Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prince Oscar Wilde is different than Barnes expected.

It’s not the way he looks, necessarily. He’s effortlessly beautiful, in his early 20s if Barnes had to guess, and there’s a sort of aloofness to him that makes him seem utterly untouchable. That bit doesn’t come as a surprise. The kinds of people who end up in these situations—locked in towers, trapped in endless sleeps, transformed into frogs, et cetera—are often of the young, whimsical sort. Or at least, that’s the stereotype, and Barnes has never found much evidence to the contrary.

Barnes can’t really put his finger on why Prince Wilde is different. Maybe it’s how godsdamned miserable he looks. Or maybe it’s because Barnes has been reliably informed that the man is cursed, but he really, really doesn’t look it.

Those are usually the worst kind.

Prince Wilde makes eye contact with Barnes and startles slightly, like he hadn’t expected anyone else to be here. That’s fair, Barnes supposes; they’re in the foyer of a dilapidated castle in the middle of a rock outcropping in the middle of a giant pool of lava in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere. It’s not the kind of place where one receives house calls. “I’m sorry,” Prince Wilde says. His accent is perfectly cultivated to sound as prim and proper as possible. He straightens, wiping the abject misery away in an instant and replacing it with a small, pleasant smile. “Who might you be?”

Barnes steps forward and awkwardly extends a hand. “James Barnes. A pleasure.”

Prince Wilde takes his hand and shakes it. Smooth skin, perfectly manicured nails. Barnes would bet he’s never seen a day of work in his life. “Oscar Wilde.”

No title. Hm. “It’s nice to meet you,” Barnes says, letting go of Wilde’s hand. “Your parents hired me. I’ll be protecting this castle—and you—for the foreseeable future. Or, you know. Die trying.”

Wilde’s eyebrows raise. “Oh! That—yes, I suppose that makes sense. Though I was under the impression you were meant to be a bit…” He hesitates. “Scalier?”

Ah. Barnes takes a few steps back. Better to show than to tell, he supposes. He rolls his shoulders, and his spine elongates with a series of clicks and shudders. His eyes go fuzzy, then crystal-clear, his back splits open, his knees shift and rotate, his fingernails grow and toughen into points, and when he settles down with a shiver and a yawn, his teeth are deadly sharp. He looks down at Wilde, who is staring up at him with something that’s not quite fear but is close enough to be mildly satisfying. “Oh,” Wilde says again, like it’s been punched out of him.

Barnes scrapes a claw against the stone floor, sighs, then folds back in on himself. He’d prefer to make a few laps of the place—stretch out his wings, as it were—but that can come later, once Wilde is tucked away in his tower. For now, human is better. People tend to be more comfortable around his human form. Especially people like Oscar Wilde.

“I believe I’m more than capable of doing my duty, your highness,” he says, flicking his wrist to get rid of some lingering scales.

“I can see that.” Wilde composes himself remarkably quickly. “I suppose you’ll also be in charge of receiving supplies and such that my parents send?”

Barnes nods.

“Good.” Wilde looks behind Barnes. His eyes track up, up, up, and Barnes doesn’t have to turn to know that he’s looking at the tower. It is very tall, and very imposing, and very isolated. He’d never want to be locked up in one of those things. But he also doesn’t believe in true love’s anything. Not anymore.

“Well,” Wilde says. “I suppose there’s nothing more to it, then.”

He stretches, and as his shirt shifts, Barnes catches a glimpse of something thin and silvery wrapped around his wrist. Huh. If he’s not mistaken—and he very well could be, given that they’re incredibly rare and he’s only seen one once—Wilde is wearing an anti-magic cuff. Maybe it has something to do with the curse? It would certainly explain why Wilde looks so deceptively normal.

The shirt slips back over the cuff, and Barnes looks away, shutting down this line of thinking before it can go any further. It’s really none of his business. “You’re going up?” he asks.

Wilde inhales. Exhales. “I suppose I must.”

Barnes tactfully does not say that Wilde really does not have to do any of this. Even if it is Wilde’s choice—and Barnes very, very strongly doubts that it is—he seems like exactly the kind of man to buy into true love hook, line, and sinker. Barnes just hopes he doesn’t spend the whole time lying on a dusty bed, lips puckered, waiting for somebody to break in and kiss him.

“All right, then,” Barnes says, a bit awkwardly. “I guess I’ll … let you go?”

Wilde waves a dismissive hand at him. “Yes, yes. Feel free to leave supplies at my door and knock when you’ve delivered them. I don’t imagine I’ll leave very often.” He fixes Barnes with a serious look, more intense than Barnes was expecting. “And don’t open the door unless I give you express permission. No matter what.”

Gods. It takes all of Barnes’ naval training to keep his expression neutral as he nods. “As you wish, your highness.”

“Good.” Wilde looks at Barnes a moment longer, then turns on his heel and walks further into the castle. Barnes hears his footsteps echoing off the stone walls, growing quieter and quieter until they fade completely.

… Perhaps this was a bad idea. Maybe he should have considered his options a bit more carefully. Already, he can feel himself growing weary, the dull, quiet walls closing in around him. But, well. That was sort of the point, wasn’t it? Barnes just … needs to be alone for a bit. Maybe more than a bit. He needs to feel useful. He needs a task. He needs to not think about what—and whom—he’s lost.

Barnes takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly. Well, he’s here now, and he’s signed a contract, so there’s no point in dwelling on it. He’ll get to kill a few knights, probably, but after a dozen or so, there’s sure to be one who makes it past him and sweeps beautiful, cursed Prince Wilde off his delicate feet. Barnes is good at what he does, sure, but not that good. He doesn’t imagine he’ll be here for very long.

Barnes stretches and shifts. He feels brimstone churn in the back of his throat, the air grow hot and still beneath his wings, and after taking a moment to stretch himself out fully, he begins to explore the castle.

It is the last time he sees Oscar Wilde for a very, very long time.

Chapter Text

Ten Years Later

Carter has landed himself in all manner of unsatisfactory situations in his life, but this may very well be the worst.

He stands in the queue, arms crossed. It tugs painfully at the shackles around his wrists, but the need to project his displeasure outweighs the rashes he’s likely getting.

He doesn’t even know the bloke who’s currently got him leashed like a dog. He’s probably got a name, but Carter hasn’t been graced with it, so he’s been calling him that stupid motherfucking nosey tit who heard rustling in his neighbor’s yard and decided to be a Good Samaritan about it. Or Nosey Tit for short.

Nosey Tit looks pleased as fucking punch with himself, like he’s managed to catch Britain’s Most Wanted or something. It’s irritating. Carter was just having a look around, borrowing some vegetables—look, times are hard right now, okay? So what if he decided to nick some carrots from an unlocked garden? He was being proper sneaky about it too; he just forgot to keep an eye on the neighbor’s house. Ugh.

And anyway, that’s not even the reason he’s about to be handed over and stuffed in some tiny cage for “relocation.”

They’re at the front of the queue now. The guard sitting at the table looks at them, clearly bored out of his mind. “What do we have here, then?”

Nosey Tit yanks on the rope. Carter stumbles forward a few steps, then gives Nosey Tit a dirty look. Was that really necessary? Really? “One of them half-beasts, sir,” he says, and gods, his voice really is like a mosquito tucked right up in your ear. How did Carter not hear this man coming from a a mile away? He’d had his ears out and everything. He must be getting sloppy.

The guard makes a few notes. “Species?”

“Not quite sure, sir. Found ‘im rummaging around in my neighbor’s garden, you see. Probably rabbit, if I ‘ad to guess.”

Carter resists the urge to scoff. This guy clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Rabbit. He wishes. He’d be proper sneaky if he could turn into a rabbit.

The guard makes another note. “Well, that’ll be five gold for you, sir. We’ll just need to prove first that he is, in fact, a half-beast. Lots of false accusations these days. You understand.”

Carter does roll his eyes this time. Right. Like he’s going to transform in front of these people.

The guard gestures for something, and another guard—this one taller and more imposing—comes forward holding a small, thin-necked bottle with something purple and vaguely shimmering inside it. Carter narrows his eyes. Oh, all right, then. So this is how this is going to go.

“Will you voluntarily drink this potion?” the guard asks, holding it up so it catches the light. “If you’re innocent, you have nothing to fear. If you refuse to drink, we will assume that you are guilty of being a half-beast as accused.”

Carter looks down at his hands. “Hard to drink while I’m shackled.”

The guard uncorks the bottle. “Don’t need your hands when I can just pour it down your throat.”

Right. Carter uncrosses his arms and shakes his wrists a little. Lighter than iron, heavier than adamantine, doesn’t reflect the light, a touch rusty … yeah, he reckons he can work with these. “All right,” he says with a sigh. “Bottoms up, then.”

He tips his head back and opens his mouth.

The guard approaches. He’s holding the potion with his right hand, and his sword is on his left side. Perfect.

The guard reaches out to pour the potion down Carter’s throat.

Carter snaps his mouth shut and headbutts him in the face.

The guard cries out and drops the potion. Carter’s already moving, darting behind Nosey Tit quickly enough that he startles and drops the rope. They took his daggers, of course, but a man never lets one know where he keeps all of his blades. That’d be downright irresponsible.

Carter slips a paper-thin adamantine knife out from the inside of his sleeve, wedges it in one of the chain links that looks the weakest, dodges a sword strike from the guard behind the table who’s apparently woken up from his stupor, and slams the knife hilt-first against a nearby tree.

The shackles snap. Fuck yeah.

Carter shakes out his wrists, pulls another dagger from his boot, and gets the guard who’s charging him right in that spot under the arm where they never put enough armor. The guard staggers backwards, but there’s more coming—shit, a lot more. More than Carter was expecting.

Carter pulls his last two knives out from his jacket lining. He throws one knife at the closest guard, the other at the next closest. They strike true—good, that should buy him enough time. He remembers seeing a small dirt trail on the way here, not far back along the main road. He doesn’t know where it leads, but it’s probably better than here.

Carter gives the approaching guards a cheeky salute, turns, and runs. By the time his foot hits the ground, it’s become a hoof. Then the next, and the next, and the next, until he’s racing along the road on all fours. He’s not as fast as a horse, sure, but he’s a heck of a lot faster than humans wearing full plate.

Rabbit. Idiot. Surely somebody as rude as Nosey Tit would recognize an ass when he saw one.

He hears cries behind him, but he ignores them, darting down the path he saw earlier. It snakes through the woods, growing thinner and rougher as it goes, and Carter is forced to slow his pace. He’s still way ahead of the guards, though. He thinks. He’s pretty sure.

In the distance, the sound of barking begins. His ears prick up. It’s accompanied by multiple sets of quick footsteps coming towards him. Gaining on him.

Shit, they sicced the dogs on him? What the hell? It’s not like he fucking murdered anybody.

Carter focuses on the trail beneath his hooves and runs faster. He doesn’t know if he can outrun dogs, but he’ll sure as hell try.

It’s probably because he’s watching the ground so intently, making sure he doesn’t trip, that he doesn’t see the stranger until he’s crashing into him face-first.

The stranger is sturdy, but Carter’s a donkey traveling at high speed, so his momentum sends the both of them careening to the ground. Carter yelps, an unfortunate hee-haw sort of noise that he never makes if he can help it. From beneath him, the stranger makes a series of disgruntled sounds, shoving at Carter in an attempt to dislodge him. “Oi! Get off me!”

Carter doesn’t want to be in this situation any more than this guy does, thank you very much. He scrabbles at the stranger’s chest, trying to be gentle with his hooves and only mostly succeeding. The stranger grunts and gives Carter a shove, and Carter finally rolls off him and into the brush.

The barking is closer now. There’s no way he’s going to make it, especially with the stranger gathering up his walking stick, getting to his feet, and standing directly in Carter’s path of egress. “I’m assuming you’re not a regular donkey?” he says.

Carter eyes the stranger. He’s humanoid—dwarven, judging by the intricately braided beard—but Carter kind of gets why he’s running into him all the way out in the middle of nowhere because it looks like he got dismembered and then unceremoniously smashed together with half of a bull. Where his pants cut off at the knee—ankle? Carter supposes it must be the ankle. Bull legs and all that—pure white fur bleeds into a set of hooves that really look like they mean business. His tail swishes back and forth with clear irritation, and his crossed arms—along with his neck, the sides of his face, the backs of his hands—are dotted with patches of that same white fur. Two horns curl up from the top of his head, the tip snapped clean off the left one, and his ears are large and pointed and adorned with a few glittering gold piercings that match the ring on his beard.

He is, to put it quite bluntly, intimidating as fuck.

Okay. So there are three options here. Carter either tries to run past this person without explaining himself, which doesn’t seem likely to work; he takes the time to explain himself and gets the both of them captured—no thank you; or he transforms, hides in a tree, and lets the stranger deal with the guards.

Yeah, option three’s looking really great right now.

Carter stands and lets his animal form melt away. Ugh. Always a bit of a weird sensation, even after 34 years of this nonsense. He flexes his fingers—good to have those back—and points behind him with a thumb. “You might wanna get out of here. Bunch of guards incoming—the kind that don’t like people like us.”

The stranger considers Carter for a moment, then heaves a weary sigh. “Why’s something like this got to happen every time I decide to go into town?”

Carter glances over his shoulder. He can see shapes moving through the trees. “Well, good talk, but I’m gonna—” He gestures to the tree, then grabs a low-hanging branch and heaves himself up, up, up. It’s not great cover, but, y’know, if Mr. Fuck-Off Big Horns isn’t going to run, then he can distract the guards while Carter makes a smooth getaway.

Carter tucks himself amongst the foliage and watches as the dogs come racing around the corner, stopping a few feet away from the stranger and growling, ears pinned back against their heads. Less than a minute later, the guards catch up, clanking and clunking and generally being ridiculous in their stupid full plate in the middle of the woods. They stop short when they see the stranger. The one in the front steps closer, raising his sword. “Halt! Who goes there?”

The stranger has a very tired expression on his face. “Zolf Smith. Yes, I have the right to be here. No, you may not arrest me. No, I will not be leaving. No, I will not help you find whatever escaped fairy tale creature you’re chasing. Can I go now?”

The guard hesitates, clearly taken aback, then takes a step closer. “By the decree that all fairy tale creatures and magical beasts will be removed from British land, I am authorized to take you into custody for processing and relocation. You have the right to come quietly and peacefully.”

Zolf pinches the bridge of his nose. “For the love of the gods. No. Fuck off.”

“Being a…” The guard hesitates, evaluating Zolf for a moment, then wrinkles his nose in disgust. “… particularly repulsive form of half-beast, I’m afraid I must insist that you come with me.”

Okay, that’s uncalled for. Zolf seems to think so too, because his posture changes, growing stiffer and more defensive. He doesn’t get taller, but he certainly gets more imposing, and the guard takes a very small step backwards. “And I said, I’m not lettin’ you arrest me.”

Zolf taps his walking stick on the ground, and—oh, shit, that’s a blade. It lights ablaze a moment later, the flames flickering higher and higher until Carter can feel their heat, and—yep, there we go. A few of the guards in the back, as well as the dogs, apparently deciding that this is simply too much to bear, turn tail and flee. It’s just a few guards left, all of whom save for the one speaking with Zolf are looking a bit shifty and nervous.

Carter gets it. Zolf just went from intimidating to fucking terrifying.

“I would ask,” the guard in front says, “that you drop your weapon.”

“And I would ask,” Zolf says, “that you stop botherin’ people when they’re just trying to enjoy some peace and quiet.”

Then, quicker than Carter expected, he jabs forward and stabs his glaive straight through the guard’s shoulder. It cuts through his armor like butter, and the guard screams and drops his sword.

The rest of the guards scatter. The injured guard, now gripping his shoulder with one hand and making a series of whimpering noises that are quite satisfying to hear, looks at Zolf like he’s the devil incarnate before turning and fleeing as well.

Zolf sighs and taps his glaive on the ground. The blade extinguishes and folds itself back into the handle until it’s just a normal walking stick again. “Guess I’m not going to the bakery today. Great.”

Then, he turns and starts walking down the path in the opposite direction of the guards.

Wait, hold on just a second. Carter scrambles down from the tree and jogs until he’s caught up to Zolf. It’s not hard; the man doesn’t move very fast, what with the whole “legs of a bull on the body of a dwarf” thing going on. “Wait, wait, wait. First of all: great work back there. Love the flaming glaive. Unexpected, but that’s the fun of it, isn’t it? You don’t see people using magic like that around these parts anymore, you know, what with the decree—well, other than people like us, but, you know, proper magic, the cool kind where you just say a few words and—”

“I’m sorry,” Zolf says, stopping in his tracks and turning to face Carter. Carter nearly runs smack into him again. “Do you need something?”

“Right!” Carter holds out a hand. “Howard Carter. Archeologist, scholar, rogue extraordinaire. Half-man, half-beast, full package.” He winks.

Zolf raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t take the hand. “Charmed.” He turns and keeps walking.

“Now, see,” Carter says, easily keeping pace, “you seem like a strong, capable dwarf. And I am also a strong and capable—well, not a dwarf, but, you know.”

“Hm. Coulda fooled me.”

Rude. “Sometimes, hiding is the right course of action. But see, see—this is why we should work together!”

Zolf scoffs. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not? Those guards—they’re kinda incompetent, sure, but they mean business. I help you, you help me, and we both make sure that neither of us ends up locked away in some cramped, dusty cage. I think that sounds reasonable, don’t you?”

“I work alone.”

“Oh, come on! Just give it a try? I promise you won’t regret it.”

“I already regret everything that’s happened since the moment I met you.”

Hah. If he thinks that’s going to bother Carter, then he’s in for a surprise. Carter’s heard worse. Carter heard worse this morning. “One week. Just one week!”

“Do you not understand the concept of ‘no’? It means go away, I’m not interested.”

“Listen.” They’re approaching a clearing now, sunken into the ground. Carter can just see the roof of a structure poking out from the middle of it. “I get it. You’re the strong, silent type who thinks they don’t need anybody to watch their back. But it’s getting rough out there. You’ve seen it! I know you have. Look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t worried that somebody’s gonna show up at your doorstep, knock you out, and drag you into custody.”

Zolf stops just shy of the clearing. Carter can see the structure properly now—a squat cottage with a sprawling garden surrounding it and a small creek running around the back. It’s picture-perfect idyllic. He turns and glares at Carter. “Yes, okay? I’m worried. Of course I’m worried. But I can protect myself.”

Carter exhales and allows himself to get just a little bit pathetic. “But I can’t,” he whines. “They caught me once, Zolf. What if they catch me again? Please, just let me stay with you. Just for a bit! One night, okay? Just one night, then I’ll be out of your hair. In case they’re still out there looking for me.” He makes his eyes go wide and pleading. “I don’t want to get locked in a cage, Zolf. Do I deserve to be locked in a cage? Like a criminal? Because I’m like this?”

He lets his ears grow, flicking once before drooping dejectedly. “It’s not a crime to be a polymorph. You get that; I know you do.”

He’s got Zolf, he can tell. Zolf’s eyes go to his ears, then to his face, then to the ground, then to a spot just over his shoulder. He sighs. Scrubs a hand across his face. Sighs again. “Fine! Fine. Just one night. Then, you’re going to go, and you’re going to leave me alone.”

Carter’s ears perk back up, and he grins. “Thanks, Zolf!” He claps Zolf on the shoulder, then skids down the side of the hill and stands with his hands on his hips, surveying the cottage in front of him. “Wow, this place is really something. And you live here all by yourself? Wow.”

Zolf stomps down the hill behind him. “Yeah, it is. Yeah, I do. Do not touch anything. Okay? And for the love of the gods, don’t walk in the garden.”

Carter puts a hand to his chest, offended. “Of course not! That would be rude.” He hesitates, glancing at the garden, then picks his way carefully down the stone path that snakes through it. Zolf follows him—loudly, Carter might add. The guy is not built for stealth. See, that’s why he needs someone like Carter around! Zolf can be the brute force, and Carter can be the carefully thrown knife from the shadows. It’s perfect.

Zolf’s door is unlocked—sloppy, really—and Carter opens it with a flourish and steps inside. It’s proper quaint, with flowers tucked in the corners and dark wood furnishings and soft rugs and a big brick fireplace. It reminds Carter of his grandmother’s house before she passed, and he feels a wave of nostalgia wash over him. “Oh, this is lovely,” he says, and he means it.

“Yeah,” Zolf says with a sigh as he follows Carter through the doorway. “It’s really meant to be enjoyed alone—hey!”

Carter looks up at Zolf from where he’s flopped artfully on Zolf’s couch. “What?”

“What happened to ‘don’t touch anything’?”

“I’m not allowed to sit?”

Zolf makes a series of inarticulate grumbling noises. “I have a system. You ruined my pillows.”

Carter twists and looks at the squished decorative pillows beneath him. “You have pillows that aren’t meant to be laid on? What’s the purpose of them, then?”

“They look nice!” Zolf sighs heavily. “Look. I live alone for a reason, okay? I like my space, and I don’t like other people in my space. Especially irritating people.”

“Wow, rude.”

“Just.” Zolf points a finger at Carter. Oh, not the pointing. Carter doesn’t like being pointed at. He glowers. “Behave, okay? I don’t want you making a mess of my house. You can sleep on that couch since you’ve gone and mucked it up already.”

“Wow, thanks,” Carter says dryly. “Real hospitable.”

