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The Year of the Realm 873

Terence was already fastening his bracers to his forearms when the Imperial horns called their troops to wakefulness. With the ease of practice, he secured them one-handed, only once making use of his teeth to draw a strap taut.

Boots next, a lesser challenge, lacing past the knee, as the soldiers in the tents near his began to grumble into the world of the waking. Morganbeard squawked, her beak forming a sharp indentation in the canvas near Terence’s head. Terence laughed and prodded it with his knuckle. An error, for it only encouraged her, and her endeavor to nuzzle against him nearly tore through the thin, travel-worn canvas.

“A moment,” he begged of her, counting his blessings that his jerkin was already in place. He slung the belt for his sword around his waist and secured it, then shunted his shield into place on his back and slid free of the tent.

Morganbeard cawed a more cheerful greeting, her iron-gray feathers gleaming in the waxing daylight. Terence tossed a dried strip of lamb to her and watched her pluck it from the air with a satisfied clack of her beak before he allowed his eyes to stray to the climbing white tents of the prince’s Holy Order, in whose shadow his own was huddled.

The banners of Bahamut soared high in the morning breeze. Beneath them, cook-fires were being extinguished, knights called to arms. Somewhere, in their midst, would stand the prince, doubtless already long awake, his hands resting upon the edge of the war table, an unforgiving knot of tension drawing his shoulders together.

Once, before the other sellswords could emerge from their own tents and witness him, he saluted.

Five years of bloody labor, of coin gathered from slitted throats, had led him here. Back, at last, to where he belonged.

When you have need of me, my prince. I will be here.

The Year of the Realm 868

“My prince,” Terence said, drawing fast the final lace upon the back of Dion’s armor. “You are certain of this?”

It had taken all day—or perhaps all the time Terence had known Dion—for him to muster the courage to speak.

Their ship rested in a bay on the Shadow Coast, at the fore of the Imperial Armada. By the time the sun had broken from the horizon, their knights’ boots would strike the shores, and Bahamut’s wings would unfurl in splendor across the sky, draining years from the life of Terence’s dearest friend as they spread.

“Of what, Terence?” Dion turned to face him, and Terence’s breath was stolen.

The Prince of Sanbreque looked terribly certain indeed. Conviction shone in the warm brown of his eyes. He held his chin high, his shoulders square under gleaming pauldrons. Regal and golden, looming over Terence where he knelt. In the shining, steel-bound confines of his person, Terence could see only traces of the boy who had captured bugs with him on the grounds of St. Édouard’s School outside Oriflamme, yet he held those traces dear—the slight, hopeful curve of Dion’s mouth when he looked upon Terence’s face, the way he shifted onto his toes when asking a question.

For the sake of that boy, who had climbed into Terence’s bunk with damp eyes when they were nine and asked Terence if he thought the saints’ haloes ever strained their necks—who had genuflected with a white-knuckled fist clenched  upon his knee as his father’s words stripped a crown from him and banished him to the fields of war—Terence forced himself to speak.

The whispers echoing in the halls of Whitewyrm Castle were growing louder, whipped to a frenzy by the cries of the new Empress’s infant son. Those whispers were stifled swiftly enough, but Terence was a keen listener.

“It is clear His Radiance knows his firstborn’s uses.”

“A sensible decision, altogether. A bastard cannot rule.”

“Bahamut’s power is undeniable. His Radiance has no cause now, to fear its use.”

Too often, Terence’s rage had closed his throat. He must speak, now, before their troops could land, and pray he did not speak too late.

“Priming,” Terence said. “Storming Ash. All of it.”

Dion’s smile broadened, breaking into a small, shocked laugh even as his brow furrowed. “Of course I am, Terence. What cause would I have to doubt?”

The hard line of the Emperor’s mouth. The satisfied smirk of the Empress’s. Every whisper of every Cardinal.

“Your Highness,” Terence lowered his eyes, for Dion’s shone too brightly. He could not watch that certainty die, and know that he had murdered it. “You are no longer in the line of succession.”

“What does that matter?” Dion asked. “My charge now is the same as it was before my brother’s birth: to protect the Holy Empire of Sanbreque.”

Dion’s tone was his father’s, measured and severe. It set Terence’s teeth on edge.

“I know your charge, Your Highness.” Terence steeled himself and looked up. Dion did not shirk from his battles; Terence would not either. “But I fear you have been left with nothing else. That once you have fulfilled it—”

Dion’s throat bobbed. The serene composure in his eyes cracked, a desperate brilliance shining through, and yet still he wore that faint, entreating smile, as if trying to coax the words from Terence’s lips. Terence labored on.

“You will be cast aside,” Terence said. “And that is if—if anything of you remains.”

The smile died upon Dion’s face. So did the brilliance in his eyes. He shifted back onto his heels, his nose wrinkling in disgust—contempt.

“Do you have so little faith?” Dion asked. “In Greagor’s will? In the honor of Sanbreque?”

“I have faith in you, my prince,” said Terence. His voice trembled. He folded his hands upon his knee, so that they would not reach for Dion’s. So that his own hopeless want could not muddy his purpose.

“Forgive me, Terence,” Dion said, and when he blinked, a tear of anger ran down his cheek, “if I find that difficult to believe in this moment.”

“D—Your Highness, please,” Terence rose to his feet. “I have seen your courage. I have seen your kindness. And I have seen it repaid with—with ingratitude and malice.”

Dion recoiled. “What? Do you think me so weak that I will only serve my nation for the sake of some—reward? Should my conviction waver because—because in guarding the lives and futures of my people, I do not serve myself?”

“What are we guarding?” Terence gestured hopelessly at the cabin wall—at the frontier of Ash beyond it. “Our people are not here!”

He knew at once that he had blundered too far.

Dion set his jaw, his shoulders gathering around his ears. “Terence, you speak treason. I thought that you, of all people—”

Terence caught his shoulders, a childlike terror seizing him. “Dion, you are my friend.”

Dion blinked hard, his teeth flashing in a grimace. He stepped from Terence’s grip. “You heard my father’s words, Terence. I am the Knight of the Holy Dragon.”

“You are a fool,” Terence said, hopelessly, stupidly, “and you are going to be hurt.”

And my heart will break for it.

Dion’s eyes shuttered. “Give me my lance.”

Terence’s arm started from his side. Then it stopped. Dion’s lance leaned against the wall, two paces behind him, but Terence’s feet did not stir. He set his hands back at his sides and met Dion’s eyes.

“Sir Poirier,” Dion said. “Give me my lance.”

Terence raised his chin and did not move. His every muscle felt wrought of stone. He stood—perhaps as his prince did—petrified by a desperate and terrible pride.

Let Dion take the field. Let Bahamut rain fire upon Sanbreque’s foes. Let Dion die for it.

But Terence would not lift a finger to aid him in it.

Dion inhaled through his teeth, a muscle in his jaw twitching.

“Very well,” he said. He walked around Terence neatly, his armor not so much as brushing his shoulder. His steps were perfectly measured, a steady clip against the floorboards as he vanished from Terence’s sight and then re-emerged with his halberd in hand.

For a moment, blond hair fell forward and obscured his eyes. “I had thought—” his jaw worked and then tightened—“it is no matter. If your hatred of the Empire is so great, perhaps you should like to disembark here.”

Dion flung wide the door, and it slammed against the wall.

“My prince—” Terence pleaded.

“No,” Dion said, the faint light shining down from the deck lining his silhouette in pale gold. “No, I think not.”

The battle was swiftly fought, but hard won.

Sanbreque’s knights were vulnerable as they sought to gain the beach in longboats, Odin’s blade flashing down upon them.

Dion had spread his wings in a shield over them, launching volley after volley of flares against the knights of Waloed before hurling himself at Odin, sinking fangs and claws into his steed until it rent asunder in a cloud like squid’s ink, leaving the Warden of Darkness unhorsed. He knew a moment’s savage triumph before Garuda fell upon him like a falcon on a wounded eagle.

Talons dug into the scales of his back, forcing him to struggle skyward and hurl himself into a roll before she could draw blood.

