Archive of Our Own

Arrayed in precise masses before you, the invading horde marches across the lowlands. From a distance, they look like so many ants, monstrous regiments of them making a gleaming tide over the low rolling hills. Their fires have been visible to you for a week now as they come ever closer, and you rode hard to match them.

The soft rattle of an unmuffled bridle sounds behind you, your father’s most trusted general riding up to gaze down at the scene. His face is grave and square, hair dark as yours and his eyes black as pitch. He sees what you see, and the grimness writ into the lines of his expression is the only verdict you need. You were expecting an army, yes, but somehow, you were not expecting this one.

“It’s a fight we won’t win,” the General says, his hand resting low on the sword at his hip. Though it is summer, the cool mountain air is brisk around you both. Down in the lowlands, it will not be so.

“There’s no chance of it?” you ask, hating yourself for the weakness in your voice.

“We can die for it,” he says, and in his voice you hear the grief of a man who would die before seeing his people crushed under that mass, “but we won’t stop them. Not with those numbers.”

“We hold the pass,” you say. It’s futile, but you can’t help running over the same words you’d told your father, again and again, reckless and hopeful and terrified all at once.

“We hold the pass,” the General says, “but they will stack bodies on us until they can climb the mountains with the weight of blood and bone.”

You catch a glimpse, in the distance, of a shape rising over the army, less than a day’s worth of marching away now. At first, it looks like a particularly large bird, but you’ve heard the stories—you know what it means. The gleam of sunlight off of gilded feathers and armor, visible even from here, is all the confirmation you need.

Aurelius the Conqueror flies above his army, and the gold gleam of his feathers marks the death of your kingdom. So it has been with all your allies that fell before you. So it will be with all the others that follow.

There is a peace treaty in vellum sitting in your tent, unsigned. In theory, an offer of peace—Aurelius knows that seizing the passes into the valleys beyond your kingdom will be difficult, and he is a man that prefers to keep his army strong for other threats. In practice, it is a ransom. Your life for the life of your people. Depraved as he is, he rewrote the laws of his Empire a decade ago to allow for it, despotic and tyrannical in how he toys with tradition.

Your jaw aches with how hard you clench your teeth. If you hold the pass—and you can hold the pass forever but not for long enough—his army will sweep into your kingdom and slaughter your people. He will seize your coffers and set his own men to governorship of your lands, garrison his armies where they ought never step foot, all that he might use the military advantage of your territory for his own gain.

“Bring me the marriage contract and a messenger hawk,” you say, staring hard at the shining curve of wings too far in the distance for even the most powerful longbow. “I will sign it.”

Your lands, held in the cradle of the mountains, have had a long history of bloodshed. Though the God of Many Hands wraps Their fingers around your people, it was not always so; this is what your tutors have taught you. The mountains isolate, but your people are not nearly so removed from the rest of the world that you have forgotten your history.

Over a thousand years ago, the Julian Empire formed low in the south and far to the west, caught close and tight to the sea. Their Gods were mighty, and lifted them high, higher still, spreading the greatness of the Empire to all reaches of the land. There is no place in the world the Julian Empire has not touched, even so far north that the men are made of ice, even so far south that the fertile lands turn to desert. It was only once their gods began to quarrel that the Julian empire faltered, their mighty roads left unrepaired and their mighty armies turning on each other.

It started with an Emperor that declared one God higher than all the others; though there had always been a rulership of the Gods, to acknowledge all the others had always been vital. As their supplicants began to fracture and fray, so too did the bonds between the Gods themselves, until it was brother against brother, son against father. Such quarrels were not uncommon, but this was not a quarrel. This was a war.

In the end, the Emperor got his wish but at a desperate price. The Julian Empire shattered on those fractures, the Gods turning their backs upon one another as they went their own ways. The Western Empire followed the God of War, whatever they named him for he had as many names as there had ever been battles, and thought themselves mightier for it. The Southern Empire took their Gods of Life and Death, of Harvest and Planting, of Wind and Rain and the floods that brought all those things in equal measure, and they bound themselves to the practices of their southernmost neighbors. The Eastern Empire took what they called now the Holy Triad, the Gods of Sun and Sea and Land itself, and they turned their attention further east still.

The God of War, who your people once knew as Parom before the Julians changed the shape of him to suit them better, was greedy—but he was not discriminatory. The Western Empire took him as their one god, thinking that he would bring them victory in every battle, but did not consider that his War was not the same as Honor. Parom only cared for battle, not the lines that were drawn within it. Without the might of the Old Julian Empire behind it, the Western Empire’s grip upon its conquests weakened, slipped, faltered, failed. The Empire became a series of warring city-states and kingdoms, the various tribes once united under its banner turning their eyes inward rather than out. The city of Julii held tight to its former glory, but it was a shade of what it once was

And you? Your kingdom was one of those once, a conquest that quietly shucked the leash around its neck. The God of Many Hands never whispered Their name to your priests, but Their touch was evident in everything—in the harvest, in the mountain snows, in the rise of the river and the fall again, in the storms that swept through and the fevers that never took hold in your people. Though you had only one God to your name, They were loving, and They had a thousand smaller gods to be Their Hands and rest Their touch upon your people.

The mountains that wrapped around you and Their touch were guard enough against the squabbles of the Western Empire. You kept the vital trade routes open, built alliances with the other kingdoms that broke off from the shattered pottery of the Julian Empire, held your lands under the loving gaze of the God of Many Hands, and you prospered. For two centuries, you prospered.

But eventually, the Eastern Empire grew bored of its expansion over those fair plains. Perhaps the desert annoyed it, perhaps the steppes were too full of fast-riding tribes for them to settle in, perhaps it longed for the sea in the way the Julian Empire once held it, perhaps all of these things were true. Perhaps none of them were. All that mattered was that the Eastern tide crashed upon the shores of your allies, moving ever west. They swept as far north and south as they could and eventually turned their eyes to the easiest way back into the weakened corpse of the Western Empire. Your kingdom. Your mountains. Your passes.

This is where you find yourself now: agreeing to a treaty to save your people, bound in marriage forevermore to the vile conquerer you once vowed to stop. In the end, even you were crushed under the tide.

Aurelius is a beautiful man, and you hate him all the more for it.

His hair is cut tight to his skull in a military fashion, but the blackness of it is still dark as ink. Though it holds none of the blue undertones of your own, his wings more than make up for it, their feathers a viciously bright splash of color—scarlet, sapphire, emerald, gold. The mark of his barbarian Holy Triad, their gift to the chosen ruler of the crumbling empire of Julii. Against his rich, dark skin and shockingly plain armor, they are all the more striking.

Like the tips of his wings, his eyes are gold. Aurelius is well named.

Though you signed the marriage contract and sent it to him, the full peace treaty is held hostage on your own borders. His army rests at the foot of the pass, their campfires already sweeping out as far as the eye can see. He stands before you alone, carefully leafing through the vellum to determine that all the terms are there still, nothing marked out against his wishes.

He pauses for a second, considering the stipulation you added to the section on governance. For a moment, his gold eyes pin you with something that isn’t quite pity and instead is uncomfortably close to pride. The thought of him being proud of you makes your hate burn even brighter, and you meet his eyes with your own, hoping savagely that the blackness swallows him whole.

“This will be formalized once we are wed,” he says, signing his name with a hard, blunt script. That he can read is a shock to you, as you know many kings that cannot—but what little you know of Aurelius tells you that he cannot abide to rely upon others. He was baptized in fire and bloodshed, and it shows even now in his wary stillness.

Once, you might have pitied the boy-king that ascended the throne of an Empire on the brink of war. Once.

“Your armies will not move forward until then?” you ask, though it comes out closer to a demand. The General doesn’t chastise you, but you can feel, if not hear, the way he shifts on the balls of his feet, ready for confrontation.

“Once your father’s position as Governor is secured, I will relay my orders to the generals on the front line,” Aurelius says. “Until then, they will hold.”

