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Two months before Cyno’s coronation as the Head of the Temple of Silence, Al-Haitham is introduced to him as the new Royal Scribe.

Cyno understands the necessity of a new Royal Scribe, understands that there is no better cementation of the power the sages had been hoping to establish with his rushed coronation than with a witness, but the wound of Azar’s betrayal is still too fresh, too tender around the edges. Every scar was once a wound and flesh does not forget.

Though he thought, naively it seems, that the future king would be consulted even a little on the process of selecting candidates, even if his judgement on Azar had come too late. But he’s been wrong before. And it’d cost them far more than a mere scribe.

Now, Royal Scribe Al-Haitham stands flanked by two of Cyno’s advisors, unwithering beneath Candace’s glare as she announces the group, and Cyno gives up the body that he is. A king must be untouched by the passage of time, including its healing hand. What good is a king so easily crippled? What good is a king so weak to losing blood?

‘Al-Haitham, my lord,’ the older advisor begins. ‘He has displayed remarkable talent among his peers, and remains uncontested in his mastery of languages, both written and spoken. The Temple has found his skill second to none, and should my lord’s benevolence allow: his part in our lord’s ascension invaluable.’

‘He is half Azar’s age,’ Cyno points out. ‘I have never heard of him prior to this. He is not of the desert-folk, either. What business would he have with our lands? What insight could he possibly provide us? You, Sages of the Temple of Silence, made of the desert and given life by the desert, you impose a stranger upon our halls without warning and expect him to be welcomed?’

‘If I may,’ Candace says. The advisors both startle at her voice. Cyno’s will for her to speak freely among his court was something they could never comprehend. Cyno gestures for her to continue. ‘While Al-Haitham is relatively new to our lands, I can personally vouch for his talents, as well as professionalism, though not so much his character. He is well-fit for duty, especially given our circumstances, but to ease you, I would encourage only a temporary employment for this man, my lord.’

Cyno raises an eyebrow. Candace’s praise is hard-won and precious, her word as good as law. She nods, reluctant but steady. He calls for Al-Haitham to defend himself.

‘My lord,’ he says flatly, bowing perfectly, a hand placed delicately over his heart. ‘Your guard speaks the truth; I have not returned home in many years now. I understand your hesitance and suspicion to be well-founded, given the history of this position, but rest assured that my acceptance of your advisors’ proposal was purely to satisfy an academic curiosity. I have no loyalty to my queen, nor do I have any desire or admiration for your position. Frankly speaking, overthrowing you is not something worth my time.’

The advisors gasp and one reaches to grab his arm, but Al-Haitham holds fast. He cranes his head to look Cyno in the eye, face blank. Beside him, Cyno hears the squeeze of Candace’s fist around her staff.

‘What are you after?’ Cyno demands. His advisors flinch at the echo of his voice across the hall. Al-Haitham shrugs and starts to smile. A hint of teeth. The withering curl of a pretty mouth. Like the first animal to discover hunger, there is a gulf in his mouth. He cranes it into something digestible. Cyno has never seen a smile fit so oddly on someone’s own face.

‘What all scholars are after,’ he says. ‘Knowledge.’

The horror of being almost-king makes itself known firstly in his bones. He feels the chipping begin within him before he feels it on him. Cyno must be perfect, as every ruler of the desert has been. He must be seen as a god, and there are things divinity demands to be given up that Cyno isn’t quite ready to part with yet. 

And besides that, between navigating coronation preparation, digging through the rubble of the country Azar had left them with to make a complete overhaul of their current government, Cyno is still burdened with the battle of familiarising himself with his new Scribe. 

Al-Haitham doesn’t make it easy either. Not at all. Cyno’s even taken to harassing Al-Haitham’s junior on his whereabouts these days. Summoning his new Scribe in an official capacity would be nothing less than admitting defeat. But he’s emboldened now, after Layla had assured him that Al-Haitham, for all his faults, has always been predictable. 

Oh, um, he was rather taken with the palace’s library when he first arrived, Layla told him, head bowed—not out of respect but instead to fight back a yawn. Perhaps you could try your luck in any empty rooms you come across? Haitham doesn’t like reading with an audience. He’s very particular about interruptions. I’m sure you’ll be able to find him soon, General, there are only so many quiet places in a palace.

I’m going to be king, you know.

And he’s Al-Haitham, she said, and that was that.

So Cyno wanders his own halls, wondering idly if it’ll feel any different once the ceremony’s over, in search of his Scribe. (He wonders whether that part will change once he’s crowned, too. Al-Haitham will have to be his shadow in the light. Will it feel better, then, to simply turn his head and find Al-Haitham there than to have the freedom of hunting him down on his own two feet?) 

For now he turns whenever he can, peeks into rooms both empty and occupied, and eventually his monotonous search leads him to the palace library. There are always people in there, whether it be court advisors or scribes or scholars or simply Tighnari. Cyno thinks Al-Haitham wouldn’t bother staying in such a crowded area, then thinks he doesn’t really know much about him at all, so he ducks in. It’s empty, save for three scholars, no older than he is and so strangely unburdened. They bow almost exaggeratedly when they see him, stumbling over each other in fear. Cyno leaves as quickly as humanly possible.

On the way out, he’s struck by a wall. Covered in dark, sheer cloth, warmed the way bodies are from sleep. He looks up as his scribe looks down, backs away and bows only his head. From there Cyno sees the hair standing unnoticed on the side of Al-Haitham’s head, clearly from resting at an odd angle on a hard, flat surface, and he’s almost shocked into laughter.

‘My lord,’ Al-Haitham says, almost dismissively, attempting to sidestep him.

‘I was looking for you,’ Cyno says.

‘I have to return this.’ Al-Haitham lifts the book in his hand. Mystical Elemental Forces. Cyno wonders if Al-Haitham read the notes he’d written in it or where the vertical tear down page 128 had come from or what the green stain on the chapter about ley lines was.

‘Did you finish it?’ Cyno asks without thinking. ‘Mystical Elemental Forces. Did you read all of it?’

Al-Haitham stares at him as impassively as ever. No, he is not being judged as a king. Not even as a thing of interest.

‘No,’ Al-Haitham says eventually. ‘Not to my tastes. Have you?’

Cyno grits his teeth. ‘Yes. Many times, a long time ago.’

Al-Haitham nods—or bows, they’re both equally as stiff—and leaves without another word. Cyno doesn’t even bother watching him go. 

‘He’s suspicious,’ Cyno complains. ‘He’s after something, wants it enough to go through all the trouble of becoming the Scribe. Who would willingly—there's just something about him, Tighnari, something wrong.’

‘Then fire him,’ Tighnari says.

‘You don’t get it,’ Cyno insists. ‘If I let him go like this, he’s won. His motives will be buried alongside him. He must stand trial for his crimes.’

‘You’re about to be king. You could throw him into the dungeons or to the vultures and you’d be applauded. He’s a man out of his depth here. He’s indefensible.’

Cyno is horrified. ‘Everyone deserves a fair trial. A king’s judgement is not something so easily swayed nor corrupted. I am to be a vessel for the divine, Tighnari. To be led by something so insignificant as suspicion would be nothing short of blasphemy. I would be killed as punishment for sullying their holy name.’

‘So you’re just curious,’ Tighnari says, disinterested. He’s fretting over his newest concoction, a strangely textured brown mixture smelling simultaneously of Henna berries and rotting vulture carcasses. He delicately adds something green into the bowl and they both watch in horror as a small cloud of black smoke is released.

‘You cannot drink that,’ Cyno protests and immediately Tighnari chooses to commit treason, bringing the bowl to his lips. Cyno waits for Tighnari to collapse, but he simply wipes his mouth with his hand and puts the bowl down, frowning. 

‘And I am not curious,’ Cyno adds as an afterthought, once Tighnari’s health is secured. ‘I am not anything. He was the Sages’ pick, not my own. I cannot be sure he is not one of Azar’s loyalists, or worse. I only wish to see my home and people protected. I cannot do that with an outsider in my court.’ 

Tighnari is shaken from his own contemplation, of which Cyno dares not question, and gives a small smile.

‘Of course. We all do. But didn’t Candace vouch for him? Layla, too?’

‘Now you, as well,’ Cyno mutters. ‘Have you even spoken to him?’

Tighnari laughs. ‘Not directly, no. But I know of him. Collei has, though. He’s helped her with her reports a few times. She goes to the library for all her work now, you know, just to con him into proofreading her writing. She thinks I don’t know.’

There is love there. Cyno stays silent. Struggles to attach the thought of Al-Haitham, the Scribe, distant, quiet, passably polite even in the face of royalty—with this other Al-Haitham, talented, fussy, privately kind to young girls in need of help. Tighnari, who knows him, beyond his soul and mind and body, watches him gently.

‘Just talk to him,’ Tighnari says. ‘He wouldn’t say no to you.’

Cyno, always one to give credit where it is due, realises Layla knows Al-Haitham better than he’d expected. He’s predictable and avoids interruptions to his well-oiled routines best he can. He performs his duty sufficiently and never more, never less. Cyno knows his schedule by heart now, something a king has no business doing, but he rationalises it as eradicating evil at the root. To Tighnari, anyway. To Candace, who grows worried with his obsession by the day, he tells her he just wants to befriend him. It works for a while. That is, until Candace catches him watching Al-Haitham draw margins and corrections into Collei's homework from behind a pillar and she has to put her foot down.

‘Enough is enough, Cyno,’ she says. ‘You have made me lie to Layla far too many times for this to continue. Poor thing thinks you actually like Al-Haitham. He has performed well so far. The Sages praise his work, even. What else could you possibly want?’

‘We know nothing about him,’ Cyno tells her.

‘Truly? After all the observing you’ve done, do you truly know nothing about him?’

She has him caught. Cyno thinks of everything he’s learned. Before he was king he was a guard, and before that, the barest, untouched version of him, he was a scholar. Everything he learns becomes a part of him. To forget any of it would be nothing short of an amputation. Every scholar knows how it feels to be a grave desecrated. Cyno keeps his research on Al-Haitham closer than others. He finds it warms him; he has yet to decide whether that is a good thing or not. (Every fire begins as something to warm before it burns. Cyno keeps his hands in the hearth.)

