he begged. "More. Gods, Fox, hit me harder!" He was writhing, his little hips thrusting forward though there was nothing for him to get any friction off of. His cock bobbed helplessly between his legs, red and wet and weeping. I got down between his legs to lick it a few times and suck his balls into my mouth while I gave him what he asked for the night before.

I could have come just watching him like this, his back bowed, welted and beginning to bruise. He panted and, eventually, he screamed. He gnashed his teeth and he pulled viciously on the belt holding him and finally, he broke. I didn't know that it was possible to come from a fucking spanking, but Cyril defied all logic all the time so it shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did when it happened. He came hard and long, trembling and screaming my name, thrusting wildly at nothing and it was fucking gorgeous. His body jolted with each successive blow to his bottom. He threw his head back and wailed through it; keening and purring like a satisfied cat toward the end.

"Stop," he finally whimpered. "Stop, Fox, stop!"

And I did, because I'd always promised him that I would. All he had to do was say the word and his body turned boneless. He collapsed onto his side; his chest heaving and I roll him back onto his back again. He winced and I ran my hands over his heated, tortured flesh. "Talk to me, little one," I implored, searching his face for something but he didn't look like much of anything except utterly strung out. His cheeks were flushed, brilliant red, and he stared up at me with glassy eyes.

"Fuck me," he finally mumbled, lifting his hips and pulling on the belt at his hands. "Please, I want--Oh Gods, yes!" He didn't need to beg me to fuck him. I was so hard from watching him that I didn't have the sense of mind to argue that he was hurting and I should take care of him. I slid into him with one smooth, fluid thrust and his body shuddered around me, squeezing and pulling me in. My cock was physically hurting from seeing him fall apart like that and I knew it wasn't going to take long. I hiked his legs up, hooking my arms around them so that he was bent in half and I could reach down and stroke his cock while I fucked him. Usually, I made him get off on me inside of him and that alone and I let him know that my touching him like that would not be a regular occurrence.

"Cyril," I warned him breathlessly and he mewled in response, his back arched and his hips pushing up into my hand. "I'm only touching you because you've been such a beautiful, well-behaved, good boy and you deserve a reward for it."

He made a strangled, desperate noise. He was slick and squirming, making a litany of sounds that could only be described as inhuman. He was incoherent, babbling, and his eyes kept rolling back into his head. He was a fucking vision. He always was and just watching him like that while I stroked his sweet spot with every brutal thrust was enough to do me in. I fucked him hard and fast and he shattered under me again, soaking himself in sticky white fluid that smeared over his stomach while I shuddered and poured myself into him. In that moment, I had this undeniably depressing hope that I could get him pregnant again. I knew that I couldn't. I knew what Kinnon had said but it didn't stop me from praying or whispering: "Please, please, please," against Cyril's ear while he panted into my shoulder.

"Untie me," he begged and shifted under me almost immediately. My muscles felt thick and heavy but I loosened the belt enough on his hands so that he could slip them free and then his arms were around me. His hands skimmed down my back and my sides, palming my hips and because it was Cyril, he knew. He always knew. Something in him called to me and he pressed sad, mournful little kisses over the side of my face.

When he spoke, his voice was despondent. "I'm so sorry!" he gasped quietly, his fingers knotting in my hair. "I'm so sorry, Fox. If I could give it to you, I would! I swear, I would. I'm so sorry."

I managed a quiet groan and a nod before I smothered his apologies with real kisses. "'S'not your fault, little one," I mumbled into his mouth and his legs slipped from my hips. I softened enough to slide free of his body and he whimpered at the loss of contact but snuggled against my chest instead. He let me roll over and gather him up. "Emory is more than enough. More than I ever thought we'd have. Roll over, sweet thing. I want to see the damage." I needed to see it, to rub something soothing into his abused flesh but when he obliged, I realized it wasn't all that awful.

Cyril was bruised, certainly, and red and welted. He hid his face in the pillow for a moment and then turned so that one of his eyes was visible and peering at me while I massaged life back into his poor bottom. He grimaced. "Sore," he complained. "It's a good sore, but it's fucking sore all the same. I'm not going to sit right for days."

"You asked for this," I reminded him and sat up, digging in the table by the bed for the jar of salve I usually used for my scars. It cooled on contact though and Cyril turned boneless as I rubbed it into his skin. He hummed his appreciation for it while I worked and left his apologies alone for a few minutes but nothing was ever simple with Cyril.

"Fox," he tried again and I looked up, arching an eyebrow. "If I could, I would. You need to understand that. I know you're hurting. Gods, I can't even imagine how that feels and I know that people on the outside look at us and they think I got the raw end of this deal being carted away but they're wrong. You got it. You lost me, you lost Emory, you had to stay behind with all this shit that's just a massive reminder of what they took from us. I still had a piece of you. That's...Gods, I've looked. I've asked every elder in every tribe if they've ever heard of an Infinito having more than one baby but it just doesn't happen."

I shifted, uncomfortable, and shrugged. "I'm not Lierian," I told him quietly, putting the lid back on the jar. Cyril sat up and winced. "According to your elders, Emory shouldn't exist at all. According to human biology, Emory shouldn't exist at all. I can't help but wonder that maybe we'll get lucky."

"You're setting yourself up for heartbreak, Fox," he admonished and then crawled forward, settling in my lap so that when I flopped down onto the bed, he was curled against my chest. "But...I won't have us fail for lack of trying."

And I couldn't help but snort because he pushed himself up on my chest to look at me, this troublemaker's smirk on his face. "Lack of trying," I repeated, my voice lazy. "I can't keep my hands off of you for more than six hours unless we're sleeping and you're worried about lack of trying. Go to sleep, you brat, unless you don't want to recover from that before Emory gets back?"

Cyril huffed but he obliged the request and nuzzled into my chest. A few moments later, his breathing was even and slow and I was drifting off with him.

Chapter Text

I hung the world on Fox.

I always had, so I supposed that being away from him for six years didn't matter. He was still Fox, with his long, lithe body and his lopsided, lazy smiles. He was still impossible to wake up, always grumbling in his pillows until Emory climbed into bed to get him up. He did whatever that boy wanted. He was twisted around his fingers, enthralled with the very idea that he existed, and if Emory told him to jump, he would have asked how high. I didn't have to study them to know that Fox loved him--that he had loved him from the moment I told him that Emory was his, that he would always love him.

It was so visible in his face that even hearing him say the words didn't faze me. Just watching them together made my heart sing. It also made me incredibly, blood-boiling angry because if anything stoked the fire for bloodshed in my chest, it was the knowledge of how much they'd lost together. It didn't matter how many times I told Fox what Emory's first words were or when he'd taken his first steps or the first time he'd slept through the night. I could repeat those stories until my lips turned blue from lack of oxygen but they would never be his memories. They would always just be stories and for that...

For that, I wasn't sure I could ever forgive Harlan. Not because of Emory so much...but because it was something that I couldn't give to Fox again. Or at least, it was something that I believed wholeheartedly that I couldn't give him again. I wanted to. I wanted to so badly that it kept me up at night. It roused me from any sleep I had with the same vivid, horrifying nightmares I'd been having since I'd given birth to Emory.

Empty cradles, empty cribs, the nauseating fear that my baby was missing and the clawing panic that induced in me, scraping nails up my throat while it strangled away any thoughts I had of ever breathing. Those nightmares had me practically throwing myself from bed, tearing down the hall to Emory's freshly painted bedroom--he'd wanted red, just like Fox--and scooping the sleeping boy from his bed. I would cradle him, kiss his face, and ignore the omnipresent, oppressive heat that radiated from his body until he squirmed away, too warm to be touched. Being with Emory...near Emory...had always taken the edge off that pain until now. Now, I feared for a child that didn't exist. A child that couldn't exist. A child that I so desperately wanted but would never have and I hadn't ever dreamed that this would happen to me.

I had hated being pregnant. I had hated giving birth. It had nearly killed me. I hadn't anticipated the kind of pain that Fox was in though and because I loved him--because I loved him so completely that my world couldn't turn if he wasn't happy--I would have gladly gone through all of it again. I went to every Lierian healer and shaman that came into the camp and I begged them for help. An alternative. Something. Several of them told me that there were plenty of orphans following the mass exodus to Coria. All I had to do was pick an infant. Any family nursing a child that wasn't theirs would gladly give up that extra mouth to feed to the Infinito should he ever ask but that wasn't what I wanted. Some of them gave me herbal fertility drinks, mixtures I had to mash up with fruits and tea until it was a chunky, thick liquid and I had to drink it every morning.

And I did, despite them being designed specifically for females. I wanted it badly enough that I suppressed the urge to vomit when I drank it and I hid it all from Fox. I feared getting his hopes up and I feared putting more pressure on him than he was already under. The Immaran army was marching down through Coria, burning everything they touched and reports were coming in of mass damage...mass casualties of people that had refused to leave. It made me ache...all those wasted lives. I knew that pain and every time someone brought him another report on the number of steadily increasing deaths, I remembered Kinnon holding my face and making me promise that I would get back to Fox with Emory. Apologizing and begging me not to hate him for what he'd done to us and how could I hate him? Little Kinnon who, following my arrival in Glacia, had done nothing but try to make it easier for me. He'd been young and naive and he'd believed he was doing what was right.

Now I missed him terribly and even thinking about him brought tears to my eyes because in all the six years I'd been with the Lierians, nobody save Raevar and Kinnon had ever bothered to get to know me beyond my title and now Kinnon was dead or worse.

It was Raevar that fixed those drinks for me, that helped me hide it so that Fox wouldn't get that delighted, hopeful look on his face only to have it smashed when I had to tell him that I couldn't do it. It wasn't possible. It was Raevar that listened to me cry about it while Fox sat through Court, his arm draped over my shoulder. He couldn't understand the depth with which I wanted this. Raevar could have had more children after me. He was free to do so but he'd grown close to the previous Infinito, my father, Meeren. He'd stayed with him to the end, suffered through the pain of losing their child with him, and the joy of getting him back. Meeren's joy had been short-lived and though I hadn't known him long, I missed him. I felt like an idiot half the time, bumbling around in the dark trying to figure out the best path to take for my people. Meeren could have helped me. Meeren might have had answers that nobody else had. There were certain pieces of our lore that only Infinitos could know and I would never know all of them. They were lost with him.

I spent every morning like that with Raevar, forcing that blighted concoction down my throat while Emory pushed toy horses on wheels around at our feet, playing pretend army while he battled the roses on the carpet. I went through heat after heat, aggressive and angry every time one hit because it meant another failure and Raevar kept reminding me of how unfair it was that I had told Fox that he was setting himself up for heartbreak only to shoulder that heartbreak alone. It wasn't what Fox would have wanted. He would have wanted to carry the burden together. He wanted to do everything together.

He wanted to marry me. To make me a joint ruler in Coria, to unite my people and his and the amount of negotiations that was taking was staggering. He hadn't even convinced half the Court to hear me out, to explain that we didn't want anything from them. We didn't want their towns or their ports or their coastal property. We just wanted to disappear into the plains or the mountains or Hollen's Wood and to not worry about being collared in the process. We wanted to be allowed to join their communities, not take over them.

The population of Coryth, at least, was becoming warmer to the idea. Sometimes I could see Corian children on the beach playing with the refugee children from the tribes, swapping stories and teaching each other things. Tolerance was sweeping through the city and soon the nobility would have no choice but to accept that the population of Coria had come to the realization that we weren't there to sacrifice their babies in blood rites. We didn't steal, we weren't violent, and we had things to offer. We had leather workers, alchemists, and blacksmiths. We knew the land better than they did. If it wasn't tolerance that was brewing, it was appreciation.

I had been dubious about this at first. I had been reluctant. We needed the Corians but in the long run, would I really be able to stay? And now I had an answer. Yes, I could. I could stay. This could work. It had to work.

But the Immarans had to be dealt with first and so Fox and I had to say our goodbyes to Emory, leave him in the care of Brentlyn and his family, and head out to the front. It hadn't been an easy decision to make. Fox wanted me to stay behind with Emory. I wanted Fox to stay behind with Emory. Both of us refused to send our armies marching forward without their leader. It was cowardly. In the end, it had been Brentlyn that was tasked with staying behind and ruling if something happened. Raevar remained with them and it would be lying to say that I didn't worry. It would be lying again to say that worry was the worst part.

The worst part was watching Emory cry.

He'd been able to say goodbye to me with all the stoic bravado that Fox often wore. I pressed kisses to his face and brushed his hair back out of his eyes. His bottom lip trembled and his cheeks flamed red. His eyes went glassy and welled up with tears he refused to shed. He hugged me tightly, touched his fingertips to my cheek, and sniffed. "You behave," I warned him quietly. "You don't want to know what will happen when I come back if I hear that you've been swinging from the chandeliers and causing problems. You listen to your aunt and uncle. Play with Riordan, do your lessons, and we'll be back in no time. I love you."

"Kinnon said he'd be back," Emory spat bitterly and I had to grind my teeth to keep from scolding him for being a brat. He was, without a doubt, every bit the same boy I'd met when I'd first met Fox. Emory was reckless, selfish, emotionally manipulative, and prone to tantrums so epic they could have been turned into poetry but he was right in this. Kinnon had said that and he'd lost too much for me to scold him for being bitter over it so I just took his face between my palms and kissed the marks beneath his eyes one more time. He didn't say anything else, just stepped back when I straightened up, still fighting tears, and then he turned to look at Fox.

It all went downhill from there. The tears started like a dam had been let loose in his face. My heart shattered at the sound of his sobbing and the way his little arms wrapped around Fox's neck when he knelt to talk to him. Brentlyn cast me a sympathetic look, though I wasn't sure if I was getting it because he hadn't reacted the same way to saying goodbye to me or if it was because he knew that it hurt to watch your child cry and be helpless to alleviate the pain. I didn't care that Emory's reaction to my departure was less dramatic than the one had to Fox's. He'd only just gotten him. Of course it hurt to lose him again and Emory knew the cost of war. He'd seen it when we left Glacia. He understood death on a level that no little boy his age should have understood it.

Emory didn't cry very often. He especially didn't turn hysterical often so this was new. The last time I had seen him do this was when the village we'd lived in had burned and the smell of charred flesh had seeped through the forest. It lingered for days while we traveled and it had broken him down little by little until he'd done this.

His little fingers clutched at Fox's shirt and he buried his face in his shoulder, arms and legs around him. I'd never seen Fox hold someone so tightly. I wasn't sure Emory could even breathe but neither of them seemed intent on leaving that embrace. I reached forward absently and ruffled Fox's hair. He shuddered beneath my touch and I could hear him promising Emory that things would be fine. Brentlyn was going to take care of him. Everything would be over in a few weeks. He just had to be good and do his lessons.

It was killing me to see them like this and I was cursing Fox for refusing to stay behind but I understood his reasons and so I waited until he held Emory back at arm's length. Our son had red cheeks, swollen from tears, and was hiccuping and struggling to breathe. He twisted the bottom of his shirt in his hands and kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other, turning his toes in and rocking on them, and looking anywhere but at Fox, who grasped his chin to get his attention. "Hey," he said softly. "I love you, boss. It's just a few weeks."

Emory hiccuped again and lifted his hands, wiping viciously at his cheeks. His eyes darted nervously between us and he reached, almost desperately, to catch my fingers in his own. He squeezed them so hard that it hurt and I squeezed back, lips pursed, until he spoke. "I l-l-love you too," he stammered and then, after another moment of quiet crying, he let Brentlyn lead him away with Raevar. He glanced back over his shoulders a few times at us and Fox seemed to want to watch him until the palace door closed behind them.

"Well," he mumbled, rubbing at his own face before stepping back to the big, chestnut colored charger he rode. He climbed up while I pulled myself up into the saddle of the Lierian bred white coarser. "That was heartbreaking."

I nodded silently, snapping the reins so that my horse fell in with his while we started down the beach with a company of guards--both Corian and Lierian--toward the road that would lead to the ambush we'd set. "Mm," I finally answered. "Imagine how heartbroken he'll be if you don't come back."

"We're not fighting over this again," Fox cut me off bluntly and cast me a withering glare that I pointedly ignored. "We compromised. I'm not charging into battle. I'm there because I'm their King. I should be there."

"You can't charge into battle, for pity's sake. You can barely lift your arms." It was a sore subject and it was one that we continued to fight about for the whole nearly two week journey it was up to the marshes. It was fucking or fighting, sometimes it was both, and I lost track of time. It was a relentless, unhealthy cycle during which I would spend all day trying to convince him to turn around and he would spend all day ignoring me or fighting me on it. He wasn't used to this aspect of who I was now.

The old Cyril was faultlessly obedient. The old Cyril was a slave to whatever Fox wanted and to some extent, it remained that way. I would have given the very blood in my body to make him happy. So I railed against him all day and at night, he took out that aggression on me in a way that made my toes curl in my boots just thinking about it. I loved how rough he could get. He made me feel things I'd believed I could never feel again. He could spank me, call me names, tie me down, and still...at the end of it, when he told me that he loved me, nothing else mattered. I didn't care that I'd come so hard I couldn't see or that my thighs were bruised and trembling, or that it would hurt like a son of a bitch to get in a saddle again--all I cared about was that Fox loved me. He'd picked me. I'd found my way back to him and I remembered all those years ago, the first time I'd slept with him, how I'd told myself that I would never let someone take him from me.

