He stared down at the body at his feet.
“Oh,” he said, softly.
The man in the field hadn’t been his father after all. It had just been Eli—Eli as he would be when was honest. All the pain and grief and mess were still there, but there was peace, too, a warmth that ran through Eli’s limbs and made the grief easier to bear.
He knelt before his body.
He had a choice,a voice said. It was a familiar voice, but Eli couldn’t quite place it. Still, it was right. He could stay there, in that field beyond the world. Maybe he would find the river of death and cross it. Maybe something else would find him and help him there. Or he could go back, embrace the cold, injured body lying in the grass, and become something new.
“I’m always becoming,” Eli said. “Aren’t I?”
There was no one to reply but himself, but Eli already knew the answer.
He crouched over his own body, placed his hand on his heart, and made his choice.
In the depthsof the oldest forests of Staria, the Green Man lifted his head. The Harvest Mother’s ashes stirred in the wind and leapt over the wheat fields with the echo of a laugh. TheMay Bride raised her veil. Spirits hesitated over the Starian countryside as the subtle magic that made them shifted and expanded, making room for something new.
Rey, kneeling over Eli’s body, felt a heartbeat pulse under his hand as Eli sucked in a rattling breath.
Rey sat up, pushing tears out of his eyes. Sabre let out a broken cry.
Eli de Valois, knight of Staria, was a traitor, a cursed exile, a brother, a lover, and a spirit. But what mattered to Rey was that he was there and smiling, one arm around Sabre’s shoulder as he reached up to cup Rey’s cheek in his other hand.
“You came back,” Rey said, and wept as he kissed him.
Eli stroked Rey’s hair. “What did Sabre and I tell Tristan, Rey? I’m a de Valois. I’m too much of a stubborn asshole to stay down for long. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. If you’ll have me, that is.”
“Yes,” Rey said. “Of course I will.”
Eli kissed him again, and as he turned to embrace his brother, fireflies winked in the shadows between the trees. They drifted like sparks from a fire, then faded away one by one as warm laughter rang out, chasing the last echoes of the unquiet dead from Staria.
The pleasure districtwas quiet in the early dawn. The noble carriages were gone, the public eateries closed until sunset and street vendors walking home as light fell over the city. Sabre walked ahead, tapping his left hand against his hip in a nervous tic Eli had never seen before, while Eli tried not to look for guards in every shadow. He was taking a risk coming back so soon, but he felt an obligation to see Sabre home.
Everything had changed, and yet it hadn’t. Eli’s wounds had closed when he’d woken in Rey and Sabre’s arms. His body felt lighter. He wasn’t winded after walking up the winding streets of Duciel, and he doubted he’d be out of breath even if he ran to the palace and back. Emile de Guillory and Isiodore de Mortain didn’t know that, though, and he doubted it mattered to them if Eli wasn’t quite a mortal man anymore. Still, he’d already faced death twice. What was Emile de Guillory next to the King of the Hunt?
Rey hadn’t let go of Eli since King Tristan’s death. He was always touching him—a hand on his shoulder, his back, his elbow—as though if he let go, Eli was going to disappear. They were all probably shaken by what had happened. Eli kept examining the sword, running his thumb over the carving of the stag’s head and thinking about the heat of Tristan’s mouth as it closed over Eli’s body. He could only imagine how that must have looked from the outside.
“Laurent might be a touch concerned,” Sabre said, as they turned down the alley leading to the House of Onyx. Eli grimaced. “I left rather suddenly, and—oh. Oh, no.”
A window swung open on one of the upper floors, and a woman with long brown hair and a rumpled silk gown leaned out of it. “He’s back!” she shouted over her shoulder, and two other windows popped open. Sabre waved at the curious faces peering down at him, and Eli drew back a step as the front door slammed open and someone came rushing out.
At first, Eli didn’t recognize Laurent. His pale violet hair was unbrushed. He wasn’t wearing makeup to hide the shadows under his eyes or the slight imperfections on his skin, and he was wearing a robe hastily thrown over some sleep pants and a simple shirt. One of his shoes snagged on the rug by the door and fell off, and he half hopped, half ran to Sabre, taking his face inboth hands and kissing him so thoroughly that Eli took another step back to give them a semblance of privacy.
“Oh, my,” Rey whispered, and Eli nudged him with a shoulder.
“Hush.”
“Laurie, I’m fine,” Sabre said, as Laurent tipped Sabre’s head back and forth as though looking for injuries. “I’m sorry. I had to find Eli, he was in trouble.”
Eli let out a long breath. Even if Laurent hated Eli for taking Sabre on a dangerous gambit that could have killed him, at least he clearly cared about Sabre.
Laurent’s gaze flicked to Eli and Rey, and his brows rose. Sabre whispered something, and Laurent’s brow creased. He looked from Eli to Sabre several times before he said, in a strangled voice, “He’s your what?”
“Best to explain inside,” Sabre said. He looked up at the people staring down from the windows and smiled sheepishly. “Privately, if possible.”
Eli doubted they would ever have privacy in a pleasure house. Laurent barricaded them all in his bedroom, which was more lavishly decorated than Eli’s childhood home, but the moment Sabre referred to Eli as “my brother,” Eli heard a chorus of gasps just outside the door.
“Ignore them,” Laurent said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Sabre knelt on the floor before him, and Laurent tangled his fingers in Sabre’s hair. “They know better than to spread rumors.”
