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thisdiscontentedwinter · 8 years ago

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SRB: The Light in the Woods

This was written for @sterekreversebang. Check out the awesome art by @rubyredhoodling here!

I’m posting it here because I know some of you guys like to read on Tumblr. But this is 12k+, so it might be easier to check it out on AO3 here.

Notes: Stiles’s language is basically bastardized Gaelic. Because I am lazy and didn’t want to make up a whole thing.

Thank you so much to @rubyredhoodling for the incredible art, and to @kcamp-homefry for beta reading.

(Apparently the cut isn’t showing up in some views. I have no idea why - I definitely put it there)

The Light in the Woods

CHAPTER 1

The last time Derek wore his ceremonial robes it was to bury his parents. On the day of his parents’ funeral the chapel had been crowded with mourners. Not today. This morning, with the ghostly pre-dawn light barely softening the darkness, the chapel is empty except for Derek, Peter, Boyd and Isaac.

The chapel is cold and dark this morning, another thing it has in common with the day of his parents’ funeral.

There are things better done in the darkness, Peter said last night. And this, Derek knows, is one of them.

Isaac looks half-asleep still. The flickering candlelight from the sconce on one of the pillars illuminates the sharp angles of his face. There are dark circles like thumbprints under his eyes.

“Isaac,” Peter says in an undertone. “The charter?”

“I shall fetch it, my lord.” Isaac slips away and is swallowed up in the gloom.

Derek keeps his gaze fixed on one of the stained-glass windows. In the sunlight they blaze with color, but now they are dark and nebulous, every panel dull and gray.

Peter’s blue eyes are almost black in the gloom. Derek sees the apology in them—an apology he knows will remain unspoken even in private—but also the resolve.

The Hales have been weak since the loss of Derek’s parents. Too many outsiders have thought that means they can come and pick over the bones of a once stable and prosperous kingdom. Peter, as regent, has pushed back any way he can against those who would seek to usurp the Hales: diplomacy, bribery, and outright hostility.

Derek’s not entirely sure into which category today’s little charade falls.

It doesn’t matter.

He doesn’t think Peter has slept a full night since he became regent.

The gods know Derek hasn’t.

He doesn’t blame Peter for this. Peter is a man caught in a very tight net. He’s working with the scant wriggle room he has, for all their sakes.

“If I start disregarding the treaties your mother signed, we risk any one of our so-called allies using our faithlessness as an excuse to attack.”

Still, the request from Beacon had come out of nowhere.

Beacon. Stupid name, but nobody has ever seemed to come up with a decent alternative. Its language is obscure. Opaque. Derek has seen the name of their land translated into anything from Beacon, to Laindéir, to Light-in-the-Woods. Its people are as incomprehensible as its name. They’re barely civilized. They’re barely human.

Why Talia Hale, Derek’s mother, had signed a treaty with them in the first place will forever remain a mystery to him. A marriage treaty, to foster an alliance between their people.

“Fuck.” Peter had stared blankly at the letter when it had arrived. The strange, spindly writing had announced the coming-of-age of the prince of Beacon. Prince, or foremost male child of the ruler, or some other title or designation that did not translate. And then: “No.”

Peter, always cleverest with his back to the wall, had pored over Talia’s treaty with Beacon and seized on the fact that Talia had promised a child in marriage. Not a daughter, since the treaty dated back to before there were any children to speak of. A child.

He had been so sure that the king of Beacon would refuse his offer of Derek. Even Derek had grudgingly smiled when Peter had sent his reply to Beacon. What king would send his son to marry another man? Marriages are for the making of heirs, which is precisely why Peter had offered Derek instead of Laura or Cora. That way Peter would have technically complied with the terms of the treaty, leaving the king of Beacon to be the one who broke it.

Except the king of Beacon did not send an insult for an insult. Instead he sent his son, and now here they are.

Isaac hurries back toward them, the charter of marriage in his hands.

Derek tries not to look at it, even though he’ll shortly be signing it with his uncle and Isaac and Boyd as witnesses. The priest, too, if the man ever appears. And… and the boy from Beacon with the name no translator has yet managed to pronounce the same twice.

Derek has grown up on the stories. Beacon lies to the north of Triskelion. It is small. It has no cities, barely even villages, and how the people prosper Derek has no idea. Because they aren’t quite people, probably. They are known to practice magic. It is said they can move through the veils separating the worlds like the fae can. It is said they are cold-blooded creatures, vicious and uncivilized. It is said they sacrifice trespassers to their ancient horned gods.

