Archive of Our Own

The sword that pierces Auguste's heart might as well have kept going, in defiance of natural laws and the strength of one man's arms, and pierced Laurent's as well.

It certainly feels like it. Laurent is crouched awkwardly, having arranged himself so that a casual glance through the open doorway would pass over his head. He's too far away to hear anything, but all he wanted was to watch. To gather information. The look on Damen's face, as the Akielon fumbled through the formal phrases; that would be useful. Whether Damen looked nervous at all, or simply confident, wrapped in the silken knowledge of their parents' approval and the plans that were laid almost before Laurent was born. It is still within Laurent's power to refuse this. He has not decided, yet, if he will.

He's crouched, elbows resting on fully bent knees. When Damen draws his sword, Laurent's joints freeze and lock. He can't move. He struggles to breathe.

It's not Damen's expression which Laurent finds his gaze pinned to, in the end: it's his brother's. Auguste's eyes, wide and horrified, barely starting to bleed anger at the edges. His mouth, open to issue a command or ask a question that will never be answered. Damen is fast, practiced. Auguste, having received his friend with pleasure and good faith, ready to hear his formal suit, is unarmed.

It's a clean, well-aimed stroke. Auguste is probably dead before Damen pulls his sword free.

Laurent hears himself make a noise like an animal, soft and raw. He tries to stand. Every part of him buckles at once and he sprawls on the polished floor; when he manages to haul himself to his feet, Damen is gone. There is just the body.

"Your Highness! Prince Laurent!"

A member of the guard--not Laurent's personal guard, it is a man he vaguely recognises, but could not name--dashes up to him. There are more men behind this one, perhaps half a dozen. The room is full of the sounds of their boots, the nervous scrape of metal. Outside, far away, Laurent can hear voices raised in agitation. Somewhere a woman screams. Laurent's head rings with it. He clings to the door frame. He can't think.

Laurent says, moving to step through the doorway, "Auguste--"

"The Akielon prince is still in the palace, sir," says the guard, grim. "We will find him. But we must get you to safety."

The shock, which had fallen over Laurent's limbs like chains, breaks. A sensation that he has never felt before is rippling through him, like a wave building out at sea, a terrible anger that will break with deadly force. He is going to fight, he is going to be revenged, he is going to find a way to remake this chasm that has formed at the centre of his life. Or else he will pull the world down into it with him.

"No," he says.

"Sir." Two pairs of hands close around Laurent's shoulders and arms. "You are the Crown Prince--you will be King, now. Please come with us."

"No." Laurent pulls and jerks. No, no.

"Your Highness--"

"Let go of me. This instant."

A new clatter adds itself to the noise, and Laurent's uncle comes into the room. He's breathing hard, as though he rushed to get here.

"Laurent," he says. He looks over Laurent's shoulder, at one of the men holding him, and nods.

Something wraps itself over Laurent's face: a hand, a soft cloth, a sweet wet smell. Laurent inhales through sheer alarm, and the furious force within him starts to falter. His uncle's face wavers and blurs before his eyes.

"This is for your own safety, Laurent," comes his uncle's voice, from the bottom of a well.

Everything turns white, and nauseous, and then dissolves into black.

Twice in his life Laurent has been knocked out: a fall from a horse, when he was very young, and an awkward fall in the practice ring. Both times the lurch from pain into pain, falling into waking, was sudden. This is no different. When he opens his eyes, fighting his way past the marsh and fog that fill his skull, he expects to see the inside of Auguste's chambers. The audience room. Soldiers. Blood on the floor--

A grappling hook of memory twists in Laurent's guts, and he retches. His cheek is against something soft: a pillow. Open your eyes. Get up.

He does. He is in a room with a single door--locked--and a single window in the curving wall that looks down, down, to a small lake and a dense forest like grubby emerald streaked with purple, stretching to close hills and an irregular horizon.

Laurent's mouth tastes like dust and there are fiery spears piercing his temples. The sun hurts his eyes but he doesn't close them again; whenever he does that, he sees the shock on Auguste's face as Damen's sword ran him through.

He shouts. No one comes. It takes those long minutes of waiting for Laurent to put his finger on the strange quality of the silence, which is nothing he has ever experienced before. It is the silence of plants, and animals, but no human beings. Laurent might as well be the last person in the world. It makes a mockery of his sword, in its sheath, which he finds leaning against the stony wall of the tower room. A courtesy? An admission that Laurent's uncle, having done all he can to remove Laurent from danger, knows that danger might find him nonetheless?

Danger. Damen.

The second time Laurent met Damianos of Akielos, he was five years old.

This is Prince Damianos, said Laurent's father. Bow, Laurent. Like we taught you.

Nine-year-old Damen returned the bow. He looked mutinous, scrubbed, a practically grown-up boy to Laurent's eyes. The way he looked at Laurent said that he had no expectation, and no intention, of enjoying the summer.

I am honoured, Laurent said, not meaning a word of it, to welcome you.

The very first time they met, Laurent was less than a month old. They were promised to one another when Laurent was a red-faced baby in the cradle, not even old enough to smile, let alone object. Their fathers shook hands and committed the two of them to summer after summer of games, wary insults, and the baffling besiegement of Laurent's bookish reserve by Damen's open, grinning mischief. A future king and a royal prince. Perfect symbols of the alliance.

The last time they met, two seasons ago, it was different. It was almost...pleasant. Damen had grown up tall and attractive and charming, and the glances they traded were no less sharp, but there was finally something underneath it. Something stronger, something ambiguous and exciting. Damen kissed him, formally on the lips, in front of their families. It was fine.

Until Damen opened his mouth.

Laurent stares down at the rippling canopy of the forest, and the slanted rays of the sun, which reach down through cushions of cloud like suspended arrows. He knocks his forehead against the wall beside the window, hard. What's the point? What's one obnoxious, unthinking insult when set against a betrayal of that size?

But he's never been able to fool himself, and he knows. It's the fact that Laurent was wavering, despite the insult. That he'd found within himself that precarious excitement, something all mixed up with the curve of Damen's smile and the easy richness of Damen's laugh, and the way Laurent's body had lit up beneath his kiss. That Laurent had put on his nicest clothes and hid himself in Auguste's chambers to watch Damen ask, officially, for his hand in marriage; and that he'd been made a fool, stupid and too trusting and utterly devastated, by what happened next.

The part of Laurent always waiting with the next question, and the next, is asking why. Is asking what Damen stood to gain.

It's drowned out, in a sudden and unbearable swell, by everything that Laurent has been holding at bay since he opened his eyes.

The last thing I said to my brother, he thinks, was: remember, don't look in my direction.

Was: you know you always mess these things up.

Laurent slides to the floor and cries until he's exhausted and his jaw aches from clenching. He cries as he has always cried: rarely, silently, and hugely. The tears feel like they come from nowhere. From the air. They appear on his face and scald it, drench it, a hot river that rages against the barrier of his hands.

When Laurent has quietened, he lowers his hands again. The light in the room has changed, gone late-afternoon plush and gilded, and two brown mice are huddled in the centre of the floor.

The mice have eyes like red beads. They are watching him in a way that seems, to Laurent, unnecessarily smug. He's tempted to throw a boot at them, but unlacing his tall footwear is more effort than he can muster right now.

Laurent climbs to his feet. At once, the mice scamper nervously through a crack in the main door, chased by their stretching shadows, and are gone. Laurent explores the room, which takes a depressingly short time. The bed with its simple, comfortable sheets. A basin and cloth for washing, and a mirror in a wooden frame. A lavatory box, tucked behind a closed door. Some food that won't go stale: hard biscuits, good cheese, raisins and dried apricots and figs. Bottles of water and wine. Candles and matches. Placed incongruously beneath the window is a desk, empty of paper or writing implements. Empty of anything, Laurent thinks, tugging hard at the last drawer, which is stuck.

The drawer pulls out with a sudden jerk that sends something sliding, with a thump, to the front. Laurent picks up the pack of cards with the relief of a poisoned man handed the antidote.

Laurent plays games of patience, then deals three hands of a poker game and cheats outrageously on behalf of every imaginary player. Then he tells his own fortune, based on half-remembered rhymes, the kind of thing sung under his window by the children of servants. Then patience again.

He itches, he is wrecked with grief; he is almost sick with not knowing what is happening in his kingdom and his palace. But there is nothing else to be done. He can't get out of the door. And even if he could break the window's diamond panes and pull the iron framework from its setting, there's no way down, unless he learns to fly.

Patience. Patience.

Three days later, Laurent has learned that the mice are talkative. They spend a lot of time squeaking and chirping at one another; and, once he has bribed them into a wary kind of trust with scraps of cheese and biscuit, they direct some of this noise at Laurent as well.

You are ascribing them personalities, Laurent thinks, because you are bored.

The more timid one of them is slightly larger and with a lighter coat, a sandy-brown shade. The smaller mouse, which is the colour of deeply stained wood, is both bolder and more fastidious. It will take crumbs of food right from Laurent's hand, and spend many minutes grooming its whiskers afterwards.

At one point, on a whim, Laurent pulls the mirror from its hook and and leans it against the wall at floor level.

