Chapter Text
Mac typically does his best to avoid the dungeons.
He prefers to take the long way around anyways, past the gardens, and not just because of the carefully tended flower bed that’d just started to bloom this summer. The big steel doors remind him too much of how everything was before the Green Night, back when he served Caddel and his ruthless court of snakes. Too much of the blood that’d stained his hands as Caddel’s court mage had been spilled across those floors with a dagger and a grim sense of obligation.
But here he was anyway, staring down the stag’s head that leered over the threshold and challenging it to stop him.
His obligations tonight were beyond it again, down the spiral staircase and past its familiar hollow echoes into the chambers lurking below - he’d just have to swallow his nerves and follow them down there like he’d always done. A small weight burns in his pocket as a reminder, nipping at his heels the closer he gets to the solemn doorway.
He gives the deer a glare before turning his attention to the two guards. They stand statue-still, one flanking the entryway on either side, and they’d probably been standing there for the past few hours, if Mac’s knowledge of their shifts is anything to go off of. They’d be tired, looking for an excuse to leave their post.
Neither speaks as Mac slows to a stop in the middle of the hall in front of them, but they shift uncomfortably as he rakes his eyes across their rumpled tunics and dented, scuffed-up metal armor with a sigh.
They wore the same familiar crimson uniforms Mac had seen every day since his coronation, the same segmented pauldrons and heavy leather boots as always, but the shapes didn’t feel as safe as they used to. Unsurprising, he guesses, when someone wearing them had put a knife to his side less than a few weeks ago, but somehow it still feels like a small betrayal to let the thought linger.
He flicks his eyes up to the glinting steel of their ornamental spears, the slow fading of the sun echoing off them and flashing across the marble floor.
“You’re both dismissed for the night,” he says finally, without looking directly at either one. “I’ll be sending replacements for you shortly, so I’d suggest you go back to the barracks and get your armor looking more presentable by morning.”
The shorter one steps forward to protest, but the King waves her still again with barely a flick of his finger.
“I said, you’re dismissed. Pray I don’t have to say it a third time.”
The guards stay silent.
He doesn’t have to ask again.
After the polished clicks of their boot heels finally fade into the outer halls, he gives the deer one last cold look. It gazes back, silent, the sun's light shining off the tips of its antlers in a way that makes the silver plating look almost gold.
“Fuck off, you dead bastard,” Mac mutters, and with only a pause to straighten his robes he pushes past the threshold, lingering just a bit too long on the landing as the doors close with a deep, echoing thud that rattles his bones.
He takes a breath as he watches the stairwell below, gripping the wooden handrail so hard he’s shocked it doesn’t crack. He’s not sure why he expected something to lunge at him from the shadows, but the musty stillness is almost worse.
The way down is initially lit by large braziers that dotted the corridors, occasionally punctuated by flickers of golden hour light that stream across Mac’s shoulders through cracks in the stone of the upper levels. But as the layers go deeper and deeper it’s soon replaced by faint torchlight, leaving just him and the weight in his pocket that bumps against his leg with every step. Its presence is red-hot in his mind, threatens to burn a hole through the fabric and clatter across the flagstones, and his fingers keep brushing against it absently as he makes his way down the maze of halls with a memory he wished he didn’t have.
The general holding cells are fairly nice, as far as dungeons go. Nicer than Mac remembers them being under Caddel, at least… not that that was a high bar, since a layer of grime and filth still clings to the cobbles underneath Mac’s shoes, but it was definitely an improvement. Burning down the castle might have had its uses, all said and done, but the thought sends a familiar foxfire chill down Mac’s spine as he slows to a stop in front of the Traitor’s Row.
Hidden behind a pair of vault-locked doors and two separate walls of iron bars, it was only ever used for the most heinous criminals or the most drastic of punishments. Stone that thick was incredibly good at muffling sound, after all, and people sentenced to death were usually the type who knew information that could be useful to the crown.
But Mac brushes aside that particular train of thought.
