Everyone thinks Perseverance is locked up in one of the towers, contained in a room lined with hot sun windows, the trap door down sealed shut.

Everyone thinks he damaged Humility's brain, put him in a coma with poison or something.

Neither's true.

After Humility's kid--Determine--found the pair of them in the bathroom, he told his mother, who panicked and asked the neighbor's dad to check the bathroom, who did and, shaken, told the healers on duty that morning, who had a pair of junior healers escort both families to rooms removed from the area around the bathroom so they could carry Humility's body--soulless--to the darkest healing basements, and drag Perseverance's body--filled with a phantom calmly repeating that Humility had wanted it--to the Empress' court.

They had to give both of them dry clothes.

The Empress finds Perseverance guilty, charges him with madness, though no one in the rows of black chairs lining the Empress' court hall can say what, if anything, about Perseverance seems particularly off--other than the fact that he admits they'd both wanted it, they'd always had something unspoken between them.

Zest--Perseverance's wife--and Regalia plus her two younger brothers sit in the stands, two rows behind Nadai and Determine and his two sisters, one older, one barely twelve. It might be the youngest's birthday, this day.

Everyone wears black. Except Perseverance, who's in dark red, and the Empress, in a sleek navy gown with silver embroidery of a sword down her torso. She questions him, but really has nothing to say--he admits what he did, and Humility is unconscious in the healer's wing.

She could charge him with betrayal, infidelity, sabotaging the night warrior cause--but she doesn't, because Perseverance has been "good." Not that it really matters what she charges him with, the guards still drag Perseverance off to the same well-lit turret they would have otherwise, but maybe "madness" soothes the families' hearts slightly more than blatant traitorism.

The Empress rises from her throne--a simple, black-wood chair, slightly smaller than the seats lining the walls--and tells the crowded, whispering room that her gown is for mourning. Some sickness must have invaded Perseverance, and they shouldn't remember him or Humility that way.

Nadai twists in her seat, and glares at Zest like this is somehow her fault. Regalia rises from her chair and marches after the guards, trailing them through the winding corridors until they reach the narrow, decaying staircase up to the turret, and she calls at them before they ascend, wondering if she can speak to her father.

Shrugging, they let her, standing back and holding Perseverance's wrists, blades clanking armor at their sides.

"Why?" she asks.

He, filled with my claw of light, just smiles. I remember I am dreaming, asleep on the plains.

Something in his face makes her step back, slippers soft on the stone. "He did this to you, didn't he?"

"Who?" the guard on the left asks.

Regalia opens her mouth. Then decides she'll sound crazy, if she says it. "H...Humility. They...they must have secretly hated each other. Poisoned each other, somehow." She hides shaking hands behind her back; she's not very good at lying. None of them are very good at lying.

"Right." Perseverance smiles, showing his chipped tooth. "It was...him."

Regalia's expression contorts and she slams the heel of her palm into her dad's jaw, twisting his face. "You let him?" she yells. "How could you?"

He slowly turns back. "You presume we did anything against our will, Lia. You think he made you fall in love, but no. You have no idea who he is, no matter how obsessed you get over making wild fantasies for what happened."

The guard on the right coughs, "Okay, up you go" and shoves Perseverance onto the cracked and broken stairs.

They ascend, and Regalia glares after them, fists clenched, night fire flickering on her hands and the edges of her loosening braid. "He lied to us for years yet I'm obsessed for trying to dig up the truth?"

Perseverance just laughs, the sound dwindling with the footsteps into faint echoes overhead.

"I don't believe you just cheated on mom without someone messing up your head!" her voice flies through the empty corridor.

The guards lock him in the tower, with a cot, some toiletries, a jug of water and a loaf of soft bread. The windows let in cooking sunlight to sap a night warrior's strength all the faster, and mirrors dot the concave walls so even during the night, the stars and moon shine brighter, never letting a night warrior build to their full strength.

Too bad Perseverance died and came back with a Destroyer's touch.

I wake, and walk, and Zadia and I come knocking on the Obsidian Castle under our umbrella. The claw of light flicks to attention, and Perseverance snaps the trap door open with spears of mist, cuts down the two guards at the base of the stairwell, then goes sneaking through the Castle to his family's quarters. They're asleep; it's late afternoon. Perseverance binds the door shut with threads of mist, tiny wires of light that root into the stones in the doorframe, tangling around the handle, worming into the gaps in the black wood. Like a mess of vines and snarled hair.

And he stands guard, heralding their Destroyer.

***

Author note: just a cute li'l interlude before some Castle invading shenanigans... Or maybe "cute" isn't the right word?