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Lady Sharon was light and trembling in Break’s arms as he raced into the town. Their carriage was waiting where they’d left it, thank the angels, and Break lunged inside, shouting at their driver, “My lady is dying! Go!”
The carriage lurched into motion almost before he’d gotten entirely inside, and Break focused on putting pressure on the wound, keeping all his focus on making sure that she did not bleed too terribly—though that was a losing battle, and no matter how hard he tried, the amount of blood that stained her dress and his hands and the carriage seat could not be classified as anything other than “terrible”. All through the ride home, he listened to her shallow breathing and prayed to every god he’d never believed in that it neither slowed nor stopped along the ride. He knew that he had functionally stranded Gilbert, Oz, and Alice at Rytas’s mansion, and he knew that he would feel guilty for that later, but right now, he didn’t care. His lady was dying, from a wound he’d inflicted on her, and every second counted when getting her to safety.
In some kind of desperate miracle, Sharon was still breathing when they reached the Rainsworth mansion; Break had been holding her in his arms from the minute they’d passed through the gates, and the moment the carriage pulled up to the great house, he lept from it and sprinted inside.
“Summon a doctor!” he shouted at the first person he saw, a young parlormaid who was sweet and fun to tease. “Now—the Lady Sharon has been severely wounded!”
The girl gasped, seeing the blood soaking his lady, and turned on her heel and bolted; Break shot through the mansion like a bullet until he reached his lady’s bedroom. There were already other servants on their way when they arrived—Rainsworth’s information network wasn’t as good as Barma’s, but it was in no way bad, either—and by the time the doctor arrived, Sharon had been changed into her nightgown and the blood had been cleaned away, though she was still bleeding sluggishly. The doctor was one whose loyalty Break had assured himself of multiple times, but he still watched closely as the woman disinfected the wound and stitched it up.
“She’ll live,” she said finally, turning away from the bed. “The cut was clean, and the sword was sharp, and no vital organs were harmed: healing should be easy, so long as Lady Sharon takes care of herself.”
Heady relief drained through Break, leaving only emptiness and guilt where his panic had been. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and excused himself from her bedroom: it had been Break, after all, who had wounded her so terribly, and though he thought that he’d freed himself from the spell, he had no real way of knowing whether or not that was the case. Spells like that were terribly insidious: often, it was near-impossible to tell that you were under one until after it had already broken.
But just because he did not trust himself enough to remain by his lady’s bedside, it didn’t mean that Break was going to leave her alone while she was so injured and vulnerable. Anyone could attack and kill her in this state, and Lady Sharon was in no condition to defend herself. Break remained at the door, one hand on the horrid bloody pommel of his traitorous sword, a guard dog to rival Gilbert Nightray, his mind racing in circles, hating and hating and hating himself for what he had done to his lady.
**
The Barma information network was nothing at all to sneeze at; within thirty minutes of a bloodied Xerxes Break running his unconscious, bleeding lady into the Rainsworth manor, word of the incident had reached Reim Lunettes, who wasted no time in hurrying over, worst-case scenarios dancing in his head. It had been his master’s information that had brought Lady Sharon and Xerxes to Rytas in the first place; Reim felt half-responsible for whatever misfortune had befallen them, and terrified that they would be lost forever by the time he reached the manor.
When he arrived, though, he was told that the Lady Sharon was stable and would live; Xerxes, however, had refused all medical treatment and was refusing to leave the hallway leading up to Lady Sharon’s room, despite the fact that he needed to report to Duchess Rainsworth sooner rather than later. The duchess had sent guards to hopefully take over the duty of guarding her granddaughter’s door and soothe Xerxes’s anxiety over leaving her alone. If Xerxes was already ignoring the duchess’s summons, though, Reim wasn’t sure how well that would work; whatever had happened at Rytas’s must have truly shaken him.
