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“You’re still up?”
Kabru jolts, scattering parchment all over the floor.
“You scared me,” he laughs, and tries his best to salvage the executive note for tomorrow’s — tonight’s dinner, he corrects, judging from the light threatening to filter through the blinds. Laios memorises best if he reads a condensed version the night before, and if Kabru reviews a handful of figures during breakfast, but replying to the Elves’ Queen’s missives could not be delegated, and while it had been appropriately scheduled months ahead, the preparations for the Dwarven representatives welcoming buffet cannot be further delayed. Kabru wants to see this as an opportunity to improve his multi-tasking skills, but he groans when the sums of the requested shipments don’t add up, feeling the pressure in his temples ramping up to acute instantly.
“Did you even go to sleep?” Mithrun asks, a sudden presence next to the desk.
“Oh,” Kabru says. “I meant to,” he adds with a perfected contrite smile.
The look Mithrun gives him back is too knowing, no-nonsense. “Yes, I’m sure.”
The tone surprises Kabru a little. But again, that’s what Mithrun has always been. Someone he had to work to understand, someone whose words he had to twist in his mind to extract meaning out of it.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” Kabru says, studying Mithrun closely. “Do you want some water?”
And right, there — a pinch of annoyance. Invisible for someone who wouldn’t know how to look, but displayed loud and clear for Kabru to see. Something even sharper maybe, judging from the pull of dead tissue across Mithrun’s eye.
Mithrun’s index knocks on Kabru’s forehead, bumping into the concern creases Kabru hadn’t even realised had gouged themselves above his brows. “Worry about yourself, before worrying about everybody else.”
The laugh is startled out of Kabru.
Mithrun watches, intent.
“I’m good,” Kabru smiles with his teeth. “I don't struggle to read myself.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Kabru parrots emphatically.
“So you’ve been looking after yourself, lately?”
“Yes,” Kabru supplies automatically. It feels honest at first, and then a little less when he meets Mithrun’s stare. “Actually — Maybe… But it’s temporary!” His mouth tugs up at the corner sheepishly. It’s true. Melini is a young state and there's always something to be done to strengthen its position.
Mithrun is bundled up in the covers up to his neck, a ruffled chick look that does very little to soften the intensity with which he’s seizing Kabru, foamy waves pressing against the dam until they find a crack to rush into.
“It’s a time crunch. Every job has those,” Kabru wants to add and resists, excuses crowding his throat, because bad lies have too many details.
Instead, Mithrun pulls him by his arm towards the bed, stubborn steps that Mithrun hadn’t found necessary to resort to with Kabru since the labyrinthine corridors of the dungeon. Kabru suppresses a dignified yelp, but in the inside of his arm, where the veins are most tender, he’ll find blotchy, finger-shaped marks. Mithrun’s strength defies the laws of physics and anatomy. It has nothing to do with luck or genetics though, and Kabru has yet to see Mithrun miss the daily workouts he inflicts on himself.
“Three hours,” Mithrun says, matter-of-factly, but the hand that pulls up the covers is gentle. “You can’t help anyone if you’re tired.”
“But —” Kabru says, the burn in his eyes harder to ignore. “I wasn’t —”
“It’ll be done.”
The confidential data on the note should ice his blood cold and spring Kabru out of bed, and so should the eventuality of Laios showing up at tomorrow’s dinner unprepared, and it’s surely telling that it doesn’t but — Mithrun soothes his hair, hands rough against his cheeks, and Kabru finds it hard to care.
How odd, he thinks as sleep pulls him down. He hated Milsiril’s insistence that he should go to bed, the stifling touch of her fingers on Kabru’s forehead, the childish nursery rhymes she sang.
He feels for the familiar iron of hatred, but instead it has formed a dark humanoid shape, a body made of absence. The lips and eyes are blank as a photo negative and thin lines radiate from it, scoring the shapes that play on Kabru’s eyelids, stark and shining.
“But it's me,” Kabru says.
It speaks.
“I know.”
The second bell rings and Kabru wakes up in a startle, his neck damp with sweat.
Kabru never said anything about waiting and so Mithrun has gone, leaving behind a slight rumple in the sheets and pillow, a Mithrun-shaped absence that Kabru is aware of in a tangible way that embarrasses him.
He swallows the longing back; Kabru has no right to expect what he didn’t voice, so he throws on himself the first shirt that seems presentable enough and mournfully sacrifices breakfast to review the note. It’ll be shown to Laios much later than ideal, but as it’s been established, Kabru sits at his desk and gathers his files, there’s no point in exploring what-could-have-beens.
Turns out, there isn’t anything to gather.
A fresh piece of parchment is placed on top of the rest, with calculations laid out in nibble but legible handwriting, the parts where Kabru had gone wrong irritatingly underlined. Even more embarrassing, additional sentences detailing Melini’s assets are inscribed in the margins in light charcoal markings. It’d be easy enough to smear his thumb across them. But admittedly, Kabru’s ego doesn’t compare to Melini citizens entrusting their lives to Laios, and indirectly, to Kabru’s ability to secure resources.
Conscientiously, Kabru takes his quill and traces until the small loops and lines are given the intensity of ink, black on white.
“We’ll be looking forward to furthering our cooperation,” Paewyn tells Laios at the dinner later. Kabru holds his breath and releases it when both signatures are eventually traced at the bottom of the contract.
Paewyn’s red curls bounce like a little girl’s when they shake on it and Kabru has to force himself to remember the bullet points he’d jotted down for Laios. He knows better than to underestimate someone without prior connections making their way to the top of the half-foots’ trading guilds, no matter how young they might appear to him.
She smiles, but the assessing glint in her round eyes is worrying. Kabru prays, as hard as he can, that Laios remembers one of the conversation starters they went over.
Laios takes his hand back hurriedly, offering an awkward smile in exchange. “Urm, so are we?”
Kabru is going to strangle him.
As he reaches the bread basket, Kabru leans into Laios’ space and quietly whispers, the gala. When he leans back, Laios’ face lights up with recognition and Kabru doesn’t have to fight the warm feeling in his chest. It feels good to be needed.
