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Chapter Text

Three hours into the ball, Mylo finally left Umber alone.

The boy had pestered her relentlessly, trying and failing to offer her bite-sized goodies from the silver serving trays of passing waiters. Apricot-glazed lamb skewers, baked snails swimming in garlic butter, soft cheeses packed full of herbs served with cuts of meat and crackers. The drinks were even worse, with various kinds of alcohol imitating the stronger ones found in Zaun rotating around the room. The only option for children was water, but not normal water. The water offered was bubbly, foul-tasting stuff that made Umber think she’d grabbed a glass from the wrong tray.

With Silco vigilantly guarding their home across the river, someone in their group needed to set an example of not enjoying Piltovan luxury in his stead— Sevika, steadfast as ever as she guarded the entrance, did not count. Umber quietly took on the challenge.

Unlike Claggor and Vi, Mylo wasn’t popular with the girls on the dance floor and, with Powder absent, he’d turned to Umber for company. He’d forgotten they were in two different age brackets, Umber’s eighteen a poor match for his thirteen.

Her sour mood didn’t help, either.

She’d always been long-limbed and scrawny, but the emerald dress they’d forced her into only accentuated what she lacked while highlighting what she loathed. Her chest, flat as a board, was still too prominent for her liking due to the neckline. Her waist, thin enough to look like she was wearing a corset even without one on, drew too many wandering eyes from others her age.

Silco had promised she could wear a suit.

Vander had clarified one of the girls could wear a suit when Powder came down with a fever. Something about not wanting to send such a blunt message that could be perceived as mocking Piltie gender conformities in front of the royal family.

When faced with the decision of herself or Violet, she allowed Vi to wear the suit. Mylo had joked in the carriage that they’d gotten mixed up— Vi’s hair was longer these days, whereas Umber kept hers cropped short like a boy’s. Vi had elbowed him, Vander had ignored Mylo when he whined about it afterwards, and the world continued to spin on its axis.

At the very least, the skirt of the dress hid her brace from view and matched the green accents of her cane, even if the hanging sleeves were a hazard.

“Your royal highness,” A voice said from behind her. “If I may make your acquaintance.”

Umber watched the lady from the corner of her eye as she fully stepped into view. She looked more goddess than woman.

Roughly the same age as Umber, she had a presence to her that drew the attention of those around them. Her gown was a solid plate of gold at the breast with white skirts that dropped down from it, hiding her silhouette. There were golden flakes dusting her cheeks and shoulders that glimmered in the light from the chandeliers, beautifully standing out from her dark skin like beams of sunlight itself— “How wasteful,” Silco would spit. “Our people starve while the topsiders galavant around in gold foil.”

However, it was not the golden ensemble that caught Umber’s attention, but the hair. The Medarda crest had been carefully braided into the side of her head, a star shape among her waist-length braids that must have taken hours to achieve.

She remembered Sevika’s debriefing and the rumors flooding Zaun: Piltover had found itself an ally in Noxus, the ever-present colonial threat in the northern part of the continent, where the message was not “conquer or be conquered” but rather “conquer for the glory of being conqueror.”

The Medardas were known for their wealth in Piltover and their strength in Noxus. Being approached by a member of the family was proof enough that Sevika’s intel had been true. If the Piltovans had allied themselves with Noxians, what did they plan to do with the power that came with it? She was tempted to look towards Sevika across the room, to see if the keeper of the guard had realized who their company of the evening was. She couldn’t risk such a move with the Medarda standing in front of her.

“Please, allow me to introduce myself,” The woman bent into a practiced curtsy, her skirts a living thing that moved with her. “I am Mel Medarda, daughter of Ambessa Medarda. It is an honor to meet someone of your status.”

“Up, up,” Umber waved her hands, gesturing for Mel to resume her relaxed posture. “There’s no need for that, we’re the same age. It’s nice to meet you, Mel. You can call me Umber.”

The noble children of Zaun had been raised with the understanding that all were equal, regardless of their station. Silco and Vander had been appointed kings only as a response, a necessity, when negotiating with Piltovans. To get a foot in the door, Zaunites had to make difficult decisions and the call for a royal bloodline of their own was one of them. If it was the only way for their struggling country to be viewed as more than a bug to step on, then so be it. They would play the game and they intended to win it.

Mel’s eyes widened. “Of course,” She paused, as if testing the feel of the name on her tongue. “Umber.”

Umber smiled and Mel returned it.

“The Ambessa?”

“The one and only,” Mel said, gesturing to her chest. “This breastplate? It’s from her first champion’s banquet.”

They did not have much in common, but being the eldest of five, Umber quickly found something for Mel to talk about other than ball gossip. The woman rambled on about painting for several minutes and Umber allowed her attention to drift just enough to keep an eye on Mylo as he weaved in and out of the crowd on the other side of the dance floor.

“— experiment with watercolors.”

“My little sister loves painting as well,” Umber shared, redirecting her focus, but she was fairly certain Mel had already realized she wasn’t paying any mind to the conversation. “All kinds of things. You’d love her.”

“Perhaps you can introduce me to her,” Mel lifted a thoughtful finger, her dark eyebrows peaked with interest. “Which sister is it?”

“Powder, the younger one. Maybe next time,” She smiled a bit, the first genuine one to grace her lips all evening. “She isn’t here.”

It was hard to hide the unbridled joy that came with speaking of Powder. Where Vi loved sports and Claggor loved gardening and Mylo loved puzzle boxes, Powder loved inventing in the same way Umber did. It was wrong to pick favorites, but Powder had always been the sibling she looked forward to spending time with the most.

“Promise you’ll bring me something back?” Powder’s voice warbled from beneath the thick mountain of blankets. Only the top of her head was visible, her form a lump beneath the covers. How cruel the world was to poor little Powder. She was the only member of the family who genuinely enjoyed such grand events and she couldn’t attend. “Who will play with me while you’re gone?”

“I promise,” Umber patted the lump sympathetically. “Little Man isn’t going either. He can keep you busy. But not too busy, because you’re gross and snotty right now.”

“I’m not gross!”

Mel’s voice reached her.

Umber shook her head. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”

“I said,” Mel’s annoyance had bled into her voice, whether she intended for it to or not. The smile she gave didn’t quite reach her eyes and Umber recognized it immediately as a smile meant to placate others. Perhaps they had something in common, after all. “She hasn’t arrived yet?”

“She won’t be coming, she came down with a fever. Our other father stayed home to watch after her,” It was hard to miss how Mel’s smile dropped entirely. Umber’s eyes narrowed. “Are you alright? Don’t tell me you think I’m going to get you sick. I was hoping Noxians didn’t buy into Piltovan superstitions.”

“No, of course not,” Mel, so open and welcoming before, had become rigid. She looked utterly horrified with her fists gripping at the gossamer fabric of her dress. “I’m sorry to cut this short, but I’m afraid my mother is summoning me. It was a pleasure speaking with you, your highness.”

Umber opened her mouth to comment on the title, but Mel had already retreated, her heels loudly clicking on the ornate tile floor in her haste. She made it across the room in an astonishingly short amount of time, brushing through soldiers with a rudeness that Umber hadn’t thought possible for her to muster.

She watched her slide up beside Ambessa, who most definitely had not been looking in their direction before, and forced her slender fingers between her mother’s thicker ones. Mel pressed her cheek to Ambessa’s strong forearm, lips barely moving as she held her hand, and it made Umber think of Powder— how she’d hide behind the nearest leg when she was frightened. Ambessa’s lips flattened into a line, anger barely concealed in the sudden tension of her body.

Mel was swiftly escorted out of the ballroom through a side entrance with a Noxian soldier on each side.

What kind of backwards nonsense were the Piltovans filling the heads of Noxians with for a mention of sickness to warrant such a response?

“Get a glass from the wrong tray?” Umber jolted when Vi’s arm wrapped around her shoulders. “You’re making a face.”

“Am not,” She wiggled out from under the arm. Vi smelled like she had bathed in a mixture of expensive floral perfumes. Her nose wrinkled. “What’ve you been doing?”

“Enjoying myself. You should try it sometime.”

“Oh, ha-ha,” Umber glowered at her fondly. Then, she dipped her head and dropped her voice to a whisper. “The strangest thing just happened. You know the Medarda girl?”

“The pretty one?”

“For fuck’s sake, Violet.”

“Come on! We’re at a ball. Without Dad! Papa’s the fun one, remember? He was tipsy five minutes in. We may as well be unchaperoned,” Vi had clearly helped herself to one of the champagne flutes. “Sevika’s not a snitch. She’ll let us do whatever we want.”

“And what, pray tell, do you want to do?”

“No idea,” Vi snorted in an unladylike manner and made a show of straightening the jacket of her olive-green suit. “But I think dancing with their precious brat would be a good start.”

Vi gestured to a corner of the ballroom with her chin.

The Kirammans stood in a cluster of guests and enforcers to the immediate left of the raised dais— where three thrones of varying importance would usually sit, a gaudy statue of the Kiramman Key in solid gold loomed instead— swathed in midnight blue fabric. The king’s beard was freshly trimmed, the queen’s graying hair was recently dyed, and the princess was mid-yawn.

Umber could vaguely remember meeting Caitlyn, once, when she was still swaddled in baby blankets. With both families trying to expand, a peace treaty had been in the works. The queen and her chosen guard had taken it upon themselves to show the royal nursery to Umber, curious as ever at the age of four, and Vi, far easier to get along with at the age of one. The room had been filled to the brim with toys Caitlyn wouldn’t get much use out of for a few more months. But Vi had picked up one of the wooden horses with her chubby hands and held it out to Cassandra, a clear offering for the baby.

What Umber remembered most about the ordeal was being carried out, bawling and screaming, by Sevika when the queen accused Vi of trying to steal. The queen pointing one of her sharp nails in her face, her jewelry loudly clinking together with every movement and her voice going up into a birdlike pitch, had haunted Umber for weeks afterwards.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually into her,” Umber said in disbelief.

“Well, even if I’m not, I’m still going to ask her to dance,” Vi replied with a stubborn grin. She rocked back on her heels, hands in her pockets. “You should come with me. That boy in her entourage keeps looking at you.”

Umber saw the exact moment the boy noticed she was returning his open stare— he jumped as though her gaze had delivered an electric shock, a blush bleeding up his neck from beneath his collar. He was wearing a red and white suit with a family crest stark against the fabric. A member of one of Piltover’s noble houses, then.

A shame. She wouldn’t be entertaining any pity dances from Pilties tonight. She wouldn’t want them to get sick.

“You’re mistaking fear for interest,” Umber rolled her eyes. “If you’re going to dance with her, don’t forget your manners. You’ll be in the papers tomorrow if you do.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Vi shrugged it off and made her way towards the Kirammans.

Watching Vi stroll forward, Umber suddenly felt very weary. What if the girl rejected her sister? Would the shame or the public outcry cut Vi deeper? If the king or queen said anything untoward to her, Umber would have to take action. She refused to let her sister, a fighter striving to be the lover, get walked over by Piltovans with a god complex.

She didn’t have long to dwell on it. Vi hadn’t even reached Caitlyn when the loud clink of a fork against a wine glass filled the room like a gunshot in an open field.

Yordles were not unheard of in Zaun, but they didn’t look anything like Cecil B. Heimerdinger. Standing tall— short— on the raised dais, he looked more like a pampered lapdog than the contributor to decades of Zaunite suffering. Umber wondered, briefly, if he at least tipped the groomer for the detailed work on his moustache.

She’d already missed the beginning of his speech.

“If you don’t mind, I have a few words for this joyous occasion.”

She found her surroundings infinitely more interesting and tuned him back out.

The crowd had pushed forward with the ringing of the glass and the air had grown warm from the body heat, leaving her feeling like she was wading through lukewarm soup. It was for the best that Powder had to stay behind, given the distinct lack of children present. Usually, there would be young children whispering to their parents and giggling throughout such frivolous speeches, accompanied by the parents hissing for them to be quiet. No such thing was happening tonight.

In fact, the crowd seemed to be holding its breath. Tense with something she couldn’t quite name. Children wouldn’t be muttering during this kind of silence, but a baby’s cry would fit right in.

Something hard pressed into her hip and she quickly turned. The culprit was the baton of an enforcer standing behind her, alarmingly close. She could see his face— sweat was dripping down into his eyes, his face so pale that he looked half-dead. It had to be his first night on security detail, the stress weighing down around his neck like a noose. Umber gave him an awkward smile and shuffled forward, between a viscount and his wife, who glared at her before the recognition hit them. The enforcer’s hands flexed, as if he wanted to reach out and grab her, but she was already out of his reach.

