a silver splendour, a flame

Viktor had not been wrong about the shocked silence that followed them everywhere through Christophe’s home in exile; one of the mages rushed to air out a spare room, and then it was Viktor magically summoning the water to bathe with up from the oasis. Your turn, he’d told Yuuri, sitting on a stool at the end of a bathing pool with an idle, expectant look that had sent Yuuri’s heart leaping into his throat. Now it was Viktor who was massaging some subtly perfumed oil into his hair, who hadn’t needed to reach for the pitcher to pour water over Yuuri’s head or onto his back.

It was relaxing and intoxicating and strangely humbling. Yuuri’s family had been stewards of the Hasetsuil baths for generations and here was the High Prince of the North, attending to him. They’d said relatively little; Yuuri was journey-tired and Viktor seemed contemplative and the silence that stretched was comfortable, something he hadn’t felt the need to fill up with words. Except, maybe, for the parts of the conversation he’d just witnessed, particularly the bit Yuuri kept replaying, where Christophe, who he’d only ever heard of as some distant enemy of the Northerners, had so casually used the word love and then Viktor hadn’t denied it. “… Viktor?”

“Mm.”

How could any of it possibly be true? “I don’t really understand what any of that was about.”

Viktor’s response came slow, but the drip-drip-drip of water and the slow brush of his fingers through Yuuri’s hair didn’t still or cease. “It’s funny,” he murmured, not unkindly. “The way you can dread the retelling of a story for decades and then Christophe just comes along and rips it out of you…” Though this sounded unpleasant, there was no derision in Viktor’s tone; he seemed strangely devoid of anger or even real energy. Viktor leaned forward, folded over the edge of the bath, and draped his arms over Yuuri’s shoulders, pressing his lips for a moment to the back of the halfling’s neck. It made Yuuri’s shiver.

“We were best friends once, Christophe and I. We’re nearly the same age.” Viktor sighed and shifted again. “It’s a long story,” he added, thinking back to the Ardor and how unwise it probably was to leave a fire mage submersed in a bath while he recounted the whole miserable tale, no matter how appealing it would’ve been personally. “… let’s get you out of here and I’ll tell it.” Let’s was something Viktor did, too, with that same twist of magic that pulled the water off of Yuuri’s skin and left him dry, a brush that felt more intimate now than it had on the ship when Viktor’d been reacting in the middle of an emergency. So, too, were the way Viktor kept to the little details, helping Yuuri into one of the silk robes as though, for a moment, he was the one who was royalty.

The room they’d been given was a corner of the villa, looking away from the oasis, and the windows were thrown open to let in the night air. Netting stretched over the open screen kept insects away from the oil lanterns strung overhead; beyond this the night sky glittered deep and black and distant, but the stars shone crisp and bright. Viktor, who Yuuri had begun to realize had a certain acclimation to luxury, seemed subtly delighted to have a proper bed to sleep in again, and he said nothing as Yuuri stood at the window looking out at the stars, moving over to it to rearrange the pillows and then sit. “Come here,” he added after a moment, gently, and so Yuuri did, and didn’t protest when Viktor rearranged them, leaning up against an intricately carved headboard, Yuuri’s back against his chest, chin resting atop the halfling’s drying curls.

“It took Yakov and Lilia something like five hundred years to actually decide they’d be a bonded pair,” Viktor murmured quietly. “My father … he’s always had an idea in his head about restoring the high culture of the elves, the first age. Their parents, my grandparents, wrote and signed the pax with the ban side at the end of the war, but didn’t live long afterwards, so much of their power spent, long lives waning in the new age … The wheel, the tradition of it at least, it predates the four kingdoms, and it gave all of them the idea of using the four cities of the festivals as capitals, a way to distribute power to hold the revenants from the war at bay. My grandparents selected these families from among their generals, at the time; Minako’s family you know, and the house of Ji, and Christophe’s family in the West, who’d been their advisors for as long as anyone could remember. Actually there’s a phrase my mother has about it that you’d like: the healing hearts of the east, she says, the open arms of the south, and the penetrating minds of the west.” Viktor’s fingers, ever restless, always mapping out the edges of Yuuri, as though testing if he was real, drifted down Yuuri’s arms and over the backs of his hands.

