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Damen hears yelling, the slap of sandals on marble, and bells. Everything is an echo, sounds elongating and shortening at woozy intervals, disobeying their natural length. He cannot parse the meaning of what he hears, cannot string together a sequence that makes sense.
His name. He hears it murmured, contained within a cry. Again, louder, but now it’s a sob that swallows the syllables in an anguished plea.
It’s shouted in surprise next by a different voice. Loud and shocked. He’s jostled. He’s on the floor. It’s cold here on hard marble, then it’s nothing at all.
His name is murmured again. The third man has a calm and clinical voice. Calloused, practiced hands turn him, run along his chest and arms. He feels the touch in sporadic stages. Something is tipped down his throat. Water? No, there’s a faint medicinal taste, then his head lowers.
Pillows now. Cushions. The marble has gone, the chill has not. He cannot see anything and his ears have stopped again.
He’s falling.
Down down down.
Dark.
Light.
A woman stands before him. Akielon, dark, tall, and beautiful. He does not know her face, or at least, not this flesh and blood version. She is, in his mind always, a marble countenance, here in Ios, and at the summer palace.
She brings her hands forward, they disappear into Damen’s hair. Soft lips graze his temple and then are gone.
He is alone.
He does not call out for her, nor does she say his name. They never had that luxury in life, nor would mother and son experience it in this liminal space, limited by Damen’s memories.
The light flickers, goes out.
A dim, hazy glow rings the perimeter of his father’s private chambers. The two guards at the entrance incline their heads as Damen passes further into the king’s rooms.
A slave to his right clears away wine glasses and a pitcher, soundless and perfect in her silent duty. Another takes away a half-eaten meal, just as quiet. Neither woman looks to Damen, does not have permission for direct eye contact. They pass by with their eyes and heads lowered, sweeping out of the room.
Damen presents himself, tall and upright, then sinks to his knee before the man standing beside a large writing desk.
“Exalted,” he says.
“Rise,” says Theomedes.
Damen’s father stands, proud and strong, lion pin glinting in the torchlight at his right shoulder. His lined face is turned down in a frown as he reads a message in his weathered, ringed hands.
“Father, what has happened?” Damen asks as he straightens.
Theomedes holds out a scroll.
“The kyros of Delpha informs me that there has been an increase of border skirmishes.”
The kyros of Delpha. Damen turns that odd phrase over in his mind.
No, not Delpha. Delfeur.
Damen shakes his head, clearing the strange, unbidden notion.
Delpha.
“Does the kyros require extra forces?” Damen hears himself ask.
“Not at this time,” his father scrubs a hand along his beard. “I trust Nikandros will quell the rabble rousing soon enough.”
Nikandros.
Nikandros who Damen last heard screaming his name in the slave baths, having finally caught up with Damen and Kastor and—
Damen staggers back from his father, the scroll flutters to the tile.
“What is happening?”
Theomedes frowns. “What I suspected would always happen with these Veretian rats. They test us still, trying to bite at us, like pathetic, wounded vermin.”
“No…no, I should not…be here. You…” Damen steps further away. “You are dead.”
As the realization dawns, as he speaks the words, the candles extinguish in one mighty gust. All except one.
The room has rearranged itself, and now Damen stands beside his father’s sick bed. Tallow, incense, and scented herbs fill his nostrils, futile measures to cover the smell of sickness. Theomedes reclines, many pillows arranged at his back to keep him upright as he coughs.
“Damen…” his voice is no longer a kingly bellow, but a rattle of impending death. “Damen…”
“I am here, Father.”
Damen kneels at his side and takes his hand. “I should have been here the first time. I am sorry…Kastor…Kastor has done this to you.”
The truth settles along his father’s brow, and Theomedes rears back, snatching his hand away from Damen.
“Kastor! Do not speak to me of Kastor!”
Tears do not prick Damen’s eyes, but a knot in his throat makes speaking difficult.
