Chapter Text
The Yellow King emerged over the hills in the midst of city noises and lights. He was in his dragon form, massive and twisting with scales like dull gold; green jewels lined the spikes of his back, and his claws shone like polished malachite. His eyes were shards of flame. They faded briefly under the glare of the true sun.
The Yellow King stared around him. Unfamiliar sounds, unfamiliar sights, unfamiliar smells, and yet dregs of memory behind them—he’d known them in the past, he could recognize them: here was the reek of exhaust pipes and garbage and urine, this was true daylight, these were cars and shops and vagrants...
He’d come from this place, he realized then, though the fact had no meaning behind it. Only one thing mattered: sharp, laughing Uaithne, his consort so far from him.
The Yellow King could smell him now, his errant husband. He stepped forward and was impeded by obstacles; objects and buildings and people all swarming in the place. His current shape was nothing but an inconvenience here. He shrunk down to his humanoid form, creating his clothes after those he saw on passerby, and looked around him…
Cars everywhere. The Yellow King remembered that motor vehicles allowed a single entity to travel far faster and further than a rider. Had his husband taken one? If so, he could be anywhere... Still the Yellow King would find him; he knew he would. To let something of his escape his grasp was inconceivable.
The sovereign roamed the streets, indifferent to the gawking passerby. He’d brought no soldiers with him. What could threaten him here? And how disappointed would Uaithne be if he was discovered by someone other than his spouse? Though he could not abide his consort's departure from his side, there were many things the Yellow King would grant him just to see him satisfied.
He felt like he could navigate the streets. He needed a moment to puzzle over this fact. Another memory returned to him: he'd been a mortal before, or at least he’d thought he was, though even back then his ancestry had echoed in him. He’d lost that life with his previous name. He frowned, aggravated by the realization that something had been stolen from him which he hadn’t even known about. He scoured his memories, trying to recover his rightful property.
Whom had he been? As he walked and thought, fragments returned. Money, clothes, the content of his wallet and the amount of his rents: the one for his office, the one for his house. He'd had employment… No… A job.
Detective. Yes. He'd been a detective. Finding truths, occasionally hiding them. Lost spouses, lovers, children, subordinates or friends, investigating suspicion of cheating, scamming... Slow, patient, meticulous work, pulling every thread to its end. Why had he done that?
“If it were about money, [ ], you'd have become a businessman.”
“Sorry, [ ]. Didn't think the issue was that sensitive.”
It had been his consort talking, hadn't it? They had discussed this in his previous life. He didn't remember the specific circumstances, only the anger and the embarrassment.
Why had he picked this career? Now, he wanted to know. It seemed to him that this was an important part of what had been taken from him—a central piece of the puzzle he was trying to put together.
He ambled on past familiar shops and checked prices. Some had risen. He felt remembered annoyance, though this was no concern to him anymore.
He went on, idly collecting the scraps that resurfaced with each scene. He was in no hurry anymore. He'd catch up to his consort in the end, anyway, and he suspected that he'd been meant to behold and ponder what he was now beholding and pondering. Uaithne was trying to tell him something, wasn’t he? He could have used words, but it wasn't his way. He liked manipulating the Yellow King, occasionally to ends even he couldn’t predict…
The neighbourhood grew familiar and the Yellow King knew that this was where his husband wanted him to go. Past that restaurant, straight after this novelty shop, turn right before the temple… Ignore the crooked house whose owner had never told him hello even after years in the same neighbourhood…
Yes. He'd lived here. That small, plain building had been his home. As the Yellow King stared at it, he found it growing less and less forgettable and more and more familiar. The rusting gate, the outer walls laced with moss, the gnarled trees of his narrow garden...
He remembered lithe, colourful shapes climbing the trunks and jumping from branches to branches to windowsills...
He pushed the garden gate; it was open, which was for the better, as he'd have torn it aside otherwise. He strode along the old, weed-gnawed cobblestones that led to his entrance door.
It swung open on a woman he needed a second to recognize. It was his sister, crying out a word he didn't know. She ran toward him and he felt something he'd forgotten, not entirely pleasant—that tightening of the chest, that ache in his guts.