‘You have to know something,’ Candace tries.

And he does. Al-Haitham is not a man of indecision. He’s sure of what he likes and doesn’t bother acting on things he doesn’t. Al-Haitham never sleeps past six forty-five even though he despises mornings because he despises the thought of being late more. He never asks for extra work and always turns away Layla’s offers to help him with what he has. He’ll stay in the library if there are no less than three people present and will leave as soon as someone new enters. He spends his downtime reading and never seems to return a book unfinished. (Cyno thinks of Mystical Elemental Forces , and he figures his irritation is wholly justified.) Al-Haitham is decidedly unweathered; he’ll fall asleep anywhere under a patch of sun. Soundly, too. He doesn’t even snore. Cyno thinks he could run him through with his spear and Al-Haitham would barely stir. He has no time for inane questions and therefore doesn’t get along with the other apprentice scribes. He has no patience for stupidity and therefore gets along wonderfully with Layla.

‘Cyno,’ Candace says, sighing. ‘I know that look.’

‘What? I know the bare minimum. It’s not enough.’

‘You could’ve given him the chance to tell you himself, you know,’ she says. ‘Have you spoken to Tighnari?’

‘I have,’ he confirms. ‘Why?’

‘Good.’ She clasps his shoulder. ‘Listen to Tighnari.’

It occurs to Cyno later that he’d never even told her what Tighnari had said.

He’s thought himself up a plan. 

Irreplaceable documents, enough information to bring a nation to its knees, every ledger of every thing that’s ever been in and out of the desert, every registered citizen and every rite ever performed, compiled into a box and left unassumingly where Haitham was bound to find it. He’d tried to make it seem somewhat hidden, though not nearly enough for his own personal tastes. Al-Haitham had claimed to be after mere knowledge. Insight. Cyno’s judged and lived among enough scholars to recognise them for the animals they are. How they’re never able to hide their hunger. (Al-Haitham came into the throne room with dripping wet teeth and visible ribs. Of course he’d been taken with library.)

Cyno would like to watch him resist this.

And he does. Watch. Their archive is so full of texts that it’s grown cramp. Cyno would usually prefer to have somewhat of a bird-eye’s view on his targets, but he decides catching Al-Haitham in the act is worth the risk of proximity.

Up close, Al-Haitham’s nothing but clear, curving lines, all confident, angled strokes. There’s an ease to him that would set anyone on edge. Something about him that screams get nervous, or try and figure me out.

Cyno has never backed down from a single challenge and never will, no matter what Candace or Tighnari say. Apparently, evidently, neither will Al-Haitham. He finds the crate easily and of course, he opens it. Cyno watches, his spear sings. The call of blood, the song of the scales, he is alight with purpose, blessed with triumph, but he stays his hand.

As Royal Scribe, the archives are his right. Cyno will not harm him in his domain. No. Like a fever he will let the infection spread before he strikes. He will wait. Al-Haitham is sure to be the root of the disease. He has not known any guilty scholar content to hoard information, after all.

He watches Al-Haitham read every document with all the patience of a hunter and hopes he eats until he’s full.

Weeks pass. His nation remains puzzlingly intact. He’d expected an uprising, or at least some form of threat, but nothing. They are as deep into peacetime as they were before. Al-Haitham still returns to the archives every day, as per his duty, and does not even look for the crate. Doesn’t matter that Cyno had removed it after he’d been sure he had read through the whole thing, Al-Haitham doesn’t even seem to have remembered it existed at all. His schedule remains unchanged. He remains unchanged. Cyno cannot condemn him with a clear conscience and it’s the sheer frustration that has him impulsively confronting Al-Haitham far sooner than he’d planned to.

‘Got tired of hiding behind shelves, I see?’ Al-Haitham says, surprisingly cheerful for being held so closely to the most vicious end of his spear.

‘You knew,’ Cyno grits out. The archives are small and cramped and conveniently isolated from the main palace. Cyno could gut him like a lamb and they’d have a replacement by next week. Tighnari might have some choice words for him, but Al-Haitham’s smug smile makes his wrath seem almost insignificant.

‘Not at first. I read everything you’d laid out, you know. Having all that information concentrated in one small crate is the security risk of the century. Or too good to be true. Depends on who you’re asking.’

‘And which one am I asking?’ The scales tip. Cyno can already see the rush of blood. The rite of judgement.

‘You already know,’ Al-Haitham says, leaning forward. Cyno watches his unblemished skin dip to the shape of his blade. Both of them could draw his blood. Neither move. ‘Don’t you, my lord?’

‘Why didn’t you tell anyone? How long are you going to keep it to yourself? You could have me overthrown. Killed.’

‘And put myself through the risk of unemployment? Not interested,’ Al-Haitham says. ‘I told you. I have no motive. I wanted knowledge and you gave it to me. Is it really so outlandish that I would want that knowledge for myself?’

‘You became the Royal Scribe. To satisfy a curiosity.’

Al-Haitham shrugs. ‘I’ve done more for less. It wasn’t as difficult as you think. You should really look into that, by the way.’

Cyno lowers his spear, gritting his teeth, careful not to hurt Al-Haitham in any way that matters. ‘Duly noted.’

For a while longer Al-Haitham says nothing. He leans back against the shelves and watches him expectantly. It occurs to Cyno that Al-Haitham might want an apology. His smile grows teeth. Cyno will do no such thing.

‘Truce?’ Cyno offers instead. ‘I promise to not kill you in your sleep. Intentionally.’

Al-Haitham’s jaw tightens, as do his fists. Cyno decides everything he’s done up until now has been worth it, watching the victory leave his face. If he were not a king, he would’ve laughed.

‘Truce,’ Al-Haitham says eventually, agonised. Cyno tries to fit all his joy into the width of his smile and finds it insufficient.

Tighnari was right, Cyno thinks, a little hysterically, watching Al-Haitham reluctantly offer a hand. Tighnari’s always right. He wouldn’t say no to me.

Cyno takes his hand.

‘Oh. Right. Don’t tell Tighnari or Candace about this,’ he says, palms pressed against Al-Haitham’s. ‘Or I’ll actually kill you. Intentionally.’

Al-Haitham has the audacity to laugh.

With their truce established, Cyno is confronted by the portion of their days spent in each other’s presence. Cyno no longer can act as if he wants nothing to do with Al-Haitham. In fact, it is well within Cyno’s best interests that he doesn't; Al-Haitham’s talents precede him. Cyno is grateful. Privately. Al-Haitham doesn’t need to know. They know enough about each other as it stands. Al-Haitham from sheer proximity and his job, and Cyno from, well.

It is easier, frustratingly, to be together than apart. They are too intertwined now to justify walking away. It starts with one meal shared on the steps of the throne on the quietest of nights, then to another, side by side, rushing to receive an honoured guest from afar, which eventually leads them to Al-Haitham’s tired, unexpectant question of Want to join me in the library? and Cyno saying Yes.

Cyno’s tolerance is learned, but his endearment is purely accidental. 

Once, Cyno had fallen asleep on the throne without realising and when he woke Candace told him his duties for the day had been either delegated or postponed. Your scribe called you in sick, she’d said, her mouth half-caught in a laugh. He’s told Tighnari to expect you. Wouldn’t want the Sages to worry too much, now would we?

Once, Haitham laughed so hard at a joke Cyno had heard from Candace’s mercenary friend, Dehya, that he’d dropped his book right onto his foot. It was a good day. They’ve been rather frequent as of late, as are Haitham’s smiles. Something grows onto him and within him. Now he takes all of his time and puts it into Haitham. He wonders now how he’d ever thought Haitham capable of viciousness with how he accepts Cyno so readily.

They are to be king and scribe. So it was written. It is within your memory that you are godly, so a king easily forgotten is just a man. The scribe takes your memory and puts you into something more earthly than a body. He puts you into writing. He sets you in stone, becomes the fire to brand you into the foundation of time, and the only version of you to survive yourself will be your scribe’s.

Cyno is thankful, then, for their cautious affection, their capacity for kindness in each other. He refuses to be remembered by only his teeth. There are far worse things to be, at the end of a life well-lived, than a friend.

It’s a full moon tonight. Auspicious and sinister. Gleaming like a polished knife.

‘It’ll be the happiest day of your life,’ Haitham says. They’re dressed in their night clothes; under the moonlight Haitham’s silhouette is blurred, so soft that Cyno can barely hold the image of him in a single shape.

‘Happiest?’ Cyno says. ‘They say the happiest day of a man’s life is his wedding, you know.’

‘It’ll be just like it. No, better. Better than your wedding.’ Haitham smiles at him and it hurts, then. Hurts so sweetly that Cyno feels detached almost from his own two feet. There is no time now to think about why. He is so close to something that he cannot name but he sees that it is good, and eventually the pain turns itself over, tender. 

‘How so?’ he asks.

Haitham’s still smiling at him while he continues, ‘All of the desert is waiting to love you, in the morning. All of it. Tell me—how could a single person even compare?’

Cyno doesn’t have an answer. Instead, he watches the sun come up and he isn’t alone. 

Until, inevitably, he is. 

The headdress fits perfectly. It takes all of him to pretend to be happy about it. The coronation is too big for just one of him, even just a room full of people would’ve been too much. He hears the Temple announce him and tries to breathe.

Before he’d left, Haitham told him Don’t think too hard about it. It’s just a big party. The more you worry the higher the chance of you ruining things. Focus on one thing at a time. That’s what I do.

Cyno opens his eyes and steps into the light.

Gold. Gold and more gold. The sun shines gold and so does his armour and the decorations and when he looks at his shoes briefly to hide from all of it, he’s almost blinded when it reflects back up on him.

Weight. He feels heavy. Is it the weight of the crown, his god’s eyes over his? Or is it love, like Haitham said—his people calling his name, reaching toward the sky, reaching for him? Cyno feels heavy enough to break. He’s become a weight he doesn’t think he can bear. A king. A king is the cracks made on him—love, going inward and outward, a real working heart. 

It is an honour, he’s saying to the crowd. Not really. His speech had been proofread by Haitham, Tighnari and Candace, then revised by the Temple into something worthy of a king. But Cyno, the man, the memory, the heart, says I am blessed. I am grateful. It is an honour to break this way.

