Chapter Text
Breakfast was the closest thing to torture he’d ever endured.
The table in the main house was spread with dry meats, fruits, cheeses — enough to feed a household — yet Fabien managed no more than a few bites of honey bread. The setting was familiar, but his mother’s empty chair, her hollow eyes staring down from the painted wall, made every swallow stick.
Her presence — the new mistress of the house — made it worse.
She was barely showing. Early enough and in bad form to speak of, but she already had a small army of servants fluttering about her, with his father as their eager general. Never mind she was young enough to be his daughter. Never mind it was indecent to remarry so soon, flaunting his wealth by taking a wife he liked. Never mind she had spent her first months erasing every trace of his mother’s hand from the estate. The lady was also expecting. One had to wonder when she found the time.
Fabien lifted his eyes from the plate, stealing a glance. She looked impossibly young, all curls, red ribbons and frills — and yet she was mistress of the house. The complete focus of his hate.
She caught him looking and smiled, sweet as honey.
“Are you all right, Fabien?”
“Perfectly, lady. Why?”
“You’re not eating.” She tilted her head, gazing up at him with wide, innocent eyes. “You’re not still angry with me, are you? It was the smell, you see. I cannot bear it, in my state. I didn’t imagine a man would care for such things. I wouldn’t have touched the roses had I known.”
Fabien steeled himself against the lash of temper. When she first came from the capital, his mother had felt banished to the ends of the earth. Grandfather had sent twelve rosebushes and a gardener to tend them, and she had poured herself into their care — scented tea shrubs, copper blossoms, peach climbers, grandifloras in purple and red, enveloping the house in fragrance. The garden had only grown after Fabien left for the university. Yesterday, the new lady had ordered them cut down.
“Of course not, lady. You wouldn’t.” He mirrored her sweet smile. If only this were his table, his house. But it wasn’t. Half the estate was his by law, but the mansion — raised by his father — was not. “I could never be angry with you.”
“See, Ellia, you worry for nothing,” the lord said, his tone indulgent. “And you shouldn’t, now. Though in truth, Fabien, you did cause quite a scene.”
He had. Awoken by shouting, by gushes of water and the sharp scent of crushed roses, he had stumbled to the window to see devastation: wide circles dug around the bushes, pruned branches strewn on damp soil, petals already shrivelling in the heat. Fabien had stormed outside, voice breaking with rage, hurling threats at the man with the spade. When the overseer hurried over, the explanation — that it was the lady’s order — had only fuelled his fury.
“I want them moved,” he had snapped, jaw clenched. “By the old cottage. Whatever can be saved. And once it’s done—”
He had gestured at the gardener, who froze mid-blow, spade in hand. “He goes to the post. Six lashes for every damaged bush.”
The overseer went pale. “Lord, they're all damaged. That's severe. Very severe -”
“Good.” His voice had come low, savage. He craved pain, blood, suffering — Ellia’s, but failing that, anyone’s.
“But he’s valuable, lord. Educated. Please consider the harm -”
“Shall I make it twelve?” Fabien barked. “Do you want to join him?”
The overseer had deferred, gone silent.
He had missed his mother’s funeral — too far away, the epidemic raging, and so he had hidden, a coward, until it was safe. Now the rose garden was a grave: earth torn open, worms writhing in the sun. He crushed one under his boot until its innards smeared red. His stomach lurched.
Staring at the churned earth, the worms, and the ruined bushes, Fabien rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes and told himself it was sweat.
Movement flickered at the edge of vision.
And then Fabien saw him — truly saw him.
The gardener stood bare-chested among the wreckage, haloed in a tangle of dark curls, the spade braced in his hands like a weapon. He was cut from angles and shadows, sharp lines of cheekbone and jaw, his face unreadable as stone. For a moment he seemed older than time, ageless in the way of saints or gods painted on temple walls—figures too distant to touch, too eternal to meet one’s gaze for long. But the eyes were vivid: black depths lit with flickers of gold, stealing his breath.
And the next, he was only a boy again. Fabien’s age. A boy bent to soil and ruin, his fingers clenched white around the spade.
Muscles shifted lean beneath sun-burnished skin. His arms were scored raw by thorns; beads of blood gathered lazily and traced red down the length of them. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t pause. As if pain didn’t matter, as if the destruction at his feet—and his own, that Fabien had just ordered—were irrelevant.
“Well, Fabien?”
His father’s voice cut across the silence, no longer pleased. Fabien had taken too long to answer.
“I apologize,” he said quickly. “I overreacted. They woke me, and I was in a foul mood.”
“Too many of those lately.”
“I’m sorry, lord. May I be excused? I’m not hungry. I stayed up reading. Had a late dinner.”
His father searched his face. Fabien held his gaze, innocent.
“Reading? Are you going back to the university?”
“Not this year.” Fabien kept his tone polite, steady, the way Mother had taught him when speaking to Father. “Perhaps in the spring. Once everything is resolved.”
“What is there to resolve?” Father’s brows drew together, voice low and sharp. Blue eyes, cold as cut glass, held him pinned. “Or are you thinking of splitting the estate?”
The question landed like a gauntlet thrown. Fabien’s shoulders tensed, but he schooled his face into calm. Inside, he felt the old ache stir - how easily Father always reduced him to the role of intruder in his own house. He could say that he hadn’t decided. He could say that he didn’t know. He could say that it was all too raw, too soon, but Father would never stomach that sort of weakness.
“I’m not thinking anything, lord,” Fabien said at last.
The silence that followed was heavy. Father’s suspicion settled like a weight at his throat. The man had never cared for his studies, pressing him instead to harden into a landlord. But he had never defied Mother or Grandfather, who had set Fabien on the path of law, of politics. Now Mother was gone, Grandfather far away in the capital, and Father had another child on the way - and surely, he hoped for a son. The disappointment was no longer required.
Fabien knew what he was really asking: Will you leave? Will you sell? Will you be gone and done with?
And though part of him longed to spit out yes - to be rid of this house, this table, this girl in Mother’s place, live as he liked in the capital - another part clung to the stubborn belief that if he left now, there would be nothing left to come back to. No roses, no garden, no home. Nothing of Mother at all. Only a painting on the wall, left there for the sake of propriety — and possibly out of spite.
Fabien pushed back his chair, quiet, polite. “Enjoy your meal, lady. Lord.”
And he excused himself, as though it were only hunger he lacked, and not something much greater.
He lay awake for the second night with the thought. He had lied about reading. He had thought of roses, ruined. And of the boy with the black-gold eyes. Lies filled everything lately. He had one link left to his past, and he dared not sever it. He could not afford a false step with Father, could not afford to antagonise Ellia.
And so, he stayed up, thinking again of his mother’s roses. And of the boy.
Mostly of the boy.
Fabien had lingered in the sun, watching the gardener work - lifting bush after bush, setting them aside for replanting, head bowed, hands steady on the stems. His body moved with perfect obedience, the rest of him consumed by the task.
Even as the heat dragged at him, slowing each motion, the boy kept working, and the sight of him still bent to the task, shoulders burning under the noon sun, scraped something raw inside Fabien. He could have stomached mercy being begged for, even defiance - nothing about his order had been fair.
Instead, there was remote resilience. He was staring at a wall he could not breach. And he was powerless. He had already sent the boy to the post. What worse could he do?
