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Chapter Text

The axe entered his left shoulder four inches from his neck.

He had been pushing past Wyvern, raising his sword to strike Shiva’s head from her shoulders. Her life, he assured himself, could not be one much worth living.

Once, it had been his charge and honor to defend somebody of her like. But he was a knight no more—his name had been stripped from him, and so too had the life that the name had clung to, and now he was only a body that could wield a sword.

Or, as the case was now, a body that could be sundered by an axe.

He scarcely registered pain. Greater than the pain was the indignation—a harsh buzz beneath his skin.

Here? It ends here? Not on the field of honor? Not in her arms? Here?

And then the world was black.

He must find the Dominant.

He is sprinting through the rocks—the trees?—his sword drawn, adrenaline humming in his veins. He has a mission before him. It will mean his death if he fails. He will not fail.

He must see her again.

He breaks through the trees—over the boulders?—and sees the Dominant lying wounded on the ground, blood and dirt in her silver—in his golden hair. He approaches, sword drawn, terror and relief surging through his chest.

Wyvern breaks through the trees, wrath blazing in his blue eyes. No, no he is Poirier, his face pale and his jaw slack with horror. “What are you doing?”  

“What I must.”  

He is falling again, pain radiating from his shoulder.

His back strikes the ground. He lies prone in the chrysanthemums outside Grandfather’s manorhouse, his palette shattered beside him.

She stands over him, as she did that first day, when General Gagnon’s eldest shoved him to the ground. He looks for her smile—for the mercy and brilliant kindness he saw in her countenance, then. But the sun behind her is so bright as to leave her face in shadow.

Her voice is cold and sorrowful as the coiling spire of ice beyond Oriflamme’s shores.  

“Is my husband dead?”

“It feels wrong, plundering corpses.”

“We’ve need of steel, Cole, and they’d treat us no better.”

It would perhaps be over-generous to say that he woke. His eyes would scarcely open. The world was blurred, painted by a crude hand, and the pain—it was nearly enough to make him wish himself dead. Bile pressed at the back of his throat. He could not feel his left arm, only the dreadful, sticky sensation of blood pooling around his shoulder and creeping down his neck.

And there were voices, speaking to one another in his ringing ears. They were the sort of people who plundered corpses. Hardly a trustworthy source of aid, especially for a lone and bleeding Bearer, but…

If his eyes closed again, he would die. Already his hands and legs were numb, his lungs tightening in his chest. He had tried to murder the girl, and for what? For the glory of Sanbreque? For the chance to murder more people, until at last he was murdered in turn?

"Is my husband dead?"

It would be terribly easy, to lie here and let the creeping black smother the pain and with it, what remained of his sorry life.

But he had never been one to do the easy thing. That was why she loved him, even as she complained of it, holding his face in her hands.

For her, he had no choice but to try.

“Help.” His voice was a dry rasp that burned his throat. “Help!”

“Shit, is that—?”

“He’s one of us. We need to move quickly.”

Footfalls made the ground beneath his cheek tremble slightly. Before he could focus upon their source, the blackness claimed him again.

Poirier’s grim little face is set in unshakeable resolve. Nothing to be done.

He elects, in reply, to shake his head and fix him with the most sage and stern look that his twenty-one years can muster. “No dying.”

He stirred awake in a strange room. The strangest feature, certainly, was the evidence of a pillow set beneath his head. Thin, and rough, and stuffed with straw, but a pillow nonetheless. The drape of a sheet fell over him, the fabric worn, but soft enough to the touch of the fingers on his right hand.

He could not feel his left. Under the numbness suffusing his left shoulder, he could feel the faintest tingling of what his right mind knew to be a volcanic and unrelenting pain. He swallowed, doing his level best to ignore it. Doing so brought to light the fact that his throat was dry as sandpaper, and somehow sticky as well. His nose wrinkled, and his eyes opened.

When they did, he found a woman with unevenly shorn red hair and a sharp, focused expression standing over him. His eyes, muddled and unfocused as they were, fell upon the dark pink scar upon her cheek. It was shaped nearly like a talon, or the mark of a flame, three-pronged like—

A Brand. Someone had cut the Brand from her face.

Understanding raced through him like a thunderbolt. He sat up—or, he tried to. He shifted on one of his arms and then fell back onto the mattress, his left arm shrieking in protest and his head whirling.

“Don’t move,” said the woman sternly. “You’ll wound yourself.”

He ignored her. “Yours—yours is gone.”

With his working hand, he waved as best he could at his cheek. “This irksome thing—could you rid me of it?”

“You are lucky to be alive,” she said. “Do not press your fortune.”

“I know,” he said. “That is why I must. I have died—I have died and yet I am here. I must—please, I must be rid of it. I must return to her.”

The woman’s head tilted to the side in curiosity. “To who?”

“My wife,” he said, and knowing he must sound mad in his desperation. “If I live, it is to see her again, I must—madam, please, I must go to her. I have been given this chance, and if I do not take it, I shall never forgive myself.”

The healer frowned. Something behind her eyes had shifted. “These are the terms you would choose?”

“Yes,” he said. “With all my heart. With all I am.”

“It will be painful.”

“Then it will distract from my present hurts.”

“If you move—if I fail—you will die.”

“I have been dead for quite some time, my lady. I will risk this, if I may be restored to life.”

She gave him something to drink. It would not help very much with the pain, she said, but it would keep him from thrashing and wounding himself.

She drew near to him with a scalpel, and he breathed out slowly, as the strength left his limbs and his eyelids grew heavy.

He felt the sharp cold of a blade piercing the skin of his face. Though his numbed body did not wince, a lance of sudden horror raced through his chest. He had braced himself against pain, yes, but not against memory, and his breath caught in his throat as he slid into darkness.

The needle pierces his cheek, over and over again. He is shackled to a chair, his head held in place by a band of metal so that the Brandmaker may do his work.

  He is learning that a man of one and twenty, with a squire and a knight’s oath and a marriage vow, becomes little more than a frightened boy when a needle full of venom breaks his skin. He is trying not to cry, and he is failing.

Sir Rayne kneels beside him, holding his right hand, and he fears he will break every bone in his captain’s hand, he grips it so tightly.

“Weep if you must, lad. You have no cause for shame.”

And so he does, as the needle jabs into the same place beneath his jaw that Laudine had kissed so gently on the night that they were wed. It lights his nerves, echoing joy with agony. He will never see her again—never hear her laugh, never rest his head on her shoulder and feel her fingers slip through his hair.

