Chapter Text
“Those are the brothers Rosfield?” Dion asks.
“Yes,” Terence answers.
Across the entry hall, the pair stand, windswept from their long journey to Oriflamme. The younger—the archduke—is dressed in the red of his house. His gold hair sits like a crown about his head, and he has a sort of lanky grace to him, a bearing of rule. His actual crown is conspicuously absent. The older brother is as strange as strange can be. The man is thick with muscle, his hair crow-dark and long and almost as unkempt as his stubble. A wicked scar runs across his cheek and down over his jaw. His black cloak sweeps down his back like a single, dark wing, yet nothing is so intimidating as the longsword sheathed on his back.
The curious sight of him is almost enough to calm the staccato thump of Dion's heart as he realizes: he invited only one Eikon to this meeting, and yet he's staring at two.
“He brings a weapon to a meeting of prospective allies?” Dion asks, hoping it sounds composed.
“He’s a guard."
“A guard,” Dion laughs. It dies when he sees the seriousness in Terence’s gaze. “Truly?”
“Clive, the elder. He’s sworn himself to the sword, to be his brother’s guard. Rosaria calls him First Shield.” Ah. That's a title Dion recognizes. He hadn't realized it was quite so literal. Terence looks at him askance. “Forgive me, Your Highness. I thought you knew of them.”
Of course he knows of them, as all in Valisthea who have an ear to the ground and a head for politics do. The second Dominant of Fire, a thing out of myth, almost against the laws of nature. When it first came to light, there was chaos on Storm, but fears of Rosaria’s ambitions growing beyond her borders were unfounded. Twin Flames, their countrymen call them. Little else is said but that the younger was always assumed to be first in line for the throne. Naturally, Dion had assumed the elder would balk at being passed over—that the rumors of his closeness to his little brother were a clever fiction perpetuated by Rosaria to pretend at peace within her borders.
It seems not.
“I met the younger some years ago, when we were children. How do you know them?”
“There are rumors,” Terence says after a moment, which is odd. He’s not one to traffic in such things.
Dion faces him fully, bemused and amused in equal measure. “What rumors?” He shifts closer, past propriety, and murmurs, “Don’t hold out on me.”
Terence reddens. “No—they aren't fit for polite company.”
That only makes him more curious. He watches as the elder steps closer to the younger to murmur something in his ear. The archduke is perhaps taller by an inch, but they seem of a height. Twin Flames—an inadequate descriptor, as nothing else about them is alike. “Not fit for polite company,” he muses. That is interesting. “Is one a bastard?”
Terence coughs as if he’s choked on air. He is so easy to fluster. “I’m sure I could not speculate, Your Highness.”
“Well, I could. Wait, is that not the rumor?”
“No. It is not.” But what it is, he seems too uneasy to say.
Dion faces him fully. “Terence.”
“They say they are—inseparable.” His blush now has reached even his ears. It is handsome on him.
“…And?”
“They say the archduke will take no wife.”
As Dion will not. There is nothing so strange about that. Even King Barnabas is spoken of thus, in hushed tones, more like to keep the company of his Commander these days. Eikons pass as Eikons pass; it is a vanity to imagine purity of blood has all to do with it. As he watches, the archduke turns to his brother and laughs at whatever he's said. It’s a bright sound.
“Come. Let us see what we can make of them for ourselves.”
By dinner, Dion’s curiosity has phased into confusion, and then into frustration. The Archduke Rosfield, Joshua, has grown into grace personified. There is nothing of the spoiled lord in him, except that it's obvious he's been spoiled rotten by his brother. The older Rosfield, Clive, is gruff and quiet. Though he changed to formal wear for dinner, his outfit is still composed of more leather than cloth and far too tight to be comfortable. It seems an odd call to vanity before Dion realizes by the way it shifts that it’s enforced—it’s armor, still. A man who wears armor to a dinner with hopeful allies... But then, the princes of Rosaria have earned that right, as few others have.
“Shield of Rosaria,” Dion remarks in a lull between their dinner and the dessert course, rolling his wine in his glass. “What does this entail??
“First Shield,” Joshua corrects. “The Shields are my personal guard. The Phoenix sees to Rosaria’s keeping, and Clive sees to mine.” And, he smiles, Clive does—his first at the table that night. The words have the cadence of something that has been said before, often, and with affection. Joshua does not look at his brother, but shifts, almost as if to bump their shoulders, though he does not.