In the end, Fabien relented. It was senseless—roses or no roses, punishment or no punishment—because none of this had ever been about the boy, or the roses.
He turned to the overseer, voice clipped, each word tasting of defeat. “You were right. He knows his work. See it done. Give him water. Allow breaks. Then let him be.”
It sounded almost generous, but Fabien knew better. It was not mercy. It was futility, bitter as bile on his tongue. He had wanted things to stay as they were, when they had already changed into something unrecognisable. His desire was childish, irrational—he was aware.
That should have been the end of it. But Fabien could not eat. He could not sleep. He could not think of anything else.
He sat at the window, as night bled over the fields, his gaze fixed on the darkening shape of the cottage where the roses had been moved. His chest ached with the maddening thought that the boy had etched himself into his mind without effort, without intent, without even noticing. The notion was absurd – and yet it hollowed him out, left him restless and raw.
The cottage blurred into darkness, but still he stared, as though by sheer watching he might hold the boy within reach.
***
Next morning, almost against his will, Fabien found himself striding across the grounds, past the trenches where the roses had stood, towards the old cottage. Once, it had been surrounded by a garden. Nothing grew there now. Not since the mansion rose and the cottage was demoted to house lesser guests — traders who came to bargain for crops and leave their gold behind.
Fabien had been too young. He had no memory of what had grown here, only a vague expectation that roses might remain. A foolish hope, soon crushed.
The morning was already heavy with heat. Pines stirred listlessly. Beyond the sagging fence, trenches scarred the earth, slick with foul water and clumps of dung. Rosebushes, hacked bare of leaf and flower, waited in uneven stacks. The rest — wilted, crushed — had been tossed beside a heap of mulch.
The gardener sat cross-legged in the dirt, scissors flashing. Curls tumbled into his face, his shirt streaked grey with mud, his back damp with sweat. His hands worked with a patient precision, pausing only to wipe his brow.
Fabien felt something inside him unclench. He was no apparition conjured by grief and fury, no angel of destruction. He was a boy — sweating, working, nothing more.
Fabien told himself he had done nothing to him. A tantrum, a bit of weight thrown around, nothing lasting. He must have been delirious to spend another sleepless night replaying it.
The scissors slipped. The boy’s eyes flicked up — and all relief bled away.
There it was. That face. Bow-shaped lips pressed into a line, eyes black as obsidian. Not blank with absence, but closed, like a door barred from within. A gaze that made of Fabien not a man but a question unworthy of reply.
It struck like judgment.
It was ridiculous. He was young, bright, rich, with the pale hair of his mother’s line and the deep blue eyes of his father — popular enough in the capital that lovers never needed wooing, only choosing. This barefoot slave had no right to judge him. He should apologize for yesterday, as was proper. Show gratitude for the reprieve. Be flustered by Fabien’s attention. Not weigh and measure him.
Anger drove him forward a step. The gardener scrambled up, quick, almost panicked, yet the movement carried a strange, unwilling grace.
“Lord,” he said quietly. Careful, as if Fabien’s title scraped his throat raw. His gaze skittered past Fabien’s shoulder to the courtyard wall, judging too sharp a risk to meet his eyes.
Fabien swallowed the urge to seize him, shake him until those lowered eyes snapped back to his face.
“They’re dying.”
“It is not their time to be moved, lord,” the boy answered, voice low and careful as glass. The form was courteous, but beneath it ran a tremor Fabien almost heard. Yet he spoke properly, the clipped dialect of the aristos, and Fabien could only stare, wondering who had taught him that voice – a master, or the boy’s own instinct to survive in a world that punished anything else.
“They must root before they can live again. Most will survive.”
“Despite you butchering them.”
“The leaves and flowers drain their strength.” The boy shook his head, slowly, maddeningly patient. His hands, though—Fabien noticed the slightest twitch in his fingers, nails dragging against his palms. The stance was straight, still, but too still. “It is how you care for them, lord. As the lady instructed.”
Fabien’s breath caught. “My mother?”
He nodded at once, quick. “They were hard work. When the lady brought me to the estate, she taught me herself.” His voice dropped further, almost swallowed.
“Did she have to strike you often?” Fabien almost laughed—a brittle, bitter sound that rasped in his throat. He could picture her vividly, sharp when displeased, knuckles rapping across ears when her standards weren’t met, lashes of words cutting deeper than blows. But not with him. Never with him. She had spared him even that small, brutal honesty. Her distance had been punishment enough—her silence colder than any hand.
And somehow it galled him more to imagine she had given the boy what she had denied her own son: correction, attention, a presence that saw him closely enough to find fault.
The memories came, sharp-edged. The brush of her skirts in passing, the coolness of her gaze, the precision with which she directed him. He was aware – now – that it had been protection – twisted, but protection all the same. She had wanted him stronger, less vulnerable to Father’s cruelty, less breakable under the endless weight of the Alba name. By pushing him away, she thought she was teaching him to stand alone. And perhaps she had – he was standing, wasn’t he? Only he had wished – desperately – that she had found another way, one that allowed her to remain his mother, not just a tutor in cold endurance.
The boy’s stillness shifted – shattered. Colour burned high across his cheekbones, his composure faltering for a breath. His lips parted, breath sharp with nerves, and then the words came in a rush, as though to silence the thought before it drew wrath: “The lady was kind. When required, she corrected me.”
“The lady was a bitch,” Fabien said, flat. The truth spilled like a stone loosed from his chest. It did not make him miss her less. It only meant the words belonged to him alone. “No one thought otherwise.”
Whatever faint spark had crossed the boy’s face was smothered in an instant. His eyes dropped, shuttering, the distance slamming back into place. But Fabien thought he saw it this time—fear in the closing, like a door barred fast against him.
Exasperation knotted in Fabien’s throat. Truth ruined things. Always had. Drove people away. And here he was again, pushing.
“Fine.” He waved a hand, sicker of words than of silence. “Do what you like. I no longer care.”
The boy’s eyes lifted just enough to gauge him, wide and uncertain. “With the roses?”
“With the imperial army.” Fabien’s voice sharpened. “Yes, the roses.”
He should have turned away. Instead he stepped closer. The boy stayed rooted, though his shoulders tightened as if bracing, fingers twitching again at his sides, scraped raw by thorns. He looked like he might flinch—yet held himself stubbornly still, refusal locked into his spine.
“How old are you?”
A blink. “Twenty, lord.”
So—not much younger than himself. His own anger suddenly felt foolish, childish. But loneliness weighed heavier, and he had no idea how to set it down.
He bit his lip. “I’m Fabien.”
The boy’s lashes lifted, then fell again just as quickly. His answer came shaped with care, heavy with something bitter.
“I know, lord.”
“Do you?” Fabien wondered briefly if the boy even understood sarcasm. If maybe this gorgeous creature was just a little slow. But no—that couldn’t be. He was educated, the overseer had said. His accent was refined – and Mother would never have wasted her time otherwise.
The olive branch Fabien had extended—offering his name, though he hardly knew what had possessed him to grant such a favour—had not been snapped by mistake. The boy had heard it, weighed it, and chosen his reply with care.
Fabien saw it now: Something about him had shifted. His shoulders were still held tense, his eyes darted away too quickly. Yet layered over everything, hardening it, was resolve.
