Chapter Text
Elias Eversteid rarely made mistakes, and yet, here he was.
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say he rarely admitted to making mistakes. His sister, Mia, had said something to that effect once. Somehow, he doubts the nuances matter much given his current situation, but he digresses.
Whatever the case may be, he must acknowledge the lapse of judgment on his part if he's to have any hope of figuring out where he went wrong. How he found himself outside the office of the former–
–it was former, now, right? One could not simply mastermind treason and hope to remain a part of the ADP, he assumed, but perhaps one could considering how the party came into power in the first place. The irony was not lost on Elias–
–First Son of the Anwei Democratic Party, considering insurrection, his family's sword not three feet in front of him nearly a year after it had been confiscated.
The son of the same man who, rumor had it, had presided over the execution of the royal family nearly a decade ago—watching, unflinching, with an ice-carved face and even colder eyes.
Elias still remembered the nightmares that used to plague both him and his sister in the early days of their exile. The Secretary of State was every noble child's boogeyman, the cautionary tale used to scare them into eating their vegetables, and the monster lying in wait beneath their beds in the dark.
The boy–
–young man? He couldn't have been any older than eighteen, nineteen, at the most–
–before him certainly didn't look like the son of a bloodless monster, but Elias knew better than to let his guard down.
The best threats were the ones no one could see.
Yun—that had been his name, right? Mentioned at some point at the beginning of their meeting before he launched into his song and dance about revolution and insurgency, and Elias damn well near forgot it.
He wore a lazy smile, had worn one since the start of their conversation like there was a joke Elias wasn't being let in on, and it grated on his nerves more than he cared to admit. He bore a striking, unsettling resemblance to Secretary Cheng, but where the older man was always severely put together whenever he deigned to broadcast himself to the people, hair pulled back and eyes flat like reptiles, Yun looked meticulously less so.
His dark hair spilled over his right eye, the rest brushing his shoulders, and the one that remained gleamed like gold, nearly identical in hue to the metal of his sword in the fading sunlight of the hall.
"Well?" Yun asked, an amused lilt to his voice. "I await my lord's answer with bated breath."
Elias felt his eyebrow twitch. The taunt was child-like but calculated—technically speaking, the Eversteids and every noble family had their titles stripped when the ADP rose to power. Slowly and then all at once.
"You'll forgive my hesitancy, Mr. Cheng." He replied cooly, crossing his arms. "Your parentage doesn't exactly inspire the utmost trust."
"Of course," Yun agrees pleasantly, almost too smoothly. "Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to assuage your reservations."
He was a politician if Elias had ever seen one. Armed with honeyed words and empty promises the same way Eversteids wore swords and shields. Had worn them. He wondered how much Yun had been born knowing and how much his father had taught him, tucked away in the seat of the capital.
"My reservations are tenfold." This game of words was not one he usually liked to entertain—he was a swordsman, after all, and he preferred his steel to do the talking, but he refused to admit defeat to this strange gold-eyed boy with his impish smile without some semblance of a struggle.
"After all," Elias continued dryly, his mask of cool apathy set firmly in place. "Your father is responsible for the decade-long witchhunt that's driven my family and others like us from their homes and onto execution blocks for the sole crime of existing in the wrong regime."
Yun didn't even bat an eyelash before an answer was on his tongue, almost as if he had anticipated this response. "The secretary has much to answer for–"
"–Yes." He interrupted, stiffly, remembering the cold nights and suffocating fear of his childhood. The hushed conversation between his parents when they thought he and Mia were asleep, whispering of friends missing or dead. "Much."
"–and although my connections are, at the present moment, limited, there are still things within my reach."
Elias didn't have the patience for pretty words, to sift through hidden meanings and secret clauses. "Spit it out, Mr. Cheng."
"Please, call me Yun." He grinned, gold eye gleaming. "And I'm talking about your family. Your sister, specifically."
Elias froze. "You know where she is?"
Yun tilted his head, his left earring moving slightly. "It'll be hard, but arrangements can and will be made to locate her. I'll do my best."
"Is that meant to reassure me?"
"Oh, absolutely. My best is what better men strive for."
Elias couldn't help but snort. "You think so highly of yourself."
"For good reason, I promise." Yun winked. "I am, after all, the leader of this illustrious revolution. We're making history. Which is where you come in."