When the dark mouse catches sight of itself in the mirror, it stops dead. It curls in on itself, nose twitching, fur rising in defensive spikes. Then, all at once, it charges, not at its reflection but at the side of the mirror's frame, as though to knock it over. When Laurent catches the mirror to halt its wobbling, the mouse bites his finger, then flees in a sudden scrabbling rush to huddle by one of the legs of the bed. Its body is shuddering.

"All right," Laurent says, and hangs the mirror back up. He washes the graze on his finger with wine.

It has been three days. Laurent is bored, and Laurent has a mind prone to following possibilities, teasing out endlessly branching pasts and futures. He has considered that perhaps Damen has killed Laurent's uncle, or some other faction has staged a daring coup, and now nobody knows where Laurent is. And will not care to look. Laurent, absent, is convenient.

The food won't last forever.

Not for the first time, he tries to pick the lock of the door with the tip of his sword. It is a good duelling blade, sharp and flexible, and the door is solid wood. Laurent will never be able to chop it down with brute force. He could set fire to it, but there's no guarantee he won't suffocate from smoke before the thing burns through enough to weaken. His best plan at the moment is to smash the mirror and use the shards to carve the lock mechanism out of the door itself, but he's still a day or two away from that level of fear.

Laurent is carefully resurrecting the rules of clock patience from ten years ago, inserting his own variations where he's unsure of his memory, when he hears footsteps. They are rising, growing louder, and they are running. The existence of a spiral staircase in a tower of this height is something that Laurent deduced on his first day here. The runner seems to be taking the stairs two at a time, and their tread is heavy. They are shouting.

Heart pounding, Laurent sets down the cards and fetches his sword.

The doorknob rattles. Another shout--"Laurent, are you in there?"--and then a blow, like anger on the verge of becoming uncontrolled. Another blow. Another. Laurent watches the door shudder in its frame. Each thump has an echo of deep splinters.

He thinks, I am probably going to die; it's like falling into a river in winter.

Finally, there's a dense and wrecking groan of wood, and the door crashes inward. Prince Damianos of Akielos has a tear in the shoulder of his shirt, a sword in his hand, and an expression of tired triumph on his face.

"Of course," Laurent murmurs. "Why didn't I think of summoning a murderer to break it down for me?"

"Laurent." Damen starts across the room, but halts at once when the tip of Laurent's sword twitches towards his chest.

Sheer curiosity forces Laurent to ask: "How did you find me?"

"I looked," Damen says. "I've been looking for days. And I saw you, in the window. The sun caught your hair."

Laurent adjusts his grip on the hilt of his sword. Damen isn't even holding his properly. There's a puzzled crease between his glorious near-black eyes, as though he's a breath away from telling Laurent not to be silly.

The insult of not being taken seriously, after everything, almost chokes him.

"Lift your sword, Damianos," says Laurent. Throwing the name between them like a rag. He hasn't called Damen Damianos since that first bow, the first summer.

"What are you doing?" Damen asks. "Laurent, what are you doing here?"

"Hiding," Laurent says. A laugh tries to tremble out of his mouth; he's not so scared that he doesn't enjoy, for a strange moment, the irony of the thing. "From you."

"Hiding?"

"Lift your sword." Cold sweat prickles at Laurent's neck. When he speaks, his teeth snap at the ends of the words. "Are you just going to stand there and pretend you didn't kill him?"

"Kill--what. Auguste? Are you talking about Auguste?" Damen looks so completely bewildered that Laurent feels sick.

"I saw you," Laurent snarls, "with my own eyes," and gives up on speaking, as it's getting them nowhere. He launches himself at Damen, sword feinting at the man's heart but ready to flick higher and pierce his throat.

Damen, even taken aback and holding his sword like he's forgotten it's there, manages to parry Laurent and turn him bodily aside with a single firm stroke. Laurent pulls back two steps, steadies himself, and attacks again.

This is not a room suited to duelling. Laurent has the advantage of knowing its exact dimensions, having paced them again and again; but of the advantages available, Damen has all the others. Laurent is too angry to be at his best. He can tell from the way Damen fights that even his best would be nowhere near enough. Damen is masterfully and forcefully defensive, never bothering to take openings or do more than turn Laurent away. The frown stays on his face, as though he is the one with a right to feel hurt; as though Damen would prefer to be talking, negotiating, while Laurent is the one most keen to fight. This is the world seen in the treacherous surface of dark water, where everything is its wavering opposite.

"Fight," Laurent hisses, and engages again, driving himself inside Damen's guard with quick footsteps.

In reply Damen simply disarms him, with a blunt lightning twist that makes Laurent gasp as pain shoots from wrist to elbow. Laurent's sword flies sideways into the wall. The hilt strikes the mirror, which cracks with a sound like breaking bones and then falls to the floor, where it shatters entirely.

Laurent cradles his wrist in his left hand and anchors his feet to the floor, eyes fixed on Damen, defiant. He can't stop his breath from racing, but he can control this much. He can face this directly, courageously, as Auguste never had the chance to do.

"Laurent, it's me," Damen says. "You know me."

"I think I may safely say that I do not."

"You really think I would do something like that?" Damen sounds, of all things, exasperated. "Damn it, Laurent, we are engaged."

The laugh bursts out of Laurent like water from the mouth of a drowning victim dragged ashore. Cold and sudden and foul.

"Setting aside the obvious," Laurent says, "I feel I should point out that the last time we met, you told me I was beautiful, and then couldn't think of a single other good quality I possessed."

The corner of Damen's mouth twitches. He looks dangerous, and bright, and appalling.

"I can think of a few things now," he says.

Laurent feels himself teetering, the resolve of his ankles weakening, the pain in his wrist like the throb of embers. He is light-headed with fury.

"Just kill me. Get it over with."

Damen's sword droops all the way to the floor. Then, in a single efficient movement, he sheaths it.

"For the last time," Damen says. "I'm here to rescue you."

Laurent breathes in, past the battering ram of his heart. Breathes out. The question is back in his mind, pulsing: why, why, why? His brother's killer. His fiancé. Somewhere there is a map to this, a perfect pattern that will make everything clear, if Laurent could only glimpse it.

The single most important fact: Damen is not, at this moment, trying to kill him. Laurent forces his shoulders into a simulacrum of relaxation, and takes the three breaths required for him to control his face.

"And then what?" Laurent steps deliberately closer. "We are to be married? You came to drag me to the altar, so that Vere would be yours as well?"

Now, again, he is inside Damen's guard. He lifts both of his hands, resting his fingers lightly on Damen's elbows.

"You thought just because our fathers wanted us to be together, I'd fall into your arms?"

Damen must have at least a scrap of native intelligence, because his eyes narrow. "Laurent," he says.

Laurent kicks him hard in the shin, stamps on one foot, brings his knee up to Damen's groin and then strikes at Damen's nose with the heel of his hand. Delivering that last blow breathes fire to full blazing life in his wrist, and Laurent can't keep back a guttural sound of pain. He fumbles for Damen's sword, but he's far too weak, and Damen has a soldier's ability to ignore the wound of the moment in order to avert the wound of the future. He jerks away, staggering towards the door, and Laurent backs off, getting space between them, snatching up his own sword from where it's lying in a mess of mirror-shards.

Wincing, Damen straightens. His nose and upper lip are bloodied.

Laurent says, "If you're not going to kill me, then get out before I kill you."

Damen says, "I didn't kill your brother."

"I was there," Laurent says. "You didn't kill Auguste? Then explain to me what I saw."

Frustration hums in Damen's voice like wasps. "I can't."

Laurent doesn't move. Damen starts towards him again, hand raised in something like unhappy supplication, and Laurent feels his lip curl.

Damen sighs.

His footsteps, as he descends the steps of the tower, take a long time to fade from Laurent's hearing.

Laurent climbs, first. There is another door at the very top of the tower, another room above the one he's been living in, but that door is equally as locked and Laurent does not have a convenient amount of muscles at his disposal. The spiral staircase leads all the way down to a bare rounded space at ground level. There is nothing there but a wooden chest containing more candles, and more blankets. The door leading out into the world is not locked; all to the good, Laurent thinks, or it too would probably be splintered around its hinges.

From down here the forest is not a carpet but its own towering world. The largest, densest and least traversed forests within a day's travel of Arles--though even that could be a dangerous assumption--are to the north of the city, so Laurent plays the odds and sets out with the sun melting into the high horizon over his right shoulder.

The forest is very dark, and there are no obvious paths. Laurent carries his sword, drawn, in his left hand. He spends a short time slashing pale marks on trees, wishing for a wayfinding stone, but he can feel reluctance dragging at his heels. Night is falling and he can hear the far-off baying of wolves. Laurent is one man, lost and tired and alone, with a sprained wrist. Auguste was always the strong one, not him.

He returns to the the tower, pulling the heavy outer door shut behind him.

Laurent's uncle arrives when the moon is climbing the sky. His footsteps on the stairs are measured, unhurried. They are confident footsteps, certain of what they will find.

They pause, in the first sign of surprise, at the smashed-in door.

"Laurent," says Laurent's uncle.

"Uncle," says Laurent.

Laurent is laying out cards by candlelight. He has not tidied up. The shards of the mirror lie scattered across the floor like angular puddles in search of sky.