“You’re the one who invited yourself into my home. You don’t get to grumble when you don’t get five-star accommodations.”

Carter’s stomach, as if on cue, growls. “I suppose I’m meant to forage my own food too?”

Zolf scrubs a hand across his face. “No. I can cook. Just—sit there. Do. Not. Come. Into. The. Kitchen. Or you will get stabbed. That is not a joke.”

Carter holds up his hands. “Touchy! When I’ve been nothing but a perfect gentleman.”

Zolf snorts. “Sure.”

Then, he turns and disappears into the kitchen.

Carter kicks back on the couch and stares up at the ceiling. From the kitchen, he can hear the sound of clinking, a burner clicking on, sizzling oil. The smell of garlic, onions, and butter wafts out after a few minutes.

Carter inhales deeply and grins. Oh, yeah. This might be his best idea in a while. He has all night to figure out what buttons to push to convince Zolf to let him stick around for a little while longer. Until it’s time to move on again.

Carter closes his eyes and waits for dinner to be served.

Chapter Text

Zolf wakes in the dead of night to what, if he didn’t know any better, sounds like a party being thrown outside his bedroom window.

Then, as the remnants of sleep bleed away, Zolf remembers Carter and thinks, Aw, shit, this better not be a fucking party.

He grumbles his way out of bed, grabs a torch from the corner of his room, lights it with a snap of his fingers, and makes his way out into his front sitting room.

Carter isn’t on the couch. The sheets are mussed, so he was there, but now he’s not.

Outside, there’s a crash and a thump, and somebody shouts something indiscernible.

All right, now Zolf’s pissed.

He pulls himself up to his full height, squares his shoulders, lets his nostrils flare just a little bit more than usual, and pushes his front door open so hard it nearly slams into the wall.

Outside, on his carefully tended to grass, walking across his beautiful cobblestone path, crushing his garden underfoot, are what looks to be several hundred fairy tale creatures.

Oh, no. Absolutely the fuck not.

Zolf takes a deep breath in. Lets it out.

Casts a spell.

And shouts, with a voice magically amplified to approximately ten times its normal volume, “Can somebody please tell me why you’re trespassing on my land at two in the bloody morning?”

It goes deathly silent. Conversations halt. All movement stops. From somewhere deep within the crowd, something falls to the ground and shatters. Several hundred pairs of eyes widen, many reflecting his torchlight.

And a familiar voice, just off to Zolf’s right, says, “Ah, shit.”

Zolf turns to face Carter as he melts out of the crowd, donkey ears manifested and flattened back slightly against his head. He rubs at the back of his neck. “Okay, so. I know what this looks like, but—”

“It looks like,” Zolf hisses, “you invited yourself into my home, ate my food, slept on my couch, and then decided to invite half the bloody country onto my doorstep!”

“Yeah, I know! But I didn’t! I swear!”

Zolf raises a single eyebrow. His tail flicks. “Sure.”

“Look, look, I can prove it!” Carter turns around and gestures frantically at one of the people standing at the edge of the crowd. They look at Zolf, take a hesitant step backwards, and shake their head. “No no, it’s okay—I just need your letter.”

They’re still shaking their head, looking at Zolf like he’s going to eat them alive. They’re a tiny thing—gnomish, probably—with a bushy white beard and eyes as wide as saucers. Zolf’s not the tallest guy in the world, but with the hooves and the horns and the bulk—yeah, sure. Fine. He’s not tryin’ to be the big bad wolf here or anything.

Zolf exhales slowly and tries to make himself look less threatening. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t work.

The person next to the gnome—pink armor, orcish, one broken tusk—gives Zolf a sympathetic look and pulls a letter out of a pouch on her hip. “Here.” She hands it to Carter.

“Thank you,” Carter says, with obvious relief. He holds the letter out to Zolf.

Zolf eyes it skeptically—it’s glowing faintly pink—then gingerly takes it. Opens it. Glares really hard at it, like that’ll make it stop saying what it’s saying. Then decides to glare at Carter instead, who makes a noise of protest and says, “Hey, stop looking at me like that! It’s not like I gave them the letters. I didn’t know about this, I swear!”

Zolf believes him, but he’s pissed right now, so he doesn’t stop glaring. “Didn’t anybody check the records office before sendin’ a bunch of letters demandin’ you all pack up and leave your homes?” Zolf drops the letter onto the ground; nobody makes any effort to pick it up. “You can’t be relocated to my land—it’s my bloody land!”

“Hey, uh, just, quick clarification—we didn’t have a choice,” a voice says from Zolf’s left. A half-elf with a belt lined with various potions pushes a pair of comically large goggles off their eyes and onto their forehead. “I get that you’re angry, I do—totally understandable in your situation!—but we don’t want to be here either. They came into our homes, forced us out, took our things, and—I tried to fight, you know, went all—grrrrrr, but it’s kind of unfair when it’s five against one, and—well, you know, there’s not that many of us and a whole lotta them, so. And then the cages were full—cages! Actual cages! It’s like, how comically evil can you get? But, you know, there was no room for us, which like, not our fault, we had plenty of room for ourselves in our houses, but now they’re not our houses anymore, and so here we are at your house, and let me tell you, it is a beautiful property, really, but I would much prefer my lab. I’ve got all my tools there, and my potions, and my tea, and quite a lot of explosives, which, you know, need to be carefully handled, and—”

“I think,” the orcish woman interrupts, “that what Cel is trying to say is that we’re not here by choice, and there’s nowhere else for us to go.”

“Yes, thank you, Azu. I get carried away at times, you know, rambling on about all sorts of interesting things—but, well, you know.” Cel wraps an arm around themself and shrugs. “It’s not safe out there right now for us. And we’ve got nothing left. They … they took it all. Everything we had is … it’s gone.”

Shit. Fucking hell. Zolf looks out over the crowd of people trampling his grass and muddying his cobblestones and ruining his carrots. They’re all huddled together, some makeshift tents strewn around but not nearly enough to accommodate everybody. They all look tired, and scared, and a little bit desperate.

Shit.

“Look,” Zolf says, glancing at Carter. “I’m sorry, I am. But you really can’t live here. This is my house, and it wasn’t built to be a refugee camp.”

Carter opens his mouth, and Zolf steamrolls over him. “But, I know this ain’t any of your faults. So … I don’t know.” He sighs and scrubs a hand across his face. “Is this a permanent sorta situation, or…?”

The crowd shifts, muttering amongst themselves. After a moment, Azu says, “We don’t know. I suspect, though, that it’s permanent until they decide they don’t want us here either and move us all to another location where they can leave us and forget about us.” She grimaces. “And that would probably include you as well. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve worked hard for this place; I ain’t givin’ it up just because some big fancy decree says I’ve got to.” He tries not to glare pointedly at the people currently reducing his garden to mush. He only mostly succeeds.

“I mean, that’s assuming that we wanted to leave our homes, which—let’s be honest, that’s a pretty rude assumption for you to make!” Cel says. “None of us just rolled over and let this happen to us. And, well, look, you seem like a fighter, and I respect that, I do, but when there’s an army at your doorstep? When someone’s got a sword at your throat? Sometimes the way we fight is choosing to live another day, and while I can’t speak for all of us, I know that’s a choice that I made. And it wasn’t easy, but I know it was the right thing to do.”

“I’m not,” Zolf says, glowering, “giving up my home. I’m not sayin’ that you lot were wrong or weak or whatever for doing so. I get it. But I’m not letting it happen to me. And it shouldn’t be happenin’ to you, either.” He bends down and picks up the letter again. “The person causing all this trouble, taking away your homes—it’s this … Sir Bertrand MacGuffingham?”

A few people at the front of the crowd nod. One of them looks ready to burst into tears. Another looks furious enough to set fire to Zolf’s house and the woods surrounding it. Everyone here—every beast, every polymorph, every gnome and troll and dwarf and elf and orc—they’re all just scared, Zolf realizes. He knew it was bad—hell, he’s been fending off the soldiers trying to take him away for months now—but he didn’t realize…

He likes living out here. He likes his home in the middle of the woods, with nobody around to bother him, nobody around to make noise or stay up until the wee hours of the morning or knock on his door asking for favors. He was a miner, then a seaman, then a pirate, then a guy with no legs and no hope, and now he’s got two legs and a whole lot more and not nearly enough patience for a world that thinks he’s some kinda sideshow attraction. He was tired, and he needed space, and he likes his space. But…

Azu looks at him with kind, sympathetic eyes. Cel fiddles with the potions on their belt, mouth slanted into a displeased expression with what they find there. And Zolf sighs. Damn it.

“Look.” Zolf pinches the bridge of his nose. “You lot can stay.” Then, when a cheer begins to swell within the crowd: “Temporarily! This ain’t permanent, all right?” He holds up the letter and shakes it. “Sir Bertrand has no right shoving you all onto my land, and he has no right taking your property and land in the first place. So I’m going to tell him that.”

A wave of titters and murmurs passes through the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye, Zolf sees Carter raise an eyebrow. “You’re just going to tell him to stop?”

“Every ruler’s got to hear the complaints of their people. I’m going to make my case.”

The volume of the titters increases. Cel flashes him a big grin and gives him two thumbs up. Carter exhales loudly, then shrugs his shoulders. “Sure, why the hell not. You can be all … you know. Big and scary. It worked with those guards; might work with him!”

“Big and scary,” Zolf repeats flatly.

Carter points at him. “And intimidating. Can’t forget intimidating. Look, you’re doing it right now!”

Zolf’s face is indeed doing something rather pinched and frustrated. Carter does not look remotely intimidated by it, though. If anything, he looks delighted. “Yeah,” Carter says with some satisfaction, crossing his arms. “No way Sir Bertrand can ignore a look like that.”

“Carter’s right,” Azu says. “You do look like quite the force to be reckoned with. I suppose it’s … well, it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

Zolf exhales. “I hope so. I’ll head out tomorrow. Can’t be more than a few days’ walk to the castle, a few days’ walk back—I imagine we’ll have this sorted within the week.” He levels a stern look at the crowd. “Until then, please stop trodding all over my garden. Especially the strawberries—I worked hard on those. And for the love of all that is holy: be quiet. It’s the middle of the night.”

He points at Carter, who gives him his best approximation of an innocent look, then waves that finger at the rest of the crowd, who do not seem nearly chastised enough. Then, he turns around and heads back inside his house.

Immediately, the noise starts back up outside, and Zolf sighs heavily before returning to bed.

He gets very little sleep for the rest of the night, no matter how much wax he shoves into his ears.

. . .

Dawn breaks, and Zolf begrudgingly rolls out of bed and begins to pack. Shirts, check. Trousers, check. Socks and pants, check. Hygiene products, check. Travel stove, check. Rations, check. Carter, ch—

Zolf sits up so quickly he hits his head on the top of the cabinet he’s rifling through. He swears and rubs at his forehead, then glares up at Carter. “Why are you still here?”

Carter sits cross-legged beside him and peers into the cabinet. “Well, I wasn’t just going to leave without you, now, was I? That’d be rude.”

“Leave without—what the hell are you talking about?”

Carter reaches into the cabinet and pulls out a bag of oats. “I like these. You should bring these. I make a mean oatmeal, I’m telling you.”

Zolf snatches the bag of oats from Carter’s hand. “I’ll decide what I bring, thank you very much.” After a moment—because Carter’s right, oats are a good idea—he begrudgingly puts them in his bag. “What do you mean, ‘leave without me’?”

“Well, it’d be rude, wouldn’t it? Heading out before you’ve even had a chance to pack. I’d have to stop, wait for you—it’d be a whole thing.” Carter reaches behind him and pulls out a backpack from absolutely fucking nowhere. “I’ve got all the essentials already—borrowed them from a lovely man out there. Ed, his name was. Literally the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life.” Carter’s nose wrinkles. “Bit thick, admittedly, but, you know—does that really matter in the grand scheme of things?”

Zolf looks at the backpack, looks at Carter, puts two and two together, and says, “Absolutely not.”

“What? I’m not saying I’m going to marry the guy or anything, but he has a nice ass! Like, a really nice ass, Zolf. I cannot stress this enough.”

“Not the—I mean, you ain’t coming with me.”

Zolf closes the cupboard and stands, deeming his rations sufficient enough to at least get him to London. He’s a competent enough hunter to make do if he runs out on the way back. Carter stands as well and puts his hands on his hips. “Now, look. I know you said just one night, and I get it! You’ve got the whole oh, I’m so independent and alone thing going on, and you know, it works for you, it really does. But I can help!”

“You can help,” Zolf repeats flatly. “Right.”

“See, that”—Carter points at Zolf—“that’s exactly what I’m talking about. That right there. You’re a bit…” Carter worries his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment. “… standoffish. And that’s good! We need that sometimes. But you might also need a people person. Someone who can talk their way out of a situation. And believe me, I’m well good at that.”

Zolf raises an eyebrow. “Sure. Like how you talked your way out of the situation with the guards? Because as I remember it, you ran away and hid while I got rid of them. Using my words. I think I’ll manage.”

“Sure, if you’re just trying to intimidate them. But I can charm them! Or trick them! Or steal their wallets when they’re not looking!”

“Not interested.”

“Come on! Please? I want to help!”

“Not interested.”

Carter exhales. “Look, I’ve got practical skills as well, okay? I can pick most any lock in under a minute, and—” Before Zolf can react, he pulls a knife from apparently thin air and flings it past Zolf’s ear, close enough that it shaves off some of the hairs. Zolf whirls around to see the knife stuck in the wall, perfectly wedged between two slats of wood, which is the only thing that saves Carter from getting an earful about throwing knives into Zolf’s very nice walls. “I can do that. Which, you know, guys with swords? You might need some backup.”

Zolf stares at the knife. Thinks about a week traveling alone with Carter. Shudders. Then thinks about leaving Carter—lockpicker, knife thrower, absolute pain in the arse—with free rein of his house and the surrounding land for a week. Unsupervised.

Yeah, no, that’s way worse.

Zolf sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fine! Fine. You can come. But”—he points a warning finger at Carter—”I will not tolerate any singing, excessive jokes, annoying noises, or otherwise infuriating behavior, or I’m dumping you on the side of the road and continuing on by myself. Is that understood?”

Carter beams and gives Zolf a mock salute. “Aye aye, captain!”

Oh, gods help him. This is going to be the longest week of Zolf’s life.

Chapter Text

Bertie is, by all accounts, not having a good day.

Yes, he’s in his castle—his glorious castle, filled with glorious things, built on glorious land, surrounded by glorious subjects. Yes, he’d had the most wonderful spread for breakfast—little cakes and scones with raspberry jam and smoked salmon eggs benedict and the best espresso money can buy. Yes, he’d gone out for a lovely stroll with Brutor, playing fetch and watching the clouds go by and enjoying the absolutely perfect weather.

But then that stupid magic mirror had to come in and ruin the whole damn thing.

“I think you misspoke,” Bertie says, crossing his arms and glowering at the mirror. It’s propped up against the wall in his dungeon, emitting a soft green glow that he really doesn’t care for in the slightest. “I asked you if you liked my kingdom. The appropriate response to that question is, ‘Yes.’”

“I did not misspeak,” the mirror says snarkily. “Shoin does not make mistakes. This is not a kingdom, because you are not a king.”

Bertie’s eyes narrow, and he pulls out his sword and points it at the mirror. “Look, I was having a really good day, and now you’ve just gone and ruined it. I should cut you in half and be done with it. It’d be ridiculously easy, I’ll have you know. Like a knife through a stick of butter left out on a really, really hot day.”

“If you would let me finish, Sir Bertrand?”

This time, the mirror sounds bored. Bertie growls. He really wants to shatter it. Very badly. One good hit, that’s all it would take. He could probably just kick it over. Yes, a good kick—that sounds very cathartic. “Well, speak quickly, then. I don’t have all day.”

The mirror sighs and pulses green. “You are not a king yet. However, it’s a simple enough process to become a king.”

Bertie nods slowly. “Yes, of course! It’s so simple, really, a child could do it. The most obvious thing in the world. A paltry task!”

A beat.

“And what is it that I would have to do, exactly?”

“… Marry a princess?”

Bertie wrinkles his nose. “Ugh, no. Try again.”

“A prince?”

“Yes, that’s much better, thank you.”

“Well, then! Let me just find the files. They’re stored away in here somewhere, it’s just been a while since I’ve had to—nope, that’s not it, you really wouldn’t be interested in those … ah! Here we are.”

The green light dims, and the mirror fills with an image of a curtain, big and red, spotlights pointed directly at it. “Forgive the theatrics—I simply can’t help myself. May I present to you: your three eligible bachelors.”

The curtain parts with a smattering of applause, and from somewhere deep within the mirror, jaunty music begins to play. A shadowy figure materializes in the center of the stage. “Now, bachelor number one likes long walks in the forest and spending time in his lab working on his latest inventions. He’s intelligent and dedicated, but don’t let that put you off—he’s also got a heart of gold. Introducing bachelor number one: Prince Nikola Tesla!”

The shadow bleeds away, leaving behind a picture of a softly smiling prince who looks like he’s been plucked straight from a schoolboy romance novel. His teeth are very white, and his jawline is superb. Bertie hums. “A strong start indeed.”

Prince Nikola blinks out of existence, replaced by another shadowy figure. This one is small and gangly, with huge ears, and Bertie does not care for that silhouette one bit. “Bachelor number two may seem grumpy, but at his heart, he’s a family man who protects those he cares about and has a strong sense of justice. His archery skills are legendary, his teeth are many, and his faith is unwavering. Please welcome to the stage: Prince Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam!”

Bertie lets out a noise of disgust at the beast that’s revealed with a flourish, all gray skin and sharp teeth and red eyes. “What kind of horrible magic mirror are you? Honestly! Get that thing out of my sight. Out of my sight!”

The music comes to a record-scratch halt, and the hideous creature blessedly winks out of existence. “My apologies, Sir Bertrand. Would you like me to find a different bachelor number two? I’m sure I can—”

Bertie knocks his sword against the side of the mirror. It totters dangerously for a moment, then rights itself. “Would you quit blathering on and just show me the third one already? You’re a magic mirror, for gods’ sake—show, don’t tell.”

The mirror grumbles something under its breath that is certainly glowing praise of Bertie’s ability to keep a situation moving forward smoothly. The music starts up again, jaunty as ever, and a third silhouette moves into the center of the screen. It’s tall, thin, and sprawled across a similarly silhouetted chair, chin propped in one hand. Bertie raises an eyebrow at it.

“And finally, bachelor number three,” the mirror says, voice once again cheery and light. “He’s a charming, charismatic prince from the kingdom of Ireland, lying in wait for his one true love. He’s trapped in a tower guarded by a dragon surrounded by boiling lava, but don’t let that cool you off—he’s enchanting in more ways than one, and his words are truly unmatched. Last but certainly not least: Prince Oscar Wilde!”

Color rushes into the figure in the mirror, and Bertie raises his other eyebrow. Good gods. Well, when Prince Wilde looks like that, the choice is rather simple, isn’t it?

“So which will it be? Bachelor one, bachelor—”

“Three, please!”

The mirror hesitates, clearly caught off guard. “You—you don’t want more time to think about it?”

“Nope! I’ve made my choice, and I choose number three. Done, solved, good day!”

“O … kay!” The mirror clears its throat, and another tune begins playing, this one triumphant with a brass fanfare. “Congratulations, Sir Bertrand—you have chosen bachelor number three, Prince Oscar Wilde!”

“Excellent!” Bertie sheathes his sword, then taps his chin with a finger and hums thoughtfully. “Now, of course, there is the matter of the lava and the dragon to attend to.”

“Yes, indeed, of course, but—”

“I certainly can’t go. Far too important. What if I perished? No, that wouldn’t do at all. Hmmmm, think, think!”

“I really must warn you that—”

“I could hire somebody? But that would require spending money, and I really must begin saving for the wedding. A volunteer? But what’s to say they’ll even make it out alive? If they get eaten by the dragon and I have to find another person to send, it’ll be horribly inconvenient for me.”

“You really should know about the reason he’s even in a t—”

“Ah ha!” Bertie slams his fist into the palm of his hand triumphantly. “Of course! A tournament! The winner of the tournament shall be sent to fetch the prince and bring him back to me, and then we will be wed, and I will take my rightful place as king of—wherever it is you said he’s the king of. Excellent! Splendid! I shall start the preparations at once!”

“Sir Bertrand, if you would please just listen—”

“Yes, yes, I think you’ve talked quite enough. Guards?”

Bertie waves a dismissive hand at the mirror, and his guards—standing silently to either side of it—move forward and cover it once more with a cloth. The mirror continues to talk, obnoxious thing that it is, but it’s blissfully muffled by the thick cloth. The guards pick up the mirror and take it away, to be stored in a dusty room and in all likelihood forgotten about.

Prince Oscar Wilde. Nice hair, nice jawline, nice nose, nice shoulders—truly, the most attractive option of the three by a wide margin. Bertie nods to himself, satisfied, and begins making his way out of the dungeons. He has a tournament to plan.

Chapter Text

London is smaller than Zolf expected it to be, but no less extravagant in its display of wealth and power. The castle soars up and up and up into the sky, dwarfing the stone walls that surround it and the city that is presumably built around its base. There are towers upon towers, stained glass as far as the eye can see, and no shortage of statues and gargoyles. One of the gargoyles slowly turns its head to look at Zolf, and Zolf raises an eyebrow at it. “Right,” he says, crossing his arms. “This is the place, then?”