Despite yourself, you feel your shoulders relax. The logistics of managing an army of a hundred, two hundred, three hundred thousand men is sickening, but if they are not squatting on your people’s land, then you will leave those logistics up to him. Difficult enough to make certain that your own army was provisioned for this, and most of your infantry and scouts were trained as hunters before they were ever military men. Men who’d been trained from birth for war alone? Soldiers with no concept of what farming and proper forestry might entail? Madness.

He carefully tucks the treaty in a leather satchel, locking it tight and then securing it over his shoulder. Somewhere in there, your marriage contract hides. You wonder if he ever offered such a thing to the other kingdoms he crushed under his heel. You wonder if he ever considered that you might say yes.

“You have a day to say your goodbyes, but I would be on the road at dawn if possible.” He tucks his wings tight to his body and turns to leave, then pauses and plucks a flowerbud from one of the late bloomers lining the pass. There is a faint smile on his face, and you hate him for that too. Aurelius the Conqueror should not take joy in the beauty of your land, not when he would have trod on it without hesitation.

When he walks down the path a few steps before taking flight, you finally unclench your fists. The static of magic tingles over your palms, but you managed to resist calling on the Hands you can feel in the mountains to crush him under their weight. It would have been satisfying, but ultimately, useless.

Still, your hands burn with the spells you did not cast. You embrace the pain for lack of anything better, and your father’s General only rests his own hand on your shoulder, offering neither praise nor scolding.

In the darkness of morning, your husband-to-be comes to fetch you, and you turn away from your home forever.

You hold tight to your resentment the entire trip to Arcadiapolis and Aurelius does nothing to alleviate it. When you leave, you leave with the army packing up at your back; though you were not privy to the discussion, you realize now that he intended to send his men home for the summer, dispatching regiments to his various governors at the edges of his empire. So cleanly the army splits apart, it almost seems as if it was never there within a few days’ time.

You would not know any of this, but you are touched by one of the God’s Many Hands, and so you can scry for such things. As long as the clouds above you carry even an iota of wind from your kingdom, you can see anything they can.

If Aurelius knows, he says nothing. Your honor guard is twenty men, woefully few against the weight of the army that carries you ever south and east, but they are loyal and none of them married. The guilt that would take you if this foolishness turned to death is less, knowing that they only leave behind worried mothers and fathers, not children and wives. When you gathered them, you did not ask about lovers, and none of them offered them up in excuse.

Once you are trapped behind the walls of Arcadiapolis, you intend to send them home. The rivers are clean and clear in the land you were born, the air in the mountains and the valleys crisp with the chill winds off the snowy peaks. To be trapped in the dusty wastes of the south—no matter that Aureliapolis lies upon the coast, the way Julii did before it—is a worse fate than you can imagine, but duty compels you. You will not allow it to compel them.

The walls of the city are impressive, when you finally see them. Most of the army settles well outside of them, but they soar high above you as you ride closer, the height of several men over. The castle your great-grandfather built was tall and broad, surely, but it was also only large enough to hold the population of the town at its base, and that for only a shorter siege.

Arcadiapolis is a far different prospect.

Aurelius’s personal guard company splits into columns with a smoothness that takes you aback. Your own guard mimics them a half second later, caught in the middle of grim-faced Julian soldiers, and your fingers tighten on the reins of your mare.

The city itself is a cacophonous mess, old stone and winding roads, the facades of the buildings well-maintained and colorful. There’s color everywhere, actually, dyed deep into the fabric of banners and awnings, woven structures pulled taut over the smaller alleyways and footpaths to block out the rest of the sun. The sea air makes each breath heavy with saltwater, and the heat of summer beats down on you as your company makes a slow, stately path towards the Palace. You pass under gates and canals, the aqueducts that Julii once prided itself on still in good repair this far east. 

Your eyes ache from the color, your ears assaulted by the roar of the crowd, and you think: is this what they call civilization out here? This mess of humanity, crushed together, breathing in each other’s air until there is nothing left to breathe?

The honor guard looks as miserable as you feel, but you do not let that misery show on your own face. The God of Many Hands touches you even out here, in this so-called jewel of civilization, and you take comfort in Their hold. Aurelius may take you from your land and may drive you mad with the disaster he calls an Empire, but you will always have Their touch against your soul, Their power running through your veins.

Eventually, you reach your destination.

The gates of the Grand Palace are massive, ostentatious structures. Pillars broader than you hold up a massive domed roof, the doors made of a bronze sturdy enough to outfit a hundred men swinging open to admit you. Inside, marble makes an appearance here too, offset by the dizzying rainbow of mosaics that ride the walls up to the interior of the dome. It’s an echoing display of opulence, and if the intent was to impress visitors, you hate to admit it but it works. It works on you, most pointedly.

Yet another thing to hate Aurelius for. His guards split off, and your honor guard is taken with them, regardless of your feelings on the matter. Since you did not bring a body servant with you to battle, you have none now—given that you also have nothing in the way of formal wear or proper attire for anything but battle, your youthful outrage having filled you with the surety that you would succeed in your efforts, it may be less of a problem than you think. After all, if Aurelius intends you to be presentable, he will send someone to attend you. It only remains to be seen whether you will let him.

Servants come to take your horses and you follow Aurelius on foot with some distaste. The Palace itself is beautiful, and you admit that fact with great reluctance. The opulence of the gate follows through the rest of the structures, and greenery abounds in the open spaces between buildings. There are guards on patrol, though none of them acknowledge you, and Aurelius’s gaudy wings very nearly blend in to the rest of it.

He leads you, without explanation, into the largest building of them all, set up on one of the higher terraces. Passing into its cool interior tells you everything you need to know—this one is the seat of his power, his primary palace within the greater whole. Corridors stretch off from the domed entryway, and Aurelius does not pause before turning towards the one that is guarded most heavily.

Here, he gestures at the guards, and they let you through. Servants pass you by, dressed in dyed clothes that would cost a great deal if you wished to import them, and the shape of the halls is echoing and massive. Gold and copper and bronze tiles line the ceilings and gild the columns, while magelights burn in the scones once designed for more mundane ways of lighting things. The effect is one of warm, diffused light, scattered until the source was almost impossible to find.

If they wished to instill a sense of divinity and awe here, it failed. You already saw the gate, and their magic is no more impressive than your own. If the Holy Triad chooses to bestow wings on their chosen ruler, let them. You will find more useful things to do with magic.

Finally, Aurelius turns to look at you. In the soft light of the halls, his eyes are a molten gold, warm amber that almost seems to burn with an inner fire. In the firm lines of his face, they’re beautiful. You refuse to think of it.

“For now, you may guest in this room,” he says, polite but distant. “With luck, we will have the wedding arranged within the week. There will be servants assigned to you, and should you have questions, you may ask them.”

You nod, tightly. Aurelius does not afford you a second glance before he turns and walks away.

The Eastern Empire is as efficient in politics and ceremony as it is in war. Six days into your stay—during which your husband-to-be has not come to see you even once —you are presented with heavy formal robes, a beautiful pattern done in cloth of gold and draped with a silk so blue it’s nearly purple. You’ve never touched silk before, and it’s slick and soft to your ignorant hands, almost as heavy as the cloth of gold with how many layers have been sewn together.

In the summer heat, such an outfit should be punishing, but the Grand Palace sits above a brisk sea breeze, and the combination of servants trained to the task and a hint of magic keep the interior of the buildings cool. You get married on the holiest of days, by their reckoning; Aurelius, in his arrogance, does not bother to ask you whether the God of Many Hands demands worship at specific times. The temple itself is gorgeous, and you can almost taste the Holy Triad heavy on the back of your tongue as you walk through it. Not all places of worship carry the touch of the Gods so firmly, but they are not shy about showing their favor to the Eastern Empire, to Aurelius, whose feathers practically glow under the golden light within the temple, whose Gods are drawn in intricate mosaic across the distant, beautiful domes of the ceiling.

The God of Many Hands rests Theirs against your skin with every brush of fabric. You take a measure of peace in it, that even here in the seat of the Holy Triad’s power, They dare to stake Their claim. You may belong to Aurelius as his Prince-Consort now, but your bones and blood and magic and soul will always belong to Them.

You are Valerian, son of the mountains and chosen of the God of Many Hands, and you intend to hate your husband until the day you die.