“My parents have … it’s interesting, the two of them. I’d never tell you that they don’t love each other. But it’s a volatile kind of love. Maybe an ancient sort. I can’t pretend to understand it. They’re very alike and yet they’re different in every possible way that could make two people tolerate each other. Father has exacting expectations, wants to see triumph and victory, the preservation of the honor of the North, the restoration of the old ways. Mother has high standards, wants to be involved in beauty-making but is uninterested in conquest. I don’t even really know why I’m telling you all of that.” He chuckled dryly, and Yuuri caught one of his hands, and turned it over, tracing the lifelines on Viktor’s palm while he spoke. “Except maybe to try and explain away some of my own bad behavior, when I was younger. It made me afraid of finding a love like that, of being hopelessly attached to someone I couldn’t hope to understand — no, not that even, they know each other perfectly — someone I couldn’t live with, because they can’t manage it, and always I was running back and forth between Ast Petyriel and Mosciren, spending this decade or that waiting for them to reconcile. Meanwhile Christophe … Christophe is heir to the West, the military advisors of a past my father’s spent his whole life hearing about, and the Princes we built perhaps the closest relationship with. Yakov has never agreed with the South’s decision to open Shen-Osheth to so many non-elvish influences, and while Minako is my mother’s student, for years he saw Hasetsuil as soft…”

“… I got it in my head back then, that maybe I could just will my way into love. What Yakov and Lilia have always feels dangerous, sharp as swords, and I thought it’d be better to find something more comfortable, less risky. Safe. Christophe should speak for himself but there’s no denying that back then literally no one would’ve been upset if we’d walked into the halls of Mosciren or Vaux Romanith and announced a soulbond. That’s how I decided that if you worked at it hard enough, you could make yourself fall in love with someone. Maybe because I decided it he felt obligated to play along. Or maybe he’d reached the same conclusions. This was back before either of us had familiars, early students of magic, unquestionably a foolish idea but nonetheless safe and easy and fine. Like child’s play at actual love.” Yuuri closed his eyes, and tried to drift into a picture of a younger Viktor, a younger Christophe. It was hard to imagine, like some Viktor he couldn’t quite reach.

“Just two idiots pretending.” Viktor, on the other hand could see it perfectly, those lazy, selfish days. He glanced down at Yuuri, looked over his shoulder at their hands together, wondered how he’d thought he could’ve ever been satisfied with the production of a kiss, nearly put on for a show, instead of this simple ease and the idle hunger of his fingertips. Touching Christophe had been a routine, something he’d constructed to practice. Touching Yuuri happened like it was breathing; he never noticed when he did it and yet when examined it was the actual miracle, utterly unconscious but the stuff of life itself, like blood and air and heartbeats. “Then the spirits came. I got the stag, all snow and ice at first and then after the winter began to loosen coming into Imbolc, water; Christophe came up to Mosciren with his python, we realized we’d be completing the wheel together. Feelings, he told me, back then; I’m hoping Minako can explain it better but I just look at people and I see them differently … Flashes of color, I guess, in auras, or connections, little insights he could never really explain to me. Whatever it was made it obvious we didn’t love each other, not in that way, but we set off for Imbolc and the way he explained it later, not that I had any appetite for being understanding, was that he’d been petting the stag — I used to let people do that, back then, and made this half-hearted, empty wish about how much easier it would be, how much more convenient for everyone, if only I just loved him.”

Yuuri’s breath caught, thinking back to Viktor’s words in the middle of the desert, out on the sunset road:

The lucky stag. Catch it and it’ll give you anything you want. Don’t you think I know how dangerous that is? Don’t you think I’ve lived it?

“That’s how you found out,” he said, suddenly horrified. “About having two magics.”

“That’s how I found out,” Viktor agreed, and suddenly it wasn’t enough to simply sit in the loose circle of his arms. Yuuri turned around, kneeling in the space between Viktor’s bent legs, studied his face in the uncertain flicker of lantern-light. “Life and fire,” Viktor murmured fondly, tilting his head a little to the side as he returned that open-ended stare, smiling softly at the way the lantern’s gentle flicker lit up the warm backlights of Yuuri’s eyes. “Fortune and water.” He reached up to sweep a hand through Yuuri’s bangs, brushing them back. “Christophe thought it was his fault, the empathy magic, it’s unpredictable and it can be amplifying in its effect; it’s why, I think, his people miss him so much. He tried to undo it, and even I remember that part, the way I kept feeling these wild swings of mood, but it was never enough because neither of us knew: it wasn’t his magic. It was mine. He says he couldn’t leave me stuck like that and pining, so off we went, around the wheel, and in retrospect I suppose it was better him than anyone else, because there are things people could do with the son of Yakov slavishly in … well, not love, I don’t think, but something like love, that I’d never had to think about before and I’ve been —“

“Careful ever since,” Yuuri finished in quiet understanding, thinking of the bitter way Viktor had laughed, brought back to health in that tent in the desert: we’d all come to you, begging … Criminal. Criminal was the word he’d used. Yuuri was beginning to understand why.