It is, Dion decides, ridiculous.
Dion opens his mouth, already sure he’ll regret the question he wants most to ask. Perhaps the wine is driving him to be unwise. “Rosaria is much different from Sanbreque. You are both Eikons, yet the Phoenix inherits the throne.” Terence, swallows audibly beside him. He’s never comfortable at these formal affairs, even after years of Dion dragging him in as backup to this gala or that peace conference. A boot knocks against his under the table; Dion moves his foot away and continues, “If I was asked to cede the throne to Olivier, I'm not sure I would have the grace to do so. Rosaria is honored by your dignity.”
“My brother honors me,” Clive says in his quiet voice. “It is my honor to be First Shield.”
They are his first words in some time and he seems to mean them with a ferocity that takes Dion aback. “Forgive me, I meant no offense.”
He meant some, but not much.
“Your Highness,” Terence interjects. “Lord Rosfield fought in the Ducal Tourney for the privilege of the title.”
The Ducal Tourney. He’s brought up short. Rosaria regards itself as the most civilized and traditional of nations but their tradition is one of war. The formidability of their military was explained to Dion by his tutors as this: the power of the Phoenix, of life and death, is too delicate, too precious to waste on war. Rosaria’s soldiers must be vicious to match their Eikon’s fragility. Their tournament is the stuff of childhood legend, even as far afield as Oriflamme. Leather-bound warriors vying for glory in muddy arenas. Fights where first blood was liable to be a sword through the chest. Fights to the death. No place for the duchy’s firstborn to compete.
Dion doesn't know what to say. “Truly?”
“Warriors come from far afield to compete, and only the best may be named First Shield, and only if the Phoenix chooses to bless them with her fire,” Joshua explains. “I had the honor of blessing my brother when he was fifteen.”
Fifteen. Fucking fifteen. Dion does not choke on his wine, so he takes a second, deeper swallow and looks across the table at the man in black who is sat so unassumingly beside his brother. But the man is not looking at him. He is looking at Joshua with something heavy, almost as if this is an argument they have fought and lost—though it confuses him, as there’s nothing but praise in his younger brother’s voice.
To win that tournament at any age—to win it at fifteen—he must fight like a demon. And moreover, he must have fought like a demon to become his brother’s Shield. The savvy part of him imagines there could be only one reason to do so: to reclaim the power lost by being passed over for the throne. But what power in this? “You truly are your brother’s keeper it seems. Would that I had your grace.”
“I would not,” Joshua says, smile still playing about his lips, “call it grace.”
After dinner, Dion ushers them to the hallway and the waiting valets with an open arm. “We have made sleeping arrangements for you both. I’m sorry; we had no word someone of your station would be attending with the archduke, but we’ve made up rooms in the east wing for you.”
This is true. When he sent the invitation, he addressed it to the archduke, and had no reason to believe Rosaria would send both her Eikons. It seems now a nearly fatal faux pas—the latest in a swiftly expanding line up, today.
Joshua shares a look with his brother.
“Will that be sufficient?” Dion asks.
“Of course,” Joshua says, not looking away from Clive. “It will be more than adequate. Surely, in a place so secure as the palace, my brother has no need to guard my door.”
Clive does not look as if he agrees with this, but whatever he finds in Joshua’s face, he says a gruff, “Surely.”
The valets lead them off down the brightly lit hallway, in opposite directions. Dion stares after them until their footsteps fade and then heads for his own rooms with Terence at his back. Once inside, he finds the nearest chair and slumps into it with only a little drama. Someone has considerately left a carafe of chilled wine and a pair of glasses on the table; he pours for them both without asking if Terence will partake and drinks deep before he speaks.
“Tell me truly, will Clive kill me in my sleep tonight for insulting him?”
Terence pauses at the door, and looks at him with concern. “I would never allow that, Your Highness.” And true, he wouldn’t—but Clive is an Eikon. Terence locks the door behind him with a click and seems to choose his words carefully. “I do not think you gave offense.”
“No? Then we are lucky. If the archduke asked his brother to wage a war on us in his honor, I don’t know if I like our odds. Did you see he was in armor at dinner?”
Terence nods tightly. “But he has reason to be cautious.”