This resolution holds true even as he keeps one arm entwined with yours for the whole of the feast that follows. The Julian nobility is arrayed around you not unlike their hordes of soldiers on the borders of your kingdom, some of them casting you pitying looks as if you don’t understand exactly why they look at you like that—some of the bolder ones have the temerity to ask Aurelius how he intends to keep his Prince-Consort in check if he cannot understand you. You are, to them, some kind of mountain savage, barely civilized and incapable of understanding them.

The first few times, Aurelius glances at you, and each time, you give him a poisonously sweet smile and do nothing to correct his dim-witted Senators. He gives up looking for direction from you and simply thanks them for their regard. If they choose to think you stupid or deaf, let them. You have no intention of breaking the peace treaty but you also have no intention of laying all your secrets bare for them. The stupider they think you are, the more careless they will be with their Emperor's life around you.

Oh, but it eats at you. Deep down, where you will not let any of them see it, where only Their fingers curl tender around your heart, it eats at you. Even after the fall of the Julian Empire to the west, you were well-educated; your tutors were scholars paid well for their troubles, your father himself taught you in the various languages that crossed your borders, and what you could not learn from books you learned from the merchants that used your mountain passes to the rest of the Western Empire, fragments though it was. To have these civilized aristocrats imply that you are a mere country bumpkin because the excessive opulence is distasteful to you drags claws of bitterness through your wounded pride. 

Since you will not let yourself break character and prove your intelligence to them, you tighten your hand on Aurelius’s forearm and smile like your life depends on it.

When, finally, you are allowed to escape, it is with his wing wrapping heavy around your shoulders and leading you back to the largest bedchamber in the Palace. His rooms are laid in marble and gilt, like everywhere else, mosaics of the war between the Gods spread out across his ceiling. Heavy, woven rugs lay on the cold tile, cushions and furniture carved from ebony wood arranged in a small seating area next to the shelves of books, and the front section of Aurelius’s bedchambers is cut off from the rest by curtains.

His other wing flicks out, easy as extending a hand, and pushes a curtain out of the way as the heavy bronze door locks shut behind you. It would be child’s play to kill him now, before the guards could reach, and you tamp down on the urge before your emotions seize control of the magic always bubbling under your skin.

The bed is a massive thing, lifted from the rest of the floor by marble steps, silk sheets and silk pillows piled on it. It’s round too, no true edge to any side of it, and the sight of it sets your heart to pounding out of something you hope is rage alone. Of course the marriage must be consummated to be legitimate. And of course, you will not do anything to jeopardize the tenuous safety of your people.

It’s just that if he was hideous you could feel nothing but hatred over this. But Aurelius commits the greatest crime of all, that of having a beautiful face and firm jaw, his shoulders broad and muscular to accommodate the weight of his wings. He releases you and begins disrobing, casual and dismissive and arrogant all at once. He knows that you’ll hop into bed with him, and you hate that you want to.

Even without the pressure of duty and peace driving you, you want to.

You let your own robes fall to the floor carelessly, the wildly expensive fabric inconsequential in the face of what you intend to do. His ceremonial dress is a bit more elaborate than yours, and he has the wings to contend with; you wonder what that means for the strength of his armor, and whether it’s worth it for him to wear armor at all. Surely a big enough wound on one of those would be as fatal a blow as a sword through his gut. You’ve hunted birds often enough to know that destroying their wings is almost always slow, cruel death.

Finally, he frees himself of his clothing, stretching his arms above his head as his wings extend to their full length. They’re almost broad enough to touch either side of the room, and it strikes you just how large they are. Aurelius’s arms are nicked with pale scars, but the one on his chest is what catches your gaze, thick and ropy where it extends from one shoulder down to his hip. The upper edge of it is dangerously close to his neck, and it has the peculiar stretched and smeared quality of a scar that grew up with him from a young age.

Your fingers itch to touch, and he sees something of that in your face. A slow, smug smile stretches over his face and he reaches for you, dragging his fingers through the long strands of your hair where it spills over your shoulders. You hate him, with a fire that ignites in your gut and wants to spill out of your fingertips, and he sees that too, his smile deepening. It might scare you if you were not so perfectly safe in your knowledge that he wants you as much as you want him.

“I wonder what that spark in your eyes is for?” he murmurs, tipping your head to the side with his fingers. His wings curve around you both, the feathers soft where they brush against your skin.

There’s a power in holding his desire hostage. You consider that, consider the burn of Their hands where they curl around your soul, and you turn your head to kiss his palm, never taking your eyes away from his. If he can see your hatred, let him. You can hate him and lust for him all at once.

His hands slide lower, over your neck, your shoulders, his fingers tracing the shape of your muscles as he leans forward. Unable to stop yourself, your own hands do the same, smoothing over the lean muscle of his hips before finally running up that scar, feeling the way it’s too smooth and too rough in turns under your fingers. Aurelius must have worked for years to keep the flexibility in his chest, because you can feel the way the scar tissue wants to pull him tight, like thread run poorly through a piece of fabric.

You don’t let your gaze or your hands fall below his waist, but you’re aware of the thick curve of his cock nevertheless. His hands bury themselves in your hair again, his mouth finding yours, and the burn of it undoes you. You gasp against his lips, your hands spread over the swell of muscle in his chest, letting yourself be pushed back against the silk spread on his bed. The warm light of the room disappears as his wings tent over you both, the riot of color in them dimming in the shadow they cast over you both.

He kisses you like he’s never wanted anything else, like your mouth is yet another thing to be conquered as fully as possible. Helpless, wanting, you kiss him back, opening yourself for him even as you let your thighs be pushed apart to accommodate the heat of him. You’re not unpracticed—you’ve seduced any number of merchant sons and hired guards passing through during market days, comfortable in the anonymity of your shared features with the rest of the kingdom—but you’ve never felt this before. This hateful, this lustful, this willing to submit under the force of another man just to hold the power of it over him later.

Aurelius wants you, and once you are done with him, he will never know how to want anyone else.

For now, it will suffice.

Times passes strangely in Aurelius’s palace. You have his personal library to peruse through should you feel uninterested in venturing out of his rooms, and the secondary library attached to the Temple further out on the Grand Palace’s grounds. There’s a University of some kind outside the Palace walls, past the massive gate you were amazed by when you first arrived, but the number of steps you must take to reach it renders the whole prospect too much effort most days. He’s an excessively well-read man, even you must admit, and that means that his personal library is still better than any you’ve ever seen.

His nobility still look at you with pity and contempt, but his nobility mean nothing to you. Of more interest are his soldiers, set to guard the Palace, and his priests, who hold control of the Temple library instead. The priests are smart enough to know that you are dangerous, even if they weren’t certain you understood their language. You haven’t seen the Archbishop since the day you were wed, but you didn’t expect to; after all, you’re a heretic, and they know better than to try and convert you. The gods didn’t touch everyone, and anyone with magic was blessed by them in some small way.

The God of Many Hands keeps Their touch on you always, and those priests with some of the sight for it can tell. Word spread quickly, after your marriage. You might not be so ostentatious as Aurelius, but you’re marked all the same. What they think of it, you don’t care—you have access to the library, should you want it. That’s the only thing you want from them.

Well. One of two things.

You rest your palms on the cool marble of the upper balcony of the Temple, its gilded domes rising high at your back. Very few of those that came to worship here knew about these balconies, and fewer still were allowed access. Aurelius had been the one to bring you up here first, his wings wrapped around you both as he pointed out the lantern lights of the ships on the sea beyond, the lighthouse tucked behind the curve of one dome but still shining bright in regular intervals. It’s the one place in the Grand Palace that you can truly feel the wind with nothing else blocking it; even Aurelius’s rooms, built for a flying Emperor though they were, had something between them and the open air. The risk to a ruler was too great compared to the small boon of feeling a storm before it arrived.

These balconies though—these were his marriage gift to you, you realized eventually. Typically used for maintenance of the Temple or for patrolling in times when Arcadiaopolis was under siege, they were bare of much of the Julian frivolity that marked the rest of the city. The marble was white and well-cared for but otherwise bland in color and design. Concrete made up much of the building where it wouldn’t be seen, sturdy enough that there was no risk of crumbling. You lift your face up to the wind, and relish the one gift your husband has seen fit to give you.