And I'd kept that promise to myself. I had fought for it but I had kept it.

I had no intentions of fighting in that battle either. I was the Infinito--the God. The tribal elders had all but forbidden me from taking part in any fighting and, by the time we reached the camp on the outskirts of Hollen's Wood to wait for the scouts to tell us that the Immarans were marching, I wasn't sure fighting was such a good idea.

Heats came every six weeks. I'd timed our leaving so that when we arrived at camp, one would hit me and Fox would be there. I attributed the lack of one, at first, to the stress of travel. I also considered the idea that he'd been fucking me stupid every night since we left. The heat stopped with sex--completed, penetrative, internal finish sort of sex like someone else's semen was a balm for the fire that licked my insides. It was a disgusting sort of thought to have to consider and I'd made the very worst face imaginable when Raevar explained it to me but there it was. So I thought, perhaps, he'd gotten me at the very beginning of it before I'd realized it was happening and it was over before it ever hurt.

We hadn't expected to camp that long though. We'd expected the Immarans to move--and they were moving, but at a much slower pace than we had anticipated. The rain made everyone miserable and while we had promised Emory just a few weeks, it looked like it was turning into just a few months and the monarchical tent I shared with Fox was beginning to seem more like a nightmare than some honeymoon-esque camping trip like Izzy had tried to tell me it could be.

Fox was driving me up the fucking wall. Or, he would have been, you know, if we'd had actual walls but it was a tent and so instead, perhaps he was driving me up the fucking canopy. Or the canvas. Or whatever it was. He was bored and whining constantly. He hated the rain, he hated camping, he missed Emory (I couldn't fault him for that one because I missed our boy so much that it was keeping me up at night), and he was ready for this to be over. I was irritated with the time it was taking, irritated with Fox's antics, irritated with the rain...hell, I was even annoyed with the cloud pattern in the sky because it meant that sometimes the tent was really nice and kind of cool and sometimes it was blistering hot.

I snapped about everything. Fox noticed and pointed out. It only made me even more annoyed. "Do you have to do that?" I snarled one morning after a particularly rough night. Rough sex, trouble sleeping, nightmares with no Emory to assuage my belief that my baby was missing.

"Point out what a cunt you're being? Yeah, I do," he snapped back, tugging his boots on and turning to scowl at me. I was perched on the corner of our sleeping arrangements. Fox was King. We camped elaborately and although it wasn't a bed, it was a weaved, soft, hammock sort of thing that hung from four posts.

He was, of course, referring to my complaints about his complaints, which was how we tended to start every morning and I couldn't even rationalize with myself why I was doing it. I had known Fox for most of my life. I knew what he was like. This wasn't a change in his behavior. This was a change in mine because prior to this stupid situation, I hadn't cared how much he whined about things. I teased him about it but it was all in good fun and I usually soothed the sting of a scathing remark with kisses. Now I just wanted to pick up one of the metal lined scrolls full of reports out of the basket in the corner and chuck it at his face and it was driving me crazy. I was angry with him for making me angry and angry with myself because I couldn't understand where mellow, mild-tempered Cyril had gone off to and what monster had replaced him in my head.

I stood unsteadily and the dizziness hit me like I'd been slapped. That was another issue. I had been, for the last three weeks or so, suffering from some kind of stomach flu. It wasn't abnormal. Being around this many Corians always did a number on my immune system but I was vomiting constantly. When I woke up, when I slept, when I ate anything--all of it came back up and I was nursing a low, retrograde fever. For the first week, Fox had been incredibly attentive and sweet about it. He'd stayed holed up in our tent with me, his arms around my middle while I sweated it out, and I'd appreciated the comfort of his touch more than I could have ever explained but he had responsibilities and I suppose part of my annoyance stemmed from that. I wanted him with me because I didn't feel well. I wanted him to hold me and kiss my forehead and offer me water after I'd thrown up.

Which he did, just then, when I hit my knees and pulled the bucket between my legs to heave. The oddest thing was that I felt fine when I wasn't throwing up. As soon as it was done, I would be able to function for awhile and then that urge would hit me again and this vicious cycle continued. "You're starting to worry me, sweetheart," he told me, holding the waterskin out to me. I took it gratefully and pushed the bucket of stomach acid away with a grimace. "You're starting to look a little bit thin."

I grumbled something, my irritation with him forgotten as he helped me back up to my feet and tucked me against his chest. Fox still smelled the same, even after all those years, like mint and citrus and I breathed it in, half-expecting that musky, masculine scent that I only smelled when I was in heat to hit me a moment later.

And it was at that point that I realized how long it had been since I'd smelled that. I jerked away from him and Fox's eyes widened, that bright green that had haunted me for all the years I'd been gone and then shown up, in their own, Lierian-esque way, in Emory's face. "Well shit," I managed to whisper, pushing away from him to the basket full of scrolls. I began tearing through them, wrenching them open while he stood above me, still just wearing trousers. He even had his glasses on; I realized when I looked up. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what? I'm just looking."

"Like that. With your shirtless, glasses, sex-tousled hair...looks. You can't be that oblivious, Fox," I grumbled, glaring again. I found a scroll with the date and swore again, my heart leaping into a frantic, excited rhythm while he crossed his arms and leaned against one of the poles holding up the tent. Gods, he looked good like that. His skin was damp from the humidity outside and I had the sudden urge to run my tongue up the center of his abdomen, then get on my knees and suck him off until his legs gave out.

Instead, I was looking between his sex-God pose and the date on the scroll, counting back in my head while I tried to come to terms with what was happening to me. My brain kept screaming that this was impossible. This had never happened before. My heart kept fluttering and repeating Fox's words--we'd been lucky before. Emory wasn't supposed to exist. Maybe we would be lucky again.

Maybe we were getting lucky again.

There was only one way to find out, for sure, without waiting even more and I scrambled for my clothes. They'd been discarded the night before when Fox had tied me to the hammock and spanked me until my knees buckled and I came all over my belly. I found my belt, drew the blade from the strap on it, and seized his arm before he could stop me. He did, however, protest when I brought the steel across his palm. "Whoa, Cyril! What the fuck!" He snatched his fingers back as the blood pooled in his palm. I grabbed it back and though he struggled, his heart wasn't in it and I smeared his hand down my biceps where the blue tattoos stood out vibrant against my skin.

This had not been an option before, with Fox in Coria and me in Glacia. It wasn't even always accurate, according to Raevar, which was why they hadn't worried when they'd cut the hand of every man that had taken part in my rite and slathered me with enough blood that I couldn't help but think, 'Well, no wonder the humans think we're barbarians.'

But now I had him and when I smeared it down my arm, I felt the change. They grew hot, even hotter than they were when I was in heat...hotter than Emory's were all the time. Fox was still looking at me like I was crazy; holding his bloodied hand against his stomach to staunch the bleeding while my breathing became labored and shallow. "You know, if you had some weird blood fetish, we probably could have talked about it be--"

"I think I'm pregnant."

Chapter Text

The look on Fox's face couldn't be described as any one particular emotion. He simply stared at me, eyes wide, with his bloodied hand to his stomach. The color drained slowly from his face, as if someone were siphoning it off, and for a moment I wondered if perhaps he hadn't actually wanted this. Maybe he had been mourning what he lost with Emory but maybe Emory was enough. Maybe his pleas when he finished inside of me were just ways to goad me to a finish because there wasn't really anything more emotional or beautiful than someone asking you to carry their child.

I got the answer shortly though. He reached for a cloth to mop up the blood on his hands, dipping it into a water basin to rid himself of the red. The injury was superficial and he bandaged it quietly while I stood, frozen, in the center of the tent. I kept brushing my fingers over those searing marks and then letting my hand skim over the space between my hips where I'd first felt Emory. I wondered if, perhaps, someone else was growing there now and the thought made my heart grow wings. Fox may have seemed dubious but I was certain. I wanted this. I hadn't realized that I wanted it for me but now, faced with the fact that it might have actually been happening, I wanted it to be true.

"Are you certain?" Fox asked quietly. "You said it was impossible. You said I would set myself up for heartbreak."

I turned to face him and took the towel in his hand to mop up his blood that was smeared down my arm. When it was cleaned up, I took his palm and placed it over the blistering hot marks on my skin. He jumped at the sensation and pulled back, surprise written all over his face. Those beautiful eyes widened marginally and his lips parted. Gods, I wanted nothing more than to kiss him. My earlier irritation was forgotten. This man had given me the greatest gift anyone could ever have given. He'd given me Emory. He'd made me a father and now, it seemed, against all odds, he was doing it again. I had to chalk it up to him being human...that perhaps carrying a Lierian baby would have destroyed whatever chemical make-up made my ability to conceive possible.

I hesitated and tilted my head toward the opening of the tent. "I'm...almost certain. I need to see one of our shamans. There are a few elders camped with us--" He nodded. He'd seen the their ghostly, gauzy white tents. "They're here to assist the healers when the battle is over. The one from my tribe in Glacia is here. Raevar trained him."

I was already moving, as was Fox. He pulled his black shirt over his head and then strapped himself into the necessary leather armor. It was of Lieran make, a gift I'd had commissioned for him before we marched. I knew about his hatred of the heavy armor Corians wore and the further restriction of his already crippled range of motion by the tight, thick leathers they wore alternatively. The Lierian make fit him snugly and allowed him to move. They'd woven a thin network of steel cables into the back too, to support his ruined muscle so that he had better range of motion in his arms. When he lifted one, the metal pulled back down his shoulder to help lift the arm. Needless to say, it was a chore getting him to take it off now.

I'd gotten him one of our seal-skin coats too. They were far more water resistant than the coats the Corians wore and, looking out over his army, it seemed a lot of them had caught on to that and had their own leather works made by my people back in the city. Fox's had been done in black, which was difficult to find. The seals off the coast of Coria and in Peak Bay were, for the most part, white. A few odd mutations produced black ones once in awhile though and I'd taken full advantage of who I was to get that coat made. I'd had the insignia of the Recian tribe burned into the space where a breast pocket would have been too.

He looked incredible in it. That force of will that he exuded doubled. Fox was a commander, more so than his brother would ever be despite the fact that Brentlyn's official title now was actually commander. He noticed me watching him and a small smile slipped across his lips. "I think you get perverse joy in dressing me up," he drawled, leaning on one of the posts while I hitched my belt around my coat and buckled it snugly. I armed myself to the teeth. Blades on both hips, tucked into the tops of my boots, slipped into my belt.

Make no mistakes about it, I was not a fighter. I'd learned to fight to protect Emory and I could hold my own now but I preferred avoiding confrontation. I palmed over the polished black handles of the two dual-wield style blades that hung against my hips. "Wrong," I eventually answered and Fox arched an eyebrow while I grinned. "I take joy in dressing you up. I take perverse joy in undressing you."

He couldn't control the urge to roll his eyes but he followed me out of the tent anyway and I could feel his excitement like it was a physical thing, a power arcing between us while we tromped through the vile mud of the military camp. The majority of the army had already moved forward, angling into position so that they would be behind the Immarans when the Immarans rushed toward the marshes with intentions of going around them. We, however, had remained in the shadow of a mountain less than a day's walk from the other camp and would not be moving forward until the battle actually begin and even then, I suspected we would be kept at a distance.

We picked our way through camp and I marveled at the differences between men here and men at the palace. Here, they acknowledged that Fox was King with a simple nod. They didn't stop their work because there was no time to do so. They even offered me a few smiles, taking note of the way their King held my hand and pulled me along like I was a doll.

By the time we reached Elder Pyrin's tent, I had mud up to my knees and my face was soaked from looking up at Fox from beneath my hood. The intense emotion that was writhing in my gut all went back to him. To how much I loved him, to how much I wanted to give this to him--to us--to the fear I had of losing him again. I squeezed his fingers and he glanced back when we stopped, silently asking if I was alright and I managed a nod before peeking into the tent.

The title of Elder does not necessarily mean 'old' and in Pyrin's case, that was true. Of course, by default, the Elder is usually old but Raever couldn't hold the title Elder. He was already the Infinito's mate, the Tribe Father and so although he had been trained as a shaman, when I'd returned from Coria, he'd given the title up to his apprentice to fill the role that I needed him to feel. That was how we'd ended up with Pyrin, who was only six or seven years older than me and one of the first of my people to accept Emory for what he was. He was devout and kind and I made it a point to bless him and his family as much as I could. He'd delivered Emory. There was no part of me that Pyrin hadn't been up close and personal with, at some point or another, and after going through that, it's hard not to consider someone your friend.

Pyrin wasn't Kinnon. The Common he spoke was guttural and choppy, often laced with our own words in some kind of bastardized version of both languages, but he tried and when he saw me peek into the tent, his grin grew to the size of his face. "Leland!" He rushed from his table where he appeared to be drying herbs and sorting them into bottles and pulled me in and out of the rain. He grabbed Fox right after and admired the leather he was wearing. "Well made, King of Coria." He patted him on the chest and then turned back to me, slipping into our tongue so that I could understand him. "Pray tell, Infinito, what honor brings you to my figurative doorstep?"

Fox glanced between us. Emory and I had both been trying to teach him Lierian and he excelled at it the way he always did with languages. I suspected he had some kind of idea of what was being said but the only two people that could translate efficiently were Raevar and myself. He would have to tough this out and I shrugged sheepishly. His knowing smile was all I needed to just answer Pyrin and not bother with the drawn out translation.

I reached for Pyrin's face and cupped his cheek, my thumb pressed vertically across his lips. I held him there for a moment and then ran the same thumb over his cheeks where my marks would have been on his face--a standard blessing only I could give and he smiled at it. "You might think I'm losing my mind, Pyrin," I admitted quietly and he snorted.

"After everything you've already been through, a war camp makes you lose your mind? I have trouble believing that," he answered flippantly, hauling himself up onto a roughly made table that I had no doubt he'd put together himself once we'd arrived. He needed somewhere to treat the ill and injured though. His legs swung and he looked at me with large eyes, the color of reflective glass. His wheat colored hair hung in them and he blew it out of his face occasionally while he waited for me to continue.

I was having trouble putting words to what it was so I shrugged out of my coat and rolled my sleeve up past where the marks were still scorching my skin. Pyrin watched, his attention focused on me, until I grabbed his hand and put it against the heated skin. "So you're in heat," he said slowly, his brow furrowed. "That's not new to you. I--Oh." I had pulled his hand down to the marks lower on my arm that had remained untouched by Fox's blood. "That's peculiar. That usually only happens after the rite." He tugged me closer so that he could look at my arm and then he peered up at Fox. "Is this from him?"

"It is."

"Very peculiar. Certainly, you're not suggesting--" He glanced furtively down at my abdomen, chewing his bottom lip and I shrugged but nodded. Pryin's expression changed from disbelief to sympathy like I'd flipped a coin and I flinched from it. If he cared, he didn't betray the emotion. He looked between the two of us and then dropped my arm. I braced myself for the lecture I had expected. "Leland, I can't imagine how hard this must be for you...to have gone through everything you went through with Emory alone. For Fox to have had those formative years stolen from him...but this isn't possible."

"Everyone said it was impossible for me to carry a halfling, too, but I did it. Maybe it's because he's human. Maybe it's because Emory was only half-Lierian. Maybe...maybe whatever made the previous Infinitos barren was a Lierian mate. Pyrin, I don't need you to believe me. I just need you to check. Please."

He shrugged and hopped off of the table, then patted it and gestured for me to climb up. "Shirt off then. Who am I to deny a God?" I obeyed his request while he fussed with cleaning off his hands, which smelled strongly of sage, and then he motioned for me to lay back when my shirt was discarded. Fox watched the ordeal with rapt interest, his arms crossed. He remained in one corner of the tent, almost like he felt he didn't belong there.

Pyrin moved with fluid ease and I remembered the last time he'd done this for me. I'd been screaming and tied to the table, thrashing and biting at him because I didn't want it to be true. I didn't want a baby. I didn't want any of it and he'd been adamantly opposed to touching me without my consent. I could remember him shouting at the other Elders that it wasn't fair that they'd rushed me into the rite before I could even properly speak their language. He'd tried so hard to soothe my fears, pressing tea soaked cloths to my face while I shrieked and cried.

He still ran his fingers over my forehead and took note of the low fever while his expert hands prodded my abdomen, coated in an oil that smelled of honey. I didn't know what he was looking for. I wasn't trained for it the way that he and Raevar were. I knew only the basics--that because I wasn't female, the way I carried a child was significantly different and because I was so tiny, it was exceedingly easy for them to tell when I was pregnant. He'd barely had to touch me to notice that Emory was there but I'd been further along then, the way I figured it.

The Elder hummed while his fingers moved between my hips, pressing and holding. He tipped his head and thought about things and then...then he stopped, eyes wide. I'd been so frantic the last time around that I'd never bothered to find out how he knew but I pushed myself up on my elbows so that I could see and there, printed across my stomach, were the same pointed, triangular marks that adorned the rest of my body but in miniature. They were there for but a second, a brief flash of pigmentation before they sank back into my flesh.

