Soren came back to himself on a tide of pain and warmth.
His first clear thought was that his ribs hurt. Not the sharp, stabbing pain of a break more like a deep, bruised ache that flared with every breath. His second was that he was being held.
Too tightly.
He blinked his eyes open.
The ceiling above him was familiar: dark beams, pale plaster. Curtains half‑drawn. The air smelled of herbs and clean linen. His head rested against something solid and warm not a pillow. When he shifted, the pressure around his chest tightened.
An arm was locked around him, hard as an iron band.
"Stop," he rasped. His voice sounded wrong, dry and raw. "You're… you're crushing me."
The arm vanished so fast his breath stuttered.
He swayed, suddenly unsupported. A hand caught his shoulder before he could tip.
"Soren?"
Ecclesias' face swam into focus inches away.
His hair was mussed, as if he'd dragged his fingers through it too many times. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw. His mouth was pressed into a tight line, as if holding something in.
And his eyes—
Soren froze.
He had never seen the king's eyes like this. The pale irises were rimmed in red, the whites shot through with thin veins. At the corner of one, a clean line cut through the faint soot smear on his cheekbone where something wet had dried.
A tear.
On a man made of iron and rumour.
"You're hurting?" Ecclesias demanded, voice rougher than usual. His fingers clenched on Soren's shoulder, then loosened quickly. "Where?"
Soren's brain tried to catch up.
"My… ribs," he managed. "Just… tight. I'm not dying."
The line of Ecclesias' throat moved as he swallowed.
"You collapsed in the corridor," he said. "You said my name and then you dropped. I caught you before your skull hit the stone."
He said it like a report. It didn't sound like one.
"Did I?" Soren whispered.
Memory came back in jagged flashes: light smearing on stone, his knees giving out, air refusing to go past his throat, the world tilting
And arms around him, hauling him back at the last second.
He realised Ecclesias' hand was still on him. The thumb digging into his shoulder trembled.
"Ecclesias," Soren said quietly, "you're shaking."
"I thought I'd lost you," Ecclesias answered.
The words landed between them like a dropped blade.
Soren stared.
"I… I fainted," he said, trying for levity and finding nothing. "I've done it before. It's not—"
"You stopped answering me," Ecclesias cut in. "Your eyes rolled back. Your body went limp. Do you have any idea what that feels like after watching a man fall choking to the floor with your tray in his hands?"
His voice jumped, then flattened again by force.
Soren's mouth opened and closed.
"No," he admitted.
"Good," Ecclesias said hoarsely. "Do not learn it."
His fingers slid down from Soren's shoulder to his wrist, closing there like a shackle and an anchor at once. The pulse jumped under his thumb, too fast but steady.
"I am not easily frightened," he went on, quieter. "I have walked onto battlefields with a steadier heart than I had holding you in that corridor, counting seconds between breaths and wondering which man's coin had just taken you from me."
Soren's chest ached in a new way.
"Ecclesias," he whispered.
The king lifted their joined hands.
He did it slowly, deliberately, as if giving Soren every chance to pull back. Soren didn't move. His fingers trembled against Ecclesias' palm.
Ecclesias' gaze flicked up once, searching his face. Whatever he saw there softened and sharpened his expression at once.
He brought Soren's hand to his lips.
The kiss was light, almost formal, a gentle press of his mouth to the back of Soren's knuckles. Courtly. Knight and princess. Except there was nothing distant about the heat that lingered on Soren's skin or the slight hitch in Ecclesias' breath as he let their hands lower again.
Soren's brain shorted.
His face went hot so fast it almost hurt. He could feel the flush burning across his cheeks, up his ears, down his neck. His tongue tangled on the first word he tried.
"Wh‑what are you doing?" he stammered.
He sounded like a boy at his first ball, not a crowned consort.
Ecclesias' mouth twitched, but the faint curve didn't hide the rawness in his eyes.
"Apologising," he said. "For holding you too tight. For asking you to stand when you were already frayed. For not seeing sooner what this was doing to you."
"That's… that's a lot of things for one kiss," Soren managed.
