Shoestring Theory

TWENTY-SIX

Later, he was told he slept for seven days and seven nights. He did not doubt it at all. He felt very much like a princess in a storybook, if the princess had blood on her clothes and had not washed her hair in days.

When he woke up, though, someone had cleaned and dressed him. A small mercy.

A greater mercy, still, was that Eufrates was by him. It seemed he had managed to find enough space on Cyril’s horribly cluttered floor to fit a bedroll, which Cyril spotted out of the corner of his eye. It was light out, though, and Eufrates was awake, sitting in a chair waiting patiently for him to wake up.

Cyril had not dreamt at all those last few unconscious days, but if he had, he was sure his dreams would be plagued by worry over what became of his husband.

To see him again was a great relief. Eufrates did not look the picture of health. He had bruises all over the exposed skin on his arms and collarbone, and there was a cut above his brow that Cyril had not noticed before, along with the heavily bandaged hand, but he was fine . He was recovering. He was clean and freshened up and his eyes no longer weighed heavy with sleeplessness. When Cyril opened his eyes, his beautiful lips split into a genuine smile.

“Welcome back, my love.”

Cyril sat up so quickly he saw stars behind his eyelids. He steadied himself with his hands on his thighs just as Eufrates braced to catch him if he swooned.

“Eufrates… oh, it is so good to see you.”

“Your aunt told me you were unharmed. The overexertion had drained you and you needed rest. But I needed to make sure you did not pass away in your sleep.” Eufrates’s smile melted into a sheepish grin.

“Tantie… she is alright? She took care of you?”

Eufrates nodded. “Aunt Heléne will outlive all of us if we are not careful. And I have not felt better in some time.”

Cyril had been so worried about Eufrates, it was only very belatedly that he noticed something about him had changed.

“Oh, no,” he said. His hands flew up to his own jaw and he was genuinely dismayed. “You’ve shaved!”

Eufrates blinked at him. “Pardon?”

“Oh, darling, it is such a shame! You looked so much more dashing!”

“ Dashing !” Eufrates brought his own hand up to stroke at his shaved chin. “Where is this coming from? You’d liked my beard trimmed, hadn’t you?”

Embarrassed by the outburst, Cyril brought his knees up to his chest and hid his face behind them. “We had just started courtship… I did not want to offend.” He paused. “But oh, I am sorry, Eufrates, I did always prefer the rugged look.”

Eufrates regarded him for a long while before he burst into laughter, clutching at his stomach.

“That is so like you, I cannot possibly be offended now !”

“You do not have to–”

Eufrates waved a hand in front of him. “It is no trouble. It has always been a great hassle to maintain this shorter style. And now that I no longer have to keep up appearances…”

Cyril tilted his head. “How do you mean?”

“Ah, yes. You’ve been comatose.”

“Because I saved your life, mind you–”

“I know, my love.” Eufrates got up from the chair. He took the two steps required to close the distance between them and sat next to him on the bed. Then, he took Cyril’s hand and kissed his knuckles. “Thank you.”

Cyril flushed a deep pink. “You are… distracting me.”

Eufrates rolled his eyes. “You make me sound so calculating.” He sighed. “I have abdicated from royalty.”

Cyril froze. He could not have heard that right. He did not believe it was even possible for him to do that. “You’ve…?”

“I asked Tigris if I could spend some quality time in the dungeons instead, as penitence for my horrendous stint as regent, but she denied my request so instead, well… I am no longer prince. I am barely a courtier, come to think of it.”

“What… what does that mean?”

“It means I no longer have any claim to the Margrave wealth and privileges and, more importantly, it means I cannot inherit the throne. Even if my sister passed away childless, the title would go to a distant relative. I am unfit to rule.”

Cyril understood his decision. He truly did. It was the kind of thing he expected Eufrates would do, if he knew it was an option, but that did not stop him from feeling melancholy for him. He was sure it was not an easy choice.

“…What will you do?”

“Well…”

Eufrates raised his right hand, the one that was not holding Cyril’s, and he saw, finally, how it trembled just from the effort of keeping the fingers outstretched. Even after a week, the limb was still heavily bandaged.

“Auntie has said that it is nerve damage. It will heal with time, with practice, but it may never be the same.”

