Shoestring Theory

THIRTEEN

“ I don’t like it.”

They had returned to the room after supper with Atticus. The king had been a perfect host and gentleman. He assured Cyril once again that he was free to stay in the palace as long as needed, as a guest not a runaway. He would be cared and provided for, and Atticus vowed to keep him secreted in Cretea and safe if he were to be discovered. He would not be handed back over to Eufrates, even under threat of conflict.

Cyril thought he was being much too generous with his promises, but it left him starstruck all the same.

Now, he and Tigris were settling in for the evening. Despite sleeping away the better part of the day, he still felt a weariness that he could not yet shake. He was just finished changing into the cotton nightshirt a valet had provided for him when Tigris spoke.

Cyril turned to her, only mildly curious. Perhaps she was unsatisfied with the food.

“What do you not like, Tig?”

She had taken up one half of the bed entirely – despite being under half the size of an average human – and had crossed her paws over one another very properly as if she were about to lecture him on something.

“The way he is around you. It is too informal. I think he is courting you.”

If he had a drink, Cyril would have spat it out. “ He ?”

“Oh, do not pretend ignorance. Atticus. I dislike how he speaks to you.”

For a moment, he was speechless. He coloured, then paled. “Tig, I… I would not dare make advances on your–”

“I am not jealous , Cy,” she said. Cyril wasn’t sure how much he believed her. “I am missing and I am a cat. I do not expect him to be made of stone when we are not even married.

“I just wish he had his sights set on anyone else.”

“I do not think he has his sights set on me.”

“Then you are stupid.”

He opened his mouth to say something, shut it, then tried again. “That’s–”

“He is much too old for you, for one thing.”

Cyril balked. “I thought it was the other way round. Remember uncle Cyril?”

“He doesn’t know that! He thinks you two-and-twenty and treats you as such. He called you a little jester! Like you are some child’s bauble.”

He made the decision not to share with her their dance at her wedding dinner, where he had been called both a Pierrot and a poppet, as well as silly. He did not mind it, truly. It did not feel malicious coming from Atticus.

“I was not offended, if it matters to you.”

Tigris narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you fancy him?”

“I!– Tig, you know I would never dare–”

Tigris projected a noise into his brain that sounded very much like her impression of a babbling, whingey child, meant as mimicry of his own protests. It was quite rude.

“I did not ask if you would betray my sacred trust regarding my milquetoast affianced.”

“I thought you liked him. Found him perfectly good-looking and nice.”

“I do. You find my judgement of him unfair, which is why we are having this conversation. And you are still dodging my question.”

He raised his hands in exasperation and threw himself on the bed beside her. “For fuck’s sake, Tigris.” He brought the same hands up to his face and dragged them up and through his hair. “Yes, I suppose I am a little taken.”

“Ha!”

“A little ,” he hissed. “He is just… very kind. I am not used to it.”

Tigris put a paw on his arm. “I was not trying to torment you, Cy.” She frowned when he glared straight through her. “Perhaps a little bit of torment. A healthy amount of hazing.

“But it is good to be aware of your own feelings, I think. I had to watch my brother be in consummate denial for several years and it made him very, very dense and stupid.”

Cyril finally relaxed and showed her a small, reassuring smile. “Fair enough.”

He lay back on the plush, quilted bedding and propped his head under one arm. Then, he fished the string of a necklace from under his collar.

“I would not worry, though.” Even in candlelight, even being old and weathered as it was, the ring glinted in his hand. “I am, after all, a married man.”

Living in the Cretian palace felt very much like living in an ornate puzzle box. The legacy ones, passed down over generations, kept under lock and key. Not only did he get lost frequently and embarrassingly, there were also rooms and corners he knew even if he had the solution on how to enter, he could not. He was a guest.

In Farsala he was home. He walked freely and, within reason, could go where he wished. He knew every nook and cranny of the place he grew up in and the worst that would happen if he barged into a chamber he was not supposed to be in would be a mild sense of embarrassment. Or, when he was a youth, a scolding from Heléne.