Peter is right to guard the Hale bloodline against them.

A door creaks open from one of the small rooms off the chapel transept. Deaton appears, holding a candle aloft. His robes sweep the floor behind him as he approaches the dark altar. He lights the candles on the altar one by one.

Isaac steps forward and sets the charter on the altar. Then he steps back again and takes his place behind Peter.

“Are we ready?” Deaton asks in a quiet voice.

Derek nods, his stomach twisting.

Deaton looks back toward the transept. “Come,” he says, and beckons. “It is time. Come.”

Derek turns to look.

At first he gets an impression of a monstrous figure, but then the light from a sconce illuminates the boy who steps out into the transept and Derek sees that he’s wearing a headdress made of antlers, with flowers woven to the points, and a veil hanging from the bone. He is pale-skinned under the veil, and fine boned. His eyes shine almost yellow in the candlelight. He wears a red undershirt, the collar standing up, with a white robe with blue trim over it. There is a thin red cloak over his shoulders. He carries a silver cup in his hand.

Derek gazes at him wide-eyed.

It is the first time he has seen the boy, who only arrived the night before. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but not quite this. There’s a strange beauty to the cast of the boy’s pale features that is both compelling and unnerving.

He thinks of the old song where the woman followed her fae lover into the woods.

Light down, light down, you are come to the place where you will die.

The boy meets Derek’s gaze and his steps falter.

“Come,” Deaton says, and beckons him forward again. “Come.”

The boy steps up to the altar, his eyes wide.

Derek steps up to join him.

And then it’s done.

***

The boy has been given a room down the passageway from Derek’s.

Derek follows him inside and shrugs his cloak off.

The boy touches the embroidery on his robe, his long, pale fingers tracing the shining blue threads. He lifts his gaze to Derek’s and then drops it again. His headdress dips, and his veil flutters.

Derek motions him forward. “Take this off, yes?”

The boy nods, his brow furrowing.

Derek tosses his cloak onto the trunk at the base of the boy’s bed. His crown follows. He has never liked to wear it, and must remember to give it to Boyd to return it safely to the treasury once he is done here. Derek presses his mouth into a thin line and ignores the dread sitting like a stone in his gut. He glares around the room at the low-burning lamps on the dresser, at the jug of wine beside them, and at the turned down blankets on the bed. The morning light might be filtering through the shutters, but the bedroom has been prepared for more nocturnal diversions. His glare lands on the boy again.

The boy is wide-eyed under his veil, his cheeks splotched with red. He lifts his fingers to the embroidery on his robe again, and moves his trembling fingers along the raised threads.

He’s nervous.

Derek feels a sudden burst of irrational anger that he’s expected to deal with the weight of both his own fear and the boy’s. The boy hasn’t made a damn move to remove his headdress.

“Take it off,” Derek repeats.

The boy shuffles forward. He folds his veil up, and lifts his strange headdress off. He sets it down on the dresser, and curls his fingers briefly around one of the points on the antlers.

Derek glances at him quickly.

The boy has dark hair that’s now sticking up at odd angles, and a smattering of moles across his face. Apart from his cheeks, which are still brightly flushed, his skin is pale.

Derek wants to open the door and flee.

Instead, he screws his courage and nods at the bed.

The boy’s sharp intake of breath seems very loud.

***

The boy keeps his face averted and his eyes squeezed shut. Derek fixes his gaze on the bedding, and tries not to be present in this moment. When it’s done, Derek straightens his clothes, and the boy—his husband—straightens his, and Derek has no idea what to say to him, and so he collects his cloak and his ceremonial crown and leaves the room.

When he pulls the door shut behind him, the boy is sitting on the bed blinking rapidly at the wall.

CHAPTER 2

Stiles, he thought as he traced the embroidery on his robe, he can call me Stiles.

Stiles has many names. They change with the seasons. Sometimes his name grows like a frond that unfurls as it pushes through the damp earth. Other times the syllables of it curl up and drop away like dead leaves. Nature is ever changing, and so are her creatures. Stiles has more names than all the seasons he has lived. He has more names than the babbling spring beside his flett can keep up with, even if she were to sing twice as fast.

Stiles sounds like a name this man will be able to say.

The man calls him nothing.

