Chapter Text
Blue sky—outside—Dilandau started thrashing the moment he surfaced, but the princess already had him on the ground, hands locked around his upper arms as they bloomed with bruises beneath her touch. “Stop it! Stop it!” he screamed as the sting of red scratches spiderwebbed across his skin. “Let me go, you bitch! I’ll kill you! What have you done to me?!”
“We’d be happy to explain if you’d calm down,” Allen Schezar said, somewhere nearby, and Dilandau did his best to spit in the direction.
“We’re trying to heal you,” the princess implored.
“Liar! You lying bitch! Bastard!” The scratches and bruises manifested each time he regained consciousness—Asturia had clearly been busy with their own new forms of torture. He had to figure out how they were doing it—not through any ingestion or injection he could remember, but that was no proof. It just meant they were also making him forget, breaking bones to re-set them to their design. He was a puppet in their hands, waking with his fingers pinched around the little necks of porcelain dolls.
But he was outside, this time—his chance to escape before they put him back in that room with all the stupid little toys and books.
“Dilandau,” Schezar said, and Dilandau twisted to give him a proper glare, filled with all the venom he could muster.
“What do you want with me? Let me go! Bastards! Swine!” He nearly broke the princess’ hold on one his arms, but she redoubled her grip. She must wrestle wolves in her spare time, he thought.
“We have no plans to do anything with you,” Schezar said. “We only ever want to talk.”
“Liar! Where am I?” His voice began to crack against the terror he couldn’t clamp down. “Why have you brought me outside?” They were done with him. They were done with him and they didn’t want to get blood on the quilt—Schezar had called it his mother’s, the child, the infant, the lost fucking babe in arms—and he needed to escape.
“We won’t continue this conversation until you’ve calmed down,” the princess said.
“Calm?” he shrieked. “You ask me to be calm? You aren’t the one waking up with bruises again and again and again and again!” The colors marred his skin so horribly—he couldn’t die like that—ugly and broken and caked with blood that wasn’t someone else’s. “Tell me what’s going on, goddamn you!”
Schezar only sighed. “As I have said, many times before, you’re in our custody, but we mean you no harm. We’ve granted you sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary?” Dilandau made an effort to tilt his head back and laugh. “Save your saccharine sanctuary and let me go!” he yelled, punctuating each word with a kick.
“If you want to be released, stop your struggling,” Schezar said. “Otherwise we’ll take you back inside and make other arrangements for your custody.”
Needles and a table.
Needles and a table.
The keen of the crying girl, so quiet lately, began to wail in his ears, and heat drained from Dilandau like he’d been dipped in an ice bath. “No.” His voice was so quiet he couldn’t be sure they’d heard it. “No! Don’t! Please!”
Schezar frowned. He must be getting bored of this. Getting tired of him. Needles and a table. Dilandau swiveled his head back to the princess—she’d do something, surely she’d do something—pleading, “Don’t let him! Don’t let him!” he cried, just like her.
“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” the princess said, lying ever, ever, ever so sweetly.
Schezar lowered himself to kneel beside them, and it was over, it was all over, and Dilandau jolted as the swordsman placed a cool hand on his forehead. “Breathe, Dilandau.”
He didn’t know why—he obeyed. “No harm will come to you,” Schezar continued. “Of that, you have my word as a member of the Knights Caeli.”
Dilandau kept breathing, kept breathing, long after his heartbeat had stopped hammering his ribs, after the princess’s grip loosened, and left. He twitched, telling himself now was the time to run, fucking run, but he couldn’t move his limbs.
“Will you let me explain?” Schezar asked.
“Where am I?”
“Still on the Schezar estate,” Schezar said. “This is the garden.”
“Why do you keep me here?”
“It’s the safest place for you right now.”
“Are you drugging me?”
“No. You’re sick.”
Dilandau, at last, managed a scoff. “I’ve been hearing that my whole life,” he said, cracking a wan smile. “It really loses its teeth after so long.”
