"Visit your sister in the dungeon sometimes." Damon drew his final circle, three in a row, defeating Gertrude.

"Despite how she is, she likes to see your faces around."

Ah.

This was what he chose to break the silence with?

Not a decree or a command, not even a reprimand for Gertrude’s defeat. Just... a suggestion. A brotherly nudge toward the dungeon where their sister was currently incarcerated for the crime of threatening to burn down the established order.

To visit Angela.

The three siblings exchanged glances, and there were wide-eyed, slightly panicked glances of younger siblings who had just been asked to pet a fire dragon.

They weren’t exactly sure about Damon yet, but Angela was scarier.

Somehow.

Even locked in a dungeon. Even stripped of her political power and her freedom of movement, Angela was still terrifying.

Damon did not look up from his grid. The stick moved in his hand, carving neat lines into the dirt. "Ask her anything," Damon said. "She’ll tell you what to do."

He paused. The stick hovered over the center square.

"Even I would ask her what to do a lot of times."

Silence.

The three half-siblings stared at him incredulously.

Could it be—

Could it possibly be—

That this man was actually close to Angela?

That the years of whispered rumors about their strained relationship, the cold distance, the political rivalry, the sister who had been cast aside and the brother who had left her to rot, were just... performance?

Damon, oblivious to or simply uninterested in their existential crisis, moved on.

"Reginald."

The Second Prince straightened so fast his boots skidded on the frost. "Yes?"

"It’s time for you to pick a girl to marry. Ask Angela."

Reginald blinked. "Uh—"

"Whoever Angela picks for you," Damon said, his violet eyes lifting from the grid to fix on his younger brother unblinkingly, "do whatever you can to marry her."

"..." Reginald short-circuited. "Uh... yes, brother. I-I–I mean, Your Majesty."

"I’m telling you this from experience," he said. "I should’ve had married the woman she picked for me." His eyes, still fixed on Reginald, were very serious. "I still feel stupid to this day."

Reginald was speechless.

The Emperor of Iondora had just admitted, to him, to all of them, that he felt stupid. About a woman. Perhaps... about Ivy Cassia?

"I... will remember that," Reginald managed.

Damon nodded once and turned to his sister.

"Gertrude. Do whatever you want."

Gertrude’s frown, which had been softening by degrees throughout this strange, unprecedented conversation, snapped back into place. "Do... whatever I want?"

"Yes."

"That’s unfair."

Damon raised an eyebrow.

"I also want to—" Gertrude stopped. Her mouth, which had been opening to deliver what was clearly going to be a very reasonable and well-argued protest, froze mid-syllable.

Damon was looking at her straight.

"You want to end up fucking your warden silly in the dungeon like your sister?"

"Eh?"

The sound escaped from three throats simultaneously.

Reginald’s face went red. Jove’s face went redder. Gertrude’s face went the approximate color of the setting sun, which was, at that moment, beginning its slow descent behind the skeletal trees.

Damon pointed at her with his twig.

"Do whatever you want. Marry whoever you want as long as I approve of him if he’s a good person." He paused. "Look at your sister. Look carefully. And be glad I can create a better life for you. She had to live like that because I couldn’t do shit for her."

"But—"

"No buts." The twig did not waver. "Whatever you want, but not stupid things."

Gertrude stared at him. The twig. The crown, still slightly askew. The dirt on his imperial mantle. The grid scratched into the frozen earth.

"...yes," she said.

Damon turned to his youngest brother.

"Jove."

"Yes!" Jove’s back straightened involuntary like a soldier called to attention. His eyes, wide and earnest, fixed on the Emperor attentively, just a boy who wanted very much to be brave.

"You go to the academy," he said. Then he asked, "You know why I am sending you to the Academy, right?"

Jove nodded. Damon had also enrolled in the Academy around his age. It felt, strangely, like being handed a map that someone else had already walked.

It was Damon’s road. And he felt something flutter in his chest.

His brother wanted him to walk the same path as him.

"Yes, Elder Brother..."

"Good." Damon’s voice softened by a fraction. "Also, learn self-defense. Marry a beast when you’re of age so you can use magic." 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

He paused. His violet eyes, so like their father’s, so like the portraits that lined the palace halls, fixed on Jove’s throat. He added, "Don’t stand and die again."

