Chapter Text
It was two days after this that he found a possession of Nanami’s in the bottom of his travel-chest. An amulet. She didn’t wear it; he didn’t know where she had gotten it or how. Nanami was the sort to leave her belongings everywhere; this was incredible, because she possessed only a few outfits and perhaps a dozen other objects. She was terrible at giving or receiving gifts and didn’t like to keep things. Both she and Riou had the deep conviction that they had to be ready to grab what they could carry and run at all times; as it turned out, their conviction was founded.
There was nothing inside of it. He wondered who had given it to her.
He didn’t know why he felt the urge to give it to Jillia. They were to be wed soon. A present would be in order. But this didn’t feel right.
-
He had thought at quite some length about which animal to use, hours spent reading and referencing books with anatomical illustrations in black ink in the laboratory’s library. L’Renouille was like a terribly barricaded town, a people with armor.
Snakes and lizards were obvious, but they were so high up north that their venom would be hard to procure, the antibodies less so. Local venom was rarer in the harsh Highlands, and he wasn’t willing to deal with the myriad side effects that came from the venom of most monsters. From a spider it would take too long to get enough venom, or the expense of enough of a fortune to be tracked.
Cheap, local, survivable. In the end, he chose a fish. Some bitter bastards swum the cold waters of the northern ocean, bitter with spines which could kill the soft hand that they pierced. And because fishermen were always in great supply no matter where you went, and snakehandlers, monster slayers, or spider… enthusiasts, he supposed, typically weren’t, there would be enough demand for their antibodies to supply his needs.
To procure it without being traced was harder, but not impossible.
To swallow it, morning, noon, and night, was harder still. But not impossible.
-
He got used to the days growing thin. It was if they were transparent, and he could hold them up to some odd celestial light and see through them, before and behind.
He knew he was seated at a dining-table in the castle with his silent wife, stomach churning, but he felt like he could hear another woman’s voice but could not quite place whom it was. Certainly it wasn’t his mother, nor could it be Nanami. Perhaps Jillia herself, from the past. Or someone he had not met yet.
He felt like he had seen his death through filmy skin a hundred times in the dark night that week, curled around the hot ache inside him, waiting.
He did wake up every morning.
-
In the room on the other side of the wall, Culgan, Seed, and the other generals were planning out the battle strategy for storming South Window. If Jowy were to be honest, he couldn’t even remember WHEN their objective had changed from Rockaxe to Window. He supposed, perhaps, someone had woken up to the danger that the growing Dunan army really did pose (he was proud, truly, he was miserably proud). Theoretically, he and Luca were supposed to be in that room, discussing how to crack down the whole Window province in a three-day blitzkreig. They were only one wall away.
Luca had taken him to the adjoining room before the meeting, for a little talk. L’Renouille’s castle had a bad habit of putting a lot of identical rooms right next to each other which, he already admitted, did a great job of turning around the casual visitor.
He was blurry-minded from his morning dose as he followed the prince into the unlit room, regarding his predicament as a kind of horrible dream, his feet not quite connecting with the floor as he stumbled on. Like a ghost slid halfway out of the world or a person fading into another man’s reality.
Luca began the clandestine talk with a hand on the side of his face.
It hurt, now, where it had been scratched and scraped, and was now pressed down on a table, the fresh wounds raw. It would hurt just as bad to be torn back off of this table, since the fibers of the dead wood were helping knit those wounds back together. The table, he thought, was essentially a dead tree, but its flesh was still flesh, numb and cold.
How beaten down do you have to be to take comfort from a table?
He had nothing to dig his nails into, nowhere to clutch his hands; already from a brief struggle he had knocked off everything that had been in arms’ reach away. His chest was bent badly, pressed harshly against the side of the table; his breath was expelled hot and curled back on his face.
He had one goal alone: do not be loud enough for them to hear you through the wall.
He was only a few feet from it.
Luca was laughing at him. How loud was he laughing?
‘Patience,’ he recited, to focus on his own utmost silence, ‘Patience, though I have not/the thing that I require…’
Luca giggled himself almost into a fit, his diaphragm spasming on Jowy’s back as he bent down lower to speak to him. “You’re making us late,” he mocked. “If you don’t hurry up, they’ll get suspicious.”