The princess deigned to speak again. “Your fate has been made unstable. That’s the cause of your blackouts. We’re working to rehabilitate you—if you’d only work with us,” she implored.
Dilandau took the time to eye them each with suspicion. “Don’t you have better things to do?”
Schezar folded his arms, in a tired sort of way. “Not right now,” he said. “But I’ll keep you informed.”
Dilandau allowed the princess to raise him to a sitting position, and she asked, “Do you need water? Something to eat?”
Dilandau shook his head, as bewildered as he always was when she asked. They were tending to him in his sleep, somehow. Washing and feeding and dressing him and insuring he woke with no hunger nor thirst. His eyes fell to his body. Today, instead of the loose smock or sickbed clothes—atrocious, insulting things—they’d put him in a lavender shirt and brown trousers that suited him well enough. His feet were strapped into an uncomfortable pair of sandals, and he kicked them together experimentally, unsure whether to deem them an improvement from the bare feet he’d been waking up in thus far.
“We’re still trying to figure out your size,” the princess said. “Do you want them off?”
“Why are you doing this?” he asked, though he’d given up on getting an answer.
“Let’s stand up and take a loop around the garden,” she said, with such a warm smile that Dilandau had to make a conscious effort to keep a scowl on his lips.
Dilandau opened his eyes to darkness, followed the ever-lightening traces of pain down his arms to his fingers. He was pinned—strapped to a table—the girl was crying—he squeezed his eyes shut again to brace against the examination lights, but none came, and after seconds had dragged to minutes, maybe hours, he heard soft breathing beside him. He turned his head, opened his eyes to see Schezar in the rocking chair, hair drooping in sleep. Dilandau was in the same room—in the same bed—he’d been waking in since he’d been brought to Asturia. Sheets—not straps—kept him swaddled beneath the quilt atop the bed. He traced his eyes along the shapes of waves and feathers embroidered across the fabric, trying to imagine how they’d feel beneath his fingers. His mother’s, Schezar had said.
Dilandau watched Schezar’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall. A fairytale book lay open on his lap. “You’re getting sloppy, Schezar,” he whispered.
Light. So stunning that Dilandau nearly lost his balance—hands on either side moved to keep him from falling. Why was he on his feet?
“We’re in the garden again,” the princess explained.
“We’d like to talk to you,” Schezar said.
Dilandau remained limp, drinking in some small satisfaction as the two were forced to ease him onto the ground.
Once he was settled, the subject Schezar raised was the last one Dilandau would have expected. “What do you say to leaving the estate?”
“No,” Dilandau said.
The princess made a shrill noise of insult. “We haven’t even told you where we’re going!” she said.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t believe you.”
The princess was not to be denied. “We think some ocean air would help you stabilize.” She sounded so earnest. Maybe even honest. “A little north along the coast, there’s a lovely beach, covered in smooth little stones—”
Dilandau closed his eyes, and conjured a great pendulum with a half-crescent axe affixed to its point. He didn’t know where the image had come from, just that it worked when he wanted it to.
The pendulum swung, so close he imagined it brushing against his shoes. Shoes that fit today, he realized, too late.
It drew back, swung low, and lopped his feet off at the ankle.
Back,
and forth,
Each swing took another section of his body.
Knee.
Hips.
Ribs.
Shoulders.
Neck
Dilandau stared up at the ceiling of a small carriage, muscles aching so badly he didn’t even move as the princess released him to ask, “Dilandau?”
“Shut up,” he said, with the only drop of venom he could manage.
“Your bruises and scratches are healing well.”
He’d have to make more. Without their pain, he had nothing to distract him from his bones. They felt as if their marrow had been boiled, and, with nowhere to go, the heat had stretched them like glass, sending the muscles twitching in confused panic.
“Are you in pain?” the princess asked.
“Shut up.”
“It’s not as if he’d consent to a sedative,” Schezar said. He was here. He was always here.