“I must, Father. He…he is responsible for your death. He and the Regent of Vere.”
“It was a Veretian plot, in the end then,” his father says with grim satisfaction. “They are alike, one and all. Cowards,” Theomedes suffers a body wracking cough, sputters the next word, “deceivers.”
“Not all,” says Damen.
He does not know where this fervent belief, this intense desire to defend this enemy country stems. Damen only knows he feels it in his gut, like a wound yet to be properly stanched.
Theomedes’s lip curls. “I have lost one son to Vere. Are you saying my heir disappoints me as well?”
Damen sets his mouth in a firm line. He stands from kneeling and looks down at his father’s frail form.
“You were wrong about them, as I was wrong about them.”
The pain in Damen’s midsection throbs, intense enough to almost make him bend double.
Theomedes glares. For much of his life, Damen feared such a look from his father. Not that he’d received it often. No, Damen’s constant purpose was to inspire pride from the king, and he’d earned it time and again. But this visceral disgust directed his way is new.
“I wonder,” wheezes Theomedes, “at the kind of king you will be.”
Damen does not answer. He knows what he believes, that he no longer sees himself as a ruler capable of emulating his father’s more brutal style. Just as he knows what word his father thinks now, what he does not say.
Weak.
Damen hears a noise at his back and his head whips around at the sound, away from Theomedes. When he turns back around, his father is gone, the bed empty.
Darkness falls again.
Then, a flicker of light at the end of a corridor. Damen spies movement up ahead: a tall, broad figure. His brother.
Kastor.
Damen shouts, hails him.
Kastor turns and runs. Damen, like a child on the shore, on the sparring grounds, the riding trail; follows, chases. It is not enough. Kastor evades him.
Damen runs, his sandaled feet pounding along the palace floors, casting flickering shadows in the torch light. These are the corridors of his boyhood, where he, the carefree king’s son, ran and played, often, with his older brother.
He knows each turning, each path through these halls, and yet Kastor’s lead is too great. Panting, Damen comes to a stop after rounding a sharp corner. He does not find Kastor, but instead, someone else waits for him.
A blond man leans against the wall. Long and lithe, he is a pale blot in the barely lit corridor. Damen finds his breath leaving him in a rush, as he takes in this stranger. Dressed in finely tailored Veretian style clothing, he is head-to-toe blue, only highlighting the striking sapphire of his eyes.
What is a high-born man of Vere doing in Damen’s father’s halls?
The man merely gazes back, cool and unruffled. As if Damen is the interloper in his own home.
“Excuse me,” says Damen in Veretian. “Did you see a man come this way?”
“You won’t catch him,” says the man, haughty and self-assured. “You need to stop trying.”
“No, but—I want to ask him. I want to know.”
Know what? Damen suddenly thinks. What does he need from Kastor?
His abdomen twinges, a bright flaring pain. Damen staggers to the side, grimaces.
The man’s eyebrows raise. “If you seek him out, if you choose that path, you cannot return, you understand?”
The pain disappears, as Damen looks up in confusion. “Do I know you?”
Pink lips quirk up in a cruel curve. “I know who you are, Damianos.”
“Can you help me?”
“If you let me.”
Damen’s side feels suddenly sticky and warm. He places a hand there and it comes away stained red.
“What?”
“Damen. Damen, please.”
Damen looks up in alarm. The blond man is no longer leonine and insouciant, but fearful. Beautiful even now, with his tightly-laced Veretian clothing exchanged for a dirty, torn chiton.
Damen lifts up his bloody fingers and inexplicably, holds them out to the other man. The man shouts his name and disappears.
Laurent. Laurent.
Damen succumbs to a dizzy drowsiness and falls into sleep; slumber subsuming the panic.
He wakes with a shout, jolting up on a cushioned chaise. Damen presses a frantic hand to his side and is relieved to find it dry and intact.