He doesn’t ask to see the runes Stiles’s father stitched into his wedding robe, or to read the meaning of the arrangement of flowers in the headdress. He doesn’t ask for the story of the stag who gave the antlers.

He doesn’t ask anything.

He picks up his things and leaves Stiles sitting on the edge of the bed, his shivering body aching in ways it hasn’t before. He is covered in sweat and… and other things. Stiles remains seated until his shivering subsides, and then he climbs to his feet and inspects the things on the dresser. He takes a sip of the wine and finds it bitter and thin. There is a basin with water in it. Stiles drinks a little of that instead, and uses the rest to wet a cloth and wipe himself clean.

He takes his embroidered robe off, his chest aching as he reads the runes stitched there. The runes list his favorite names; the names his father speaks through a wry smile, his voice full of love. Names that include Mischief, Spark, and Will-o’-the-Wisp. Names he earned alongside stubbed toes, skinned knees, and dirt-streaked smiles.

Stiles folds his robe carefully, and sets it down beside his headdress. He keeps his red undershirt on, smoothing out the wrinkles left by holding it out of the way when…

Stiles distracts himself from thinking about it by reaching out to touch the wall. It’s stone, and Stiles traces the line where one stone is cut to sit flush with its neighbor. The stone feels cold. It’s an interior wall, untouched by the rays of the rising sun, and unwarmed by it. Stiles removes his hand.

He straightens his undershirt, and fastens his cloak on over it. Then, casting a glance at his folded wedding robe and his headdress, he crosses to the door and opens it.

It is time to explore his new home.

***

Stiles might have the heart of a will-o’-the-wisp, but it’s better suited to winding aimless paths throughout the woods than it is to finding his way around a castle built of stone. There are too many narrow stairways with uneven steps and dark corners, and Stiles is too afraid to venture too far from his room in case he can’t find his way back. How is he supposed to find his way anywhere without the sun on his skin or the wind whispering in his ear to guide him?

He finds it strange and disconcerting to be hemmed in by stone like this. In the absence of windows he is drawn to the narrow arrow loops in the walls that let in precious light and air. His courage leaves him quickly in this place. He can’t smell any trees at all.

He flees back to his room.

He waits there like a coward until a maid comes to fetch him for breakfast. He considers donning his wedding robe again, but he doesn’t know the rules here. Nobody has explained them to him. Stiles suspects he wouldn’t understand even if they tried. He tugs his cloak tighter around his body instead, and follows the maid.

There are four people seated at the table. Conversation dies the moment Stiles steps into the room.

He is seated next to his husband to eat, even though his stomach aches with homesickness and he’s not hungry. He glances at his husband once or twice, but the man does not look back.

Stiles tries not to feel so small and afraid. The blood of the fae runs in his veins. He has scaled the cliffs at the edges of his world. He has waded through the marshes and heard the dead calling after him. He has listened to language of the water and the wind. He has seen the Wild Hunt, and bowed as the Old Ones passed by. Stiles does not fear the darkness. Stiles is a spark in the night. He is the light in the woods. He is his father’s son—his mother’s son—and he is unafraid.

It’s just… it would be much easier to believe that if he wasn’t so alone.

He misses his dad.

There’s a darkness coming to the heart of the woods, and Stiles knows his dad sent him away to protect him from it, but if Stiles is a spark, a flicker, a will-o’-the-wisp, then aren’t the woods darker now he’s gone? He should be there, but his dad thought Triskelion would be safer for him.

Even… even with the insult.

Stiles is no fool, and neither is his father. He knew they were supposed to reject Peter Hale’s offer of his nephew for the marriage treaty.

“They are laughing at us!” Stiles had shouted at his father. “At you!”

His father had only raised his eyebrows, refusing to get drawn into the maelstrom of Stiles’s anger. “Laughter never slit a man’s throat.”

Stiles presses his mouth into a thin line to kill the trembling in his bottom lip. For all they’d fought about it, Stiles had come to Triskelion determined to do his duty, and to honor the treaty his father had made with the Hales. He had fulfilled all his sacred traditions, even though there had been nobody to help him recite his prayers to the Old Ones as he dressed in his wedding robes. There had been nobody help him make sure his collar and his seams were straight, and that his veil was arrayed properly, so Stiles had done it all himself.

He was his father’s son, and his mother’s son, and he knew how to do his duty. He knew how to stand in front of a priest and do what was expected of him. It turns out he even knew how to lie back and do what was expected of him after the ceremony. But he didn’t know what to do now, with these strangers in this very strange land.