Reim made his way directly to Lady Sharon’s room, not bothering with any more social niceties as he went. As he’d guessed, the arrival of more guards did not seem to have soothed Xerxes any; Reim’s friend seemed to have barely taken any notice of them at all, pacing in front of Lady Sharon’s door and muttering to himself. He was absolutely soaked in blood, and one half of his face was swollen in an enormous bruise, and Reim felt the fear rush up in him again before he reminded himself that Xerxes and Lady Sharon were both home safe, now.
“Xerx!” Reim called, and Xerxes turned around so quickly that he probably gave himself whiplash.
“—Reim,” he said.
“What happened? Are you alright? And the Lady Sharon?”
The blood, Reim noted, was splattered thickest around Xerxes’s right hand and the sheath of his sword, though that didn’t mean much: it was thick everywhere, and only barely beginning to dry—although everything on the sheath and the pommel was already brown and crusted.
“She’s stable,” Xerxes said after a moment, as if that fact was the only thing tethering him to sanity at the moment. “The doctor said that she would heal.”
“Good,” said Reim. “What about you?”
“About…me.”
“Are you alright?” said Reim. “What happened?”
Xerxes’s eye, red and bloodshot and wild, flicked around the hallway, bouncing off the guards, the wall hangings, the Barma pageboy concealed in Reim’s wake, because something that could shake the Red-Eyed Specter was something that had Rufus Barma very interested indeed.
“Not here,” Xerxes murmured.
Reim nodded. “Might I accompany you to your debriefing?” he said. “I could hear what happened there, and it would be secure.”
Neither of them said anything about Duke Barma; everyone knew that if Reim shared anything that Duchess Rainsworth didn’t want to be shared, Reim would not be the one punished—Duke Barma would.
Xerxes nodded, his movements jerky. He turned on his heel and spoke to the guards the duchess had sent in low tones, promising to rain hell on them if the Lady Sharon experienced even the slightest discomfort while he was gone, before returning to Reim.
“Are you ready to go?” Reim asked, because there was something animal and hollow and hopeless in his eye, something that looked like the man Xerxes had been when they met and not the man he was now, and Reim was hoping that if he got language out of him, some sort of conversation, that hollowness would recede.
Xerxes only nodded, though, and Reim did not push the matter, and they walked together to the duchess’s office, dried crumbs of blood flaking to the ground as Xerxes moved. He paused at the door, and stared at it as though he didn’t quite know what to do with it, so Reim knocked, and when the duchess called them inside he walked in with Xerxes and quickly explained what he was doing there as his friend stared as hard as he could at the floor.
“I see,” said the duchess, eyeing Xerxes with no small amount of worry. “I am glad to have you here, Reim. Xekkun. Please give me your report.”
Xerxes did so, his voice dull and flat and alien. He told them about the trial, and his attempted workaround; he told them where his memory stopped and where it started again, and the few things he’d managed to recall between then and now. He told them about trying and failing to stop the bleeding from Lady Sharon’s wound, and her order that he not think about or remember what had occurred. He described bringing her into the mansion, summoning the doctor, threatening the guards to keep her safe at all costs. He described the walk to the duchess’s office with Reim, though he made no mention of his earlier summons, and then he fell silent.
“I see,” said the duchess, her face grave.
“Duchess Rainsworth,” Reim said quickly, “is there any way we can make certain that there are no long-term effects of the spell on Xerx?” After all, he thought, if whatever it was they did to him wiped his memories, maybe that’s why he’s acting like this now, too. Maybe if we fully remove it he’ll go back to normal— But Reim did not really believe this. Spells such as that one were never particularly long-lasting; they were powerful but fragile, and once a person regained their memories that was it: the spell was gone.
“No,” said the duchess. “It is almost certain that Xekkun already broke the spell himself.”
Reim nodded; he had expected this, but he’d still had to ask the question.
“If you hang me sooner rather than later, you’ll know for certain the spell was broken either way,” said Xerxes.
“Excuse me?” said Reim.