“I started a bond with him, even,” Viktor admitted, glancing off towards the open window and the subtle breeze. It was dry and hot here, but even the memory of the waiting oasis outside was a little soothing, settled his magic and therefore his nerves. “Every time he tried to pull away I panicked and so it seemed like the way to keep him. We didn’t finish it, I don’t think it would’ve worked, but … He pretended. That’s what I found so unforgivable, later. He says he figured it out at the games for Lughnasadh. I’ve always liked archery but I didn’t miss a single bullseye. So we traveled one city further, until I was back at Mosciren where he could leave me with my family to deal with the fallout, and he caught the stag again and made his second wish and the whole thing broke: I fell out of love like someone had thrown me off of a cliff, and what little bond I’d been able to force on him while under the whole spell of it snapped like a twig and I’ve never been so angry with someone in my entire life. I blamed him: my magic might’ve sealed it but who knows how strong it would’ve been on its own without the influence of his?” Viktor sighed and looked back at Yuuri. “Yakov was furious. This was before my brother was born, but gods, you could feel it in the family link, the constant, hard edge of his anger. It was a betrayal of the old order, this rejection: nobody got to just throw off the love of the High Prince like that and go unpunished. I’m not going to blame him either but it was a convenient angle for me: a way to wrap up all my hurt in outrage instead, and to insist Christophe lacked the sort of control over his powers that he’d need, left in charge of the West. With my father’s backing I came back down the King’s Road to depose him.”

For the first time, Viktor thought he detected something else in Yuuri’s gaze; something strange and conflicted and hungry, out of the bounds of the story itself. “… You look troubled,” he said, pausing for a moment.

“It’s just … It’s …” For a brief moment he’d heard Viktor’s heartbeat, steadier and calmer than his own, amidst the fires and music of Beltane, and Yuuri had fled it, terrified of that same kind of breaking. Nobody got to just throw off the love of the High Prince like that and go unpunished. “Finish your story,” he insisted, shaking his head. “It’s not relevant.”

“Isn’t it?” Viktor asked quietly, because there was a subtle undercurrent of fear and anxiety in Yuuri’s gaze that he couldn’t place. Nonetheless, he decided to proceed: “… Naturally nobody listened to me,” Viktor quipped dryly. “In their eyes I was a spoiled, scorned lover, and Christophe was their rightful leader, and that only made things worse, so we came back and removed him by force. I took the crown of the West and left Vaux Romandith in the care of the Stewards and told Christophe to leave, and now here he is, and here we are, and that’s the end of the whole, sorry tale. Two stupid and selfish princes looking for the easy road found the hard one instead. If the first age wasn’t enough of a warning about how to be careful what you wish for, maybe this ought to be.” He paused. “Do you think less of me for it?”

“No,” Yuuri murmured, definitively, sure of that much at least. His answer came swiftly and firmly enough that curiosity came to life in Viktor’s blue eyes, and so he scrambled to explain why: “… All the stories about you are … you’re a living legend, you’ll be in songs long after your parents are forgotten, Vitya …” The nickname came unconsciously and there, too, was a flickering in Viktor’s eyes, the one place where Yuuri was learning how to read his passions more plainly. Vitya. The name everyone close to him used. “They all say you’re the strongest elven mage of our era. This … it makes you … it proves you’re a real person, not one of the old gods walking the earth anew. And I … I think I understand quite a bit more about the who of who you are, and not just the what.”

“I learned something else coming out of all of this,” Viktor said carefully, with a subtly rueful smile. “Christophe wasn’t wrong, though he shouldn’t have been the first to say it …”

“You mean —“

“I’ve learned love isn’t a feeling. If it was Christophe could break anyone’s bonds, could make them, even.” Viktor leaned closer, nose to nose with Yuuri. “Love isn’t a mood,” he breathed, and his hands had once again taken on a life of their own, pulling the halfling closer. “Love is a force. Or: love is like magic. I thought all this time I could choose it, and here I am, and it’s chosen me.”

He was going to spend the rest of his life nourishing it, tending it, making it grow.

“Now I’m going to choose back,” Viktor added against the corner of Yuuri’s mouth, and Yuuri felt tears prick his eyes: “Over and over and over again if I must,” he said, and swept away the fine river of one salty streak down Yuuri’s cheek. “I decided I century ago it was better and safer to be alone but traveling the wheel again with my brother, it’s made all these memories clear as day. I stumbled on you at dawn and what this is, it’s nothing like that.”

Over and over and over again were words that did not stop reverberating through Yuuri’s bloodstream, worked their way into the marrow of his bones, and he couldn’t hide the desperation in his kiss, hoped only to soothe the hurt of it: if I must.