Cyril realised that for all his proximity to power and nobility, not once had he ever been purely a guest . Even at the Academy, there had been strict rules and regulations to follow, on which he was instructed the very first day of orientation and he followed to the letter, to the annoyance of his more outgoing roommates who saw curfew as a suggestion rather than law. Here, he was told he had a great degree of nebulous freedom, and he was to make himself comfortable.

Not exactly knowing what either of those entailed, he chose to idle away his days devoting himself to very little.

He kept to a fairly monotonous path every day, from his room to the dining hall, to the gardens, sometimes to the library Atticus had shown him the second evening they dined together.

The library was small and interested him little. It held titles of a ludic nature, fiction and gossip, sensationalist pamphlets and fantastical novels. Cyril took a few with him back to the room, but he found himself too unsettled to truly concentrate on the words on the page. Also, Tigris insisted he read aloud to her, which, after a half hour, made his throat sore.

He was sure there was some sort of bigger, more expansive library tucked away in one of the corners of the palace he had not dared explore yet. Atticus was such a learned man: it was difficult to believe he didn’t have an entire shelf somewhere dedicated to science theses and old treatises. Cyril was the studious sort. He would much rather be spending his time finding some way to improve his magic, his knowledge, his usefulness than to sit and putter, entertained by prosaic fluff.

The garden, though less stimulating, was at least a bit more noteworthy. He remembered when Tigris mentioned her husband-to-be kept game wandering around as pets. This was not true. They were familiars. Cyril couldn’t tell right away, but after a closer look (and clarification by a very helpful butler) he figured out their true nature. Also, one of the animals was a whole, grown bear, and it was not attempting to eat or maim any of the smaller creatures wandering around the gardens. Notable other familiars were a peacock, a snow-white fox and a tan-coloured hare that seemed to vanish from sight every time Cyril blinked.

“Oh,” Tigris said when he relayed this information to her. “Well, that’s quite a bit more fun. Maybe I’ve been too harsh on him.”

Truly, he did not know why he expected any other reaction from her.

The menagerie indicated that, somewhere within the palace walls there were mages working for the king. Cyril would have done anything to meet them. Day in and day out, he interacted with a handful of servants, Atticus and Tigris and he was dying for variety. The thought of being surrounded by other mages made him miss his Academy days. There had been so much to learn. Cyril himself had specialised in a fair bit of everything, but the ones who dedicated themselves to one singular branch of the pattern always had him in wide-eyed awe. He liked surgeons the best. It had always been his worst subject, anatomy and medicine, and surgery was an even more refined form of that . Talking to them was fascinating. Seers and enchanters came a close second. Cyril was too much of a coward to delve into predicting the future, so he thought very highly of seers. And enchanters, with their easy words and effortless grace, were just always the most fascinating to hold a conversation with. They were very much like spiders, in a way. Nature’s weavemasters, pulling on the threads of all around them.

He did not, however, find any of the mages. They did not dress like – as Atticus would so aptly put it – ‘silly little clowns’ and were thus indistinguishable from anyone else residing in the behemoth of a palace. He could, of course, go up to each and every person he saw on his way to eat and sleep and eat and ask if they happened to be a mage, but this might be regarded as very rude. He could also simply pry . Look into the pattern of the palace and its surroundings and search for any disturbances, held spells or more complex weaves. This, he was certain, would be regarded as very rude.

To stave off loneliness, he dined with Atticus every evening, doing his very best to avoid Tigris’s scrutinizing eye as she lapped up a bowl of starchy, rich soup. He did not need her to tell him to keep the king at arm’s length. No matter how tepid Tigris’s feelings were for her fiancé, he had neither the intention nor the power – the wedding band was an ever-present reminder, after all – of stealing him away.

He had to admit, though. For lack of any other company (Tigris had at one point tried to selfishly make him spend time with Miranda to awkward, disastrous results), Atticus provided him with a comforting, soothing presence that he craved dearly at the end of each day. Just being close to the king undid decade-old knots on his spine that crept back into his body as soon as he stepped out of the dining hall. Atticus’s attention and his need for some company that wasn’t cat-shaped and demanding was a heady, powerful combination. Almost strong enough to get his mind off Eufrates.

