Archive of Our Own

Somewhere, echoing in the darkness, is the sound of dripping.

His eyelids flutter, ever so slightly.  He lets out a sound, faint, not even a grunt.  His body feels weightless and yet somehow heavy, as though the earth is dragging him inexorably down but never letting him reach the bottom.  The world swirls around him in slow, endless loops.

He sags, his head dropping, and darkness descends again.

Where had it started?  The strike, perhaps--the impact, the sudden burst of pain--

No.  The footsteps, the crunch of gravel, the rattle of pebbles--

No.  The looming shadows, crumbling walls and--

No.

The letter.

It all started with the letter.

The young woman came barging into the King's meeting with his aides with nary a how-do-you-do, not even a knock on the door.  The meeting came screeching to a halt, Wolfgang breaking off mid-sentence to stare with his mouth agape, King bringing his feet down off the table with his eye narrowed.

"Pardon the intrusion!" the woman gasped.  Right-Eye couldn't recall her name off the top of his head, but he recognized her, had seen her around the Palace before, one of the multitude of servants who kept the place up and running.  "Your Majesty," she said, still panting for air, and in one trembling hand, she held out an envelope.

"Is this necessary?" snapped Mavis.  "We're in the middle of a very important discussion--"

"Right-Eye," His Majesty said.  Nothing else, just his name, but Right-Eye knew the tone, heard the undercurrent of urgency.  His Majesty played the role of the brash, cocksure ne'er-do-well only too comfortably, but he took his position on the throne seriously, and the responsibilities that came with it too.  He had surely seen the way the young woman blanched, surely heard the quaver in her voice, and realized, perhaps before anyone else in this room, the seriousness of the situation.

Right-Eye took the envelope.

It had been slit open with a paper-knife, neat and clean.  All mail into the Palace was checked upon arrival, of course, so Right-Eye knew there were no poisoned needles or other trickery slipped inside.  In fact, there was nothing but a single piece of paper folded in half.  Right-Eye slid it from the envelope and flipped it open.

The words were written in ink, the letters jittery and jagged.  It looked like it had been written by a child, or by someone using their non-dominant hand.  But Right-Eye registered this only dimly, because the words themselves were as shocking as a bullet in the heart.

In that messy, jerky scrawl, the note read, I have information about Zoe.

Sounds.

They strike his ears like knives, a physical ache.  Addled, dazed, barely conscious, it takes time for his brain to piece the shards together.

Voices.  Yes, that's right, they're voices.  Speaking.  But he cannot understand what they say.

What, he thinks, how, and then he is dragged back down.

Right-Eye stared at the note, stunned.  He was breathless, speechless.  The room, too, descended into an uneasy silence; his reaction had not gone unnoticed.  "Right-Eye?" King said at last, a thread of uncertainty in his voice.  "What is it?  What does it say?"

Right-Eye blinked, swallowed, cleared his throat.  "'To His Majesty, King Quatredina,'" he read aloud, his voice admirably steady, "'I have information about Zoe.'"

Gasps echoed around the room.  Wolfgang dropped down into his chair as though his hamstrings had been cut out from beneath him; Mavis swooned, while beside her Hubert gaped comically.  But His Majesty--

His Majesty went ashen, his one eye gone wide, and upon his shoulder, Lord Shirogane stared at Right-Eye with his ears pinned back and his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Right-Eye swallowed.  "'Come to the Tsirahe ruins at midnight on the night of the new moon,'" he continued reading.  "'Bring'--my apologies, Lord Shirogane--'bring with you no one but your dogs.  I will tell you what you need to know then.'"

Lord Shirogane let out a huff.  "I think that reference to 'dogs' was meant to include you, Right-Eye," he said.

"I'm sure it was," Right-Eye replied.  "But they can call me whatever they like as long as they do not expect me to let His Majesty walk into a possible trap alone."

"A trap?" Wolfgang yelped.

"Of course it's a trap," Sylvanna said, pinching the bridge of her nose.  "And a very unsubtle one at that."

Her proclamation set a flurry of mutters rising throughout the room.  "Of course," Hubert said, his tense shoulders easing.  "A trap--of course."

"If someone actually had information about King Zoe, they would go through official channels, not leave a fly-by-night letter," added Orvin.

"And they certainly wouldn't have anyone go to the Tsirahe ruins," Sylvanna said with a disdainful snort.

Right-Eye looked back down at the note, at the uncomfortable scrawl and the barebones message.  He hesitated, his eyes cutting to the side.

"Is it signed?" Mavis asked.

"No name was left," Right-Eye answered.

Orvin huffed.  "Of course not," he muttered.  "I don't think there's any reason to lend this any credence.  An anonymous note, no details, telling His Majesty to go someplace like that alone--"

"I wouldn't be going alone," His Majesty interrupted.

The silence returned, tense this time.  Hubert wore a sour expression, while Sylvanna looked particularly uneasy; they both remained less than fond of Right-Eye, their past suspicions never fully banished.  But even Wolfgang looked discomfited.  "Be that as it may, King," he said, "we don't know what you'd be walking into.  And, well, if you're walking into a squadron of three dozen men, there's only so much even Right-Eye can do."  He shot an apologetic glance Right-Eye's way.  Right-Eye just inclined his head in acknowledgment; he was confident in his abilities against superior numbers, but even he had to admit that three dozen to one did not present the most favorable of odds.

"I'm not exactly helpless myself," His Majesty retorted.

"It doesn't matter, because you won't be going," Mavis said bluntly.  "We don't need another king going missing.  Especially not over something that's such an obvious trap."

"Is it?" His Majesty countered.

Startled, Right-Eye looked at His Majesty.  So did everyone else.

"King," Lord Shirogane said quietly.

"Think about it," His Majesty said.  "If you're living in the Tsirahe ruins and you have information about a missing king, are you going to go to the sheriff or palace bailiff to file an official report?  Would you want to walk into a meeting with a squad of Royal Guards looking for the slightest excuse to draw their swords?"

The silence was downright uncomfortable this time.  Wolfgang shifted in his seat, while Orvin averted his eyes.  Of course, Right-Eye thought.  They wouldn't think of it that way.  After all, they've never been among the forsaken and rejected.

Right-Eye wasn't much familiar with the Tsirahe ruins himself; they were far enough away from the city, and from all civilization for that matter, that anyone who did not go there specifically would go a lifetime without seeing them.  But even he knew that the ruins were not as abandoned as their name suggested.  There were people living there--a few dozen, a hundred, a thousand, no one really knew.  What everyone did know was that they were the most downtrodden and desperate of humanity, a throng of starving, flea-ridden, diseased, abandoned souls.  Even the lowest city slum-dweller turned away from the forsaken inhabitants of the ruins; even Right-Eye, foreigner though he was, had heard enough during his years living on the roads and in the gutters of Quatredina to pity them.

The odds that anyone living in the Tsirahe ruins might hear word of King Zoe were exceedingly low.  But if such a report were made to any official, officer, or servant of the King, the odds that such a warning would be taken seriously were nonexistent.

If this were true--if someone in the ruins really did have information about Zoe--then this anonymous note was the only way such information would ever reach His Majesty.

"Right-Eye," His Majesty said.  "Is that all the note says?"

"Not quite," Right-Eye replied.  He looked at the last line, paused.  He read the last line out loud.  "'If you do not come then, it may be too late to save him.'"

A shiver ran through the room.

Instead he turned his gaze on Right-Eye, sharp and calculating.  "Right-Eye," he said, "what do you think?"

Right-Eye paused for a moment before answering.  "I agree it is quite likely to be a trap, Your Majesty," he said diplomatically.  No need to displease any of His Majesty's advisors by disagreeing with them to their faces; His Majesty irked them well enough without any assistance.  "But I am concerned by the possibility that it might not be."

Realistically speaking, of course it was a trap.  But--

But what if it wasn't?

If you do not come then, it may be too late to save him.

His Majesty leaned forward, clasping his hands.  His eye narrowed in thought.  On his shoulder, Lord Shirogane whispered something in his ear, and he nodded and raised his head.  "Someone go fetch Glen," he commanded.  "It's, what, three days to the new moon?  And it'll take us half a day on horseback to get there.  We don't have much time to make a plan."

His body is numb.  His mind is numb.  His thoughts are numb.

There is a faraway thudding.  It sounds like footsteps.  It sounds like fists on flesh.  It sounds like his own heartbeat.

Lost in a semiconscious haze, somehow, he breathes.

The Tsirahe ruins had probably been quite magnificent, once.

The ruins dated back unknown centuries, back to well before the country of Quatredina even properly existed.  "There was nothing but ruins left when I sat my first king on the throne," Lord Shirogane had said, which Right-Eye found nearly unfathomable.  There had been a people here once, a nation that built its own city with plazas and longhouses and an enormous stone plinth that must have borne some domineering structure that once loomed over the people below.  But now the plinth was empty, whatever castle or pyramid that had once stood atop it lost to the winds of time, and this once-glorious city was now nothing but crumbling walls and solitary pillars and rubble all around.

This was all that was left of the Tsirahe people, but they were not the last people to ever live here.  Even now, the pitiful and the outcast eked out a pathetic living amidst the overgrown crumbling architecture, using shrubs as fuel and half-collapsed ancient houses as shelter.  Every once in a while, Right-Eye spotted signs that this derelict place did indeed have denizens--charred bones gnawed clean, abandoned fire-pits filled with ash.  People had lived here, and quite recently.  But where they were now, he had no idea.

"This was a terrible idea."

Right-Eye glanced over.  His Majesty wore a heavy cloak against the midnight chill and carried a lamp against the looming darkness, but neither could hide the irritation in his expression.  Even Lord Shirogane, clinging to his shoulder, looked put out.

"Your Majesty," Right-Eye said.  "Are you all right?"