Green. Peculiar green. Even more peculiar under the sun. Cyno is a river, he’s a canal. His people drink from him and his promise to never dry. He pledges many things. He pledges what he knows, but this is what he’ll remember: Haitham watching him (green eyes, green robes, a prospering green) from his side, the knife of his smile and how he did it because nobody would think to look at him instead of Cyno. He’ll remember wondering if every king had felt this way under the unwavering gaze of their scribes. The headdress preens. Haitham watches. He holds his parchment as if it is something dear. He looks as though he cannot do anything else. 

Cyno understands then, that this is the gaze that will make him immortal. This is how he will live forever. Cyno smiles back at him, if only because nobody else will. I am going to remember you.

It isn’t the happiest day of Cyno’s life, no, it is simply the first.

Cyno himself is a learned thing. He is what he knows and what he knows he is taught. 

The Temple of Silence taught him this: you are not above your duty.

You are the bound fist of a nation’s suffering. You are the knife to cut the rot from their wounds. But you are also part of the wound. The deepest, softest part of it; you are the start of an infection—you could be a killer or a simple fever. Your people are made of you and because of you. There is no greater shame on earth than what you are primed for. There is no greater failure than the ones at your hands. 

The Temple said, Be wise, and if you cannot then be fair. Do not concern yourself with any other act. What is horrible will seek you out, and what is good will not deny you. Trust the laws and trust what you know. You are blessed. You will be grateful.

And Cyno swore exactly that.

They are having a moment together. This has been happening often lately. Cyno is well aware of how much the previous kings’ lives had been shared with their scribes, but he doesn’t think it could be like this—none of the war trumpets, none of the imposing pillars of a king’s audience hall, just the peace of Haitham reading quietly in the library and Cyno attempting to do the same. Haitham has a beautiful posture. His heavy, wide hands are gentle as he flips the pages, his neck is curved like a swan’s. It occurs to Cyno then that Haitham is handsome, objectively, and briefly thinks about what a shame it is for a man like that to be confined within the halls of a single place. (Of a palace, Cyno reminds himself. Haitham takes his beauty and walks the paths of gods and kings and gold. If not here, then where?)

‘Is there an issue?’ Haitham asks, eyes still fixed on his book.

Cyno startles. ‘No,’ he says mildly. 

He turns toward his own book. Mystical Elemental Forces. He’d picked it up on pure habit. He sneaks a glance at the book in Haitham’s hands, trying to catch a glimpse of the title.

‘What is it?’ Haitham asks again, sounding lightly irate, and slowly flips his book shut.

‘What are you reading?’ Cyno blurts out. Graceless. Too loud. Haitham shows him the cover with a raised eyebrow.

‘Logical Concepts in the Runic Language,’ Cyno reads out loud. ‘I haven’t read that one, though I’ve seen Layla carrying it around.’

Haitham hums. ‘I picked it up on her recommendation, but I’m finding it rather elementary, truth be told. There are no new ideas being proposed or arguments worth deeper contemplation. It’s nothing I haven’t read before.’

‘So that is where your interests lie? In language?’

‘You would hope so. I am your scribe.’

‘But you enjoy it,’ Cyno insists. He’s being persistent, he recognises, and refuses to confront its significance. ‘You like it enough to spend your time away from work with it.’

‘I do know twenty languages, you know. I would have to have at least a modicum of interest to achieve that.’

‘You know twenty languages.’ His mind boggles. ‘Fluently?’

‘Did the Temple not brief you on me?’

‘I’d known they were screening candidates and, well. And nothing else.’

Haitham’s eyes are wide in disbelief. It’s new, this look, and Cyno’s utterly pleased with himself for causing it. Not enough though to forget that Haitham knows twenty different languages and Cyno had absolutely no idea. It is little wonder why Candace herself had vouched for his talents now.

‘Well, then,’ Haitham says, huffing like a child. ‘I suppose your suspicion and stalking that first week is somewhat justifiable now. Somewhat. You’re forgiven.’

‘I wasn’t going to apologise,’ Cyno says. ‘But tell me, what languages do you know? Is it common, in your home, to know so many? Are you familiar with any dead languages? Are you able to read and write in all of them as well?’

Cyno feels like a child again, the first time he’d gotten his spear. He hadn’t known the proper way to use it then or what it meant, but understood that he was close, so close to something previously unattainable. Something precious. He leans forward in anticipation. 

Haitham laughs. Cyno is so, so close. Something blooms at the edge of sight, begging to be known.

‘How about instead of asking questions,’ Haitham says, leaning forward over his book. His eyes are lovely when he smiles, even if it is a little odd on his face. ‘You actually learn one or two?’

‘You’ll teach me?’ Cyno asks, hopeful. ‘You’re willing?’

‘Are you expecting me to say no? To my king? Have a little faith in me, my lord,’ Haitham says, his smile like an animal's. ‘How could I ever turn away the opportunity to give you orders?’

During one of their many arguments about Cyno accepting the role of king, Tighnari told him that his understanding of loyalty was the worst case of abandonment issues he’d ever seen and that the worst thing yet was that he couldn’t seem to see beyond it. 

Take off a dog’s leash and hand it a crown, so what, Tighnari had said, it’s still a dog.

Cyno had shrugged. There are worse things to die for, he thought. 

(There were: Azar died on his spear believing in his own failure, not realising that his stubborn hold on the title of king was what sentenced him to his death in the first place. None left to mourn him; not even his memory can be evoked kindly now.

All that for what?)

Before he was king of a nation, he was its right hand, a general. He has always been the will of his nation personified. So, contrary to what Tighnari had thought, Cyno did have the closest understanding of what it meant to be king. After Azar, it had only been a matter of time. He’d bent at their god’s knee long before he’d ever put on the headdress, after all. (Even a god is ultimately his own duty. He is his promise. All ruling things must make cages they have to live with.)

Tighnari thinks Cyno has judged himself wrongly, but he understands better, knows better. He is blessed. He is grateful. 

He is fine.

He finds himself looking forward to their tutoring sessions, which is to mean every time they have a spare moment together. Haitham had started him on a language long lost to their part of the desert, something so old Cyno is sure that if he were to split the Temple of Silence palace in half he’d find the very same runes etched into the deepest, oldest corners. Haitham speaks of language and understanding them like one would a child, awed by its growth and progress, humbled even more so because of it.

Haitham gives virtually nothing away. His tone is smooth and unchanging, his expressions even more so, but Cyno knows better. He knows that Haitham plans out their sessions with even more dedication than he does his actual job, that Haitham scours and borrows and even purchases books for Cyno to refer to days in advance, that he often breaks his beloved routine to stay up through the night to write comments and criticism on Cyno’s translation work. But most importantly, Cyno knows that Haitham looks forward to these sessions together as much as he does.

It’s during one of these sessions that Cyno receives a particularly scathing comment written in the margins of his work from Haitham that has him huffing in mock anger, shoving Haitham’s shoulder.

‘You think you’re so smart,’ Cyno says without heat. Haitham grins.

‘Or your grammar was just that abysmal,’ he says. ‘Listen to this, what has happened again, what has done before again, nothing under sun new. This is scripture, holy text that you’ve disrespected! Tell me, does it make any sense to you?’

‘I don’t see the problem. You asked me to transcribe what I could, and I did.’

‘This is a direct translation! You’re meant to infer the meaning of it and fill in the correct terms to make it coherent in the language you’re translating it to. You’re making the reader do all that on their own.’ 

Cyno hides a smile behind his hand.

‘You did this on purpose,’ Haitham accuses.

‘How could I? I’ve never translated anything, much less holy text, in my life,’ Cyno lies through his teeth. ‘Perhaps there are just things I am incapable of. That’s what I have my all-knowing Royal Scribe for, no?’

Haitham rolls his eyes. ‘Flattery, another thing you are incapable of. I am hardly all-knowing, else I wouldn’t be here.’ Cyno raises an eyebrow. ‘Combat, for one, is something I have no knowledge on.’

His smile drops. ‘You’re lying to me.’

‘And risk execution?’

‘You’re risking it right now,’ Cyno says. ‘Look at you. You think I would describe you as feeble ?’

‘How humbled I am, to be so lucky to have my king’s gaze solely on me! Oh, how will this lowly, feeble scribe ever prove his innocence to you, my king?’ Haitham laments. Cyno shoves him again. ‘A spar, perhaps?’

‘That is an excellent idea, Haitham,’ Cyno says. Haitham’s smile drops. ‘Go, collect your weapons. I’ll be waiting for you in the courtyard.’

‘I didn’t mean it!’ Haitham calls, but Cyno’s already out the door, excited in a way he had utterly forgotten he was capable of.

Haitham is a terrible liar. After their first round (that Cyno wins, of course), he tells him exactly that.

‘You can fight,’ he says triumphantly, grinning down at Haitham who’s laying on his back, breathing hard. He receives a glare that would have any apprentice scribe running in return.

‘I know the basics,’ Haitham says. ‘Help me up.’

‘You’re good,’ Cyno tells him, pulling him up by the hand. Haitham, the menace, makes Cyno lift his full weight. ‘Come, another round. I’ll show you what you can do better.’

‘We haven’t even started on the material I brought today,’ Haitham gripes, but he’s already lifting his swords.

They go four rounds until Haitham calls for a break. Cyno, disappointed but apologetic at Haitham’s visible exhaustion, allows it.

‘I have no love for it, you know,’ Haitham tells him, pointing at his spear. ‘Fighting. No glory in it, I’d say. Makes us no different from the animals. I didn’t even want to keep my swords. I was ready to sell them off, but nobody in Aaru Village would take them.’

‘You should have tried Caravan Ribat.’

‘And get killed on the way to Aaru Village?’ Haitham snorts. Cyno shakes his head.

‘But as someone who uses these weapons, when you’re holding them or using them, wouldn’t you say it is the intent that matters?’ Cyno asks, tapping the blade of his spear. ‘You just have to know when to stop.’

‘A sword is a sword. A spear is a spear.’ Haitham shrugs. ‘You could hurt me even if you didn’t mean to.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Cyno insists, weapon faltering, and then Haitham’s leaping forward, swords in hand, laughing at what he thinks is a clear advantage.