His eyes close, and time speeds past him. Of a sudden, he stands in the foyer of their manor, looking into her eyes. His armor weighs heavy on his shoulders. He is still weeping. But her fingers trace over his cheek, as if the Brand makes no difference to her. It makes no difference to her.

He loves her. That is the end of the story, and the start, and even the wretchedness between. He loves her.

It is time to come home.

When he woke, at last, in earnest, his cheek was bandaged, and it stung atrociously. The itching in his left shoulder was more profound than the pain, and the pain was great indeed.

No matter. He was alive. His only duty now was to remain so.

He turned his head to the right. A terrible, foolhardy idea, he realized. The nausea was immediate, and the scar over his left cheek and jaw stretched painfully over bone.

He saw, however, once his vision cleared, Shiva, sitting up against the headboard of her own bunk, turning to eye him curiously.

She looked far better than he felt, her face clear of bruises, and her knuckles unbroken, and relief lightened his chest.

“My lady.” He inclined his head (another terrible, foolhardy idea, but given the circumstances it seemed ill-advised to neglect courtesy). “I am glad to see you well. My apologies, for the terms on which we met.”

Shiva looked at the floor, her own brows rising. For a moment, she looked terribly like Prince Dion had, after the battles in Ash, shoulders bowed beneath a guilt too heavy for any living soul to bear. “I take little pride in my own part in it, sir. My sins are not few.”

Like Prince Dion, indeed.

“I suppose neither of us were given much choice,” he told her. It had been a long time since he had sought to offer reassurance to anybody. When he tried to warm his voice, it felt rusty as a disused winch.

“No,” said Shiva. “We were not. But still, I might have chosen differently.”

I might have, too. He had forgotten that he was a person who could choose. That was the greatest and most awful power that Sanbreque wielded, wasn’t it? It bound its children body and soul with the shackles of honor and duty. Dressed its bloody orders in the vestments of God’s will. And ever since they had set this Brand upon his face—every jest had been met with bruises, every kind word with derision. His humor, his principles, his joys and vexations, all had been beaten out of him as if upon an anvil, until nothing was left but cold steel.

He nodded his understanding at her, even as it made his vision whirl. He said something he had not said in a very long time.

“I am Sir Charles Descoteaux,” he said to her. “They gave me another name, but I find I have no wish to keep it. Might I know yours, my lady?”

For a long moment, she hesitated. When she spoke, her voice sounded as unsteady with disuse as his own. “Jill. Warrick, sir.”

“Ah! Of the great Northern houses! It is an honor to make your acquaintance.” It was like riding a chocobo—one never really lost the knack for society, once it had been learned, and Charles found himself trotting again with surprising ease.

Lady Warrick seemed somewhat less relaxed. “Thank you. It has—been many years since I have had the privilege of thinking of the North as my home.”

If Charles’s memory served him, Lady Warrick had been a Ward of Rosaria in the years before the duchy fell, as the Northern territories crumbled. Old wounds upon old wounds, and he did not wish to press upon any of them.

Still, they managed a respectable conversation between the two of them. Though he itched to ask why Wyvern had frozen in his tracks at the sight of her face, he did not wish to give offense, or pain. It seemed Lady Warrick had known more than her share of both. So they spoke of their present accommodations—a Hideaway for Bearers and Dominants, if what their keepers had said to Lady Jill could be trusted.

“I admit,” he said, “I have heard whispers of such a place. My squire’s younger sister sought it out, some years ago.”

If this truly was the place… they were fortunate indeed.

When the healer, whose name Jill had told him was Tarja, returned again, Charles took it upon himself to ask.

“Pardon me,” he said, as Tarja laid a bowl of soup on the table beside him and brusquely helped him to sit up. “Is there by any chance a young lady here by the name of Desiree?”

Tarja’s brows rose, and Charles’s heart lifted. “She is here?” he said, before she could answer. “She is safe?”

“She is,” said Tarja, a look of puzzlement on her face. “Who is she to you?”

“Her elder brother,” Charles said, “is a dear friend of mine. He was my squire, before—well, you know. If it is not too much trouble, might you tell her that Sir Charles is here, and that he should very much like to see her?”

Tarja did not look entirely at ease, but she nodded. “I shall tell her. But only after you rest. You have lost a great deal of blood, and I doubt any excitement will do you good.”

Charles was dutiful. He spent the next day or so drowsing in perfect and complete boredom, his fingers itching for a brush—the fingers of his right hand, at least. The left did not stir, even when he bent all his thought upon it. When he asked, Tarja’s mouth formed a hard line.

“There are limits to things a body can escape unscathed,” she said. “I cannot tell you that you will ever regain the use of it.”

Charles reached for sorrow, for disappointment, but he could not find either within himself at present. An arm seemed a small price to pay for one’s liberty.

He could not say quite how long it had been when a young woman with neatly bobbed brown hair entered the infirmary.

“Sir Descoteaux!” It was the lady Desiree, right enough. Her smile was bright as ever, and she was dressed in a comfortable-looking gown of cream and teal cloth. She seemed bent on embracing him, but checked herself and instead collided, rather painfully it seemed, with the foot of his bed and winced. “Sorry. Tarja said I’m not to jostle you.”

“She is quite diligent in her work,” said Charles, “and I will choose to be grateful for it. You are well?”

“Very well, sir,” she said, “and glad to see you here. I have always hoped that you might one day join us. Your lady sends to me sometimes, to ask if you have arrived, and she always trades the nicest foods and fabrics to Lady Charon, so that we can have them for cheap.” In illustration, she waved her trailing sleeve.

Charles smiled. “My lady has ever striven to share the finer things in life. What news have you of your brother?”

“Oh, Terence?” Desiree said. “He sends when he can, too, but not much lately. Word is that Odin’s moving again, and the army is bound to clash with him at Belenus Tor.”

Charles held his hand out for her, and she clasped it tightly. “Your brother has something of a knack for surviving clashes between gods perfectly unscathed. His Highness will not let him come to harm.”

“I know,” said Desiree, wrapping her free arm over her stomach. “But I worry all the same. I—I know the Imperials aren’t friends to folk like us, but I can’t help fearing when they come under fire.”

“I understand, my lady,” he said. “I’ve grown quite practiced at praying for Terence and His Highness’s health while wishing a thorough bout of leprosy upon His Radiance.”

Desiree laughed and stepped back from his side, sitting down instead beside his feet. “Will you be a Cursebreaker, then?”

“A Cursebreaker?”

Desiree tapped her own heavily inked cheek. “Those what have their Brands removed, so they can go out beyond the Hideaway and fight the good fight.”

