Chapter Text
Jester informs him that they have moved to Port Damali for the next two days, along with some mildly truncated instructions on where to find the tower. Essek wanders the streets of the city in disguise, squinting at signs and wishing he’d brought a hat to block the sun. When he finally finds them, the Nein insist on bringing him to some restaurant they’ve found, except they make him cast Seeming first because they’d already gone the night before and gotten kicked out. Jester asks him about the makeup she’d given him and waggles her eyebrows suggestively when he admits he’s worn it a few times now.
“Oh! I almost forgot, I got you these!” These turn out to be a pair of earrings, two tiny crabs in silver. They’re...surprisingly tasteful. He may actually be able to wear them to Court without getting strange looks.
It’s so good to see them, to listen to their chatter, to hear about what they did over their vacation and get context for the various strange Sendings he’s received, to deftly avoid their questions on what he and the scourgers got up to during their absence.
“But you are together, right?” Jester presses.
“Yes, but what’s the saying? Don’t kiss and tell?”
“Huh. So then you’re dating two people at once, then. Do you think maybe you’d have room for one more?” Essek gathers, from the way that everyone’s eyes flick over to Caleb, that this is the subject of an ongoing debate. He’s not sure whether he’s grateful or horrified that the Nein have decided to meddle in this particular matter.
He knows better than to acknowledge it, regardless. Just gives Jester a coy smile. “Why? Are you interested in joining us?”
She doesn’t have the chance to respond, as it is at this point that Caleb inhales some water and spends several minutes coughing very loudly.
After dinner they wander the streets, more tolerable now that the sun is setting. The crowds are eclectic, as port cities tend to be, and the air smells faintly of the sea. The streets sprawl and wind, but Fjord knows his way around, all the interesting spots, tourist traps and local dives alike. The zoo is closed, which the Nein don’t seem particularly concerned about when they teleport inside the gate. There are indeed lions, surrounded by broken shards of winter squash. And colorful birds, and monkeys, and presumably more animals that they don’t get to see before a security guard finds them and they teleport away, breathless and laughing, into some square with a fountain surrounded by colorful mosaics. It’s a lovely city.
Essek misses Zadash.
It’s ridiculous. The Nein are here, and his scourgers are probably in some safehouse miles away from any civilization, and Essek misses Zadash. He never wanted to like that city, but it seems inevitable in hindsight, that he would love the place where he fell in love.
—
Later in the week, Essek casts Sending. “Do you know the current location of Caleb’s tower, or if it would be appropriate for me to visit?”
Astrid takes a while to respond. Essek smiles at the pause, imagining her drawing tally marks. “Port Zoon. Whalefall Inn, suite 21, second floor. The Nein will be happy to see you.” A slight hesitation. “So will we.”
It takes a Teleport, a decent disguise, several questions asked of locals, and a Dimension Door to get there. Essek enters the tower and discovers that all of the Nein, Veth included, are currently engaged in some sort of target practice involving entire roast chickens. There’s a very enthusiastic few minutes where he gets swept up in the general energy of the dining room and is almost convinced to participate. Then he discovers that an Eldritch Blast has enough energy to turn an entire chicken into a fine mist, and that aerosolized chicken paste is the most horrifying substance he has ever encountered. He excuses himself with an explanation so garbled he doesn’t even know what he’s saying and flees upstairs with several more castings of Prestidigitation than strictly necessary.
Essek’s reaction to the two scourgers outside his door is far more relieved than it would have been six months ago.
He finds himself suppressing a smile, lets them in without a word. They end up draped across each other on his bed. Essek is fairly certain it was smaller at some point, but he doesn’t recall it ever changing, which means Caleb must have done it gradually enough that he didn’t notice. Essek isn’t about to complain, if it means moments like this, lazy and indulgent. It’s the first time he’s really relaxed in days. He laughs.
“What?” Astrid asks, reaching over to play with his hair.
“You know, I did have to explain my absence last week,” he says, “to the Bright Queen and several important members of the Court. I framed it as a strategic necessity, maintaining contacts most closely allied with the Nein and most amenable to consorting with a drow. I told them all sorts of useful information I’d gained, about the Volstrucker program being decommissioned by the Cobalt Soul, and reiterated my advice to ally with them, as a semi-independent entity from the Crown. I was praised for my unique insight and diligence. I cannot imagine what they would have to say about this.”
“Mm. Congratulations, probably,” says Eadwulf, and Astrid laughs.
