Larem noticed before he even crossed the room.
Soren sat sideways on the small couch near the window, legs tucked under a blanket, a thin stack of reports balanced on his thighs. Ecclesias occupied the other end, close enough that their knees almost touched, one arm resting along the back of the couch as if he'd simply forgotten to move it.
They were not touching.
Not quite.
"Your Majesty. Your Grace," Larem said, inclining his head.
Soren looked up from the page. Colour rose along his cheekbones, quickly, almost guiltily, and his fingers tightened minutely on the parchment before he made them relax.
"You are late," Ecclesias said mildly. "I was beginning to think you were avoiding us."
"If I were avoiding you, Your Majesty, you would not see me at all," Larem replied. "Your Grace, your wrist."
Soren shifted the reports aside and offered his hand without argument. The moment Larem's fingers closed around his pulse, the beat under his skin leapt faster, not with the thready edge of panic, but with something bright and sharp.
Larem's gaze flicked once to Ecclesias.
The king had gone very still.
"Interesting," Larem said.
"Is that a medical term?" Ecclesias asked.
"It is the polite one," Larem said. "Your Grace, breathe normally."
Soren exhaled a little too deliberately.
Larem counted silently. The rhythm was fast, but regular. No stutter. No hollow skips. His skin was warm, not fevered.
"You are not dying," Larem said at last. "Again. Unfortunately, that is the end of the good news."
Soren's mouth twitched.
"There is bad?" he asked.
"Reckless," Larem said. He released Soren's wrist and straightened. "Your endocrine system is still strained. Your pheromones are overreacting to stimuli."
"Stimuli," Ecclesias repeated blandly.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Larem said. "Things like stress. Sudden fear. Physical exhaustion. Illness. Or a king who cannot keep his hands or his mouth to himself."
Heat flooded Soren's face. Ecclesias' ears reddened.
"I asked," Ecclesias said, too calm, "and he consented."
"I assumed as much," Larem said. "If he had not, you would already be in the infirmary and he would be explaining your injuries to me."
Soren made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh.
"The point," Larem went on, "is not whether you asked. It is what his body can reasonably sustain while it is still expelling poison. You have given his system a great many reasons to light itself on fire. Perhaps do not hand it tinder."
"I feel fine," Soren protested.
"You feel alive," Larem corrected. "Those are not the same. Your Grace, you are reacting very strongly to proximity and touch. That may be gratifying. It is also draining."
Soren's fingers curled in the blanket.
"So your advice," Ecclesias said, "is that I sit at the far end of the room and practise monastic restraint."
"My advice," Larem said coolly, "is that you remain close enough to stabilise his scent, but not so close that he forgets how to inhale."
He adjusted the strap of his satchel.
"You will continue the nutrients and tonics," he added for Soren. "Light study only. Short audiences. If you feel your chest tighten, your vision blur, or if His Majesty kisses you until you cannot breathe, you will stop. Do you understand?"
Soren's flush darkened.
"Yes," he said.
"And you?" Larem asked the king.
Ecclesias met his gaze without flinching.
"I understand," he said. "I make no promises about never wanting to disobey you."
Larem closed his eyes briefly, the picture of a man conversing with a wall.
"At least he will be alive to complain about you," he muttered. "You may both go back to whatever you were not doing when I arrived. But slowly."
He bowed and left before either of them could say something that would force him to stay.
The door shut.
Silence slipped in behind it.
"That was… humiliating," Soren said at last.
"He did not say anything untrue," Ecclesias said.
"That does not make it better," Soren replied.
Ecclesias shifted a little closer along the couch, careful, deliberate, letting his knee rest against Soren's under the blanket.
"Does this count as tinder?" he asked.
Soren's heart betrayed him again, a small leap under his ribs.
"Yes," he said. "Unfortunately."
Ecclesias' lips curved.
"Then we will ration it," he said. "For today."
Soren was not entirely reassured.
***
The audience chamber felt larger when one entered it with intent.
Soren had crossed it a hundred times as decoration following priests, trailing behind nobles, walking where he was placed. Today he crossed it on his own feet, with Ecclesias at his side and a clerk already waiting with the first petition.
"There are representatives from the river districts," Kael murmured as he took his place behind the throne. "They claim the water has made people ill."
Soren's shoulders tightened.
"The same districts affected by the last shipment of bad medicine," Ecclesias said under his breath. "Watch. Tell me if anything sounds familiar."
They took their seats.