But just almost.

He was told multiple times to try and relax, but he could not. There was a herd of ants crawling within him, just beneath the dermis, and he could not scratch them away. He felt like bouncing off the walls or melting into the floor in his uselessness.

In theory, all he really needed to do was wait out the worst blow to the kingdom – the crown princess’s death. Eufrates had no right to inherit if his sister showed up on his doorstep, happy and healthy after a long period of mysterious absence. This was easier said than done when there was so much at stake.

Couched in all the luxury a king could provide for him, it was almost tempting to forget the future he crawled his way out of. But his mind made sure to supply him with enough night terrors of red skies, rundown shacks and barren beaches to keep him focused and just on edge enough to have the consequences of Eufrates’s reign playing constantly at a low level in the back of his mind. With the rot at the end of a despot’s war looming over him, it was difficult to sit idly by.

Perhaps he could find a way to bring time forward, all the way to the date of Tigris’s death and then the two of them would go forth and win back their home. But he was fairly certain such a ritual would need preparation, and notes and a circle and he had none of these available.

So he spent these first few days wrought with agony. Until he asked, quite unceremoniously at dinner, if Atticus perhaps needed another mage in his retinue. Not a specialist, to be sure, but someone who could pick up odds and ends.

To his credit, Atticus did not immediately say no. He said no after a gregarious smile and a fond ruffle of his hair.

“My dear Cyril, I do not want you working for me.”

Cyril frowned. Atticus didn’t seem to quite understand. “No…” he said slowly. “But I would be glad to work for you .”

He regarded him for a while with those understanding seafoam eyes and then sighed. “I am sure you would be wonderful. I have met your peers and I have heard great things. But if I take on Farsala’s grand mage… it will have consequences.”

Cyril’s lunch turned in his gut. “Ah.”

“Yes. I will have stolen you away. It would be lawful cause for conflict. The regent would demand satisfaction.”

“But you did not steal–”

Atticus’s lips twitched upwards. “Did I not?”

He had lost count of the number of times he felt heat creep up his cheeks when speaking to this man, but there it was again.

He said nothing, so Atticus spoke again, comforting. Laying a hand on his shoulder as he always did.

“Perhaps once the situation cools, if you still wish to stay, I will give you something to do. But for now, my only request for you, Cyril, is to unwind.”

Cyril could do nothing but nod.

It was an almost impossibly difficult request for someone with his nature. He would fret and fidget over the smallest things. Relaxing under the threat of a declaration of war felt as ludicrous as if he had been asked to give the entire palace feet and make it dance the pavane (which, for the record, with enough time and resources, he could do).

And yet, over a couple more days, he did feel himself slowly lowering his guard. He was unravelling, but it did not feel like a bad thing. His daily walks about the palace became pleasant, almost dreamlike. If he forgot himself enough, he could even pretend like there were no problems at all. No deaths, no disease, no conflict, no war, no Eufrates . It was a state of blissful ignorance he rarely found himself experiencing. Even Tigris, who he was sure would have advised him in much the same way, found this change in behaviour unusual, but there was something about this new life, this sense of powerlessness, the fact that there were no expectations of him, that felt quite freeing.

After a while, he had even given up his search for other mages, for more knowledge. He stopped petitioning Atticus for a place among his servants. He had formed some half-wrought plan to ask Miranda for a cleaning job if his fidgeting became distressing enough, but even this he gave up as a senseless, childish endeavour. Better to do what he was told.

Through nervousness, and anxiety, and restlessness and finally this last dissociative state, one week and a day passed since he arrived at the doors of Cretea’s palace that fateful dawn.

What he felt now, this gauzy, dreamlike ghosting through Cretea, its palace and its inhabitants was not entirely unwelcome. Cyril had grown from a trembling child to a fretful youth, to an unbearably anxious adult, but life in these courts, devoid of expectations, came every passing day with a new, rejuvenating sense of ease. He slept better, with fewer night terrors. He looked forward to whiling away the hours tasting local delicacies, reading all the fluff pieces Atticus allowed him access to in the library and to Atticus himself, jovial and entertaining. Understanding and uncomplicated.