“The Skysibil differentiated between the two groups of scourgers as the rogues and yours, and part of me wonders if she knows.”
“There’s more than just the rogues and us. There’s also every other unreliable bastard working for Beau, and I hope that you never meet any of them.”
“Are you worried I’ll meet one who has the foresight to remove all of their daggers before lying on the bed with me, so they don’t dig into my ribcage?”
Astrid sighs and stops playing with his hair for long enough to reach down and remove the offending dagger. Flicks it into the wall with a lazy motion that Essek tries not to find terribly attractive, goes back to playing with his hair. “I don’t trust them,” she says.
“You don’t trust me,” he points out.
“Imagine my stress at having everyone I don’t trust in a room together.”
There’s a knock at the door— tap, taptap, taptaptap, tap. His scourgers tense at the first knock, then melt back into the bed upon recognizing the pattern. Even before he gets up to open the door, Essek knows who will be on the other side.
“Can I help you?” he asks Caleb.
“May I come in?” Caleb asks, then blanches. “That is. Ah. I don’t mean to—”
“You aren’t interrupting anything, if that’s what you’re concerned about.” Essek steps aside to let him in. Caleb stops in the middle of the room, stooped and uncertain. Astrid has moved to sit just on the edge of the bed. Essek hovers by the door, fidgeting and wishing that he had his mantle to hide it.
“What is it?” Astrid asks softly.
Caleb clears his throat. “Right. I know that you all have, ah. I do not wish to be—presumptuous. But I have been—I have had some time to think about things, and Beau—the Nein—” He breaks off. Sighs, shakes his head slightly. “This is not going how I imagined it.”
“How did you imagine it?” Essek asks, wanting desperately to know what it is, if this could possibly be going where he hopes it is or if he’s giving in to wishful thinking.
Caleb looks over at him. Opens his mouth, closes it again. Licks his lips, says, “I’ve imagined a lot of things. But...” He shrugs, doesn’t finish the sentence.
“What do you want, Caleb?” asks Eadwulf.
Caleb’s hands flutter at his sides while he searches for words. Then, very faintly, “You?”
The room is very quiet, after that word. Caleb closes his eyes. Astrid slides off the bed, steps closer, reaches out and stops just short of actually touching him.
“Hey,” she says, and waits until he opens his eyes again. “We all want you here. Do you want to stay here? Or do you need more time to think about this?”
Caleb exhales all at once. “If you give me more time I will change my mind and take another year to get my head out of my own ass again.”
“If you need another year, you can have it,” she says. “Or two, or ten. However long you need.”
“Please just kiss me,” says Caleb, only a little desperately.
Astrid closes the last few inches between them and does exactly that. It’s a brief kiss, like she’s stealing something, but as she pulls away Caleb follows, draws her in for another. She doesn’t break away a second time, drawing closer to him instead. He obliges eagerly, hungry, like contact was inevitable, like this is the end of both of them and the beginning of something new.
Essek has never seen galaxies collide, but he understands the theory.
“I cannot overstate how much I do not want to ruin this moment,” he says, “but your clothes still smell like chicken paste.”
Astrid sighs against Caleb’s lips, murmurs, “He has a point.”
“If I could just—prestidigitate them, perhaps, or—”
“Or I could take them off,” Caleb says, hands moving to his scarf.
“Oh,” says Essek, which draws a laugh from the scourgers.
Caleb turns to look at Essek, grinning. Throws the scarf over the back of a chair without breaking eye contact, which—Essek should not be flustered by this. His shoes, next, then his coat, dropping into a heap on the floor, then the buttons on his shirt, and—
There’s a shift at some point, in Caleb’s demeanor, so subtle at first that Essek thinks he’s imagining things. His smile too sharp, his movement too fluid. There’s something—familiar, something—
Astrid and Eadwulf exchange a look, Wulf’s brow lifting in a silent question.
—something that’s not quite right.
“Caleb. Pause,” Essek says. Caleb freezes, one arm out of his shirt, like a machine grinding to a halt all at once, the facade failing as soon as his momentum is disrupted. Of course. Now he knows what is familiar about this.
“Are you okay?” Astrid asks carefully.
Caleb takes a very long time just to shrug.
Maybe this is a terrible idea. Maybe there is a timeline where this all works out, and this isn’t it. Maybe there’s no turning back time and no healing from the damage that has already been wrought. Maybe some things break in a way that can’t be fixed. Maybe some things aren’t meant to be, no matter how badly you want them. Maybe some things end and do not begin again.
Or maybe Essek is overthinking this, just a little.