"Is it? I don't recall having agreed to your suicide mission."
"Not yet," Yun stressed, smirking. Elias wished he could slap it off. "The Eversteid knights were responsible for protecting the royal family for generations in the beginning. The revolution will need your skills if we are to succeed."
"To fight?"
"Yes...and no."
"Do you enjoy making conversations needlessly complicated or is this how all the politicians of the ADP talk?"
"I'm one of a kind, Eversteid. Which is why I need your protection."
"My... protection," Elias repeats, eyebrows raised in a rare display of expression. "You?"
"Don't look so surprised," Yun replied wryly, finally sheathing the sword. Elias couldn't help the way his eyes caught on the hilt and its silver engravings, the small precious stones embedded sparkling faintly. "Contrary to popular belief, I am not capable of everything. Most things, yes, but I'm afraid even I don't have bulletproof skin. The curse of brilliance is fleeting mortality, you see."
"I don't," Elias deadpanned, before getting to the point. "So, I'm to be your bodyguard."
"And it only took him several minutes to figure it out," Yun lightly commented. His smile straddled the line between playful and mocking, and Elias briefly entertained just turning around and leaving.
Elias rolled his eyes. "Surely the First Son of the ADP is never truly in any real danger. Not like the people you've dragged into this inevitable massacre."
For the first time since their conversation started, Yun's smile flickered, faltering.
–Or maybe it didn't because Elias blinked and it was in place once more, plastered on as it had never left.
"You'd be surprised." Yun finally said, as unruffled as before.
A strange silence ensued. One that made Elias realize that Yun had no intention of elaborating. He got the feeling that he had gone off script a little, and now the boy was trying to reorganize.
"I don't suppose I'm getting paid for my services rendered?" He sighed.
Yun arched an eyebrow. "I hadn't realized that being a patriot required coin."
"It's hard to be a patriot when you've had your estate and belongings seized by the government while you're forcibly separated from your family and you await execution."
". . . Touche." Yun tilted his head. "But that's exactly why you should stay. What happened to you and your family—the old nobility? Should have never happened. But the ADP won't stop. They didn't then, and they won't now. What do you think the secretary will do when he runs out of nobles to scapegoat? I'll tell you: he'll turn on the common people. The man providing for his family, the woman watching over her children, and the little kid who says the wrong thing to the wrong person."
Yun's tone had shifted. Less silky and honeyed, more earnest. "The Eversteid knights didn't only protect the royal family, right? They protected the people, too."
Elias snorted, feeling the familiar sting of bitterness on the back of his tongue. "A lot of good it did us."
"I know." And the sympathy in his voice and eyes almost made it hard to look at him. "But, call it a hunch: somehow I doubt you'd condemn an entire country because of personal feelings. They need your family and their knights, even if they've forgotten it."
Elias ran a hand over his face and looked out the window, unseeing. He had been so young when the crown was overthrown, barely eight years old when their family was forced to leave the Eversteid Estate on palace grounds under the new mandate of the ADP. His parents had tried so hard to raise him and Mia like nothing was wrong, but so much had changed, in so little time, and they couldn't protect them from everything.
Twelve years later, and here he was: his parents dead, Mia missing, and the Eversteid family heirloom in the hands of Secretary Cheng's son.
It almost felt, distressingly so, like fate.
"Tick, tock..." Yun tilted the sword back and forth.
Fate must well and truly hate him.
"So what do you think?"
"You talk too much," Elias snapped.
Yun's smiled seemed to grow. "So, I've been told."
Elias scoffed and moved closer, closing the distance between them the slightest bit. "Not enough, apparently. You mentioned a tour earlier?"
"Depends. Is this you saying yes?"
"Depends. Are you finally giving me my sword?"
Yun laughed, a surprisingly pleasant sound. He held the sword out and Elias gingerly clasped the sheath, trying not to collapse underneath the flood of relief and heartache that suddenly swept through him.
Tears threatened to spill over and he quickly blinked them away, clearing his throat roughly. Yun had the decency to look interested in whatever was going on out the window before looking back, golden eye searching, the bronze-tipped cherrywood churchwarden pipe back between his fingers like it had never left.
"Very well, then." Elias gestured ahead of him. "After you."