"Some directions would have been nice," His Majesty griped.  "Are we supposed to be finding someone somewhere in here?  This place is huge.  We could be walking around here for hours and find jack shit.  And that's assuming we don't accidentally step into a sinkhole."

Right-Eye peered through the darkness, to no avail.  The moon was utterly dark, not a sliver to be seen; the stars splashed across the sky were beautiful, but did nothing to pierce the blackness.  Even His Majesty's lantern did little more than cast eerie shadows all around them. 

"Watch your step here, Your Majesty," Right-Eye said, gingerly stepping over what he suspected might have been the cornerstone of some ancient building.  Nearby was a small pile that might have once been a chimney; there was nothing else left of the building that had once stood here.

"I'm just saying," His Majesty continued, stomping on the cornerstone so hard that the edge crumbled beneath his boot.  Historians would have wept to witness this wanton desecration of an ancient artifact.  "We're supposed to be meeting someone here, but it's pretty damn hard to meet someone when you have no fucking idea where you're supposed to meet.  What are we supposed to do, wander around these ruins until we stumble across someone or the sun comes up?  This feels like a wild goose chase."

"At least we have a lantern," Lord Shirogane said pointedly.

"Not that it's doing us much good," His Majesty muttered.

It wasn't doing them much good, but it was enough to keep them from tripping and falling face-first into rubble or getting tangled in a stray bramble, and Right-Eye appreciated that.  Glen's men and women in the Royal Guard weren't nearly as lucky.

They were out there somewhere in the darkness, too--fifteen of Glen's finest, hand-picked by the commander himself.  They lurked at a distance, picking their way over the wreckage of a lost civilization and keeping watch for the slightest indication that there was someone else skulking out there amidst the ruins.  The lantern held by His Majesty wasn't just to provide light; it was also a beacon, not just to their supposed informant, but also to the Royal Guard, so that they could come roaring to his defense if necessary.

So far, it wasn't looking necessary in the slightest.

"I'm afraid we don't have much choice other than to keep going," Right-Eye said apologetically.  "It's either that or sit and wait for them to find us."

"That option's looking more tempting by the minute," His Majesty said.

"You know, they might already know we're here," Lord Shirogane pointed out.  "We've been wandering around here for a while now, and you haven't exactly been quiet about it."  He slapped his tail against His Majesty's side as though to indicate exactly who he meant by you.  "I wouldn't be surprised if they've already noticed that we're here."

"If they've found us, they should tell us," His Majesty snapped.  "Why would they wait?"

"They might be watching us," Right-Eye said.  "They wrote quite specifically in the note about who was supposed to come.  Perhaps they want to make sure that we're actually us and not stand-ins sent in our place."

"I am a stand-in," His Majesty muttered.  Still, he soldiered on, his eye narrowed, his hair gleaming platinum in the lamplight.

Right-Eye turned his attention outward, scanning their surroundings.  His skin prickled with tension, and he felt horribly defenseless.  The darkness pressed in all around them, inky and all-encompassing, and it was impossible to see anything beyond the pale illumination of their single lantern.  But he suspected that he would have disliked this place even in the light of day; there were far too many cracked walls that enemies could lurk behind, far too many hidden crevices that could conceal trickery and deception.  Far too many impenetrable shadows that refused to betray their secrets.

The perfect place to lay a trap, some part of his mind hissed.  He acknowledged the thought and let it slip away; giving way to paranoia would help no one even if it ended up being true.

Wordlessly, they continued through the ruins, making their way step by step.  Their boots crunched on gravel and dirt; their breaths echoed around them, loud and harsh.  They had no discernible objective, no destination; only the flickering candlelight from His Majesty's lantern showed their path.

Right-Eye stepped carefully, testing the ground before putting his weight on it.  He kept his hand on the hilt of his sword, just in case.  Step by step by step.

Suddenly, Lord Shirogane made a sound.  No words, no warning, but Right-Eye froze nevertheless, glancing back.  Upon His Majesty's Shoulder, Lord Shirogane lifted his head, his eyes narrowed and his ears pricked.  His fur stood on end, almost bristling.

"Someone's here," he said.

His Majesty's hand slipped inside the lapel of his coat, no doubt reaching for his gun.  "What are the odds that they're our contact?" he asked, his voice low.

"Shh!"  Lord Shirogane hissed.

Right-Eye struggled to peer through the darkness, but he saw nothing but vague, dark outlines of ruined buildings, a jagged horizon against a vague, dark sky.  If it had just been him, he never would have noticed anything.  Still he searched, with bated breath.

Then, ahead and off to the left, a sound.

He probably wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't been paying attention.  A footstep, betrayed by the noise of loose sand and pebbles grinding underfoot.

"All right," His Majesty muttered.  "Let's roll."  And he lifted his lantern high in the air, a signal.  "Hey!" he shouted.  "I'm here!  Can we stop playing hide-and-seek and get down to business?"

The gentle soughing of a faint breeze was his only reply.

Right-Eye swallowed.  There was a prickling at the back of his neck, a roiling deep in his gut.  Something was wrong.  Something was very, very wrong.

And then he heard it.  A tiny sound, easily missed.  A sound he'd heard countless times before.  A sound that haunted his dreams even now.

It was the distinctive creak of a bow being drawn.

"Your Majesty!" he shouted, and without thinking, he leapt.

That's right.

Memory returns slowly, in disconnected, jagged pieces.  The letter.  Zoe.  The ruins.  That's right, he thinks hazily.  We went to the ruins.

But he cannot think further, because he shifts his body, and instantly, like a firestorm, pain explodes--

That's right, he thinks through the agony, and, at last, remembers.

It knocked the breath out of him like a sucker punch to the gut.

That was all it was, at first--no pain, just a sudden impact.  He staggered, gasping for air and clutching at his left shoulder--

And then his fingers knocked against a smooth wooden shaft, and that was when the pain hit.

He dropped.  His legs buckled beneath him, but he barely felt his knees hit the rocky earth.  He barely felt the slickness beneath his fingers, either.  He barely felt anything except the agony in his shoulder--blinding, suffocating, radiating all the way down his arm, stone arrowhead grinding horrifically against bone with even the slightest movement.

"Right-Eye!"

And then there was the whistling sound of an arrow flying through the air--another one--and for a split second, his mind was utterly clear.

He was the right eye, and the body was in danger.

His Majesty was in danger.

On instinct, he let go of the arrow impaled in his shoulder, reached up, grabbed His Majesty by the elbow, and yanked as hard as he could.  The lantern went tumbling with a deafening clang.  His Majesty went down with a curse.  Lord Shirogane yelped, his tail a flagging banner in the air.  Right-Eye shoved them both down beneath him, out of the immediate line of fire, his body their only shield.

The lantern rolled to a clattering stop on the ground a few feet away, the candle guttering but still flickering and alive.

"Your Majesty," Right-Eye said through gritted teeth, "are you hurt?"

There was no response, and he looked down.

His Majesty lay sprawled beneath him on the dirt.  The dancing shadows cast by the abandoned lantern obscured most of his face, but even in the darkness Right-Eye could see that he was deathly pale, his single eye frightfully wide.  Beside him, Lord Shirogane stared up at him equally stunned, jaw dropped, eyes wide.

Something liquid and dark dripped down onto His Majesty's cheek.

"Right-Eye," His Majesty said dumbly, his voice flat with what would only be shock.

Shouts echoed through the night, winging like owls through the ruins.  Some of them were surely His Majesty's loyal Royal Guard, swooping in to the rescue; some of them were just as surely not.  Even through the veil of agony that was even now misting his vision, Right-Eye knew better than to hope that their contingent from the Royal Guard was closer.

Someone had nearly put an arrow in His Majesty in the dead of night with nothing but a lantern for guidance.  Right-Eye didn't know how many of them there were or where exactly they might be, but one thing was crystal clear:  This was a trap, and the enemy was right on top of them.

The instant their enemy found them, the strike would come from point-blank range.

"Lord Shirogane," Right-Eye said, forcing the words out past the pain.  "Which way is the Royal Guard?"

Lord Shirogane craned his head this way and that, ears swiveling, and then he jerked his muzzle.  "That way," he said, nodding somewhere behind Right-Eye in indication.

Right-Eye jerked at his scabbard, still buckled at his side.  The movement alone jostled his shoulder, making his breath catch and his vision swim.  Panting, he tried again, but to no avail.  "Your Majesty," he said, his voice trembling.  "Go to the Royal Guard.  They'll make sure you're safe."

"Right-Eye," Lord Shirogane hissed, his ears pinning back in alarm.

Right-Eye made one more attempt at his scabbard, then abandoned the effort entirely and just dragged his sword out, hissing at the throb of pain that accompanied the motion.  He lay the sword down by His Majesty's side.  "Take my sword," he said, pressing a hand to His Majesty's chest.  "To defend yourself."

His Majesty's chest rose and fell beneath his hand.  Too shallow, too rapid, but still breathing.  Still alive.  Right-Eye shifted his hand over, his fingertips sliding beneath His Majesty's coat, right over his racing heart.  Still beating.  Still alive.

A hand clamped onto Right-Eye's upper arm and squeezed.  His Majesty's eye was ablaze with fury.  "You're supposed to be the one defending me," he hissed.

Right-Eye gazed down at him, just for a moment.  "I will," he said, and then he closed his hand around the grip of His Majesty's revolver, yanked it free, tore himself away, and ran.

Eventually, the pain subsides, just a little.

He realizes, belatedly, that he's grinding his teeth together, so fiercely his jaw aches.  Each exhale is forced out through his clenched teeth, rough and rapid.  It is the sound of a man struggling to breathe through agony.

He is a man struggling to breathe through agony.

His wrists burn.  His head throbs.  His scalp twinges.  His abdomen aches.  His shoulder screams.

But none of that matters, none of that means anything, because with the memory and the pain comes a rising tide of panic, an existential desperation--

Your Majesty!