"Leland, I've never met a luckier son of a bitch than you," Pyrin whistled. He lifted his hand up and beckoned Fox over, who came hastily like he'd been waiting for the invitation. The Elder rubbed that thick, sticky oil over my stomach again and the marks bled back up to the surface and sank back down into the skin. "You must have the whole army of your ancestors looking out for you because you absolutely are pregnant."

Fox perked up and looked at me. "What did he say? What does that mean?" His hand hovered over me, over the marks that were already invisible, like he wasn't sure if he could touch or not and Pyrin closed the distance, pressing his palm down. His fingers spanned across my hips and he splayed them over my belly. I shivered and my hand closed around his wrist to hold him there. I'd missed this. I hadn't known what it was with Emory but this support? Just having him there? I'd missed it. "Cyril?"

"It means job well done, you smug bastard," I drawled, stretching my legs out and rolling my ankles before I pushed myself up into a sitting position.

I didn't have a chance to get to my feet because he'd gathered me up off the table and I yelped, wide eyed and flailing while he pressed kisses to my face and my throat. Pyrin was laughing at us, probably mostly at me for the look on my face. He cast me a grin and then stepped out of the tent as if to give us a moment of quiet to absorb the information. He made sure to toss me a towel before he left and when Fox finally sat me back down on the table, I wiped up the oil Pyrin had used on my stomach.

Fox couldn't keep his hands off of me though. His fingers ruffled my hair and then ran down my back, over my ribs and shoulders, and rested against my stomach like he couldn't quite believe it. He kept nuzzling against my throat, his face buried there and I wrapped my arms loosely around his torso. "Gods, Cyril," he eventually breathed against my ear and then kissed a line down my center to my abdomen so that he was kneeling by the table, his body between my knees. I ran my fingers through his hair, pushing his hood back in the process. My heart skipped, erratic and hungry for affection. "Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I know this can't be easy for you."

He was breaking me in the best way possible and I squeezed his shoulders while his kisses continued over the spot where our baby was growing beneath my skin. "Easy?" I asked quietly. "I would do this a thousand times for you. You know that."

"We're in a fucking war zone and you're pregnant. Now. Of all times. It couldn't have happened back at the palace." He whined into me and I couldn't help but laugh. "I suppose I shouldn't be so picky."

"I suppose you shouldn't," I agreed softly, still ruffling his hair. He looked so content, perfectly comfortable with spending the rest of his day nuzzling against my belly like he could love our latest edition with the same closeness he shared with Emory. "I'm not running off into battle. I'll be right beside you the whole time. I'll be fine. Besides, Meeren told me that when Raevar's blood heated his skin like that and they knew he was his mate, he could comfort him. He said...something like only your mate can make it easier. They tried everything to make me comfortable with Emory but I was one step from cutting myself open with a jagged rock to get him out of me."

"Shit," he breathed. "I'll do whatever you need. I might just start carrying you everywhere. How does that sound?"

I snorted. "Dreadfully uncomfortable. I would prefer walking, for the majority of the time. I am not opposed to occasional carrying if it ends in a bed."

Fox hummed and got back up, his hands braced on the table on either side of my hips. He leaned in and his nose brushed mine, his lips a breath from my mouth so that I could taste spearmint when he exhaled. It was dizzying. I felt like a snake responding to the pipe of a charmer. When Fox tipped his head, I tipped mine so that our mouths remained lined up, just one small fraction of space from a kiss. My heart thumped wildly out of control. I became acutely aware of each ragged, shallow breath I drew. My fingertips lifted to trace his jaw, scraping over the rough stubble on his face. The sensation made me shudder and he chuckled, hoarse and low in his throat, heady with anticipation of a kiss he kept denying me. Every time I tried to lean forward or tilt my head to take it, he reacted to keep me from it so that I remained the snake and he remained the charmer.

He was getting me drunk on him, so drunk that I was practically squirming in my seat, desperate for contact and finally, after what felt like years, he kissed me. It was slow and deep, a claiming of my mouth more than it was a kiss. Fox had always been possessive but this...this was unlike anything I'd ever felt. His tongue slid into my mouth like he was feeding it to me and he brushed over every surface like he couldn't leave a single spot untouched. He finished there and moved to my lips, sucking gently on one and then the other until I was a boneless, pliant heap willing to do whatever it was that he wanted me to do. "Please," I eventually whimpered against him while his hands moved back and slipped into the back of my trousers to squeeze.

"Please what?" Fox inquired, his lips at the thin skin above my pulse where he was, no doubt, leaving a lurid bruise that would mark me as his for weeks.

I whined, curling my fingers into the collar of his leather vest. I wanted to be kissed and touched and held. I wanted to be fucked, hard, like he had the night before. I wasn't used to this intimate, sweet side of him. "Take me to bed," I managed breathlessly. "I want..." What did I want? Everything. Anything he wanted to give me. Just him. He leaned back and looked at me, his eyes bright and teasing. He thumbed over my mouth and my tongue darted out, swiping over the pad. He was waiting for me. Waiting for my words to come out of my mouth. Normally, he'd have bent me over the table and spanked me until I was able to say them for him because he hated begging and he hated when I didn't tell him what I wanted.

He pressed his bent index finger beneath my chin, running the knuckle over the thin skin there while I swallowed and leaned forward, my eyes half-lidded. My lips parted, my heart hammered, my lungs struggled to keep up with what he was doing to me. "Come on, little one. Just open your mouth and say it." His tone was sweet and low, encouraging, and his free hand skimmed up my chest to one of my nipples. He circled it with his thumb and I squirmed, panting and hot under his touch. He knew exactly what to do to me and where to touch to get the reactions he wanted and when he lowered his mouth to replace his thumb, I mewled like a kitten. My fingers tangled in his hair and he repeated the same gesture to the other side, then dipped his tongue into my naval and nuzzled my belly again.

"Take me back to the tent and fuck me!" I finally spat the words, hissing them through my teeth and Fox chuckled at my frustration like the smug bastard that he was. He pulled my shirt and coat back on for me though and I allowed him to dress me, feeling rather like a petulant child until he picked me up. My legs slipped around his waist and my arms locked at his neck.

Fox breathed me in. I felt his chest fill up when he inhaled and he buried his face in my hair. "Gods, I love you," he mumbled against my ear and I shivered at the words. "You are...so, so incredible."

My cheeks flushed blood red at the compliment and I squeezed him tighter, shifting in his arms as he ducked out of the tent. Pyrin shot me a knowing smile when we passed him and waved but I didn't wave back. I was too intent on holding on to the man that was carrying me, my fingers knotted tight in his clothes. "You know, you're not so bad yourself, Prince Charming," I told him, whispering so that nobody we passed could hear our conversation.

I felt him laugh, a low rumble in his chest. "Prince? I'm insulted. I'm a King. You should know that, foreign dignitary that you are." He reached our tent and ducked in, dropped me in the hammock, and then moved back to tie the door shut. Then he was climbing over me, one of his legs tucked neatly between mine. "I'll forgive you...this time. I'm sure you can make it up to me with that wicked tongue of yours."

"I'm certain I can. Or you could spank me for it."

"I could," he mused and tipped his head. "Is that even safe now?"

I couldn't contain the urge to roll my eyes, my fingers curling around the back of his neck to pull him down so that his forehead was pressed to mine. "If I didn't enjoy it, I would say no. But it's not as if you're putting me under some kind of stress. Although, if it makes you uneasy, we don't have to do it. You can save them for later."

Fox snorted. "I'll do that. In the meantime, I plan on giving you what you wanted. To some degree."

I huffed and glared. To some degree. The man had a way of infuriating me even when I was on cloud nine, ecstatic over our luck, over what I'd been able to do for us, over the oddity that was my body...this strange shell I lived in that could give me a child with the man I loved.

Fox must have sensed my annoyance. He kissed the tip of my nose and then nipped at my mouth, pulling back before I could steal the real kiss I wanted. "I have no intentions of fucking you," he told me quietly and I opened my mouth to protest but his fingers on my lips quieted me. "I'm going to love you. Long and slow and for the rest of the day, little one."

And I swear, after that, every time he touched me, I fell more in love.

Chapter Text

I woke to the sound of horns a little over a month after my initial consultation with Pyrin. The Immarans were suffering. Disease ran rampant in their ranks, hindering their progress, but such was the risk of invading coastal lands. Waterborne plagues were the very worst sort to contract and their army left a trail of corpses...some Corian, some Lierian, but mostly their own. It was encouraging, that putrid wasting illness that snaked through their companies, decimating their numbers before their ships ever sailed down through the river toward the marsh.

The horns were the battle call, the warning that the bloodshed had started and I scrambled from the hammock, disentangling myself from Fox before he even managed to push himself upright. I wobbled slightly, my hand over my swelling abdomen. I was showing. It was just a bit, not enough to worry anyone or for anyone to even notice when I wore my coat, but I felt it. Fox saw it and every night before he slept, he pressed kisses to my naval and my hips. He spoke against my skin and I liked to imagine the words sank through and that whoever our little one was, he would recognize his father's voice.

My fingers splayed over him. Fox had been filling my head with baby names, all of which held some special meaning. Little miracle. Little Atara, I called him. My gift...and with the horns wailing, I truly began to fear for him. This was no place for me, not now, but going back hadn't been an option either. I was miserable all the time. My head ached, my body ached, I reacted dramatically to the smallest of things, and I was so clingy that I was starting to think even Fox was getting irritated with me. He never showed it but how could he not with the way I clutched at him night and day? He'd never been a patient person but his touch soothed me like nothing else did. The teas that Pyrin gave me took the edge off but when Fox climbed up into the hammock beside me, slipped his arms around me from behind, and let me snuggle back against him--that worked. In those moments, nothing else mattered. Nothing ever did when I was with him.

There's old Lierian lore that says the Infinito is only half of a person until the rite is complete and their mate is found. There's some silly story about it, because the mate is always older, at least by a few years, that says the ancestors find someone deserving of us and they craft us to fit. That we're a gift to that one individual.

And that was how I felt about Fox. Like I'd been crafted for him somewhere but I didn't consider myself the gift. He was the gift, with all of his lazy smiles and the peace he brought me even in the worst parts of my life...even when he hadn't been present, he'd given me something...he'd given me Emory.

"You're doing that thing where you stare at me again," he drawled, rolling out of the hammock. He landed fluidly on his feet, grabbed his trousers, and hiked them up around his hips. With the horns going, there was no time for nonsense or touching or slow, easy, early morning sex that had become my very favorite kind. Waking up with his mouth on me or his hands on my hips had become a ritual I looked forward to with such a passion that it bordered religion.

I pulled my own clothes on, tearing my eyes away from him at his teasing. "That's because I adore you," I answered simply, shrugging one shoulder. I reached for my coat only to feel his arms slip around my waist. He splayed his hands over my belly and bent his head, nuzzling into my throat and then kissing my jaw. He tipped my head back and stole one from my mouth, chaste and sweet at first but it smoldered and grew until he pried my lips open with his tongue.

"Do you know how incredibly proud I am of myself for doing this to you?" he mumbled, but the inflection of his voice told me that he was half-teasing. This was meant to make me roll my eyes and it did, my fingers lacing through his as I peeled him off of me. "I can't wait until you're big and I can feel him move."

"You say that now but just wait. I'll get progressively more emotional and miserable as the weeks go on. I'll be the size of a beached whale. I won't be able to see my own feet. I'll be far too big for sex and you won't find me attractive in the least." I huffed when I finished and pulled my coat on, strapping the belt loosely so that nobody noticed the bump beneath my clothes.

Fox snorted and spun me to face him. I was immediately grateful that my constant vomiting had ceased. I'd been sick the entire time I was pregnant with Emory but this little one seemed more content than he'd been. He caught my face in his hands and licked the tip of my nose, grinning at the expression I made. "I disagree. I'm imagining it and I think you're fucking beautiful. Round, miserable and carrying my baby. Poor, adorable little Cyril. Maybe I'll cart you around in a wheelbarrow."

"Oh, fuck you," I responded with next to no venom, rolled my eyes again, and started out of the tent only to receive a playful swat on my bottom in response. I turned around and scowled at him but he was struggling not to laugh and, on the eve of battle, how could I really destroy his pleasant mood? He wouldn't be pleasant for long. He'd be counting his dead and I'd be doing the same for my own people. I'd always assumed I would be with him, watching from a distance, but it hadn't played out that way. I wanted to go with Pyrin. Raevar had taught me a bit of our medicine and I wanted to help. Fox couldn't argue with the logic that more hands tending to the wounded meant less casualties. He cared too much. His big, open heart wouldn't allow him to argue. It was safe in a medical tent anyway.

So instead of storming out and dealing with him later--whenever later would be, I didn't know, I walked back and caught his face the way that he'd caught mine. He sobered almost immediately, his smile tugging down into a frown. "You stay safe, Fox," I ordered. "Don't do anything stupid. I love you. You know that."

"Back at you, champ," he murmured. "I'll see when this is over."

Little did I know, that wouldn't be for days.

-----------

The battle was a slaughter for both sides. It had been going on for the better part of a day by the time Pyrin, myself, and the small group of the other Elders crossed the marsh. The water ran red and I tried telling myself repeatedly that it was just an algae bloom from the ocean but I knew better. The water was thick and metallic. Dead fish began surfacing, their eyes stained pink. Suffocated. We plucked our way through the gore to the sound of swords and screaming and we came up out of the fog on what looked like the edge of hell.

The sky was black. Great plumes of thick, oily smoke rose from the burning ships and painted the clouds the color of charcoal. Ash rained down around us like snow and my stomach roiled in my gut. Somewhere, on the other side of the river, Fox was with the Corians as the battle died. The ships sank and among the twisting, turning bodies on the field, I could see my own people, their white coats stained red and black. Nothing broke the line. Nothing got beyond them to us. The Immaran force was decimated and those that were left were throwing their weapons down and turning for the hills, past their camp in the distance--a blot of black on the verdant green of the plains.

I had never seen death on this scale. The Lierian tribal chiefs barked orders from the undulating mass of people stomping on people, walking over bodies, ignoring the spurting blood of comrades that lay dying at their feet. This...this was war, the likes of which I had never truly been privy to seeing and I remembered the way Fox had come back from his first battle. Silent, brooding, withdrawn...so unlike the boy I'd known and he'd been seventeen at the time. Just seventeen and now I, as a grown adult, couldn't even bear to stomach the carnage that swept out before me.

"My lord Infinito," one of the chiefs broke away after what seemed like hours of watching but had truly only been minutes. "The Immarans have quit the field. They flee to their camp and into the forest. Some even took to the marsh."

"Let the marsh have them," I breathed, my eyes still taking in the smoggy, repulsive scene before me. How people could do this to each other was beyond my realm of comprehension. I had experienced evil in my life. I had felt it inside me with Ivar and I felt it again every time I let someone throw money on my back after they'd fucked me. I'd felt murderous before. I'd killed. I'd killed poachers and criminals. The Corian distaste for death had long since grown bitter on my tongue. Execution, I had come to realize, was a necessary evil but this...this wasn't execution. This was mindless, meaningless death. This was something in the realm of nine thousand screaming souls, their bodies gutted and empty, churning over a bloodbath with no hope of peace. I had to tear myself away from it, my vision blurred with tears and the chief frowned sympathetically, his hand on my arm. "Round up the others and take them to the King. The Corians are better suited to deal with human captives. He and I will decide what will become of them later. Pyrin?"

The Elder inclined his head in my direction. "Leland?"

"Have an area cleaned up for the wounded. If you can't save them, bring me to them. I'll grant them a mercy. Kill the wounded Immarans." Pyrin's lips pursed and his brow furrowed but he didn't argue. It was necessary and it was my job, whether I wanted it or not.

"And the Corian soldiers, sir?" he inquired gently.

"Treat them. All of them. Fox can decide what's to be done with those that we can't save. Keep your eyes open for Meyer."

"The halfling scout?" Pyrin turned before I answered and began issuing orders to those working under him. Half of them set off into the woods to start gathering material for pyres and half of them moved to the clearest edge of the battlefield. They began dragging bodies into piles, laying out the wounded into two distinct categories.

I nodded anyway. "He's one of Fox's but...he's ours too."

Pyrin heaved a sigh and then took me by my arms, shaking me gently to keep me from looking around. He wiped tears from my face that I hadn't known I'd shed. "Give me the Infinto's blade, Leland. Let me do this."

It wasn't an option. Or rather, it was an option I refused to recognize and I ignored the request. I stepped around Pyrin and began the hike over a hundred corpses to the steadily cleaner looking space near the rocky edge of the mountains we'd been camped in. I stopped in front of the group deemed lost causes and began my work. Lierans were not opposed to mercy killings. Poison was a common tool of our trade and watching someone die slowly while a toxin eats their insides is a far worse fate than sliding a blade between their ribs and into their heart. It was faster and far less painful but it required certain rituals. I blessed each one of them, kissed their foreheads, and pressed my cheek to theirs with every kill. They were carried carefully, like infants, to a separate pyre and burned with a level of respect not granted to a normal soldier for these had fought on, even when faced with death, they'd kept breathing. Kept fighting. It was supposed to be an honor to end their battle for them but I felt nothing but a growing urge to vomit.