“What, exactly, have I consented to?” Dilandau crowed. “I wish I could recall!”
“We’re on our way to the beach,” the princess said. “When we arrive, do you want to come out and see it?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Schezar asked.
“I hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you!”
“Do you hate the ocean?”
Dilandau closed his eyes and brought the pendulum down.
Dilandau was on his hands and knees like a dog, wet and covered in sand. In instinct he rolled, shoulder splashing into shallow water and soaking his shirt until he was righted again, heaving.
Schezar sat staring at him in the water a little distant, about to set a stone atop a pile. He was undressed—vulnerable—wearing only some short trousers and an airy shirt—Dilandau cast his eyes down for a rock, some glass, anything, but each white and black stone within reach was smooth, small, useless.
Schezar set down the stone, sat back in the water, and waited.
Dilandau swung his head around—where was the princess?—this was the beach she’d promised, covered in the little stones, the carriage was inland in the brush, and the sea stretched on forever. A blonde head surfaced in the water—the princess was swimming towards a large rock, too far to stop him from running this time. He had only to deal with Schezar.
A small clack beside him. Schezar had resumed his stacking.
“What are you doing?” Dilandau spat.
“Building a castle,” he mused. “Any interest in joining?”
Dilandau crawled through the surf, shoved at the stones, and sent the pitiful pile tumbling down.
Schezar just looked at it. “Now we’ll have to start all over,” he sighed.
Dilandau scrambled forward over the jumbled pile and buried his hands in the fabric of Schezar's shirt. “Stop fucking with me, Schezar!” he screamed. “I won’t be brainwashed! I’ll never be your prisoner—your captive—your little pet!”
Schezar smiled, unperturbed. “Believe me, I know.”
“Then why?” Dilandau did his best to shake him, but his arms were aching badly. “Why do you keep me?”
“Oh? Are you ready for me to explain?”
Dilandau shoved him away, mostly succeeding only in pushing himself backwards.
Schezar went on. “Ten years ago, my young sister was kidnapped—stolen—by the Zaibach empire,” he said. “The things they did changed her beyond recognition.”
Dilandau kept his eyes on the princess offshore, tracking her progress to the rock, but his mind was in a field of wheat, wind blowing too hard to hear Schezar’s words. All he could see was his smile in the sun.
Dilandau dropped the stone from clumsy, aching fingers, watched it tumble down the side of the pile.
“She shares your body, Dilandau,” Schezar said. The princess stood atop the rock. “You were cleaved from my sister, Celena.”
Dilandau was lying down, shallow water chilling his burning skin. Below, his muscles seized with shock, trying to peel themselves free from screaming bones. The princess was back, lifting his head up instead of pinning his arms down. What novelty.
“Dilandau," she enunciated, as if he couldn't hear. "Are you all right?”
“Put a fucking end to me,” he bit out as the princess managed to rest his head upon her lap. His limbs hurt too badly to move, and the pendulum hung high in the sky, too far to reach him. “Just put a goddamn fucking end to me!”
“I can’t do that,” Schezar said.
“Then I’ll do it myself,” Dilandau spat. “I’ll do it the next chance I get.”
“Try it,” Schezar said, “and you will know no peace.” His voice held a solemnity Dilandau wasn’t prepared for. “You will be watched, restrained, locked away. Again and again.”
Needles and a table.
Needles and a table. The crying girl sobbed.
“Or,” Schezar said, “you can live. You can take your place in our lives. A place is yours by rights.” He brushed the wet hair from Dilandau’s face. “My brother.”
Dilandau’s chest shook with something that wasn’t rage, but he could find no words to excise it, so instead he reached for the pendulum, and pulled it down from the sky himself.
This time it was the princess asleep in the chair. Allen Schezar stood by the window, looking out. For the first time the curtains were drawn back, the window was open, and outside the moon shone in the night. Everything hurt, but the bed—it was a bed, with a quilt on top—was warm, and the wind was cool on his face.