A nightmare. A vivid, gory nightmare. Damen must have returned to his rooms after training and dozed off, tired out after a long, hard session. His apartments are light and airy with mid-day sun, gauzy curtains blowing inward with the seaside breeze. The winds carry the scent of summer blossoms and fruit trees and Damen sighs in relief.
A tinkling laugh sounds from across the room.
“My prince, you have been dreaming.”
Damen smiles at Lykaios. Like the curtains, she is dressed in gauzy, light fabric through which her gorgeously-proportioned form is apparent. Lykaios places a tray of refreshments on the nearest low table. Damen glances appreciatively at her movements, at her body and its exquisitely performed functions in serving him.
“Come here,” says Damen.
He palms the curve of her delicate face with his large hand as she kneels.
“Are you feeling neglected?” he asks, fondly.
An earnest smile splits her mouth. “This one does not feel neglect from you.” She nuzzles into his palm. “I am your slave, Prince Damianos.”
Damen recoils from her.
Slave.
Gold around her throat and both wrists, a slave’s adornment.
His back twinges, a memory of excruciating pain. He rubs at his wrist, confused by the bare skin there.
His golden cuff is missing.
Lykaios stays kneeling at his feet. The collar has fallen from her throat. Damen knows what will happen next, has now understood where he is and what he must see.
She raises the knife and Damen cries out but to no avail. She falls to her side with an awful, weighty noise, her eyes as open as her throat.
Damen strokes her hair, once, an apology she’ll never receive.
The next drop is too sudden to allow him his bearings.
Damen is on the grass field, the sound of men and metal clashing all around. It’s practised, yet discordant. Not the battle, but the preparations for it.
Orlant picks up his sword. Damen finds there is already one gripped in his hand.
“Come on, is that the best you’ve got?” teases the other man.
Orlant tries for a series of quick engages and Damen beats him back, easily.
“All that muscle on you,” he jeers at Damen. “Don’t hold back, not on me.”
Damen grins and increases the strength of his attacks, driving Orlant away and what was once precise technique from the seasoned Veretian soldier becomes sloppy in its defense. It’s exhilarating to Damen: the heat of the fight, the physicality of swordsmanship, the edge of danger in dueling a quasi-enemy.
Damen toys with Orlant a minute more, then executes a series of maneuvers so sharp and brutal, that the final thrust of it has Orlant flat on his back in the dirt.
“The prince must have his hands full with you,” says Orlant with a winded leer.
Damen rolls his eyes and offers his hand. “We don’t do…that.”
“Right, you’re not fucking him,” says Orlant, dry and disbelieving.
Damen shakes his head and turns to survey the rest of the men, but a high sound from Orlant distracts him.
Orlant’s breathing turns shallow. Aimeric’s blade sticks out of his chest. Color drains from his face as it blooms across his shirt.
“Tell Jord. I don’t…I… he was a…Tell Jord I tried. We had plans for after. Stupid shit, you know? Real…real degenerate stuff….”
“I’m sorry,” Damen says.
Orlant’s head droops as he falls to his knees. “Tell the prince…I’m sorry.”
“I will. Thank you for all you did for him.”
Damen almost asks if Orlant can help him return, but knows he can’t. This is a journey he takes alone.
Damen finds the perfumed air of the gardens in Arles is less pungent tonight. He tugs at his gold collar, tries in vain to adjust his slave garments so as to protect more of his modesty.
A young boy skips down the path, humming a Veretian drinking song. He’s dressed extravagantly, sapphires in both ears and scattered through his striking curly hair. He stops short when he comes across Damen, pouty lips grinning with anticipated misdeeds.
Nicaise tosses a bejeweled dagger from hand to hand, as if deciding where to stab Damen first. Damen could not be less afraid of this youngling.
“Are you supposed to have that?” Damen asks, attempting to sound less amused.
“What’s it to you?” asks Nicaise with a frown, clearly bothered by his intimidation tactics failing.