“I will admit, my lady, that does have rather a splendid ring to it, but—” Charles sighed—“I confess my heart will not be equal to such a task until I see my wife again.”

“You’ll be anxious for Cid to get back, then,” Desiree guessed, her eyes downcast. “So that you can get underway.”

“I swear I will return to visit. And to aid you, should you ever need it,” he told her. “But yes, I admit, I am eager to meet with your resident Outlaw, and not only to learn from his flair for the dramatic.”

He got his chance two days later.

Ramuh, aptly enough, had a voice like the low rumble of distant thunder. Charles had half-feared meeting him, knowing the swathes of corpses his lightning had cut through the Sanbrequois lines when he was Lord Commander of Waloed.

“So,” said Cidolfus Telamon, lighting a cigar. “Have you found any fault with your accommodations?”

It was the sort of question that could easily take the tone of a threat, but Telamon seemed as earnest as any country innkeeper eager to restore the goodwill of a disgruntled guest.

“None whatsoever, my lord,” said Charles.

Telamon waved a hand. “None of that here. I’m Cid. You, if I’m not mistaken, are Charles. None of the other nonsense that clings to a name matters here.”

“Of course,” said Charles, feeling that it would not be in the proper spirit to mention that he was quite fond of the “Sir” that cleaved itself to his own name. “As I was saying, my reception here has been warmer than any I might have hoped for. The kindness of your associates has been great indeed. I owe my life to your people, and I am not a man eager to leave my debts unpaid.”

“But?” Cid took a long inhale from his cigar and slouched back in his chair expectantly.

“Before I was discovered,” Charles explained, “before I was Branded, I had a wife. I have a wife, a friend to your cause. We have a daughter. They are waiting for me. I have a second life, now that my first has met a grisly end. I cannot bear to let any more of it pass without seeing them.”

“You are the Mad Widow’s husband?” Cid said, a brow rising.

A scream echoed in Charles’s ears—the one Laudine had let out, shaking the very stones of Whitewyrm Castle, when the guards took him away. He smiled as he had then, even griefstricken as he was—his lady, like himself, had ever understood the value of dramatics.

“I see my lady’s reputation precedes me,” Charles said, pride shining in his heart.

“She’s done us many a good turn over the years,” said Cid. “I think that seeing you back to her in one piece is the least my folk can do.”

Charles was so happy that he might have sung, but he found himself liking Cid well enough that he decided not to subject him to such a torment.

Charles could walk at speed now, albeit a bit unsteadily. His left arm remained in a sling close against his chest, and very well might until he died. He could still feel nothing more from his fingers than the occasional dull buzz, and every time he took a step with his left leg, he felt strangely wrong-footed, knowing he could not count upon his arm to catch him if he fell.

But he was, in a welcome turn of events, dressed somewhat to his liking.

Accompanied by Desiree and Lady Jill, he had visited Charon to purchase fabrics, and Hortense, the Hideaway’s most skilled seamstress, had finished her work. He wore a tunic of velvet that was only somewhat worn, and the boots that he had tucked his sturdy leather breeches into bore the slight heels he favored for dueling. His old rapier, he left with Lady Desiree. It had been hers now, for as long as it had been his own, but the new one from Blackthorne was perfectly respectable and leagues better than the heavy, bloodstained scrap of iron that the Empire had foisted upon him. He had succeeded in goading the taciturn fellow into carving the head of an aevis into the stone of its pommel.

For the first time in seven years, he felt like himself.

“You are sure you will be all right on your own?” asked Lady Jill.

“Quite sure, my lady,” said Charles. “And at any rate, I imagine you shall have your hands full with Wy—Clo—Lord Rosfield.”

Lord Rosfield—honestly, how many pseudonyms did a man need?—smiled grimly, but when his eyes alit on Lady Jill they grew large and luminously blue in a way Charles had never seen. In his happiness, he looked years younger.

“Well,” said Lord Rosfield. “I—hope your journey is a safe one.”

At the very least, Charles thought, he still had Wyvern’s way with words.

“And yours,” Charles said, wavering for a moment. How to farewell someone who had been a constant companion for seven miserable years, yet never drawn near enough to be called a friend? “Perhaps someday we shall cross paths again, under better circumstances."

Lord Rosfield cracked a truer smile again and held out a hand for Charles to clasp. “We could hardly meet under worse.”

“Let us hope that is true,” Charles rejoined, and he clasped Lord Rosfield’s arm as he might have had they met in brighter days.

With a final wave to Lady Jill, he turned east as she and Clive turned west. Sanbreque unfolded green and rolling before him, more beautiful than it had been in years. He would need his brush soon, to capture the way the sun illuminated the grass, a million dewdrops returning its radiance.

He drew in a deep breath, and started down the first hill. If he moved at speed, he could reach Descoteaux Manor in three days.

His home awaited him.

Chapter Text

The Year of the Realm 857

She wished that Charles had not come.

Her fingers smarted, and her eyes ached, and the dear sound of his voice echoing from the foyer was nearly enough to reduce her to tears.

Charles Descoteaux had treated her, always, as a knight might treat his sworn lady in a bard’s song—she could hear in the shades of his voice, feel in the careful press of his hand against hers, that he believed her beautiful and regal and worthy of admiration.

It had been nearly a year, since she had heard his voice. It was lower now, than she remembered from that late summer day at Descoteaux Manor, the sunset warm upon her skin.

“Thank you,” she had told him. A chirp from Poppy on her shoulder told her that the stone bench by the chrystanthemum patch was just to her right, and she’d turned and sat cautiously, guiding Charles after her by the arm she had looped through his.

“Whatever for, my lady?”

“For showing me such an excellent time, these past few months,” she’d said. He’d found her books with the letters embossed and raised, so that she could practice her reading. He had listened to her play the harpsichord, and accompanied her as best he could with his loud and warbling voice. He had even, after a long and tedious negotiation with Father, taken her riding with him, so that they could trade jokes with one another when he went out to paint landscapes. “People don’t usually wish to show me much of anything.”

Beside her, Charles stirred, as he always did when moved by strong feeling—which was often. He moved as if to stand and pace, only to be held in check by the loop of their arm and slump back down beside her. “You deserve the world, my lady. As much of it as you wish.”

Laudine had laughed and pressed her hand to his arm. “Your lordship is very kind. But I find I am more than content with what I have here.”

She had felt terribly bold then, a thrill running through her veins as she turned her face toward him.

Poppy, virtuous spoilsport that she was, had crowed abruptly and jolted them both from that strange spark of a moment, but Laudine had found her mind straying to it often all the same.