"I am an efficient man," Ecclesias replied softly.
Soren made a helpless noise that might have been a laugh.
His heart hammered against his ribs. No one had ever kissed his hand like that. Not when he'd been wrapped in silk and presented like a prize. Not when suitors had paraded past him like shoppers, weighing alliances and dowries.
No one had touched him like that and meant *him*, not the crown.
He did something reckless.
He leaned forward.
It was not graceful. He had to push himself up on one elbow, ribs protesting, to reach. His free hand came up, fingers brushing the hard line of Ecclesias' jaw for balance.
He pressed a quick, awkward kiss to the king's cheek.
His lips caught more stubble than skin. He nearly bumped their noses. Heat exploded in his face, worse than before. For a heartbeat, he wanted the mattress to open and swallow him.
Ecclesias went utterly still.
Soren froze with him.
Silence wrapped around them, taut and fragile.
Then Ecclesias turned his head a fraction. Soren's hand slid from his jaw to his shoulder, fingers curling there. Their faces were suddenly too close.
Soren could see everything.
The fine lines at the corners of Ecclesias' eyes, deeper today. The darker ring around his pupils. The faint tacky shine of the tear track at his cheek. The way his lips parted on a breath he didn't seem to realise he was taking.
Something in Soren's chest twisted, tight and unmistakable.
He had been trying not to name it for weeks. Telling himself it was gratitude, dependence, anything but this. But sitting here, looking at a king with tears still drying on his face and a hand careful around Soren's wrist, it refused to be anything else.
He was starting to fall in love with his king.
Soren's breath hitched.
"Don't look at me like that," he blurted.
"Like what?" Ecclesias asked, voice low.
"Like… like I'm going to vanish if you blink."
"Experience suggests that is a possibility," Ecclesias said. "Forgive me if I am reluctant to test it again."
Soren made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh.
He wanted to look away. He couldn't.
Ecclesias' thumb stroked once across his knuckles, a small, circling movement that felt like both question and answer.
"Promise me something," the king said.
Soren swallowed.
"That depends what it is."
"Promise me you will take care of yourself," Ecclesias said. "That when you are tired, you will say so. When your chest tightens, when your thoughts chew at you, when you start telling yourself you are not enough you will tell me. You will eat when Larem tells you to eat. You will not decide alone that collapsing in a corridor is an acceptable price for looking unshakable."
His voice roughened at the end.
"I cannot stop every knife," he went on. "I cannot watch every cup. But I can stand between you and *this*. If you let me."
Soren's eyes burned suddenly.
"I don't like depending on people," he said quietly. "Every time I've done that before, it ended badly for me."
Ecclesias' jaw flexed.
"Then consider this treason," he said. "You are required to depend on me. Specifically. On pain of more lectures. And more hand‑kissing, if necessary."
Soren choked on something between a laugh and a sob.
"That seems like a terrible punishment," he said.
"Good," Ecclesias replied. "You will avoid it by obeying."
Soren let out a shaky breath.
"Fine," he whispered. "I promise. I'll… try. To eat. To sleep. To say when I'm not all right. To let you be there. Even when it feels like I shouldn't."
Ecclesias nodded once, as if sealing a treaty.
"Then I promise," he said, "that when you stumble, I will be there. When you are tired. When you cut yourself down in your own head. When you decide you have to carry everything alone—I will be there, in the way."
He lifted Soren's hand again and pressed another light kiss to his knuckles, softer now.
Heat flared in Soren's face. His heart thudded so hard he was almost sure Ecclesias could feel it through their joined hands.
Before he could say anything truly foolish, someone cleared their throat at the foot of the bed.
"If you intend to raise his heart rate, Majesty, at least let me mark it down," Larem said dryly. "Otherwise it looks like a relapse."
Soren yelped and snatched his hand back as if burned.
Ecclesias straightened, composure sliding back over his face like a cloak. Only the faint colour high on his cheekbones betrayed anything.
"You've had your five minutes," Larem told him tartly. "Now let him rest. If he collapses again, I will inform the entire court that it is due to royal harassment."