"Nephew," says his uncle. "I know how upset you must be about Auguste. I share your grief. But this kind of tantrum is unlike you."

Part of Laurent would like to leap from the table and run to his uncle, the first friendly face and pair of arms he's seen in days, but he's learned that keeping his eyes on the cards can hold the tears at bay. Besides, he's waiting for an apology for being drugged and held against his will, no matter how kindly meant.

"It wasn't me," says Laurent. He moves a red queen onto a black king. "Or rather, I had help."

"Help?" His uncle's voice is sharp. "What do you mean?"

"Damianos was here."

"Damia--Laurent."

Laurent looks up. His uncle looks pale and startled, almost afraid. Good, Laurent thinks; you weren't here, were you? And then feels ashamed of himself for the thought.

"How did he--" His uncle swallows. "Are you harmed? What happened?"

"He denied killing--he denied it," Laurent bites. "Of course."

His uncle nods. "Lying Akielon filth."

"He could have killed me," Laurent says. "He didn't. He said he was trying to rescue me." He stands, and feels better for standing. "Uncle, I need to get back to the palace. I've been away too long. There are things I should be doing."

"Shh," his uncle says, soothing. "No. I'm taking care of everything."

Laurent's instincts for danger have never been honed in a war, and they are sluggish for it, but he is not stupid enough to ignore them. He is, he realises, on guard.

"Let me out," he says, heading briskly for the door. "Take me back."

The most surprising thing about his uncle's firm, trapping grasp on his upper arm is how unsurprised Laurent finds himself at the feel of it.

His uncle says, "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Laurent."

Says, "Remember, I'm doing this because I care about you."

This is nothing like the swift, muffling sleep of the drug. It hurts more than anything has ever hurt in Laurent's life. Deep within him is a grinding noise that he can hear with his liver, feel with his hair, and it chews its way outwards from its skeleton until every part of Laurent's body feels like pulped raw meat. The ceiling and the walls are drifting away from him. Thousands of pins erupt through his skin. He tries to vomit and his mouth is stone; he falls and can't catch himself.

For a long clear moment he sees his reflection, split across twenty shards of mirror like a flock dancing in unison.

The grinding turns to a roar and Laurent promptly, gratefully, passes out.

"You think so? A swan, in a tower? We're still better off."

"He's not locked in, any more. And nothing's going to try to eat a swan."

"I don't know why he didn't just kill him and have done with it."

There is something strange about the two voices. They are recognisably young, male, and Veretian; one of them has a faint accent of the eastern provinces, lacking city polish. The other is cultured and peevish in a way that tugs at Laurent's memory. But Laurent's mind, while insisting that it is hearing two young men conversing, also insists that it is hearing a series of high-pitched animal tones.

Laurent opens his eyes and is not actually surprised to see the brown mice sitting within a few yards of his face. He tries to move. Every part of him aches. His body feels unimaginably strange. Trying to turn his head is like passing a message along battlements under siege, carried from one soldier to another; trying to move his arms produces a sound like a floor being swept. Everything in the room has doubled in size.

A swan, in a tower.

Laurent thinks: when I was a boy, I told my uncle it would be wonderful to fly.

"There, I told you so," the larger mouse says. "If he didn't kill us, he wasn't going to kill his own nephew."

"You're an idiot, Aimeric," says the smaller one. "He's got much more reason to kill the Prince, especially if he--"

"Aimeric?" says Laurent.

The two mice freeze.

Laurent braces everything, grits something that is probably the equivalent of his teeth, and manages to find his feet after only five false starts. For a horrible moment he's back in Auguste's rooms, frozen in shock, struggling to stand. He breathes. Breathing is the same.

He can absorb this. It is simply information. Magic, in Laurent's experience up to this point, has been rain spells to help the crops; pretty lights at feasts; wayfinding and healing and charms to keep a ship safe. The Veretian royals had strong magic, many generations ago, but the bloodlines weakened and died out.

There have been no sorcerers in Laurent's family for almost a century. Or so goes the talk.

"Aimeric," he repeats. "Guion's son? I knew you."

"You didn't know me," says the larger mouse. "You don't know anything."

"You came to Arles. You joined the guard for two seasons, and then you left again."

The smaller mouse, the dark one, gives something that is at one and the same time a squeaking snigger and a high, disdainful laugh.

"He joined the guard for two seasons, and didn't have the sense to stop nagging your precious uncle about broken promises. So this was his reward."

Aimeric leaps on the smaller mouse, creating a quick impromptu tussle of teeth and claws. He snarls, "As though you fared any better, Nicaise."

Nicaise. It was longer ago, but Laurent remembers the face; it was not the kind you forgot easily. Dark curls, a triangular chin, those blue eyes that would turn limpid in an instant. And a tongue like a honeyed snake.

"You were killed in a hunting accident," Laurent says. Trying out the words as though he might taste the lie.

Nicaise delivers a final half-hearted bite to Aimeric's neck and rolls aside. His eyes--like tiny drops of dark blood, vastly far from the breathtaking things they once were--are fixed on Laurent. The malice in them is stinging and palpable, like a papercut.

"Aimeric was right. You don't know a fucking thing. Your Highness."

Laurent could snap out at him; he's settling into this body, and he can feel the potential in the muscles of his long, long neck. He could crush Nicaise with a blow from one of his wings.

Instead, he stretches the wings out, exploring the span of them. The right one aches sharply, and the furthest stretch of feathers sags down and can't be raised. Of course. His wrist.

"You said I'm not locked in any more," he says.

"Your brute of an Akielon paramour broke the hinges, remember?" says Aimeric, sullen.

And, more importantly, to leave the door unmended is a gesture of total contempt on his uncle's part. Much good may it do you, Laurent.

"You're a bird," Nicaise says, unwittingly following Laurent's thoughts. "And that wing's not going to hold you. What are you going to do, hop down the stairs?"

Laurent narrows his new swan's eyes.

"Watch me," he says.

The rules, according to Laurent's uncle, are these:

Laurent will transform back into a human if he is in the lake when the moon rises and its light strikes the surface of the water. Only direct light will do. The moon's unshielded reflection.

When moonlight fades and the sun rises, he is a swan again, no matter where he finds himself at the time.

His uncle has placed new enchantments around the tower; any human will find his steps looping back to it when he leaves, or away from it when he comes in search, and a wayfinding stone will lie silent in the palm.

In swan form, Laurent can go as far as he wishes. He could fly all the way back to Arles, and the palace. But if he wants to be human again, he always has to return.

Some further details, which Laurent discovers for himself, are these:

Now that he's under a spell, he can understand Aimeric and Nicaise's speech even when he's in human form. They are not tied to any sadistic conditions related to celestial bodies; they are mice, and stay mice. They have been that way for years. This is what happens when his uncle tires of a boy.

("He's not a murderer," Aimeric says.

Laurent says, "Is this better?"

"No," says Nicaise, flat.)

Injuries survive transformation. Clothes do not. Laurent only has the one outfit; he can't afford for it to be tangled up and ruined by lake mud and reeds. He leaves his clothes bundled on the grass by the lake's edge, beneath a tree, just before sunrise. He walks out of the water in just his skin.

It always hurts as much as the first time.

It takes four days for Laurent's wrist to heal to the point where he can fly. Laurent spends those four days paddling in thoughtful patterns on the lake or walking up and down the banks of it. He gazes frankly at his own changed reflection. He thinks about Auguste, and about their uncle, and about Damen.

"Why don't you leave?" he asks Aimeric and Nicaise. "There's nothing keeping you in the tower."

"That's what Valere thought," Aimeric says. His tail twitches, sweeping a small spider off the fallen log.

"Valere?"

"And I'm sure it was a great comfort to him, when the snake got him."

Nicaise is shivering. Laurent's fingers remember being bitten, and he gives a cross shake of his pinions, quelling the urge to reach out and comfort.

"Mice," Nicaise says, "are safer in empty towers than in forests full of predators. There's usually enough food."

"And sometimes he turns us back," Aimeric says.

"Not for long," says Nicaise: bitter, where Aimeric was wistful. "Just long enough to remember what it's like."

Like everything else about his uncle's true nature, the horrible enormity of that idea has to sink slowly into Laurent's mind.

"This is embarrassing, what you're doing," Nicaise adds. "You're supposed to start from the water. Watch the ducks."

Where Aimeric has a sunny nature soured by disappointment, Nicaise is insolent and petty, and prone to mocking Laurent's plight. For all that, he's entertaining company, and Laurent can recognise a strong defence when he sees and hears one. Nicaise's burning hatred of Laurent's uncle is like a stone rolled across a handkerchief held taut, warping every aspect of his frustrated, intelligent being. Laurent aches for what this boy might have grown into.

He watches the ducks. Nicaise is right: the beginning of flight involves a motion like running across the surface of the water. Laurent moves his shoulders, watching in his reflection the angles this creates. For the first time he feels something like a solid surface beneath his wings, a promise, a nudge.

"Got it," he says, "I've got it!"

