Birdsong threaded through the quiet like silver wire, pulling Soren up from sleep one note at a time
Their calls threaded through the shutters in bright, insistent bursts, as if the city had decided that nothing important had happened the day before. For a heartbeat he lay very still, waiting for the familiar squeeze in his chest, the roar in his ears, the sense that air was too small for his lungs.
It didn't come.
He drew a cautious breath. Then another. Air slid in and out without catching. His ribs ached in a dull, bruised way, but the pain was ordinary. Manageable.
Light pressed dimly against the curtains. The room smelled of cooled ashes, herbs, and clean linen. Someone had propped him up with pillows at just the right angle; a blanket lay over his legs. When he shifted, his muscles complained, but the world did not tilt.
On the small table beside the bed, a tray waited. Steam curled from a covered bowl. A slice of bread sat on a plate, its crust still soft.
His stomach tightened, not quite in hunger.
He remembered a hand around his wrist, a low voice saying, *You will eat when Larem tells you to eat. You will not decide alone that collapsing in a corridor is an acceptable price*.
He'd promised.
Soren pulled the tray closer. When he lifted the lid, the smell of broth rose simple, warm, unthreatening. His fingers closed around the spoon. They trembled only a little.
The latch clicked.
"If you drop that," Ecclesias said from the doorway, "Larem will blame me personally. I am not prepared for that battle before breakfast."
Soren looked up.
The king stepped in and shut the door with his shoulder. No crown, no cloak, just dark, plain clothes and the kind of presence that made the air feel denser. His hair was damp at the temples. Fine lines dug deeper than usual at the corners of his eyes.
Those eyes swept him quickly: face, chest, the hand on the spoon. Counting.
"I'm holding it," Soren said. "See?"
He lifted the spoon. The broth quivered in it, but stayed where it was.
Something in Ecclesias' shoulders loosened, too small for anyone else to see.
"Miracles," he said. "We should declare a holiday."
Soren made a small sound that might have been a laugh if his throat hadn't still felt scraped.
He took the first mouthful.
The broth was hot and salty, familiar in a way that made his chest ache a little. It slipped down easily, settling warm in his stomach. The second spoonful was less of a struggle. By the time he'd eaten half the bowl, the shake in his hand had faded.
Ecclesias watched him the way a commander watched a weak point in a wall.
"You're staring," Soren said at last.
"I'm verifying that you still remember how to obey orders," Ecclesias replied. "Larem will be insufferable if you don't."
"You're very quick to blame Larem," Soren said. "You're the one who uses 'eat' like a royal decree."
"Kings have few pleasures," Ecclesias said. "Harassing you into staying alive is one of mine."
Soren rolled his eyes, but something under his breastbone unwound another notch.
He set the spoon down, fingers resting around the bowl.
"Is the city still standing?" he asked quietly.
"For the moment," Ecclesias said. "The carpenters will be charging extra for building in the square, but the walls remain."
Images surged, fresh and sharp: raw wood, rope, the clean fall of steel, banners dropping. Soren's grip tightened on porcelain until his knuckles blanched.
Ecclesias saw it.
"Do you regret watching?" he asked.
Soren thought about it.
"I regret that there was anything to watch," he said. "But no. If people die because they reached for me, I don't want to pretend it happens somewhere I can't see."
Ecclesias' gaze held his, something unreadable flickering there.
"You sound extremely like my queen," he said.
"That is unfortunate," Soren murmured. "I was hoping to be someone else this morning."
The faintest curve touched the king's mouth.
"You can be Soren," Ecclesias said. "For a little while. Which, incidentally, is why I'm here."
Soren blinked.
"Because you enjoy supervising meals?"
"I was hoping to ask questions," Ecclesias said. "The sort that are not appropriate in council."
Soren's fingers curled reflexively against the blanket.
"I thought kings didn't have time for idle curiosity," he said lightly.
"This is not idle," Ecclesias replied. He pulled a chair closer and sat so their knees almost touched. "You told me yesterday that depending on people has always ended badly for you. I would like to know why, if I am to keep insisting you do it anyway."
Soren looked away, suddenly aware of the birds still calling beyond the shutters, careless and bright.
"That was not an invitation for an interrogation," he muttered.
"Consider it an abuse of power," Ecclesias said calmly. "Humour me."
Silence stretched.
Soren drew slow breaths, feeling each one scrape against old habits.
He had promised.
"My mother worked in a house with red lanterns," he said finally. "Not one of the elegant ones. The kind where men go when they don't want anyone to see them. I was a mistake whose coin ran out."
He kept his eyes on his own hands.
"I depended on her," he went on. "She depended on men who never remembered her name. When she got sick, I depended on the woman who owned the place instead. She taught me quickly that nothing is free, and nothing is yours. Not even your own body, if someone has enough coin."
The words came out flat. Safer that way.
"When my mother died, I depended on an uncle who saw an opportunity," Soren said. "He dragged me to the palace as a curiosity, a shameful secret he could turn into favour. Everyone pretended I didn't exist until it became useful to pretend I did."