"Blackmail," Ecclesias muttered.
"Medicine," Larem corrected.
Soren sank back against the pillows, suddenly boneless. His chest ached, but less sharply. The warmth there felt different now, tangled with something that hurt in a way he wasn't sure he wanted to lose.
As Ecclesias stepped away, his fingers brushed, light and quick, over Soren's wrist one last time.
"Sleep," he ordered, softer than before. "For once, don't argue."
Soren opened his mouth to protest and found a yawn instead.
He heard Ecclesias' quiet huff of amusement as the room blurred at the edges.
This time, as sleep took him, it didn't feel like falling.
-----------
By the time Soren woke again, the decision had already gone out into the city.
Ecclesias stood in the war‑council chamber, the long table between him and the men who would have to carry his orders. Sunlight from the high windows cut hard bars of brightness across maps and parchments. The air smelled of ink and steel.
Kael stood at his right, Arven at his left.
"The servant is dead," Ecclesias said. "The first noble who paid him is dead. There will not be a third man hiding in the dark to take their place."
An older minister shifted uneasily.
"You have already made an example of Harren, Majesty," he ventured. "To go further—"
"Harren was one name," Ecclesias said. "This was not one man's plan. You have the list in front of you. Stewards. Couriers. Coin‑keepers. All tied to houses that sat in my hall, smiled at my queen, and counted on me to blink because they have titles."
Parchment whispered as hands tightened.
A younger councillor cleared his throat.
"If you begin executing entire houses," he said carefully, "including children, the city will be… shaken. Some will say it is too much. That you are cruel."
"Yes," Ecclesias said. "They will."
He did not sound troubled.
Arven's jaw was rigid, but he said nothing. Kael's mouth was a hard line that meant he disliked what he was about to do and would do it perfectly anyway.
Ecclesias let his gaze travel the length of the table.
"These lords bought poison," he said. "They paid to see my queen weakened and humiliated. They discussed his blood like a flaw in a breeding chart. They gambled that if their servant failed, they would be safe because nothing touched his lips."
His voice thinned, honed to a blade.
"They were wrong."
A shiver moved around the room.
"We will do this in the upper square," Ecclesias went on. "Midday. No hoods. Their crests will hang above them. Their names and crimes will be read loud enough for the markets to hear. Their coin will be seized. Their lines will end."
"Majesty," someone tried again, horrified. "Their *lines*—"
"If you would have me treat men who tried to murder my queen as if they had stolen bread," Ecclesias said, "say it plainly, and I will know where to place your name on the list of those I cannot trust."
The man's mouth snapped shut.
Silence stretched, taut.
"Fear kept them from attacking me openly," Ecclesias said more quietly. "Fear will keep the rest from trying again. They wanted to know what happens if the queen falters. I will show them what happens if they touch him."
He looked to Arven.
"You have the names," he said. "Bring them in. Their families too. Anyone whose coin touched this plan."
Arven inclined his head.
"It will be done," he said.
Ecclesias turned to Kael.
"You will oversee the square," he said. "No chaos. No stones thrown. If anyone so much as lifts a hand toward the scaffold, you break it."
Kael bowed.
"Yes, Majesty."
The decision left that room like a shockwave.
-------
The nobles heard the shape of it before they knew the details.
At first it was just whispers: more arrests, more guards at certain doors, the king in closed council with steel‑eyed faces. Harren had overreached, they told themselves. The king was posturing. It would pass.
Then came the words *public* and *families*.
A steward overheard a fragment outside the ministers' wing and ran straight to his master. A bored guard, unused to how fast gossip travelled uphill, repeated a complaint about "dragging their brats to the square" within earshot of a kitchen girl. By nightfall, every manor knew three things:
There would be executions in the upper square.
More than one house crest would hang above the scaffold.
No one related by blood to the condemned could count themselves safe.
Panic followed.
In one house, trunks were dragged from attics and stuffed with jewels and travel clothes. In another, a lord tore through ledgers with shaking hands, ripping pages out and cramming them into the hearth fire. In a third, an old dowager sat very still in her chair and murmured, "Of course," as if she had been waiting for this since the day Ecclesias took the throne.