She looked around the ballroom as Heimderdinger droned on.

An enforcer stood behind Vi, another near Mylo. When had the enforcers gotten so close? In the corner of her eye, she could see Claggor near a group of Noxian soldiers. Was Vander in a similar position somewhere behind her?

It struck her that she was surrounded by Piltovans, but not a single one was pleasantly loosened by alcohol. The alcohol that had so clearly been tampered with to resemble something one would purchase in Zaun, stronger and more appealing to the tastes of their Zaunite guests. They were all completely sober and some kept casting cautious looks in her direction. Was she imagining the Piltovans around her taking a step away to give her a wide berth?

She felt a prick of unease.

Something was wrong.

“— and thus, we celebrate our first ever Progress Day!”

The following applause made her jump.

She collected herself, a weak smile on her face, and joined in. The excitement of the day had merely gotten to her. After Heimerdinger left the platform and the Piltovans around her cleared a path, she’d spend some of her evening with Vander. He’d laugh with her about her anxieties and keep a warm hand on her back, perhaps convince her to take a sip of that horrible alcohol from his glass because “you’re old enough now, kid” or “when your dad and I were your age, we already knew how to make stuff five times stronger than this weak imitation Piltie liquor.”

But Heimerdinger did not step down.

The yordle checked his pocket watch and looked to his left, where the Kirammans were being lead out of the ballroom. When had they started leaving? Why were they being evacuated?

A guttural scream tore through the room.

All heads swiveled toward the sound.

Vander stood in the middle of the ballroom, hulking form slouched over, gripping at a massive sword piercing through his shoulder blade. Blood blossomed out from the wound like a flower from a bud, dry red paint meeting water and expanding outwards. And then, with a sickening gurgle from Vander, spikes shot out of the blade and mercilessly lodged it further into his flesh.

He collapsed, his body falling aside to reveal Mel’s mother, bathed in the lifeblood of Umber’s father.

Ambessa twisted around in time to dodge Sevika— the source of the guttural scream, Umber recognized— as the guard swung at her.

Everything became a blur.

People grabbed at Umber’s dress, trying to keep her in place and trying to pull her elsewhere all at once. They clawed at her, deep bloody scratches appearing along the pale expanse of her neck. She could only think that if they were stronger, they’d tear her to pieces. She held her cane close to her chest with both hands in a vice grip, paralyzed with fear and incapable of striking back.

“Umber!” Claggor’s voice.

It spurred her into action.

She elbowed someone in the face to get loose, shoving her way forward, fighting to keep from being pulled under the insistent wave of panicked partygoers. She’d be trampled in seconds if she hit the floor. She started using her heavy cane like an enforcer’s baton. She had to reach Claggor.

She looked over the tumultuous sea of people for him, but what she found made her wail in anguish.

The Noxian soldiers that had closed in on him were far stronger than the people who had been pulling at Umber. Stunned and uncomprehending of the gore, Umber wondered how they would ever give him a proper funeral service with his body in pieces.

She turned away violently, bile rising in her throat. The scene that greeted her in the middle of the dance floor wasn’t better.

The fight had left Vander’s body unguarded, but untouched, too close to Ambessa and Sevika’s battle for others to seek further mutilation and treasures. But it wouldn’t be long before they were on him like vultures, tearing at his skin and digging into his pockets, leaving him an unrecognizable creature upon the bloodied tiles.

Umber was seized by the realization that they would take his bracelet.

When Vander and Silco were crowned, Silco had proposed to Vander with an invaluable bracelet crafted by his own hands. Polished jade that sat in a circle of gold, the emblem of Zaun engraved on the back, completed with a strip of brown leather cord long enough to be a necklace on anyone else but just enough to be a bracelet on Vander.

She pushed back against the crowd, her cane her lifeline, and shoved her way towards her father’s body.

A foolish thing to focus on, but the only thing she could. It was a symbol of the love her parents shared. A representation of their family. Umber couldn’t bear the idea of Vander being parted from it by someone else’s hands.

After what felt like a lifetime of grappling, Umber finally burst through edge of the crowd. She struggled to find her footing on the blood of Vander and so many others… and oil. One look towards the ongoing fight told her all she needed to know— Sevika’s prosthetic had been pierced through and was hemorrhaging black liquid. Quickly, she averted her gaze. She couldn’t bear to see what else had been done to Sevika.

She lowered herself to the floor next to Vander, one hand staying on her cane and the other grasping at the bloody band of leather around his thick wrist. Her hands shook, struggling for purchase, and she made the mistake of looking at his face.

Black spots danced in her vision.

Blood, thick and dark, still dripped from his open mouth.

A hand grabbed the end of her cane and she turned with the intention to fight. She was terrified and wounded, but she would not let them kill her without a fight. She would make her nation proud.

“We don’t have time for this!”

It took a moment to place the girl’s name.

Sky Young, the daughter of Sevika’s operations officer, had found her in the chaos. They’d played together a handful of times as children, but she was a stranger without her trademark glasses. Seeing the laceration under her left eye and her bleeding nose, Umber could make an educated guess as to what had happened to them.

“Please, Umber,” She had moved closer, reaching to put a hand on Umber’s arm. She hated the way the pity welled up in Sky’s eyes. “We need to get out of here.”

“Go find Mylo and Vi,” Umber tried to reason with her. “I’ll meet you at one of the exits.”

Sky took a trembling breath. “Mylo is already—”

Blood thundering in her ears, Umber released her cane and went back to tugging at the bracelet with both hands.

“I can’t— I can’t leave him,” She couldn’t remember when she started crying or when she’d cut her fingers on the leather cord. “Dad will want it. I have to bring it home. I can’t let them take it. Please, Sky, tell me what to do.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Sky said, her voice cracking.

Umber sobbed, hands becoming desperate and more uncoordinated than before. Her heart was heavy in her chest. The neckline of her dress was stained pink with the blood from the scratches at her neck. Her fingers burned from the cuts the leather had bitten into them. Her arms ached from fighting off the crowd. She wanted to curl into Vander for protection the way she had as a child and wait for the nightmare to end.

Someone joined her on their knees.

It was the boy from before, who Vi had thought wanted to dance with her, brandishing a pocketknife. He pitched forward, the blade sharp as it caught the light from above, and Sky opened her mouth to scream. Umber was given a matter of seconds to accept her fate.

But instead of digging the knife into the soft gaps of her ribcage, he cut the leather cord.

It came off in her hand, a bloody line left behind on Vander’s skin and the amulet cold in her palm.

“Come on,” He helped her to her feet and nodded to Sky. “They’re going to kill you if we don’t hurry.”

They’re going to kill you. They’re going to kill you. They’re going to kill you.

Moving through the crowd with a group proved easier than braving it alone, but the relief they felt upon reaching a side exit only served to blind them. A pair of enforcers grabbed hold of them. Sky was sent sprawling on the floor and the boy was shoved into the doorframe face-first and beaten with a baton. Umber found herself lifted from behind by strong arms around her waist, her cane falling from her grasp, the enforcer loudly shouting to the ballroom, “I caught one! I caught one!”

Was she one of their red foxes, released for the thrill of being hunted?

She thrashed violently, trying in vain to kick at the policeman. The other enforcer, a man with dark hair and a grin on his face, veered away from the boy and raised his baton— he brought it down on her bad leg. She blacked out from the pain.

She couldn’t have been out for more than a minute. When she came to, she had been hoisted over the enforcer’s shoulder like a sack of flour. Her leg was broken, she was sure of it. She struggled to lift her head from his back, her ears stuffed full of cotton and her body sluggish with agony.

Umber turned her head toward the raised dais.

There, on the floor, laid Vi’s trampled body. Limbs broken at odd angles and a gash in her neck. Blood had pooled around her head and Noxians slid through it like butter in a pan as they tried to catch Zaunites like Sky, family members of guards who had come with the royal family to protect them.

She used the last of her strength to throw herself backwards and out of the enforcer’s grasp. She hit the floor hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. Sky’s mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear her. The enforcers stood over them like giants. Umber fumbled for her cane beneath her and pulled it on top of her with a groan of pain. She held it up, tensed for violence. One of the enforcers took a step forward. She rammed it into his jaw. She swung it to the side and hit the other directly in his solar plexus. She aimed for first enforcer again, but he tore it from her grasp.

Umber reached for it again, but hands grabbed hold of her waist.

The boy wasted no time in pulling her through the door, three harsh thumps down a small set of concrete steps that made her vision pulse black when her broken leg hit them. She laid on the cobblestone, biting into the flesh of her forearm to keep from screaming. Her lungs seemed to rattle with every breath.

“I’m not strong enough to carry her,” Sky cried. “They’ll catch us before we get anywhere.”

The boy pulled Umber’s arm around his shoulders. He nearly tilted off balance from the dead weight of her. “I’ll carry, you lead. I can’t see.”

She can’t see without her glasses, either, Umber thought. But Sky squared her shoulders and took charge, blurry vision better than none.

The first step had her digging her face into the shoulder of the boy’s suit with a sob, her blood dyeing the red of his attire even darker. He kept moving forward.

Darkness had fallen over the city and with it the chill of a winter’s night, but Umber couldn’t tell if she was shivering from the cold or the shock of her battered leg. The snow lining the streets was a pure white that she had never seen in Zaun, where the snowflakes fell in shades of gray and were indistinguishable from ashes, and she felt a strange sort of glee in knowing a trail of blood was dragging behind them. With her last breath, she would at least dirty their snow.

They lurched unsteadily into an abandoned side street that seemed impossibly long and tall to her, the uniformity of the buildings making her dizzy. The street lights hummed as if in greeting, their yellow glow pouring over them.

Head still against his shoulder, Umber looked up at the boy. The doorframe had cut deeply into his eyebrow, the blood blocking out one eye. He’d have a nasty scar, a mark upon Piltovan perfection. Even then, he was handsome. He looked kind. As her mind began to swim, she found herself wanting to apologize for her earlier behavior— behavior the boy hadn’t even witnessed. She’d operated the way Piltovans did and judged him without rhyme or reason.

Instead, half-conscious, she mumbled, “I should’ve danced with you.”

He shifted to look at her with his good eye. She couldn’t tell from his expression if she was at all coherent and he could understand her, but she had to believe he could. One last good deed before the end. She tried to smile.

Something slammed into them from behind. First, a shove that broke them apart. Next, the loud whistle of something solid sailing through the air. The boy hit the ground, unconscious, and Umber landed in a painful heap beside him. Sky began screaming.

The enforcers had caught up with them. The one standing over her sported a bloody jaw and his lip was curled up to show a horribly shattered set of teeth. It crossed Umber’s mind to beg for her life, but no words came out. The sudden lack of noise in the night had Umber craning her head to look at Sky. The other enforcer had knocked the girl to the ground and begun kicking at her, but she had ceased moving. Umber rolled onto her stomach and reached for her with a bloodstained hand.

The enforcer lifted her cane like a holy sword.

It came down against her skull with an echoing crack.

A dazzling blue light filled the alley and, with it, the enforcers turned to dust. With a single gust of strong wind, their remnants disappeared.

A hooded figure raised their staff into the air. The atmosphere was ripe with magic and ozone. Runes swirled like water down a drain, a slow but quickening tempo as the figure moved. In a flash, they were gone.

In the quiet street, only the body of Sky— dressed in the green gown of a missing princess— and the boy remained.

The only proof that the mysterious figure had been there at all was a blue stone tucked in the boy’s palm.

“In need of some extra luck? Princess Umber’s finger bones for sale, here only,” yelled a man standing behind a pop-up stall, crammed between a stall selling blankets and another selling half-rotten produce. “Only eight left, limited stock!”

Viktor grimaced.

It was the most dreadful time of year, when the trees had shaken off their leaves and the clouds stayed a dull gray. Everything smelled vaguely of overturned dirt, the soles of shoes were always caked with mud, and Viktor’s body preemptively ached in response to the approaching cold. A sheet of snow would blanket the town by the end of the week, Singed had predicted over breakfast.

With the season came the anniversary of the massacre that would call for a week’s worth of festivities in Piltover— morbidly known as Progress Day— and a day of rest in Zaun. Being four days out from the twin cities by train and completely divorced from the culture of them didn’t stop the sleazier vendors in Holdrum from trying to capitalize on it.