This could not be read as anything other than the rejection it was.
And the way it was delivered—measured, unyielding—struck him with the uncanny recognition of a style he knew too well. That clipped cadence, that sharp edge wrapped in formality. Fabien did not need to wonder where he’d learned it. The realization struck like a bruise, half fury, half pull, for it was Mother’s steel he heard in the boy’s voice—her lessons echoing back at him, sharpened, made striking, made beautiful in someone else.
The realization coiled cold inside him, suspicion taking root.
“Other than gardening, what else did you do for my mother?”
“Household chores, as the lady requested,” the gardener said, his voice low, directed at the ground. There was the faintest hesitation before he inclined his head toward the building behind them. “In the cottage. And in the mansion.”
Household chores. The words rang hollow. Fabien could not picture Mother setting him to scrub floors or fetch water. He could not picture her near a kitchen at all; he himself had never seen her cross its threshold. And yet—why this boy? Was the estate so bereft of skilled, age-appropriate servants that his father had tolerated such an arrangement? Had Father noticed and chosen not to care?
Anger rippled through him, hot and sudden, followed by a rush of pain so sharp and violent it made his head spin.
“In her bedroom, as well?”
The question struck like a lash, more brutal for being his own. His heart thudded against his ribs as the gardener finally raised his eyes. For a heartbeat they held him—wider, deeper, darker than before, as though he might fall straight through them.
“The lady never requested it.”
The words were polite, but the ice beneath them cut.
Relief struck, tangled with shame. At thinking it. At suspecting it. At seeing too clearly how the suspicion had lived in others. His mother had never cared who paid the cost of her vengeance. Perhaps not even this boy.
But she hadn’t requested it of him.
And in that space, in that absence, the realization struck Fabien: he could. Nothing prevented him from asking, and no one could gainsay him. The choice was his alone. The knowledge hollowed him, scorched him, and yet it thrilled.
Why restless nights, the gnawing hunger that sleep would not quiet? Why torment himself when the answer stood here, within reach? Nothing but his own will stood between him and the boy.
He would ask. He would scratch the itch. Steal a few moments for himself—without guilt, without grief. The prospect set his pulse racing, sharp and heady, a taste of power – almost like freedom - too sweet to turn aside. His breath caught. The thought swelled, unbearable, and before sense could snuff it out, the words slipped out, reckless.
“What if I am?”
Stillness.
The boy did not move, did not even breathe. His eyes, wide and dark, locked on Fabien’s before sliding away quickly, the smallest flinch betraying itself in the set of his jaw. And as the boy held himself motionless, his answer withheld, Fabien thought he would be denied.
The notion jolted through him, not only with fury but with an irrational thrill. Part of him almost hoped the boy would say no—that he would be spared from himself, from the terrible weight of wanting.
A breath – his lips parting. The boy’s throat worked, and the answer came—quiet, very quiet.
“I— I would do as you request, lord.”
Fabien’s heart dropped. Disappointment churned where triumph should have been. Too easy. It was always too easy. Money, standing, a title before his name—every door swung open, every demand met before he’d even finished speaking.
What he craved was resistance, a wall to break against, the shock of being denied, the chance to fight for what he wanted. But here was only compliance, offered without struggle – meaningless.
“What’s your name?” he demanded. The words came too harsh, meant less as curiosity than as lash. In the back of his mind, a thought coiled bitterly: what use would the boy make of him, if given the chance?
The boy flinched. His jaw tightened, his gaze falling at once to the ground. “Kreso, lord.”
Fabien tasted the name, let it roll on his tongue, soft for a moment, almost gentle. “Kreso.” His mouth curled into something unreadable. “I like the sound of it.”
Then, sharp as spite, the blade turned: “I don’t think I like you very much.”
Kreso said nothing, eyes on the ground. Silence was better than false apology — but the urge to shove him into the dirt simmered all the same.
“Come to my room tonight.” Fabien jutted his chin, daring even himself. Things are what they are. And he had nothing else.
Stillness thickened, heavy as stone, as if even the air held its breath.
“I will, lord.”
At last. Victory. If victory could taste like ash.
“What’s my name?”
Kreso’s lips pressed together, the silence stretching. A pause—long enough to prickle like defiance—before he dropped his gaze and forced the word out, low and stiff, as if it burned him.
“Fabien, lord.”
Absurd. Irrational. The way the title clung to his name, hollowing it out, twisting what Fabien had wanted into something he could hardly bear to hear. It should have satisfied him, proof of power, proof of place. Instead, it made his skin crawl, made his chest ache, because what he craved wasn’t command obeyed—it was himself, seen and spoken, without the weight of a lordship he hadn’t earned.
“After dinner,” Fabien said. His voice sounded distant to his own ears, flat and sharp all at once. “Don’t be late.”
He did not try to meet Kreso’s eyes again. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. Because in those eyes he might see obedience, or fear—or worse, nothing at all.
***
Fabien spent the rest of the day avoiding Father and Ellia with a stubbornness that felt like fever. He asked for dinner in his room, citing a headache and a hint of sickness. The lie slid down easily; Ellia was still cowed by the memory of the plague.
He refused to think of anything much. He moved his eyes over his law books, drafted a few dutiful lines to his tutors in the capital, and refused—point by point, thought by thought—to think of Kreso. Whether he would come. Whether Fabien wanted him to.
When the tray went back to the kitchens barely touched, the house had fallen into its summer hush: cicadas in the dark, jasmine on the air, pine resin thickening the heat. He had said, don’t be late, and Kreso already was. Fabien told himself to undress, to sleep, to forget the whole thing—then a knock trembled against the wood.
He breathed once, twice, flexed his hand, tossed the useless law book aside. “Yes?”
Kreso stood in the doorway. Clean this time - shirt fresh, curls tamed, the lamplight turning his edges soft. The delay no longer mattered. Fabien let himself look, unapologetic.
“Come in,” he said, stretching lazily, arms above his head—half habit, half theatre. “Promise not to bite, if that’s not your thing.”
Whatever tone he’d aimed for missed. Kreso crossed the threshold and nearly stumbled. He stopped just inside, eyes on the floor.
“Good evening, lord.”
Something in the movement jarred. This morning the boy had been all grace and control. Now the cadence was off; the words came with a slight drag, as if each had to be lifted and set down.
“Look at me,” Fabien said.
Kreso’s head tipped up. He blinked - long, heavy blinks. His gaze drifted past Fabien and back again, pupils wide and unsteady. The expression behind them was blank in the way of a shut door.
“Did you come to my room drunk?”
A slow shake of the head. “I am not drunk, lord.” Another blink, lashes skimming glassy eyes.
“Come here.”
Kreso obeyed, swallowing, steps careful - learned care, not deference, still walking barefoot on broken glass. Close now, close enough that if he’d been drinking the scent would have given him away. There was nothing on his breath but soap and crushed grass.
“Not drunk,” Fabien murmured, drawing in the clean scent. “What then?”
Even at this distance, Kreso didn’t see him. The eyes slid; the body stood. Fabien’s frown deepened. Something older than anger moved him. He reached out, purely to touch - drawn by the line of cheekbone, the heat of skin.
Kreso flinched so fast his forearm snapped up to shield his face. Not a flinch of modesty. Protection – the kind you don’t learn without a reason.