“That—incident was eighteen years ago." And the last of Rosaria's wars was almost ten years past. "Do you think it’s made a paranoid of him?” But he knows as he asks it that it’s a stupid question. Of course, it would. Of anyone, it would. A father dead, a nation imperiled, a mother lost to her own machinations in a night. If there was ever a time for someone to take the throne, that night would have been it. There was talk of it then, as everyone watched Rosaria flounder in tragedy like a slow moving fire that might consume the nation and the rest of Storm with the slightest breeze. Dion was young then, and it was his father’s affair to deal with it—and with the rumors that Sanbreque had some part in the attempted coup—but he remembers the wars that followed. Privately, shamefully, he’d been relieved that Dhalmekia and the Iron Kingdom were busy tearing Rosaria apart when Emperor Sylvestre fell ill, instead of turning their swords on Sanbreque. It made the transition peaceful. The astrologers were so smug at Rosaria’s misfortune.
And yet, here she is, whole. The two child sons of Rosaria held the throne through ten years of war, but how?
“Is the younger a puppet prince, do you think?” he muses. “Are these the rumors you spoke of?”
“...Those were not the rumors.”
“You really won’t tell me?”
For a moment, it seems he’ll break, but he turns his eyes to the floor and says only, “They are too graceless to repeat.”
“I like this guessing game.”
The next day dawns bright and clear as he could hope for the tour they have planned of the city. Archduke Rosfield meets them on the castle steps with a smile on his face and a sort of gratified air about him that’s a total mismatch for the ghastly cloud his brother paints behind them.
“Did you both sleep well?” Dion asks.
Joshua’s grin grows. “Quite well. Almost as well as at home.”
“Lord Rosfield?” Dion asks.
Clive looks at him and Dion tries not to flinch back from the circles under his eyes. Coupled with the extra day’s growth of beard and the mass of scar, he looks… somewhat less than lordly.
Joshua pats his brother on the shoulder. “He never sleeps well his first day away. You do look a mess, Clive.”
“Thanks.”
“Hold still.” Joshua reaches over and picks his hair that’s gotten caught in his beard. “There. Let us see that beautiful face—”
“Oh, fuck off.”
Joshua covers his mouth. “Clive!”
Clive blinks, and then seems to realize they have an audience. “Apologies, Your Highness. Travel doesn’t agree with me in my... old age.”
“If you’re old, I’m not sure what that makes Terence and I. Was the bed insufficient?”
“Too big, perhaps?” Joshua asks, still with that edge of humor. Brothers, it seems, will be brothers.
Clive shoots Joshua a look of his own, equally impenetrable, but his words are for Dion and Terence, it seems. “I’m used to sleeping soldier’s quarters. I suppose comfort doesn’t suit me.”
“Ha. I don’t know if I believe that. We dragoons are no strangers to the soldier's quarters, are we Terence?” When Dhalmekia tired of losing to Rosaria, they turned to skirmishing at Oriflamme’s borders. Sanbreque’s dragoons answered the call. It’s how he made a name for himself, past bastard and Eikon. It’s how the throne passed to him without a single whisper that it might better go to someone of full royal blood.
Terence nods, and then, to his utter shock, Clive smiles at them both. “Yes, of course. I’ve heard of your highness’s dragoons. Their fighting prowess is legend.”
From anyone else, it would be flattery and sarcasm. From this man, it’s nothing but genuine.
A small something flutters in Dion’s chest, and oh, when the elder Rosfield smiles, it transforms him. He finds himself floundering for words. “Yes, well. If you’d like to see our training field tomorrow, it would be my honor to show you. Perhaps Terence could tempt you for a spar.”
Clive’s eyes are blue, he realizes quite suddenly. Ridiculously blue. Exquisitely clear, almost as the span of sea beyond the city on a summer’s day. His voice has a sort of… a quality of something to it. Something rough and yet kind. “I’d like that,” he answers, without a single hint of anything but honesty.
The smile lingers until Joshua steps between them. “Later,” he interjects. “I was promised a tour of the city today, was I not, Lesage?”
Lesage?