‘I might,’ Haitham says later, grinning up at him from the sharp end of his spear. Cyno had given as good as he got, despite the dirty trick Haitham had pulled, wrangling out a decidedly hard-fought win on his end.

‘You couldn’t, even if you did mean to hurt me,’ Cyno says with a laugh, ears buzzing. Prayers with the rising sun. The strings of a lyre. It takes a full moment for Cyno to quiet the singing of his blood. ‘I just proved that to you.’

Cyno offers his hand and Haitham takes it, his swords lying forgotten on the ground. He leans down, the image of satisfaction, and says by Cyno’s ear, ‘But I would at least make it fun for you, wouldn’t I?’

His advisors present him the letter with all the reverence of men in prayer and Cyno prepares himself for the worst. Haitham, standing before his throne, watches him with the intent of a bird of prey. 

‘From Her Majesty, the Lesser Lord Kusanali of Sumeru City, my lord,’ one of the sages says. His voice trembles with excitement. ‘A formal invitation to Her Majesty’s birthday celebration.’

‘The Sabzeruz Festival,’ Haitham says. He’s moved to stand beside Cyno now. Not to read over his shoulder like Cyno had assumed, but simply there. An unflinching presence. Cyno has grown too used to him to not find comfort in it anymore.

‘I am familiar with the occasion,’ Cyno says, skimming through the neatly written letter. It is nothing like an official summons, he realises, the language polite but friendly, as if they were more than neighbouring rulers. It is a letter from a friend.

‘This is an opportunity we cannot give up,’ the other sage insists. She bows hastily. ‘My lord, you must attend. Sumeru City and its lands have done nothing but prosper under Lesser Lord Kusanali’s reign. Her forestlands have unimaginable resources, her people want for naught. She will be an invaluable ally!’

She’s right. Of course she is. It is not even a decision to be made, in the end. 

‘Scribe Al-Haitham,’ Cyno announces, ‘please ensure a reply is sent post-haste. I am honoured by Her Majesty’s graciousness and would be even more grateful to be a part of such a joyous day. She may expect our arrival two days before the festivities begin.’

Haitham bows, hand over his heart. ‘It will be done, my lord.’

He keeps his gaze low as Cyno discusses the trip with his advisors, uncharacteristically silent as the two sages sing Lesser Lord Kusanali and her nation’s praises. Cyno watches him avoid even Candace’s searching gaze and dismisses his advisors mid-speech.

Later, when they’re alone in the throne room, after Cyno had insisted Candace take an early dinner, it’s Haitham that approaches him.

‘I assume you wanted to speak with me?’

‘I do,’ Cyno says. ‘You’re from Sumeru City, aren’t you?’

‘I am,’ he says stiffly, ‘but I was never an active participant in the Sabzeruz Festival. I can tell you what I know, of course, though I don’t see how it would be very informative at all.’

‘No, I know. They are essentially our sister kingdom, Haitham, what king would I be if I wasn’t familiar with their biggest holiday yet?’ Cyno smiles at him and hopes it is kind. ‘I just wanted to know—no—I’m sure, you must be excited to return home. I do remember you claim to have no loyalty to your queen, but still, it is your home.’

‘It is.’ Haitham offers nothing more. Cyno waits. He understands later that the logical feeling would have been frustration, even anger at Haitham’s blatant dismissal, but now he just feels a little nauseated. Cyno has not been an outsider to him in a long while, now.

‘Are you?’ he tries, wholly aware of what he is now: a waiting dog at Haitham’s door. ‘Happy to go home?’

Cyno thinks Haitham is cruel, then, for making them both suffer through his silence. He worries, suddenly, that Haitham thinks he cannot deny Cyno without consequence. The thought alone is enough for Cyno to physically back away, unable to stare at anything but his hands, attempting to give Haitham space. A king should be a cage to only himself, after all. He starts to think about forgiveness.

‘I did not leave Sumeru City happy,’ Haitham says slowly, gently. ‘It will be my first time returning in years.’

Cyno wonders if he is being comforted. ‘I’m sorry,’ he offers.

‘It was my own fault. I chose to leave the way I did.’

‘Surprising,’ Cyno jokes weakly. Haitham’s grief is unbearable. ‘I was sure you’d been driven out of the city for your crimes.’

‘And how would that reflect on you, having a wanted criminal as your scribe?’

‘That I believe in second chances.’

‘Or that you’re a soft-hearted fool.’ Haitham considers him. ‘And they would be right.’

‘Any louder and Candace might have you banished for threatening the king.’

‘Not likely. I’ve heard what Tighnari calls you sometimes—to your face, might I add. You’re telling me Candace hasn’t said worse?’

‘Death to all three of you,’ Cyno decides.

‘May Layla avenge my untimely demise then.’ Haitham clasps his hands in prayer.

But his grin slips off his face agonisingly quick. Cyno watches helplessly as the density of earlier crawls back into the air between them.

‘I was meant to be Grand Sage.’ Haitham looks at him with an intensity Cyno cannot decipher. ‘They wanted me to do it but I couldn’t. I was grieving. They wanted more than I could give.’

‘So you came to the desert?’

‘I stayed in Aaru Village for the most part,’ he agrees. ‘It was an easy life, even while Azar was in power. Just what I needed.’

‘And you decided to try for the position of Royal Scribe?’ Cyno asks, incredulous. ‘What happened to a simple life?’

‘We all suffered during Azar’s reign,’ Haitham shrugs. ‘I felt sorry for whatever poor fool the Temple of Silence conned into taking the crown after that whole mess. And besides,’ he adds smugly. ‘how else was I going to get access to the royal library?’

Cyno quiets. Haitham’s kindness is always a shock to his system. He is thankful then, for Haitham’s hindsight to deny the Grand Sage position. He would have been second to only Lesser Lord Kusanali, a ruler in his own right. He is grateful. Haitham had come to him wholly intact. He is blessed.

‘I suppose I am,’ Haitham says loudly, breaking Cyno from his thoughts.

‘What?’

‘I think I am glad to be visiting,’ he repeats. ‘It’ll be hilarious to be introduced back there as your Royal Scribe, won’t it, Cyno?’

Outside, the stars glint to the rhythm of Haitham’s laughter, and Cyno thinks this might be how he remembers Haitham forever; Cyno’s name as joy on his lips, grief forgiven, though hardly forgotten.

Sumeru City is unapologetically in celebration. You’d think it was the whole nation’s birthday just by one look at the decorated streets, the flowers in every corner, the collective excitement just as enthusiastically expressed from the local blacksmith to the Grand Bazaar performers. It lacks the solemnity of his own coronation, the weeping wound of his people that Cyno had meant to soothe. 

Cyno looks over his shoulder at Haitham. He’s looking up at a banner of flowers and he isn’t smiling but he may as well be. There is love in his eyes, or something close. There is no being as familiar with them as Cyno, no other being has been followed so closely by them, no one who’d looked back at them as often as him. Haitham looks around his city like a son in his childhood home, searching for any change that happened without him to get familiar with.

Sumeru City is as untouched as Haitham is. As beautiful as Cyno imagined, too, for a nation to have blessed them with him.

Lesser Lord Kusanali wears her crown well. She’s young and kinder for it. Upon their first meeting, she greets Cyno with a joke about being the first to welcome the new neighbour and tells him to call her Nahida.

Cyno, he’d said.

Thank the gods! She giggled. Thank you, Cyno. I don’t know what I would have done if you made me call you Your Majesty after making that joke.

She wears her duty with more grace than Cyno ever will but her people’s love she wears even more beautifully. They quickly learn that she is as part of the process of the festival as she is the actual celebration. She introduces them to the Royal Architect and Haitham’s former roommate, who had been wholly enthralled with Tighnari after he’d made an unnecessarily detailed comment on the placement and size of a garden from Kaveh’s blueprints. She even tries to involve their party from the desert with the preparations. Cyno is honoured. He is grateful. Haitham treats her as if she’s still his queen and Cyno can’t blame him.

So when he wishes her happy birthday on the day of the Sabzeruz Festival and tells her she deserves every second of it, he finds that he actually means it.

It’s barely midday when the dancing begins. Cyno himself is pulled into the crowd by Kaveh and Nahida and brings shame upon his whole nation trying to emulate their steps. Eventually they get separated, but when Cyno attempts to seek refuge in the corner with Tighnari, Candace, Dehya and Haitham, he’s immediately drawn back in. Perhaps it was a mistake to leave the headdress and jewellery behind. It was Nahida’s birthday, he had wanted to be polite, to let her have her moment. But he barely has time to regret it before Kaveh’s calling him easy pickings as he steps around him and Cyno tries his best to trip him. It doesn’t work, Kaveh too skilled a dancer and Cyno too concerned with protecting the peace of the ever-moving crowd to earnestly try.

He’s saved, eventually, embarrassingly, when he bumps into a familiar wall. Dark sheer cloth, a pleasant hint of sweat. His scribe looks down at him, amused and trying valiantly to pretend otherwise. He has two hands on the side of his arms to steady him.

‘Didn’t take you for a dancer,’ Cyno says. They’re both still. Everyone around them stops to give them strange looks before moving on. Cyno grows increasingly aware of Kaveh’s laughter in the distance.

‘I’m not,’ Haitham says. ‘But for you, my lord, I find that my levels of tolerance grow increasingly high, while my capacity for shame decreases exponentially.’

‘You have served me well, Scribe Al-Haitham,’ Cyno says solemnly.

‘You’ll find that I’m about to serve you even better. Come on.’ He pulls at Cyno’s arms. ‘I want to show you the markets. No dancing there, I swear.’

Cyno doesn’t think he could’ve said no even if he tried. Haitham masterfully navigates both of them out of the crowd and to the pathway leading down to the festival bazaar. Cyno is far too taken with the sheer life of the bazaar to notice Haitham’s hand remain secure around his wrist. Occasionally he feels something reach and rub the back of his hand and at the edge of his thumb, but the vendors don’t let him stay focused for long.

‘Divination?’ Haitham asks, sounding almost offended. ‘Really?’

‘I’m curious,’ he tells him. ‘Why? Afraid that you’re fated to suffer some great misfortune?’

