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It is well past sunset when Aymeric makes his way home.
The House of Lords had been in session since the morning, and he doubts the succeeding days will be any different.
Talks of coordinating relief efforts—and the few remaining traditionalists decrying so much as wriggling a toe to help others—have dominated the meetings since the blasphemies wrought havoc in Radz-at-Han. Thankfully, with the adamant voices of Count Charlemand and Lord Audouin of House Durendaire lending their support to the idea of rendering aid, the vote is likely to come out in favor of those who wish to see Ishgard expand further in her diplomacy. Count Artoirel, too, insisted upon every recourse being made available to Isghard’s allies—the way he comports himself should make Lord Edmont very proud, Aymeric thinks.
They have all come such a long way.
The comforting heat of the Borel Manor envelops him as he darts inside through the servants’ entrance: it is less open and brightly-lit than the massive front doors, and with no legion of footmen to ambush him. Ah, that’s uncharitable of him. Aymeric is not a stranger to being waited on, despite his parentage, or the rumors surrounding it—he doesn’t enjoy it, however. On evenings with hours and hours of work behind him, he finds he enjoys it even less than usual.
He closes the door behind him, securing the latch as well, and ascends the stairs that will take him to the upper floors, ignoring the passage to the foyer entirely.
The guards in the hallway have adapted to his bizarre comings and goings; they do not startle when he appears unforeseen or unaccompanied—he gets a few acknowledging nods, a “ser” here and there, and he makes it to his rooms without so much as an interruption.
He tries not to rush while he divests himself of his armor, but it’s an exercise in futility. His exhaustion can’t dampen his excitement—he’d gotten word just yesterday that the twins were planning to drop by Ishgard, and that Sekka would be accompanying them. They could be here tomorrow—they could be here today. He would not be aware if they were, not as busy as he’s been. But now that he’s home, he can make sure.
It has been a scant fortnight since he saw her in Ala Mhigo, a stolen moment in the sea of chaos around them, and yet it seems like it’s been an eternity.
A maid—Estelle—asks him through the door if he’d like a bath drawn.
“Please, if you so would,” he says.
Some forty minutes (and a substantial doze in the bathtub) later, he’s slipped into a fresh pair of breeches and a tunic, and is halfway through fastening his house coat shut when another knock sounds.
“Enter,” Aymeric calls out.
The door swings open to reveal Querrault, the head butler, a reed-thin Elezen with pin-straight brown hair and a generous mustache. Little sees sunlight in Ishgard, but Querrault somehow gets less than that; he is a permanently ghostly figure, both in the present, and in the memories Aymeric has of boyhood. Quiet as a wraith and just as fast, he has been serving House Borel since the time of Aymeric’s foster-grandfather. He is practically part of the manor itself.
“Your Excellency,” Querrault greets him, bowing at the waist, proper as ever. “You really must notify us when you return.”
Aymeric chuckles. This has been a longstanding grievance of Querrault’s—it will not be changing.
“The fault is mine,” Aymeric confesses. “I simply did not wish to be a bother.”
“We are servants, my lord,” Querrault deadpans. “We are to be bothered.”
“I shall endeavor to remember it,” he assures Querrault. He rubs at his face in an attempt to chase the sleep from his mind.
“Your wife awaits you in the drawing room,” Querrault says, and suddenly Aymeric’s blood is electric. “She arrived shortly after the sixth bell.” The butler fidgets, shifting on his feet, and his impressive whiskers twitch. Then, he adds, “I apologize for the delay in my alerting you. My lady was most insistent we let you rest.”
Aymeric shakes his head. “Of course she was. Calm yourself, Querrault. You’ve done no wrong.”
“Very good, my lord,” Querrault says with a sniff. “Shall I announce you?”
“No, no,” Aymeric says, making for the door. “I will go to her. Thank you.”
Querrault bows deeply—again—swiveling about to excuse himself.