Lord Vallens paced his study until the carpet bunched under his boots.
"He will not kill children," one cousin said desperately. "He can't. The city will not stand for it."
"The city stood for him ending the war," Vallens snapped. "For him hanging his own uncle. You think a handful of lordlings will tip them now?"
He stopped, palms flat on the desk.
"He wants us afraid," he said. "We are. The question is whether we move, or stay still long enough for this to pass."
"And if it doesn't?" the cousin whispered.
"Then we were dead when we opened that purse," Vallens said. "We just hadn't felt the knife yet."
Down in the streets, scaffolds began to rise.
The hammering of nails into fresh wood echoed up the hill like a slow, relentless drum.
---------
Soren stood on the balcony with a blanket over his knees and more eyes on him than he could see.
From here, the upper square spread below like a basin carved into stone. The scaffold looked brutal and new, pale boards stark against the dark buildings. Banners hung from its front, each painted with a crest Soren recognised from the council table.
The crowd was a solid, restless mass: merchants packed shoulder to shoulder with servants, apprentices craning for a view, minor nobles standing stiff and pale at the front as if proximity to the king might protect them.
Larem hovered behind Soren's chair like a crow, one hand ready on the backrest in case his patient decided to be unwise.
"You can still go inside," he murmured. "He'd understand."
Soren's fingers tightened on the blanket.
"He asked me not to fall," he said. "He didn't tell me not to stand."
Larem made a quiet, irritated sound that might have been affection.
On the scaffold, Ecclesias mounted the steps without a herald. Kael flanked him, armour dark and clean. Arven held a roll of parchment in both hands.
When Ecclesias turned to face the crowd, the square's noise died like someone had closed a door.
He did not shout.
"Yesterday," he said, and his voice carried anyway, "a servant died in my cells. His name was Deren. Most of you would have walked past him in a corridor without ever noticing his face. The men behind me thought that made him a good place to hide their courage."
He gestured once.
Kael stepped aside, revealing the line of shackled figures at the back of the platform: lords and ladies and older children, hands bound, crests hanging above their heads.
"It did not work," Ecclesias said. "Servants talk. Coin leaves trails. Fear makes people careless."
A ripple moved through the crowd.
"These houses," he went on, "chose to test whether their queen could be weakened enough to shake my throne. They failed. He is alive."
Soren felt the word *he* strike him like a thrown stone and lodge under his ribs.
"They are not," Ecclesias finished.
Low sound rolled through the square—a gasp, a curse, a broken sob from somewhere near the back.
"For conspiracy against the crown," Ecclesias said, "for placing the life of the queen in danger, for buying poison and paying for silence, I strip these houses of name and privilege. Their coin comes to the crown. Their lands will be reassigned. Their blood ends here."
He did not soften on blood.
One condemned lord shouted hoarsely, blaming stewards, claiming ignorance. A woman beside him began to sob. A teenager maybe fifteen stared out over the crowd with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
Ecclesias did not look at them.
His gaze swept the faces below instead. Soren watched him pick out the cluster of nobles standing near the front, their colours muted, their expressions stretched tight. Vallens stood among them, jaw like stone, gloved hands clenched behind his back.
"Look well," Ecclesias said.
He didn't raise his voice. The quiet made it sharper.
"This is what happens when you decide my queen is a convenient test. There will not be a second lesson."
He stepped back.
Arven moved forward and broke the silence with the clean, carrying sound of a name.
One by one, he read them out. For each, he recited the charge: coin paid, meetings held, letters seized, words spoken. The rope creaked. Steel flashed. The square did not roar; it went almost eerily still, as if the city itself were holding its breath.
Soren's hands dug into the arms of his chair until his knuckles hurt.
He had asked to be there.
Ecclesias had not wanted him to. Larem had argued furiously. But Soren had said, very quietly, "If people are dying because they reached for me, I won't pretend it happens in another world," and Ecclesias had stopped arguing.
Now he watched.