Dragging the pair about Oriflamme is both delight and frustration in equal measure. Dion tries not be offended at Clive’s tendency to walk exactly five feet behind Joshua and he, but the man’s tenseness is palpable. It's as if he thinks at any moment fire and arrows might rain down from the sky. It’s made worse by the spectacle they make. While the Knights Dragoon are not a rarity walking about the city, to see their prince and commander and his second, certainly is. The princes of Rosaria draw their own gazes, their own whispers. Few dare to walk armed and cloaked through the streets of Oriflamme as Clive does. He, more even than Joshua’s air of nobility, marks the archduke as royalty.
When Clive starts at a stranger’s gasp for the third time, Dion turns to him and offers lightly, “The city is safe. And with three Dominants and a commander of the dragoons here, none would dare cause mischief.”
Joshua puts a hand on his brother’s arm. “It’s all right.”
“I know.” He looks almost shame-faced about it, and Dion feels suddenly bad for pointing it out at all.
“I could show his lordship the smith where we have our lances forged,” Terence offers. The shop is only a short walk down the street from where they are, within eye and earshot.
Dion would kiss him there in the street in thanks if he could. Clive looks to his brother once, and then nods tightly and lets Terence lead him off. Under his breath, Joshua says, “Watch him come back with a lance—as if he doesn't have enough swords.”
“Then Terence and he share interests.” Truly, they’re more Dion’s, but he felt better about being Terence’s reason for dedicating his life to the dragoons when he showed a genuine interest in being one himself. “Tonight, I thought we might tempt you both for a theater performance, but if your brother is weary…”
“He would be delighted.” Joshua leans in close. “My brother loves the theater.”
“Really? I wouldn’t have guessed.” It sounds snide, though he doesn't mean it to be. It almost seems a joke, but it would be impolite to laugh, and he’s already insulted the elder Rosfield enough for one diplomatic visit.
He is, he reminds himself not for the first time, trying to woo Rosaria, not start another war.
“Yes. Before the—" He stops himself, and then continues, "When we were young, he saw every performance he could convince anyone to take him to. Our uncle, usually.” Across the street, Clive and Terence are sharing some intense conversation over a spearhead the shop attendant is holding on display for them both. “I know how he seems now. He feels as if he relaxes a moment, he’ll fail at something. There’s little I can say to convince him otherwise.”
“Forgive me if I caused offense.” Something he seems to be making a habit out of, he thinks. “When my father fell ill, rule fell to me before I was ready. I understand the burden—though I wouldn’t presume to say I understand what you suffered.”
“I suffered not one half what my brother did. Not one half.” His voice is tense. Though he’s looking across the street, as Dion is, he looks as if he’s seeing something not there. “We've had nine years of peace, but he won’t let himself rest." He says, almost to himself, "I wonder sometimes if he ever will.”
It’s the first time in two days he’s heard the archduke express anything but blithe humor.
Dion stares after the pair. Terence is smiling at something, talking animatedly, as he so rarely has the chance to. “That which is hardest won is most tightly held, I’ve found.” As Dion watches, Terence looks back to him, their gazes crossing for a moment.
"Yes," Joshua murmurs. "Quite."
That night, for the first time in two days, Dion is treated to the sight of the elder Rosfield relaxing. It suits him. In the quiet of the theater, where all is dark and calm and there is only the spectacle at the front, he lets his worry go for a moment. He can almost feel the relief, though he chances only a few glances at the man on the other side of the archduke. The many colored lights of the stage paint his face and the scar and stubble aren't so obvious here. When he smiles, when he laughs, it pulls one side of his mouth up more than the other.
He smiles most often when Joshua laughs.
An odd thing, not unlike jealousy, courses through Dion from the pit of his stomach to the hollow of his throat where it sets like a stone. How unfair that Rosaria should have not only two Eikons but two princes. It’s a clever game, they play, the two of them—to be of one mind, to speak with one voice, to have twice the body and twice the power but a single course. They’re playing this game two against his one.
No; it’s hardly fair.
“Thank you,” Clive says after the performance. “It's been a long time.”
“Do you not attend plays in Rosalith?”
Clive snorts. For a moment, Dion thins he’s mistaken the sound, but that is certainly what it is—bitter humor. “No. Not for a long time.”
Dion opens his mouth to stick his foot in it once again, but thinks better of it. Of course. Rosaria has had peace for a time, but some parts of society take longer to rebuild. When you’re busy trying to keep your people fed in the middle of an endless war, joy is last on the list of needs.