Anger sparked in Jowy’s stomach, just a thin layer of skin away from the jabbing pain. It was harder to brace himself properly, he had no hold—patience— ‘I must of force, God wot/forebear my most desire…’
“Of course, I can be as late as I want to be! I have all the time in the world. You, however, are subordinate, and this laziness will not go unpunished. I’m sure your absence hasn’t gone unnoticed. Are they wondering where you are? Or do you think they’ve figured it out? Hn—” Luca cut off his own sex-babbling with a shudder when (as Jowy could feel) his cock twitched, stiffening suddenly.
Jowy wondered, not for the first time, if he was really necessary in this situation. Luca seemed to be turning himself on and off, and all Jowy really had to do was be upset about it.
But he had to orgasm, or he wouldn’t stop.
Or, presumably, he would beat him bloody. He couldn’t afford any bedrest time, and with the toxin, it might—
He tensed his jaw and heard it click when the prince slid halfway inside of him, rubbing the inside of his body slowly.
“Hhhn, you’re—already getting looser,” Luca groaned. “Fucking—” he had to hold his bulk still, quivering, or he would get too heated. His sex twitched inside of Jowy and the wet heat of his sweltering hips and thighs prickled on his skin.
‘For no ways can I find/to sail against the wind…’
Luca whispered his name, hot, aroused.
Jowy looked up instinctively, rolling his cheek up. He felt the bruises as they pressed against the wood, like an old apple rolled in the hand. The prince’s breath was badly controlled but he had composed his reddened face, biting his lower lip.
The prince let his lip go as he smiled. Jowy clenched against him.
He reached forward to grab a length of his hair, let it slip halfway through his fingers. “Do you want to be late?” he asked threateningly.
“I—” Jowy swallowed, turning away again as his throat prickled and convulsed from the painful twist. “How am I supposed to—”
Luca chuckled again (laughing, laughing, always laughing) and seized Jowy by his side to lift him into the air, simple as that. He had a brief, dizzy sensation, a feeling like he just jumped—he was being turned around. “Of course,” growled Luca, thumping his back onto the desk without care and without the purposeful aim to injure. “You like this better?”
Did he? Jowy didn’t expect to ponder the question. If it was less painful, he’d get aroused more easily, but facing him, those sick, clouded, golden eyes, that flashing leer, the sweat beading on his face—
‘Patience, do what they will/to work me woe or spite…’
Jowy turned his head and squeezed his eyes shut as nausea briefly overtook him and it didn’t matter if Luca took that as assent or not. He had to squeeze his hard sex back inside him, starting with the protesting, sore muscles on the rim, and let Jowy seize and scrabble his way through the next invasion.
This is what a door battered upon feels like, he thought, by a horned battering-ram.
“Hh—you know—a different position makes a difference—ha ha—if you ever find yourself in my position—you might like it,” he cackled, running his hands up and down Jowy’s side to find a place to clutch. He settled on gripping Jowy’s arms, pinning him down. “But you seem more natural to the position you’re in now. The question of position—power, submission, a person’s place—” if he had a train of thought in the first place, he lost it when Jowy flexed, his abused thighs twitching open to try to find a comfortable position. The prince slid inside him, to his hilt;
‘I shall content me still— ’ you have to focus Jowy you have to get through this— 'To think both day and night/to think and hold my peace…’
His cock pulsed inside him, small, spastic jerks of his hips, slipping his head through the same inch of his inside over and over. Jowy grunted in shock,
‘to think and hold my peace—’
Luca growled, and leaned as far into him as he could possibly go, stretching his powerful back to loom over his prostrate subordinate. As he did one of his hands slid all the way up Jowy’s arm, ruffling the hairs standing up on his skin, until he was pressing him down by the shoulder. Twisted, in pain,
‘to think and hold my peace/since there is no redress—’
Luca growled a horrible animal grunt as he began to rut him harshly, hot pulses inside and slower drags out; his expression lost its harshness for a second as sensation overcame even his malice. It had to—feel really fucking good to him—even though it felt like trying to swallow a knife to Jowy—over and fucking over, like a hammer falling on the anvil. And just as the metal of the sword being forged shuddered and threw off light when it was struck,
‘since there is—no—what is—’
Jowy gulped down a breath as Luca rammed him again and his skin shuddered. He felt a dizzying pitfall sense of déjà vu, like he was falling for a second; what was this? This wasn’t right; but still he knew it. It was as though his mind had dipped down into a nightmare, and he realized, looking around at the monsters with their tearing claws and the ocean that swelled up black around his ankles, I’ve had this nightmare before. It’s happened before.