Petitioners stepped forward: a woman with roughened hands, a guildmaster with ink‑stained fingers, a thin priest whose eyes slid too often toward the nobles' gallery. They spoke of rashes, fevers, strange lingering weakness in those who drank from certain wells. The words were wrapped in worry, helplessness, anger; beneath them ran a thinner current of fear.
Soren listened.
He watched the way the guildmaster's fingers tapped a nervous rhythm on his hat. He noted the priest's careful phrasing too careful, as if avoiding certain names. The woman from the district mentioned a supplier in passing, a name that snagged somewhere in his memory.
Arven's ledgers and lectures unblurred in his head.
"Your Majesty," Soren said quietly, "may I ask a question?"
Ecclesias did not look at him. His gaze stayed on the petitioners.
"You may," he said. "You are, after all, the one who nearly died of other people's water."
A faint ripple of uneasy amusement moved through the chamber.
Soren ignored it.
He addressed the woman first.
"You said the last barrels arrived with a different mark than usual," he said. "Can you describe it?"
She nodded, speaking of a stylised river, a set of interlocking circles.
Soren's stomach tightened.
He turned to the guildmaster.
"And you?" he asked. "Have you seen that mark in your accounts?"
The man hesitated, then admitted he had, once or twice, on shipments routed through the border.
Soren glanced up at Ecclesias.
"That mark was in Arven's records," he said softly. "On a route tied to Vharian‑friendly traders."
Ecclesias' jaw shifted.
"Kael," he said. "Note it. Quietly."
Kael dipped his head.
Soren looked to the priest.
"And you, Father," he said. "You mentioned a travelling healer who blessed the wells before people fell ill. Where did he say he was from?"
"He did not," the priest said. "He spoke with an accent I could not place."
"Did he ask after anyone in particular?" Soren pressed. "Certain families? Certain bloodlines? Anyone with unusual gifts?"
The priest swallowed.
"He asked," he admitted, "whether any among us had been touched by the old stories. Children born with… strange talents. Old omens. We told him no."
That, of course, was a lie. No village was that clean of superstition.
Soren sat back.
He felt Ecclesias' gaze on him now, hot and considering.
"You see?" the king asked the hall at large. "This is why you will speak to him when you try to hide the rot. He has already nearly died of your poison. He recognises the taste."
Several nobles shifted uncomfortably.
Ecclesias turned back to the petitioners.
"You will have clean water brought in from the upper wells," he said. "At Crown expense. Larem will send physicians. Any man found continuing to sell contaminated supplies will be tried as if he had raised a blade himself."
His voice cooled.
"And if we find that this 'healer' is connected to our southern neighbours," he added, "we will teach them the cost of experimenting on my people."
There was nothing ceremonial in the way he said *my*. It rang like iron on stone.
The audience continued. More petitions. More small failures and bargains. Soren's head grew heavy with them. His ribs ached where the bandages still pulled.
By the time the last petitioner bowed and backed away, his hands trembled faintly where they rested on the arms of his chair.
Ecclesias saw.
"That is enough for today," he said, rising.
Kael began to protest something about schedules; Ecclesias silenced him with a look.
***
In the privacy of the small study, the ache hit properly.
Soren sank down onto the couch, breath catching as his side flared. The reports on the low table blurred at the edges.
"You pushed too far," Ecclesias said.
"I sat and listened," Soren said. "Barely that."
"You turned an audience into a thread we can pull," Ecclesias replied. "That takes more from you than smiling on a balcony."
He knelt instead of sitting, so that he was level with Soren's shoulder. One hand hovered near Soren's ribs, not daring to touch without permission.
"May I?" he asked.
Soren nodded.
Ecclesias' fingers pressed lightly along the side of his chest, testing the bandaged area with careful, practised touch. Soren hissed softly where the bruises complained.
"It is not worse," Ecclesias said. "Just angry that you insisted on being useful."
"I thought that was the goal," Soren muttered.
Ecclesias' mouth twitched.
"The goal," he said, "is that you live long enough to be as irritatingly useful as you like."
He shifted, sitting beside Soren instead, and gently drew the blanket higher over his legs, like he had in the early days when Soren had been too weak to stand.
Soren stared at his hands.
"I liked it," he admitted quietly. "Hearing them. Seeing where the lies sat. Feeling like I could do something beyond surviving what they throw at me."
Ecclesias' gaze softened.
"And?" he asked.
"And," Soren said, throat tight, "it terrifies me. The more I matter, the more there is to break. For them. For Vharian. For you."
Ecclesias leaned back enough that he could study Soren's profile.
"You were breakable when you were a nameless omega in a brothel," he said. "You were breakable when you slept on your uncle's floor. The difference now is that if someone reaches for you, they will have to go through me."
