Chapter Text
Auguste said, “Laurent, I would like you to meet my wife.”
Laurent answered, “That isn’t a wife; it’s a corpse that’s forgotten to stop breathing.”
The Queen’s bowers were shadowed and quiet. She received few visitors these days, and when she did, they always spoke in stifled tones, and never stayed for long. The previous Queen of Vere had always filled the space with sunlight and fresh flowers, lacy curtains fluttering in open windows, even during the worst of her illness. Now it had become a place of solemn expressions and hushed voices, the air thick with the medicinal incense the physicians kept burning at all hours, the curtains drawn and the windows kept tightly shut. It was stifling and stuffy and too warm, always, and Laurent’s words, rude and spoken in a normal tone, were jarring.
“Don’t be vulgar,” Auguste snapped, uncomfortable with the brief, poisonous thought that crossed his mind that, yes, Laurent was right – that visiting his wife felt like standing at an open grave.
At first, Auguste expected his brother to ignore him, but after a moment Laurent turned his head to look his way. His gaze was flat, empty, and unfriendly.
To say that matters were strained between the King of Vere and his beloved little brother would have been like comparing the flicker of a firefly to the enduring blaze of the sun. They had only just arrived in Arles after a long, tense journey from Marlas, wherein Auguste had bargained away the very soul of his country in exchange for a mere year with his little brother at his side. Auguste had known it would not be quick or easy, getting through the gnarled thorns of Laurent’s temper to find his sweet brother beneath, but he found himself frustrated nonetheless. Laurent’s crude assessment of the Queen Consort had been the longest sentence the boy had bothered to bestow upon him since they had parted ways with the Akielons back in Marlas.
Somehow, Auguste had convinced himself that bringing Laurent home would help him get through to him; that all he needed was time; that once he got his darling brother away from the poisonous influence of the barbarians, he would start to see glimmers of the boy he knew once again. They had only just arrived back in Arles from Marlas – they hadn’t even washed up or changed clothes yet. Auguste had been too eager to take Laurent up to meet Roslin, sure that the brother he knew would have been moved to tears to see the pitiable state his siter-in-law was in. At minimum, the old Laurent would have at least had questions.
The old Laurent would never have referred to his brother’s bride as a corpse.
Two years ago, Auguste had made the worst mistake of his life – a mistake he would give absolutely anything to take back now. In order to end the war with Akielos and secure peace for his people, Auguste had given his little brother to the younger Prince of Akielos to wed.
At the time, the decision had made sense. At the time, it had seemed like the best – the only – course of action. It didn’t only end all aggression from their barbaric neighbors, it tied Akielos to Vere as a powerful ally, discouraging any other country from attempting to take advantage of the chaos as Vere’s new King settled into his rule. Father was dead and Vere was left vulnerable. Auguste needed to establish his reign and help his kingdom recover – particularly war-torn Delfeur. Laurent would have to marry for political reasons one day anyway, Auguste had reasoned. He had truly believed, at the time, that he was making the right decision.
He had not realized that decision would mean losing Laurent completely. It had never occurred to him that the Akielon beasts would manage to turn his precious brother against him – not in a million years.
“This room wasn’t half so dreary while mother was actively dying in it,” Laurent stated with a sigh, crossing to the window and opening the blinds. The sun seemed too bright, too intrusive. When he cracked open the window, the sounds of men training in the field below filled the previous grave-like silence.
“Roslin is not dying,” Auguste snapped, annoyed at his brother and disappointed by his disrespectful behavior. Laurent shrugged. When he turned away from the window, his eyes sought out the woman on the bed once more. She was watching them – or appeared to be. It was rare these days for her eyes to be open.
“I’ll bet you ten sol that she wishes she was,” Laurent said.
Auguste shuddered, horrified by his callousness.
--
Auguste was increasingly afraid that he no longer knew the boy who had come to replace his beloved little brother. The thought haunted him. Obsessed him. In Auguste’s mind, Laurent should always have remained as Auguste loved him best: thirteen and sweetly affectionate, brighter than the starburst it was now his right to bear. In reality, Laurent was something else now: fifteen, freckled and savage, half Akielon by both marriage and sheer force of will. Even now, dressed properly in Veretian layers of jacketing and corsetry, his hair trimmed stylishly short, there was something disturbingly foreign about him – the way he held himself, the way he had begun to think, even the way he spoke, with a slight accent on certain words, as if he spent most days speaking and thinking in nothing but Akielon. Sometimes, search as he might, Auguste found that he struggled to locate even the smallest trace of the Laurent he knew within him.