Carter turns their map around. Squints at it. Squints up at the castle. “Well, unless you know of any other giant castles surrounded by walls with the words ‘London: Home of Sir Bertrand MacGuffingham, the Most Important Man in Britain and Possibly the Entire World’ engraved on them.”

Zolf looks away from the gargoyle. Oh, yeah, there it is. Emblazoned right over the top of the gates leading into the city, engraved in big gold letters. It’s so utterly ostentatious and so absolutely ridiculous that it makes Zolf snort. “Oh good. He’s a bigot and an ass.”

The dirt road leads right up to the front gate, where two guards are stood at an approximation of attention. One looks to be asleep. The other is visibly bored. Zolf readjusts his backpack, tightens his grip on his walking stick, and soldiers forward. He hears Carter curse under his breath before following close behind.

It doesn’t take very long for the bored guard to notice them. The moment she sees Zolf, she stands up straighter, hand flying to the sword strapped to her side. “Halt!” she says, which wakes the other guard with a suddenness that knocks their helmet clean off their head. It clatters to the ground, and both guards wince. Zolf continues to approach. “State your business.”

“Here to see Sir Bertrand MacGuffingham,” Zolf grunts, continuing forward until he’s just out of sword range of the guards. “Party of two. We come in peace, et cetera.”

“For what purpose?”

The formerly asleep guard eyes their helmet, now resting at Zolf’s feet. Eyes Zolf. Appears to decide it isn’t important. Takes a small step back and grips the hilt of their sword tightly.

“We just want an audience with him. That’s all.”

“For what purpose?” the guard repeats. The sword is halfway out of her scabbard now. Great. Why does Zolf always have to deal with shit like this whenever he leaves the house?

“He’s decided to dump a few hundred fairy-tale creatures on my front lawn. I’d like them sent back to the homes they were taken from. If you’d kindly let us pass.”

The guard narrows her eyes at Zolf. “I’m afraid Sir Bertrand isn’t taking public complaints at the moment. You’ll have to come again later.”

Zolf narrows his eyes. “No, I think I’ll come again now, thank you very much.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the guard says, her lip curling into a sneer on the word sir, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to insist.” She pulls out her sword and points it at Zolf’s chest. “We don’t tolerate your kind here, so you’d best move along before things get ugly.”

Zolf heaves a sigh. Great. He tried to come in peace, but apparently, that was too much to ask.

Wearily, Zolf waves his hand and mutters a few words under his breath. The guard with the sword flinches back, but she’s still close enough that Zolf sees a flash of purple in her eyes, quickly swallowed by her eyelids as they droop. The sword slips from her hand and clatters to the ground, and a moment later, both guards slump to the dirt, going limp and still but for the rise and fall of their chests.

Ugh. Zolf hates casting sleep. Always leaves him feeling a bit groggy himself. He scrubs a hand across his face, sighs, then steps around the guards. “Come on,” he says to Carter, who’s looking at him with a stupidly large grin on his face. “Let’s get inside before they wake up.”

Zolf expects resistance inside the heavy wooden doors—more guards, or at the very least civilians milling about—but there’s nothing. The city is dead silent, save for the occasional creak of shop signs as they blow in the wind. Zolf hesitates just inside the doorway, surveying the street in front of him. Nobody melts out of the shadows to confront him. All of the shop doors are closed. It seems like a city that’s lived in, certainly. Just … currently empty.

Behind him, Carter mutters, “This is creepy. Where is everybody?”

Zolf tightens his grip on his walking stick. “I don’t know.”

“They can’t all have left, right? Where would they have gone?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean—were they running from something? Should we be running from something?”

“I don’t know, Carter!”

“All right, all right! Just thinking out loud.” Carter walks past Zolf and approaches a nearby shop. “It’s really too bad—I was looking forward to having a nice pint or something. We’ve been on the road for ages.”

“Three days.”

“Yeah, like I said. Ages.”

Zolf eyes the shops. “It’s probably better that it’s empty. Can’t imagine we’d have gotten the warmest welcome.”

Carter snorts. “Nah, I think you make a great first impression.”

“Shut up,” Zolf grumbles.

Carter moves on to the next shop. After a moment, Zolf hears a rattling noise, and he looks over to see Carter working on the door with a pair of lockpicks. “Oi! We’re not breaking into people’s businesses.”

“Correction: you’re not breaking into people’s businesses,” Carter says, tongue sticking out between his teeth. “I am getting us some more rations. And a pint. Maybe two. Who knows—maybe there’s something inside that’ll tell us where everybody is. You know—clues.”

Before Zolf can protest again, the door pops open, and Carter makes a triumphant noise. He stows his lockpicks, looks both ways, then slips inside. Zolf huffs and walks over, stopping in front of the now-open door. “I’m going to the castle and leavin’ you behind if you don’t hurry up.”

From behind the bar, Carter calls, “They’ve got bread, Zolf! And cured meats!” He pops up and lobs a loaf of bread at Zolf. Zolf just manages to catch it. “And huge bottles of ale.” Carter clambers back over the counter with a sack in one hand, a large corked glass bottle in the other. “You look like the kind of guy who likes a good ale.”

“Yeah, I do. When I pay for it.”

Carter waves a dismissive hand at him, slips past him out the door, and closes the door with a flourish. “Fine, okay? I left a few coins behind the counter.”

“You did not.”

“No, I did not. But if it makes you feel better, why don’t you just pretend that I did?” Carter pats Zolf once on his upper arm, then begins walking towards the castle. He uncorks the bottle and takes a long swig, and Zolf sighs and follows behind him. All this, and they’re going to get arrested for petty theft.

Though … there is nobody around. Perhaps. Just this once.

Zolf eyes the bread in his hands, then sighs and tucks it into his bag. What’s done is done, he supposes.

He lets his mind drift, ruminating on how to best convince Sir Bertrand to change his mind and give the people on his land their homes back. Or at the very least, put them somewhere else. He’s so caught up in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice that Carter’s stopped until he nearly runs smack into him. “Why’ve we stopped?” he says with a frown. They’re not even halfway to the castle yet.

Belatedly, Zolf notices that Carter’s got his ears out. They’re twitching, pricked up and alert and angled towards the castle. “Can you hear that?” Carter says, hushed.

Zolf listens. He’s got decent ears, but Carter’s must be better, because he can’t hear anything but birdsong and the creak of wood. “What?”

Carter takes a few steps further down the road, then nods to himself. “Yes, definitely. I hear people—lots of them. Some sort of … event, maybe? There’s shouting. Er, the good kind. Like a … a sports match or something.”

“A sports match,” Zolf echoes.

Carter’s ears twitch again, then fold back against his head and disappear. “Suppose we know where everybody went, then.”

Zolf raises an eyebrow. “Everybody. To a sports match.”

“Well, I don’t know! Maybe field hockey’s all the rage around here.”

“It’s not a sports match.”

“It could be a sports match!”

“It’s not. A sports match.”

. . .

Carter gives a knight in full plate a cheeky wave, leans over to Zolf, and whispers, “It’s basically a sports match.”

“It’s a tournament,” the knight says, because Carter’s whisper might as well be his normal speaking voice. “And you are interrupting.”

“Look mate, we didn’t mean to—” Zolf begins, then cuts himself off with a huff. He looks out at the arena they’ve stumbled into—at the thousands of people sitting around it, staring down at Zolf with mouths agape. “Sorry to interrupt!” he calls, voice echoing off the stands. “Not trying to interrupt. We’re here to talk. Didn’t mean to, uh. Break down your door. You should probably invest in sturdier wood. Uh. Anyway. Sorry again.”

The crowd titters unhappily, and Zolf scowls. Really, though. He spent three days on the road with Carter, then another hour trying to figure out where the entrance to this stupid arena was. Maybe he opened the door a bit hard—so what! He hadn’t expected it to literally fly off its hinges.

There’s movement above them, and Zolf looks up to see a man approach the balcony overlooking the arena. Even from this distance, Zolf recognizes the scowl of disgust on his face. “And what,” the man says, his voice carrying through the silence that has fallen over the arena, “are you supposed to be?”

Carter gives him a sidelong glance that Zolf deftly ignores. So this conversation isn’t starting the way he’d planned—so what? It’s fine. “Zolf Smith,” he says. “I’d shake your hand but, well.” He gestures. “You’re up there and I’m down here.”

“And thank the gods for that.”

Zolf does not glare. He very pointedly does not glare. He’s being diplomatic. “Are you Sir Bertrand MacGuffingham? I’m here to speak to Sir Bertrand MacGuffingham. Please. I’d appreciate it kindly.”

“Oh look,” one of the nearby knights snickers. “It has manners.”

Zolf’s jaw twitches. Carter’s sidelong glance intensifies. Zolf continues to ignore it. “I’m just here,” he continues, “about the fairy-tale creatures you’ve relocated. They’re on my land, and I want them gone—back in their homes, their possessions returned, et cetera.”

A few of the knights snicker. Sir Bertrand makes a dismissive gesture. “Yes, yes, you can stop talking now. Guards?”

A dozen swords are suddenly leveled at Zolf’s head. Carter goes very, very still. “Can we please run?” he hisses. “We are going to get killed.”

“Oi!” Zolf glares up at Sir Bertrand. “I’m tryin’ to have a conversation with you.”

“And I am in the middle of a tournament, which you have interrupted.” Sir Bertrand crosses his arms. “New rules: whoever kills the beast will be named champion. But do try to make it at least a little bit interesting. It’s so boring if you just do it right away.”

“Now hang on a minute—”

“Zolf, please, can we run? Like, now?”

The swords are closing in. Zolf sucks in air through his teeth. “Mm, bit too late for that, I think.”

Diplomacy is out, then. Fantastic. Plan B it is.

Zolf mutters a few words under his breath, lifts his walking stick with two hands, and slams it against the ground.

Lightning arcs down from the sky, connecting with the top of his walking stick and radiating out in all directions. It narrowly misses Carter, who yelps and darts out of the way just in time. It does, however, squarely hit every knight surrounded them in each bright and shining metal chestpiece.

The knights all drop to the ground, and Zolf wrinkles his nose. Ugh. He hates the smell of burnt flesh.

“Wow,” Carter says, staring at Zolf with wide eyes. “You—holy shit. Wow. You’re bloody terrifying, do you know that?”

“Yeah, thanks. Incoming!”

Carter turns just in time to dodge a sword aimed for the center of his back. He curses and wheels around again, and two knives that were definitely not there before are now gripped tightly in his hands. There are knights charging them from every direction—dozens of them, more than Zolf and Carter can take on one-on-one. Probably. Doesn’t mean he’s not going to try

“Got any more lightning bolts?” Carter says.

Zolf taps his walking stick on the ground. The glaive snaps out of the top and bursts into flames. “Sorry. Only got one a day.”

“Damn. I was afraid you were going to say that.” In the scant moments they have left, Carter flashes Zolf a wide grin. “Suppose we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way, then.”

The knights give a cry and raise their swords.

And Carter leaps onto a nearby barrel, then jumps neatly over the line of knights and lands safely on the other side.

Zolf groans. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

The knights are upon him. Zolf raises his glaive and, with an irritated sigh, swings it around in a circle.

Adamantine is a wonderful material. Rarer than rare, especially nowadays. They certainly aren’t making armor out of it. Which means it’s incredibly easy to slice through it like it’s made of paper.

The innermost ring of knights fall, and Zolf scans the remaining knights, picks the part of the crowd that looks weakest, and charges. A few of them flinch away—excellent—and the others get a burning glaive to the face—also excellent. And then Zolf is free, breaking through the ring of knights and running deeper into the arena.

Carter is perched atop what looks to be an overturned cart, spinning a knife on one finger. “See, I knew you could do it! You didn’t need my help.”

“Some backup you are!” Zolf snaps. “Knights! Dozens of them! Still coming for us!”

Carter sighs, then looks over Zolf’s shoulder and throws a knife so close to Zolf’s ear it makes him flinch. He turns around to see a knight staggering backwards, knife embedded in the little slot in his helmet.

He turns back, and Carter is wiggling the other knife at him, one eyebrow raised. “Happy?”

“With you? Unlikely.”

“Harsh! Tin can at six o’clock.”

Zolf turns around and stabs out with his glaive, getting the knight behind him right in the stomach. He pulls the blade out with a grimace, then eyes the crowd of rapidly approaching knights before turning and surveying the rest of the arena. He hears the shink of another knife striking true, and Carter says, “Hey, look—not to tell you how to fight or whatever, but maybe don’t turn your back on the enemy? Just saying.”

Zolf waves an absent hand at Carter. Come on, come on, he could’ve sworn he saw—yes, there! Perfect.

“Follow me,” Zolf says, and then he starts running across the arena.

Carter lets out a string of curses, but a moment later, Zolf hears a thump and the sound of footsteps chasing after him.

“So, what’s the plan?” Carter says, risking a nervous glance behind him. “Because there are about two dozen knights back there with very sharp swords, and I’ve only got one dagger left, and it’s not even a good one, so I really hope you have a plan.”

“I have a plan.”

“Great! What is it?”

“Just do what I tell you to do.”

“That’s not an answer, Zolf!”

“Well, it’s all you’re going to get!”

“Ugh! Can’t you just do another—I don’t know, magical attack thing?”

“What,” Zolf says through gritted teeth, “do you think I’m tryin’ to do?”

He reaches his destination—a sewer grate, set into the ground just beside one of the walls. It’s been unseasonably rainy lately, so … yes, perfect—the level is higher than normal, and Zolf can see the glimmer of water below. “Cover me,” he says. Then, he drops to his knees and begins tugging on the grate.

Carter makes a frustrated noise, then turns and pulls his last dagger from his boot. “‘Cover me, Carter,’” he says in a poor mockery of Zolf’s voice. “‘Yeah, you’ve only got one dagger left and are rubbish in face-to-face fights like this, but hey! I need to lift this grate real quick.’”

Zolf gets the grate free and sets it on the ground. He hasn’t been a sailor in so long, but he can still feel the pull of the water deep within his chest, calling to him. He puts a hand over the hole in the ground, closes his eyes, and exhales. “Carter?”

“For fuck’s sake, what?”

“Duck.”

Zolf mutters a few words, lifts his hand, opens his eyes, and points his palm out towards the sound of clanking footsteps.

And a wall of water explodes out of the sewer.

He doesn’t know if Carter ducked in time. All he can see is water, brown and brackish, stinking and horrible and wonderful, rushing up and up and up and crashing into the knights with the force of a hundred horse-drawn carriages. It carries them back across the arena, slams them into the opposite wall, into each other, flooding their suits of armor and getting inside their noses and mouths. Their swords come loose, swirling around in the eddies, before being sucked back and away as the water loses its force and distributes amongst the rest of the arena, soaking into the dirt and dribbling back down into the sewer from whence it came.

The knights, now disarmed, lie in heaps, groaning or unconscious. A few try to lift their heads, but none rise. Zolf exhales, drops his hand, and ignores how desperately thirsty he is. He can fix that later.

“Holy shit.” Carter’s voice is small and awed, coming from behind Zolf. How he got there, Zolf has no idea. “Are you a god? Genuine question. Please say yes.”

Zolf gets to his feet with a groan, using his glaive to help him keep his balance. “No.”

He takes another moment to catch his breath and survey the knights to make sure none of them are getting up. Then, he slowly turns to face the balcony.

Sir Bertrand is standing again, staring down into the arena with a look on his face that, even from this distance, Zolf can identify as startled. Around him, the crowd is alive, murmuring and tittering and generally in a state of unrest. Zolf takes a few steps closer to the balcony, grips his flaming glaive tightly, and tilts his chin up. “Looks like the tournament is over now,” he says. “So how about that conversation?”

Sir Bertrand glares down at him for a long moment. Then, he says, “Well, given that you’ve just destroyed all of my knights, I’d really rather not.”

Zolf holds up the glaive and points it at Sir Bertrand. “Yeah, that wasn’t a request.”

A guard on the balcony approaches and whispers something in Sir Bertrand’s ear. “No, no, that wouldn’t work,” Sir Bertrand says—gods, the man’s voice really does carry.

The guard whispers something else, more intently.

“Really? You don’t say.”

More whispering.

“Well! I quite like that. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it myself.”

Sir Bertrand clears his throat, then looks down at Zolf. Louder, he says, “Now, then, I’ve just had the most splendid idea! Let’s make a deal, hm? I have a quest for you, Borf—”

“It’s Zolf.”

“—a brave and noble quest of the utmost importance—”

“I’m not interested.”

“—that will bring honor to you and your family, but most importantly will benefit me, and probably won’t bring you much honor at all to be quite honest—”

“I’m already on a quest.”

“—but, of course, you will accept.”

“I really, really won’t. Look, I just want my land back. You’ve relocated a whole load of fairy-tale creatures onto it, and I want you to put them back where they came from and leave me in peace.”

“Hmmmm.” Sir Bertrand puts a hand on his chin. “Hmmmmmmmm—no, nope, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Doesn’t sound familiar in the slightest.”

“Yeah, well, you did. And you’re gonna fix it.”

Sir Bertrand looks down at Zolf for a moment, then claps his hands together. He’s wearing golden armor, so they make a loud clank when he does so. “How about this, Garf—”

“It’s Zolf.”

“—if you complete this quest for me, then I’ll ensure that your land is returned to you safe and sound and that the fairy-tale creatures are removed from the premises.”

Zolf narrows his eyes. “And returned to their rightful homes?”

Sir Bertrand waves a hand. “Yes, yes, of course. Do we have a deal?”

Zolf looks at Carter out of the corner of his eye. Carter looks back and, not very subtly at all, shakes his head.

Zolf turns back to Sir Bertrand and narrows his eyes. “… What sort of quest?”

Chapter Text

“I don’t like this.”

Zolf sighs. “Yes, you’ve said. About a dozen times already.”

“Yeah, and I stand by it.” Carter kicks a rock. It goes skittering across the road, disappearing into the underbrush. “We’re just going to go to this random castle in the middle of nowhere, guarded by lava and a dragon, and rescue some prince who’s trapped in”—Carter wrinkles his nose and puts on a mocking impression of Sir Bertrand’s voice—“‘The highest room of the tallest tower’?”

“No,” Zolf says, “we’re walking out into the middle of nowhere just for fun.”

“Hey, don’t get sarcastic with me! It’s a stupid plan.”

“It’s an arrangement. I give Sir Bertrand his prince, and in return, you all get to go home. I thought you’d be happy!”

Carter tactfully does not mention that he was homeless before the relocation. “I mean, yeah, sure, great. If he keeps his word. Which, you know.” Carter wiggles his hand from side to side. “Fifty-fifty chance of that.”

“Well, I am going to keep my word.” Zolf continues to stomp forward down the path. Carter’s pretty sure he stomps everywhere, actually. Maybe it’s just the way he walks. “You don’t have to come.”

Carter grumbles and kicks another rock, then picks up the pace until he’s walking by Zolf’s side. “And miss this absolutely thrilling journey? Nah, no way. Besides, who’s gonna have your back in a fight if I’m not there?”

Zolf snorts. “Yeah, sure. Remind me who took out the majority of those knights?”

“Hey, you’re the one who said ‘cover me,’ okay? I covered you! Quite well, if I do say so myself.”

Carter pulls out a dagger and begins twirling it in the air. Zolf eyes it warily. “When you cut off a finger, I ain’t healing you.”

They break free from the tree cover and begin wading through a field of sunflowers as tall as Carter’s shoulders. The flies are atrocious, and he lets his tail grow out so he can use it to flick the nasty buggers away from the back of his neck. Zolf’s tail appears to be doing the same, and Carter grins and nudges Zolf’s side with an elbow. “Look at the two of us, eh? We’re a lean mean fighting machine! You’ve got your magic, and I’ve got my knives, and we’ve both got that ‘rugged rebel half-beast, on the run from the law’ thing going for us.”

“I am not on the run,” Zolf grumbles. “I’ve got a home, and I’m quite happy with it, and I’ll be even happier when I can get back to it.” He scrubs a hand across his face. “Gods, it’s probably a disaster by now. I’m gonna have a lot of rebuilding to do.”

“Nah, I’m sure it’s fine.”

Zolf gives Carter a sidelong look. “Really.”

“Eh, probably not. But it will be!”

“Thanks,” Zolf says dryly. “I feel much better now.”

“Hey, what are friends for?”

Zolf says nothing in response. He says nothing very, very loudly. Carter glances at him out of the corner of his eye, sees the expression on his face, then looks forward again.

Right. Of course. Not friends. His mistake.

They walk in silence for a few moments. Carter’s never been good at silence. It always feels so … oppressive. He twirls his dagger a few times, then begins to whistle. It’s a nice song, a jaunty sea shanty he picked up a few years back. He quite likes it.

Zolf pushes aside another sunflower and says, “Carter, please. D’you mind not whistling?”

Carter stops whistling. Swats aside a sunflower with a bit more force than necessary. It swings back and smacks him in the face. Through a mouthful of pollen, Carter says, “Fine! Fine.” He searches for a good topic of conversation. Comes up blank. Looks at Zolf’s tail again. “So. How’d you end up stuck mid-shift? Assuming, of course, that the tail and hooves and such aren’t just a fashion statement.”