The shock knocked the air from Fabien. His hand veered, landing on Kreso’s shoulder instead - steadying more than holding. Muscle tightened beneath his palm; the contact prickled through him, right and wrong at once.
He let go abruptly. Kreso lowered his arm by degrees, as if coaxing it down from an old habit. He stared, wide-eyed. Fabien stared back, appalled at himself for wanting and at whatever had taught the boy to expect a blow.
Kreso bit his lip, sharp white teeth marking the skin. “I didn’t mean to.” The words sounded unvarnished, fear creeping at the edges.
Fabien forced the air back into his lungs. Perhaps he’d misread. Perhaps there was another way through. He lifted his hand again, slower now, to the nape - firm but careful pressure, guiding Kreso nearer until their faces were inches apart.
Relief loosened him when Kreso didn’t recoil a second time. Something like hope rose, unwanted and undeniable.
“Have you done this before?”
“Of course.” The answer came too quickly, as if speed might shield him.
“With men?”
“Yes.” A slant of the eyes, fleeting, cautious. An answer that offered nothing, gave nothing back, only questions where clarity should have been. A thin, unhelpful disappointment pricked at Fabien’s chest.
“Why, then?”
“I don’t know.” The words tumbled out soft, evasive, meant to placate.
“You do.” Fabien’s voice tightened, anger nipping at the edges of his restraint. “What just happened?”
“Fabien – ” Kreso said his name low, almost pleading, like an offering. His eyes lifted, catching the light for a heartbeat – too brief to grasp—before slipping away again, leaving Fabien with the uneasy sense of a meaning just out of reach.
“Oh, I’m Fabien now that you want me to step back?”
Kreso’s mouth tightened, then loosened again as if the muscles themselves were unsure which story they should tell. He looked fractured - pieces that didn’t fit, answers that didn’t match the body’s truth. A stricken look, as if the problem was larger than the room, older than either of them.
That look shoved Fabien to the edge again—anger and something softer sharing the same breath. The thought pressed in on him—what the boy might be after—and he hated the thought. He lifted a hand, cradled Kreso’s jaw gently, angled him so he could not drift away.
“Speak, Kreso. Stop circling.”
“I don’t know how,” Kreso admitted, voice thinning under some terrible weight. He went rigid, throat working, words catching.
“I don’t know what you want me to— if you’d just—”
“If I’d just— what?” Fabien released the boy with an impatient flick of his hand, annoyed by all the stalling. “Out with it.”
The boy’s hands shifted at his sides, restless, as though he longed for something to hold.
“If I speak wrong, you’ll be angry,” he said softly, almost weary. Not enough to spark defiance, not meek enough to be safe. The tightrope of someone who had learnt precisely how far he could go without paying for it.
He was playing games. Fabien understood, suddenly and with nauseating clarity, how this would go if he let it: the boy would - eventually- name something simple, Fabien would grant it, and Kreso would oblige, perfectly. They would get through it; Fabien would wake sick with the taste of the bargain and tell himself it had been mutually useful. He had done that dance before—a barter against the part of him that wanted to feel wanted.
It was pointless. Futility, all of it. Nothing real, nothing that held meaning.
He stepped forward, giving ground to neither impulse nor kindness, and crowded Kreso back until his spine met the wall, palms braced on either side of him.
“Enough,” he bit out. “I’ve better things to do than stand here wasting words on my gardener.”
Kreso was taller but slighter. Up close, the heat of him made the air feel thin. He didn’t tremble, but his gaze slid past Fabien, through him, into shadow.
Fabien closed the space with intent, leaned in and claimed his mouth. No hesitation, no fumbling—it was measured, controlled, the pace his own. He held it slow at first, a deliberate test of ground. Then his hand closed around the back of Kreso’s neck, firm, inescapable, and the kiss deepened by degrees.
For a heartbeat the universe aligned: Kreso yielded, lips parting, the sharp taste of mint flooding between them.
His body followed when Fabien pulled him toward the bed—lean, pliant, fingers clutching at his shoulder, letting himself be moved.
Ease surfaced—strange, almost giddy. As if, at last, it could be simple.
He pressed him back onto the mattress, still chasing that illusion. But the longer it went on, the thinner it felt. Kreso’s mouth yielded without giving, his lips slack, his eyes half-lidded and fixed somewhere beyond the ceiling. His body was warm beneath Fabien’s, but unresponsive—pliant, distant, a doll that breathed.
A chill crept under Fabien’s skin.
He drew back an inch, eyes raking Kreso’s face. He had been—well, he could be cold. Had to be, more often than not. And now he was unravelling, burning through moods too fast to name—caught on a thorn between anger, desire, and something else entirely, a shy, unfamiliar tenderness.
It pulled at him in two directions at once: the urge to shield the boy, and the darker impulse to claim him, hold him fast so he could not slip away.
No wonder Kreso was tense. Fabien could hardly fault him for it, not when he himself could barely contain the storm inside.
“Relax,” he said, trying for soft, for gentle, brushing his thumb along Kreso’s cheek. “I’m not angry with you anymore.” It didn’t ring quite right, but he pushed it aside, reaching for something reassuring, easier to put into words. “We’re just having a bit of fun. I’ll make it good, alright?”
“…alright,” Kreso whispered. Not relieved. Just absent. His body didn’t stir, limbs heavy and still beneath Fabien’s weight. His fingers clenched in the sheets, as if holding on for balance.
Fabien’s annoyance battled with concern, so tangled he could no longer tell one from the other. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Kreso uttered—too quick, too flat.
“Nothing?” His tone sharpened, suspicion threading through. “Then maybe try a little.”
Kreso blinked, slow, as though dragged to the surface against his will. His lips parted at last, voice cracked and subdued, the words tumbling out with the soft desperation of someone trying to soothe a storm.
“I’m… trying.”
Fabien stared. This wasn’t trying, nerves meeting desire. It looked like stalling. Like angling. He knew that look—or thought he did.
“What do you require to manage? Don’t hold back.” His voice sliced thin, sweet with venom. It was always something. But nothing worth this boy’s theatre. What petty prizes might a clever slave angle for if he thought himself bold enough? A coin slipped to his hand. A softer shirt. Boots that fit. A day spared from the garden. Trinkets. Scraps.
Kreso’s breath broke ragged in his chest. He gave a quick shake of the head, small, frantic, the kind that begged without words.
“I’m not. I swear I’m not denying you. You can do whatever you want—I know, I know I don’t have the right. I’m aware of it every moment.”
His voice faltered, caught on a sob he swallowed down. Then the words came, tumbling out raw, cracked open, stripped bare. “But if you would—please—just don’t. Please, don’t make me to this.”
Fabien stilled, as if struck. The words didn’t land like resistance; they tore through him like something far worse. He had expected cunning, some petty bargain, a mask he could despise. But this raw plea unmade him.
It was not denial. It was surrender, and it burned. The sound of it -please, don’t - lodged under his ribs like a blade.
Fabien had ordered him under the lash the other day—and he had not begged. He pleaded for mercy now, in his bed.
“Why even come in the first place?” His voice was harsher than he intended, and he hated how much it sounded like an accusation meant to shield himself.
Kreso curled back in panic against the corner of the bed, fist pressed to his mouth, eyes too bright. “You told me to.”