“And who exactly, Xerxes, will be hanging you?” said the duchess, her voice cold in a way that spelt danger for anyone who displeased her. “You are a valuable servant of this dukedom, and it was not your fault that you were enchanted by the enemy. I will not see you punished for a crime that you did not commit.”
“I did commit the crime, Lady Sheryl,” said Xerxes, some of his fight creeping back into him. “I tried to kill my lady.”
“Not of your own will.”
“I held the sword,” said Xerxes. “My sword has her blood on it. I hunted her through the maze like an animal.”
“And how much of that do you remember?” said the duchess.
“Less than I would like to,” said Xerxes. “More than my lady commanded. Enough to know what my just punishment ought to be.”
“And how many people,” said the duchess, “did you kill in your actions as the Red-Eyed Specter?”
“One hundred and sixteen, Lady Sheryl.”
“And you were not hanged for any of those deaths,” said the duchess. “And I will not hang you for merely wounding my granddaughter—especially since that attack was committed against your will, and you alone were the one to break the spell commanding you to kill her.”
Xerxes did not look happy with this line of reasoning, and Reim thought that perhaps he would argue against the duchess, but he kept his mouth shut and glared at the ground as though that might convince Duchess Rainsworth to change her mind about him.
“Xekkun,” she said gently. “You should clean yourself up and get some rest. You’ve had a hard day.”
“Lady Sheryl, I—”
“I’ll see to it that he does, Your Grace,” said Reim. He took Xerxes by the arm, but his friend shook him off.
“Please permit me to kill Rytas and his followers first,” Xerxes said, desperation draping him like a funeral shroud.
“That’s too dangerous at the moment,” said the duchess, “especially as you do not know the extent of his power or even the complete memory of your time under his spell. I wish you to rest, recover, and regain those memories, and then report them to me immediately. It is unwise to fight a battle without all the information available to you.”
This, thankfully, got through to Xerxes; he bowed his head and acquiesced, some of the restored fight draining away from him like pus from a wound. Reim bowed as well, and took him by the arm as they left the duchess’s office, just in case. He did not know whether they were walking together or whether he was leading Xerxes to his bedroom, but when they arrived and he made his friend sit on the bed while he got a washcloth and some water to clean the blood off of him, Xerxes did not move at all, and though his hands were clenched tightly and tension made his veins stand out like ropes in his skin, he did not react as Reim first cleaned the blood away, and then undressed him, and then took the bullet out of his shoulder and then cleaned and bandaged that, too. He did not move when Reim, hands shaking, pulled his pajamas over him and did up the buttons on his shirt, each buttonhole a clumsy kiss.
“Xerx,” said Reim, as softly as he could bear. “Lay down. It’s time to rest.”
“I’m not an infant,” Xerxes complained, but he got under the covers anyway and rolled over to face away from Reim, and Reim said nothing, sitting on the side of his friend’s bed and watching him slip from faking sleep into genuine slumber.
It wasn’t fair. Neither Xerxes nor Lady Sharon had done anything to deserve this, and yet they’d both been hurt so terribly; nobody had done anything wrong, and yet they’d crashed and burned with their wings set ablaze. Xerxes had told Reim off for treating him like a child, but—God, but he was so fragile like this. Fragile—or brittle, really, hard on the outside, but so goddamn easy to break into a million sharp pieces. He had really been doing so much better, over the past fifteen years, but now—angels, now—
And Lady Shelly was long gone, now, long dead, and she had been the only person Xerxes had ever accepted any form of help from that Reim knew of, and—and if he never recovered from this—
Though Reim worried on like this for quite some time, eventually he fell asleep and awoke to morning light in his eyes and Xerxes Break attempting to tuck him into bed. He would have gotten away with it, too, if Reim hadn’t fallen asleep directly on top of Xerxes and woken slightly when he was transferred from his friend’s chest to the warm sheets, and gotten himself together enough to blink awake and then grab Xerxes’s wrist and sit up.
