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When he reaches Marielda, when the war has fizzled rather than ignited, and after the parades and audiences, Samot throws himself into his work. It’s new, the mundanity of it all, the idea that his actions matter. The drudgery, the meetings, the having to measure twice and cut once, because he can’t put the fibres back together again. It’s invigorating, and occupies his attention in a way that he’s desperately grateful for, now, when the world is dissolving and his father is dying and his husband is dead and his son—
He’s glad to be busy.
It hits Samot at odd hours, is the thing, and never when he expects it.
Take the throne for example. The first time he walks into the central room of the tower it’s with his stomach already clenched in anticipation of forcing down a grief that he doesn’t deserve to feel and—
Nothing.
It’s just a throne, all polished wood and flame decal, marble accents. It’s a throne and he can see his husband’s hand in the design and his husband is dead and the throne doesn’t make it worse.
Then he is walking through the city and he sees a flash of blonde hair, and he smiles, almost calls out—
Then he’s meeting Castille’s eyes and looking away too quickly—
Then he’s in a meeting and he has a headache and it’s too bright in here and he thinks, reflexively, you bastard, you’re doing this on purpose — and he has to excuse himself until his hands stop shaking.
Aubrey finds him after that. He’s retired (fled) to his office. He’s by the window, still gripping the thick velvet curtain from where he’s pulled it closed, and he doesn’t realise she’s standing there until she coughs lightly.
“What, Aubrey?” it comes out sharper than he means it to, and he winces, loosening his grip and smoothing out the wrinkles his hands had created in the curtain. “What is it?”
“I think you should take a break.”
He turns to her and sees her watching him with wide eyes, tapping her claws together.
“I’ll just pause the Heat and the Dark, shall I?”
She just looks at him, still tapping.
“I appreciate — I don’t have time. ” He gestures to the papers spread across his desk
“Don’t be mad, but I think you should talk to Samol.”
He moves to a cabinet and pulls out a bottle of wine, two glasses, and doesn’t shout at Aubrey. He pours the glasses and doesn’t shout at Aubrey. He places hers down on the desk and doesn’t shout at Aubrey.
“No.” he takes a long gulp of his wine.
“Lord—”
“I said, no!”
He winces, and briefly closes his eyes. He hears her claws on the stone, and expects her to have retreated, but when he opens his eyes, she is close, looking over the papers.
“I can handle things here for a while,” she says, as though his outburst didn’t happen. “Castille will help me.”
“My father doesn’t want to speak to me.”
“Has he told you, or are you just guessing?”
“How can he?”
“I mean, I don’t know him, but you’re his son.” The unspoken only, unspoken last hangs in the air. “How can he not?”
Samot turns and leaves the room without another word.
Samot travels for about a week in search of his father before he gives up. He’s made so many wrong turnings, and he keeps having to go back. Used to be that he could shift and blur reality enough that he never went in the one direction over the other. He hates reaching for his power and feeling it be tugged away. It feels… it feels like when he wasn’t him. Before Severia, before his father made him real, named him. It feels like being a word-eater and devouring things just to dissolve them, to taste them on his tongue for a brief moment before they were gone. He tries hard to avoid it, but centuries of habit isn’t broken in two months; especially two months as mortals measure it. Instead he reaches for something else that he hasn’t touched in years. He reaches for Samol.
Father, I —
He stops there. What can he possibly say? Sorry? He is. If only they hadn’t used that sword, it might have—? Excuses, defences, and Samol has never had much time for either. I’m sorry for dragging our boy into this? He’s not. No, that’s a lie. He is. But it would have worked! He is not sorry for believing that his son could lead him to victory. Samot will never forgive his husband for that gauntlet. He could try I need to talk to you, please. But he still has his pride. (Another lie. He simply wouldn’t be able to bear it if Samol ignored that plea.)
From above him a bird swoops down so low that he can feel the wind rustling his hair. When he looks up it’s perched on a branch, head cocked watching him. When they lock eyes it trills, ruffles its feathers. When he just blinks it trills again, and this time he recognises the tune — a song that Samol sung to Maelgwyn, back when he was small. The bird trills one last time, and then flits to the next branch, not looking back. Samot follows.
He reaches the house in under an hour, following the bird from branch to branch through the thicket, until eventually the forest opens up into a familiar clearing, garden spilling on either side of a stone path. He thinks maybe no one that his father doesn’t lead there finds this place. It stings through his heart, like an arrow, that Samol is living here. Still, better him than anyone else. Even Samot, as he is now, would feel like an interloper in this place.
The bird lands on the shoulder of a young man kneeling in the garden. Samot thinks he recognises him, but he can’t place him. The man looks up, smiling. When he sees Samot it falters, but doesn’t break.
“Samot. Lord Samot? You’re here? I’ll go and get —” He breaks off when the door swings open.
“No need, I’m here.” And there’s his Father, silhouetted in the doorway. Samot takes a few steps forward without thinking about it, then stops, unsure. Samol looks worse, he looks older. He looks the same as ever.
“Well what are you waiting for, boy? Come in if you’re coming.”
Samol turns and heads back inside without waiting for an answer. Samot follows. The entryway is barely changed from when he and Samothes lived there, but Samol leads him through to the kitchen, and that is different, in that there's actually things that get used in there — herbs half chopped on a chopping board, and a kettle on the hob that Samol fills and lights a fire under without looking at Samot. Samot sits at the table. Samol finishes the tea and then sits opposite, watching. Samot takes a sip of his tea, just for something to do. If he were mortal it would have burnt his tongue. It's only Samol who can make him feel like this, a child waiting for a disappointed look. He's missed it. Samol doesn't look disappointed though, he just looks sad. And increasingly frustrated when Samot doesn't say anything or meet his eyes.