Yet the rage burning within his heart left him numb to fear.

Terence.

Terence, whose faith he had never doubted, whose calm and resolve had never wavered. Terence thought him a fool. Behind his soft features rested the same contempt that the Empress wore, all the more hateful for being disguised.

Not one soul in the Twins believed truly that Dion Lesage could serve the Empire with honor.

Very well. He would serve regardless.

And he did, with fang and talon and relentless light, holding the Wardens of Wind and Darkness at bay as the battle raged behind him.

In the end, Waloed retreated up into the foothills with a parting slash of Zantetsuken across the Imperial frontline.

Dion landed, gasping, where the sand gave way to soil and grass. His breath felt thin in his lungs. His vision blurred.

A small price to pay, for the safety of his people, whatever Terence might say. Terence, damn him, who was probably still skulking aboard the ship. Even now that Bahamut’s raging glory had left him, betrayal heated Dion’s veins like molten silver.

Terence had followed Dion from one life into another—from monastery school to the halls of Oriflamme. He had bent his head to swear his fealty unto his dying day, his soft voice filling the frigid silence of the great cathedral as fog did a summer’s morning. Dion had adored him, his gentle voice, the feeling of his hair against his fingers, had felt a swell of radiant pride as they enshrined their boyish friendship in dogma, forged it into a bond between knight and prince that would guard their steps and assure their purpose as they journeyed together into manhood.

And now Terence had drawn forth a dagger and severed that cord, as if every promise whispered in the dark after curfew and every vow sworn in the sight of God were naught to him.

Dion’s thoughts were still seething over the boiling heat of his anger when he nearly tripped over Terence’s body lying motionless on the tide-washed sand.

A freezing wave rose up from the ocean and swept up to Dion’s shins, dousing his anger and seizing his heart. Its force was enough to lift Terence’s limp form an inch, stir his unresisting limbs to false life, and drag him a step back into the mouth of the sea.

For a breath, Dion was motionless, blood frozen in his veins as he watched the water lift Terence’s dark hair and draw it across his forehead.

Then he pitched to his knees. The surf crashed over his hips and soaked through his armor as he dragged Terence’s waterlogged form into his arms.

“Terence!” His name broke in Dion’s throat and burned there, a log splitting in a pyre. “Terence!”

Terence was bleeding, from a wound just above his left hip, the cruel work of a Waloeder’s broadsword. His eyes, as gray as the ocean around them, flickered open for a moment, fixing upon his face. Even bloodshot and half-lidded, they were unwavering—defiant.

Terence’s hand, clammy and trembling, gripped Dion’s arm. “My prince,” he said, raggedly, and he fell limp against Dion’s shoulder.

“Terence!” The name was a sob now, a wash of undignified tears spilling down Dion’s face.

“Your Highness!” the Lord Commander called out. “The Waloeders are routed. What are your orders?”

He might as well have been calling to Dion from the shadows of the moon. Dion pressed his hand to the redness of Terence’s tunic, forcing Bahamut’s grace from his palm and into Terence’s wound. Tears rolled from his chin and vanished into the surf.

“Your Highness!”

I should have been here. I should have protected you, all I am is to protect you. Dion’s thoughts were all heresy and terror, his eyes trapped upon the pale curve of Terence’s cheek.

How disgusted he had been with Terence, for asking him to place his own good before the Empire’s. And now here Terence lay, pale and chilled at death’s brink for the Empire’s sake, skewered upon Dion’s orders, and it was all Dion could do not to vomit into the receding tide.

“Your orders!”

“Retreat.” Dion scarcely heard himself. He was as much a traitor as Terence, it seemed.

The ocean clamored around him, as if seeking to drag them both away.

Terence was aware, first, of the slow rocking sensation, as if the Goddess cradled him in her arms. Dim light pressed at the backs of his eyelids, and the rocking turned queasy, bile pressing at his throat. His head drummed painfully, and above his hip—

Memory returned to him.

He had been struggling from one of the longboats, the one meant to bear Dion to the beach. But that plan had been forsaken. Already Bahamut soared overhead, as if the prince’s cold fury had drawn him straightaway into the air.

Terence had strained at the oars, striving with all his feeble might to overtake him. He had not made it far. Odin had Primed and drawn Bahamut to the hills, and as Terence’s eyes had turned upward, a knight of Waloed had charged to the head of the longboat and driven a blade into Terence’s gut. He remembered feeling suddenly cold, remembered the blunt, disembodying pain, and remembered having just enough nerve left to slit his assailant’s throat for his troubles. Then the freezing surf had embraced him, and he had known no more.

The rocking, he realized, as he forced his eyes open, was that of a ship, the cabin lurching slowly to and fro.

A single dim lantern illumined the gloom of the cabin, but even its dull glow made his eyes ache.

Hello? He tried to call out. Is anyone there?

A small, choking sound escaped his throat instead, and he coughed.

“Terence.”

That voice, he would know anywhere. Terence turned toward it like a plant toward the sun.

Dion stood an arm’s length from Terence’s bed, his hands clasped beyond his back, his eyes wide and grave.

“Dion,” Terence croaked. The name was not his to speak, but he had not the strength to keep it locked behind his teeth. His hand strayed toward the edge of the mattress, a thin shoot seeking light and warmth.

“You should not move,” Dion said. His elbows drew forward and halted, his hands still locked behind his back; his foot shifted forward an inch and went still. “I—it was thought that you might not wake.”

“I have now,” Terence said, a thin and dented shield raised against the fear in Dion’s eyes. A smile tugged weakly at the corners of his mouth.

“I am glad of it,” said Dion stiffly. “Take as much rest as you can. We shall land on Storm before sunset.”

“Storm?” Surely Terence could not have slept through the four days’ passage back from Waloed? “We… retreated then?”

A terrible relief crept through him at the thought.

“Yes,” Dion said. “Though we shall soon return.”

Relief died before it could advance beyond Terence’s heart, a candle swiftly doused.

“V—very well, my prince,” Terence managed. All the ire and resistance had drained from him, lost, it seemed, with the blood that had spilled upon the beaches of Waloed.

“It is all right, Terence,” said Dion, “you shall not be called upon.”

Terence shook his head. The room spun painfully, and he found himself forced to press his eyes shut. “I shall recover swiftly. I shall join you again soon.”

I shall not leave you alone.

“No.” Terence’s eyes flashed open and found Dion’s hollow and resolute. “No, Terence, you will not.”

“My prince—”

“It is clear to me now,” Dion said, “that you hold no love in your heart for the Empire of Sanbreque. It can ill afford such a soldier. I am grateful for your friendship. But its cost is too dear.”

“Dion, please—”

“Sir Terence Poirier,” Dion said, unyielding, his voice rising with terrible purpose, “I hereby discharge you, with honor, from the Imperial Army of Sanbreque. Your wounds shall exempt you from any further service, and the physickers shall see that they heal cleanly.”

“No, Your Highness—”

“Such is my decree.” Dion’s brow furrowed, his brown eyes flashing. “Your injuries bar you from any further service to the Empire, even as reluctant as yours would be. You shall not be permitted a second enlistment, I will not—” he trembled, a sharp inhale breaking his speech. “Your life will be a safe and prosperous one. Consider it payment, for your kindnesses to myself. Farewell, Terence.”

Terence cast about desperately, as one searches for a house-key lost in a pile of luggage, for words that might undo the past five minutes—that might unlock the door of Dion’s heart.

But his tongue was leaden in his mouth, his mind blank of anything save for desperate, undignified pleading. All that emerged was a dumb sob of protest, a please dissolved in tears.

Dion pressed his eyes shut, drew his spine taut, and Terence forgot any pride he might once have had, rolling onto his side with an effort that sent dizzying pain rippling through his flank, and reached for him.

The door of the cabin opened. It closed.

As it bolted from without, Terence pushed himself an inch further, forcing his arm and chest from the bed after Dion, and then the world lurched and spun, and he struck the floor shoulder-first, black spots crawling across his vision.

“Dion,” he meant to scream, but wept instead, as darkness took his sight.

The Year of the Realm 873

The Curse had spread.