No doubt Nicaise says something sarcastic. Laurent is a blade across the water, unhearing, and uncaring. It still hurts a little, but most of the motion comes from the shoulder and elbow, or their equivalent points. The nudge becomes a shove and suddenly his webbed feet are clear of the lake's surface, and the swan body's instincts grab rough hold of his coordination, and he's up--flying--away.

At first Laurent flies aimlessly, for the sheer joy of it, learning quickly how to find the warm currents that rise from the ground or to use the breeze to boost his own movement. Then he makes steep loops around the tower itself, gazing with interest through the window of the locked room at the very top. It's more furnished and more cluttered than Laurent's room, with paintings and maps on the walls.

His main goal, however, is to find out exactly where he is. An hour of noting landmarks and guessing at hills guides him to the edge of the forest closest to Akielon lands, and he thinks with satisfaction that he might at least have a bearing, now. The distance involved is still daunting. But he's no longer lost; and, if the mice are to be counted, no longer alone. It makes enough of a difference that a twisted knot comes loose inside Laurent.

On his way back to the tower, Laurent sees a pair of riders break free of the forest cover, coming out into a small clearing, where they pull their horses to a halt. The men are dark-haired and wearing the clothes of high-ranking Akielons, and a dart of mingled panic and hope goes though Laurent when he recognises one of the voices as Damen's.

Swans are not built to perch in trees. Laurent flies in slow circles, closer and closer, until he can both see and hear clearly. Damen's companion is Nikandros, his closest friend, who often played with Damen and Laurent during the summers of their childhood.

"Why can't we find this lake?"

"I don't know," Damen says. "I could swear I remembered the way."

Nikandros sighs. "It's not that I don't believe you--"

"Thank you," Damen says, heavy with sarcasm.

"The Veretian Regent has had every inch of both countries searched, and nobody has seen Prince Laurent. Missing, possibly dead. You've heard the pronouncements."

"He's alive, and he was here."

"I still don't know why you bothered to go after him in the first place."

"He's my fiancé."

"He's an icy brat. And he always cheated at cards."

"He's…" Damen smiles. "Complicated."

"Don't tell me you actually love him."

"Love?" Damen glances at his friend. "No. But I think I could."

"You're the Crown Prince. You could have anyone!"

"I've never looked at anyone else," Damen says. "I want him."

"Difficult," says Nikandros dryly, "given there's that rumour going around that you killed his brother. And maybe Laurent as well."

"Another reason to produce him whole and well," says Damen. He's quiet for a moment. "He said he saw me do it," he says. "How is that possible?"

A shrug. "Maybe he's in on it," Nikandros says. "Part of a conspiracy to--what? Start a war?"

"If that was someone's plan, it's almost worked," Damen says. "Even my own brother has heard the rumours; if I can't prove my innocence, Kastor will have me arrested, to preserve the alliance with Vere. He'll have to hand me over to the Regent to be tried for murder, or risk full-scale war."

NIkandros says something under his breath that is probably profane. He looks at his hands, frowning. His knuckles are pale on the reins. "Damianos--"

"Don't. Not now," Damen says. "I know what you think of him, but Kastor is--I can see the reasoning. He doesn't have a choice. The peace is more important than one man."

"Not when that man is to be King," Nikandros says sharply. "And not when you didn't do it."

Laurent is still recovering from the words Veretian Regent. It's apparent, or at least it should be to anyone with the least intelligence, that this whole plot is something cooked up between Laurent's uncle and Damen's half-brother, a conspiracy with its fingers in two royal families and with the goal of seizing two thrones.

Laurent is swooping down before he's consciously made the decision to do so. He doesn't have a plan. It just seems imperative that Damen should be shaken out of this infuriating, trusting placidity, that he should be made to listen.

"Damianos!" Nikandros says sharply, when he sees Laurent. He's fumbling for his bow, but Damen is faster, Damen is so fast, and too late Laurent realises his mistake, the bizarre and frightening sight of a swan heading straight for a person, and the generous target he makes silhouetted against the leaves.

He swerves wildly, in a space too small to swerve. One wingtip grazes a tree. The other wing erupts in a totally new kind of pain, but Laurent ignores it and flaps harder than ever, seeking gaps that are barely there. He breaks free of the canopy and flies directly into the sun; it's not quite the right direction, but he won't be visible beyond the glare. It will buy him time.

His wing hurts even more than it did when sprained, but he doesn't dare look to see what damage has been done by Damen's arrow. It must have either grazed him at an angle or passed right through, which is a mercy. Laurent doubts he'd be able to fly with something stuck in him. And, thankfully, he doesn't feel weak yet; the sheer rush of survival is keeping him airborne. He breathes, and he flies.

Laurent is learning that one can accustom oneself to pain.  

His uncle pays one of his night-time visits while Laurent is awkwardly wrapping the wound on his arm. In human form it's a deep cut, but with clean edges, and to Laurent's relief the strength of his hand and fingers seems unaffected.

"Have you been out looking for trouble, nephew?"

Laurent has, with difficulty, torn strips from the bedsheet to make bandages. He pulls the end of one of these tight.

"Hunters," he grits out. "They shot at me."

His uncle gives the same thin, sympathetic smile that he's given hundreds of times. Laurent wonders how it never made his fingers itch to form a fist, before now.

"Perhaps you should stay in the tower."

"Perhaps you should leap from the top of it."

His uncle laughs. Pleasantly. "You were much more polite as a boy. But it's more satisfying to win a game against a man."

Laurent bites his tongue on any comment about his uncle's boys. If his uncle doesn't know that Aimeric and Nicaise are speaking to him, then Laurent's not going to volunteer it.

Instead he tucks the bandage into itself and keeps his voice even, bored. "Win? You've got all the magic, all the power; of course you've won. Don't bother to pretend that you've even allowed me to play."

Laurent comes by his ability at cards honestly. Or dishonestly, as the case may be. But the fact remains that his uncle has always had a weakness for games. Now, his uncle's eyes glitter with interest, and something that Laurent has never before been able to recognise as malice.

"A fair point, nephew. Very well. I will give you a chance to show me what you're made of. You have three days to break the spell on your own."

"What breaks it? A kiss, I assume?" Laurent says blandly.

"Yes, why not?" That thin smile. "And," says his uncle, "a demonstration of true devotion, for the world to see. That shouldn't pose you any problems, a charming boy like you."

"And if I fail?" Laurent says, mouth dry. "What's the forfeit?"

"You stay a swan," his uncle says. "Forever. No nonsense with the moon. Become a bird in truth. It will be such a pity, to waste those lovely looks." A hand, stroking down Laurent's cheek. Laurent flinches away. His uncle's fingers strike him in the forehead instead, a sudden hard flick. "And that clever mind."

Laurent would welcome, at this point, a loud rescue attempt by his affianced Akielon. The irony of this is not lost on him. It also doesn't change the fact that he has no way to tell Damen what has happened, or--more usefully--to summon him so that the unlikelier parts of the conversation can take place in person. Even at night, his uncle keeps the tower room free of anything he could possibly write with or upon. Laurent tries using his own blood on the playing cards, striking his wound against the wall until it splits and bleeds anew. But the card surfaces are glossy and he has nothing finer than twigs and his fingertips. He only succeeds in turning the two of hearts into a smudged, messy ten.

And even if he could send Damen a message, it will not remove the enchantments that lie over the paths to the lake. Laurent's uncle is the only person who can find it, now; presumably because the enchantment is his own.

"No, that's not it," Nicaise says. "He hasn't got the energy to keep those kind of spells up day and night. He set wards, with quartz and blood and rosemary. He doesn't have to keep them going, but they're external. They work on him just as much as anyone else."

"So how does he find his way here?"

"A map," Nicaise says. "The paths can't lie if you know how they're supposed to be."

"Any map?" Laurent says sharply.

Aimeric finally manages to knock the framed map off the wall by leaping onto it from a bookshelf. Laurent, who has been inventing new curses for whichever creator god decided that swans should be too large and too dignified to be able to hover, makes a harsh sound of triumph as he swoops past the window of the upstairs room for the twentieth time that morning. He glides down to the base of the tower and waits.

It's almost an hour later when Aimeric and Nicaise appear, pushing the map before them down the stairs. The paper drifts in uncooperative little bursts, one step at a time, when pushed. The edges of it are damp and irregular, the whole thing now discoloured with dirt, but it's exactly what Laurent needs.

"I had to gnaw the stupid thing free," Aimeric complains. "It took forever."

"We pushed the frame under the bed," Nicaise says.

Laurent pulls the map closer to him with one foot and scans it carefully, superimposing the mental picture he's gained during his flights. He has weighed time against clarity, and time has won. He still doesn't have a pen, he won't risk waiting until moonrise to send this message, and he can travel further and faster as a swan.

"Here," he says. "We're here." He taps with his beak on a blue expanse in the area representing the forest, which is riddled with thin lines. The paths.

Nicaise's claws skitter on the paper as he walks across it. He has to shove with most of his strength to make a tiny claw-hole in the map. Then another. And more and more, making two small lines of holes that will show, when held up to the light, an X marking the lake. When that's done, Nicaise pauses and looks at Laurent, shaking his paw like a scribe with pen-cramp.

"I can't exactly write a saga," he says acidly.

"The letter L," Laurent says. "And a moon. Time, place, and sender. It's enough."

