Shoestring Theory

TWENTY-THREE

“Eufrates!” he called.

The prince had his eyes closed, but he opened them partway when he heard his name.

Cyril looked over the length of his body, searching for the wound. He had a shallow one on his outer left thigh, the fabric of his trousers sliced to reveal an open gash that stained the material. This was not the trouble. Eufrates’s disabling wound was up on his chest, where a plume of crimson spread across his shirt and a thick, knitted vest he had put on as some form of cover as he was dashing out of that tower.

Cyril thought about the cuirass he had bled upon, how it had been wasted on fighting him . If only Eufrates had had time to put it on here.

Quickly, he tore open the front of the shirt to assess the damage. He hoped the cool drizzle of rain was at least soothing on the wound.

“Cyril…?” Eufrates blinked a few times against the light, eyes dull and dreamy.

The thundering in his chest amplified when he realised Eufrates was conscious enough to sleep. He would keep him awake.

“What happened?” he asked. He tore a piece of fabric from his tunic and used it to push down on the open wound, stopping the blood flow.

Eufrates shut his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, they were in focus, gazing up at Cyril’s face.

He chuckled, which was not at all what Cyril was expecting.

“This isn’t helping my case at all…” he murmured under his breath.

Cyril knit his brow in confusion. “What? What case ?”

Eufrates hissed when he felt Cyril press harder on the wound. “ Ah … never mind. You asked what happened? Clearly, I lost a duel. I do not think I am the weaker fighter. I gave him enough trouble that he has fled to lick his wounds, tail tucked between his legs, but he did not play fair.”

Cyril couldn’t help the snort that escaped him. “You didn’t think Atticus would play fair? He is evil .”

“ I am evil, Cy.”

“No, you’re–”

“Oh, shut up.” Eufrates looked up into his eyes, but he was not quite angered. He was frustrated. Annoyed. He reached up, weak as he was, to grab Cyril’s hand. “I suppose if I am not to make it out of here, I may as well ask for a moment of your time.”

“You’re not going to die . Now who’s dramatic?” But there was a note of desperation in Cyril’s tone, like he was trying to convince himself more than Eufrates.

He should have been going after Atticus. Putting an end to the monster once and for all if it meant having to wield a proper sword for the first time in his life, but he was rooted to the ground. Atticus could escape into the safety of political asylum for all he cared.

And if Eufrates wanted to wax prose at him in what he thought were his dying moments, Cyril would do something useful with his time. He was not an expert physician. He had barely passed surgery at the Academy, but he knelt down next to Eufrates’s chest and began to thread the wound.

“You should not be wasting your time,” Eufrates said.

“You shouldn’t have let yourself be hurt this badly,” Cyril sniffed.

Eufrates grimaced. “And that is the crux of it, no? I am weak and you are my caretaker.”

Cyril looked up from his work for a long moment. He was about to ask what on earth he was talking about, but Eufrates continued, in a high, cloying voice that did not suit him.

“‘Poor Eufie, meek little Eufie, taken in by the plotting of a malicious sorcerer. It saddens me so that I did not prevent it. It is my fault he is evil’,” he said.

“Where… is this going?”

“Cyril, I thought the worst thing you had ever done to me was leave. Regard me with suspicion and disdain. Abandon our marriage because I disgusted you so deeply you could not stand to share a home anymore, let alone the same bed. You had your reasons, but I did not take it kindly. I did not handle it… well.”

“But I was wrong ! I’ve asked forgiveness–”

“I do not need your apologies!” Eufrates roared, and the hole in his chest pulsed with new blood that Cyril desperately tried to weave over. “Listen to me, please. If I die here and the last image you have of me is the one you’ve concocted in that frayed brain of yours, I will not be able to forgive myself .”

Cyril was silent. He waited.

“It does not matter that I was enchanted. I am glad to know it, I am sure it would have changed things, had I not been influenced, but we cannot know that. I will never be king in this lifetime, and that is a good thing. That is a wonderful thing.

“The truth, Cyril, is that were it my sister being ensorcelled by a mage, it would not have taken hold. A seed needs water to grow. It needs fresh air and rich soil. Tigris’s mind is a barren wasteland of insecurities. I am a garden.

“I do not think he even needed to go through the trouble of using magic . I think he could have just said the right things to me, and I would have made the self-same mistakes, over and over. I did not care about government. I did not care about being king . But I needed the respect, because there was one thing I cared about above all else.”