That hot—and then it hit him again—
‘sincethereisnoredresspatiencewithoutenblameforIoffendednoughtforIoffendednought whatcomesnext ’
Luca heaved a breath of exertion as he stilled his thighs, though his sex still twitched inside him; his left hand clutched over his shoulder and released again, his left spread as an open palm over his arm. He shook with the effort of holding himself back.
“You’re really late now,” he panted, “They’ll think you want to fuck more than you want to conquer my kingdom for me. Well, you’re a teenager. Can’t blame you for being such a fucking whore.”
He shoved into Jowy so suddenly, when his flesh had tried to settle back into a less painful position, that he shrieked, for a half second, then bit down by his teeth. But it had been loud.
No, no no no—
Luca laughed carelessly and pumped him again, giving the sensitive skin no time to rest. Jowy hallucinated everyone going still in their seats across the wall, the men in their uniforms, sitting in silent circle, their eyes cast down—
“Ohh, fuck, yes ,” Luca barked, thrusting into him quickly, a pump of hot blood with every heartbeat. “Yes, yes, let me hear it, fucking whore—”
‘—for I offended nought! For I offended—offended—offended— what the hell comes next for I offended nought—’
The little pause had caused his insides to relax against his will, they raced to forget; when the prince’s cock opened him up again he felt as raw as the very first time, sensitive as skin newly revealed by a deep cut. And there was no respite, no rest from the pumping that rubbed him raw over, and over, and
“Ahh haa, yes, yes, let me hear you, uhn—” The prince leaned over to clutch at his hair and what the hell was he talking about? Jowy hissed when he grabbed at a knot and pulled, it was louder than he intended and then his breath was shocked out of him—
Ahh—
The sheer heat of the hard cock pumping in him over and over was burning him; it was burning him inside; he had hardly noticed it building but he was painfully, uncomfortably hot, like he had fiercely rubbed his own skin to keep away a cold breeze. His own skin was beading up with sweat, he couldn’t remember the poem, his rhetoric tutor would be so very disappointed, and his asshole was opening like a cunt after going numb to the beating, it felt like. A heavy hand clutched at his hair, tugged it so that he could just feel prickled on his scalp, just have his head pulled barely out of the way.
Luca growled encouragingly, hunching as far over Jowy as he could; he was a muscular man but could stand to be more flexible, Jowy had noticed. He had had a crick in his neck after the first time they had fuck his cock rubbed tortuously slowly over the same spot over and over like a corpse being dragged, over and over
“Oh, you fucking whore,” he panted, perhaps trying not to dig into his skin with his fingers too hard. “You love it, mm, yes, let them hear it—”
When his breath was expelled from him—rapidly, with every thrust of Luca’s cock—
Jowy opened up his hips as wide as he could because Luca’s huge frame kept pressing him in and he couldn’t open them wide enough—
Every time he thrust into him his breath left him in—
The rubbing of his cock became so fucking hot it was like its searing heat was melting him, and he twitched whenever its dull swollen tip pressed his—his??—
It left him in a low, grunted exclamation—
He had to angle his thighs up and Luca pressed him so hard his hips rose slightly off the table and his spine started bending up and he pushed so far inside him, he felt his cock touch the very back of his hole and press there which was fucking goddamn awful and
“Uhn!” he gasped as his head hit the table again. “uh—uhn—ah—”
Every time his cock pumped inside him, smearing its heat on his hot insides—
“Can’t take it—” the prince growled, a hand flying to Jowy’s hip to grip it like the hilt of his sword, “ahhnn, yes--yes--yes, Jowy, you perfect fucking whore, yes, louder, l—l—what do you—what do you say—”
“Nn!” Jowy gasped, no fucking clue what he said as the slamming of Luca’s hips grew so intense his stomach twisted with pain and nausea like the sweaty beast was stabbing him all the way through—
“Say it,” the prince demanded, his face twisting with lust, his reddened lip rolling out of his seizing teeth as his climax crawled up his thighs—“say it—I’ll kill you—fuck—say it now—”
“Hha--!” Jowy shuddered, the pain that grew deep inside his body ignited like a star and made his stomach curdle it hurt so much he wanted to run back to the heat that had just been—no no no no—
“Jowy!” Luca shouted, loud enough to hit the wall with his voice, and rammed him like a killing blow; Jowy whined high and horrified in response, feeling the hot seed burst in him; the whole massive beast that was latched into him like a tick or a leech heaved and growled, thrust in him again, spilled his seed again and slicked the path for his cock to spasm suddenly, rapidly, he groaned as he greedily clutched at every last second of his orgasm—
Pumped him fast and hard as he—
Hot—
Jowy gasped with surprise as his hips bucked hard and a spasm of pleasure tore from the heat in his hole up to his heaving stomach and up through his throat and
His lungs burned
He wasn’t cognizant of throwing his body to the side or how and when he threw himself off of the prince. He blanked out between the surprise orgasm that slapped him and the first retch of puke that flew from his lips and landed, half on the table and half on the ground, with a sickening splat.
