(The Holy Kingdom of Righteous — The Royal Study)
The electric lights had been dimmed since before dawn.
Nobody had come to adjust them — not because the servants had forgotten, but because Gustavious had told them not to enter unless called.
And they had learned over the past two weeks that when the king said that he meant it in a way he hadn't meant it before the queen died.
The study was organized in the way that working grief organized things — not messy, not neglected, but carrying the particular quality of a space being used as a place to put yourself when you didn't know where else to go. Documents on the desk. Maps on the side table.
Reports stacked with the careful arrangement of someone who had been reading and rereading the same information hoping it would eventually say something different.
Gustavious sat behind the desk.
He looked like a man who had been sleeping in four hour intervals for two weeks and had decided that was simply what sleep was now.
The friendliness was still in his face — it was built too deeply into the architecture of him to disappear entirely — but it sat differently. Like a room that still had all its furniture but the light had changed.
Across from him, in the chair that had been occupied consistently since he arrived, sat Leohart.
Not talking.
Just there.
Reading a document that may or may not have required his attention. Present in the particular way that only people who understood the difference between company and intrusion could manage.
The self moving carriage Clover had developed made the journey between Warmark and Righteous two days rather than the better part of a week.
Leohart had made that journey once — arriving three days after the queen's death — and had not left since. He had sent word back to Diamond. Diamond had sent word back that everything was handled.
He had believed her completely and stayed.
Gustavious looked at a report.
Set it down.
Picked it up again.
Set it down.
"He's in the southern territories," he said. Not to the report. To the room. To Leohart by extension.
"The trackers lost him in the Forest of Codar. Three separate teams." He exhaled through his nose.
"My son. Lost three tracking teams in the Forest of Codar."
Leohart looked up from his document.
Said nothing yet.
"He was always clever," Gustavious continued. "Even as a boy. Too clever sometimes. I used to think that was going to be the thing that made him great." He paused. "I may have miscalculated what direction that cleverness would go."
"You didn't miscalculate," Leohart said. Quietly. Directly. "You raised a clever son. What he did with that is not a reflection of your arithmetic."
Gustavious looked at him.
"That's very diplomatic of you."
"It's also true," Leohart said.
Gustavious leaned back in his chair.
The dimmed electric lights threw a soft steady glow across the desk — the documents, the maps, the cold cup of tea that had been placed there an hour ago and ignored since.
"Rachel would have known what to say to him," Gustavious said. Quieter now. Not grief performing itself — just a fact stated in the tone of someone who had been turning it over for two weeks and hadn't found anywhere useful to put it. "She always knew. With both of them. Erica comes back from whatever impossible thing she's doing and Rachel would have—" He stopped.
Let the sentence finish itself in the silence.
Leohart set his document down fully.
He didn't offer anything immediately.
Just waited — the particular patience of someone who understood that some sentences needed the space after them more than they needed a response.
"I keep thinking," Gustavious said eventually, "that if I had just — handled it differently. The guilt from Warmark. She told me. Erica told me. Even Leon told me in that infuriatingly gentle way he has." He looked at the desk. "And I sat in it anyway. Like I deserved to. And Tazz watched his father sit in guilt and decided that was weakness." His jaw tightened slightly. "And maybe he wasn't entirely wrong."
"He was wrong," Leohart said. Simply.
"Leo—"
"He was wrong," Leohart repeated. The same tone. The same directness. Not harsh — just unwilling to let that particular statement stand unchallenged. "A son watching his father carry grief and deciding the solution is a coup and—" He paused. Chose the next words carefully. "And what followed. That is not a father's failing. That is a son's choice."
Gustavious was quiet for a moment.
"You never second guess yourself do you," he said. Not unkindly. Just — observationally.
"I do," Leohart said. "Privately. It's more efficient that way."
"Diamond gets that from you," Gustavious said.
"Diamond gets everything from herself," Leohart replied. "I simply provided the environment."
The ghost of something moved through Gustavious's expression.
Not quite a smile.
The infrastructure of one.
"How are they," he said. "Your children."