Aymeric nearly flattens the poor man in his haste to get to the stairs. He provides an apology, which gets him a long-suffering sigh in return; when he’s convinced Querrault isn’t going to go tumbling into the banister, he carries on with his descent.
The accouterments and decorations of the manor blur into an unmemorable goulash of disparate hues and textures—Aymeric is paying them no heed.
His actions are automatic: a left at the bottom of the foyer, onto a path hemmed in by hanging portraits of previous generations of de Borels on each side, a right into the next corridor, past the study, and the dining hall, until he’s before the double doors that lead to the drawing room.
One of the doors is slightly ajar, letting a bar of amber firelight escape—it spills across the floor, scattering on the wall behind him.
His pulse pounds in his fingertips, his ears, his ribs. Steady on, as Haurchefant would have said.
He reaches for the doorknob and pushes.
And there she is.
Sekka looks a little out of place—as she always does—surrounded by the trappings and furnishings of a typical Ishgardian house, in her no-nonsense winter kimono. It is that shade of cobalt he’s so partial to, dark and rich, making her milky blue skin and hair stand out all the more; she is turned away from him, mesmerized by her favorite painting of a Falcon’s Nest landscape, which is mounted above the mantelpiece. He can see the elegant curve of her bone-white horns peeking out from under the glossy fall of her hair, which she only ever wears unbound when she is home. Free of its braids, it grazes at her elbows. Tonight she has twisted it into a low tail with a single tie.
The sight of her is so welcome, so encouraging, that it makes him ache.
He takes a step forward, and at the sound, she faces him.
He delights in her familiar, beloved features—the partially hooked, pointed nose, the stern but full mouth, the delicate scales in between thin, sloping brows, and running along the symmetrical lines of her cheeks. Beautiful.
She smiles, and it is to him the dawn after an existence of endless night.
“Aymeric,” she says.
He gathers her to him, soaking up the warmth of her like a sun-starved flower. She stretches up to meet him just as he bends to compensate for their difference in height.
Fury be praised—she is finally back in his arms.
He laughs breathlessly into her shoulder. “I did not doubt that you would triumph, dearest,” he says hoarsely, “but I feared for you.”
“Your faith is my strength,” she whispers. There is a burr in her voice that he rarely gets to hear.
What did she endure at the end of the world, there beyond the stars?
He could have lost her. The pain of that thought lances through him without mercy. His embrace tightens.
After a moment, she moves away a bit to stare up at him—the unusual color of her irises, pink like the cherry blossoms he saw that spring when they went abroad, is almost rose-deep by the glow of the fire. Her lashes are fine and thick and pale.
“What is it?” he says. He frames her face with his hands, feeling the satisfying rasp of her scales.
“I am simply glad to be returned,” she replies with uncharacteristic hesitation. “It was… a near thing.”
His stomach pitches to the floor. And he had been clutching at her like some ecstatic boy. “Are you hurt?” Aymeric asks, searching for any indication of injury he might have missed.
“Not anymore,” she says, leaning into his touch. “Urianger and Alphinaud tended to my ills. I need only take my ease for a while until the lingering soreness relents.”
He knows his wife. She has a horrendous tendency to minimize whatever fantastic ordeal has been visited upon her—that she even admitted to having been wounded is historic, indeed. She must have…
No. He will not think of it.
“You are safe now,” Aymeric says, to himself as much as to her.
His response comes in the form of a kiss, first pressed reverently to the center of his palm—then to the sensitive underside of his wrist. Her lips are an adoring brand, silken as a petal. She kisses his jaw next, just as tender; he intercepts her following that, and slants his mouth over hers, because he is a greedy man, and she has been gone for such a while, wrested away from their home incessantly by duty or doom or death. They have lost years to make up for.
She is not close enough. He grasps at her hips, holding her to him, and at her eager compliance, the proximity of her, the initial stirrings of desire bloom and unfurl within him.