He imagines loss, then. He imagines his father dead and suddenly instead of at the distant end of the long illness the emperor is suffering through. He imagines fighting tooth and claw for his throne, fighting wars on his doorstep, fighting wars in his capitol for nothing less than survival. Years of it—and how many years was it? The battles were read off to Dion by his tutors as no more than the news of the day. Rosaria, fettered by tradition, rolling in her death throes and taking down any who got too close. Sanbreque on her hill, watching.
He imagines doing it at fifteen.
Of course there's no theater in Rosaria now. Of course. Even if there was, he doubts the Dominant of Ifrit would have the time to attend.
That night, Dion eschews his warm bed and the comfort of Terence wrapped around him for the library. To no avail. There are books on Rosaria’s dead princes and queens, on the many circles the royal family took to keep the Phoenix in their blood, their strange rites, their old songs. There are descriptions of the city, of her castle, of the military ranks, the Eikon’s powers, and the forging of swords. Nothing so current that it mentions Twin Flames. It's as if no one thought it worth writing about a country on the brink of annihilation. Best to save the writing for a retrospective—everyone loves a tragedy.
Closed off within her borders, Rosaria has grown strange.
There is, in the centermost point of one of the larger and dustier tomes, a description of the Shields. It includes an engraving in black and white: a figure in a stylized knight’s armor kneeled before a woman in a crown, her outstretched hand radiating light. The following page says merely that the Shields aspire to no glory but that of their Dominant. It says the bond between First Shield and Phoenix supersedes all others.
It is a bond, the book says, unbreakable but by death—and even then, it says.
Even then.
“I want to meet them!”
“No,” says Dion, growing tired of repeating himself, but well used to it with this particular annoyance.
Olivier bunches his fists at his side, and his face reddens the way it used to before he would launch himself into a true epic of a tantrum. He’s outgrown that—for the most part. “But I want to!”
His words echo off the hall around them, bouncing off portraits of previous emperors and their statues. He wonders, vaguely, if any of them had to deal with this. Probably.
“Olivier, no.” I’m having enough trouble convincing Rosaria to give us this alliance on my own without you interfering. But he doesn't say that, because the last time he said anything of the sort, the boy had erupted into tears and Dion had been forcibly reminded that he was dealing with a ten year old child who had no mother and no father well enough to pay him attention. All Olivier has left to him is a brother twenty years his elder with no time.
He smothers his sigh. “This is their last day here, and we have much to discuss. Why don't you go into town with Lisal and pick something out to give them as a royal gift?” Dion looks beseechingly at his brother’s governess—nursemaid—and she looks cool on the idea but musters a smile.
Olivier bows his head, and his little braids hang down about his round cheeks. “All right,” he says quietly. A pang of what can’t be guilt cuts through Dion, but it truly would do them no favors for two brothers as close as the Rosfields to see Dion, at thirty, bickering with his own kid brother like a cat with a dog.
He thinks about it for only a moment and then adds, “And why don’t you pick something out for yourself as well? Anything you like.”
Olivier perks up a bit at this. "Anything?"
"Within reason," he adds, already regretting the suggestion.
A voice from behind Dion says, “You'll spoil him rotten that way.”
Dion turns and eyes the elder Rosfield walking toward him. “Speaking from experience?”
Clive laughs. He actually laughs. “I did spoil Joshua.”
“And is he rotten?”
A small, near bashful smile plays across his mouth. It makes him look young. “Only where it won't show.”
“You—you're Ifrit!” says Olivier when he recovers from his shock. They both turn to him. His face is red, the tears that he was working up to forgotten. “Ifrit!" he crows again, looking between them, and then to Lisal, and then he says, "Ifrit the Blasphemous!” And well. There’s that, done and dusted. Incredible.
Dion allows himself a moment to put his face in his hands. One moment, and no more.
Clive seems—unsurprisingly—a bit taken aback. “I haven’t heard that in a long time," he says, and scratches the stubble on his cheek.
Dion rounds on Olivier with a glare to melt steel. “My deepest apologies, Lord Rosfield," he says to Clive without looking at him. "He’s a boy who has no comprehension of manners.”
“Stop, stop. It’s fine.” Clive waves his hand. “That’s me, in the flesh. Blasphemy and all.”
