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He’d made it from Arktos to Staria on less.

But the man who’d crossed the desert had been young, and Charon could feel the creeping weight of age pulling at his bones as he held himself up by his arms alone.

Duciel lay before him, a city on a hill half-hidden by the rain, taunting him with its nearness.

“You can walk,” he told himself, and forced all his dominance into his voice. He took a few steps away from the road marker and swayed dangerously. “You aren’t hungry. You aren’t tired. You can walk.”

He staggered forward. Shapes formed in the downpour, carriages and covered carts, people walking with cloaks held over their colorful clothes. They watched Charon as he passed, and one of them, a pale man with a hood shielding his angular face from the rain, made his way toward him.

“You look dead on your feet,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Have to get to Duciel,” Charon said. A man with brown hair darkened by the rain steadied Charon by the arm, but Charon shook him off and kept trudging forward. “There’s a wedding.”

“Oh! That’s where Cillian and I are going.” The man in the hood smiled brightly. “But we got held up by the rain. Miserable stuff, but the mud is an interesting texture.”

“Astra, don’t,” Cillian said. “We’re performing at the wedding, if we can get there in time. Are you a guest?” His gaze rose from Charon’s muddy boots to his unbound hair, which fell over his face in dark curtains.

“No. How long before the wedding? Where is it being held?”

The men glanced at each other warily. “It’s at the palace,” Astra said. “Right before sunset, which isn’t fair, in my opinion. I’m going to catch a cold at this rate.”

“No, you won’t,” Cillian said.

Charon looked up at the palace at the top of the hill. He wouldn’t make it in time if he kept this slow, plodding pace. The others in the parade of performers were already starting to pass them, though a few paused to give Cillian inquisitive looks.

“Why are you going to the wedding if you aren’t a guest?

” Astra asked. He walked easily alongside Charon, occasionally kicking up mud like a bored child.

Cillian gave him a warning look, but Astra had the air of a born brat, and proved Charon’s estimation right by stepping solidly into the middle of a mud puddle.

“I have to stop the wedding,” Charon said. He was beyond false pretense now. He had no energy left for anything but the truth, and it spilled from his lips with the hot, painful pull and push of his lungs. “I have to tell Yves that I love him. Properly, this time. Before it’s too late.”

“You’re in love with the groom?” Astra asked, loud enough that most of the people around them slowed to listen.

“One of them,” Cillian said, when a young woman whispered in his ear. “I think he means the courtesan.”

“Yes. Yves.” Charon pushed himself forward. “He told me that he loved me, but I couldn’t—couldn’t admit it yet. I have to tell him. Let him know. Even if he doesn’t want it any longer.”

Astra and Cillian exchanged another look, and Astra moved closer to place a slender, pale hand on Charon’s arm.

“You must love him a great deal to do this,” he said.

“More than I can say.”

Astra paused as though carefully choosing his words, then squeezed Charon’s arm. “Then we’ll get you there,” he said. “You just need to go a little farther, then you can rest.”

Charon nodded. Astra’s voice held no dominance, but there was something in it that rang true in Charon’s mind, and as he took another step toward Duciel, he felt a rush of energy surge through him.

Exhaustion lingered at the edges of his awareness, but he felt oddly free of its control.

The city was so close that he could make out the roof of the palace—he couldn’t afford to fall by the wayside.

Charon strode into the rain. The crowd of performers followed, and trees bent in the wind before him as though heralding his return.

Thunder echoed over the palace, and Yves jumped, nearly spilling a glass of champagne on his wedding suit.

“Someone’s anxious,” Harriet said. She and Percy had commandeered Yves’ dressing room when the steward reluctantly announced that the dance troupe had yet to arrive, and Harriet was delicately weaving flowers around the gold diadem in his hair.

She glanced at Yves in the mirror, but Yves couldn’t meet her eyes.

“I can’t imagine why,” Percy said. “You’re finally getting everything you’ve ever wanted. You’ll be richer than the king after this.”

“Of course,” Yves said.

Harriet gave Yves another meaningful look and ducked her head down to whisper in his ear. “He’s not a very perceptive man, is he?”

“He has other qualities,” Yves whispered back.