“Where are you going?” he said. “Duchess Rainsworth…commanded you to remain in bed and rest.”
“I regained the rest of my memories,” said Xerxes lowly. “I’m going to report to Lady Sheryl and then kill Rytas and his ilk.”
“Xerx—”
Don’t worry, Reim. I’ll return for my execution.”
That was not at all reassuring to Reim, for a number of reasons; for one, nobody was going to be executing Xerxes, and for two, that meant he was still suicidal, and three, Xerxes was still injured: if he returned to the lab, it was likely that his condition would only worsen.
“That’s not what I’m worried about, Xerx, you fool,” said Reim. “You’ll be putting yourself in danger. What harm is there until waiting until you’ve recovered to get revenge?!”
“I did abandon Gilbert, Oz, and Alice there as well,” Xerxes shot back.
“They’ll be able to find their way back themselves,” Reim said immediately. “In the worst case scenario, Gilbert has the Raven; he’ll be able to fly them back. There is absolutely no need for you to go anywhere right now.”
Reim did not bring up the Lady Sharon. He did not know if she had awoken yet, but if she hadn’t then any mention of her would upset Xerxes more, and if she had, and they went to get her opinion, she might strain her injury beating the ever-living shit out of Xerxes for trying to put himself in danger behind her back again.
“I will accompany you to Duchess Rainsworth and remain with you as you give your report,” Reim said. “But I will not permit you to do anything to put yourself in any danger.”
“And who made you the boss of me?”
“I outrank you,” said Reim. “I am nobility and you are a servant. The very conventions of our society made me the boss of you. And I will pull that rank if you even dream of putting yourself in any unnecessary danger.”
Xerxes scoffed, and Reim tightened his grip on his wrist.
“I’m serious, Xerx,” he said. “I don’t want you to do anything that you’ll—regret.” I don’t want you to put yourself in danger, or to hurt yourself, or—
He couldn’t even let himself think that last thing. There was an irrational part of Reim that was screaming that if he let those words form anywhere, even in his head, it would put the idea into Xerxes’s, and then—and then—
“Please,” said Reim, his voice low and aching. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Xerxes looked at him as though he had peeled himself bare in front of him and then sat there, bleeding, and offered a handful of meat and blood as a petition, and he said, “You should go.”
“Xerxes—”
“I’m going to get dressed before making my report. You ought to check on my lady. She’s the one who needs your care.”
Reim clenched his jaw, but he knew his friend well enough to know that he wouldn’t do anything stupidly dangerous without speaking to the duchess first, so he nodded, and released Xerxes’s hand, and stood. He paused in the doorway, and said without looking, “I’ll see you in the duchess’s office,” before leaving and closing the door behind him. He leaned against the wall and breathed as deeply as he could and closed his eyes, trying not to think about any of the terrible and dangerous things Xerxes might be doing alone in his room, and then he pushed himself off the wall and went to the nearest writing-desk and wrote, in the first cipher Duke Barma had ever taught him, Xerx still intends on fighting magician Rytas + being executed. I fear for his life before folding it and giving it to the first servant he saw to run to the duchess. If Reim couldn’t do anything to help Xerxes, maybe she could—and two heads were always better than one, anyway.
Reim went and stood outside of Lady Sharon’s door, though he did not ask if she was awake or enter the room. He couldn’t face her, not yet, not while Xerxes was still in danger—he did not have the words to tell her what had transpired while she had been unconscious. Reim Lunettes and Sharon Rainsworth had been friends since they were small; he knew that she knew this would happen, if Xerxes realized that he had been the one to attack her. He knew that she had tried to stop him from ever knowing. He knew that he had been part of the reason this endeavor failed.
He went and waited in the hallway outside the duchess’s office until Xerxes arrived, in his Pandora uniform, and they entered together, Reim not quite daring to take Xerxes’s arm again in fear of being shaken off. Duchess Rainsworth made no mention of Reim’s note, though she smiled when he entered, and instead asked Reim and Xerxes to take tea with her as Xerxes gave the rest of his report.