Yes, he is greedy, for her smiles and her laughter, her mind and body, her precious heart, and her every wayward daydream, no matter how impossible. He hopes to fill this estate with a joint lifetime’s worth of memories—they have started to, but the work is slow when hampered by constant impending apocalypses.
“Wait,” she gasps, her breath fluttering against him.
He blinks, letting himself take her in—the start of the flush that will spread further the better she is loved, the blown pupils of her intelligent eyes.
“My love?”
She traces the sweep of his collarbone with a gentle regard that tears at him. “It would be remiss of me to not ask—have you eaten?”
Aymeric cannot stop his grin. His Sekka, ever pragmatic. Ever mindful of him. “Ah, well…”
“I have my answer,” she says, patting his chest. “Come, husband. Welcome me with a meal.”
He stoops to bestow her a final kiss. “I can refuse you nothing.”
They both accept it as fact—in truth, he would like it if she were more demanding. But her requests run along the vein of her current wish, for instance: to eat regularly, to sleep peacefully and tranquilly, to give himself ample respite, and to set aside an hour here and there to do what gladdens him.
He links their arms, tucking her slender hand in the crook of his elbow as he guides them from the room.
“Mother and Father sent me a gift,” Sekka says. “I received it in Sharlayan.”
“Oh?”
Her expression is pleased. “It will pair suitably with dinner.”
Dinner, as it turns out, is a mouthwatering spread of roast meat, accompanied by creamy vegetable soup, and a salad of fresh greens.
And the gift? Well, the gift is carried in by a wordless Querrault, who is obviously both curious and dubious—upon the tray he he delivers to them is a black, open-topped, lacquered bottle, gleaming in the candlelight; in a matching color, on either side, are two short and exquisitely thin and ceramic cups. Aymeric recognizes this set: Sekka brought it to him after one of her many sojourns to Kugane.
“My mother’s family, I learned some time ago, was very involved in the business of brewing sake,” Sekka explains as she takes up the bottle and a cup. “The occupation decimated their earnings, naturally, and they sealed everything away—a hope that the sun would shine again on them, I think.”
Aymeric steeples his fingers. “It did, did it not?”
She pours—the sake is clear as glass, tinged with the faintest hint of pale gold. When the cup is a little more than half full, she stops, lowers the bottle, and takes up the cup. She offers it to him, the sleeve of her kimono skimming his arm.
“It did,” she says, tilting her head at him. “My grandmother was impatient to share the joy of the brewery resuming business. There was too much for the clan, and so I was given the rest.” Her tone is exasperated, and yet fond. “It is custom to pour each other the first drink.”
He receives the cup carefully. The fragrant, floral aroma of the sake wafts up to him as he places it by his plate.
She nods to the bottle. “Now you.”
The decanter is smooth as seaglass and pleasantly chilled. He handles it with less grace than he would like, but then again, he has been told he’s a relentless perfectionist. He copies her adequately, mimicking her when she lifts her cup.
“As your kinsmen would say—cheers,” she murmurs. In afterthought, she adds, “It should be savored and sipped.”
He laughs. She is gravely serious and thorough in all she does, his love. Even dining and drinking.
“Cheers,” he repeats, and watches her as she swirls her cup, letting the sake aerate. Rice wine, as he has discovered, is enjoyed in some ways much like the wine he is used to.
They sample their sake in tandem.
It has a light flavor, quite unlike anything else he can recall. Earthy, too, somewhat sweet, reminding him of the blossom-water added to tea or pastries, but astringent enough to offset the richness of their dinner. What a complementary choice—he anticipated no less from Sekka. She is no zealous enthusiast of spirits and alcohol, but when she does deign to indulge, her options are meticulously examined and thoughtfully vetted. That she chose to share this with him makes him happy.
It’s with a buzz of affection that he realizes she is observing him expectantly.
“Thank you,” he says, inclining his head in order to kiss her cheek. “It is delicious.”