He could not possibly be expected to retain loyalty for some conniving, brooding Machiavel who intended to keep him shut up in a room all hours of the day under his watchful eye. Regardless of how often he was reminded of that same man, every time the chill of well-preserved metal brushed against his breast, it was like a vexing warning not to stray too far into the comforts of these charming foreign courts.

It was difficult not to, though. And easier still to be secretly happy at how long he would have to be exiled. There were months until Tigris’s day of death. And so far, not a move from Farsala in protest of his egress. Perhaps they were already much too preoccupied with Tigris’s mysterious disappearance.

Perhaps Eufrates, thrust into this new realm where he had yet to muster up the full force of his influence, had deemed him too unimportant to seek out, despite what he had said otherwise.

Perhaps Eufrates did not care that much about him leaving, especially as this was technically the second time.

Cyril chose to try, to varying success, not to think about Eufrates at all.

He grew comfortable to the point where he had to tell Tigris to relax a bit. He had gotten into the habit of, when Atticus was unavailable, taking his meals in his room so he could chatter idly with her without being thought of as a madman. Overall, it was also going quite well. He had snuck a few more sweetmeats than he should’ve and was nibbling on one while he read the third chapter of a horror book on pirates to Tigris (he’d decided her commentary was worth spending his voice).

That same night, he heard a tapping at his window. Tigris reacted to it almost instantly, but his head felt so full of cotton and fluff that he had to shake it several times as though this would somehow help clear his ears.

It did not make any sense. Cyril was not staying on the ground floor and there were no trees or branches he could see outside. When the noise became recurring, he walked across the room, Tigris in tow, to investigate.

In the dead of night, with only the candelabra lighting his room, it was impossible to clearly see the source of the tapping, but he was fairly sure it was a bird. Cyril pressed his face against the window and a hard, grey beak and salt and peppered feathers slammed against him so suddenly that if it were not for the glass, he would now be short one eye.

He recoiled from the window with an undignified scream just as Tigris leapt onto the parapet. Her eyes grew huge, and she began to paw at the lock.

“Cyril! Open it!”

“Wh–what are you doing ? It’s trying to kill me!”

“Shut up. It’s Ganache!”

Cyril blinked a few times, refocused on the view outside the glass and stepped forward for a closer look. It was, indeed, Ganache.

“Oh,” he said.

Then, with a bit more urgency once Tigris shot him a sour glare, he rushed over to help her unhook the latch and open the window enough that the crow could pass through.

In such a grand room, it was doubtful anyone could hear them, but Cyril still lowered his voice to a whisper.

“Ganache! What are you doing here? Is Tantie alright?”

Ganache nodded and he realised she had to be. The bird would not look so hale and superior if she were somehow harmed. It flooded him with relief.

Before he could ask another question, the bird lifted up one of her talons to reveal a small, rolled-up paper tied to a string around it.

“Cyril, look!”

“Yes, I see it. It must be a message from Tantie.”

Guilt burnt a fire through his belly once he realised he had not been nearly as worried as he should’ve been about his aunt. The past few days he hadn’t even thought of her. He had gotten much too comfortable. With shaking fingers, Cyril undid the wrapping around the paper and unfurled it, careful not to rip. The lettering was small and tight, crammed to fit as much text as possible into such a small scrap.

It was not, in fact, a message from Tantie.

Cyril had not seen this handwriting in an age, but he recognised it instantly. Despite the limitations of the page, the calligraphy was beautiful. Immaculately clear and yet frivolous in all its flourishes. It deserved a frame and a placard. It was as much a work of art as any draftsman’s etching, even before reading the words.

Cyril did not want to read the words, of course, but he forced himself regardless. The letter was addressed to him after all.

Dearest Cy,

As you know, you have always been my muse. My shining starlet. My endless beacon of inspiration.

I am sure, then, that it will bring you great joy to find out you have inspired me to invade the kingdom of the man you’ve chosen to shack up with a whole eight years ahead of our known schedule.

