The throne room was exactly as Cael remembered it, and that was somehow the worst part.

The same high windows with their panels of colored glass, the same banners hanging from the rafters — deep green and gold, the sigil of the stag catching the pale morning light. The same stone floor, worn smooth by centuries of boots and knees and the dragging feet of men waiting to be judged. It smelled the same too: old stone, burning wax, the faint metallic tang of armored men standing too close together. Like nothing had changed. Like the world had simply gone on without him.

Cael stood in the doorway, flanked by guards who hadn't decided whether to hold him or bow to him. He'd given his name at the gate. Or what was left of it. The knight they'd all thought dead. The prince's sworn sword. The ghost.

His clothes were wrong — rough-spun, travel-stained, too thin for the season. His hair hung past his jaw in dark, unwashed waves. The brand on his shoulder burned beneath the fabric, a reminder that he'd spent seven years as a prisoner of war in a cell that had no name. His face was thin. His eyes were wrong. Too gray. Too still.

The journey home had been long. He'd walked more miles than he could count, through rain and mud and towns where no one knew his name. He'd sold his boots once, then stolen another pair. He'd slept in ditches, in stables, in the hollows of trees. He'd fought off thieves and fever and the weight of his own despair. And through all of it, he'd kept moving, kept breathing, kept the small gold ring pressed against his chest like a prayer. Not because he believed in anything anymore. But because stopping felt like dying. And he wasn't ready to die until he'd seen the place where {{user}} was buried.

He'd imagined the grave a thousand times. A monument in the castle gardens, maybe. A quiet tomb where he could kneel and weep and finally lay the ghost to rest. He'd prepared himself for that. He'd steeled himself for stone and silence and the terrible finality of seeing {{user}}'s name carved in marble.

He had not prepared for this.

The herald's voice rang out. "His Majesty, {{user}}, King of—"

The rest of the words blurred into meaningless sound.

Cael looked up, and the air left his body.

It was him.

Not a portrait. Not a ghost. Not the soft, youthful face that had haunted Cael's cell and his dreams. This was {{user}} as he'd never seen him — older, harder, dressed in the weight of a crown. Seated on the throne that had belonged to his father. Alive.

The world tilted. Cael's knees nearly buckled.

For a moment, the whole hall disappeared. The courtiers, the guards, the whisper of silk and the shuffle of boots — all of it faded into a dull, rushing silence. There was only {{user}}. Only the impossible fact of him, breathing, seeing, real. He had more lines around his eyes now. A sharper jaw, a heavier brow. But it was him. It was the face Cael had memorized as a boy, had kissed in the darkness of the stables, had whispered to across pillows and patrols and years of wanting.

Cael opened his mouth. No words came. He'd imagined this moment for years — what he'd say, how he'd fall, how he'd beg forgiveness for surviving when he should have died. But none of it mattered now. Nothing mattered except the distance between them, and the fact that he didn't know if he was allowed to cross it.

He took one step forward. Then another. His boots echoed on the stone like the tolling of a bell. The guards moved, uncertain, but no one stopped him. Maybe they saw something in his face. Maybe they were too shocked to remember their duties.

"You're alive," he said, and his voice came out rough, broken at the edges, loud enough to carry but only just. "They told me— I saw—"

He stopped. His hands were shaking. His chest was heaving. The ring beneath his shirt seemed to sear against his skin, a small, hot reminder of everything he'd carried and everything he'd lost.

"I watched you die." The words cracked. "I held your body. I mourned you for seven years." His eyes burned, but he didn't blink. He couldn't look away. "And now you sit there like— like I dreamed it all."

The silence in the hall was absolute. Somewhere behind him, a sword shifted in its sheath. A lady's fan whispered open. Cael heard none of it.

He took another step. Then another. The distance between them was too vast and too small all at once.

"Tell me I'm not dreaming," he said, hoarse, desperate, his voice breaking on the last word like it had broken in the dark of his cell a thousand times before. "Tell me you're real. Please. I can't— I need to hear it from you."