He pulls a key out from under his robe and opens the door’s padlock with a heavy click that makes him twitch. He’d made a habit of being quiet on instinct - all the better in his apprentice days to keep his guards unaware so he could slip into libraries late at night, smuggle material between private studies and dormitories without being noticed - and making any sudden noise still put him on edge. Not that attempts at stealth mattered much now, anyways, with a crown on his head.
Mac starts to turn the heavy wheel on the door. It moves tick by achingly slow tick, each pin giving way one by one, until the door swings open with a heavy metal groan that cuts harsh across the eerie dark silence. He pushes it aside like air and sweeps in, red silk trailing behind him in the torchlight.
The room has a chill, and not just because of the cold stone.
There are actually two rows of cells on Traitor’s Row, one on either side of the hall, left over from when this wing used to be full to the brim with would-be assassins, spies, and usurpers. Almost every single one of them sat empty now, strung with rusting chains that swung lazily as Mac strode past, save one cell, at the very end of the hall. The shadows seem thicker there, far from where even the last accidental shreds of light could reach, and something in Mac’s chest aches thinking about Victor, Victor of all people, sitting down here in that thick darkness day after endless day.
He slows to a stop before he breaches the shadows himself, hovering by the last torch as the echoes of his footsteps fade into the air, and he can hear the figure inside starting to turn in his direction.
It takes a moment, but a voice curls out from the shadows.
“High King,” it rasps from somewhere to the right. It sounds like gravel, uncharacteristically low from disuse, but Mac would recognize it anywhere.
“High Guard,” Mac replies, curt and formal, folding his hands behind him like this was nothing more than a diplomatic meeting. His words cut through the air like glass. “It’s been a while.”
Mac almost wonders if they won’t reply at all, if he’d come all the way down here to find out he lost the one person he was trying to save, but a reply comes back out of the shadows soon enough.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the voice says, quiet but definitely there. “The court’ll have a field day about it, a king chatting with his assassin.”
“Didn’t know you cared what the court was saying about us these days,” Mac counters. “Can’t let those insufferable gossips go too long without something to pick apart, anyway. They start to get nippy.”
“And besides,” he adds, casually stepping closer until the shadows start to curl across his face, too, “You’re not exactly an assassin if you failed to kill me.”
He’s not sure what he was expecting. A grim laugh, perhaps, or a frustrated eye roll, an exasperated sigh and a sharp remark right back - a sign the same Victor who left Mac’s room two weeks ago was still there. Anything but this aching silence that won’t look back at him.
“Yeah, well… Guess I still did my job in the end, then.”
Dust drifts across the room between them, settling in the floor with a swirl. What Mac can make out of his former bodyguard between the shadows of the steel bars is set hard as the stone walls.
Victor looks awful, though Mac can’t say he hadn’t laid awake at night imagining them looking far worse. He’d been dragged down straight from Mac’s chambers still wearing his guard-issue tunic and pants, but the vivid maroon and delicate brown are both dingy with the amount of dirt and dust that had accumulated in the fabric. The double rows of laurel embroidery on his collar were the only reminder of his former high rank, staunchly refusing to be tarnished. And their hair… the hair they took so much pride in, their lion’s mane, had been cropped short in the prison style. It’s uneven and choppy from being cut with too-dull scissors and tangled from going too long without a proper comb, making their sharp features look harsh and worn.
But his stubborn Price pride was still there, too, hanging on as tightly as ever as the guard pushes himself to his feet when he realizes Mac isn’t leaving and offers something close to a proper half-bow. He meets Mac’s eyes without hesitation, and they’re the same defiant green they’d always been.
“I do hope they’ve been treating you well,” Mac offers, watching Victor steady himself against the wall. He knows they haven’t.
“Only the best for Traitor’s Row,” Victor tosses back, as expected, but the sharp edge of sarcasm is welcome in comparison to apathy. “Not sure if you remember, your highness, but people don’t take kindly to regicides.”
“Hard to forget,” Mac says with a cold smile. He’s acutely aware of the weight of the crown on his own head, how people had looked at him in the months after the Green Night and Caddel’s death. The road ahead of Victor was harsh and lonely - Mac knows that firsthand. “Though people warm up to you eventually.”
