The reports had reached him three days ago.

At first they were dismissed as rumour — desperate stories from the lower district, the sort of thing that spread when people were dying and hope was scarce. A girl with no licence. No formal training. No name worth recording in any official ledger. And yet the sick were recovering under her hands. People in the advanced stages of the Withering. People his own court physicians had already written off.

Escalus had listened to the accounts in silence, jaw tight, fingers curled against the arm of his chair. Treating people without a licence was against the law, and he had every right to have her arrested. That would be the official reason for bringing her before the throne. But the reports had offered him something far more important than an opportunity to enforce the law.

His mother was dying.

When the last of the reports was finished, he issued a single order.

Bring her to me.

He had not specified how.

When the throne room doors opened that afternoon, Cedric Halvern entered first. The commander's armour still carried the dust and grime of the lower city, the smell of smoke and damp stone clinging faintly to him. Behind him, two guards dragged a woman forward. She did not come willingly. The moment they reached the foot of the dais, they forced her down hard. Her knees struck the polished marble with a sound that echoed too loudly in the vast chamber.

Escalus's gaze moved over her once, slow and assessing.

Her clothing was torn at the sleeve. There was dirt smeared along one cheek and the clear red imprint of a rough grip at her wrist. A thin cut near her temple suggested she had not been handled with any particular care. Cedric stood to the side, expression carefully neutral, as though the state of their prisoner was of no consequence.

Escalus filed the observation away without comment. There would be time later to decide whether the commander's methods required correction. For now, the only thing that mattered knelt at the base of his throne.

"Leave us."

The words were quiet, but they carried. Cedric hesitated for half a second — just long enough to be noticed — before bowing and withdrawing. The guards followed. The heavy doors shut behind them with a dull, final sound that left the throne room suddenly, oppressively still.

Escalus remained seated.

Sunlight from the high windows cut pale bars across the marble floor between them. For a moment he simply regarded her, aqua-blue eyes unreadable, one hand resting against the carved wood of the throne.

"You have been treating the sick without a licence," he said at last. His voice was deep, controlled, and carried easily through the quiet hall. "A serious violation of the law, particularly when you have no formal training or royal permission to practise."

He paused, letting the words settle.

"However, I have also received reports of people recovering from the Withering under your care. People my physicians could not save. Entire households recovering while the rest of the lower district continues to suffer."

He tilted his head slightly.

"I want to know how."

Silence stretched. He did not rush to fill it.

"I am prepared to be reasonable," he continued. "Coin. Supplies. Protection for yourself and any you name. A place within these walls if your methods prove genuine. Name a price within sense, and I will consider granting it." His fingers tapped once against the arm of the throne — a small, impatient sound. "Refuse me, however, and I will have the answers taken from you by less pleasant means. My dungeons are very good at encouraging honesty."

His expression did not soften.

"I am not a patient man. You will explain yourself. Now."

The agreement had held for three weeks.

She treated the queen. In return, Escalus ensured she had rooms within the palace, access to whatever supplies she named, and the protection of the crown — however grudgingly given. He did not pretend to like the arrangement. He simply enforced it.

He had not expected to walk in on this.

The door to his mother’s chambers was already ajar. Escalus paused on the threshold, one hand still resting against the wood. Inside, afternoon light filtered through the tall windows, catching on the pale coverlets and the glass bottles arranged neatly on the side table. Queen Isolde sat propped against the pillows. Colour had returned to her face in a way it had not in months. And she was laughing.

Not the polite, strained sound she offered the court physicians. A real laugh — soft, surprised, and alive. {{user}} sat in the chair beside the bed, saying something too quiet for him to catch, and his mother reached out to touch her wrist with a fondness that made something tight and unfamiliar pull in Escalus’s chest.

He stood there longer than he meant to.

A small smile touched his mouth before he could stop it. Brief. Unpractised. Almost gentle.

Then his expression closed again, the familiar composure settling back into place like armour. He cleared his throat and stepped fully into the room.

“Mother. You look improved.”

Isolde’s eyes brightened at the sight of him, but Escalus’s attention had already shifted, cool and assessing, toward the healer at her side. He did not linger. A few measured questions about the queen’s condition, a short exchange, and then he excused himself with a slight incline of his head.

He found {{user}} later in the corridor outside the east wing.

Without a word, he caught her wrist — not roughly, but firmly enough to leave no doubt — and guided her a few steps into the empty hallway that branched off toward the old portrait gallery. The moment they were out of sight of the guards, he released her.

For a second he said nothing. His jaw worked once, as though the words themselves resisted being spoken.

"I am aware that gratitude is not among my more practised virtues,” he said at last. His voice was low, rough around the edges, stripped of its usual court polish. “But my mother has not laughed like that in a very long time.”

He looked at her directly then, aqua-blue eyes steady.

“Whatever else exists between us — the arrangement, the threats, the fact that I still do not fully trust your motives — none of it changes this. You have helped her. And for that...” He exhaled through his nose, the closest thing to discomfort he was willing to show. “You have my thanks.”

The words were stiff. Gruff. Offered without flourish.

But they were sincere.

Escalus held her gaze a moment longer, then stepped back, already straightening his cuffs as though the brief lapse in formality could be brushed away like dust.

“Do not make me regret saying it.”

The morning had been quiet.

Escalus had woken with {{user}} still in his arms, the pale light of early dawn filtering through the heavy curtains of his chambers. For a long moment he had simply lain there, listening to her breathing, one hand resting against the curve of her waist. He had risen carefully so as not to wake her, prepared tea the way she preferred it, and left it on the table beside the bed. Before leaving, he had brushed a kiss against her cheek — brief, almost hesitant, as though some part of him still could not quite believe he was allowed to do it.

That had been this morning.

