The two strangers are covered in dirt and blood when they show up at the city gates. Five pairs of feet run down to them, no one voicing it, everyone hoping. And when the doors open, the electric lights falling on Caj's worn face and Fae's thin frame, no one says it but they all move at once, gripping the pair in a tight embrace.

"Walked," is what Caj tells them, his left arm set in a brace and his voice flat from exhaustion. "All the way."

Their first stop is the infirmary, despite both travelers' protests, and then the kitchen. A bottle of wine is cracked open and mugs are passed around; the mood the lightest it has been since leaving Bear's Spear.

It's Hiran who broaches it first, Hiran who, glancing critically between Caj's newly re-set cast and Fae's hollow cheeks, finds the light way to say it.

"Why didn't you go to Solveigard City, you little fool?" he asks, ruffling Fae's wet, frizzing hair and Caj, scowling at them over his cup, sinks further beneath its brim to avoid being lured into the conversation.

"Thought we might be the only ones left," Fae answers, her gaze half-flickering toward the Smith-caller. "By the time we knew where we were, we were so far west it would have delayed us days to go back, and we thought we had to get to Bear's Spear immediately."

To tell them we had been lost¸ Allayria supplies at the end of this, drinking deep into her own cup. This, just as the other five's prior anxiety-inducing assumption about Fae and Caj's status, remains unsaid. They are, after all, celebrating.

"The soldiers there told us where you had all gone," Fae continues, the candlelight flickering in the hollows of her cheeks. "They said they would send a bird out ahead of us. Did it come?"

"No," Lei answers, frowning. "We heard nothing until today."

There's a disquiet that follows this, a wordless wondering of where that bird went, and, at least on Allayria's part, why the soldiers sent Fae and Caj without any back up, any guard. It's only broken when Finn slumps into his cup, already snoozing, his sleeves stained with apple juice.

The morning after is blurry and bleary, even for Lei, who bears it stoically, with the exception of his shortened temper. Both he and Allayria are due at the council, which they probably should have thought about the night before, but then again, noon had seemed so far off then.

But the midday comes faster than expected and they trudge down, stepping into the bright, sparkling room with squints and mumbled grousings.

"I heard Fae Urilong showed up last night," Beinsho says in way of greeting, his eyes narrowing when they find Allayria's face. "I went down to see her and the Smith-caller this morning."

"Hans will be thrilled," Hai Sofo wheezes from his chair, settling back into the cushions. "I had my scribe write to him immediately. He's overseeing the council with Sinfui while I am away. Was quite distracted when he learned his girl hadn't been retrieved."

"Imagine that," Feuilles drawls from his corner of the room.

"I do hope they will be well enough to attend the party tonight," the old king continues, his fingers trembling as he sets a hand on the table. "It would be good for them to be seen out and about."

"Party?" Allayria inquires.

"Yes, your welcoming ball," Beinsho retorts and a cold silence follows as none of the men nor Dost look particularly keen on the idea.

"There doesn't need to be—" she begins but Feuilles cuts in, his voice an arch jeer:

"In fact, there does, Your Excellence," he says, his lip curling. "I don't know where you have been slinking around prior to this, but in the mannered parts of this world, balls are a necessary part of formalizing a trusting, respectful alliance. People will be expecting it and we don't want there to be any whispers of dissension or... disagreement."

"No, we certainly would not," Allayria agrees, keeping her tone even though she can feel the heat rise in her cheeks. "We certainly want to make our collaboration and compromise apparent to everyone."

She sits back, still turned toward the High King but raising her voice so her next words are directed toward everyone: "We wouldn't want people to think any of us expected anyone else to blindly follow orders. Trust and balance—isn't that what this council is all about?"

A smile twists on Feuilles face, not thawing the icy flecks of his green eyes in the slightest.

"No one would accuse Your Excellence of following orders," he replies. "Or even taking suggestions when they are the most logical, practical choice—"

"To you," Allayria pushes back as Ruben suddenly shifts in his seat. She knows he was about to talk, but it is she who must answer. "Not to me. I know what I am. I know what I am good at, and I have seen what Abadi Chaudri has done. Find someone else to be the ringmaster of your little show. I am more useful at the front."