Leohart considered the question with the brief pause of someone who took it seriously rather than answering automatically.
"Diamond is managing everything as she always does, with the help of Konrad," he said. "Thoroughly and without being asked to." A pause. "Clover is — Clover. Rose is managing her. The twins are also being supervised by Konrad who I suspect is finding it considerably more demanding than prime ministering." Something moved through his expression. "And Vetra is keeping order in the absence of both of us."
"You trust them," Gustavious said.
"Completely," Leohart said. Without hesitation.
Gustavious looked at him for a moment.
Something in that exchange — the simplicity of it, the uncomplicated certainty of a father speaking about his children without grief attached to it — landed somewhere tender.
He looked at the desk.
"I used to be able to say that," he said quietly.
Leohart said nothing.
Which was the right thing.
"I need to find him," Gustavious said. Back to that. Always back to that. "Not to punish him. I have — people for that. Formally." He paused. "I need to find him because he's still my son. And wherever he is right now—" His voice shifted. Just slightly. "He's alone. And he did something he can never take back. And he knows it."
Leohart looked at him steadily.
"You think he's suffering," he said.
"I think he killed his mother," Gustavious said quietly. "And I think whatever he tells himself about whose fault that was — some part of him knows. Some part always knows." He looked at his hands on the desk. "So yes. I think he's suffering."
A long silence.
"And you want to find him anyway," Leohart said.
"He's my son," Gustavious said simply.
As though that answered everything.
Because for Gustavious — it did.
Leohart looked at him for a long moment.
Then he reached forward and picked up his document again.
"Then find him," he said quietly. "But eat something first. You haven't eaten since yesterday morning and you're making decisions on empty and it shows."
Gustavious stared at him.
"You noticed that."
"I notice everything," Leohart said. Eyes on his document. "I simply choose what to address."
"And you chose food."
"I chose the thing most immediately fixable," Leohart said. "The rest we work on."
Gustavious looked at him for another long moment.
Then he reached forward and picked up the cold tea.
Drank it.
Made a face.
"That's cold," he said.
"I know," Leohart said. "I watched it go cold an hour ago."
"And you didn't say anything."
"You weren't ready to drink it an hour ago."
Gustavious set the cup down.
Looked at his old friend sitting across from him in a chair that wasn't his, in a kingdom that wasn't his, reading documents that weren't his concern, showing up every morning without being asked to and staying every evening without needing to be asked to stay.
"Leo," he said.
Leohart looked up.
"Thank you," Gustavious said.
Simply. Without decoration.
Leohart held his gaze for a moment.
Then looked back at his document.
"Eat something," he said.
⸻
A knock at the study door.
Measured. Patient. The particular knock of someone who had learned over many years exactly how much force to use on that specific door to convey the right combination of presence and deference.
Gustavious straightened slightly.
"Come in Leon."
The door opened.
ArchPriest Leon entered with the unhurried movement of a man who had long since made peace with the pace at which the world moved and had decided to operate slightly above it.
His robes were immaculate as always — the white and gold of the Holy Church of the Six Crowns carrying the particular quality of things maintained not out of vanity but out of respect for what they represented.
He looked at Gustavious.
Then at the cold tea cup.
Then at Leohart.
"Your Majesty," he said to Gustavious. A pause. "Your Majesty," to Leohart. A slight incline of his head to each.
"Leon," Gustavious said. "Sit down."
Leon settled into the chair beside Leohart with the ease of someone who had sat in difficult rooms for most of his life and had learned that the chair itself was never the hard part.
For a moment the three of them simply existed in the same space.
No agenda. No report. No document requiring attention.
Just three men of a certain age who had known each other long enough to understand that sometimes presence was the entire point.
"Duke Hidenham sends word," Leon said eventually. Quietly. Not a report — just information passed between people who trusted each other. "The southern search teams have filed their latest updates. Nothing confirmed yet. But he is being thorough."
"He always is," Gustavious said.
"Yes," Leon agreed. "It is both his greatest quality and his most exhausting one."
