6. Knight and King, Traitor and Tyrant

Snow fellover the quiet village of Atherry. The small, narrow houses that lined the street running through town hunched in the gray light of an overcast dawn. Beyond them, the loomhouses perched like shabby vultures over the countryside. Most mornings, the heavy thump of the looms rolled through the village, but the barred windows were dark, and no sound came from the workrooms. The girls who lived and worked there, signed on by desperate parents who couldn't afford the taxes Baron Atherry demanded, had disappeared from their beds above the workrooms three nights before. No one had seen them go. The baron's man had locked the doors that night as always, but when he was summoned the next morning, he'd found the lock broken and the beds empty. It would only be a matter of time before the girls' rest day came and their parents started wondering why they hadn't left the loomhouses, and snow had long obscured their tracks.

Three days later, just as snow started to cling to the fields, a fox marched into town.

He was a beautiful fox, with a thick red coat and a green scarf wrapped around his neck, and a young man walked a few steps behind him with a hand on the hilt of an ornate sword. The crossbar looked like twining antlers, and a stag's head was carved into the hilt, gleaming brightly under his calloused fingers. The man wore a dark coat and soft leather cuirass over his chest like one of the royal guards in Duciel, but the crest stamped into the leather wasn't the crest of the de Guillory line—it was a stag's head with a light caught in its antlers, embossed in gold thread.

Behind him came the missing girls.

They were dressed far better than they'd been when they followed a talking fox out of their beds three nights before. They wore thick furs and sturdy, expensive boots, and they were all grinning at each other and calling out to the houses along the lane. Their astonished parents joined them as they went, emptying the village, and several of the girls jostled each other for the honor of taking the arm of the young man with the glittering sword.

"There he is," one of the girls said as they approached the loomhouses. One of the baron's men was standing outside, kicking muddy snow off his boots. He turned to stare at the crowd of girls and their bewildered parents. "That's the one that beat Jen when her fingers froze."

"He beats us when we talk, too," another girl said. The young man nodded thoughtfully, then tugged at his gloves.

"Thank you," he said. He strode forward, unbuttoning his coat as he made for the man staring at the gathered girls. "This shouldn't take long."

* * *

"Something must be done!"

Bazyli de Guillory blinked down at the man standing in apoplectic rage at the door to his husband's country estate. He hadn't slept much the night before. Neither had Emile, but while Baz emerged from the bedroom in a daze, Emile was quietly reading in a breakfast nook with the satisfied air of a man who had slept ten hours on a bed of clouds.

"Please lower your voice and take three steps back," Baz said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I am a baron under His Grace's rule," the man was saying, "and as such, I am owed his protection. There is a man—a beast?—"

"Right," Baz said. He twisted to look over his shoulder. "This is your problem, Emile."

"You're the one who opened the door," Emile called from the drawing room.

Baz grimaced.

"…beat my men," the baron said. Baz was fairly sure he'd missed something important, but he was too tired to care. "Now they've taken over the loomhouses, and that man had the nerve to tell me how to tax my own people. As though he understands the burden of stewarding the land, or running a business with those lazy sluts—" His voice rose to a shriek as Baz closed the door in his face.

"Well," Emile said, finally appearing in the hallway with a cup of tea in one hand. "That sounded unpleasant."

"It was," Baz said. The baron started knocking on the door. Baz locked it. "Didn't the cook say something about those loomhouses, about how he treats the girls? If someone's beating his men, he'll probably take it out on the girls. That's how men like him work."

Emile gave Baz a considering look. Baz knew what he was thinking. Baz didn't speak much of his childhood in Mislia anymore, but he didn't have to. Emile had learned to read Baz better than his brother's demon, who waltzed about in other people's business like a town gossip. He'd filled in the silences between Baz's words, the memories he couldn't quite recount, the scars he didn't like to touch. Emile wasn't a soft man, not by most standards, but he had a straightforward kindness that fit well with Baz's aversion to flowery words and overbearing sentimentality.

"I'll send a message to de Valois," Emile said. "If my son is clever enough—which he is—he'll know how to settle the matter without alarming the surrounding nobles. He could use a few more challenges, I'm sure."

Baz smiled. Even as king, Emile tended to attribute any popular decision he made to his son, building up Adrien's reputation as a kinder king than his father. Adrien the Just, some were calling him, which Baz found a little ridiculous.