"Yes, you certainly have proven that," Feuilles sneers. "Your last foray into Jarles territory was such a success. We're only just now recovering the last bits of your team, but at least you can boast at your ball that everyone made it out alive—"

"The mission was a success," Lei suddenly cuts in, and everyone turns in surprise, but he only glowers at Feuilles. "You tasked us with finding information on how the Imperator is controlling the Nature and Beast Skillers. We now know that, and we're now closer to figuring out how to reverse it than we were before."

Allayria blinks. She can't tell if the lieutenant is actually standing up for her, or if Feuilles's poor reporting has offended him.

Probably the latter.

"We'll talk about the front line tomorrow," Beinsho says, and he watches Lei keenly. "In the meantime, do make sure both Fae Urilong and the Smith-caller make it tonight. We need to show a united front here."

It is a sea of jewels, of silken cloths and bright, white, false smiles. They wear them like party hats, swooping and swirling around her, groveling in unctuous tones of supplication, of cooing desire and acquiescence.

Your Excellence, Your Excellence...

They linger over her meal, they linger over her drink, they linger in the hallways and swarm in the main hall, these plumed creatures of powder and perfume.

At this ball she should be something else, something softer, frillier, the way Fae Urilong is when she sweeps through, all delicate and sweet—though Allayria thinks the last bit has more to do with intense food and sleep deprivation and less with any natural allurements. The Keesark noble clings to Hiran's arm, mostly because she'll topple over if someone doesn't hold her up.

The courtiers ooh over her and swoon under Hiran's sunlight smile. They aah over small, sweet Finn, unaware of how he could break them with a glance, all that power wrapped up beneath that innocence. They simper around Tara—so fresh, so rustic—and pass over Lei, a dressed up guard standing to attention.

Right now Allayria wishes she too could be in some Halften uniform, that she too could technically attend but stand to the side, stock-still so that everyone would pass her, unaware. On the other hand, the partygoers are very aware of Caj but give him wide berth and Allayria takes shelter in his surly presence until she is ushered out because there is cake, there will be a toast, she is needed.

But they don't need her, they need a body—a little dog on a leash, a vicious voice says again, cutting deep. Something to flaunt and control—

Her stomach roils and she sets the champagne down on an abandoned tray. Someone says something, another nobleman, noblewoman, whose names she has forgotten, if she ever knew them. They're talking at her, talking about something inane, something meaningless, while somewhere east some child is being herded into a dark room, being sorted, chosen or discarded, strapped to a table and opened up or set against a wall, used for target practice—

"Excuse me," she mumbles and turns away.

She catches a glimpse of Tara and Fae walking toward the opposite end of the room; Caj has disappeared. Finn is at the sweets table, insensible to the surrounding gaggle of cooing women. She makes it to the edge of the room, close to an exit. She's in the doorway when she finds Hiran, eased into a corner next to a pretty, red-haired woman whose eyes flash as she laughs.

There had been some of that thrown her way too, a lure dangling in the proverbial social waters. But she doesn't know what to say to that anymore, what to do with herself in this vast room full of strangers. Nineteen—they expect her to know what to expect of these songs and dances now, they expect her to have had all the revelations, all of the tense, awkward experiences of those squirmy teenage years worked out. She is supposed to have come out of it smoother, more in control. Poised. But Allayria was alone until Ben, and now, in this sea of people, she's in no-man's land. Too old to be excused, too grown up to be this naïve.

It's the prickle of bittersweet memory, a quiet, unexamined longing for closer, familiar company, for smaller rooms—in  dusty, dimly-lit bars, with sticky cards thrown on tables and sour beer slopping over tankards...

"These swindlers will beggar you," he had said in the orange glow of torchlight, a hand over hers, as if that was the worst thing anyone in the room would do to her.

She doesn't want to miss it anymore; she doesn't want to smell the pine and smoke, taste the bubbling tang.

I live half in memory, she thinks, watching distantly as the redhead leans close to Hiran, murmuring something into his ear that causes him to laugh, and half in nightmare.