Maybe Caleb is, too.
“If you would like to be a cat for a while,” Essek says, “that would be okay.”
Caleb blinks several times in quick succession. Lets out a long breath, gives what could almost be considered a nod and reaches behind him to remove the tie from his hair. There’s a small cocoon strung along the ribbon, cleverly hidden away. He crushes it, casts Polymorph.
“Are you sure that was a good idea?” asks Astrid.
“In my defense, that was not the kind of cat that I was imagining.”
Caleb, now in the form of a fucking mountain lion, pads past Astrid and jumps onto the bed, walks a few circles before settling down next to Eadwulf.
“I’ve seen weirder,” he says after a beat of silence, shrugging and reaching over to scratch under Caleb’s chin.
They all end up lounging on the bed again, with the addition of one more large predator. It’s awkward, at first, what with the mountain lion and the uncertain silence.
“It, ah—occurs to me that we’ve never gone on a proper date,” Essek says after a couple minutes. “I do know of a couple cafes in Rosohna that aren’t completely mediocre. You could get better coffee.”
“We’d likely need better disguises, if we’re walking with you,” Astrid points out. “You like to make a spectacle.”
“Ah, but the advantage of drifting everywhere in ornate clothing is that no one recognizes me if I take off the mantle and walk.” He shifts, slightly, trying not to disturb the mountain lion. “Or we could go somewhere in the city where humans wouldn’t be as...unpopular.”
Astrid laughs. “If you can find some part of Rosohna that’s still living in 548 PD, I would love to go there.”
Essek raises a brow. “Why 548 PD?”
“The assassination crisis?” Eadwulf guesses. “The first one.”
“Mm, ja. Though I suppose if we’re traveling back in time we might as well tip off the Kryn and avert the entire thing.”
“I do not know if that would make a difference, unless we also averted the Western Penumbra Conflict,” Essek points out. “We’d have to convince the Empire not to interfere.”
“Or we could convince the Dynasty to cede the rights to the land. It was a tenuous claim anyhow, and out of their usual reach.” Astrid has stopped scratching behind Caleb’s ear. He lets out an irritated mrrp, which is less adorable and more threatening than he probably realizes. She starts scratching his ear again.
Essek snorts. “That may be feasible. But then there’s the incident further north—”
“The one in 602 PD? I do think the Dynasty is mostly to fault for that one.”
“Perhaps. Though you must admit, from our perspective it didn’t seem like the Empire had any use for the mountain.”
“True. They couldn’t have known the details.”
“Unless someone in the Empire just told them,” Eadwulf adds. “There wasn’t any point to all the secrecy.”
“Ja, fair point.”
Astrid knows a fair deal of history, and the conversation continues in that vein for a while. Old events, skirmishes and spats long before their time, picking through each conflict and trying to determine what went wrong, on each side. There’s not much point to the exercise. They weren’t there to intercede, and they have no plans to rewrite time and undo the mistakes of the past. But perhaps it’s a sort of practice for the future.
And there’s something comforting about this, speaking about politics without trying to trick each other into revealing information. It’s...collaborative, a purely hypothetical examination of past tactics. No blame assigned, no forgiveness offered. Just what happened, and why it happened, and what could have been done differently.
Caleb returns to his original form well before the hour is up, which Essek takes as a good sign. None of them acknowledge the change, just continue picking apart the skirmish outside Nogvurot nearly two decades ago before moving onto Dwendal’s refusal to send aid to a besieged Vasselheim, Astrid petting Caleb’s hair with the same absentminded impulse as she had scratching behind his ears five minutes earlier.
“I suspect that the only real motivation was pettiness,” she says. “Which could have been avoided entirely by sending someone less overbearing. An ambassador who was more cognizant of his...defensiveness.”
“Could’ve asked the Assembly,” Eadwulf says. “They would’ve used it as an opportunity to gain a foothold in the city, which Vasselheim wouldn’t like. But they would have been useful.”
“Something tells me that the Assembly managed to gain a foothold there anyhow, if the specificity of your opinions on the food there is anything to go by,” Essek points out, and he laughs.
“Ja. Well. World didn’t end, so maybe that one didn’t matter as much.”
“It was an opportunity to improve diplomatic relations with Issylra, which in turn could have reduced tension over the trade agreement with Ank’Harel. But yes, I’m willing to concede that that one turned out fairly well, regardless.” Essek sighs. They’re running out of impersonal anecdotes. “Much better than the outcome of other selfish decisions. I shouldn’t have stolen the beacons.”