“You, young man,” The vendor called to him, spit flying. Viktor braced himself with a sharp inhale when he saw the man’s eyes drag over his cane. “The princess had a bum leg, just like yours! One of these finger bones— no, two of them— will serve you well this winter! Don’t miss this chance!”

“I’ll pass,” Viktor hoped his disgust showed on his face.

With an exaggerated “pah!”, the vendor moved onto his next target.

Viktor shrugged his shoulders, readjusted his heavy satchel, and continued down the road.

Even if he’d wanted to indulge in the perverse mockery of a child’s corpse, he’d only counted out enough change for exactly what was needed: a silver cog for ten slices of dry-cured ham, three bronze washers for a jar of pickled cabbage, and two more washers for a container of live bilgeworms that were hard to come by this time of year. The butcher’s wife was kind enough to hand over a packet of fresh crackers wrapped in wax paper when she learned of his impending adventure, insisting they be given to Singed.

Before Viktor came along, Singed was little more than a mystery to the townsfolk. But Viktor’s frequent trips into the heart of Holdrum for various supplies put the man firmly on their radar. If they believed Singed to be Viktor’s peculiar and unfriendly father who lived in the renovated coal mine on the outskirts of town, he was inclined to let them believe it.

It wasn’t that Viktor viewed the man as a father, but more that he didn’t have anyone else to claim as his own. If anything happened to Viktor, they sought out Singed. If Singed ever left his home and anything happened to him, they would seek out Viktor. That was how things were and there was no point in trying to change it.

When he woke up in the cavern with Rio— an amphibian with the build of a medium-sized dog— curled up on his chest and Singed leaning over him with a penlight to shine in his eyes, Singed claimed Viktor was found along the coastline. Half-buried in the sand and bleeding from his skull with a mangled leg, brought to the scientist for medical attention.

Viktor had always known this was a lie.

In the beginning, he expected foul play: a recluse with a deceased daughter who had graciously taken in an injured person to nurse back to health of his own volition. Viktor had even played with the idea of being the daughter, hit across the head after a disagreement that granted Singed the opportunity to start the cycle over again. It threw him for a loop when Singed gave him a handful of money and told him to go into town for supplies once he was well enough.

He was utterly unknown to the Holdrians. The fishermen looked at him strangely when he inquired about washed up bodies on the shore. Somehow, he’d gotten to Holdrum with no one knowing who he was or where he had come from.

Singed was a liar. But he was also all Viktor had and Viktor was all he seemed to have.

Between the strangest assortment of bonding exercises two humans could manage, the most tentative form of trust had been forged between them.

The second week:

The glass of tepid water was pulled away from his cracked lips and bony fingers returned to his hair, gently combing through the thick locks while avoiding his stitches. He could tell his doctor was a father— or had been, at one time— by the way his stiff hands tried at comfort.

“When can I leave?”

The scarred man sitting next to his bed raised his remaining eyebrow. “Whenever you are ready.”

The second month:

Singed had taken to calling out “you!” when he needed his attention. He’d grown tired of it. Medications administered and bandages changed between a man with a name and a man without one, it made him feel less like a human and more like a test subject. Soon, he’d be pinned down on a dissection tray with Singed leaning over him with a scalpel in one hand and curved tweezer forceps in the other.

He had spent days determining a good name for himself, picking through every letter of the alphabet until he decided on the strange familiarity of ‘V.’ He mulled over his options for hours before making his decision.

“My name is Viktor,” he announced over a bowl of congealing porridge.

“Alright,” Singed said. “And will Viktor be paying rent?”

Viktor flung porridge at him. “I’m still your patient. Guests do not pay rent.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Singed said, his voice deadpan as he wiped the thick mixture from his cheek. “You have overstayed your welcome. You eat my food, you play in my laboratory, you share a bed with my pet and you contribute nothing to this household but headaches.”

“Are you going to kick me out, then? All by my lonesome, defenseless in my current state?”

Singed said nothing.

The fifth month:

“Rio,” Singed admonished, hands scooping under the creature’s stomach and lifting her from the floor. She was almost too big for him to carry. “You have eggs you should be sitting on. The survival of your species depends on it, foolish thing.”

“Leave her alone, I’ll handle it,” Viktor pulled Rio from his arms, stumbling slightly due to the inconvenient size of his cast and the too-tall height of his crutches. “It’s like you’ve never had a pet before.”

“I’ve had many pets,” Singed gestured around them, the neon tanks blinking in greens and purples. Each one displayed a different creature Viktor had never seen before, preserved in chemicals with crudely written labels at the bottom of each container. “I play with them often.”

Viktor recoiled in disgust.

The eighth month:

“You have noticed you’ve started speaking like I do, yes?”

“I do not,” Viktor said, pushing back his bangs with the safety goggles. He had discovered the man was an effective, if unconventional, teacher possessing a wealth of scientific knowledge. They were on their third attempt at making a better incubator for Rio’s eggs, the creature proving too hyperactive to stay in place and do what nature asked of her. “I have always had this accent.”

“I thought you were above lying to yourself, my protégé,” Singed’s words hit like acupuncture needles. “Perhaps we will need to work on that.”

Viktor tried to ignore how warm protégé made him feel.

The eleventh month:

Fitted with his new brace, Viktor felt like a butterfly newly emerged from its cocoon. Free to walk where he wanted with the help of a cane, free to sleep with both legs at the same elevation, free to roam Singed’s laboratory and get in all the crevices and notebooks that had been out of his reach before.

“You’re going into town today,” Singed said, holding out a handful of money. “Make some friends while you’re out.”

“You’re a lazy bastard,” Viktor replied, taking the money and shoving it into his pocket. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Exploration would have to wait.

The third month of the second year:

They were watching Rio swim in dizzying circles in the kitchen sink, the cool water sloshing onto their shirts with every dive. She seemed to know she was almost free of being breeding stock, her job done— whether Singed wanted it to be or not— with her upcoming sixth and final clutch of eggs. The babies would be released into the local ecosystem and watched closely by Singed from then on, but the partially domesticated Rio would stay in their care until her time to return to the ether came in the upcoming decades.

Viktor ran a finger along the edge of the metal sink. “Have you ever performed cosmetic surgeries?”

Singed faced him, face carefully blank. The understanding was clear in his eyes and Viktor wondered if the man had expected such a request when he declared his name that morning at breakfast.

“Whatever you need from me,” Singed placed a hand on Viktor’s shoulder. “I will give it to you.”

They began operating the next week.

The eighth month of the second year:

“My biggest regret is refusing to let her go when the time came,” Singed traced the elegant name carved into the gravestone. A brilliantly white lily had been placed on the dirt, the wilted one from the last visit in Viktor’s hands. “I believe I prolonged her suffering with my inability to give up on things.”

“It isn’t such a terrible trait to have,” Viktor said softly, twirling the dead flower in his fingers. “You didn’t give up on me when others surely would have.”

“I suppose that is true,” Singed laughed, a sad sound that made Viktor’s heart clench in his chest. “You are the only proof I have that these hands are capable of good.”

The first month of the third year:

He thumbed at the jade pendant, the grooves of the symbol on the back rough against his skin. “What if they don’t like this version of me? What if it is for the best that I have forgotten them?”

“It will be their loss,” Singed said without looking up from his book. The pages were tinged brown and the spine was riddled with holes left by hungry beetles, but he paid them no mind as he turned to the next loose page. “Not yours, Viktor. Never yours.”

The eighth month of the sixth year:

“I do not want you to be lonely. I don’t want that. I do not want to be cruel to you. You have taken care of me the way a father would a son and for that I am forever grateful,” Viktor said empathetically, his voice full of emotion. “But it has been years and I do not know who I am. I haven’t even started to rediscover my past. All I have to my name is this necklace with the seal of a country I cannot remember. I cannot continue to live like this, Singed.”

“Ask me what you want.”

Viktor huffed in frustration. “I want to go to that academy, the one in Piltover.”

“I’ll write a letter,” Singed said. “We’ll send it off first thing next week.”

“You still have connections there?”

“Just one,” He said. “It’ll get you in.”

Viktor stared at him in shock.

“I told you when you first came to me,” Singed said. “You can leave whenever you are ready.”

The ninth month of the sixth year:

“Professor Heimerdinger will be coming to get you in two months’ time,” Singed didn’t react when Viktor sobbed with relief. “Do not squander this opportunity.”

“I won’t.”

“You must understand, they will recognize that you are a Zaunite even if you don’t remember your life as one,” Singed lamented. “They will be cruel in ways you cannot imagine.”

“I will bear it.”

“You will have to.”

Lost in his memories, Viktor made it back to their home faster than he had expected.

The door, always unlocked, opened with a firm jab of his cane.

He shoved his index finger and thumb in his mouth and whistled, loud and echoing through the cavern. There was a trill, the clatter of a metal cup hitting the floor, and a curse Viktor had never heard before. Rio, purple flesh going dark with excitement, darted into the room. Singed soon followed.

“I got you the worms you like, sweetheart,” Viktor said, bending to scratch beneath her chin. “Nice and fat ones for our trip.”

“You are spoiling her,” Singed complained. “She can eat the other ones.”

“Everyone deserves a treat sometimes,” Viktor opened the satchel and handed him the jar of pickled cabbage. He knew of Singed’s love for nonperishables— canned meats and fruits, nuts, dried beans, rice. If Viktor hadn’t come along, the man would have lived on a diet of such things and been happier for it. “I got you some of that ham you like, too.”

“You didn’t have to waste your money on this,” Singed grumbled, but he didn’t hand back the jar.

Viktor unpacked his findings, spreading them out on the table. If he’d done his math right, and he knew he had, then Singed theoretically had at least two week’s worth of food. There was plenty of porridge and oats stored in the pantry for his breakfasts, he always skipped lunch, and dinner would be covered by the small servings he’d make with the cabbage, crackers and meat.

With Rio traveling with him, Viktor was more worried about Singed being entirely alone than he wanted to admit. He’d contemplated trying to catch one of Rio’s babies, providing it as a fat slimy puppy to keep the scientist busy, but he knew it went against their goal of reintroducing the species to the wild.

He wouldn’t waste away. He’d be there when Viktor, eventually, came back to visit. Without meaning for it to, the cavern had become a home.

A knock, low but sharp, struck the door.

“That’d be Heimerdinger,” Singed said. He took a step towards the door. “Shall I?”

Viktor nodded, but his nerves made his hands tremble.

He was fairly certain he had never met a yordle before, because he would remember seeing someone like the mustachioed Heimerdinger. The same height as a human child on the smaller side, he made his way around the cavern and rambled while his chauffeur packed Viktor’s few belongings into the vehicle. Viktor couldn’t determine if he was made of the components of different animals— rodents, canines, perhaps even a bit feline in some aspects— or if he was something different altogether. Something kind of human and kind of animal, but distinctly neither.

He knew the trip to Piltover would be a long, arduous one when Heimerdinger stuck his nose up at the sight of Rio joyful and round in his satchel.

“Everything’s ready, sir. We need to get moving if we want to beat the snow,” The chauffeur cautioned. “The car wasn’t built for such weather.”

“Alrighty then,” Heimerdinger put his hands behind his back and headed for the door. There was an undertone of superiority laced through his vocabulary. “Say your goodbyes and meet us at the automobile, my boy.”

The door opened, a roar of wind filled the cavern, and the sound cut off when the door closed behind the professor. They were left in silence.

Things were moving too quickly, too intense for Viktor to keep up with. His palms had gone clammy and his only comfort was the familiar weight of Rio at his side. He longed to ask Heimerdinger to return at a later date and give him more time to put his gratitude into words, but he knew that if he didn’t go now, he would never leave.

Arms gently wrapped around him and a head rested atop his own. A hand drifted up and down his back in a soothing motion, the familiar aroma of antiseptic filling his nostrils. The shock of it delayed his reaction, his own hands slowly coming up to return the hug. It was still over too soon.

“I’ll be glad to be rid of you. These have been the longest years of my life,” Singed’s eyes were glassy as he looked down at him, his hands still on his upper arms. His voice was soft and his accent thickened with emotion like overmixed cake batter. “And I won’t miss you.”

“I won’t miss you, either,” Viktor sniffled. “You better be here when I come back.”

When he exited the cavern, he was still wiping his eyes. The cold stung his wet cheeks.