Dion lay steaming with cold sweat amid the tangled sheets of his camp bed. The pain had woken him hours ago, a gnawing, burning grip upon his arm that made his fingernails dig into the seam of his skin, striving to pry stone from flesh and drawing blood instead. In his sleep, as the pain seized him, he had tried to cry out, as he always did, for—

A memory. Nothing more.

He held his right forearm above his eyes and squinted at the gray oblong that mottled his flesh. It had begun as a small stone coin pressed into his skin half a year ago, and now it had trebled in size, its advance furtive but inexorable.

Dion dashed the last of his useless tears of pain from his eyes and sat up. Sunrise would find him soon, and he would be ready to meet it. From beneath his pillow, he drew the small, carefully sealed jar of unguent. He had slipped out of Whitewyrm in the garb of a minor noble and purchased it from a vendor in the streets of Oriflamme.

“A Branded of mine,” Dion had told the apothecary. “Yes. He must serve for many years yet, before we can afford to lose him.”

Dion removed the cloth covering the jar, and with two fingers gathered up a gil-sized smear of the thick, pungent-smelling ointment. He rubbed it carefully into the pink, inflamed skin that surrounded the Curse’s mark upon him. He failed, as usual, to suppress a wince—the lotion seemed at once to freeze and burn, before it gave way to the welcome numbness that was its greatest boon.

He had yet to contrive a way of bandaging himself cleanly. Any of his knights might assist him, he supposed, but that would mean allowing them to lay eyes upon the mark that meant the failing of their Order.

Bahamut was the hope of Sanbreque. It mattered not how many flares Dion launched against Waloed. One glimpse of the doom slowly unfurling upon his arm would turn that hope to ash.

So, he unwound the linens himself and pinned his arm awkwardly against his leg, struggling to wrap the bandage around his forearm without letting it fall slack. In the end, he was forced to seize the end of it in his teeth to secure it, the marks of his own incisors showing upon the fabric when he tucked it beneath the rest.

The bindings were too tight, he knew, biting into his skin at the ends, and the knot somehow too loose, but it mattered little. The Curse was concealed. So, too, was the yawning ache in Dion’s chest, that could not be soothed by any poultice.

He had drawn his gauntlets safely over his wrists and laced his mail-coat by the time Sir Picard arrived to finish readying him.

Dion nodded in answer to Sir Picard's polished salute. “The missives?”

Sir Picard gave into Dion’s keeping the reports from their scouts, and one bearing the Emperor’s seal.

Dion scanned them swiftly as Roland went about his work, setting Dion’s pauldrons upon his shoulders and securing them.

The state of the battlefield was as Dion had predicted. Fifteen-hundred Waloeders, inbound from the coast a league distant—twice the force Sanbreque had marshaled against them. The host likely to clash with their own at Belenus Tor by mid-day. Odin likely among them.

It mattered not. Bahamut would deliver victory into the Empire’s hands. Such was the bargain Dion had struck, when he had heard a thud on the far side of a cabin door in a ship bound home from Waloed, and walked away from it without breaking stride.

He split the seal on the missive from Father.

His Radiance wished his son well in the battle to come. The attacks of saboteurs still plagued the Holy Capitol, and its citizens prayed for victory. Reinforcements could not be spared. Hardly worth mentioning. Dion had not asked for any.

“My spear?” said Dion, and Sir Picard gave it into his hand without a moment’s hesitation. “Ready the cohorts. We march for Belenus Tor.”

Sir Picard saluted sharply. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Dion struck out with Sir Picard at his shoulder, lance in hand.

Barnabas Tharmr was certain to take the field this day. Dion would make certain that he failed.

Waloed’s vaunted cavalry would mean little, if Bahamut first Primed and charred their frontline to ash. Even the small reserve of mounted mercenaries Sanbreque was able to rally would suffice to drive back their footsoldiers after that, so long as Bahamut held Odin’s eye.

By his power and resolve would their victory be purchased.

The sky overhead was a soft, mourning-dove gray. Dion kept his eyes level, and did not look up to see it.

Terence tightened his grip on Morganbeard’s reins, and she clacked her beak in reproof.

The Empire’s cavalry, such as it was, had just summited the broad green hill of Belenus Tor, and as they began their descent along its southern slope, Waloed’s knights came into view on the far side of the valley, bristling from the hilltop.

Terence rode at the right-hand end of the line of Dragonscale Mercenaries that the Emperor had opened his coffers to. The newest of their number, he had no friends among them, no shared jokes. As strengthening glances passed themselves down the line, Terence found none cast his way. His own eyes were turned upon the dragoons, above and behind them, ready to spring from the peak of the Tor and into combat.

He spied, for the first time in five years, a form clad in white and silver, glittering on the promontory, proud and upright as the figurehead of a warship.

For every day of the past five years, he had fought only for this: to lay eyes once more upon Dion Lesage. He had sold his dragoon’s armor and shunned his family’s hearth. He had vanished into the streets of Oriflamme, and forged himself anew.

He had taken every piece of bloody sellsword’s work that flung itself his way. He had served lords whose rivals irked them, and constables whose prey eluded them. He had even lent his blade, on occasion, to bandits with scars upon their cheeks, and cut down lords and constables in turn.

All to secure himself a post near to the prince’s side. For a prayer of renewing his service—of shielding his friend as he had always sworn to.

Terence still had no notion of how he would approach Dion, now that he was so near.

A problem, he supposed, for after the battle.

The war cries of fifteen-hundred Waloeders mingled into a low, distant roar. Their cavalry swept down the side of the valley in a single dark wave. The captain of the Dragonscales, twenty yards to Terence’s left, bellowed an answering cry, and Terence gave Morganbeard his heels.

She raced forward as a well-cast spear, the green of the plain eaten up beneath her claws.

Faster still was the shadow of Bahamut.

The wings of the King of Dragons cast a flickering, silvered glow over the earth even as they blotted out the sun, like moonlight through a forest’s canopy.

Waloed’s cavalry grew nearer, their indistinct figures sharpening, armor gleaming under the sun before falling beneath Bahamut’s shadow. Terence drew his sword. They outnumbered the Dragonscales four to one, and the earth trembled beneath their feet.

They were twenty yards distant, near enough that Terence could see the irregularities in their helms—which had combed out their plumes and which had left them to fall in lopsided disarray—and then they were gone.

A hundred points of light burst into existence beneath Bahamut’s wings, hanging motionless like stars over Terence’s head for the span of half a second. Then they raced forward with the almost-soundless whistle of arrows loosed from the string, still beautiful, still brilliant.

Then they crashed into the Waloeder frontline and became heat and smoke and seared skin, dozens of explosions denting armor, rending bone.

This was the gift Bahamut had granted to Dion Lesage: to make corpses from living flesh, at the cost of his own.

Terence could afford only a second’s mourning for the boy who had helped him save a lizard trapped beneath a stone at school before Morganbeard pierced the smoke and shredded earth where Bahamut’s flares had struck, and charged into the midst of Waloed’s footsoldiers.

Taking advantage of the thick haze of terror and smoke, Terence laid about himself widely with his sword, striking heads from necks and driving steel into shoulders, a constant, weighty, scything motion as he cut life from the panicking Waloeders around him.

After all, the gift that Sanbreque had granted to Bahamut, it bestowed on all its sons in lesser measure.

Corpses fell around Terence, and Greagor counted them and smiled.

On the hill beyond them, as if a door to night had swung suddenly open in the middle of the noonday sky, rose Odin, his six-legged steed casting all the field beneath him in abrupt, dizzying midnight.

Overhead, Bahamut roared a challenge. His dragoons were now loose upon the field, surging up beside Terence before he could be surrounded by Waloed’s infantry.

He could not afford even a moment to glance skyward, but he felt a great wind stir his hair with a downward sweep of Bahamut’s wings, heard a tremendous crack, as if of a vast bullwhip, that gave way to a vacuum of silence that briefly devoured every shout and clash of steel upon the killing ground.