"In the meantime, I'll send someone to inspect the loomhouses," Emile said. "Now, come here and have breakfast. It looks like someone ran you ragged last night."

"Yes, a sadist who still doesn't know that an hour or two of sleep might be good for him," Baz said. Emile smiled wickedly and tugged at Baz's braid when he came close, pulling him to his knees.

"Oh, I could always be worse," Emile said.

"Now you're spoiling me."

Emile's grip tightened in Baz's hair, and Baz let his eyes drift closed, content and warm at his lover's feet.

* * *

It took nearly a week for someone to come looking for the baron.

Heavy snow fell over the baron's former country home as two women in dark livery stepped down from their saddles. Eli was in the kitchen with the new baron, a young teenager named Roland who'd called for Eli's help when his friend in the loomhouses had told him the other girls were starting to starve. Roland was a good-hearted boy, probably because he'd spent most of his childhood avoiding his father, and he was quickly charming the staff who hadn't left in the baron's sudden absence.

So when the officials came waltzing through the front door with a request to see the baron, Roland nervously stood up from the table and cleared his throat.

"Th-That would be me," he said. His voice cracked in the middle of his sentence, and the two women looked at each other dubiously.

"He is," Rey said. Eli, whose mouth was full of cobbler, listened as Rey's subtle magic settled over the crowded kitchen. "The baron abandoned his title a few days ago, so his son inherits."

"And why would the baron have passed down his title?" one of the women asked.

"Good question," Rey said. "Funny story about that, really."

Eli set down his fork. "Maybe he had a change of heart."

Sure, it had taken Eli dragging the baron out of bed, tossing him into an open grave, and pretending that Eli could reach into his chest and rip out his heart with his bare hands if he wanted to, but the results were the same.

"Are you two representatives of the crown?" Eli asked. "Because I have a few questions if you are, like why the crown would let an entire village of teenaged girls starve half to death in winter when these loomhouses make the cloth for most of the noble fashions in Duciel?"

"What my friend means," Rey said, giving Eli a warning look, "is that the Baron realized the error of his ways and decided his son was old enough to take over."

"Did you see the state of the roads? The only way out of town is a toll bridge. No wonder they can't get work elsewhere."

Roland leaned toward Rey. "This is going to be like the grave thing, isn't it?"

"Possibly," Rey whispered back.

"What grave thing?" one of the officials asked.

"The man we work for is not responsible for another noble's roads," the other one said, a frown creasing her forehead.

"But he's powerful enough to send people to ask when the baron goes missing." Eli stood and gathered his coat from the back of his chair. "I'd like to have a word with him then, if you don't mind."

"And who are you?"

Roland went pale, and Rey patted him on the shoulder.

"We're conscientious Starians," Rey said, "doing our civic duty."

Which was how Eli, Rey, and their deeply unhappy horse ended up trudging through a snowstorm and into the largest country estate Eli had seen. It was broader than Eli's mother's lands, which had sprawled over much of Eastern Staria before it was divided up between the lesser nobility. The grounds of the estate were lush with winter flowers and greenery, and Eli was fairly sure he spotted roses blooming by the windows, which made no sense—they should have died months ago, but the blossoms were barely touched by frost.

Unicorn grumbled to herself in a warm stable while Eli and Rey were ushered into the foyer, which was elaborately decorated in an eclectic mix of styles. There were Mislian charms hanging next to paintings of Starian landscapes, and a number of musical instruments leaned against stacks of books and decorative urns. Rey hunched miserably in his snow-sodden scarf and coat while the officials went scurrying off into the warm house, and Eli turned to start unwrapping Rey from his various layers.

"Hush," he said, when Rey opened his mouth to protest. "You know you'll be colder if they're damp."

"I'm colder now," Rey said. He shivered. "What kind of place is this? I don't recall visiting when I was here last. A bit off the beaten path, isn't it?"

"Too rich for its own good," Eli said. He nodded to the bellpull by the door. "That's for servants. The oldest noble houses have bellpulls like that—they're connected throughout the house so you can call servants into any room. We had bells like this at home."

He smiled ruefully. It was odd how, despite the fact that he hadn't considered the de Valois house his home in far too long, the word still came so easily to his tongue.

Rey brushed at Eli's hair. "Try not to terrify this one. I am not going back out in that storm, thank you."