Their hands stroke your cheeks with every breeze, Their presence rich and defiant still. The God of Many Hands hasn’t touched you while you pass through the Temple again, but They always wait for you once you’re out of its gilded halls. They will not spit in the eyes of the Holy Triad, but neither will They abandon you. And with every storm, They bring you gifts of Their own.

It matters not which direction the wind blows from, They always bring you news from home. Despite the way time seems to move at a pace too slow to comprehend out here, back home matters are moving quickly. Your father has been awarded governorship of his own kingdom—a mockery of a title, you think sourly, but he was more willing to consider the treaty than you were from the very beginning—and there is work being done to repair and widen the road through the mountain passes. If Aurelius intends to march his army into the shattered remains of the west, he will have to make sure his supply lines are able to march as well.

Here, again, you must begrudgingly admit that your husband is smarter than you give him credit for. Knowing full well that a knife in the back could kill him as easily as a wall of swords to his front, he hasn’t let his men pillage or raid the kingdoms that broke under the weight of his armies. They’re allowed a certain amount of leeway during war, yes, but afterwards he expects his conquests to be able to support themselves. You have watched him sift through governor prospects late into the night, trying to determine which will be capable of running their offices without significant local uproar, and he never seems to mark martial ability over those less glorious features such as diplomacy and sensibility.

With winter bearing down on your home, your father has made the transition to vassal-state smooth and easy. He’s sent you letters, most of which are light on political details and heavy on the state of your sister’s husband—doing well, for all that he took ill last winter and left your kingdom adrift without his own armies at hand—and your mother’s dealings with the merchants that still ride through. She took this in stride, much as he did, and you would resent them for that if you were not so grateful that they were alive and well.

You’ve spent a full season at the Palace now, and are set to finish another. Aurelius is meant to arrive home again sometime tonight or tomorrow, having taken a fraction of his armies to quell some kind of rebellion in the provinces to the south. It’s not often that they happen, he’d told you before setting out, but sometimes people see that he’s turned his attention elsewhere and think that it means he will not see them. This is never the case.

While the delay annoys him—and Aurelius is like a child, sullen and grumpy when he doesn’t get what he wants, even if his sullen attitude never leaves your bedrooms—it means that his engineers have more time to fortify the roads to the west and secure his holdings from the last year of war. In the end, that was the thing that mollified him. It doesn’t make you any happier though, not when it means only that you have to suffer alone in this expansive Palace, resented by the rest of the nobility and treated like you can’t understand anyone.

At least the priests had learned, you think, shutting your eyes to a gust of hot, wet air. The storm builds off the coast and under your skin, Their hands finally leaving you now that They’ve delivered Their message. Those that spent their time maintaining the library were even willing to discuss scholarly concepts with you, to a point. The guards were not so enchanted with smalltalk, but they still treat you with respect when they have to accompany you outside of Aurelius’s halls. The servants that worked in the Palace had no interest in you at all; you might as well be an object to them too, though given the amount of work that faces them in a place so lavish, you can’t blame them for trying to tuck you in a corner and forget you.

But the aristocracy of Arcadiaopolis? Oh, they are Julian down to their bones, with all the pomp and decorum of a people who’ve had a thousand years to inflate their egos. The Senators don’t acknowledge you at all, and those aligned with their houses but without any political position to speak of treat you like some cosseted pet instead. One too many times you’ve had a noblewoman coo at you in cloying babytalk, as if that would make their language easier to understand. You, driven by spite and a desire to watch them dig their own graves, have made an art of pretending to be dimwitted. Without Aurelius around to entertain you and with no power of your own, it’s the only game you have left.

As it was with the lady Domitia, who had this morning assumed you too stupid to repeat anything, and openly discussed with a less worldly friend the tensions to the south. She had been entirely too sympathetic with the rebellious province, which was an interesting thing, given that her husband—a Senator, albeit one with few connections and little power on his own—had been all too willing to give his support behind Aurelius’s desire to replace the Governor with one of his own hand-picked men. 

Her friend had been shocked, but not disagreeable, to Domitia’s view of events. You had filed that reaction away as well; though you could not recall the second woman’s name, she had a distinctive birthmark over her eye that would serve as well for you to identify her.

So the end of summer and the beginning of autumn have gone. With Aurelius absent, court life is less rigid in ceremony and celebration, the nobles free to host their own parties without worrying about running afoul of an imperial event. With only you as a witness, many of those same nobles have felt free to give voice to their discontent—it is always the most decadent that resent him, assuming that he’s draining the Empire’s coffers for his wars of expansion. You’ve noted them, but you’ve also noted those that remain quiet.

Most of the Senate still stands by Aurelius, because their temperamental complaints are just a way to spend time. But some of them, you watch. They don’t vote against him in blocks, and they don’t voice their disdain for him. But the God of Many Hands doesn’t cloud your vision, and your parents did not raise a fool; you can tell, when they look at his absent chair and your affably confused presence, that they loathe him all the same.

The most prominent of their number are the House of Maleinos. Paulus Maleinos is a Senator and well respected, grey in the hair and one who’d served Aurelius’s father as well. He’s the one you’re most unsure of, because he’s the one who seems to regard Aurelius the most fondly out of all of them; by the same measure, he’s the one that regards you with the most suspicion. Most of the Senators think you attend out of a misplaced sense of duty and lack of anything better to do, but he seems to have realized that you can understand their language just fine. It may be that he simply doesn’t trust you in Aurelius’s bed, or it may be that he means your husband ill. You cannot tell.

His nephews are much less difficult. They’re quiet, but they’re also resentful, chafing at the bounds of noble behavior and lusting for the throne. The Eastern Empire follows the laws of the consolidated Julian Empire before it—the Imperial Throne is held by deeds and might, not bloodlines. That Aurelius’s family has earned the favor of the gods for three generations does not sit well with some of those who think they could do better.

If someone were to unseat Aurelius, it would not be Paulus’s nephews, though. You’ve seen them during parties, and occasionally debating military strategy with other aristocrats; they’re not stupid, but they’re not especially brilliant either. And you think that Paulus knows himself too old to try. But resentment still breeds below the surface, and it is only now, as you feel the warmth of the sun on your skin and the scent of sea in your nose, that you realize why.

The House of Lartia had not been well loved even before the events two decades ago, but they had not been particularly despised either. They were a relatively minor house, one of those that had never achieved much in the way of military or economic might, and their political power was thereby weakened because of it. Had they been in a better position, they might not have become so desperate as to stage a coup but there it was: they were desperate, they were stupid, and they thought they could take the throne by force.

If they had succeeded, it would have been a different matter. The Julian Empire was no stranger to coups and hostile takeovers. If an Emperor was weak enough that he could be taken so easily, then he deserved to lose his seat. When the pantheon had been whole, it was such, and even after the Holy Triad split off it was so. Had House Lartia succeeded, they would have been the next in line to have their names remembered for their might and their shrewdness.

But they made a grave error when they slaughtered the Emperor and his family. They forgot the children.

You were only four at the time, so you could be forgiven for forgetting this until now. After all, the names of the family were struck from the records, and it was not something your father would share with a young child, even one destined to be his heir. But now that you’ve remembered the connection between Lartia and Malenios, you remember what you were told later, by one of your tutors. That Lartia had done everything correct in the coup but for the fact that they discounted the gods, and for the fact that they had discounted Aurelius.

Just because he was a bare thirteen summers old did not mean he wasn’t a vicious fighter. And in the end, the gods chose him. House Lartia failed in their endeavors, and the boy-king that sat on the throne ordered every last one of them to their deaths.

Even women. Even children. If they held the name, by marriage or not, they were executed.

It set the tone for Aurelius’s later conquests. 

