we never belonged to you
Ten days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age
As they rode into A’ve Palmera, weary and exhausted, Christophe barely accepted the welcome of the mages of his house. His priority was helping Rafael into the villa, shuffling his lover away for much-needed rest. “The mages can show you where the stone is,” he murmured to Viktor in passing, pausing only for a moment. Once he’d been the sort of person who’d given Viktor advice and been heeded. It was difficult to know whether or not that was still the case. “… no good decision is made unrested, Vitya,” Christophe warned, the nickname at once familiar and not, when it fell from his lips.
Yet it had been an easy habit to resume, and the advice itself was sound.
“Take the room you used last time,” Christophe added, and then he and Rafael were off, and Viktor and Yuuri were left in villa’s entryway. There Viktor hesitated for a moment, looking at Christophe’s retreating back, before he, too, trudged off towards the guest wing. Yuuri felt him reaching out for the Northerners, swept into a channel of thoughts amongst the royal aes sidhe that he still felt like an interloper in.
We’ve arrived at A’ve Palmera. The situation is … Viktor paused, chose his words with care. … tenuous. Yura, when will you get here?
Beka says another day and a half, if we hurry. Tell your halfling that his sister’s been very helpful.
I can hear you, thought Yuuri, slightly amused, and Viktor turned to look at him with a brief glimmer of bemusement, little more than a wavering candle’s worth, or a lightning strike: there and then gone again.
Lilia added: I’ve been doing some reading. The last eruption, as I thought, was in the first age.
And? Yakov’s voice, even in this context, still felt like stones tumbling through the collective consciousness: hard edges that promised damage, left bruises.
It was … fairly catastrophic, as far as I can tell. Ancient ban side settlements south of A’ve Palmera were completely destroyed with relatively little warning. They are not students of elemental magic and I can’t tell if anyone made use of any wayseeing stones — the fires raged for weeks before help arrived. Some accounts seem to indicate something like a drought, or perhaps the smoke lingered overlong, it’s a little difficult to say. It may have helped transform the landscape to make it as inhospitable as it is today. Doubt was an uncommon note, in Lilia’s tone, and she subsequently confessed to its cause: … Most of the work was only transcribed by one or two aes sidhe, and they aren’t contemporary.
The banshees never do write anything down properly, Yakov grumbled, which might’ve made Yuuri laugh, dryly and without humor, if he wasn’t so, so tired. The word were at once a compliment to Lilia’s research and an insult to the ban side that Yakov still clearly misunderstood. Old habits were hard to break.
We’ll discuss it with the Princes when the council convenes, Viktor promised. He seemed to know to expect the knock that followed them, just a few moments after their arrival in the guest room; accepted a spare set of robes from one of Christophe’s mages and then shut the door. … Right now we need rest. Mother, will you send word to Vaux Romandith that the Steward of A’ve Palmera is back in his residence and has arrived safely? Jean-Jacques will be anxious to hear from us.
I will do so.
Thank you. Viktor turned his attention away from them, and then reached for Yuuri, tilted his head down for the softest kiss. He began, without preamble, to help him undress. “Do you have any idea,” the prince asked quietly, as his fingers drifted over collarbones, down muscle, “… how much of a miracle you are?”
“I’m nothing special,” Yuuri mumbled, shaking his head with a self-deprecating smile as he reached for the hem of Viktor’s shirt, drew the tunic up and over the prince’s head. Tonight the challenge would be to not fall asleep in the baths, boneless and tired, and as tempting as it was to just climb into bed and sleep he couldn’t quite manage it. There were simple desires left to indulge: he wanted to shake the dust off, wanted to give into the needs of his hands, undo Viktor’s braids and then pick the tangles out of his hair. It’d be reassuring, simple, sweet. “I assure you.”
Viktor shook his head, led them over to the tub, drew water. For a moment Yuuri thought he might’ve left things there, agreed to disagree, but he should’ve known better: Viktor never settled. “… We believe the gods left this place to its own devices, for better or worse, long ago. That’s part of the story of the havens, the last stop before one travels back to them,” he murmured, and reached for Yuuri, who came close, who settled so perfectly and comfortably within the circle of his arms that Viktor was sure this was what they’d been made for. “I don’t know what I believe about all that,” he admitted, because if there were gods and they’d ever been good then there was no explanation for the present state of the world; if they’d been bad, there was no reason for Yuuri to be with him now, a good and perfect gift. “… but I’m reasonably sure whatever molds they left were broken with you.”