You’ll have to, Vitya.

You won’t have a choice.

“Yuuri,” Viktor breathed gently, his name little more than a whisper left on the soft edges of his own lips, “why are you crying?”

He owed it to Viktor to explain, somehow, but couldn’t; not now, wouldn’t ruin this.

Yuuri swallowed and told the truth that lived behind all of his fears about the future, the terror he someday needed to be able to articulate to Viktor in return:

“Because I love you too.”

- - -

Five weeks and six days after Beltane, 1017 II Age

Audible murmurs followed them through Vaux Romandith: can it be?

It is, it’s him! That’s Christophe with the High Prince, I can’t believe it —

Christophe’s expression was one of wry bemusement, and rather than make for the high redwood halls amidst the trees, he sent the mages onward and followed Viktor and Yuuri to the meadow instead.

“What?” Christophe inquired of Viktor’s back, although Viktor had said nothing, and their week at A’ve Palmera and the four day journey back had taught Yuuri to expect this of the Westerner, who picked up on things that tended to go unspoken. “It’s been a hundred years. I want to meet your baby brother.”

Viktor gave a long-suffering sigh. He’d been doing that a lot too, while they traveled, though Yuuri also sometimes caught the glimmer of mischief that lit up the blue lights in Viktor’s eyes whenever he teased back, though with Christophe it was always done in monotone, with a perfectly straight face, and none of the half-cocked, expectant smirk that gave him heart palpitations whenever it was pointed his way instead. “Pray he’s not the last person you meet.”

Yuri was a veritable storm of fury when they dismounted at the camp, rushing to give his elder brother a hard shove before whirling on Christophe, his fist already clenched. The resulting punch, from someone smaller and more petite of build, was impressive, though surely with such anger pointed in his direction Christophe must’ve known to expect it.

Nonetheless, there he was, crumpled to the ground. Yuri’s oncoming kick he caught with a narrowing of eyes, and pulled him to the ground. “The first punch was free,” he explained, standing up to dust himself off. Otabek was nearby, suddenly, and reached down to help the young Prince back to his feet. “Save the rest.” He studied Yuri a moment with that all-seeing gaze. “We settled the war some time ago, let’s try not to fight it a second time.”

“Christophe.”

“Otabek.”

Now Yuri was incredulous, and even Viktor turned to stare at the Ranger Captain, though he left the inquisition to his brother: “You know each other?”

“He’s one of the Rangers,” Christophe said, though his crooked smile was back, and even Yuuri thought it might’ve not been the whole truth: “I live in the steppes at an ancient spring that’s one of the stops for their watches. They’re from the desert. Trust me, it makes logical sense.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.”

“On what?”

“Me ever trusting you,” Yuri muttered darkly, and Otabek chuckled wryly, showing one of those rare flashes of his subtle, stoic bemusement:

“That and he’s in love with one of my tribe.”

“Ah, yes.” Christophe shrugged, as though it was some tiny, inconsequential detail; his bond with one of the nomads bent on protecting the wilds. “That too.” Those greenish hazel eyes swept over Yuri for a moment, along with the curve of a knowing smile that made the younger prince flush. All the more reason to like you, little Prince. To make such an observation aloud in front of Viktor’s little brother would’ve been unforgivable, though, worse in Viktor’s eyes than the stunt he’d pulled in A’ve Palmera, confronted with the reality of Viktor’s fondness for Yuuri and the curious, reaching interplay of their auras. “Would’ve just loved for you two to meet,” he drawled, ignoring the way Yuri stared at him, fists still clenched and at the ready. “Imagine how much more fun we could’ve had. Except he and his cohort all left for the sunset road a few weeks ago. Some spectacle off in the desert, earlier than the normal pilgrimages for this time of year; I don’t suppose you had anything to do with that?”

Viktor actually rolled his eyes. It was a gesture Yuuri had only seen in his younger brother, and he hid his smile by turning to strip the pack off of his horse. “When you start explaining yourself to the people here,” Viktor told Christophe dryly, “I want you to make sure to mention that I’ve been putting up with your terrible jokes for eleven days straight and that they’ve only gotten worse in the last hundred years.”

For only the second time, the other being Christophe’s brief moment of shock as they walked up to the oasis, Yuuri saw the Westerner hesitate, recognized a momentary flicker of dread and uncertainty in his gaze that Christophe was swift to replace. Yuuri knew those feelings all to well. The difference was: they paralyzed him, and Christophe recovered just as swiftly, actually winked. “Whose fault is that, I wonder?”

“Shut up.”

Yuri leaned over to Otabek, muttered something that sounded suspiciously like is he always like this?

“More or less.”