"Only if you don't try to trick him into buying magic hair oil," Eli said. Rey made a face, and Eli smiled. "All right. I'll be civilized, I promise."

"His Grace will see you now," a servant said, materializing like a ghost from a side room. Eli almost jumped. Even the servants in the de Valois house, who were used to slipping meekly under Aline de Valois' imperious gaze, weren't that quiet. The servant bowed and gestured toward the open door.

Eli approached carefully. There were only a few people who could use the term "His Grace," and they were all in Duciel. That meant whoever was in the other room was either one of them, which was highly improbable, or was so egotistical he didn't mind risking the ire of the crown, since impersonating a title you didn't own was tantamount to treason. Given how pleasant the baron had been, Eli wasn't holding much hope that this man was any better.

Eli crossed the hall next to Rey and stepped into the doorway, dripping melted snow onto the polished floor as he went.

He stopped, his entire body locking up in a twisting mess of panic, fear, and disgust, as one of the men in the room turned to face him.

Emile de Guillory looked Eli up and down as wind rattled the windows and snow pelted the glass, and he slowly set a crystal cup on the windowsill.

"Well," he said, as Eli's heart leapt to his throat, "isn't this a pleasant surprise?"

* * *

Eli de Valois was a mystery to Emile, and one he did not know how to solve.

When he'd had the grave exhumed and there'd been no body, he'd felt the most curious sensation of relief followed by the very reasonable concern that anyone would feel upon discovering a grave was empty that should not be. Even with archmages who tortured remotely through mirrors and the existence of talking foxes—be they the spirit type, or the demonic sort that bedeviled Emile for sweets—the dead rising to walk again was a bit much.

He'd been told what happened by Adrien, who'd been slightly confused as well, but had told him that Sabre had a brother who was now a knight, and was wandering about Staria saving people or some such thing. Emile was still waiting for someone to explain the part where Eli was alive and not in the ground, but then he'd recalled Sebastien d'Hiver and how odd the man was, and decided maybe he didn't want to know. Emile wasn't a man who regretted many things, and he'd never feel bad about hanging that bitch Aline, but he'd meant those words to Sabre that day at the gravesite. He should have found another way, with Eli. Strange to think that grave had been empty, even then.

Eli looked much the same as he had last time, perhaps a bit less bedraggled and more settled, and while Sabre was the spitting image of Arthur, Eli resembled Emile's old friend just as much. But there was something else, and maybe not a physical resemblance as much as something more ephemeral, something that made Emile see himself in Eli. Distant cousins they may be, but he had a feeling it was more than that.

Before he could even suss out what it might be, however, Eli de Valois gave him one long stare, unimpressed and wary, and then turned on his heel and walked right of the door.

"No," said his companion, the man who'd turned into a fox. "Let's not. Please?"

"There's no need to–" he sighed, hearing the front door slam.

"Emile," Bazyli said, disapproving. "It's snowing." He gave a pointed look at the door. "We'll wait for you."

"Bless you and the demons that made you," the fox said.

"Emile," Bazyli said again.

"Oh, he'll come back, surely. It's quite chilly out," Emile said.

"I'll get your coat," Bazyli said, in a tone that said Emile would not be getting out of this one.And people were foolish enough to think dominants were in charge.Emile dressed in his coat and gloves, pulled a fur hat over his messy hair, and went out into the storm.

It wasn't hard to find Eli, as there were only a few places someone would go to escape the snow that wasn't the warm, comfortable house he'd left behind. Emile found him in the stable, perched on a hay bale and staring into space.

Emile pulled the stable door closed, which did nothing to warm the chilly interior, but at least gave him something to do. He and Eli looked at each other, the silence heavy in the air between them, the wind outside a low, mournful sound like someone was crying.

"Appropriately dramatic," Emile said, after a moment. "Don't you think?"

Eli had something in his hand, maybe a knife. It occurred to Emile that he might have just been sent to his death by his submissive, who was taking tea with a man who could turn into a fox in the house and would certainly feel very bad in the morning when he found Emile's frozen corpse by the water trough.

"Could be worse," Eli said, in a tone of voice that suggested he'd make sure of it before too long.

"Could it?" Emile crossed his arms over his chest. "I fail to see how." He did not think he was in danger of losing his life, but that didn't make this any less fraught. "If you have any ideas, keep them to yourself lest the universe oblige."