She had returned home to Bellamy Manor in the perfect, wistful happiness of a lovestruck girl of just sixteen, who suspected her feelings were returned.

And at home, she had met with a nightmare.

Papa had taken on a new tutor, for herself and Dorothée and Bernadette, to strengthen their theological understanding, and Father Lemoine, he had explained, was an exceptionally pious and learned man, a gentleman from Oriflamme of an excellent education.

It had not seemed strange to Laudine that her lessons were to be held separately from Dorothée’s and Bernadette’s. She could not read as they did, after all, and her grammatical and mathematical tutors had done the same—at least, those who had tried at all.

But it had seemed strange when she heard the door of the study lock behind her, and when she had first felt a switch sting the skin on the back of her hand.

“What are you doing? Are you mad?”

“Greagor’s disfavor follows you, child. Yet you preen and hold forth as if you are one of Her most beloved chosen. No more.”

She had run to Papa afterwards. Had tried to tell him. But the strike upon her hand had left no mark. He had not believed her. And nobody in the manor seemed eager to cross a servant of Greagor’s will, save for dear, faithful Poppy, who had sought to burn the hair from Lemoine’s scalp and been shackled out on the grounds for her troubles, leaving Laudine alone in an uncertain landscape, with no guide for her feet but Lemoine’s grip on her arm and the bruises it left.

In the months since, Lemoine had grown more confident in his grip upon the household, and now Laudine’s hands lay hidden beneath gloves, so bruised and swollen that she could scarcely eat. It had been two months now, since she had touched her harpsichord, and now Charles had come—and would fall beneath Lemoine’s spell like all the rest, or flee in his disdain for the shrinking, silent thing she had allowed herself to become.

She sat now alone on the edge of her bed, her hands still gloved and aching too badly for her to brave the pain of freeing them.

Please, Greagor. Do not let him see me so. Do not let me be diminished in his eyes—in his heart.

A sudden rap sounded at the window. Laudine jolted to her feet, and she readied herself to scream as she heard the casing rattle open. Her room was safe upon the mansion’s third storey. What manner of madman could possibly have—?

“Wait!”

Charles’s voice.

“My lady, it is me.”

Laudine closed her mouth and sat back down, feeling as if she had been struck forcefully in the chest. Charles drew the window shut, the bolts sliding back into place, and in a moment his footsteps had reached her.

“My lady?” He was kneeling, she realized, at her feet. One of his fingers brushed hers, and she dragged her hands hastily to her chest, so that he could not touch the bruises.

Greagor, she had been silent for too long. He would know something was amiss.

“Did my stolas reach you?” she said abruptly. Her voice sounded thick and strange, and she loathed it. “I meant to wish you well on your name-day.” It was two days past, now, and the young Lord Descoteaux was newly fifteen.

“I am afraid that I set out before it arrived, my lady,” he said. “For I found on the occasion that I wanted nothing more than to see you.”

Laudine’s throat tightened. “I—if you had received my stolas you would know, we will not be summering with you again this year.”

The sorrow in Charles’s voice was unmistakable. “My lady, what has happened to you?”

Laudine pressed her lips together. She could not bear to speak.

“I saw Poppy tethered outside. I saw that man drag you to your chair at supper as if it was his right to do so. Laudine, please. Do not tell me that nothing is wrong.”

Laudine turned her face away from him. She could not deny it. She could not force herself to say what had been done to her.

“Very well,” Charles said, a bit shakily. “Perhaps I might accompany you to the music room? You could—play one of your fearsome sonatas, and—my lady?”

Laudine realized, then, that she was weeping. Her hands began to move toward her face and then stopped. Her fingers were so stiff with pain that they would do no good. She feared, quietly, that the index of her left was broken—that it would remain so, and she would never play again, and she could do nothing to repress the tears now spilling down her cheeks.

“Laudine,” Charles said softly, and the sound of her name spoken with such reverence nearly made her curl in on herself in a sob. His hands found her wrist, and slowly, gently, he peeled back the glove from her right hand.

She was too weary, and too fond of him, to stop him.

Her hand must have looked as dreadful as it felt, for he gasped as the fabric parted from her fingers. “Oh, my lady.”

The anguish in his voice gifted her a strange sense of relief, and she held her left hand out to him, letting him reveal the bruises and lacerations that covered it.

“My lady, I—” Charles’s voice caught, faltered, and plunged into a sob. His arms wrapped around her waist, and the weight of his head and chest fell across her lap as he strove, even in their ungainly arrangement, to hold her.

Laudine elected to ease his task by sinking to the floor, lowering herself entirely into the circuit of his arms. She clung to him as tightly as her swollen fingers would allow, hiding her face in the side of his neck. He still smelled like the fresh grass and wildflowers of the manor he spent his days wandering, and that was comfort enough to draw fresh tears to her eyes.

“I missed you,” she said.

“You might have sent for me.” There was no reproach in Charles’s voice, only sorrow.

“I—I did not want you to see me so. I feared I would lose your regard.”

For Lemoine had said she was loathsome and lying and unworthy, and slowly everyone had come to believe him, until—until it had seemed that he must be right. That he had somehow revealed the truth of her, and that truth was fearful and wounded and incapable of commanding respect, or love.

“My lady…” Charles sighed. His hand touched her cheek, gently brushing the tears from it. He tilted her chin upward, and she let him, because she wanted him to look on her face, even if she could not see his own. “Oh, my lady, nothing in this world could take it from you. It is yours, always.”

They sat there for some time, on the carpet beside the bed, holding each other fast and weeping.

She had a great deal of sorrow to spill, but when it had fallen low enough that she could breathe steadily again, she asked, “What are we to do? He is Greagor’s servant. My parents are—in thrall to him. They believe whatever he says. I—”

I wish we could run.

Her name would be ruined, and so would his, but a mad part of her wished that they might flee together into the forests, as Sybil and Sir Crandall did in The Saint and the Sectary.

Charles raised his head from her shoulder. His fingers pressed more tightly into her back. He spoke, in a voice that she did not know.

“I am going to kill him.”

“You cannot,” Laudine said. “He is of the Church. You—you will hang, and I—” she found his face with her hands and framed it, her thumb brushing a tear from his jaw, even as it sent a molten pulse through her hand—“I could not bear that.”

“You will not have to. I swear it.” Charles rose. He set his hands lightly on her elbows, so that she could follow him if she wished, and follow him she did. “That bastard spent three-quarters of supper holding forth about ‘outward signifiers of Greagor’s favor.’ Let us see how well She favors him when I call him to the field.”

“Charles, no,” she began. “I cannot risk you, I—I cannot ask this of you.”