Cyril looked at the way Eufrates’s fingers jerked when he tried to wave them about.

“That is…”

“It’s my dominant hand, yes. Silly to try and stop a sword with the other one.”

He was crestfallen on Eufrates’s behalf. So devastated his shoulders shook and he squeezed Eufrates’s other hand tight, throat swelling with emotion. “What will you do? How will you write? Play ?”

Eufrates gave him a fond smile. He kissed his brow and when he spoke there was an optimism in his voice that Cyril had not heard in years. “Cyril, my love, I have two hands. And I have an inordinate amount of time at my disposal from now on, after my disgraceful exit from politics. I shall have to learn my craft once more.”

He was still unconvinced. “Do you – do you at least want me to – I could fix your room!”

Eufrates silenced him with another kiss, on his lips this time. He really did miss the beard. “It is not my room. I no longer live here, though I have been graciously allowed to stay until I can find a new home.”

“Your instruments–”

“Cyril!” Eufrates was laughing -– laughing ! – at him. “Fine. If you insist, I believe I should be able to learn the fiddle quickest with my left hand. Fix it for me, please.”

“I will fix all of them,” Cyril huffed.

“I will not have learned much of a lesson that way.”

“The fiddle and the lute and the viol and… and the harp. That is my favourite. And I will help heal your hand.”

“Mm? How shall you do that?”

“There must be a way. I will ask a physician.”

Eufrates’s lips spread into a grin. “Are you to be my private attendant, Cyril?” He leaned in close to plant kisses down from his jaw, slowly, to his neck.

Cyril was easily lost to the touch. He melted under Eufrates’s tenderness, and threw his arms around him to pull him closer, wrapping them together in an embrace that made his skin catch fire. He had not felt like this in so long: he could not believe he had ever given it up.

“Is he finally awake?!”

Tigris was at the door, braced against its hinges like she had just grinded to a halt from a dead sprint.

“I heard voices!” she said and entered the room without leave to sit on the other side of Cyril’s bed. In the meantime, Eufrates had put some distance between them, much to his chagrin.

“She has come here every two to three hours since your collapse,” Eufrates murmured in his ear. “It’s like she doesn’t have any duties.”

Tigris, who had heard every word, shot her brother a scowl and pulled Cyril by the arm to her own side of the bed, so she could properly fuss over him.

“I am a new queen! It has been a very fraught transition; I am allowed to take breaks!”

Cyril’s eyes lit up. “You’ve been crowned?”

“Oh, yes.” She grinned. “Almost immediately. Oh, Cy, it has been such a mess! I shall tell you all about it once you are better rested and sworn in.”

He blinked. “Sworn? In?”

“As grand mage! Auntie has been filling in for you, but she is so mean! And how she criticises! I think she is getting too old for the job.”

“I… Tig, I cannot possibly. Eufrates has resigned, I believe I should also–”

“Perhaps!” she cut him off. “Perhaps both of you should leave me alone with the weight of a kingdom on my girlish, delicate shoulders!”

Cyril glanced at her shoulders, which were neither girlish nor delicate.

“Tig…” he said.

“But!” She grinned devilishly at him and patted his cheek. “Eufrates was just a common prince…”

“Still here, Tig,” Eufrates said from his half of the bed. She waved him away as though he were a fly.

“You, however, are the greatest wizard of your time! I would be a fool to allow you to retire, even if it’s how you’ve decided to self-flagellate. You are an asset too valuable to lose.”

“You will not give me a choice?” Even as he said this, a smile threatened to tug at his lips.

“If you start any kind of descent into nihilism, I will personally smack you upside the head, how does that sound?”

“It sounds like I have to obey my queen.”

“A quick study! Very good!”

Eufrates cleared his throat. “Will I get any time with my husband, dear sister?”

Tigris sniffed at him and wrapped an arm around Cyril’s shoulder. “Perhaps if you had decided to stay in the palace. Besides, as far as the law is concerned, you two are not married. It is improper for a commoner to be so close to my mage.”

Cyril gave her a wry look. “You are being so mean to your brother.”

“Am I? Is he even my brother anymore?”

“Oh, don’t sulk , Tigris. It’s unbecoming,” said Eufrates.

“Children, please,” Cyril chided. “I love you both equally.”