A stipulation of Vere’s peace with Akielos held that the contract was to remain open until Laurent reached his majority at twenty-one. They had wed in Akielos, but not in Vere, and the marriage had not yet been consummated – and nor would it, until then. Waiting was intended to give both countries ample opportunity to make adjustments to the terms of their agreement as they navigated this new and unprecedented world where Akielos and Vere were supposedly friends. Rather than either side lock themselves into a deal they would regret, causing quick return to war, they had years to work together to ensure their partnership remained mutually beneficial for centuries to come.
This unconventional half-union was meant to be a strong enough tie to keep both countries invested in the bonds of peace. It was an expression of mutual trust, of intention for continued cooperation and understanding. Uncle Richard had wanted the contract closed early, worried that the Akielons would find some way to take advantage of the situation, but Auguste had been too horrified by the prospect of watching his brother consummate a marriage so young to consider the benefits to being done with the devils. Every spring they were to meet to review and renew the contract; Auguste had bound them all to that when he had helped to thwart his uncle’s machinations toward an early end.
Twice now the meetings had been held, the contract re-signed. Auguste was already sick of it.
A part of him almost regretted that they had not just finished with the whole deal then and there, when Laurent had been fourteen and still salvageable. No, Auguste was in no hurry to watch that awful brute violate his baby brother, but at least if they had taken care of it at fourteen, all of this madness would be past by now. Damianos would have no further need, much less desire, to keep Laurent by his side. The peace would have been secure, and Auguste could have taken Laurent home – or at least seen him sequestered away in some quiet palace near the border where Auguste could visit him frequently.
It would have been painful, but it would have been fast. It would have been over, now. It would not have been this slow, torturous farce where Laurent was slowly chipped away from him – where Laurent stopped writing to him and refused to come to his wedding, where he didn’t think to acknowledge the accident that had nearly cost Auguste his bride and unborn son. It would not be this horror where Laurent returned to Vere an unrecognizable stranger who there was no reasoning with.
The Akielons were turning Laurent against him.
--
“What’s been done to her?” Laurent asked finally, belatedly, the first sign at all that he had given that he cared that bis brother’s bride – who he had never met before and who he had not bothered to send even a single letter to to welcome her to the family – lay in such a pathetic state. Auguste knew there had to be some hidden motive behind the question; the sweet, tender-hearted brother he had known would not return to him so easily.
“The physicians have done everything they can,” Auguste said, his words an uncomfortable echo of those that had once been spoken by their father, while Mother lay dying in that very same bed. “One of them thinks she may have been poisoned,” he allowed, after a moment.
Laurent had approached the bed, and had even been so rude as to take a seat on the edge – scandalously improper, even given his status as a married man, and Auguste’s presence as chaperone. He was fifteen now, too old to be so close to a woman, especially in her own bedchambers! Auguste was already outraged, even before Laurent reached forward to take one of Roslin’s still, pale hands in both his own. He was glaring when Laurent glanced back at him, the boy’s own brows drawn down in thought and concern.
“There is no antidote?” Laurent asked.
“The only antidote is toxic,” Auguste answered, brusque. “If the physician’s theory is wrong, it would kill her.”
“At least then she would be free,” Laurent said, his eyes returning to meet Roslin’s, his thumb gently stroking her wrist.
It was almost blindingly infuriating – Laurent, sitting on his bride’s bed. Touching her. Laurent, trying to present Roslin’s death as if it would be a boon. Auguste had no love for Roslin; she was common born, and somewhat plain, but her father’s money had helped Vere in a difficult time, and she was carrying Auguste’s child.
“My son would die with her!” Auguste said. Laurent shrugged.
“Are you proposing that it would be better to leave her lying here while he bakes in her womb?” he asked, turning back to Auguste again. “She is a person, not an oven.”
“She is a person carrying a Prince of Vere!” Auguste wanted a glass of wine, desperately. Maybe an entire bottle.
These days, talking to his brother always had that effect.
“How do you know this whole ordeal has not damaged him?” Laurent asked. “How do you know this Prince will survive, even carried to term? You can father more children. Your Queen only has one life, and you are torturing her with it.”
“Laurent - !”
“Actually,” Laurent said, rising, letting Roslin’s hand fall as he took a step back toward Auguste. His eyes were glittering. “Does my recollection fail me, or don’t you already have a son? Sebastian has told me that Uncle had graciously chosen to adopt the boy. Is that true?”