“I know,” he said softly. “But you are brave and kind, my lady. You came to my aid once, when I had no recourse. So I swear to you now, you will have justice.”

“It will not be like the stories we have read together,” she said, seeking to stamp out the ember of hope that had flickered to life in her heart. “It will be ugly, and brutal. Even if you triumph.”

“I am sure it will be,” Charles said.

His head turned in her hands. His lips brushed the inside of her wrist, and then he drew her once more into an embrace. Her chin now settled just on top of his shoulder—for the first time in their acquaintance, she realized, he was taller than her.

“You cannot be dissuaded?” she whispered.

“Not for anything, my lady. My dearest friend.”

She released him and backed up a pace. Her bruised hands tightened into fists, the welts upon them stinging bitterly.

She nodded once, and the ember bloomed into flame. “Then strike true.”

The Year of the Realm 873

Charles approached the manorhouse from the southwest.

There would be gardeners about, certainly, and somewhere toward the front of the house he could hear the piercing laughter of a young girl. He froze, heartstricken for a moment.

He needed to find Laudine. He could not conceive of how to introduce himself to a dughter who would see him only as a scarred and frightening figure emerging from the woods.

It was late in the morning, a fine, cool spring day. If her habits had not changed, his lady would be in the music room on the second floor, the windows ajar to invite the fresh air.

The image was enough to compel Charles to a sprint through the trees surrounding the estate, circling it at speed until he reached the north side, where Laudine kept her harpsichord.

He was not quite so fleet as he had been at fifteen, especially with his left arm slung uselessly against his chest, but the brickwork on this side of the manor housed enough gaps that he was confident in his ability to summit it. It would be nothing to the razored cliffs he had scaled in his time as a Bastard, or even the summer-rain-soaked three stories of well-maintained brick that had met him at House Bellamy when he was a boy. He could manage it.

Holding his breath, he stepped forward, out of the cover of the foliage. No alarm went up. No servants spied him.  And there, twenty feet over his head, were the open windows of the music room.

The winding and intricate notes of a concerto—LaCroix’s third, if he was not mistaken—spiraled over the sill to meet his ears. It ran in a major key—a brisk and pattering rhythm for a bright and bracing morning, and Charles breathed it in for a moment, letting it warm him like the sunshine upon his face, before he began to climb.

Climbing with the aid of only one arm was perhaps a more difficult endeavor than he had hoped at a glance. He had to cling tightly with the fingers of his right hand, and propel himself upward chiefly with his legs. Each time he had to move his right hand, he jolted, gravity seizing him and trying to drag him back to earth in the instant it took him to dig his fingers into the next layer of brick. It was a tedious and painful process, and he thought it likely that the proud forte of Laudine’s harpsichord was the only thing concealing his struggles from her hearing.

At last, he hooked his right arm over the sill, and before he could look into the room properly, a frantic kick of boot against brick propelled him through and tossed him, in the same breath, into an altogether ungainly heap on the floor.

At the loud thud his ingress produced, Poppy let out a warning trill, and Laudine just as quickly rose from her harpsichord, whirling to face the window, her hands balled into fists. The music stopped, and so did Charles’s heart.

He was, for a moment, eight years old, lying in the chrysanthemums at the edge of the grounds, looking up at the angel who had been the saving of him.

She was as beautiful as she had ever been. Her face was rounder, and laughter had lined the corners of her eyes. Her shining raven hair, which had always been tightly curled around her shoulders, now flowed down her back in soft waves. Her gown was soft and light, a far cry from the bold colors and sharp silhouettes she had favored when they were young.

Her nose was unchanged. So, too, was the luminous green of her eyes.

For a moment, he could not speak. His throat was empty, his heart too loud in his ears for speech to be possible.

“Who is there?” she said fiercely, but Poppy, he noted, had not spat fire as she might if any footpad had come creeping into the room.

Charles found his voice, tight and threadbare as it was, and used it. “It seems I am always stealing through your window, my lady. I fear you will think me a brigand.”

Laudine froze. Charles rose slowly to his feet, and watched tears well in her eyes. Her mouth opened. It closed again. He waited.

“Charles…?” she said at last, as if she feared she spoke to a ghost.

The smile that spread across his face pained him. Joy was a woodsman’s axe splitting wide his heart.

“Twelve o’ clock, dearest,” he said.

Chapter Text

It had been seven years since Sir Charles Descoteaux had kissed his wife—chains dragging at his arms, her hands gripping his hair tightly enough to hurt as guards seized his shoulders and strove to drag him from her.

He had dreamed of it often enough, lying on rocky ground, stirring awake beneath careless stars. Whenever doubt crept into his mind, whenever he feared that Laudine’s love for him could not endure so long a parting, the sound of her scream of wrath against the Emperor would jolt him back to the truth. Her love was no more brittle than his own, and for its sake, he killed. He rationed his magic, using it only in moments of bitterest peril. He strangled his wit, keeping silent with all save for the Bastards.

He had done all of it for this moment, as her hands found his face and her lips met his own with a gentleness and a passion that he had half-forgotten. He only had one arm, now, to wrap around her. His lips, he was certain, were chapped, his skin weathered by the sun. And he had never been so happy in all his life. He had known the greatest depths of misery and horror that this wretched world had to offer, and he was kissing the girl he had loved since he was eight, and he feared his heart would burst.

“How?” she said breathlessly, drawing back just enough to speak. “How are you here?”

He reached up, somewhat awkwardly, and used his right hand to guide her fingers to the faint scab on his cheek. Tears filled her brilliant eyes, as her fingers traced the flame-shaped outline of the mark.

“I have been killed in action,” he told her. “Felled by a Crusader’s axe. But I still have business here. I believe I promised, once, a long and felicitous life, to a lady of whom I am very fond. I am come to fulfill that charge.”

Laudine smiled, and a tear rolled down her cheek as she pressed her forehead to his. “I love you.”

He had not heard those words in seven years. He had not spoken them either. They had lain in his chest, under lock and key, kept safe against the battering storm of fortune. He freed them, now.

“I love you too, my lady.” His eyes fell shut, and his arm wrapped again around her waist, as relief threatened to buckle his knees. “My Laudine, it has been too long.”

Father made a terrible Madu, Sybil thought, not without fondness. She was sprinting about his chair in the garden, the sword he had whittled for her in hand, and she felt swift and powerful, Sir Crandall and her namesake all in one.

However, Father’s curly hair and cheerful gray eyes hardly lent themselves to the part of a vengeful and power-mad sorcerer. As he brandished the polished end of a tree limb that Sybil had found to make a wizard’s staff from, he was laughing, which made Sybil laugh, too. It spoilt the drama of the scene entirely, even if she did like laughing.