Fabien’s throat tightened. His hands shook; he forced them into fists, then opened them again, unable to settle. His skin crawled as if the walls themselves were watching. The silence spread, oppressive. It hardened past patience. Doubt grew fangs. He couldn’t tell if he was being played, if there was some end game Kreso had in mind. In the moment, the boy’s desperation felt raw, real. But a voice in his head whispered otherwise—that it was always something else.
“Now I’m telling you to get out,” he uttered at last, voice cold, controlled, the control costing him everything.
Kreso didn’t reply. He didn’t argue, didn’t try to bargain with him. His head dipped lower, dark curls falling like a curtain to hide his face. Slowly, he slid from the bed. His footsteps creaked soft on the boards. He obeyed, quietly, without looking back. A mercy—Fabien doubted he could have borne his eyes just then. The door clicked shut, the sound final, like a lock turning.
Fabien stood alone, pulse hammering in his throat.
He told himself he was right to send Kreso away. That he would not crawl for a boy who climbed into his bed only to stare at him in horror. A boy who, at all other times, looked straight through him as if he weren’t there at all. He told himself it was self-respect, and he clung to it like a blade.
But the words tasted of smoke.
The room gaped cavernous around him. Fabien’s jaw clenched, chest heaving, every breath catching like broken glass. He wanted to smash something, to tear the doubt out of himself with his hands. Instead, he stood hollow, poisoned by the echo of his own voice—and by the memory of Kreso’s eyes: wide, terrified, and soout of reach.
***
“Sit down, Fabien.”
Father pointed at the chair opposite him, and Fabien obeyed, forcing his shoulders loose though his spine stayed rigid. He had delayed this meeting as long as he could. Now the letter from the capital had stripped his excuses bare: Mother’s will had been unsealed before the prefect, Grandfather had spoken, and Father would not let it rest.
“You look pale,” Father observed. Not out of concern. Hunting for weakness - always hunting for it.
Fabien mustered a polite smile. “I am fine.”
The words meant nothing, even as he kept repeating them. For days he had turned them over in his head, shut in his room, angry and spent. He had not sought Kreso out again. He told himself the boy’s conduct that night - pulling back, pleading, feigning helplessness - was a kind of play, a bid for control. That demanded correction. Yet the memory of his voice, thin with terror, kept breaking through, and Fabien could not decide if he hated Kreso for it or himself more. He could not decide what to call it. Scheming could not be stomached. A night gone wrong was no crime.
The worst thing was how badly he wanted a chance to do it over, to shape it into something that made sense. Want itself gnawed at him, sleepless and unrelenting, until every hour seemed haunted by the boy.
“Well, then.” Father’s shrug dismissed him. “The magistrate comes to formalise matters. Let us discuss in principle, and if all is clear, I will see to the details.”
Fabien’s gaze fell to the table, to the scratches in the dark wood. He remembered the magistrate from his childhood visits — calm, reasonable, a man who brought sweets and toys from the capital. But he had always had one end: securing his position. If Father handled him alone, the point would be made clear enough — all power here flowed through him.
“There is no easy way to do this, so I will be blunt. Your mother’s dowry belonged to me for the term of her life. With her passing, ownership transfers to you. Her jewellery is excluded — she divided most among her sisters and nieces, and the rest falls to Ellia. I had an inventory prepared—”
“It’s fine, lord,” Fabien cut in, sharper than he had ever dared before. Days ago, the interruption would have been unthinkable. Now he was bone-tired of being managed. He cared little for what had been Mother’s and was now Ellia’ - jewels, or even Father himself. “I have no objections. I would rather discuss what is mine.”
Father’s eyes narrowed. His mouth pressed thin. “Half the estate. From the cottage through to the lake. Land and buildings only. The slaves remain with me. I propose a rent — twenty percent of the crops. That way, matters continue as before. You need not concern yourself with management. You may return to the capital, to your brilliant political career.”
Nothing would continue as before. Fabien ignored the bait of irony. “Thirty percent.”
Father weighed him. “Twenty-five.”
“My half has the best land for crops, lord. Thirty.”
A curl of the lip. “Fine. And when will you return?”
”Are you asking me to leave?”
Father’s palm landed flat on the table, the sound hollow in the silence that followed. Fabien did not flinch. He held his stare, cool and unimpressed, the faintest curl of defiance in his stillness.
“I will never understand what has gotten into you, boy. But suit yourself. Only do not expect me to defend you once Marcian Alba learns of it.”
Fabien inclined his head. A letter from Grandfather had arrived for him, couched as advice but carrying instructions. Stay. Supervise. Report. Grandfather had even named the thirty percent. Father had failed to see the hand moving the pieces. Fabien was no longer a child. He was an heir, still a pawn perhaps, but one who knew which ally mattered.
Father shifted in his chair, as if remembering something he had almost let slip. “One more thing. I said the slaves stay with me — save one. Your mother purchased him in the capital. Another of her whims. He had studied medicine or something like that under his previous master – a man well-known for his skills. Plants, herbs, remedies and whatnot. She had him tend to her roses.”
Fabien flinched — and hoped Father missed it. “Her gardener?” He’d been told Kreso was educated but had assumed his learning was agricultural — crop rotation, irrigation, pruning. Work useful to an estate. “Medicine?”
“The sooner you learn about rich, spoiled women, the better, Fabien.” Father’s voice dripped mockery, each word sharpened to wound. “What would she want with a medic? She needed a gardener—and he’s the sort of plaything that catches a woman’s eye. Cheap, pretty, disposable. My advice: sell him. His training may fetch a price. Or his looks. Cut your losses.”
Fabien schooled his face. “I do not need the money, lord.” The thought of selling Kreso had flickered across his mind in the aftermath of that night — punishment by distance — but daylight had killed it as petty.
Father snorted. “Not when you’ve stripped me of profit, you don’t. But do not be naive. She favoured him, Fabien. She enjoyed ridiculing me, yes - but that is not the point. He was her pet, tamed for her hand. A creature like that poisons discipline. He has no place on a serious estate. Scheming, bone-idle, worthless. I had him beaten more than once after they moved out, and still the insolence bled through.”
Fabien’s head snapped up. “Moved out?”
“Your mother left the mansion last summer,” Father said, his tone as flat as a slammed door. He tapped two fingers against the armrest, sharp, impatient beats. “She went to the cottage. He went with her. In time he ran the house in truth. She dismissed everyone else but a handful of women, and she shielded him—like some prized pet.” His lip curled as if the word itself were foul.
“In winter they both sickened. Even then she barred the physician. She kept only him.”
Fabien’s jaw shifted, almost a flinch. The question slipped out, quiet, contained. “He was ill too?” And cursed himself inwardly for asking, for letting slip a concern he had no wish to feel.
Father gave a brittle laugh, shoulders lifting in a dismissive shrug.
“Forget him. He lived. She might have too—had she not been so damn wilful.” He leaned forward, voice low, hard-edged.
“It was hardly the worst fever this estate has seen.” He flicked his hand as though brushing away a triviality. “She had the strength. But no—she fancied herself wiser than any physician, drove him out as if her pride alone were remedy. She never crawled back to sense. The sickness gutted her.”
