And Alucard was here to prove it. To lay his heart bare before Rhy, and the Rose Hall, and the rest of London.
“Nearly four years ago,” he began, “I left your … court, without explanation or apology. In doing so, I fear I wounded the crown and its estimation of me. I have come to make amends with my king.”
“What is in your hand?” asked Rhy.
“A debt.”
A guard stepped forward to retrieve the parcel, but Alucard pulled away, looking back to the king. “If I may?”
After a moment, Rhy nodded, rising as Alucard approached the dais. The young king descended the steps and met him there before the throne.
“What are you doing?” asked Rhy softly, and Alucard’s whole body sang to hear this voice, the one that belonged not to the king of Arnes, but to the prince he’d known, the one he’d fallen in love with, the one he’d lost.
“What I promised,” whispered Alucard, gripping the mirror in both hands and tipping its surface toward the king.
It was a liran.
Most scrying dishes could share the contents of one’s mind, ideas and memories projected on the surface, but a mind was a fickle thing—it could lie, forget, rewrite.
A liran showed only the truth.
Not as it had been remembered, not as one wanted to remember it, but as it had happened.
It was no simple magic, to sift truth from memory.
Alucard Emery had traded four years of his future for the chance to relive the worst night of his past.
In his hands, the mirror’s surface went dark, swallowing Rhy’s reflection and the hall behind him as another night, another room, took shape in the glass.
Rhy stiffened at the sight of his chamber, of them, tangled limbs and silent laughter in his bed, his fingers trailing over Alucard’s bare skin. Rhy’s cheeks colored as he reached out and touched the mirror’s edge. As he did, the scene flared to life. Mercifully, the sound of their pleasure didn’t echo through the throne room. It stayed, caught between them, as the scene unspooled.
Alucard, rising from Rhy’s bed, trying to dress while the prince playfully undid every clasp he fastened, unlaced every knot. Their final parting kiss and Alucard’s departure through the maze of hidden halls and out into the night.
What Rhy couldn’t see—then or now—in the mirror’s surface was Alucard’s happiness as he made his way across the copper bridge to the northern bank, his racing heart as he climbed the front steps to the Emery estate. Couldn’t feel the sudden horrible stutter of that heart when Berras stood waiting in the hall.
Berras, who had followed him to the palace.
Berras, who knew.
Alucard had tried to play it off, feigning drunkenness, letting himself tip casually back against the wall as he rattled off the taverns he’d been to, the fun he’d had, the trouble he’d gotten himself into over the course of that long night.
It didn’t work.
Berras’s disgust had hardened into stone. So had his fists.
Alucard didn’t want to fight his brother, had even dodged the first blow, and the second, only to be caught upside the head by something sharp and silver.
He went down, world ringing. Blood dripped into his eyes.
His father was standing over him, his cane glinting in his grip.
Back in the Rose Hall, Alucard closed his eyes, but the images played on in his mind, scorched into memory. His fingers tightened on the mirror, but he didn’t let go, not when his brother called him a disgrace, a fool, a whore. Not when he heard the snap of bone, his own muffled scream, silence, and then the sickening slosh of a ship.
Alucard would have let the memory play on, let it run through those first horrific nights at sea, and his escape, all the way to the prison and the iron cuffs and the heated rod, his forced return to London and the warning in his brother’s eyes, the hurt in the prince’s, the hatred in Kell’s.
He would have let it play on as long as Rhy wanted, but something weighed suddenly against the mirror’s surface, and he opened his eyes to see the young king standing very close, one hand splayed across the glass as if to block out the images, the sounds, the memories.
Rhy’s amber eyes were bright, his brow knitted with anger and sadness.
“Enough,” he said, voice trembling.
Alucard wanted to speak, tried to find the words, but Rhy was already letting go—too soon—turning away—too soon—and retaking his throne.
“I have seen enough.”
Alucard let the mirror fall back to his side, the world around him dragging into focus. The room around him had gone still.
The young king gripped the edges of his throne and spoke in hushed tones with his brother, whose expression flickered between surprise and annoyance before finally settling into something more resigned. Kell nodded, and when Rhy turned toward the room and spoke again, his voice was even.
“Alucard Emery,” he said, his tone soft, but stern. “The crown appreciates your honesty. I appreciate it.” He looked to Kell one last time before continuing. “As of right now, you have been stripped of your title as privateer.”
Alucard nearly folded under the sentence. “Rhy …” The name was out before he realized his error. The impropriety. “Your Majesty …”
“You will no longer sail for the crown on the Night Spire, or any vessel.”
“I do not—”
The king’s hand came up in a single silencing gesture.
“My brother wishes to travel, and I have granted him permission.” Kell’s expression soured at the word, but did not interrupt. “As such,” continued Rhy, “I require an ally. A proven friend. A powerful magician. I require you here in London, Master Emery. With me.”
Alucard stiffened. The words were a blow, sudden, but not hard. They teased the line between pleasure and pain, fear that he’d misheard and hope that he hadn’t.
“That is the first reason,” continued Rhy evenly. “The second is more personal. I have lost my mother, and my father. I have lost friends, and strangers who might one day have been friends. I have lost too many of my people to count. And I will not suffer losing you.”
Alucard’s gaze cut to Kell. The Antari met his eyes, and he found a warning in them, but nothing more.
“Will you obey the will of the crown?” asked Rhy.
It took Alucard several stunned seconds to summon his faculties enough to bow, enough to form the three simple words.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
*
The king came to Alucard’s room that night.
It was an elegant chamber in the western wing of the palace, fit for a noble. A royal. There were no hidden doors to be found. Only the broad entrance with its inlaid wood, its golden trim.
Alucard was perched on the edge of the sofa, rolling a glass between his hands, when the knock came. He had hoped, and he had not dared to hope.
Rhy Maresh entered the room alone. His collar was unbuttoned, his crown hanging from his fingers. He looked tired and sad and lovely and lost, but at the sight of Alucard, something in him brightened. Not a light Alucard could see in the molten threads that coiled around him, but a light behind his eyes. It was the strangest thing, but Rhy seemed to become real then, solid in a way he hadn’t been before.
“Avan,” said the prince who was no longer a prince.
“Avan,” said the captain who was no longer a captain.
Rhy looked around the room.
“Does it suit?” he asked, drawing his hand absently along a curtain, long fingers tangling in red and gold.
Alucard’s smile tilted. “I suppose it will do.”
Rhy let the crown fall to the sofa as he came forward, and his fingers, now freed from their burden, traced Alucard’s jaw, as if assuring himself that Alucard was here, was real.
Alucard’s own heart was racing, even now threatening to run away. But there was no need. Nowhere to go. No place he’d rather be.
He had dreamed of this, every time the storms raged at sea. Every time a sword was drawn against him. Every time life showed its frailty, its fickleness. He had dreamed of this, as he stood on the bow of the Ghost, facing death in a line of ships.
Now he reached to draw Rhy in against him, only to be rebuffed.