Paewyn giggles behind her hand and Kabru could strangle himself for forgetting about half-foots’ keen hearing sense.
“Sure, king Laios,” Paewyn chirps, in the air of talking to someone through bars for their own protection. “Ask me about the gala for half-foot girls in trading. Would you be interested in being a sponsor?”
The conversation starts flowing naturally and Kabru wipes the sweat off his brows, crisis adverted. Before he can come back to his neglected plate, he makes a mental note of Paewyn’s empty glass of grape juice. He’ll have to order the nicer kind ahead of her next visit. If she hasn’t spread the word that Melini is governed by clowns, and doesn’t decide to turn down the invitation, that is.
Kabru operates a quick scan of the room by reflex, just to make sure the next crisis isn’t happening somewhere else, and he’s hit with pleasant surprise when he catches sight of Rin leaning against the wall of the banquet room.
She stands away from the flood of chatter and laughter filling the air and it’s usually why Kabru spares an invitation to these events. He values the observation she makes purely reading on the guests’ body language and the feedback tinged with pessimism she has to offer.
And, selfishly, it’s always a good occasion to catch up with her.
“You look great,” Kabru tells her and Rin smiles back; in the sweet way she never lets anyone but Kabru see.
“I stole it from my mom,” she confides about her black dress, and it feels that way: privately shared, Rin not looking at anybody else, the rest of the party guessing what they might be talking about.
Before Kabru can say as much, Rin’s frown is creasing her face in familiar ways. “Kabru,” Rin says, fingers so tight it’s a surprise her flûte hasn’t shattered in shards of glass yet. “Tell me the rumours aren’t true.”
“Uh. Which ones?” Kabru already feels the knots settling back in his shoulders. So much for a good night of sleep. That being said, he knows Rin. And what this could be about.
“It’s true then,” Rin says, stern. “You’re — associating with them.”
Kabru laughs. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”
“You have no idea,” Rin rubs her arm anxiously. “How cruel elves can be.”
Kabru smiles, annoyed Rin thinks the idea would be novel to him. He takes her hands in his own to stop the frantic motions, and her cheeks turn a splotchy red instead. “The worrying is sweet,” he kisses her cheek, chastly. “But you should save it for someone who needs it.”
She gasps, temporarily stunned, until a spark of recognition furrows her brows back into their permanent shape.
“Kabru,” she hisses. “Listen to me.”
“I am,” he says, a hand on his chest. “I always do.”
“No, you’re not. With elves, you start caring, but they don’t — they’ll smile back when you beg for help. They can’t think of tallmen as people. And is that how you want to be seen? A perpetual child? A short-lived distraction? A joke?”
Kabru’s lips curl, displeased.
It’s bad enough to know with inescapable certainty that he’d come running every time Mithrun needs him. Probably far worse to get attached to more elves, which he will — which he has. Far worse to smile back when Cithis’ ebony-painted mouth curves around a scathing quip, or to worry so much about Fleki’s vacant eyes. To care so much, when Kabru’s efforts are met with dismissal and condescendence.
“It’s not like that. They’re my friends.”
As soon as the words leave his lips, Kabru feels the heavy weight of a quilt pulled under his chin, the cloying taste of sugar. The room where Kabru could eat all the cake he wanted, the room he never once about coming back to. Even after the dungeon, after experiencing everything he’d imagined and dreamed of — Kabru thought he’d finally get to become who he wanted to be. That he’d get to lock in the room forever the kid who longed for friends, shut off from the rest of the world.
“Really?” Rin’s voice is thick with pity. “You look at Mithrun and see a friend?”
But how does Kabru look at Mithrun?
Kabru imagines Mithrun kneeling on the side of the bed, taking Kabru’s hand, or their first meeting, when nothing set him apart from his men, but one sentence was enough to command the room’s attention. In Kabru’s memories, there’s a gleaming quality to Mithrun, in the way most elves possess, like fairies from old illustrations and picture books. The ramifications are beyond embarrassing, but Kabru requested over and over for the tale to be read to him, just in the hope that he’d be able to meet eyes with the boy cursed to a frozen heart, whose lips had turned purple and mean. His skin reflected the light like snow, and it was beautiful in the way things that are other are.
Kabru looks at Mithrun and gives everything away.
“Yeah,” Kabru says. “Something like that.”
Rin frowns. “That’s a very broad definition of friendship.”
“Why would it be?” There’s a sudden flick of darkness in the room when Rin’s hands tighten around her staff. Kabru blinks, realising how close he had leaned in. “He cares about me.”
“But with what has happened to him, I thought he couldn’t — ”
“You don’t know what happened,” Kabru says, kindly. “The version you got never was the full picture.”
“How would you know that?”
“He told me.”
Mithrun only ever told Kabru. Now, it’s easy to think of their conversations as fated, two individuals who coincidentally understood what it meant to eat and be eaten. But back then, were they more than strangers? Had Mithrun fallen with someone else, would he have bared his deepest secrets at the smallest attention, the simplest touch?
“Kabru,” Rin sighs, sounding exhausted. “It’s what they do. They lie. And one day it’ll happen to you.”
Kabru scoffs. So elves lie. Elves kill. So what? Tallmen do too.
Rin opens her mouth. And closes it. There’s something about her expression, a tightness he’s only ever seen while they met with Laios’ party, after witnessing the ruins and feathers Falin had left behind. “This could be bad,” she had muttered. “This could be very bad.”
Her light spells are strong and her cast illuminated the horrors perpetuated by Laios’ party in their full glory: the rusty stain of blood on the floor, dragged, encircled by pentagrams; the soft texture of feather on Falin’s chest, her pointy fangs. Rin’s magic was always a good judge of character.
And yet Kabru hadn’t listened to her, misplaced excitement over sudden developments buzzing through his ears instead.
“Please be careful,” Rin says now.
At the table, Laios smiles like a puppet, all sense of the original emotion lost. He might as well be big-signalling for Kabru’s help. “Of course,” says Kabru, already walking towards his king. He smiles. “I’ll see you later.”