Astrid hums. “Ja. The potential gain in knowledge wasn’t worth the conflict that followed.” She makes it sound so simple like that. Just another cost-benefit analysis.
“The Assembly shouldn’t have asked for two,” Eadwulf says. “But Vess and Ludinus never learned how to share.”
“They shouldn’t have asked for—well. I suppose the loss of two was worse than one,” Essek concedes. “Still.”
“They could have accomplished similar goals without taking either. The resources it took would have been better spent stealing more ephemeral things. State secrets. Things that no one notices.” Astrid tilts her head towards him. “Not that spying on you wasn’t interesting, but I still think that we could have found a way into the Conservatory, given enough time.”
“You truly could not, not without escaping notice. Trust me on that one. Better not to steal anything from the Dynasty at all. And the root of the problem was that neither I nor the Assembly was particularly concerned with averting international conflict in the first place.”
They fall silent just long enough for Essek to remember that Caleb is there, pressed between them, warm and human and—
“We shouldn’t have spied on you,” Eadwulf says before he can think too much about it. “It might not have worked, if the Assembly hadn’t gotten you involved.”
“Well. Yes. I can’t say that I minded the attention, though,” he adds, and they laugh at that, Caleb included.
“We also shouldn’t have showed up at your home trying to intimidate you into revealing your loyalties,” Astrid says dryly.
“Yes. You could have trusted the Nein. Though your concerns were entirely understandable, and the situation turned out about as optimally as possible for all parties involved.” Then, because they seem to have strayed into the territory of interpersonal errors and he still feels uneasy about the entire thing, “I shouldn’t have eavesdropped on you, the one time.”
The reaction is subtle but immediate. Eadwulf stops breathing for a couple seconds. Astrid’s hand ceases playing with Caleb’s hair, and he looks up at her, brows raised in concern.
“When was that?” she asks lightly.
Essek sighs. Can’t help but curl into himself slightly. “It was in the library, several weeks ago. I’d read a book in Zemnian earlier, so I understood part of your conversation when you entered. I should have told you, rather than pretending I didn’t understand.”
Astrid and Eadwulf are still tense, but Caleb seems to connect the dots, no doubt aided by his excellent memory. “Ah. Well. In your defense, we were talking about you.”
A beat. Then Astrid says, “Then? Really?”
“What?”
“You knew that we liked you. That whole time.”
“I knew that you were attracted to me, but I was also working under the assumption that you were trying to get me killed. So no.”
Silence. “Fair. Just. Don’t do that again,” Eadwulf says.
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“We should have told you we weren’t trying to get you killed,” Eadwulf adds after a moment. “So there’s that.”
“It would have been difficult to convince me, in the beginning. But at some point, yes.” He sighs. “Speaking of withholding information, I should have told the Nein about stealing the beacons.”
Caleb frowns at that. “You would not live very long if you made a habit of that.”
“I don’t mean when we first met,” Essek says. “But at dinner, when you asked me what the worst thing I’d ever done was. I could have told you the truth then.”
Caleb blinks a few times. “You could have,” he admits. “That might have, ah. Made the rest easier. But you were not used to trusting people, and the stakes were very high. I can understand why you did not.”
Another silence. Astrid starts playing with Caleb’s hair again. “We should have told you about what happened at Vergesson,” she says.
Caleb sighs, closes his eyes. “I think that if we go over every mistake we have made with each other, we will be here a very long time. And I do want—” A pause. Another sigh. “I have never been particularly good at moderation, only indulgence or abstinence. The lengths I have gone to to obtain—things I wanted, things I decided I could have—I am not proud of myself, for that.” He opens his eyes, looks at Essek. “I shouldn’t have seduced you to get access to dunamancy.”
“I truly cannot emphasize enough how much you did not do that,” Essek retorts. “I realize that this is a somewhat ridiculous assertion considering the number of people currently in my bed, but I am not an easy individual to seduce. I didn’t actually find you attractive until—” He breaks off, sighs. “I don’t know, exactly. Probably when we were working on the Transmogrification.”
“Oh.”
“I know how to play along. I wanted you to believe you had some sway over me. But—it’s nothing personal, really. I’ve never been interested in strangers.”
“I liked you right away,” says Eadwulf.
“And?” Astrid says. “You’ll flirt with anyone who could kill you. That doesn’t mean much.”
He chuckles. “It didn’t. And then the bastard tried to teach me astrology.”
“Astronomy.”