Aimeric makes a sound like a high-pitched scoff. "Is he smart enough to work that out?"

Laurent says, "If you're not going to be useful, Aimeric, then be quiet."

The previous night, in human form, Laurent tore more strips from his sheet and removed one of the laces from his best jacket. With them he fashioned a kind of sling and pocket that could be looped around his neck in swan form, allowing one of the mice to sit snugly against his chest. It's a little ungainly, but more balanced and much more reliable than asking them to cling to one of his legs. Between the three of them, they manage to fold the map until it can be tucked into the sling along with Nicaise.

"Drop me in a lake and I'll fucking murder you," says Nicaise.

Laurent says, amused, "Don't wriggle."

They started trying for the map as soon as there was enough dawn light to see by, and it's still early in the day. As he flies, Laurent tells Nicaise everything he remembers about the layout of the Akielon royal palace from summer after summer visiting Damianos.

The sun is high overhead and Laurent's wounded wing is throbbing in time with his heartbeat by the time he alights in the palace gardens at Ios. He shakes the sling off quickly, and Nicaise grips the folded map with his teeth.

"Well?" Laurent says, after a moment's pause.

Nicaise drops the map again, like a lady spitting out apple pips, and looks at him. "There might be cats in the palace."

Laurent resists the urge to shout, snap, or buffet him with a wing. "Scared?"

"No." Nicaise gives an irritable toss of his tiny head. "Just pointing it out."

"Nicaise," Laurent says. "Thank you."

"Thank me when he's dead," Nicaise says.

He picks up the map, and is gone across the grass. Laurent wanders towards an ornamental pond, doing his best impression of a bird with nothing better to do than paddle in circles and peck idly at reeds. His heart is pounding inside his delicate ribs. Aimeric and Nicaise are right to be dubious: any number of things could go wrong. Nicaise might not find Damen's chambers. Damen may not find the map. Damen may not understand what Laurent needs from him.

The last time he saw Damen, the Akielon tried to kill him with an arrow, if unknowingly. The time before that, Laurent was trying his level best to kill him. This is the longest of long shots. It is also the only chance that Laurent has.

Damen arrives at the lake two hours past moonrise. The water's surface has been taunting Laurent with the glow of potential, clouds drifting past the moon in lazy bursts, but he's held firm. Transforming in front of Damen's eyes will be the quickest way to make him understand.

Aimeric is the first to hear. His whiskers tremble. He raises his head and says, "Wait. Across the lake."

"It could be him," says Nicaise.

But Laurent's eyes are not mouse-eyes, and the moonlight is far brighter than it should be; it has been that way, in this place, since the spell was cast. He can clearly see the man tying his horse to a tree and moving with fast strides around the bank of the lake. Laurent has to take a moment, breath suspended in relief and wariness. Then he launches himself onto the surface of the water.

Damen is making for the tower, map clutched in his hand. He doesn't spare more than a brief glance for the swan moving across the lake. Laurent swears under his breath, and then makes the loudest noise a swan can make. This, he has discovered, is a harsh honking din that is remarkably loud.

Damen halts, one hand on his sword hilt. Then turns to look. Only a few yards separate them now.

Laurent floats into the parenthesis of the moon's reflection, looks Damen right in the eye, and braces himself.

Damen says, "What--"

--and then the pain takes over everything else. Going from swan to human hurts more, but feels better, in a way. The crack and stretch of Laurent's bones means he's growing to the size he should be; the feeling like all of his hair being pulled out at the roots means he's getting his true skin back. There's always a moment of total imbalance, as the wings snap and fold and shrivel into thin arms, but Laurent can stay upright through it by now, with no more than a caught-back breath of agony.

When it's over, Damen is staring like the world has turned both inside-out and on its head, and Laurent is standing naked and knee-deep in the water. The night breeze is mild but he can feel himself starting to shiver.

He takes a deep breath; might as well have it all out at once. "My uncle is a sorcerer. And no friend to me."

Damen is still staring.

"Clothes, if you please," says Laurent.

"You--"

"Clothes," snapping his fingers at the pile by the tree.

Damen can at least follow instruction. He fetches the clothes and hands them to Laurent, who scrambles into them without bothering to dry off first.

Laurent was wearing one of his best outfits, on the day he thought he might agree to be married. The gorgeous trousers and high-necked bodice with their lacings lie long-abandoned in the tower room. Since the spell was cast Laurent has been wearing only the shirt, with its acres of sleeves, and his thin under-trousers. Both garments were once white, and are now grubby with grass and dirt. Laurent's hair falls untidily into his face, and his eighteen-year-old chin has even managed to scrape together the faint beginnings of a beard, in the time he's been here.

Damen is decked out in rich fabrics, a perfect and achingly handsome prince, the circlet of his rank glittering moonlit on his brow.

Laurent would like to punch something.

"You're hurt." It's the first thing Damen's said since Laurent stepped out of the lake.

Laurent looks at his arm. Bandages disappear as predictably as clothes when he transforms, and the wound there still looks raw and unpleasant, emerging from the pushed-up volume of sleeve. Laurent is keeping it clean, but it will scar badly. It should have been stitched by a physician.

A lie is hovering in his mouth; he's not sure why. He's equally unsure why he swallows it down and says, "Luckily, you're better with a sword than you are with a bow."

He can see in Damen's face the moment when Damen makes the connection.

"The swan I shot at," Damen says, horrified, "that was you?"

"Yes."

"I've never heard of a spell like this."

"Neither had I," Laurent says. "But if my uncle's magic can do this, I'm sure he could make someone look--like you."

This time Damen follows him instantly. "Auguste."

"I owe you an apology," Laurent says, stiff.

"You saw me do it," says Damen. "I would have tried to kill me too, I think."

"Even so. I'm sorry."

"I will kill your uncle, if this was all his doing," Damen says. He adds, with an awkward deference that warms Laurent ridiculously, "Unless you'd like to do it yourself."

"I appreciate the thought." Laurent is thinking about the wards. "But I don't know if that will be enough to break the spell, now it's been cast."

"Surely--"

"Damen," Laurent says. "I am working from what my uncle, whom we have already established is not to be trusted, has told me. And a thin knowledge of magics much less powerful than this. I am not prepared to risk my life on surely."

"Yes," Damen says, his shoulders dropping. "I'm sorry."

"He told me how to break it myself. I don't think he was lying about that," Laurent says bitterly, "it's too absurd," and explains the terms.

"A demonstration of devotion," Damen says, when Laurent falls silent.

"I was thinking," Laurent says, precise, looking at his own dirty toes in the mud, "you could propose. Properly. Publically."

A moment of silence. Laurent gathers his courage and looks Damen in the face. Damen's eyes are full of something shining and unfamiliar.

"Would you still have me?" Damen says.

"Would you still have me?"

"You know that I would." Damen smiles, blindingly sudden and wide. "Publically? I'll throw a ball at the palace--I'll invite half the world."

"I wouldn't be able to leave here until after moonrise. Even with a map, it's too far, on foot."

Damen waves this aside. "I'll send a man with a horse for you."

Laurent turns the idea in his mind. It seems to hang together. "When?"

"Whenever you want. Tomorrow night."

Laurent glances at the pale sliver, like the bow of a goddess, rippling in the surface of the water. "Don't be foolish. The moon's been waning; it's almost gone. Tomorrow is a new moon. It will have to be the night after."

"That's cutting the time fine," says Damen.

"There's no other choice," says Laurent.

Damen nods. "The two parts of breaking the spell, do they have to take place at the same time?"

"The kiss and the demonstration? I don't know. Why?"

Damen looks at him, still with those shining eyes.

"I see," Laurent says, ignoring the sudden clench of his heart.

Damen steps closer, reaches out. His fingertips, on the side of Laurent's face, are gentle. A lump almost like tears rises in Laurent's throat and he swallows it savagely down.

"You look tired," says Damen.

"You really haven't gotten any better at this."

Damen says, a bit amused, "I was only offering comfort."

"Thank you," Laurent bites out, "I don't need it."

"And I want to kiss you."

"Oh."

"Was it really so bad, last time?"

The last time, which was also the first time. Laurent can't bring himself to say, the opposite, actually. His cheeks heat. He imagines that heat transferring to Damen's fingertips. He imagines Damen's fingertips. His mind is stuck there like an insect in honey.

"All right," he says. Holding himself very still. "Kiss me."

Damen kisses him.

It is nothing at all like last time. That was a brief, tingling press of lips, and Laurent was aware the whole time of Theomedes and Auguste in the room, and of what the kiss symbolised.

This is not symbolic, and it is not brief. Damen's mouth is warm and constantly moving on Laurent's, and every time Laurent thinks he might stop, he doesn't. Laurent...does not want him to stop. Laurent's breath is thin in his throat and he can hear himself gasping, hear the slick sounds they make, and he never wants to stop.

"Laurent," Damen murmurs, like he's discovered the word for the first time.

"No," Laurent says, nonsensically, and grabs hold of Damen's hair and shoves their mouths together again. Damen is pushing him, directing him, somehow managing most of Laurent's weight. Laurent's arm hurts and his bare feet are catching on sharp twigs, and he doesn't care. Damen backs him into a rough-barked tree and kisses him, kisses him, hot slide of tongue, and gets his hands under the loose shirt so that they lie demanding and certain on Laurent's bare sides.