At the time, your tutors had emphasized that while Aurelius was right in his actions, that did not make him wise. They had pointed out the many people that would resent the decision—the nobles that would fear him, the already unstable politics of the Eastern Empire that lead to the coup in the first place, the families of those who’d lost daughters and sons via the cruel twist of fate that left them married into a noble house. When he’d cavalierly rewritten the laws of marriage for nobility ten years after his ascent to the throne, your tutors had pointed out how unpopular that decision would be too.

House Malenios had been close to House Lartia, for all that Malenios was more well-favored in the Senate. They had bowed their heads and acquiesced to the whims of their new Emperor, but that did not make them happy about it. And to have their noses rubbed in Aurelius’s failings now, in the wake of your marriage, with your husband off at war—

Yes, you think you might know why Paulus Malenios is so wary of you. It would be a folly to assume Aurelius didn’t hold you in some favor, even with his absence now, and Paulus is clever enough to realize that you can understand him. An insult might be enough to bring the axe down upon his nephews heads.

You wonder if they realize it, or if it’s only their uncle that knows. Your brow furrows as you squint out over the water, sunlight catching off of a wave and shining into your eyes. Paulus is certainly wiser than Domitia, but you might try and find any links between them anyways. If his nephews are unwise enough to make their distaste of you obvious despite Paulus’s warnings, then perhaps they are not the only stupid company he keeps.

The gleam of sunlight turns richer and you realize that it’s not the sea you’re being blinded by. You take a step back from the marble edge of the balcony, lifting a hand to shield your eyes from your husband’s wings. He circles the ships below one last time before turning towards the Temple; for a moment, you wonder how he knew you were there, and then you admit to yourself that with a storm on the horizon, you wouldn’t be anywhere else.

Aurelius lands lightly, wings flared out wide as he checks his speed before slamming into the side of the Temple. It would be impressive even if it didn’t gust wind up around you, but with the force of his flight so obvious, you have to admit it only makes him more attractive. Months of absence from him, and you’re appalled to realize that you missed him. From the way his gold eyes light up, he’s missed you too.

“Finally decided to come back?” you ask, trying to sound as cold as the snows that close in the mountain passes of your home.

He smiles wide, like you’ve just told a particularly good joke, and you can’t tell if you hate him for that or for the way his smile makes your heart stutter in your chest. “My generals reminded me that I’m a married man now. And the rebellion is crushed. We only stayed so long to root out any last remnants of the previous Governor’s forces. He had some of them garrisoned away to strike at our backs.”

“I am not sure how you want me to take that,” you say, but you take his hand when he reaches for you. He pulls you in close, his body warmed by the sun and the exertion of flying, and his wings are warmer still when they wrap you both in a colorful tent to hide you from the rest of the world.

“Take it however you will,” he murmurs, reaching a hand up to run his fingers through the long strands of your hair. His fingers are like brands where they rest against your cheek, and his eyes are burning just as bright. “So long as I get a kiss to welcome me home.”

“You don’t deserve one,” you tell him, but you let him pull you close, and you kiss him anyways. 

He tastes of salt and the electric crispness that always reminds you of the gods and magic, not unlike the taste of lightning before it strikes. With his wings around you both, the wind is cut off, the crying of the seabirds and the sound of the docks to the west no longer carrying over the sound of the water. It’s a warm bubble of pure silence, only the sound of Aurelius’s breathing and his lips on your own to distract you.

Your traitorous heart missed this, missed him, even if you still despise all that he stands for. In truth, you’ve never lain with another man for more than one night in a row—you were always careful, so careful, when you pretended to be a high-spirited merchant son to the traders you knew would only pass through once. There’s something intoxicating about familiarity, about the way you can map Aurelius’s mouth by memory alone, knowing all the ways your body fits into the curve of his even after months apart.

You slide your hands along the clasps of his armor and he laughs softly before finally breaking away. His wings are still folded around you both, but the sun peeks through the feathers haloed around his head anyways, reflecting of the red and green of his feathers to stain you both in color in your hidden wing-made alcove.

“I have missed you,” he says, his eyes warm. He sounds terribly sincere, and you do not know how to handle that.

“You could have come home sooner,” you tell him, but it comes out fond rather than acidic. You’re horrified by how easily you soften under his hands, but not horrified enough. It’s a terrible thing to be.

“Well,” he says, running his hands through your hair like the length of it fascinates him, “unless any of the other provinces decide to cause problems, I should be home through winter. I’m told that your mountain passes are impossible to travel then.”

“Not impossible, but close enough to, and my father wouldn’t thank you for leaving hundreds of dead men in his passes to deal with once the spring thaw arrives.” Your fingers still toy with the clasps of his cuirass, running down the weak edges of it where it’s designed to fit around his wings. As always, you wonder why he bothers—a javelin through the meat and arteries of one would be enough to kill him.

“I certainly wouldn’t thank me either. Have you been keeping busy while I was gone? Visited the University?” He reaches down and catches your hands, pulling them away from his armor and bringing them to his mouth to kiss. Attempting to do anything more salacious than kissing on the Temple grounds would be frowned upon, you suppose. This balcony isn’t terrible comfortable anyways.

“I haven’t left the Palace. Between your library and the Temple’s, I’ve enough to keep me occupied for now.” You sigh and take a pointed step back. The storm you’ve felt building is beginning to threaten the city properly now, the wind picking up and bringing the taste of rain with it. “Come. I’ll tell you what your Senate has been up to while you were gone.”

“Nothing good, I’m certain.” Aurelius sounds amused, but he lets you leave the curve of his wings, releasing your hands. The coming storm slaps you in the face with wind and you can’t help but smile at it, the extra hint of intensity that hadn’t been there a few moments ago. Whether They are expressing displeasure at Aurelius’s arrogance or They held back the storm long enough for him to get home, you can’t tell; regardless, Their touch lingers in the wet chill of it, and that feeling brings you comfort.

He’s close on your heels as you take the secluded stairways down to the Temple proper, passing by priests as you get to more public areas. “Not much of interest. There’s some concerns about trade, though I’m sure your councilors will have more to say about it than I do. A few families are still opposed to your wars, but they have little in the way of support.”

“The usual ones, I suspect,” he says, kissing his fingers and touching each statue of the Holy Triad as you pass by them. By nature, every Julian emperor has been pious, but Aurelius is more pious than most. You expect that attendance to Temple ceremonies is about to increase again, now that he’s back in the Palace.

“Perhaps. I would not know them. There was drought to the east, but there were enough reserves that they were able to pay their taxes in full, though the provincial Governors petitioned for leniency in the next year, should the drought continue. I haven’t been allowed to look at the records for those provinces, so I could not tell you if this is true or not—but the weather has not been abnormal from the east, and they have gotten plenty of rain.”

His wing extends up over your head once you exit, shielding you both from the weakening sunlight and the scattering of leaves from the garden trees. The sun itself isn’t strong enough to merit the shade, but it gives him an excuse to come close to you. It also gives the rest of the Palace an excuse to start scrambling for his return; Aurelius typically rides with his troops, so having him suddenly within the walls is an upset. When the trip through the city takes an hour, and the outriders ahead of the regiments arrive a full day before, there is usually more than enough time to be ready.

He is smiling faintly when you glance over your shoulder at him, so you think he knows exactly what his sudden return has done to his household. If you were a betting man, you would guess that he intends to hold a formal dinner this evening, just to force his nobles to dance to his tune. Since you are not a betting man, you take solace in knowing exactly the kind of man your husband is, and turn him towards his personal palace.

“We’ll look over the records together, tomorrow,” he says, nodding in acknowledgement of the guards that salute as you pass into the palace’s gilded halls. “If you aren’t opposed, I would have you continue sitting in on the Senate sessions with me. How much have they figured out that you know?”

“Most of them? Nothing. A few suspect, I suppose, but the vast majority of your officials seem to be under the impression that I’m some kind of ambulatory house plant.” You let the disdain for them creep into your voice and he chuckles quietly behind you, his feathers whisper soft as they trail over the marble floors.

“I wonder that must say about me.” Aurelius lets you hold open the door for him, then locks it behind himself once you’ve passed through. The curtains are opened wide, because no one but you has been occupying these rooms in his absence—while Aurelius might conduct business in the front areas of his personal chambers with trusted officials, you have no one who requires that level of attention. And you prefer to pass from his library to his bed without having to move the heavy silks out of the way.