Zolf huffs. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

Carter wipes the pollen from his face. “So we’re just going to walk in silence, then?”

“Yep.”

“Fine,” Carter says sulkily. “We’ll walk in silence. Good. Great.”

“Great.”

They walk in silence for about five minutes before Carter’s boredom once again reaches critical mass. He twirls his knife between his fingers and then, casually, starts to whistle again.

“Oh, for the love of—Carter!”

“Has anyone ever told you,” Carter says, amused, “that you’re incredibly grumpy?”

Zolf smacks a sunflower out of the way. “Oh, shut up.”

Carter’s grin widens, and he follows Zolf gleefully through the flowers.

The day wears on. The sun is hot overhead, and Carter is thoroughly out of breath and sunburnt to all hell by the time the grass turns to burnt brown dirt and the trees disappear completely. The ground slopes up and up and up, growing rockier and more difficult to traverse, and Carter hesitates, trying to decide if hooves or hands are more beneficial here.

“Come on,” Zolf says, already halfway up the incline, and Carter swears and clambers up after him.

“We’ve got to be almost there,” Carter pants as he climbs. “Really, I mean, we’ve been walking for days now, Zolf. And this looks very ‘horrible castle surrounded by lava,’ doesn’t it? All the rocks and the dirt and—” Carter wrinkles his nose and glares up at Zolf. “Oi, what’s that smell? Was that you? If you’re going to let one go, at least give a man a warning.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Or, you know, point yourself in a direction where I’m not directly downwind of you.”

“I said, it wasn’t me!”

“Oh, what—the dirt here just happens to smell like the backside of a bull?”

Zolf pokes his head over the top of the hill. “No, it’s not the dirt.”

Carter scowls. “So it was you!” He crawls up beside Zolf, glaring at him.

Zolf gives Carter a withering stare. “Yes, Carter, you’re right, that smell is absolutely me and definitely not the huge river of boiling lava.”

He points, and Carter looks. Ah. Right. That’s … Carter’s never seen a river of lava before. He never really wanted to. He still doesn’t. He really doesn’t want to be here in general, actually.

“I guess we’re here,” he says weakly.

Zolf nods. “I guess so.”

Carter gulps. “Good! Good. Great. This is … great. Big ol’ castle sunken into the ground, surrounded by lava, with a dragon hiding inside of it. Why the hell are we here, Zolf?!”

Zolf exhales. “To save my garden.”

Then, he climbs over the top of the hill and begins skidding down the other side.

“We are both going to die,” Carter says, to nobody in particular. Then, he follows Zolf down the hill.

Zolf is standing before a horrible-looking rope bridge that goes from the ledge they’re standing on to the rocky island the castle is built upon. His hands are on his hips as he surveys it. Carter edges a bit closer, looks down into the pit of boiling lava, then backs away again. “Do not tell me we’re walking on that.”

“Unless you see another way across.”

Carter surveys the area. The ledge they’re on isn’t very big, and it melts into the side of the hill in either direction. There is, indeed, only one bridge. This one. This very wooden, very rickety bridge. With rope handles. It’s swaying slightly. Carter gulps. “You know,” he says, “maybe if we just went back up the hill and walked around, there might be another way in! You know, something that isn’t going to immediately kill us.”

“I mean. It’s not the bridge that’ll kill us.”

“You know what I mean!”

Zolf exhales, then squares his shoulders. “Well, I suppose there’s no use standing around chattin’ about it.” He steps forward and grips the ropes tightly with both hands. “You leadin’ or followin’?”

Carter looks at the bridge, looks at the castle, then takes a seat on the ground. “Sitting. I’m sitting. Right here until you come back.”

Zolf lets go of the ropes and turns back around. “Hey now, what happened to being my backup?”

Carter shakes his head and crosses his arms. “‘S not worth it. I like not burning alive.”

“It’s plenty sturdy! Look, see?” Zolf reaches out and shakes one of the ropes. The bridge begins to swing wildly back and forth. It makes an ominous creaking noise. A few of the wooden slats shift.

“You are really, really not making the point you think you’re making.”

Zolf sighs. “Fine! I’m not gonna drag you across kicking and screaming.” He turns back to the bridge. “Suppose I’ll just have to keep all the gold for myself, then.”

Oh, no. That’s obviously bait. No way Carter’s falling for that. No way in hell.

Carter worries his bottom lip between his teeth. Looks away. Looks back at Zolf. Purses his lips. “… Gold?”

Zolf ties his walking stick to his back and grips the poles holding the ropes in place. “You know. The dragon’s horde. All dragons have ‘em. Gold and jewels and all kinds of valuable stuff.”

No, nope, no way, Carter isn’t listening to this. He isn’t hearing how much money lies inside that castle. He isn’t thinking about the fact that the only coin he has to his name is a single gold piece squirreled away in his boot. He definitely isn’t considering just how much things he could buy with a handful of big, red rubies.

This is not happening.

Zolf starts down the bridge. It sways as he walks but ultimately remains intact. Carter eyes him until he reaches the halfway point, waiting to see if he falls. He doesn’t.

Ugh. Carter really, really shouldn’t follow.

Carter glances at the castle again, groans in defeat, and stands. “Fuck’s sake. Wait for me!”

. . .

Carter does not fall into a pit of boiling lava. Hurray.

Zolf, waiting for him on the other side, gives Carter a smug little grin that he does not care for in the slightest and says, “See? You survived.”

Carter grimaces. “Yeah, for now. We’ve still got to fight a dragon.”

The grin vanishes. “Yeah,” Zolf sighs, looking up at the castle before them. “Not looking forward to that bit.”

Zolf pulls his walking stick from his back, then makes his way into the castle. “Really?” Carter says, following close behind. “But you’ve got, like, real magic. You could probably take a dragon down easy.”

Zolf shakes his head. “Dragons are usually resistant to magic. Ain’t gonna be that simple. And besides, my plan isn’t to fight the dragon.”

Carter frowns. “What?”

Zolf pauses just before rounding a corner, holding up a hand to get Carter to pause as well. He slowly peers around it, then nods and waves Carter on. In a more hushed tone, he says, “I want to avoid it entirely. No confrontation, no killin’. Of us or the dragon.”

“Oh, I’m down with that. Avoiding confrontation, that’s my middle name!” Carter slips a dagger into his hand, though. Just in case. “You know, I’ve never seen a dragon before. Not common, especially around these parts. But!” Carter pokes Zolf in the arm. Zolf flinches. “Did you know that apparently, there are some polymorphs who can turn into dragons? Man, what I wouldn’t give to be able to turn into a dragon. Donkey’s fine, but, you know, it’s not very sexy. A dragon? Now that’s sexy. You could just fly around and stomp people, and nobody would ever be able to tell you what to do, ‘cause you’d just burn ‘em alive or eat ‘em or something. You know, that reminds me of a time when—”

“Carter.” Zolf reaches out and claps a hand over Carter’s mouth. “Shut. Up. This is a stealth mission.”

Carter rolls his eyes. “Yeah, like you’ve ever been stealthy in your life, Mr. Great Big Hooves and Walking Stick,” he says against Zolf’s hand.

Zolf scowls and removes his hand. “Didn’t catch that, but I’m sure it was insulting.”

“I was just saying how you’re the pinnacle of silence. A real master at the art of going undetected. Like a ghost! Truly, nobody could ever possibly hear you coming—”

“All right, you’ve made your point.” Zolf sighs and points his walking stick at Carter. “Look, how about this: we split up. I’ll go this way—” Zolf points to the big open hallways they’ve been walking through. “—and you can go that way.” He points to a side corridor that looks like it leads further into the castle. “If there’s anything here, it’ll hear me comin’ from a mile away, so we’ll be at more of an advantage if they don’t know you’re skulking about as well. And remember: we’re looking for the highest room of the tallest tower. If you see stairs, climb them. Got it?”

Carter gives Zolf an elaborate salute. “Aye aye, captain. When you get eaten alive, I’ll remember you fondly.”

“Thanks,” Zolf says dryly. “I’ll meet you back here in an hour or so if we haven’t found anything, okay? And if you hear screaming—run.”

Well, that’s cheery. Carter grimaces. “Way ahead of you.”

Zolf nods once, then turns and continues walking down the corridor. Carter sighs. Glances around them. Sees a suit of armor lying near the wall, visor pulled back, skull on full display. Shudders.

Well then. Shadowy hallway it is.

Carter turns and heads deeper into the castle.

The hallways here probably used to be carpeted, but it’s long-since been trampled down into nothing. The shadows of once-pictures line the walls, and there are a few tables knocked over at random intervals. A rat skitters across the hallway, burrowing into a hole in the wall and disappearing. There are cobwebs everywhere. It’s creepy as hell.

After five minutes, it’s less creepy.

After ten, it’s just sort of there.

After fifteen, Carter is thoroughly bored.

He flips a dagger up in the air and catches it with a sigh, then throws it at the wall right in the middle of a mysterious stain. He tests how high he can toss it before it embeds itself in the ceiling, then stands there waiting for it to fall before resigning himself to chucking a hunk of rock at it to knock it loose. He throws the dagger again, as far as he can, watching it disappear into the gloom ahead of him.

He expects to hear it thunk as it hits the wall, or even the floor, but it doesn’t.

Carter sighs. Shit, did he accidentally throw it out a window or something? He just got that one! Good daggers are hard to come by when you haven’t got any money, and he was pretty fond of the hiltwork on this one. Maybe it landed on a patch of carpet or something. It can’t have just vanished.

Carter continues down the hall, scanning the floor for his dagger. So he doesn’t see the one coming towards him until it sails so close to his face that it shaves some of the hair off his moustache before embedding itself in the wall behind him.

Carter startles so badly that he transforms. Horrible habit, really—he’s trying to break himself out of it. It’s not going well. He lands on all fours and immediately shrinks against the wall, eyeing his surroundings warily.

His eyesight is better in this form than it is when he’s human, but he can still barely see anything. He thinks he spots something moving in the shadows, and he flattens his ears back against his head and makes the most threatening noise that he can in this form. It sounds like a cross between a honk and a croak, which is … not great. Gods, why couldn’t he have been a fucking dragon?

There’s a pause. Then, a voice, quiet and a bit awkward, says, “Er. Sorry, mate. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Another pause. “Well. I did mean to scare you, actually. Didn’t mean to make you go all … donkey, though. That was an accident.”

Carter narrows his eyes. He swears, if he squints, that he can see a shape in the shadows a little bit further down the hallway. It’s proper hard, though; she’s nearly invisible.

Well, probably best if he’s able to talk as well. Carter shifts back into human form, and there is no way to make that look cool or graceful but damn if he doesn’t try. “Er. Hello. Do you … live … here?” He hesitates. “You’re not … the prince, are you? I thought you were meant to be in a tower of some sort.”

A beat. Then, the figure laughs, a bit longer than Carter thinks is really necessary. “The prince? Nah, mate. I ain’t no prince. Ain’t no princess, either.”

And then—

See, now, Carter will swear up and down that he saw movement in front of him. He swears that whoever threw that dagger at him, she was still a good distance down the hall. He’s positive! He’d bet his life on it!

Carter swallows and feels the blade that’s now pressed to his throat shift, just shy of drawing blood. Well. He might not have much more life to bet, now that he thinks about it.

In the distance, Carter hears the roar of something very big and very dragony, and he winces.

He should have stayed on the other side of the bridge.

Chapter Text

Wilde’s in the middle of a less-than-fruitful writing session when he hears the roar.

He pauses, quill poised just above the inkwell. The tower trembles, as it always does when Barnes decides to take a stroll in his dragon form. A single drop of ink drips from the quill’s tip and splashes into the pool below.

So there’s another one, then.

Wilde sighs, taps his quill on the rim of the inkwell, and continues writing. Early on in his time here, he’d snap to immediate attention every time there was even the slightest hint of a knight within the castle walls. He’d scramble to put on his best clothes, tidy his hair, check his anti-magic cuff and then double-check it just in case, apply a quick bit of foundation and eyeliner, fetch the week’s bouquet from the vase on the side table, and lie down in bed. The picture-perfect prince in the highest room of the tallest tower, beautiful and pristine and ready for true love’s kiss.

Wilde still believes in true love’s kiss, of course. But everything else…

Well. He doesn’t really bother with it anymore. Nobody ever makes it up this far. Wilde would accuse Barnes of doing his job a little bit too well, but … it has to be done right. Otherwise, the person who pulls Wilde out of this horrible, horrible place won’t be his true love, and this will have all been for nothing.

If that person ever comes.

Another roar, closer this time. The tower shakes again, a bit of dust falling from the ceiling. Wilde wrinkles his nose and glares up at it. Honestly, this place is falling apart. It’s kept standing through some magical spell or another, but standing does not mean in peak condition, and its age is starting to show. Gods, how Wilde longs for an actual castle with actual beds and actual people. And maybe a garden. What Wilde wouldn’t give for a garden.

He has been here for much, much too long.

… Hold on. Is that shouting?

Wilde cocks his head and stops writing. It’s quiet for a long moment. And then…

Yes! It is! It’s shouting! Somebody is close enough that Wilde can hear them shouting! That hasn’t happened for—gods, years. Usually, Barnes herds them close enough to the entrance that he can just dump their bodies in the lava. And if they get past Barnes, then, well. Sasha usually takes care of those.

But now. Shouting.

Wilde sets down his quill. Caps his bottle of ink. Looks at the absolute mess that is his desk. Hesitates.

There’s another roar, and this one is quite close indeed.

He really, really shouldn’t be getting his hopes up.

Wilde hesitates another moment. Then, he begins stuffing papers into his backpack—half-finished drafts, the novella he’s in the middle of editing, copies of manuscripts he’d handed off to Barnes years ago to get published under the pen name of a childhood friend. Anything he can think of, into the enchanted bag it goes, vanishing into Wilde’s own little pocket dimension. He’s probably going to have to empty it out again in an hour, when he realizes that nothing is happening and nobody is coming, but…

He can’t help it. Even after all this time. Perhaps it’s because he so badly wants to be rid of this place, or perhaps it’s because he can tell Barnes is tired too, or perhaps it’s because he never quite managed to snuff out that little spark of hope inside of him, or perhaps it’s because he really does believe in the power of true love. But something tells him he should be ready to go. That today’s the day.

Wilde finishes with his desk, then moves on to his vanity. Powders, rouges, liners, brushes—into the bag. He opens his wardrobe, considers for a moment, then chooses a few shirts and trousers that he knows travel well along with the necessary undergarments. He slips on his best shoes, then looks at himself in the mirror and grimaces. Oh, no. Surely there’s enough time to at least do something about his hair.

Wilde’s just finishing up when he hears another roar—this one so close that it rattles the windows.

A moment passes. Wilde holds his breath.

And then something crashes through the roof of his room.

Wilde yelps and throws his hairbrush at it.

The something, now puddled in a heap on the ground, groans, and—oh. Oh. That’s a man. He’s encased in black, swirling armor—some sort of spell?—and he’s just beginning to stir.

Wilde blinks at him once. Twice. Then, he panics, turns around, and throws himself onto his bed.

Shit, shit, shit.

Wilde has been waiting for ten years. He is not going to fuck this up.

The man groans again and sits up, facing away from Wilde. Wilde quickly lies down—knees together, hands crossed atop his chest, hair arranged artfully around his head. Thank the gods he decided to make his bed this morning. Now he just needs—

Shit. There’s no bouquet—he stopped asking Barnes to bring them years ago. There’s a potted plant within reach, but—no, that’s stupid.

The stranger stands.

Quickly, Wilde grabs a book from his nightstand and clutches it to his chest. His heart is pounding and he feels shaky and nervous, like he’s 25 again and lying here for the very first time. He’s gotten very good at putting on airs, though, so he manages to close his eyes and school his expression into one of restful slumber

He hears footsteps, coming closer. The man has seen him. Wilde’s true love is here, now, and he’s seen him. Does he think Wilde’s pretty? Of course he does—he’s Wilde’s true love. What does he look like? Is he handsome, tall, strong, rugged? Gods, Wilde hopes so. He deserves it after everything he’s been through.

The footsteps stop, right by Wilde’s bedside. Wilde resists the urge to hold his breath. He does not resist the urge to pucker his lips ever so slightly, though. He’s always enjoyed a little bit of drama.

The man shifts, and Wilde feels the increasing proximity as he leans down, down, down, and…

“Oi!” A hand grasps Wilde’s shoulder and shakes him vigorously. Wilde’s eyes fly open and he lets out a startled gasp, thrown completely off his rhythm. “Wake up! It’s time to go.”

Wilde is so stunned that he’s temporarily left speechless. The face of Wilde’s true love is obscured by the magic helmet—disappointing—but Wilde can see a pair of green eyes watching him from the darkness within. The man’s hand is still on his shoulder, and the book is on the floor now, flung there by Wilde’s instinctive thrashing after being so rudely awoken.

Indignation overtakes surprise, and Wilde finds his voice again. “Did you just shake me?” he asks, affronted.

The man sighs, shifts so he’s gripping Wilde’s forearm instead, and yanks him to his feet. Wilde goes, flabbergasted. Every bit of nerves and anxiety and anticipation have fled his body to make space for complete and utter bewilderment. “We don’t have time for this. Let’s go, come on.”

“No, hold on, wait a moment. You shook me.”

“And I’ll do it again if you don’t get movin’.” The man begins dragging Wilde towards the door.

“Hold on just a—hey! Let go of me!”

The man does not. Wilde has just enough freedom of movement to grab his backpack from beside the armoire and mournfully eye his hairbrush, lying amidst a pile of rubble out of reach, before he’s out the door and onto the top of the stairs.

… He’s … he’s out the door. And onto the top of the stairs.

He’s out of the tower.

It stuns him, sending him into a haze as the man tugs him down the spiral staircase. (And down, and down, and down—goodness, Wilde had forgotten how high up he was.) His backpack is slung over his shoulder, bouncing with every step, and he hasn’t breathed air that wasn’t part of that room for ten years, and he’s out. He’s free! His true love is finally here, rescuing him!

… His true love is clomping down the stairs, dragging Wilde bodily behind him.

They’ve reached the bottom, and Wilde—once again with his wits about him—digs his heels into the ground and says, “Now wait just a minute.”

The man sighs and stops. He turns to face Wilde but doesn’t let go of Wilde’s wrist. “What now?”

Wilde straightens up and slips on an easy, demure smile that he knows is guaranteed to capture the hearts of every man, woman, and otherwise. “I simply must thank you for rescuing me from my terrible prison. Every day has been a burden—oh, an absolute burden! But they were all worth it, knowing that it was you, brave knight, who would come to save me.”

The man blinks at him. “Uh. You’re … welcome?”

Wilde smiles coyly and puts his free hand on the man’s bicep, looking at him through his eyelashes. “As I’m sure you know, my name is Oscar Wilde, crown prince of Ireland. If you might do me the honor of introducing yourself as well?”

“Er.” The man shifts in place, clearly uncomfortable. Wilde fights back a frown. This normally works. Why isn’t it working? Oh, gods, has he lost his touch? Please, anything but that. “Zolf. Zolf Smith. Charmed?”

Zolf. Bit odd, but perhaps it’s a family name. Well, regardless. Wilde gives Zolf a winning smile. “I assure you, Sir Zolf, that the pleasure is all mine.”

He slips his hand into Zolf’s, lifts it to his lips, and kisses the back of it.

Zolf pulls his hand away so quickly you’d have though Wilde was wearing lipstick made of acid. “Okay, not doing that. We’re leaving, now, mister—prince—Wilde. I ain’t sticking around to get burnt to a crisp by a big scaly beast, and you’re comin’ with me.”

“Of course,” Wilde says, confused. “Where else would I go? You’re rescuing me.”

Zolf nods. “Good. Great. Let’s go.”

They take a few more steps before Zolf’s words register, and Wilde digs his heels in again, bringing the both of them to a halt.

Zolf wheels around, glaring. “What?! What could you possibly need now?”

Oh, Wilde does not care to be shouted at, thank you very much, true love or not. He glares back. “I’m sorry, am I supposed to not react to the fact that you apparently did not slay the dragon?”

Not that Wilde wants Barnes to die. He’s grown quite fond of the man over the past decade or so. But unfortunately, Barnes is magically, contractually bound to stop anybody from coming in or out of this castle who means to remove Wilde from its premises. At any cost.

“I’m working on it,” Zolf hisses. “Now, come on.”

He begins dragging Wilde again. Wilde tries to resist, but Zolf must not have been trying very hard before. Wilde learns two things:

One. Zolf is, apparently, very strong.

Two. Wilde is, apparently, into that.

Still, Wilde begins struggling even harder when he realizes that instead of heading for the front door, Zolf is leading him further into the castle. “I don’t mean to be rude,” Wilde hisses, “but the front door is that way.”

Zolf sighs. “I know. Can’t leave yet, though.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Why the hell not?” Wilde smacks Zolf’s arm with his free hand. Zolf doesn’t react in the slightest. “I thought you said we were leaving!”

Zolf scrubs a hand across his face. “We are. Eventually. I just … ugh. Gods help me. I need to go fetch the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever met. Assuming he hasn’t already been killed.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, right. The biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever met, besides you.”

Wilde makes an affronted noise. “I would like to go on record and state that this is by far the worst rescue I’ve ever had the displeasure of enduring.”