His mouth thinned, bitter. “And that boy was there, always at her side, feeding her delusions, daring to encourage her. No real chores, only the damn roses - and flattering her, pandering to her every whim. I tried—believe me, I tried—to talk sense into him. And when that failed, I put the lash to him.” A pause followed, sharp as a whip-crack. His lip curled in reluctant acknowledgment.
“Yet even stripes on his back could not strip him of guile. He clung tooth and nail to his place, his influence - and she made certain he kept both.” His hands spread, mockery in the gesture. “And I, your father, was left to face your grandfather’s questions, to carry the disgrace of her arrogance.”
Fabien’s mouth twisted. “How inconvenient.”
Father’s gaze snapped to him, sharp as a lash. “Your sarcasm is noted. A slave has no business holding such sway.” His voice thickened with derision, every syllable weighed down with scorn. “Sell him.”
Fabien pressed his temples. He had never been told the precise circumstances of Mother’s death. Now doubt gnawed: what had Kreso’s place truly been? If not for the legal snarl of inheritance, Father would already have sold him. Fabien might never have met him. Perhaps that would have been better. Yet the thought sat heavy, irretrievable, in his gut.
“I will consider it.”
“Do so.” Father’s look was anything but pleased. “And think of moving into the cottage. Now that it is yours. It will make things easier for Ellia, in her condition.”
He was being turned out of the home that was no longer his. “I will need a cook and a maid.”
“Certainly.” Relief crossed Father’s face. He reached into his robe, produced a small, folded paper, sealed. “This was with her will. Returned unopened. It has your name.”
Fabien broke the seal.
Fabien,
I failed to act when I should have, not in the ways that truly mattered. And now the chance is gone forever.
My will is this: my slave, Kreso, is to be set free and provided for.
You will be strong.
—Your mother,
Lidia
Fabien read the lines once, twice, a third time, as if the ink might shift, as if he had misunderstood. The seal cracked beneath his fingers, but the words were plain.
My slave, Kreso, is to be set free and provided for.
He stared until the letters blurred. His mother’s hand — sharp, imperious even here — reaching beyond the grave to give away what was hers. To bind him still, though she was dust in the ground.
Father was speaking, something about arrangements and magistrates, but the sound washed over him like distant surf. Fabien folded the paper with care, too much care, slipped it into his sleeve. He would not let Father see his hands shake.
So, she had loved her roses and her garden. She had despised her husband. And in the end, she had given away the freedom denied to her—bestowed it not on her son, but on him.
The boy who obeyed with ice in his voice. Who had run her household, shut her doors, barred the physician. Who lived when she had not.
Fabien’s jaw clenched until pain shot up the hinge of his skull.
A first impulse urged him to tear the letter to shreds, scatter it across the floor, and grind it beneath his heel until nothing remained. Another pressed against it, just as strong—the memory of Kreso’s arm flung up to shield his face. It told him to hide the letter, to guard it, to keep it safe from Father’s sight. The urge sickened him, for it reeked of envy as much as guilt: envy that his mother’s last act of grace had not been for him, guilt that he might yet betray it.
When he rose from the chair, Father gave him a questioning look. Fabien willed his voice steady.
“Thank you for the clarification, lord. I’ll think on your advice.”
He left before Father could press further. His steps carried him fast down the corridor, through the halls, until he reached the seclusion of his own room.
There, with the shutters drawn and the light dim, he pressed the folded paper flat against the table, laid his hand over it, and shut his eyes.
The words burned into him. Not love, not farewell. Only duty.
You will be strong.
But strength deserted him. What remained was weakness, raw fury, and the bitter knowledge that he was now bound tighter to the boy his mother had chosen—had left him with—than he had ever wished to be.
***
Since that night, Kreso could not shake the sense of foreboding. Once, not so long ago, it had been bound to the Lady — the moment she first stepped through the door. Now it was her son who carried it, her son who made Kreso’s blood cold with the knowledge that something dangerous was about to happen, and nothing he did could prevent it.
He had waited for Fabien. Counted the days like a fool. Hoping against hope. Pretending not to hear the whisper in his head: the lady had lied before, and she might have lied again.
She had been failing already when she took pen and paper with shaking hand. Kreso, fever burning in his own veins, had helped her press the seal. Her eyes had caught his then, steel-grey, sharpened with will.
“I knew you would leave,” she rasped.
He had nodded as the world burned to ash around him. A lie, to spare her. He would not have. He loved her – though he was only an asset to her.
“It will not be for long. There will be no one after me.”
And later, with that same terrible certainty:
“Fabien will see to my wishes.”
He had wanted to believe her.
But the young lord had returned and shown no concern for the wishes of a dead woman — or for promises made to her slave. Weeks passed, nearly two months, and Fabien might as well have forgotten he existed.
Rumours trickled down from the other slaves, who despised and distrusted him - and never hid it. He carried the lady’s mark too plainly; he had never been one of them – the strange boy from the city, with the potions and powders, a rich woman’s plaything.
Still, they gossiped. The inheritance unsettled, tensions mounting between father and son. The smallest scrap of news was enough to plant hope in him again, fragile and invasive as weeds in a garden. And, like weeds, it was crushed soon after — the day he was ordered to tear out the roses.
Fabien had taken one look and decided he was expendable. Then changed his mind, because he needed a body in his bed.
Only then had Kreso understood the lady’s obsession with secrecy. It was power, yes. But it was survival too. He had met the entire family now. He had met Fabien. They would have devoured her long before the sickness did.
He reached for his vial, tipped out two pills, swallowed them with water. Just enough to carry him through the night. They did not numb him, not like drink. They sharpened him. Cleared the noise long enough to hear his own thoughts.
He had wanted to trust her. But even at the start, the air had been heavy with danger.
Perhaps it was her presence itself: a noblewoman striding into a workshop instead of summoning discretion to her home — a thing unheard of, out of place. Perhaps it was his Master. A botanist, a pharmacologist, educated at Tarson’s academy, never one to bow to anyone. Yet when she came, his arrogance curdled into unease. He fawned. He soured. His moods grew black, and the apprentices trembled beneath them — Kreso most of all.
She came every day that week. Draped in furs and silks, her beauty iced into indifference. She would not sit; she leaned against the chair they set out for her, as though to rest would admit weakness. Only once did her hand touch its backrest — long fingers splayed, steadying herself — and then retreat, quick as if the slip had been noticed. And she watched. Always watched. Kreso crushed leaves, measured powders, pressed pills, every motion dragged beneath her gaze. His skin crawled. He fought the urge to shrink, to vanish. He made himself small, gave his Master no reason to call him out before her.
It did no good.
On the last morning, before her arrival, the Master summoned them all. One apprentice would go with the lady — her choice. Kreso had been certain it would not be him. But his name was put forward with the rest. A knot of dread took root in him. His apprenticeship had been a bargain — service and training, freedom at its end. Sale was not supposed to be part of it. Yet the Master knew too well what he lacked. Perhaps he had chosen him precisely to fail.
She entered. Her eyes found him at once. A finger, elegant and merciless, cut the air — though it trembled, a flicker she disguised in imperiousness. “The pretty one.”
The Master bent his head, bowing deep. “Of course, lady.”
She dismissed the others with a flick, kept him alone. Her gaze swept him like smoke. The silence pressed until he could bear it no longer. He raised his eyes, just enough — never fully. He had been trained better than that.