Eli said nothing, and Emile cocked his head, considering him. "You were mouthier with Isiodore, de Valois. No dressing-down for me, hmm?"

The moment he said it, he realized that of course there was a reason for that. Isiodore had signed Eli's death warrant. Emile had been there that morning, smiling to watch him die. Eli was likely afraid of him and, given he was a de Valois, hated that more than anything. He was at a loss for what to say, but in an attempt to navigate this strange encounter, Eli finally spoke.

"Next time, de Guillory, try sending your men before women are locked in a loomhouse and beaten for asking for water to drink."

"That was you, was it?" Emile pulled the hat from his head, raked a hand through his messy hair. "I can't say I mind that lout is gone, but I didn't know the extent of his behavior."

"That's a common excuse with you," Eli said.

Emile smiled, though it wasn't particularly friendly. "Is it?"

Eli hopped off the bale. He was short, and had that dominance of his wrapped tight like a cloak around him. It was strong, stronger than even his mother's had been. No wonder Aline had tried to force Eli into being someone he wasn't. She was probably worried about the competition.

"I didn't know you lived here."

"I assume that's why you turned around and walked out of the door," Emile said. "By the bye, your man is taking tea with my submissive, Bazyli. I suggest we return and join them." Emile could see Eli was shivering. If Emile was cold, with his much studier frame, he must be freezing.

"I'm not sleeping under your roof, de Guillory."

"Did I offer? I mentioned tea, it's not an inn."

Eli was so tense that he looked like he might crack, but he wasn't giving ground and he was meeting Emile's gaze steadily. "You don't want me here any more than I want to be here."

Emile lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "That doesn't mean I'll send you out into a snowstorm, de Valois."

"Wouldn't want to kill me," Eli said, dryly, "would you."

Emile's smile was chilly, but this time, there was a hint of some sort of dark amusement in it. "Apparently I'm not very good at it anyway, so I doubt it would work."

Eli took a step back, shoulders hunching slightly. "I can't do this." His voice sounded caught. It was hard to think of this young nobleman as the person he'd sentenced to die, and that's because it wasn't the same person. Just as he wasn't the same person who'd been there that morning, raising a hand to the hangman.

"I suppose you want me to apologize."

Eli's laugh was as harsh as the wind outside. "Fuck off. I don't want anything from you."

"I did, you know," Emile continued, "to your brother."

"You owe him more than a fucking apology," Eli snapped, temper roused on Sabre's behalf.

"So do you," Emile retorted. "And no, I apologized to him for you."

"Do you think that makes it better?"

"No," he said, honestly. "Not in the slightest. Do you?"

"No. Not in the slightest," Eli repeated his own words back to him.

Emile gave a slight nod. "Then we understand each other. Thank you for taking care of the baron. What an odious man."

"A lot of those about," Eli said, and Emile's smile was entirely devoid of its earlier chill.

If Eli had cowered or raged, Emile might have responded coldly and told Eli to sleep in the stables for all he cared. Now, however, he chuckled, glancing up at the stable roof, imagining the snow piling high on the wood, blowing about in the wind. "Arthur, why are both of your sons as disrespectful as you?"

"My father would have challenged you for what you did, if he were still alive."

"If he were still alive, de Valois, I wouldn't have had to. Now, let's decide what we're going to do about our rather complicated history, and then go back inside. That's not my attempting to kill you again, it's my respecting that you likely despise me and want to be nowhere near me."

"You can't possibly blame me," Eli said.

"Of course I don't. Do you want to duel me? I'm not the swordsman Izzy is, but I've a pitchfork around here somewhere."

Eli shook his head. He wasn't looking at Emile anymore. "No. I'm going to get Rey and we'll sleep in here, or somewhere else. I'd rather sleep in the snow." He strode toward the door, reminding Emile so strongly of Sabre that it was uncanny, but when he pulled at the handle, nothing happened.

He did it again, and still the door remained shut. "What the–"

"The snow," Emile said, carefully moving closer. He wasn't going to sneak up on Eli, he wasn't stupid, and his cruelty as of late was channeled into delightfully tormenting Bazyli, not young noblemen. "It might have blown against the door. I'll give it a try."