“Laverne! Laverne!” She called; that was not his name. She grasped him, shaking, and he did as well, remembering so much of her now: her as a toddler, her as a little girl, her as a lanky teenager, her as a bright young woman and her older and wiser and more cynical. When had he seen her cry for the last time?
He was glad he'd found her. He'd been—he was fond of his sister. Now that Uaithne had brought him back to her, could he convince her to come under the hill? He should. He had to. He could not bear to lose it all again: her and her kids and the house and his friends and his—
Lithe, colourful shapes appeared under the door: the spots and stripes of Crane, Robin and Stork and, next to them, the silver silhouette of his husband.
He let go of Ivy. He knelt and opened his arms, for he remembered that you didn't grab their kin. They came and they rubbed purring against him while his sister, half-laughing half-sobbing, was saying, “you and your damn cats”.
Uaithne slipped last against him. He'd brought him here on purpose, to the cats and to his sibling.
The Yellow King remembered the name he'd given him, Cuckoo. It was the only shackle he'd ever allowed himself to place on his pets—their names.
“You love them so much,” Cuckoo said.
He'd shifted back into his usual form and curled against the sovereign while the other cats demanded attention. The Yellow King felt familiar, inhuman possessiveness, but somehow it dulled before the need to take care of Stork, Crane and Robin. How long had he been gone? They’d missed him, it was obvious, and his chest was gripped by a monster that didn’t belong under the hills—guilt, soft and aching.
“I knew you'd recover your lost self if I brought them to you,” Cuckoo said. “Your sister to make you remember your human bonds, your cats to remind you that you once knew to set love before greed.”
“I'm honoured to be held in the same regard as the cats,” Ivy deadpanned.
Her voice was trembling, but she already sounded more composed. She’d always had a good grasp on herself. They both had, before…
“How long have I been gone?”
In body and in mind, he thought.
“Three years,” Ivy said. “I only knew you were alive because your—because your husband told me.”
Warn my sister so she takes care of my cats. Irving—Uaithne had done so, of course. The Yellow King closed his eyes and felt all the missing parts of himself try to slot together—those that already remained, those he’d just recovered, those that perhaps he'd find if he probed the wound long enough.
He wished he had a name; that, though, had not been lost but torn away from him, and in its place there was not even pain left.
After a while, Ivy insisted that they come back inside. Uaithne had given her enough to keep the house until the Yellow King's return; as soon as the consort had managed to emerge over the hills, he’d called her so she’d rush here with the cats.
“Laverne,” she repeated again and again. “Laverne, Laverne.”
But that wasn't the Yellow King's name, no matter how often she said it. He pretended still, because he knew it would make her glad. He ate her food and wore the clothing she gave him and petted the cat as he absorbed the sights and sounds and smells of his empty home.
The moon was high when she finally retired for the night.
“Don't do anything I wouldn't do,” she said before leaving for the guest room.
“You've done a lot,” the Yellow King retorted, making her wince from the memories of countless youthful indiscretions.
“Well then, don't do anything I would do.”
“We'll do our best,” Uaithne promised.
She barked out the short laugh she used for jokes she didn't find funny. She didn't like the Yellow King's consort. Perhaps she held him responsible for her brother's disappearance. She wasn't that wrong.
Finally, they were alone in front of the chimney. It was late March; spring was still cold, and the trees half-dead.
Uaithne sat at the feet of the Yellow King's chair and played with one of his husband’s hands while the other petted Stork.
“I apologized once already,” he stated eventually, staring at the fire. “but then I don't think you could understand what I was sayin’.”
“I don't remember.”
“No wonder. You'd lost your name. My mother never understood their point, you see. Faeries work hard not to be bound by any of them, even the true one. You could call me by my birth name and I don't think it'd do much more than sting.”
Uaithne gently kissed the Yellow King's knuckles.
“Mortals, though, only ever use one name, and so when she severed it away, your humanity was torn to shreds. I couldn't fix it on my own; not with bein’ a faerie myself. I knew I had to drag you over the hills, but you didn't wanna leave.”
“You'd have fled anyway.”
A chuckle. The sovereign could imagine his husband's smirk.