He let out a brittle breath.
"So no," he said. "I don't like depending on people. Every time I've done that before, it ended badly for me."
Ecclesias had gone very still.
He didn't say I'm sorry. Soren was grateful for that. The king sat with his forearms on his thighs, hands loosely clasped, eyes dark and intent.
"Power doesn't care who your mother was," Ecclesias said at last. "But people do. And people are often stupid."
"That is a very kind way to put it," Soren said.
Ecclesias' mouth twitched briefly.
"You were invisible here because it suited them," he went on. "Because calling you a bastard made it easier to keep you out. People who study power don't care about our insults. They trace blood, not titles."
Soren frowned.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
Before Ecclesias could answer, a knock sounded at the door to the outer chamber.
"Come," Ecclesias called, not looking away from Soren.
Arven stepped in a moment later, a sheaf of folded parchment in one hand. He paused at the threshold of the inner room, taking in Soren propped on pillows and the king sitting close.
"Majesty. Your Grace," he said. "Apologies for the interruption."
"If this is about a minor trade dispute," Ecclesias said, "you may take it up with the river and see if it cares."
"It isn't," Arven said. "It's about Deren. Harren. And who was behind them."
The air thinned.
Ecclesias gestured him closer.
"Speak," he said.
Arven came to the foot of the bed, laid the papers on the small table and opened the top page.
"We have been combing Harren's ledgers," he said. "And his steward's. At first it looked like simple bribery. Coin moving from his coffers into kitchen hands. But there are other payments. Ones that don't go to servants."
Ecclesias' eyes narrowed.
"To whom?" he asked.
"At first glance, to minor factors," Arven said. "Money‑changers. Messengers. Then we pulled their records. It repeats. The same sums, spaced out. Routed through different hands, but always ending in the same place."
He tapped a neat line of ink.
Ecclesias read it, jaw tightening.
"Of course," he said softly. "Vharian."
Soren's skin went cold.
"The Vharian Empire?" he asked. "Why would they care about our kitchens?"
"They don't," Arven said. "They care about you."
Soren's laugh came out thin and incredulous.
"Me? Why would Vharian care about me?" he said.
Arven met his gaze.
"Because power doesn't care who your mother was," he echoed. "And they have people whose work is to find it. The sort that runs in blood."
Cold crept up Soren's spine.
"I don't have—" he began.
"Yes," Ecclesias said quietly. "You do."
Soren stared at him.
"What are you talking about?" he demanded. "Larem never said—"
"Larem treats what you are as exhaustion and strain," Ecclesias said. "He is not entirely wrong. But he sees only the cost on your body now. Vharian has been tracing something further back."
He nodded to Arven.
"Tell him," he ordered. "Exactly as you told me."
Arven folded his hands behind his back, bracing himself.
"We intercepted some of the letters Harren's steward thought he'd hidden," he said. "They match copies of reports we took from a Vharian agent two years ago. The descriptions are the same. Place. Time. Circumstances of birth."
Soren's mouth went dry.
"What descriptions?" he asked.
"A child born to a prostitute in the lower quarter," Arven said calmly. "A labour that lasted three days. A mother who bled almost to death on the table. An infant who did not cry for the first hour and then screamed without stopping the next six. A midwife who wrote that the water in her basin kept turning cold too quickly."
He shrugged slightly.
"To most, that is a sad story," he said. "To people who hunt certain lines, it is a sign."
Soren's fingers had knotted in the blanket without him noticing.
"How do they even know that?" he whispered. "Those were poor rooms. No one writes down what happens there."
"Someone did," Arven said. "A temple scribe. A midwife with debts who copied her notes. A priest who thought it interesting. It does not take many people. Once a line is marked, they follow it."
"And they followed it to the palace," Ecclesias said. "To you."
Soren felt as if the floor tilted.
"They tried to kill me," he said. "With the tray. With the cup in the cells. How does that fit your story of… hunting for power?"
Ecclesias shook his head.
"They didn't try to kill you," he said. "That's what we thought. Standing over Deren. Over Harren. Arven's new papers say otherwise."
Arven tapped another sheet.
"The Vharian reports don't speak of your death," he said. "They speak of your *transfer*. They list routes, safe houses, false names. They pay not for blades, but for doors that can be opened quietly."
Shame prickled under Soren's skin.
"And the nobles?" he asked. "Harren. The others."
"Were paid to prepare the ground," Arven said. "To weaken you. To keep you skipping meals and pushing yourself. To plant doubts about 'unfit blood' so that if one day you disappeared, fewer people would shout for your return."
Soren's stomach clenched.
He thought of long days under too many eyes, of forcing his body through ceremonies on sheer will, of the collapse in the corridor that had almost become a spectacle.
"They wanted you breathing," Ecclesias said. "Just not here. They wanted you worn down, doubting yourself, easier to move. The poison on the tray was a crack for everyone to see, not the breaking. The cup in the cells was theirs too cleaning up a servant who could point back the wrong way."
He held Soren's gaze.