"Right-Eye!" His Majesty roared, but Right-Eye did not stop, did not look back, didn't falter by even a fraction of a second.

He ducked down only long enough to snatch up the toppled lantern.  He could barely curl his fingers around the handle, the ruin of his shoulder making his hand almost useless, but he gritted his teeth through the bolt of agony and snatched it up nevertheless.  Then he spun, once, twice, and sent the lantern flying.

The flicker of flame arced through the sky like a blazing star falling to earth, and then the lantern crashed and shattered.

And somehow Right-Eye's luck was with him, because the fire took.

It was nothing but a twig, a leaf, some bit of dried-up scrub--some sliver of tinder that could keep a flicker of a flame alive.  It did not erupt into a blaze, hardly even burned at all.  It merely smouldered, a warm ember in the blackness of night.

Right-Eye didn't wait for the fire to find more kindling to devour; he didn't give the enemy time to stamp it out, either.  He lifted His Majesty's gun, aimed it in the general direction of the bowman who was somewhere out there, and pulled the trigger.

The gunshot was explosive, tearing through the air with an earsplitting crack; the gun bucked violently in his hand.  Right-Eye winced, the ringing in his ears momentarily distracting him from his shoulder.

"That way!"

"There he is!

"That's him!  Get him!"

That's right, he thought viciously, whirling around and lifting the gun again.  Come and get me.

If they came for him, they wouldn't go for His Majesty.  And that was all that mattered.

The fire was beginning to catch; now there were golden tongues of flame licking at a low-huddled shrub.  It cast little light, but it was enough, and at last he could see them--a handful of dark, indistinct outlines, coming from a direction that he knew could not be where His Majesty and the Royal Guard were, and that all he needed.

He fired.

Right-Eye was not a good shot.  In fact, he'd never fired a gun before in his life, or at least not properly; they were exceedingly rare weapons, rare enough that he'd hardly ever seen them before that fateful day he ended up back-to-back His Majesty in that street filled with would-be assassins.  He was not a skilled marksman, not like His Majesty, and the arrow still impaled in his left shoulder certainly didn't help.  But none of that mattered, because he didn't need to actually shoot anyone.

He just needed them to assume that if someone was firing at gun, it was His Majesty.

So he took aim and fired, again and again.  He skittered sideways as he shot, always at an angle, drawing away from where His Majesty had been.  "Stop him!" a voice howled, "don't let him get away!" and he bared his teeth in grim satisfaction.

That's right, he thought.  I'm your target.  I'm your prey.  Not His Majesty.  Me.

He pulled the trigger, again, again, gunshots shattering the night and bullets ricocheting off crumbling ruins, until, at last, the gun only clicked futilely.

Right-Eye tossed the gun and ducked behind the nearest cracked wall.  He leaned against it, grimacing, his breath whistling out through gritted teeth.  His hand shook as he raised it to his shoulder.

Then his fingers bumped against the shaft of the arrow, and he nearly passed out.

His vision grayed and swam as agony swamped his system like fire.  He squeezed his eyes shut and struggled to breathe.  His Majesty, he thought.  It was a moment of clarity, a knife slicing through the fog of pain.  His Majesty needs me.

He groped at his hip until his hand landed on the hilt of his dagger.  Not His Majesty's gun, capable of felling a foe from a distance; not his trusty sword, his longtime companion, whose weight was so familiar and comforting in his hand.  But a weapon nevertheless.

He yanked the dagger from its sheath, clenched his jaw against the ever-increasing waves of agonizing heat in his shoulder, and bolted.

Pandemonium reigned.  Voices shouted; steel clanged; flames crackled as the fire slowly ate up dried brush.  His eyes immediately fixed on the nearest figure.  The fire was still small, casting only a flickering light, but it was enough for him to identify the clothing as very distinctly not that of the Royal Guard, and even more obviously not His Majesty.

Right-Eye launched himself forward.  The man turned toward him, no doubt warned by his footsteps, but it was too late.  Right-Eye slammed the dagger into the man's side, and it slid through leather and fabric and flesh and muscle with ease.

The man's eyes bugged out, and he choked out something incoherent.  Right-Eye spared half a second to study the man's sallow face; it was not one he recognized.  He dropped the man to the ground, the dagger slipping free with a spray of blood, and he turned, looking for the next attacker--

--and something collided with his shoulder in an explosion of agony.

He didn't feel himself hit the ground; he didn't feel his head crack against stone.  He didn't hear the victorious shout or the stampede of approaching feet.  There was nothing but pain on pain on pain, like fire, like poison--torturous, burning, emanating from his shoulder to wrack his entire body.  He choked on bile, his body spasming, his vision staining red in the darkness.

Then a hand clamped down on his shoulder, rolling his worthless body over.

He may have screamed.  But if he did, he didn't hear it, because by then, there was nothing at all.

Your Majesty, he thinks, panic crawling up his throat and curdling in his belly.  Your Majesty, Your Majesty--

--and somehow, he opens his eyes.

The room around him swoons violently.  He squeezes his eyes shut, swallows down the nausea and the bile.  Then he lifts his head again and forces his eyes open.

He is in a room.  It is small, cramped, dark.  A light behind him casts his shadow against the stone walls, wavering as the flame flickers.  There are no windows; there is no other light.  The one door is shut.  There is an oppressive chill.

The tips of his boots drag against the stone floor.  In the center of the room, he hangs by his bound wrists, strung up like a rabbit corpse at a market.

Cell, he thinks.  Underground.  His stomach sinks.  Captive.

He digs his toe into the floor and somehow manages to twist himself around.  A burst of agony wracks his shoulder--the arrow is still embedded in it.  But he grits his teeth against the pain and scans the room.

The room is empty.

He is alone.

Your Majesty, he thinks again, and now his breaths are coming too rapidly, on the verge of hyperventilation.  His king, his liege--where is he?  Did they find him?  Did he escape?  Or is he--

Right-Eye can't even countenance the thought.

Calm down, he tells himself, swallowing down the lump of terror in his throat.  There's no reason to think anything happened to him.  The Royal Guard was coming for him, and I distracted the attackers.  He probably got away.  And if something did happen to him, the only way I can fix it is by getting out of here.

So he closes his eyes and takes deep breaths, gulping down air, until the dizziness of panic fades.  And when he at last opens his eyes once again, they're flinty with determination.

The room is sparse and bare.  The feeble light comes from a torch in a sconce on the wall; it burns fitfully, as though on the verge of flickering out.  This side of the room holds nothing else.  Tapping his toe against the floor, he slowly turns himself back around.  The door is wood and metal, solid, heavy.  No visible locks or deadbolts; if he's locked in, it's with a bar on the outside.  The room is otherwise empty--no furniture, no people.  No clue of where he might be.

Gritting his teeth, Right-Eye looks up.  His wrists are bound in rope, tightly enough that the skin feels like it's been rubbed raw.  The other end of the rope is looped through a metal ring set in the stone of the ceiling and tied taut.  He tugs his arms slightly, grimacing through the pain, but the bonds around his wrists don't loosen at all, and the rope is thick enough that even if he tried to wear it down by rubbing it against the metal ring, he'd probably die of thirst before the rope snapped.

He's well and truly trapped.

Exhausted, light-headed, and frightfully weak, he sags.  But that means his entire body weight is being supported by his wrists and shoulders, and he winces and straightens as much as he can.  But even stretching as far as he can, his toes just barely brush the floor, barely enough to take a sliver of weight off his arms, and it only takes a few moments before his calves and feet start twitching from the strain.  He's been expertly strung up at the perfect height for sheer torture--high enough that his bound wrists and ruined shoulder are forced to bear the brunt of his weight, low enough that he can just barely take the edge off the strain on his arm for seconds at a time.  Low enough to despair that he could properly support himself on his own two feet if only he had one extra inch--

He sets his jaw and banishes the thought.  Perhaps he can't do anything about his physical situation, but he can at least refuse to give way to psychological torture.

That is what this is; he recognizes psychological torture when he sees it.  Despite the brevity of their lessons, his brother was quite an adept teacher in that regard.

Right-Eye takes a moment to collect himself, breathing heavily.  There's one more thing he has to check.

He braces himself and looks down at his shoulder.

His coat is stained with a truly terrifying amount of blood.  No wonder I'm so light-headed, he thinks vaguely, stunned; he must have lost more blood than he'd thought.  But at least it doesn't seem to be bleeding anymore, or at least not that much.  He can't actually see the wound--the arrow punctured a hole straight through his coat and shirt, and the fabric, though bunched and torn, is still very much in the way--but it doesn't feel like it's still bleeding.  Small blessings.

But the arrow is still lodged deep in his shoulder, cleaving through flesh and muscle and very possibly bone.  My shoulder might be destroyed, some distant corner of his mind whispers.  It's his left shoulder, true, and he's right-handed, but he still needs full use of his body, still needs to be able to raise his left arm, use his left hand.  A bodyguard with one useless arm is of no use as a bodyguard.  And His Majesty--

Later, he tells himself.  That's not what's important right now.

Nothing else matters if His Majesty is not safe.  And if His Majesty is not safe, then nothing else matters but escaping and finding him.

Right-Eye looks at the arrow, and then he looks up at the rope binding his wrists.  Then he looks at the arrow again, his mind churning.  The fletching stands almost level with his eyes.  One of the feathers is stained with a smear of crimson.

Surely the arrow has an arrowhead with a finely honed edge.  Surely that edge is sharp enough to saw through a rope.  And surely he has enough strength left in him to haul himself up, closer to the knot holding him captive.

Right-Eye tilts his head sideways.  He clenches his teeth around the shaft of the arrowhead.  He steels himself.  Do it, he commands himself, and with all the power he has left in him, he yanks, as hard as he can--

He has never experienced anything so excruciating in his life.

A blow across his cheek snaps him awake.

