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Khun was young, when his mother taught him a valuable lesson that he’d come to depend on, time and time again.
Khun—then called Aguero—sat in his plush armchair, watching his mother uncap a tube of lipstick at her vanity a few steps away.
“Lesson number one, dear,” she said, applying it with a few deft swipes, “is to trust no one.”
“No one, mother?” Aguero admired the bold red of her mouth, at sharp contrast with her pale hair and paler skin.
“No one,” she confirmed. She narrowed her eyes at the mirror, picking at the nonexistent flaws in her face. “They will try to use you. It is not a question of if. Even within this family, your sense of strategy is remarkable.”
His mother’s reflection’s eyes flicked up to meet Aguero’s through the mirror. Aguero stilled.
“So, you must use them first. When they think they’re getting closer to you, let them. When they think they have you in the palm of their hand, let them. When they begin to trust you, let them,” she said, evenly. “Smile. So they don’t suspect a thing, when you squeeze them dry for everything that they’re worth and ruin them.”
Aguero nodded, absorbing her advice.
His mother continued, “You must not show weakness. In a place like this, it’s practically bleeding in a pool of sharks. You’re going to have to learn to keep your true emotions off your face.”
Her face transformed—in lieu of her typical impassive expression, she wore a delicate smile that softened her sharp, icy eyes—into something that would have brought empires to their knees, in another life. Aguero’s mother was one of Khun Eduan’s wives for a good reason. Dutifully, he analyzed the expression to practice on his own later. Even as a child, he resembled his mother; it would be a shame to not take advantage of the gifts she gave him.
After a pointed moment, she dropped the expression. “Of course, I will be your teacher.”
“Yes, mother,” Aguero said. He tilted his head in an angle that Aguero knew made him look unbearably endearing. “You’re very good at that,” he said sincerely, because it was the truth.
His mother paused for a moment, glancing up from where she was selecting a set of gleaming earrings. She stood up, the silver skirt of her dress swishing, and leaned over Aguero’s special seat. She was smiling, but Aguero knew this one to be genuine.
“You’re a natural!” She laughed, patting his head lightly. His mother tucked stray strands of hair behind his ear. Her fingers were pleasantly cool, as they brushed his skin.
She huffed a little, almost another laugh. “If only you’d been born a girl,” she said, voice wistful. “I’m certain you would’ve excelled as a princess.”
Aguero blinked, wondering what that meant, and the rest of that day was lost to the blur of fading memory.
It was dull.
The Khun family and its politics, the ruthless way it was arranged for its children to trample over each other for a scrap of Khun Eduan’s acknowledgement—it was so, so dull.
The deaths, betrayals, and infighting couldn’t be called uninteresting, but Aguero grew tired of it all the same. It was just a cycle of perpetuated jealousy leading to hatred, then to blood. All for a god of a man who couldn’t care less about the blood spilled in his name.
Aguero couldn’t say that he’d never wondered what his father would be like, but he also found the terrible lengths people would go to for his favor perplexing. Why bother? He’d proved, time and time again, that his attentions were fickle and only concerns were pretty women, quality alcohol, and fighting strong opponents.
Aguero couldn’t understand it. Why go so far for someone who would never look back at you?
But nevertheless, Aguero flourished in the Khun family. He never revealed weakness, wearing a constant mask of impassive disinterest. He laughed in the faces of his half-siblings who simpered up to him in order to take advantage of his status as the brother of a princess candidate. He killed his family members before they took the chance to kill him first. He felt no particular way about it, except a curious sense of emptiness.
(There came a point when even death became monotonous.)
When Aguero was ten, he entered the fight for the right to wear the family crest. He didn’t care very much for it, but his mother did, so he decided to do whatever it took.
Aguero had learned ambition and ruthlessness at his mother’s knee, watching her smile into her mirror; the pretty red of her lips like a slash on her face, like a knife between your shoulder blades. It was not much of a competition.
His mother took in Kiseia, her sister’s daughter—Aguero’s cousin and half sister. Her eyes followed Aguero’s older sister whenever she entered a room, awed and admiring.
Then, someone attempted to assassinate his sister. The culprit was a rival daughter, envious of his sister’s potential and the rumors circulating that she’d begun to train as a potential candidate for the position of one of Jahad’s princesses.
It was an unsuccessful attempt, of course. The girl had arranged for a maid to poison her tea. During a meeting with their mother.
Needless to say, the maid was killed. The girl herself had yet to be dealt with, as that was Aguero’s duty as his sister’s strategist. He turned the problem over in his head as he considered a solution.
He could go himself. But that would imply to everyone that Aguero would be willing to become his sister’s attack dog as well as her strategist. It would become a slippery slope from there, as he would be demanded to eliminate more of her enemies.
Aguero cared for his sister, in a distant, obligatory sort of way. But not enough to let himself be used as her pet killer.