Even with the strength he'd inherited from his commoner father, though, Emile couldn't manage to get the door open. "Ah. Well, Bazyli will come looking in a bit. I suppose we'll have to wait it out." He wondered if this was the snow, or someone trying to force them to have a very difficult and painful conversation by giving them absolutely no other option.

Emile hated to do what anyone wanted, and he had a feeling Eli was similar.

"Rey!" Eli shouted, pounding on the door. The horses whinnied at the sudden outburst, but Emile did nothing, simply went to sit on the hay bale so he and Eli were at a bit more of a level height. "Bloody fox."

Emile gave a soft snort, thinking of Baz's brother's troublesome, loveable demon. "Bazyli will keep him fed and warm, don't worry."

"She told me about him," Eli said, jerking his head toward the direction of the house. "Rose told me about Bazyli. That's why the roses are blooming, right? He's a mage."

"He's not. For a bit, he sheltered the spirit of an ancient goddess. She lives in the garden now and is particularly fond of plants." At the look Emile gave him, he held up his hands. "Surely a man who was pulled from the grave is willing to believe in a little bit of mysticism."

"Don't you—that's fine, this is fine." Eli tugged at his hair, a gesture he'd seen in Sabre, and Arthur before him.

I wish you'd known your son, old friend. He's cranky and a bit of a mess, and how were you friends with me if that wasn't something you liked?

He wouldn't say this to Eli—it wouldn't be fair, not after what he'd done. He did not think this would be like his relationship with Sabre, which had mended as much as it could, anyway, simply because of how entwined they now were in each other's lives. Sabre was married to Laurent, Laurent's sister was married to Bazyli's brother, and Sabre stood beside his son's throne. There was simply no avoiding each other, and they'd done the best they could to find some common ground between them.

Emile doubted it would go the same way with Eli, and that was all right. Sabre was very much a Starian noble, a man connected to his time and place, but Eli wore that hint of otherness in the same way as the Duke d'Hiver, both men caught between this world and another Emile could not touch nor understand.

"Thank you for what you did, Ser de Valois, in righting the injustice done on my lands." He gave Eli a short bow. "You might not believe this, but it's not my intent that the people here should be exploited and mistreated."

"Just the ones in the capital?" Eli's mouth quirked, not quite a smile.

"Yes, well." Emile examined his nails. "They do enough of that themselves, really."

Eli pushed at the door again, sighing. "I know what I did was wrong. Adrien, I—he's a good king. I believe that. I really do."

"So do I," Emile said, carefully. "So do most people. His reign will be well-remembered." Unlike my own. They called his son Adrien the Just. They called him Emile the Iron-Hearted, which was perhaps a step up from Ol' Frosty, which made him feel like a character in one of Victor Owl-Eyed's books about Lukos. "You were a child."

Eli whirled on him, voice a snarl of too many tangled emotions that Emile was feeling as well, even if he had more practice keeping it hidden. "That's not an excuse. I was hateful and jealous and–"

"You were young, and I was old enough to know better," Emile interrupted.

"I'm not saying this to make you feel better, old man," Eli snapped. "I'm saying it because I'm not going to wait until there's gray in my hair to learn how to admit I was wrong."

Emile nodded. "Good. You'll have a happier life that way, Ser de Valois. Take it from me."

* * *

Sometimes, Eli wished he could allow himself to be a little unreasonable.

It would have been easier if Emile was the monster that Eli's mother had built him up to be, wicked and irredeemable. Isiodore was manageable. Eli knew how to handle the resentment that surged to his throat like bile every time he heard of Isiodore helping Sabre with business at the palace or giving Rose and Hektor flowers on opening nights. Now that Eli was here, trapped in a stable with the man who'd watched his execution, he could feel the boy he'd been raging against his flimsy sense of self-preservation.

"She said you were the one who killed my father," Eli said, looking down at his hands.

"Did she?" Emile didn't ask who she was. Eli glanced up and caught something cold and dangerous in Emile's eyes, the same look he'd worn that day on the gallows.

"She said a lot of things about you." Eli could still remember the way his mother had cursed Emile with her dying breath while Sabre had only thought of saving them. In the end, hating Emile had mattered more than her own life. "But so does Rose."

Emile gave Eli a curious look. Rose de Rue was an anomaly in the Starian court—as the sister of a courtesan and a child of commoners with a noble title, she didn't quite belong anywhere, so she had made herself belong. She'd bullied Eli and Rey into visiting every time they passed Duciel, and Eli couldn't help but be charmed by her.