“Father!” She stamped her foot on the grass. “You promised!”

“I know, I know, I am a knave, I am sorry,” he said, clutching his stomach. “I am a brigand and an oathbreaker, and…” he grinned, mischief sparkling in his eyes. “By my might shall all Valisthea be laid low! Churl that thou art, thou shalt never withstand my wrath.”

Sybil grinned and planted her feet, drawing her practice blade up beside her face. “You court your own undoing, Madu! For I am returned from the jaws of death to bring your ruin forth!”

She struck. He parried. She danced away and, with a swirl of her hand and a shouted whoosh! launched what they both understood to be a meteor at the would-be tyrant.

Father cried out, clutching his chest and wheeling his chair backward as if struck by a behemoth’s tail. “Agh! I am wounded! But try as you might—!”

The door to the house slammed open, and Sybil froze as Mother, her long red hair trailing behind her, came sprinting down the walk. Sybil squinted. Mother joined in their games often enough. Perhaps she was a lately-arrived Saint Sybil? Or an angel of Greagor?

Sybil’s hopes proved false when Mother hastened to Father’s side and whispered in his ear. His jaw went slack. His eyes widened and raced to Sybil, then back to Mother. His expression was one of perfect astonishment.

“Truly?”

“Yes. The music room.”

“Of course. But Rosy, are we to—?” Again, he looked to Sybil.

“We must, I think. It is only right.”

“Is it about my uncles?” Sybil asked, suddenly nervous. Her uncles, Terence and Sebastian, were both brave knights in Prince Dion’s guard, fighting in the battle in the south at Belenus Tor.

They had visited the manor on their way from Oriflamme. Uncle Terence had shown her how to climb a tree, and the prince had joined them, smiling as Terence taught her how to check a branch for dead leaves before trusting her weight to it.

“Now,” Terence had said, when she had managed to hoist herself up into the elm branches high enough to be level with the crown of his head, “unless you are trained as a dragoon. You must never leap. You must sit down, and climb back the way you came.”

Something sad had happened in Terence’s eyes, and the prince had come forward and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

The prince had told her quietly, afterwards, that she had had an aunt younger than Terence, long before she was born, who had been lost because of a fall from a tree.

The knights had set out the next morning, Mother hugging Uncle Sebastian tightly. “Be careful, now.”

“I am the only careful one of our company, Rosy, you would better spend your fretting on Terence.”

“Should I not spend it on Sir Roland? He seems the most eager to pay for your foolishness.”

Sebastian’s face had turned as red as his hair, and he had revolved to face Sybil with almost mechanical smoothness. “Lady Sybil, should you like another bout on the field of honor before I depart?”

Sybil had, very much.

Now, they were gone, and Mother and Father were often awake when they thought Sybil asleep, talking in low voices. Odin was riding along the coasts. Many soldiers were dead.

Mother always told Sybil not to worry, but Mother worried herself, and so Sybil could not find it much comfort.

“No,” said Mother, parting from Father and stooping so that she was on Sybil’s level. She squeezed her shoulders. “No, sweetheart, I’ve had word this morning that Terence and Seb and His Highness are all are perfectly safe. I have good news for your father, just—news we hadn’t expected.”

“What is it?” Sybil asked. Obviously, it was a grand secret.

“It’s not mine to tell,” Mother said. “We’re going to go meet Auntie Laudine in the library. It’s hers.”

Sybil was now thoroughly engrossed in whatever mystery was about to unfold for her. Aunt Laudine was clever and beautiful, and surrounded always by a sharp, frosty air of sadness that rendered her entirely fascinating to Sybil. When it was rainy, and she could not play outside with Father, she would tote all her dolls into the music room and arrange grand operas and battles to the tunes that Aunt Laudine played. When she felt confident in her plots, she narrated them, and Aunt Laudine always smiled at the tales she spun.

Mother and Father had told her that Laudine had been married once. Her husband, Charles, had been a brave knight and a skilled artist who was lost in the Empire’s wars before Sybil had been born. Laudine still wore her wedding band every day, and Mother set a place at the table every night that was never filled.

“Sybil,” Mother said, holding Sybil’s hand as they walked toward the library. “You know how when the constables came for Kenneth, we told them he was dead, even though that wasn’t true?”

Sybil nodded. It was the first important secret Mother had ever entrusted to her, and she held it close to this day.

“You have done a very good job at keeping that secret safe. You’re a big girl, and clever. We’re going to trust you with a bigger one today,” she said. “And you must guard it even more carefully. We will all be in danger, if anyone outside of this house learns it.”

Sybil nodded solemnly, narrowly repressing a grin. Danger! It must be a remarkable secret indeed.

“Careful, Sybs,” Father said. “Uncle Terence hasn’t shown you how to use a sword properly just yet.”

Perhaps her grin had not been so well concealed as she had thought.

Father winked at her, and the three of them carried on to the library. Awaiting them was Aunt Laudine, smiling as Sybil had never seen her. At her side was a handsome man with an arm in a sling and a livid scar on his face, who startled and straightened up as she entered the room with Mother and Father.

Mother turned and closed the doors behind them, bolting them with a clank.

The strange man looked to Father. “You are certain? We need not hasten—“

Father shook his head. “She will only know she is doubly loved. And she is too clever to endanger us.” He smiled knowingly at Sybil, who suddenly felt the weight of the words. The secret was a dire one. And it was about her.

“Very well.” The strange man squeezed Aunt Laudine’s hand. “Where shall we begin?”

“Usually, an introduction is the done thing,” Mother suggested.

“Right. Yes.” The strange man smiled tremblingly, and, to Sybil’s astonishment, he sank to one knee. “My lady, I am Sir Charles Descoteaux. Laudine’s husband. It is an honor to make your acquaintance.”

He extended his hand, and Sybil took it, but could not help saying, “You are not dead, then?”

Sir Charles smiled more warmly now. There were tears in his brown eyes. “No, I am not. Though I will admit, it was rather touch and go.”

She grinned. “Oh, how wonderful! Aunt Laudine must be so happy, I know she has missed you, and—” her brow furrowed—“why are you a secret?”

Auntie Laudine set a hand gently on her husband’s shoulder and said, “My dear Charles is a Bearer. We all fought for his sake, even the Prince, but—“ Laudine’s face darkened—“the Emperor would not yield, and he ordered Charles be taken away, to serve as one of his soldiers.”