He steals a glance at them.

The Hales.

The daughters are beautiful. They are dark-haired and green-eyed like their brother. The older one, Stiles knows, will be Queen of Triskelion some day soon. The younger one looks just as imperious. He remembers that his father says the Hales are descended from wolves. Stiles can see a certain resemblance. Fierce creatures all.

They’re beautiful. Their brother too.

Heat rises in Stiles’s face and he tears his gaze away from his husband and glances at the regent instead.

The regent does not have green eyes. His eyes are piercing blue. Stiles spoke to him briefly when he arrived last night. At least he thinks it was a conversation they had. He nodded a lot and said “yes” whenever the regent’s inflection seemed to indicate a question, and his responses seemed to satisfy the man.

Stiles never learned much of the Triskelion language apart from basic greetings. He was always much more interested in the language of the woods: birdsong and the whisper of the wind and the rustling of the leaves.

He feels the depth of the paucity of his knowledge now when the regent speaks to him.

“Yes,” he says.

He looks at his husband just in time to see the man’s brows draw together in consternation.

Stiles looks to the regent again, and tries to look receptive. He raises his brows and leans forward a little. “Yes?”

The man repeats the words he said before. Stiles recognizes their cadence, but he doesn’t understand the words themselves. He meets the man’s eyes, and reads a hundred things in them that he needs no words to communicate: annoyance and amusement battle for dominance in the regent’s blue gaze, but underneath that he is as weary as a bough in winter, straining under the weight of ice and snow.

Stiles shakes his head blankly, and tells the man he does not understand.

Of course, the man does not understand that Stiles is telling him he does not understand.

It’s a vicious circle of not understanding.

Stiles would laugh about it, if it didn’t hurt so much.

He looks at his husband. His expression is shuttered.

“I was supposed to tell you all of my names that my father stitched into my robe,” Stiles tells him, and his husband’s forehead creases in some unhappy response. “And you were supposed to ask me about the antlers. I was supposed to tell you that my name can be Stiles for you, and you were supposed to tell me your name in return.”

His husband says something, a slight hint of impatience in his tone, and Stiles doesn’t need to translate the words to understand the sentiment: I have no idea what you’re saying.

Stiles would laugh about it, except he can’t even raise the ghost of a smile.

CHAPTER 3

Peter’s right.

It’s no consolation at all, but Peter’s right. If the Hales get the reputation that they’re disregarding treaties previously made by Talia, then sooner or later one of their so-called allies will make a move. Alliances are precarious things. It would only take the tiniest stumble for all of them to collapse where Triskelion is concerned. The Hales are weak right now, and that makes them prey.

Derek’s marriage was necessary. Better him than Laura or Cora. There will be no children born of this strange union. No half-Beaconite child will inherit the throne of Triskelion and taint the bloodline of the Hales.

Peter’s right.

The boy, he discovers, is called Stiles. It’s an odd name for some strange wild thing from the dark woods, but Stiles nods and smiles when Derek repeats it dubiously, and Stiles it is. He sits beside Derek at breakfast and at dinner, but vanishes the rest of the time. It’s weeks before Derek even realizes where it is he goes.

Derek should be worrying about the latest veiled threat from Deucalion—the man is a warlord and mercenary and reports state he is tracking closer and closer to Triskelion—and he’s on his way to meet Peter with a proposal to shift a garrison of men from the castle itself to the eastern border, when he finds himself drawn to the sound of raised voices coming from the Queen’s Garden.

The door to the walled garden is open, and Derek’s heart skips a beat. The Queen’s Garden was his mother’s. It was her sanctuary. Nobody ever disturbed her here, and as far as Derek knows only the family have come here since her death. Derek steps through the door wearing a scowl.

Stiles is seated on the ground. He’s dressed in nothing but a thin pair of trousers. Swathes of pale mole-dotted skin are on display. His bare shoulders are surprisingly broad, and he is leanly muscled and not at all as small as he first appeared to Derek clothed in his strange wedding finery. He has his bare hands splayed on the ground beside him, and his bare toes digging into the thin, brown grass. It’s almost winter. He must be freezing.

Stiles doesn’t seem to care that it’s cold though. He’s gazing up at the two women who appear to be standing over him fighting.