“That’s enough - !”
“Do you think dear Uncle has fucked him yet?”
Auguste almost staggered, the audacity of the question stealing his breath from him.
“I assume ten was an arbitrary number agreed upon when our Father was accommodating Uncle’s preferences,” Laurent continued to approach him. “How young do you think Uncle really prefers to start with them? I must be nearly too old for him; he acted very rashly at my birthday. Do you think your bastard will hold his attention until he’s ready to stick it in your legitimate get?”
The sound seemed deafening, when Auguste slapped him. It shocked even Auguste; for a moment, he forgot his rage as if it had never been.
“Let’s – let’s retire to the sitting room,” Auguste suggested, into the stunned silence. Laurent was staring at him, his hand slowly lifting to his reddening cheek. Auguste fiddled with his cravat for a moment; his hands seemed unaware of what to do with themselves, as if they belonged to someone else. “Laurent,” he began.
“No,” Laurent said. He tilted his head, hand still pressed to his face, eyes wide. “Why should we – this discussion involves your wife, does it not? As you have no intention of protecting your brother or either of your sons from dear Uncle, yet you insist on leaving her in such a state for the sake of said son. She should know, shouldn’t she? How much higher you hold our uncle than anyone else?”
“Laurent!” the shock was gone, and rage returned. Half-blind with it, Auguste was only aware that he had his brother by the arms, that his grip was bruising as he hauled the boy to the door. “I told you to take yourself from here, and by the gods, you will obey me!”
--
In Roslin’s sitting rooms, Laurent’s Akielon guards shifted a little, tensing, as the King of Vere hauled his little brother bodily from the bedroom. One of the two even put a hand on his weapon, although he didn’t draw.
Auguste, fortunately, didn’t notice it. If he had, there would have been an entirely new set of problems to face. He flung Laurent into the room, releasing him with a rough shove, his temper flaring white-hot when Laurent shot him a look of sullen resentment in response.
“I have had enough of this attitude of yours!” Auguste snarled.
In response, Laurent had the audacity to laugh.
“Have you?” the boy asked. “Well! I would tell you what I have had enough of, but I am uncertain either of us has the time! I assure you – it’s a very long list.”
The collection of glass decanters on Roslin’s sidebar gleamed at him, begging for attention. She had had them put there for him, so that she could properly host her husband when he came to call. Auguste went to them with a sort of mindless desperation, even as his brother flung himself sullenly into an arm chair. One leg draped itself insolently over the arm rest, swinging with all the intention of the tail of an irritated cat. His head turned, blue eyes glaring out the nearest window. The Akielon guards eyed Auguste, and did not relax their postures. Auguste’s hands shook as he poured himself a glass. He had to down one right away, then poured a second to drink more slowly.
“You are too old to be conducting yourself in such a manner,” Auguste informed him as he saw to that second glass. It was liquor, not wine, and it burned, warm, all the way down his throat and chest, promising to soothe and numb him to the all-consuming rage. For a moment, Laurent was blessedly silent, and there was nothing in Auguste’s world but that comforting burn. He closed his eyes, and let his head fall back.
“I am so very sorry, brother,” Laurent said, and he sounded sincere enough that Auguste made the mistake of turning around to look at him.
“You are?” Auguste failed to keep the surprise from his voice. Laurent smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course. Forgive me. I promise – the next time you murder one of my friends and inflict a curse like slavery on my homeland, I will endeavor to endure it with much more grace.”
Auguste’s fingers tightened around his glass. His brother’s big blue eyes looked so innocent, so sincere, and yet from his mouth spewed only the most vile of garbage.
Who are you? Auguste wanted to ask. Instead, he glared at him, and he drank. He wondered, not for the first time, if this was how father had felt, whenever he had to deal with him. If this was why there had been so much petty dislike between the two. The reminder of his deal with Akielos made his stomach churn. Of course Laurent would fail to appreciate that the horrific sacrifice had been made for him.
“Do you think it pleases me?” Auguste demanded.
“You hardly seem burdened.”
“Slavery is vile,” Auguste said. “It is a disease that rots a country from within. It steals men’s souls and it angers the gods. And yet I have opened the gates for the poisoned floodwaters. I have made that trade, willingly – eagerly – because of you.”
“Yes; another thing I am to blame for.”
Auguste downed his second drink. He wanted to throw the glass across the room. Instead he set it down. He forced himself to cross the room – to not merely put himself in closer proximity to the vile little beast that had once been his brother, but to drag a chair over, and sit himself before him. He waited for Laurent to meet his eyes.