Light and shadow played madly across the grass. A tempest stirred the air, its voice rising to a scream. The soldiers below fought onwards. Only the most foolhardy among them dared to look up to the clash between gods unfolding above them. There were two battles being waged now, one on earth and one in the skies, and if all the soldiers upon the ground were very lucky, the two would never meet.

Red and silver lit the valley. Terence’s arm tired with the endless swings of his sword.

And from overhead came a roar that transformed, halfway through its length, into a bone-shaking, agonized scream. Terence looked up. So did every other soldier in the valley, and he gasped in horror at the scene unfolding above him.

Bahamut hung in space like a paper star folded for the solstice, his wings fanned wide, flares still dissipating from his form. A faint line of red crossed his head, splitting his third eye in two. Odin lowered his sword, for its work was done. The full mass of Bahamut’s form blurred at the edges, his shadow thinning. Sunlight shone through his faltering wings. All at once, his vast, celestial body dissolved into a thousand severed motes of light, the scream of creation ringing in the air.

Terence did not hear himself scream with it.

Dion stood at the peak of Belenus Tor, looking out over the valley beneath them.

“Rather a lovely spot for a picnic,” Sir Beaufort observed behind him. “Perfect weather, too. What are the odds, you think, on old Barny calling a halt and agreeing to a luncheon?”

“Two-hundred and thirty to one,” said Sir Picard levelly, though Dion could hear a smile in his voice.

Dion’s chest twinged.

“Be silent,” he bit out. “Both of you. Do you think we have occasion to jest?”

“No, Your Highness,” they said in low unison.

“Then you will do well to refrain from it,” Dion said shortly. “Make yourselves ready for my landing.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

The mercenary cavalry were already spreading across the field, Sanbreque’s infantry and the lancers under Dion’s command filing out behind them. On the far side of the valley, Waloed’s cavalry were rising over the crest of the hill.

He waited for both sides to charge before he leapt from the peak of the Tor. He reached at once for the steel tether within his soul that bound him to the divine—the cord of chilled resolve that might bend the King of Dragons to his will.

Bahamut’s wrath came easily, the dragon’s pride boiling from his bones and forging steel from his skin. His ire lifted them on high, and before Odin could rise upon the far hill, he was racing through the air, making for the frontline of Waloed’s lauded cavalry.

They dared to drive their steeds across his hills, as if his land were their own to trample beneath their feet.

Odin would rise regardless. But this field would be Bahamut’s before the Warden of Darkness could so much mount his steed.

With a beat of his wings, he overtook the charging cavalry of the Dragonscales—men without rank or oath, willing to die for coin. Like Dion, they could be spent cheaply upon the frontlines.

He pooled God’s wrath beneath its wings and flung it wide, sending flares of divine fury down into Waloed’s cavalry, sending bodies toppling across the ground like toys tossed about in a child’s tantrum. The smoke did not reach him, nor did the smell of burning flesh.

Only the screams.

They mattered little. It would be the screams of his own men, if he had not let fly his power.

After his second volley, Odin Primed.

His presence was an immediate ripple of cold and dark upon the surface of Dion’s mind.

So, Bahamut. Barnabas Tharmr’s voice slithered into his head. I find you near to liberation—to enlightenment.

Dion trimmed his wings and raced forward, seizing the hilt of Odin’s blade with his claws before he could strike a blow against his men.

Spare me your heathen piety, he snarled, and a low laugh issued from Odin’s helm, echoing in the confines of Dion’s skull.

It is commendable, Odin went on, damnably calm. Were I to cleave you through with this blade, it might find nothing to sever from you. Nothing from which to cut you free. Would you like me to put you to the proof?

That will not be necessary. Dion rolled free of Odin’s strike, which sliced instead through a distant cloud. I am proven.

He had been, ever since he had disembarked the Imperial flagship at the age of eighteen, and left his heart and weakness behind. There was no impurity left within him that Odin’s blade could sever more surely than Dion’s own will already had. He had carved every deformity, every patch of softening rot, from his heart, and sharpened it to a point that could be brandished against monsters like the one staring at him now from the darkness.

He hurled himself forward again without hesitation, his wings unfurled as a shield above his men.

He was the light of Sanbreque, born to drive back the darkness, and he had given all he was to his purpose—had become it, body and soul. The flares he commanded pitted the earth and the flank of Odin’s steed, and he cut through the air as sharply as a blade, dodging scythes of red that hummed past him by inches.

Such surety. Odin’s tone was gloating. From whence, I wonder, does it spring so readily?

From sacrifice, Dion knew. Of every selfish desire he had ever entertained, of every soft temptation that had ever urged him to rest, to lay aside his burdens and hoard peace for his own, while his people suffered endless war.

Perhaps he wished to prove it. Perhaps he wished to know, in bold red print, that his sacrifices had not been in vain.

Or perhaps, after half a decade of abject perfection, Prince Dion the Bold made a single, small mistake.

He spread his wings wide, loosing a barrage of flares at the Warden of Darkness even as red light seared toward him. He would be the swifter, he would meet each blow with his own—

He was a split second too late.

The crimson glow of Zantetsuken overtook his vision, slicing into the clear gaze of the third eye set into his brow.

It split through cornea, pupil, optic nerve, and then, as if it were a hot knife slicing through butter, that iron cord of perfect control that Dion had spent five years forging within his heart.

He screamed.

Your Highness. Word of our son’s dispensation reached us some weeks ago, and yet our son has not followed it. In the name of the friendship between you, I would ask you: where is Terence?

Terence lay at his feet, blood washing in the surf of the Shadow Coast. In a meadow, his throat laid by footpads before he could return home. Sweat pearling on his neck, his lips parted around Dion’s name as he trembled apart on tangled sheets.

Every fate Dion had mourned or feared or visited in dreaming surged up around him in an instant. He had burned it all in the censer of his ambition, even the knowledge of whether Terence lived or died, and still he had failed, and now the flame broke from its confines and devoured him.

The Empire relies upon you, Dion. Father’s letter had read. You bear their faith upon your wings, and I know you shall never allow it to falter.

He felt that faith slip from his shoulders, felt it crack, as he stumbled suddenly beneath its weight.

I have failed. Even should I rise again, I will have failed.

Hope was hard-won and easily broken, and it shattered in every Knight of Sanbreque that stood upon the field of Belenus Tor, and still he screamed, selfishly, for Terence.

The vast form of the King of Dragons had shrunk, yet his rage and agony burned in Dion’s heart and contracted around his skin, forcing new wings from his shoulders, pushing canines from his gums, twisting and mangling his fingers into hooked and silver talons. Horns split his skull and rose to crown him, and the pain drove him from his mind, his clawed hands seizing out for—

It was always Terence, always, damn him, why would he not show himself?

Why would he ever show himself? Why, to one who had wronged him so, who had broken his body and heart and cast him aside, only to fail?

A cry of heartbreak rose from his chest and left his jaws as a roar.

Rage—want—regret—they burned within his ribs, a second sun blazing to life. So potent, so near to the earth, it would burn every soul on the battlefield living. Already it was boiling his flesh, crowding his throat, pouring from his eyes and forcing its way through his skin.

Bastard. Whoreson. Coward. Failure.

You will be cast aside, and that is if anything of you remains.

Nothing remained. Nothing worth saving, and nothing worth loving, only punishing light and terrible claws and wretched, tangled loathing.

Dion gave his men one final kindness. He cast himself aside, beating his wings and driving himself like a comet northwards, far beyond their sight.

Even after two days, the Imperial camp was all noise and disarray. With their commander and greatest weapon lost, the captains of the dragoons and the generals of the standard Army all grated against one another, struggling for precedence and survival.

Their camp was now pitched at the outskirts of the Greatwood, for Waloed had driven them from the plains. Morganbeard had taken a nasty slash across her hip as they retreated, and Terence had feared for a moment that her leg might roll from beneath her and pitch them both to the dirt. After Bahamut had dwindled in the sky—after Dion had screamed in midair as if his heart were being rent from his chest and then sped away from the battlefield—Sanbreque had been forced to give ground, to flee for miles until they found some semblance of shelter.