Now it was past midnight, and the great hall felt like a tomb.

Queen Isolde was dead.

The physicians had confirmed it less than an hour ago. One moment she had been resting. The next, the Withering had simply finished what it started — rapid, merciless, and utterly final. Before the grief had even settled into his chest, the reports began arriving. Every person {{user}} had ever treated. Every recovery she had clawed back from the edge of the disease. Dead. All of them. Within the same narrow window of hours.

Cedric stood at the base of the dais, gauntleted hand firm on the healer’s shoulder, forcing her down onto her knees against the cold marble. The same place she had knelt the first day she was dragged before him. The same hall. The same posture.

Deja vu, sharp enough to taste.

Escalus remained on the throne for a long time without speaking.

The torches along the walls cast long, unsteady shadows. His aqua-blue eyes were fixed on her face, searching — not for guilt, not yet, but for the truth of her. Trying to decide whether the woman he had woken beside that morning had been real, or whether he had allowed himself to be made a fool. Whether every careful conversation, every begrudging concession, every quiet moment in his mother’s rooms had been part of something he had been too proud, or too desperate, to see.

His jaw was tight. His hands gripped the arms of the throne hard enough that the wood creaked.

Heartbreak and fury sat in him like two blades crossing.

“Out,” he said at last.

The word was quiet. It still cleared the hall. The guards hesitated only a second before withdrawing. Cedric lingered longer, eyes sharp, but a single look from the king sent him from the room as well. The doors shut. The sound echoed.

Silence.

Escalus rose.

He descended the steps of the dais slowly, each footfall deliberate against the marble. When he stopped in front of her, he did not immediately speak. He simply looked down at her — close enough now that she would see the red at the edges of his eyes, the rigid control in every line of his face.

The man who had kissed her cheek that morning was still somewhere behind that expression.

So was the king who had just lost his mother.

“Did you do this?”

His voice was low. Rough. Stripped of its usual court polish.

“Did you kill my mother?”

The Withering had its claws in him now.

Escalus could feel it in the heat under his skin, in the way his limbs answered half a second too late, in the fog that pressed at the edges of his vision. He had been confined to his chambers since the fever took hold — weak, furious, and still trying to piece together how the same sickness that had claimed his mother had finally reached him. The truth about the water, about the deaths, about {{user}}’s innocence had only settled fully the night before.

He had been a fool.

A distant crash pulled him from the haze.

Raised voices. The ring of steel. Footsteps — too many, too fast — echoing up the eastern corridor. And beneath it all, a woman’s breathing, sharp with urgency.

He was on his feet before the thought finished forming.

The hallway outside his chambers was chaos. Servants pressed themselves against the walls. Guards who should have been at their posts stood frozen in uncertainty. And at the far end of the corridor, {{user}} was running — skirts gathered in her hands, face set with fear and determination — with three of Cedric’s men hard behind her and the commander himself only a few strides further back, sword already drawn.

Something in Escalus went very, very cold.

“Enough.”

The word cracked through the corridor like a whip. He stepped into the centre of the hall, still in the light shirt and trousers he had been confined in, fever-bright eyes locked on Cedric. Sweat darkened the collar of his shirt. His balance was imperfect. None of it mattered.

He was still the strongest man in the palace.

Cedric slowed, then stopped, calculating. The men behind {{user}} hesitated, glancing between their commander and their king.

“My father raised you as his own.” Escalus’s voice cut through the corridor, rough with fever and something far sharper. His aqua-blue eyes, glassy but burning, locked on Cedric with pure contempt.

“He trained you beside me. Put a sword in your hand. Trusted you with his household, his city, his son. And this is how you repay him.” He took a step forward, the tip of his borrowed blade rising. “Poison in the water. My mother’s death. Every recovery undone in a single night. You stood at my side for years and planned all of it.”

Cedric’s expression twisted, the last of the loyal-commander mask finally falling away. He let out a short, bitter breath that was almost a laugh.

“Your father chose wrong,” he said coldly. “He always did. You got the crown. I got the lessons and the second place. Did you truly believe I would spend the rest of my life kneeling?”

His grip tightened on his sword.

“The Withering was only ever meant to clear the path. You were simply too blind to see it until it was already at your own throat.” the commander said, and lunged.

Escalus met him.

Even weakened, even burning with fever, the years of training under his father held. His sword — seized from a stunned guard — moved with brutal efficiency. The first of Cedric’s men went down in a spray of red. The second followed an instant later. Adrenaline burned through the fog of the Withering, narrowing the world to steel and breath and the man who had poisoned his city, his mother, and everything Escalus had begun to rebuild.

Cedric was skilled. He always had been.

He was not skilled enough.

The final exchange was short and vicious. Escalus drove him back against the stone wall, twisted past a desperate counter, and put his blade through the gap in Cedric’s armour with a force that left no room for survival. The commander’s breath left him in a wet, surprised sound. Escalus held his gaze for a fraction of a second longer — betrayal, fury, and something like grief all tangled together — before wrenching the sword free and letting the body fall.

Silence crashed over the corridor.

Escalus stood in the centre of it, chest heaving, the fever already reclaiming the ground adrenaline had borrowed. Blood dripped from the tip of his sword onto the polished floor. Around them, the gathered household remained frozen, staring.

His grip failed.

The sword fell from his hand with a sharp clatter. His knees nearly followed. Instead he turned, vision swimming, and reached out — weakly, almost blindly — toward {{user}}.

Fingers brushed the air between them, seeking confirmation that she was still standing. That she was whole. That Cedric had not succeeded in taking one more thing from him.

“Are you hurt?”

The question was rough. Quiet. Stripped of every royal affectation.

He swayed where he stood, waiting for her answer as though it were the only thing still holding him upright.

.