“Easy for you to say.” Victor scoffs, “You ended up with a throne, not a death sentence.” Despite the harsh words he’s drifted closer, close enough that Mac can almost see the scar tracing up the side of his face. “How long before they decide what to do with me, you think - a few days? A few hours?”
“There are better things for you to be doing than sitting in this cell waiting to die, Victor.”
“Isn’t that the whole point, though?” Victor’s bitter words bite at Mac’s throat. “For me to die instead of you?”
The space between them feels cavernous, even though they’re only a few feet apart. When Mac doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even twitch, Victor scowls and plants a hand against the bars.
“Don’t stay down here on my account, your highness. You might get dirt on your silks.”
Mac raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t have the will to make the expression stick. He’s just happy Victor is standing, despite the fact that even after the worst two weeks of their life they still somehow managed to be that infuriating inch taller than Mac, and their shoulders were still frustratingly broad even without those familiar brass pauldrons to square them out. A million words burn hot in the back of his throat at once, and he carefully plucks out the most staid of them.
“You of all people should know this robe has seen far worse. Besides,” he waves, brushing away a stray piece of dust, “It’ll take more than a little mess to keep me out of here tonight.”
Victor snorts. “Oh, please, do tell. I’d love to know what finally got you to drag your ass down here after two weeks of nothing.”
Mac is stunned silent for possibly the first time in recent memory that didn’t involve being on the wrong end of a knife.
He deserves that one, really. ‘Two weeks’ rings through his head like a church bell as his hand settles against the weight in his pocket again. Two weeks he’d been sitting in his room, wrapped in soft fabrics and bandages that got changed twice a day, while they’d been stuck with bloodstains in a tiny cell, no one to talk to but the shadows on the walls.
Well, he hadn’t just been sitting, Mac tries to justify to himself. He’d been reading. Spent days straight in the library as time blurred together outside, poring over every legal text, every old obscure law, every esoteric loophole he could get his hands on, praying for the first time in his life that the gods might give him something to stay Victor’s execution.
And maybe it really was the gods, or maybe it was the last shred of good luck he had left, because there had been.
He’d claim it was short notice to anyone who asked, but the bag Mac is pulling from his pocket had been sitting nestled in his nightstand for a few months now. It’s small, made of soft red velvet and tied in a loose knot with a fine golden cord, and as he pulls the strings loose something small and bright scatters into his palm. Mac lets it dangle down between his fingers, careful not to let it fall as it swings between him and Victor through the bars.
Even in the scant light the glint of gold is unmistakable, like sunlight caught on a spider’s web: A signet ring on a delicate chain, flat on top with the royal family crest cut deep, and engraved down the sides with curling ivy vines. It had been fitted from Victor’s gauntlet, engraved on the inner band with almost illegibly small text and polished to a mirror shine. It would be beautiful, really, if it weren’t for everything else going on at the moment.
The air is gone from the room.
Victor groans and shakes his head, leaning his forehead against the bars with a hand over his face. A few stray curls stick out far enough to brush Mac’s fingers.
“ Fuck , this is just like you. You can’t seriously-”
“It can be as much or as little as you let it,” Mac cuts in, glad for once that the heavy dark shadow over the both of them keeps Victor from seeing his face, “But at its simplest, what I’m offering you is a way out. If I go upstairs and announce our engagement, the court will legally have to pardon you of your crimes - your attempted crimes, mind you - and free you into my custody to determine your punishment as a member of the royal household. It’s simple and clean.”
‘And you get to stay alive’ stays unspoken, but it rings in Mac’s ears as the ring circles between them counterclockwise. He knows the plan is crazy. It’s a legal last resort, but something deeper in his chest still needs it to work, a familiar greed grasping for what it wants with hungry fingers. Just for him, if nothing else, it needed to work.
“This is putting a target on your back for no reason, and you know it.”
