The Traitor’s Mercy by Iris Foxglove
Epilogue
It had been quite some time since Sabre de Rue last set foot in his family home in the shadow of the palace.
The carefully maintained gardens at the gate were overgrown, thistle and mint pushing up against the iron fence as Sabre lifted the latch and slipped through. He had a small staff who came in once a week to keep the house from collapsing under the weight of its own consequence, but none of them were gardeners, and wild roses brushed Sabre’s dark jacket as he turned the key in the front door and stepped inside.
The manor was empty. The front hall was cleared of furnishings that had been in the de Valois home for hundreds of years; Old clocks generations of children weren’t allowed to touch, ancient books arranged by color behind glass, chairs that were dusted off and polished but never used. The drawing room had a couch for the staff and a tray for tea, but the rug where Sabre and Elise used to read poetry to each other was gone, and the painting of dogs running about in a distant, unknown countryside was just a blank space on the wall.
He ran a hand over the dent in the wallpaper where Sabre, age seven, had driven a wooden sword through a stand of plate armor and upset half the household. There was the mark on the glass window where Elise had thrown a stone at twelve, and scratches on the banister where countless children sat and watched their noble families mill about below, the murmur of hundreds of dinner parties rising like steam through the halls.
Sabre stopped in the ballroom, where the king’s guard had caught him months before, dragging his family through the streets to the square. He crossed to the high windows where Elise had stood in her blue gown and ribbons, her hands trembling, and looked down at the street below, the fine houses of fellow nobles who had gladly beaten him, whipped him, hissed curses into his ear, as soon as they had the chance.
“You know,” he said, running a line down the dust on the window. “You and Mother might have been right about Staria. Not exactly the way you meant it, perhaps, but we can’t just go on as we are.”
He thought of his room with Laurent in the House of Onyx, of Rose revising scripts in the kitchen, teenagers in debt to the Houses along the street, running dangerous gambles for a chance at a comfortable life.
The quarry cart, rolling down the streets with the marble that formed the manor in which he stood.
It took being unmade for Sabre to learn the shape of who he was, in the end. That didn’t mean it had to be the same for the rest of the world.
He turned to look at the empty ballroom. “Perhaps you’ll be a school, one day,” he said. “Or a theater. Another option, before people sign their debt into a House’s ledger.” He smiled. “The neighbors will be thrilled.”
He sighed and turned his back to the ballroom, leaving it empty, bathed in early morning light.
The square before the palace was starting to thin as the day wore on, and Sabre passed a hat stall where the gallows used to be, children selling flowers, a herald reading news from the palace. Sabre stopped to buy a flower for Rose, who had a fondness for her namesake, and turned toward the pleasure district.
“Hey, kid,” Nanette said, when Sabre came in through the front door of the House of Onyx. She was wearing a heavy red sweater over her catsuit, and was reading one of the salacious novels they sold on the street, something about Arkoudai warriors slinging Katoikos nobles over their shoulders. “You just missed Yves’ mother. She made us sweaters. Did you know Yves’ legal name is Darling? Darling.”
“I’m not surprised,” Sabre said, sidling around the cart of masks in the foyer. Gwydion was in the common room with Rose, reading through her latest edits while Simone listened and mended an enormous lavender gown. Rose patted Sabre absently on the cheek when he handed her the flower, then turned back to her script, papers shuffling over her dress as she moved.
“Laurent’s upstairs,” she said. “And so’s a copy of Act Three.”
“I’ll have my notes on your desk in the morning,” Sabre said, and smiled as Rose waved him off.
He ascended the stairs through the House, lightly sliding his hand along the banister. Music played from Yves’ room, a guitar of some sort, soft, hesitant strings plunking away through the wall. Laughter rang out from the baths. Through the window, laundry dried in the sun, and the white, heavily pregnant cat Rose had just adopted off the street basked beneath it, content.
Sabre stopped at the door at the top of the stairs. He’d knelt there, once, waiting for permission to enter, too afraid of love to think it could be given, too eager to turn away.
He opened the door. Laurent looked up, still dressed in his morning robes, the light of the open window pooling into his eyes.
“Good morning, love,” Sabre said, stepping inside. “I’m back.”