The vehicle was the color of a ripe plum, two tires in the front and four in the back. It was, as far as Viktor knew, the first one he’d ever seen outside of the textbooks in Singed’s laboratory. The industrial revolution hadn’t quite expanded to places like Holdrum yet, where transportation was reliant on horses and the ambulatory capabilities of the given individual. Opening the door revealed a plush interior of velvet, the scent of sugar biscuits and warmth from a heating system fanning out into the cold, and two sets of seats: one sharing a back with the chauffeur’s compartment and one sharing a back with the trunk. A poro that was more fur than animal slept behind the driver’s seat, a perpetually open milky eye indicating blindness facing Viktor.

“The poro,” Viktor tightened his grip on his satchel, Rio rustling around impatiently within. “Does it bite?”

“A poro? Bite? Viktor, that sense of humor will serve you well at the academy,” Heimerdinger chortled. “Go on, get in! We’re wasting daylight!”

Viktor wanted to point out that the sun hadn’t shone through the gray clouds above in four days, but held his tongue. He shoved his cane into the vehicle, climbed into the seat with his back to the trunk, and settled in.

With a nauseating rumble, the car began to move and their journey began.

“Well, my boy,” Heimerdinger grinned at him, surprisingly vicious. “Tell me about your intentions at the academy.”

Viktor was not one for idle conversation, but when he grew tired of speaking, Heimerdinger’s long-winded interruptions kept things going. At some point, Rio had crawled out of the satchel and wormed her way onto the back of the seat, resting heavily along his shoulders. He would ache later, but he refused to make her move. Coming in crooked from the East, snowflakes hit the windows in small but mighty bursts of ice.

An hour passed.

“Tell me about your family,” Heimerdinger requested at last.

Viktor tensed. Had Singed told him he was a Zaunite? “Singed is the only family I have.”

“How interesting,” Heimerdinger said, a hand resting contemplatively on his chin. “In all the time I knew him, he never mentioned having a son your age. Only a daughter, who had passed.”

“My sister’s death took priority,” Viktor lied. “We only became close again through our shared grief.”

“And you’re sure you have no other family?”

The vehicle stopped abruptly and Heimerdinger almost toppled out of his seat from the impact. Viktor gripped his knee through the brace, already sore from the weather, and winced. The poro remained asleep, but Rio jumped up and paced along the back of his seat.

Heimerdinger took a moment to collect himself. “Harold, good lord, what is the hold up?”

“There’s someone in the road, sir.”

“Someone in the— someone in the road?”

“It would appear so.”

Through the howling wind, Viktor could hear a voice call out: “Professor Heimerdinger!”

Heimerdinger huffed as the locks popped up along the doors, making Viktor jump. The door to Viktor’s right swung open and a large body clambered inside. They didn’t wait for Viktor to move over, instead folding up their knees to sit on the carpeted interior as they slammed the door shut behind them.

The person pulled down their red scarf and Viktor held back a gasp

His gaze flickered across the man’s face.

Holdrum did not have men like the one in front of him, that much was certain. Handsome, with dark hair and a strong jawline and the brightest eyes Viktor had ever seen. A small scar slashed into a thick eyebrow, but it wasn’t an imperfection— it somehow made him more beautiful, more human. He filled out his dark overcoat in a way that ensured he was hiding muscle beneath the fabric.

Viktor felt as though he were looking at a prince who had leapt from the pages of a children’s fairytale.

“Why, if it isn’t Mr. Talis!” Heimerdinger greeted merrily. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

“I followed you here,” Talis said, breathless as he rubbed his cold hands together in the heat of the vehicle. When he spoke, an endearing gap between his two front teeth was revealed.

“Ah, well,” Heimerdinger cared enough to look moderately troubled. “If you’re here to threaten me, please refrain. I want to expose this kind young man to the excitement of the city in small doses, so as to not frighten him.”

“I don’t care about—” Talis looked at Viktor and paused. His head tilted to the side, as if struck by a sense of familiarity, and Viktor blushed. It took a second more for Talis to shake his head and turn back to Heimerdinger. “I’m not here for that. I want to talk to you about my expulsion.”

“And your exile?”

Talis flinched.

At the harsh word, Viktor sank deeper into his seat. Had Heimerdinger allowed a criminal to enter the car?

“Professor, please,” If Talis already being on his knees wasn’t enough to hammer home the begging, the pleading look in his dewy eyes was. “I know I’m asking for a lot, but you have to understand. My mother, she’s still in Piltover. She doesn’t know about the trial. I need to get back to her.”

“Why, say less,” Heimerdinger said. Talis’s relief was palpable. “I’ll summon the Council when I return.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Talis said, broad shoulders sagging. A weight had been lifted from him. “I can’t begin to tell you how much that means to me.”

“There’s no need for that,” He called for Harold to help Talis out of the vehicle. “It’s just a matter of exiling your mother to Zaun as well. It’s an easy fix.”

Talis’s face fell.

“Professor Heimerdinger, wait—”

The door flung open and hands seized Talis. In seconds, the man had been pulled from the car and the door was shut behind him. Viktor could hear a struggle happen, shouting of the professor’s name hurled at the vehicle. When Harold got back in the driver’s seat, his uniform was ruffled and there was a dark red spot on his left cheekbone— Talis had struck him.

“That was unexpected, wasn’t it?” Heimerdinger laughed as the car began to move again. Viktor felt sick. “He would’ve been your classmate, you know. He was in the course you’re going to be taking. I suppose you’re taking his spot, hm?”

Viktor’s heart sank into his stomach like a rock and they rode in a stiff sort of silence for half an hour more.

He picked at a stray thread on his sleeve. He hadn’t shed his deep green overcoat yet, the warmth of the car doing little to ease the cold settled deep in his bones. His leg ached with it, occasional jabs of pain causing his knee to jerk in his brace. He chose to ignore how the professor shamelessly looked at his leg whenever it happened.

“Would you like some tea?” Heimerdinger finally broke the silence as he pulled a thermos out from underneath his seat. The thermos was ceramic and painted with a scene of the Progress Day Massacre, certainly worth a small fortune. “It’ll be your first taste of Piltover.”

“I’d love some,” Viktor lied, taking it from the yordle’s hands. He doubted the tea tasted at all decent. “Thank you, Professor.”

He opened the thermos and lifted it to his lips.

Rio hissed, violent and sudden, right next to Viktor’s ear. Viktor jumped, the dark tea sloshing dangerously close to the rim, as she stood protectively on his shoulder. The poro woke from its slumber and yipped incessantly until it plopped itself down on Heimerdinger’s lap, which only irritated the amphibian more.

“Rio, what is wrong?” She continued to hiss, pawing at the thermos. Viktor remembered a talk with Singed years before, about Rio’s species having a natural ability to detect bacteria and toxins. “Oh, Professor, I’m afraid this tea is no good. Perhaps the bag had been tampered with.”

Heimerdinger’s pleasant expression faltered as Viktor popped the lid closed.

“I believe it would be in the best interest of everyone if you drank it,” Heimerdinger prompted, small hands forcefully petting the poro.

“What?”

“Please, Viktor, drink the tea.”

Viktor slowly put the thermos on the seat beside him. “Professor?”

Heimerdinger looked conflicted.

“Professor,” Viktor said slowly. “Did you do something to the tea?”

“I cannot return to Piltover with you in tow.”

“What?” Viktor’s voice was small.

“For your safety and the safety of others, I cannot. If you intend to go there, I will not go with you. I will leave. I will leave this continent if I have to.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Get out of the car.”

“But,” Viktor said helplessly, one hand raised to Rio for comfort. “It’s snowing.”

“Get out of the car before I have to do something drastic.”

Viktor’s mouth flooded with the taste of fear and he fumbled with the door handle, frantic. He poured into the street with Rio cradled in his arms. The wind filled his coat, merciless. He grabbed his cane and shut the door, thankful for a barrier between himself and Heimerdinger.

Blindly, he walked to the back of the vehicle and reached for the trunk, but the car took off before he could remove his luggage. With the snowfall, the taillights soon faded into nothingness and the tire marks were covered not long after. They, likely, wouldn’t be visible again until the following spring.

He stood there for a long while, letting the snow beat him.

For such a small village, the tavern was impressive. Leaf-shaped sconces lined the walls and the patrons kept to themselves at evenly-spaced tables. A fireplace roared along the left wall.

Jayce leaned on the imposing slab of mahogany at the bar and watched the ice— mockingly stamped with acceleration runes— in his glass melt. His hopes for a third glass of bourbon had dwindled after the bartender shot him a concerned look. He wasn’t in the mood to be babied like a drunk academy student when he, by all accounts, could no longer be identified as such.

He believed the friendly woman behind the bar would take pity on him if she knew he’d bought his drinks with his fifth to last silver cog. He was tipsy in an unfamiliar place in freezing temperatures after being expelled from the school of his dreams and exiled from his home. Someone had to feel bad for him.

The last of his savings were spent following a morally dubious yordle across Valoran and all he’d gotten out of it was further disgrace to his family name. He pressed his fingers into his temples as if trying to keep his head screwed on, a headache digging into his brain with an ice pick.

He couldn’t face his mother. He was better off staying where he was, wasting away on overpriced liquor. But he loved his mother more than life itself and, unfortunately, knew he’d have to pull himself up and head back to Piltover somehow. He’d allow himself a few hours more of self-pity and then he’d use the brain that got him into the academy in the first place to figure out a solution.

The bell above the door rang, a muscle jumping in his jaw at the irritating jingle.

“Welcome,” The bartender flashed a smile in the direction of the entrance. Jayce wondered if he could sucker the new customer into buying him another glass. A rhythmic tapping approached the counter. “Can I get you anything?”

Despite five other stools being empty, the person sat right beside him.

“Ah, no,” The person had one of the thickest accents Jayce had ever heard. Frustratingly, he couldn’t quite place it. “I’m afraid I’ve just been through an… ordeal and my mind is still catching up. Can I sit here for a while?”

The bartender shrugged and called to one of the guest tables instead, asking if any refills were needed.

Something moved in the satchel between them and Jayce turned, his curiosity getting the better of him, and ice entered his veins. The concern sparked by the moving bag was relocated to the very back of his skull.

The person who sat beside him was the same one who had been in the car with Heimerdinger.

A young man so beautiful that it hurt, cheekbones so sharp that they cut as deeply as any knife. His brown hair reached his shoulders, bleached at the ends, and Jayce wanted to see if the waves were as soft as they looked. The raw beauty of him was not what drew Jayce’s attention, but the two moles delicately dotting his face.

It threw him back to his sixteen-year-old self, when the Zaunite princess had been the most breathtaking girl he’d ever laid his eyes on. He’d never met another person with the same beauty marks, one beneath an eye and the other above a lip.

“You chased after the princess and found her body in the street. She had already succumbed to her injuries,” Officer Grayson said, pen loud against her notepad. “Do you understand?”

“No,” Jayce said. “That’s not what happened. I’m telling you, the princess—”

“You chased after the princess and found her body in the street. She had already succumbed to her injuries,” She repeated, insistent.

“You’re not listening to me,” Jayce said, voice breaking.

“Jayce,” His mother grabbed his hand. They’d allowed her into the interrogation room with him. “Listen to her.”

He understood, then, what was happening. This was the false story they would print in the papers. This would go in the official report, the documentation stored in Piltover’s archives. He was being wrapped in a lie.

“For your own protection, your name will not appear in any official documentation,” Grayson said, her voice more empathetic. “I only have a few more questions for you and then you can go home and act like this never happened.”

Jayce nodded, but he knew he’d never be able to forget the princess hanging onto him as she bled.

Fingers snapped in front of his face.

“Anyone in there?”

Jayce blinked, stunned by the audacity. “What?”

“I said I was glad you made it out of the snow,” The man offered a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He sounded like his voice hurt. “It’s rough out there.”

Jayce nodded in agreement but didn’t reply, suddenly feeling shy. He shifted his glass around on the counter, the ring of condensation expanding.

“What’s your name?” Jayce asked after a moment of deliberation.

“Viktor,” The man answered. “Yours?”

Jayce considered lying and getting an alternate life going in preparation for his impending future as an exile, but for all the creativity that landed him in the mess, he couldn’t think of a good alias.

“Jayce,” He replied. “Is Heimerdinger with you?”

He didn’t know why he asked. He didn’t plan on trying to reason with the professor any further, knowing he’d be hurting his chances of getting everything back to normal— everything back to how it should be.

“No,” Viktor’s voice was laced with anger and something akin to sadness. “He wasn’t what I thought he’d be.”

“Yeah,” Jayce scowled. “Me neither.”

A beat passed.

“So,” Viktor opened. “What did you do to get expelled?”