His mind was blank with pain for five, six more heaves. Half-consumed food turned into sickly yellow stomach bile.
No, he thought helplessly, the venom, the antibody, I need to—
His arms gave way and he collapsed almost into his own vomit.
It was hard to breathe. It burned.
He could feel the muscles of his pelvis and his thighs clench with a sweet pulse of pleasure that tasted absolutely vile dusted over the bitter excretion.
He actually didn’t catch the first biting thing Luca said to him after that. What was weird was that he felt the clench of shame in his shuddering stomach even without hearing the words.
He did hear the second thing he said.
“You’d better have a good excuse for yourself when you walk in late.”
Luca left the room, and Jowy was left to contemplate what he would do, what the hell he would stay, how in pity’s sake he could stand to pick himself up and walk into the room next door, where the eyes of a dozen generals would lift up from their papers and glasses of wine to meet him.
-
“I know they know the same/Though they have changed their thought,” Jowy snapped, hitting the endtable with the base of his pen.
Jillia startled as she pulled a hairpin out of her braid. “Jowy?” she asked, eyes wide but voice soft.
Jowy felt himself flush a little when she turned those wide eyes to him. “Nothing,” he hurried to say. “I couldn’t remember a line in a poem. Earlier. Today.”
“O—oh,” she said, and then, “Oh! It’s Sir Wyatt,” she smiled, a tiny, crooked smile. “It must be.”
“You know his work?” Jowy asked.
She nodded. “He was a favorite of mine. Though I felt I rarely understood his message, his words…” she trailed off.
“…Mine as well,” Jowy admitted. “He was a favorite of mine too. His word sounds, his repetition…”
“Yes, so musical!”
“…Good for recitation…” Jowy felt himself smile a mirroring smile, equally lopsided. “Though he’s not popular.”
“He was hated in his time for his love affairs, right?” she asked, as if trying to please a strict tutor.
“And still is, for how petulant he was when writing about them,” Jowy confirmed.
She barely laughed, a hiccup her hand stifled. “It’s…” she began, no preamble, “ ’Patience, withouten blame,/ For I offended nought;/I know they know the same,/Though they have changed their thought./Was ever thought so moved/To hate that it hath loved?... ’ There is one more verse,” she worried.
“There is. Oh,” Jowy pressed a hand to his forehead. “ Patience of all my harm,/for fortune is my foe—”
“Patience must be the charm/to heal me of my woe, ” Jillia recited smartly. “ Patience without offence—” she held off expectantly.
“…Is a painful patience,” Jowy completed.
She perched her hands on each other, as if to clap, but not willing to make a sound.
Jowy came to a terrible, ill-conceived decision on the spot.
“Jillia,” he said. “I must tell you about something.”
-
He double dosed himself at night.
He wheezed and clutched his chest the whole night, until grey dawn. Blearily, his vision went off and on of Jillia, Jillia in her nightgown, her hair getting tangled on her pillow, Jillia sleeping peacefully. He hurt, he hurt, his self-imposed torture leaking into the cracks that Luca had rent in him. Brother and sister. A man who took the whole room and a woman who would never be seen. In any other fate, would Jillia have been shoved into a back room, shut in with a wheel and spindle? Would anyone have ever been able to intervene for her? Against the King and the Prince, who could?
The very spines of the poison fish spiked inside him as it swam and sunk in his veins.
In his half-dream, white Jillia still floating in his filmy eyes, he saw a golden crown, spinning, floating in the air, superimposed over the furniture and cut stones of the bedroom as if it were inside his eye. It spun and shot sparks. When he closed his eye to shut it out it squeezed in on his throat, harder and harder. He could only breathe with a dry rasp; this disgusting life, blood, semen, and puke, his sweat staining the bed next to sleeping Jillia, the utter disgrace that was this stinking body.