Terence’s heart had screamed to run blindly northwards. To forsake the Dragonscales and the Army and to march, instead, in Dion’s wake, and stop only when he found him.

His head reminded him that Dion could have easily turned to the left or right while flying, and that he was no scout.

He was, however, a proficient eavesdropper.

In the newfound chaos of the war-camp, it was frankly worryingly easy to loiter by the side of the command tent when the scouts returned.

“Caer Norvent,” said the first. “Word reached us before the battle that the garrison had fallen to the Intelligencers, but I doubt there’s anybody on either side left living there now.”

“We didn’t dare draw closer than a hundred yards,” the second put in. “The whole place—burned.”

“He’d set fire to it?” Terence recognized the low, precise voice of Sir Roland Picard.

“No. No, it—glowed, all from nowhere, and I couldn’t take so much as a step forward without feeling like my skin would sear from my bones.”

“Are all His Highness’s scouts trained in cowardice and superstition?” The Lord Commander, Terence guessed.

Sir Roland sputtered indignantly, but another voice spoke on his side of the tent.

“I suppose it depends.” This voice, too, Terence knew well. It belonged to Sir Sebastian Beaufort, his own brother-by-law, speaking now with a deliberate, affected drawl that he knew was meant to sink under skin. “Are His Radiance’s generals trained in blasphemy against the Holy Dragon?”

The indignant sputtering migrated to the other side of the tent.

“Proceed with your report, Faucher,” Sebastian went on, “and spare us no fanciful details.”

“We saw him, for a moment,” said Faucher. “He was perched on the bridge over the river. Not himself, and not Bahamut. Both, somehow, and though we were far distant, he—looked at us. He showed his teeth, and the ground trembled.”

“It is as His Radiance feared,” said the Lord Commander. “He has run mad. He served the Empire faithfully, as a panther does its master, but a beast is a beast.”

Terence’s fists clenched. He forced himself to gaze off into the trees, to look idle and distracted, even as blood beat loud in his ears.

There was a clattering noise, somewhat suggestive of Sir Roland making an attempt to lunge across the table.

“Do not misunderstand me!” The Lord Commander spoke hastily. “I do not speak these words with any joy. Bahamut is the Empire’s champion. But if such a weapon were ever to turn upon its wielder… we cannot risk it.”

“I am sure the people will rejoice of your decision,” said Sir Sebastian dryly. “It’s not as if Bahamut is Greagor’s chosen warrior on earth.”

“Sirs, I understand you are the Prince’s pet soldiers, but I am merely being practical, and—” the Lord Commander’s words took on a furtive, pleading tone—“we have mercenaries at our disposal. Our hands need not be dirtied.”

Terence took this as his cue.

“Mine can be.”

He pushed through the flap of the tent, letting it swirl shut behind him.

The Lord Commander, a man in his forties with a beard and mustache that looked two days overgrown, gawped at him, all professional affront. Sirs Roland and Sebastian, on the other hand, looked as if a ghost had walked into their midst.

Terence supposed that one had.

He saluted crisply and said, “I am Terence Poirier of the Dragonscale Company. I volunteer myself in the hunt for Bahamut.”

Sir Roland rounded on him at once. “Traitor! You would seek to harm him? After all he—” a hand upon Roland’s chest forestalled him.

Sebastian was watching Terence with narrowed, calculating eyes. They had come up through the ranks together; he had stricken Sebastian to the rough ground of a sparring ring more times than he could count, in his quest to reach Dion’s right hand. He was the most likely of any here assembled to know what Dion Lesage truly was to Terence.

Terence watched a cautious understanding settle over Sebastian’s features, and relief loosened his chest.

“I know this man, Lord Commander,” Sebastian said. “He and His Highness were friends, in their boyhood. If any might approach Caer Norvent without being roasted alive, here he stands.”

The Lord Commander fixed Terence with a hard stare. “A boyhood friend, you say. Can you swear that you will do what must be done? Regardless of what you may feel?”

For him, anything.

“Yes,” Terence said. “Come what may, I will serve.”

Sir Roland tensed as if making ready to fling himself upon Terence and open his throat, a gesture that Terence truly respected. But Sir Sebastian caught Roland’s arm and then his eye. A look passed between them, of a kind that left a strange pang in Terence’s chest—doubt yielding to trust.

Sir Roland, still looking somewhat afflicted by lockjaw, said, “Very well. This endeavor meets with our full approval. You may avail yourself of arms and provisions from the quartermaster. Now, leave our sight.”

Terence did.

Midnight was drawing near by the time Terence reached Caer Norvent. The shadows gathered close around him, the night thick and strangely silent. No insects droned in the humid summer air. No nightingales sang out their evening chorus. Morganbeard’s gait was unsteady, and he patted her neck and handed her a fistful of gysahl greens.

“Thank you, girl,” he said as he slid from her back. “You have been far braver than I ought to have asked you to be.” He gently scratched the feathers at the crown of her head, and she nudged her brow against his shoulder.

“If I am not back by dawn, make your way back to the Army’s camp. Or enjoy your freedom, if you would prefer it.”

Morganbeard emitted a low kweh of protest. Terence smiled.

“I shall try not to keep you waiting.”

He slid his shield onto her back. He would not need it within. His sword he kept, and his traveling cloak, but he left his bedroll and rucksack behind, keeping only what he could carry easily on his person. In a moment of what he could only dub idiocy, he pushed his hair back from where it fell thickly over his forehead, and winced at the feeling of it clinging to the back of his neck. Would that he could have crossed paths with a barber in the past quarter-year.

He shook himself and tightened the laces on his boots where they climbed past his knees. In the absence of the coin needed to buy plate that might shield his thighs, their thick leather had sufficed.

He checked his pockets, straightened his cloak, and at last turned his eyes to Caer Norvent, where it jutted across the sky above him.

As the scouts had said, lights shone from every window—not the soft and wavering glows of torches but a cold and constant silver, without warmth or pulse. Light, Terence realized, that warded nothing—only threatened life away.

He set his jaw and stepped from the treeline. For all his toil, all his bloody labor, he had never known, truly, what he could offer to Dion Lesage if he returned to his side.

He had known only that his prince was alone, adrift as if in the tides upon the Shadow Coast, with none to guard his heart.

Perhaps the blow that had fallen upon that heart had been a killing one, and Terence had found him too late.

But he had given his home and his innocence and five long years for the chance to try, and so he marched down the cobblestone path that led to the Glorieuse gate of the fortress without breaking stride.

He thought for perhaps three seconds upon the problem of how to pass through said gate, when he rounded a bend in the path to see that same frigid light pouring from a ragged seam torn through it, the doors creaking upon their hinges, splintered by Bahamut’s claws.

With each step he took, the clack of his heels against the cobbles seemed to grow louder, the silence thickening and growing cold, making his every breath and movement echo and resound in his ears, as if he were underwater. The air around him seemed to thicken, contracting around his lungs and forcing his steps to a crawl.

The gash torn through the gate seemed a rift between worlds, and Terence paused for a moment, a thin shadow cast against an unforgiving light.

Once he passed through, he understood, he would not be given leave to depart. The light brought tears to his eyes.

He placed his hands on either side of the splintered aperture in the gate, and forced his eyes shut as he stepped over the threshold. An unseen force pressed against his sternum, and then shifted as his foot landed on the flagstones within the entry hall. The searing light against his eyelids dimmed, and he dared to open his eyes.

The glow inside the Caer was paler than the violent light that poured like boiling oil from the windows. Motes the size of fireflies hung in the air, never flickering, casting all the world in a cool, uncanny gray.

And that oppressive force that had at first pushed upon his lungs flipped and inverted, hooking itself, instead, into the muscle of his heart, and tugging him forward. He stumbled forward one step, then two, before digging his heels in experimentally.

The hook sank more deeply, then gave a long, insistent pull, as if it would rather tear his ribs asunder than let him run free.

What did it say of him that relief lightened his heart?

He was wanted here. He would be dead, seared away to nothing, if he were not.

“It is all right,” he said to the air. “I will go where you bid.”