“Ja, astrology.”
Essek reaches over to flick him on the nose, and Eadwulf leans out of the way, smirking. When Essek pulls his arm back, Caleb reaches up and plucks his hand out of the air, laces their fingers together. Whatever Essek was about to say next dies in his throat as Caleb presses his lips against his knuckles. He seems—steadier. Present. Confident, though still with the slightest edge of uncertainty. More than a little hungry. And something else, something that takes Essek too long to recognize because it doesn’t happen particularly often—he looks happy.
“I have no idea how any of this worked out the way it did,” Essek says quietly, like it might disappear if he startles the moment away.
“Considering how we started?” Astrid says. “Neither do I.”
“It was...difficult, in the beginning,” Caleb says. “To have the people I love at odds with each other like that.”
There’s too much of a pause after that, the rest of them struck breathless by the people I love, the sincerity with which he says it, the ease. Eadwulf recovers first. “Easier or harder than when they’re all fucking each other?”
Caleb blinks a couple times. “Well. Something was harder.” Essek is startled into laughter at that. Caleb grins, adds, “It is not every day that your wildest fantasies go ahead and happen without you, you know.”
“You fantasized about this?” Essek asks.
“I have a very, ah. Active imagination. Though I did not imagine it would involve turning into a cat, first,” he admits sheepishly. “I think too much.”
“That’s fine. But. Next time you decide to be a two hundred-pound cat? Perhaps some warning?” Astrid suggests.
Caleb snorts. “Consider yourself lucky that I did not turn into a manticore.”
Essek sits up a bit. “Can you? You figured out the spell?”
“Ja, I think so. I, ah. I spent a lot of time trying to distract myself, these last few weeks.”
Astrid snorts. Eadwulf says, “You’ll have to give a demonstration.”
“You’ll have to show me how you solved the metaphysical mass conversion problem,” Essek adds.
“Nerd,” says Astrid.
“Are you saying that you don’t want to know how he solved the metaphysical mass conversion problem?”
“I didn’t say that I am also not a nerd.”
Caleb laughs, shifting his weight onto one elbow, though he doesn’t let go of Essek’s hand. “I promise I will show you later. But. Tell me if I am—moving too quickly, here—”
“I recognize that patience is a virtue,” Essek says, “but haven’t we all earned a little vice, at this point?”
Caleb blinks. Wets his lips. Blinks a few more times, staring at Essek like a book he hasn’t read yet, before pulling him over to straddle his lap. Essek leans close, lets go of his hand so he can tilt Caleb’s chin up just a bit.
“Yes?” he asks, and Caleb says a breathless word in Zemnian. He still hasn’t figured out if that one means please or you’re welcome, but the sentiment works either way.
“Good,” Essek says, and kisses him.
There are different kinds of infinity, some larger than others. And it seems the same holds true for perfect things, because Caleb’s lips against his is perfect, at least until he feels Astrid’s hand brush against his flank, and that is better, somehow. He’s dizzy with emotion, the feeling of Caleb’s arms thrown around his neck, Astrid’s hand trailing lazily down to his hip, his body pressed against Caleb and the growing evidence of his arousal.
Caleb lets out a surprised moan and breaks away, panting. “Wulf,” he says, a little wrecked.
“What?” Eadwulf says innocently, and lets his hand creep further up the inside of Caleb’s thigh.
Caleb makes another noise, equal parts frustration and desperation, says, “You are all wearing more clothing than I am. That is very unfair.”
“I promise to let you put your clothes on if you let me prestidigitate them first,” Essek says with a smile, not his usual polite facade but something sharper that he’s learned from Astrid.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh? What else could you possibly mean?”
Caleb rolls his eyes and begins fiddling with the clasps on Essek’s shirt.
Astrid snorts. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with that than we have. Neither of us have managed to get him completely naked,” she says, already untying the lacing on her own shirt.
“That is blatantly untrue. I distinctly remember—”
“You were wearing socks,” she says, pulling the shirt over her head. Essek hides his face in the crook of Caleb’s neck, because she’s entirely correct.
“My feet were cold,” he mumbles, and Caleb shakes with quiet laughter beneath him.
They’re terribly inefficient at removing clothing. Part of it is that they’re very good at distracting each other. Part of it is that Essek tries to prestidigitate Caleb’s coat while they’re distracted, setting off an extremely unnecessary chain of Counterspells, and he only manages to clean it the second time because Caleb joins his side. Then things devolve into some sort of contest to steal the socks off Essek’s feet, and an argument over whether Astrid gets partial credit for stealing a sock from Eadwulf’s Mage Hand, and—
“I do not understand why you’re still arguing over a point system when we could be having sex,” Essek says, which does manage to get things back on track.