“He won’t like it if you hurt yourself.”
“He worries too much. It’s so annoying,” Nicaise says with a huff.
“As you say.”
“Have you figured it out yet?” Nicaise’s mischievous smile returns, smug that he knows something Damen does not.
“Yes. It’s an Akielon legend. A walk through the void while your mortal fate is decided. The past is revisited, the soul weighed but not judged, not yet.”
“Your legends are dogshit. Like the rest of your country.”
Damen rolls his eyes. “An opinion I am sure you arrived at all on your own.”
Nicaise shrugs, unbothered. He kicks at a pebble in the path, doesn’t look at Damen when he asks: “Is he…alive?”
“Who?”
“Laurent.”
“Yes.”
Nicaise shuffles his feet, looking like the young child he still is, the child he would always be. “I helped?”
“You helped. You saved him.”
“Of course I did,” says Nicaise and lifts his chin in a mannerism so reminiscent of someone they both hold dear. “I’m better at these stupid games than he ever was.”
“He misses you.”
Nicaise snorts. “Tell him not to bother.” But Damen can see the compliment land, causing the boy’s cheeks to flush.
Damen forces himself to watch the next part, the brutality he knew was coming. Nicaise more than likely had no witnesses the first time, and Damen will do him the respect of staying with him to the end.
When it’s over, Damen screams. There is no one here to run his sword or fists through. There is only the ever present feeling of impotence and failure.
The battlefield is quiet before him. Men’s bodies are scattered all around, some whole, some in pieces. Horses, too. Spears and swords, broken and abandoned litter the once dry landscape, now churned and wet with mud and worse.
Damen blinks and the destruction disappears, replaced with a field of white and yellow flowers. Someone comes to stand at his side, surveying the now tranquil, regrown lands of Marlas.
“Hello, Damianos,” says the man at his side.
Damen turns to give the golden prince his singular attention. He’s not as tall as Damen remembers, but still a powerfully built, broad-shouldered swordsman. His hair is a darker gold than Laurent’s, but the eyes are that same, piercing blue. Though, where Laurent’s favor ice chips, this blue recalls the warm sea.
His demeanor is relaxed, open. He does not share the anxious burdens of his younger brother, but holds himself as the confident, affable first-born son. The one who expected to carry the weight of the crown, who accepted this fate from birth, instead of forcing himself to fit a mold not made for him.
“Hello, Auguste.”
“If only we’d engaged in such pleasantries that day.”
Damen no longer needs to adjust to the surroundings, gather his wits. This confrontation could not be avoided, nor did Damen want to miss it.
“I…I’m sorry,” says Damen, inadequate yet firm.
“For?” Auguste’s smile is not quite mocking.
“Killing you.”
Auguste considers him for a long moment. “No. I do not think you are. I think you are sorry for other things, though.”
Someone stands behind Auguste. They tug on his cape, but Damen cannot see around Auguste.
“A moment, please,” says Auguste. He turns and kneels so as to be level with the slight figure. “Yes?”
The boy whispers something to Auguste who laughs and ruffles his lighter hair. “Go on then, see how many you can find.”
The boy tears off, sprinting toward a low hill. Carefree and loose in a way that makes Damen’s heart ache.
“Is that…?”
Auguste shakes his head. “It is how he should have been. He is who I failed.”
“No,” says Damen. “He is alive now.”
Auguste raises an eyebrow, stares intently into Damen’s eyes. “Thanks to you?”
“In part, yes.”
Auguste nods, takes several minutes to ingest that information. “What is he like?”
“He is…Laurent is…” Damen’s stare fixes on the mid-distance as he considers the totality of Laurent. “Brave. True. Time and again he showed me, showed his men, just how much he would risk for peace. He gambled all and he…he won, in the end.”
When Damen looks back to Auguste, the other man is wide-eyed. Then, Auguste starts laughing so heartily that tears run down his face in a mixture of mirth and grief.