“That you’re either tasteless or depraved, and both of those are true,” you say, beginning to unclothe, pulling the heavy drapes of your robes off. Winter comes slowly to this region, and it comes nowhere near as harsh as it does in the mountains, but the clothing left for you is warm all the same. Were it up to you, you’d keep to the fashions of your home, but it has a meaning here, and so you are dressed as one of Aurelius’s household.

The windows to his room are open, and even if you can’t feel the storm properly down here like you could up on the Temple wall, the breeze begins to pick up. Aurelius laughs as he turns his back to you, feathers ruffling slightly as he leaves the clasps of his armor easy for you to reach. “Surely not so depraved as that? I’ve been good the whole time I was away, you know.”

“You’re a boring despot. I’ve watched.” Your fingers are deft as they undo his cuirass, letting the pieces of it fall to the floor. The scale leather and metal crumples rather than clattering like the solid breastplates you’re more familiar with, but you’ve grown used to that too. With the smooth, dark muscle of his back on display, you give in to the temptation to touch, dragging your palms over his skin before burying your fingers in his feathers.

They are, as always, impossibly soft, the colorful barbs of them like silken threads under the callouses of your fingers. Aurelius groans, wings twitching under your hands as he ruffles them further. You are, as ever, the obliging husband, dragging your fingers through them in long, slow sweeps. He’s a vain man, he truly is, but you suppose you would be vain too if the gods saw fit to shape your body into something so beautiful.

The rest of his armor falls in bits and pieces around him, his hands fumbling as you do your best to unmake him. Knowing what you do of how birds fly, you understand why his wings are so sensitive to the touch—and knowing what you do of how Aurelius thinks, you understand that you are the only one who has ever gotten the chance to touch them like this. He’s as jealous of his body as he is of his throne, and it wasn’t until some weeks into your marriage that you were able to stroke his feathers back into place.

Then, he’d been suspicious. Now, he’s open and eager for it, wings opening up as you curve yourself over his back, standing on your toes so you can hook your chin over one of his broad shoulders.

“You owe me an hour or three,” you inform him, feeling the firm muscle of his buttocks against your groin.

“I will give you as much time as you desire, my heart,” he says, breathless and eager. One wing flicks up, careful not to smack into you, and it’s the only warning you get before he turns to sweep you into his arms again.

Aurelius’s return sets off a series of celebrations and ceremonies, as you expected. It’s a fascinating dance to watch, now that you have the experience to know what the court looks like without him. The nobility still hold their own parties and quiet engagements, but it is nothing compared to the lavish affairs they are expected to attend under Aurelius’s watchful eye.

There are also the chariot races to consider. Like the University, the hippodrome was outside of the walls of the Grand Palace, which made it more of a trial for you to get to. Given that you disliked being followed, and given that you had little interest in the races and events held there, you’d never visited it before. Now that he’s back in residence, you’re expected to attend alongside him when he chooses to watch the races.

It is with some chagrin that you realize the emperor’s household has a specific box and passage to reach it. Aurelius laughs at you for it, but you can admit you deserve it this time.

Julians are as interested in blood sports as they’ve ever been, but at least the races are a kind of brutality that makes attempts to pretend it’s something more. You find the crowd a much more interesting thing to watch, especially those within it who take this chance to get Aurelius alone and discuss matters with him. Like the Senators, most of the people of Arcadiaopolis assume that you cannot understand them; like the Senators, they are wrong. It still serves your purposes for them to think you stupid, and it serves Aurelius well when he can ask you about your impressions after the fact.

Winter doesn’t bring the cold that you’re used to. The open-air arena is pleasant enough in its chill, though you expect you’d be miserable watching any games during the summer. Next to Aurelius’s majestic sweep of wings and handsome face, you’re a pale, purple-clad shadow, only distinctive by virtue of your imperial colors. So perhaps you grew complacent, and perhaps that is why it catches you so off guard the first time someone tries to poison you.

Your fingers freeze on the cup, muscles locking as They force your hand to still. Beside you, Aurelius is occupied with some discussion about farming rights in the districts around the city with a grave-faced merchant and head of some of the outlying towns that served to feed Arcadiopolis. The God of Many Hands has very little sway over you today, with the skies clear and the wind a distant memory, but They are doing Their best, and it fills you with a cold dread.

This is not the first time you’ve feared for your life. But it is the first time that it was threatened in a manner so insidious.

Noticing the rigid set of your jaw, Aurelius waves off the men that were talking to him. He curves his body around you, one wing moving to shield you from the crowd, and reaches over your body to take your white-knuckled hand off the cup. A question forms on his lips but never gets further, tension slithering over his body instead the moment his fingers touch the metal. So it seems that the Holy Triad watches him as closely as They watch you.

He regains his senses before you do, still struggling to pull Their fingers out of your muscles and let you move. Gently, he takes your hand off the cup, and equally gently, he pours it out. Hidden in the folds of his wings, no one gets the chance to see why the wine has hit the floor, and if they assume you a fumbling barbarian, that is all the better. With the threat gone, the God of Many Hands finally releases you, and you drag in a harsh breath as Aurelius’s palm on your cheek replaces Theirs.

“Look at me,” he murmurs, gold eyes sharp. “Your god kept you from drinking, didn’t they?”

“I haven’t been held by Them so tightly before,” you say, your voice tight. Even now, the ungentle grasp lingers in a tremble under your skin, and lightning sparks off your fingertips when you grab his wrist. Control. You need to get control over yourself and the magic that wants to spill out of your body, because you could kill too many people with the lack of it.

“The first time is the hardest,” he says soothingly. The sparks that ground themselves in his skin go gold instead of the harsh blue you’re accustomed to, and you wonder whether he means to influence them, or whether that is you alone.

You don’t like the idea of having your core self so deeply affected by Aurelius. You don’t like that he holds you so gently, or that you find more relief in his touch than you found in the knowledge that They were watching for any threats against you. “How many assassination attempts are supposed to be normal?”

“Fewer than this.” His expression goes tight, grim. But if you both left now, there would be questions. You see it in his eyes, and know that your own reflect the same knowledge—if someone was so bold as to try and poison you while you sit right next to him, when you’ve gone unmolested for the entire time he was gone, then it won’t stop here. This was a message.

“How salacious are you willing to let me be in public?” you ask him. It earns you a soft huff of a laugh, because Aurelius knows you better than you’d like and he knows what you’re really asking. In answer, he pulls his wings back and settles into his chair once more, leaving his lap open for you.

You’re married, so you tell yourself that it isn’t wrong to seek comfort in the warm curve of his body, draping yourself over his chest like a concubine. It rings hollow, even to you, but you are not able to be ashamed of it either. Aurelius has stripped the shame out of you and left a fire for him alone in its place.

You can’t remember what it was like to hate him without reservation anymore. That, more than the poison, scares you the most of all the events today.

But it does not stop with poison.

Together, you and Aurelius slowly piece together a map of suspects; at first, you’d included some commoners on it, but when you’d found a thin, metal dart tipped with snake venom laced into your robe halfway through an imperial celebration, they had been removed. While it’s more than likely that commoners are engaged with the scheme, the mastermind of it was nobility. Possibly a Senator, possibly not. It is never the same method twice, and that makes them hard to track while telling you something else.

“They would rather risk a dozen failed attempts than a single poisoner willing to confess,” Aurelius says thoughtfully, the night after you’d found oil along the marble of your private balcony in the Temple. Of all the attempts, this one impresses you both the least.

Unfortunately, it also tells you nothing more than that. For all that the balcony is reserved for private use, there are no barred gates or guards to keep anyone from sneaking up there. You’d discussed the matter with the Archbishop after finding the evidence of treachery, but even he had admitted that there was no way to bar access to it without raising suspicion. Still, he’d been bright with rage at the thought of someone defiling holy ground under his nose. You expect that your would-be assassins will not be able to do it again.