It was hard to argue, hard to tell Viktor he was wrong, when his certainty glimmered across their bond together, nearly enough to convince Yuuri that he was telling the truth. Nearly enough to see himself through Viktor’s eyes. It was entirely beyond Yuuri to make Viktor, of all people, a liar.
He’d have to live up to it. He fell asleep promising to do that, tired but safe and oh-so-warm, drinking up the slow dribble of Viktor’s sleepy kisses like honey, like ambrosia.
- - -
“… I told him it wasn’t your time,” Christophe admitted, putting together a poultice of strong, sweet-smelling herbs to apply to the last of Rafael’s bruises, to administer to all of the the places where he still vividly recalled wounds.
Rafael laid back on their bed, propped up one elbow, as though he didn’t entirely trust the arm that had taken the brunt of the blow, deflecting the sharp crack of the dragon’s tail. “Did you, now?” He asked, closing his eyes for a moment. Christophe paused, fully aware of Rafael’s inspection of his thoughts and his motives within their bond. It was intimate, this searching, and he drank in the flicker of thoughtfulness in Rafael’s mien, smiled at the precise moment that it turned into subtle approval. “You wouldn’t have lied,” Rafa hummed, almost to himself, and the ranger didn’t need to explain why that mattered to him: why it was important that the aes sidhe he’d let get so intwined in every aspect of his life honored even the final aspects of it. “You told the truth as you saw it. I suppose I should thank you for that.”
“Thank me next time by not shutting me out,” Christophe replied, momentarily serious as he began to apply the salve. “When I said I pledged my living and my dying I meant it.”
It seemed kinder to keep you from harm, Rafael thought, but Christophe could sense the apology beneath, Rafa’s shifting assent to his request, framed up by newfound respect and the certainty that had Christophe believed it was his time to die he would’ve said so, and done what the aes sidhe were so terrible at: would have embraced the art of letting go.
It’s much too late to protect me from what you are, Christophe added, and when he was done with the salves, satisfied with what medicine had to offer, he stretched out nearby and let Rafael creep closer, swept his fingers through the ranger’s brown curls. Or you from me.
I don’t require any protecting from you, Rafael teased, turning his head ever so slightly to press his lips to Christophe’s jaw, curling into his body heat. He’d missed this; Viktor’s reappearance had sent Christophe far from A’ve Palmera, which meant that he’d come back to the villa more than once to find their bedroom empty, to sleep alone. It was something he’d gotten used to out in the wilderness, but didn’t like here. Here, they were supposed to be together. … Unless we’re talking about towels.
His lover was unrepentant, with dangerous hands, and a sweep of feelings that could get them into trouble if he wasn’t particularly careful. Purple magic hovered in the air, slithered across Rafael’s exposed skin, protective and possessive all at once, and then it settled into him with the radiant warmth of summer sun. “I prefer you naked, it’s true.”
Christophe didn’t need to see Rafael’s answering smirk in the dark, but he had needed to hear the soft sound of his laughter, short and quiet as it may have been. “Ruthless,” he hummed, fondly, which was enough for Christophe to push aside his worries long enough to sleep. It was not yet tomorrow. Rafael had taught him about all of the crucial moments that convened in the present, and Rafael was here, now.
- - -
Eleven days after Imbolc, 1018 II Age
Sickening. That was the word Yuri might’ve used, if asked to describe what it was like to look on his brother and Yuuri curled up in bed. The halfling lay on his back with Viktor curled into his side, his brother’s head pillowed on the fire mage’s chest as though he’d fallen asleep listening to his heartbeat. Yuuri’s fingers were still tangled in the platinum silk of the prince’s hair, and there was a softness between them that Yuri didn’t have the right words for. He might have shouted his disdain for the entire situation, except for the tranquility of Viktor’s face, a comfort and contentment that he’d never really gotten a chance to witness.
Bliss was what Viktor might have called it, but Viktor was clearly a sentimental idiot.