Jayce choked on nothing and Viktor laughed.

“Right to the point with you, huh?”

“My dreams were just shattered right before my very eyes,” Viktor said with a wry lilt, moving to rest his chin in one of his hands. “I have no time to waste, Jayce.”

Jayce liked the way his name sounded in Viktor’s mouth, his accent curving over the letters and rounding them out.

He made a noncommittal sound and shrugged. He fiddled with the leather strap under his sleeve, the smooth surface of the stone beneath his thumb grounding. He’d had enough trouble trying to break down his studies to professors like Heimerdinger, he didn’t feel up to the challenge of explaining it to a complete stranger. Jayce couldn’t begin to put into words how the unique compositions of trajectories in his brain operated.

Besides, Viktor was attractive and Jayce didn’t want to scare him away just yet.

Viktor, thankfully, allowed the avoidance.

“Where will you go?”

Jayce made a face. The buzz of the alcohol had, at long last, taken hold of him. “Zaun, probably.”

“I’m a Zaunite,” Viktor informed him, sitting a bit straighter.

One of Jayce’s eyebrows lifted. If Jayce didn’t know any better, he would think he was proud of the declaration. He would never put such a thought into words, but the cane resting across Viktor’s lap and the poor stitching of his coat suddenly made sense. Looking over his new companion, he was reminded of why his exile was particularly horrible.

“That must be why you look so familiar,” Jayce said, giving the scar on his eyebrow a rub. “I must’ve seen you there before.”

Viktor whirled towards him, the threatening tip of his cane narrowly missing Jayce’s side. A new energy had filled the man, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open.

“I look familiar to you?”

The confusion crept into Jayce’s voice. “Yes?”

“Tell me more,” Viktor stood, almost taking his stool down with him. He reached for Jayce’s arm. “Please, you have to tell me more.”

They sat at one of the tables in the far corner of the tavern, Viktor’s satchel placed over his lap and another drink poured in Jayce’s glass. While the bartender hadn’t taken pity on him, she seemed endeared by Viktor and tipped the bourbon over the half-melted ice as they’d moved. Watered down whiskey was better than no whiskey.

Viktor kept him occupied until the bar was closing, two hours later.

Questions about Zaun, questions about Piltover, questions about missing persons that Jayce didn’t know what to do with, questions about the likelihood of missing persons ending up in different city-states for medical attention.

Jayce answered every question to the best of his ability, even when Viktor’s contagious excitement made him want to vomit.

The bartender announced closing in ten minutes, but she didn’t need to address the whole room when only Viktor and Jayce remained.

“You know, it’s kind of funny,” Jayce said, one eye more open than the other. “You’re a dead ringer for their princess. Umber.”

The confident air around Viktor seemed to dissipate, leaving the man quiet and still. It seemed as though he had stopped breathing entirely.

“It’s funny because you’re not a girl,” Jayce explained. “You’re a guy. But you look like her. That’s funny, right?”

Jayce had always thought of himself as a man with a good sense of humor, but Viktor wasn’t laughing with him, so maybe he was one of those people who were only funny to themselves. Maybe the other man just wasn’t into him. He didn’t know which was worse.

Viktor seemed to make a decision. Regarding what, Jayce did not know.

“Jayce,” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Do you have any more money on you?”

By the time they stumbled through the doorway of a suite at Paddlemar Inn, Jayce had convinced himself that they were going to have sex and he was going to let it happen, so he was confused when Viktor deposited him on the bed and didn’t join him.

Viktor’s voice entered one ear and exited the other at random intervals, like a sea creature cresting a wave and dipping back under. There were times where a particularly loud exclamation registered fully— “that explains why Heimerdinger was such an asshole!”— and Jayce wondered if this was how his mother perceived him as a child between his inventions and discoveries.

At one point, Viktor leaned over and grabbed his chin, forcing him to make eye contact. His eyes were golden.

“You are going to take me to Zaun,” It sounded like a dare. “We are going to request an audience with the royal family. We are going to do this together. Do you understand?”

Jayce gave a jerky nod.

Viktor smiled and patted his cheek with a bit too much force behind it.

As Jayce drifted to sleep, he willed himself to remember to ask Viktor in the morning if he owned any jade pendants.

Chapter Text

It was the loving caress of his mother’s hand against his cheek that led Jayce away from the mirror. Without her interference, he would have stayed there all night, attempting to achieve perfection until the stress finally toppled him over like a house of cards. He barely complained when she licked her thumb and used it to wipe at one of his cheekbones— what she saw that he hadn’t, he would never know.

Her gown wasn’t truly a completed gown, but two separate pieces: a white off-the-shoulder top embroidered with flowers and a floor-length red skirt. They matched in a way that would have overjoyed Jayce as a child. She’d be freezing when the rooflines were lined with snow later that night, but it was the most expensive outfit she owned and striving to look like they belonged somewhere they didn’t was as good as a Talis family tradition.

“It will be fine, yes? You will have fun,” Ximena said in her too-practiced Piltovan. Where native speakers would allow the words to fall and rise as they pleased, Ximena often kept the same cadence and was careful to never skip any words. “We will have fun.”

Jayce nodded and smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

She took his hand in her own, her metal fingers like ice, and he thought about her hands the entire walk to the palace.

Their arrival in Piltover from Ixtal when Jayce was a child had not been the joyous occasion his parents had hoped for. Decades before, a blacksmith with the surname Talis had arrived in Ixtal on an expedition and married an Ixtali woman— Jayce’s ancestors on his father’s side. His father had received a letter inviting him to take over the family business in Piltover. Their only Piltovan relative, who they hadn’t even known existed, had passed with no children to serve as her heirs.

Jayce’s father took it as a sign. They could make a name for themselves in Piltover, ensure that Jayce got into a good school and had a bright future. While Ixtal was their cherished home, it was an undeniable fact that it did not provide the same opportunities for success as Piltover.

The trip was long and difficult, made worse when the Kumungu mountain range experienced an unseasonal snowstorm, and his father developed a fever. But they eventually made it to the Golden City. Their clothes torn, their pockets picked clean, their stomachs empty. It was a relief.

But then they were informed of the debt their relative had gotten herself into and how it was now their debt to pay off. His father’s fever didn’t go away and he developed a harsh cough alongside it. They had to pay a minimum of two thousand gold hexes for Jayce to be allowed the honor of taking an entrance exam, where the name at the top of the page mattered more than the capabilities of the candidate.

Their remaining money— only a handful of washers— was spent getting medicine for his father. It was a waste, when he died only two days after they’d purchased the medicine. The doctor’s office didn’t accept returns, either. The cough medicine sat on the top shelf of their fridge for three whole years, until Ximena finally found it in herself to throw it out.

To keep them afloat, Ximena accepted a factory job. Jayce had been sitting home alone, studying for another entrance exam, when one of Ximena’s coworkers knocked on the door. She’d lost two fingers to the poorly maintained machinery and had been taken to an infirmary in Zaun for medical care that she could afford. Jayce had expected for the man to take him to the infirmary or sit with him until his mother came home, but when he turned back to the doorway after putting on his shoes, the man was gone.

He sat alone in their tiny apartment for almost a full day, jumping at any sound from outside and crying himself into short naps. When Ximena finally returned home, just as panicked as he was, Jayce cried so hard that he gave himself his first migraine.

One month later, with Ximena unsubtly refusing meals for Jayce to eat instead, an enforcer rapped on the door. He asked if Ximena had crafted the clothing hanging from their balcony. They didn’t know until later that the enforcer wasn’t just any run-of-the-mill enforcer, but one from the royal guard, their colorful ribboned badge indicative of their status.

The one and only princess of Piltover, a petite girl named Caitlyn, was in urgent need of a seamstress. She was an exemplary marksman and hunter— winner of the Annual Piltovan Fox Hunt when she was only seven years old— and it led to regular tears in her stately wardrobe.

What the job entailed was obvious.

The things asked of Ximena, less obvious.

Patching holes in clothing became staying at the palace late into the night, preparing snacks, emotional labor when Cassandra couldn’t bear it. Ximena would keep Caitlyn’s three poros alive, she would make sure Caitlyn brushed her teeth, she would commit to the task of keeping the child’s toys sanitized.

An absurd jealousy had rounded within him when he was a child, Caitlyn’s demands for his mother irking him. Ximena would speak about Caitlyn as if she were her daughter, but Jayce became more and more aware of the reality as time went on— the bags under Ximena’s eyes and the way his mother would flinch when the princess didn’t immediately bend to her requests of tidying her playroom made it clear that Caitlyn was as much her employer as Cassandra was.

It broke Ximena’s heart when Caitlyn began issuing orders with the same frequency as the queen.

The wages remained low, but low was better than nothing at all.

As they approached Giopara Hall— the wing of the palace where the dance would be held— he could see bright dresses and suits lined up outside. Hand-painted posters advertising the event were glued to the buildings in the surrounding area, a mocking render of a dainty princess and a sharp-edged king with a pointed nose. Prewar propaganda often lent itself to the royal cause. Seeing the crest of Clan Giopara hanging above the entrance, he frowned before he could catch himself.

Four days after his twelfth birthday, Jayce was taken on as an apprentice by Clan Giopara, but not in the traditional sense. He was underpaid and overworked, an extra pair of hands for their more qualified blacksmith who earned a livable wage. When the day came to ask for a recommendation for the academy, the head of the house had looked down her nose at him and sneered— she was happy to inform him that he’d be fired on the spot after acquiring the recommendation. He worked two more tireless weeks, the heat of the forge making his skin tender and thicker calluses forming on his hands, and resigned with enough money to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies until he heard back from the academy.

They had to accept him. Failure was not an option.

He had been dreading the ball since Ximena mentioned it over tea three weeks before and, standing among the noblemen, he realized his dread was entirely justified. Piltovans were not friendly to outsiders, even ones who had been in the country for as long as Jayce and his mother, and it made him anxious.

Somehow, he was sure everyone they passed knew he was waiting on a letter from Piltover Academy.

One that would change his life or ruin it.

He needed the acceptance letter like he needed air. The small salary offered to students would be enough to convince his mother to quit her job, her remaining fingers riddled with nerve damage.

With a flash of Ximena’s letter, taken directly from the desk of Queen Cassandra with the Kiramman Key stamped in the middle, the gold-framed doors of Giopara Hall opened for them faster than the other partygoers. The enforcers stationed at the main entrance knew better than to question the queen’s authority when her reputation was on the line— she needed to put up a front of complete, united respect with Silco and Vander attending.

If Jayce were less mature, he would’ve stuck his tongue out at the line of waiting guests when his mother’s early entrance was met with a round of loud complaining.

Instead, he took Ximena’s arm and led her inside before a handsy enforcer could do the same.

They walked right up to the royal family’s cordoned off section of the ballroom. Ximena had kept the letter out and in full view as they approached. The last thing they wanted was to be perceived as a threat.

Many socialites surrounded them from a distance, giving them a wide berth as they ogled them.

Ximena’s position had given Jayce a unique glimpse into the family.

Cassandra hadn’t shared a bed with Tobias since Caitlyn’s birth, required help getting dressed in the morning because she didn’t know how to do it on her own, and smoked on a balcony she believed was hidden after dinner. Tobias spent more time with their dogs than his wife and daughter, indulged in foreign sweets despite the cavities in his molars, and supposedly favored the company of stablehands. Caitlyn enjoyed making up stories about the maids to get them sacked, threw fits when she had to break in new shoes, played with her food and picked her nose when she thought no one was looking.

The monarchy was gradually evolving into something more stable, an ironic mockery of Zaun with Cassandra having a cabinet of trusted advisors surrounding her as the years ticked by, but the majority of Piltovans wanting the imperial family complicated progress. Where the dismantling of the Zaunite royal family would be met with indifference in Zaun, such an action with the Piltovan royal family would be met with months of mourning. Piltovans had linked their national identity so closely to the royal family, the Kirammans were synonymous with Piltover. They feared existing without someone ruling over them. As long as that fear remained, Cassandra’s word was law.

“I’ll find you something to drink,” Jayce said, releasing her arm.

She grabbed it and pulled him back to her side. “No, you will stay here and keep me company.”

“You should ask her to dance,” urged Ximena with a knowing smile, swirling the glass of bubbling water she’d finally allowed her son to get her. “The worst she can do is say no.”

“She’s a princess,” Jayce’s voice was dispassionate. “She’s got better people to dance with.”

“Jayce Talis,” Ximena hissed. “It does not matter if she is a princess. You know she is still human. She is no better than you.”