So, apparently, was Emile.

"Oh, he's practically toothless by now," she'd said the last time they visited, pouring tea while Rey and Flick compared the size of their tails in the garden. "Bazyli's had time to wear him down, you see."

Eli had wondered if that was true.

"Rose de Rue is certainly exceptional," Emile said, in a tone that suggested that he, too, found her boundless energy a little overwhelming. Eli wasn't sure he liked having that in common.

"I trust her more than I would trust Aline de Valois," Eli said, and Emile let out a sound that was dangerously close to a laugh. "Rey likes to say I'm a contrary little shit sometimes. Apparently he likes that." Eli got up to check the saddlebags they'd dumped next to Unicorn's stall.

"Bazyli says something similar so far as I'm concerned," Emile said.

"Yeah, well." Eli pulled out a bottle from their supplies. It was a nutty liquor from East Staria, one of Rey's favorites. "So maybe I'll do what my mother would hate instead." Eli returned to Emile, took a swig, and passed it over. "There, no poison."

"Does poison affect you?" Emile asked, wiping the rim of the bottle with a cloth from his pocket.

"I don't know. I've never swallowed poison before." He didn't think drinking ash counted.

"I have. I wouldn't recommend it." Emile took a sip from the bottle, looked at the label, and smiled.

"What?"

"Oh, just checking the maker," Emile said, handing it back.

"No, that's not it. It's something else." Eli searched Emile's face. He looked far too smug for a man shivering on a pile of hay.

"We have a few bottles of this inside," Emile said. "That's all."

"Great." Eli took another sip. Now he'd have to swear off it.

"Planning to toss your supply in the midden?" Emile asked. Eli felt a flush rise to his cheeks. "What would your mother despise?"

"Sharing a drink with her enemy." Eli toasted him with the bottle before tossing it over. "Not being a noble anymore. Wearing pants."

"A far better choice overall," Emile said. "She didn't have the best taste."

"She married my father."

Emile flapped a dismissive hand. "That was ambition, not taste. If you really wanted to make her turn in her grave, you'd take up the sword and terrify half the nobles in Staria into behaving themselves."

"That sounds dangerously like a compliment."

Emile just smiled.

"She would hate this," Eli said, leaning against an empty stall opposite Emile. He tapped the sword at his hip, with its twisted, polished hilt. "Sabre was bad enough. She locked me in my room for days when she found out I'd sent de Mortain a letter asking for lessons."

"You could always send him another one," Emile said, passing him the bottle. "Your form wasn't…the best."

"It was raining and you had a gun to my head," Eli said, but the terror of that moment didn't rise to the surface as it did some nights, when he woke up in a cold sweat with his hand grasping for his sword. He just took another drink. "I almost beat him last time."

Emile gave Eli an arch look.

"All right, I was closer." Eli tossed the bottle, and Emile caught it with both hands.

There was a creak by the door, and Eli turned to find that the shadow made by the snow was gone, and something was making odd scratching sounds against the wall. He approached the door carefully, and when he tested it, it swung open without resistance. For a second, Eli saw something green scuttling out of view, and he squinted through the whirling snow to get a better look.

"Were those vines?" he asked.

"Most likely," Emile said, getting up from the hay bale. He pressed the bottle into Eli's hands and passed through the door. "Come, de Valois. As delightful as your company is, I have no intention of staying in that stable all night."

* * *

Baz had that smug look on his face, the one he wore when he was absolutely sure he'd done something for Emile's own good that Emile hadn't enjoyed, and it didn't falter when Emile crankily stomped the snow off his boots. "Oh, stop that."

"I will not," Emile said. He narrowed his eyes at the fox-man, Rey, who was smiling brightly at Eli and looking around like maybe the entire room was going to collapse around them.

Emile understood. Eli had that sort of energy about him. So did he. "We'll have a room made up for you, with the understanding that you're only availing yourselves of our hospitality because of the storm and will be on your way in the morning."

"Emile, really," Baz huffed.

"That's not my wish, darling. It's Eli's, and it's fine." More than, really. He wouldn't have thought Eli would spend five more minutes in his home, much less an entire night.