He drank the poison at dawn.
-
His throat was burning as he crossed the threshold of the double doors, glittering with gold, that led to King Agares’ throne room, smoky with the smell of rich incense, rustling with fresh reeds under his feet.
Luca had been dressed as a prince, he thought, as if this were some other man attending a costume ball. A crown, a cape, gloves, heeled shoes. He was a great monster of finery, a vengeful ghost from the grave.
Jowy, loping behind him, felt as if he might be the dead body left behind.
The King looked jovial from the throne from what he could see of him. His eyes were blurring. The golden light of noontime through the high glass windows turned everything gold, sumptuous, dripping, filthy with gold.
Luca in iron, at least he knew what to expect. But Luca in gold?
He reminded himself to put his focus on the King. Golden instruments played heavy, regal notes that swirled dizzy in his ears, and they swooped like hawks over him when he dipped his knee to bow. For a second he was afraid he would not get up; he would stumble as if drunk.
Luca Blight, the picture of a crown prince, regally extended his ring-covered hand to lift the knight onto his feet. As was proper, Jowy held his golden eyes, then bowed his head to the ground in silent gratitude.
They still fixed him when he looked back up. He turned to the king.
Whenever the king ended a sentence, he thanked him and agreed. He didn’t have to know what he was saying, which was very good, because he did not. Somehow, he could hear Luca breathing more clearly, his chest rising and falling in measured, unconcerned swells right next to him. It only would make sense that he would have to listen to the more dangerous noise, the prince’s quiet breaths.
The prince picked up a golden goblet from a gold-stitched cushion. He smiled when he lifted it to his eyes, their hollowness reflecting its cold metal luster. Jowy watched, transfixed, as gold reflected gold as stupidly as gold. Ceremoniously, he turned it upside-down, then turned around on his heel to then take the glass bottle of black wine that another cupbearer offered him. Not accepting offered assistance (and how those assistants shrank back) he balanced the goblet in the palm of one hand and poured the wine halfway up with his other, a steady and well-controlled stream of red.
Jowy had become transfixed by his smooth, measured moments. He knew that Luca could act civilized at any time and typically just didn’t choose to, but still.
Slowly the prince’s eyes turned to meet him, looking down from his upturned chin. His smile was princely, beatific, and horrible. It was though he was gazing up upon some terrible statue, a mad pervert’s carving of a personal angel, grotesquely handsome, threateningly massive. He extended his left hand without leaning to offer Jowy the goblet, held at arm’s length.
Jowy wrapped both hands around it, worried they were shaking. (They were not.) Briefly his fingers, cold and thin, wrapped around Luca’s warm hand. His teeth barely peeked out of his grin, and were covered again.
Jowy’s hands wrapped around the cold gold. He watched the wine swirl inside, the sour red wine.
That smell cut through the swimming royal incense. The sourness of reeking breath. He looked up to keep his eyes on the prince.
He had accepted the ceremonial dagger, gold-hilted, iron-bladed, and was turning back toward Jowy.
“Your choice,” he murmured, for only their ears, “are you taking your blood, or am I?
“Either way is considered proper. But I bet…” he said, voice trailing away expectantly.
Jowy laboriously shifted the goblet into his left hand, being sure to not stop standing straight and not move anything but his arms. “Hand me the knife.”
Not a very subordinate thing to say. Luca obviously loved it. Jowy would have to tone himself down before he gave him an erection during his knighting ceremony.
To hold a heavy goblet of wine while slitting his wrist was, well, impossible. Luca took the cup back from him, a strange exchange, as they passed gold and iron and wine around and around, from each to each. Jowy thought of communion. Of bond-lords, of golden rings and bracers. Of marriage and family ties. Drunkenness. The sharing of drink.
He had never felt less pain when he slit his skin. He couldn’t even be surprised. He thought for a second he hadn’t been able to pierce himself but then blood welled like tears from a cut half and inch deep, which would need attention fast. Both his and Luca’s eyes widened when they saw how sorely he had just hurt himself, the red riding down the white skin hot.
Luca lowered the goblet without lowering his eyes. Jowy stubbornly held them, gold rings, gold in the fist, iron grasp, as the prince slid the cold metal up his arm to catch the flowing blood. Quickly the level of liquid in the cup rose and quivered.