“That had better not be true,” Eufrates murmured close to his ear, just as Tigris shot him a wild grin.

Cyril let out a theatrical sigh. “Very well. I love you both,” he said, making sure to emphasise the retraction.

“She will get over it once she realises it means she will be able to get out of the palace every so often to visit me,” said Eufrates.

Tigris perked up, just slightly, but she said nothing as she leaned her cheek upon Cyril’s shoulder.

“Speaking of marriage, Tig,” he continued, breaking into a Cheshire grin. “How has it been going with all your new suitors?”

Tigris blanched. “You are so right, Eufie. I am a very busy woman.”

She planted a quick kiss on Cyril’s cheek and absconded like a ghost, bidding them a curt goodbye from the door. Cyril gave Eufrates a confused look.

Eufrates shrugged. “It turns out, even if you murder your fiancée, a foreign king, with your bare hands, if you are Queen Tigris Margrave, you are still in very high demand. She has had to beat the suitors off with a stick. Says they give her nightmares.”

“Has she soured on the idea of marriage, then?”

“Ha. I do not think she wants to think about it for quite some time. Besides, do you remember the Cretian butler?”

Cyril’s brows rose well into his forehead. “Miranda?”

“Mm. Unfortunately for Tig, she was not the guileless accessory to King Atticus’s schemes that my sister secretly hoped for. I have heard it is difficult to pine for a war prisoner.”

He had to pretend very hard not to be delighted by this piece of gossip. “What war ?” he said. “At worst, it was conspiracy.”

Eufrates cocked his head to one side and seemed to truly consider this. “You’ve got a point.”

Cyril laughed, holding a hand up to his lips, and shifted next to Eufrates on the bed. He let the warm, comfortable silence fill any spaces between them before he spoke again, making his tone overly casual even as he traced the band under his nightshirt with his thumb.

“Do you think we ought to? Get married again?”

“Mm…” Eufrates thought about it. Or, perhaps, pretended to think about it. “I don’t know. It’s such a hassle.”

It seemed the unspoken agreement was to be very cavalier.

“It is! And we are so old !” Cyril said.

“Very old,” Eufrates chuckled.

The door to his room burst open again with an ear-shattering bang. Tigris was back. Tigris, most likely, had not left. He hoped she had heard every word of their conversation and that her ears burned scarlet.

“If the pair of you imbeciles don’t get married again, I am going to make unwed public affection illegal ! I will lock you in prison! I will throw away the key!”

“Would we be sharing a cell?” Cyril asked.

“ No !”

Cyril looked at Eufrates, who was returning his gaze. They held the stare for a long moment before the two of them burst into hysterics.

The next few days were ones reserved for Cyril to play a game of catch-up with the court. Despite Tigris’s fervent insistence, she made sure he was well-rested and sound of mind when he told her he was ready to take on responsibilities as her mage. He only truly inherited Heléne’s title after a gauntlet of proving to her he was ready and eager for the job.

He did not, however, inherit her tower. The top floor felt isolating and, frankly, a bit intimidating. He liked his quarters just fine, and he would have access to Heléne’s vast studies whenever he wished. Besides, what kind of monster would displace an old woman from her home?

Once he was settled with his position, Tigris finally let him into the workings of their court. He had been dying with curiosity over why they were not under siege at this very moment by a handful of Cretea’s allies and, as it turned out, once she had destroyed the pattern that held that kingdom together (the better part of it a series of enchantments captivating most of the region’s magical talent), a bevy of mages had come forward before a grand court to testify against the wicked, conniving King Atticus.

Tigris herself had managed to spin the tale so she was a damseled fiancée who had stumbled upon her husband-to-be’s plans and fought to put a stop to them. Cyril did not know what kind of damsel trounced her affianced so humiliatingly in combat, but he would not contradict her story even under knifepoint.

They were using Farsalan funds to help rebuild Cretea’s palace and restore their government to some sort of order, which seemed to be appeasing to all. Cyril wondered why there were a lot more inhabitants wandering the halls of the palace, too, until he was finally told any displaced stragglers who presented themselves to Tigris would receive asylum within her walls.

Cyril thought this very generous, for a first decree. But with so many new mages wandering about, he checked every nook and cranny of the pattern every single day to an overzealous degree. He would make the rounds of the palace grounds and by the time he was finished, half the day had been spent in diligent surveillance.