He gasps, his head jerking up.  And then, even though his shoulder throbs with searing agony and his head spins and his throat is dry and aching, he freezes and stares.

Standing before him in a man.

"Oh, good, you're awake," the man says.  Despite his cheerful words, his tone is indifferent.  His eyes bore into Right-Eye like knives.  "I think it's about time we had a talk, you and I."

Right-Eye stares a second longer, and then, at last, the gears of his mind lurch into motion.

Captor, he thinks.  This is the man holding me captive.

This is the man who tried to attack His Majesty.

Right-Eye sets his jaw and glares with narrowed eyes.  Remember him, he tells himself.  Remember everything about him.

The man is a stranger rather unremarkable in appearance.  He's perhaps a bit taller than Right-Eye, not a particularly large or muscular individual, but with sword-calluses on one hand.  Tanned skin, sandy hair cut short and practical.  A long, narrow face with a hawkish nose, dark eyes, thin eyebrows, a small mole on one cheek.  By all standards, a rather ordinary-looking man.  His clothing, too, is unremarkable; sturdy leather boots, dark trousers, long shirtsleeves.  A nondescript man, the type that Right-Eye would not look twice at if they crossed paths in town.

I will remember you, Right-Eye vows to himself.  And I will destroy you.

"First things first," the man says conversationally.  "Did you do this?"  And he nudges something with his foot.

Right-Eye looks down.  There, lying on the stone floor in a puddle of blood that is alarmingly large, is the arrow.  The stone arrowhead is broken, the tip shorn off; the shaft is stained dark with blood.

Right-Eye looks up again, gnashing his teeth.  I dropped it, he thinks, cursing himself.  I managed to pull it out, and then I had to pass out and drop it--

"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter," the man says, and he kicks the arrow away.  It skitters across the floor and clatters as it hits the wall somewhere behind Right-Eye, out of sight.  His one chance at freedom, lackadaisically kicked out of reach.  "But you should know that you're bleeding again."

Right-Eye does not look at his shoulder, does not look away, does not react at all.

The man stares at Right-Eye for a few moments, his head cocked to the side.  "Tell me," he says at last, his voice low.  "Are you the king's dog?"

Right-Eye does not reply.  He just curls his upper lip in a disgusted snarl.

The stalemate holds, and then, in a flash, the man's face crumples in fury.  His hand shoots out and grabs Right-Eye's coat, fist slamming against his injured shoulder.  Right-Eye yelps and instinctively jerks away, but to no avail; he can't escape, can't go anywhere, can't escape the agony coursing like electricity through him.

"Let me make something very clear," the man hisses, spittle flying.  "You are not in charge here."

He lets go, and Right-Eye gasps and chokes for air, his eyes stinging, his shoulder aflame.  The man's voice rains down on him.  "Let's try this again.  Are you the king's dog?"

Right-Eye's breaths are shuddering.  Even the rise and fall of his chest sends agony shooting through his shoulder.  He swallows thickly and forces the words to come.  "I am His Majesty's right eye," he says, and he raises his head.

The man is staring at him, brow furrowed, lips pursed.  "So it's true," he says at last, a strange undercurrent in his voice that Right-Eye can't identify.  "He is missing an eye."

Right-Eye does not react, but it's a close thing.  His heart thuds forcefully in his chest, and his stomach lurches.

He knows.

Amongst the general populace, His Majesty's lost right eye is not widespread knowledge.  That is not to say it is a state secret--there are far too many people in and out of the Palace for that--but he wears his long hair the way he does specifically to hide the scarred and empty socket, and his aides and advisors do not speak widely of it in public.  The average common man in Quatredina probably has no idea that his king is half-blind.

But this man does.

"Everyone knows the king has a loyal bodyguard," the man continues, and now his eyes have gone narrow and cunning, his lips curling cruelly.  "But I didn't think his dog would end up being his right eye, too.  And if you're his right eye, you must have seen quite a lot, hmm?  I was rather displeased when they came back with you, but now that I think about it, I'm sure you could tell us all sorts of things."

Right-Eye's blood runs cold, and instantly, two things become clear to him:

First, this man will not kill him.  He wants information--about His Majesty, about Lord Shirogane, about Zoe, who knows?  But he wants information, and he intends to use Right-Eye to get it.

And second, this man doubtlessly intends to use this information to ill ends--perhaps against His Majesty himself.

No.  There is a third thing Right-Eye knows, with a certainty that burns like lava in his gut: he knows exactly what is going to happen to him.

He squeezes his eyes shut, takes a deep breath.  For His Majesty, he thinks.  Whatever it takes, protect His Majesty.

"Let's start with something easy," the man says, bringing his hands together as though in supplication.  "Where is the King?"

For a moment, a bare second, the words don't make sense.  Right-Eye blinks, staring at the floor, and then the pieces come together in his mind.  They don't know, he realizes.  They don't know where His Majesty is.

They don't have His Majesty.

His Majesty escaped.

His Majesty is safe.

Right-Eye is swept up in a sudden wave of giddiness, so intoxicating that his head spins.  It only lasts long enough for the man to let out a disgusted noise and punch Right-Eye in the gut.

He gags, retches, thankfully does not vomit.  Hanging from his wrists by his own body weight, he can't curl up on himself, but his body instinctively tries anyway, his back curving uselessly.  Tears sting at his eyes.  He breathes, each inhalation agony.

"I said, where is the King?"

Right-Eye swallows.  He does not raise his head; he does not want to see what kind of expression his captor is wearing.  His entire body trembles.  But inside, he feels victorious.

His Majesty escaped a trap meant to either kill him or ensnare him, and now he has no doubt retreated to the safety of the Palace.  The Palace, his stronghold, where a giant beast lurks on the roof, where Iselphia can report on movements within, where the finest soldiers in the Royal Guard now doubtlessly patrol the halls, where Lord Shirogane can rain down destruction upon enemies of the nation.  The only way His Majesty could possibly be safer would be if Right-Eye were by his side.

Right-Eye does not fully trust anyone else with His Majesty's safety.  But Right-Eye being here is a small price to pay if it means His Majesty is not.

"I don't know where he is," Right-Eye says at last.  His voice emerges rough but mostly steady and utterly flat.

The man's hand fists in his hair and yanks his head back.  Right-Eye grimaces in pain; the man's fingers tighten.  "Give me your best guess," the man says.  There's an edge to his voice, something venomous, dangerous.

Right-Eye knows the situation; he knows the delicacy of the balancing act he must engage in, the precariousness of the tightrope he must walk.  He has to buy time, enough time for the Palace to locate him and mount a rescue attempt, but without seeming like he's stalling.  He needs to cough up information, something to feed his captor; he needs to give up nothing of value, nothing that can damage His Majesty.  Right-Eye stares blankly at the wall over the man's shoulder, considering his options.  "I would presume him to be at the Palace," he says at last.

"Well, he's not," the man snarls.  "Word in the Palace is that he's gone to ground.  So tell me, dog of the King: where is he?"

Word in the Palace.  Right-Eye's stomach turns to ice.

This man has ears inside the palace.

Instantly, the mental calculus changes.  The risk changes.  Everything changes.

The fact of the matter is this: Right-Eye has made very few sacrifices for his king.

Someone looking upon him from the outside might disagree.  He was once a prince of a powerful empire, second in line to the throne; now he is subjugated to the king of another country, bound to his service like a dog, despised and distrusted and denied of even a name.   He has lost his status, his homeland, his family, his freedom, his identity, everything that was once his.  Surely these are sacrifices, many and great?  Surely he has suffered for these losses?

Losses, yes; Right-Eye has lost much.  But he cannot think of those losses as sacrifices.  It was no sacrifice to surrender his brother, a crazed, cruel man who murdered one of the best men in all of Zephil; it was no sacrifice to lose a country whose throne he never would have sat upon anyway.  It was no sacrifice to abandon a name that brought him nothing but sorrow, and no sacrifice to accept in its place a name that gave him a purpose and a place to belong.  It was no sacrifice to dedicate himself to His Majesty's service, and it is no sacrifice to renew that vow of loyalty day after day.

Right-Eye has made very few sacrifices for His Majesty.  It would be a far greater sacrifice to lose his place by His Majesty's side--a far greater sacrifice than he could possibly bear.

This man, this viper, this enemy of the crown, has ears inside the Palace.  That doesn't mean he knows everything, but it means he knows something, and that means he knows too much.  He is not merely looking to acquire whatever scraps of information he can get his hands on; he is looking to fill in the gaps in his knowledge, to confirm or disprove his suspicions, to attain whatever vital piece of information he needs to put into motion whatever nefarious scheme he might be plotting.  And that means Right-Eye's tactics might not work.  Coughing up lies might be met with retribution; giving up tidbits of useless information might not be rewarded with even a second's reprieve.

That doesn't meant Right-Eye won't try.  But it does mean he will eventually run out of time.

Right-Eye knows what will happen.  He knows that, sooner or later, his answers or lack thereof will be insufficient, that the man will lose patience, that the man will do whatever it takes to eke more information out of him.  And it will likely happen far more swiftly than any rescue attempt could happen.

Right-Eye will suffer.

For the first time, Right-Eye will sacrifice.

For His Majesty, he thinks again, and steels himself for the inevitable.

"Where is he?" the man asks.

Right-Eye has sat in on enough meetings discussing emergency procedures; he has some clue of places His Majesty might go.  There are hidden rooms in the Palace that only Iselphia knows, a war room bunker at the Royal Guard Headquarters, even a lesser palace to the west that lacks an Iselphia but is blessed with a quite defensible castle with an impressive moat and a keep built to deceive the eye with its four-story exterior masking six floors inside.  There are several places where His Majesty could conceivably be, any of which would be quite safe.  Any of which might be compromised if the enemy learned their secrets.

"I don't know," Right-Eye says.