Kabru skids into the eating hall twenty minutes after the end of service. He’d convened with Mithrun on a meeting time before starting a long day of audiences, which should have been a sign to arrange for a meal to be served directly in his room. But Mithrun leaves for monster hunting weeks on end without warning, and Kabru had wanted — he almost trips on the last step in an excess of eagerness — to just, spend time with him, maybe.
A mad cackle rises from the opposite corner of the room and Kabru mobilises his public hearing smile again. It was foolish of him to hope they’d be alone.
“I saw that,” Fleki snickers when Kabru sits at the Canaries table.
“Fleki, don’t comment on it,” Cithis’ heavily shadowed eyes meet Kabru’s in her small compact mirror, and she smirks. Kabru shivers. “It’s rude.”
Kabru opens his mouth to object, but Fleki rolls her eyes so hard her pupils probably catch a sight of the back of her head. She dips her hand in her glass and sprinkles the drops in Cithis’ direction, chuckling when Cithis scowls.
Kabru reaches in his pocket casually, not too fast, and offers his handkerchief to dab at the end of her hair, her cold west chest. For much longer than a second, she flicks her eyes up and down at him, Kabru’s reflection in her pupils distorted in the slant of her eyes. Kabru’s smile holds, even when the rest of the table turns to watch, vultures smelling fresh blood in the air.
“Thanks,” she purrs eventually, snatching the cloth away from Kabru’s hand, the indent of her nails like half-moons in his palm.
“Because that’s playing nice?” Fleki says, throwing her hands up at Otta.
“Fleki. Cithis.”
Mithrun’s voice stays remarkably at conversation level, but the order transpires clearly underneath it. Kabru scoots closer, just as Mithrun pushes a plate of food in his direction, their hands meeting in the middle. With the tip of his fingers on the ceramic, he murmurs a quick spell. Kabru feels a sudden chill of fear, the hair standing up at the back of his neck. Magic puts the world ever so slightly out of joint. Suddenly, the stew is steaming hot again, the sauce mushing the bread and staining marzipan cakes on the side, a disjointed association.
“Thanks,” Kabru smiles, keeping under control his worry for Mithrun’s mana levels. Outside of the dungeon, Mithrun is still forgetful of meals and sleep, but seeing him go away on missions doesn’t twist Kabru’s insides with anxiety like the image of Mithrun crumbling to the floor like a doll whose strings have been cut.
He’s fine when Mitrun leaves for weeks on end without notice and comes back with hollow cheeks and hair like straw. He said so!
“How was the audience with the short-lived?” Cithis asks, a hand arranging her hair into finger-waves, and Kabru chokes around his first mouthful.
He can’t breathe, let alone answer. Cold fingers are placed on the back of his neck and strange words are said again. Suddenly Kabru’s airway is clear, his eyes streaming for seemingly no reason at all.
“Wow,” Cithis says, amused. “When I said short-lived I didn’t mean it like that, Kabru.”
“I know, I was just — Did you mean the half-foot emissaries?”
“Guys,” Fleki cuts right in. “I’ve told you before! You can’t say that shit anymore, it’s discriminatory.” She leans against her chair and crosses her arms, a smug grin warping her face.
Cithis scoffs. “You can’t say anything anymore.”
“You’re literally saying it right now,” Kabru says, surprising himself.
“Oh?” Cithis says, voice rich with amusement. Kabru feels the crease of a frown on his forehead. “Then what should I say, little tall-man? Quicker-lived? People of reduced lifespan?”
“Their race will do just fine,” Kabru says, hunger sharpening his annoyance. Milsiril had warned him about nobles, but it’s good to know common elves are just as bad. He feels Mithrun’s presence in his peripheral vision and fights the urge to catch a glimpse of his face, his expression.
Kabru’s trust isn’t so easily shaken.
“Captain!” Fleki elbows Kabru in the ribs, her wry side-look saying watch this. Otta lunges to cover her mouth with her palm, but before she can make it, Fleki continues, “What do you call tallmen and half-foots?”
“Inferiors,” Mithrun says, without missing a beat.
Kabru’s blood turns to ice, cold as the dark stars live in. Meanwhile, it sends the table into peals of cackling laughter, through which the word supremacist! is faintly heard.
“That’s just what everyone used to call them.”
“Everyone?”
Mithrun turns to look at Kabru and it’s stupid that even something so simple, during a potentially humbling conversation, sends chills down his spine. “Most people did, two hundred years ago. Equality is a rather novel current.”
“Is it?” Kabru mutters stubbornly, though it’s stupid to have hang-ups about long learned facts. He can hear Milsiril’s most worried tone buzzing behind his ears, whispering her perpetual telling-off. I told you so. No good will come out of any of this.
Kabru takes a spoonful of his place but the stew’s meat is tough with ligaments, stringing across his teeth and hindering his breathing. It tastes like the crawling sensation of magic. It tastes like dirt and regrets.
Kabru isn’t hungry anymore.
“Fifty years is the blink of an eye, tall-man.” Cithis smiles. “To us, that is.”
“Anyway,” Kabru loudly announces, desperately looking around for a new topic. He glances over his documents, the unfinished dishes scattered messily across the table, the chair left vacant right next to Fleki. Where a silhouette should be slouching, half-naked and openly bad-mouthing Kabru, remains only absence. “When is Lycion coming?”
The atmosphere snaps from uncomfortable to downright hostile, the Canaries shifting their back to Mithrun in an organically protective circle Kabru is, of course, the target of. The shadows of the room stretch on the floor, creating odd patterns and unsettling shapes.
“Captain?” Otta says, amusement chopped off clean.
“Lycion won’t be coming,” Mithrun answers.
“Oh,” Kabru says, his heart beating painfully in the confine of his chest. “You mean tonight? Or like, he won’t be joining you guys at all….?”
“For a while,” Mithrun’s face distords in anger, peeled raw like Kabru has never seen it. Kabru would ask what ‘a while’ entails, but it’s been made clear that their perceptions of time differ.
“I see,” Kabru says slowly. Placading, almost. Though he can’t quite discern what he’s supposed to appease. Cithis’ shoulders are high with tension and Fleki keeps darting looks back and forth within the group. Mithrun’s stare pierces through Kabru’s face with distilled fury. “I hope he’s okay.”