Sybil noted that while Laudine’s voice was level, her fingers were making crushed-down outlines in the velvet of her husband’s shirt.

“But I am here now,” he said, as if in answer to Laudine’s fury. “Among friends and family once more.”

“I am very happy for you, sir,” Sybil told him.

He smiled. “I am glad. I—” he faltered, his eyes flitting from hers. She followed his look, peering over her shoulder to see Mother and Father. Both of them were smiling. And both of them were in tears.

“There is—more,” Sir Charles said. “I—”

“When we tell you this,” Mother said, stooping beside Sybil and setting a hand on her shoulder. “We are not taking anything from you.”

“We love you, Sybs,” said Father. “Always.”

That was, Sybil thought, probably the most terrifying thing he could possibly have said, and she turned, trembling, to Sir Charles.

“As you likely know,” he said carefully, “Bearers in Sanbreque are forbidden from having children.”

“And… when the Empire came to take Charles away,” Laudine said. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, shakily. “I was with child. With you.”

Outside, a jay was chirping, high and incessant. The inside of the library was perfectly silent.

Sybil sat down—or fell down, and landed sitting.

A number of things made sense all at once. How sadly Aunt Laudine smiled when Sybil visited her in the music room. Why her own eyes were brown when Mother and Father’s were blue and gray. Why they lived on Aunt Laudine’s estate instead of in the manorhouse Father would inherit from his own one day. Why old Lord Descoteaux had propped himself up in his deathbed to show her how to paint before he passed, and told her with a wrinkled smile that she had the family gift.

She looked up after a moment to find Mother and Father—were they still Mother and Father?—and Aunt Laudine and Sir Charles—were they Mother and Father?—all watching her, their faces anxious, their smiles tense. Their happiness hung on what she would do next, on the words she would speak, and the weight of it crushed her throat.

She clambered to her feet. She opened her mouth.

And then she turned on her heel, ducked beneath Mother’s arm and past Father’s chair, and ran.

Over her own frantic breathing, she could not hear if there was a commotion in the library behind her. She pelted down the hall and up the stairs, not knowing where she meant to go. She summited one flight, barreled down the hall, and then found the next stairway and followed it up as far as she could go, until she came to a halt, panting, in house’s drafty attic, where they kept all unframed canvases that had been discarded or forsaken in overlapping piles. She tiptoed over to a place in the roofline where a gable formed a small nook in the wall into which she could fold herself comfortably enough.

Wedged in beside her were a series of abandoned paintings of red chrysanthemums, the pigments clotted and thick, and she sat, arms wrapped around her knees, and studied the clumsy blooms of color.

After some time, through the window at her elbow, she saw the telltale red of Mother’s hair bursting out onto the grounds once again. She had her hands cupped around her mouth, and her calls echoed faintly up through the glass. Sybil pressed her feet together and felt loathsome, but she could not bear to move.

She was not certain how long after that she heard footsteps on the stairway.

She made no great effort to hide. There would be no point. So, when Sir Charles peered over a raft of canvases and met her eyes, she did not look away.

“Hello,” he said quietly. “Would you like company, just now?”

Sybil did not trust herself to speak without crying, but she gestured at the floor just outside her hiding place. As she bade him, he sat, the fingers of his right hand drumming nervously on the floor.

“I am sorry,” he said. “It cannot be easy, to learn what you have learned so suddenly.”

Sybil nodded.

“I was afraid of giving you distress, but Rosalind said your distress would be the greater if we kept it from you longer than we must.”

“Is she—“ Sybil shifted. “Is she still my mother?”

He moved as if he wished to set a hand on her shoulder, but faltered and placed it on the floor again instead.

“Of course,” he said. “She and Sir Dominic love you. They will be as much your parents as they have always been, and Laudine and I have no wish to interfere in that. I only ask that you believe me when I say that it is the greatest joy of my life just to know you.”

“You don’t, yet,” Sybil said, feeling strangely guilty.

Sir Charles nodded. He still looked on the brink of tears, and yet he was smiling.

“Is this place a favorite of yours?” he asked.

She nodded. “I am a spy when I am here.”

“It is a rather cunning lookout post,” he said. “I only ever came here to read, or to hide. You have made better use of it than I.”

How strange it was, to know that her home had been somebody else’s, so long before she was born—that the scarred and mustachioed soldier in front of her had been six years old himself, once.

Feeling a bit dizzy at the thought, she asked, “What else did you do here? When you were my age?”

“I was a bit older than you when I came to live here,” he said. “My parents died when I was little, and so Grandfather raised me.” A sadness crossed over his face, and Sybil felt a pang. He had missed Great-Grandfather by a little less than two years.

“I painted, mostly,” he went on in haste. He pointed at the misshapen little canvases of flowers beside Sybil. “Those are my work, in fact. They were meant to be gifts for Laudine. But I remembered, partway through the first, that she would not be able to see them. And then I tried another tack, to layer the paint more thickly, so that she could feel it, but that attempt was dreadful as well and—” he smiled—“in the end, I just gave her one of the real ones, but I confess I keep a soft place in my heart for my Ugly Mums.”

Despite herself, Sybil giggled. “I have some, too.”

Sir Charles sat up straighter, his eyes brightening. “You have—I—I would love to see your work, if you would be willing.”

Sybil found that she was.

She got to her feet and shuffled to the small pile of canvases that were her own attempts. She’d not yet decided that any of them were worth framing.

She picked up the least blameworthy few of the lot and made her way back to Charles, her heart suddenly in her throat as she gave them into his hands. She had seen his works on the walls many times—beautiful landscapes thick with pigment and light. Her own attempts were meager by comparison.

“They’re not very good,” she found herself saying, as if it might shield her from judgment.

“Nonsense,” he said, even before his eyes fell upon the first canvas, one of Sybil’s attempts at capturing the jay that lived in the elm tree, which had eventually grown sick of her staring and swooped down upon her in pecking, screeching ire. His voice, when he spoke again, sounded thick and wobbly. “See, here? The line of the wing? You already have an excellent grasp of form. Look.”

Sybil did, peering over his shoulder, nearly setting her chin upon it. He moved his hand over the canvas, propping it against his knees. “See, how you’ve put the paint outside of the lining here? You have a keen sense of motion, I can tell he is stirring from his perch as you go. And here—” he smiled, gesturing to the somewhat exaggerated tilted brows that Sybil had scrawled above the jay’s eyes—“you can see that he’s a fearfully ill-tempered gent. A promising study indeed.”

With some effort he succeeded, one-handed, in shifting that first small canvas to the back and drawing forth the next—Uncle Terence and His Highness, little more than two smears of gray under the green trees.