I did not believe you would sink so low as to run away from me a second time, even when you claim at every hour of the day to wish to foil me. I may have my foibles, my love, but I am not stupid. And I will not be kind.

I know exactly where you’ve gone, where you are and who is abetting you. You well knew that there was not a corner in this entire world you could try to hide from me where I could not find you. The only matter is whether I would leave you alone in your spinelessness or not. So, then, you have made your choice. You have dragged all who abet you down with you in your cowardice, and I hope when I have managed to take your life, your everything, we will meet again in hell so I may do it all once more.

Return to Farsala only if you wish to fall upon my sword. There is no calling off my decision. This is merely a formality.

I wished you to be the first to know.

All my love,

– E

If anything could snap him out of his stupor and remind him of exactly what was at stake it was this. Cyril’s blood turned to ice, congealing him in place with the letter in his hand long enough that he did not think to hide it away from Tigris. Once he realised he needed to throw the scrap into the fire before she ever read a single, horrible word, it was already much too late.

“It is unprovoked! He will be the one to blame for the war!”

“That has not stopped him before,” Cyril said, though his throat felt desperately parched and the sweetmeats still on his tongue took on an acrid aftertaste. “He is an artful orator. He will spin it so he is right and his cause is good.”

“We must go back!”

Upon hearing this (curious that Ganache was able to hear her, but he did not have time to dwell upon it), the crow let out an imperious caw, and a second, slightly damp piece of paper fell from her beak.

This was Heléne’s handwriting. He recognised the quasi-illegibility immediately. The paper was folded four times over. It was the same size as Eufrates’s missive, but its contents were much more concise.

DO NOT COME BACK.

KEEP HER SAFE.

Tigris saw this one as well, and looked on her way to mutiny until Cyril steeled his expression.

“She would not have written that if she were not right. I cannot take you back there, Tig. I will go alone.”

“The fuck you will!” Her eyes narrowed into slits. She looked rabid.

Cyril flinched. He was not so good with a stern face as his aunt. But he held fast. “Then I will not go at all.”

“We have to! We cannot let him–”

“Eufrates will find a way to start this insensible takeover one way or another. I do not matter to him aside from being a convenient excuse. The only real solution is to dethrone him.”

“Then I will–”

Later, in retrospect, Cyril would have time to be proud of how fast he was. Faster even than a cat’s nimble reflexes. He saw Tigris about to shatter her gemstone collar on the ground without a second thought and wove her to stop, plucking at the pattern around her until it looked as if she were caught in an invisible net.

While she struggled and cursed him to the hells, he carefully opened up Heléne’s pattern on the gem (magnificent work, he might add) and added his own caveat to the spell. Tigris would no longer be able to break the collar on her own. The only one who could release her from the spell – well, now it was beginning to have all the makings of a curse – was Cyril himself.

He let her figure out what he’d done herself when he released her and she immediately tried to break the gem so hard and so vigorously she made a dent on the wood floor. Cyril would later cover that up with an expensive tapestry hanging on the wall.

“What did you do to me?” she hissed.

“I have one job, Tig. And it’s to prevent your death.”

“You are treating me like a child . Worse than that: like an object .”

“I do not care what you think of me, Tigris Margrave. I will treat you like an exuberant crystal vase if that is what I must do.”

“You are a coward.”

“I have heard this one before, I’m afraid.”

He saw the tears bead into the corners of her eyes and his heart felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand. He hated this. He did not wish to do this. He wanted no part in her suffering.

But, at the same time, he was no stranger to playing the villain. And he had committed much worse crimes than confining a princess to a gemstone indefinitely.

As if dragged by the weight of a thousand chains, he sank down to the floor to sit and be at her level, leaving himself defenceless against another scratching if she so wished. Mercifully, she did not take the bait.

“I am sorry, Tig. I wish I could just find a cure. Prevent the illness entirely instead of… of this . But I am frightened. I cannot lose you again.”

She was crying now, and she did not raise her head to look at him.

