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The knife that felled Damianos of Akielos had been Kastor's, but the poison, Laurent is sure, was Jokaste's. A final parting blow, or perhaps another movement in a puzzle-box of a plot that Laurent might have admired, in another time. Set both Kastor and Damianos onto each other, and make doubly sure that neither would survive the encounter. That would leave her son as the rightful heir to the throne of Akielos. Kingmaker indeed.
But it has been two days since Kastor fell to Laurent's blade, two days since Damen had lay, shackled to the floor, smiling up at Laurent as bells rang out around them. Laurent had had an illicit fantasy of spending Damen's convalescence in his bed, feeding him dried fruits and tasting those again when they kissed. Instead, he stands at Damen's besdside, forcing himself to consider the worst, as Paschal and three other physicians race to keep Damen's wound from going septic.
The wound is ragged and festering and no matter what they do, they can't get it to close. Laurent sheds his fussy Veretian jacket and pushes up his sleeves, baring pale forearms and a shining gold cuff, so that he can help change Damen's dressings. He's been on a battlefield before, he knows what color a wound ought to be, and Damen's is not that-- too red, draining white and yellow and green into the linen bandages until the whole room stinks with it.
Stitches slip and the wound gapes open again as dying flesh gives way. Paschal agrees that the usual Akielon method for cases like these would work best to remove all but sound flesh, and Laurent stands near Damen's pillow and strokes the man's hair and looks only into his eyes as Damen's wound is packed with maggots and honey. Damen opens his eyes for a moment, looks helplessly up at Laurent, smiles and says, "I love you."
Laurent feels hollowed out, a sinkhole opening up in his stomach. He hadn't wanted the first time he'd heard that to be here, to be now. He swallows and whispers, "You're going to be all right." And he has to pray that it's true.
He does pray, that night, to a God that he'd stopped talking to when he was nine and stopped believing in when he was thirteen. He hardly remembers all of the rituals he and Auguste had learned at mass and anyway the series of verbal prostrations remind him uncomfortably of the Regent, so can only offer up this silent plea: Please, spare him. Take anything else from me. But not him. Not him.
Nikandros comes the next morning; he's been riding hard between Marlas and Ios, exchanging exhausted horses for fresh but refusing to stop himself to rest or recover. When he bursts into Damen's chambers in a clatter and crash that makes Laurent wince, he's still covered in road dust, sweat dripping down his face. He rushes to Damen's bedside and Laurent is forced to stand back. Nikandros looks over Damen's chapped lips, the pale greenish tinge to his skin, the terrible wound. Damen sucks in a ragged breath and sighs, "Nik," and Nikandros folds to his knees, "Exalted. Damianos. Damen," he says, voice thick.
Laurent must stand awkward and alone by the doorway, unable to follow Nikandros' rapid, frantic Akielon but listening to Damen's raspy answers: "A filthy blade, that's all. Recall when we were boys, and you..." He struggles to get his breath as Nikandros says something else. "No. I couldn't. Laurent. Laurent was there."
Nikandros looks up to stare at Laurent, as if for the first time. Fitting for a killer of princes to fall in love with a killer of kings. Perhaps more than one. Laurent braces himself for Nikandros to demand why Laurent had not protected Damen from this blow, why it hadn't been him on the end of a blade instead. He'd been asking himself as much for days.
Instead, Nikandros gets to his feet, comes to stand before Laurent, stares him flatly in the eye. Laurent wishes he had his sword. Or a mace. Or a kitchen knife, anything to defend himself from the coming onslaught.
Nikandros kneels. Laurent flinches. From the bed, Damen laughs, then gasps and groans in pain, and the moment is ruined when both Laurent and Nikandros rush to tend him.
"Thank you," Nikandros says quietly, some time later when Damen has slipped into a fitful slumber again. "For..."
"Time enough to thank me when he's well again," Laurent says primly.
Another week of honey and stained linens and drawing poultices and fevers. Damen rants and weeps in his sleep, calls out for his father, for his brother, and "Laurent, where are you?" and though Laurent comes to stroke Damen's face and murmur "I'm here, Damen, I'm right here," nothing seems to soothe him. Laurent stares down at Damen's sunken cheeks, dark hair plastered to his skin with sweat, and has the quiet, evil thought that it would have been better if Damen had gone quickly, like Auguste had.
Then he calls for Nikandros and takes himself to the baths to scrub himself and that thought from his mind. He rakes his fingernails across pale flesh until his skin is raw and stinging in the hot water.
Though there are servants and volunteers aplenty, Nikandros and Laurent take it in turns to watch over Damen, one of them at the bedside, the other trying to sleep a few feet away on a slave's pallet by the fire. A few days after his arrival, Nikandros goes to meet with the other Kyroi who've arrived for Damen's coronation. Laurent can only hope that the man can buy Damen time to recover, that they can be urged to be patient though he is sure the palace is in an uproar. He can only dream of what must be happening in Arles-- the news must have reached there by now, if not by messenger bird then by relay. He tries to consider what he'll do, tries to lay out a plan, then finds that he can't think beyond being here, beyond Damen laying in this bed.
Nikandros returns after several hours, looking haggard. At Laurent's questioning glance, he says, "Damianos is their king. They will wait." And then, more quietly, "I have seen the both of them hung from the Traitor's Walk." He does not have to say who.
They both kneel there beside Damen for some time, watching the shallow rise and fall of the man's broad chest. His wound, too wide now to be closed with stitching, has finally begun to scab over and Paschal had said that they might treat it once more with honey and then replace the dressing. Perhaps the poison was finally out of Damen's system; perhaps the infection would likewise pass. Perhaps Damen himself would have the strength to recover and not have to suffer weeks or months of wasting away in bed before finally subsiding. Laurent clenches his fists.
Nikandros turns his head slightly, lifts a hand and lays it over Laurent's. "He is stubborn," he says softly. "He will push through."