“Happy to be of service,” Zolf says dryly. “Now, come on. We’re getting Carter, and then we’re getting out of here.”

Wilde blinks. “Who the hell is Carter?”

Chapter Text

Carter has been in his fair share of sticky situations, but none quite as sticky as this one.

“Hey now,” he says, trying not to move lest he inadvertently cut his own throat open. “Is that really necessary?”

“Yes.”

“O … kay! Can I ask why?”

“You’re not supposed to be here. I don’t know you; I don’t know if you’re a threat or not.”

“Not a threat!” Carter says quickly. “Very much not a threat. Honestly, I don’t even want to be here. I’m just moral support for the other guy. He’s the one trying to rescue the prince.”

Another roar. The stranger sighs. “Aw man, now Barnes is all agitated. We were gonna play poker tonight.” The pressure of the knife increases slightly. “You ruined our poker game.”

“How was I supposed to know?” Carter squeaks. A beat. “Sorry, you named your dragon Barnes?”

The stranger huffs a laugh. “Mate, he’s not my or anyone’s dragon. And he named himself Barnes.” A pause. “Well, no, his parents did.” Another pause. “Well, Barnes is his last name, actually—James is his first name. James Barnes. He’s my mate.” She sounds a little smug about it.

Something clicks in Carter’s mind. “Ohhhhhh. He’s a polymorph?”

“Yeah. Real badass one, too. Lucky bastard. Though, I suppose he ended up trapped here, so maybe not so lucky.”

Carter laughs, a little nervously. “I know the feeling.”

The stranger shifts, the knife beginning to cut into his skin, and Carter says quickly, “So, daggers, huh? I like daggers too! Lost most of my proper ones—hard to go back for ‘em when you throw ‘em at someone you’re running from—but I managed to get some half-decent substitutes” He chances a look downward and just barely makes out the edge of a hilt. It’s plainly carved, but there’s a symbol on it Carter recognizes. “This one’s a Damascan adamantine blade, yeah? New cut, from Ratchet’s? Facet … 6? Or maybe 7—it’s hard to tell from this angle. Hah.”

The stranger hesitates, clearly clocking the distraction tactic. Carter holds his breath.

“… Yeah. Facet 7.”

The pressure of the blade lessens, enough for him to breathe. Phew. “Wow—that’s a rare one. I’ve been wanting one for ages now. Managed to get my hand on Facet 4—decent, but, you know, not the best—but they took it from me when I got arrested.”

“Arrested?” The pressure lessens further. “What for?”

“Oh, you know.” Carter lets his ears grow. “Not the most popular guy around nowadays.” A pause. “I was also stealing. A little bit. No big deal.”

The stranger is silent for a moment. Then, slowly, the dagger pulls away from Carter’s throat entirely. He rubs at the tender skin there, then turns to face the stranger. He still can’t quite make out her features; she’s wearing all black, with a dark mop of hair on her head, and her face is blanketed in shadows. “Yeah,” she says, spinning the dagger between her fingers. “I know what that’s like.”

Carter studies her a moment longer. His eyes go to her ears; even in the low light, he can tell that they’re much longer than human ears are, with sharp points. Elven.

He notes as she flips the dagger that she’s missing the ring finger on her left hand. He doesn’t ask.

Instead, he says, “So. What other sorts of daggers do you have?”

The stranger says nothing for a moment. Then, she tucks her dagger inside her coat and says, “Oh, loads.”

. . .

Barnes did not mean to send that knight smashing directly through the roof of Wilde’s room, but he also can’t say that he isn’t a little bit relieved.

Finally. Maybe this will finally be the one who gets Wilde out of this place and sets all of them free.

Barnes shifts out of his dragon form. Waits to see if he’ll be compelled to chase after the stranger. Sighs with relief when he isn’t, then continues on foot into the castle, towards where he and Sasha spend most of their time.

Hell, who knows. Maybe they’ll still be able to do that poker game they had planned.

He’s been here far too long. That’s the crux of it, really. He took this job heartbroken, fresh off the loss of the man he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with. Couldn’t stand to be on the ocean anymore, not after the wreck. Couldn’t stand to be in society at all, really. Everywhere he went, everyone he saw, everything he did—it all reminded him of what he’d lost.

So he’d come here. And if he’d been here for a few months, or a year, or hell, maybe even two, it would’ve been fine. He was still sort of okay with the prospect of dying at the hands of some brave and muscular knight who would sweep Prince Wilde off his feet and carry him off to have their own happily ever after. But then one year had turned into two, and two had turned into three, and three had turned into four and five and eight and ten. The grief had dulled, softened by time and isolation into an ache that is hardly more than a bruise occasionally poked. And now…

Well. If Sasha hadn’t showed up around year two or so, Barnes is pretty sure he would have lost his mind out here. He has no idea how Wilde has remained sane.

(Though Barnes is pretty sure he’s heard Wilde talking to himself on more than one occasion, so. Perhaps he hasn’t.)

In any case. Barnes is ready to be gone. He would have been gone much, much sooner than this if it weren’t for the magical contract keeping him bound. Even now, he can feel it itching beneath his skin, telling him that somebody is here, trying to rescue Wilde, and that he needs to stop them.

He will. Probably. Most definitely. As soon as he sees them escaping. If he sees them escaping. For all he knows, Wilde’s refused to go. That would be just his luck.

The back of Barnes’ neck itches. He dusts off the lingering scales—honestly, he never used to shed this much when he was younger—before opening the door that leads to his chambers and stepping inside.

Two heads turn to look at him, and Barnes freezes. “Uh,” he says eloquently.

Sasha, on the right, gives Barnes a nod. “Hey, Barnes. All done, then?”

The stranger, on the left, lights up. “This is Barnes?” He gives Barnes a once-over. Raises an eyebrow. Grins. “You didn’t say he was handsome.”

What.

“What?” Sasha says, giving the stranger a truly baffled look. “Is he?” She looks over at Barnes, bewildered.

“I’m sorry,” Barnes says, “have I missed something?”

The stranger gives a little wave. “Hello! Name’s Howard, Howard Carter. You can call me Carter. Or Howard. Or darling. Whatever you’d like. I’m here with the…” He jabs a thumb over his shoulder, like that’s supposed to explain anything. Then, he frowns. “Aw, you didn’t eat him, did you? He wasn’t that bad of a guy, really. A bit grumpy, sure, but a hell of a cook.”

Oh. The knight. “No,” Barnes says awkwardly. “He, uh. Well. I think he’s probably rescuing the prince right about now.”

Sasha’s eyes shoot up to her hairline. “Really? Somebody finally managed to get past you? We get to leave?”

“Well.” Barnes rubs the back of his neck. “I may have. Er. Accidentally … thrown him through Wilde’s roof. Meant to, you know. Just sort of … into the lava, but. Miscalculated, a bit. He’s heavier than he looks.”

Sasha laughs. “You did what? Oh, gods, I wish I coulda seen the look on Wilde’s face.” She taps the ground next to her. “Well, then, come sit down, yeah? We were just about to start a round of cards; it’ll be better with three.”

Barnes hesitates. Looks at Carter. Sasha must see the distrust on his face, because she says, “Nah, mate, he’s fine. Cheats, of course, but that’s just the right way to play cards. You’re the one who always insists on honesty and integrity. Makes it proper boring to play with you. Plus, he’s got some sick daggers. Oh, oh, show him the one that fits in your cuff!”

Carter flicks his right hand, and the next thing Barnes knows, there’s a blade between his fingers, paper-thin but wickedly sharp. He flips it around a few times, tosses it up in the air and catches it behind his back, then holds it hilt-first for Barnes to take. “Not sure if you’re a knife kinda guy, but if you want to take a look?”

Barnes worries his bottom lip between his teeth. He really shouldn’t. He should probably guard the bottom of the tower stairs, wait for the prince and his knight in shining armor to appear. He should almost certainly not sit down with one of the people who came to rescue Wilde in the first place.

But. Well. There’s no compulsion gripping him right now, forcing him to enact its will. And it has been so incredibly boring here lately. A change of pace is desperately needed.

“Okay,” Barnes says, stepping forward and taking the knife from Carter before sitting down beside him. “Just one round.”

Chapter Text

This is easily one of the most irritating days of Zolf’s life.

Not the worst. He’s been shipwrecked twice; he lost his legs and nearly drowned the second time. This isn’t that by any stretch. He’s even managed to get his walking stick back—found it next to the base of the tower, dropped there when he was flung through the roof by a great big dragon. But most irritating? Yeah, it’s up there—right next to the day Zolf met Carter.

Wilde’s wrist feels thin and brittle where it’s gripped in Zolf’s hand. Zolf is trying not to squeeze it too tightly, because he doesn’t want to hurt the guy. Even if he won’t fucking shut up.

“I simply think,” Wilde says, “that I am entitled to know what your plan is in this situation, given that I am an unwilling participant in it.”

“Sorry,” Zolf says, “do you want me to put you back in that tower?”

Wilde huffs. “I’m just saying that I ought to be treated with a bit more respect. I am a prince, after all.”

Zolf takes a deep breath. Lets it out slowly. “We are going,” he says slowly, “to find Carter. We are avoiding the dragon. And then we are leaving.”

“That is not a plan.”

“Well, it’s all I’ve got.”

He continues walking. Wilde continues resisting. Is it going to be like this the entire journey home? Zolf doesn’t know if he can stand it. Maybe he should just cast sleep on Wilde and be done with it.

“Would you please just listen to me!” Wilde says. “If the dragon is still around, and if he’s found Carter, you are both in serious danger. We cannot just stomp around with no care at all for stealth or strategy.”

“It’s been working so far!” Zolf yanks open a door harder than strictly necessary and pulls Wilde through it. “If the dragon has found Carter, where would he be keeping him?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

Zolf only mostly fights back a groan. “Because you live here?”

“Correction: I live in the tower,” Wilde says tightly. “Which I haven’t left for ten years. You’ll forgive me if I don’t know where my guard keeps his bed chambers.”

“You—” Zolf stops walking. Turns to face Wilde. Squints at him. “Ten years?”

Wilde sets his jaw and looks at Zolf, expression unwavering. “Yes.”

“You sat in that room for ten years.”

“Yes.”

“Never left? Not even once?”

“Does ‘yes’ mean something different where you’re from?”

Pity tries to curl in Zolf’s stomach. He doesn’t let it. “Why? Why would you do that?”

Something flashes across Wilde’s face, there and gone before Zolf can name it. “Does it matter?”

Yeah, a little bit, Zolf wants to say. But, well. It really doesn’t, actually. He’s here to retrieve Wilde and bring him back to Sir Bertrand, and in exchange, Zolf will finally get some godsdamned peace and quiet. It’s not long back to London—a few days at most. It’s not like he wants or needs to know Wilde’s whole life story.

… He’s a bit curious, though.

No, they don’t have time for this right now. “No,” Zolf says. “I guess not. Come on.”

This time, when Zolf leads Wilde through the castle, Wilde goes willingly.

It’s not long before Zolf catches something just on the edge of his hearing. He pauses, and Wilde pauses too. Zolf sees Wilde open his mouth, and he holds up a hand. Wilde scowls but closes his mouth again. Zolf’s hearing is a bit muffled in this armor, but…

Yeah, that’s voices. He thinks he even recognizes Carter.

“Come on,” Zolf whispers. “I can hear him.”

At the end of the hallway sits a wooden door. The voices are definitely coming from behind it. Zolf grips his walking stick tightly and mutters a few words under his breath. The flaming glaive appears, and in the flickering light, Zolf sees Wilde’s eyes widen for just a moment before he schools his expression into something blank and unaffected.

Makes sense. The guy probably hasn’t seen a lot of magic in his life.

“Stay behind me,” Zolf whispers. Then, slowly, he opens the door.

The room on the other side is spacious and looks to have once been some sort of sitting room. Half-broken furniture lines the walls, and an unlit fireplace sits at the far end, the bricks pitted and crumbling. A threadbare rug covers most of the stone floor, and atop it are a few pieces of furniture that look newer—a few chairs, a couch, a low table with books and wooden boxes stacked atop it.

Carter is lounging in one of the chairs, paused mid-gesture with a hand that’s holding a few playing cards.

On the couch next to him, two people Zolf doesn’t recognized are sat, also holding cards.

All three have stopped talking and are staring directly at him.

“Er,” Zolf says.

Carter squints at him, apparently finally clocks who he’s looking at, and breaks out into a grin. “Hey, Zolf!” He waves at him with the cards. “Long time no see. Cool armor! Is that a spell?”

Zolf glares at him and steps into the room, towing Wilde behind him. “Yeah. Because I was actually putting some effort into this instead of sittin’ around playing card games.”

He keeps on eye on the strangers. As Wilde comes into view, Zolf sees the expressions on their faces change. The pale one wearing black looks startled, then curious, studying Wilde’s face the same way one might study a particularly rare and interesting gemstone. The other one, a moderately windswept-looking man with long hair tied up in a neat bun, looks perhaps the most profoundly weary that it is possible for a person to look.

“Oi,” Carter says, affronted. “Says the man who was literally thrown directly at the feet of the prince.” He looks behind Zolf and gives Wilde a small salute. “Hello—name’s Howard Carter. You can call me…” He gives Wilde a once-over, then grins. “Whatever you’d like.”

Zolf opens his mouth to tell Carter to please stop flirting, for gods’ sake, hasn’t Zolf suffered enough, but then the windswept man moves and Zolf’s mouth snaps shut. Immediately, he has his glaive up and pointed at the man. “Stay right there.”

The man, no longer holding his cards, stops. He looks behind Zolf at Wilde, whose face is undoubtedly making an irritating expression of some sort, then looks back at Zolf. His jaw twitches, and he says, like it pains him, “I can’t let you take him.”

“Barnes,” the woman in black says, setting her cards down as well. “C’mon. Can’t we just let ‘em go? He’s already out of the tower and everything.”

Barnes grits his teeth and shakes his head slowly. “They’re still within castle grounds.” He curls his hands into fists. Looks at Wilde again with an expression that looks a hell of a lot like an apology. That does not inspire confidence in Zolf; he grips his glaive tighter and prepares for a fight.

“But he’s already been rescued!”

“Sasha,” Wilde says from behind Zolf. He also sounds tired. Zolf doesn’t want to risk looking away from Barnes to see the expression on his face. “He can’t help it. It’s in his contract.”

Things are starting to click in a way Zolf doesn’t care for at all. “What’s in his contract?” he says suspiciously.

Barnes exhales. When he unclenches his fists, Zolf sees that his nails are longer than they should be, tinted a dark green. Claws. “I think you should probably go,” he says, and his voice is lower, rougher, like it’s coming from something much larger than himself.

Carter drops his cards like they’re hot coals and springs to his feet. “Well! This has been fun, but I think we should probably, you know.” He points a thumb at Barnes, who is beginning to become very large and very scaly. “Run from the dragon.”

“Aw, man, we didn’t even get to finish our game,” Sasha protests.

“Yep,” Zolf says, backing out of the room with Wilde in tow. “We should definitely run.”

. . .

There are three things that Zolf is intimately aware of in this moment:

One. Wilde is a faster runner than Zolf is, but just barely. He’s got exactly the kind of athleticism that you might expect from someone who’s been locked in a tower for ten years, and Zolf’s putting half his mental energy into making sure the guy doesn’t trip on some loose rocks or something.

Two. Carter ran with them for about thirty seconds before skidding to a halt, saying, “I’ve got a plan, just keep running,” and then sprinting off down a side corridor that Zolf is 99% sure is definitely not a way out. So that’s great.

Three. Barnes is gaining on them. Quickly.

Zolf turns and runs down a large hallway with columns to either side of it. He’s pretty sure this is the way out, but honestly, he can’t quite remember. It all kind of looks the same. And Wilde is being no help at all. Because of course he isn’t.

Okay, perhaps there are four things Zolf is intimately aware of. The fourth is that the prince is the absolute worst.

“We should have just left,” Wilde complains as they run, “instead of sticking around and waiting for Barnes to see us! Honestly. In terms of well-thought-out rescue plans, this one is at the bottom of the list.”

“It wasn’t thought out at all,” Zolf snaps back. Like an idiot.

Wilde gives a pissy little huff that makes Zolf want to put him right back in that tower. “Well, obviously.” He mutters something under his breath that Zolf can’t quite make out but that is probably similarly rude and uncalled for.

“Can you just shut up and keep running?” Zolf says.

“What,” Wilde says through gritted teeth, “do you think I am doing?”

He sounds out of breath, though, and his pace is starting to flag. Zolf hopes they’re close to the exit. He thinks they’re close. He’s pretty sure he remembers that dusty pile of armor.

They run in blissful silence for a few moments before it’s shattered by a roar that is much, much too close for comfort. Out of the corner of his eye, Zolf sees Wilde flinch. “Relax,” Zolf says flatly. “It’s me he’ll eat. He’ll just stick you back in that tower.”

“Is that meant to be comforting?”

“Best I’ve got.”

They run into another hallway, and—okay, yeah, Zolf definitely remembers this one. It’s got the tapestries. They’re almost out. They’ve just got to pass through the foyer, then they’re out and it’s just the wooden bridge left.

… The bridge. Made of wood. Which is flammable.

Well. Shit. Fly isn’t a spell Zolf knows, so if the bridge goes down…

Another roar, closer this time. Fuck, okay. Focus on getting out of the castle first. They’ll cross that bridge when they come to it. Literally.

“Okay,” Zolf says as they run into the foyer. “We’ve got about twenty seconds before Barnes—”

At which point, he runs squarely into Carter, who’s standing like an idiot right in the path of egress.

The three of them go down in an inelegant pile of limbs and curses. Wilde is the first to extract himself, dusting himself off and glaring down at Zolf and Carter as they stagger to their feet. “For gods’ sake,” he says crossly. “If this rescue mission fails, I’m having you both beheaded.”

Zolf grunts. “Yeah, well, we’ll be eaten, so.”

Barnes roars again, so close it shakes the room. Carter’s eyes grow wide, and he pulls out a dagger, gesturing to Zolf and Wilde. “Come on! Over here.”

“No, we need to run.”

“No, no, just—I have a plan! And it’ll work if you just come over here.”

“Carter.”

“For the love of the gods, just come over here right now!”

The footsteps are dangerously close, and Wilde is already inching his way towards Carter. Zolf swears under his breath, then does it again for good measure. “Fine,” he hisses. “But if this doesn’t work, I’m letting him eat you first.”

“Hey, don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Zolf makes it behind a pillar and out of view a split second before the door to the foyer caves inward and a very large, very green dragon squeezes himself through it. Carter holds a finger to his lips—as if Zolf were considering shouting, “Hey, over here!”—and then uses that same finger to point up at the ceiling.

Zolf and Wilde both look up.

Hanging in the middle of the foyer is a huge cast-iron chandelier.

Oh, this is never going to work.

Zolf shakes his head at Carter. Carter rolls his eyes, pulls out a dagger, and holds it at the ready as Barnes makes it through the doorway and continues barreling through the foyer—presumably under the assumption that Zolf and Wilde have made it out the front door and are beelining for the bridge.

Zolf registers the rope stretching past Carter’s shoulder and up towards the ceiling a split second before Carter slips the dagger beneath it, exhales, and slices it in two.

The rope snaps and shoots up as something very heavy on the other end of it weighs it down. Zolf braces himself, expecting the chandelier to come crashing to the floor in a big spectacle of iron and dust that will probably do nothing but make Barnes absolutely furious.

The chandelier barely even shudders as, instead, a dozen or so small white bags fall from amongst the empty candle holders. They must be dense, because they fall quickly and strike Barnes’ back and neck and tail with enough force to split them open.

Sticky white nets explode across Barnes’ scales, expanding until they bleed into one another. They tangle with Barnes’ legs, and Barnes roars as his feet go out from underneath him and he tips over onto the floor. He roars again, then huffs, then begins trying to squirm his way free of the netting.

“Well,” Carter says, “there’s our out. Don’t know how long those’ll hold him, so! I suggest we move quickly.”

He steps around the pillar and sprints for the exit. Zolf looks at Wilde, who’s staring at Barnes with wide eyes, then tugs his arm to get his attention. “Come on. We’re almost there. He’ll be fine.”

Wilde swallows and nods. Together, they follow Carter, running past an increasingly agitated Barnes who appears to be making some headway on the netting entangling his back feet. Not as much as Zolf would have expected, though; whatever Carter’s trapped him with, it’s potent stuff.

Carter is already out the front door. Zolf is ready to follow him when Wilde hesitates, just as they’re passing by Barnes’ head.

“Wilde,” Zolf hisses, tugging forcefully on Wilde’s arm. “C’mon.”

Wilde’s eyes are on Barnes’ face. His expression is neutral, but his arm where it’s gripped in Zolf’s hand has gone ever so slightly tense. “Goodbye,” Wilde says, the same way a captain might say, It’s been an honor, moments before their ship goes down in a bad storm.

Then, Wilde turns, and he runs.

Carter is standing by the bridge when they exit the castle. He’s looking down at the lava with a pinched expression on his face. He turns to Wilde. “I don’t suppose there’s another way out of here? One a bit less … objectively horrifying?”

Wilde grimaces. “There’s a stone drawbridge on the other side of the castle, but we keep it up. It would take too long to get over there and let it down.” He looks past Carter, down into the pit of boiling lava. “Though … I’m not really sure I like the look of that.”