‘I’d wager the likelihood of that to happen to me anytime today is highly unlikely,’ he says confidently. So Cyno drags him to the stall out of pure spite. Haitham lets him. Even fights Cyno to pay the diviner running the stall and wins.

The diviner tells them Haitham is destined for happiness, but when Cyno makes him choose the flavour of Yalda Candies they end up with lizard tail and onikabuto.

‘Happiness,’ Haitham says, wrinkling his nose at the candies. ‘Not good fortune. It seems you were right.’

Victorious, Cyno pops an onikabuto flavoured one into his mouth and chews. ‘Hmm. Not bad. Could do with a bit more spice, though. Haitham, try one, do you think Candace would like it?’

Haitham tells Cyno to stay as far away from him as possible, but pays for both boxes anyway.

They’re almost at the end of the bazaar when the sun begins to set. It’s less harsh here. Less formidable. The sun in the desert is always felt, always present, always demanding something. It could kill you if you weren’t made for it. Nothing like Sumeru City. The sun leaves them with a kiss of colours, falling over the city like a gift. He has never seen Haitham like this in the desert. They have never watched the sun set so unburdened like this, as if they were two mere tourists, here to celebrate the Sabzeruz Festival and nothing else.

He is acutely aware of Haitham’s hand creeping downwards from his wrist. He is just as aware of his own hands opening to receive it. Cyno feels like he’s been bowled over, even though Haitham holds him steady.

‘Cyno,’ Haitham says, turning to him, their hands hanging like a premonition between them. ‘Have you ever seen the sea?’

Haitham takes them to Port Ormos. The sun’s fully set by the time they arrive, and the stalls are as lively as ever, but Cyno’s attention is on the sea.

It’s dark out, but the waves demand to be known one way or another, playfully rocking the boats at the port back and forth, straining the old wood into a litany of groans.

Cyno had been aware of the sea the way one would be aware of their nose. Vaguely, and wholly unconcerned. Until, that is, someone comes along and points it out and then it becomes the only thing you can see in a mirror. Though, unlike a nose, the sea has far more to offer Cyno. To have something so close to you and still so unknown, Cyno wonders how little he really knows about his nation and himself. He’s immediately bombarding Haitham with question after question, asking about anything and everything (history, logistics, statistics, geography) while Haitham just laughs and doesn’t bother answering any.

‘Let’s look at stalls first,’ Haitham says, ‘then I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’

The first stall they stop at is run by a local toy shop that sells wooden sculptures of baffling creatures with large hats.

‘The Aranara,’ Haitham says, just as the vendor had opened his mouth to likely do the same. ‘Children’s stories, myths. They’re said to be visible to children and nobody else.’

‘That’s fascinating.’  Cyno runs his hand over the floppy hat of the tallest one displayed. ‘It is a shame though, that we don’t have anything as adorable in the desert. The children would love it.’

‘The Wenuts aren’t so bad. You could make sculptures out of those.’

‘Clearly you haven’t been on enough expeditions, scribe, if you can say being struck by a beast of that proportion isn’t so bad .’

‘You’re right, I haven’t. I applied for the position precisely to avoid any long and tiresome expeditions. I am perfectly content to take your experienced word for it.’

‘No need to be so eager, Scribe Al-Haitham, you’ll be following me wherever I go. As a matter of fact, I believe I’m overdue a visit to Hadramaveth a—’

‘You’re blocking the line,’ the vendor cuts in, eyeing them warily. He gestures behind them at the growing line. ‘Are you two going to get anything at all?’

Cyno picks the largest toy he sees and holds it up to the vendor, his face searingly hot.

‘We’ll take this,’ he says. Haitham opens his wallet without protest, but gives Cyno the most improper, scathing look he’s ever seen. He grins, pride restored. But he makes Haitham carry the thing around for the rest of their trip, of course.

Eventually, they come across a stall selling food for the Haft-Mewa Feast and Haitham buys all seven types. They sit down at the edge of the docks on planks that cry out worryingly under their combined weight, but they pay it no mind. Haitham tells him the history and genus of each and every one of the fruits he’d bought as he peels them. Cyno passes him a dagger that he accepts wordlessly, immediately setting to work. Haitham places sliced Sunsettias and Harra Fruits and Zatyun Peaches into Cyno’s hands as he answers his questions. By the end of it their hands are sticky and sweet and they’re content enough to watch the moon ripple onto the water, brushing their feet against each other just as quickly as they pull away. All their moments have felt this way, recklessly stolen and just as hastily returned. Cyno wonders how long he can get away with this.

But Haitham doesn’t ever stop talking or touching or looking, so Cyno thinks there is nothing to forgive. Nothing to be tried for in the first place. Haitham’s attention is scarcely given and carefully received. Cyno’s the king—it’s his job to know what is precious and what isn’t. Nothing criminal could be so gentle. Haitham is something to be tender with.

By the time they return to the city, the festival has long since ended and Candace is furious, waiting for them at the gates. 

Haitham grins at him conspiratorially in the dark when she demands to know where they’d snuck off to and he decides today is not something to be regretted. Or shared, for that matter. Candace watches them and something passes so quickly over her face that Cyno can’t be sure it's anything good. Eventually she sends them to their rooms with a sigh and a promise drawn out from both of them to never do that again. 

Haitham doesn’t stop to say good night and Cyno doesn’t stop to say thank you , but he does tell Cyno he’ll see him in the morning and Cyno says of course. It’s a promise for them, between them. Private, exclusive. It’s more than enough.

That night, Cyno falls asleep to the memory of Harra Fruits and Haitham’s hands on him and feels himself becoming something he does not know how to judge.

The Temple of Silence is furious with him. It would’ve happened sooner or later. Candace escorts him to his own audience hall and speaks to him gently. She tells him it’s probably nothing to be concerned about, even makes a strained joke about performance reviews and shakes her head when Cyno asks her if she’s always been this kind to their prisoners. She isn’t permitted any further than the doorway and he thanks her grimly for her service in an attempt to get her to smile. She laughs instead and he’s comforted. He loves her laugh. It is the kindest thing she could have left him, in any case.

He’s made aware, violently, of how much time he’d put aside for Haitham. He’d been aware of their time spent together with a certain detachedness that he was only familiar with when he dreamed. That this was them without cost, at the edge of creation, and like children they knew no consequence. They’d gone from weekly sessions to meeting almost daily, after all, and that isn’t an easy feat to achieve without sacrifice. But he had thought he was being discreet, that he’d been present for enough discussions and passed enough judgement and responded to enough calls for aid from his people to keep Haitham hidden from the Temple. It is not as though he has wholly neglected his duties, it is not as though he has lost his love for his nation, for his people. It is not as though he has forgotten the weight upon his head or the slow breaking of his neck underneath it.

But the Temple had summoned him into the room with them and once they were alone had asked him, Do you think we would not notice? Did you think you could have it all?

He did. He thought he’d deserved it. They’d all fought and lost and died for peace. For their nation. What of the spoils of war if one can’t enjoy it? 

The sages had frowned. They looked like they felt sorry for him, then. They tell him they can look past leaving a neighbouring ruler’s birthday celebration early and unannounced, that he can be forgiven because Lesser Lord Kusanali had deemed him faultless, but they also tell him that Haitham’s progress prior to the festival had been slow and unsatisfactory. They tell him Haitham’s gaze is meant for a nation, not a king. They ask if he can bear both their burdens. He can’t. Cyno is ashamed and unrepentant and essentially alone.

Look at your greed. Your ignorance. Do you think yourself free of judgement? Do you think you are owed forgiveness?

No. No.

‘Stop moving!’ Tighnari tells Haitham, frustrated, and Cyno is disgusted with himself.

‘For the love of—I will not be held responsible if this gets into your eyes,’ Tighnari warns. ‘Cyno, tell him to stop—listen, Al-Haitham, do you want to go blind?’

‘What is with you people and blinding me?’ Haitham complains.

‘You brought this upon yourself,’ Tighnari says. ‘What were you thinking, telling Cyno to not hold back?’

‘That I wanted a fair fight.’

‘You— stop your incessant wiggling—call this fair? You could’ve lost an eye.’

‘But I didn’t. It was a good loss, anyhow.’ Haitham looks right at Cyno and stills. His smile is captivating, despite the blood. ‘You fought well. Congratulations on the win. That makes us, what, 20-10?’

‘Eleven,’ Cyno corrects. ‘You won the warm up round yesterday.’

‘How generous of you.’

Tighnari sighs, snipping the last of the thread from his needle. Cyno watches, trying to settle his stomach, as Tighnari presses the gauze to Haitham’s face.

‘You’ll need to return to have those removed,’ he says. ‘But otherwise you’ll live. Congratulations. It’ll scar, though.’

‘Naturally.’ Haitham sounds oddly proud. He touches the gauze delicately, tenderly, and Cyno wants to run himself through his spear. Haitham’s blood hasn’t dried on his blade yet, he leaves it on the floor of Tighnari’s office without remorse, following behind Haitham.

Tighnari catches his arm before he can leave. 

‘It would’ve happened sooner or later,’ Tighnari tells him. He’s using the same voice he uses to coax Collei into taking her medicine. ‘It’s not your fault.’

Cyno doesn’t bother nodding. He simply leaves.

Outside, he finds he cannot bear to walk in sync with Haitham. From behind Cyno can pretend nothing’s changed, that Haitham remains as unweathered as he’d always been, that he bears no mark of violence, much less one from Cyno himself.

But of course Haitham turns. When has he ever made anything easy? Haitham turns and looks and waits for him to catch up. Cyno is caught.

Look at your greed. Look at your ignorance.

Haitham’s blood had been so red. Clashed terribly with the gold of his spear. Cyno’s seen a hundred different parts of the human body on the very same end, scrubbed every single bit of it clean himself, but the sight of Haitham’s had him lightheaded. He’d wanted to wrap his arms around himself to push the sickness down, to remain as unwavering as he’d promised to be, to help Haitham off the ground as he always had and always will. But Haitham had picked himself off the floor and asked if Cyno was alright, reaching for him instead of stopping the bleeding on his own damn face. 

He’d thrown up outside Tighnari’s office the moment Haitham had been received. He wouldn’t have gone back in if Haitham hadn’t called for him.