—
He’s not—Essek has had sex with both of them several times now, but never at the same time, and he’d been a little preoccupied with the logistics of an extra person, let alone two. Which, in hindsight, is a little ridiculous, because he’s fully capable of multitasking and taking turns. He’s not sure if this is too much or not nearly enough, but more people is good, more hands—more, more, more—
Caleb is loud. It does not take long before his speech devolves into incomprehensible Zemnian babbling, and fuck does Essek ever need to learn Zemnian but at least his name is the same in any language. Astrid seems so quiet, in comparison, composed right up until the last few seconds. And Eadwulf is silent, he’s always been silent except for that little cut-off sound when he finishes, but Essek has ideas, suddenly, about what might make him beg just as prettily.
Caleb trails a lazy line of kisses down the column of his throat, lax and sated but nevertheless determined to take Essek apart.
“I have an idea,” Astrid says, and Caleb pauses, pulls away slightly. Essek tries to complain and it comes out as nothing more than a disappointed whine.
“What?” he says after another second’s pause.
“You like to make a spectacle,” she says slowly. “How do you feel about touching yourself while we watch?”
The answer, as it turns out, is very positively.
—
Essek sits on the couch and makes a vague attempt at reading his book, though he’s paying almost as much attention to the Nein’s definitely hypothetical conversation about robbing some lord in Feolinn of all his good wine. Caleb sits next to him, chiming in on occasion. He leans against him, arm thrown around Essek’s shoulders without thought or purpose, touching him just because he can. He’s warm. There are kittens embroidered on the cuff of his sleeve. Essek could die here, perfectly content, but in truth he hasn’t thought about his own death in weeks now.
Their scourgers arrive with little fanfare, skirt past the Nein and head towards the couch. Astrid sits at her usual perch, on the arm of the couch next to Caleb. Eadwulf hesitates a moment before he sits on the other side of Essek, leans against him. Tense, awkward. A couple of the Nein glance over, but none of them comment. Essek’s warning glare might have something to do with it.
The conversation continues for another few minutes. Caleb stands, stretches, leaves the room. Not a minute later, a cat jumps onto the couch, huge and orange and violently fluffy. It accepts Essek’s proffered ear scritches, then curls up onto Eadwulf’s lap and begins a rumbling purr.
This strategy works quite well for a while, Eadwulf slowly relaxing at Essek’s side, one hand carding through fur. But perhaps Caleb does not have the same grasp on the passage of time as a cat, because in one moment he is fuzzy and rumbling and content on Eadwulf’s lap, and in the next he is long-limbed and ungainly and tumbling off the couch in a human heap.
“Are you okay?” Essek asks when Caleb doesn’t immediately get up.
“That was embarrassing,” he says, winded.
Eadwulf snorts and reaches down, scoops Caleb up under the armpits like an errant toddler and sets him on the couch next to him. After a moment, Astrid quietly slides off the arm of the couch to sit next to Essek, rests her head against his shoulder.
Essek had assumed that they always sit here because it’s the most comfortable seat, or because it’s the best position to covertly watch people enter and exit the library, but it turns out that the couch is also exactly the right size for four wizards to sit next to each other without any space between them.
In the grand scheme of things, this small moment, golden and perfect as it is, is entirely inconsequential. This will not be recorded in any history books. This will not prevent a war. It will not turn back time or clean the blood from their hands. The Empire is hungry and canny and its ruler is short-sighted and ill-tempered more often than he is not. The Dynasty is old, so very old, and it will not forget the slights against it, not even in the name of peace. These facts may be mutable, or they may not, but this moment will do nothing to change them regardless.
But therein lies the paradox—if moments like this did not exist, why would any of that be worth changing? The relentless machinations of war, the grim tides of conflict and the clash of nations, none of it is terrible because it belongs in history books. It is terrible for the lives lost, for the moments like this that could have taken place instead.
Astrid reaches up, runs a hand through Essek’s carefully-styled hair, mussing it up beyond recognition. He closes his eyes, leans into the touch. Caleb says something in Zemnian. Eadwulf responds, also in Zemnian, and then Astrid chimes in as well. Essek doesn’t understand the words, but even without looking he can tell that they’re smiling as they speak.
Love is worth almost nothing, in a world like this, so why is it the only thing that matters?