“Finally,” she said, her tone unreadable. “Look up, boy, not down. Your name?”
“Kreso, lady.” His sleeves were too long; he twisted them in his fists to hide the trembling, forcing his eyes to meet hers.
“Plebeian,” she murmured, her fingers drumming lightly on the table. The motion was precise, controlled — but when she withdrew her hand, a faint tremor lingered in the air. “Not born to this. Sold for training, not for gold. A family’s hope of your freedom.”
Her precision startled him. The question slipped out before he could stop it. “How can you tell?” He added the belated, fumbling “lady.”
Not quite laughter. Too sharp. “Because it is obvious. Whoever gave you up loved you. Otherwise, they would have sold you to a brothel, where beauty buys gold. Instead, they sent you here, thinking it would save you. But you lag. Your Master deems you unfit.” Her eyes swept him, remote, unblinking. “How long has he been in your bed?”
Kreso flinched, froze.
“Obvious again,” the lady sighed. “You’re thinner than the others. He feeds you — all of you, but you won’t eat. You wear your hurt like armour, thinking it makes you less desirable. It does not, boy. Not to men like him.”
Shame scorched his skin. He curled in, bowed lower. Dissatisfaction flickered across her face. But her next words jarred, strangely tender beneath the veneer: “The shame is not yours to bear. How would you stop him? Look at me.”
He risked a glance, shaken. The lady shook her head slowly. “I’ve watched a week. You never needed correction. You are not behind. Your contract says you cannot be sold without consent. But your master can extend your term forever if you’re inadequate to practice. He will. It serves his interests to keep you. Too gorgeous for your own good, aren't you? There is no end for you in his house.”
Her voice was steady, detached, each word placed like a chess piece. Yet when she shifted her weight, her balance faltered for a breath, and her hand clenched in her skirts before she forced it still again. He wanted to weep, stripped bare by the truth she laid out.
“I can change that.” Her voice was steady, like a vow sworn in stone. “But if I choose you, you must understand what it means. Never speak a word of it. You will obey only me. Can you?”
He couldn’t tell what hollowed his chest — despair pressing the breath from him, or a flicker of hope breaking through. “Yes, lady. Please—”
“You were told to look up, weren't you,” she cut him off coolly.
He’d bowed his head again — habit, survival. He obeyed now, too quickly, dizzy, already failing. Her eyes sharpened, reading every weakness.
“Never let your face betray you. While you are mine, I must not see what you think.” For the first time, her voice faltered. Her hand rose, trembling in spite of her will. “Not because I relish cruelty, boy. Because I am dying. And if you cannot mask yourself, you’ll be torn apart when I am gone.”
The perfection cracked — a breath, no more. Behind the steel, he glimpsed the truth: a woman clinging to dignity while her body failed, terrified of being stripped of control, terrified of leaving the world.
Her hand touched his cheek, cool and unsteady. Softer than he expected, too.
“Understand this, Kreso,” she whispered. “It will not be for long. And there will be no one after me.”
But there was Fabien now. Golden-haired, broad-shouldered, her mirror in charm, his father’s in cruelty. Fabien who had shoved him right back, inside the chamber of a master – into his bed.
He still felt Fabien’s hand on his cheek, the weight of his body pressing him down. The command — and the loathing, the terror thick enough to choke on.
He had thought he understood how men used him. He had learned to survive it: keep still, give what they wanted, hide behind silence until it was done. Anything to blunt the blow, to lessen the chance of another strike, another wave of pain. Pride had been stripped from him long ago, and he had told himself there was nothing left to lose.
Fabien had robbed him of that illusion. The words had spilled out of him, raw and humiliating. Please, don’t. He had thought it would mean ruin. Instead, it had left him standing, unscathed but emptied out, as though his plea had cost him more than a blow ever could.
And then—he had been spared. Sent away, not struck, not forced, not even bargained with. That was the cruellest part. Spared, but not forgiven. Spared, but dismissed. Fabien’s cold words had banished him like a servant caught in the wrong room, nothing more.
He did not know what burned worse: the shame of having begged, or the bewildering mercy that followed. Mercy he should never have had to ask for. Mercy instead of freedom — that felt like another kind of punishment, sharper than pain, because it bound him tighter to the one who had shown it.
And he hated Fabien for it. Hated him for shattering what little self-respect he had left, for holding him fast with chains of pity instead of striking him clean. Hated him most of all for failing her — for breaking his mother’s last will, the promise of freedom she had given. Fabien kept him caged, and in that cage every gesture of mercy cut deeper than cruelty.
He tipped the vial back into his pocket and lay his head against the wall. Tomorrow, perhaps, the aristo boy would decide to punish him. Or to discard him entirely.
He almost hoped it would be the last.
It was not the mood Fabien found him in when he finally came looking, if only because Kreso’s moods shifted like weather. Past desperation now, he clung to brittle determination: no more pills, no more self-pity. He needed his mind clear, sharp. Yet still the question gnawed — how long could such resolve hold before it broke?
He stood by the garden shed, trying to drown himself in work. Soap-making was ordinary, every estate did it, but to make something fine — soft, fragrant, worth silver — took skill. He had shown the lady once what he could do, and she had rewarded him for it. He had managed the recipes, measured ingredients, overseen the process, while others carried out the heavy work. At first, they had sneered at the foreign boy set over them. Later, they had complied. Not from respect, but because failure never came. It had been her word that protected him then. Now she was gone, and they watched, waiting for him to fall.
Around him gossip rose and fell — the inheritance settled, no slaves sold, the young lord moving into the cottage, the new lady making offerings and prayers for a boy. Useless words. Gods did not bargain. Sons did not heed their mothers.
The soap was ready. He breathed in lavender and jasmine, sliced the pale blocks with a knife. Too much weight and they would crumble. Something dark tugged at him, the childish urge to break and ruin. He smothered it quickly. Anger had a price. He had been reckless with Fabien in the garden, when his chocking resentment, the contempt he felt for this spoiled aristo boy had led him too far. He could not risk it again.
Slice after slice. Clean, perfect bars. Then his hand froze mid-air. Silence had settled. A prickling crept across his skin. He was being watched.
He set the knife down carefully and lowered his gaze. His eyes betrayed him anyway, sliding to the dusty straps of Fabien’s sandals, dark against pale skin. The sandals moved closer. The other slaves melted away.
Kreso told himself to breathe. His chest still tightened. He was exhausted from imagining this moment, yet here it was, and all the breath he drew felt dry and thin, burning his lungs.
Fabien dropped onto the grass with a sigh, long legs stretched, leaning back on his arms. He tilted his head, looked up, and Kreso flinched. For a heartbeat it was not the son who sat before him but the mother, her shrewd, weighing gaze, stripped of empathy.
“Did you know your father?”
The question jolted him. His breath caught; his pulse skittered. Cornered, he forced the words through his teeth. “Yes, lord.”
“My father thinks he knows everything,” Fabien said pleasantly. “Always knows best. Was yours the same?”
Old words rose unbidden, words he had clung to as a child: It will not be forever. Only for a while. It’s the only way. Nine years later, he had no idea if the man still lived. If he saw him again, he would laugh, then spit in his face. “Yes, lord.”
Fabien’s smile was too polished, too careful — the smile of a host at court, not a son in grief. Kreso knew the trap when he saw one. His chest tightened, breath shallow.