“Fine,” Jayce rolled his eyes and laughed when it earned him a pinch on the arm. “I’ll ask her after Heimerdinger’s speech.”

A loud splash jolted Jayce awake.

Blearily, he looked around the unfamiliar room and took note of his surroundings: a quaint bedside table with a lamp and a handmade sign warning against tobacco use, a blue armchair in one corner with a spare set of linen sheets folded neatly on the seat, a jute rug dyed mulberry, an open closet and a presumed bathroom with a closed door from which the noise came.

As if on cue, Jayce heard the noise again and the splatter of water against a tile floor.

He was saddened to find himself fully clothed— he slept so hard, he could feel the imprint of the fur-lined collar of his coat on the right side of his face— and grew more confused. Viktor, the man from the bar, shouldn’t have had any reason to shower so early in the morning. He could recall vague events of the previous night, the ravings of a pacing mad man while Jayce struggled to remain conscious on the bed. With a scowl, he realized it was probably for the best that he hadn’t had any sexual relations with the stranger.

Another splash sounded from the bathroom and he remembered, with a bit of panic, that Viktor had been using a cane. What were the odds that the man had slipped while trying to take an early bath? Things were only going downhill for Jayce.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and jumped to his feet, hurrying to the closed door. The momentary relief of the knob being unlocked was overshadowed by the fear of finding Viktor dead inside. He opened the door.

In the tub was a creature unlike anything Jayce had ever seen. Shades of pink and purple with ruffles and a fat little body, tied together with massive eyes that bore into him. Two tongues flicked out of the mouth and grossly slid over an unblinking eye.

He slammed the door shut.

“You’re awake,” Viktor said with a smile, two white plates balanced precariously in his arms with his cane resting in the crook of his elbow. “They had a full continental breakfast downstairs and I thought I’d bring ours back to the room. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I tried to grab a bit of everything. Didn’t see any hangover cures.”

“Somehow I’m fine,” said Jayce with a shrug. “No headache or anything.”

He politely took one of the plates and rested it on his lap. Scrambled eggs, two thin cuts of bacon, a slice of toast and a puff pastry of some kind were all that rested on the plate. Noting a lack of utensils, he assumed Viktor had forgotten them and he wasn’t going to force him to go back to the lobby for a fork. He picked up a piece of greasy bacon, which was no longer hot but still warm, and shoved it in his mouth.

“I would’ve brought refreshments but,” Viktor gestured at his cane, still held in his arm, and then to the brace on his leg. “I felt that I would be tempting fate.”

Jayce nodded and reached for the toast.

“Can I ask,” He bit into the toast, but it didn’t keep his mouth shut. He continued to speak even with his mouth full, going against everything his mother had taught him. “What happened last night?”

“I’m sure you’ve noticed that you’re still dressed, so we didn’t do anything of that nature,” Viktor said with a sudden laugh. It shook his entire body. “You did, however, call me pretty. Many times.”

“Sorry about that,” Jayce swallowed before speaking, his cheeks going red as a fear of choking gripped him. “As in, I apologize for being rude. Not for calling you pretty, because you are, and— and now, I’m going to stop talking.”

Viktor’s laugh was more of a giggle and it made Jayce’s heart swell with something bright. A surprisingly comfortable silence grew between them.

“There’s a giant lizard in the tub. Big as a dog,” Jayce said after a moment, an icebreaker, shoveling room temperature eggs into his mouth with the aid of the toast. “Should we notify the lobby?”

“That’s Rio,” said Viktor. “Swimming is good for her joints. Prevents dry skin.”

“Ah.”

“Ah,” He nodded. “Are we going to plan our journey?”

“Our journey?”

“We’re going to Zaun,” Viktor pulled a map out of his coat pocket, crumpled and torn at the edges. He’d grabbed it from the check-in desk and the poor excuse for a map only covered the small region the hotel was in. They had to start somewhere. “You promised.”

“I was drunk,” Jayce said slowly, a peculiar heaviness beginning to weigh him down. Perhaps the alcohol from the previous night hadn’t gone peacefully after all. “You can’t actually believe I meant it.”

“So you’re a liar?”

“No,” He said defensively. “I know better than to expect someone under the influence to keep the promises they made the night before.”

“You swore you’d take me to Zaun to find out about my family,” Viktor scoffed. “I’m the spitting image of the princess. You said so yourself.”

Jayce bit the inside of his bottom lip. He couldn’t be sure what he’d seen in Viktor last night, pretty face aside, but he had been blind to the instability of the man. The manic look in Viktor’s eyes had likely excited him through the pleasant blur of alcohol.

“Princess Umber was a girl,” Jayce chose his words carefully. “I’ve been under the impression that you were a man. Am I wrong?”

“I am a man,” said Viktor, lips pressed into a thin line, as if he’d eaten something sour. “I didn’t always know that I was.”

It took a moment for the words to click into place and register fully, but Jayce gave a nod when he understood.

“What makes you think you’re the princess?” The words came out more patronizing than intended.

Viktor, visibly growing more irritated as the interrogation continued, put down his plate and sat beside Jayce on the bed. He turned away from him and lifted his hands to his shoulder-length hair, gently feeling around before parting the locks over a spot at the crown of his skull.

The scar was a jagged vertical line, made of pale raised flesh that was around two centimeters wide and four inches long.

Jayce can imagine a much younger Viktor sitting in a clinic with a shaved head, unaware of who he was. Suffering from headaches and an unbearable pressure from the inside of his skull, throwing up from the bright lighting of a hospital room, his vision blurring at random as he had to relearn his motor skills, feeling like he was moving at a snail’s pace. Experiencing unexplainable bouts of sadness, anxiety, aggression. Confusion that was unable to be remedied due to the damage to his limbic system.

Were the scar and Viktor’s lopsided gait related?

What had happened to him?

Was it an accident or was it intentional?

As the silence stretched on, Viktor began to close in on himself— Jayce rushed to right his wrong.

“You have amnesia,” breathed Jayce. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’ve lived years without knowing who I am,” He said. “I am tired of the unknowing.”

“The circumstances you’ve found yourself in are horrible and I hope they improve, but none of this means—”

Viktor pulled a string out of his shirt and held it out. Jade framed in gold. He’d know it anywhere.

“This is the only relic I have of my past,” said Viktor, twisting the cord between his fingers to show the back of it. “It has the emblem of Zaun engraved on the back. I never considered it could be valuable until last night.”

Jayce thought of a winter gala constructed like a spider’s web, a family of Zaunite royalty stuck in the middle as Piltovans and Noxians alike closed in on them. Breaking away from his mother during the evacuation to help a princess, showing signs of malnourishment despite her title, as she tried in vain to pull jewelry from her father’s corpse. Trying not to drip over the skirt of a deep emerald gown as he rushed down a side street and a head resting against his shoulder.

“Where did you get that from,” Jayce questioned. “Did you… did you steal it?”

The air became cold.

“Excuse me?”

Jayce flinched. “I just— you already took money for this room and breakfast, it’s safe to assume—”

“And that’s the Zaunite thing to do, yes?”

He should say no.

He does not.

“Well, I mean—”

Viktor hit him in the shin with his cane, hard enough for Jayce’s vision to swim. He held his leg in pain, the hit seeming to reverberate through his entire skeleton.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You are what is wrong with me,” said Viktor. “I did not take you for a bigot, Talis.”

When Viktor left, he didn’t come back for a long while. Morning became midday and Jayce stayed on the bed, rubbing at his bruising leg and listening to the amphibian swim in the tub. If Viktor didn’t come back for it, Jayce didn’t know what he’d do.

Finally, as sun became golden, Viktor returned.

“Viktor, I didn’t mean—"

“Save your excuses,” snapped Viktor. “I would like to negotiate.”

Jayce frowned and opened his mouth to argue, but Viktor lifted a hand— a clear signal to stop.

“Were you lying when you said I could pass for the deceased princess?” Jayce shook his head. “Good. I have other information that implies I have a connection to Umber and I have reason to believe that we could pull this off.”

“Pull what off?” Jayce questioned. “What other information?”

“No information that you need to know,” Viktor said. “We both need to reach Zaun, you need to get there in a short time frame. Neither of us has money. It is my first time traveling on my own, that I can remember, and I am in need of a companion for my own safety. When we get to Zaun, I will claim to be the princess. Even if the royal family rejects me, the act will garner attention from locals and I will become a kind of roadside attraction. I will pay you for your services and you will, hopefully, be able to get in contact with your mother using that money.”

It felt like Viktor was trying to negotiate a peace treaty, his voice neutral but firm in his delivery. Jayce was reminded of Caitlyn and how she’d been in speech classes since her first word left her infantile mouth, primed for public speeches and political debates.

“It is not a great plan, but it is all I have to offer. I have nothing else.”

“You want to pass yourself off as the dead princess of Zaun?”

The very suggestion made his skin crawl.

“That is what I said, yes,” said Viktor. “Are you with me or not?”

Jayce hijacked a car.

Well, maybe hijacked wasn’t the right word. The point was that they were sitting in a vehicle that was not theirs and the owner of the vehicle was not aware of it.

“Assault, grand theft auto, public intoxication,” Viktor listed off with one hand on Rio and the other on the grab handle above the car door. He’d only ever been in one other vehicle, but he was certain that Jayce wasn’t a great driver. “You’re a bona fide criminal.”

“Shut up,” Jayce said hotly, aggravated. “We don’t have any money and Heimerdinger’s probably halfway to Piltover by now.”

The next two hours of their drive were spent sitting in tense silence, Jayce tapping the steering wheel and Viktor distracting himself with Rio.

Jayce messed with the radio, turning the knobs back and forth in a seemingly random pattern, and finally flicked the device with his forefinger and thumb. The music blasted out of the speakers and Jayce grinned over at him, clearly seeking praise. Viktor would never give it to him. At the lack of reaction, his wide smile faded.

They rode in silence for several more minutes.

“It’s a Zaunite station,” Jayce said expectantly, trying to passively encourage some kind of response from his traveling companion. “Thought you’d like it.”

Without consciously wanting to, Viktor listened. Through the static, he could hear a man singing about his love being a bubbling fountain. The only radio in Singed’s home was exclusively used for weather and news updates, the signal too weak to pick up anything that wasn’t local. Singed had told him early on that he wasn’t a fan of music— he’d said it was too distracting, headache-inducing— and Viktor didn’t have an issue with the ringing of the cave’s echo.

“It isn’t what I expected,” Viktor said. Jayce looked at him with a hopeful gaze. “I don’t see how my people get anything done if this is the heist music we’re working with.”

Under Jayce’s guidance, the vehicle suddenly veered to the left.

“Sorry! Sorry,” Jayce frantically apologized. “Didn’t mean to do that.”

Viktor gripped the grab handle so hard his knuckles turned white. “You could’ve killed us!”

“I wouldn’t have!” Jayce turned a corner, the car violently bouncing as they hit a new section of road.

“You’re an idiot!”

“I was in control the entire time!”

“I was sitting right here, I saw the whole thing! I wouldn’t have asked for your company if I had known you—”

The vehicle began to spin on the icy road, faster and faster until they rammed into a sloping snowbank.

The impact jolted them both, Viktor more harshly as he desperately held onto Rio’s bag and his body slammed back against his seat. They were loose marbles bouncing around in a container, the only thing keeping them from flying through a window the thin and cutting seatbelts. Jayce narrowly avoided bashing his forehead against the steering wheel.

He coughed, violently, as the belt tightened around his torso.

“Fuck,” Jayce cursed, flinging open his door and struggling to climb out. The belt fought against him for a moment before letting him free. He tumbled out into the roaring snow. He disappeared to the rear of the vehicle before reappearing in front of the windshield, his hands behind his head as he spoke to the wind. Only few statements made it through to Viktor and Rio, still stunned. Jayce climbed back into the car, panting as he closed the door behind him and locked it for good measure. “We’re stuck. Too stuck for me to try to push us out. Should we try walking?”

“Jayce,” Viktor looked over at him and then cast a pointed glance at his cane in the backseat. “I am not leaving this car until the sun is up. Do you understand?”

Jayce slouched in his seat and then began to open his mouth.

“For both our sakes,” Viktor cut in before he could start, sighing heavily. “Please don’t bring up anything you know is going to make this more unpleasant than it has to be.”

Jayce closed his mouth and Viktor readjusted Rio in his lap.

“What’s her name again?” Jayce asked.

“Rio,” Viktor smiled. “She’s a waverider— well, a variant of waverider.”