- - -

Oh gods. Ever since his return to Vaux Romandith Christophe had been hit with waves of fresh sentiment: wild curiosity, often, particularly from the younger generation he’d never known, who wanted to learn about their former Prince and hear of whether or not he had plans to try and resume rule. Nostalgia from the elders, people who remembered him fondly and who grafted their hopes onto him, the twist of expectation in their auras tangible and stifling as it had ever been.

This was, perhaps, his greatest secret, the one thing Viktor had never actually understood amidst all of his posturing over empathy’s potential misuses: crowds loved Christophe, but Christophe had never once loved them back.

Still there was an unavoidable nostalgia about being back here, back home. These trees were the giants that had been his friends; the maze of rope bridges and connected archways twisted over their enormous branches he remembered as clearly as though he’d never left. Slowly Christophe made his way up to the heart tree in the center of the village, stepped inside of the high hall. A small council stood there, talking to the young elf he’d known to look for in part because he remembered Jean-Jacques’ parents well:

Back when they still served at our leisure.

“Out,” said Christophe, ignoring the stares pointed in his direction; tilting his head back towards the door he’d just come through. Quickly the mages scrambled to obey, and his hazel gaze fell on Jean-Jacques. “Everyone but you.”

They’d all been curious to see him. Cautiously happy, carefully hopeful. This was the burden he and Viktor had always shared, the thing that brought them together and then tore them apart: twin princes, so easy to graft dreams and wishes onto. 

In Jean-Jacques, however, there was a steady, angry streak of resentment and a bold burst of fragile bravado, the colors of which were ferocious and loud, insisting on his attention, disrupting his thoughts. Christophe turned to face the boy (Jean-Jacques was not this, but he saw so much of himself in him that it was hard to think otherwise) who once would’ve been his Steward, in some other world, where different mistakes had been made. Let’s get this over with. “Something on your mind?” He prompted, and not for one second did Christophe feel even the slightest bit guilty about stoking the fires of Jean-Jacques’ anger.

He could see himself how insufficiently fueled it was, how quick it might be to burn all the way through.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Yeah …” Christophe hummed, then tapped his chin thoughtfully. Purposefully infuriating. “I’m going to go ahead and suggest that’s probably a lie.”

“You’re a coward,” Jean-Jacques spat, standing with his arms crossed, fists clenched into the crux of his elbows. “You come back now just because he’s decided it’s okay, instead of because we needed you. You left on his word, too, back when you owed it to everyone else to stay here.”

“Ah.” Now they were getting somewhere, Christophe thought, and he dug in a little deeper, raised his eyebrows speculatively. “Should I have fought him and died?”

“If that’s what it took.” Youth. Jean-Jacques could say that because he was removed from an older generation, from the Yakovs and Lilias left in the world who remembered what that meant. Christophe wasn’t sure Yakov had completely taken the lessons to heart, but Lilia, at least, understood it well.

“All that bravado, Jean-Jacques.” Christophe clicked his teeth together, and reached in his pack for the circlet Viktor had returned to him, holding it up idly as though inspecting some passing trinket, and not an artifact of the ancients. “… All that play-pretend courage.” Pretend was a word that made Jean-Jacques flinch, left him grinding his teeth with a subtle, telling twitch in the muscle of his cheek.

Christophe let go of the crown, let it fall to the floor with a resounding thud.

“Pick that up,” Jean-Jacques nearly shouted, unclenching his arms and crossing half the room in a series of long, swift steps. He was strong, at least, Christophe could read that much in him; there was a radiating power there if Christophe could simply get him out of his own way.

“You pick it up if it means so damn much to you,” Christophe drawled, turning his hand over to inspect his fingernails. Like he hadn’t a care in the world.

Jean-Jacques’ fury soared, precisely the ah-ha moment he’d been looking for, and he sprang for the circlet with one hand and came at Christophe swinging with the other. Christophe kicked him.

“Sloppy,” he said, and then the fight was on. You’re a boxer, are you, Jean-Jacques? Hit me with everything you’ve got.

Later, tending to his black eye and his split lip, he gave Jean-Jacques some credit: “You’ve got a better punch than I was prepared to give you credit for.” Could’ve avoided the face, perhaps, Christophe thought a little gingerly, suddenly glad that the banshee who shared in half of his thoughts and all of his heart was away on the ranges. There was a certain delight he’d learned to take in the art of being attractive to his lover, the fun little seductions that probably weren’t nearly as effective with an angry, swollen cheek.

“I don’t understand,” Jean-Jacques said, breath coming in heavy, rapid pulls, ribs bruised, fists shaking. In one of them the circlet was still in his grip, unreleased from the moment he’d picked it up. “I can’t do this.”