This is something Laurent can have for himself, despite his uncle's plans and his uncle's spells. A swan can fly, but this is what human bodies can do; and Laurent has a terrible need to be human, to be what he's supposed to be. He wants this, Damen touching him and kissing him into the true knowledge of himself. Damen smells like autumn and tastes like real things. Damen's fingers dig into the grooves between Laurent's ribs and Laurent loses his mind, a little.

"You said, you said you'd never wanted anyone else," Laurent says, breathless. "Did you mean it or not?"

"To marry?" Damen says. He drags his lips along Laurent's jaw. "No. No, I am yours."

Laurent tilts his neck and rises onto his toes, and the sudden shift in position presses him right up against Damen's thigh. His head thumps back against the tree and a moan escapes his lips. His hips move before he can think to tell them to do it. He rubs against Damen, a plea, moving his hands down past the embroidered collar and soft fabric and the sudden, stomach-clenching leather of Damen's belt, so he can tug Damen even closer. So that the frantic slide of Laurent's arousal can pretend to a rhythm, and the heat inside him can continue to build.

He stops when Damen's hand, firm, swipes Laurent's hair back from his brow and holds his head steady. Laurent swallows the sudden and swan-like urge to hiss.

"Laurent," Damen says. "Do you--are you certain?"

Laurent breathes, wild and needy, staring into Damen's eyes. There are so many things he could say and will not say. Your hands feel like a surer boundary than my own skin, like they can teach me my own shape. This might all go disastrously wrong. This might be my only chance to have this, don't you see?

"This is my body," Laurent says. It really does come out almost a hiss, sharper and more desperate than he'd known himself capable of. "Mine."

Damen says, wrecked, "Tell me what you want."

Instead Laurent takes Damen by the wrist and drags Damen's hand where he wants it, pushing past the spike of shy fear. He says, "Damen. Please."

"Yes," Damen breathes. It sounds closer to a prayer than triumph.

And then he's stroking Laurent through the thin and half-damp fabric, exploring with gentle fingers that turn firm when Laurent shoves into his hand, insistent--"Ah," Laurent says, as Damen squeezes and rubs, as Damen loosens the string so that the under-trousers sag to Laurent's hips and Damen can slide his hand inside, skin gloriously smooth against skin. Fingertips. Honey.

Laurent makes a noise like a sob, and feels himself begin to tense and shatter like a clock wound too tight. Damen's other hand is cupping the side of his face; Damen is dropping kisses on his eyelids, his panting mouth.

"That's it," Damen murmurs, "that's it, I'm here, Laurent, come on," and Laurent forgets everything but the pleasure that spills through him as he comes into the engulfing strength of Damen's hand.

"Damen," he starts, when he has his breath, but finds he is unable to continue when faced with the sight of Damen licking his own fingers clean.

Laurent's hands fumble as he ties the strings of his trousers, wincing at the drag of fabric on his spent, sensitive cock. He feels acutely young and vulnerable with the newness of this, with Damen's obvious experience. And he is in the grips of a more cerebral kind of desire, which shatters him anew every time he glances up and sees Damen's fingers, wet and coated, disappearing between Damen's lips.

"This isn't fair," Laurent says.

"No?"

"I am half-naked against a tree," Laurent says, "and you haven't even unbuttoned your cuffs."

Damen laughs, soft and kind, a shared pleasure rather than a joke at Laurent's expense. He leans in slowly, giving Laurent the chance to refuse the kiss, but Laurent is helpless and hungry and meets him halfway. He tastes his own bitterness on Damen's mouth.

"That's only what it looks like," Damen says.

"What do you mean?"

Damen looks down at him. The bright moonlight makes ethereal shadows on his cheeks. He says, softly, "I am entirely undone."

Laurent swallows hard and says, "Show me."

They don't need to unbutton Damen's cuffs. Damen lifts his tunic and pulls down his own trousers and he's there, his cock curling long and hard towards his belly. Damen keeps his eyes on Laurent as he wraps his hand around himself. Tiny muscles, barely visible, move beneath the skin of his jaw and his neck. He sucks in a long breath that jolts, brokenly, like a stone skipped over water.

Laurent's mouth is dry as midsummer. This is a thirst that is new to him, but he knows what to do with it. He has barely reached out, barely tangled his fingers between Damen's on the hot length of Damen's cock, before Damen closes his eyes and groans, pulsing between them.

Laurent holds his breath, skewered by desire, totally fascinated. Laurent thinks: I want to see your forearms. Your collarbones. I want to watch you handle a sword when I'm not on the other end of it. I want to tell you stories.

I don't love you, but I think I could.

He has to bite his lip when he's hit with a sudden stab of longing for his brother. It's wildly inappropriate, probably, but all Laurent wants to do is run to Auguste with this feeling, share it with him like he used to share colourful stones and sword tricks and newly-learned jokes. Loss and exhaustion briefly clamber for footholds in Laurent's crowded mind, but he pushes them away. Not tonight. Tonight he has this.

There's a ragged edge to Damen's laugh. "Now we need to wash."

"How convenient," Laurent says. He is staring at the stars. His body feels drained and fresh. "We are standing next to a lake."

A day, and a night, and a day. His uncle could visit at any time; Laurent throws everything into the pretense of uncertainty, of a helplessness that's being channelled into anger. He finally lets himself sleep properly, at odd hours, away from the tower so it looks like he's off searching for--something, anything. An act of devotion.

When he's in the tower he deals endless hands of cards against an invisible enemy, then yet more games of patience. It takes almost no thought to play these games now, red onto black onto red, possibilities lighting up his mind as soon as he glimpses the spread. His hands move cards and the rest of him remembers Damen's mouth, Damen's fingers, which have awoken something in Laurent that was not there before. What he and Damen did together made Laurent feel human, but this new sensation also makes him feel animal in a way that has nothing to do with his uncle's spell, nothing to do with a swan's body. Though something--perhaps--to do with the soaring pleasure of air beneath wings.

By candlelight he lays out the cards in shape of a clock, and flips them, shifts them, arranges them. This game is pure luck, and one that can seldom be won; the odds are always stacked against it. He lays out game after game. Counting down.

Laurent tells himself afterwards that he should have paid more attention to what was happening in Aimeric's silences, instead of allowing himself to be diverted by Nicaise. It's close to moonrise on the day of Damen's promised ball when the sound of footsteps on the stairs sends cautious dread worming through Laurent's veins. He forces himself to be still, to keep his face calm. He'd have thought his swan's face would show precious little in the way of expression, but the mice can convey a lot with a twitch of one ear, and Laurent will take no chances.

The calm shatters as soon as Aimeric skitters into the room, between his uncle's legs, and under his uncle's indulgent gaze.

"Going somewhere, Laurent?"

Laurent's pulse explodes in denial. Before he can move, something cold grabs at one of his twiggy legs: a manacle, attached to a chain in the floor. The air around him puffs with the faint taste of metal. Magic. All of that effort, and his uncle still holds all the cards.

"So you're a rat on the inside as well," Laurent flings at Aimeric.

Nicaise makes a low deadly sound and runs, fearless, in Aimeric's direction. Laurent's uncle bends and scoops the dark mouse up by the tail, and the next instant there is a small cage atop the desk which was not there before, and Nicaise is vibrating in futile squeaking rage within it.

For his part, Laurent snaps at Aimeric with quick speed and all the sharpness of his beak, hoping with an instinct that's half bird and half his own to catch on something soft and fleshy, to make Aimeric bleed. He comes up at the end of the chain with a painful jerk, and Aimeric skitters away, dodging behind his uncle's boots.

"That's not enough," Aimeric says. "He's clever, he's slippery, what if he gets out?"

"We can't have that," says his uncle mildly.

There is a sound like a tree being felled by gradual strokes. The door, which has been sagging at a useless splintered angle since Damen's assault on it, grinds back into place. Back on its solid hinges, with its solid lock. Laurent's uncle has his lips pressed together as he stares at it, like a particularly grim schoolmaster threatening punishment, and the white lines around his mouth increase as he turns and extends a hand towards the window.

When he lowers his hand again, the room is darker than it was. Laurent shifts the radius of his restraint in that direction and stares out of the window, where a bank of unmoving ashy clouds has appeared in front of the barely-risen moon. The lake's surface is a pool of dimly lit ink.

His uncle is breathing hard, one hand pressed to his side, and there are smudges of fatigue under his eyes. For the first time he looks something less than perfectly assured, but the glance he gives Laurent is triumphant.

"Some contingencies, nephew. Just in case you do get any ideas about escaping."

The mouse that is Aimeric scrabbles at one polished boot. He is halfway to climbing Laurent's uncle's leg, and his voice is urgent.

"You said--I told you everything, you said you'd change me back for good!"

"I did say that."

Laurent's uncle opens one hand, splaying his fingers as though dropping a handful of dust onto Aimeric's head.