Necessary evils, I kept telling myself as I worked, stopping only when Pyrin insisted I eat something. He cleaned me up the best he could, forced some kind of tea down my throat with a bowl full of dried fruit and nuts, and then I went back to my job. I was slick with blood by the evening. It coated my arms up to my shoulders and my coat was as red as Fox's favorite colors. My heart hurt more than it ever had in my life and I moved with a singular focus. I felt like a puppet on strings pulled by the Gods. I couldn't even spare a thought for Fox, though I heard his name mentioned a thousand times throughout the day and when those that couldn't be saved stop coming in, I went to work at Pyrin's side. I cleaned wounds and rubbed poultices into injuries. I wrapped broken limbs and spoke in quiet, soothing voices to the terrified men and women that began occupying a growing portion of the battlefield. The more we worked, the clearer it began.

And it smelled of roasting flesh. The Corians didn't burn their dead but we did. Their dead were put to sea, hauled off in wagons to the coast so I knew that every time I inhaled, the smell was that of my own people. People that relied on me to keep them safe and this was the end result. This bloody, broken place and I had known what the casualties would be like. I had known how terrible this fight would be but I had never understood what a grand scale that was. All of Fox's fears at our strategy games...all of his whispered pains that the moves I made cost so many lives...it all made sense now and I was determined to offer everything I could to fix it.

I kept moving even when my limbs were numb from cold and exhaustion. The seasons were changing and the rain was turning to a slushy, frozen mess, pink and frothy around our feet. My teeth chattered until Pyrin caught up with me and dragged me away. I tried to argue and he ignored me, leading me to the tent of one of the chiefs, a woman whose broken arm I had set earlier, and he sat me down in there with her and put her under orders to make sure I slept. She fed me, though I hardly tasted it through my tears. She was old enough to be my mother and she treated me as such, speaking like I was a child and though I resented it at first, her soothing tone eventually took over and lulled me into a state of numbness.

I wanted Fox.

I cried for him and she hushed me, peeling my bloodied clothes off with the sort of reverence due an Infinito. She wiped my skin clean and paused at my abdomen, her lips parted in breathless surprise. "Oh, little honored one," she whispered. "You shouldn't be here at all. This is not a blessing to be taking risks with."

"You can't tell anybody!" I responded, panicked and horrified and I didn't understand why. I wanted Atara to be a secret. I wanted him safe. I didn't need a target painted on my back so that some pissed off Corian could put an ax in my spine for the sake of tradition or so some fundamentalist Lierian couldn't poison my food to spite me for being mated to a human.

The woman clicked her tongue and pressed her fingers to her lips to indicate her silence, then she wrapped me in one of her coats and ushered me to her bedroll. She curled up beside me while I sobbed. I tried desperately to pick the pieces of my heart up off the floor of my chest but it just broke even more every time I thought about it. I kept remembering every face, every last breath against my ear, and every crying individual I'd seen. I kept thinking about Fox, wondering where he was, if he was okay, and why he hadn't found me. Then I had to remind myself that he was King. He was just as busy as I was dealing with his people.

That didn't stop me from wanting the comfort of his touch. That was the first night I'd spent without him since the Fox and the Hound. The woman with me cradled me like I was her baby and I allowed it because any touch was better than nothing and I felt so dreadfully miserable for being the person that had orchestrated this massacre.

I cried myself to sleep, my hands clutched over my stomach and I woke up to the same nightmare I'd drifted off to. The world smelled of burning flesh and it sounded of the cries of dying men. My tent partner was gone but she'd left a bowl of more dried fruit, nuts, and a length of jerky she'd probably gotten from a Corian. There was a note on it from Pyrin though so I decided it was probably from him as I forced myself to chew it. It read, "Human baby probably has human dietary needs."

I scrubbed the blood from my clothes the best I could before deciding that I didn't really care and then set off to find Pyrin again. A flock of crows and vultures hovered above the field. Wolves and stray dogs lined the sides, picking at what was left. My stomach churned as one dragged an arm off and ran toward the beach. Bloated bodies were knocked loose from the ships and they floated down the river, face up, eyeless and blue. I functioned automatically again. There were more Corian soldiers the second day but there were more of them in general and so I suspected that over on Fox's side of camp, things were overwhelmed.

My heart reached for him. I felt like it was trying to climb up out of my throat as I worked, still exhausted and sore down into my bones. I couldn't spare a thought for my own comfort or my own worries, not when everyone around me had so many more. They were filling wagons with injured people and carting them to the closest towns, villages, and farming homesteads. Citizens from those places came out to collect them, leaving behind their oldest children to assist in anything they could.

There was kinship in tragedy, I learned. There were no humans or Lierians. There were just people. Dead and alive, healthy and injured, noble and common and none of it mattered. I saw Urien carry Meyer in, writhing in agony, his hands gripped over his gut where his insides were spilling out and I couldn't bring myself to kill him the way that I should have. A Corian healer put him back together the best that he could and a Lierian shaman treated the raging infection that left his skin blistering and hot. He died that evening, clutching at my fingers and whispering my name.

I fell asleep in the same tent that night, alone until the early hours of the morning when someone crept in through the flap that functioned as a door and slid in beside me. I startled at the size. The Lierian woman that had been there the night before, who this tent actually belonged to, was about my size. This person was larger, all muscle and long limbs and I scrambled up only to be pulled back down, horrified. I opened my mouth to scream and a hand clamped over it in the dark. I thrashed blindly until he spoke.

"Shh, little one, it's me." Fox. I recognized his voice from the shushing alone and I melted back into him.

I had never, at any point in my life, been happier to see him than I was that day. Even after six years away, this still trumped that day in the Fox and the Hound. I went boneless and the sobbing started almost immediately. "Meyer's dead," I whimpered, curling into his chest. His arms looped around me. He didn't smell like Fox. He smelled like war. Like blood and poultices and dirt. Like rot, and I'm sure I didn't smell any better but I hardly cared.

"Urien told me," he whispered back. "This is much worse than I imagined it would be."

The dread that had been pooling in my stomach finally let loose. I felt raw and broken in ways I hadn't known I could be. I'd put a blade into people I'd known for years that first day but I hadn't been able to kill Meyer with his enchanted looking eyes and his sweet, young face. I wailed, agonized and aching and I clawed at his clothes while he held me. I was angry and I was hurt and he understood it. He let me rage against him for the better part of an hour until my face was flushed and my tears were spent. I was exhausted again and he hauled me into a sitting position. He rubbed my back and blew on the nape of my neck, cool, soothing air that sent chills down my spine. He ran his fingers through my hair, rubbed my swelling stomach, and nuzzled into the curve of my shoulder. "I've never seen something this...this...evil," I managed to gasp. "How can we do this to each other? How can you butcher another person like that? Meyer's intestines were in my fucking hands, Fox."

He winced in the dark. I felt it against my neck where his face was pressed, leaving kisses against my filthy skin. He was just as dirty though so I supposed it didn't matter. "I can't answer that," he whispered. "I don't think anyone can. And I can't stay long either, sweetheart. I only came to bring you something. Or, rather, someone."

I shifted and wiped at my eyes but I slipped my coat back on, cringing at the heaviness of it when he gestured for me to get up. It took a great deal of effort to make my limbs work and when we stepped out of the tent, I got a better look at him. One of his hands was bandaged and I lifted an eyebrow in silent accusation. "I told you not to rush into battle. Tell me you did anyway. I swear Fox, if you--"

"Relax. I was combing over the battlefield and ran into an injured Immaran. He got a lucky swing in and I took his head off. It's superficial. Just needed cleaned up and wrapped. Gods, Mother." He rolled his eyes and I huffed, brushing a sooty smudge off of his cheek in the process. He looked as exhausted as I felt. He had circles under his eyes the same color as his black leather armor. He moved with none of the grace he normally carried himself with. "Pyrin's been looking out for you?"

"He has," I answered dryly while I followed him toward where the healers were tirelessly working. Great fires roared into the sky to offer light. For the most part, the battlefield was clean. Only the Immaran dead were left to be burned.

Fox nodded and glanced out over it with me. "We'll leave for home this afternoon. I just need to get a final casualty count."

My heart stiffened and I flinched. "What are we looking at?"

He grimaced and stole a look in my direction. "Five thousand, so far," he whispered. "Not including your people."

"Gods, Fox. That brings it closer to six." I lifted my hands to my face and stopped, doubling over in a sort of abject horror. "And this was my plan! This was me! All six thousand of them...all those people!"

He stopped and stared for a moment, waiting for me to uncurl myself from my legs before he pulled me close. I let him hold me, my head tucked against his chest while frozen rain poured down around his. He was shivering and I clutched at him, trying to force some of my body heat his way. "It was the only plan, Cyril. There are something like a million people in Coryth. If we hadn't stopped them this way, we'd have lost a lot more than six. This isn't your fault. Come here. I have something that will ease this for you."

I didn't want to move. I wanted to sink into the dirt or climb up onto one of the pyres that were now burning Corians too because there were too many dead to send them all to sea. I wanted to shriek at the Gods and my ancestors. I wanted to cast blame at someone's feet...someone that wasn't me or Fox. I wanted someone to suffer for this, for all these people, for all the families that would mourn them. I wanted to go home. I wanted to hold my son and thank the heavens that I was still alive to hold him.

Fox led me by the hand through the rows of sleeping, injured men all buried under mountains of pelts and blankets. Wagons were still loading them and carrying them away and there, at the end, Pyrin stood with a group of what appeared to be Corian children from a distance. Dark haired and terrified but as I grew closer, I realized they weren't Corian children. They were Lierians. They were adults. So filthy that their hair looked dark and wearing nothing but rags and the blankets thrown over their shoulders. My stomach flipped. "Why would I want to see this?" I breathed, tears spilling over my eyes onto my cheeks again and Fox held up a finger to his lips.

A few of them noticed our approach and one of them pushed forward, a little bit taller than the rest. So tall that it was familiar because he hadn't always been that tall and I'd teased him for it relentlessly. It was the name he used to call out to me that gave it away though. "Cyril!"

I broke from Fox's grasp and tore toward them like my life depended on it. I nearly tripped over a stack of wooden crucibles, caught my balance with flailing arms, and launched myself right into Kinnon's grasp. "I thought you were dead!" I was sobbing, hysterical again, running my fingers through his curly hair, matted and filthy though it was. The elation I felt outweighed the exhaustion. I wanted to touch him, to feel every inch of his face, this boy that I had come to love like he was family and, realistically, he was. His mother was one of Raevar's cousins. He'd been willing to die for me...for Emory. His arms were frail and trembling but they locked around me and then slid forward between his, his fingertips pressed to my distended abdomen.

His eyes met mine, glittering in the dark, and then turned to Fox when I nodded. "Not dead," he said slowly, attempting to process the information. "Caged and collared but that's no new thing for me, right? Cyril, are you?"

"Mm. Shh. It's not something I'm telling the town crier just yet." But a dozen hands were on me, all my people...all from my tribe. I knew their names, their families, their ages and I touched and kissed and blessed each one of them in turn before returning back to Kinnon. He was skin and bones, bruised and bloodied and obviously ill, but he was alive and I held his face between my hands. "Emory will be over the moon. He cries for you, Kinnon. What you did for us--"

"Is what I owed you," he cut me off and looked furtively between Fox and I. "Both of you. I helped steal your life from you, Cyril. I wanted to help give it back. You weren't cut out for this. You were cut out for that idiot." He nodded at Fox, who caught the word and scowled. Kinnon switched easily into common when he addressed him. "Yes, that's right. I'm talking about you. You ought to get him home. He doesn't belong out here like this."

"He tried," I drawled when Fox opened his mouth to argue.

"Damn right, I tried. The only person on the planet more stubborn than me is you." He kicked at the dirt. "Get Kinnon cleaned up and go back to your tent with him. I have to find Urien." He bent to kiss me quickly on the cheek and ruffled Kinnon's hair in the process. "Take care of him, Kinnon. Make sure he's not up at the ass end of dawn trying to help."

"Fox--"

His eyes turned hard and I clamped my mouth shut. I recognized that look. That was the look that usually happened right before he wrestled me over his knee and spanked me into submission. Not that it ever really required wrestling. I always went willingly. His hand curled around the back of my neck and my eyes widened. "Listen to me, Cyril, and listen hard, because if you feel like fighting about this later, you better have a really fucking good argument," he hissed and my eyes grew even more. Fox was never angry with me but this...this sounded angry and my fingers tightened in my coat. I felt Kinnon's hand on my arm, almost like he was worried about me and I understood that. Fox was terrifying when he was angry. That commanding nature he had dominated all else and it felt rather like we had an audience for this. Everyone around us went silent and even though he was speaking so low that I doubted they could hear him, they had to know I was most certainly being scolded for something. Fox continued, almost like he didn't notice or he didn't care. "I am not losing you. Either of you." He looked pointedly at my abdomen and I flushed. "To your own self-deprecation or to your need to lay the blame for this at your feet. So you're going to stay relaxed and stress free and if you don't, you're not going to like what I do to you. At all. Is that very clear?"

My stomach dropped and I wanted to blame this sudden mood change on our situation. This was all high stress and anxiety but he had never threatened me before. Not like that and so when he kissed me, I couldn't bring myself to react. My lips remained pressed shut but if Fox noticed, he didn't betray it. He just walked away.

I felt Kinnon shift beside me but I couldn't even look at him. I was watching Fox, long-legged and beautiful as he ever was, walking away without so much as an 'I love you.' Just a threat like he planned on beating me as punishment instead of foreplay. "I think I might throw up," I finally managed as my stomach twisted in my gut, nervous and upset and Kinnon caught me around the waist to haul me back toward the tent we'd come from.

"You let him talk to you like that, Infinito? Does he hurt you?"

"What? I--" But my stomach heaved and I was vomiting in the mud a moment later, Kinnon's hand on my back while the last things I'd eaten came back up. I wiped viciously at my mouth with the back of my hand. "Fox has never hurt me. He would never hurt me. It's not...it's--"

"Really?" Kinnon raised an eyebrow and kept walking, giving me a rough tug. He was obviously upset and though it should have been easy for me to fight him off given his current state, I didn't bother to try. "Because that sounded like he was threatening to beat you. Infinito, listen to me..." He stopped when I stopped and gestured to the tent as if to indicate that this was where I was staying, though I had no idea where the owner was and I was beginning to wonder if she was dead or if maybe she'd gotten on a wagon to town and left me with her things because of who I was. I stared blankly at Kinnon, feeling rather heartbroken and raw over the whole ordeal.

He hesitated, like he was waiting for me to speak, and when I failed to come up with anything, he continued. "I love you, you know that?" I did, of course. Kinnon was family. More than that, he was my friend and though he'd been a petulant, snotty little brat (and still could be) he'd been good to me in Glacia. He'd helped me when nobody else would. He'd loved Emory as fiercely as a father would and all the moments that Fox had missed? Kinnon had been there for them. "And I know that you love Fox. It's more than that. What you feel for him is...beyond any language I know. I watched you grieve him for six years, Cyril. I held you through your tears. I held you when you gave birth to his son. I took care of you when you refused to let anyone heal your heat because you only ever wanted him. I stayed with you when I had to tie you down and cover your mouth and keep everyone that could smell you away from you. I put those tea soaked towels on your face to chill your fever when you fought through it. I will not let him hurt you. You are my God. I will gut him where he stands if I ever see him touch you in any way I deem inappropriate again and his people may kill me for it but it would be worth it to know that you're safe."

"I'm safe," I assured him quietly, though I wasn't even entirely sure of that then. "He's under a lot of stress, Kinnon. All these people...he loves me. He treats me like glass. I promise. He missed so much with Emory. He's just...he's frightened. That I'll lose this one or something will happen that will steal it from him again. He'll feel poorly for that when he's slept on it."

Kinnon scoffed, his arms crossed over his scrawny chest. "You're making excuses for someone that hurts you. I saw your face. You're afraid of him."

"He's the King."

"And you're a God!" His shout startled me and I jumped. Kinnon, at least, noticed and shriveled at my reaction. "You could have had anyone you wanted. You chose him. He doesn't get to treat you like you're a warm hole for him to fuck when he feels inclined."

"Kinnon!" Under normal circumstances, I would have felt inclined to argue more for Fox but Kinnon was right. He'd hurt me. However unintentional it had been, he'd hurt me and he didn't seem to care. That wasn't fair of me to think, of course, given the amount of strain that Fox was under. He didn't have the energy to care or to argue with me. So instead of fighting, I let my shoulders sag and pointed to the tent. "Get inside. We need to get some sleep."

His teeth clenched and he scowled but he obeyed and I looked back over the battlefield, toward the lights on the horizon where I knew Fox's company was camped. For a brief moment, I considered running to him. I was quick. I could catch him on his way back and demand he apologize.

Instead, I crawled into bed and let Kinnon hold me.

Chapter Text

I hiked up river with Kinnon the next morning. Pyrin had mentioned that it would be good to get away from all the death and destruction so we walked until we couldn't smell the rotting corpses anymore. Kinnon detailed what had happened in the village...how the youngest of them were taken back to the Immaran camp for 'entertainment' purposes. I tried not to think about it but Kinnon seemed to have taken it in stride. It was alarming--the ease with which he spoke of what they'd done to him but that was Kinnon. He'd already been through hell and he'd done his duty. He had protected Emory and I. According to him, that was worth a thousand nights in Immaran tents.