Fleki errupts in a nervous coughing fit and like that, the tension ruptures. Kabru joins in the laughter, adrenalin springing his muscles with nowhere to go.
“I’ll be taking my leave,” he says when silence settles again and practically jumps out of the bench without waiting for the polite exchange of wishes and farewells.
While he walks away, whispers tickle down his neck — He didn’t eat much at all. Is it common for tallmen to sleep that little? — but he resists turning around, imagining four pairs of eyes fixed on his nape instead.
The bed dips when Mithrun crawls on his side and pulls Kabru in, his body an object deviated from its axis and cursed to become a satellite by the laws of physics. Mithrun doesn’t lie down.
“You're good?” Kabru says, not too loud.
It’s close enough to a ‘Are we good?’ to make him wince, but he smoothes his expression the best he can. Worrying is suffering twice, he knows but — he's been waiting for it, in a way. Expecting it, would be closer to the truth.
When all is done and said, Kabru was the lucky recipient of the story book ending. A dream job, all the friends he could have ever wanted, an ambiguous situationship — what else could he ever want? But he's learnt, since the dungeon. He sees Marcille staring at feathers erupting out of Falin’s neckline, and is immediately reminded that he too, will sacrifice. But with the dungeon gone and states emerging out of oceans — change brings uncertainty and disruption, and while all good things have a cost, it’s dangerous that he doesn’t know whom he owes.
Back when he was a kid, he knew to be thankful to Milsiril for what she taught him, to stay docile under the pressure of cold fingers and sticky kisses, because that was her price.
So maybe he's been waiting for the other shoe to drop, a little bit. To lose one of these good things, just to even it out.
When Mithrun kills the candle with his fingers, he’s still looking at Kabru.
“Sure,” he tells the darkness of the room. It wraps around Kabru as he drifts to sleep.
When his eyes open again, he’s somewhere else.
“If you want to,” Mithrun murmurs, hushed in the dark. They’re in a bedroom. The mattress is soft under Kabru’s knees, pliant under the press of his body.
Yes, Kabru means to say, but no sound seems to come out. He blinks, but that doesn’t do much either. He feels Mithrun’s shape rather than seeing it contrast against the silken sheets, the fuzzy fur thrown-over. But his mind doesn’t let him linger on it, skipping and jumping away, focusing on other things instead.
Mithrun’s eye, too-close and knowing. Mithrun’s mouth, open in protest. Hands on Mithrun’s shoulders, pulling him back. Mithrun writhes on the bed, to little effect.
Lycion should be here, Kabru thinks numbly. Where is he? He would never let Kabru do this.
When Kabru leans in, Mithrun doesn’t stop him.
Where is Lycion?
Mithrun’s mouth opens and Kabru presses in.
Where is Lycion?
Mithrun should stop Kabru but he can’t. Kabru shouldn’t keep going but he does. His hand pulls on Mithrun’s hair.
Where is Lycion?
The pelt under Kabru warms, diffusing the heat of a body. Kabru stills, stares in mute horror as the transformation ripples through, something wet and hot pressing against his body. Where was Lycion before this?
Kabru closes his eyes, afraid. He doesn’t want to look at Mithrun anymore. He doesn’t want to be here at all.
You have no right, Lycion says, too many teeth in his mouth. Kabru. Kabru opens his eyes. Blood strings like pearls between the jaw and Kabru’s neck. Kabru closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to see.
When Kabru’s eyes snap back open he’s back in his own bed. He’s alone.
He doesn’t fall back asleep, and instead thinks; Where is Lycion?
After the dinner, Kabru decides he’s reached his threshold of judgmental Marcille side-eyes over the state of his desk. It has its own organisation and Kabru could produce any document of choice in a matter of seconds, but he can’t deny the weight of social bias for untidiness, the piles of parchments and books threatening to completely block his view on the door.
“Weirdly,” Marcille said once. “I never thought you’d be a messy kind of guy.”
Dumbly, Kabru didn’t even protest, too busy feeling squirmy at the thought of being pictured — an image of him composed without him in it. Recognising traits and tendencies in others is the only skill he’s truly honed and yet when he faces his reflection in the mirror, it is an unreadable stranger.
Along with missives he’s already sent a response for and long-discarded drafts, Kabru shoves those uncomfortable thoughts aside.
Carelessly, one of the loans from Merini’s library tips too far into one of the corners and falls loudly on the ground. Kabru coughs through the small cloud of dust it gathers, silently blaming cleaning. After putting it back, a small note remains on the floor. Kabru reaches to throw it out with the rest of the trash and freezes, instantly recognising the handwriting.
Kabru frowns. It could be a joke, but it doesn’t feel like one. Why would anyone go through the trouble of forging the identity of a court member on a casual note, not even an official letter? It could be ill-intended, but it isn't, considering the culprit didn’t even try his hand at mimicking the signature, leaving the post-scriptum blank.
He tucks it into his pocket. Pressing matters await.
“It was easy to figure out it was you,” Kabru teases when he hands the note to Mithrun later that evening. “Try harder to change your handwriting next time.”
Mithrun’s thin fingers carefully enfold the piece of parchment with more care than it deserves. Kabru smiles fondly. Here and there, there are signs that the second son to the House of Kerensil hasn’t completely forgotten his roots.
“There won’t be a next time.” Mithrun snaps his fingers and the paper combusts. A moth caught in a flame, words melted away like wax. Kabru blinks against the brightness, startled.
“A little dramatic, maybe?”
For someone supposedly devoid of desires, Mithrun has an acquired taste for dramatics. When he’s mad at Kabru, he lies in their bed, eyes fixed to the ceiling and his arms lined up properly to the side. But it also means that no matter what time of the night Kabru wakes, Mithrun’s position remains unchanged. It shouldn’t be comforting but Kabru watches the even rising up and down of his chest and falls right back asleep.
On most nights, that is.
“Some lessons must be learned,” Mithrun says and Kabru frowns.