“Aguero!” He heard someone call.
Aguero turned to see Kiseia stop from a sprint in front of him. She looked up at him, eyes bright.
“How are you going to handle her?” she asked. He didn’t need for her to clarify who the “her” was; it was obvious from the contempt in her tone that Kiseia was referring to the girl who had attempted to kill their sister.
He cataloged her clenched fists, the taut line of her spine. She was here with a purpose. It couldn’t hurt to give her a lead in.
“That’s what I was considering just now, actually,” Aguero replied.
“If you’re going to continue to leave her to walk free from this,” Kiseia said fiercely, “I’ll kill her myself.”
And Aguero looked at Kiseia, her burning eyes, and thought, I can use this.
Maria was a curious outlier.
She laughed like she meant it. She pouted at him when he refused to call her his older sister. She turned her fragile back to him so easily, it was a wonder she wasn’t already dead.
Quietly kind, as she sat with Aguero as he fished after skipping lessons he didn’t need. Some days, she didn’t say anything at all. She just sat with him, offering her silent companionship.
It was warm.
A bright person, in a pit of snakes. Aguero wondered what a girl like that would do, as a princess of Jahad. It would be interesting to find out.
So he let himself be used.
It all fell apart spectacularly.
His sister killed herself. His mother lost the fight for power, as her cohort abandoned her. Aguero was exiled with the rest of the Agnis branch, pruned off the family tree. His sister’s supporters, enraged by the amount of time and investment they’d wasted on advocating for a failed princess, created a temporary alliance with the sole purpose of kicking Aguero—the one they blamed for the entire ordeal—out of the Khun family with the title of “abandoned son.”
Aguero was quite flattered, actually. To think, he’d brought together a group of scheming, untrusting, and unreliable backstabbing snakes, who’d banded together in order to get rid of him—a brilliant, but ultimately expendable strategist! It was enough to make any boy blush.
On his way out the door, he decided to execute one of the plans he’d created years ago in his boredom but never expected to carry out: he broke into his father’s treasure room. He stole a couple of valuable items; not important enough to merit assassins being hired after his head, but powerful enough to be useful.
It was a gamble. It was stupid. It was risky.
It was exhilarating, to throw the dice with no idea of how they would fall, and have everything slot perfectly into place.
He was chosen as a regular, and laughed as he left the only place he’d ever known, endless bag filled with his spoils.
He introduced himself as Khun now, instead of Aguero. To create a careful distance between himself and other people; between the person he is and the person he was.
It was easy enough; that was, until he met Bam.
Bam was even more perplexing than Maria. He was naive in a way that Maria, as a Khun, had never managed. He trusted Khun almost immediately, after an offering of an easy smile and an outstretched hand. Carrying a relic like the Black March, completely oblivious to its political weight and power; unaware of the implications of the crest in his hair, of Khun’s family name… It was almost enough to make Khun laugh aloud.
Well. Strange as he was, he was certainly interesting. Khun was curious to learn more about Bam.
He turned out to be more than interesting.
A lonely boy, desperately chasing after a star. A lonely boy, so unashamedly kind that it worried Khun. That sort of easy willingness was just the type that attracted people willing to use him to further their agenda, and the thought of someone snuffing out the brightness in those eyes made something in Khun want to snarl.
Bam, who trusted Khun absolutely.
Khun, who had killed so many people, he’d lost count. Khun, who had no qualms with deceiving others in order to get what he wants. Khun, who had done terrible, immoral things because he didn’t care enough not to.
Khun: who was, by all accounts, a terrible person.
Khun didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at Bam’s judgment of character.
(But that was fine. Khun was a selfish, greedy creature. He would bask in Bam’s light as long as he was able to.)
"As long as he was able to" turned out to be not nearly as long as he would have liked.
“Would you like another cup, Rachel?” Khun asked.
“Yes, please,” Rachel said, voice soft with affected fragility.
Khun picked up the teapot, pouring with practiced hands. Fingers curled around the handle, the other hand holding the lid in place, as chamomile tea streamed into Rachel’s cup in a graceful waterfall.
He watched, as Rachel picked up her tea, eyes closed as she inhaled the calming aroma. She looked unguarded like this, Khun observed.
It would be so easy to slit her throat.
There was a knife strapped to the small of his back. She probably wouldn’t even realize what was happening until she was choking on her blood, Khun mused. He was fast enough. He wondered what her face would look like, her hands clasped to her throat, blood spurting through the gaps of her fingers. Would she look betrayed? Confused and uncomprehending? Murderous?
God, Khun hoped she would look just as betrayed as Bam surely did, as she pushed him off that ledge.
“Khun?” He heard Rachel say, “Are you okay?”
Khun blinked evenly, once, twice, back to reality. “Oh, yes.” He took a sip of his now cool tea, and then set it back down.