Jove’s hand flew to his neck.

It was blunt. Brutal, even. But Damon did not say them cruelly.

Don’t stand there like a fool and die just because it was your mother who held the blade.

That was what he meant, and Jove understood.

Damon pushed himself to his feet. "Now go rest. I think they’re done with cleaning my bedroom now. I’ll go to rest too."

He stretched and his spine popped, the imperial mantle shifting around his shoulders. The crown, still slightly askew, caught the last rays of the setting sun.

Ah.

The three siblings exchanged a final glance.

Was he... messing with dirt here to wait for the servants to be done working?

Damon Iondora was notoriously terrifying to the palace staff. The last time he had returned to his chambers while servants were still working, he had killed a maid.

Yes, the maid had been sent by someone... uh... likely their mother to poison him, but still.

The staff whispered. They flinched when he passed. They hurried their work and avoided his eyes and probably prayed to gods they would not be the next to accidentally offend the murderous prince.

So he waited.

He squatted in the garden in his imperial robe and played tic-tac-toe with a stick rather than walk into his own bedroom and risk scaring the people who cleaned it.

This was their emperor.

This was their brother.

Damon June Iondora, who had spent years pretending to be the monster everyone assumed he was because it was easier than explaining that he was not.

Damon, who told Gertrude to do whatever she wanted.

Damon, who told Jove not to die.

Damon, who told Reginald to marry whoever Angela picked because he still felt stupid about Ivy Cassia.

Damon, who was walking away now, his imperial mantle trailing in the dirt, his crown still slightly askew, leaving behind three half-siblings squatting around a tic-tac-toe grid scratched into the frozen earth.

And they understood him.

Just a little—

Nope. They still had a very long way from truly understanding Damon June Iondora.

Because at this exact moment, Damon was praying a full-bodied plea directed at whatever gods might be listening to let her be gone. Please let her have left. Please let the chamber be empty. Please—

Her? Who?

Well, after his coronation and the arrest of Baron Vemorel... after the endless procession of dignitaries and the thousand small rituals that accompanied the transfer of absolute power, Damon had begun the long walk back to his private chambers.

And then he had smelled it.

Perfume.

Ivy Cassia’s.

His blood ran cold.

Every instinct he possessed, and he possessed quite a few, honed over decades of surviving assassins, screamed at him to retreat. Because here was the thing.

Ivy Cassia had killed his father.

She had done it for Cecilia. Because she believed Cecilia was dead, and Ruby Vaiva had replaced her. Because the Emperor had allowed it. Because Ivy Cassia, in her unhinged way, had decided that regicide was the appropriate response.

And Damon had not told her that Cecilia was alive. Also that Cecilia was Lady Sees. He had kept the secret just like he had kept Ivy’s assassination plan from Cecilia.

See, a matched set of omissions, balanced on either side of a scale he was now desperately trying to keep from tipping.

He wasn’t afraid to face Cecilia, since she was his sister in spirit.

But Ivy...

Ivy was something else entirely.

So Damon Iondora had done the only thing that made sense. He had bolted. He had walked very quickly and with immense dignity to the garden, found a stick, and squatted in the dirt, praying with every fiber of his being that Ivy Cassia would get bored and leave before he had to return.

He was not avoiding the servants.

He was avoiding her.

The tic-tac-toe game had been a diversion. The conversation with his half-siblings had been genuine, but it had also been a way to kill time. To wait. To give Ivy a chance to depart.

Surely she had other things to do. Surely a foreign princess couldn’t loiter in the Emperor’s bedchamber indefinitely. Surely—

The sun had set. His siblings had gone to rest. And Damon, his heart pounding with something that was not quite fear and not quite hope, had finally made his way back to his chamber.

He opened the door.

And there she was.

Ivy Cassia was asleep on his bed.

Her blonde hair spilled across his pillow like a pool of liquid gold. Her chest rose and fell slowly. Her shoes had been kicked off and lay in a heap on the floor. Her traveling cloak was draped over the back of his favorite armchair. She had made herself at home.

Damon stood in the doorway, one hand still on the handle, and stared at the woman who had killed his father.

The woman Angela had picked for him to marry.

The woman he had let go.

...

...

Anyway, he was screwed.