“Is her species only found around here?”

“No, they used to be in Ixtal as well,” explained Viktor.

“Really? I’m from Ixtal and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like Rio.”

“In some regions of Ixtal, Rio’s species used to be a delicacy,” Viktor said, far too joyfully for Jayce’s comfort. “They’d wrap them in corn husks and roast them.”

“I don’t think I could eat a lizard,” said Jayce, his nose scrunching up with distaste. “What do you mean they ‘used’ to be a delicacy?”

“Rio’s species nearly died out due to overhunting by Piltovan colonizers. When they took over Holdrum and some of the coastal regions of Ixtal a few centuries back, they realized Rio’s species was good for protein,” Viktor explained. “It caused a genetic bottleneck. Now, Rio and her babies are the only known survivors. We can’t be sure if Rio’s species came back in Ixtal, but maybe someday they can be reintroduced to the environment. Regardless, the mutation must survive. Life will find a way.”

When he stopped, he realized Jayce had been watching him owlishly for the majority of their conversation.

“Forgive me, you didn’t ask for a lecture,” Viktor awkwardly shifted in his seat. “I’m used to having someone with an equal level of interest to talk with about these things.”

“I’m interested! I didn’t want to interrupt you,” Jayce said quickly. “I’m not in the same field as you, but I’d love to know more.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m in the field either,” He said. “I’m more for machinery. Engineering little tchotchkes. Singed, my caretaker, was the conservationist.”

Jayce’s knee banged against the console as he fully turned to face Viktor. “You like building things?”

Viktor looked at him as if sensing, for the first time, that Jayce wasn’t a lost cause. He regarded him appraisingly, curiosity taking over.

“On occasion,” Viktor mused, not without pride. “I take it you do as well?”

“It’s what I was in the academy for,” said Jayce. The leather bracelet beneath his sleeve seemed infinitesimally heavier on his wrist. “I’m an engineer and inventor.”

When preparing him for the academy, Singed had told Viktor that the most precious thing an inventor could have was someone with likeminded philosophies. A partner who could understand them and wanted to accomplish the same goals. He told him that, if he accomplished nothing else at the academy, to find that person. He didn’t say it, but Viktor knew his mentor didn’t want him to end up alone in a cave with only his work as company.

As he talked with Jayce about their shared passion for mechanics and the importance of keeping such technology open to the public until they couldn’t keep their eyes open, Viktor thought it would be nice to find a partner in someone like Jayce.

The wet, crunchy sound of snow sloughing off the vehicle made Jayce shiver. He hadn’t opened the door yet for fear of wet ice raining down on him and the possibility of waking Viktor. Though the snow was gradually melting as the sun rose higher in the sky, he doubted he could free the car. A part of him feared the damage done in the crash that wasn’t visible from his spot in the driver’s seat.

When the sunlight bouncing off of the snow became too harsh on his eyes, he looked at Viktor.

Pale-faced in the rigid cold, his features were softer with sleep but still severe. He almost looked waxen— crafted by the meticulous hands of a skilled artist, sculpted to angled perfection, and detailed with the delicate tip of a paintbrush.

Viktor resembled the princess in his memories so closely that it made his chest ache.

The necklace was a damning thing. As far as he knew, he was the only living person who knew Umber had taken it from the corpse of Vander. It hadn’t fallen into the hands of the mob. The significance of the amulet would be lost on anyone except for Jayce.

If Viktor was Umber, what did that mean? What would happen if he brought him to Zaun? The story of survival would be remarkable, but the political landscape of Valoran would shift in unpredictable directions. What if it was for the best that Viktor had ended up in Holdrum?

A more selfish part of him cried out for attention: you didn’t fail her after all. He could sob from the relief of it.

Suddenly, a hand slapped the hood of the car. Jayce’s elbow pressed against the horn. Viktor jerked awake and then groaned with pain.

A woman grinned at them and gestured for Jayce to roll down the window. He complied, squeaking in a rather cowardly fashion when ice fell in and slid down the inside of his door.

“You got closer to town than you thought,” She laughed. “Few more feet and you would’ve barreled into the pasture.”

Jayce tried for a friendly smile, but it came out more as a friendly grimace. “Where are we, exactly?”

“Cravenwick,” She answered.

“Where is that on your breakfast map?” He asked Viktor, but the other man just shrugged and turned his pockets inside out to show he didn’t have it. “You’re an awful navigator.”

“Well, luckily for you, I own the only inn around here,” the woman bounced on the soles of her feet. “It’s the big house with the blue brick exterior. Painted it last spring. How’s about I help you guys out of this death trap and get you someplace warm?”

Jayce opened his mouth to protest, but Viktor’s nails dug into his hand.

“We’d appreciate your help, thank you,” Viktor leaned over Jayce and out of the driver’s side window as she trudged back the way she came. “And what’s your name, miss?”

She flashed a wide grin. “Maddie! Maddie Nolen.”

Her pickup truck was an obnoxious red with wooden bed rails caging in the back— Viktor took the passenger seat while Jayce was pressured into sitting in the back. Viktor was still reeling from the presence of vehicles only a short distance from Holdrum, where industrialization had branched outward enough to allow the townspeople the luxury of automobiles. According to Maddie, gently prodded through idle chit-chat, the entire continent would have access to such technology by the end of the decade.

Viktor envisioned Singed driving a car, polished and inconvenient and brand new, during their fated reunion and hid a smile in the collar of his coat.

Placed between a pharmacy and a post office, the inn stood out with the colorful paint job Maddie had mentioned.

The lobby was cozy and leaned towards being overdecorated with the amount of picture frames on the walls. Signs of a fulfilling life, families on vacation smiling and posing in every single one, each dated neatly in the bottom right corner— some were older than Viktor by twenty years. A calendar, several days marked through with red lines, was nailed beside a wall-mounted telephone. The rustic furniture was adorned with hand-knit quilts and pillows. A plain dish full of peppermints and orange candies sat in the middle of a coffee table next to a guest book. The only thing out of place was an ashtray on the round accent table, but Viktor supposed everyone had their vices.

Maddie had built up the fire and the heat was delightfully comfortable. He sank into a cushioned armchair while Jayce hung his coat in the foyer, deep in discussion with the innkeeper. He stretched his legs out as far as he could in front of him, the bolts of the brace squealing in protest, and didn’t stop stretching until a loud pop came from his spine. He nestled even deeper into the seat with a content sigh.

“We’re headed for the Trans-Valoran railway—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t recommend it,” Maddie insisted. “Not this time of year. It’s dangerous. All the snow just piles on the tracks.”

Viktor had allowed his eyes to drift closed, basking in the warmth of the fireplace like a cat in a patch of sunlight, but his brows furrowed at the sound of Maddie’s claim. The T-V was notorious for being well-maintained in all seasons, often serving as the only form of transportation to other parts of the continent during the colder months. Singed had told him of a winter during his youth wherein the switches along the track had frozen over, uncared for, and Freljord was inaccessible until early summer— it had upended trade across the land for nearly a year afterwards. The upkeep of the railway was, at least on the surface, one of the few collaborative efforts Noxus indulged in without the explicit goal of colonialism.

Only a few hours out from the train station, Maddie would be aware of the importance of conserving the tracks.

He frowned.

She was going to rob them.

They had lied by omission, but she was going to keep them trapped in her inn with the intention of milking every last cog and washer out of them. The first night would be free as promised, but everything that came after would have an exorbitant price tacked on.

When Viktor gripped his bag a bit tighter, Rio let out a small squeak. Would Maddie charge a pet fee or demand papers regarding Rio’s vaccination status? Rio was far from a dog or a cat. He didn’t know how one would go about evaluating Rio and determining if she was fit for a bedchamber. The back of his neck had grown sweaty.

His eyes flew open when Jayce snapped in front of his face, teasing in the way Viktor had the night before last.

Further into the inn, a door creaked open and slammed shut.

“Don’t fall asleep now,” Jayce said. He’d put his coat back on, disheveled and infuriatingly handsome. “C’mon, she wants to show us something in the shed.”

“Ominous,” Viktor whispered in reply, but he let himself be pulled to his feet.

“Very,” Jayce agreed.

They followed after Maddie into the backyard, where snow had begun to fall again, and approached the shed. The little building was… cute. Painted a creamy white with blue accents, dried garlands hanging across the singular blacked out window it had. It had a barn door that Maddie had slid to the side and left standing open.

Jayce saw the blood before Viktor did.

He stopped walking, pausing inconveniently in front of Viktor’s smaller frame, and the cane whacked him in the ankle before it could be stopped. Jayce didn’t react. Viktor leaned around him curiously and saw the red.

He went pale, his free hand forming a tense hold on the back of Jayce’s coat.

“Sorry, fellas, I haven’t had time to clean,” Maddie called out from inside. “Skinned some squirrels I caught this morning. Just wait out there for me!”

Jayce and Viktor grew nervous.

Maddie appeared in the doorframe a moment later. The bottom of her boots were red, her short body sliding around a bit on the slickness of it. She held up an orange slab of some kind with a large smile on her face.

“Smoked salmon! Ready as of last night,” She winked, the action loud in the quiet yard. “You guys showed up just in time!”

As Jayce laughed awkwardly and attempted further conversation, a slimy paw exited the satchel and scrambled at Viktor’s side. Rio had smelt the salmon or, worse, the blood. Her diet was not Viktor’s to judge, only to work with.

With a gasp, Viktor forcefully shoved Rio back into her bag. “Behave!”

Jayce looked over his shoulder, the confusion clear on his face.

“Not you, you imbecile!”

Jayce frowned.

“Haven’t even been here for a full hour and you two are having a lover’s spat,” Maddie laughed, the salmon waving in her grasp. “How long have you been together?”

Viktor opened his mouth to protest, but Jayce spoke first.

“Just over a year,” He said with a bravado he did not feel. “We’re on our honeymoon.”

“Your honeymoon!”

“Our honeymoon,” Jayce confirmed.

“Why didn’t you say so? That means you get to stay here free of charge,” Maddie said. They said nothing, but she tutted as if they had. “No ifs, ands, or buts! I’m not going to charge a couple of newlyweds for lodgings.”

“That’s so generous of you,” He grinned. “Thank you so much. We’re so grateful. Aren’t we, beloved?”

Viktor tenaciously tried to pierce through the flannel at the back of Jayce’s coat with his blunt fingernails. He wanted to pinch the man’s spine between his fingers, damage the vertebrae and curve the spinal column until it was a mirror of Viktor’s crooked one.

“So very grateful,” Viktor said through gritted teeth. He was going to crack one of his back molars.

“I’ll go get the honeymoon suite set up,” She stepped out into the snow, fish in hand, and used the heel of her boot to slide the door of the shed closed. She was in such close proximity that Jayce could see the freckles on her face— winter had rendered them pale, but the flesh of her cheeks was thoroughly dotted. “The good room and salmon for supper! A good start to any marriage, I’d say.”

“Two suites will suffice,” Viktor interrupted.

Maddie looked at him in confusion.

“He’s joking,” said Jayce with a tight grin. “We’ll take the honeymoon suite.”

“I am not joking,” Viktor argued. “I want my own—”

“There’s no need to be shy,” Maddie reassured him. “I can’t hear you two from my room downstairs.”

“Great! We’ll wait for you to get the room ready.”

Once he was sure Maddie had made it far enough inside that she couldn’t hear them, Viktor rounded on Jayce. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“I got us a free room and you’re complaining?”

“You didn’t know it would get us a free room,” Viktor said, simmering with anger. “You’re sleeping on the floor.”

Viktor sat on the edge of the bed, hair still sugar-dusted with snow and cheeks still pink from the wind, and he ignored Jayce’s entrance. The anger seemed to radiate around him, a tangible thing that warped the world around him like steam from a kettle. Jayce was relieved to see his cane placed at the foot of the bed, far out of his reach— his shin was bruised a sickly yellow from Viktor’s previous attempt to break his leg.

The room was charmingly rustic, all of the furniture crafted from wood and carved by hand. The headboard of their bed featured a gorgeous scene of mice gathering items for a massive cornucopia, an artist’s delicate touch clear in the details of blackberries.

“We need to talk.”

No acknowledgement.

“Fine! I’ll talk,” Jayce ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “You listen.”

This time, Viktor glared right through him.