“Well, yeah, but still—this was for you. Your family, your cats, your work. The three things for which you'd dismissed your greed in the past. I just knew you’d return whole once you remembered ’em.”
“You've a lot of trust in what I've become.”
He could picture Uaithne’s twisted, toothy grin.
“I’m a gambler. I bet on you.”
The Yellow King clasped his husband’s hand. For a second he didn’t speak.
“Can I recover my name?” He finally asked.
“Can’t,” Uaithne replied with uncharacteristic quietness. “She wanted it destroyed, so it's gone. You'll have to pick new ones if you wish to be somethin’ else than a king.”
New ones. Plural. A faerie's cautiousness.
The Yellow King had really been called Laverne, hadn't he? But that was in the past. Attempting to take this as his name would be no better than trying to shove a dead arm onto a stump.
The sovereign gazed at the flames that danced and popped in the fireplace. Right now, he hated the monicker that had been bestowed upon him.
“Give me a name,” he finally said.
Uaithne startled against his leg and looked up at him:
“You can't be serious! It'd have far too much power, if it's the first name you want to take for yourself!”
“I married you against your will—”
“—marriage is nothin’ important for a faerie, only pretty titles for pretty heads—”
“—and sequestrated you.”
“Big syllables for such a small thing. Husband, you can't make me—”
The Yellow King's smile stretched into a smirk. He glanced into his beloved's widened eyes.
“It's rare that I see you scared.”
Uaithne sat up on his knees.
“I’m not scared,” he retorted sullenly, grabbing his husband's thighs to rise more easily. “I'm doing you a favour. I'm being kind.”
“You carry iron with you,” the Yellow King said.
“Yeah, and?”
“And I want you to give me my new name.”
Uaithne stopped. His pupils were wide and dark.
He stared at the Yellow King’s lap, where Stork was sprawled with possessive satisfaction, and was clever enough to pet her head; she hissed in offence and scampered away, so that he could pull the sovereign to his feet and kiss his mouth with short, hungry ferocity.
“I will give you the name “Gramr”,” he purred against his lips.
“Where does it come from?”
“An old dragon-killing sword.” The consort smirked. “Probably made from good, solid iron.”
Gramr laughed and embraced his lover.
“I like it.”
He could feel the presence of Uaithne's weapon near his hips, the terrible, awful weight of iron. An echo of it, that name in that mouth. The human that he was found it fair. The dragon that he was purred with the possessive satisfaction of having created another bond with what he loved. Even if his husband ever fell out of love with him, no-one would ever gift him something that precious ever again.
Uaithne kissed him again, slow and pleased now, and pulled away just enough to look into his eyes.
“I've just one question,” he stated. “Last time, you've refused to answer.”
Gramr knew the one, one of the first he'd asked himself when he'd returned to himself. Why had he become a detective?
“I don’t remember yet.”
Uaithne frowned.
“Then you'll have to stay a while more. If you don’t know this about yourself, you'll forget your humanity as soon we return.”
“Return”. Away from the sun, from his cats, his family and his world. Back to his kingdom, his subjects and his world. Ache and satisfaction, the twin sides of the Yellow King still disjointed. His hands clenched on Uaithne's hips.
“I'm not—”
“You're the monarch. You can do anythin’ you like, including forsakin’ your title, especially if you leave it to your faithful, beloved husband…”
The Yellow King’s grip on Uaithne was enough of a rebuke. His kingdom, his crown, his power. The consort grinned and kissed the silent snarl of his mouth.
“If you can't give up what’s yours, then you’ll have to rule. You can't find a third way out of everythin’, husband.”
Gramr didn’t answer. The twist of his lips showed fangs. Uaithne’s eyes were bright and delighted, as they always were on the cusps of a bet. The Green Consort’s fingers pressed on his canines.
“Let’s all set it aside,” he said. “These stupid rules, these silly laws, that stuffy crown—forget ’em, leave ’em under the hills. For now—”
He grinned, he purred, and the hunger on his face was one that burned as bright as the Yellow King’s.
“Gramr,” he murmured in a low, pleasant voice—a lover's playful pleading. “Beloved, dearest Gramr—won’t you kneel for me? Won’t you beg for me?”