“Oi,” the blonde snapped, and reached over to shake his older brother’s shoulders. “You going to sleep all day, or what?”
Yura …
“Do you know how many people I had to boss around to get up here?” Viktor was pretty sure the answer was two, because the entire oasis ran on a mere fraction of what had once comprised Christophe’s court, but to Yuri it seemed to be the principle of the thing that mattered more than its precise details. “Sleeping royalty my arse,” he added, as Viktor stirred and rubbed the sleep from his eyes; Yuuri, disturbed, sat up and did the same. “They lectured me about your privacy! You know when privacy would’ve been useful? When you were busy falling in love with this other idiot back at solstice in Vaux Romandith, when we were all still sharing a tent.”
“That’ll do, Yura.” If he hadn’t been awake before, Viktor certainly was now. Next to him Yuuri yawned and stretched, which was the very definition of a distraction: the arch of his spine, the graceful reach of his arms …
“Hey, pay attention!” Yuri’s eyes crinkled subtly around their edges but he did not smile. “Beka went to go get Christophe, I guess. Do you want me to start making the calls for council?”
“Please,” said Viktor, calmly. “We’ll be there soon.”
Yuri wagged a finger in his face. “Reminder, in case you’ve forgotten: everyone Beka loves is in danger right now. No morning funny business. I’ll know.”
I have some semblance of self-control, Yura, Viktor snapped back, though even he knew what the blonde meant. There was something about Yuuri in the mornings. The light of sunrise favored him.
It’s nearly noon, moron, his brother scoffed. See you in a bit.
- - -
Otabek had not bothered to have a conversation with any of Christophe’s staff. Instead, he’d climbed up to the balcony and then helped himself in via a window, which seemed easier. Ideally this time Rafael and the aes sidhe would be decent, at least. The last time he’d played this little prank, it had yielded embarrassing results, nearly as embarrassing as other memories he had of this same place, growing up, of being a wayward teen whose hair Rafael patiently held back while he puked, drunk on far too much thistle-wine at one of the festivals of the moon. How many times had he been here, to this oasis, before running off to join Yakov’s court?
Too many to count, perhaps. He had never ridden the ranges with Rafael; had grown up in a different village, but sometimes their paths intersected, and the patrols of his family swept through A’ve Palmera in seasons when both Christophe and Rafael were in residence. The two of them together were always in good spirits, and they knew exactly how to entertain. There had been something about watching them, back when he’d been an adolescent, something that had made him think about the sort of person he wanted to be, someday; someone as assured as Rafa, as willing to come into the world just the way it was and exist. Someone who could love the way Rafael loved, with easy, languid grace, in a way that could nearly be called careless and not be an insult.
And not just that. Together, Christophe and Rafael challenged every conventional thought. When had an aes sidhe last loved a ban side so fully? The stories hardly spoke of it. Yet Christophe and Rafael were real, and what was between them was real, and when he’d been a boy he’d demanded answers from Rafa, because the aes sidhe had ruined the whole world once, hadn’t they?
Maybe they did, Rafa had said, with all of his easy wisdom, able to move through the world with such perfect insight and clarity that Beka had envied him, growing up. But to hold the actions of people who died before Christophe was even born against him doesn’t seem like something we should do, don’t you think?
What do you mean?
I mean that to harbor that kind of resentment is to live in the past, which isn’t our way. When you look on him with the eyes of the present, what do you see now?
All moments were crucial moments. The idea of their reconciliation had stayed with him for years, and when he’d come to the conclusion that the situation at the cauldron was unsustainable, that carrying on herding revenants for another ten centuries wasn’t going to keep the ranges safe, Otabek had turned his back on all the things he’d thought he’d known and marched steadily north with one aim in mind: to learn to see the high elves the way Rafael could, for who they were now, not what their ancestors had been. For that, he now had Yuri’s heartbeat echoing faintly beyond his own whenever he thought of the blonde, which wasn’t quite always, but often, frequent enough to be unsettling because when he’d set out for the north, Yura had not been what he’d had in mind.
More importantly, though, he’d seen the whispers of smoke from the cauldron with his own eyes, knew what that meant. “Rafa,” Otabek murmured, reaching for his mentor’s shoulder, and then, after a moment, also for Christophe’s, because Christophe had been one of them for decades now, “Christophe, wake up.”