The man punches him again.  Knuckles to his stomach, driving upwards toward his diaphragm.  Right-Eye gags, tastes the bile bitter and acidic on his tongue.  He raises his head and spits it in the man's face.

The man glares balefully at him, wiping the saliva off his cheek with the back of his hand.  "What a loyal dog the King has leashed," he sneers, and he grabs Right-Eye's injured shoulder, fingers digging into pulverized flesh.

Right-Eye does not scream.  But his vocal chords tear all the same.

"Where is he?" the man asks.

"I don't know," Right-Eye says.

A thumb forces its way into the cavity where the arrow had once been.  Right-Eye chokes on nothing.

"Where is he?" the man demands.

"I don't know," Right-Eye repeats.

Fingernails tear at his shredded flesh, peeling back shredded skin and ripped muscle, gouging, eviscerating.  Right-Eye spasms, muscles twitching uncontrollably.

"Where is he?" the man snarls.

"I don't know," Right-Eye grinds out.

The hand retreats.  Right-Eye sags, panting, his vision blurry; he hangs from the rope, helpless, powerless.  Footsteps as the man walks away, circling to the back of the room.  A pause.  The footsteps return.  The man grabs his chin and yanks his head up, forcing him to see.

Gripped tightly in the man's hand is the arrow.

The man smiles.  It is vicious, mirthless.  He casually rests the broken, jagged arrowhead against Right-Eye's shoulder.  "Where is he?" he asks.

Right-Eye says nothing.

The man's grin broadens, and he drives the arrow in.

Right-Eye wakes up to a splash of icy water in his face.  He gasps, splutters, coughs and pants for air.

"Where is he?" the man asks.  "Where can I find the King?"

Right-Eye's entire body is limp; the arrow still protrudes from his shoulder, but even that excruciation cannot make him move.  It takes heroic effort even to part his lips.  "I don't know," he whispers.  He swallows; his throat feels ragged.  "He could be anywhere by now."

His eyes drop shut again.  The torture does not continue.  The silence stretches.  Then there are footsteps, slow, ponderous.  Right-Eye trembles in his bonds.

"Very well," the man says at last.  His voice emanates from somewhere behind Right-Eye and resonates throughout the chamber.  "If you don't know where the King has turned tail and run to, perhaps you can tell me something else."

Right-Eye waits.

"The pelt," the man says.  "The proof of the king.  Where is it?"

Right-Eye licks his lips.  He can taste blood.  "With His Majesty, I'm sure," he says.

A blow strikes him in the small of his back, directly over his spine, with a horrific crack.  Right-Eye lets out a cry.  The man kicks him again, and this time he clamps his jaws shut.  Still, he can't help but let out a piteous whine.  The agony makes his head swim.

At least he can still wiggle his toes in his boots.

"Don't be clever with me," the man says, his voice dangerously low.  Right-Eye still can't see him, and if he still had the capacity for higher processing, he would have been ashamed by the fear that struck in him.  "The pelt.  How do I get my hands on it?"

Right-Eye struggles to breathe without whimpering.  "Why?" he at last gasps out.  His voice sounds wracked and fractured in his own ears.  "Are you trying to usurp the throne?"

Footsteps.  The man rounds back into view--although Right-Eye can't lift his head enough to see more than boots.  "Usurp?" the man echoes.  "I wouldn't call it usurping the throne.  If your system of government runs on the premise of 'finders keepers,' you're practically asking for it."

Right-Eye exhales.  "It isn't enough to have the pelt," he mumbles.  "Just having a pelt isn't enough to become king.  You have to be chosen."

"Chosen?"  The man's voice is incredulous.  "What do you mean, chosen?  If you have the pelt in your hands, what more do you need?"

Right-Eye barks out a rough laugh.  "Try it, then," he says, and he forces himself to lift his head.  He fixes the man with a contemptuous glare.  "Just try it.  See how much luck you have in winning over Lord Shirogane after you've plotted against his chosen king."

The man stares at him, wearing an expression of stone.  Then one of his eyes twitches.  "You've got a mouth on you," he says, voice taut, nostrils flaring, eyes hard.  "We'll see if we can't get that mouth of yours to start talking."

The man leaves Right-Eye hanging for hours.

Right-Eye isn't sure how long it is.  He simply hangs there, his wrists throbbing, his back aching, his shoulder sluggishly bleeding anew.  When he can muster the strength, he tries to keep some of his weight on his feet, stretching his toes down to the unforgiving stone floor.  But his entire body shakes from the effort, shuddering and struggling and eventually surrendering to gravity once again.

His hands are numb.

Eventually, he slides into a fog, not quite awake and not quite unconscious.  The pain grows distant.  So does his sense of reality.

It is suffering, to breathe.

He blinks, and slowly, painstakingly, he claws his way back to awareness.

His mind is still vague and muddled.  He shakes his head, tries to shake the cobwebs free.  It only jars his shoulder and makes him hiss in pain.

He is still alone.

Now, he thinks, now is my chance, and he looks at his shoulder.

The arrow is gone.

He doesn't have to look far to find it; it lies on the floor, perhaps a few feet away.  He stares at it, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed.

Now that he thinks about it, he has a vague recollection of the man yanking the arrow out of him before stalking from the room and abandoning him to his solitary confinement.  His captor is no fool.  Even worse, his captor isn't underestimating him.

Right-Eye eyes the arrow.  It looks unfathomably far away, and yet almost within reach.

It's his only possible way out of here.

Right-Eye twists and turns his hands.  They are stiff, swollen things, ungainly and uncooperative.  He somehow manages to grab the rope suspending him from the ceiling.  It isn't much, but at least it's a bit of leverage.

Then he digs his toes into the floor and pushes himself forward.

At first, he barely sways.  Forward an inch, back an inch.  He kicks as furiously as he can, swinging himself forward, then back.  The strain on his shoulder is agonizing; he grits his teeth and shoves it aside.  Forward, then back.  Like a pendulum.  Forward, back.

He swings forward and reaches one foot out, stretching his leg as far as it can possibly go.  Gravity drags him back.  He pushes off again, stretches his leg, tries to catch his toe on the arrow.  Just a tiniest bit, that's all he needs.  If he can just brush the very tip of his toe on the fletching, then maybe he can drag it back to him, maybe he can get it within reach, maybe--

Forward, back.  He grimaces as his shoulder wrenches, but presses on.  Swing forward, back.  Forward, back.  Forward--

But the arrow remains stubbornly, infuriatingly out of reach.

At last, Right-Eye's body gives up.  Every muscle goes lax, and he dangles and sways in the air, his toes dragging against stone.  He pants for air, dizzy from the effort.  Exhausted, he closes his eyes.  Just for a moment.  Just for a moment.

This time it's a slap across the face.

Right-Eye jerks, blearily looking up.  The man is once more standing before him.  "Good morning," the man says.  "I hope you're feeling a bit more talkative today."

Today.  How long has it been?  Right-Eye swallows; his throat his dry.  Dehydration, a detached, coldly logical part of his mind says.  Dangerous to combine with blood loss.  No wonder he's still light-headed.

He opens his mouth, but no words emerge.

"I thought we'd try something different," the man says.  He pulls a stool over and sits down in front of Right-Eye.  In one hand he has a pair of pincers, flat-nosed, the type that might be used by a carpenter to remove nails.  He holds them up and does not smile.  "Do you know what these are for?"

Right-Eye says nothing.

"Well, you'll find out soon enough," the man says, and he reaches down and grabs Right-Eye's foot.

Right-Eye struggles, but it's no use; there's nowhere he can escape to.  The man's grip on his ankle tightens.  "I'll be honest, I'd rather use your hands," he says casually, untying the laces of Right-Eye's boot.  "But, well, I'd rather not risk untying you and giving you a free hand.  I've heard stories, right eye of the king.  You can be a cold-blooded killer when you want, can't you?  I'm not going to take my chances."

He yanks Right-Eye's boot off, then the sock.  He takes Right-Eye's leg in an underarm grip.  "Now," he says, picking up the pliers in one hand.  "Tell me.  What do I have to do to get my hands on that dog pelt, and how do I get it on my side?"

Right-Eye swallows heavily.  "You can't," he whispers.

The man lowers the pliers.  Carefully, he closes the jaws shut around the tip of the nail of Right-Eye's big toe.  Adjusts his grip on the handles.  Squeezes tight.  "Are you sure about that?" he asks.

Right-Eye grips the rope, hoists himself up with all the strength he can, and swings his free leg into the back of the man's head.

He connects, hard.  His shin impacts with a force that vibrates throughout his entire body.  The man goes down with a shout, the stool toppling, the pliers clanging across the floor.  Right-Eye goes spinning, the room a whirl around him.  He gets his bare toes on the floor, wrenches himself back under control, turns himself around to kick again--

And a fist collides with his cheek.

His head snaps to the side.  Stars spark in front of his eyes.  Had he been standing, he would have stumbled back; as is, all he can do is slump, once more hanging limply, slowly turning on the rope.  He blinks, his vision graying around the edges.

The man glares venomously, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.  "Very funny," he spits, and he picks up the stool, hoists it up, and slams it into Right-Eye's leg.

Right-Eye's knee explodes in a cataclysm of agony.  He can't help it; he screams.

The man swings the stool again.  And again.  And again.

Eventually, Right-Eye's voice gives out.

When it finally stops, the man is panting heavily.  It's the kind of panting that comes not from exertion but from rage.  "Now," the man says, his voice rasping, "now let's try this again."

The wooden stool is shattered, nothing but pieces of driftwood.  The man sits down on the floor instead.  He picks up the pliers, grabs Right-Eye's bare foot, clamps the jaws of the pliers around one toenail.

Right-Eye tries to wrest himself free, but he has no leverage.  He can't move his other leg.

"The pelt," the man says, his breathing still ragged.  His shoulders heave; his hands tremble on the pliers.  "Tell me everything you know about the pelt."