Zolf resists the urge to roll his eyes, then considers what a long day this has been and rolls his eyes anyway. “Can we please cross the bridge before the dragon gets loose and sets us all on fire?”

The lava pops and boils. Wilde takes a deep breath. Then, he sets his jaw and nods.

“Great! Let’s go, then.”

Zolf lets go of Wilde’s wrist and nudges him forward. “Royalty first, et cetera.”

Wilde scowls, then grabs the ropes and steps onto the bridge. It sways a bit but remains intact.

Barnes lets out another roar, and that, apparently, is enough to set Wilde in motion. He begins shuffling across the bridge, and Zolf follows close behind. He doesn’t check behind him to see if Carter is following. If Carter wants to get eaten by a dragon, fine. That’s his own choice. Zolf’s done his part.

They’re about halfway across, moving slowly and carefully, when there is the distinct sound of a dragon snapping its way out of several layers of sticky netting. “Wilde,” Zolf says lowly. “I think we should run now.”

“On this?” Wilde says, his voice high and tight. “You must be joking.”

More scraping and thumping sounds from inside the castle. “I’m really, really not.”

Wilde exhales shakily. “Fine! Fine. We’re running. Okay.”

He begins forward at an admittedly faster pace, but one that is distinctly not a run.

Barnes roars again.

“Wilde, for gods’ sake, run!”

“I am trying!”

“Well, try harder!”

“Fine!”

Wilde begins to sprint down the rope bridge. It swings and sways, and Zolf curses loudly and tries to stabilize it, even as he hurries after Wilde. Carter shouts, from what sounds like quite a ways back, “Great! Now we’re going to burn to death in lava instead!”

Wilde makes it to the end of the bridge, Zolf hot on his heels. Zolf turns to see two things:

One. Carter, a significant distance from the end of the bridge, gripping the ropes for dear life.

Two. Barnes, still half-entangled, head sticking out of the castle door, mouth open and filling with flickering green flames.

“Carter, run!” Zolf yells, a moment before flames shoot out from Barnes’ mouth and consume the end of the bridge.

Carter runs, but the flames are faster, licking along the ropes and making the wood crack and drop into the water. Zolf runs to the edge of the plateau, gripping one of the poles anchored into it with one hand and reaching out with the other. “Come on!” he shouts.

The flames reach Carter’s hand, and he hisses and pulls it away from the ropes. The wood beneath his feet is burning, and he’s too far, he’s still too far, he’s not going to make it—

Carter leaps forward, and somehow—impossibly—he closes the distance. His hand finds Zolf’s, and Zolf latches on with all of his strength, gripping Carter’s hand tightly and pulling.

Carter’s stomach hits the edge of the plateau, and he gasps as the wind is knocked out of him. Zolf grits his teeth and heaves Carter over the edge to safety, and Carter collapses on the ground, clearly struggling to breathe. As Zolf watches, two donkey legs transform back into human ones.

The bridge is gone, crumbled to ashes and consumed by the lava below. Barnes closes his mouth and watches the three of them. His expression is unreadable, due to both the distance and the fact that he’s currently a dragon, but the way that he sighs and slowly lays his head against the ground is enough to give Zolf a good inclination that they’re not going to have to worry about being pursued.

They made it.

Zolf taps his glaive on the ground, and it once again becomes a walking stick. “Right, then,” he says gruffly. “Let’s get away from the giant pit of boiling lava, yeah?”

. . .

The two adventurers and the prince stagger their way over the hill and away from the castle. A moment passes. Then, part of the shadows peels away from the cliff wall and follows close behind, daggers tucked away beneath the worn leather of her coat.

Best not to let the prince out of sight. Just in case.

Chapter Text

Wilde is sitting on a boulder.

Wilde is sitting on a boulder, and it’s sunny out.

Wilde is sitting on a boulder, and it’s sunny out, and there’s grass around his feet, stretching on and on in front of him for miles. He thinks, in the distance, he can see sunflowers.

Slowly, Wilde reaches down and plucks a small green clover out of the dirt. He holds it gingerly between two fingers, spinning it slowly and watching the leaves flutter with the movement.

His hair, loose around his shoulders, blows in the wind. It hasn’t done that in a decade.

Gods. He’s probably pale as a ghost.

“Should wear off any moment now,” Zolf says, and Wilde looks up, dropping the clover quickly and folding his hands atop his lap. Zolf isn’t talking to him, though; he’s facing Carter, who has one hand on his hip and the other poking at Zolf’s faux breastplate. “Would you stop touching it?”

“Hell of a spell, that,” Carter says appreciatively. “Think you could teach me?”

“No.”

Carter pouts. “Not even a little bit?”

“Not even a little bit.”

Wilde clears his throat. They both turn to look at him. “Well!” he says, standing and clasping his hands in front of him. “I suppose some effusive thanks are in order.” He steps forward and reaches for Zolf’s hand. Zolf pulls it back. Wilde frowns and reaches further. Zolf tucks his hand behind his back.

Wilde huffs. “Honestly, I am just trying to—never mind.” He takes a deep breath, then gives Zolf a smile carefully chosen to convey both gratitude and affection. “I am forever in your debt, Sir Zolf, for rescuing me from that tower. While your methods were … unique, they were effective. And what’s a better quality in a man than talent?”

Wilde winks. Zolf doesn’t seem to respond in any way.

Well. That’s a work in progress. Wilde turns to Carter. “And you, of course. Carter, yes?”

Carter nods, a bit too vigorously. “Yes, that’s me. Or Howard. Or ‘hey you.’ Whichever you’d like. I’m not picky.”

Wilde maintains his smile, adding just a touch of flirtation to it. Carter’s nose goes pink. “Well then, Carter. I suppose I am in your debt as well.”

When he reaches for Carter’s hand and kisses the back of it, Carter doesn’t resist. Zolf, next to him, scoffs. “Great, fantastic, you’re very thankful. Can we go?”

Wilde’s smile twitches, but he keeps it in place. The cuff around his ankle itches, and suddenly, he wants nothing more desperately than to remove it. “Before we do, I hope I might ask something of you.”

Zolf sighs. “Sure.”

Wilde takes a step closer to him. “It’s nothing much. Just a kiss, and then we can be on our way.”

Zolf freezes. “I’m sorry?”

Wilde reaches for Zolf’s face. Zolf takes a step back. “A kiss. Really, it should have happened back in the tower, but you are quite unorthodox.”

“What?” Zolf looks at Carter, who looks back, equally baffled. “Why would—the tower? What?”

Wilde’s smile feels frozen on his face, but he maintains it. “Surely you’re aware of how this goes. Right?”

They both stare at him blankly.

“A knight finds a prince in a tower, guarded by a dragon. He defeats the dragon, rescues the prince, and then they share true love’s kiss?”

A beat.

“You think I’m your true love?” Zolf says, like it’s the most absurd thing in the world. “Sorry to break it to you, Wilde, but I ain’t.”

“But you are.” Wilde doesn’t understand why this is so complicated. “You rescued me. Only my true love could’ve rescued me from the tower.”

His stomach is beginning to churn. He waited so long—so fucking long—in that tower, knowing that whoever rescued him, they would be his true love. Zolf has to be them. He has to be. That’s how this works!

“Look,” Zolf says, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Trust me. I ain’t your type.”

Wilde looks Zolf up and down. Admittedly, it’s hard to see much beyond the armor spell, but he’s almost as tall as Wilde, broad, and, most importantly, able to escape from a dragon unharmed. “I think I’ll be the judge of that,” Wilde says primly.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Zolf mutters something under his breath, waves a hand, and like smoke caught in a strong gust of wind, the armor dissolves into nothing.

Wilde sees Zolf for the first time—properly sees him—and he stops breathing for a moment.

There’s fur. And horns. And hooves. And a tail. It’s like a child took clay figurines of a bull and a dwarf and smashed them unceremoniously together. Zolf’s pierced ears flick irritably, and he glares at Wilde and crosses two fur-covered arms over his chest. “See? Like I said. Ain’t your type. Can we go now?”

Wilde takes a few steps backwards and sits back down on the boulder. His cuff is like white-hot coals against his skin. “No,” he says faintly. “No, this isn’t right. You can’t be…”

He forces himself to look at Zolf again. Zolf is scowling now, clearly pissed, and … well. Wilde supposes he has every right to be. Wilde’s being rude; every etiquette lesson from his youth is screaming at him to stand back up and face this with polite words and a dignified smile.

But Wilde doesn’t feel dignified. And he doesn’t feel like smiling. Not after ten years of waiting and wishing and hoping, only for it to go terribly, hopelessly wrong. His cuff is itching, burning, and he so desperately wants to tear it off, but he can’t. Not now, maybe not ever. Because Zolf isn’t his true love. Zolf isn’t even human. Zolf is a monster, a hideous beast, a manifestation of all that is ugly and perverse and wrong with this world. If Zolf is his true love, it will be a horrible, cruel joke of the universe.

“You are not,” Wilde says viciously, “supposed to be a beast.”

“Yeah, well, I am,” Zolf says shortly. “And I’m not your true love, all right? I’m here on business; that’s all.”

Wilde digs his fingernails into his thighs. “Business?”

“Yeah. Business.” Zolf scrubs a hand across his face. “Look. The person who actually wants to marry you, Sir Bertrand—he’s the one who sent me to fetch you.” Carter clears his throat meaningfully. Zolf sighs. “Us to fetch you. He’s your true love or whatever. Not me.”

Wilde narrows his eyes. “You’ve rescued me … so that you can deliver me to somebody else.”

“Basically, yeah.”

Wilde folds his arms across his chest. “Then I’m afraid you have greatly misunderstood how this works. There is no such thing as a surrogate knight in shining armor.”

“Yeah, well, there is now.”

“No.”

Zolf raises an eyebrow. “No?”

Wilde’s getting angry now. He tries to make it a point not to get angry. Or at least, never to show it. He channels that anger into haughtiness. “If Sir Bertrand wishes to have me rescued,” Wilde says, “he can do it himself. Properly.”

Zolf’s eyebrow climbs higher. “I don’t think you’re gonna be able to lock yourself back up in that tower, what with the bridge literally going up in flames.”

“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll be sitting here.”

“Right there.”

“Mm hm.”

“On that rock.”

“Yes.”

“For however long it takes for somebody else to come along and decide they want to deal with you for the rest of their lives?”

“If we were in my kingdom, I could have you beheaded for speaking to me like that.”

“Sure.” Zolf doesn’t sound convinced. Gods, it’s infuriating. Zolf is infuriating. This is the worst. Wilde wants his fucking fairy-tale ending. Why does this have to be so hard?

Wilde exhales slowly, then flicks his hand dismissively at Zolf. “Well then, I suppose you ought to get going. This appears to have been all one big misunderstanding.” He gives Zolf a once-over and quirks an eyebrow. “I mean, really. A knight who can be his own steed? Well, it’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Carter makes a sound that might be a choked-off laugh. Zolf’s eyes narrow. “Yeah, that’s not how this is going to work.”

“Oh?” Wilde crosses his legs and inspects his nails. Flawless, of course. “Please, enlighten me.”

“I’ve got a job to do, and I’m doin’ it.” Zolf takes a step closer and looms over Wilde. He’s pretty intimidating from this angle; Wilde ignores it and feigns a yawn. “Now, are we going to be doing this the easy way or the hard way?”

Wilde smirks. “Darling, I’m never easy.”

Zolf sets his jaw. “All right. The hard way it is.”

Then, he grabs Wilde under the arms and lifts him straight up off the boulder.

Wilde yelps and begins struggling, but Zolf’s grip is like iron. Wilde is tossed unceremoniously over Zolf’s shoulder like a sack of particularly beautiful potatoes; he immediately begins beating his fists against Zolf’s back. “You absolute bloody brute! Put me down!”

Zolf ignores him. To Carter, he says, “We should make it to the edge of the woods by sunset; we can make camp there. Think you can scout ahead in case there’s any trouble?”

“Uh … sure.” Carter’s face appears around Zolf’s side, peering at Wilde incredulously. “You’re just gonna carry him like that? The whole way?”

“Yep.”

Carter puffs out a breath, then shrugs. “Well, all right, then. I’ll go … scout.”

He pops out of view again, and Wilde hears footsteps moving quickly down the gravel path. Zolf begins to follow, moving at a reasonable pace. His gait is uneven, and every step jostles Wilde in a way that he does not care for in the slightest. He can already feel himself getting lightheaded. “Would you at least try to be gentle?” Wilde hisses.

“You try walking with hooves for feet. This is the best you’re going to get, your highness.”

Wilde huffs and decides that there’s no way he can make this look dignified, but neither does he want to give in so easily by asking Zolf to put him down so he can walk. So Wilde crosses his arms, glares at the hill surrounding the castle as it slowly recedes into the distance, and gives Zolf nothing more than haughty, offended silence.

Chapter Text

They’re being followed.

Carter’s been scouting ahead, like Zolf said he should. It’s a bit boring sometimes, but it means he can whistle as much as he’d like, and more importantly, it means he doesn’t have to engage with whatever’s going on between Zolf and Wilde. The animosity there feels like it’s choking him, and not in the fun way.

Anyway. They’re definitely being followed. Carter’s got an eye for these sorts of things—sensing when things are out of place, knowing when he’s not alone anymore, that sort of thing. He can’t hear them; he can’t see them. But he knows they’re there.

He just doesn’t know where. And it’s bugging the hell out of him.

They stop to make camp and prepare dinner, and while Zolf wrangles a scowling Wilde into setting up the bedrolls, Carter slips between the trees. The shadows are starting to get long as sunset approaches, and Carter creeps among them, dagger in hand, every sense on high alert.

Whoever it is, they haven’t stopped tracking them. Carter knows that for sure. Even now, he can tell they’re somewhere. He lets his ears grow, searching for any sign of life—a twig snapping, a gasp of breath, a shuffle of cloth against skin. But there’s nothing. Only his own heartbeat in his ears.

Gods, he feels like he’s chasing ghosts. He needs a different tactic.

Carter takes a deep breath, lets it out, and says carefully, “Whoever’s out there—stop following us. All right? Whatever you’re looking for, we don’t have it.”

Silence. In a nearby tree, a bird takes flight. A squirrel runs chittering through the underbrush.

Carter spins his knife nervously through his fingers. “Look, mate, we’ve got, like, no money or valuables on us, and believe me, nobody is more upset about that than me because I was promised gold and jewels. A whole dragon’s horde, and you know what I found! Bones. Whoooole lotta bones. Do you know what you can buy with bones? Nothing. Nada. Useless, completely useless. I was hoping for rubies and sapphires and—” He cuts off with an irritated noise. “Anyway. You’re really better off robbing someone else, honest. Plus, my friend could probably gut you with his flaming stick-knife-thing in half a second, so. There’s that.”

Behind Carter, someone huffs a laugh. “I’d like to see him try.”

Carter whips around so fast he nearly drops his dagger. Sasha is perched on a stump, dagger in hand, one knee tucked against her chest, elbow resting atop it. She gives him a nod. “Hey.”

Carter’s mouth hangs open. “What? When did you get here?”

Sasha shrugs. “Been here the whole time, mate. It wasn’t even that hard to stay outta sight. You’re a bit rubbish at bein’ a scout.”

Carter points his dagger at her. “Oi. I’m an excellent scout. You’re just … I don’t know. A ghost or something.”

Sasha’s lips twitch into a smirk. “Nah. I’m just better than you.”

Carter sulks. He tucks his dagger back inside his sleeve and crosses his arms. “Why were you following us?”

Sasha points a thumb over her shoulder in the general direction of where Zolf and Wilde are. “Got kinda used to protecting the guy, you know? I’m just making sure you’re taking him where you say you’re taking him; that’s all.”

Carter squints. “Is he, like. Paying you?”

“I mean. I did get to rob anybody who came to the tower lookin’ to rescue him, so. Kind of?” Sasha shrugs. “But officially, no. It’s just kinda … I dunno. Feels right, that’s all.”

Carter doesn’t get it. Wilde’s fine, sure—nice to look at, a bit funny, though also a bit of a dick—but he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would attract someone like Sasha. Still … if she doesn’t mean them any harm, it’ll be nice to have another pair of eyes in the trees, just in case they run into any trouble.

“Well,” Carter says, “okay, then. So you’re just gonna follow us? I don’t have to worry about you slitting our throats in the middle of the night?”

“Probably not.”

“Probably not,” Carter echoes. “Wow. You really know how to put a guy at ease.”

Sasha shrugs again. “Not really tryin’ to, mate.”

“Riiiiiiight. Well, good talk. I’m gonna…” He points towards where they’ve made camp. “Let me, uh. Let me know if anything … comes up? Do you need food, or…?”

Sasha pats her jacket. “Nah, I’ve got it covered.”

Carter nods again. “Right. Okay. Well. Then. Er.”

He takes a step forward. Sasha doesn’t move. He walks past her, half-expecting to get a knife in his back, but he doesn’t. When he’s a few paces away, he hears a rustling sound, and when he turns to look, Sasha is gone.

“How does she do that?” he mutters to himself before returning to camp.

It’s easy enough to find again, partly because Carter has excellent navigational skills and partly because he can hear Zolf and Wilde arguing long before he gets to the clearing.

“—don’t know what’s so difficult to understand,” Wilde is saying. Carter is close enough now that he can see the pinched expression on Wilde’s face, like Zolf is a bit of mud stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “I don’t eat rats.”

“Yeah, well, you do tonight, because it’s all I could catch. Believe me, I would also much rather be eating somethin’ else, but I didn’t plan on bein’ out here this long, so we’re out of rations.” Zolf waves a skewer of skinned, smoked rats in front of Wilde’s face. Wilde leans back slightly. “It’s this or nothing.”

Wilde’s nose wrinkles, and he pushes the skewer away with a single manicured finger. “I would rather starve.”

Zolf huffs. “Fine! Fine. Suit yourself. But I ain’t helping you tonight when you decide you’re too hungry to sleep.”

“I do not need,” Wilde says, “nor want your help. Thank you.”

There’s a brief pause, during which Zolf looks like he desperately wants to smack Wilde in the face with the skewer. Carter takes the opportunity to step out of the trees and into the clearing, hopefully preventing any potential death-by-rat-kabob. “So!” he says, clapping his hands together. “Sasha’s following us. Won’t be an issue, nothing to worry about—she’s just keeping an eye on the prince. Just thought you ought to know.”

The full force of Zolf’s glare is turned on Carter, for the horrible crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Oof, that thing is potent. It’s the horns that really push it over the edge, Carter thinks. After a moment, though, Carter’s words appear to sink in, and the glare fades to a suspicious narrowing of the eyes. “Keeping an eye on … good? Or bad?”

“Er.” Carter hesitates. “... Good?”

Zolf raises an eyebrow.

“Good for Wilde,” Carter clarifies. “Bad for us if we turn out to be, like, horrible murderers or kidnappers or something.”

Zolf huffs. “Well, we ain’t, so I’m not going to worry about it.” He turns back to Wilde and says, “Last chance for dinner.”

Wilde looks to Carter. “Did Sasha say anything about protecting me from attempted poisoning? Because if I’m being honest, I’m feeling very threatened right now.”

“Oh, for the love of—” Zolf turns his back to Wilde, yanking a single rat off the skewer. “I should just cast silence on you and be done with it.”

Wilde scoffs. “I’d like to see you try.”

Zolf’s face is turning an alarming shade of red, and Carter makes the executive decision that he no longer wants to be part of this conversation. “Okay!” he says quickly. “Well, I’m gonna go look for some more firewood. So. Yeah. Good? Good!”

And with that, Carter flees.

This is going to be a long journey.

Chapter Text

Night has fallen over Britain, and Wilde, in a perhaps unsurprising turn of events, can’t sleep. His stomach is hollow and aching, but he grimaces and ignores it. He is, even after ten years living alone in a tower, a man of culture and of taste. He refuses to eat a rat on a stick.

No matter how amazing it smelled.

Wilde is lying on the bedroll Zolf gave him—after much arguing and quite a lot of huffing and puffing—tucked away behind a large boulder. His arms are folded behind his head, and he’s staring up at the stars. It’s a cloudless night, and the moon hangs low in the sky, so he can see galaxies upon galaxies spread out before him, little white lights flickering a billion miles away.

He’d been able to see glimpses of the stars from the cramped tower window. But they’d never looked quite like this.

Grass tickles the side of his cheek. Crickets sing chirruping, happy songs. A faint breeze twists the loose strands of his hair. The air tastes sweet and earthy, like moss and leaves and petrichor. Wilde is not emotional about any of these things in the slightest. That would be ridiculous. He’s just … happy to be out of that tower, that’s all.

Even if it means traveling with Zolf.

Wilde does not look over at where Zolf is sat, whittling something out of a small piece of wood. He knows Zolf can’t see him—he chose this spot deliberately so that would be the case. He could look and it would be just fine. But he doesn’t.

It’s just … it’s all so backwards. So wrong. Zolf is supposed to be his knight in shining armor, his Prince Charming, his true love.

Instead…

Instead, Zolf is a beast.

Wilde shifts and presses one bare foot against the cool metal of the cuff around his left ankle. He wants to take it off. He got used to it in the tower—taking it off whenever he felt like it, safe in the knowledge that his door was shut and locked and barred and that nobody would disturb him. He would practice his illusion magic, refining it, poring over tome after tome and teaching himself more and more obscure spells. His fingers twitch, itching to cast. But he can’t—not with the cuff on.