He’s reaching his limit of puzzles with missing pieces. I need you. Come find me now. He pivots the words in his mind a second time, the intimacy of a note scribbled away in urgent want and the slight slant of the long loops — Oh. He gets flashes of skin barely concealed behind heavy, woven tapestries, the pressure of a hand against his mouth and the cold of the wall on his back. But the heat of the fantasy doesn’t compare to the reality of Mithrun seeking out his desires after spending decades in categorical denial.
“What was so urgent you couldn’t wait to see me?” He steps closer to Mithrun’s chair, fingers digging into his shoulders and back and feeling how strangely solid he is. He’s unmovable; he’s marble. He’s in control when Kabru wants him not to be. When Kabru longs, greedily, to be pulled in closer.
“What happened to not wanting too much?” He murmurs on Mithrun’s neck. Mithrun’s pupils go wide and dark, filling the space between his lids. He tilts his head back and Kabru takes it as what it is: an invitation to suck in a kiss below his ear. Kabru feels the chill against his lips, the warmth slowly pouring back. There’s no concealing, here. No secrets. Mithrun’s body says more than Mithrun himself knows.
“Kabru.” Mithrun’s hand circles Kabru’s wrist in an iron grip.
“Yes?” Kabru hears the hesitation, the youthful insecurity, and hates himself for it.
Mithrun intertwines their fingers so tight Kabru can’t tell where his palm ends and where Mithrun’s begin. Kabru swallows. It’s scary sometimes, to lean into Mithrun with his whole body, pressing into the hands holding him down just enough to feel the resistance but not enough to get free.
Could Kabru break free, if he wanted to?
Mithrun turns his head to the side and catches Kabru’s lips with his own, chapped raw and cold. The sparks start like the drag of nails on the back of his hand, propagating from his arms and spasms of pleasure tensing his muscles like a drawn-out release. It should be embarrassing, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes and his mouth open around a moan, but it feels too good, too powerful to resist. Kabru leans into it, practically sitting in Mithrun’s lap and grinding his erection on whatever surface stands between them, desperate for the friction and light-headed with needs. “Please,” he begs in the kiss. Closer. Touch me. Only ever want me.
Suddenly, the headiness dissipates like a fog clearing and Kabru catches the image of himself, pathetically writhing, too far gone in waves of pleasures steadily rolling out of his stomach. He jerks away, mortified.
“Don’t,” Mithrun frowns. “It’s dangerous.”
“What was that?” Kabru wipes his mouth, the saliva crackling like sparkling sugar.
“Did I use too much?” Mithrun touches Kabru’s cheek and it’s like being seared with white-hot iron. He recoils, over-sensitive. “Stop. I’m fixing it.”
Kabru tilts his head back and takes slow breaths through the counter-spell and like Mithrun had promised, the fever dissipates, cleansed away in the way magic always does, queasy and abrupt.
“I forgot,” Mithrun says. “It’s hard to adjust to your kind.”
Kabru stares, bemused. Mithrun always speaks in half-sentences and Kabru can’t muster the energy to fill in the blanks. “What do you mean, adjust?”
“Didn’t you know?” Mithrun seems surprised. “It’s common practice to use magic to heighten sensations. I can’t believe you never noticed.”
Kabru coughs, feeling a warm blush creeping up his cheeks. “I mean, I just thought you were — really good.” Mithrun croaks out a laugh. “But how was I supposed to know! Milsiril never told me about something like this.” He winces, while making a mental note of elven practices. “Actually never mind. I’m really glad we never had that conversation.”
Mithrun nods gravely. “I’ll make sure not to do it again.”
“That’s not — that’s not what I meant,” Kabru says slowly, trying to pick the threads apart. His heart drops to his stomach when the realisation hits; how many times did magic meddle with his feelings, his memory? It’s impossible to tell. Everything is spoiled and nothing is. “I want —” What does Kabru want? He likes to think of himself as an introspective person, so it’s odd that the words feel bulky in his mouth. And it just slips out, scarily honest. “I want what we have to be real.”
Mithrun’s head tilts to the side. “It is real. It only emphasizes what you already feel.”
Kabru groans. Milsiril had once told him that calling upon magic for elves was like bending down and drinking from a lake of mana, which is hard to imagine when lighting small fires leaves him exhausted. “I guess that’s true. Not like I really hated it anyway,” Kabru says, because that’s easier than providing explanations to a person with no point of reference.
Mithrun’s valid eye pierces through his head, baring Kabru’s every thought. “Not everything good has to be hard.”
It catches Kabru like an uppercut to the jaw. “Ouch.” Is Kabru not allowed to work hard for what he wants? Shouldn’t Mithrun know that happiness served on a silver platter always turns out to be a curse in disguise? What does Mithrun know about lessons to be learned?
“I suppose it is a charming side of yours,” Mithrun concedes.
Kabru smiles, caught off-guard by the compliment. “I mean — I guess I wouldn’t mind. If you did it again. Just give a guy a warning next time,” he jokes, but Mithrun’s face tightens.
“Of course,” Mithrun says, gravely. “I will tell you.”
Kabru opens his mouth. Closes it. He foresees an extremely unpleasant conversation he, quite frankly, does not have the capacity to delve into tonight. Instead, Kabru smiles, unaware of what truth lies dormant.
“Well? Should we pick it up?” Mithrun’s palms are cold and dry when Kabru slides his hands against them. He winces at how clammy his own get in comparison.
Later, Kabru will look back on the strange, sudden unease taking over him so completely. The immediate rush of adrenalin, the bitter taste of fear, completely overtaking his body for visibly no reason at all. If only Kabru had asked then, if he had been brave like he had pretended so many times before —
So much for choosing the easy way out.
“Kabru,” Marcille runs to him, out of breath. Her blond hair flows down her back, unchecked by ribbons or braids.
Kabru’s stomach drops with dread. He pulls the quill down and inquires, “Did something happen?”
Marcille pulls down her face with her hands, merely seconds away from losing it properly. “My notes are gone — I searched everywhere, I swear — I’m so, so sorry.” She produces an upset little sound. “We’re going to have to redo the guest list and the invitation template, and we were already so tight on time —”
Kabru shows his palms, like he might with a spooked horse. “Wait. By your notes, do you mean your notebook?”
“Yes,” Marcille hisses. “It’s gone. Vanished.”