Jowy was given the cup, his arm shaking with the effort of upholding it. With his head beginning to swim and his thoughts crashing on the shore he lifted the witch’s brew above his head and recited his piece, memorized. The blood dripped all the way down his arm and he heard some in the crowd murmur with concern. “That was a manly cut,” said one, shocked, and another, “’swounds, will we have a knighting ceremony or a funeral today?”
Ha ha. Ha.
Of his own blood he drank, and the heavy golden goblet tipped to pour a line of it down his chin. Yes, this was Luca’s wine, bitter, sour, joyless, and his blood, bitter, sour, furious. He had tasted both on his tongue before. Together they were sharp and metallic as a blade.
It was the prince’s job to walk the goblet to his father. Jowy wrapped bloody arm around bloody arm behind his back to watch. When the king lifted the goblet to his lips, he kneeled down on the rushes and lowered his eyes to await his knighthood.
A guard scrambled up and began to tie his arms behind his back. No, he was bandaging his wound. He felt the rough cotton bite into the slit.
His head was so light.
He might be about to die.
He wished he could remember a poem.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Then the crash of metal.
He didn’t think to stand up at first. His head was woozy. Slowly he clambered to his feet. He took a few steps forward—and met the prince. Luca had reached up, grabbed his arm, though Jowy didn’t know when he raised a fist himself; his grip crushed the bandages (rather, it was a shirt) over his wound and the blood began to gush at his fingertips. He halted Jowy in his tracks and they stood there among the rush of people beginning to shout, panic, rush to their king, like a great stone that stood in the lashing sea.
Luca twisted his head at him one way, then another. He looked upon the cut on Jowy’s arm, raised it almost to his face—pulled it down, revealing his wide, terrible, golden eyes.
“Jowy,” he said.
“Luca,” said Jowy, whose head was dizzy with exhaustion.
“You— your blood.”
“The goblet…” Jowy whispered, his vision beginning to speckle and spark at the edges.
As Jowy’s chest heaved and Luca’s fingers curled tightly around his bleeding wrist, sticking skin to skin, they stared at one another in transfixed amazement while they watched each other realize that they had both poisoned King Agares.
They had both poisoned King Agares.
In his—his—
Surprise?
Wonder?
Confusion?
Awe?
Luca Blight looked human for the first time. Perhaps that was because he looked like he liked something.
Then his worst smile slowly overtook its face, like a cicada molting off an old, molded skin, and the putrescence of madness and cruelty warped that expression into pure lust .
“Jowy,” he growled, so low that Jowy could only feel it, not hear it.
“Hnn—” his hands trembled with excitement as he gripped Jowy’s wrists. Jowy was frightened, for a second of stomach-plummeting panic, that Luca would not be capable of controlling himself, despite the crowd, despite the death of the King, despite his sister’s suddenly dropped goblet which just now had hit the floor with a delicate tinkle. Instead, he lurched back, releasing Jowy’s wrists to show his own bloodstained palms.
“I accept your allegiance, Sir Blight,” his voice cracked, shot through with joy, “Last knight dedicated to King Agares Blight, and first to King Luca Blight. To me.”
He had gone a little off balance when Luca let go of his wrists.
He stumbled back on his heels.
Then forward onto his toes.
Then he toppled onto the golden floor and his vision went black.
-
Jillia Blight wore a black dress and veil, aggressively modest. She said not a word nor did she look up from the bunch of fabric lilies she clutched with a black glove.
Jowy Blight wore his military uniform, and held her arm. They stood side by side in the great tomb of the Kings of the Highlands, cold stone stacked upon the wind-blasted moor. Jowy had so many hot aches, pains, infections, that he was glad for the cold wind.
King Luca Blight wore his armor and his father’s crown. He did not choose to perform the ceremony, and no one would have wanted him to, even the handful of people who weren’t dread certain that he—perhaps with the help of his shameful paramour—was the King’s murderer. Instead he watched with them.
Jowy stood between brother and sister silently, and tried to ignore it, tried so hard to ignore it, but a whisper of thought inside of him traitorously sighed, and said, were it only a different brother and sister.
That was the moment he decided that he, himself, was dying too. Mentally, he wrote it into the plan, finished the whole bloody thing with a period and a curl of the pen. And what a relief it was.