“Oh my. Oh…I know he must be tearing himself apart at the seams for this.”
Damen’s fists clench. “I won’t let him. Not any more.”
Auguste raises a placating hand. “Damianos, you are very serious, aren’t you? A straightforward Akielon to the last.”
Damen breathes out a hard exhale. “You fought me with honor. Know that I fought for him, for Laurent, with that same honor.”
The child runs up and stops short of Auguste. “Are you finished here? You promised me we’d go riding.”
The boy does not spare Damen a glance.
“A moment more,” says Auguste. “Run ahead, I’ll catch up.” He turns back to Damen. “One more for you, I think.”
“I am ready,” says Damen.
“I do not doubt you. I believe that you and I, despite our countries of origin, are more alike than not. We were born to duty. We were raised to be loyal men, to our family and country above all else. And still, I think there is someone we value beyond everything. I am glad to know that Laurent still has that.”
“Do you want me to tell him anything?”
“No. He knows.”
Damen does not want to see it, but forces himself to watch. The blood spreads outward, a crimson shape growing and growing as Auguste falls to his knees. Damen witnesses for the second time, the destruction and pain that his own hands wrought.
Shivers now. His mortal body battling a fever, most likely.
A gold-haired figure, impossible to miss, stands atop the dais. Per Veretian protocol, he waits for Damen to make his approach.
“My brother of Akielos,” calls the prince.
“Our brother of Vere.”
“I thank you for your generosity. The gifts are well chosen.”
Prince Laurent gestures a pale hand to the side of the courtyard, which is lined with livestock, chests of jewels, crates of apricots and oranges, jugs of wine and oils. Damen has spared no expense in this endeavor, it seems.
“As I said before, I would have courted you,” Damen calls. “I would have come to your father and brother in state.”
“‘Would have’?” Damen knows that tone; danger hiding beneath silk.
“Yes,” says Damen. “But that is not a path available any longer.”
Laurent smirks and the scene changes. They switch to a bedroom with dark, carved furnishings. Lavish and lush hangings spread apart to reveal a massive four-poster bed atop which Laurent settles like a pampered pet.
Then, like a pet, he begins removing clothes as if this is a performance and he is rewarding Damen with each salacious reveal. While it is unhurried, making a meal of each garment’s shedding, there is a careless and wanton abandon to being on display that Damen does not recognize.
Damen turns away.
“You do not want me?” asks Laurent.
“Stop. Stop this.”
Footsteps draw near and two fingers tilt Damen’s chin up.
Laurent grins when Damen swallows down the arousing sight of Laurent in a state of half undress, shirt removed and pants unlaced. “But I am everything you dreamed. I am Laurent without complication.”
“Laurent is complication.”
“You do not think I can be as droll? As cutting? As ruled by my mind?” asks Laurent, twisting a lock of his own hair.
“You are not him. You have not his experiences.”
Damen allows his gaze to rove over that unblemished, porcelain skin. He is missing the knife scar from Govart.
“Is that not what you wished for him?” counters Laurent. “To pursue such a golden, untouched prince without the shameful burden.”
Damen’s face flushes with anger, instead of fever. “Laurent has nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Do you think he shares that view?”
“I will make him know it.”
“Hmm. And when he disagrees with your tender applications? When he spurns your gentle touch? What then? A cold bed for the newly crowned King of the mighty Akielos while he waits for a neurotic, damaged lover to stomach lovemaking? How disappointing.”
“In that sense, he could never disappoint me. And I do not fear difficulties. I expect nothing less from such a man as he.”
“And again I put my offer to you: here you may partake of such a courtship sans impediments.”
Damen does not bother to explain to this specter the honor Laurent has already bestowed upon him as a lover. Earned. Damen had earned every precious reaction, every trusting movement. It had been a privilege to allow Laurent the safety to explore his preferences in lovemaking. To give him the pleasure he’d long been denied, then denied himself.