“We will fix this together, in time,” he pleaded. “It is only a few months now, and you will be queen once more, and there will be no war, and I will be your grand mage if you wish it, or… or I will rot in the dungeons if that is what you would prefer. But before that, we will fix this. I did not come all the way back here not to, and when we do it, we will do it as a pair.

“Queen Tigris and her mage. You said we suited one another, did you not?”

She sat in silence for a while, letting her tears dry, before she said something in a hushed, uncharacteristic voice.

“…I do not want you rotting away in a dungeon, Cyril.”

“That is very kind of you. Exile, perhaps.”

She tilted her head and gave him a wry smile. “No. I do not hate you, Cy. I don’t believe anyone alive hates you as much as you do.”

It caught him off guard, being laid bare so suddenly, but he tried for levity against all better judgement.

“Eufrates, perhaps.”

“No.” Her answer came so quick he wasn’t even sure she had heard him. Surely, she hadn’t. “Not even Eufrates. I know it.”

Cyril sighed. “Alright. I… I will go back to Farsala and you will stay here, then?” There was a hopefulness in his tone that was wholly undeserved.

She shook her head, indignant again instead of upset. This was a much more manageable version of Tigris, at least.

“Absolutely not! You think I’ll let your skinny little legs walk out there on your own? You’ll be eaten alive before you get through the door.”

“Might I remind you I am the greatest wizard of my time,” he said, with no small amount of irritation.

“Meaningless if there is an arrow through your neck. You are not going.”

“Then – then neither of us are going!”

She considered this. Chewed through it like a piece of sweetmeat. “I am amenable to that.”

“A moment ago, you would have had my head.”

“Quiet, you. I am formulating a plan.”

Cyril’s brows rose as far up as they could go.

“A… plan ?”

“What? I can’t make my own plans?”

“I didn’t say that, I just–”

“I said quiet.”

He quieted. It was an order from his queen, after all. While she paced around their room in circles, more a lioness than a cat, with her head down and tail swishing contemplatively, Cyril made his way back to the window.

He looked outside.

“Ganache… I don’t suppose you’re still around.”

Without a shadow of a doubt meaning to scare him on purpose, Ganache descended from a high branch she had perched upon and cawed right in his face.

Cyril jumped. “Gods! That wasn’t necessary at all, was it?”

The crow eyed him impatiently. Cyril pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep, hopefully calming breath.

“You are to return to Tantie. I take it once you arrive, both she and Eufrates will know I’ve read their letters.”

Ganache nodded as though this were quite obvious.

“Well, I… I would like it if you could buy us some time, that being the case.”

She chirped and tilted her head to one side.

“Delay your return. I am sure it takes only a few hours to arrive back there. Give us a day, at least, to warn Atticus. It is his kingdom. He should not be caught unawares over a jilted lover.”

She seemed to consider this.

“I know Tantie will know if you are in danger. If you are delayed and she feels nothing, it is of your own volition. We can keep you in here.”

Ganache peered over Cyril’s shoulder and looked at his opulent guest room with the same scorn one would gaze upon a hole in the ground. Cyril exhaled deeply.

“I will fetch you many, many raisins.”

This earned him some attention at least. After some tortuous moments, Ganache finally hopped from the parapet of the window to a nightstand by the bed, where she perched territorially.

Cyril smiled genuinely at her. “You will have a king’s breakfast, and then you can leave in the morrow if you like, but fly slowly,” he said.

Ganache chirped her assent at the same time as Tigris snapped out of her own machinations. She jumped onto the bed to be closer to him.

“I’ve got it,” she said.

Cyril folded his arms over his chest. “I am dying to hear it.”

“Do not sound sarcastic before you even know what it is,” she snapped, and continued before he could protest. “Atticus is protecting you at the moment, right?”

“I… yes. He is.”

“Once you tell him about Eufrates – which I know you will – he might not want to anymore. It may be too much of a risk. We have to guarantee he wants to keep you safe.”

“…You want me to tell him about you.”

“No! Gods, you are very frustrating. This one’s all on you, Cy.”