“Does this push it closer to someone who despises me more than they desire your throne?” you ask him, settled on the silk of your bed trailing your fingers through his feathers. The curtains were drawn around the bed and the room as a whole, the door locked. Even the windows were half-closed in anticipation of the winter storm blowing up out of the sea, so your bedroom is private and warm with only the two of you.

Half a year in his company and you find you do not hate the intimacy anymore.

“I cannot tell, in honesty. Not every emperor has been devoted, even with the favor of the Gods on his shoulders. It may still be someone who thinks that offending them won’t go poorly. It may be someone who intends to put a puppet on the throne instead.” He lifts a hand in helpless inability to understand their saboteur’s thoughts. “It may be someone who thinks me distracted by you and would rather I focus on my war. They won’t be still long enough for me to tell.”

You snort softly. For all that he’s a tactical genius in the field, Aurelius is not nearly so deft when it comes to maneuvering in the Senate. His advisers he trusts completely, and they have no interest in betraying him, which helps, but when you’re alone with him, you see how much the political games frustrate him. Unlike you, he derives no enjoyment from playing a long game.

Then again, he could have them all beheaded in a moment, if he chose. So perhaps he gets no pleasure from it because he doesn’t need it for power. Nevertheless, playing the game makes his rule more stable, so he plays it and hates it the whole while.

You have the benefit of your own patience and manufactured simplicity. Domitia is not so bold as to proclaim dissatisfaction with Aurelius when he is in residence, but she’s not so bright as to hide her distaste for him around you either. With Aurelius’s hectic schedule of temple attendance and imperial parties eating up time that she could be spending growing her own power, she’s become both intolerable and surprisingly well-supported by a small group of her own.

Powerless, in theory, as most of them are wives without rights to their holdings, but a lack of voice in the Senate is not the same as an inability to act. And were you the only one to notice it, perhaps you would have brushed them off as unimportant—but Aurelius’s sister has too, even absent from the imperial court as she usually is.

You’ve met her in person only twice, as she’s a woman consumed by a desire to learn and a desire to care for her children, but you’ve liked her both times. It would be hard not to, when she mirrors you so completely. Her two sons are still less than ten years old, and so kept from the complicated dance of court even though they are Aurelius’s heirs, but they are just as bright as she is, and they have spent a great deal of time with the lady Domitia’s children too. With so many bright minds seeing the same thing, you would be foolish to disregard it.

She suspects Domitia. Aurelius suspects every member of the nobility. You, privately, suspect Paulus.

But if you should bring it up, Aurelius dismisses the idea immediately. No matter that the Maleinos family had every reason to hate him, no matter that you can point to the unvoiced resentment they foster, no matter that you know Paulus Maleinos has figured you out. Your husband, with all the confidence of an ass, declares every time that Paulus could not possibly condone something like this.

He sees the look in your eyes now and sighs. “I know you think it has to be Paulus, but I’ve told you—”

“That he served your father faithfully, that he was one of the Senators who spoke in favor of your execution of the Lartia, that I am clearly reading things into his face that do not exist?” you ask dryly. Despite your irritation with him, you keep your hands gentle on his wings. His feathers can be surprisingly delicate, and you’re not so angry you want him hurt yet.

“That he’s loyal,” Aurelius says with more patience than he has any right to. His palm smooths over your thigh, warm and affectionate. “He came to me, you know. When I came back from the battlefield, after I had greeted you properly. You’re right that he knows you can understand him, but he was suspicious because he couldn’t understand your game. He thought you were after me.”

“And yet, his loyalty to you does not preclude him from making attacks on me,” you point out. Thus far, every assassination attempt has been on you. Those few attempts that might have injured Aurelius have all involved collateral damage from attacks on you. Thus far, it seems you are the target more than he is, and it is not a comforting fact to think of.

“Paulus wouldn’t do something to hurt me, and he knows that your death would hurt me. He wouldn’t orchestrate these attacks.” He sits up and cups your cheek, running his fingers through your unbound hair.

“Your insistence of his innocence does nothing to make me feel better.” Still, you let him pull you close, and you let him kiss you. His breath sighs against your lips, wings coming around you both and embracing you in a soft warmth that silks cannot begin to rival.

“I can—” he starts to say before a knock cuts him off entirely. What he can do, he never finishes saying, unwrapping himself from around you and heading to the door. Unhappily, you follow, sweeping your blankets off the bed and wrapping them around yourself in a mimicry of the robes the Julians still prefer. Aurelius, bold as he is, answers the door naked.

A second later, he jerks back from it, hands outstretched as Paulus stumbles into him. With the bright memory of needles sharp enough to pierce anything in your mind, you leap forward and swing the door shut, lightning gathering at your fingertips and ready to launch should Aurelius’s trust be misplaced.

But Paulus has no knife and no poisoned needles, only a gut wound that threatens to spill out past the hand keeping his intestines still in. The gray in his hair has leached into his olive skin, leaving him sallow and unhealthy, and even if you aren’t a healer, you know the look of a man who cannot step back from the ledge of death.

“I told them they were fools,” he rasps, blood flecking his lips as he grips Aurelius tight. “I told them this was folly. But they would not listen. I’m sorry, Aurelius. I didn’t realize until now.”

“You should have gone to a doctor,” Aurelius says, distracted and focused on the killing wound. “Paulus, the Palace hospital is as close as my rooms to yours, you should have—”

The old senator’s fingers tighten, his skin tight over the knobbed curve of his knuckles. “Listen to me. That fool woman Domitia thinks she can influence your boys, and she’s put those ideas in to my nephews’ heads. They thought if they could be rid of your husband, you’d be too consumed by grief to think, but they know I’ve come here by now—you cannot afford to be slow.”

Aurelius, even shocked by such a blatant attack in his own walls, is not stupid. But then, neither are you.

Because you’d realized, the moment Paulus began his awful confession, that Paulus might resent you, but he was smart. Hadn’t you thought it during all those Senate meetings he was so terribly quiet during? Hadn’t you wondered whether he shared his nephews’ sentiments? He had served Aurelius’s father with loyalty, and Aurelius for years afterwards without a hint of hatred, even though his daughter had been one of the ones to die by Aurelius’s order. He had known what Aurelius would do if his family tried to kill you.

He’d told his nephews first, but he’d come to Aurelius when he’d realized they wouldn’t listen. Perhaps he thought that Aurelius would show mercy to the innocents of the family if they did. Perhaps it was simply that he was dying, and had a loyalty to the Emperor that few others could claim. Or, perhaps, it was that his nephews were brighter than you’d given them credit for, and Paulus was an excellent, if unwitting, distraction.

The first man through the window is wearing metal armor, which is a terrible mistake when you hold a storm in your hand. Outside, the thunder roars, rain sheeting down on the mass of dark shapes that have snuck through the gardens around to Aurelius’s chambers. You suspect that the guards lie dead somewhere, because they have always been loyal. The second man sees you kill his comrade and is smart enough to lift his sword, but not so smart that he steps inside to avoid the lightning that strikes down from above.

From the front of the room, you hear Aurelius swear and the crash of blades together—this was a two-pronged attack then, an attempt to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. Like the rest of the Julian nobility, the Maleinos sons think that you’re a dimwitted piece of treasure, fit only for hanging off of Aurelius’s arm. You had never been a consideration to them.

Their mistake.

The silk blanket lies on the floor somewhere behind you, abandoned once you realized you would need both hands for this. Julian swords are weighted much that same as those your kingdom used, because barbarian heritage is not enough to burn out the weight of the Empire that once stretched across your borders. With the rain soaking into your naked skin and the sky flashing bright with the rage of the storm, you have just enough time to grab the dead man’s sword and move out of range from the strike of one of his fellows.

The Julian nobility had always thought their gods the only ones of merit. When the Western Empire crumbled under the vicious weight of Parom, when the Eastern empire arrogantly proclaimed their Holy Triad as mightier than all others, not once did they consider the possibility of other gods. If those gods were many, then they were all weak, and weak, small things could not possibly hold up against the weight of Julian arrogance.

But They have many Hands, and They ride this storm with all the ferocity of a true God, Their touch lingering in every drop that strikes your skin, in every gust of wind that sends rain sheeting over you and your opponents, in every strike of lighting that falls on another man.