And he can’t take it off. Not here. Not until he finds his true love.

… Perhaps not ever again.

Wilde exhales and squeezes his eyes shut. Gods, he’s being melodramatic. Everything is going to be fine. He’s being taken to the man who was supposed to rescue him, and once he gets there, he will receive true love’s kiss and the curse will be broken. He doesn’t understand why Sir Bertrand didn’t come himself, but … it’s no matter. When has anything in Wilde’s life ever been straightforward? This is just another trial he must endure on the long road to happiness.

Why must I endure it at all? a small part of Wilde whispers. He shakes his head to quiet it. He really must get some sleep if he’s going to start spiraling about things he can’t change.

The grass rustles, and Wilde turns his head to see Carter trudging through it, having just finished a final perimeter check. He plops down on the ground next to Zolf and sighs. His ears are out, and Wilde expects him to withdraw them again now that he’s done patrolling, but instead, he leaves them be. “Nothing out of sorts,” Carter says, leaning back on his hands. “We should be safe here tonight.”

Zolf sighs and slices another chunk of wood off with his knife. “Great. Thanks.”

There’s a moment’s pause. Then, Carter says, “So. Question.”

Zolf sighs again, wearier this time. “Must you?”

“Hey, I’m a curious guy!” Carter gestures to Zolf. “I know I already asked, and I know you said you didn’t wanna talk about it, but now that we’ve rescued a prince and defeated a dragon and become super good best friends for life—”

“Colleagues, I think, is more accurate.”

“—I just—look, I really wanna know how you ended up all…”

“Hideously beastly?” Zolf says dryly.

“Hairy. I was going to say hairy.”

“Well, I still don’t feel like talkin’ about it, so.”

Carter huffs, and his ears droop. “Come on, it’s killing me, Zolf! You’ve gotta tell me, or I’ll die. Painfully and slowly. They say curiosity killed the cat, but that’s actually not true—it killed the donkey, and it’s gonna do it again if you don’t give me something.”

Zolf points at Carter with the knife. “If I tell you, will you stop askin’ personal questions?”

“Absolutely! Almost certainly. Probably. You know, I can’t promise that I will, but I’ll try my best.”

Zolf hacks a piece off the wooden figurine with a bit more force than necessary. “Fine. It was a sailing accident.”

Carter waits a beat, then says, “That’s it?”

“That’s all you need to know.”

Carter visibly sulks for a moment before a lightbulb appears to go off inside him. He straights, his ears pricking up with excitement, and he says, “Oh, oh, wait, I’ve heard about this! I knew a guy who had this sister, right, and her friend’s mom’s cousin’s husband lost an arm and a leg in a mine collapse. But they brought him to this specialist, and because he was a polymorph, they were able to just kinda … stick him in this halfway state between forms. Gave him his limbs back and everything. And another guy I know—well, this was just a story, but he knew somebody who got shot—horrible, really, total accident—and their beast side just went haywire! Saved their life, though. And another time, I heard—”

Zolf reaches out and covers Carter’s mouth. “Carter. Shut up.”

Carter shuts up. Though whether it’s by choice is debatable.

“Yeah,” Zolf says. “Something like that. But it doesn’t matter, okay? I ain’t ashamed of lookin’ like this, and I don’t care if other people think I’m horrible or ugly or a monster or whatever. It’s just what I look like now. Bit hard to walk at times, but that’s what the stick’s for. I ain’t complaining. I am who I am, and it don’t make me a monster. Yeah?”

Carter smacks at Zolf’s arm until he drops his hand. “I never said you were.” Carter points at his own ears. “Pot calling the kettle black and all?”

Zolf snorts. “Yeah. Sure.”

Carter studies Zolf for a moment. “Is this Wilde guy getting to you or something?”

“What?” Zolf laughs and shakes his head. “Nah. He’s just another spoiled, stuck-up prick. He and Sir Bertrand should get along just fine.”

Wilde wants to protest. He wants to stand up and march over to where Zolf is sitting and give him a piece of his mind. He did not suffer through ten years of isolation and a horrible curse just to be called spoiled.

But…

Wilde curls up onto his side, trying to make as little noise as possible. Zolf and Carter don’t appear to notice. He watches Zolf’s tail flick, studies the outline of Zolf’s ears against the moonlit sky, notes how the white hair on Zolf’s head continues onto the back of his neck and the exposed bits of his forearms.

Ten years. For ten years Wilde locked himself away, hoping and praying and wishing for somebody to come and free him, from the tower and from the curse that kept him there. That is an awfully long time for one to wait, only to be rescued by somebody who is wrong in every conceivable way. Or perhaps more accurately, somebody who is right in all the wrong ways.

Because when Wilde looks at Zolf, he doesn’t see Zolf. Not really. He sees himself—the parts he hates the most, the parts he tries to hide, the parts he refuses to think about, all reflected back to him through Zolf, like looking into a warped mirror. Wilde sees Zolf, and the thing that makes him shudder is not disgust or hatred or anger or fear.

It’s recognition.

“Yeah,” Carter says with a sigh. “How long until we’re back, d’you think?”

Zolf hums. “A few days, maybe? Hard to tell. Depends if I have to drag his royal highness kicking and screaming the whole way.”

Carter laughs, and Wilde’s stomach curls. He hates being laughed at. He takes a few deep breaths to calm himself, curls his hands into fists for a moment, then relaxes them and exhales.

Fine. He’ll behave. Anything to make this trip go faster. In a few days, Wilde will arrive in London, and all of this will become nothing more than a minor inconvenience on the way to his happily ever after.

Wilde closes his eyes, ignores the echoes of Zolf’s voice in his head—I am who I am, and it don’t make me a monster—and wills sleep to come.

Chapter Text

The morning breaks softly, with birdsong and a gentle breeze and warm sunlight. Wilde would almost enjoy it, if his stomach didn’t feel like it was eating itself alive.

He sits up with a groan. As far as he can tell, Zolf and Carter are still asleep. They’ve set up under some bushes on the other side of the clearing, and there’s currently no movement from either of them. On the one hand, that means that nobody’s about to shove any rat kabobs in his face and call it breakfast. On the other, it means that Wilde is going to have cobble together a meal using his own foraging skills. Of which he has next to none, on account of spending 25 years being waited on by servants and private chefs and the next 10 confined to a single room in a tower.

Great.

Wilde stands with a wince, feeling the ache of sleeping on the hard ground all night throughout his entire body. He cracks his back one way, then the other. Stretches his arms above his head. Yawns. Brushes his hand through his hair and thinks longingly of his forgotten hairbrush. Then, after digging a tie out of his backpack and securing his hair at the nape of his neck, he goes off to find something to eat.

There are, admittedly, not many options. A handful of berries that Wilde is only 50% confident aren’t poisonous, some mushrooms that Wilde’s even less sure about, and a rabbit that flees at the sight of him, as if he were the sort of person who is even remotely capable of hunting a rabbit.

He’s been wading through the underbrush for about twenty minutes when, finally, he comes across something that he’s reasonably certain will be edible.

“Sorry,” Wilde says with a grimace as he scoops the eggs out of what he thinks is a duck’s nest. “Really, I would rather not be doing this as well. I assumed my brave and heroic rescuers would bring enough rations for the journey out and the journey back, but apparently, that was simply too much to ask. So I am reduced to this. Stealing eggs from a duck.”

There is no sign of said duck, but Wilde doesn’t feel like taking any chances. He cradles the eggs in his arms and makes a hasty retreat.

Carter is still asleep when Wilde returns, but Zolf is up and sitting on his bedroll, braiding his beard. Wilde hesitates just before the clearing, half-hidden behind a tree, watching Zolf as he weaves hair white as moonlight into a series of complex patterns with practiced ease.

He just … he doesn’t understand how Zolf can go about the world the way that he does—without shame, without worry, without fear. Wilde is vain, he knows this, but it’s not vanity; it’s self-preservation. Surely Zolf would prefer to exist in polite society without worrying about people turning him away from their businesses, or fleeing from him in terror, or breaking into his home with torches and pitchforks? It’s just common sense when one looks the way Zolf does.

Wilde watches Zolf slide a small gold ring onto the end of his beard, securing it in place. In the light of a new day, with the shock and horror of their escape now faded, Zolf doesn’t look very monstrous at all.

Wilde shifts, and a twig snaps beneath his boot. Zolf spins around, hand reaching for his walking stick, but he stops when he realizes who it is. “Oi,” Zolf says, voice still rough with sleep. “What’re you doing over there?”

He says it like an accusation, and Wilde bristles. “Getting breakfast,” he says primly, making his way into the clearing and depositing his armful of eggs beside the charred remnants of last night’s fire. “I figured I should take it upon myself to find something edible for us after last night’s…” He trails off meaningfully. “Attempt.”

Zolf grumbles something under his breath. There’s a shuffling noise, and a few moments later, Wilde has a companion by the firepit.

Zolf studies the eggs with a raised eyebrow. “Where’d you get those?”

“Oh, you know. Here and there. Despite what you may think of me, I do have some survival skills.”

Zolf raises an eyebrow. “Sure.”

Zolf piles some of the leftover firewood onto the old cinders and, with a snap of his fingers and a muttered word, lights them ablaze. He slips a flat metal plate out of his pack, sets it atop the logs, and cracks a few eggs into it. They are, blessedly, free of tiny duck bodies. Wilde had been worried, and vaguely nauseated. Though that could also be the hunger.

The eggs begin to sizzle, and the two of them sit in silence for a long moment. Wilde searches for a polite topic of conversation, discards several dozen that have a high potential of failure, then decides that perhaps in this situation, he should simply say what’s on his mind. A novel prospect, but he gets the feeling that Zolf doesn’t care much about etiquette and decorum.

“So,” Wilde says. “You’re not a knight, presumably.”

Zolf eyes him. “What gave it away?” he says flatly.

Wilde resists the urge to roll his eyes. Barely. “I simply meant,” he says, fetching a clean-looking stick from the ground nearby and beginning to flip the eggs, “that if you’re not a knight, I’m not entirely sure why you’re here. Are you on Sir Bertrand’s staff?”

Zolf snorts. “Er, no.”

“Private contractor, then?”

“Sure.”

Wilde narrows his eyes. “If you’re not who you say you are,” he says, jabbing the egg-covered stick at Zolf in what he hopes is a threatening manner, “then I suspect you will shortly have Sasha to reckon with.”

Zolf raises an eyebrow at the stick. “What’re you gonna do with that? Poke me?” He continues before Wilde can reply. “It ain’t that, okay? We are bringing you to Sir Bertrand. It’s just a bit of an … unorthodox arrangement.”

“Unorthodox how?”

“Well,” Carter says, materializing out of fucking nowhere and plopping down on the ground next to Zolf. “You see, the man’s a bloody wanker, and—”

“Carter,” Zolf hisses.

“What?” Carter gestures to Wilde. “He’s gonna want to know what kind of man he’s betrothed to, isn’t he?”

“Ignorance is, occasionally, bliss,” Zolf mutters.

“Oh, no, please,” Wilde says, gesturing to Carter with the egg-stick. “Continue.”

Carter grabs an egg from the plate with his bare fingers. “Ooo, hot, hot.” He holds it between pinched fingers, blowing on it frantically, then pops it in his mouth. Wilde wishes desperately he’d brought along some cutlery. “Well,” Carter says, through a mouthful of egg. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard about what’s going on in Britain right now, given—” He makes a gesture that Wilde thinks is meant to mean being locked away from civilization for a decade. “But basically, Sir Bertrand’s got it in his head that he wants all the fairy tale creatures gone from his land. Poof, just like that, never mind that most of us have been here for generations and that we own land fair and square like everyone else. So he’s been taking people, caging them, and relocating them for … gods, ages. A year, maybe? That’s how I met Zolf.” He puffs up slightly. “Ran into him while escaping from the guards.”

“Literally,” Zolf says dryly. “Been making a right pest of himself ever since.”

“Anyway. The point is, that same night, Sir Bertrand’s lackeys dumped a big bunch of fairy tale creatures on Zolf’s doorstep for ‘relocation.’ We went to talk to Sir Bertrand about it, got caught up in some sorta tournament, kicked absolute ass, and were told that if we rescued you and brought you back, Sir Bertrand would remove everyone from Zolf’s land. And, you know, ideally give them their own land back, but I’m gonna be totally honest—I’m not convinced he’s going to hold up that end of the bargain.”

Carter reaches for another egg, and Zolf swats his hand away. Carter scowls. “Anyway, that’s about it. Sir Bertrand hates people like me and Zolf, but, you know.” He gestures to Wilde. “You shouldn’t have any problems with that.”

Wilde feels ill. It takes all of his willpower to keep his face neutral. “Well, that’s … unfortunate. I’m sorry to hear that the situation with Sir Bertrand has been so … dire, as it were.” He hesitates. “And for what it’s worth, I … I don’t share his beliefs.”

Zolf raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t seem that way yesterday.”

“Yes, well, yesterday was a bit of a trying day for me, if you didn’t notice,” Wilde snaps. “I was caught off guard, that’s all.”

“Right,” Zolf says. “Because you were expectin’ a strong, handsome knight and not a horrible beast who—what was it you said? ‘Can be his own steed’?”

Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, Wilde feels like ripping the cuff off his leg and giving Zolf a piece of his mind. He does not. “Fine. I’m sorry. All right? I’m sorry that I reacted so poorly. I’m sorry that I wasn’t perfectly polite and courteous. May we please move forward with the understanding that I do not find you a reprehensible monster who deserves to be caged?”

Zolf glares at Wilde for a long moment. Then, he sighs, pulls another small plate out of his pack, and slides an egg onto it. “Fine.”

“Fine,” Wilde echoes, spearing an egg of his own onto his stick.

“Fine,” Carter says. Perhaps simply to feel included.

. . .

They’ve stopped for lunch, and Wilde has learned the hard way that he was not getting enough exercise in that tower.

He winces as he sits on a small moss-covered rock, nibbling at some berries Carter found alongside the trail. Carter is off looking for something more substantial, so it’s just Wilde and Zolf now, sitting and eating berries in awkward silence. It shouldn’t be a problem—Wilde is good at making silences not awkward—but Zolf is nothing like any of the high society elite he’s used to having to rub elbows with. Or the low society folk. Or anyone at all. Wilde’s never met someone quite like Zolf. He hasn’t decided yet if that’s a good thing.

Perhaps he ought to find out.

“So,” Wilde says once he’s finished his handful of berries. “You’re from Britain?”

Zolf grunts. Charming. Wilde hedges, “I’m assuming you live … outside of London?”

Zolf gives Wilde a flat look. “Yes, and I quite like it there, I’ll have you know.”

Wonderful. Off to a great start. “I am just trying to make conversation,” Wilde says. “If you’d prefer, we can sit in silence until Carter gets back.”

Zolf eyes him a moment longer. Then, he sighs. “I’ve got a cottage,” he says. “Tucked away in the woods. It’s quiet, and I have my garden, and I’m looking forward to getting back to it once this mess is all over and done with.”

Wilde does not appreciate being called a mess, thank you very much. He bites down his irritation and says, “Well, for all of our sakes, let’s hope that comes sooner rather than later.” He crosses his legs and props his chin on his hand. “So, then. You garden?”

Zolf shrugs. “Yeah, a bit. Mostly it’s just so I can have fresh vegetables to cook with.”

Zolf does not strike Wilde as the kind of person who cooks. Though maybe that’s just because the only thing Wilde has seen Zolf cook so far has been rats. “Oh? Just for yourself, or do you host?”

Zolf scoffs. “Who would I host for?”

“Friends, family, passersby? We’ve only just met, you know. I don’t know the intricacies of your rich inner life.”

Something passes across Zolf’s face, there and gone in an instant. “No,” Zolf says. “No friends, family, whatever. Just me.”

Wilde realizes, belatedly, that he may have trod upon a sore subject. He attempts to course-correct. “Well, never underestimate the value of a bit of alone time.” Though ten years of it, I would not recommend. “I, for example, enjoy reading, which is certainly much more pleasurable an activity to do by oneself.”

Zolf’s ears twitch, the way a dog’s do when they’re interested in something you have in your hand. “Oh? What, er. What kinds of books do you like?”

Oh, thank the gods, a common interest. Wilde could weep. “Oh, a little bit of everything,” he says diplomatically. “I was raised on the classics, so I have a fondness for those, of course, but some of the stuff they’re coming out with these days is quite good.”

“Can’t say I’ve read many of the classics. ‘S mostly modern—whatever I can get from the shop.”

“Any favorites?”

Zolf, in an unforeseen turn of events, goes a bit pink around the ears. “Nothin’ you’ve probably read.”

Now this is a topic of conversation Wilde thoroughly enjoys. “My my, Zolf—purveyor of the raunchy dime novels, are we?”

That pink darkens to red. “It’s good literature, and I won’t hear you or anybody say otherwise, all right?”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t dream of it. Are we talking Roberts, Sebastian, or Cambell?”

Zolf blinks at Wilde. “… Cambell. Have you read them?”

Wilde doesn’t even have to lie, which is nice. “I have. Just finished the newest one a few weeks ago, in fact—The Coming of the Second Son.”

Zolf points a finger at Wilde. “I’ve not finished that one yet on account of this whole situation, so no spoilers, yeah?”

Situation. That’s an upgrade from mess, surely. “Of course,” Wilde says mildly. “The man is quite prolific—we could spend all day talking about any number of his works. Which is your favorite?”

That sends Zolf into a long-winded ramble about the various pros and cons of Cambell’s rather varied collected works. Wilde offers his own opinions as well; he intends to keep them neutral and vaguely complimentary, as decorum would dictate, but then he stumbles into an inadvertent criticism of the third Hearts Collide book and it sparks an intense discussion between the two of them about whether Jennifer’s characterization is consistent throughout the trilogy or not. It seems that Zolf may actually prefer it when Wilde lets himself be sharp around the edges, so he does. Decorum be damned.

Wilde says, “Really though, I think Charles would have been a much better choice than Richard,” just to see what Zolf will do. (Rant for five straight minutes about Charles’ various character flaws, apparently.) He tells Zolf that his favorite Cambell by far is the largely-hated In the Eye of Your Love just to hear Zolf scoff at him and tell him he has no taste. He suggests that Cambell’s later stuff is far improved on his earlier works and gets an earful about writing periods and comparing apples to oranges and let me just get this book out of my bag and show you, if you’re gonna insist on being wrong.

Zolf does indeed pull a stack of books out of his bag, and Wilde nearly chokes.

It’s a collection of mostly Cambells—old and worn with cracked spines and peeling covers. And wedged right in the middle of the stack, just as well-loved as the rest, is Picture of Dorian Gray by R.B. Ross.

Barnes really managed to get them published, then.

“You’ve read Ross’ work?” Wilde says, trying his absolute best to sound neutral and not at all like he’s got any stake in the matter whatsoever.

“Hm?” Zolf looks down at the stack. “Oh, didn’t realize I’d brought that one along. ‘S quite nice, yeah. I’ve tried some of Ross’ newer stuff, and it was fine—just not my cup of tea, you know—but I really like their early works. Especially this one.” Zolf hesitates. “Hits close to home, what with the—well, I don’t know if you’ve read it.”

Wrote it, actually, Wilde does not say. “I haven’t.”

Zolf pulls the book out of the stack. “Well, then. Something to pass the time, maybe.” He passes the book to Wilde. Wilde numbly takes it. “Seems like the kinda thing you might like. I dunno. ‘S got a lot of focus on, you know, the difference between who we are and how other people see us. How the most ordinary lookin’ people can be monstrous, and vice versa. Not a light read, but a good one.”

Wilde is very aware of the themes. He is also very aware of how absolutely, unshakably, incandescently furious he was when he wrote them. Furious at his parents, furious at Bosie, and perhaps most of all, furious at himself for being stupid enough to get himself in this situation in the first place. He’d scribbled it all down, then spent a year cutting it apart and pasting it back together until it resembled a story, then spent another few months making the story shine as best he could. Then, during one of Barnes’ food drop-offs, Wilde had slid the manuscript beneath the door and told Barnes to publish it. He doesn’t know why it had been so important to him. It just … had. He needed somebody else to read about what he’d been through, albeit twisted into a different shape with different names. He needed somebody else to understand.

And, it seems, somebody had. Quite thoroughly, if the broken and peeling spine is any indication. Wilde feels a surge of something unnameable pass through him as he holds his own writing, well-loved by someone who reminds him so vividly of the parts of himself he can’t stand to look at. It kind of makes him want to cry.

Wilde is spared the difficulty of formulating a response by Carter, who loudly announces his presence by tripping over a stick. Zolf is thus distracted complaining about Carter’s ineptitude and preparing to cook the rabbits that Carter managed to procure, and Wilde is left alone on the mossy boulder, book still clutched in his hands.

He flips it open to the first page. Skims the first paragraph. Winces, as one so often does when reading old writing of theirs. Then, he tucks the book into his bag where it’ll be safe and goes to join the others for lunch.

Chapter Text

Sasha’s missed the trees.

Not because she’s an elf. She’s sick and tired of people looking at her ears and assuming that she’s obsessed with trees and flowers and ferns and that sorta thing. She likes nature as much as any bloke off the street. With maybe a bit more tolerance for the bugs.

