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They say the traitor king’s betrayal was seamless. Perfect. Bloody and brutal.
They say Eret walked out of the final control room covered in blood but none of it hers. They say she emerged grinning, they say her head was held high and her eyes gleamed behind stygian shades and the very ground parted beneath her in fear.
They’re not wrong. They’re also not entirely right.
Eret walks out of the final control room with her head forced up high, steps heavy and confident, a battered grin on her face as the cheers of her new comrades wash over her. She walks out of the final control room with a burning feeling spreading. It eats away at her shoulder, the nip in her side, eating away at her nerves until she feels she could never move again. And Eret moves anyway. Head held high, posture regal, every part the selfish king. Not a weakness to be found in the perfect traitor, seeping blood and burns hidden behind gleaming armor and blood that isn’t hers.
He lasts longer than he really expects. The pain is numbed for much of the day into the night, everything passing in a haze of explosions and negotiations and hateful glares. Every step he takes feels like walking on clouds and every thought passes through his mind like water, and for hours the only thought on his mind is that he won. Lopsided crown on his head, grin on his face, posture befitting a king, Eret almost makes it out of the war numb.
It’s only after the duel, when Eret sees the flash of oak wood in the water and darts over to grab the duelling bow from the riverbed, that the numbness begins to clear and adrenaline makes way for sparks of pain.
Burns hurt, Eret remembers, doubling over for a brief moment in what will look to others as just him bending to inspect the bow. Blows and swipes from blades sting and ache, but burns do as their name tells and rage a fire under skin for as long as they see fit, dragging their claws through flesh and muscle and bone like it’s entertainment. There was a blade, Eret vaguely remembers. Maybe two, but the first he knew was the glancing pain of sweeping edge magic slicing under her armor.
No, the second was direct. Eret squeezes their eyes shut and sucks in deep breaths as the magic of a fire aspect blade freed from the numbness of adrenaline and spurred on by their grab for the bow tries to perform an encore in their shoulder, where a chink in their armor lies between pauldron and chestplate. It’s utter agony— the cut went deep, cutting through flesh and muscle down to the bone, and Eret realizes with a barely-suppressed wheeze that that arm has been hanging unused ever since until Eret rudely tried to use it.
She doesn’t actually know who dealt the blow. All she knows is that there was scuffling, and she was running after that warning blow from a sweeping edge blade, gunning it for the space in the wall she’d sectioned off to be safe, and something had slammed into her. In the blur of motion that followed, she felt her knee ram into the ledge of her tunnel, saw Punz running at Wilbur behind her with a sword smeared with blood, and then she was hefting herself into the tunnel and plunged into darkness with the briefest chance to feel burning agony in her shoulder before adrenaline took over. And then she was opening the tunnel in the silence that comes from death and she was screaming her words of condemnation to her former comrades that could no longer hear them, that she knew her new allies would aggrandize for years to come.
A seamless betrayal. Bloody, brutal, infamous. All except—
“Eret?”
A hand clamps over Eret’s injured shoulder, and he can’t bite back a strangled cry.
Everything turns liquid for a moment. There’s a gasp of horror, a string of apologies, hands on him and his armor and the feeling of his crown sliding off his head as he’s moved, every sensation drowned out by the feeling of fire in his skin screaming and clawing and wailing for vengeance. Eret comes to seeing nothing but darkness, his eyes squeezed shut, laid on his side and heaving for breath with bile in the back of his throat.
“Breathe, Eret, breathe.”
It takes Eret a moment to recognize Punz’s voice. He peeks his eyes open and sees a blur of color: grass, gravel, an oak bridge, the brilliant dazzle of enchanted netherite covering a man with white red-stained clothes and bright blue eyes. Their hands are grasping Eret like they’re afraid he’ll disappear without them and their eyes are fixed on his shoulder, which feels both unbearably hot and cool with each passing breeze at the same time.
His armor has been removed. One of the flashes of netherite Eret mistook for being on Punz is actually his own pauldron, lying to the side with blood splattered on the interior. His shoulder is bared to the gentle breeze in the twilight, roaring in pain with every light touch of the wind.
“Eret, breathe,” Punz repeats.
Their sword lies on the ground, still glinting with blood they hadn’t washed off—Wilbur’s blood. Punz hadn’t hit Wilbur by the time Eret saw it shine red.
“Deep breaths. God, Eret, which one of those bastards did this to you?”
It was you, Eret thinks, though she doesn’t speak it aloud. There’s no horror, no wrench of the gut that follows the thought—she knows why Punz’s sword hit her. A flash of blue and a tricorn hat, darting in front of Wilbur on her way out, nothing more than another target for his wild blows to hit.
Still, even without her speaking, Punz seems to realize anyway. His eyes find his sword just like she had, and his face sinks.
But, just like her, he doesn’t say a word. He unhooks a regen potion from his belt instead, carefully pulling her into his lap with the mumbled excuse of easier access. It’s warm, with her back against his chest, but the warmth isn’t unbearable like the pain in her shoulder. It’s almost comforting, instead, a wall of safety behind her as he peels back the ruined sleeve of her jacket and carefully pours the potion on the injury.
Silence settles as the cool breeze makes itself clear on Eret’s shoulder, as thick liquid settles into her skin and knits torn flesh and muscle back together. To Eret it’s peaceful, but the tension of the body she lies on suggests it’s anything but to her companion.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into the breeze. “I didn’t—I saw—”
“I know,” Eret murmurs back, sitting up and causing Punz to tense more. The burn isn’t gone, she notes, flexing her shoulder with a wince. Enchantment magic loves to stick in that way; it may take months for the aches and flashes of burning to disappear (if ever, Eret briefly thinks, and she quickly stamps that one out), but the worst of the agony is over.
Quietly, Eret lets his head fall on Punz’s shoulder. A silent reassurance that makes him startle at first, but he gradually relaxes into the touch.
Neither of them speak a word. If they need to, they don’t address it. There will be much more to come, ballads of how the traitor king emerged unscathed from the final control room covered in no blood save for her enemies, stories of how Punz and the rest moved like angels of death in that tomb of a room and how Eret stood in the midst and gave her declaration. And the two of them will let them be written. Over and over, covering their tale, until the only ones that know the truth are the two of them and the ache in Eret’s shoulder.