‘Hurry up,’ Haitham says. The gauze taunts him. Cyno is disembowelled. ‘Cyno?’

‘I shouldn’t have listened to you,’ Cyno says. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why not?’ Haitham says. ‘I asked for it.’

‘It was foolish. I was not thinking—’

‘I was.’ Haitham leans into his space. Looking at him directly will surely be the thing that kills him. ‘I knew what I was getting into. You were having fun, weren’t you? I had fun. You don’t really get to let loose like that, do you?’

‘You shouldn’t have to take such measures to entertain me,’ Cyno mutters. Haitham presses his palm over the gauze, considering. Then, with the same hand, he takes the same side of Cyno’s face and holds it. The shame of it threatens to bowl him over. The disgust promises to bury him standing. Doesn’t he know it then, that his violence will bleed him dry. He wonders, detached from his own body, how he ever thought he was capable of outgrowing himself.

‘I’m your scribe,’ Haitham says, almost scolding. He leans no closer, but his hand remains still. ‘I chose to serve you. Of course I would want to entertain you.’

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ Cyno says. 

Haitham laughs. He holds Cyno in place so tightly he thinks he’ll be this way forever.

Do you think you are owed forgiveness?

‘Cyno, there’s something you should know,’ Haitham says quietly, tilting his bowed head forward. Cyno strains to hear him. ‘I lied—you couldn’t hurt me. Even if you did mean to.’

No. No.

Golden light. The sun is slow rising and dripping. The desert sleeps like it is at peace. Cyno stands unmoving outside a familiar room. He’d woken up sick in the echoes of a half-remembered dream, whittled down to his instincts. The morning had come to him like a threat. He hadn’t felt so hunted by the light since he bore Azar’s leash. He’d let his feet guide him then, because if he knows nothing, then at least he knows his own body, knows his own ability to keep himself alive. He’d brought himself here. He’d been too desperate for it to be by chance. This shame too is something he knows well.

At the borders of his vision, he registers a body shifting on the bed. White sheets, green and gold accents. Mussed and hanging off the edge of the frame.

Cyno dares a closer look. Leans in through the doorway. Haitham awake is made of limestone, sculpted by the loving hand of precision, by hands that knew no doubt. Hardly ornamental. Sleep makes him something worldly, less silvery, something to be cared for. When he is this way Cyno finds him easiest to consume. He watches for a moment more, the soft breathing, the careless spread of hair over a pillow. It’s enough for a man. 

Cyno turns to leave.

Then, as he’s about to reach the end of the corridor, he hears, ‘Cyno?’

Refuse him. Refuse him. Refuse him. He turns.

‘Did you sleep at all?’ Haitham asks, blinking himself awake. Cyno finds him terribly endearing.

‘A little,’ he answers. ‘Go back to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘It is morning.’ Haitham steps out of the room and starts jogging across tiles still cold from the night, barefooted, to reach Cyno. ‘It’s already morning.’

‘I interrupted you, I apologise.’

‘I don’t mind,’ he says quickly.

‘Go back to bed.’

‘Come back with me.’

‘To bed?’ Cyno snorts. ‘You’re still asleep. Go.’

‘No,’ he says, ears going red. ‘I finished looking over your translations last night. They’re back in my room. Let me run them by you before you’re needed.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes. Now. We can always continue later tonight, but we should get a head start on it. After all, you’re already here and I’m already awake and my room is right there—’

He snorts. ‘Fine,’ he says, following Haitham back to his room, falling into step beside him easily. A thought occurs to him, being brought back to his doorway: ‘You aren’t going to ask me why I was here in the first place?’

Haitham carefully avoids his gaze. ‘I did not think to be curious.’

‘You? Not curious? Perhaps you should return to sleep,’ Cyno says gently. ‘You are not usually an early riser, after all.’

‘I’ll never get used to it,’ Haitham says, sifting through papers on his desk for Cyno’s marked translations, ‘how much you know about me.’

‘Do you wish I didn’t?’

Cyno watches Haitham's back go still. He watches his fists tighten and loosen, crumpling the papers in his hand. He says nothing. Cyno smiles with the knowledge Haitham won’t be able to see it.

Eventually he does fall asleep, hunched over Haitham’s desk.  When he’s gently shaken awake by a relieved Candace, saying I’ve been searching everywhere for you , he finds a familiar green cloak hanging off his shoulders, warming him in place of the light.

They are once again having a moment of peace together. Cyno can no longer remember a time when peace was something they didn’t share. Haitham is showing him the corrections he’d made to Cyno’s translations to the newest language he’s being taught, pointing out grammatical inaccuracies (as always) and misplaced words, and Cyno is trying his best to listen. They’re shoulder to shoulder and almost wrist to wrist. If Cyno lifts his head any higher they’d be eye to eye, noses touching, closer than Cyno’s ever been to another person without the backdrop of violence. Cyno feels himself looking. He is too close now to justify not looking. But there is nothing new to see. Haitham appears today how he was yesterday and how he will tomorrow. Cyno is ready to outgrow this habit of looking at Haitham and expecting something different. He is ready to have Haitham walk into a room and not notice when he leaves.

‘What is it?’ Haitham sighs, but he’s smiling. ‘Am I boring you?’

‘Of course not,’ Cyno says. He pretends to consider the paper. ‘Very informative. As always.’

He snorts. ‘Take a break. Come back to me when you’re ready, Cyno. We’re not even halfway done, if you were even listening up to that point.’

Maybe it’s the evening. Maybe it’s Haitham sitting so close that the heat of him is enough to warm Cyno. Maybe it’s how Haitham looks under the desert sun, how she holds him so tenderly, as if he were born of her all along. Cyno looks at Haitham and for the first time since they’ve known each other, he can’t speak.

‘You’re not alright,’ Haitham says, worried. He presses the back of his palm to Cyno’s forehead and all Cyno can do is look up at him. He is made of the desert and given life by the desert, but will he be able to hold Haitham as delicately? Would it be Haitham’s own will that lets him or his duty? Will he be as beautiful, or even more so, because of it?

‘You need rest. You’re completely out of it. I’m taking you to bed. Gods, Cyno, why didn’t you say anything? Keeping quiet, hiding it—you could’ve just told me to leave if you were unwell.’ 

Haitham’s face folds in worry but Cyno’s more worried about him dropping his hand. So before it can return to Haitham’s side, while it’s still part of him, Cyno reaches up to pry his open palm off his forehead and holds him tight, just over his chest. Haitham has never been more beautiful. The desert suits him well. He does not even think of letting go. He thinks he would rather die than let Haitham go, now.

‘I don’t want you to go,’ Cyno says.

Haitham is quiet. Shocked into silence, maybe. It is hard to imagine and even harder to achieve. Cyno looks up at him and doesn’t recognise the look on his face. 

Not that hard, maybe.

They stew in the quiet. Cyno opens his mouth to tell Haitham to forget it but he beats him to it. 

‘Say it again,’ Haitham says, his voice coming out in a whisper.

His eyes are so green. Cyno is only now seeing the gold within them. Haitham carries blessings down to his core. Good fortune, indeed, for Cyno to have found him as he was.

‘Don’t leave,’ Cyno says again.

Something is hanging over his shoulder. Something is threatening to overcome him, to break the cage he’s laid out for it, the one he’d made to be kept out of sight. It demands to be witnessed. Let me be seen. Who are you to deny me the light?  

Before it can make itself known, Haitham speaks.

‘I love you,’ he says, like it’s one of his lessons, something undeniable. He looks down at their hands. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘Haitham,’ Cyno croaks out. He can’t pull his hand away. Does he even want to? He can’t move. The setting sun goes blood red and eventually fades into night. All of Cyno is lost to the last of the light.

‘Will you make me repeat it?’ Haitham sounds almost miserable.

‘I’m sorry,’ Cyno says. He means it. ‘You were there—you know I can’t. You have to know —so why would you—’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Haitham says again. ‘I just wanted you to hear it. That I love you. I thought—no, I don’t know what I thought.’ He looks at Cyno, and his gaze bears all the weight of the world. A weight Cyno himself is trying to carry. How did it ever get over there? Haitham takes a deep breath. 

‘I suppose I thought it would make you happy to be loved. Most people are.’ He looks at Cyno. He has been a crumbling structure up until now. Cyno is horrified to be the thing to ruin him so completely.

‘Forgive me,’ Haitham says, his voice regaining its strength.

‘For what?’

‘For thinking it would be enough.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Cyno says again. Desperate now. He is trying to rewrite himself into something Haitham will understand, something he cannot bear to leave.

Haitham drops his hand. Cyno has failed.

‘I don’t blame you,’ Haitham says, his smile a fragile thing. ‘I’m just one man. How could I ever compare to a whole nation?’

The Temple of Silence taught him this: take your desires and place them on the scale. Deny them.

Take what you think is love to a river and pray it does not make it upstream. Wash your hands. Then empty out your heart and do it quick. The only love a king should carry is the weight of his people. If you cannot even give that up, how could you have ever hoped to be good?

Cyno puts himself on the scales and finds himself sinking. He is experiencing what no fair judge should ever feel: guilt.

These days, Cyno sees only Royal Scribe Al-Haitham and never just Haitham. He won’t even look at him now, keeping his eyes low and head bowed when called upon, or his gaze trained to the side of the room when faced directly with Cyno. He’s rejected every single invitation Cyno’s sent his way that didn’t involve official channels. 

He reads and rereads Haitham’s exercises for him until he knows every correction, every insult to his linguistic skills by heart. He thinks he could forge Haitham’s handwriting perfectly if he tried. It’s been two months since Haitham’s spoken to him outside of their jobs. Cyno feels the sudden break in routine physically. Manifests itself onto him with all the irreversibility of a head wound and the discretion of a bruise. Cyno is half a body. The headdress hasn’t fit quite right since.

Eventually he gets tired of trying to find comfort in the things Haitham has left him with and does what Haitham himself does best: play dirty. It’s laughably easy, in the end. All it takes is a hastily written official summons for Collei to deliver and he and Haitham are faced with one another again.