For all that you’ve given your unwilling heart to Aurelius, you belong to Them. You will always belong to Them. And Their fire is the magic that runs through your bones, sparking off of your fingertips and shocking down your sword to strike each assassin that makes the mistake of getting too close. Unlike them, you wear no metal to channel the lightning. Unlike them, you are not bogged down by the weight of armor in a muddy garden, your bare feet dancing over the ground without issue.

Unlike them, you are chosen, and have been since the day of your birth. You will not fall here.

Your blade finds the throat of one assassin while ice slices up through the vital arteries of another, the slick mud on the ground freezing and cutting the men like winters in the mountains. The rain keeps weighting your hair down, dragging it into your eyes as you yank it out of the way again and again, eyes squinted against the flashes of lightning. With the darkness all around you, you dare not look into the bedroom, not when doing so might leave you night-blind, but you can hear fighting still.

Aurelius has the reputation he does because he’s a fearsome fighter, you remind yourself, ducking under the blade of a man and stabbing him in the soft place where his thigh meets his groin. Your pale skin is smeared with mud and blood both, small slices that do nothing to slow you but sluggishly bleed anyways. None of them can land a true blow on you, but if you let this drag on enough, a thousand little cuts will kill you nevertheless.

The wind picks up as you call the storm down, casting walls of magic and air out around you. Caught off guard, the assassins all fall back, and you spin in perfect harmony with the miniature cyclone you’ve called before slamming your foot against the ground. With a finality matched by the crack of thunder, ice erupts from the ground again, impaling your opponents. At least, all the ones you can see. If the Maleinos hired more men than these, those men were smart enough to flee the battle before it could even begin.

You rush back to the bedroom, breathing hard and dragging your hair out of your face again. Inside, the gorgeous silks and gilded walls are a mess, blood and body parts littered across the floor. In the center of the carnage stands Aurelius, his rainbow wings a strange metallic gold with blood smeared up the length of his pinions. Paulus lies at his feet, too grey to be alive any longer, and there’s a wild look of rage in his eyes.

That he’s alive isn’t a surprise but you are relieved all the same.

“Aurelius,” you say, your voice soft but carrying still in the destroyed room. His head snaps around, the gilding on his wings melting away as he flicks the gore off of them, and some of the wildness leaves his eyes. “The men out here are dead. His nephews—”

“His nephews will be dealt with,” Aurelius says, his voice raw with grief. Paulus had been loyal to the end, and the loss of him must hit your husband like the loss of his father all over again, worse because it was Paulus’s own family who betrayed him in the end.

You step into the bedroom, heedless of the mud you’re tracking onto the marble floors. There’s an unhappy tension in the set of Aurelius’s shoulders, a misery that seems like it has no source. He was thirteen years old when he sentenced the Lartia, as a whole, to death. Now, at thirty-three, you wonder if he has the wisdom to be more selective with the Maleinos.

“Aurelius,” you say again, lifting a hand to cup his cheek. He turns to you, the bulk of his wing shifting, and whatever you meant to say dies in your throat.

There’s no time to warn him. You shove him hard instead, sending him stumbling back and his wings locking in tight—haven’t you thought, a hundred times, about how vulnerable they were? All it would take is a bowman with enough time to aim and Aurelius would be dead with a single strike.

The arrow misses his wing. It finds its home in your shoulder, a sickening crunch sounding as it shatters the bones of your chest and right arm, the force of it driving you back. Your feet slip on the marble floors, agony catching a scream deep in your chest as you slam into the cold, hard expanse of them, the shaft snapping inside your body. You can’t find the breath to tell him where the bowman is, but then, you can’t find the breath for much of anything at all, not when pain grips you tight instead.

Your vision begins to go gray around the edges as you struggle to inhale, Aurelius’s wings going gold again as the next arrow shatters into splinters when it hits them. It stands to reason that his gods would find a way to protect him. Stupid as it is, you’re terribly relieved by that—how awful it would be to die for nothing at all.

Their Hands do not touch you as the darkness sweeps in.

It’s the cold of ice in the spring melts that you feel first, a frost that crusts over your eyelashes and across your lips. Though you thought yourself dead, it seems that the God of Many Hands thinks something very different. You can feel the cold clustered around your shoulder, numbing it until it feels as unreal as a dream, but also in the ghostly sensation of a hundred Hands resting on your skin, from your brow to your toes, Their presence absolute. If you’d collapsed in a mountain pass, that would explain much. A long, persistent fever dream, the lingering remnants of an avalanche that means to kill you of cold before you can wake.

One by one, the hands fade away, until the only one you’re aware of is clutched tight around your fingers. The numbness in your shoulder persists, but you can crack your eyes open past the ice, and you realize that you are not in the mountains at all.

The light in the bedroom is soft enough that it could be oil lamps or the filter of sunlight through sheer silk curtains. The hangings around the bed are different, still heavy, but left open rather than drawn closed. You cannot smell the blood and scent of punctured bowels that clung to Paulus, only the soft scent of incense from far away. When you breath in, you can still taste Their presence, and the breeze flutters the bed hangings slightly.

You cough when you breathe out, and Aurelius looks down.

There are dark bruises under his eyes, not hidden well enough by the rich color of his skin. His wings are as close to rumpled as you’ve ever seen them, a few feathers out of place, and his hair is longer than you’re used to, tufting slightly now that it has the length to do so. The hand clutched tight around yours squeezes tighter, and he sets aside whatever reports he was looking at to lean over you with concern.

“Valerian,” he says his hand warm where it cups your cheek, like the spring chasing the winter thaws. You breathe in again, your own hand squeezing his fingers where they’re tightly twined with your own.

You breathe out, and with it, you whisper, “So we were both wrong.”

“So we were,” he says again, but a smile slowly lights the dull gold of his eyes. It’s strange to think of him so afraid for you, even though you’ve known that he loves you for some time now. A dangerous thing, to acknowledge that he loves you.

A dangerous thing, to love him back despite yourself.

“The lady Domitia?” you ask, unable to keep yourself from worrying at the plot to dethrone him anyways. Surely he has it handled by now, though you have no idea how long you have been asleep, but nevertheless—

“Executed, as were Paulus’s nephews and some of the other nobles associated with this. One of my Senators had given them access to the palace first.” He hesitates, then presses a gentle kiss to your brow. “Only those who I could prove were directly associated with the plot. Paulus tried to warn me. I won’t hold the rest of his family responsible for the sins of his nephews.”

You breathe out again, another cough catching you at the end of it, then tug at his hand restlessly. “Good. Come up here and join me. I’m cold.”

“Your shoulder—” he starts to say before sighing at the mulish look in your eyes. There are very few battles of will you can win against your husband, but you intend this to be one of them. The God of Many Hands may have saved you, of that you have no doubt, but Aurelius was the one that kept you worth saving.

He is impossibly gentle when he heaves the bulk of his mass onto the bed, his wing stretching over you until you’re shadowed under its colorful warmth. The cold is the remainder of Their touch and cannot be driven away by mortal means, but it seems like his touch helps anyways. You take comfort in that, lifting your good arm up to trace the edges of the scar at his throat.

“We match now.” You smile at the dismayed expression on his face, perversely pleased that for once, you are the one with good humor in a poor situation.

He catches your hand again, lifting your fingers to his lips and kissing each of them gently. His grip on you is tentative, like you’re made of glass or something even more fragile, and it only firms when you tug on your hand pointedly. You may allow Aurelius the opportunity to worry, but you won’t allow him to treat you like you’re weak . If it hadn’t been your shoulder, it would have been his wing.

You would do it again in a heartbeat, but you hope that next time neither of you will be so short-sighted as to drop your guard.

Something of that must show in your face, because he sighs and presses your palm to his cheek with a look of resignation. He’s wearing entirely too many clothes to properly cuddle with you, but you can already feel true sleep, honest sleep, trying to drag you back down. So perhaps that is only sensible.

“I love you,” you tell him, because you cannot let him leave without telling him, even with your body’s traitorous desire to falter dragging you down.

“I know,” he says, kissing your palm before leaning in to press another to your lips. “I know.”