They call him that because there can be only a single Eikon of fire. It was a derisive moniker, a tool of propaganda. He no longer remembers where he first heard it—only that he heard it everywhere, until Ifrit proved to be as formidable as any other Eikon, if not more so. Until Ifrit started winning Rosaria's wars for her. Until it became clear that, had she wanted, Rosaria could have set Ifrit loose on any other nation and come out on top.
Olivier shoots a guilty little look at Dion, and then walks right past him and up to Clive. “You’re huge,” he says.
“I… Yes.”
“But where’s your sword? All the books say you have a sword!”
Dion frowns. “What books?”
“He took all the books he could on Rosaria from the library,” Lisal explains. “And he has some picture books about it.” She looks exactly how Dion feels, as if she’d like the room to cave in on them all, perhaps, as a bit of rare luck.
Dion closes his eyes. Of course. No books in the library—no, why would there be. Leave it Olivier to finally take an interest in his studies.
Clive kneels down so he’s on eye level with the boy. “I didn’t wear it today.” He didn’t, Dion realizes. How out of character. “You’re Prince Olivier, aren’t you? Your brother has told us all about you. What a fine man you’ll grow into.”
Olivier shoots Dion a surprised look, and Dion’s guilt crystalizes. Clive is good with children, it seems, and good at lying to them, too. But Clive looks like he wants to say something else. He's here, leather-less for once, unarmed, wanting to talk. It can be for only one of two reasons, and none of them good news for Dion's hopes for an alliance.
Lisal reads the room. “My prince, we should head into the city, should we not?” she chances, and sets a hand on his shoulder. Her pay must be increased, Dion decides.
Olivier frowns. “But I wanted to meet the Phoenix…”
Clive leans in close and says conspiratorially, “I believe my brother is still sleeping. You can meet him tomorrow when you see us off.”
“Could I really?”
Dion nods, though he'd had no intention of inviting Olivier to that. This cows Olivier into submission. Clive stands to watch as Lisal leads him off—or is led, as Olivier for once seems to have a slight skip in his step. He’s a dour child usually, and prideful of his station, given to arrogance no matter what Dion has tried to tell him about the virtues of humility.
“Apologies,” Dion offers again when they’re gone. “He’s incorrigible, and to my shame, I haven’t had the time to see to his education the way I ought.”
Clive shakes his head. “It’s fine. I know how it is to grow up unsure of your place in a castle like this.” He glances around, at the decorations, the oozing opulence. In truth, Dion never felt a great comfort with it either. “They called me a bastard, too, when I was born without the Phoenix.”
Then he’s heard that rumor. With both Sanbreque’s princes born outside of marriage, no one can speak the word bastard with much weight, but it is spoken still, as it was of Dion before he proved himself to be more than worthy of the throne. “I suppose in that, we’re all of us brothers," Dion offers.
There are other rumors, however. Worse rumors of Olivier’s parentage; rumors of the most wicked sort. Rumors of a traitor. Rumors of a woman who betrayed her own kin, her own husband and children, and sought harbor within Sanbreque when it all fell apart. A decade on, they’ve quieted, but he supposes he’s been a fool to pray those rumors wouldn’t reach Rosaria.
A smile flickers across Clive's face as he stares after Olivier. “That we are.”
“Did you have something you wished to speak about?”
Clive eyes him. “I did.” But he doesn’t say anything else, and Dion finds himself unable to speak. The way Clive is looking at him is rather like being pierced on the end of his own lance. “We’ve both of us spent time in battle. Can I speak to you as one soldier to another?”
“Yes.”
“My brother intends to refuse this alliance.”
All his breath knocks out of him at the single blow of those words. “Why?” Dion asks, the question falling out of him before he can stop it, in all its offense.
“He worries. He thinks Sanbreque will drag us into another war. He fears that more than anything.”
And Dion recalls his words from the day before, and his bitter eyes. I suffered not one half what my brother did. Not one half.
For Clive, he realizes. He’ll refuse an alliance in the far chance that it will obligate this man to battle, again. “War may come to Rosaria regardless. And you would have us at your back. You would have our grain, our clothes, our—our theater, if you wished it.”
“I know.” Clive smiles placidly. “That’s why I’ll try to convince him. Don’t make me regret it?”
His eyes are so very, very blue.
Dion nods. “On my life, I will not.”
He wonders why it feels like he’s made this vow on bended knee.