"That is not the comfort you think it is," Soren said. "If they cannot go through you, they will go around. Through the people. Through the crown. Through anyone they think I care about."
Ecclesias considered that and did not dismiss it.
"Then," he said, "we make sure that for every person you care about, there are ten who owe you more than they owe them."
Soren turned his head, meeting his eyes.
"You want to build a wall of favours and fear around me," he said.
"I want to build a country that considers harming you as unthinkable as harming its own lungs," Ecclesias answered.
Soren's heart twisted.
"That is not how countries think," he said.
"Then we will teach it," Ecclesias replied. "We have time. You are not going anywhere."
That was not entirely true, as it turned out.
***
They barely had an hour before Kael appeared at the door again, irritation carefully hidden under protocol.
"Majesty," he said to Ecclesias, then to Soren, "there is something you should see."
He held out a folded piece of parchment, sealed in wax with a lesser house's sigil. On the outside, in neat script, a harmless address.
"It was intercepted by the outer guard," Kael said. "Routine inspection. The courier ran when questioned."
Ecclesias took the letter, broke the seal, and read. His jaw tightened. He held the page out so Soren could see it too.
Polite phrases. Careful ink.
Beneath them, an invitation to "discuss concerns about the Queen's growing influence" at a private gathering. Hints that if His Majesty could not be separated from his new consort, perhaps "other responsible voices" might be needed to "guide" the realm. Nothing treasonous on the surface. Everything poisonous beneath it.
Stripped of courtesy, it said one thing: gather those who disliked the queen, test how far they could push him away from Ecclesias, and, if that failed, decide what to do about a consort the king refused to give up.
Soren read it once. Then again, slower. His grip on the parchment hardened until the edge crumpled. When he spoke, his voice was calm; the anger had gone cold.
"They move quickly," he said.
"They were already moving," Ecclesias replied. "The coronation simply gave them a reason to hurry."
He looked at Soren then, not as decoration, not even only as risk, but as someone whose decisions would now matter as much as his own.
"Well," Ecclesias said, tone almost light. "They wanted to test the Velvet Blade."
Soren lifted his gaze from the ink to meet his eyes. The exhaustion of the last days, the ache in his muscles, the new weight of study and duty all of it folded into a single, clear line of resolve.
"Then," he said, "perhaps we should show them what happens when they reach for it."
Silence sat with them for a breath.
Then Kael cleared his throat again.
"There's more," he said. "From Arven."
***
In Arven's office, the air was thick with ink and dust and old maps.
"There have been three attacks on caravans in the last month," Arven said without preamble. "All carrying medical supplies. All on routes that match the barrels that reached your rivers."
"Bandits?" Ecclesias asked.
"Bandits do not leave the coin and take the ledgers," Arven said. "Or the correspondence."
He pushed a bundle of folded letters across the table.
Soren recognised the handwriting.
"The same as the intercepted letter after the council," he said.
"Yes," Arven said. "Someone is testing how much poison the realm will tolerate before it complains."
"And how much I can tolerate," Soren said quietly, "before I collapse."
Arven did not argue.
Kael cleared his throat.
"There is another matter," he said. "One of the physicians who treated you before Larem took over? He has disappeared."
"How convenient," Ecclesias said.
"He requested leave to return to his family," Kael said. "The paperwork is clean. Too clean. The address he gave does not exist."
Soren's mouth went dry.
"So someone with access to me, to my blood, to my condition, is now missing," he said. "Likely with friends."
"Likely with instructions," Arven added.
Ecclesias' hand found the back of Soren's chair, fingers curling around the wood.
"They experimented on him once," the king said. "They will not get a second chance."
Soren did not miss the way he said *on him*, not *on His Grace*.
"Then we have to move," Soren said. "Not just on water and traders. On the ones who think a queen is a convenient test subject."
"You are still recovering," Kael started.
"And they are not waiting," Soren cut in. "They did not pause their plans because I am tired."
Arven's gaze flicked between them.
"What do you propose?" he asked.
Soren thought of the river districts and their poisoned wells. Of nobles too afraid to say his name, and letters inviting people to discuss his removal over wine.
"Let them gather," he said. "Whoever wrote that first letter will try again. They will want others to sign their courage."
Ecclesias' eyes sharpened.
"You want us to let them call their meeting," he said.
"Yes," Soren replied. "And you will not be the only one listening this time."
"The last time we put you in a room full of knives," Kael said, "we were very nearly cleaning your body from the floor."
"The last time," Soren said, "I was alone."
The word hung there, heavier than rhetoric.
He looked at Ecclesias.