With every fall of the blade, a house he knew from table and corridor shrank into a stain on fresh planks. With every name, he felt the invisible map of power in the city redraw itself.
Beside him, Larem did not look away from the scaffold either.
"He's doing this for you," the physician said under his breath. "And for himself. Don't let either of you forget that."
Soren couldn't answer. His throat was too tight.
When it was done, the banners came down with the bodies.
New ones would rise in time. Vacant lands would be claimed. The city would learn to live around this new scar the way it had learned to live around old ones. But for now, the square was full of a thick, stunned silence.
Ecclesias turned and left the scaffold without another word.
-------
He found Soren back in their rooms, sitting on the edge of the bed with the blanket still around his shoulders, as if he hadn't quite realised he was safe inside now.
"You shouldn't have been there," Ecclesias said.
"You shouldn't have done it alone," Soren replied.
They faced each other across the small distance between them.
It felt much narrower than it had before.
Ecclesias closed it in three strides.
"You're pale," he said, hands hovering near Soren's arms, not quite touching. "Sit properly before you make Larem right and me wrong in the same day."
Soren almost smiled.
"I'm not going to faint," he said. "Though if you keep executing entire families, I might sit down so I don't throw up on your boots."
Ecclesias' expression flickered.
"You think I enjoyed it?" he asked quietly.
"No," Soren said. "I think you decided it was necessary. That isn't the same."
He took a breath.
"And I think you needed them to see you would not stop at servants," he added. "You're… putting a leash on their fear. Pointing it where you want it to go."
Ecclesias stared at him for a long moment.
"You're angry," he said.
"Yes," Soren answered, surprised at how steady it sounded. "I am furious that any of this was needed. That they put us here. That you had to choose between looking weak and filling a square with ghosts."
He swallowed.
"But I am not angry at you," he said. "Not now."
"Give it time," Ecclesias said, a thin edge of humour in it.
Soren stepped closer.
He had to tilt his head back to meet the king's eyes. Up close, the lines of fatigue were carved deep around Ecclesias' mouth; he looked older than he had yesterday, and somehow younger at the same time.
"You made a choice as a king," Soren said. "I am trying to figure out what choice I make as your queen. As… myself."
The last word came out small.
Ecclesias' gaze softened.
"You make the choice to stay," he said. "To eat. To sleep. To tell me when your chest hurts or your thoughts won't quiet. To stand beside me when you can, and let me stand in front when you can't."
His fingers found Soren's wrist again, the touch familiar now, anchoring.
"And you do not forget," he added, "that none of this happens without your consent. Not the crown. Not the councils. Not…" His hand tightened. "Not this."
Soren's breath caught.
He thought of the tears on Ecclesias' face, the way he had said *I thought I'd lost you*, the press of lips to his hand. He thought of the scaffold. The fear in the nobles' eyes. The weight of what had just been done in his name.
"I don't know what to do with all of it," he admitted. "With you. With them. With what I feel when you look at me like…"
"Like you are the first thing in years that makes this worth the cost?" Ecclesias supplied.
Soren flushed, helpless.
"Yes," he whispered.
Ecclesias' hand slid from his wrist to his fingers, lacing them.
"Then we start there," the king said. "With you breathing. With you keeping your promise. With me keeping mine. The rest we will learn. Together."
Soren let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.
"Together," he echoed.
He rose onto his toes, just enough to press a brief, deliberate kiss to the corner of Ecclesias' mouth this time. Not clumsy. Not an accident.
A choice.
Ecclesias' eyes closed for a heartbeat.
When they opened, there was something settled there no less dangerous, but clearer. Not just a king weighing costs. A man who had chosen, and was done pretending otherwise.
Outside, in manors that suddenly felt too large, nobles whispered and counted empty seats. Some plotted smaller, meaner games. Some quietly began to make plans for other countries, other courts. Some vowed never to let their thoughts stray toward the throne again, not even in anger.
Inside the quiet room at the palace heart, two people began to shift the centre of their world from fear to something else.
It would not make the realm kinder.
But it would change the way they faced what came next.