Eufrates reached up to stroke his cheek. His hand, stained red, left marks on Cyril’s hair and dappled his face in blood. Cyril did not care one bit, but Eufrates flinched at the sight and pulled away.

He looked up at the sky for this next part, avoiding his gaze. “Since our wedding, I had advisors and courtiers alike needling me about my mistake. How I was besotted and inexperienced. How you were unsuitable, irregular and… well, worse things. And I was fresh, a princeling. Easy to push around, so it seemed. I did not have the respect I needed to assert myself. And I especially did not have the respect I needed to protect you .”

Eufrates looked up and to the side, suddenly swept away by some self-consciousness that prevented him from looking directly at Cyril. “I was always acutely aware of how you were seen in court. How I made you be seen in court. If it were up to me, you never would’ve known about it, because I would’ve sent each and every slick-tongued gossipmonger to the gallows. Unfortunately, even being king didn’t allow me such a direct approach, not at first.

“But respect is so difficult, time-consuming to cultivate. Fear, a strict iron grasp on the throne, is much easier.”

Cyril finally spoke, voice crackling with emotion and the strain of magic. “I don’t need your protection.”

Eufrates let out a huff of laughter from his chest. He rolled his eyes. “And I don’t need yours . Do you see the predicament we are in, my love? You think me soft, tender. A sweet man who was suckered by a smarter, better wizard. Cyril, that is the picture you have started painting in your head and I would rather die than pose for it. I was tricked, yes. But I was also lucid. My mind was hazy, but it was my own. I have done things I thought I’d never do, that I was not strong enough to resist, but these are my failures. You will let me own them or I will perish in humiliation. I would rather die than see pity in your eyes whenever you look at me.”

Cyril was impressed by how much the man could talk while having an open wound in his chest being stitched back together. He grunted and shook through the process, making Cyril just narrowly avoid missing a stitch a couple of times, but he kept a hand on his chest, as firm as he could manage, and continued on with his work. It was difficult to see through the rain, and through the tears misting his eyes as he listened to Eufrates and saw his bloodied, battered chest at the same time, but when he was done, his shoulders nearly shook with relief. It was not a replacement for proper treatment, but it would keep the wound closed and Eufrates alive for the foreseeable future.

When he was finished, he finally looked down at Eufrates’s face and fresh tears beaded from his eyes down to his breast. Cyril wanted to tell him he would be alright. That he had managed to stop the bleeding. Something pragmatic and useful, a promise that they would perhaps continue this conversation later.

Instead, he blurted, “You still love me?”

Eufrates regarded him a long while, utterly baffled by the question. Like he had not heard right, or Cyril had started speaking in a foreign tongue. Then, once it truly sunk in, he laid his head back against the soft, wet grass and breathed out a sigh that almost sounded like a laugh.

“I have never stopped loving you. Vexing though it may be, there is not a thing you could say or do that would make my world stop revolving around your light. I am your adoring, your begrudging, your eternal satellite, my love. Whether you want me or not.”

Cyril’s chest felt like it was going to burst apart from the buzzing inside it. He dipped his head to plant a kiss on Eufrates’s forehead, then another, soft and tender, on his lips. He tasted blood, but he also tasted honey and nectar and love. Eufrates reached up to wrap his arms around him and he sank into the embrace.

“It is a shame, but I love you too,” he said, quiet, mirthful, against Eufrates’s lips.

They only broke apart when they felt the earth shake and rumble beneath them, as though being pried apart. Despite knowing what it was, Cyril still startled at the jolt.

“What is that ?” said Eufrates, looking wide-eyed around them as though he could find the source in the garden.

Cyril beamed. “Tig is almost done, I think.”

Eufrates blinked, grasping his meaning. He returned the smile. “Can you believe we tried to run a country without her?”

“I cannot!”

He could perish like this. Cradling his husband in his arms, so full of saccharine his teeth ached. He needed to make sure they made it out safe, of course. But this might be the best his life was going to get.

But Eufrates’s expression had changed. It fixated not on Cyril, but on a point behind his shoulder and his lips parted to say something. A wordless shout, and he bodily shoved Cyril into the grass and the wildflowers as he shot up, pushing himself on his uninjured leg with his right arm outstretched to deflect something.

