Page 52

T he silence spell muffled the sound of hangers clinking together as they tried to arrange themselves modestly, but there was frankly no appropriate way to maintain a respectful distance while crunched into the bottom of someone’s wardrobe.

As things stood, Ambrose had a stiletto poking him in the hip, Emery knelt awkwardly over his lap, the lace of one of Hellebore’s dresses hanging over his head like a funeral veil.

“Never thought I’d find myself back in here,” Emery muttered.

It momentarily distracted Ambrose from the flood of unwelcome memories. “In Hellebore’s closet?”

“No, I mean—”

The sound of the door opening silenced them. They both held their breaths, listening.

“What sorts of colors do you like?” That was Hellebore’s voice.

“Mm, I wish I was a winter, but I think I’m more of an autumn, if I’m honest.”

“I didn’t ask what some Alakagram star thinks your colors are, I asked which ones you like .” The usual edge to Hellebore’s voice had softened to butter, more teasing than acerbic.

Ambrose found it hard to concentrate on what they said.

Had the witch king arranged the deaths of his parents? Had he orchestrated it to make himself look like a savior?

Of course he had. Then he’d silenced the only other man who’d known.

Ambrose had just turned fourteen. He’d watched the witch king perform powerful magic to murder a healthy young man in his athletic prime.

With no surviving relatives and nowhere else to go, he’d curled up in that exquisitely comfortable bed, and when the witch king came up and put a hand on the back of his neck to tell him, with affectations of warmth and kindness, that the most difficult part about being king is that everyone had a story to tell about you, and most of them weren’t true, Ambrose had nodded and smiled and pretended he hadn’t seen what transpired on the green.

Why hadn’t he remembered it until now, though?

He couldn’t recall what the witch king had said. Had he been angry, calm? Had he explained himself? Ambrose shuddered violently as wave after wave of realization came with each chipped memory.

Emery shifted uncomfortably, probably kneeling on one of Hellebore’s shoes. “Are you okay?”

“Sit down,” Ambrose whispered, grateful the silencing spell allowed them to converse.

“You look upset.”

“Just sit down?”

Emery lowered himself gingerly until his weight settled into Ambrose’s lap.

His warmth and solidity were a grounding rod, helping to dispel some of Ambrose’s anxiety.

In any other circumstance, it might have brought up the memory of kissing in the kitchen, it might have brought heat to his cheeks, but instead he found himself thinking about all the moments he’d defended the witch king or acted for his benefit.

He tried to focus on what he could see outside the door. Through the narrow crack, Saoirse sank, bouncing, on the end of Hellebore’s bed. She wore a knee-length dress with star-spangled tights and leather boots—the kind of clothes she hadn’t worn to guild meetings since Morcant’s quip.

“I like jewel tones,” she said. “But—”

“I think jewel tones would look lush on you. Now, sit still. I’m not used to doing this on someone else.” Hellebore sat on the bed next to her with a palette open in her lap. “Let’s start with your eyes.”

It was a different side of Hellebore from the one Ambrose had seen standing over Emery with a dagger. Her fingers gently dabbed something clear over Saoirse’s eyelids, then followed it up with shimmery emerald powder.

They weren’t eavesdropping on anything nefarious related to Morcant, only a girl teaching her friend how to apply makeup.

“ In the closet is a euphemism,” Emery said quietly. “For people like us, it means the time before you told anyone you were queer. I’ve never been in Hellebore’s closet before.”

“Oh,” Ambrose said. “I … see. When did you—?”

“Come out of the closet?” Emery supplied. “I think I was eleven when I told my nonna. But she already knew.”

“Your nonna?”

“My grandmother. She raised me. Mum and Dad, they couldn’t really take care of me.

Or didn’t really want to. Mum liked parties and traveling more than me, and Dad went in and out of prison, so—” He shrugged, abruptly shifting the conversation, uncomfortable with the personal turn it had taken.

“Hellebore never struck me as the nurturing queer elder sort,” he added.

“You’re the same age.”