"We cannot stop them from hating me," he said. "Or from fearing what I mean to you. We can decide whether that fear makes them reckless in the dark or careful in the open."
"You are suggesting," Ecclesias said slowly, "that we invite them to underestimate you."
Soren's mouth curved, without humour.
"They already do," he said. "I am simply suggesting we choose the room."
Silence settled, tense and thoughtful.
Arven's fingers drummed once on the edge of the table.
"We could make it a charity gathering," he said. "Something your position demands you attend. A winter relief banquet for the river districts. An event any 'concerned' noble would be expected to support."
"And we stack the staff with our own people," Kael added. "Guards in servants' clothing. Ears behind every curtain."
Ecclesias did not look away from Soren.
"It puts you in their sight again," he said.
"I am already in their sights," Soren answered. "This way, we choose the angle."
His heart was beating too fast. Larem would call it reckless. He called it inevitable.
Ecclesias exhaled, slow.
"Very well," he said. "We will plan your ball."
The word tasted strange in his mouth.
"My ball," Soren repeated.
"Our trap," Ecclesias corrected softly, as if the word itself were a blade being drawn.
***
By evening, Soren's body had decided it was done collaborating.
He managed to make it back to the study before his knees threatened mutiny. Ecclesias guided him to the couch with a hand at the small of his back, gentle but immovable.
"Sit," the king said. "Before I have to explain to Larem that you tried to outstare an empire and lost to gravity."
Soren sank down, muscles ringing.
"If you tell him, he will write it down," he said. "He will add a chapter to his treatise on my poor life choices."
Ecclesias picked up a report from the table, glanced at the first line, and tossed it aside. Then he picked another, read two sentences, and did the same.
"You are not reading," Soren observed.
"I am making a pile of things that can wait until tomorrow," Ecclesias said. "So that I may focus on the thing that cannot."
Soren raised an eyebrow.
"Which is?"
"You," Ecclesias said, without hesitation.
The word landed low in Soren's chest.
He tried to deflect.
"You know," he said, "most kings say things like 'the realm' or 'the border' when they talk about priorities."
"They can acquire their own queens," Ecclesias replied. "This one is mine."
The possessive should have rankled. It didn't. Or rather, it did and the part of him that bristled had to fight another part that wanted to lean into the word until it became shelter.
Soren's eyelids felt heavier with every breath. The edges of the room softened.
"Read," he said, nodding vaguely at the remaining reports. "If I fall asleep, you can pretend I am a decorative cushion."
"You are a terrible cushion," Ecclesias said. "You argue."
"Then I will argue in my dreams," Soren murmured.
He meant to sit straight. He truly did. Somehow, over the next stretch of quiet, his shoulder found its way against Ecclesias' arm. The warmth was immediate, solid. His body, that treacherous thing, relaxed into it as if it had been waiting all day for permission.
Ecclesias did not move.
He picked up one of the reports from the "cannot wait" pile and began to read aloud instead, voice low and even. The subject matter grain quotas, river patrols, troop rotations should have been dull. In his mouth, it became a steady rhythm, words washing over Soren's raw nerves like river stones.
Soren drifted.
He dreamed, briefly, of hands in the dark again grabbing, pulling, trying to drag him backward into the cold water of old fear.
Then another hand closed around his, firm and warm, refusing to let go.
He woke with his fingers actually curled around Ecclesias' sleeve, breath hitching.
Ecclesias' free hand came up, not quite touching his face.
"Here," the king said. "Not there."
Soren swallowed.
"I know," he said. "I just… forget."
"Then I will remind you," Ecclesias answered.
He did not ask about the dream. Soren did not offer. The understanding lay somewhere between them, quiet and stubborn.
On the table, a small velvet box waited.
Soren noticed it only when Ecclesias reached for it.
"There is one more thing," Ecclesias said. "Kael brought it up from the vaults. Arven disapproved. That made me more certain I wanted it."
"You stole from Arven?" Soren asked, surprised into a soft laugh. "I did not think anyone was allowed to do that."
"I am the king," Ecclesias said. "I am allowed to be a menace when necessary."
He opened the box.
Inside lay a ring.
It was simple at first glance no heavy crown of jewels, no gaudy crest just a band of dark, polished metal worked with a narrow inlay of gold in the shape of a broken circle rejoined. On the inside, the royal sigil was engraved where only the wearer would feel it against the skin.
Soren's amusement faded.
"What is it?" he asked, voice low.
"Authority," Ecclesias said. "Mine. In your hand."
He took the ring out and turned it between his fingers.