Somewhere in her, she knows at least that dance, knows the quiet steps of secret glances and shadowed smiles. She's been there before, but it feels like another life, a quiet glow of candlelight twinkling across a long tunnel of cold, hollow darkness.

Hiran leans in, a hand brushing across the woman's thigh because of course it does, of course Hiran Baulieu, with all his ease and charm, knows these steps by heart. It's practice and that intuitive sense, that animal knowing of mood and subtext. The hand moves to the woman's, picking it up and turning it over, palm up, as a thumb skims across it and he leans over, murmuring low things in her tilted ear.

Someone once touched me that way, Allayria thinks and she feels cracks splintering across her. Someone once looked at me that way.

She steps back, through the doorway, and closes the door, leaning back to rest on a ledge in the darkened, quiet hall.

And sitting here, alone in the twilight, she sets her head against the stone wall, allowing herself for a moment to feel those cracks in her that seep with deep, hollow loneliness. All the memories she has of close touches and searching mouths are stained and she doesn't know how she can paint over them, how she can ever trust the pitter-patter of her heart not to lead her to ruin.

And who knows why anyone would want you now either, a voice in the back of her head whispers as it wells, this bitter feeling, long denied. Who knows if they want Allayria, or if they just want the bright trophy that is the Paragon...

She feels like she is fading away into starlight; that she has, just for a moment, relinquished that title and if anyone would walk in now their eyes would pass over her, through her, never really knowing she was there. She can admit now that there's only hollowness underneath this mask; there's no one left who knows Allayria, not the Paragon. And she shivers with it, shivers with this irreparable ache and the helplessness it makes her feel.

She sees him when she opens her eyes. He's come through the door at the other end of the corridor and stares at her. She tries to school her features back into an unreadable expression, to mask the things passing through her, but he's striding down toward her, looking at her with such intent.

He stands in front of her in the moonlight, hesitating for a moment, and then he reaches out.

It's not love she feels when Lei presses his mouth against hers, his hand grasping at the back of her neck, pulling her close. There's nothing soft about this, nothing painfully, breakingly sweet about this touch. He kisses like he fights, like he talks, like he is: hard and a little detached. But there's need here, and loneliness too, and Allayria clings to the bluntness, the efficient way he presses her up against the wall, slipping his knee between her legs. His hands hold her securely, but they don't draw patterns on her hips, they don't brush softly down her lips.

"My mother would only have me back to see me drowned."

He saw it, he saw it even before I did, she thinks, pulling him in closer. His sense of duty may clash with her independence, but in this they are the same, in this they can trust each other because if there's anyone in this world more afraid than her of love, it's Lei.

It's not love; it's safe, she thinks as his mouth trails bruisingly down her neck, unable to quite manage gentleness but still wanting to inspire desire, to spur on the heat pooling between her legs. He's safe.

He won't lie to me.

And so she twines fingers through his hair as he pushes them farther back into an alcove, meeting his firm grip with her own, fastening her mouth against his, because this is yet another battle, another game designed to break them out of all the rubble they are trapped under. She feels his fingers twitch against her sides, a vague tremor that is silenced by a sharp flex of his hand.

"You and Lei are very different people, but you have as many similarities as you do differences."

Yes, yes, we do, Allayria thinks as he hitches her hips around his, moving in a way that sends chills running up her spine, shivering up into her hands which clamp down tightly in his hair.

We are the same.

A/N: This is the chapter where literally everything happens because when it rains, it pours, my friends. Caj is back! Fae is back! Feuilles and Allayria have a concerning sass fight! Hiran is Hiran and Lei and Allayria are... whatever the hell that is. Do we ship them? Or are we just afraid?

Save your fear for next chapter.

Chapter notes: The memory of Ben cautioning Allayria in the Hanged Man pub is from the "Open Arms" chapter of Paragon. Ben's snipe about dogs and leashes is from the recent "Did You Love Me in the Firelight" chapter of Partisan, while Ruben tells Allayria about her and Lei's similarities  in  "Grave Dirt" and Lei talks about Abadi Chaudri's maternal feelings in "Her Son."