“It’s not for no reason,” Mac starts, and he meant to add something else, but the words get stuck in his throat. Victor doesn’t seem to notice - two weeks in prison really takes the edge off a person, it seems - and keeps talking.
“I… It’s just not just as simple as taking some shiny ring from you and then having everyone be okay, Mac. Fuck. What if something happens? What if someone figures out how to make me do it again, and I can’t stop it this time? I almost-” He chokes, and there’s a shudder as his hand curls tighter around the bars.
“But you didn’t,” Mac says softly, “I’m fine. That’s the job, isn’t it?”
Victor’s eyes burn into him, dragging across him like they’re seeing something very different from the regal leader that’s standing in front of them. Something vulnerable, maybe, in a way that Mac hates being, a way Victor’s seen him in time and time again.
“It’s your offer to take or leave as you see fit,” Mac pushes, as Victor’s eyes shift from Mac to the ring and back. The ring swings towards them. “I won’t force you to accept, but…”
But what? What could he possibly say? How untethered he feels without Victor’s constant steady presence behind him like a shadow? How much he wants to apologize for two weeks of silence while they both grieved alone? How lonely the halls are now, how much he hates seeing Victor like this, how much he-?
The ring swings back to Mac.
“Damien’s been asking for you,” he tries instead, and he pretends not to see how Victor cracks when he says it. “He feels responsible for what happened, you know - for letting Eli get close to you, and for not sensing the spells on you sooner.”
Mac doesn’t mention that Damien had been the one to get Eli to confess in the first place, coming out of the room slick with tears and fiercely determined in the stubborn way only a Price could be. Or that he’d been in the library for days on end right alongside Mac, both of them drowning themselves in books in an attempt to force the world to fix itself.
“Tell him he doesn’t have to apologize for anything.”
“Tell him that yourself.”
Victor doesn’t break Mac’s gaze this time as the ring swings back in their direction. He refuses to look away, like it’s taking every muscle in his body to keep from tearing those bars apart and closing the rest of the inches between them himself.
Mac jerks the necklace chain, wrapping it up around his fingers and watching the ring shudder to a halt. He tilts his head, just slightly, but doesn’t waver.
“And it would be a shame to have to return the ring, you know.”
Victor sighs.
“Alright.”
It’s rough, barely more than a whisper, but Victor’s already passing a hand through the bars, a flicker of torchlight dancing on their fingers, and Mac doesn’t know if he feels dizzy from the sheer relief or something else entirely.
“Yes?”
Victor nods, almost imperceptibly, letting the chain pool gold in his palm as it gently slips between Mac’s fingers.
Mac thinks he might have forgotten how to breathe.
It takes a minute for him to fumble the heavy iron key back out of his pockets. His hands feel uncharacteristically clumsy, like they’re made of lead, but when he eventually manages to slip the door open Victor practically falls into his arms.
Well, not practically. Literally. They’re leaning against him just to stay upright, fingers curled into the fabric of Mac’s robe like all the energy he was using to stand is gone. Mac doesn’t care in the slightest.
“You look like shit, by the way.” Mac cracks with a weary smile as Victor settles against him, and that finally gets a reaction out of them. They snort into Mac’s shoulders, half incredulous and half exhausted, but it’s better than nothing.
“Fuck off, you asshole,” Victor’s voice is muffled by the fabric, but it vibrates through Mac’s chest just the same. “I’ve been in jail.”
There’s a lot of big feelings there, pushing against the walls Mac had put up for this very occasion, and he exhales long and slow as they die down one by one.
There were things left to do before he could finally let those go.
“Can you walk?” He asks. It felt odd to be the gentle one this time, the one asking Victor that question, after all the times the guard had helped carry him to the nearest private room or hidden wheelchair, but he’s also suddenly realizing how daunting a task getting Victor out of the dungeons all by himself might be.
Victor shrugs. “Don’t really have a choice, do I?”
“Not really,” Mac breathes, looping an arm around Victor’s waist to help take some weight off his feet as the two start to make their way, slowly, stutteringly, back up into the fading sunlight.
“Time to get you home.”