The transformation, seen from the outside, is no more comfortable than it is from the inside, but Laurent can't look away. Something eerie pulses beneath Aimeric's skin as he grows and straightens, as the tail shortens and then disappears entirely. And then there is another human being in the room with them, a sweet-faced young man with a full mouth. The tendons are stark beneath the skin of his neck, and his knees wobble.

"Thank you," Aimeric gasps. He fumbles at the front of Laurent's uncle's clothes, trying to pull him close. "Oh, thank you."

"Aimeric," says Laurent's uncle, almost tenderly. "You never did know when to stop." With one hand he cups the back of Aimeric's head, as though he might kiss him.

With the other hand, he pulls a knife from his belt and drives it between Aimeric's ribs, true and hard towards the heart.

Nicaise lets out a cry and throws himself against the bars of the cage, just as he'd thrown himself against the mirror that refused to show him the beauty he remembered. Laurent is, again, frozen. Useless.

Aimeric's eyes are wide, his face warped with pain and a soft, awful betrayal. His mouth opens and closes. He manages to cough, thinly. From the place where the knife enters his chest, something is dripping. No, not dripping. It's a dirty and captivating purple light, and it snakes, like a fast-growing vine, down the knife hilt and down the arm holding it, spilling and sucking until Aimeric's horrified gaze goes blank and his body slumps to the ground.

Laurent stares. His uncle takes a deep breath, as though surfacing from underwater. All the strain and shadow has left him; he looks like a man glowing with vigour and energy, ready to take on the world.

He wipes the knife on his tunic.

"I think I needed that," he says, conversational. "I wasn't expecting to have to play with the weather. This will make things much easier."

He turns to look down at Laurent, smiling. Deep in his eyes is a purple spark.

This transformation is like a theatrical trick, like a curtain rising. The change starts at the feet with a cloud of pinprick lights that swarm like lantern-flies, and as they rise over his uncle's body, what they leave behind is--not his uncle's body at all.

"No," Laurent says.

"Now, now. It's rude to refuse an invitation, especially when one is the guest of honour. And I hear this is to be the ball of the year." The lights are at the throat, at the head. The voice changes mid-sentence. For a moment the lights form a crown around the head of pale blond hair, and then they fade.

This transformed version of Laurent is wearing a severe but impeccably cut black outfit, with red lacings and a splash of gold at the throat. Proper garb for a royal ball.

"And now," says Laurent's uncle, in Laurent's voice, "I'm off to meet your meddling lover."

Frantic rage and fear whirl around Laurent's head. Aimeric knew about the man Damen will have sent, map in hand, to wait on the path a short distance from the lake, with the horse that is to carry Laurent to the palace. Aimeric knew; now his uncle must know too.

"I wouldn't have thought he was your type," Laurent spits.

"He doesn't need to be for long, does he?"

The face in front of Laurent, which is his own face, curls its lip. It's like staring into a malevolent mirror. Laurent has a violent moment of empathy for Nicaise.

"If you hurt him," Laurent says--useless bravado--"I will kill you."

His uncle gives Laurent's soft, cold laugh, turns on his heel, and is gone from the room. The door locks behind him.

Somewhat anticlimactically, Nicaise escapes from the cage simply by running and pushing and knocking it off the edge of the table with him inside it.

"Shoddy magic," Nicaise says, shaking himself clear of the mangled thing.

Laurent supposes his uncle wasn't expecting much trouble from that quarter; just as Laurent himself underestimated Aimeric's desperation, he thinks ruefully. Power and size have their own blind spots.

The night is deepening, and there's nothing shoddy about the manacle around Laurent's leg. He has enough room to move it up and down, but can't pull the wide webbing of his foot through it.

"If I can't make it there by midnight," he says, mostly to himself. "Or if Damen makes his declaration to--to him." He's picked up Nicaise's habit of simply using the pronoun, injected with hate.

Laurent stares at the outline of his own leg, and pecks hard at it before he can change his mind. Pain springs out at him. Then he does it again, feeling the sickly scrape of the beak's serrated edge. Again.

"You're mad," Nicaise says, backing away. "Laurent, stop."

Laurent does stop. The taste of copper combined with the knowledge that it's his own blood is making him feel unwell to the point of dizziness.

"Nicaise," Laurent says, "do you think you could gnaw off my foot?"

Nicaise's nose twitches. "No," he says, horrified.

"So much for my slippery nature," Laurent says tightly, "fucking Aimeric--" and then goes still.

"What is it?" Nicaise asks.

"Oil," Laurent says. "Or butter, or--"

"Oh," says Nicaise. "Yes, wait--" and shoots out of the room through the tiny crack in the door. When he returns, he is walking uneasily on his hind legs, and his face and front are covered in yellow grease. He smells like spring mornings in the palace at Arles, Auguste breaking the crust on bread rolls with a loud crackle of crumbs, spreading the soft insides with butter and honey. The memory seems so far away from Laurent's present situation as to be almost a story in a book.

"This is disgusting," Nicaise says. His paws are already busy spreading the grease inside the metal ring, and over Laurent's leg and foot. It soothes over the new sores there, and goes faintly pink where it mingles with Laurent's blood. "It's still too narrow," Nicaise says. "You'd have to break--gods, you are mad."

"No," Laurent says. He feels quite calm. "I'm myself. And if I don't escape and make it to Ios in time, I won't be myself any more. Not even on the inside. I won't sit here and let it happen. Would you?"

Nicaise is quiet. Something about the angle of his head recalls the lovely boy with his arrogant chin.

"No," Nicaise says finally. "What do you need?"

"If I pass out," Laurent orders, "bite me until I wake up."

The angle is incredibly awkward. Laurent has to brace one foot while he pulls the other against the rigid metal, and beat with the full strength of his wings, forcing it through. The butter-slick surfaces strain and glide against one another. Laurent feels the poker-hot shattering of one small bone, then another, and his wings falter. He was wrong; he can't do this. He's never been the strong one.

There's a smaller, sharper pain, a bite from tiny teeth, and then Nicaise is inches from his face.

"What's the matter, Prince of Vere?" Nicaise snarls, "Scared?" and Laurent gathers himself and shoves again.

His foot moves, inch by awful inch. Laurent hears that loud, pained, inhuman sound erupt from the length of his throat. It reverberates in the tower room. His vision goes dark at the edges; he pushes and pulls because he can't do anything else; he screams, he screams--

He tumbles backwards and away across the floor, free.

He has to push himself up with his wings, because he can't stand on--he can barely look at--the mangled mess of his foot. He hops in a slow circle. Everything is crystalline and cold, in Laurent's head: a palace of ice built to keep out the pain. His mind ticks from one problem to the next. He moves his gaze to the locked door, then around, to the sealed-shut window. A deep part of him is raging, helpless, angry, the same feeling he had when he saw Auguste murdered before his eyes. That ocean wave, building and building, filling him up, reaching his boundaries and straining against them, and--

Nicaise darts beneath the bed as the window shatters in a firework of green light--not just the glass, but the iron framework as well. The whole lot of it turns to dust in an instant, and Laurent is left gasping like a man at the end of an hour-long foot race.

Night air pours through the new hole in the wall. It smells like salt and leaves, and Laurent shudders, from head to broken toe, with the strength of his relief.

Nicaise scrambles out again. "How did you do that?"

"I don't know."

"Can you do it again? Can you do anything else?"

Laurent wants to sleep for a hundred years. Pain moves in a sickly stampede from his leg to his stomach. There is nothing useful inside him now but the ice of necessity, and it will fracture if he leans on it too hard, if he does anything but keep moving.

"No," he says. "I can't. I. I have to leave."

"I'm coming with you," says Nicaise at once.

"Nicaise--"

"I'm not staying here," says Nicaise: that plaintive, cultured voice that is also a rodent whimper.

Laurent looks at Aimeric's body.

"All right," he says.

Everything comes down to timing, Laurent reflects as he flies. His uncle has known that all along. Laurent had to be in the right place at the right time, in order to see the false Damen kill Auguste, for all of this to be set in motion. The conspiracy had to strike now, when Akielos is poised on the brink of succession, before Theomedes succumbs to his illness and Damen takes the throne. Everything might have been different if Laurent had come into his own magic before now; or would it have stayed quiescent, without crisis to bring it surging forth?

Clock patience: twelve piles of cards for the hours between moonrise and sunrise, everything unfolding in patterns, searching for the kings who will be placed in the centre. Three days to break the spell, and a deadline of midnight. There's something inevitable about it all, a weight behind it like a pendulum or a story told to children.

So it seems equally inevitable that Laurent should arrive at the grand, many-windowed ballroom of the palace at Ios, just as Damen steps up onto a dais holding Laurent's transformed uncle by the hand.

"Take me down now," Nicaise says sharply. "You're going to fall out of the sky."

Laurent had thought he was doing well, letting the ice carry him through the fact that his wing feels like it's flapping through a box of knives and his foot feels as though it's being crushed steadily between rocks. But Nicaise is pressed right up against his chest; the heave of Laurent's breath and the pounding race of his heart must be obvious.

He leaves Nicaise and the sling in the gardens. He watches Nicaise scamper towards the building, and then steels himself to take to the sky again, to circle the hall in desperate search of an entrance. The night is quiet, as is the crowd of gorgeously dressed people. The voice of Laurent's uncle carries easily through the glass.