The tug in his chest relaxed, and even in the unnatural chill of the empty hall, he smiled.

Terence walked at a careful pace through the cavernous, echoing corridors of the dead Caer. The slaughtered members of the garrison lay slumped against the walls, and layered over them were the charred corpses of Royalist Intelligencers.

Whether they had been slain before or after Bahamut’s rampage, he could not say.

The back of his neck prickled. A formless vigilance dogged the hallways. His every step seemed marked with bated breath.

The beckoning claw beneath his sternum guided him up winding staircases and down slowly widening corridors, until he reached a set of heavy wooden double-doors, with a seam of light gleaming between them. He set his hands to the oak, and he leaned forward, putting the full strength of his shoulders into forcing the doors open with a heavy creak.

He raised his head, and found himself staring into the eyes of the light itself.

Dion—or something that was almost Dion—lounged upon a raised throne of ancient wood at the end of what proved to be a banquet hall.

The sunny brown of Dion’s eyes was nowhere to be seen. The eyes that met Terence’s—three of them, one set in the center of his brow—glowed a livid silver that burned as brightly as the sun, broken only by the thin shadows of his slitted pupils. A crown of glittering horns rose from the soft gold of his hair, and the hand that gripped the armrest was clawed, the points of his hooked talons fine enough to sink without resistance into flesh and tear it effortlessly from bone. Coiling from behind his hip was a strong and spaded tail, and spanning from his shoulders were a pair of leathern wings.

Dion was naked, clad only in scales of steel gray that climbed his thighs and flanks and shoulders, that crept up the sides of his neck and his cheeks to his temples. Light played across him, within him, shining in his veins and over his skin, and Terence found himself struck motionless at the far end of the hall, transfixed as a field mouse before a serpent.

Dion’s lips parted. Fangs bared themselves.

“Who are you?” Like the body slouching upon the throne, the voice that spoke was and was not Dion’s. The air reverberated with the force of its words. “Who casts a shadow in my presence?”

The pressure in Terence’s lungs had returned. Whether summoned by Dion’s will or his own trepidation, he could not say.

Five years divided them now, from the boys they had been, who had cared for and trusted one another, who had clad one another in armor, until that steel had cut the line between them and left them adrift.

Terence stepped forward. One step, then another, then another, breath tightening in his throat until he released it in words.

“I am Sir Terence,” he said, pausing perhaps five paces from the raised foot of Dion’s throne. This near, Dion was blinding, beautiful and terrible, cruel of eye and sharp of fang. With trembling hands, Terence took hold of the hem of his shirt and drew it upwards, baring the broad, silvered-over scar that branded the flesh over his hip. “Sworn to you unto death.”

Dion hissed, half-recoiling, as if Terence was the one among them who shone so bright as to burn.

“You, who have already dared to pass your judgment upon us. To mock our cause and disparage our strength. Do you dare to judge us once more?”

Dion’s claws sank deeply into the arm of the throne, his eyes wide and anguished, his brow furrowed. It was the first expression to cross the face of the god sitting before him that was familiar to Terence. Under his terrible anger shone a bright and desperate fear. The fear that Terence had come to soothe.

“I am here for you,” Terence told him. “Only for you.”

“I am sure,” Dion snarled, sitting forward, a predator poised to spring. “For my humiliation. For my ruin. I used you as a comfort, and I cast you aside when that comfort was outgrown. You have more right than any living to celebrate my downfall.”

I, now, Terence noticed, with a small stirring of hope. Not we.

Terence took two more steps forward, all the way to the base of the steps that led up to the throne, and drew his sword.

Dion’s roiling form went motionless. His eyes pleaded, the pupils widening. His chin lifted and bared his throat. Terence’s heart thudded painfully in his chest.

Terence lifted his sword upon his palms and knelt at Dion’s feet, bowing his head deeply, baring the back of his own neck.

A faint, human choking sound emerged from Dion’s throat, and then a clawed hand sank without warning into Terence’s hair and seized, wrenching his head back. Terence gasped, conscious of how effortlessly Dion’s claws could draw blood—and of the fact that they hadn’t.

Panting, the soft sting at the roots of his hair muddling his thoughts, Terence looked up into Dion’s face. His jaw was set and trembling, his brows tense, his eyes roving over Terence’s face, scouring it.

“Are you mine?” Dion asked roughly, dragging Terence half-upright, his free hand encircling Terence’s throat, the points of his talons resting in promise and threat against the skin of Terence’s neck, ready to rend his head from his shoulders, or…

Terence let his sword clatter to the floor, and he reached forth and set his hand to Dion’s cheek, running his thumb over the smooth scales and warm skin.

“I am,” he swore. “I have been. I always will be.”

Dion lunged. His hold on Terence’s hair and throat tightened, and in a blur of motion and unnatural strength, he dragged Terence into his lap and bruised Terence’s lips with his own.

Terence could scarcely call it a kiss—it was too violent, too deafening, for a word that sounded so much like a whisper. He moaned into it all the same. Dion’s hand was iron in his hair, around the back of his neck, holding him fast as Dion crushed Terence’s mouth against his, as if he wanted to break their bones and blend their marrow.

Terence’s lips parted in an effort to draw breath, and Dion’s tongue—forked, he realized drunkenly—pushed into his mouth and filled it. The hand that had been pressed to Terence’s throat slid down to wrap tightly around his back, to draw his chest flush with Dion’s, and Terence wound his arms around Dion in turn, clinging to him as Dion fucked his mouth with his tongue.

I am yours, he hoped the choked whine in his throat said. Use me. Please, please, I am yours, make me yours, never let me go from you again, I am yours. Love me.

Dion clutched him tightly, talons shredding through his cloak and shirt and leaving stinging red lines upon his skin. His tongue pulsed mercilessly in Terence’s mouth, sliding forward and back, laying claim to tongue and teeth and throat and breath, making Terence gasp and tremble helplessly in his arms.

At that, Dion let out a low sound that Terence did not hear so much as feel in his molars. He drew back an inch, only enough to let Terence look upon him for a dizzying instant, and then his clawed hands were at the clasp of Terence’s cloak, tearing it asunder in a ring of broken metal. He brought his talons to the high collar of Terence’s shirt, eyes locking onto the sliver of skin that it left bare over the bob of his throat.

In another lightning-like blur of motion, Dion’s mouth had closed across the front of Terence’s throat, fangs pricking against the rapid pulse in Terence’s veins, hand fisted again in his hair.

Terence realized, as a drunkard might, stumbling along a cliff’s edge, that with a single snap of his jaws, Dion might kill him, might puncture his windpipe and drain his blood, might claim the life Terence offered him in an instant of vicious desire.

And like a drunkard, he was too warm and intoxicated to care. His hand sank into the warm silk of Dion’s hair, and he spoke, tremblingly, as Dion tongued his throat and tested the give of his skin with his teeth.

“I missed you,” he whispered, a last confession. “I could not bear to think of you alone. I never wished to leave.”

“You never shall,” Dion said, his mouth rising to Terence’s ear, his clawed hand tearing through the fabric of Terence’s shirt to bare his chest and shoulders to the chilled air. “You are mine.”

His words rang through Terence like the toll of a great bell, like absolution. All the blood he had spilled, all the lies he had spoken, they had led him here, beneath the eyes of God, and in those eyes, his prince still claimed him.

A low sob of absolute relief broke from his throat, and he buried his face in the crook of Dion’s scaled shoulder, felt fangs pierce the muscle of his own, the sting of it sharp and sweet.

“I am,” Terence swore, pushing his chest flush against Dion’s, soaking in the cool light of his skin as Dion soothed the mark upon his shoulder with his tongue. “I am yours, please, Dion—” he rolled his hips, his half-hard cock grinding against Dion’s, pulling groans from both their mouths—“take me, take what you want of me.”

“There is no end to what I want of you,” Dion said, rising to his feet, and light flooded Terence’s chest. He wrapped his legs around Dion’s hips so that they could not be parted. Though he was taller and broader than Dion, the King of Dragons lifted Terence effortlessly.