“And yet you have been doing it,” noted Christophe mildly, seemingly unoffended now that the fistfight was over, and all of Jean-Jacques brittle anger spent: “which I think is less of a mistake than you think. If anything the error is this: you took the whole weight of it on your shoulders alone, and if it’s any consolation, in a strange way, that’s at the root of the same mistake Viktor and I both made once.” Damn. With the split lip he couldn’t grin all the way. Viktor was going to love that. He imagined the High Prince would radiate smugness, entirely too satisfied with this trouncing. Irritating. “That’s a compliment, Jean-Jacques. Look at the company you keep.”

“So you’re not … you’re not going to stay?”

“Let’s not be hasty.” Christophe settled for a smaller smile, more elusive. “I never said that.” In truth he preferred the villa and the isolation of the oasis, the quiet that let him focus on the emotions of a handful of people at a time, instead of the chaotic swirl of hundreds or thousands even. In A’ve Palmera he had room to breathe, room to think, a place to center his focus on the people he cared the most about.

In Vaux Romandith he felt as scattered already as he had been in his youth, over-eager to buy into narratives of security and alliance. Selling his heart short for the promise of safety. “Steward of A’ve Palmera has a nice ring to it,” he said, and offered a hand out to Jean-Jacques, whose blue eyes widened in surprise: “sounds like the sort of person a prince could call on if he found himself in need of help, don’t you think?”

“… a Prince?”

“Prince Jean-Jacques, I daresay.” Christophe looked pointedly at his outstretched hand. “Lesson one was fistfights. Lesson two is evidently going to be about handshakes.”

Jean-Jacques enveloped him in a bear hug and Christophe sighed, more to himself than to anything else. Handshakes. I said handshakes. “I have this effect on people,” he muttered, and then winced. “Watch the ribs!”

- - -

“Viktor!” Christophe sounded entirely too cheerful for someone strolling along the overhead archways of Vaux Romandith with a face full of bruises. He clapped Jean-Jacques on the shoulder; Jean-Jacques who winced in subtle pain and who looked absolutely no better off. 

Viktor’s face was impassive and glacier-cool. Westerners. The Northerners trained in fighting and in the high arts, but only in the West did they settle things with duels and challenges. Yakov had once scoffed that it was the mark of impatience, an inability to wait and play the long game. Then again, Yakov had a perfect critique ready for every kingdom, knew every way in which they didn’t stand up to the golden days of old. “Yes?”

“I’ve just made Jean-Jacques Prince of the West,” Christophe announced with a lightning-quick smirk, though he winced afterwards, and poked at his fattening lip.

“I don’t think you have the authority to do that anymore,” Viktor mused idly, ignoring the way Jean-Jacques bristled as he took a moment to look contemplative. “But I suppose with the authority my father’s vested in me, we accept.”

“… I’m not the only one whose jokes have gotten worse, Vitya.”

“Get yourselves to the Halls of Medicine,” Viktor murmured, waving them off: “You both look terrible.”

- - -

Seung-gil radiated annoyance when they returned, and hadn’t even needed to say anything to explain why. Yuuri could practically feel the question: have you told him yet, what he’s in for? Yuri, too, seemed inclined to suspicion, overprotective of the brother who’d he’d only ever known at the wrong end of too many mistakes. Don’t think that just because he likes you means I will by default.

Yuri and the rest of the Northerners were a keen reminder of the one part of Viktor’s story Yuuri wanted to forget: its references to Yakov, and his expectations for his son as the heir and the someday leader of four kingdoms of high elves. He hadn’t asked the question, even though it flickered through his thoughts along with all the rest of his doubts: what will your father have to say about all this? Instead he’d endured a four day ride back from the oasis with an increasing amount of dread that Christophe must have picked up on, because he’d kept a very wide berth. Yuuri wondered how plainly the one-time Western Prince must’ve read him: how fiercely and deeply he’d come to admire and even love Viktor, and his terror and dread over a future that was going to be unavoidable by Samhain.

How much more that was going to hurt, this year, now that he had such a clear picture in his mind of an alternative, of an easy, light-filled world where he woke up every morning cradled so perfectly by the efficient, cool grace that was Viktor’s body, even at rest. A broad path wound its way out of Vaux Romandith and around the lake, forming the runner’s loop for the Lughnasadh games, and Yuuri took it to clear his thoughts, because he’d chosen it before, when he’d been on the Wheel, had won the marathon to the surprise of everyone else who hadn’t known to look at him and expect endurance.