“My father likes to call my mother’s choices whims. Impulses. But you and I know the only spontaneous thing she ever did was breathe, don’t we, Kreso?”
Kreso’s shoulders hunched; his gaze slid away, seeking some corner to hide in. But Fabien’s eyes tracked him like a snake scenting prey.
“Why did she have a medic for a gardener?”
The words struck like a verdict. His stomach knotted; his hands curled tight inside his sleeves. He looked through the masks, desperate to read what might appease Fabien. Should he be a tool — cracked, but still serviceable? A pastime — pretty, broken, easily set aside? No. Fabien’s voice was too pleasant, too measured. This was no idle curiosity. It was judgment. A fate being weighed.
Kreso shifted, a tentative lean, meaning to move closer, to offer nearness as defence. Fabien’s hand lifted — a small, almost careless motion, but forbidding all the same. The gesture stopped him cold, as though a wall had risen between them.
“Stay where you are. And answer.”
“A chemist,” Kreso whispered. The lady was gone; her secret no longer mattered. Loyalty to her had brought him nothing but misery. He had given her all there was to give — blood, broken pride, and crushed hopes. Nothing was owed anymore. Nothing ever would be. And still he despised himself for having given so much. His throat closed on the words, his voice thin, uneven. “Not a medic, lord.”
Fabien crossed his arms, still studying him. “Why?”
“Pills, infusions.” When he answered, the fear had ebbed into resignation, though every word felt like surrendering another part of himself. “The lady required them.”
“My mother was sick.” Fabien spoke calmly, with deliberate intent — too calm, as if laying a trap to see whether the story would hold.
Kreso nodded, slow and careful, forcing his face into stillness to hide the jolt of surprise. For all his dread, Fabien seemed willing — or pretending — to believe him. And that, in itself, felt like a reprieve.
“She had seen physicians in the capital. An illness of the breast. Painful. She needed careful doses.”
“An illness.” Fabien’s brow furrowed, his gaze darkening. “That word makes it sound harmless. Was she even infected? Or was it this illness that killed her?”
“Both, I think. I tried.” The words came softly, edged with bitterness. He no longer knew how to convince this aristo boy, or what might reach him — if, with the lady gone, anything he did mattered at all. And the thought stung: why should he have to prove himself to the very one who had broken her promise?
“And it never occurred to you to tell anyone?”
Kreso bent his eyes to his feet. The reprieve – if he could even call it that – was done. “She did not want the family to know.”
“Of course not.” Fabien’s tone was implacable, sharp as glass. “But you can write. You could have sent word — to me.”
Kreso bit down hard on the truths he could have flung back — the son who had called her a bitch, the mother who thought him better off in ignorance, her last will already trampled as they spoke. He held them in – not from kindness, but from fear of what his words might cost him. And beneath lay grief - raw and unhealed - for the lady who had been his only shield.
“I couldn’t. She ordered me not to. Who was I to send, lord? And where?”
Fabien surged to his feet, crossing the space in two strides. His palms crashed down on the table, the wood shuddering under the force. Kreso flinched, shoulders snapping tight, his breath caught in his throat. His eyes darted down, anywhere but Fabien’s, though the heat of that glare pressed inches from his face. His mind raced, quick and sharp with fear — gauging whether this was only words, or the moment before a blow. It was only words. Part of him would have chosen the strike.
“I have been home for weeks. I asked you what you did for Mother. And you lied.
“I was scared,” he uttered. Pleading — unsure himself if it was truth or mask, a thing worn smooth with use, slipping in place too easily.
Fabien’s glare faltered, just enough to show the crack. Hurt flashed beneath it, raw and unguarded, breaking through the venom like light through shattered glass.
“My mother was dying, and alone. You played her for favours.”
Panic crushed his chest. The letter. Every thought scattered but that one. The accusation had been hurled at him so often it had begun to feel like truth. If Fabien believed he had tricked the lady, bent her to his will, if he thought the freedom in her hand was bought with guile — then it would be gone before it ever touched him. Worse — he might turn the letter against him, call it proof of deceit. The letter could mean chains as easily as release.
“I only did what the lady asked.” He bowed his head lower, feeling as if he were already under the lash, with no defence against the blow. “She saw through everything, lord. No one could have deceived her. If I’d tried, she would have known at once.”
Silence stretched. Fabien’s eyes lingered, sharp and unblinking, his expression impossible to read. His mouth curved, but whether toward a smile or a snarl, Kreso couldn’t tell. The weight of that look was worse than anger — a warning, or a promise, or both. He felt the threat in it, even if no words had been spoken.
“I am your lord, Kreso. Lie to me again, and you’ll regret it. I’ll be moving into the cottage. You’ll be there. I’ll think of your duties.” He waved a hand, sweeping the shed, the garden, the soap, and Kreso into one careless gesture. “I’ve had enough of this charade.”
His stomach clenched, the blood draining from his face. He knew well enough what “duties” meant. Not the roses, not the garden, not the small routines that had been his tether to sanity. No — duties meant flesh. Compliance. A bed that was not his own. He had learned long ago what it was to be “useful” in that sense, how quickly work could be twisted into service of another kind.
Fabien had shown him mercy — the other night. But mercy was temporary. More often, it softened the victim before the next blow. He had lived through that rhythm too many times not to fear its return.
His hands folded tight into his sleeves, nails cutting crescents into skin. He bowed his head lower, as if the gesture might make him smaller, easier to overlook. Inside, panic roared.
“Yes, lord.”
Fabien’s gaze raked over him, cold and dismissive. “You won’t be in my bed, Kreso, don’t worry. Saves me the trouble of forcing it.”
A fist to the ribs would have hurt less. Forcing it. His breath stilled, his chest hard. Fear coiled low and fast, and with it, humiliation so sharp it scalded. Fabien’s tone had been offhand, but to Kreso it rang with a truth he knew too well – of doors bolted, of hands that took choice away. The seaweed-like scent of iodine, biting at the back of the nose, a hand heavy on the back of his neck. The command to lie still – a sharp whisper The Master’s laugh of contempt afterward, when Kreso thought himself too shamed to breathe.
His head dipped lower, eyes fixed on the dirt at his feet. He didn’t trust those words that felt like the lash. Shame and dread gnawed, and Fabien’s gaze pressed like a brand, and to be seen was dangerous. He had always stood out- too gorgeous for your own good, the lady had once told him. He’d never learnt to take that beauty – he one thing that he had – and hone it into a weapon.
Forcing it. But not unwelcome if not forced.
Never let me see what you’re thinking, lady had warned, too. Advice that had been more gift than command.
So, he said nothing more. Kept his head bowed. Let Fabien have the last word. That was what he wanted, what they all wanted — something pretty, something weak, something broken. Damaged, then. Kreso found it disturbingly easy to be that, especially if it kept him safe. And if Fabien’s gaze held more than contempt – if the faintest flicker of hunger slipped through – Kreso should seize it, twist it, make it serve him - even if the thought hollowed him with shame.
A tremor rippled through his hands where they hid in his sleeves. His breath shuttered, sharp and shallow, before he forced it down. To Fabien it would look like fear alone – which it was, though not all. Beneath it lay the desperate calculation of someone who had no other way to survive.