“This is His Highness, is it not?” Charles said, pointing to the yellow-gold blob atop the somewhat misshapen hourglass of gray and silver.

“Yes,” she said, feeling suddenly embarrassed. As royal portraits went, it was not of great quality.

“I thought so. I would know that ridiculous mailcoat anywhere. And this, I assume, is Poirier?”

Sybil furrowed her brow. Why was he saying her surname—or, well, Mother and Father’s surname? “That is Uncle Terence.”

“Yes.” Sir Charles smiled. “I am accustomed to calling him by his surname. He was my squire, you know, before my nature was discovered. He was and is the best and truest any knight could hope for. You have captured his poise and calm here very well, even though we cannot see his face.”

Sybil grinned. As Charles moved to the third and final canvas, he made a sound like he was choking, and she seized his shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, my lady,” he said, his voice little more than a warble. “I find myself a sincere admirer of your work.”

The final canvas was Aunt Laudine seated at her harpsichord, her back to Sybil. Sybil could confess she was rather proud of the shine she had managed on Laudine’s—on Mama’s—hair, though she had surrendered entirely on the hands. Instead, she had filled the rest of the canvas with her attempts to color the music Laudine was playing—reds and yellows and deep purples all swirling and bleeding into one another. It had been a ridiculous idea.

“That is just the way her playing fills the air,” he said. “The boldness and vibrancy, it—”

Sybil leaned forward and saw that tears were rolling steadily down his face. That they probably had been for quite some time.

“I—am quite out of practice with the art,” he said. “But if you would not mind, I think I should quite like to study with you.”

Sybil found that she wanted to hug him. So, she circled around him enough to do so properly, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Canvas shuffled against itself as his arm rose and curled around her shoulders. His tears dampened her hair, but she didn’t mind.

“I should like that, too,” she said, “Papa.”

The word still felt as strange as the soldier now blubbering over her canvases, but it did not feel wrong, either.

“Thank you, Sybil.” He released her and blinked up at her owlishly, struggling visibly to compose himself. “I am happy—so happy—to meet you.”

By his own count, Charles had been weeping, on and off, for eight hours. He had not felt a great deal in the past seven years, save pain and desperation, and now each thing of beauty he laid his eyes upon burned them with fresh tears. His grandfather’s paintings, where they had always hung upon the walls. His daughter’s own work, bright and untamed. Her laugh and sly looks, and her kindness. The place set for him at supper, the same chicken with rosemary and lavender that he had liked best as a boy.

Now, as he and Laudine retired to the bedroom that had only been theirs for a blessed handful of weeks many years ago, she reached up and brushed the tears from his cheeks, only for a new wash of them to undo her work.

“I am sorry,” he told her, voice catching. “I promise I am quite happy to be here.”

“I know, my love,” she said, a rueful smile upon her face. “I have had seven years to weep over you. I am sure you have a great deal of time to make up for.”

She reached out and found his arm, guiding him to the bed, and as she kicked her feet from her slippers and settled against the headboard, he understood.

As he had when he was fifteen, with new blood staining his hands, he crawled onto the covers beside her and laid his head in her lap. Her fingers slipped into his hair, drawing soft lines along his scalp, and as it had then, the unsteadiness of his breathing eased.

He had been so horribly ashamed, then, for trembling and breathing shallowly just because his blade had pierced the heart of a man who richly deserved it.

“I am sorry,” he had told her. “I do not regret it. I only—”

“You should not have had to,” Laudine had said fiercely. Her hands were clumsy in his hair, her fingers still swollen and bruised. “It should not have fallen to you. I am more grateful than I can say but—Charles, I cannot make words from the fury I feel. Your hands should not have been the ones stained.” 

He felt much the same now—foolish, quaking when for once all in this wicked world was right. Carefully, he wrapped his arm across her legs to hold her as well as he might in turn.

“I—suppose you are right,” he said. “It is like stumbling into the middle of summer after a decade of bitter cold. I am sunburnt, and I cannot help shivering, still.”

Laudine curled over him, a warmth and weight across his shoulders, her hand settling over his heart. “I understand,” she said. “I find I cannot stop trembling. There seems a hollow in my heart, as if I have lost you afresh—as if I will never have enough of you before you are lost again.”

Charles turned hastily onto his back, his hand going to Laudine’s cheek. Tears shone in the brilliant green of her eyes.

“You will not lose me,” he said, more forcefully than he meant to. “I will not let anything dear be taken from you again.”

Laudine smiled, a laugh brightening her face. “You are just the same, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“That you are my knight,” she said, “as you always have been.”

She kissed him, and the sun’s light smiled on him again.

Sometime in the night, he startled awake. Pins and needles were driving into his useless left arm. The rocks of the Nysa Defile were sharp against his eyes and hands. Shiva was at his feet—a girl mistreated and maligned, and he drew his sword against her and died, and deserved it.

Adrenaline burned his nerves as his eyes flashed open. His breathing grated in his lungs.

The light before his eyes was the pale lilac that whispered of dawn. He was lying on his side, with his cheek resting upon his wife’s shoulder and his arm about her waist.

He had had dreams like this, of raven hair in his eyes and warm sheets wrapped around him. And he had woken on hard ground, with a low fire burning and smoke in his lungs.

But the weight of Laudine’s hand upon his side was real. So was the smell of her hair—the rise and fall of her breathing beneath his arm. It was not a dream any longer, and he buried his face in the side of her neck and blinked back tears.

She stirred, and he looked up enough to see her smooth brow furrow.

“Charles?” she murmured. Her hand slid up his shoulder, fingers drowsily touching his cheek.

Of course. He had not been the only one that had dreamt of this and woken to a cold bed and a sinking heart.

“Yes,” he whispered, smoothing a hand through the fine silk of her hair. “I am here, dearest.”

A smile tightened her face. It was a fragile thing, but it would grow stronger with time.

Greagor, at last, he had time.

Laudine, still half-dreaming, rolled onto her side, an arm folding more tightly around him, the crown of her head nestling beneath his chin. It was the greatest honor of his life, to kiss her hair and hold her close.

His heart sang loud in his chest. Sleep was impossible when joy was such a radiance within him.

When the sun rose, he would wake his wife, and they would go and break fast with their daughter. He would open again his case full of brushes and look on the world with eyes that sought the beauty in it. He would laugh at Sir Dominic’s jests. He would read plays aloud with Sybil. He would listen to Laudine play her harpsichord.

But for now, he lay content in the dimness, holding his wife in his arms, and knew, for once, that the dawn would greet him as a friend.