He told me that Fox had found them himself, locked up in cages, and that he'd spent the better part of the day having the chains broken by a blacksmith, the collars removed, and the injured tended to. Then he'd sent them off to Pyrin and come to see me. We stopped talking about Fox then. The night before still weighed heavy on my mind. Fox meant well. I knew that he did and that he was just used to getting what he wanted and having everyone obey him without question. I understood his fears. My pain was his pain but it worked in the opposite direction. I knew how much missing the first few years of Emory's life weighed on him. He was in agony. I could feel it as surely as I could feel my own heart skip when I thought about him. This was his second chance. This was his family. I knew how important that was to him. I saw the depth with which he loved our little boy and the way he looked at his siblings like the world revolved around them.

It wasn't fair for me to hold it against him but it wasn't fair for him to treat me the way that he had either. I didn't want to think about it, not really, not without talking to him first. I doubted very much that he'd threatened me on purpose or that he'd actually meant what he said. He was exhausted and injured and while I understood the weight of being a leader, I wasn't Fox. I was capable of hardening myself to the idea of this. It had taken time but I'd woken up that morning with a clearer head than I'd had in days. These deaths were a necessary evil, like so many other things in our lives.

Fox, with his compassion, his willingness to love, and his primal urge to protect everyone around him, was struggling with that, no doubt.

Kinnon and I cleaned up. He rinsed the blood and dirt from his hair until the same bright eyed, honey blond that had been my constant companion for the past six years was staring back at me. It was cathartic to get all that grime off me and rinse it from the leather I wore until it was almost white again. Kinnon had donned a Corian uniform, plucked from one of the dead no doubt, and far too big for him but he was clothed, at least. I talked to him about Emory, the journey from Glacia to Coria, how Fox had found me, and how Raevar had survived. Kinnon asked excited questions about my son and my father, thrilled that they were both alright, and then we'd taken the hike back to the battlefield.

I wasn't looking forward to the trip back to Coryth. No, it wasn't even that. I wasn't looking forward to talking to Fox. I wanted him, desperately. I wanted him so much that it hurt somewhere inside my chest that I couldn't reach. I needed the balm only he could provide but I was afraid of him. For the first time in all the years that I'd known him, after everything I'd let him do to me...now I was afraid of him. I was afraid of what he could do to me, of the power he had over me, and how he carried my heart between his teeth. I feared losing him...to this war, to his grief, or to his duty as King.

I wasn't surprised that he was nowhere to be found when we got back to Pyrin. The sounds of people in pain settled back in my ears, a chorus of agony and aches. I would have given anything to ease the suffering of the people around me. I felt despondent, lost, and detached from the situation at hand. Pyrin had to repeat himself a dozen times before I answered simple questions like: How are you feeling? Did you eat? I want you to ride in a wagon, okay?

I may have woken up with a clearer head and a better grasp of why this was so necessary but that didn't ease the pain. Pyrin made me eat and I had trouble keeping it down. He and Kinnon spoke in hushed voices so that I couldn't hear them but I knew what they were discussing. Kinnon was, no doubt, relaying what Fox had said the night before and my reaction to it. I felt sick and miserable and somehow humiliated. It was rather like he'd made me into a child that needed coddled. I was barely holding myself together when the wagons rolled up.

They were loaded with supplies this time. The injured were too injured to be moved yet and a few of the Elders and the Corian healers were staying behind to tend to them with a small company of healthy men and women as protection. A few of my people were remaining to build a lodge to keep the injured safe from the elements and I watched them with a sense of vague disinterest. I kept one hand against my stomach and the other arm was listlessly strewn across my lap. It was Kinnon that fetched me when it was time to leave and I tore myself from my absent staring to look up.

Fox's guard had joined us, dressed in their royal white armor. He was at the center of them, speaking to Urien, already on his horse. He saw me and managed a lopsided smile and I don't know why I expected him to drop what he was doing and pay attention to me but it hurt when he didn't. I suppose I wanted the comfort of his touch the way that I had yearned for it when I'd been carrying Emory. Instead, Kinnon climbed into the back of the wagon with me and let me lean into his side when the motion sickness hit me an hour into the trip. I ran a low grade fever that Pyrin treated with cold teas he was carrying in water skins. I had tried insisting he stay behind but he wanted to be with me...to tend to me on the journey home.

The silence went on for days. Fox was so close that I could call his name but he never once made it over to talk to me. I fielded questions from my people and he always seemed deep in discussion with Urien or other high ranking members of the nobility. Even at night, I curled up next to Kinnon, who hummed Lierian lullabies through my fitful, nightmare-laden sleep. Even when the fever worsened, I never felt him there. I'd gotten sick like this with Emory. Meeren had insisted it was part of the process but this felt different. I was irrationally angry with Fox. I wanted him with me. I wanted the balm of his touch, the sound of his voice. I wanted him humming above me, not Kinnon, and the more the time passed, the more I became absolutely convinced that I was losing him.

All I got for close to a week were occasionally glances, half-smiles in my direction while I threw up over the side of the wagon. He never once touched me or spoke to me directly. Kinnon grew increasingly aggravated with my miserable state and I sunk deeper and deeper into a sort of despair I hadn't felt since they'd first taken me to Glacia. The world around me lacked color. It rained ice and I shivered between Kinnon and Pyrin. There was nothing green left as winter set in. Mud and ice caked the wheels of the wagons and more time was spent chipping it off than was spent actually traveling.

And it wasn't until we reached the Fox and the Hound that the bitter, cold silence between us finally broke me. The wagons rolled to a stop and I climbed down, disregarding Kinnon's offer for help. My legs ached from too much sitting. I spent more time crying than I spent doing anything else. I tried to focus on Emory...Emory was at the end of this road I was on and that was what kept me moving. It was what kept me forcing food into my mouth when Kinnon held it out to me. I was a disaster. I was an emotional basket case. My nerves were frayed and I trembled with every movement.

I was conditioned to need him. I realized that and I knew that it was selfish to want his time when he had so little of it to spare but even if he'd just slept near me so that I could touch him when the nightmares were the worst, it would have made my life more bearable. The sudden lack of Fox was even worse than it was the first time because he was right there. I could see him and it was like every time he looked at me, he denied me what I needed. I felt like he was punishing me and because of that, I never worked up the courage to reach out to him despite Pyrin's insistence that communication worked two ways.

So when my legs buckled in front of the Inn, I was surprised that it was Fox that caught me before I hit the ground. My vision had tipped, dizzy and out of focus in the rain, and I'd started falling before Kinnon was even out of the wagon but somehow, Fox, with his long legs and his unnatural ability to sense how close I was even without seeing me, managed to grab me under my arms before I landed in the mud. "Watch your step, champ," he whispered, one arm snaked around my chest to hold me steady and for a moment, I was content to breathe him in. Citrus. Mint. Rain. Fox. I loved him so completely that I even appreciated the pain he could cause me. It was just a moment though--a second of weakness during which I melted into his arms and prayed for him to scoop me up and carry me like he'd promised he would.

Then it was over. I remembered the heartache of the past week. The silence, the lack of his touch, the unbearable thoughts I'd had that echoed back to the very earliest days of our relationship when I'd thought myself unworthy of his attention. I had given him everything. My life, my heart, my body--he had it all. I'd given him a son. I was carrying another, through a fucking war-zone. I'd put myself through hell to ease his sorrow over what he'd lost with Emory only to have him treat me like I was just an incubator for his spawn.

I jerked away from him, shoving at his chest. Anger gave me strength and though Fox tried to hold onto me, I squirmed out of his grip by violently pushing away from him. I slid in the mud and caught myself on the side of the wagon. "Don't touch me," I hissed, my eyes narrowed and Fox's widened like he was surprised and I wondered how he could be after all of this. He had been actively avoiding me after threatening me.

Fox held his hands up in defeat. He was soaked and cold. His lips were tinged blue and his hair stuck to his face in the rain. Part of me wanted to run my hands over his face, to warm his mouth with my own, and to share heat with him because I ran warmer than he did. The larger, angrier part of me took pleasure in his discomfort because I'd been miserable for a week and he'd done nothing to take the edge off, despite knowing that he was the only one that could do it. Still, he let me have my fit. "Fine," he relented. "You're obviously upset with me over something. We can talk about this inside. You shouldn't be out in the cold like this."

"Or we can talk about it here," I snapped back. I was irate and when I got angry like this, my temper fueled my ability to hurt him. I didn't often get angry at Fox but when I did, it wasn't something he easily forgot. Usually, he let me get it out of my system. He sat quietly and took my verbal lashing until I exhausted myself and cried my apologies. This day, however, his eyes hardened at my demand and he shook his head but I just kept on going. "You haven't said a word to me in close to a week! Not a fucking word, Fox! You haven't touched me, you've barely looked at me, and now you want to act like none of that happened? You threatened me and then you cut me off. So what was this?" I aimed to hurt. I went right for the vitals. My cheeks flushed red and my heart hammered in my throat, frantic to stop my strung-out mind from saying something I would regret but ultimately, it failed. "A game? Was it all about getting Emory and making up for what you lost? Now you've got what you want and that's it? Don't you think it would have been easier to find a woman to give that to you?"

He looked livid at that and while I pushed at him, shoving with every sentence, his fingers wrapped around my wrists and he wrestled me back. I was being positively impossible and I knew I deserved his ire for this but I was tired of not understanding what I'd done to deserve it prior. "Stop it!" he snarled. "You're being ridiculous, Cyril! I can explain all of this if you'd just--"

Someone had seized me by the arm and jerked me free from his grasp. My eyes widened, startled by the sudden loss of contact, and then there was a blur of movement and the familiar, dull thumping noise of a fist connecting with flesh.

My stomach dropped down through my feet, into the cold, icy mud and I realized what was happening. Kinnon's fist had connected hard with Fox's mouth and Fox hit back, his right fist driving into Kinnon's gut so hard that I heard the air leave his lungs. The guards jumped forward just a second later, peeling Kinnon off of him while he snarled. "You don't deserve to touch him!" he shrieked, thrashing against their hands on his arms. Fox lifted his fingers to his lips, brushing blood from the corner of his mouth. "You don't deserve anything he's given you, you're a sick--"

"Put him in irons," Fox spat the order and sneered at Kinnon's howl of disapproval. "Throw him in with the Immarans."

"Don't you dare!" It took me a moment to catch up with what was happening, my eyes moving from Fox, to Kinnon, to the caged wagons full of prisoners being taken to the Coryth. "Keep him in shackles but he's mine to punish, Fox. He's not Corian. You don't get to decide what happens to him."

"Follow the orders." He scowled at me and my anger turned into something else. It was easy to be Cyril with Fox. I liked being Cyril but that wasn't who I was, not to Kinnon or Pyrin or the dozen other Lierians that would have slaughtered Fox's whole company if I gave the order. To them, I was Leland. I was their Infinito. Their God.

My responsibility was, and would always be, to them. "I'll leave," I told him coldly and he hesitated, his eyes glazing over when he looked at me again. "I will take Emory and I will go back to Glacia and you will never see us again if you put him in there. He's mine."

Fox looked sick. He also looked irate. His fists clenched and tightened at his sides, his jaw worked, and he held a hand up to stop the guards. "You're picking him over me," he accused me quietly. We were an island in a sea of our people...a tiny, self-contained little oasis of hate that radiated out from the both of us.

"I'm stopping you from doing something that you'll regret," I corrected. "That's my job, remember? One punch and you're ready to throw him in there with a bunch of rabid animals pretending to be men. He'd be dead by morning. I will see to it that he is appropriately punished."

"You threatened me!"

"It doesn't feel good, does it?" His eyes widened at that then and I continued. "Is that what you want to be known for? The King that threw a defenseless boy into a pit of vipers?"

Fox huffed but he stopped the guards and Kinnon was tossed into the back of the wagon he'd been in with me, still shackled and looking contrite, but there was nothing else I could do for him. He couldn't haul off and start hitting Fox or any member of the court whenever he felt inclined. If our alliance was going to work, there needed to be a balance of power. Neither of them seemed to understand it. When Fox spoke next, his words were icy and menacing and though he didn't touch me, it felt very much like he was holding me by the back of my neck like a runaway kitten. "Get inside," he ordered.

It took every ounce of self-control I had to swallow my pride and walk into the building. Kara greeted us like we were old friends. She fawned over me, fed us, and all the while, Fox remained entirely silent. He didn't speak to Urien. He didn't answer Kara with more than a shrug and she clicked her tongue and fussed with his wet clothes. "Poor thing," she lamented in my ear. "He looks bone tired."

And she was right. His cheeks were sort of hollow looking, like he'd lost weight, and the longer I watched him the more the guilt settled in. The brightness in his eyes had dulled and his skin had a grayish, unhealthy tone to it. He favored his injured arm. Kara kept insisting we both eat more. She told me that I looked as hollow as he did. I appreciated her mothering. I appreciated hot food even more. It lulled me into a sense of calm and eventually, Fox even brought Kinnon in, sans shackles, and told Kara to make sure he and Pyrin were kept warm and comfortable.

The gesture, I knew, was for me and I reached tentatively for his hand where it rested on the table. The bandages had been changed recently but his fingers were warm. Warmer than they should have been and my stomach twisted uncomfortably. "This is infected," I breathed, my fingertips plucking at the edge of it before he stopped me. Panic swelled in my throat and I scooted along the bench, closer to his chair at the head of the table, but he withdrew his arm before I could peel it free. Infection was deadly. I'd seen Meyer succumb to it an hours. Granted, his injury was much more substantial than the wound on Fox's arm, but the fact remained. I'd been worried about losing him to grief or responsibility for days but I'd never imagined I would actually lose him.

I tried, for a half of a second, to imagine a world without him, and my entire being rebelled against the idea. I shivered in revulsion because even when I'd been in Glacia, I'd known that he was alive. Somewhere, Fox was okay, and that had kept me going in some of the darkest hours of my life.

"It's clearing up. It was worse," he said quietly. "It's why I've been avoiding you. You don't need to worry about this. You have enough to worry about." He lifted his wine to his lips and shot me a look over the rim of the cup while I stared at him.

Guilt hit me hard and fast. It stung my eyes and burrowed into my heart, which jumped to my throat and threatened to claw it's way up out of my mouth just to be closer to him. I wanted to crawl into his lap, to beg forgiveness that I knew he'd already given me, or to provide the kind of comfort that he may have needed if he'd been in pain. I stared instead, lips parted, and he leaned forward to kiss me gently. It was chaste, almost questioning, just his sealed mouth pressed to my open one until I responded and sucked on his bottom lip.

Beneath my coat, something stirred in my belly, a little rustling of movement, a twitch of muscles that weren't mine to control and I sucked in a sharp breath. I'd never wanted to feel Emory. I had blatantly ignored his movements and, in the beginning, I'd been convinced that they were figments of my imagination. I never committed them to memory but this...I felt this and my cheeks colored.

"That was hot but I didn't think it was gasp and flush hot," Fox teased, quirking an eyebrow while he looked at me but I shook my head and his smile faded. He blinked at me, confused, his head tipped to one side and I knew it was silly because he couldn't feel him yet. Our little gift wouldn't be strong enough for that for months. Pyrin called this the quickening. The first fluttering movements, the sensation of life, and I didn't know when Emory's was but I would always remember this.

And even though it was silly, I grabbed Fox's hand and guided it beneath my coat and my shirt to my skin. He was still staring at me, realization slowly dawning on his face. The dull look in his eyes gave way to the same brightness I'd missed and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "You can't feel him yet, but I can," I assured him. "Just now. Just a little...something. Just--"

Fox pulled his hand away and got quickly to his feet, scooping me up in the process. The rest of the table looked on like he'd lost his mind but nobody dared question him, even when I squealed in protest and he swatted me gently on my bottom. "I'm taking you to bed," he whispered against my ear. "And I think you're due for a spanking."

Chapter Text

We had a room, a simple thing--just a wood framed bed with a slatted headboard but it was better than the back of a wagon and Kinnon's side. It was warm and dry and it had a clean, lemony smell that I recognized from the time I'd stayed there as the wood oil that Kara rubbed into the floors and the tables when she cleaned the rooms.

Fox carried me inside and sat me down on my feet. He kicked the door shut behind us and set about to kissing me immediately. His good hand cupped my face and tipped my jaw up so that he could seal his lips over mine, hot and heady. He tasted of mulled red wine and Fox, warm and rough. The stubble on his cheeks scraped my face and his fingers tangled in my hair like he was trying to soak me in, to pull me closer, or to take more of me than I could give and I gave him everything. I let him in and felt his tongue sweep over my mouth, hungry and wanting--like he was just as starved for my attention as I had been for his.

I'd been in withdrawal from him, suffering through his absence like an addict without a fix and now he was back. Now his hands were on me, cupping my face and sliding down the small of my back, guiding me until the back of my knees hit the bed and I sank into the mattress. I expected him to climb over me, push me back, and settle between my legs but he stayed standing, both of his hands on my face so that I had no choice but to crane my neck to keep kissing him. I held onto his biceps, my fingers tight and digging into his muscle, trying to pull him down but he didn't budge. He held me captive with his kiss and stole the air from my lungs with the ministrations of his tongue. I felt dizzy and drugged. I wanted to peel him out of his clothes, strip myself of my own, and feel his skin against mine.