It meant he did not get to see Eufrates nearly as much as he would have liked, which vexed him very much. But not nearly as much as it vexed Eufrates himself, who scheduled a most embarrassing audience with the queen to demand Cyril get at least one day off a week (though could it truly be considered a day off when he went seamlessly from being monopolised by one Margrave sibling to the other?).

He had been in the great hall when it happened, and Cyril heard the entire thing. He had to, mortified, with his hands covering his face, watch the Margraves squabble over custody of his time.

For his part, Eufrates took whatever he could salvage from his room and found a guest chamber to stay in until he had a more permanent place to stay. Cyril insisted if he wanted to see him so badly, he should simply stay in his apartments in the tower.

“If you let me into your rooms, I will make sure you never leave them,” Eufrates had said to him, looking as pleased with himself as a well-fed cat.

Cyril, red-faced and flustered, told him he was much too old to be talking like that.

Despite all their put-upon, grousing insistence that they were already bound together and there really was no need for any kind of ceremony, Tigris did manage to drag him and Eufrates to the altar, in the end. Their first wedding had been bombastic. A state affair. A royal wedding fit for a king, but it was not what either of them had truly wanted.

Cyril and Eufrates were married in a quiet ceremony, with a handful of trusted palace-dwellers present and their family: Heléne and Tigris.

It turned out to be the happiest day of Cyril’s life, and not just because he could finally get that damned ring off his neck and onto his finger where it belonged.

Eufrates, who had never taken his off, watched in amusement as Cyril struggled with the string around his neck, sure at any moment it would strangle him even as it offered no resistance. In retrospect, the fact that Eufrates had never removed his wedding band should have been the dead giveaway Cyril needed to know that no ridiculous, lovesick spell would bind them more tightly in adoration than what they already held for each other.

As a wedding gift, Tigris offered them an indiscriminate plot of land. She did not specify where, and Eufrates was immediately paralysed by choice, despite his grand musings of a cabin by the sea. But for once, Cyril’s eyes lit up with the rare certainty that he knew exactly what to do.

On a sunny, summer morning, a day after they had returned from their honeymoon in Farol (which was much more vibrant and picturesque when it was not horribly cursed), Cyril led Eufrates out into the woods, past a copse of trees, a babbling brook with three rocks to cross it and into a clearing dappled by sunlight and wildflowers. With them, they carried barrels of salt, as it was impossible to draw upon grass with chalk and blood would be very inappropriate for the occasion.

Eufrates watched, practicing his left-handed fiddle as Cyril meticulously salted the soil with a circular design. It took him an hour to get it right, which was good. He had cut down his time quite significantly since the last magic circle he’d drawn.

Then, he ran to Eufrates’s side and held him by the arm, urging him to watch as he set the spell alight and the ground rumbled and shook.

From the ground, sprung a small, fully formed, idyllic cottage, with a curved, chimneyed rooftop and an attached second storey that took up half the building and rounded off into a point. Its own miniature tower.

He had given it three rooms. One for the newlyweds, one for Eufrates’s artistic pursuits (Cyril had a whole tower in the palace to himself, it was only fair) and another for… well. He did not know what it was for. It could be for anything, really. A guest room. Perhaps something more permanent. He thought himself silly, imagining himself a parent at his advanced age, but they were in a new world, and this was a new start. He felt younger every day.

One of the doors inside the cottage, that seemingly led to nowhere but a back wall, connected to Cyril’s own study in the palace. He told this to Eufrates, who seemed instantly keen on abusing this privilege. Perhaps Cyril would look into fitting it with a key. Later. In the future.

Outside, there were the fixings for a garden, should they like to plant one. Cyril thought he would go into town on his day off and procure some tomato seeds. See if he could get the girth right this time. He did need a hobby now that he was not the right hand and lapdog of a horrible tyrant. (Yet. He would keep an eye out on Tigris.)

It was not the seaside cabin Eufrates had dreamed of and described to him an entire lifetime ago, but Eufrates had quickly and mercilessly discarded the idea as soon as it was made clear to him that he would need to stay close to the palace if he wanted to see his husband, the grand mage, every day. And he very much did . Cyril promised him many vacations to the beachside in return.

They had all the time in the world.