Dion’s patience, however, was not the equal of his strength, and he traveled scarcely two steps before half-hurling Terence to the cool stone floor, upon the rumpled softness of his cloak. The impact rattled the air in Terence’s lungs, and Dion’s full weight fell at once upon his chest, leaving him breathless and disoriented, the ceiling blurred before his eyes.

Dion scrabbled at his shoulders, pushing the shredded remnants of Terence’s shirt from them, and drew back for a moment, pinning Terence to the floor with the sheer intensity of his gaze. His searchlight eyes traveled over Terence’s chest, catching at the scar above his hip. Terence’s breathing caught, too, as Dion raised a trembling claw and traced the mark with the back of his knuckle.

Dion’s other hand traced, with the tip of a talon, too lightly to break skin, a small curve of scar tissue left upon Terence’s shoulder by a footpad’s blade, then the small ripple in his right flank where a Man of the Rock had shorn through his armor with a scimitar.

“I—have done things,” Terence confided. “Things that do not bring me pride.”

Dion’s grip upon his flank turned rigid, his weight pressing down upon the old scar at Terence’s hip, making his leg jump against Dion’s. Bahamut’s wings flared wide. Talons pricked his skin.

“No. I do not give you leave to regret.” Terence’s throat went dry, and guilt and reason ebbed from him. “You are here.”

“Forgive me,” Terence sighed, and Dion answered him by folding himself over Terence’s chest, bringing his lips and tongue to the old scar upon his shoulder, trailing kisses downward until his mouth closed around the pinkness of Terence’s nipple.

Terence gasped out what air was left in his lungs as the sharp pleasure of Dion’s teeth sent a pulse of tingling warmth through his chest and made his cock twitch in his trousers. Dion was merciless, licking at the nub and rolling it between his teeth until it was hard and aching and Terence’s head was pitched back against the cold of the flagstones, senseless moans pouring from his lips.

“Dion.” He could not call the utterance anything but a whimper. It mangled itself in his throat, as Dion turned his attentions upon the rest of Terence’s chest, nipping and lapping at his skin, talons teasing across his scars every time he tried to breathe deeply.

Dion buried his face in Terence’s stomach, glowing wings askew, fangs pricking softly into his skin. “You are here. I have you. I will have all of you.” He spoke as if assuring himself.

“Yes,” Terence promised. His skin ached with pleasure forced to the brink of pain, and yet it was terribly easy, to yield. To bare his throat. To part his legs. For five years, he had suffered an emptiness—of honor, of hope, of purpose—and now it was the greatest relief in the world to let the full force of Dion’s want pierce him and fill him to the brim. “You will.”

Dion would have all of him; he would have all of Dion.

Dion looked up into his face, and for a moment the light of his eyes was dimmed and tender, yet at Terence’s words, they blazed anew, and his claws hooked into the waistband of Terence’s trousers.

He had torn through an inch of fabric by the time Terence’s shaking hands managed to join his efforts. He fumbled to work free the laces before Dion’s impatience could shred them, and largely failed. He succeeded, in the end, only in salvaging something from one of the pockets. An unsteady laugh grated at the back of Terence’s throat as Dion’s expression fell, murderous, upon the tightly-laced leather boots that climbed his thighs.

He managed to untie the fastest of the laces at the top, and then Dion dragged his boots from his legs, and his trousers with them, in a single, determined tug, leaving him naked upon worn fabric of his cloak, the coldness of the flagstones pressing through it.

Dion was hunched over him, bestial and angelic, his gaze raking over Terence so brilliantly that it raised a shiver upon his skin, and his jaws parted slightly as his eyes landed upon Terence’s cock, heavy and painfully hard between his legs.

“You want me?” Terence asked, delirious with pride for knowing the answer.

“More than anything.” The threat in Dion’s eyes was a plea now, and Terence, drowning, drank in the sight of him, the powerful muscles of his shoulders trembling with want, his scaled hips rolling slowly against nothing as he sought relief.

“Here,” Terence said, and he drew from the fold of his cloak the small vial of oil that had dwelt in his pocket.

Carrying the vial here had been absolute folly. It had proved useful, every now and again, in hasty moments of solace and camaraderie that he had happened upon in exile, but there had no reason to expect it to see service in this Caer lined with dead.

He spilled enough of it over his fingers to leave them slick, and found Dion watching him, pupils wide with hunger and fascination.

Solace. Camaraderie. Dion, probably, had been afforded neither.

“You will have me,” Terence said softly, and he held Dion’s gaze as he trailed his hand down his chest and stomach and hip, along the crease of his thigh, and then pressed his forefinger into himself.

Dion moaned as if Terence’s flesh were his own, his clawed hands clasping Terence’s hips and leaving tingling, pinprick wounds.

For Dion’s benefit, he sank his finger a knuckle deeper into himself and crooked it, pushing a gasp of pleasure from his own lungs.

Dion’s chest heaved. Between iron-gray scales, his throat bobbed. “You have done this before.”

“Yes.” Terence bit his lip and pushed a second finger in alongside the first, scarcely repressing a moan.

Dion leaned forward, gold hair spilling through his silver horns. Envy suited him. “Did I hold your thoughts? Even then?”

“I took rest,” Terence managed, “when I could find it upon the road. But I never forgot where it led.”

“Terence—” Dion’s voice wavered and broke, his eyes flickering brown and warm for a moment before silver blinked back into place.

Terence twisted his fingers inside himself, making himself writhe, back arching for Dion to see, and then he withdrew them. Readied, empty, aching, he reached for Dion.

“My prince,” he whispered, as desperate as any prayer he had lifted to Greagor. “Please.”

“I will. Terence, I will—” Terence fumbled the oil into his palm and wrap it around Dion’s cock, readying him with two hasty pumps of his hand.

Dion answered his wish, parting Terence’s thighs and pressing them back. He pushed into Terence unsteadily, a series of short, frantic thrusts that stretched Terence inch by trembling inch and made a sharp staccato of his breathing. When Dion’s hips slid home and met Terence’s thighs, they stilled for a moment.

Dion’s pulse was quicksilver in his throat, the muscles of his arms taut where they bore down upon Terence’s thighs, and Terence felt frozen in amber, purpose fulfilled, Dion warm and thick inside of him, a low heat building in his stomach but not yet driven to an inferno.

“You have me,” he sighed, elated, insensate, and then the sharp thrust of Dion’s hips made him cry out.

The pace Dion set was brutal—deep, driving thrusts, without a rhythm to ground them. Terence bit down upon his lip, stifling a whimper. His fingers scrabbled across his cloak, desperate for any purchase that might preserve him against the pounding, violent pleasure that sought to wash his soul from his body.

Dion’s hand, warm and yet unyielding as a gauntlet, caught one of Terence’s and pinned it beside his head. The other grasped the side of Terence’s face, its clawed thumb braced across his throat. Terence found, when he tried to stir his right hand, that it was trapped at his side, his arm drawn taut by the tight coil of Dion’s tail around his wrist.

“This Caer is mine, as are you. There is naught to conceal.”

Terence understood well enough, as Dion kissed his trembling, bitten lips, and at Dion’s next thrust he surrendered. He moaned, loud and frantic, into the next kiss, gave up every sigh and tremor of want and desperation for Dion to hear and taste and do with as he pleased.

Pinned and pillaged and run through, there was naught else he could do. Every stroke of Dion’s hips drove the breath from his lungs in a cry of bruising pleasure. He writhed upon Dion’s cock and in the iron grip of his hands, rutting his hips against the too-slight friction of Dion’s stomach, helpless to touch himself, to do anything but take what Dion gave to him and half-sob with the fullness of it.

All Dion’s composure—the stricture of his armor, the careful lacing of his fingers, the measured pace of his words—was burned away. His body was a cage of burning silver. He was desire made flesh, endless, fathomless, held at bay for too long to be anything but vicious, and that desire poured into Terence as a scalding flood.

Terence was happy to drown.

Time lost its meaning. So did pleasure and pain, the two twining around one another until he could not say where one started and the other began, or if there was any difference between them at all.

His body seized and trembled and keened under Dion’s desperation, and Terence took it gladly.