Khun looked up at the clock on the wall, and got to his feet. “I just realized that I have an appointment with our future scout,” he said, apologetically.
“Well, don’t let Novick rough them up too much,” she teased. “We’ll need them to climb the floors.”
Khun laughed, letting his eyes curve into crescents to hide the insincerity in them. “I will, I will,” he promised, as he turned to leave.
Only after the door clicked shut behind him, did he let his easy smile drop.
Khun had never thought of himself as a person capable of becoming emotionally invested enough to hate. It sounded illogical, spending so much time and energy angry, when you could be doing more useful things.
As it turned out, he was wrong. Tamping down the burning fury in his chest was an exercise in futility. Every time he saw Rachel's pitiful expression, wearing a thin veneer of bravely trying her hardest despite the harsh hand that was dealt to her, Khun wanted to be physically ill. Having to pretend to be sympathetic and accommodate for her, when he knew damn well she didn't need or deserve it, made Khun want to make her lie of being unable to walk her reality.
It was exhausting: meeting Rachel’s soft smile at the kitchen table, smiling back at her, as if he had not enjoyed a dream of strangling her with his bare hands and watching the light leave her eyes with vicious glee, just the night before.
(Thankfully, Khun was a very good liar.)
But still, Khun didn’t kill her.
Khun wasn’t clouded by emotion to the point that he couldn’t see what was truly important. He would bring Rachel to the top of the tower, have her see those beautiful stars of hers, those stars that she’d judged to be more important than the most genuinely good person Khun had ever met. Then, as she looked upwards, wonder glimmering in her eyes, Khun would slide his knife between the third and fourth rib, directly into her heart.
Bam would forgive him for it, Khun knew. There was absolutely nothing that Bam wouldn’t forgive his companions for, lonely and desperate for friendship as he was. He would welcome Khun in the afterlife with open arms.
Khun wasn’t good enough of a person to not take advantage of that.
When Hwaryun said, “Bam is alive,” Khun felt like he was finally surfacing for air after holding his breath for seven years.
The moment Khun caught sight of Bam through the screen of his lighthouse, his heartbeat began to gallop. An undefinable cocktail of feeling swept through him: of relief, exaltation, and yearning, reducing him immobile.
His eyes automatically caught the differences brought with his maturity: his eyes less round, bangs grown longer to cover his eyes, a sharper jaw. Caught in a moment of weakness, Khun reached out to press his fingertips against the screen, to the curve of his cheek.
Seeing him again—physically, not blurred with the haziness of memory—was that unnamable feeling, except more intense somehow. His breath whooshed out of his lungs all at once, like he’d been struck in the solar plexus.
But even then, words weren’t quite enough to describe the sensation that overcame him. God. It was like, like—
(It was like watching red swirl down the sink’s drain while washing himself of blood, after killing someone; like a swallow of hot tea flushing his entire body with warmth, from his toes to the top of his head; like basking in a spot of sunlight after spending an afternoon in the snow; like his mother’s cool fingers carding through his hair to gather back in a high ponytail.
It was like coming home.)
Khun caught Bam’s hand, and squeezed hard for a moment, hoping that Bam would be able to understand without words. By the way his eyes were trained on their clasped hands and trailed back to Khun’s once he let go, lingering, he did.
(Quietly, Khun was glad to see that the light in his eyes hadn’t been smothered.)
It was alarming, how full of feeling he was. Khun was used to feeling emotions mildly; pleasant surprise when things went his way, mild annoyance when things didn’t, disinterest when he didn’t care for what was happening around him, which was most of the time. He was glad for it; it made maintaining his mask of bland neutrality easy.
But when Bam revealed casually that he was acquainted with many prominent figures of great power and political influence, Khun’s eyes widened in genuine shock. When he heard news of Bam fighting princesses of Jahad, slayers, rankers, corps commanders of Jahad’s army, Khun couldn’t help but let his inner mother hen take over. When Bam earnestly told Khun that he thought he was the smartest person he’d ever met, Khun had to turn away to hide the flush crawling up his face.
It made Khun want to be his blade; his shield, his knife in the dark—anything, to be of use to him.
Where is your pride now, Khun Aguero Agnis? Khun laughed aloud, mockingly. What happened to the boy who refused to even entertain the thought of becoming his sister’s lapdog?
He died with the boy Bam used to be the day Rachel betrayed him, he answered himself. And there was nothing else to add after that.
It was uncharacteristic of Khun to dedicate himself so wholly to something—to someone. If his mother were to see him now, he was certain she would turn away in disappointment. But that was fine. As long as Khun was able to, he would stay by Bam’s side, no matter what obstacles he would face.
Strange, terrifying, alarming—no matter what it was, Khun had never decided to dedicate himself to something and not put his all into it. So he embraced it with open arms.