Christophe came to first, sleepy, confused, and then he’d flashed that dangerous grin of his, made his jokes and laughed into the promise of darkness. “Honey, wake up,” he cooed at Rafael, batting his eyelashes. “The prodigal son returns.”
- - -
They met together in an alcove on the second floor, loosely gathered around the faint glow of the wayseeing stone. Viktor moved towards his brother, in the middle, and Otabek found himself gravitating towards Seung-gil, who’d silently chosen a place near the windows. He was followed by Rafael and Christophe, and so together they made for a cluster of ban side, unexpected for this type of council. Yuuri lingered a little ways behind the two princes, near his sister, and though the two of them had each tried to pretend that they weren’t deeply relieved to see each other, they certainly hadn’t managed to fool Christophe in the slightest: the two siblings stood shoulder-to-shoulder, touching just enough to be reassured that they’d made their dangerous flights successfully and without incident.
Yuri had been the one to trigger the chain of summons that linked the other five stones together; first he’d called to Lilia, in Ast Petyriel, and the chain had continued onwards from there, alerting Yakov in the high alcazar of Mosciren, who’d thundered for Jean-Jacques in the great heartwoods of Vaux Romandith. Jean-Jacques, in turn, activated the call for Guang Hong in the council of Shen-Osheth, and Guang Hong had turned his own thoughts East, until Minako answered for Hasetsuil.
“Good,” Yakov said brusquely, “you’re all here. High Prince Viktor, you requested this summons. The council will hear your business.”
“… About two days ago we received word of trouble at the cauldron,” Viktor explained. “Yuri and I had just completed the Wheel in Hasetsuil when B — when Otabek, who is a member of the Northern Court and one of the ban side Rangers — heard the song of one of his tribe on the western wind and suggested we return to the village. His insight proved correct: Jean-Jacques had activated the stone at Vaux Romandith, and was waiting with Minako to inform us that he, too, had heard of trouble via the steward of A’ve Palmera …”
“The steward of A’ve Palmera?” Guang Hong echoed, to which Christophe stepped forward, more into view, and flashed a wry grin.
“Present and accounted for,” he chirped, and drank in the younger Prince’s surprise with wry bemusement. “That’s unbecoming, Guang Hong, I’ve been gone, not dead…”
“Your exile has not cured you of speaking out of turn,” Yakov muttered. “Among many other bad habits.”
“Though perhaps he should speak,” Viktor interjected carefully, before any of the arguing could get worse, “… if only to introduce the ranger whose story it is to tell.”
“I will do so gladly,” Christophe murmured graciously. “Albeit with some regret. I wish he had a different tale to spin. Like Otabek, Rafael is a Captain of the Rangers, and he’s the one who went to investigate.” He glanced backwards at the brunette, who had observed the whole exchange thus far with absent interest, and smiled subtly. “I suppose I ought to vouch for his intelligence and courage, or tell you of the strength of his character, but he did marry me, so …”
“With no regrets. Let’s not waste time,” Rafael added, as he stepped towards the stone. Viktor stepped back to make room, and fell out of the picture it presented in the five other cities. “Typically I travel with two others across the northern part of the ranges; we travel in a loop from A’ve Palmera south to the cauldron, back up through the outpost and again at the oasis; looking for revenants, usually, trying to keep them contained and away from the borders. Five days ago the steppes were shaken by an earthquake, which is not uncommon, but the aftershocks didn’t cease, and a day afterwards I thought I detected a trace of smoke off to the south. Traveling to the cauldron itself is treacherous, and when we arrived we were greeted by two terrible pieces of news: the fresh simmering of the caldera, and a trail of magma, and an injured dragon, nesting there. I … distracted it long enough for my companions to each make for the outposts to carry news, so that our people might be prepared …”
“What is that thing, anyway?” Yuri asked, suddenly, recalling the giant shadow that had overtaken him on the desert road, and trying but failing to repress a sudden shiver when he remembered the way Viktor had thrown himself in front of it.
“I am not sure. I think that question is perhaps best directed to Otabek. He has as much experience with the cauldron as anyone, by now…”
Otabek? Otabek knew? Yuri turned to look at him, unable to hide a subtle frown. “… Beka?”