‘You called for me, my lord?’ Cyno watches Haitham bow, stiff and insincere, from his seat on the throne and feels defeat. He’s as distantly polite as those first few days as Royal Scribe. Before Cyno knew what peace could mean, how it was something best shared. Candace doesn’t even need to be dismissed before quietly taking her leave.

‘What is it?’ Haitham asks warily. The suspicion hurts, but Cyno’s taken worse hits.

‘There’s no need to be so formal.’

‘So this isn’t official business?’ Haitham pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘I should’ve known. Well? You have me. Out with it.’

‘Tell me honestly, Haitham,’ Cyno says, impatient. He’d beg if he knew how. ‘have you grown sick of me?’

‘Excuse me?’ 

Cyno lets the question settle.

‘You think I’m…tired of you? How?’ Haitham asks, his Royal Scribe Al-Haitham front dropping instantly. His voice catches and breaks. ‘Cyno. Cyno, I told you I loved you. Did you think I was lying?’

‘No, no, I just—’ And not for the first time, swallowing mouthfuls of saliva and no words worth saying, Cyno wishes he were anyone but himself. ‘You won’t even look at me.’

‘I am looking at you.’ Haitham reaches for him, aborts it, and takes a step back. ‘I’m always looking at you,’ he says, unflinchingly.

‘It wasn’t like this before. We weren’t like this before. I’m sorry,’ Cyno says hastily. Compromise. He’s a king, he has to be good at that. He has to be something Haitham can stand to forgive. He has to remember how to be someone Haitham used to like. ‘Whatever I did, I’m sorry. You said you didn’t blame me. You said it wasn’t my fault. You asked for forgiveness— I forgive you .’

But Haitham looks devastated instead of placated. Cyno panics inwardly. Briefly, he wonders if this is the end. Of them, of this. Cyno is what he knows and what he doesn’t know is how to survive this. Does anyone? Do you sit and bear it? Be content with watching their backs, counting the steps it takes to leave you completely?

‘Haitham,’ Cyno pleads. ‘What will you have me do?’

Sacrifice. What’s a little more for him to give up? He has a duty to Haitham just as he does everyone else. He waits for Haitham’s price.

‘Nothing,’ Haitham says sharply. ‘There’s nothing to be done. I told you, didn’t I? You’re not responsible for my—for me. Nobody is. I just need time. I’ll overcome this. I have a duty to you to overcome this. Let me do this for you.’

Then, he reaches for Cyno’s hand, simply and without desperation, and Cyno lets him, ashamed. He turns their hands over, thumb drawing circles over Cyno’s skin and says, ‘I only ever loved you one way. The one way I shouldn’t. I need time to learn to love you the way you want. Let me try. I do want you to be happy, you know. If you must remember anything from all of this, remember that.’

A king does not chase after what is lost to him. A king does not give pause. A king in stagnation is a nation condemned. What is yours will never leave you. What isn’t is unworthy. You are the king. You will have what you are owed.

Cyno watches Haitham walk away from him with all the hope of an abandoned dog, waiting for a glance over his shoulder, to be given one last kind thought. 

Haitham doesn’t turn around. Cyno is alone with himself.

Haitham volunteers Layla as the scribe to accompany Cyno to Sumeru City for the official announcement of Lesser Lord Kusanali’s next of kin and Cyno can’t even bring himself to look forward to the trip. It’s not fair to Layla, but he hasn’t seen Haitham since he asked for time and left Cyno in the audience hall. He’d felt stripped of his skin in the days following. He doesn’t know when he started expecting something every time he looks over his shoulder or, most importantly, how to stop.

‘A-are you looking forward to the celebration, General?’ a timid voice asks, cutting through his thoughts.

He hums. Layla’s the only one left to call him that now. He can’t deny how much easier it is to bear.

‘I am, though it won’t be as grand as the Sabzeruz Festival,’ he says, apologetic. ‘Is it your first time in the city?’

‘Oh, um, no, General,’ she says. ‘I’d been there only once as a child. Have you been to Port Ormos? I recall the stalls are nothing short of extraordinary.’

‘Haitham took me,’ he says before he can think. ‘It’s where he got that toy. The creature with the hat? What was it—’

‘The Aranara!’ Layla gasps. ‘He never said. I always thought he just got it from some high-end gift store in the city.’

‘Ah, yes, well, he didn’t.’ Cyno shifts his weight. Then, quietly, he asks, ‘How is he?’

Layla regards him with a thoughtful look. ‘So you two really did stop speaking.’

Cyno stays silent.

‘At work, he’s been the same as ever.’ Layla catches his eyes. ‘He’s not quieter or anything. He still drives our juniors crazy and clocks out way too early. He didn’t give me many details, or, um, any , for that matter, so I could never be sure, but he’s been sad, I think. He wasn’t particularly happy before—before you, but he wasn’t like this either. I saw what he was like before you, Collei too, even though I don’t think he thought anyone did. And, um, if I may, General?’

‘You may,’ Cyno says, bracing himself.

‘Haitham’s been a good senior to me, sir,’ she says, her voice confident in a way Cyno’s never heard. ‘A good friend, too. He may not realise it, or even care, but there are people who would rather see him happy. Don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ Cyno says immediately. ‘And he does care. I swear. But I can’t be the one to do it. How would you even know if I could?’

Layla considers this for a moment.

‘I don’t,’ she concludes, looking terribly sorry. ‘But you were a choice he made by himself, for himself. You are always going to be something to him that he’ll have to honour, even, well. Even if we don’t want him to.’

Sumeru City is as stunning as ever with its unabashed celebration. Of course it is, Cyno hardly thinks the city knows how to be anything else. Nahida asks him to join her family on the stage and she smiles so sweetly up at him he can’t bring himself to say no. Her ward, now officially her next of kin, a small, doll-faced man with a challenge in his eyes, shakes his head at her and says nothing.

The ceremony is lovely. Her speech of introduction for her ward is moving and sincere and incredibly short. Cyno asks Nahida about it later, after they’ve all cheered and clapped and bowed accordingly, and she giggles at him.

‘I actually thought it was rather long,’ she says. ‘There really isn’t that much to be said. He’s my family. I love him. I want him to have everything I have.’

‘It was lovely,’ he says sincerely. ‘But he was already a sage of yours, wasn’t he?’

‘He was, but he was more to me than that. There’s nobody I trust more with my nation. Our nation, now!’

‘It was a little surprising to hear you announce a successor so soon,’ Cyno admits. ‘You still have a long life ahead of you. I thought you were being a little premature.’

‘Perhaps,’ she agrees. ‘But the ceremony was lovely, wasn’t it? A whole nation celebrating him…it’s exactly as he deserves. And, well, I’m the queen, aren’t I? Isn’t it my right to celebrate who I love with what I love?’

Cyno finds he has no answer. But he wishes them well regardless. Sumeru City is never more beautiful than happy, after all.

‘You’ve done right by your nation,’ he says. ‘You should be proud.’

‘So have you,’ she tells him. She holds his face gently. Her hands are too small to fit quite right. Nahida is kinder and gentler than he deserves, but Cyno is just his shame now, too busy thinking of someone else to be grateful, to see that he is blessed.

The night before they’re meant to return, Cyno walks the length of the city instead of falling asleep. The whole city’s quiet at this time of night, a trait shared comfortingly with the desert. But once he reaches the outskirts of the city leading out to the forest, he notices a fire. He’s drawn to it, of course he is. His head is bare and his hands are shaking. He approaches the campsite with the intention of passing as a lost traveller until he notices the two familiar figures huddled together.

‘My lord!’ Candace gasps, standing. ‘What are you doing so far from the Sanctuary? I thought you were asleep?’

‘I couldn’t,’ he tells her quietly. ‘May I join you two?’

‘Of course, Cyno,’ Dehya says, patting the ground beside her. ‘Loosen up, Candace. There’s nowhere safer for our king to be than here, right?’

Candace isn’t quite convinced, but gives in anyway. She falls back into Dehya’s open arms in a practised routine.

Cyno stares.

‘There was no good time to tell you,’ Dehya says, sounding apologetic. ‘Don’t take it personally. It’s just—she’s your general, and I’m me.’

‘I would have supported you,’ he says, sounding like a child.

‘I may not be your general when I’m with her,’ Candace says. ‘but that is not something I can forget when I’m with you, Cyno.’

‘Yeah, she’s got rules about that.’ Dehya rubs the back of her neck. ‘I mean, I’m all for it. Gotta keep work and love separate for a happy life and all that, right? You get it.’

‘Dehya—’ Candace warns, but she’s too late.

‘I mean, you and that scribe had something like this going on, didn’t you? You kept it under wraps. We’re doing the same.’

‘We didn’t,’ Cyno says weakly. ‘have anything like this.’

‘What?’ Dehya asks. ‘But— oh. Oh. Shit, I’m sorry. Must be pretty hard for you, huh? I’ve seen people date their teammates and work partners and have massive fallouts during jobs. Makes it super hard to continue any op after that, I know.’

‘Dehya.’ Candace sighs. ‘You’ve got it wrong.’

‘Don’t worry, Candace,’ she assures, kissing her cheek. ‘He’ll be fine. It’s always worse when the break up’s still fresh.’

‘We didn’t break up. Not like that.’ Cyno opens his palms to the fire, just for the sake of keeping his hands busy. ‘We just—we’re just not on speaking terms, at the moment.’

‘How’re you doing?’ Candace asks quietly. Cyno smiles gratefully.

‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘Haitham’s performance is as good as ever.’

‘Tighnari says you don’t come to his office anymore.’

‘Really, Candace,’ he tries.

‘This is the longest you’ve spoken to me in weeks.’

‘I’m fine,’ he tells them as firmly as he can bear. The last thing he needs is to remind him who he is. ‘I have my duty and he has his. We shouldn’t have gotten involved beyond that in the first place. This was bound to happen.’

‘You’re not so high and mighty that you should be all on your own, you know,’ Dehya says sadly, like it’s something she shouldn’t be reminding him. ‘You’re not just the king of a nation, Cyno. Who were you before this?’

‘Do you even remember?’ Candace finishes.

‘Of course I remember!’ He fights to keep his voice low. ‘All I do is remember.’