“I could always go in your stead,” Harriet told him, braiding in another yellow flower. “I might be a little stockier than you, but I have the right hair color.”

“Thank you,” Yves said, looking up at the rain through the high window, “but I’ve agreed to do this.”

“You could run after him,” Harriet said.

Percy groaned and threw down the silk robe he was examining. “What are you all being so cagey about? Who is he running after?”

“Charon,” Harriet said, just as Yves said, “No one.”

“Charon?” Percy’s expression went blank. “Why would you run after…”

“Think about it,” Harriet said, and Percy swiveled around in his chair to look at Yves.

“You mean to say that all this time, you haven’t just been prancing around Charon for the fun of it?” Percy asked. “But you always seemed so…but you were friends!”

“Well, it doesn’t matter, in any case,” Yves said, taking a sip of his champagne. “Charon wouldn’t admit to anything. I gave him the opportunity, and he left.”

Percy got to his feet. “And you didn’t make him talk?”

“Maybe I let him go,” Yves muttered into his drink.

Percy started pacing the room like an agitated cat.

“You let him go. You, Yves. You don’t let anything go. It’s in your nature to be a stubborn little ass. That’s what I like best about you! That’s why we’re friends!”

“ You try running after someone like a pathetic, sniveling wretch,” Yves said.

“Oh, so it’s your pride. ” Percy made a dismissive sound.

“He does have a point,” Harriet said innocently, twisting a flower in her fingers.

“I’m not here to be judged,” Yves said, feeling more than a little testy. “I’m here to get married.”

“Are you?” Percy asked. “What else have you been hiding from me? Is this Raul secretly a prince of somewhere?”

“No, but he’s nice.”

Harriet put one of the flowers in her own hair. “And nice is what you want?”

“I’m on the verge of kicking you both out so I can have a second to breathe, actually,” Yves started to say, but he stopped short when the door to the dressing room swung open.

Oleander stood on the doorway, damp with rain and hardly dressed for a wedding.

Yves hadn’t expected them to come in the first place.

They’d been uncharacteristically silent since that night at Lord Marteau’s, and Yves had assumed they would rather skip the wedding and work through whatever complicated feelings they had about being rescued by someone they thought of as a rival.

But there Olly was, looking slightly wild behind the eyes as they glared at Yves.

“He just passed the House of Onyx,” they said.

“He?” Harriet asked.

Olly took a heaving breath. “I saw him from the window. It’s like a parade out there.

There were circus performers or something, people dressed in these ridiculous pink and red outfits—but when they said who it was, people started leaving the pleasure houses to see what’ll happen.

Everyone says he’s coming to ruin the wedding. ”

“Who?” Yves asked, rising from his chair.

“Charon,” Olly said. “Charon’s coming here for you. ”

Dancers always did love a crowd. Charon spotted members of Cillian’s troupe talking excitedly to curious onlookers as they entered the city, and the Starian fondness for melodrama won out against the pouring rain as people gathered around the performers, staring at Charon.

The first time he’d entered Duciel, Charon had been no one.

Even in Arktos, he was just an interrogator’s apprentice—the patrols who’d searched for him likely didn’t bother looking too hard for someone most of Arktos tried to ignore.

He had entered Staria alone, and the world moved on, ambivalent.

No one could ever be truly ambivalent about Yves.

The sun had already crossed its zenith and was close to sinking behind the storm clouds that darkened the wheat fields beyond Duciel.

At the top of the hill, Yves was likely about to say his vows at any moment.

The crowd around Charon seemed to sense it, and Charon heard anxious murmurs through the ceaseless drumming of the rain.

Lightning illuminated the golden tiles of the palace, and Charon started to run.

Yves felt the air around him go still, as though time itself had ground to a halt.

He knew he should have been furious. How dare Charon simply waltz in and expect Yves to go running into his arms?

How dare he do this now, when Yves had wedding flowers in his hair and the king waiting for him to stand on the dais with Raul?

But he couldn’t muster up the outrage through the sudden, overwhelming burst of elation that coursed through him.

“He’s too late,” Yves forced himself to say.

Olly narrowed their eyes and swayed in the door like a snake about to strike. “No. I didn’t come all this way to tell you this only for you to say it’s too late.”

“Why did you come?” Yves asked.