Kabru opens the lock to his desk’s drawer and extracts a small notebook bound in leather. “Could that be it? It was left behind after one of the counsellor meetings.”
Marcille practically jumps up from joy, cradling the notebook close to her chest. “I thought it was gone for good! Phew. You’re a lifesaver, Kabru.”
Kabru smiles, attempting not to gloat visibly at the praise. “I took it with me just in case. We have a lot of guests staying over right now.” The implications don’t need to be spoken out loud.
Marcille’s lips pinch sternly. “The Canaries were my next stop.” A spark of recognition forms in her eyes, “Ah, sorry, I didn’t mean —”
“It’s alright,” Kabru cuts in. Yesterday’s conversation looms at the back of his head and he’s done his very best to keep it at bay.
She nods, a rosy blush warming her cheeks but already back to business. Working with Marcille has been a pleasant surprise, Kabru must acknowledge. There’s a practical side to her that’s well suited to their line of work and she never forgets to close his door when there’s strategic information to be exchanged over an infused cup of tea.
“I’ll just give you the list now,” Marcille flips through the notebook. And reaches the end. “Wait, what?”
“Is it not yours?”
“No, it is,” she frowns. “I just can’t find it. If I go by date, it should be around — There! Can you see it? It’s missing a log.” Kabru leans in and sees for himself; small pieces of paper burrowed deep within the spine of the book, violence in the ragged demarcations. “I don’t get it,” Marcille traces circles on her temples. “The list will be made public in a few weeks. Why would it be anyone’s priority? There’s much more compromising stuff in there.”
“It’s strange,” Kabru agrees, steadily ignoring that last part. “Was something written on the back of it?”
Marcille shakes her head. “Notes on a random meeting. The one you left early.”
“What?”
“Yeah?” Marcille’s head tilts to the side. “You said it was a personal emergency.”
“I don’t —” Kabru focuses. He pulls on his memory like a rope, reviewing weeks and then days one by one. The instant he’s about to snap his fingers in recognition, it burns through his hands, pulling back until the thought has fully eluded him. Intangible like details of a dream might be, shapeless and watery. “Sorry,” he tells Marcille, mouth furred. “What were you saying?”
Her eyebrows rise comically high. “The meeting,” she says slowly. “About the agricultural strategy. You didn’t stay until the end.”
“The investment in buckwheat,” Kabru struggles, finding his mind oddly fractured. “And then —” A void. He puts his head in his hands, wincing.
Marcille’s fingertips are on Kabru’s own temples now, diffusing a soft blue light. “That’s right,” she coaxes. “You’re doing really well. What else can you tell me?”
Kabru pulls with newfound clarity. “I got a note.”
“You did. You open it now. What does it say?”
“It says,” Kabru opens his mouth, and it’s there, the small letters twisting between his fingers. I need you. Come find me now.
A shock runs through Marcille’s fingers and springs them apart. “Ow,” she yelps, shaking away the small sparks that stick to her forearms. “What the heck?!”
Kabru blinks, pulled out of the trance he’d so suddenly sunk into. “What was that?”
“A curse.” Marcille’s mouth pouts in disgust. “A particularly strong one. It detected my magic and pushed me out when I tried to bypass it. What an elaborate security system.”
“What?” Kabru’s stomach sinks when he realises the implications. What if someone’s been looking through his eyes this whole time, lodged in his ears? He feels a pang of anger at the confidences Mithrun has shared in honesty and Kabru gave away.
“You should find Cithis. She understands memory magic better than anyone. These curses can’t be undone by anyone but the caster usually —” Marcille bites her lips. “But I’m sure she’ll find something to do!”
Kabru isn’t stupid. He catches on quickly.
“Yes,” Kabru rises slowly. “I think I’ll go right away.”
“Whoah,” Marcille says. “Major déjà vu right now!”
Cithis invites Kabru in with such an obsequious wave, it makes him wonder if this is still the castle’s guest wing and not her private suite.
The bare mattress is swathed in a rich duvet, stone floors smothered under a florid rug. Candlesticks and lacquered cases fight for space on the ivory vanity, and Kabru sees the glimmer of crystals lined along the windowsill. On the wall, is that — wallpaper? How could she have had time to put up wallpaper? The Canaries haven’t been there for more than —
Kabru swallows, coming back hands empty on that instance too.
“You may,” Cithis points dismissively at the other chair on the opposite side.
Kabru sits, cursing his past self for throwing himself into the lion’s den without any preparation. He just ran out without thinking, and that unspoken dread makes itself known again.
“Thank you,” he smiles. “How have you been, Cithis?”
Her eyes narrow, slanted like a cat. “Good. But confused to hear you knock at my doorstep. I struggle to see how I might be of any help at all.” Her lips purse into a girly moue, lashes fluttering, and for a second Kabru questions if this could have been in his head.
“Well, you see. There’s been — dreams, lately. When I wake in the middle of the night my heart beats so fast I’m scared it’s going to burst. I can’t remember them at all, but it leaves me unsettled until morning.”
“Is that so?” She starts filing her nails, disinterested.
“It is. And recently, the dreams started bleeding into my day. I’ll be having normal conversations and suddenly I have to check my neck for bites. When I reach the end of the corridors, I look behind my back and expect to see monsters concealed in the shadows.”
Cithis hums, noncommittal. “Out of fashion paranoia, if you ask me.”
“That’s what I thought too!” Kabru exclaims. “Until I found out about the memory curse.”
Cithis stills. She lifts her head, slowly. “But did you, really? Short-lived species like yours have no talent for magic. You wouldn’t recognise a curse if it danced before you.”
“I trust Marcille.”
A spark of hatred distorts her face, and then vanishes, as soon as it had appeared. “A half-elf?” She snickers. “That’s the source you wish to rely on?”
“That’s what I was hoping to confirm with you, actually. She painted you to be quite the specialist.”
Cithis rolls her eyes. “Sure,” she waves her hands in front of Kabru’s face and declares, “You’re fine. No curse at all. Shoo, little tall-man.”
Kabru likes to think he’s learned the virtue of patience since Laios’ crowning. But now, he struggles to recall its merits. If this had taken place in the dungeon, his sword would already be sliding out of its sheath.