"I regret the misunderstanding of the past weeks, and the dreadful rumours that have spread," he says, pure as a bell. "Prince Damianos did not kill my brother the King. I stand by his side and I will declare my absolute faith in him."

There is no way into the hall for a swan. Laurent has perched himself under the eaves of a slanted section of roof, and he taps frantically with his beak at the glass, but it is drowned in the lively murmur of approval from the Akielon court as Damen takes his turn to speak.

"Many of you know," Damen says, "that our families always intended for Prince Laurent and I to be married when he came of age. I have to admit that the first time I tried this, I--I misspoke. I focused on his beauty, when I should have made clear how much I admire his sharp wits, his strength in the face of adversity. I devote myself to him, here, for the world to see."

And Damen presses his lips to the lips of the man beside him, who is smiling, smiling, smiling.

Pain erupts in Laurent's chest and spreads: something like transformation, only tripled. With a stark and all-consuming horror he is aware of himself starting to melt into the swan's mind. He kicks at his ruined leg with his good one, using the specific stab of agony to anchor himself, and wrenches himself back towards humanity with an effort.

The next thing he is aware of is a door opening, somewhere beneath him. Laurent hears the applause as it starts to trail away, to be replaced by chatter and music.

"Your guests will talk, if you abandon your ball," says Laurent's own voice.

"Let them talk all they want," Damen says, warm. "I want to be alone with you."

Here in Ios there are no clouds to block the moon, and the garden paths are lit still further with lamps hanging from trees. They walk companionably, side by side, away from the building.

Laurent stays where he is, in the shadow of the eaves, thinking frantically. He could reveal himself, but his uncle is still the one holding the better hand; he is glutted with the power of Aimeric's death, and Laurent is fading, keeping afloat in icy water, all the while feeling the patient and numbing chill tug at his legs. It is all, again, a matter of time.

Damen leads them onto a small bridge, barely more than a few paces long, crossing a stream that runs into one of the ornamental lakes. Laurent is watching them closely, but he still misses the moment when a casual turn of Damen's body becomes a brutal shove, becomes Damen's hand at that slim throat, pinning Laurent's uncle up against the railing. Past his surprise and a sudden leap of hope, Laurent has a giddy moment of delight that he has--that everyone has--underestimated Damen's capacity for deception.

"You are not Laurent," Damen growls. "Where is he? What have you done to him?"

Laurent's uncle lifts one of those pale hands to lie atop Damen's at his throat. An awful smile crawls over his face.

"The question, Prince Damianos, is what have you done to him, by declaring yourself mine?"

Damen flies backwards as though thrown from a carriage, his arms flung wide. He is motionless, trapped by magic, pressed up against the other railing of the bridge. Laurent has to close his throat against a cry.

Laurent's uncle dusts off one sleeve of the black outfit, and takes a stalking step forward. His smile is the smile of a man who will never accept the given odds; who will always, always stack the deck.

"You are despicable," Damen snarls, straining against the power holding him. "You aren't fit to kneel at his feet. Where is he?"

With a deliberate, fastidious angle of the wrist, Laurent's uncle pulls Damen's own sword from its sheath at Damen's waist.

Laurent tries frantically to draw on the wave of his own power again, but has no more luck than before. The tide of that ocean has gone out. There's nothing there, he's empty, and with the wild jumbled instincts of the bird tightening their grip on his mind he can barely think.

"What a pity, Damianos," says his uncle, "that you did kill King Auguste, and have now enticed his younger brother here under false pretenses in order to finish the job. Forcing him to defend himself with deadly force."

Laurent sees only the sword, the edge gleaming in lamplight. He launches himself from the roof, the world narrowed to a single goal. He has his wings, he has his beak, he can see the cold blue eyes of the man about to kill Damen and he is going to peck them out.

Everything is absolute noise, for a space of less than half a minute. Laurent realises somewhere in there that the man he is attacking is no longer wearing his face, but has been distracted back into his uncle's true form. Damen is shouting something behind them. Damen is moving; Laurent has been a better distraction than he thought, because the magical bonds holding him on the bridge have dissolved.

Damen weaves into the fray with his warrior's speed, and Laurent's uncle gives a shout of rage as Damen snatches his sword back. It is the first motion in a series of motions that seem unstoppable, and Laurent is dimly aware, as he tries to scramble out of Damen's way and feels himself fall to the ground, of how those motions will end. He sees in his peripheral vision the flashing arc of the blade. He hears the grunt of pain as the sword finds its target. In Laurent's mind flashes, once more, the sight of a sword entering Auguste's body. Laurent feels a fierce satisfaction unclouded by pity or regret.

"Laurent," says Damen. He's already turning around as he pulls the blade clear.

Laurent is lying on the grass. He realises, firstly, that throwing oneself directly in front of a sword is not the kind of action that lacks consequence. He has a wound in his abdomen and it is bleeding profusely.

He realises secondly that the blood is spilling onto skin and not feathers.

"Damen," he says. His throat scratches the name to pieces; he coughs, winces at what that does to his stomach, and then tries again. "Damen."

And Damen is there, tugging his embroidered cape from his shoulders and wrapping it around Laurent's bare body, pressing down with one broad and capable palm on the wound.

"Physician," Damen shouts, loud enough that Laurent's head aches. "Now."

Laurent looks sideways. His uncle is also lying stretched out on the ground. His uncle turns his head, blood bubbling between his lips, and meets Laurent's gaze. Neither of them speak.

"An act of devotion," Damen says; his voice cracks. "Laurent, you idiot."

Laurent looks away; looks up at Damen. There doesn't seem much point in saying that he hadn't thought about it that way. He hadn't thought about anything beyond Damen in danger and his own incoherent rage.

"Oh, well," Laurent says weakly. "Next time I shall just let him stab you."

Damen gives an explosive little laugh and buries his face for a moment in Laurent's hair, then looks up to yell for the physician again. People are spilling rapidly out into the garden.

When Laurent looks back at his uncle, the bubbling has stopped. There is a ghastly expression, a grey haze of twisted frustration, frozen on the man's unseeing features.

Laurent feels very little.

"Laurent!"

Laurent tries to sit up, in sheer surprise. He fails, and collapses back into Damen's arms as Damen curses him for an incorrigible fool, but he still cranes his neck to look.

Nicaise is running up to them. His dark hair falls past his shoulders in a tangled mess. He is taller than Laurent remembers, but those amazing eyes are the same. He's managed to acquire a cloak from somewhere and wrap it around himself like a towel, but it's slipping down his bare torso.

"What on earth," Damen starts, but Nicaise cuts him off.

"Is it true? He's dead?"

"Yes," Laurent says. "Shall I thank you now?"

"Don't bother," Nicaise says, irritable as ever, but his eyes go wide at the sight of Laurent's blood and he falls to his knees in the grass. He grabs one of Laurent's hands between both of his own, and glares at Damen when Damen looks as though he might protest. Then he glares at the physician, when the physician dashes up, out of breath and pink-faced and followed by a small army of curious Akielon courtiers.

The physician, to his credit, seems only momentarily taken aback at the sight of his prince's fiancé sprawled undressed and badly wounded on the ground. He casts a professional glance over Laurent's abdomen, places a brief hand on Laurent's forehead, and then rummages in a pouch at his waist. He pulls out a white painstone shot through with veins of pale green, and then meets Nicaise glare for glare until Nicaise allows him to wrap Laurent's fingers around the stone.

"Hold onto this," the physician directs Laurent.

Laurent sags in relief as the stone heats and glows in his hand and his pain level drops sharply. Everything still hurts, but at least he can think through it, now, and notice other things. There is a great deal of excited noise. Damen's arm is very warm beneath him. His forehead itches. The moon is like a tilted smile, and Damen's smile is like the moon.

"Your Highness," says a guard to Damen, staring at the body of Laurent's uncle. "Is that--"

"The Veretian Regent killed King Auguste, and tonight made an attempt on my life," says Damen, not moving his gaze at all.

"I will bear witness," says Laurent. He doesn't move his gaze either.

"What happened to your leg?" the physician demands. He's prodding at Laurent's bruised and swollen ankle, and the open sores on Laurent's foot. "And your arm?"

"That," says Laurent, "is rather a long story."

"And your head." Damen touches the itching place on Laurent's forehead. His fingers come away bloody.

"Yes. I shall have quite the collection of scars," says Laurent. "How fortunate that you claim not to love me for my looks."

Damen startles, and then his smile changes. This one is tender and rapt and new.

Laurent raises his eyebrows. "Wit and strength? I suppose that will have to do."

And apparently I'm a sorcerer, he doesn't add. That can wait.

Damen kisses him, gathering Laurent fully into his arms. Laurent makes an inelegant sound of renewed pain into Damen's mouth.

"Your Highness!" the physician protests.

"Now there," says Nicaise, "you actually sounded like a swan."

"I am wounded, you ass," Laurent says to Damen. "Control yourself."

"Though you really are beautiful," Damen blurts. "I mean, not just beautiful, but--"

In the distance, bells are chiming midnight.

"Damen," Laurent says, feeling the smile start to spread on his lips. "Stop talking."