"They were never trying to end your life," he said. "They were trying to make you easier to steal."
The word hit harder than any talk of death.
Steal.
Soren saw it: hands reaching, not to strike him down, but to pull him away from everything he knew. A carriage in the dark. A foreign room. Faces that smiled and called him *asset*.
He remembered his mother's cramped space, the way men had stepped around him, never quite looking. Being moved and posed to make other people's lives more comfortable.
He'd clawed his way out of that to a throne.
Now strangers across the border were sending coin and poison because whatever he was had become valuable again.
"That doesn't make sense," he said numbly. "I'm a mistake. I grew up in a room that smelled of cheap perfume. How am I suddenly something empires want to steal?"
"Because you survived," Arven said. "Children who aren't meant to sometimes draw attention. Because your blood isn't as simple as the story they told you. You're a dominant omega born from so‑called bad blood, something that almost never appears outside noble lines. And someone in Vharian believes that, if they wake whatever sleeps in you, it will tilt a battlefield."
Soren let his hand fall from the blanket.
"I don't want to be a weapon," he said. The words were small and hoarse. "For them. For you. For anyone."
Ecclesias moved before Arven could answer.
He circled the bed and sat on the edge, close enough that the mattress dipped. His hand found Soren's wrist, thumb settling over the familiar point of pulse.
"Listen to me," he said.
Soren did.
"They don't just see you as a weakness," Ecclesias said. "They see you as a prize. A lever. Something rare they can bend if they cut you far enough from everything else that you forget you have choices."
His thumb pressed gently against Soren's pulse.
"If there is power in your blood," he went on, "it is yours. Not theirs. Not even mine. If it wakes, it will wake because you decide what to do with it. My fear is not of what you might be. It is of losing you to people who would rather own you than stand beside you."
Soren's eyes stung.
"I don't know what to do with any of this," he whispered. "With them wanting to take me. With you wanting me here. With what that makes me."
"It makes you Soren," Ecclesias said. "The same man who faints because he refuses to admit he's tired, and who apologises to the floor for falling on it. Nothing in Vharian's reports changes that. The only difference now is that we know why their hands are reaching."
He squeezed Soren's wrist once.
"And you are not meeting those hands alone," he added.
Soren looked from Ecclesias to Arven.
"I thought needing people always ended badly," he said quietly.
"You were depending on the wrong people," Ecclesias replied.
Something in Soren's chest shifted, slow and uncertain, like ice beginning to crack.
He drew in a breath.
"Fine," he said, more to himself than to them. "Then I will try. To rely on you. On him." He nodded at Arven. "On Kael. On Larem. It feels like putting my head in a different kind of noose, but… I promised."
Ecclesias' mouth softened.
"And I promised to be there when you stumble," he said. "Consider this the first test."
Arven inclined his head.
"I'll leave you two to fail at resting together," he said dryly. "Majesty."
He gathered the papers and withdrew.
The room felt bigger once the door shut, and smaller at the same time.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Outside, the birds still sang, oblivious.
Inside, Soren shifted, turning so his shoulder brushed Ecclesias' arm.
"I hate that they know so much about me," he said. "Down to how long my mother was in labour. I didn't even know that myself."
Ecclesias' fingers tightened gently on his wrist.
"You know it now," he said. "That means you get to decide what it means. Not them."
"And what if this power—whatever it is—wakes up and I don't like who I am with it?" Soren asked. The question slipped out before he could stop it. "What if they're right to be afraid?"
"Then we deal with that when it comes," Ecclesias said. "You and I. Not you and some Vharian lord with a leash. I am not afraid of what you are. I am only afraid of you being taken."
Soren's heart lurched.
He turned his hand in Ecclesias' grasp until their fingers could curl together, palm to palm.
"For someone who terrifies half the court," he said softly, "you say ridiculous things."
"For someone who terrifies me," Ecclesias said, "you are very bad at noticing it."
Soren let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
He allowed himself to lean sideways until his shoulder rested fully against Ecclesias' arm. It felt less like falling and more like finally tipping in a direction he'd been leaning for a long time.
"I'm tired," he admitted. The word felt strange and honest. "Not the collapsing kind. Just… heavy."
Ecclesias shifted carefully, bringing his free arm around Soren's back without pressing sore ribs. Soren let his head come to rest against the king's shoulder and closed his eyes.
"Then rest," Ecclesias murmured near his hair. "I'll read Arven's terrible handwriting and be offended on your behalf."
Soren made a weak sound.
"Wake me if the empire decides to walk through the door," he said.
"If they do," Ecclesias said, "you will hear about it only when it is over."
Soren believed him in a way that loosened something inside.
He listened to the birds. To his own breathing. To the steady thump of Ecclesias' heart under his cheek.
He had spent his life learning that depending on people was dangerous. That it ended in abandonment, in humiliation, in someone else deciding what he was worth.
Now there were hands reaching for the power in his blood from across a border, nobles whispering in the dark, scaffolds still fresh in the square.
And for the first time, letting someone hold some of his weight felt less like a mistake, and more like the only way he might remain his own.