Viktor was waiting when he came back to the meadow, coming back from a day in which he’d evidently been attending to the small council at Vaux Romandith, pretending largely as though he didn’t care about any potential changes to the Westerners’ sense of order, and failing in equal measure. Every so often his words gave him away, walking with Yuuri back to the lake to rinse off: Jean-Jacques will be made Prince. Christophe intends to tutor him.

Then, sitting back on the piece of driftwood, he asked about Yuuri’s day, offered an appreciative smile when Yuuri mentioned that he knew the running path, had circled it before, the last time he’d come to the West. “You know what I don’t understand?” Viktor asked, leaning back on his palms with an idle, contemplative look.

It was difficult to imagine Viktor not understanding something. Viktor who’d been trained for his whole life to have the world at his fingers. Yuuri shook his head. “What’s that?”

“How come I never met you when you did the Wheel. When was it…?”

“Three years ago …” This. This was at the heart of his fears. Torn between the urge to pace and the sudden need to sit down, because the world was threatening to tilt, Yuuri chose the latter, and tried to find the right words. “I didn’t make it to Mosciren. I got … sick and broke off at Ast Petyriel.” Mostly true. Technically true, even. “… My sister and Seung-gil helped me get home.”

Viktor processed this information for a beat in steady silence. Looked as though he might have wanted to ask a question. Instead he said this: “Come to Solstice with me.”

“Viktor…”

“With me,” he emphasized gently. Because it mattered. Because all this time, Yuuri’d been the halfling who happened to also be traveling on the wheel; not the fire mage Viktor had every intention of courting. Like an equal. He understood the quiet secrecy with which Yuuri carried himself, as though he wasn’t also the phoenix, didn’t have life itself pooling in his palms, but it was an injustice, too, to walk through the earth knowing that nobody else had seen the things Viktor saw.

That when they looked at Yuuri they saw someone average, instead of someone extraordinary.

“I understand, believe me,” Yuuri murmured, and he exhaled heavily. At A’ve Palmera, Viktor had been vulnerable: he’d told Yuuri his whole painful tale, had brought him along to witness his confrontation with Christophe, had revealed precisely why so many legends surrounded the lucky stag and why he never kept it corporeal, never let it be caught.

“Come to solstice. Come to Lughnasadh. Come to Samhain. You’ll love it, we light candles all over Mosciren and you can see the whole universe overhead, on a clear night —“

How could he stand here pretending, and not return the favor of that trust?

“Viktor,” Yuuri said softly, “you will never see me at Samhain.”

“What?”

“I …” It wasn’t going to be enough to sit here and let the words fall out. Yuuri moved and knelt in front of the prince, reached for Viktor’s hands, and looked up at him with such heartbreaking kindness that it made Viktor’s chest hurt. “I need to tell you something, and you’re not going to like it, but I need you to … I need you to …”

“Start from the beginning,” Viktor said, very quietly, and suddenly so terribly still. “Whatever it is, Yuuri. Start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”

In the end he had to close his eyes to begin, to tell the story of that strange morning before Imbolc when he’d felt an irrepressible urge to go out to the canyon, to sit in the torch of the east, and the ageless magic he’d encountered there with a fire that Yuuri thought could’ve consumed anything. “ … I got back and I told Minako everything, and she’s the one who told me what my guardian was, told me to be careful. But she didn’t know … Well, we’ll get there. I set out on the Wheel with my sister and Yuuko, and everything went the way you’d expect. There was a Southerner up for Imbolc, you remember Phichit, and then we took the eagles onwards to Shen-Osheth, and stayed there through Solstice. I felt … I feel so much stronger, in the Spring and the Summer. But I didn’t think anything of it, really, decided it must’ve been an effect of the life magic Minako had told me a little bit about. We crossed the desert, accompanied by some of the Rangers, and it was dangerous, but not like what we just saw … My sister’s really good with illusions, and it helped us stay hidden.”

Nervous, now, because so far he’d only told the harmless parts of the story, the easier bits, Yuuri drew in a shaky breath. Viktor shook one of his hands free to sweep his fingers along Yuuri’s jaw, and instinctively Yuuri opened his eyes and looked up. The High Prince’s gaze was blue and patient and clear, reminded him of the sea on its calm days looking out from Hasetsuil. “… It was after Lughnasadh that I started to feel it. Under the weather. We started on the King’s Road up towards Ast Petyriel and I got this rattling cough, kept oversleeping … Still, we kept going, with the idea that I’d take a rest at Ast Petyriel and catch up to everyone else a few days later, once I started feeling better. The rest of the revelers went onwards up to Mosciren, and Mari and I stayed behind. That’s when Seung-gil showed up. We’d just decided that I’d try to ride up the pass, except I blacked out trying to get onto my horse, caught not by my sister but this stoic faced banshee I’d never seen before in my life …”

“… His familiar was this three headed dog. I’ve never felt more instinctively afraid of something in my life as I am of that thing, but he said he’d come from the Rangers, who’d told him about me, and he knew about the man I’d seen at the canyon, back before Imbolc. Mari and I went with him back to his quarters, and he told me the part of the phoenix story that Minako didn’t know, the part he says the aes sidhe all forgot…”

“Which is?”