He pulled my coat and my shirt over my head when he broke that kiss, leaving me breathless and flushed. I lifted my arms for him automatically and groaned at his hands sweeping over my shoulders, my back, and my chest. He traced the marks on my body with his mouth on mine again, silent and needy, but he never got on the bed with me. When my head lolled, my thoughts blurred to a point where the focus was only him and his mouth, his fingers tangled in my hair and jerked me back so that I hissed at the sharp pain and blinked up at him. He had never pulled my hair before but the action seemed to have a direct line to my groin because I was getting hard just looking up at him like that. He had that radiant power of a King, commanding and almost overbearing...almost suffocating but I loved to drown in it.

"I am so fucking angry with you," he breathed, catching my bottom lip between his teeth. He tugged almost cruelly until I yelped. His hand closed around my jaw to hold me there with near bruising force and my heart hammered in my chest, excited and almost frightened by this new power play he was engaging in. It was always power play with Fox, of course. I loved that but it had never been to this extent. He never possessed me so entirely that I was afraid of touching him and in that moment, I began to think that if I did reach out to touch him, he'd have slapped my hands away.

So I didn't move. I didn't answer. I stared at him, wide-eyed and waiting for him to keep talking. He let go of my jaw but his eyes stayed on mine, bright and burning with intensity and a ferocity I hadn't seen since before I'd been exiled. It dried my mouth and I felt rather like a scolded little boy, contrite and pouting.

Fox continued though, his fingertips brushing down my throat and the center of my chest. They stopped at the slight bump between my hips, folding so that he could run his knuckles tenderly over the outcome of our love. "And I love you so much," he added, scraping his jaw along mine so that I shivered and leaned, feeling rather like the snake to his charmer again. "But you listen to me, because I'm only going to say this once. If you ever threaten to take Emory or this little addition away from me again, the things I will do to you are fucking illegal."

I felt rather like I'd been punched. He'd built me up into this expectant, sexualized state and crushed it and I knew he'd done it like that on purpose. This was Fox. His ability to hurt and emotionally manipulate knew no rival. He'd been holding my heart in his teeth for the better part of seven years and he'd bit down that moment. His teeth sank into it until the beating stopped and I felt utterly destroyed.

The sob in my throat choked me and I shoved at him, stumbling to my feet. Sorrow and rage hit me hard in the chest, an explosion of agony the likes of which I'd never known. I felt broken, like his words had shattered bone. My ribs became knives that reached for my heart and I wanted to strike back. I wanted to hit him. Instead, I dissolved helplessly under the heat of his stare. What else could I have done? How would I have felt had he threatened me with the same heartbreak I'd threatened him with?

"I just needed to frighten you!" I shouted back at him desperately, wiping furiously at the tears that poured unchecked down my face. "I needed to make you see! You get so worked up and so angry that you don't see the bigger picture. This is bigger than us, Fox! There are people's lives at stake with this fucking alliance and you're going to throw it away because someone half your fucking size hit you? How old are you again? I expect that kind of vindictive bullshit from Emory. You are a grown man!"

I was pressing my hands to my chest, trying to control the ragged, shallow way that I was breathing. I was so strung out, so pulled taut that I felt like the threads holding me together might snap like fishing line. I wasn't done though and he seemed to know that because he didn't answer. He crossed his arms and watched me--studied me, like he was gauging my reaction when I could barely get enough air in to speak.

My throat went raw from sobbing. I was an emotional disaster, in part because of the situation I was in and in part because the person that was meant to love me more than anyone else had ever loved me had toyed with me. He'd made me into a plaything. He'd built me up and he'd shattered me and what was worse was that some part of me believed that he could hurt me. If he felt threatened enough...if he felt that his relationship with Emory or our growing infant was threatened enough...I knew he would stop at nothing to preserve it. I would become an obstacle to his greater goal and I knew, logically, that if I felt he were a threat to my boys, I would have hurt him too. I had killed for Emory when we escaped Glacia. If Fox became a toxic part of our lives, I had no doubt that I could remove him like a cancer. It would hurt, as all surgical procedures hurt, but the hurt would heal because Emory and this little one were worth that pain.

I wanted to believe that we were more than that. I had to believe it. "And your answer to that wasn't to talk to me? It wasn't to say, 'Would you really do that to me, Cyril?' So that I could explain to you what was going through my mind when I had time to explain it--when I wasn't racing you...you as this manipulative, vindictive, commanding force of fucking nature that was ready to throw one of my people into a caravan of monsters! I told you not to do it. You didn't listen. You brought that on yourself."

Fox seemed to absorb what I was saying for a moment, still standing by the bed while I coughed and clawed at my throat, trying to scratch the rough, hoarse tone in my voice away. My whole body felt itchy with irritation. I was flushed, hot, and sweaty. My hair stuck to my face in limp locks of snowy blond, a color that was, in and of itself, a lack of color. "Would you?" he finally asked quietly, his head tilted to one side.

I scoffed and rolled my eyes. "Take them from you if I felt you were becoming toxic? To protect them? To protect my people? Yes. I don't think you understand, Fox. You were always so quick to insist that I'm human." He opened his mouth as if to argue that I was, in fact, human...the same way that he always did. I held a hand up and kept right on talking. "I am not human. Your son is not human. He's a halfling. They both are. You cannot risk alienating half of who they are. Kinnon was all I had. He loves me. He's my family."

"He wants you," Fox interjected that time, his jaw tight and I blinked. It wasn't the first time that someone had insinuated that Kinnon and I would have been mated had it not been for Fox. There were stories about that sort of thing happening--boys that were good friends with the Infinito taking part in the rite and drawing the 'honor,' if you will, of fathering the child. Kinnon had taken part in my rite. It wasn't something I often liked to think about, but there it was, and here was Fox parroting back what everyone had told me about him. That he and I would have worked.

And maybe we would have. Maybe, if I hadn't been poached, if Harlan hadn't taken me from that brothel, if Fox hadn't taken that beating for me...maybe we would have worked but my heart had never belonged to anyone but the man standing in front of me. Even now, even as bloody and raw as I felt from his words, I was still his.

I stared at him and Fox snorted. "You're blind, Cyril. Kinnon may care for you, I'll give him that. He may have been there during everything you went through. He may have held your hand and coddled you and apologized for what he's done to us but the bottom line is, babes, that he wants to fuck you."

And because I wanted him to hurt, I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow. "He has."

The fury in Fox's face was unmatched. He opened his mouth like he wanted to rage against the idea but nothing came out. His fists clenched, his face turned scarlet, and for a brief moment, I thought he might hit something or maybe even me but he just let out a long, low breath. "When?"

"He took part in my rite," I answered flippantly and his shoulders seemed to relax just a hair at that. I watched him carefully and then cleared my throat, almost surprised by the realization that dawned over my consciousness. "You thought I let him touch me while you were off being an ignorant, pigheaded asshole? While you ignored me to 'protect' me from my emotions? To 'protect' me from getting worked up and stressed out, only to bring me here and build me up like you're going to lay me over the bed and make sure every fucking person here can hear me scream your name and then crush that just to hurt me? To threaten me for the second consecutive time in the whole two conversations we've had in two fucking weeks?" I lifted my hands to quote around the word 'protect' as I spoke and I advanced on him, eventually shoving him backward in my rage. He didn't stumble, just grabbed my wrists and pushed them back to my sides when he glared at me.

But while I had the floor, I was going to keep going. "So what were your plans, Fox? What were you going to do to me that I wouldn't like at all? What are you going to do to me that's so illegal that even a King can't do it? You love me, Fox? You love me. That's what you say but let me tell you what I've gone through for you in the past few months. I have seen every shaman and Elder that survived the exodus. I have forced fertility drinks that taste like pond scum down my throat every morning. I begged and prayed and pleaded with your Gods and my ancestors. I slept with my hips up when you fucked me to keep what you left inside me, inside me! And then when it worked, when this miracle, this gift was laid in our laps from whatever God found us worthy of it, it became a whole other slew of issues. I vomit and I ache and I'm feverish. I can't sleep. I have the worst vertigo I've ever had in my life. My skin is crawling constantly and in six months or so, I'm going to have to push a living creature out of my body for you. I'm going to bleed and scream and my pelvis is going to split open. For you. For you! And even though you know that you're the only person that makes any of those symptoms a little bit more tolerable, you chose to threaten me, ignore me, and then threaten me again!"

Fox looked...surprisingly contrite. The color in his face drained away until he seemed almost pale and his hands, which had once been squeezing around my wrists, held them lightly, his thumbs stroking the protruding bone along the side. I could see him swallow, a tightening of his throat before his fingers lifted and brushed the stray tears from my cheeks. I allowed the gesture. What I'd said seemed to hurt him or it brought back reality or something. There was a definite change in the charge between us. It had gone from angry to tender in the span of a few seconds.

"I'm sorry," he finally whispered. "I...was out of line. I didn't want to worry you. Obviously, I worried you anyway. I should have been there. Not...not Kinnon." The way he said his name made it sound like a curse and he wrinkled his nose as if he'd sucked on lemons. He took a deep breath then. "I didn't have plans. I was just...angry and impatient. Seven thousand people...Gods, Cyril, seven thousand people. I wanted you to be safe, that's all, and I didn't have the energy to fight with you about it. I'm just...I'm terrified that something will happen to you. That you'll lose this baby. That we'll lose this chance and it was such a stressful, ugly thing for you to be a part of in this sort of condition--"

"Fox." I stopped him with fingers to his lips and he pursed them, blinking down at me with a pained expression. "I was already pregnant when Harlan had me torn out of your arms, dragged screaming and fighting down the steps of the tower, and drugged until he could get me out of the palace quietly. There is nothing that compares to what I felt then. There is no amount of stress that anything could put me under that would even come close to what losing you felt like. You need to stop acting like you know what you're doing, because you don't. The men in my family have been doing this for thousands of years in worse conditions than a battlefield. Just relax. I've got this."

A small smile crossed his mouth then and his eyes brightened back up. "Was that forgiving me?" he asked coyly.

I pretended to think for a moment, the weight from my shoulders lifted while he stood so close that when he inhaled, his chest touched mine. "I suppose so," I relented eventually. "I'm disappointed that you hauled me up here with promises of spanking me and all you did was fight with me."

Fox grinned, the same smug expression that I'd grown to both love and hate evident on his features. His arms wrapped around me and he gave me a small push back toward the bed where I tumbled down, my legs hanging off of it. He unbuckled my boots with slow, practiced motions and then slipped them off of my legs. I wanted rough, needy Fox but what I was getting was the lazy, sensual side of him. He was feeling affectionate, it seemed, because he straddled my hips then and kissed me. His fingers laced through mine and held my hands to the bed and I could feel him, hard and hot through the fabric of his pants until he moved back down my body, dropping kisses over my chest and my belly. He lingered there, nuzzling against my skin, licking the marks on my sides while I panted and chewed my lower lip to ribbons.

I warmed up immediately, my anger and frustration forgotten. This was what he did to me...how he could own me so completely. In the time I'd spent away from him, I'd learned that nobody could do to me what he did to me. He'd promised me once that he wanted me ruined for everyone else. He wanted me so caught up in him that nobody could ever make me feel the things that he made me feel and he had succeeded completely in that venture.

He licked over my hips, his tongue circling the bones that were slowly disappearing into the bump of my stomach. His fingers hooked around my trousers and slowly, one inch at a time, he peeled them down my thighs and kissed every inch of exposed skin on both of my legs. He stopped when he reached my knees and discarded the fabric, parting my legs so that he could leave scorching kisses on the inside of my thighs. My back bowed up and I whined, low in my throat. Each brush of his lips burned me down to my core. My heart fluttered in my chest, wings beating frantically against my ribs while my hands tangled in his hair. "You're teasing me," I accused softly, breathless and hot.

"I'm apologizing to you," he corrected gently. "Then I'm spanking you."

"Skip the apology. You're forgiven." I had no patience for this, not after his previous game, and Fox chuckled.

He motioned for me to get up but didn't wait for me to actually do it. He just grabbed my arms and flipped me over gently, lifting my hips so that I was positioned on my hands and knees in the middle of the bed. I lowered my head to the mattress, my fingers digging into the quilt while I spread my legs and wriggled for him. It was enough to garner another small laugh and he swatted me gently. "You're impatient, little one. Are you sure this is okay?" His hand stayed on me, right over where his palm had landed, and he squeezed and cupped me, rubbing what I hoped would soon be red, aching flesh.

"I know what I can handle, Fox. I like this." And I didn't understand why. Being beaten had been one of my biggest fears as a child. As a teenager, when Ivar came to tutor us, it had only grown worse because he actually did beat me. I'd had no control over those situations though. It didn't explain that I liked it when he hit me. There was something about taking part in my own debasement that I found incredibly erotic. I wanted to submit to his whims, to take whatever he gave me, to make him feel even a fraction of what I felt for him...and I knew that if I told him to stop, he would stop. There was no begging with Fox. I got what I wanted. I always got what I wanted. All I had to do was ask.

This was no different. The first blow came down smarting and sharp and I gasped, my fingers tightening in the quilt until it balled up in my palms. He rubbed his hand over the mark right after he hit me, soothing the tingling burn that sank into my skin. He knelt on the edge of the bottom of the bed while he did it and he seemed...almost hesitant. Like he wasn't quite sure how hard he could hit me or if this was okay. I could see his mind working behind his eyes when I twisted to look at him, my arms and face still against the bed. He hit me again at the motion and I yelped, moaned, and arched my back like I could present myself to him for more.

Fox took the invitation. Every sharp crack of skin on skin made my blood sing for him. I felt like I was boiling from the inside out and he was the source of the heat. My bottom and the backs of my thighs stung and throbbed and my whole body rocked back into every blow until he reached between my legs and started stroking my cock with his free hand. I made a strangled, desperate noise. He could take me to a finish with a spanking alone. He'd done it before. I got off on just his touch, on the fact that I was pleasing him.

"Good boy," he murmured, leaning to speak against the base of my spine. I mewled at the contact and he hit me again, holding his hand against the bottom curve of my ass where the blow had landed. He squeezed, sliding his fingers over to the inside of my thigh and I heard him exhale, loud and breathy. "Gods above, Cyril, you are soaked down your thighs, baby boy."

I felt my cheeks flame. The oddity that was my body was an uncomfortable subject for me but Fox adored the things that I did. That I got wet, mostly. He worshiped me while I despised myself on some levels, at least physically. The shell that I existed in was the reason parts of my life were too hellish for me to remember, the reason Ivar had tied me down and forced himself inside me, and the reason I'd undergone the rite...but Fox loved it and he knew how I felt about it so he took every opportunity to compliment it. He built me up and when I flushed, he reached down to brush his fingers over my cheek, his other hand still skating between my thighs and then up to the soaked, tight opening where I wanted him desperately.

"Mmmm, Fox," I mumbled against the quilt, screwing my eyes shut tightly when his thumb pushed into me. I shifted to move, to reach for him, to crawl over him and peel him out of his trousers so I could ride him but as soon as my arms lifted, he grabbed both of my wrists and brought them back down.

"Easy," he purred. "You know I'll take care of you. No need to get fussy." He swatted me again, gently, but every touch on the abused flesh of my backside felt like a blow and I gasped, both at the exit of his thumb and the smack. "Tell me how you--"

"Feel," I finished for him through my teeth and he snorted above me, shifting so that both of his hands were on my bottom and he was opening me up. I knew what came next and I felt my stomach climb. My cock bobbed between my legs, angry and untouched again. "Empty. I want you inside me. It's been too long, Fox, ple--"

He hit me hard then and I cried out at the sudden, unexpected pain that blossomed over my thighs and drove down into my core so that I buried my face in the mattress and choked on a scream. "Do. Not. Beg," he snarled and I shuddered, basking in the aftermath of an agony so sweet that it bled into pleasure. I could have finished then. I was so hard it hurt. It ached into my thighs and joined the pain of my spanking. "I know I've asked you this before but how many times will I have to go over this with you? I hate when you beg. It makes me want to take a belt to that pretty ass of yours."

I keened and shivered at the thought, my lips parting in a gasp. "Oh Gods, yes!" I couldn't believe the words came out of my mouth. Neither could he, apparently, because he stopped what he was doing--rubbing life back into the tortured skin of my ass--and just sank two of his fingers into me. I howled, twisting on the bed. He hit my sweet spot with practiced, perfect ease on the first push and he rubbed it until I was practically wailing.

"You want a belt?" he breathed and I felt his tongue on one of the welts, his stubble scraping heated, raised, sensitive flesh. I panted and whimpered while his fingers fucked me, slow and hard. He drove in, rubbed, and pulled all the way out. "Answer me, Cyril."