"There are two seals in this kingdom that command immediate obedience from guards and ministers," he said. "Mine, and the one on this ring. When you wear it, if I am not there, my word rides in yours. Orders given under it are treated as if I spoke them."
Soren's breath faltered.
"That is—" he began, then broke off, throat working. "You would give them that excuse? To say I control you?"
"They already say it," Ecclesias replied. "I am simply giving you the power they pretend to fear."
He shifted to face Soren fully.
"You have stood beside the throne," he said. "You have bled for it. You have nearly died because others wanted to see how far they could twist what you are. This is not repayment. It is recognition. You are not borrowing this place anymore, Soren. You are sharing it."
He held out his hand.
"May I?" he asked.
Soren looked at the ring, then at Ecclesias' face.
"This is not just… a symbol," he said slowly. "If I wear that, and I speak, they must obey."
"Yes," Ecclesias said simply. "Some of them will hate you more for it. Most of them will be too afraid to test how far your reach goes. All of them will have to remember that ignoring you is no longer an option."
"And you are not afraid?" Soren asked. "That I will misuse it? That I will make a mistake so large you cannot mend it?"
"I am very much afraid," Ecclesias said. "Of many things. You misusing this is not among them."
Soren's heart lurched.
He lifted his left hand, fingers curling in on themselves for a moment, then slowly uncurling in silent permission.
Ecclesias took his hand with a care that felt almost ceremonial. His fingers were warm, steady, wrapping around Soren's as if they belonged there.
The metal slid over Soren's knuckle and came to rest at the base of his finger.
It was heavier than it looked. He felt the cool touch of the inner engraving against his skin, the faint indentation pressing into him like a secret only he could feel.
"There," Ecclesias said softly. "Now, when I am not in the room, I am still between you and them."
Soren stared at his hand.
All his life, rings had meant something he didn't have: promises made to others, doors closed to him, status he was told he could never touch. This one encircled his finger with the opposite: a promise given to him, a door opened from the inside.
"It is dangerous," Soren said.
"Yes," Ecclesias agreed. "That is why it belongs on someone who understands danger."
"It paints a target," Soren added.
"It tells them where to aim," Ecclesias said. "At you, where I can see. Not at the shadows around you, where I cannot."
Soren let out a breath that shook more than he wanted it to.
"This is not just about making them obey me," he realised. "It is about you trusting me with the part of you they fear most."
"My power?" Ecclesias asked.
"Your name," Soren said. "Your throne. Your… anchor."
Ecclesias' gaze softened in a way that made Soren's chest hurt.
"Love," he said quietly, as if testing the word. "They fear that most. Yes."
Soren's fingers closed reflexively, feeling the band bite gently into his skin.
"What if I am not enough for it?" he whispered. "What if they are right, and I break the realm just by being allowed to touch it?"
Ecclesias did not look away.
"Then we will fix what breaks," he said. "Together. But I will not keep you small to make cowards comfortable."
He lifted Soren's hand, still wearing the ring, and pressed his lips once, deliberately, to the back of his knuckles. The kiss was gentle and unhurried; the contact of metal and mouth made Soren's pulse jump.
"In public," Ecclesias said, voice low, "this tells them you speak with my authority. In private, it tells you something else."
Soren swallowed.
"And what is that?" he asked.
"That I chose you," Ecclesias said. "Not as an ornament. Not as a shield I can hide behind. As the person I trust most to stand where I cannot always be."
Heat rose in Soren's chest, curling under his ribs, flooding his throat.
"For someone who terrifies half the court," he murmured, "you say very reckless things."
"For someone who terrifies me," Ecclesias replied, "you are very bad at seeing it."
Soren looked back down at the ring.
It gleamed dully in the low light, unassuming to a casual glance. Only those who knew what it meant would understand that wrapped around his finger was the right to interrupt a council, to countermand a captain, to shield a village, to ruin a plot—and the proof that the king's power did not begin and end in one body.
It was an armament and a vow in one.
His body still ached. His lungs still tired too easily. Vharian still wanted him stolen. Nobles still whispered.
But for the first time, when he imagined walking into a room without Ecclesias at his side, he did not see himself as a soft throat waiting for someone else's knife.
He saw the ring.
He saw their faces when they realised that even in the king's absence, opposition to Soren was opposition to the crown itself.
And under that, quiet and shocking and warm, he felt something else:
For once in his life, being claimed did not mean being owned.
It meant being trusted with the one thing a king could not take back.
His hand tightened around Ecclesias'.
"I will try not to ruin your kingdom," he said.
Ecclesias' smile cut through the last of the day's heaviness.
"If you do," he said, "we will build a better one out of the pieces."