“I’m not completely convinced I know either,” Otabek murmured, somewhat reluctantly.
“You must have seen something,” Rafael encouraged quietly. “What else made you ride for the north?”
“Please, Otabek.” Lilia’s voice was determined. “I have little knowledge of these matters. Even your suspicions may prove useful.”
He sighed. “… My family has watched the southern ranges for generations,” Otabek explained, in his stoic, quiet way. “Growing up I struggled to put aside my sense that something is not right with the central lands … all of our legends say that the cauldron is the font of creation, and yet it’s blighted land, still devastated from the first age, and it feels … it feels sick, to me. After a thousand years you’d think something might finally grow on those slopes but nothing ever does. When I got strong enough I took more patrols to monitor it, thought I might figure something out. I came to the conclusion that the efforts of the Rangers, as they currently are, might be … well, they’re containing it, this illness. But I think they’ll ultimately prove futile. We cannot hold these things back forever.” He glanced into the stone for a moment, studying Yakov and Lilia’s stern faces, reflected back, and then looked away from them to study Yuri instead. At this precise moment the blonde was doing a remarkable job of imitating his two parents, watching him with a neutral, cool expression. “In all of our stories the aes sidhe are to blame,” Otabek admitted softly. “Over-eager, over-reaching, too determined to leave their mark on the world. Yet one of them had handfasted my mentor, before I was even born, was mischievous and kind, too complex a figure for the simplicity of the old stories. So I left, thinking I might get the contradiction square in my own mind, learn for myself what the people who I supposed were my enemies were like.”
Yakov’s eyes narrowed ominously. “You came to the Northern court asking to serve it convinced that we were enemies?” He asked.
“Please don’t insult us both by pretending you did not consider the possibility when you agreed,” Otabek replied swiftly. “I can suffer the discourtesy but the rest of the courts are perfectly aware their King is not an idiot.”
“… The insolence of the young, in this age,” Yakov grumbled, but he waved a hand, dismissive. The point was not false. “My son asked you about the dragon.”
“In our stories, the revenants are leftover from the first age, the untended guardians of magic that there are no longer enough ban side to possess. If that is correct, then …”
“Then what?”
“Then the dragon may be part of a legacy Otabek is familiar with,” Seung-gil supplied calmly, filling in the spaces of Otabek’s hesitation with calm fact. The Ranger stood silent while he spoke, clenching his fists until his nails bit into his palms. “Its similarity to the wyvern is too marked to mistake.”
“There was a great warrior from our council who was killed in battle just before the end of the great war of the first age,” Otabek added finally, though he made himself look away, fixing his eyes on the distant horizon through the dusty windowpanes. “… They say we sang of his loss for months. His death made way for the pax.”
Rafael chimed in, moving forward to clap Otabek on the shoulder. “He was Otabek’s great-great-Uncle,” he explained, gently, and Otabek looked up at him with subtle gratitude. How could he have explained it, the threadbare wish that all this might be remade new, the unintended burden left by this ancient legacy that threatened to spoil every landscape he held dear?
Yet to kill it would be to kill a part of himself, in some strange way.
“In all of the songs his spirit guardian is a great dragon.”
“Another shadowmancer?” Viktor inquired.
“… Yes, but not just. Rather more like your magic, if the stories are true.” Otabek looked up and met Viktor’s gaze. “Chaos. Entropy.”
An understanding passed between them then, and Viktor bowed his head, dropping his chin into a waiting palm with a thoughtful expression. “Ah,” he said. “That’s unfortunate.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Jean-Jacques piped in, shaking his head slowly.
“I think I do.” Yuri’s voice was quiet, calm. Otabek turned to look at him, exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “The revenants are corrupted original magicks, echoes of famili — guardians — things that somehow got twisted and corrupted in the war. One of them was this … chaos, the stuff that makes things fall apart, and it’s been at the cauldron this whole time, brewing, falling apart more, getting worse for centuries, gathering strength but in the wrong way … And now it’s corporeal, it’s a dragon again, but we’ve hurt it and it’s gone back to the only place it knows to lick its wounds. But it’s in the worst possible place for magic like that to be out of control. It’s been making the cauldron more volatile all along just by existing, all these years. Not because it’s malicious. Because it doesn’t know any better. Now it’s hurt, too. It’s lashing out. That’s what’s triggering the caldera to be active again, after all this time. That imbalance.”