Right-Eye does not have any voice left with which to speak.

But when the man wrenches the pliers back with a twist, he discovers he still has voice left to scream.

"The pelt," the man presses, harsh and relentless, and he closes the pliers around the next toenail.

For His Majesty, Right-Eye thinks, and he screws his eyes shut and bites down on the bloodied shreds of his own coat collar.

He screams anyway.

One by one, his toenails click as they drop to the stone floor.

Water is poured into his mouth.  He chokes on it at first, sputters, coughs.  Then he gulps it down greedily.

His entire body is pain.  There is nothing but pain, indescribably, incomprehensible in its vastness.  But the water sluicing down his throat takes the edge off.

The cup pressed to his lips vanishes, and slowly, he opens his eyes.

"Good," the man says.  He sets the cup down on the floor.  "I have a proposition for you."

Right-Eye stares flatly at him.

"Your loyalty is admirable," the man says.  "I mean that sincerely.  Not even dogs are as loyal as you.  My question is, why are you so loyal to him?"

Right-Eye swallows.  You would never understand, he thinks.

"You would never understand," he says, his tongue thick, his voice hoarse.

"I find myself quite baffled," the man continues, as though Right-Eye hadn't said anything at all.  "That king you're so loyal to--he's a stand-in, isn't he?  Nothing more than a warm body to sit on the throne until the true king returns.  Zoe, right?"  He tuts in false sympathy.  "Quite the tragic tale.  But anyway.  There's no reason to be loyal to the man when he's nothing but a temporary substitute.  Which means you must be loyal him because he wears the crown, right?  You're loyal to the crown, not the man.  That's the only thing that makes sense."

Right-Eye's leg is ablaze with agony.  His shoulder burns with pain.  But his blood is ice-cold, and his thoughts are as crisp and clear as a brisk winter morning.

"Which means the man himself doesn't matter," his captor continues.  "You are a loyal servant of the crown.  I admire that.  I respect it.  And if you extend that same favor to me, I will make it worthwhile."

Right-Eye swallows past the grit and the blood.  "What do you want?" he croaks.

The man smirks.  "I want to be king," he says frankly, his eyes alight with something malevolent.  "And I want you to tell me how to make it happen.  All this suffering you're going through?  We don't have to be doing this.  You can make it stop, right here, right now."

Right-Eye closes his eyes.

"I can be your next king," the man continues, almost coaxingly.  "You're loyal to the crown, aren't you?  Well, the next man to wear the crown will be me.  Give your loyalty to your next king, tell me what I want to know, and when I sit on the throne, you will be rewarded handsomely."

Right-Eye laughs.

It emerges guttural and ugly, barely even a laugh at all.  The sound makes the man's brow knit in confusion.  Then, gradually, his expression turns to anger.  "Are you laughing?" he asks, his voice a growl.

Somehow, Right-Eye manages to bring his head up, to stare this pitiful, cowardly, pathetic man in the eyes.  His voice is weak, but he spits the words out with a fire that still burns somewhere in him.

"You can hurt me," Right-Eye grits out.  "You can damage me.  You can kill me, if you want.  But you cannot buy me and you cannot break me.  I am the right eye, and you cannot turn me against the body to whom I belong."

The man stares at him, utterly emotionless.  Right-Eye glares back, unrepentant, all else forgotten.

Finally, the man takes a step back.  "The King's right eye," he says, almost musing.  "He must value you greatly, if he considers you equal to his right eye."

The man walks with his hands behind his back, as though out for a midday stroll.  He circles Right-Eye, once, then vanishes behind him again.  There's a sound, a brief scraping of something against stone.  Right-Eye can't tell what it is.  Was there something behind him?  He can't remember.

Then the man returns, and in his hand he's holding the arrow.

"The loyal right eye of the King."  The man speaks as though relishing the words.  "Tell me, right eye.  Will His Majesty still want you to be his right eye when you don't have one yourself?"

And then a hand descends on Right-Eye's face, fingers digging into flesh and prising his right eye open, pulling back the eyelids so that he can see, so that he has no choice but to see--

Once, a lifetime ago, a mercenary-turned-bodyguard walked, subdued and chastened, into a sickroom and said, "Take my eye in exchange for yours."

He had been prepared to lose his eye; he had been prepared to lose his life.  But instead, the one-eyed king stood tall and gave the command that changed his life: Be my right eye.

He has lived up to that calling to the best of his ability, with dedication and with gratitude; he bears that name with pride.  But even though he knows His Majesty would never demand it, that original determination still lives within him.  My freedom for yours.  My eye for yours.  My life for yours.

Even now, he is still prepared.

But nothing could have prepared him for this.

First, he is silent; a conscious choice, a declaration of his loyalty, an assertion of his resolve.  Then he whimpers.  Then he chokes back gasps and sobs.  Eventually, he screams.

He screams, and he screams, and he screams--

And then, in the end, he goes silent once again.

In his haze of semiconscious agony, there is only one thing he can cling to, only one inviolate truth, only one thing that matters.

For His Majesty, he thinks, and slips into darkness once again.

He had thought, once, that His Majesty was some kind of divine benediction, a gift bestowed upon Right-Eye in recompense for all that Ulysses had suffered.  It did not make up for what he had lost--Balford, a loving brother, the country of his birth--but it felt like the balancing of some great cosmic scale, like the world was acknowledging its trespasses against him and had chosen to deliver its atonement in the form of a king.  And the loss had been great, but the reward had been greater still--a name laden with meaning, a singular purpose, a place where he belonged, and the unwavering, unyielding trust of a man for whom he would do anything.

He thought the universe had made its restitution for his suffering and had granted him some kind of unspeakable grace.  But now there is pain, and there is pain, and there is pain--

And now he realizes, for the first time, that he was wrong.  This whole time, he's had it the wrong way around.

The universe did not take everything away only to give him His Majesty.

The universe gave him His Majesty, only to take everything away.

It continues, but for how long he does not know.

It continues, but he can't feel anything at all.

At first, he does not realize that the shouts are not his own.

They sound from a great distance at first--shouts and screams and cries of outage and agony.  They echo strangely in his ears.  Dazed, barely conscious, he cannot lift his head by even a fraction of an inch.  His blood-crusted eyelids crack open, just by a hair.  He sees nothing but darkness.

His eyelids flutter shut again.  His lips part, but no sound emerges, and that is when he realizes that the voices are not his.

Something is happening.

There is no plan, no consideration, no conscious thought at all; his body simply acts.  He thrashes, writhes, tries to free himself from his bonds.  But he can do little more than twitch, cannot even bend a finger, and within seconds he is drifting once again towards oblivion.  He claws for wakefulness, but each movement is agony, even breathing is torture--

And then the door bangs open and slams against the stone wall.

He flinches, pure instinct.  Somehow, he opens one eye.  His vision blurs and swims, and there is nothing but shadows in the darkness.  But the figure standing before him is still only too familiar, and surely his eye is playing tricks on him, surely this is a hallucination or a dream or a deathbed vision, because it can't be, it can't be--

"Right-Eye," His Majesty's voice says, cracking.

And then there are footsteps, and arms hoist him up, warm and gentle and there--

He comes to slowly, in bits and pieces.

There are arms around him, a trembling hand cradling his head against a warm, steady chest.

A damp cloth wipes his face, cleaning away grime and sweat and blood and tears.

A jolt of pain, sudden and bone-deep, wrings an agonized moan from his very core.  "It's all right," a voice whispers, tense and tremulous, "it's all right, you're all right."

A gentle pressure settles over the right side of his face, cool and soothing.

Firewood burns and crackles, the sound homey and comforting.

A weight, soft and warm, nestles against his side, resting atop his uninjured shoulder.

There are snippets of memory, snatches of wakefulness.  But mostly, he sleeps.

When he at last opens his eye, it is to the sight of a mass of white fur.

Right-Eye blinks muzzily.  His thoughts are sluggish, foggy and molasses-thick.  His eyelid begins drifting down again; with great effort, he forces it open.  Oh, he thinks hazily, his mind churning with agonizing slowness.

He is in a bed.

He is lying in a bed, in a room with a fire roaring in the fireplace and sunlight streaming in through the window.  He is lying in a bed with clean sheets and warm blankets, almost entirely immobile, a bandage over his right eye.  He is lying in a bed, and that lump of white fur draped by his right side is--

"Lord Shirogane," he croaks.

At least, that is what he tries to say.  But it emerges jumbled and slurred, entirely incomprehensible, barely even speech at all.  Nevertheless, Lord Shirogane's head pops up, and in a heartbeat, he's squirming over, gingerly inching closer, looking Right-Eye up and down with eyes full of concern.  "Right-Eye," he says, his ears drooping.

Right-Eye blinks at him, slow and fuzzy.  He swallows; his throat is dry and scratchy.  "Lord Shirogane," he tries again.  It's mostly intelligible this time, or at least he thinks, but the effort leaves him exhausted; his eyelid is drooping once again.

Then he remembers.

Panic blooms in his gut.  His eye snaps open.  "His Majesty," he whispers.  He tries to push himself up, to drag himself upright.  He doesn't have the strength, his arms barely shift, but still he struggles, because he can't just lie here, he can't rest, not until he knows where His Majesty is, not until he knows His Majesty is safe.  "His Majesty, where--"

"His Majesty is fine," a familiar voice says.

Instantly, Right-Eye's body drains of what little strength he's mustered.  He collapses back into the bed and, somehow, manages to roll his head over to the left.

And there, sitting bedside, is His Majesty.

He looks an exhausted and defeated man; his face is wan, his shoulders slumped, his hair a tangled mess.  There's a dark circle beneath his eye as he gazes at Right-Eye.  But he's here, whole, in one piece, here--

And for the first time, Right-Eye realizes that in spite of his certainty that His Majesty had escaped, part of him had feared the worst.