“It is your father-in-law who is to blame,” Auguste said, slow and measured, drawing the last dregs of patience from the very bottom of what he had left. “I offered other things, Laurent, but he was unreasonable. He was too invested in keeping you at his side, in ruining you. Theomedes would hear none of my offerings – not until Kastor suggested this. It was the only way I could keep you.”
“Why?” Laurent demanded. His voice cracked. Auguste was surprised to see that his eyes were wet. Something in Auguste softened, relieved he was finally getting through.
“You would have to ask Theomedes,” Auguste said. “I don’t – “
Laurent jerked away from him as Auguste reached out to touch his face.
“No,” he said. “Why keep me at all? Why was it so important? Why would you damn your own citizens to slavery?”
“You know why.”
Laurent stared at him, horrified.
“I want to go home,” he said at last, pleading almost, a sob caught in his voice.
Auguste said, “This is your home.”
“Vere stopped being my home the moment you sold me to Akielos.”
“I didn’t sell you - !”
“Married me off, then.”
“For peace, and I would take it back if I – “
“You married me off, to a good man, for a good cause.”
Auguste drew back as if he had been struck. Laurent was staring at him now, intent, as if willing him to read some further meaning from his words. Instead, Auguste felt only pain.
“Guilty,” Auguste answered him, his own tone gone faint. “Guilty as charged.”
“Yet now you’re angry about it?” Laurent challenged. “You’re upset that your plan worked? You don’t like it that your country is at peace? You resent the fact your brother is happy?”
“I don’t want to lose you!”
Laurent stared at him, startled. For a moment, Auguste made the mistake of thinking that he had finally found a way through to him.
Then, Laurent smiled.
Laurent said, “You should have thought about that in Acquitart.”
--
Laurent’s eyes were burning. His emotions were a thick, immovable lump in the back of his throat, however he fought to push them down, however he struggled to close himself off from them.
He had taken advantage of his brother’s surprise to flee the Queen Consort’s quarters before he could be stopped. Now he hurried through the palace corridors on memory alone, blinded, not by the tears he adamantly refused to shed, but by the images in his mind.
Larius, nude, stretched across Uncle’s lap became hundreds of other boys, faceless and helpless, chains on their wrists and ankles. Instead of collars ‘round their throats, he saw the cut – the seam of red so thin at first, so quick, so impossible, as his brother’s sword sliced cleanly through his friend’s neck. There was a moment – Laurent could not be sure, now, if it was memory or dream – a moment where Larius met his eyes one more time, his neck ringed like that, with that thin ruby-colored collar, and then his head rolled from his body.
Larius. Slavery. Auguste had done it all because of him. For him. Laurent was the one to blame. All of it was Laurent’s fault.
Somehow, he found his way to his rooms.
He was aware of the fact he instructed his guards to wait outside. It was like watching from the outside. He was calm enough when he did it that they didn’t argue – and Akielon guards would have argued, if they thought he gave them cause to be concerned. One did duck into the rooms to make sure they were secure before either would agree to Laurent going in alone. It felt like an eternity that Laurent stood there waiting. He didn’t fidget. He didn’t cry. He stood statue-still and he pretended to be empty and he ignored the way that the other guard (Philos. Laurent was fairly sure his name was Philos.) looked at him with sympathy. Philos was a young man, of an age with Laurent’s husband, maybe a little younger. In Akielos, sixteen was the age of adulthood. He wasn’t the kind of man to realize that sympathy was hurtful. He didn’t know that Laurent didn’t deserve compassion.
At last the other guard returned. Atkis. This one was named Atkis. It helped, focusing on their names. Laurent could breathe as long as he didn’t think.
Atkis looked pleased.
“Exalted,” he began.
“Well?” Laurent interrupted. “Are my rooms clear, or aren’t they?”
Atkis faltered, and he exchanged looks with Philos. Finally, he nodded. Laurent went inside – only to stop short, like running into a wall.
They were lined up there, smiling, waiting for him.
Aden, Kallias, Iphegin, Ermis, Erasmus – and the newest boy, Isander. The only ones missing were Larius, who was dead, and Aimeric, who was with –
Laurent’s control shattered before he could complete the thought. His friends rushed forward to catch him as his legs gave out beneath him. Reaching up, he clawed at the laces of his collar.
“Get me out of this!” he begged, and he fell willingly into their arms.