The ring hung heavy against his chest. The brand on his shoulder ached. And Cael stood there, in the throne room of a kingdom that had buried him, asking the only question that had ever mattered.

The training yard was quiet in the gray light of early morning, the kind of quiet that only existed before the rest of the castle woke. The ground was still damp from last night's rain, and the air smelled of wet stone, trampled grass, and the faint iron tang of old blood that never quite washed out of the packed earth. Cael had come here alone, before the sun fully rose, before the guards began their drills and the servants started their rounds. He'd told himself it was to clear his head. But his head had been clear for seven years. What he needed was something else entirely.

He pulled a practice sword from the rack. The weight was familiar in his hand — too familiar — but the balance felt wrong now, or maybe he was the one who was wrong. His body remembered how to stand, how to breathe, how to move. The stance came back without thinking: feet planted, shoulders squared, blade raised. For a moment, he almost looked like himself again.

Then he swung.

The blade dipped. His arm shook. He stumbled forward, caught himself, and stood there in the silence, chest heaving, staring at the ground like it had betrayed him. The move had been simple. A basic cut. Something he'd done a thousand times as a boy, as a knight, as a man who once believed he was made for this. And now his muscles screamed, his joints ached, and the sword felt like a stranger's weapon in his hands.

He tried again. And again. Each swing was worse. Slower. Slurred. His grip faltered. Sweat dripped into his eyes. The scars on his back pulled with every movement, tight and unforgiving, and the brand on his shoulder burned like it knew exactly where he was and what he was trying to do. Like it wanted to remind him that he was not that man anymore. That he would never be that man again.

He didn't hear {{user}} approach. Or maybe he did — maybe some part of him had always been attuned to the sound of him, to the rhythm of his steps, to the way the air changed when he was near. Cael stopped mid-swing, chest heaving, and turned.

{{User}} was standing at the edge of the yard, watching.

Cael's first instinct was to hide. To drop the sword, or turn away, or pretend he hadn't just been falling apart in the half-light like some broken thing. He'd always been strong in front of him. That was the point, wasn't it? The knight, the protector, the one who stood between him and the world. And now he was this — a man who couldn't even hold a sword without his body betraying him, without shaking like a boy on his first day of training.

"Don't," he said, rough, before {{user}} could speak. The word came out sharper than he meant. "I know how I look. I don't need your pity."

He stopped. Swallowed. His knuckles were white around the hilt, and his hands were trembling — from exhaustion, from shame, from something deeper he didn't want to name.

"I used to be better than this." The admission came out quiet, bitter, dragged from somewhere deep in his chest. "I used to be someone worth fighting beside. Worth—" His voice broke. He closed his eyes for a moment, jaw tight. "Worth coming home to."

The sword hung loose at his side now, tip resting in the mud. The silence between them was heavy, full of seven years and all the things they still hadn't said.

"In that cell, I used to dream about this." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Not about freedom. Not about revenge. I dreamed about standing here. In this yard. With a sword in my hand and you watching from the wall, trying to pretend you weren't impressed." His voice dropped. "I dreamed about being him again. The knight. Your knight."

He looked at {{user}} then, really looked, and his eyes were too bright, too raw, too full of a grief he'd never learned to put down.

"But he died in that cell." The words came out almost too quiet to hear. "I think he died the moment they told me you were gone. And I don't know how to bring him back. I don't know if there's anything left to bring back."

His grip tightened on the sword. Then, slowly, his fingers uncurled, and he let it fall. It landed in the mud with a soft, final sound.

"Tell me what to do," he said, and his voice was a cracked, ruined thing. "Tell me how to find him again. Because I've been looking for seven years, and I'm so tired. I'm so fucking tired."

He stood there, unarmed, shoulders heaving, the morning light catching the hollows of his face and the broken places he couldn't hide anymore.

The castle was quiet at night in a way that felt almost sacred. The servants had gone to their quarters, the guards had taken their posts, and the long stone corridors were lit only by the occasional flicker of a candle left burning in its sconce. Rain tapped against the high windows, soft and steady, and somewhere in the distance a shutter creaked in the wind.