His Majesty reaches forward, hesitates.  Then, at last, he takes Right-Eye's left hand, fingers curling gently, barely touching.

His hand is trembling.

"I'm fine," His Majesty says.  "I'm fine.  So go back to sleep."

And Right-Eye is bloodied and beaten and bruised, he is weak and powerless, but somehow, with some grain of strength, he manages to squeeze His Majesty's hand before slipping back into the embrace of sleep.

He wakes again to a throb of agony in his shoulder.

He groans and tries to pull away, but he can't.  He levers his eye open, baring his teeth.  Then he blinks.

His left arm is being moved and manipulated by a man he vaguely recognizes.  A grizzled man, hair more salt than pepper, with frown lines around his mouth and a crease between his eyebrows.  It takes a few moments for Right-Eye's scrambled thoughts to remember.  A surgeon, he recalls at last.  Not that he remembers the man's name.

"Sorry," the surgeon says absently.  "I didn't mean to wake you."  He continues to move Right-Eye's arm slowly, carefully, peering over the rims of his glasses.  The hand that isn't lifting and turning is instead pressed against Right-Eye's shoulder as though probing it.  "How much does it hurt?"

Right-Eye grits his teeth and doesn't answer.  A wordless utterance of pain rumbles in his throat anyway.

"I won't lie, it's pretty bad," the surgeon says.  "But I think you'll be able to use your arm when all is said and done."

Right-Eye swallows.  "His Majesty," he whispers.  His voice comes out hoarse, barely even human.

"Is right over there," the surgeon replies, jerking his head to the side.

Right-Eye turns to look.  His Majesty leans against the wall, his arms crossed, scowling.  He looks distinctly put out, even more so than usual.  Perhaps the doctor booted him from the bedside.  Lord Shirogane is perched upon his shoulder, fur uncommonly tousled, ears pressed back.

"Your Majesty," Right-Eye says.  "Lord Shirogane."

"Don't strain yourself," Lord Shirogane says.

Right-Eye swallows.  "How bad?" he asks.

The surgeon pauses, then glances at His Majesty.  His Majesty's gaze is sharp and shadowed.  "Tell him," he says.

The surgeon does.

His feet are a bloodied mess, each toenail torn out, several tiny bones crushed.

His right knee is destroyed.  Kneecap, shattered; tendons and ligaments, shredded.  The fibula, too, is fractured.  His entire leg has been immobilized, splinted and bound in bandages stiffened with starch.  At best, he will walk with a limp for the rest of his life.

He has several broken ribs.  None have punctured any organs, but it still hurts to breathe.  Or perhaps that's due to the damage caused his lungs by hanging suspended in the air for unknown hours.

His left shoulder has been transformed into a hunk of pulverized meat; the arrowhead chipped his collarbone and tore through muscle like so much wet paper.  They had to cut away putrefying flesh.  They think he will be able to regain some use of his arm, but he will be lucky if he will be able to grasp or lift anything heavier than a book.

His left wrist is broken; his right is severely sprained.  Both hands are swollen and half-numb; they hope the nerve damage is not permanent.

He's missing two teeth.  His cheek bone has been shattered.  And his right eye--

"I'm sorry," the surgeon says, his voice gentle.  "There was nothing we could save."

His right hand still works, more or less, and he raises it to the bandage covering his right eye.  The bandage is linen gauze, soft and clean.  The empty eye socket below is a dull, faraway throb of pain.

He closes his eye and sleeps.

The next time he wakes up, the room is quite dark.  The fire in the fireplace has been banked, nothing but glowing embers; only a speckling of stars breaks through the pitch-black of the sky beyond the window.  On the nightstand, a candle with a tiny flicker of a flame provides the only real light.

Right-Eye is alone.

He grimaces; his shoulder pulses with each beat of his heart, a throb of pain that ripples through his torso.  Slowly, tentatively, he twitches the fingers of his left hand.  They move.  So, too, do the fingers of his right hand.  All of his toes, too.

"Right-Eye."

He starts, his heart thumping.  In the darkness, a familiar lupine head rises, pricked ears angled his way.  He isn't as alone as he thought.  "Lord Shirogane," he says numbly.

"You're supposed to be asleep," Lord Shirogane says.  He inches closer, carefully avoiding Right-Eye's numerous wounds, and rests his chin on Right-Eye's right elbow.  "You're still hurt."

"I'm aware," Right-Eye replies.  "Where is His Majesty?"

"In a meeting," Lord Shirogane says.  "You must be feeling better, if you can speak in full sentences."

It's a playful jibe; Right-Eye ignores it.  "A meeting?" he asks, frowning.  "At this time of night?"

"It's not that late," Lord Shirogane says.  "Not even nine o'clock.  And it's important."

Important.  It echoes in his ears, niggling away at the back of his mind..  There was something else important, something--

And then his eyes go wide in recognition.

"Lord Shirogane," Right-Eye blurts.  "It's a plot.  There's a mole in the Palace.  Not high up, but with access to the Palace.  And--"

"Right-Eye."

He falls silent.  Lord Shirogane is staring at him, eyes narrowed, ears pinned back, fur bristling.  He's angry, Right-Eye realizes, and the fact that Lord Shirogane is turning anger upon him is enough to tie his tongue in knots.

"For once," Lord Shirogane says at last, his voice low, "for once, think of yourself."

"But--"

"Right-Eye."

Right-Eye swallows his words.

Lord Shirogane sighs, and then he drapes himself over Right-Eye's uninjured right shoulder.  "That can all wait," he murmurs.  "You need to get better first."

"But--"

"Just focus on recovering," Lord Shirogane says.  "Everything else can wait."

Right-Eye swallows.  "The meeting," he whispers.  His voice sounds huge and expansive in this dim, tiny room.  "You said His Majesty is in a meeting.  It's important?"

Lord Shirogane lets out an exasperated sigh, but he answers.  "Very important," he confirms.  "We need to figure out if this is a bigger plot than we think it is.  And if it is, King is figuring out how to find the rest of them and burn them all to the ground."

Right-Eye's breath catches.  "The rest of them?"

Lord Shirogane raises his head and grins at Right-Eye, but it looks like a snarl; in what little light there is, his teeth gleam.  "They attacked and tortured his right eye," he says.  "Do you think King will let that go unpunished?"

"Oh," Right-Eye says blankly.

Lord Shirogane's expression goes somber.  "You didn't see him, Right-Eye," he says quietly.  "You didn't see what he was like."

Right-Eye swallows.  "I'm sorry," he says.

Lord Shirogane buries his muzzle in the crook of Right-Eye's neck.  "Go back to sleep, Right-Eye.  King will be back soon enough."

Right-Eye opens his eyes.

No.  His eye.

He opens his eye to warm, butter-yellow daylight.  He blinks, and he realizes that he is awake, aware, fully conscious.  His thoughts settle into order, sluggish only with the last few shreds of sleep.  There is pain, but it is bearable.  His stomach aches and churns on nothing.

Oh, he thinks, dazzled by the gentle, peaceful mundanity of it all.  I'm hungry.

He shifts, then hisses.  Independent movement is still beyond him.

"Right-Eye," His Majesty says.

Right-Eye looks over.  His Majesty is once again sitting at his bedside, Lord Shirogane draped over the back of the chair.  Both of them look at him with identical gazes of consternation.

Right-Eye exhales, slow and unsteady.  "I'm all right," he says, though he can't mask the tense thread of pain in his voice.  "I just need a moment."

"I'll get the surgeon," His Majesty says, abruptly standing from his seat.

Right-Eye doesn't think.  His hand shoots out of its own volition, weakly catching on the hem of His Majesty's shirt.  His state is bitterly pathetic; he can't even grip properly.  But the attempt alone is enough to stop His Majesty mid-step.

"Not yet," Right-Eye says.  "Stay."

His Majesty hesitates, his expression torn, and then, finally, he sits back down.

"Thank you," Right-Eye says.  "Now help me sit up."

"Right-Eye--"

"Your Majesty," he says.  "Please."

They stare at each other, a standoff.  But eventually, His Majesty folds.  He eases Right-Eye up off the mattress, practically barricades him with pillows and blankets, and helps him lean back against the bedboard.

It's barely anything, and yet by the time it's done, Right-Eye slumps back, panting.  He didn't even sit up of his own power, and even that exertion was too much for him.  "Your Majesty," he says, still breathless.  "I need to tell you something."

Lord Shirogane lets out a gusty sigh.  "Right-Eye," he says reproachfully.  "I told you this could wait."

"It can't," Right-Eye insisted.  "Your Majesty.  It was a plot.  I only saw the ringleader, but he wasn't the only one.  He has a spy in the Palace.  I don't know who, but someone with low-level access.  A maid or a horsegroom, perhaps.  Whoever it is, it's enough to give him some information.  He's planning on stealing Lord Shirogane and seizing the throne--"

His Majesty lets out a scornful snort, and Right-Eye falters.  "Your Majesty?"

"So unoriginal," His Majesty huffs.  "I swear, you meet one assassin, you meet them all."

"This isn't about originality," Right-Eye argues, and then his mind backtracks and trips over what he's just heard.  "You met him?"

His Majesty meets his eye squarely.  "I put a bullet in him," he says.

Right-Eye stares at him.  "I think," he finally says, feeling faint, "that you should tell me everything from the beginning."

Everything, from the beginning, is this:

The first member of the Royal Guard arrived on his Majesty's location only seconds after Right-Eye plunged back into the chaos and destruction.  The Royal Guard whisked His Majesty away to safety, even as he shouted and screamed and scrambled to try to go back.  Their loyalty, after all, was to their liege, not to a simple bodyguard.  "I threatened Glen," His Majesty says bluntly.  "But he wouldn't listen to me."

They returned the next morning to investigate by the light of day, but they found nothing but some newly broken architectural ruins, a bit of burned shrub, and enough smeared bloodstains to cause no small amount of unease.  "They said you might be dead," His Majesty adds, shaking his head in disgust.  "They thought that blood was all yours.  Idiots, the lot of them."