She clears her throat with a small cough as her blush makes a spectacular return. “Good. I am relieved you like it.”
He thumbs at her chin in playful rebuke. “I am not difficult to please,” he reminds her.
“You should be,” Sekka admonishes.
“I am luckier than any man has a right to be,” Aymeric says. “To demand more would be hubris.”
She frowns at him, creating an adorable divot on her brow. “It would be your right.”
He shrugs helplessly. “If you say so, my dear.”
“Stubborn man,” she scolds, tapping at his shin with a slim foot under the table in faux reprimand. “We will fix this now that I am home.”
A laugh burbles out of him without his express permission.
“Do not mistake my mirth for censure,” he says when he spots her sour look—the same stony, focused expression she wears preceding a dive into battle. “I am most eager to experience your solutions.”
She takes a dainty bite from her forkful of meat. “Hm. You will remember those words in your hour of regret.”
Oh, he’s counting on it.
When dinner is done and Estelle has cleared away the plates, they adjourn to the drawing room with the rest of the sake.
Outside, the sky is cloudless; the moon, a day away from being full, is a disc of silver. The smoke and lights of Ishgard drown out the stars—but the moon remains resolute. Seeing it there, in stark contrast to the stygian dark, Aymeric understands how the peoples of the world could come to worship it: with no magic or magitek to illuminate the abyss, any source of guidance must have seemed godsgiven.
His tunic ripples and dips as Sekka leans her head on his shoulder. Sat side by side on this comfortable lounge, soothed by the crackling fire, looking out through the tall arched window together, it is like she did not ever leave.
He threads a loose tress behind one of her horns. She hums.
“Is aught amiss?” he says.
This continues to be dreamlike to him, that they are touching, that he can smell the subtle perfume of her bathing salts, the conditioning oil she uses on her scales—he associates the crisp, biting notes of mint and eucalypt leaf with her. But there’s something satiny to the sharp, underneath it. He’d asked what it was, once, sliding the tip of his nose along her throat, and she’d laughed and said white ginger! As he recalls, not much talking had happened after that.
“Nothing immediate,” Sekka says, and drinks from her cup. She pauses, her contemplation plain. “I could not reach him.”
“The prince?” Aymeric says.
He strokes a knuckle along her nape, curling the downy hair there around his index. She shudders in a manner he finds utterly gratifying.
“Yes,” she confirms. “I feel, somehow, that I failed him.”
She would.
“You told me he seemed… happy,” Aymeric suggests.
Her lidded eyes glisten with sadness. “He was. It was not usual.”
“Perhaps you gave him what he sought, then,” Aymeric says.
He will not pretend to comprehend their relationship—the reports available to him paint Zenos as a strange but not entirely inscrutable figure: a man driven, desolate, and detached from a major part of the mores that reliably move others. Aymeric can identify the signs of a punishing life on anyone. Whatever Zenos yae Galvus had been seeking, he’d been sure that Sekka was the person who could grant it to him.
While Aymeric cannot forgive the harm done to her, would not, will not—he cannot begrudge that search for meaning or connection.
“Perhaps,” Sekka says indistinctly. “He reminded me of myself. When I was younger, especially. Alone, but unable to realize what loneliness was, exactly. Having become accustomed to it, he could not see he had not been forsaken.”
Aymeric mellows the edge of his thoughts with a nip of sake. “You speak of the woman found at Camp Broken Glass. The prisoner in Commander Aldynn’s custody?”
“Minerva sas Quintus,” she supplies. “No relation to the I’s legatus. Her father’s mother was a lady of House Darnus. He himself was tribunus laticlavius to the V’s legatus. And her mother… a lancer, an Ala Mhigan who fled the violence of the civil war and settled on the Gyr Abanian side of the Eastern Shroud’s border.”
“Half Eorzean?” Aymeric says in wonder.