Give it to me. The bitterness and anguish. The nightmares you have denied. Give all of it to me, I will hold it for you.

Whether Terence would shiver to pieces under the weight mattered little. He canted his hips upward, sweat trickling down his neck, the muscles of his stomach burning as he met each of Dion’s thrusts with what little leverage he possessed. He clamped his legs tightly against Dion’s flanks, holding him near.

Dion’s hand tightened in Terence’s, a soft, hoarse sound escaping his throat. “Terence. Oh, Terence, I missed you.”

The coil of his tail loosened, and Terence reached up through his horns to sink a hand into the rich gold of his hair, tears burning in his eyes. The motion of Dion’s hips slowed, his thrusts taking on a steady, pulsing rhythm that drove Terence inexorably towards climax. His eyes focused upon Terence’s face, brilliant and adoring.

“Can I see you?” Dion asked, his voice tender and earnest.

Too breathless to speak, Terence nodded and wrapped his hand around himself, a whine catching in his throat at the feeling of his own desperate hardness against his palm. His arm trembled as he sought to keep his strokes in time with the roll of Dion’s hips.

He let his head fall back, his throat bared to the hunger of Dion's eyes. The sounds tearing from his chest grew loud and ragged, the steady, throbbing pleasure of Dion inside of him pushing him to the brink. With a twist of his palm, Terence flung himself over the edge, clenching around Dion as he painted their stomachs white.

Terence felt a kiss upon his eyelid, light as the wings of a moth, and then a violent shock of pleasure as Dion rocked his hips forward once, twice more, and then spilled hot inside of him with a long, wavering moan.

Terence forced his eyes to focus and made out silver wings flickering in the dimness.

The dragon’s hold was weakening, now, as Dion’s head slumped against Terence’s shoulder.

Perhaps, he thought, it was like the fairy-tales, the old legends of man and monster and the too-thin line between.

He lifted Dion’s jaw with a finger, guiding him to meet his eyes.

“I love you,” Terence told him, the truest words he had ever spoken. Then he kissed Dion softly upon the lips.

Three silver eyes flickered shut.

As a candle, the light in the throne room went out.

Two eyes opened.

Dion’s knees ached. His throat was parched. His elbows gave way beneath him, his right arm dully radiating pain.

It scarcely mattered, for gazing up at him with eyes like evening stars was Terence. His soft dark hair was plastered to his forehead by sweat, his pale throat and his broad shoulders peppered with the hateful marks of Dion’s want, written in blood and bruises.

The fangs that had left those marks no longer pricked against Dion’s lower lip, but the proof of their deeds still rebuked him for his avarice, his selfishness. Terence had offered him grace, and Dion had seized it with clawed hands and bled it from him.

And Terence loved him still.

Dion opened his mouth to protest, to thank him, to beg his forgiveness, to tell him in turn that he loved him, that he dreamed of him, that he had ached for him so desperately it had broken him even as he had refused to grant the feeling its name.

All that emerged was a dry sob, and he buried it in Terence’s chest.

“Oh, my prince.” Terence’s voice was soft and worn, his fingers gentle as they combed through Dion’s hair.

Dion gripped Terence’s flanks, the soft give of muscle a blessing against fingertips that no longer bore claws.

“I love you,” he managed at last, forcing himself up onto his hands. “And I have hurt you still.”

Terence shook his head, a fatal, tender smile marking the full curve of his lips. “You have healed me, my prince.”

Before Dion could speak a word of his doubt, Terence’s eyes widened, his hand catching Dion’s right arm where it lay beside his head.

“Dion,” he said, his voice thick with sorrow, and Dion followed his gaze to see, revealed by the retreat of his scales, the mark of the Curse advancing up his arm. His madness had cost him—the stone now encircled his forearm entirely and crept up to his elbow. When he bent his arm, it flared with dull pain, the stone tugging at his flesh.

Terence sat up, taking Dion’s arm carefully in his hands, cradling it as if it were some small wounded creature. Dion’s pride would have bridled, if he had any left to speak of.

As it was, he sat motionless, throat tightening, as Terence brought his lips to the petrified flesh in a reverent kiss. Dion felt it only as a slight pressure at the edges of his skin where it met stone, and yet his shoulders trembled.

“How long?” Terence asked, tracing the edges of the Curse gently with his fingertips.

“Half a year,” Dion said. “It—seems my folly these past days has worsened it.” His hand twitched, moving instinctively to conceal the mark, though it was futile now.

Terence’s mouth turned ruefully. “I am the first to have seen it, aren’t I?”

“I could not rob the men of their hope. And Father—I could not see him despair. But you were right. All came to ruin anyway. I—I failed to bear my duty, and my people have died for it. Perhaps I should be cast aside.”

Terence’s hand touched his cheek. “That is not what I meant that day, and you know it.”

“I do.” Dion sighed. “But what am I to do now? Forsake them all? The men who swore themselves to me? The people I gave my word to protect?”

“My prince.” Terence grimaced. “I—with the help of my brother-by-law, I persuaded the Lord Commander that I went seeking your death. On those terms was I allowed to leave.” He lowered his eyes. "It would be best, perhaps, if you were not found."

Dion felt betrayal as a dagger twisting between his ribs, but not as a surprise. The ragged pain of the Curse flared, and Dion clutched at his unbending arm.

He ought to have waved aside the threat of his death. Ought to have told Terence to guide him to Oriflamme post-haste, that he might go before Father and earn his trust once more—bend the knee and accept his reprimands and lower his head against the Empress’s smirk.

But he was weak and weary, and he said, “My arm pains me, Terence. I want to sleep.”

Terence kissed his forehead, and Dion sank into the softness of his lips. A fierce, silvered part of him wished to push Terence to the floor again, to hold and hoard him here, where neither of them could be hurt.

He crumpled, instead, into the warmth of Terence’s arms, felt them close softly around him. Something soft—the remnant of Terence’s shirt, he thought, moved across his stomach, cleaning him of Terence’s spend. He felt Terence’s arms turn him and lower him into his cloak, and he let out a moan of protest as Terence released him.

“Only a moment, my prince,” Terence said softly.

Dion opened his eyes enough to watch through his lashes as Terence cleaned himself with the ruins of his shirt. Greagor, he was handsome, his skin the color of the moonlight falling through the window. Though five cruel years had passed, there was still a softness to his face, a gentleness that no violence could withstand.

Dion reached out a hand for him the moment he had laid down the cloth, and Terence answered his greed as mercifully as he ever did, crawling into Dion’s arms and gathering him close. For all the strength of his muscles, Terence was soft. Dion buried his face in the warm skin of his shoulder, and felt the slow, relentless current of sleep catch at his limbs. He had never been so near to another living soul—had never dared to hope for the gentle slide of a leg against his own or a hand up his spine. He was drunken with it.

“I called you a traitor,” Dion murmured into Terence’s collar, “when there is none more true. If you were to leave again, I would—”

Not grudge you, he tried to say.

Not know how to survive it, he found he meant.

“I would go with you.”

Terence shivered, a small sound of relief humming against Dion’s ear. He clung to Dion more tightly, pressing their heartbeats together. “Only tell me where, my prince, and I will go.”

“To find some clothes first, I should think,” Dion said, if only to hear Terence laugh. It was as lovely as he had remembered, gently halting at first, like a creek thawing and finding its way at the start of spring.

“I believe that can be arranged.” Terence’s smile was a benediction. “After that… we might see about your arm. I have made strange allies of late. Some of them might know enough to ease your pain, at lea—”

Dion took his face in his hands and kissed him, moved by a gratitude so deep that his bones ached.

“Tomorrow,” Dion told him. “I would hold you, now. I would let you know rest.”

Terence had the eyes of one who had toiled for years on a phantom hope, circles printed beneath them in lilac, and he sank back against the flagstones with a long, slow exhale, his quest fulfilled, his labor done. With fingers unadorned with claws, Dion brushed his hair from his forehead and placed a kiss upon his brow.

He had failed to ward the Empire, failed to ward his soldiers. Yet still, this light was given to him, and he would never see it doused.