He'd at the very least have the kitchen prepare food for them, provisions to take along on their journey—sharing a drink was a good first step, but they likely were in no place for an entire meal together. They may never cross paths again, but perhaps they would. Emile had given up attempting to predict the strange twists and turns that his life would take, ever since he'd drunk poisoned champagne in his garden and woken up with a Mislian force-feeding him flowers.

In a way, he and Eli had both come back from the dead. Emile's crimes were greater, and while it wasn't his nature to dwell on his own horrendous behavior in those dark days after Arthur and Lianne's murders, he knew what he'd done to Eli was unforgivable. Eli knew it too, and they would have to live with it, forever.

Emile warmed himself by the fire while Baz went to instruct the kitchen and fetch him warmer socks, Eli and Rey talking quietly across the room. He would send Adrien a letter, he thought, and perhaps Sabre, but there was something he could do now.

He kissed Baz and murmured he had something to do before bed. "That was your idea, to keep us in there?"

"Aye," Baz said, smiling, easy in his arms. "I knew he wasn't going to try anything."

"How did you know?"

"He loves his brother," Baz said, shrugging, "and Sabre loves Rose, who loves Hektor, who loves me, and I tolerate you, mostly."

Emile barked out a laugh at that, kissing him, nipping his bottom lip. "I can't say I appreciate it, but I suppose it could have gone worse."

Baz raised his eyebrows. "I should think so, Emile. You know exactly how badly it could go, because it already went there."

"I think it could have been a touch worse, don't you? He's not dead."

"You just smiled," Baz said, eyes narrowed. "You like him, don't you?"

"I respect a man who digs his way out of a grave and becomes someone better. Like him? Of course not. I'm a beast, I don't like anyone."

"You're a ridiculous man and you do so, but I'll keep your secret. I like him," said Baz, and that wasn't a surprise. Displays of fraternal loyalty certainly didn't hurt, and if Emile was any indication, Baz liked a strong personality, which had been what Lianne had always said about him.

It occurred to him that if she'd been alive when he'd had Aline and Eli arrested, she would have talked some sense into him even if Eli had been everything they'd thought when he'd been taken to the gallows. And she'd hated Aline de Valois.

Emile kissed Baz one last time and lightly smacked his ass, pleased when he jumped, still a little bruised from that enthusiastic caning the night before. "Go on. I won't be long."

Emile went to his office, pulled out his official signet ring, wax, and parchment. He thought for some time, then began to write.

Emile did not bid farewell to their guests in the morning, but a servant handed over knitted scarves, new hats, fur-lined socks and food for a few days' journey. She also handed them a signed letter with Emile's official seal, a hasty note scribbled on scrap paper clipped to the top.

Ser de Valois,

I've had a copy sent to Adrien in Duciel, but I thought you might like one for yourself.

From one man who came back from the dead to another, I assure you I am making the most of the second chance I assuredly did not deserve. I may never be a good man, but I have vowed to be a better one. Perhaps this will prove that I meant both what I said to your brother and what I said to you.

Best,

Emile de Guillory

PostScript: I included another bottle of the liquor, to replenish your supply. Don't drink so much that you won't be able to vanquish Izzy with your blade. I should like to see that one day, as, I believe, would your father.

The letter he'd written in triplicate read–

By order of King-Regent Emile de Guillory, Eli de Valois is hereby officially recognized for his good deeds on behalf of Staria and its citizens. It is the decree of the crown that he be knighted accordingly, and granted all rights and privileges as benefits this honor.

Isiodore had pardoned Eli, which Emile had known and approved, since he had been the target of the assassination plot that Eli was being pardoned for. But as far as he knew, this was the first knighthood bestowed in Staria in an age. It felt right that he should do this, and that people know it was him praising Eli for his knightly deeds. It wasn't important for himself or his own reputation, but for Eli, for Sabre. It was for the man he'd been, once upon a time, before he'd let himself be buried alive under his paranoia, fear, and hate.

It was for Arthur, wherever he was, who'd never had the chance to meet the man his youngest son became, a noble knight who drank liquor and backtalked kings who tried to hang them.

When he'd apologized to Sabre by an empty grave, he'd left a flower, but flowers weren't the same as something that had roots. If falling in love with Bazyli had taught him anything, it was that.

Perhaps with time, this seed would grow, and one day flower. Perhaps it wouldn't. But it would have a chance.