“You mean to say magic is sentient?”
Rafael seemed to find that question amusing, and he cast a smart glance towards Jean-Jacques. “What did you think it was, all this time? Happy coincidence, to get something so suited to you?”
“This one’s clever,” Lilia murmured with what was nearly a smile as she looked through the stone at Rafael, and Jean-Jacques flushed in response, expression thoughtful while he contemplated the idea.
“We have to get rid of it,” Yakov declared. “I’ll seal the whole place up in stone if I must.”
“Yes,” Seung-gil muttered finally, his cold voice dripping with sarcasm, “you go and do that. Surefire way to die in a blaze of glory, at least, at the end of your long and ridiculous reign …”
“Excuse you?”
“It’s very like an aes sidhe to bury a problem and declare it gone,” Seung-gil snapped. “You can’t make the cauldron bend to your will. I have terrible news for you, Yakov: the world does not think it has a King. These things are ancient. They do not yield. They will not simply go into the veil because you march in and order them to.”
“… Is that what they need?” Yuuri asked suddenly, before Yakov could interject in fury. “Are they supposed to go beyond?”
“We’re not going up there to murder revenants,” Seung-gil said coldly. “We are not.”
“That isn’t what he’s suggesting,” Viktor replied swiftly, with ice in his tone. “You of all people ought to know better.”
A thoughtful silence descended over the gathered room, and it spread across five different cities before Yuri looked up suddenly, and fixed his eyes on the halfling. “What did you do to them,” he asked suddenly. “What did you do when we were on the sunset road?”
“That was …” Yuuri glanced at the wayseeing stone, somewhat uncomfortable; Guang Hong and Jean-Jacques had not yet been sworn into his secret; did not know what had transpired over Samhain and thereafter. Viktor understood without words; moved behind him and draped his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders, reassuring and solid. The princes will not betray you. I will see to it. “… that was entirely the phoenix,” Yuuri said softly, relaxing into Viktor’s chest.
“Phoenix?” Guang Hong asked, which Yuri ignored, waving off the detail for now. It was a story that could be told some other time.
“Could you do it again?”
“… Lost me again,” Jean-Jacques pointed out, and Viktor looked down at Yuuri for a long moment, solemn, ignored the way the rest of the room, one by one, arrived at the same conclusion Yuri had come to. Yuuri shrank away from their gazes, looked down at the floor, and Viktor turned him around slowly, tilted his chin up, sought out his gaze.
I want you to understand that you can tell them no, he thought fondly, sweeping a hand along Yuuri’s cheekbones. That you have every right to be frightened or to think it’s too big a task.
Viktor, I —
If, on the other hand, you’re willing to try, I want you to know something else, too:
What?
Everyone here will be with you.
But it’s so dangerous, they could all get hurt ...
It’s too big a task to take on all alone, Yuuri. “We promised to share each other’s burdens, did we not?” Viktor asked quietly, ignoring the gathered stares around them.
“I don’t know,” Yuuri admitted finally, and he looked away from Viktor finally, turned to meet Yuri’s sharp stare. This was easier, somehow, than facing into the council of princes assembled in the wayseeing stone, easier than promising the collection of ban side false hope. “… but I’d be willing to try.”
“We’re coming with you.” Christophe was the one who spoke, but it was Otabek who moved, who took a knee, followed by Rafael, and then Christophe. Seung-gil stared at the three of them for a moment, then slowly did the same.
“In this matter,” Otabek said quietly, directing the words to Yuuri, “… the ban side are at your service.”
“I’m coming, too.” Mari chimed in, reaching over to clasp her brother’s shoulder. “Mom and Dad’ll never forgive me if you do something stupid and get yourself properly killed.”
“Get up, all of you,” Yuri muttered, staring at the ban side. Even though he recognized the gesture had been directed towards Yuuri and not to his brother, he knew how costly it was to make. The blonde extended a hand to Otabek, who they both knew didn’t need the actual help coming to his feet. What was it Viktor had said once? Ah, yes. “You bow to no one.”