Gramr obeyed before he'd even registered the order, kneeling at Uaithne’s feet. As he looked up, as the first words escaped his lips, as he saw his consort’s eyes and revelled in the power he now held over him—
He'd taken so long, he thought, to understand who truly served whom when Uaithne bent unbound to his will.
***
They'd both answered the Yellow King’s summon, the Blue and the Red princesses. One was surrounded by her devoted entourage; the other was wild and silent and alone.
They'd fought the Yellow King, and they'd lost. They'd had to settle for the mercy he'd granted them and they resented it.
“I've summoned you to offer you an opportunity and a pact,” the sovereign stated.
Gormlaith stared; Flann glared. At his spouse's side, Uaithne smirked.
“I wouldn't be opposed to sojourning above the hills for half of a mortal year,” the Yellow King said. “I wanted to grant regenthood to one of my ministers, but my husband pleaded for you to be considered in spite of our past trouble. Should you accept, you will wield the power of ruler for three months each. I'll ask you to act according to my interest, but otherwise you will enjoy a queen's full authority.”
“I don't want it,” Flann answered contemptuously. “Who'd settle for half a crown? Especially with all the awful laws you’ve added to elevate commoners beyond their status. That’s all Uaithne, isn’t it? You’re always so strange about these things, Uaithne!”
The Yellow King smiled. He'd taken to being called Rithill. Some had searched for the meaning of this monicker, but what they'd found had made no sense—a dragon-slaying blade, not an auspicious name for one of his blood—and it would have been gauche to enquire outright.
“That's not the right question,” he said. “What you should be asking is, who'd settle for no crown when there's half of one to enjoy?”
She snarled but didn't answer.
“I thought you'd like the opportunity to reshape our castle's gardens,” Uaithne added smoothly. “I wanna bring seeds back from the mortal world, and see what you’d do with ’em.”
She stared at him. For all her pride, her hunger was simple and they'd known it.
“Fine,” she snarled. “But! I want to be the one who goes over the hills in spring, when their flowers blossom.”
“That can be arranged,” the Yellow King said genially.
Gormlaith waited for a few seconds. In the end, she smiled a glacial smile and straightened.
“Well, brother-in-law, you're a generous one. I'm not childish enough to request a favour to ‘agree’ to something I want. Instead, I wish to give you a gift in thanks for your benevolence.”
She gestured to one of her followers—Habren with the dark, feverish eyes and the ground-worn feet, Habren who'd fought as her general bravely but without few victories to show for it. The other faerie looked at her first with blank perplexity, then with panic.
“My Lady—” She started.
“Habren will now serve you as faithfully as she served me.”
Something in Gormlaith's voice, in the way she said faithfully, made Habren's face twist.
“My Lady, if I've failed you—I took full responsibility every time—please, I beg you, I've only ever—”
“Habren,” Gormlaith stated with cruel poise, “do not shame me.”
Habren's cheeks flushed. She turned away from her mistress. Slowly, with trembling hands, she removed her blue robes and untied the azure ribbon that restrained her hair. Black locks fell free over her shoulders; yellow illusions climbed her skin until she was clad in the golden hues that the Yellow King favoured.
She couldn't see Gormlaith’s face, having her back turned to her, yet she must have predicted the twist of her mouth—she must have heard her intake of breath—she must have known the princess better than herself, for what curled her pale lips was dark and satisfied.
The Yellow King saw it, and felt Uaithne’s contentment at his side, and understood more about the terrible patience that could be intertwined with a faerie’s love.
***
“You've asked me twice why I'd become a detective,” the Yellow King—Gramr—Rithill said.
Uaithne opened one eye. They had a bedroom on the top floor of the agency, and the cats and he were sprawled over and against Gramr.
“Yep. You didn't answer back then. Even when you remembered.”
“You’re still interested in the reply?”
Two iron-sharp eyes opened wide, entirely focused on Gramr.
“Of course I'm interested.”
“It's nothing very noble,” Gramr said. “Just, a boy was killed, decades ago, when I was a kid. All the newspapers went wild over it. A man dying's nothing interesting unless it's suitably gruesome, but a dead woman's romantic and a child makes for some beautiful paragraphs about the wasted innocence of youth.”