He trusted Bam: unconditionally, absolutely. It was not a blind trust. It came from a place of deep understanding. Khun knew that Bam would never prioritize others over his companions. Every choice he made was with consideration of them in mind because for Bam, any loss was an irreplaceable loss. It was a novel experience, not having to concern himself with self-preservation with someone at his back. So he shaped his strategies around Bam’s priorities, even if he himself wouldn’t have made the same decisions.
Bam wasn’t quite the same boy he was, before—he was jaded, more quieter. His eyes were wearier. But still, at his core, he was that same lonely boy willing to go to any length to be with his loved ones and keep them safe.
Still, he was a force of nature. Not only in immense potential for power, though that deserved a mention, but in sheer earnest charisma. He had a gravity about him that made people look at him, want to be with him, want to stay, just to see how far this star of a boy would be able to fly.
They called him a god, and maybe they were right, to a degree. They didn’t know what Khun did, however—Bam was human. Human in his joy, his grief, his anger, his desperation. They didn’t know that Khun would do absolutely anything—dirty his hands with blood, burn himself until all that was left was ash, turn against any principle, any moral, any dignity—in order to keep him that way.
If they were smart, they wouldn’t be given a reason to learn.
(Bam awoke a monster in his chest. Devotion beat a tattoo in his heart and curled around his throat like a noose. Khun wondered what it said about him, that he wouldn’t have had it any other way.)
Khun grimaced as he caught sight of blood seeping through his bandages in the mirror. He dropped the edge of his shirt with a sigh. Thankfully, he wasn’t wearing his usual white dress shirt. This one would be dark enough to disguise any bloodstains.
Khun heard a clear one, two, three rap of the knuckles against the wood of his door. By the soft weight, yet confident cadence of the knock, it was Bam.
“Come in,” Khun called, taking care to erase any traces of pain in his face.
The door eased open, and Bam entered his room, expression full of worry.
“I heard from the others that you got hit,” he said, closing the distance.
“Who said that?” Khun deflected, internally cursing out Shibisu—the only one on the field close enough to see him take a hit—for selling him out.
The enemy had caught him in a rare moment of inattentiveness. He’d been too busy watching over Bam’s fight, and had missed his lighthouse alerting him to an ambush. A stupid, careless mistake. He’d killed the guy, obviously, but Khun was a little sore that they’d gotten the drop on him at all.
Khun hadn’t used the fire fish; he was becoming increasingly concerned about the price he’d have to pay for power, the one that the fish had warned him of. The wound would scar, of course, but what was another to add to the list? It was a non-fatal stab wound, anyway.
“Don’t misdirect, Khun,” Bam said, in front of him, now. Khun leaned back, his hands subtly bracing himself against his desk.
Khun smiled reassuringly, lips turning up in a perfect curve. “I’m fine, Bam.”
Bam leaned in closer, and pressed his palm against Khun’s mouth. His hand was warm.
“Don’t,” he said, eyes molten gold. “You don’t have to. Not with me.”
Khun paused.
Despite Khun’s fretting over Bam’s habit of fighting extremely powerful figures, his worries about Bam’s exponential growth being too quick to catch up with, and even his slow-burning anger and concern over Bam’s complete disregard of his own self when it came to his companions, Khun didn’t think he’d ever once been afraid of Bam. Afraid for him, always. Never of him.
But…
“You scare me, sometimes,” Khun breathed, a confession, into the scant space between them.
Bam flinched, his hand falling away from Khun’s face. The beginnings of devastation began to bloom in his wide eyes, the wavering of his mouth; like he was about to crumple into himself.
So Khun cut it off at the roots: “You see right through me. All these masks and lies, for what?” He let his head dip forward, hair falling into his face. “You cut me open.”
A hesitant hand reached forward, to brush his hair behind his ear. His fingers, as they brushed his skin, were warm.
“I just want for you to see me as someone you don’t have to hide from,” Bam said softly.
Khun tipped his body weight into Bam, and leaned on him, head slipping down to rest on his chest. Bam’s arms reached up to loosely hold him, cradling his skull; a mirror reversal of how Khun comforted Bam after he’d ended up using the power of those souls during the battle at the Nest. Pain flared at his side, a simmering ache, but it was nothing Khun couldn’t endure. Like this, Khun could hear Bam’s hummingbird quick heartbeat.
“It scares me even more,” Khun murmured to Bam’s heart; a secret, “that I don’t want to hide from you.”
“You don’t have to be,” Bam said. His hand was unfathomably gentle, as it curled around the nape of Khun’s neck.
Bam slipped past every towering defense, stripped him bare of every layer, stared at the burning, bloody, hoarfrost core of him, and still thought, I want him.
Even after all these years, Khun was still unsure if he wanted to laugh or cry at Bam’s poor judgment of character. Even after all these years, Khun was enough of a selfish, greedy person to be unable to not take advantage of it.