I moaned, incapable of speech while I fought off a climax he seemed determined to make me have before he was even inside me. I thrashed, reaching up to squeeze one of the pillows and pull it to my face. "Yes, Gods, please, yes, I want a belt! I want a fucking belt, Fox, I can't. I can't--I can't--" I couldn't get words out of my mouth, not with the way he was moving and not when he leaned forward so that his tongue slid around his probing fingers. I sobbed into the bed. I wanted to tell him that I couldn't last. I couldn't keep this up but he didn't seem to care.

The warm, wet muscle of his tongue left my body so that he could kiss the welts he'd left and then speak. "Do you want to come, beautiful?" I could only nod frantically, my ass up and open for him, his fingers buried inside me. I was debased and destroyed, soaked in sweat and body fluid that slid down my thighs, sticky and hot. I was near tears again, desperate, aching, and clawing at the pillow I was using as an anchor. I'd been fucked on this same bed probably a dozen times by men that threw coins on my back when they left but none of them had ever finished me.

I whined and ground my teeth, focusing all of my energy on answering him because he would demand I used my words in a few minutes and I wanted so badly to please him. "My words," I gasped frantically. "'M using my--my words! I p-promise!"

Fox laughed and it was a warm, honeyed sound that reached my heart and made my soul sing for him. "Good boy," he crooned again. "Take your time. Tell me if you want to come."

"Yes!" I bit out after a few more strokes of his fingers. "M-may I?" I couldn't believe I was asking for his permission. The humiliation of it was lurid and gorgeous. The shame I felt at loving that sensation reached deep, colored my cheeks, and flooded me with agonized bliss.

Fox hummed over me, that sweet tenor reaching into my chest. "Of course you can, sweetheart." And like he'd commanded me, I did. I practically howled his name, rocking back into his fingers while I came all over my stomach and the quilt. My legs trembled. After the initial cry, I repeated it--his name--like a benediction. Like it was the only word I knew. Over and over until he was turning me over, hushing me with kisses so that I fed him his own name while he cradled my face.

I was incoherent, out of my head, and it was only when I was coming down did I realize he was kneeling over my chest, his knees on either side of my shoulders and his clothes were gone. I didn't remember him taking them off. Then again, I'd been distracted and I didn't get a word in before his cock was at my lips. I opened my mouth willingly, hungry for him, and my hands fell on his hips. It was a strange reward--being allowed to touch him like this when he usually wanted my hands pinned down.

I loved this. I loved the way he felt...the thickness of him, salty and bitter and Fox. He held my head in his hands and I relaxed my jaw, my eyes flicking up to his as if to tell him to move and he did. His hips rolled and he pulled my face toward him at the same time, fucking the back of my throat so that it constricted automatically around him. I barely gagged on him anymore. I focused on breathing through my nose when he slid out, hollowing my cheeks, sucking and swirling my tongue around him while his fingers fisted in my hair. I watched his reactions, the clenching of the muscles in his abdomen with each thrust forward. I felt his legs contract to bear his weight and ran my hands over his thighs.

Fox called me beautiful all the time but he was more than that. He was perfect, save the scars that mutilated his back, and even those were perfect. I liked to think of them as a skin-language that only my tongue could speak when I traced them--that they told me his story while I touched them. He loathed them and so, the same way he lauded me with compliments about the odd shell that I lived in, I showered them with attention. His flaws were part of him--part of that sun-kissed glow his skin had, part of the network of rigid, hard muscle that made him up, and that tousled black hair that always smelled of spearmint soap.

I loved the way he tasted. The way that he used my mouth for what he needed, bruising the back of my throat, hot, hard, and unrelenting. Saliva and precum saturated my cheeks and my chin and I got hard just watching him.

He only stopped when he'd gagged me enough to make it difficult to breathe. My eyes watered and then he was at my mouth, kissing me and licking up the mess he'd made of my face while he pulled my legs around his hips. I felt his cock in the cleft of my ass, his hands on my hips, angling me up while I squirmed and panted at his tongue on my cheek and my throat. He slid into me like he was made to fit there. I was so soaked that my body offered no resistance. I took him like I was crafted for him, my back arched and my legs locked around him.

"Gods, you're tight," he murmured against my throat, nuzzling me there while he found my hands and held them up above my head as I'd expected him to.

"And you're heavy," I complained, my tone mocking so that I could hear him laugh again and he did, a low rumble that I felt vibrate from his chest to mine while he snuggled against me, content to just remain seated inside me. He felt good though. The weight of his body, though heavy, was not uncomfortable and though I was always surprised by how big he felt when he was inside me, the agony of it wasn't in the sudden stretch. It was in the feel of his skin against my tortured bottom. It sang to me, a screaming pain in my thighs that made my breath hitch. I wriggled my hips, desperate for more, and Fox growled. "This is intimate and cute and I like when you're affectionate, Fox, really. It's endearing. But I really want you to fuck me. Really, really want it."

He hummed. "Really? How bad?"

I rolled my eyes. "You spank me for begging now you're practically asking me to do it," I grumbled but I relented, clenching my body down around him so that I felt him shudder and his hands tightened at my wrists. I inclined my head, my tongue darting out along the shell of his ear. "So bad, Fox. I want it so bad--" I took his ear in my teeth and tugged gently, felt his whole body shift at the sensation so that the tiniest wave of friction scraped my insides and I moaned. If he wanted to know, I intended on giving him a show for it. I knew what got him going--for all the pain and punishment I enjoyed, Fox liked the softer things. He liked it when I was affectionate, when I told him that I loved him. "You know it'll feel good. I'm always good for you. Like I was made for this. For you."

"Fuck, Cyril." His voice was like gravel when he spoke and he pushed himself up so that his hands held mine beside my head and braced his weight. He started moving, slow and easy so that my breath caught with every thrust. His eyes were dark when he looked at me. His pupils were wide so that they nearly blotted out the green. I felt something building in my abdomen, his cock sliding over the knot of nerves inside of me that made me see stars but I didn't see stars that day. I felt them, searing behind my eyes, but all I saw was him and the way he looked at me like I was the center of his world. With every thrust, he got a little bit faster, a little bit harder, like he was building me up for a finish that would shatter everything and I knew he could do it. We'd done this enough that I knew where this ended.

But he'd never looked at me like that. He looked at me like he loved me. I knew that he loved me. This was worship. It stole my breath and drew tiny, mewling noises from my lips while I rocked my hips against his. He lowered his head, his forehead pressed to mine and the quick, hot kiss--his teeth on my bottom lip--it destroyed me. "Let go of my hands," I implored and he hesitated. "Please, Fox, I want to hold you!" I was desperate to touch him and he allowed it. My hands skimmed over his arms, his back, his ribs, and his hips. They stayed tangled in his hair, finally, enough to pull him down and kiss him and he really gave it to me then. His hands went to my waist and pinned me down and he fucked me, hard and fast like he was losing control.

I panted and whined, moaning and squirming under him, struggling to hold on while a climax built between my legs. I wanted to touch myself. I wanted to squeeze and jerk my cock in time with the snapping of his hips but I knew he'd never allow it so my nails raked down his back to his ass and I squeezed until a guttural, almost pained howl tore from his lips and he buried his face in my shoulder while he came. I felt him, hot and thick inside of me and it was enough to nudge me over the edge again, writhing under him while my vision turned black.

And it was silent but for our breathing and the frantic pounding of his heart that I could feel against my hands where they were pressed to the ribbed scars of his back. I clutched at him, sweaty and slick, his hair stuck to head and mine glued to my face. He was motionless and I ran my fingers through his sticky, wet curls while he gulped for air, eyes shut, and his head on my chest.

"Hey," I finally whispered in the growing dark of the room. We'd never bothered to light any lamps. He didn't move though. "Fox, baby, hey. You still in there?" I ruffled his hair and he heaved a sigh.

"Can I just stay like this?" he mumbled. "I'm so tired, Cyril. I'm so tired." And he didn't need to explain. I knew that he didn't mean tired in the sense that he hadn't slept or that he'd fucked me into a state of exhaustion. He meant tired--emotionally tired, mentally tired, psychologically exhausted in every way that a person could be. He started pushing himself up though and I clung to him in an attempt to hold him down. "I should take care of you. Sorry, I--"

"Shut up," I ordered quietly. "Lay back down. You take care of me all the time. I can take care of you tonight." The Fox I was used to would have argued but this poor, bone-tired individual sank back into the bed, disregarding the mess we'd made of it while I slid out from under him and shuffled around the room for the clay jug of water and a towel from the table by the bed. I cleaned myself up and wiped off what was left of our mess on his stomach while his breathing evened out.

He was bruised along his cheekbone from Kinnon's punch and I patted it gently with a cold cloth before moving to his arm, peeling the bandages off to finally investigate the damage. It was a roping, thick wound that raked from the inside of his elbow to his wrist like a ragged, red river of bloody tissue. I could see where someone had scraped infection away and cleaned it up. There was a green, leafy paste on the inside of the bandages that I recognized as Lierian medicine. "Pyrin cleaned this up?"

"No, some other Elder," he mumbled. "It wasn't that bad when I got it. I just...didn't have time to care for it the way that I should have."

I clicked my tongue and shot him a glare that he winced away from. "You could have lost your arm."

"I'm already crippled. What's one more mutilation?" He spoke with a disgruntled edge and tried to pull away but I refused to release his hand. I got another clean towel and scrubbed at it while he hissed and squirmed. Fox didn't like pain. He could take it...he could take it better than anyone else I'd ever met, as was evidenced by his sentence to the post, but he hated it more than anyone else too.

I huffed eventually. "You're not crippled. Crippled insinuates that your daily life is somehow impeded by your injury. Your daily life is more than satisfactory, if I were to judge it myself. You can walk, you can pick up your son, you can see, hear, smell, taste, touch...you can fuck like it's a bloody marathon. You're loved." He grimaced like he didn't believe that I understood and I grabbed his face, my fingers tight on his jaw the way that he did to me when he wanted me to look at him. "You are loved, Fox. And you're alive. Do you know how many men I held through their last breaths this week? You're lucky. You shouldn't take that for granted." I gave him his arm back and patted his stomach. "You can leave that unwrapped. Some air will do it a great deal of good."

I stood up and slipped my trousers back on before climbing into bed next to him. He was silent, staring up at the ceiling until I pulled him in and his head landed on my collar again. "Thank you," he mumbled quietly and I assumed he meant for his arm so I kissed the top of his head. "For the perspective. I needed that."

I didn't answer that one. His voice was low and sleepy anyway and I ran my fingers through his hair until his breathing slowed and I knew he was gone.

Chapter Text

Fox clung to me like he was attached to my hip for the rest of the journey. When we left the Inn, he climbed right up into the wagon with me and ignored Kinnon's glare when he pulled me into his lap. He made a show of touching me whenever he could. He ran his fingers through my hair or over my cheek; he nudged my leg with his, zippered our hands together, and slept with my back to his chest and his arms locked right over the ever-growing bump beneath my coat. Nights consisted of slow, easy sex and long hours of nightmare-free sleep with the sensation of his heartbeat against my spine.

I took care of his arm with Pyrin's help. Peeled off bandages that smelled of infection in the early hours of the morning while Fox hissed and squirmed, his fist clenching and unclenching, his face pressed tight into my shoulder while we scrubbed it clean and wrapped it back up. It was healing, albeit slowly, and Pyrin insisted that whatever blade had made it had been dipped in some kind of poison to turn the wound necrotic. Fox suffered valiantly and despite the pain--and I knew it had to be wickedly painful--his spirits lifted a bit more the closer we came to Coryth.

When the city rose up on the horizon he was practically giddy with excitement. His whole body thrummed with it. He was like a child on his birthday and he held me a little bit tighter while we watched the spires of the palace grow taller with each passing minute. The sky behind the building was dark, indicative of a storm rolling in off the ocean and by the time we trundled through the gates to the city, painful, icy rain pelted down around us but the fanfare remained exorbitant. Fox was a returning King, triumphant and well loved. He had always been well loved, the sort of individual that people could relate to, despite his station. He wasn't afraid of getting close to them. In fact, he jumped from the wagon and helped me down, holding me tight beneath his arm like he was claiming me.

People reached for him, outstretched fingers that brushed his own and his guards kept them from piling on top of us. My own people waited along the edge of the beach near the gates of the palace and knelt, their bodies bent forward over their knees so that their faces nearly touched the sand. Pyrin, Kinnon, and the four other Lierians traveling with us didn't stop them from coming forward. I distanced myself enough from Fox and their hands brushed over the edges of my clothes or touched my cheeks in reverence as they stood. One woman held a bundled baby out to me and beneath the blanket, the little girl stared up with wide, lilac colored eyes. Females were rare treasures among the Lierian tribes. It was part of the reason our numbers had staggered so low. Every child, of course, was a blessing, but girls were something else entirely.

I kissed her cheeks and brushed my thumbs over the orbital bones beneath her eyes and she blinked, sneezing when the rain hit her face and as lovely as she was, all she made me do was want to hold my own child. "You're very lucky," I told her mother quietly. "She'll bring you great joy, I'm sure."

And the woman nodded, tearing up so that she could take the infant from me again. Fox's hand on my shoulder brought me back to reality and the gates grated open. The palace was quiet. No doubt the members of his family were all inside the door, kept out of the rain for fear of catching sick. I had imagined a sunnier day for our return and how Emory would race down the steps and I'd feel the familiar weight of him in my arms, hear the way he laughed, and smell the lavender soap that clung to his skin.

It was silent though--silent until the guards opened the doors and the massive, dark blue structures swung inward. Riordan and Emory were engaged in a hand game, hitting their palms together and singing a nursery rhyme in Lierian. I recognized it as one he'd played frequently with the other boys in our tribe when they were willing to involve someone who was both the future Infinito and a halfling. He looked up at the sound though, all wide, mint colored eyes and flushed cheeks. The resounding squeal that echoed through the hall could have broken glass. Even Brentlyn winced and Emory's boots smacked against the marble as he ran forward.

I had to get on my knees to hold him, afraid to lift anything too heavy, and he collided with me hard enough to knock my breath from my chest. The alarmed look on Fox's face was lost in the sensation of having Emory back. His arms locked around me and my heart filled up, ready to burst in my chest in the very best way possible. I wanted to soak him in--to feel the way he breathed, to listen to his heart, to touch the marks that slashed over his skin like his very own brand of war paint...I just wanted to hold him. I ran my hands down his back and through his hair, the same tousled, black mop that Fox sported. I kissed him a dozen times--all over his face and tasted tears in the process.

Harlan had been right when he'd told Fox that there was something special about your first. Emory had changed me and being without him caused me immeasurable pain that I hadn't realized hurt so deeply until I was holding him again.

Beside us, Riordan hugged his brother with the same fervor. His sister, Izzy, and Olivia (very sloppily) kissed his cheeks. Brentlyn shook his hand and then pulled him into a hug that nearly lifted his feet from the ground. He plucked Emory up off of my lap then and I got to my feet when he tossed him and caught him the way one might have done with a human toddler. Emory shrieked and his tears gave way to giggles when Fox's fingers dug into his ribs. He squirmed in his arms, joyous and content while his family kissed and hugged me the way that they had with him. It was only Izzy that felt something when she held me and she leaned back, her expression heavy with questions.

I held a finger to my lips and her smile widened. Her fingers laced through mine and she brought my palm to her abdomen where she was sporting her own tiny bump. "We can make them miserable together," she whispered, conspiring in my ear as she hugged me again and I couldn't help but snort.

Emory's joy when he realized Kinnon was alive was unparalleled. He reached a fever pitch level of excitement in which he couldn't do anything but jump up and down and run around in circles, squealing and giggling and tugging on his hands.

It was Brentlyn that finally spoke beyond the expected, "Are you well?" questions that plagued every conversation. Raevar had made his way over to me and kissed my cheeks but was doing a much better job of containing Emory than any of us could have done. He'd had the foresight to bring a wheeled horse and was letting him ride it around the central hall like it was a wagon trail.

"How many were lost?" Brentlyn finally asked gently and Izzy swatted at him, her eyes bright and fiery. The back of her hand hit his abdomen and he returned her glare. His withered almost immediately and I got the impression that Brentlyn had developed none of his brother's dominant personality traits.

She huffed. "They just got here. Lets all have something to eat and we can talk about numbers and death afterward. They're both alive and well. Can't you be happy with that?"

Brentlyn wrinkled his nose and Fox crossed his arms but we followed them into the dining hall. The table was laid out and heaped with food of all varieties. There were Lierian dishes peppered among them and Riordan grinned when he noticed my expression. "Brentlyn hired some refugees," he told me with a grin. "They make the very best fruit desserts. Emory stole a basket of raspberry tarts and puked in my brother's lap."

I blanched and Fox laughed. "Emory!" I called for him and he looked up, still seated on his horse. "Were you stealing from the kitchens? Did you vomit on your uncle?"

His wide-eyed expression turned almost immediately irritated. "Tattle tale!" he shot the insult at Riordan, who stuck his tongue out in response and walked away with his chin up, haughty in a way I'd only ever seen Fox achieve. It was clear, in that moment, that they were related and Riordan took his seat almost disdainfully. Emory, ever the loyal friend, climbed up beside him and though he elbowed him in the side, he didn't do anything else and Riordan didn't retaliate. A few moments later, they were chattering together like nothing had happened.