‘Hey, Cyno,’ Dehya starts, looking uncharacteristically nervous, ‘just a question, but did you want to break up? Or, I mean, have something to break in the first place?’

‘Do you want him?’ Candace asks without grace.

He turns the question to her, frustrated. ‘Didn’t you, with her?’

‘Of course,’ she answers. Dehya has a wolf’s grin, teeth and all, as she throws a hand around Candace’s shoulders.

‘Even if I could have her sentenced to death?’ Cyno looks Candace in the eyes. He will not waver, he owes her not to. He stands his ground. He watches her expression harden, understanding that he’s being fully serious.

‘Whoa,’ Dehya says. ‘Listen, Cyno, I haven’t done anything against you and I—’

‘Just a question,’ he tells her. He’s being unfair. It goes against the grain of him, but he needs to know. ‘If I wanted her dead, would you do it? Would you still want her, even then?’

Candace takes Dehya’s hand. ‘I would.’

Dehya shakes her head and she’s smiling. Cyno can’t make sense of it.

‘Only if it was for you,’ Candace says. ‘And it was you asking. I would do it. And I’d love her until the end.’

‘What if I was wrong about her? If I made a mistake?’ Cyno asks, trying to keep his voice strong and failing.

‘You won’t.’ Her eyes are as tough as her shield and just as lovely for it. Her voice commands him with an audacity so similar to Haitham’s that he is helpless before it. ‘I have always trusted your judgement, Cyno. And I do not expect you to give me any reason not to anytime soon, yes?’

‘Yes,’ he says to her. Then finally, ‘Yes, I think I did want something to break with him. I don’t know what. A companion? A life that wasn’t just this?’ He is a burden too big to put into words. He gestures uselessly. ‘Anything at all—I think I could’ve been happy with anything at all. But. Well. He didn’t seem to think so.’

Both Candace and Dehya watch him like he’s something to be pitied. He watches the fire and considers throwing himself in.

‘I’m sorry,’ Candace says eventually, and he pretends, for her sake, that it’s enough.

Candace is sent to retrieve him once again. It’s only been a day since they’ve returned to the palace. This time he’s confused. Angry, almost. What more will they ask of him? What is left of him to give? What part of him has not yet been abandoned on the scales?

Candace tells him she’s sorry again when she leaves him at the door and Cyno remembers how she’d smiled at Dehya over the campfire, how she said she could kill her if Cyno ever decreed it so. Cyno remembers her unwavering faith in his judgement, how she believed him worthy of happiness even then, and enters the hall with his head held high.

The Temple says they’re worried about him. His reign, his conscience, his good, honest judgement. They tell him he is distracted, that they are appalled at how he keeps asking after Scribe Al-Haitham.

Like a lover scorned, they accuse him. Cyno thinks I never even got the chance.

But Cyno sees the fear in their eyes as they note his negligence, his inability to give Haitham up. Azar is a haunting that will follow them to their graves. He will be present in every king after him; every mistake they make will take on his form. Cyno sees them look at him and recognise a ghost. The truth hits him like hot iron.

They eventually release him with a tense warning, and Cyno understands this to be mercy. That this, too, is love.

He stops asking after Haitham. It would have happened sooner or later. These days Cyno finds himself immeasurable. He’s fully given up the body that he is. All that wounded flesh, that heart heavy with life. Cyno thinks of himself as a feather instead, too light to dip the scales against or in favour of him. The sages tell him he is a king to be proud of. A king worthy of memory. Figures, that only in the absence of himself does he manage to be something good.

He doesn’t see a glimpse of Haitham outside of their official meetings anymore. Not even accidentally. It’s for the best. A king cannot afford to be the will of one singular person, only his nation’s. The sight of Haitham without the reminder of the headdress on his head would have been enough to shake Cyno’s own. 

This was always going to happen, sooner or later.

Two months before the anniversary of Cyno’s coronation, Royal Scribe Al-Haitham publicly demands a private audience with him.

Candace ushers everyone out of the hall before Cyno even agrees to it. The sun has only just risen and from up on the throne Cyno can note all of his familiarity with astounding clarity. Haitham will never change. He is as he was yesterday and how he will be tomorrow. Cyno is just his memory now. He is alone with him.

‘I am forfeiting my position as Royal Scribe,’ Haitham says, without introduction. He even forgoes the bow.

‘What?’ Cyno stands from his seat. He is surprised at how steady his feet remain in the wake of it. Him.

‘I resign,’ Haitham repeats. ‘I can recommend apprentice scribe Layla as a fitting replacement. You will not find her skills lacking.’

‘Are you asking for my approval?’ Cyno asks. Haitham sees him, finally, and he softens. He has always been beautiful, but never the way he is when he’s like this. (Cyno never forgot. How could he? He never thought he’d see it again.)

‘No,’ Haitham tells him. ‘but I would like to have it anyway.’

Cyno stares. It’s unbecoming. Haitham remains unwavering. He is forcing them into something Cyno cannot face. Threatens to drag them into the light.

‘So you’re leaving.’ His voice echoes. His fear is thrown back at him. He sounds frustratingly like a child. Haitham doesn’t even flinch. ‘No matter what I say?’

‘Yes,’ he says simply. Cyno is overcome with the urge to run him through with his spear. To keep at least a part of him. Cyno never wants to hurt him, but he is nothing, evidently, that either of them could want.

‘To think abandoning your own nation wasn’t enough for you,’ Cyno says. ‘What was it? Did you have your fill of knowledge? Did you finally get what you wanted?’ He looks down at himself. Azar had thought him a child and something to be betrayed. Now his scribe chooses willingly to abandon him. He is sick to his stomach of being something no one can love. ‘I hope you did, Al-Haitham. I hope what you found was enough to satisfy you.’

He takes a moment to remember himself, to give his approval. Haitham opens his mouth to speak and Cyno attempts to cut him off prematurely.

‘You are relieved of your duties.’ He will not risk looking at Haitham. How will he let him go now that he’s here? ‘It is an honour to have had your service. I am grat—’

‘I just wanted you to be happy!’ Haitham snaps.

Something in Cyno breaks. ‘That seems to be all you claim to want lately, Haitham, and yet there you are! Asking to leave! Asking me to watch you leave and—and you want me to be happy?’

‘Because I can’t be the one to do it!’ Haitham’s yelling now. Cyno has never seen him so angry. Cyno thinks he’s the most lovable he’s ever been. ‘I heard about the sages. I know what they said to you. I know all of it! I know I was making everything worse for you, even if I wasn’t doing anything. I know what the Sages mean to you. What this nation means to you, and I was still distracting you. Hurting you.’ Haitham’s voice breaks. ‘I never meant to. I just love you. I can’t help it.’

He turns around, hiding his face. ‘But I can leave. Remove the problem at its root, yes? You’ll never have to bother with me again. I should’ve tried harder, kept you further away, but I couldn’t. I made you responsible for myself while you were so busy trying to be responsible for all of us. I failed at the one thing I wanted to do, and I’m not so arrogant that I can’t admit it. I’m sorry, Cyno.’ He turns his face only enough for Cyno to catch a glimpse of his mouth. ‘The last thing I ever wanted was to cause you grief.’

And he starts walking. Away from Cyno. He thinks briefly of Candace, washed in shadows and fire, asking Do you want him? Thinks of how good it had felt, then, to be able to say yes to someone without consequence.

Haitham does not turn around. Cyno wonders if he’s condemned to a lifetime of surviving being left behind. 

Do you want him?

Can he? Can he have it? Haitham’s time and his books and his blood. His mornings, afternoons, sunsets and midnights. Is he worthy? How sure can he be that he’ll even know what to do with it?

Do you want him?

Something is blooming at the edge of vision. Something is crawling its way into the light. Love arrives like the first knife to ever taste flesh. All of Cyno’s hunger opens its jaws to devour him. His eyes are clear, his scales have settled their rattling and he has wanted Haitham for so, so long now. He has wanted Haitham beyond his own memory.

So he runs.

The steps of the throne are steep and narrow, but he takes them two at a time. How could he fear the thought of falling now? Haitham is close enough to touch. Cyno reaches out a hand and takes him by the wrist.

‘You’ve crippled me,’ he says, spinning Haitham to face him.

‘Then let me go,’ Haitham begs, but does not leave. Cyno grins. Tighnari is always right.

‘I love you,’ Cyno tells him. ‘I love you, and it is fully self-imposed. I need you to know that I want to love you.’

‘You have no obligation to me.’

Cyno reaches his free hand to hold Haitham’s face, tracing over the wound he’d inflicted, now a thin, delicate scar.

‘I have every obligation to you. I love you.’ He says it again. This is repentance. This is forgiveness. ‘I’ve hurt you too, haven’t I? Even without meaning to. I hurt you, over and over, and you still stayed. Tried to change. You’re only leaving now because you want me to be happy. I know. I know you, Haitham, and I love you. It was never your fault. I don’t blame you for anything, and I really, really don’t want you to go.’

Haitham’s face crumbles. For a horrifying moment Cyno thinks he’s going to cry, but Haitham just pulls him close and buries his head into the curve of his neck. His ears are red. He holds Cyno without the desperation of someone about to let go.

‘Say it again,’ Haitham says.

‘I love you.’ Cyno runs his fingers through his hair. ‘Don’t leave me. I’m way out of my depths here. You’ve crippled me.’

Cyno can feel the exact shape of Haitham’s smile on his skin.

‘Maybe you’re not so bad at flattery, after all. How many can say they’ve crippled a king?’

‘Just you, I’d hope.’ Cyno gently pulls Haitham from his neck, looking him in the eyes. ‘Hey, want to know what’s more impressive than that?’

Cyno kisses him before he can reply. Haitham holds them together until they’re both out of air then longer still.

‘Congratulations to me,’ Haitham says, breathless, happy, the most precious thing in the desert. ‘I’ve just kissed my king.’

And Cyno kisses him again. Shorter, this time. There’s no need to rush. The light isn’t going anywhere it won’t return from. Haitham hums, utterly satisfied.

‘By the way,’ Cyno says against his mouth. ‘resignation denied.’

i will tell you: i love you

when all old love languages die

and nothing remains for lovers to say or do

then my task

to move the stones of this world

will begin

i will tell you: i love you, nizar qabbani