“Older than Saoirse, I meant.”

Ambrose didn’t want to let Emery distract him from the morsel of detail about his upbringing. If he had to dig up his own past tonight, they might as well share a shovel. “Where’s your nonna now?”

“She died.” Emery shrugged again, a compulsive gesture, as if to say pay no attention to how wounded this made me . “Nothing dramatic. She was old. When Katzica died, too, I thought about resurrecting my nonna instead of you.”

Ambrose’s throat tightened. He was grateful for the second chance Emery had given him and afraid that Emery might regret that choice now. “Why didn’t you?”

A shaft of light from between the wardrobe doors cast a bolt across Emery’s face. In it, his eyes shimmered too much. “And tell her that, in her absence, I’d become a murderer?”

“You didn’t mean to kill Craig Kendrick.”

“But I did.”

“I didn’t know her, but I think she’d have forgiven you,” Ambrose said.

Emery said nothing to that, just looked away.

Ambrose added very quietly, “Perhaps it’s selfish, but I’m grateful you brought me back.”

“It’s not as though I didn’t benefit. And I didn’t bring you into a time of happiness, sunshine, and daisies.”

Ambrose thought about his life before, the knot in his belly the moment he saw the view out that window.

“In my time, I lived in here.” The cramped interior of the closet pressed in on them, hardly room to breathe.

Emery put both hands on Ambrose’s arms and squeezed. “Are you going to tell me what had you so freaked out a minute ago?”

“Here?”

“We’ve got no place else to go. Hellebore and Saoirse can’t hear us.”

If it was anyone else, Ambrose could never admit to the things he’d seen, the things he’d done, the things the witch king had done. It made him look like such a fool, to have followed so blindly.

Then he remembered Emery saying, He was kind to me, in the beginning.

The darkness made it easier to confess. Ambrose recounted the things he’d remembered.

How the witch king had first found him. The death of the knight outside that window.

The rituals which made him a living weapon.

The moment he erred and was forced to kill his horse and submit to the arcane collar.

Who had he been, by then? Who had he become?

Not the hero he’d dreamed of, that was for certain.

Emery listened without interruption. Sometimes, he rubbed his hands up and down Ambrose’s arms in a gesture of comfort.

When Ambrose finished the sordid tale at last, he said, “I don’t understand how I could bring myself to trust him. How could I just forget what he’d done?”

Emery said, “You were young, with no one to turn to, and you’d just found out the man who rescued you had orchestrated the deaths of your family. What else could you have done?” Emery asked.

“Fought him.”

“You were a boy. You would have died.”

“I would have died instead of being made into … this .”

“I happen to like this .”

“But how could I think I loved him?”

“Because it was the only way to survive.” Emery took one of Ambrose’s hands from where it was knotted around his waist and kissed a scar across his knuckles.

“The mind is no different from the body. It can be wounded. Your body freezes near a cliff’s edge because it knows the fall will kill you.

Your mind knew that to do anything but adore and obey the witch king would result in the same thing, so it erased the memories that made following him impossible to endure. ”

Outside, Ambrose vaguely heard Hellebore complimenting her work then getting up to leave, telling Saoirse she needed to grab something from the bathroom. Saoirse said she’d make them tea.

Ambrose considered Emery’s words. Could his mind have done that? Sutured injuries with romantic embroidery to make the pain endurable?

Though it made a twisted sense, the pretty stitches had rotted through gradually, and as that rosy outlook faded, he’d felt less like a lover on the cusp of a reunion than a sword ceaselessly dulling its edge against the necks of anyone who stood in the witch king’s way.

Why he’d remembered now, he couldn’t be certain, but he thought it had to do with the hospitality of Emery’s arms around him, in the thump of one heartbeat steadying his, providing a safety from which he could face the truth.

“Thank you,” he said, just as the last motes of Emery’s silence spell ran out.

The emotionally fraught conversation had distracted them from how much time had passed.

Outside, Saoirse’s head snapped toward the wardrobe.