“The first person to ever have a phoenix spirit was the first halfling,” Yuuri murmured carefully, quietly: “the first child of the first elf who ever died.”

Viktor’s gaze darkened subtly, though he made a concentrated effort to control his expression: “… Go on.”

“Seung-gil had this to say. He said the phoenix is a bird that comes out of the ashes of a death.” Yuuri said. “Every year it rises in the Spring, and every year it —“ His breath caught, and he nearly choked on the words.

“It dies in the winter,” Viktor said, with sudden and terrible realization, and Yuuri looked on helplessly as the riddle did its work in Viktor’s eyes; as Viktor’s jaw tightened and his breath became shorter, all things Yuuri knew entirely too much about because he knew precisely how the world could turn itself upside down all of a sudden, how it could twist in on itself and leave him nowhere. “So — so you’re —“

“Viktor you know what nearly happened to you in the desert,” Yuuri muttered miserably. “You know what happens when someone loses all of their magic. You will never see me on Samhain because for the past three years of my life, I’ve spent Samhain dying.”

“No.” Only Viktor could stare at a fact like that and tell it no. “No," he repeated, still in the desperate thick of this denial: "... Not this time. Yuuri, we’ll figure it out. I’ll think of something, my mother, someone —“

“Maybe you will,” Yuuri replied sadly, and a part of him desperately wanted to believe it.

“Tell me that you think that I can.”

Did he think that? My family has attended to the phoenix for centuries, Seung-gil had said, cold and grave and stoic. Among the ban side, the person who bears this responsibility is the Reaper. The last one was my mother, who knew the last phoenix was ready to let go, to pass the power onwards … “I think if anyone could, it would be you,” Yuuri murmured softly, and because tears had spilled over onto Viktor’s fine, high cheekbone, he suddenly realized he was crying himself. “… but I … when you say things like come to Solstice with me, or when you told me the story about that part-bond you had, and how it broke, Viktor …”

“… This is why you fled at Beltane. You would have done it, otherwise.” Viktor’s eyes widened. You were protecting me. Yuuri hadn’t even known the half of it, then, and still he’d run: “The first step of the bond, I mean. That was as much you as it was me.”

“Oh, gods, yes.”

Viktor, silent for a moment, counted his breath. “I wasn’t lying when I said I would choose you,” he said, carefully. “Over and over and over again.”

“I know you weren’t.” There was no doubting Viktor when his mind was bent towards something. “… But it won’t affect just you, Vitya. There was a reason Seung-gil came with such urgency, wanted to get me home. He did, just in time to see my family, and then he made it seem like we’d left, so that there was a story for my absence… I don’t … I don’t know what happens, I never remember anything, but I was back, suddenly, a little while before Imbolc, and before I knew what hit me our whole family sprang back to life in my mind, and when I saw them again … my parents looked terrible. Mari stayed in bed for a week … Viktor, maybe you think you can withstand what happens, but will you subject Yuri to it? Maybe the Queen endures it … I only saw your mother very briefly and I hardly remember her other than my impression that she’s a little bit like you, high-minded and fine, but … can your father?” Yuuri trembled, fought back the urge to vomit. “… I’m sorry, Viktor. You are sitting there offering me the whole, perfect world, and your love, and there’s nothing on earth that I want more, and all I have to give you in return is whole handfuls of suffering and sorrow —“

“That is not true.” Yuuri looked up, and Viktor’s eyes shone bright through his tears. “You saved my life. You did it long before that day in the desert. You flew in over the horizon one morning and you made a world that I’d held at arms length for a century saturated with color again. You danced with me at Beltane without a moment’s hesitation, like it was something you were born to do. You made me re-examine the wisdom of a life set apart. You have done all of that.” Viktor wiped his face, and drew in an unsteady, quivering breath.

“… I will speak to my family,” he said, after a moment. “I will convince them that we can handle this in the worst case, but we are going to fix it. After that, if I ask you again, come with me to Solstice, will your answer be yes?”

How had he earned this; Viktor’s willingness to take on and shoulder that pain?

How was he ever going to repay it?

“Yes,” Yuuri said, because he’d never wanted anything more, because the dance alone had been just an inkling of this purest form of magic, of the brightest dream he knew:

“Over and over and over again, if I have to.”