The scene shifts again and Damen stands in the throne room now, Laurent lounging upon the high-backed, cushioned seat. Fully dressed, at least, golden circlet and tight lacings back in place.
“You have most of his beauty,” says Damen. “His likeness. But you are not him. You would not learn coin tricks from degenerate card players. You would not run like a madman across the rooftops of Nesson. You…you would not put your sword to my brother. Doing what I could not.”
“That’s right. I killed your brother.”
“You did.”
“How poetic.”
A figure comes into relief behind Laurent on the dais. He has his back to Damen, but Damen would know his shape anywhere.
Damen does not call out to him now.
“You can ask him,” says Laurent. “I know you are dying to.”
Dying. That’s all he would do here. With effort, Damen draws his gaze from Kastor’s caped back.
“I have other promises to keep now,” says Damen.
“Will he forgive you?”
“He has forgiven me.”
Laurent tilts his head side to side. “No, will he forgive you for denying him his solo victory over his uncle? For your blind, raging interference that could have cost him everything?”
“I returned to Ios to save him. And I did.”
“At what cost, Damianos? He will not thank you for swooping in, the heroic brute with his blundering rescue, overturning all his carefully laid plans.”
“I have no need of his thanks.”
Laurent’s face is a mixture of pity and mockery. “Ever the honorable barbarian.”
The pain increases, body-wide now. Damen feels as if he is sinking.
His speech becomes labored as the throne room blinks in and out of his vision.“He had to…had to know…that he was not alone. That I…I would always…always come…for him…”
Breathing hurts. Tender muscles flex and strain.
“And he will…never be…alone again.”
A new image superimposes over the smirking, crowned Laurent in front of him.
A shy smile in bed, the morning after a night of lovemaking. A tentative, awkward embrace once offered to Damen in a spell of grief. Moments and affection hard-won from a man he’d once believed to be ice-cold.
The truth of his Laurent feels like a rope thrown over a rampart, and Damen grabs and climbs. Up up and out, toward pain and brutality and uncertainty, Damen pushes himself ever forward.
Death’s claws retract, its jaw bites together, at rest.
There’s a sour taste in his mouth. His tongue is heavy, everything is heavy. Panic flares briefly, as he catches a scent of an herb reminiscent of his father’s medicines. Damen fights down the nausea. Fights to open his eyes.
The sight before him guarantees he’ll stay conscious for the foreseeable future. A long-limbed body is curled up in a cushioned chair, feet outstretched and resting on the bed. Damen can tell exactly how this decision process came to be: Laurent too anxious to sleep beside Damen for fear of reopening the wound, but wanting proximity to Damen all the same. He’s still wearing that tattered chiton, though his skin and hair are at least clean of dirt and scrapes. He frowns in his sleep, his features slightly scrunched.
It’s close to dawn, based on the weak light making an attempt through the room’s curtains. Damen eagerly anticipates the full Akielon sunshine striking upon Laurent’s hair, making it more a beacon than it is already.
With a bracing hand on the bed, Damen attempts to sit up further. He’s slow and careful, but not gentle enough, and his bandaged side throbs in protest, punching out a loud groan.
Laurent’s eyes snap open at the sound and he’s on high alert in an instant. Feet swing off the bed, he sits up straight and catalogs Damen’s entire physicality, searching for the source of pain.
It takes another moment before he realizes Damen is awake. Their reunion is a silent one, Laurent’s face crumpling for a mere second before he masters his expression. Damen holds his searching stare, unable to impart the magnitude of the journey he’d only recently completed, but trying to make Laurent understand one vital thing.
I will always come back for you.
Laurent clears his throat, and when he finally speaks, his voice is hoarse, as if he’s already spent most of its strength shouting at people on Damen’s behalf.
“You took your time,” says Laurent. “Something funny?”
“Time. We have that now.”
When Laurent smiles, when the realization dawns, Damen can only think of how bright their entangled future will be.
FIN