Fox left the head of the table to Brentlyn, opting instead to sit beside me. He rested his head against my shoulder like he was tired already but the exhaustion only lasted a moment. Eventually, with a full plate and a glass of liquor that smelled like honey, he answered Brentlyn's earlier question. "We lost seven thousand," he told him stiffly and Brentlyn grimaced, drawing a sharp breath between his teeth. They both lifted their glasses to their lips. "Meyer is dead. So are both of Urien's brothers, Lady Glenning's husband, and a slew of others from the Court."

"Oh," Brentlyn practically moaned. "But Meyer was only eighteen." He seemed miserable and I flinched at the knowledge. He looked pointedly at me then while I pushed food around my plate, chewing slowly on stewed fruit. I swallowed hard and licked my lips.

"Two thousand," I added quietly. "We lost two thousand. Considering there were only three thousand of us to send..." I pursed my lips. Our tribes were decimated. There was no way around it. That little girl I'd seen outside the palace had been a ray of hope in a field of darkness.

Brentlyn ground his teeth and Olivia, who was seated on his lap, babbled and stuffed an olive into her mouth. She chewed while she stared up at him and he ran his fingers absently through her hair. I saw his arm tighten around her and the sudden urge to touch Emory became almost too much for me to bear. I reached for him and ruffled his hair and he looked up at me with the most serious expression, like maybe he understood my concerns, but a moment later he smiled wide and revealed the apple slice he had tucked against his teeth, red side out. He and Riordan both howled with laughter and I plucked it from Emory's mouth.

"Emory, don't play with your food," Fox corrected him, leaning back to shoot him a stern look and Emory sobered quickly. He turned back to Brentlyn and continued. "On the bright side, the Immarans are dead. We took a small group captive and slaughtered what was left. Any of them that remain here will be fleeing for the shipyards to get a trip back to Immara and I doubt they'll make it. The people on the coast are suffering from their scorched earth policy. They'll slaughter anyone with an Immaran accent or Immaran armor that comes their way. And--" He hesitated and looked at me like he was asking for my permission to say what I knew he wanted to say.

I took the opportunity to say it for him. "And I'm pregnant." I felt Emory jerk beside me, surprise etched in his face. The same expression was evident on Raevar's features.

Izzy clapped. "Me too!" she practically squeaked the words but it seemed they already knew and only Fox was getting that news. I saw him shake Brentlyn's hand in a congratulatory fashion--like the ability to knock someone up should have been applauded or something.

"That's not possible," Raevar interjected. "You're--"

"Extremely pregnant, Raevar," I assured him. "I promise. In fact, I can feel my darling parasite right now. It's kind of nauseating."

"Isn't it though?" Izzy complained and I glanced at her plate. It was nearly as untouched as mine. Fox's arm curled over my shoulders and he tugged me a bit closer, pressing a kiss to my temple. I was warm and comfortable, yes, but I was still sore, sick, and exhausted. I wanted to sleep in an actual bed and I wanted to wake up when I was fully rested instead of when the wagons decided it was time to roll out. I wanted to cradle my little boy and read him stories and listen to what he'd done while I was gone. I wanted time with my family.

My family. The two individuals seated on either side of me. Emory scooted closer and his little hands moved over my stomach, somewhat in awe. "For real?" he asked incredulously and then he grimaced in Olivia's direction. "You only have boys, right? Make sure it's a boy. I don't want a sister. She's disgusting." Olivia, who may not have understood exactly what was being said about her, did understand that it was negative and she made a face.

"I only have boys," I promised, though really, how could I know? I'd been told I would only have one. That an Infinito could never take a human mate. That Emory wouldn't survive infancy with the way his marks rejected the parts of him that were human and heated like they were trying to purge that from his system. I'd been told I would never get back to Fox, that he could never love me, that I'd only ever been brought to Coria to be his whore...and here, sitting between Fox and our son--our son, who bore my marks, the pale coloring of Lierian eyes in the same shape as my own but who also bore Fox's dark hair, smile, and dozens of his personality traits--I knew that all of that was false. Everything I'd been told that I could never do...would never do...I had done it.

And like he knew what I was thinking--and maybe he did because Fox wasn't just the person that I'd willingly given my life to, he was a part of me--he leaned in against my ear. "Maybe you should amend that. You have a way of...spitting in the face of everyone that tells you no."

I kissed him in response and he grinned, nuzzling into my shoulder. I forced down enough food to keep me from getting hungry without making myself sick. Emory ate until he was sleepy and flopped across our laps before dessert even hit. He slept soundly, his legs over me and his head pressed to Fox's stomach. Eventually, Fox lifted him so that he was cradled in one of his arms and sleeping on his shoulder until we took him up to the monarchical suite.

I stopped in front of our bedroom door and Fox turned down the hall like he was going to put Emory to bed. I pursed my lips and reached for him just as he hesitated, turning around to face me so that I could see the question in his eyes. "Do you think...we could keep him with us for the night?" he asked quietly, almost wincing like he thought I would want him to myself.

"I was going to suggest it," I admitted gently and Fox breathed a sigh of relief, followed me into our bedroom, and we were asleep in minutes with Emory cuddled between us.

Chapter Text

I married Fox two weeks after we returned from what later became known as the Immaran Massacre. It was a quiet ceremony, owing in part to my 'condition.' I had no desire to be around large crowds of people. Certain smells nauseated me. My back and legs ached constantly. I was running a constant, low-grade fever, though I'd done that with Emory as well. My moods were in a constant up and down fluctuation. I could go from exuberance to crippling depression to blind fury in a matter of seconds. Fox thought it was hilarious, but he did his best to keep Emory at a distance when I was at my worst so I knew that he didn't think it was all fun and games.

The ceremony was witnessed only by the Court and our families. There was a ball afterward that I escaped before it was even halfway finished. Constantly talking to people, smelling the perfume that the women wore and the copious amounts of alcohol that everyone was drinking had my stomach in knots and so I spent most of the after-party with Emory and Riordan, who were racing marbles down a corridor to the great dismay of their attending guards and nannies.

Fox found me when it was all finished. One of us, at least, had to remain until the end and he was more than a little bit drunk by the time he located us. He smelled of honey mead and hard cider and he tasted just as syrupy when he kissed me. It was a matter of putting Emory to bed and retiring then, slipping off to our bedroom for obligatory wedding night consummation.

It was the longest, hardest sex I'd ever had in my life. Fox built me up and sent me spiraling off into finish after finish until my legs gave out where I was kneeling on the bed. I shook so hard my joins ached. I couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, and I certainly couldn't function or think. I was a slave to his every whim. He owned me entirely and every time he whispered his possession against my ear, a barely audible, "Mine," it sent a shiver down my spine that curled my toes. I had bruises in the shape of his hands on my hips, prints of his mouth on my throat and my collar, and he bore the same evidence on his own body. My nails had raked bloody gauges down his back and his shoulders. I'd bitten into his collar and the imprint of my teeth was visible in broken skin and a black bruise. By the time he stopped--and I had to ask him to stop because I literally could not take him again for fear of splitting in half or forgetting to breathe for too long--the sun was rising in the window of the bedroom.

And thus I did not wake until dinner, nor did he, and Emory had been deterred from waking us, which was good because we were in no state for our son to see.

I felt like it was the beginning of my life though. All of the rest--the uphill battle to be with Fox, who was sleeping soundly against my chest where I could feel him exhale with every breath, the torture of losing him, Ivar, the escape from Glacia, the whoring, raising Emory on my own, and that wretched war--it all lead to this.

It led to more nights like that. It led to lazy mornings, tangled in his limbs, or mornings where I woke to an empty spot beside because he had to sit Court and in his place was a note or a hastily scribbled drawing of a ridiculous smiley face, or, on the rare occasion that he was feeling particularly affectionate, there would be a flower of some kind. Afternoons were spent tending to my own people. Some of them remained behind after the war. Some of them went to different parts of Coria to rebuild their tribes and carry on traditions. With them went Pyrin, who believed that the tribes were in more need of him than we were, and Kinnon, who couldn't bear to see me with Fox. Evenings belonged to my family--they were slow, meandering hours of listening to Fox recount his day, telling him mine, and playing with Emory.

My life had become...almost a dream. I had everything I wanted. Everyone I loved was with me. Fox doted on me through the entirety of my pregnancy. He would straddle my legs in bed and kiss my distended belly or hum against my skin while he measured my hands up against his. When my back started aching to a point that nearly brought me to tears by the end of the day, he kneaded his fingers into my muscles while I whimpered on my side. When I was miserable, he made time to hold me--to run his fingers through my hair or trace the blue markings that scattered down the back of my ribs or just to kiss me when we ran into each other through the busier parts of our days. He had a kingdom to run. I had a nation of people that needed my guidance. Until evening, we were ships passing in the night.

He was everything I needed and the closer we got to the end of that pregnancy, the more he fussed. Admittedly, it became increasingly difficult to get around. I was tiny, even tinier than most Lierians, and it wasn't an easy pregnancy. I was almost always sick. The only weight I gained was at my stomach. The rest of me had gotten skinnier. I craved food that my body didn't tolerate. I wanted meat and dairy and when I gave in to those cravings, I tended to over-estimate how much I could eat. It always ended with me on my knees, heaving into a bucket somewhere.

Eventually, when I had trouble even getting to my feet on my own, I had to make the decision to let Raevar handle my work for a bit. He acted as a go-between for the Lierian elders and myself while I stayed, for the most part, in the monarchical suite. My days became focused on Emory or the nursery that Fox had commissioned. There was no expense spared. This child was going to turn out a spoiled brat, just like he was, but the gesture was appreciated. Emory's first years had been in a lodge. He'd slept snuggled into my side almost every night until we reached Coria with Fox.

I felt like a whale. Fox called me beautiful. He cradled my face and promised me that I glowed when I knew I was even paler than usual, almost gaunt looking, and exhausted. Izzy insisted that men found it attractive when their significant other was carrying their baby...that Brentlyn said the same things about her when she was just as swollen as I was.

The final piece of my puzzle was that baby though and the pains started at night. I recognized them for what they were, my eyes opening in the dark at the shooting ache down my back and the stiffening of my abdominal muscles. It started dull--dull enough that I fell asleep again because it had taken hours for me to get to a point where I had to push for Emory. When it woke me again something like two hours later, it was more intense. It was enough that I sucked in a sharp breath, my fingers splaying over my stomach as a rampant flutter of limbs skimmed the inside of my skin.

I pushed myself up and looked over at Fox, sleeping soundly on his belly, one arm hanging off the bed and the other on my side. It had been across my chest until I'd gotten up but he didn't seem to notice my movements. He slept like the dead in his pile of pillows, bare from the waist up, and breathing deeply. I didn't wake him just yet. I sat back and stared at the ceiling.

I was calm, all things considered. I was ready for this and I had accepted it, which I hadn't done the last time around. What was more? I wanted this. I wanted it for him and as the hours passed, I came to the realization that this would be a slow labor like my first one. It built in a gradual crescendo until sun streamed in through the curtains and Fox started moving beside me. Another wave of pain--now almost nauseating in its intensity--tore at my insides. My hips ached in a constant throb like my body was trying to force my legs open.

It was that particular early stage contraction that finally pulled a noise from me. I groaned low in my throat as Fox's eyes fluttered open and I grabbed blindly for his arm. My nails dug into his skin, just above his wrist, and I had to force myself to breathe. Even then, my lungs caught a few times and it was a struggle to get through the few seconds that it lasted. Fox sat up and sidled closer to me, pressing kisses to my neck while he palmed over my belly. "I'm going to get Raevar," he whispered against my ear and I barely managed a nod while he slipped out of bed. I heard him collect Emory--probably to take him to Brentlyn and Izzy--and then the door to the suite shut. Without Emory and Fox there, I wanted to scream.

I did scream. It was almost as if his presence had been holding me back because as soon as he'd gotten left, I felt like I was being split open. I barely squirmed out of my clothes. My hips didn't want to move and my legs felt stiff and bruised along my thighs. I was hot all over, sticky with sweat that pooled in every crevice of my body. My hair was soaked with it in minutes and I responded by throwing the blankets and pillows away in an attempt to have as little fabric touching me as possible.

There is no dignity in birth. It is both hideous and beautiful, gory and pristine, hateful and loving--a multitude of things that should never compliment each other but in this one instance, they do. The fact that, minutes later, I was the focus of every person in the room and that I was naked and writhing, should have bothered me. It didn't. The fact that my thighs were slick with fluid and blood and that every time I twisted in the sheets, the white turned red, should have bothered me. It didn't. The fact that my father was one of the people there should have really bothered me.

It didn't. Not even a little bit.

I was in too much pain to care. Fox sat beside my head once Raevar had me on my back and he held my fingers to his lips in the dull moments during which the room was quiet but for my heavy breathing and the conversation that Raevar and the Corian healer that was with him were having. Fox whispered endearments and encouragements into my ear, mopped up the sweat from my face, and held wet cloths to my mouth when my tongue turned heavy and dry. I could feel the life inside me shift, the movement stopped with the stress of the situation, and the urge to push became omnipresent and unbearable. That was what they were waiting for though.

It was another twelve hours of agony before the baby came. I shrieked and screamed. I clawed at Fox. I begged Raevar to cut it out of me. I didn't care if I bled to death. I was so far gone that none of it mattered. I sobbed until I felt like I had no tears left and then finally, after what felt like days, Raevar said magic words. "One more, Leland," he promised. "Just one more."

And one more, at that time, felt like too much because one more meant that Fox got up and was no longer there to hold my head in his lap. He circled around behind Raevar and bit down on his bottom lip. For a moment, I thought he might actually decline that defining moment he'd been looking forward to--catching that child as it squirmed from my body--but his stomach held out through that last push and I felt the infant slide from between my legs into his arms. The pain seems secondary in that moment, it always does. It had seemed secondary with Emory because I'd seen his head of dark hair and it seemed secondary with this little one because the awestruck, devastatingly in love expression on Fox's face carried enough joy to last me the rest of my life.

The rampant squalling came a moment later. Frantic, wet, pitiful little cries that sounded almost nasally and he held him up for me--our new little boy, wearing a pattern of dark blue slashes across his body not unlike Emory's. This tiny thing's were vertical, running from his shoulders to his hips, one across his cheeks and his nose, and one tiny line of dark blue that split his lower lip in half.

Love is a funny thing. It can hit you slow like it hit me with Fox. I was his best friend for so long that being in love with him seemed second nature. Or it can hit you fast like it does with a child. I didn't have to know anything about him. Only that he was there. He was breathing. He was ours and he had fuzzy blond curls on top of his little head. He didn't stop wailing, even when Fox was cleaning him off because he insisted on doing everything that he hadn't been able to do with Emory. I wanted to hold him so desperately that there was a physical ache in my arms for the weight of my baby but Fox had been robbed of this once and I had spent the entire length of my pregnancy promising myself that he would have as long as he wanted with this little one to himself.

I watched them together. Fox cleaned him up. He used warm, wet towels to mop the blood and slime from his body and kissed him a thousand times throughout the process, always looking over at me right afterward like he couldn't quite believe that the baby was actually there. He kissed his tiny hands and his feet while Raevar and the healer took care of me. They cleaned the blood up from beneath me, stripped the sheets on the bed while the healer held me like an infant, and replaced them. They cleaned my legs and mopped up my sweat soaked body. Then Raevar pulled a long shirt over my head and tucked the sheets in around me so that I was decent enough to have Emory in later.

It was only then that Fox brought the baby to me. He crawled up next to me and seemed almost hesitant to hand him over. "Keep him as long as you want," I managed hoarsely, my voice worn from screaming. "I've had him for months."

"You deserve to hold him. That was a tremendous amount of work, Cyril. I am...I don't have words for how impressive that was." He held him out to me, still wailing, his little tongue curled in his mouth around pink, healthy gums. He opened wide, dark green eyes more human than Lierian when I held him and his squealing stopped. "Oh, I think he likes you," Fox added.

I snorted, both at his comment about how impressive it had been and that he liked me, and I rolled my eyes. "Emory did the same thing. He recognizes my heartbeat. He's probably hungry." Of all the things my odd little body could do, feeding an infant was not one of them. A bottle would have to be made up in the kitchens and brought for him. "Have you picked a name?"

"I liked Atara," he answered. Atara. The little gift. I'd brought it up with him while he'd mused over Corian names a dozen times and he'd added it to his list of possibilities. I'd named Emory and so I'd let him take the lead on this one. "The meaning is fitting. His eyes are more human than Emory's." He brushed his fingertip over the baby--over Atara's--nose and then sighed, his chin on my shoulder. One of his legs was bent behind me and the other was folded flat against the bed so that I was sort of cradled against his lap. "Oh, Cyril, you didn't tell me I'd fall in love so fast."

"You don't strike me as the love-at-first-sight type, Fox. It took you thirteen years to decide you wanted me," I reminded him, rearranging the blanket beneath Atara's chin. Fox only sighed again and brushed his hand over the fluffy, peach-fuzzy curls on the baby's head. "He is beautiful though, isn't he? I'm quite proud of this."

It was Fox's turn to snort. "And you say I have the ego?" He nudged me gently and his lips brushed my cheek. "He's perfect. Emory is perfect. You're perfect. Everything is perfect. I am a very, very lucky man."

And so was I.