But spending nearly eight years in a castle made of stone and not much else makes you realize just how much tree there is in a single tree. There’s bark and branches and leaves, but also bugs and sap and little holes where the birds like to hide, and sometimes there’s moss or ivy growing on it, and, of course, the things that live near the roots—mushrooms and tiny frogs and little roly-poly pillbugs, feasting on the leaf litter.

Sasha would be more comfortable among the leaf litter, she thinks, but instead, she’s perched near the top of a big old oak. There aren’t many shadows up here, but there are enough to bleed into and disappear if she needs to. She does so now, clinging close to the trunk and staring down into the forest below with narrowed eyes.

They’re being followed.

It hasn’t been for long—a few minutes, at most. None of the others seem to have noticed, but Carter hasn’t got his ears out—sloppy—and neither Zolf nor the prince strikes Sasha as terribly observant in these sorts of situations. They make very little effort to keep quiet as they stomp through the forest, and it makes Sasha want to roll her eyes.

It’s fine. That’s what she’s here for. Sort of. Mostly.

There’s another snap of a branch, more movement through the forest—closer this time, moving quickly. Sasha flicks a knife out of her sleeve and moves silently from tree to tree until she can get a better look at the threat.

Well, shoot. It’s quite a big threat. Sasha counts 13—no, 14—people with cloaks and hoods and various levels of armament. She grimaces, decides there’s no chance of her taking care of them herself, and moves quickly through the trees in an effort to warn the others of what’s to come.

Eight years in the castle must have made her sloppy. She’s too slow.

. . .

Zolf spent five years in the Maritime Watch, nearly another five as a privateer. He should be able to spot a bloody ambush coming from a mile away.

But he doesn’t. Maybe it’s because he isn’t as sharp as he once was, or maybe it’s because he’s distracted by Carter’s incessant rambling about some upper-society gossip that Zolf could not care less about but that Wilde seems to be keenly interested in. Either way, he doesn’t realize they’re being followed until an arrow flies out of the trees and neatly embeds itself in his left buttock.

Zolf lets out a choice expletive that he learned in the Watch, which earns him a shocked look from Wilde. Then, Wilde’s eyes travel downward and register the arrow, and they somehow get wider. “Oh, hell,” he says.

Zolf grits his teeth and yanks the arrow out. A moment later, another arrow flies out of the trees and narrowly misses Zolf’s head.

Right. Time to stop mucking about.

Zolf slams his walking stick on the ground as he turns, and the flames that roar to life nicely illuminate the veritable horde of men descending upon them from between the tree trunks. “Carter,” he snaps. “Keep an eye on Wilde.”

He doesn’t look back to see if Carter listens. Instead, he curls a hand around his glaive, mutters some words under his breath, and casts out his other hand.

A wall of stone and clay shudders out of the ground in front of him, rising halfway up the tree trunks before coming to a halt. It’s not a perfect solution, and already Zolf can hear the men moving to run around it, but it gives them time.

Zolf turns and says, “There’s too many to fight head-on. We need to run.”

Carter grimaces. “I think I’m the only one here who can actually run faster than these guys. Er, no offense. What we need is a plan.”

As much as it deeply pains Zolf to admit it, Carter is right. Though he’ll never say those words aloud within Carter’s earshot. “First priority is protectin’ Wilde. If you can take him and—I dunno, hide him or something, I can probably figure out something to stop the bandits.”

“By yourself? Zolf, there’s, like, a hundred of them.”

“There’s maybe twenty.”

“There might be more we haven’t seen yet!”

Somebody drops out of the trees behind them, and Zolf nearly brains them with the glaive. “Woah!” Sasha says, darting out of the way just in time. “Watch where you’re swingin’ that thing.”

“How about you don’t sneak up on me when we’re bein’ attacked!”

Sasha makes a face. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair. Just—I can take Wilde and protect him and stuff while you lot take care of the bandits. Yeah?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Zolf can see movement again, can hear the crash of boots through the underbrush. “Okay,” he says, hefting his glaive. “Keep an eye out in case any of ‘em try to come at us from behind.”

“‘Course,” Sasha says. She nods to Wilde, then begins hurrying off further into the woods. Wilde casts one last nervous look at the bandits, then follows behind her.

“All right,” Zolf says. He touches Carter’s shoulder, then his own, and two shield spells flicker to life. “That should help a bit.”

Carter flips his dagger between his fingers, then thumbs the blade. “Can’t you just—I dunno, hit ‘em with lightning again? Or something?”

“That’ll only work on some of ‘em, and we don’t know if there are more than the ones we saw.”

It’s a good suggestion though, so as soon as the first few bandits are in range, Zolf slams his glaive against the ground, and arcs of lightning slam into five unarmored chests. They drop like stones. “That should give us time, at least.”

Not enough, it seems. A few more arrows fly out of the trees, bouncing off Zolf’s shield spell, and he turns to see a wave of bandits crashing out of the tree cover, weapons drawn. It’s not hundreds, but it’s certainly a lot, and Zolf readies his glaive with a grim expression on his face. He tries to think of a spell he can cast to take care of this, but water has always been his biggest strength, and there’s none of it in sight. He doesn’t want to risk a forest fire by trying any fire-based spells either. He could try a large-scale confusion spell, but he’s never quite gotten that to work right and now does not seem like the time to test his luck.

Zolf throws up a quick searing light, which leaves most of the men stumbling and blind, but not all of them. Well, that’s probably the best he can hope for right now.

Beside him, Carter throws a dagger, which misses spectacularly. He grimaces and pulls another from his sleeve. “These are my last two, so I hope you have a plan!”

“Not really,” Zolf says. And then the bandits are upon them, and Zolf becomes very busy very quickly.

One bandit spits, “Begone, foul beast!” before Zolf slams his glaive into the side of his head and knocks him prone. Another, just behind him, says, “I bet I’d get 100 gold for you, alive or dead,” and her knives glint just as much as her eyes.

“Can’t say the same for you,” Zolf says before stabbing her in the side. It’s not a mortal wound. Probably. Zolf really doesn’t appreciate being reduced to what somebody will pay for him.

Carter seems to be holding his own, which is a nice change of pace. But still, there’s too many for them to handle on their own. As if proving his point, Zolf hears the sound of scuffling behind them, and he risks a glance over his shoulder and sees Sasha, knives a blur as she darts around with speed too quick to be entirely mundane. A bandit who had clearly been approaching them from behind lies bleeding on the forest floor, and Sasha nods at Zolf before turning so her back is to them, guarding the rear.

Gods, he hopes Wilde is stashed away somewhere safe.

More and more bandits pour from between the trees. Zolf wracks his brain for some spell that will fix everything, like it did during the tournament, but without ready water available, he’s at a bit of a loss. He boosts his and Carter’s shields a few times, casts a quick cure wounds on himself to stop the bleeding from his backside, and stabs out with his glaive, but there’s only so much he can do with a single weapon.

For the love of the gods. If he loses a fight to a group of backwoods thugs, of all things, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to show his face in public again.

Then, from off to the side, Zolf hears something crash into the forest floor. Something large. He doesn’t take his eyes off the bandit he’s currently engaged with to look, but a moment later, there’s another crash, and another, and Zolf realizes with a start what he’s hearing.

Footsteps. Large, heavy footsteps, approaching them at increasing speed.

Oh, fuck.

The person in front of Zolf stops mid-attack, staring at something over Zolf’s shoulder with wide eyes. They take a staggering step backwards, nearly tripping as they do so, and Zolf can see the other bandits doing the same. The woman Carter is facing off against drops her knives and begins to run. Behind him, Zolf hears Sasha say something in a language he doesn’t speak, followed by a word he does recognize:

“Barnes?”

Fuck it. Zolf glances over his shoulder.

Pushing its way through the forest, knocking over trees and crushing bushes underfoot, is a very large, very green, and very familiar dragon.

“Holy shit, it’s Barnes!” Carter says. He does not sound nearly horrified enough.

“Get down,” Zolf says, grabbing Carter’s arm and dragging him bodily behind some boulders. He sees Sasha duck down as well, just in time.

A moment later, flames erupt through the trees, washing over the leaf litter and the bushes. The bandits scatter in all directions, tripping over themselves to get out of the literal line of fire. Zolf winces as he sees the wood, dry from a few weeks without rain, catch ablaze. The flames aren’t spreading yet, but it won’t be long. He just hopes there’s a stream somewhere nearby that he can use to quell them.

Barnes stomps past, chasing the bandits further into the woods. Zolf is so focused on not attracting attention to themselves that he almost misses the small twitch of movement in the corner of his eye, back in the direction Barnes came from.

It’s Wilde. He’s standing in the hollow of a tree, almost entirely shielded from view. His hood is up, obscuring his face, but Zolf can still tell it’s him. (The man’s clothing is truly the most ostentatious thing he’s ever seen.)

It’s funny. If Zolf didn’t know any better, from the motions of Wilde’s hands, he’d think that he’s casting a spell.

Barnes roars one final time before stretching his wings out, pushing off the ground, and taking flight. He hovers above them for a moment, wingbeats sending leaves and sticks flying off in all directions, before turning and disappearing into the sky above.

… Literally disappearing. Zolf blinks, trying to decide if perhaps he’d just lost track of him, but he’s certain. Barnes was there, and then he wasn’t. He vanished. Like the sky reached out and ate him whole.

Stunned, it takes Zolf a few moments to realize that the fire is gone as well, as if sucked up by a vacuum. The trees aren’t charred; the underbrush isn’t crushed underfoot. Everything’s just … fine. The bandits are gone, and the forest is fine.

In Zolf’s peripheral vision, he sees Wilde’s hands stop moving. And he realizes that he does, in fact, know better.

Wilde is a magician. More than that, Wilde is an illusionist. Zolf’s no expert on humans, especially royal ones, but he’s pretty sure they don’t study magic, and he’s extra sure that if they do, it’s not illusion magic.

That’s … unexpected.

Whatever kind of magic Wilde’s cast, it seems to have had some sort of side effect on his hands. They look green, and Zolf winces. It’s not unheard of for some people’s bodies to be unable to handle large quantities of magic coursing through them, and that was probably the most impressive illusion Zolf has ever seen or even heard of. Wilde bends down and attaches something to his ankle—a protective charm, perhaps? Zolf’s heard of those as well, and he knows they can interfere with magic if you don’t remove them before casting—and when he straightens again, his hands are normal.

Well, whatever it is, it’s Wilde’s business. The bandits are gone now, and that’s all that matters.

Wilde pushes down his hood, straightens his shoulders, then emerges from behind the tree. “Zolf?” he calls softly. “Carter? Sasha?”

“Here,” Zolf says, unfolding himself from the boulders. Carter slips out behind him, and Sasha emerges from her own hiding place. She’s still staring up at the sky, brow furrowed.

“Oh, good.” Wilde looks vaguely rattled, but not as bad as Zolf expected him to be. That’s a pleasant surprise. “It seems perhaps that Barnes is … also invested in my well-being.”

Is that the story they’re going with? Zolf side-eyes Sasha. “Did you know he’d be comin’ along?”

Sasha blinks, then looks down at him. “I mean—we didn’t really talk about it. Dunno why he didn’t stick around.” She pouts a bit. “I wanted to say hi.”

“Maybe he’s still angry at us for using tanglefoot bags on him,” Carter says, somewhat sulkily.

Neither of them brings up the fire and destruction, or lack thereof. Hell, maybe Zolf is the only one who noticed. Sasha seems more perceptive than that, but she also seems distracted by the appearance—and subsequent disappearance—of Barnes. “Maybe,” Zolf says. “Either way, he’s gone now. We should probably get going, just in case the bandits decide to come back.”

“Yes, agreed,” Wilde says, looking nervously into the trees. “I suspect we can’t rely on a second dragon ex machina, as it were.”

Carter sighs and slips his knives back into his sleeves. “Yeah, all right. Let me go scout ahead, just in case. Sasha?”

Sasha nods, and a moment later, she’s gone, having scaled the nearest tree with surprising speed.

Wistfully, Carter says, “Gods, I wish I could do that.”

They begin to walk. Zolf allows Carter to pull ahead out of earshot; then, he looks at Wilde out of the corner of his eye and says under his breath, “So. Impressive illusion.”

Wilde doesn’t quite manage to contain his flinch. “I’m sorry?”

“Back there.” Zolf jabs over his shoulder with a thumb. “Saw you casting. Impressive. Didn’t know they taught princes how to do magic.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wilde says, clipped. “I’m afraid you’re confused.”

“Now, hold on, I know perfectly well what I’m talking about, and I certainly ain’t confused about anything. You—”

Wilde whirls on Zolf. “Drop it.”

It’s nearly snarled, and it startles Zolf right out of his planned interrogation. He’s heard Wilde on edge, heard him snippy and irritated and annoyed, but he hasn’t heard him like this. Like this is something that matters.

“Okay, okay,” Zolf says. “Don’t get your royal panties in a twist. C’mon—we should catch up to Carter.”

Wilde blinks at him, clearly caught off guard. It takes him a long moment to collect himself. “Right. Yes, let’s.”

Wilde lengthens his stride, pulling ahead of Zolf. Zolf watches him go, rubbing his thumb thoughtfully along the smooth wood of his walking stick.

Maybe there’s more to Wilde than he first thought.

Chapter Text

It goes like this:

They’re staying off the main paths now, trying not to attract any more unwanted attention. Carter is scouting ahead, message active in case he needs to alert them of any danger, so Zolf is left walking alone with Wilde. The morning passes in silence; Wilde is clearly still tense from the previous day, with the bandits, and Zolf is keeping his attention fixed on the trees around them, watching and waiting for any adversaries that Carter may have missed.

When lunch comes and goes without incident, the tension breaks. And in the afternoon, Wilde begins to hum.

And Zolf … Zolf listens.

He’s glad that Carter is scouting ahead because he knows he’d be getting an earful about oh, so when I whistle, I’m a horrible nuisance, but when his highness hums, he just gets a free pass? But Wilde is not Carter, in so many ways. He can carry a tune, for one. And his voice is…

Well. It’s pleasant to listen to, is all.

Wilde hums, and Zolf listens. And they walk on.

. . .

And like this:

Wilde is sitting on a log, a notebook balanced atop one knee. The sunset illuminates him from behind, casting his face in shadow, but there’s just enough light for Zolf to see a small flash of pink from Wilde’s tongue as it sticks out of the corner of his mouth, a quirk of concentration he almost certainly isn’t aware of.

Zolf watches him for a moment. Considers asking him what he’s writing. Then, he shakes his head and turns his attention back to dinner preparations.

. . .

And like this:

Things make a lot more sense, now that Zolf knows that Wilde is a magician. The way Wilde’s eyes track Zolf’s movements when he casts, carefully cataloguing, not with amazement but with curiosity. Zolf almost asks him if he wants Zolf to teach him some spells—and he’s interested in seeing Wilde cast as well, because he knows magic and Wilde is the most powerful illusionist he’s ever met and almost certainly one of the most powerful magicians he’s ever met, full stop—but he bites his tongue.

Wilde told him to drop it, and he hasn’t cast anything since. And Zolf may not be the most tactful guy in the world, but even he knows how to not completely put his foot in it. Wilde clearly doesn’t want to do magic, and he doesn’t want people to know that he can do magic, so … fine. Zolf won’t bring it up.

But if he’s a bit more methodical about his spellcasting, making sure that Wilde can see the movements of his hands and enunciating more clearly … well. Wilde can do with that what he will.

. . .

And like this:

“I just think the themes of self-alienation are perhaps a bit more … prominent than you’ve assumed.”

Zolf points a firm finger at Wilde. “Oi, I can take whatever meaning I’d like from my literature, thank you very much.”

Wilde rolls his eyes. “Well, yes, but sometimes it’s nice to dig deeper into things we perhaps didn’t consider the first time around.”

“And I’m sayin’ that I have, and I’ve still come to the conclusion that this book is fundamentally about rejection from societal norms!”

Wilde sighs in that prissy little way he does that gets right underneath Zolf’s skin. It stokes the fire within him, and Zolf isn’t going to think about the fact that he’s started to enjoy that—gettin’ all riled up and bickering about books or food or music. Wilde has a surprising backbone, is all. “And do we not think that that rejection contributes to self-alienation?”

“Yeah, but that don’t make it the central theme! The entire book centers around Czerney’s fear of the outside world.”

“Look,” Wilde says, “I am not saying that rejection is not a theme in this story, just that—”

“So you admit it!”

“Oh, for the love of the gods, you are intolerable.”

“I liked the part where the guy talks to a tree for, like, five pages,” Carter offers from the other side of the fire.

Wilde locks eyes with Zolf and raises a single, thin eyebrow. It’s a brief moment of shared humor, and it lodges in Zolf’s chest like a splinter that refuses to work its way back out into the firelight.

. . .

And like this:

Wilde says nothing as Zolf settles down beside him. He’s lying on his back, staring up at the stars. It’s a beautiful night, cloudless and still, with the moon hanging wide and bright overhead. It makes Wilde’s skin seem almost translucent, save for the rosy sunburnt tinge to his cheeks that he’s developed after almost a week on the road.

They pass a few minutes in silence. Then, Wilde says quietly, “I couldn’t really see them from the tower. Not like this, at least. The lava was so bright, and you couldn’t really get a good angle out of the window, so I … well, I rather forgot what it was like. To see them all stretched above me like this.”

Zolf isn’t quite sure what to say to that. Why didn’t you just leave, then? Why did you stay all those years? Why did you lock yourself there in the first place? Were you really that desperate for true love’s kiss?

None of that is right. Instead, Zolf hums and lets Wilde decide how to fill the silence. Wilde’s the one who has a way with words, after all. If Zolf has learned anything about him during their time together, it’s that.

It’s a few more moments before Wilde speaks. “The grass, too. The air, the trees, the animals, the flowers … For so long, I didn’t…” He stops, the corners of his mouth tightening, as if battling some unimaginable grief. When he speaks again, it’s with forced levity. “Ah, forgive me. The night sky brings out the melodrama in me. I simply mean to say that … well. It’s rather beautiful, isn’t it?”

Zolf studies the lines of Wilde’s face—the crooked slant of his nose, the high points of his cheekbones, the strong curve of his jaw. Then, he tilts his head back and looks at the stars above. “Yeah,” he says. “It really is.”

. . .

And like this:

Zolf does not mean to push Wilde into the bush.

Zolf has had many, many years to grow accustomed to his new body. As evidenced by his walking stick and his inability to run faster than a generous hobble, however, it has become increasingly clear that “grow accustomed" does not mean “gain full and unimpeded mobility.” He’s gangly. He’s not even close to stealthy. He sometimes knocks shit off his table with his tail when he loses track of it.

And, apparently, he still doesn’t quite know his own strength.

Wilde blinks up at him from where he’s sprawled in the blackberry bush. There are splotches of blue-purple juice peppered across his shirt and trousers, and Zolf just knows he’s going to be hearing about that for the rest of the day. His cheeks are still flushed from exertion, the stick he’d been using as a stand-in for a sword during their early-morning impromptu “Zolf I really feel the next time that bandits come around I would like to not simply hide myself behind a tree so could you spare the time to teach me how to fight” sparring session lying discarded at the base of the bush. There’s a leaf in his hair.

“Shit,” Zolf says. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to, uh. Shove you like that.” He holds out a hand, grimacing. “Er. Sorry. Again.”

Wilde stares at the hand, then up at Zolf, then back at the hand.

Then, to Zolf’s complete and utter bewilderment, Wilde begins to laugh.

“What?” Zolf says, baffled, which only seems to make Wilde laugh harder. He pulls back his hand. “What’re you gigglin’ about, you big buffoon?”

“Buffoon,” Wilde repeats, wheezing. “You certainly do have a way with words, my brave and noble knight who has quite literally swept me off my feet.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I don’t suppose you might push me into a raspberry bush next? I do like to match my juices when attempting to dye my clothing on the go.”

“Yeah, all right, Wilde.”

Wilde’s laughter settles down into titters, and he looks up at Zolf with a wide grin. His hair is a mess, and his clothing is stained, and he’s got dirt streaked across his cheeks, and there are a few beetles crawling on him that he’s going to have a proper fit about once Zolf points them out, and Zolf can’t stop looking at him because it’s the most disheveled he’s ever seen him and Wilde is laughing.

It makes Zolf’s stomach do something quite complicated that, frankly, he does not have the time nor the patience to think about right now.

Zolf sighs and holds out a hand again. “Here,” he says, “lemme help you up.”

He thinks about it later, though, at night when he’s lying on his bedroll and watching the moonlight scatter off the blades of grass around him. He’s been trying not to, but anybody who’s ever met Zolf would call him the most stubborn bastard they’d ever met in their life, and Zolf himself is no exception. Sometimes, when his mind wants him to think about something, he has no choice and no chance at rest until he gives in and just bloody thinks about it.

So what if he enjoys Wilde’s company. So what if he thinks they’re getting on. So what if he’s dreading the end of their journey. And so bloody what if he’s started to sort of revisit that whole “true love” business. He’s got a job to do, and he’s going to do it, and he is not gonna muck it all up by—for the love of the gods—catching feelings for a prince who’s about to marry another man.

There. Thought acknowledged. Now Zolf can stop thinking about it and get some bloody sleep.

Zolf rolls over and closes his eyes. Sleep does not find him for a long, long time.