“I’m afraid I don’t grasp your meaning.”

“You and he! You should court! Marry, perhaps.”

He needed a second to pick his jaw up off the floor.

“…You think I should court your fiancé.”

“Oh, I’m sure that ship has sailed. You like him so much more than I do! Ever since that wedding dinner! And I would like you to be happy.”

“I thought this was a calculating ploy.”

She shrugged. “Two birds.”

Ganache crowed from her perch. Both he and Tigris chose to ignore it.

“I… Tig, I cannot seduce the king of Cretea.”

Tigris shook her head and tutted as if speaking to a small child. “Oh, Cyril. Oh, my dear, dense, stupid, idiot little Cyril.”

“Ey–”

“You already have.”

Cyril flushed a deep red, threatening on violet. He felt as though all the blood had drained from the rest of his body up directly to his face and he must look like a vascular nightmare.

“‘Ooh, Atticus, I am not a damsel’!” she crooned.

“I said that because I am not ! I am a soulless old man!”

Tigris laughed. “You are certainly shameless as well.”

“I am feeling a great deal of shame right now.”

“Well, in any case, once you get over yourself you will see how beneficial this will be. Before, Eufrates’s claim to war was that his mage had been stolen. Easy to spin as a noble cause. If you come out and declare yourself in love, he will seem cruel and a tyrant, getting in the way of a happy coupling by refusing to find a new mage.”

Cyril leaned in, horrified and impressed all at once. “You’ve really thought this through.”

“You may be very learned and intelligent, but I have been groomed for politics since birth. This is my playing field.”

“Well. It all sounds quite solid, but there is one small issue.”

Tigris cocked her head. “If you say cold feet–”

“No, no…”

He pulled his wedding ring from out of his nightshirt and brandished it at her like a holy symbol. Again, it glimmered and shone even in dim light, as if to remind everyone of its presence.

“Even if I were to form any kind of… attachment to Atticus, the ring would certainly prevent our marriage.”

“You don’t need to get married right away–”

“It,” he choked. “It prevents other things, too.”

Tigris gaped at him like he was the stupidest man on earth. Which, perhaps, he was.

“Why would you do that to yourself?”

“I was twenty-three!” he blurted. “I was in love!”

Tigris brought one paw up to her forehead and rubbed away a migraine. “Is… there a way to undo it?”

“Not that I know of. It’s a powerful curse.”

“Curses can be broken, can’t they? I know that much about magic.”

“Seeing as it’s my own spell, I’m the one who ought to know how.”

“You’re very unreliable. Surely someone else could help.”

Cyril glanced briefly at Ganache, but shook his head. “I cannot push my luck corresponding with Tantie. And it would not be something so simple that a few notes back and forth could suffice.

“I… think there is a library here somewhere. Or something of the sort. I see so many familiars in the garden, there must be wizards all over and they would need resources. I just have yet to see it.”

“I will look for it!”

Cyril’s face flooded with consternation. “On your own?”

“What will they do, arrest me? I am just a lost kitty-cat.”

He chuckled. He did think her reasonably safe within palace walls. “Very well. You do that and get me once you’ve found it. What do I do?”

Tigris grinned. “You’ve got a king to seduce!”

“…Of course.”

“Do not look so sour. You are only being bashful now because you have to do it on purpose.”

Cyril sighed. There was perhaps some truth to what she was saying. He did not acknowledge it to himself, but it did feel good to speak to Atticus, to have his attention.

He imagined a life with the charming, gregarious king of Cretea. A good man who would treat him well. It would please him, he thought, if that was his fate.

And at the same time, a wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm him. The ring burned into his skin, but the pain was not what had his stomach tied up in knots. He had felt the sear of the ring. He had become used to it.

Cyril could not think of a future wedding day without remembering his first. The way he and his new husband danced all night, how he’d sang sweet, improvised tunes in his ear, how for years after he woke up every day in a state of lovesick euphoria because the man who owned his heart lay beside him.

He could not admit this to Tigris. It would make her immediately give up on her schemes. But he was, and would always be, desperately in love with his husband.