Cyril watched, sprawled and helpless, as Eufrates’s hand was run through by a blade, pierced all the way like a threaded needle. And he watched as Atticus, disappointed, yanked the blade back and Eufrates fell to his knees in agony.

“I came back to finish you off,” Atticus spat down at Eufrates. “And what do I find instead? Two lovebirds to stone instead of one.”

Atticus did not look on the verge of death, but he did not look well. Like Eufrates, magic or not, there was only so much healing a mage could do in so little time. Sweat beaded at his brow and he was ghostly pale. His breath was laboured, like he needed to be concentrating on when to breathe in order to carry on without bursting into an airless fit. The rainwater had glossed his ruddy hair over his forehead, and he was bleeding from a cut above his brow that made him hold one eye semi-closed. Eufrates had given as good as he got, even though he ended up losing the fight. Atticus had had the benefit of magic and trickery and better armour. Eufrates had gone into a fight knowing he was bound to lose, and Cyril would give him an earful for it later .

The king of Cretea turned to Cyril.

“Did you get bored with me so easily? I suppose your type is…” He glanced down at Eufrates, clutching his hand to his chest. “Well. See for yourself. Really, Cyril, you should have stayed with me.”

“It was never an option,” Cyril said through gritted teeth. He got to his feet and held his hands out at his side, going through the overwhelming list of spells that lived in his mind. He truly wasn’t very good at reacting.

Atticus sneered at him. “Big talk for someone who’s failed to undo my pattern. You are here, and I can still feel it in my blood.”

Cyril took a step back and Atticus advanced on him. This was good. It was getting him away from Eufrates, bit by bit. “I am not destroying anything, Atticus. I would have a word with your fiancée.”

Atticus blanched. The violet rings around his eyes grew darker. He understood the situation immediately. He lunged at Cyril just as Cyril began to weave a spell, any spell, to push him back, but Cyril was not a trained duellist, and Atticus was.

He did not strike Cyril with the sword, though. Instead, he had a spell of his own. It must have been the only offensive spell the king knew, but it was the only one he needed. He could not reach Cyril at the distance they were standing, not in time, not physically, but he could cast.

Cyril’s hands seized and cramped up, balling painfully into fists against his will. It felt like they were wrapped in gauze, layers and layers of it, he could not flex or contract his fingers. He could not weave.

That was when Atticus unsheathed his sword again, ready to have Cyril at the other end. But that is also when the constant rumble underground came to a crescendo, building faster and faster to a peak.

The garden shook around them. The earth cracked, soil was displaced, trees were felled. It had been a massive pattern, and it would have massive consequences. But it was far enough away that they did not have to run from it.

Yet.

Atticus screamed. It was a grotesque, angry scream, inhuman and feral like a wounded beast. Immediately, he lunged for Cyril again, but Eufrates stepped in front of him, sword out this time, and even with his hand as mutilated as it was, he managed to parry the blow before his legs buckled and he fell to one knee.

“You think you will get away with what you’ve done?” Atticus roared. “I will kill the both of you. You, Eufrates, the crazed tyrant, poisoned by weakness, and your powerless little pet will be reunited only by the Undertaker.”

He held his sword up like an executioner ready to behead, frenzied and convulsive. Cyril had no magic to fix this. He would have no magic to salvage it if it came to pass. For a moment, time stopped.

They kept putting themselves in front of each other. Self-sacrificing in the name of love, in the name of family. That is what he was about to do. He was about to let Atticus tear out his throat with his blade if it meant Eufrates got to live, but his blood was boiling. He was angry and afraid and desperately determined.

He did not want that. He did not want to fall on the sword for Eufrates, but he did not want him dead either. He wanted them both to live.

It was a wild, foreign feeling, but it had been building up within him ever since he woke up in that clearing again, bleary, confused and hopeful . Setting things right didn’t have to mean self-sacrifice. It just had to mean he would do anything within his power to get exactly what he wanted. What they all wanted. This sudden, brazen selfishness was the driving force that made him push his husband away and lumber towards Atticus himself.

He had promised he would save everyone. Everyone he had failed to save the first go around. He could do it. The thrumming in his chest, the overwhelming sensation that filled and fuelled him, be it mania or courage, had him convinced he could.

He was going to save everyone he held dear.

Including himself.