“Cithis,” Kabru says in a poor imitation of Mithrun’s categorical tone. “I want my memories back.”
She huffs, staring around wildly. “I can’t do that.”
“But you’re the original caster, you should be able to —”
“Give them back to you? You think I don’t know how to? When I possessed someone for the first time, you weren’t even born. This is not what this is about.”
“Then why?” What else must I do? How much further must I go? Kabru wants to ask. But he knows. Nothing is ever enough.
She bites her lips and almost despite herself, her eyes dart to the door in Kabru’s back. “I swore I wouldn’t.”
“Swore?” Kabru parrots out loud. “Like, to whom —” He feels his face fall so it isn’t surprising Cithis sees it too, closing her fangs around the faintest trace of weakness.
“Ungrateful,” she drawls. “After everything the Captain has done for you.”
“I’m supposed to say thank you after you erased my memories and he made sure I wouldn’t get them back?” Kabru laughs in disbelief. “My friend was right. Elves think of others’ lives as disposable. You’re incapable of caring.”
“Caring? No one day passes where I don’t regret entrusting the Captain to you in the dungeon. If only I had shut my mouth back then, if only Lycion hadn’t gone ahead and ruined everything — then I wouldn’t have to spell this out to you now.”
“So it’s my fault now?”
Cithis flaps an impatient hand around. “Lycion, that jealous furry slut — We had agreed to give it twenty-five years. You had one job: sticking around. If you had, we would have tolerated the Captain’s clearly misguided choices”
Kabru nods, like that’s not completely insane. He’d thought of these people as his equals. As his friends.
“But no, Lycion always has to do everything his own way. He sent that stupid note and you,” her sharpened nails point at Kabru accusingly. “Were stupid enough to come running.”
“I was scared,” Kabru bristles. “I wasn’t — thinking straight. That’s what happens when you have feelings, when you care for people! It’s normal to be afraid when you think they’re hurt, and it’s not like I can trust you to take care of him when you’re away. For all I know, you’d just leave him behind.”
See, says something in the ground and the rising dark. See, that was you all along. When you stop pretending, this is what remains. Cithis’ face hardens, like the cold of the night creeping through a door. “It seems like Lycion was right.”
Now, that’s something else.
“Tell me Cithis,” Kabru says. “What did Lycion do?”
When Kabru leans in, the door is flung open against the wall. The Canaries come in, surrounded in joyful chatter like the Fair folk making night rounds on the hills, waiting for a lost tallman to lure in their court and to curse to dance to madness.
“Kabru!” Fleki says, putting a hand on his shoulder. She looks at Mithrun, expecting praise for making friends, and Kabru feels his stomach lurching.
Kabru drops her hand, as though her skin has burned him. There’s a cold feeling in his chest. “You can stop pretending.”
“What?” Fleki says, making her indignation loud enough for everyone to hear.
There’s a silence and Kabru sees the looks exchanged between them, the practiced choreography he’ll never be a part of. What if Marcille hadn’t come to find him? Kabru would have been coddled the rest of his short life, no difference from the path Milsiril had offered him.
“He knows,” Cithis sighs at last.
“Oh,” Fleki gasps. “What was it like being killed by Lycion? I’ve been wanting to ask you, but the Captain said I shouldn’t.” Strangely, Kabru’d thought of elves Rin warned him about as older, distant and evil figures. But Fleki turns around to face Mithrun like a child, guilty because she’d been caught reaching for an extra cookie in the jar.
Kabru’s heart is thundering in his chest, darkness flickering at the edges of his vision.
“I wasn’t sure,” Kabru says. He’d guessed. Of course he had. But it’s not making the truth any easier.
He turns around.
Mithrun stands so far away.
“I don’t understand why you would all lie to me.” He croaks out a laugh. “I mean, it’s not like Lycion ever liked me. It doesn’t exactly come as a surprise.”
“When we got to the dungeon, it wasn’t like normal —” Cithis shivers. Cithis, who laughs, a trilling and uncomfortable noise, at people tripping. Cithis, who curled her hair around her finger and swore she knew nothing about the rusty nails in Pattadol’s bed, shivers. “You couldn’t be brought back with necromancy. The Captain used stronger magic.”
“Wild animals,” Fleki chirps. She throws her hands up when everyone turns to look at her, shocked.
Cithis’ lips purse in unveiled disgust. “Quite. Too long had passed.” And Kabru wonders why they’re still bothering with forms at all.
Like Fleki, Kabru wants to ask. Was it so terrible? But, what was it like, really?
Did his body lay on its back, seemingly asleep at one’s first glance? Did they have to stand there for a while, to take note of the dark stain spreading beneath him, rusting the grass? At the end, did Kabru beg? Did he thank Lycion for doing them all a favour? Or perhaps, there were no words at all. Small bubbles in the blood pooling at his mouth, silencing Kabru’s last swaying attempt. It would have been warm all over, Kabru thinks, as he closed his eyes for the last time. As it all slowly poured, oozed out of him.
At least it makes sense. It explains why Mithrun has been looking so much at Kabru, at his body. Did he feel like it was something that should be in the ground? He wonders if Lycion buried him, a headstone entirely out of question in the wildness of the dungeon. No one’s son, no one’s brother, no one’s lover. Somewhere forgotten, dirt lays undisturbed on top of a boy who used to pursue attention like the sun, who took care of people with gentle, clever fingers that are now writhing with worms, his life line eaten through and feeding the ants.
How ironic, for someone who had been so intent on giving all of himself away. Despite himself, a snorting laugh makes it past his lips. How ironic indeed.
When he looks up, everyone’s stares are tainted with varying levels of concern.
“Oh,” Kabru says. “That was nervous.”
When silence sets, uncomfortable, Kabru’s brain swarms with possible openings, mercilessly shooting down anecdotes or phrases that would be deemed inadequate.
He opens his mouth, not quite knowing which one will make it out, but instead, it’s Mithrun that tears himself from the shadows and steps out in front of Kabru.
“Come with me,” he says, and Kabru cringes.