“I've gotta say, I’m not sure what you’re doing here. Not like you come to me for advice anymore.” Samol breaks the silence.
“I —” Samot doesn't know what to say. He's here because Aubrey told him to, he's here because she kept looking at him with pity as the weeks drew on and he didn't follow her advice. He's here because he doesn't know where else he can go and have someone else grieving for the man and not just the king. He's here because Samol knew his son as a child. He’s here because Samol is dying. He's here because at the end of the day all he wants is Samol to tell him what to do. He can't say any of that, not now. Before he can settle on anything Samol speaks again.
“You been working yourself hard up there, you just come for a break?” Samol hasn't looked away from him. Samot wishes he would.
“I came to apologise.” What else?
“Ain’t me you should be apologising to, boy.”
“It’s not like I can apologise to Samothes.”
“You know it’s not him I mean.”
Samot doesn't answer, his mind flinching away from the forge.
“You want me to absolve you? Ain't me who can do that. Ain't anyone.” Samot sighs. Looks out of the window, following the tiny bird as it hops along the windowsill
“Not even sure you need it. You thought you were doing right.”
“Am I?”
Samol shakes his head.
“Thinking and doing aren't the same. You know that, same as me. Don't know about what you're doing in Marielda. People seem happy with it, so that's something.” Samol looks back at him. “I think you forget I can see everything that goes on. I can see that boy hammering away. Don't know if what he's doing is right either. But I know you ain't talked to him. I know you ain't apologised.”
“Is it him still?” As soon as he asks it, he knows its what he came here for. To know if his son is gone.
“Does it matter?” Samol
“ Yes.”
“He remembers being him. But no, not entirely.”
“Then what would be the point?”
“He's Samothes as Maelgwyn saw him. Means there’s some of him in there. Still enough of him left to want his daddy to reach out to him, I’d reckon. To want that apology you were giving me.”
Samot throws back the last of his tea like a shot. His hands are shaking.
“I have to go.” He can't stay here, with Samol looking at him with regret. He stands, chair scraping against the tiled floor with a squeak. “I'll be back, dad. If you'll have me.”
“We'll see how you do at that apology, boy. Live up to your name and then we'll see.”
Samot closes his eyes for a second and then nods. He doesn't acknowledge the young man as he leaves. He can't think. He doesn't want to think. The work was a good distraction, but it won't be enough anymore. Not after that.
Samot is a wolf before he even gets to the end of the garden.
Samot doesn’t go back to Marielda for a long time after that. He doesn’t know exactly how long. The prayers are like an itch in the back of his mind, but that’s nothing. Living as a wolf is so much more bearable. It dulls the sting, applies poultice to the wound that he had been doing such a good of ignoring until Samol had pulled off the bandage and shown the infection. He loses himself to it, for a time. In the hunt, in the freedom, in the now rather than the then.
When he has clarity of thought again, he is on his back, panting heavily, with Severea’s knife at his throat. She examines him for a long moment. This is as serious as he’s ever seen her. For someone who so often is joyous, it sends a stab through him. Another who had loved his husband, loved his son.
“Back are you? Good.” Severea doesn’t even seem out of breath, but she’s splattered with his blood and her own. He closes his eyes, and she scoffs at him.
“You're going to waste it then?” She takes the blade from his neck, standing from her crouch, and wipes it on her thigh. “My brother didn’t ask me before he gave you form. I comforted myself with the fact you gave more than you took, in general.”
He needs a mouth for this, so he turns human, gets onto his knees, spits blood.
“And now I have taken him.” He murmurs.
“He took himself. I hear he even crafted the sword.”
“I used the wrong one, I told Maelgwyn—”
“Self-pity doesn’t suit you.” When he looks up at her, Severea’s face has softened. “You don’t like what you did? Make better choices.”
“What can I do, against the Nothing?”
“ I don’t know. You were made of it.”
“I was made of you.”
She smiles and it feels like the baring of teeth.
“You moulded a self-hood around my name, but that Darkness is in your blood.”
“Wouldn’t it be better, then?” He doesn’t to have to clarify. She will know what he means. She sighs and kneels in front of him, turning his head to face her square on, her nails digging into his chin.
“We have both been lost to it. You think that better?”
Maybe he does have to explain. Maybe the years have changed her. “Not better for me.”
Her grip spasms and then gentles.
“Not that either. Loathe as I am to admit it, you have done good things — the Nothing is further away with you here.”
Without thinking, he leans into her for a moment. As soon as he realises what he's done, he expects his face to be dropped. But she lets him, her grip relaxing until his cheek is resting on her palm. Then she pulls away and stands.
“You wanted his kingdom to help drive out the Nothing, Samot. Don’t waste that either. We all have work to do.”
She leaves him there, kneeling on the forest floor.
For a long time after that in his dreams he is hungry, ravenous, but every time he takes a bite the food turns to ash in his mouth.
He thinks about praying to the forge. But he always stumbles at the first hurdle; the most simple. Who is he praying to, really? Samothes or Maelgwyn? So he doesn’t. He pens long letters to his husband and son both, long apologies, long excuses. Conversations he wishes he could have. As he does it he can almost imagine that they are simply back in the war. He used to do this then too. It is almost as though they’re alive, just simply out of reach.
He burns all of them almost as soon as he writes them. It’s better that way. A clean break. Those nights are when he swallows ash by the handful, and when he catches sight of his reflection in a goblet it is his son’s eyes he sees.
It is a long time before he gives in and prays. First to the newly-named Samothes and then, increasingly desperately, to Maelgwyn.
He never gets a response, and the dreams stay with him until the spring.