“I’m sorry I accused you of stealing the necklace. It looked like one I’d seen in the past and I was impulsive. I shoved my foot in my mouth,” said Jayce. “I didn’t accuse you because I thought you were a Zaunite, but I know that it hurt you regardless. I could’ve still been acting out of implicit bias. I apologize and I promise I will do better. We had an amazing conversation last night and I’d love it if we could keep that going until we get to where we’re going.”

Jayce was left standing long enough that it felt more like an exercise than a talk.

“Thank you,” Viktor said eventually. “I won’t be forgiving you.”

“What?”

“You are a grown man. You know that an apology is not sincere if you expect forgiveness.”

“I don’t! You don’t have to forgive me,” argued Jayce. “But you didn’t have to be so rude about it, either.”

“I didn’t mean to be.”

“Viktor—” Jayce started.

“Jayce,” Viktor cut in, mimicking the other man’s tone. “You of all people should know how our words can be misconstrued.”

Jayce, seething in his frustration, turned on his heel and left the room.

“Where are you going?” Viktor called out after him.

“Wherever you aren’t!”

The civil conversation they’d held for hours the night before was far behind them.

Viktor settled on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He patted his stomach with both hands twice and Rio hopped up next to him, still damp from the tub.

“Am I being too hard on him?” Viktor asked the room.

Rio made a noise awfully similar to a croak.

“I knew you’d agree,” Viktor said, making a mental note to find some of Maddie’s precious salmon— hopefully, untouched by the curing process— for her after a shower. If he couldn’t find any, he was sure the woman was the type to keep containers of nightcrawlers somewhere in the house for her hunting and fishing hobbies. “He can sleep in the chair tonight.”

The process of rinsing out the tub was a practiced one with Rio trapped outside. The amphibian would paw at the door until the sound of the moving shower curtain made it clear Viktor wasn’t going to let her join him and then she’d find a dark corner to pout in.

He turned on the shower and let the water heat, picking at his face in the mirror. Before his eyes, the glass began to fog.

Unbidden, he thought of Jayce in the snow. Working diligently on their stolen vehicle. Was he being cruel? Singed had once told him that his stubbornness would do him more harm than good in the long run. Jayce had apologized for his wrongdoing and, while Viktor didn’t have to forgive him, it would make their trip easier to pretend. Their night in the car had proved they could get along, almost a little too well— Jayce seemed to understand the intricacies of Viktor’s mind and could keep up with him, their thought processes complimenting each other while reaching a similar destination in the end. If it weren’t for the time constraints of their dire situation, they could accomplish something magical.

With a shake of his head, he pulled back the curtain and climbed in.

His thick hair had only just gotten thoroughly drenched when he heard the bathroom door creak open. The cool air from the adjoining room seeped in, touching the back of his calves and sending a shiver through him.

“Jayce?” He asked, facing the stream. “Is that you?”

The other man didn’t respond.

“I’ve been thinking. We should talk after I get out,” He swallowed his discomfort as the water pelted him. The complete lack of a response was harsher than any reprimand Viktor could’ve imagined. A rock settled in the pit of his stomach. “I was childish and that wasn’t fair to—”

An arm flew from around the curtain and pulled his necklace tight around his throat, yanking him backwards as he flailed uselessly and let out a strangled cry.

Grunting with the effort, he let the tire iron fall to the ground. It was so heavy, it cut through the upper layer of snow and disappeared instantaneously. It left behind only a comical outline.

It had taken him twenty minutes to walk to the inn from the vehicle, slipping and sliding along the road and trying not to tumble into the snow. After sliding downhill twice, out of sheer desperation, he’d used the tire iron like a pickaxe to pull himself along as his biceps burned. A memory of his youth struck him in a similar fashion— snowflakes burning his cheeks, his clothing too thin, his father sacrificing his own coat to keep Jayce’s body warm— and it made him think of his mother waiting for him to come home.

Unless he found a socket wrench, he’d have to wait until the hardware store opened the next morning. They didn’t have the money to buy, much less rent, anything from the store’s inventory to begin with.

Despairingly, Jayce looked to the shed.

When Maddie had shown off the salmon with the door wide open, he’d gotten a glimpse of a pegboard displaying miscellaneous equipment. He considered his choices: waiting until morning to see if he could rent a tool to get home or risk getting thrown out of an inn. He picked the one he’d chosen to focus on for the past two hours and tried to pull the door open. He met resistance. He retrieved the tire iron and went to force the door open.

He fumbled with the light switch.

It smelled of iron and stagnant water.

Up close, he could see the extent of the blood— it was strange to think that so much blood could come from such little animals. Blonde fur was clumped together in the stuff, slowly being dyed pink. Jayce steeled himself and turned. Racks of salmon dried in one corner and, in the other, stood racks of salmon coated in salt. It was a small operation, but infinitely more complex than Jayce had thought. His quest for tools forgotten, he curiously walked towards the salt-covered salmon.

He slid between two racks of fish and was seized by intense but brief claustrophobia as the wood pressed to his chest and back. Against the far wall, coated in a thin layer of crystalline salt from years of careless dusting, sat a black trash bag.

When he poked it with his foot, it fell over with a clank. Something heavy had been sitting on top of a suspicious mass inside. The bag hadn’t been tied shut.

Jayce used the tip of his shoe to open the mouth of the bag.

A ceramic thermos depicting the Progress Day Massacre had toppled over, the lid covered in gore, and he turned away to puke when he recognized the body of the yordle inside.

He couldn’t get his wet fingers under the cord as Maddie slung him around, knocking shampoo bottles and lotions and soaps from the sink. The porcelain bowl of it clipped Viktor’s hip enough to make him shriek and thrash violently. He kept sliding along the floor, the action pressing his neck further against the cord as gravity attempted to take him down.

Rio tried to bite at Maddie’s ankles, but her boots were too thick and the creature’s teeth weren’t sharp. Distressed squeals filled the air as she frantically circled the pair.

Maddie was relentless. Merciless in her approach. She tugged the cord tighter, wrapping a loop around one of her hands to reduce the slack. She was shorter than him, but significantly stronger— bending backwards slightly ensured Viktor’s feet would completely leave the floor and leave him writhing in the air.

His vision began to pulse, the world around him fading in and out in black flashes. It struck him that he couldn’t even beg for his life, unable to make any noise but a strangled wheeze.

The door swung open with enough force to shake the frame.

Jayce.

The necklace around his neck loosened and he collapsed to the floor, curled in the fetal position and clutching at his throat. No blood had been drawn, but there would be a nasty bruise. His whole body hurt and the adrenaline kick made him feel ill. His breath was a rattle in his chest as Rio protectively curled herself around his head.

Cold fingertips touched his side and his legs kicked out in a feeble attempt at defense.

“Easy,” said Jayce, as if calming a frightened animal. “It’s me. It’s Jayce. I’m not going to hurt you.”

A blanket was wrapped around him, but he shivered still. Jayce helped him up and handed him his cane. His neck should’ve been his main concern, but the pain in his hip was fierce.

Jayce had caught Maddie by surprise with a tire iron, a large gash on her forehead bleeding down the left side of her face, and tied her to a chair with the help of spare bedsheets.

“Why did—” Viktor stopped talking, the scratchiness of his voice painful and foreign.

A large hand rested on his shoulder and he looked at Jayce with a furrowed brow. The other man nodded with easy acquiescence and spoke for him. “Why did you do this?”

“You already know the answer,” said Maddie. Her eyes were calculating as they scanned over the room, looking for an out. Unless she managed to burst through the sheets, she wouldn’t be going anywhere. “Why do you want me to repeat what you already know?”

Jayce and Viktor exchanged a confused glance.

“We want an actual answer,” Jayce pressed. “Did you do this alone? Did someone send you?”

He’d chosen the correct words.

With a manic grin, Maddie opened her mouth and lifted her tongue.

There, on the bottom, was the emblem of Noxus scarred into the flesh.

In the next moment, she’d clamped her teeth down on the appendage and severed it entirely.

The tongue hit the floor with a wet smack and blood gushed from her mouth like water from a fountain. Viktor had never seen so much blood. It was viscous and bright red as it poured, splattering against the wood paneling of the floor. She’d leaned forward to ensure she wouldn’t choke on her tongue, but the position kept the blood flowing at a dangerous rate.

Viktor pressed his cane to her sternum and pushed her back, the chair tipping with her.

“Rio!” Jayce was making a grab for the creature as she barreled across the floor, right towards the tongue. Viktor took his cane and whacked it, sending it beneath the bed with a smear of blood in its wake, and the sudden movement stunned her enough for Jayce get a grip on her. “She’s so fast— she’s choking! Maddie’s choking!”

Maddie had started convulsing on the floor, gurgling and thrashing and flinging blood everywhere. Viktor rushed over to her, sliding in the blood and nearly falling as he hovered above her. He tried to lift her, but he wasn’t strong enough. He only succeeded in making the choking worse. By the time Jayce had shoved Rio into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, knocking the overturned chair onto its side, Maddie had ceased movement entirely.

They were now bound by blood.

When he was a child, Ximena had told him about yordles and their ability to respawn. The Teemo and the Bandle Scouts series had been one of his favorites, the picture books teaching him lessons about morals and a variety of skills for peaceful resolution. His favorite had taught him about yordles, which Teemo and the Bandle Scouts were, and he was delighted by the stories of Bandle City— notably, he was happy that Teemo came back to life at the end of the story after canoeing over the edge of a waterfall.

As an adult, standing in front of the empty trash bag, Jayce was surprised to find that the stories of fantastical yordle revival were not bullshit.

“You’re sure he was dead?” Viktor’s hoarse voice made his own throat burn in sympathy. He was holding the thermos from before, opening the lid and walking to the shed door to pour the liquid inside on the snow.

“He was dismembered. Horrifyingly so. You saw the how the fur and blood was all of over the place before,” insisted Jayce. “It’s just like him to traumatize someone before hitting the road.”

Viktor exhaled a laugh through his nose and Jayce marked it as a victory.

Once they knew to look for bodies, the elder owners of the inn were fairly easy to find in the pantry. They shoved them back in without another word and focused on transporting Maddie to the shed, her small body barely denting the thick layer of snow as Jayce tugged it across on a layer of blankets. They tucked it around her, swaddling her, and closed the shed for the night. She wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Sitting on the plush couch, Viktor’s headache from the lack of oxygen had settled behind his temples. Maddie had used up all the firewood the old couple had chopped for their home and the fire was quickly dying despite Jayce’s best efforts to feed it paper— pages ripped from the guest book. It felt blasphemous.

“Why would a Noxian agent try to kill me?” Viktor asked aloud.

“I wish you’d stop talking.”

Viktor’s eyebrows raised.

“Because of your throat! I meant because of your throat,” Jayce rubbed his face with a large hand, exhausted with himself. “We can talk all about this tomorrow. Or the next day. Whenever you don’t sound like you’ve tried to deepthroat a chainsaw.”

Viktor frowned, but didn’t speak again.

Ultimately, Jayce abandoned the fire and accepted they would be cold. They stayed awake until the round moon was high in the night sky, feeling the temperature of the house drop around them.

When sleep began to pull at him, Viktor selected a new bedroom upstairs and kept Jayce from leaving with a gentle hand around a thick wrist. He didn’t ask, but Jayce understood the silent plea: stay, I don’t want to be alone right now.

While he climbed into bed and attempted to get comfortable, Jayce sat in a rocking chair in the corner.

“What are you doing?” Viktor finally asked.

“You said I’d be sleeping on the floor, I picked the chair,” Jayce joked, but he grew serious when it didn’t land. “I think it’s for the best that we operate with the belief that you are the princess— prince. I don’t think it’s proper to share a bed with you.”

Viktor was torn between the joy of being believed and the revulsion of being put on a pedestal by the man he’d hid a body with only a few hours prior.

The rocking chair was too small for someone of Jayce’s stature to sleep in, he’d be sore for days afterwards and struggle with the drive. The sheets were so cold they felt damp and he’d learned from their stay in the car that Jayce emitted the body heat of three men, whereas Viktor’s body already struggled with regulating body temperature. Jayce exiling himself to the chair for the night would only serve to lengthen their trip and exacerbate their barely resolved animosity towards each other.

“Jayce,” Viktor rasped, breath coming out in a puff of white even indoors. He heard the rocking chair creak in response. He rolled over to face the wall and patted the vacant spot behind him. “Get over here. I won’t ask again.”

Jayce wanted to argue, but the lethargy of the evening had worn him down. He’d worry about propriety in the morning. When he relaxed into the bed, Jayce stared at the back of Viktor’s head and thought of the scar beneath the curtain of hair.