They scoured the Tsirahe ruins until they found a small settlement of people, impoverished and wary and entirely unsettled by the events of the previous night.  A few questions revealed that a band of outsiders had taken to skulking about in the ruins, no doubt plotting something nefarious.  "Here's the thing about those Tsirahe ruin-dwellers," His Majesty says.  "You can't just waltz into the ruins and expect them not to notice.  And you really can't launch an assassination attempt on their territory and expect them to turn a blind eye.  Once they heard exactly what happened, they were quite happy to make it known that they had nothing to do with it."

And the people of the Tsirahe ruins were considered outsiders, but they were, down to the last man, woman and child, people of Quatredina.  His Majesty was their king, too.

"They gave us some information," His Majesty concludes.  "What they'd heard, who they'd seen.  It took a couple of days, but we tracked him down.  Man by the name of Melvin Havreheath.  New money, nice little manor house out a bit from the city, far too much ambition for his britches.  He hired a bunch of thugs, by the looks of it.  They weren't expecting us.  It wasn't that hard to storm the place."

A couple of days.  It had seemed like an eternity.  "And that was it?" Right-Eye asks.

"That was it," His Majesty says.  "You said you saw the ringleader?  Man with a mole right here?"  He taps his cheek in indication.

Right-Eye swallows.  "That's him," he replies.  "He's the only one I saw."

His Majesty's gaze goes hard and cold as ice.  "Then he's the one who did this to you," he says harshly.

Right-Eye says nothing, but nothing is answer enough.

His Majesty clasps his hands together so hard the knuckles go white.  For a long, long moment, he's silent, as though trying to wrest himself under control.  "In that case," he says at last, "I'm glad I put a bullet in him.  We'll get every last piece of information out of him, and then he can spend the rest of his miserable existence rotting away in a cell."

And then his Majesty reaches out.

His touch is gentle, cautious, almost skittish.  Just a faint brush of fingertips against Right-Eye's jaw, then sliding up to cup his cheek.

It's barely anything, but Right-Eye's breath catches in his throat all the same.

"I'm sorry," His Majesty says.  His hair falls to veil his face as he ducks his head; his voice is thick and rough.

"Your Majesty," Right-Eye whispers.

"I'm sorry," His Majesty repeats.  "This never should have happened to you.  Right-Eye--"

"Thank you," Right-Eye says softly.

His Majesty looks up jerkily.  His face does something strange, twisting into an expression that's uncomfortable and off-kilter.  "Why are you thanking me?" he asks.

For everything, Right-Eye thinks.  You have given me everything.  He would have died for this man; he would have borne any suffering, accepted any punishment, and considered it a sacrifice well worth paying.  He had been prepared to die.  And yet somehow, against all odds, against all probability, His Majesty saved him.

"You saved me," Right-Eye says.  In more ways than you can possibly know, you have saved me, again and again.

"I saved you."  His Majesty sounds disgusted.  "Listen to yourself.  This happened to you because of me.  You put yourself in harm's way for me.  You were captured and tortured because of me.  You--"

"I," Right-Eye says, "am your right eye."

His Majesty's hand trembles against his cheek.  "You lost your right eye," he grinds out.

Right-Eye's heart aches.  His eyes prickle with tears, even the one beneath the bandage.  He grasps His Majesty's hand in his own and squeezes with what little strength he has.  "Your Majesty," he says hoarsely, "he wanted information.  About you.  He would have killed you."  His voice wavers.  "I would rather lose my right eye than lose you."

His Majesty lowers his head again.  His shoulders, too narrow and bony, begin to shake.  But then something settles over him, like a mantle, like a crown, and he raises his head and looks Right-Eye dead in the eye.

Resolve, Right-Eye realizes, and suddenly, a chill sweeps over him.

"Once," His Majesty says, "once I took an arrow for you."

Right-Eye flinches.

"I took an arrow for you," His Majesty repeats.  "I lost my right eye.  And you came to me and offered to give me your right eye in return."

Right-Eye lowers his head.  "I did," he whispers.  "I would have, if you had asked me to."

His Majesty is silent.  His fingers are cold.  "But I didn't ask," he says at last.  "I didn't ask, and you did it anyway.  You gave up your right eye."

Right-Eye stares at him, a tide of desperation rising up and threatening to choke him.  "Your Majesty--"

"You gave me your right eye," His Majesty repeats, more fiercely this time.  "An eye for an eye.  If there was any debt between us--if you ever felt you owed me anything--you've repaid it." 

"Your Majesty," Right-Eye says desperately.

"So I release you," His Majesty says.

Right-Eye stares at him, thunderstruck.  He can hear nothing but the frantic beating of his own heart.  "Your Majesty," he whispers.

"I release you," His Majesty repeats, softer this time, and bows his head.  "Your debt has been paid, with interest.  You no longer have to be my right eye."

Slowly, with heart-stopping finality, Right-Eye feels his world begin to crack.

Reality has a way of intervening.  Logic dictates the only reasonable course of action.  And the truth is, somewhere deep down, Right-Eye understands.

He is the King's bodyguard, tasked with protecting and preserving His Majesty's life and safety.  Such a position requires more than unswerving loyalty; it also demands someone who is able of body, swift, strong, capable with a weapon, able to fight, able to kill, able to defend.  And Right-Eye is not someone who can do that, not anymore.

Right-Eye will recover, to some degree.  He may even be able to take up a sword once again.  And even if he could never walk another step, he would still gladly lay down his life for His Majesty.  But that isn't enough, and he knows it.

Perhaps he should have expected this.

Perhaps it was inevitable.

Right-Eye tilts his head back and gazes at the ceiling, his eye misting.  He takes a deep, shuddery breath.  "If," he says, but his voice emerges creaky.  He clears his throat.  "If I am no longer suitable to be your right eye--"

"What?"

Startled, Right-Eye lowers his gaze from the ceiling.  His Majesty is staring at him, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.  Right-Eye gulps.  "Your Majesty--"

"No longer suitable?" His Majesty snaps.  The shock on his face has been clean wiped away; now he's practically purpling with outrage.  "How did you--when did I say anything about suitability?"

Right-Eye rocks back, thrown for a loop.  "But," he says, stammering.  "But if you don't want me as your right eye--"

If anything, His Majesty looks even more flabbergasted.  "When did I say I didn't want you?"

"You just told me to quit!" Right-Eye snaps back.

"I didn't tell you to quit, I said if you want to quit--"

"Why would I want to quit?" Right-Eye shouts.  He's desperate, on the verge of hysteria, and he doesn't understand, he doesn't understand at all. 

"Why wouldn't you?" His Majesty roars, slamming a fist against the arm of his chair.  "Look at yourself, Right-Eye, look at what I--"

But whatever he's about to say is lost, because at precisely that moment, a mountain of white fur plops onto his head.

They both freeze.  His Majesty sits hunched beneath the weight of Lord Shirogane's body, utterly motionless.  Lord Shirogane, for his part, is wearing a rather irked expression.  "Don't shout, King," he says, very deliberately slapping the back of His Majesty's head with his tail.  "He's not in any physical shape to deal with your moods."

His Majesty stiffens, but then his shoulders go slack in surrender.  He reaches up, grabs a handful of Lord Shirogane, drags the pelt off his head.  When his face reemerges into view, his expression has gone almost sheepish.  He settles Lord Shirogane in his lap, rakes his hair back into some semblance of order.  Then he clasps his hands together and bows his head, almost as though praying.

"Your Majesty," Right-Eye whispers.

His Majesty takes a deep breath, as though to settle his nerves.  "Right-Eye," he says, his voice subdued.  He doesn't look up.  "It's not about whether I want you as my right eye.  It's about the fact that you're lying injured in that bed right now because of me.  You very easily could have died.  Any man in his right mind could be forgiven for saying that enough is enough.  If you've decided that this is too much--that you don't want to do this anymore--I won't tie you down."

Right-Eye swallows.  "I know I'm not fit to be your bodyguard--"

"I'm not talking about my bodyguard," His Majesty says.  "I'm talking about my right eye."

Right-Eye can't breathe.  His head is spinning.  "Your Majesty," he says.  "I've had my name taken from me once before.  Are you going to take my name from me again?"

His Majesty looks up, stunned.  "No," he says fiercely.  It's like the response is torn straight out of him; it's ragged and heart-wrenching and heartbroken.  "No.  But this happened because of me."  His voice drops.  "It's my fault."

No, Right-Eye thinks.  This isn't your fault.  I chose this.

I chose you.

Right-Eye's head is still spinning, but he forces himself to calmness.  He takes a deep breath, and another.  Though he's still shaky and feeble, he reaches out, his fingers grasping weakly at empty air.

His Majesty, as though on instinct, extends a hand, and Right-Eye grips it as tightly as he can.  It feels like the only thing holding him down on the earth.

"Your Majesty," he says.  "You lost your eye because of me.  I offered to give you my right eye in return.  But you told me that if I wanted to make up for it, I should become your right eye instead."

His Majesty gazes at him, with something very close to desperation.  But he says nothing, nothing at all.

Right-Eye swallows.  "I lost my eye for you," he says.  "But you have no right eye to give me in return.  So if you want to make up for it--"

His Majesty's eye widens.

"Then become my right eye," Right-Eye says softly.  "For as long as I live, be my right eye."

For a long, tenuous moment, His Majesty just gazes upon him, searching his face with some kind of hope against hope.  Then he reaches out and presses a hand to Right-Eye's cheek, gently, as though touching something eminently fragile and invaluable.  "Right-Eye," he chokes out, and he presses their foreheads together, so close that they breathe the same air.  "Right-Eye."

"Yes," Right-Eye says, and leans into him too.  "I will always be your right eye, if you will be mine."