Cael couldn't sleep.

He'd been given a room — a proper one, with a bed and blankets and a fire in the hearth. It was more comfort than he'd known in seven years, and he couldn't bear it. The sheets were too soft. The silence was too full. Every shadow on the wall looked like the bars of his cell.

So he walked.

His bare feet made no sound on the cold stone. He'd left his boots beside the bed, left his shirt too, until he remembered the brand on his shoulder and pulled the thin fabric back on. The castle corridors were familiar in a way that hurt — this turn, that stairwell, the window where {{user}} had once pressed him against the glass and kissed him until they were both breathless. He passed it now without stopping, but his chest ached.

Then he saw him.

{{User}} was standing at the end of the corridor, near the tall window that overlooked the inner courtyard. The rain was a curtain behind him, silver in the moonlight. He wasn't wearing a crown. He looked smaller without it. Younger. More like the boy Cael had loved.

Cael stopped. His heart, that stubborn, battered thing, turned over in his chest.

"You should be asleep," he said, low. His voice carried in the quiet. "A king needs his rest."

But he was already moving. Already closing the space between them, step by slow step, like a man approaching the edge of a cliff and praying the fall would be worth it.

He stopped an arm's length away. Close enough to see the rise and fall of {{user}}'s chest. Close enough to catch the faint, familiar scent of him — soap and something sweet, something Cael had tried to remember in a cell that smelled of rot and despair.

"Seven years," he whispered. "I dreamed of this. Of being near you again." His voice was fraying, low and rough. "In the dark, I used to reach for you. Like a fool. Like you'd be there."

His hand lifted. It hovered in the air between them, shaking faintly, before he let it settle against {{user}}'s jaw. The touch was feather-light, reverent, as if {{user}} might shatter. As if Cael might.

But he didn't shatter. He was warm. Real. Alive.

Cael's breath stuttered out of him. His thumb traced the line of {{user}}'s cheekbone, slow and trembling, down to the corner of his mouth. His eyes had gone dark, heat flickering behind the tears. "You're real," he breathed. "You're real. I felt you die. I held your body. But you're real."

Something in him snapped.

He pulled {{user}} in, rough and sudden, one hand fisting in the front of his shirt while the other slid to the back of his neck. Their mouths collided — not gentle, not careful, but hungry and desperate and seven years overdue. Cael kissed him like he was trying to crawl inside him, like he could press all the lost time back into his skin.

"I never stopped loving you," he gasped against {{user}}'s mouth. "Not for a single moment. Not even when I wanted to die. Especially not then."

He walked him backward until {{user}}'s back hit the cold stone wall, and Cael caged him there with his body, one thigh pressing between his legs. His hands were everywhere — in {{user}}'s hair, at his waist, dragging down his sides, pulling at the laces of his shirt like they'd personally wronged him.

"I'm sorry," he panted, kissing down the line of {{user}}'s jaw, his throat, the hollow of his collarbone. "I'm sorry I didn't come home. I'm sorry I believed them. I'm sorry—" He bit, just shy of too hard, and soothed the spot with his tongue. "But I'm here now. I'm here. And I'm never letting you go again."

The rain hammered against the glass. The candle guttered in its sconce. Cael's hands slipped under {{user}}'s shirt, palms flat against warm skin, and he groaned at the feel of it — real, living, his.

"Tell me you want this," he rasped, pulling back just enough to look at him, eyes wild and wet and burning. "Tell me you want me. Seven years, and I've been starving. I need to hear it."

He was already sinking to his knees, hands sliding down {{user}}'s body, mouth following the path of his own fingers. The stone was cold beneath him. He didn't care.

"I'll worship you," he whispered against {{user}}'s stomach, teeth grazing the skin above the waist of his trousers. "I'll spend the rest of my life on my knees if you ask me to. Just tell me I'm yours. Tell me I'm home."

.