Something moved through Leohart's expression.
Gustavious almost smiled.
"How is he managing it," Gustavious asked. "The search. The — everything."
"As Duke Hidenham manages all things," Leon said. "With complete dedication and absolutely no indication of how much it is costing him personally." A pause. "He will find the prince, Your Majesty. If anyone will, it is him."
Gustavious nodded slowly.
He looked at the dimmed lights.
At the maps.
At the cold tea cup that Leohart had made him drink and that was somehow still the most useful thing anyone had done for him all morning.
"She would have hated this," he said quietly. Not to either of them specifically. "Rachel. All of this — the searching, the politics of it, the — she would have wanted it handled quietly. Privately." His voice didn't break. It just — thinned slightly. "She always protected him. Even when she shouldn't have."
Leon looked at him steadily.
"She protected him because she loved him," he said. "That was never wrong. What he did with that love—" He paused. "That was his choice. Not hers. Not yours."
Gustavious was quiet.
"You sound like Leo," he said.
"His Majesty King Leohart is occasionally correct," Leon said.
Leohart looked at him.
"Occasionally," Leon repeated, with the particular serenity of a man who had been giving carefully measured compliments for decades and had no intention of changing his approach now.
This time Gustavious did smile.
Small. Brief.
But real.
The first real one in two weeks.
It lasted approximately three seconds before the weight of everything settled back around it.
But it had been there.
Leon saw it.
Leohart saw it.
Neither of them commented on it.
Which was exactly right.
"I keep thinking about Erica," Gustavious said. "She doesn't know yet. She's out there on that island—" He paused. The weight of that settling differently now that he said it out loud in this room. "Monza briefed us all before she left. The three powers all agreed the mission was necessary. We all understood the risk." His jaw tightened. "But she doesn't know about her mother. About her brother. She's on that island not knowing and there's nothing I can do about it until she comes back."
"She will come back," Leon said. Quietly but without qualification.
"You sound very certain," Gustavious said.
"I am," Leon said simply. "She is your daughter."
Gustavious looked at him.
Then at Leohart.
Leohart said nothing.
But the expression on his face said he agreed completely.
"Monza's daughter is with her," Gustavious said. The observation of someone finding a small thread of comfort in the connection. "Alice. And William. And—" He paused. "And of course, Jericho."
The name settled in the room differently from the others.
Leon's expression shifted slightly — the particular shift of the only man in Righteous who knew exactly what Jericho was and what that meant for every situation he walked into.
"Yes," Leon said quietly. "And lord Jericho."
Gustavious looked at the map on the side table.
At the island marked on it.
At the distance between where his daughter was and where he was sitting right now.
"When she comes back," he said. "When she finds out—"
"She will handle it," Leon said. "The way she handles everything."
"She shouldn't have to," Gustavious said.
"No," Leon agreed quietly. "She shouldn't."
The study was still.
Outside the window the morning light of Righteous moved through the city the way it always did — unhurried, golden, completely indifferent to the grief sitting in the room behind the glass.
Gustavious looked at it for a long moment.
"I'm going to find him," he said. "My son. Whatever he's become — whatever he's done—"
His voice was steady now. The grief still present but something else beside it. Something that had been there longer than the grief and would outlast it. "He's still mine. And I'm not done with him yet."
Leon looked at him.
Something settled in the ArchPriest's expression — not surprise, not relief exactly. Just the quiet recognition of a man who had known this king for a long time seeing the thing in him that had always been there reasserting itself.
"No," Leon said softly. "I didn't imagine you were."
Leohart said nothing.
He reached forward, picked up Gustavious's empty tea cup, and set it pointedly to the side.
Then he looked at his old friend.
"Now," he said. "Eat something."
Gustavious looked at him.
"You said that already."
"And yet here we are," Leohart said. "Still not eating."
Leon looked between them with the expression of someone watching something they had witnessed many times before and had long since decided was not their place to involve themselves in.
Gustavious pushed back from his desk.
"Fine," he said. "We eat."
He stood.
Looked at both of them.
"And then we get back to work."