“Her mother moved them again, to Garlemald, when she was a young girl. She was accepted as a ward of the palace on account of her father’s influence, and her mother was legitimized through marriage.”
“Still,” Aymeric says, caressing her back, “it could not have been easy for them, being surrounded by ardent imperialists in the heart of the Empire.”
“She might have been the single person who did not abandon her prince, though it did not benefit her,” Sekka goes on. “Though it was not repaid in kind.”
He guides her face to turn to him, until their gazes are connected. “You cannot be everywhere at once, my love.”
“Even if I could be, I could not save them all,” she mumbles. “The trust afforded to the Warrior of Light is not universal.”
He kisses her, a modest affirmation of I am here and I do.
“It is the nature of titles,” he says when their contact finishes. “They can cleave a crowd as much as unite it.”
“My wise Lord Speaker of the House of Lords,” she says. “Ishgard is lucky to have you.”
“No, no,” he refutes with a lengthening grin, “I believe we established at dinner that I am the lucky one.”
She finishes her sake and leaves her cup on the end table. “Debatable.”
“That we established it, or that I am lucky?”
“That is unclear,” Sekka retorts. “A conversation incorporating greater detail is required.”
He imitates her, draining his cup, relinquishing it, too, in favor of pulling her into his lap, smiling when her body goes languid in his arms as if she predicted what he would do. He will not rush his explorations. There is no deadline, no forthcoming calamity. He can be thorough. He can tease, and tempt, and maybe torment, and…
“Wait,” she interjects, and he groans, butting his forehead against her clavicle.
“Again?”
He’s treated to the exceptional treasure of her laugh. He supposes it makes up for the delay.
“I wanted to mention,” she says, permitting him to loosen the sash of the obi around her waist, “that in the next week, I plan to petition Raubahn to negotiate particular freedoms for Minerva. And to check in on Fordola.”
“That sounds like you,” Aymeric says honestly. He slides his hands below the outer layers of the kimono, across her hips. “You trust her?”
“No. I trust very few,” Sekka concedes. “But I have seen enough.”
He does not envy her the Echo. Empathy, by itself, can already be a great burden.
“I will be here, whatever you may need,” he says, tugging the ribbon from her hair. He is true to his word, though he cannot intervene in any official capacity as Lord Speaker—she would, however, never ask that of him.
“I know,” she reassures him. “For you are chivalrous and kind and merciful. And beautiful.”
He laughs as his cheeks heat. “Beautiful?”
“‘Handsome’ is not adequate,” Sekka says, and shrugs resolutely out of her simple kimono, leaving her in her hempen underdress. “Your eyes are beautiful. Your mouth is beautiful.”
She illustrates her point with a nibble to his upper lip, a clenching of her thighs.
“I think there must have been something in the sake,” he croaks. “Do we have more?”
“So much more,” she informs him. “It is some of the finest. Special strains of rice are grown explicitly for use in its creation.”
It had not occurred to Aymeric that an explanation of top tier brewing techniques could be sensual. Each day is a lesson. Or… it is because his very willing, captivating wife is the explainer.
“Fascinating,” he says. He does half-mean it.
“I will tell you more later,” she promises.
Then she kisses him, and her blunt nails drag at his chest through his tunic before she demolishes the neat knots of the ties at its front. She is suddenly ravenous; she brushes her tongue by his, makes him pant, dips her head to suck a livid mark onto his skin. He is grateful for his penchant for high collars.
They cling to each other, hungering, incapable of yielding.
She leaves him for a second to tear off the underdress—like it has offended her—and he is rather abruptly faced with a startling reminder that no brassiere or smalls are worn beneath it. Limned in the mingled glow of the moon and the fire, she is radiant.
“I love you,” Aymeric says.
“And I love you,” she reciprocates. She plucks at the hem of his shirt. “Let me show you.”
He is powerless to resist.
But one thing is certain: they will be keeping the sake.