Uaithne stared at him. Fascinated, hungry but patient, always patient. He'd never make Gramr do anything he didn't want to. He just set up situations and waited until his wish came true.
Gramr thought of Habren's patience and twisted schemes, centuries thrown away—her freedom forsaken just so that the one she loved would mourn her absence. He thought of her friendship with Uaithne.
Birds of a feather…
“They didn't find the culprit,” he said eventually. “I'm not claiming that I would have caught him, or her. Scratch that—I wouldn’t have. The police have far more men and means than I do.”
“Not anymore. And you’ve always had your cleverness and your patience.”
Gramr caressed his husband’s nape, thumbed at the tender hollow of his jaw.
“I remember the parent's testimony. The hypotheses. Experts and mediums. Scammers and psychologists. Everyone trying to understand.”
These unblinking eyes didn't leave him, fascinated. He searched for his words, attempting to explain something deeply human to someone that wasn’t.
“Life isn't cruel. It doesn't have intent. It goes on, and it's us mortals and faeries who call it cruel or kind depending on our needs, but—at least we can try to understand. Even if blood's already been shed, even if the truth's worse than ignorance, we deserve to know why it happened. Not for justice or fairness, because truth isn't about fairness or justice, but because at least we can grasp a bit of knowledge back, and knowledge's all the power we can claim over this world. Enough understanding to act the way we want to, or at least with the right meaning behind it...” He waved frustratedly. “It’d take a poet or a philosopher to explain, and I’m neither of those. Call it nonsense if you wish.“
“I won't,” Uaithne said slowly, possessively, grabbing Gramr’s hand to kiss his palm. “It doesn't make sense for the people under the hill, and it doesn't make sense for me, but I care about the way you work.”
“You do,” Gramr acquiesced. “You like me. You've liked me ever since I've sav… helped you when you were a cat.”
Uaithne nodded, his eyes growing half-closed. He let his husband's hand caress his throat, splay softly over it.
“And you've known about my blood far before I have,” Gramr said. “Any faerie has a right to royalty if they're crafty or lucky enough, haven't they?”
Uaithne's eyes opened wide, bright and pleased and sparkling with a gambler's delight.
“You weren't expecting your mother to choose me as her heir,” Gramr said. “Weren't hoping for that much. But you were betting that my faerie origins would resurface one way or another, were you? In light of the situation, the contract you'd had me sign contained plenty of potential for chaotic outcomes. You had plans. Vanquish your sisters, grab the crown and then fight the dragon I'd have become one way or another—tame me, bring me back to myself, bind me to your throne and marry me. I'm sure you'd thought of ways it'd be beneficial for me. I trust you when you say you want to make me happy—but you wanted me happy and yours.”
Uaithne's smirk was wide and full of teeth.
“What will you do if I answer yes?” He purred, absolutely indifferent to the possibility of retribution and the clench of Gramr’s hand against his throat.
His husband stared at him. Wondered about a dragon's greed and a human's foolishness.
“I told you,” he said tiredly. “Truth isn't about getting justice or fairness.”
Uaithne's grin widened. He twisted to embrace his spouse.
“The name Gramr's actually one I wanted for myself,” he whispered into the monarch's ear.
Gramr laughed in spite of himself.
“Disappointed?”
A grin against his throat. Teeth against his jaw.
“You've never done anything but go beyond my expectations, beloved.”
Iron at Uaithne's hip, iron in Uaithne's mouth. The faerie chuckled, coiled over Gramr. Poisonous, adoring warmth...
You never truly stopped atoning for a faerie's affection.
“Give me a name of my own,” Uaithne purred, and the Yellow King's greed flared back.
Claws into skin, teeth against teeth—boundless avidity against fathomless yearning.
One more time, Gramr devoured and drowned…
***
In the morning, Refil was gone; of course he was. He'd left a note, a hint, a promise.
Gramr sighed and fixed breakfast for him and the cats. He ate carefully and only went down to the office once he was done with the dishes. He told himself that the thrill he felt was the intellectual satisfaction of resuming investigation and nothing baser or more primal.
He had a customer and a salary to earn, nothing more.
The hunt, once again, was on.