Kabru steps back, but Mithrun steps closer, and if Kabru hadn’t quite reconciled the tales surrounding the Captain, stubborn and relentless against monsters, with the person he had come to know, he does now.
“Hm,” Kabru says eloquently, feeling himself go warm all over and making note despite himself of the distance separating himself from Mithrun, or the lack thereof. Too close to be friendly, too certain to be anything but intimate.
“We need to talk,” Mithrun says, and Kabru cannot, but envy the imperviousness to the mortification Kabru seems to be cursed by.
“But —” Kabru could protest.
“I don’t —” Kabru could say.
But when Mithrun calls, he answers, no matter what the consequences might be.
“Distance might prove advisable.”
Mithrun stares out of the window in Kabru’s room with mild interest.
Panic bubbles up, sick and hot in Kabru’s gut. After everything, after all Kabru’s tried to make himself a suitable option, Mithrun would still —
“But why — so that’s it?” Kabru stops, immediately hearing the strident supplication of a child in his voice, and hating himself for it. He swallows, collects himself. “Was it something I did?”
“Kabru.”
“What?” Kabru never cried in the dungeon, even when he starved to death and the barrier between worlds ruptured, letting monsters and hell loose. It’s stupid for something like this to push him over the edge. He wipes off his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“Kabru,” Mithrun repeats, the only indication that he’s somewhat at a loss. “Why would you still want this after what we did. To you.”
“But you didn’t,” Kabru says, all sense of clarity lost. “It was Lycion who — who called me.”
“I won’t let you innocent me. Wrongful acts must be accounted for.”
“Yet it makes no sense why you’d punish me for them.”
“You don’t know,” Mithrun says, the closest to shouting he’s ever been. “What it was like to find you like that. Barely recognizable. After what had been done to you. What we did to you.” Kabru opens his mouth to protest but he’s left no chance. “And your first reflex should be standing up for yourself. Not defending me.”
“But that’s what I’m doing now! I’m standing up for what I want,” Kabru feels himself becoming warm all over, a raw kind of anger he hasn’t felt in a while. “And you won’t listen.” Kabru is aware that words like want make Mithrun uncomfortable but he's less inclined to care about that now that he’s died.
“Kabru,” Mithrun says. “This cannot be what you want.”
“You’re talking down to me,” Kabru bristles. “But I’m telling you. I’m not mad about Lycion killing me.”
Mithrun’s lips press against one another, new cracks appearing.
“I wasn’t a very good adventurer,” Kabru laughs. “I died a bunch of times in the dungeon, I know what it’s like to be brought back. And like, I’m not stupid. I know it wasn’t your idea. Lycion always hated me. But I wouldn’t have expected this from you.” He takes a short breath, out with it. “Why would you ask Cithis to make me forget? I really thought I was losing my mind.”
“I can’t — ” Mithrun hedges. One look at Kabru and his shoulders drop, gaze falling. “The safest option would have been to wipe your feelings off while she took your memories. A guarantee you wouldn’t be exposed to elves anymore.” Kabru’s mouth opens on its own. “But I couldn’t ask that of her. I took the measure of my selfish desires, but I couldn’t.” Guilt is clearly an uncomfortable and unfamiliar mantle for Mithrun of the house of Kerensil. “I thought, if you didn’t remember, maybe — we could go back to what we had.”
“But we never had something perfect,” Kabru says, the anger suddenly deflating. He thinks of Milsiril’s description of the dungeon, the empty, broken house where Mithrun held onto monsters until he was eaten alive. He steps closer, not knowing whether to reach out. “Lycion hates me and you’re outliving me no matter what we do. There are facts that we know. Refusing to acknowledge them won’t stop them from happening.”
Kabru smiles, though he knows it won’t attenuate the heaviness of the words themselves.
Gravely, Mithrun nods. “I’m not sure how to do that.”
“Literally anything except manipulating me and wiping off my memories will do,” Kabru says drily.
Mithrun recoils, but Kabru feels very entitled to conflicting and confusing reactions.
“I’m joking,” he atones. “But I know you see how the Canaries treat me. You could start by saying something.”
“You never said it bothered you,” Mithrun frowns.
“I didn’t. I was waiting for you to say something about it,” Kabru says, realising as the words come out. “If we carry on, I need to feel like — like you would save me first if we were all drowning.”
“You can swim.”
“But I need to know you would,” Kabru says, feeling peeled raw like the anatomic figures in Milsiril’s books. Do people really do this on a daily basis? Laying out their deepest needs for anyone to pick on?
Mithrun nods, no variations in his expression. “I think I understand.”
Kabru waits.
Mithrun takes a step further, fingers slipping between Kabru’s, interlocking, and he finally meets Kabru’s eyes. “I’ll show you.”
Who is Kabru to say no to that?
“You can show them now,” Kabru says, already feeling the prickly feelings of having to face the Canaries twice in a day. His thoughts wander to the parallel conversation they’re most definitely having about Mithrun and Kabru teleporting to Kabru’s room and he suddenly looks forward to clearing up conclusions drawn in a hurry.
He gives a firm press to Mithrun’s hands and lets go. “Let’s head back.”
“Kabru.”
Kabru turns around, surprised.
“You said we knew. But I didn’t know,” Mithrun says. “What it’d feel like to lose you.”
“Oh.”
“The reality of it was unlike anything I could have imagined.” Contained, direct; it’s elven through and through. Kabru doesn’t mind. The warmth of cold truths surpasses that of empty promises.
Mithrun doesn’t want anything. Mithrun wants Kabru forever. Statements that shouldn’t be true but simply are. Like in the dungeons, truth and laws bend to allow for mistakes to be mended, for paths to be taken again. Kabru takes a step to the side, walks into the unknown. “I think that’s — the nicest thing someone’s ever said to me.”
The skin pulls on Mithrun’s eye. “Isn’t your definition of nice too broad?”
“I’ve been told so,” Kabru lets an eyebrow rise, cocky. “Isn't that what's good about me?”
“Angling for compliments, I see.” Mithrun smiles openly this time, amusement undisguised. “But I mean it. Will I know how?”
Kabru looks at him, his bowed head and mouth in a straight line. He opens his hand again.
“There’s time to figure it out.”