Please say something, Reim prayed silently. Please do something. Please save him.
But the only thing of note that happened during the meeting was that, every time Reim attempted to drink from his teacup or eat anything at all, Xerxes stole it from him and ate it himself—lightning-quick at first, though slower later on through the meeting. Reim didn’t know why, but he didn’t ask or try to stop Xerxes, because this was the closest Xerxes had gotten to acting normal since Reim had arrived. Once the report was given, Duchess Rainsworth nodded, and reiterated that she would not be having Xerxes executed, and then asked Reim to please escort Xerxes back to his bedroom, where he would be resting and recovering for the foreseeable future.
Xerxes did not look happy to hear that, but he didn’t say anything at all against it. His hands were clenched on the arms of his chair, almost as though he were holding himself upright, but when Reim, as an experiment, reached towards one of the scones on the table, Xerxes immediately grabbed his wrist, his hand just slightly warmer than usual.
“Duchess Rainsworth,” said Reim, who had employed similar means in the past but still was not feeling very happy with the current situation, “what was in the food?”
The duchess raised one elegant white eyebrow. “A very common benzodiazepine, and it was in Xerx-kun’s cup only. He will sleep it off, but I intend to keep him under sedation until Sharon has recovered enough to rein him in. If Xekkun decides that somebody has to die, then they will die—and if he has decided that he needs to die, I am not sure that there is enough power in Pandora to physically stop him, and I do not want to bet his life on that uncertainty.”
Reim nodded. This perhaps wasn’t the most ethical choice to make, but Reim Lunettes had not thought about ethics in a sense outside of the abstract since he was being fostered by the Rainsworth family. As Rufus Barma’s spy, ethics were an indulgence that Reim didn’t usually partake in—he had other, higher priorities, such as spending time with Xerxes Break and Sharon Rainsworth.
He nodded, putting an arm around Xerxes’s shoulders. “Thank you, Your Grace,” he said. “And—the Lady Sharon. How does she fare?”
“The doctor says she’s recovering well, though it is, of course, still early,” said the duchess. “I have already discussed Xerxes’s fate with her, and she agrees that, though distasteful, this is necessary.”
Reim nodded. He did not ask to see Sharon; he would, he thought, drop by later, once he was more certain that Xerxes would be alright, or at least asleep for long enough for Reim to leave him alone without worrying.
“Please give her my well-wishes, and let her know that I will be in to visit once I am assured that Xerx is stable,” he said. The duchess smiled and assured him that she would, and dismissed them, and Reim helped Xerxes up and slung his arm over his shoulder as he brought him back to his bedroom. Xerxes was incredibly out of it, which was only surprising when you didn’t remember that Sheryl Rainsworth was the only person in the world whom Rufus Barma feared, but when they got back to his room he still protested Reim’s help in changing him back into his pajamas, which was honestly a relief: he hadn’t even been together that much last night, when he was entirely sober.
Once he was in bed, Reim sat on the side of it again, this time taking Xerxes’s hand in his and squeezing it tightly. He had not seen Xerxes Break asleep in years; he knew he would see this sight much, much more in the coming weeks, and it scared him more than anything had scared him before in his life, almost.
Xerxes sighed in his sleep, so peaceful, so shattered. He had known he was being drugged but had eaten and drank anyway. He had known he was being drugged, but he’d done his best to prevent it from happening to Reim, too. He was a soft thing, lying in the bed, broken, but Reim knew his edges could still cut, and cut hard. He wondered if they would be forgiven, when Xerxes awoke. He wondered if he would regret this.
And then the earth shook—and then there was a shock of Abyssal power, shaking loose his Chain, one more shackle on Glen Baskerville’s soul gone, and Reim Lunettes suddenly had much, much bigger worries.