Derek recognizes one of them as Jennifer, and feels a jolt of something that’s almost guilt in his gut. Jennifer is sweet and kind, and Derek made no advances, and made no promises either, but there was something. Shared glances. Shy smiles. For the first time since Kate, Derek had let himself entertain the idea of allowing a lover into his life again.

And then Stiles had arrived.

Jennifer looks upset as the other woman—younger, with long dark hair tied in a messy ponytail—jabs a finger toward her. “You’re doing it wrong!”

“What’s going on here?” Derek demands, and all three of them notice him at once.

The young woman who was acting the aggressor looks suddenly mortified. She shoves her hands in her sleeves and takes a step back.

Jennifer’s expression of surprise morphs into one of warm gratitude.

Stiles clambers to his feet.

“What’s going on here?” Derek asks again.

“The regent has asked me to teach your husband our language, highness,” Jennifer says. “And I have been trying, but he is proving himself intractable.”

“Because you’re doing it wrong!” the other young woman bursts out, and then claps her hands over her mouth.

Derek looks her up and down. She is a stranger to him. “And you are?”

The woman gives an awkward curtsey. “Kira. Kira Yukimura.”

“Your parents are the traders,” Derek says.

She nods. “And before we were here, we were in Lady Satomi’s court, and she is allied with Beacon. There were ambassadors there. I’ve learned their language.”

Jennifer hugs a book to her chest. “I have a perfectly good foundation in their language!”

Kira rolls her eyes, and says something to Stiles in a series of strange tones that sound not unlike birdsong.

Stiles rolls his eyes too, and that’s enough to decide Derek.

“Jennifer,” he says, “I’m sure your assistance has been valuable, but I’ll advise my uncle that Stiles has found himself another teacher.”

Jennifer’s smile wavers, and he hopes he hasn’t hurt her feelings.

“Thank you,” he says. “For all your efforts.”

Jennifer gives him another smile and walks toward the door, still clutching the book.

Derek watches her for a moment, a strange sadness tugging at him, and turns back to Stiles just in time to see his husband look away.

If Derek didn’t know better, he’d say Stiles appears upset.

He turns on his heel and follows Jennifer inside.

***

There’s a map of Triskelion laid out on the table in Peter’s room. Derek doesn’t think he’s rolled it up and set it aside since he became regent. Peter is drawn to it, his sharp gaze always pulled to it in case he’s missed something. Peter has bags under his eyes that he never had before. Derek remembers how he used to laugh once. He remembers how he was before he wore long sleeves even in the summer to hide his scars.

Derek’s fault.

“How’s the husband?” Peter asks mildly, moving around the table and tapping his finger on Beacon.

Such a tiny territory. So fucking insignificant.

“The treaty with them,” Derek says, and then swallows. “Why did my mother make it?”

Peter meets his gaze and holds it. “I don’t know.”

Derek raises his eyebrows. “You know everything.”

“No, that’s just something I encourage my many enemies to believe.” Peter’s smile is wry, and a little bitter. He turns his head as Isaac approaches with a cup of wine for him. Isaac looks just as tired as Peter, but Peter won’t trust any other servant with his food preparation, and Isaac would never let anyone else do it anyway. “The treaty was made long before I was interested in such things. I can’t imagine that it was strategic in any way. An overture of genuine friendship, perhaps.”

Derek snorts. “Friendship?”

“Such a thing can exist, even amongst neighbors.” Peter’s smile fades as he focuses on the map again. “Have you spoken to your sisters today?”

“No.” Derek frowns. “Should I? Has something happened?”

“I have no idea,” Peter says. “Laura is still angry with me over your unexpected nuptials and refusing to speak to me, and Cora is taking her lead, as always.”

Derek nods curtly.

Peter exhales slowly. “I did this for them, Derek. You do understand, don’t you? This wasn’t to punish you.”

Derek allows himself a fleeting thought of Jennifer. He barely knows her, but what does that matter when it comes to the fantasies his mind weaves for him? He imagines her nursing a baby in her arms. That’s something Stiles can never give him. This may not be a punishment, but it feels like one. And despite what Peter and his sisters have all told him, Derek knows that he deserves to be punished.

He nods. “I understand.”

Peter taps a point on the map. “My spies tell me that Deucalion is heading north again. He may be seeking out winter quarters. The seasons are with us, but I expect he will make his move against us come spring. We have to be ready.”

“Our allies?” Derek asks.

“Our allies are very much waiting to see if we blink.” Peter quirks an eyebrow. “Christopher Argent has offered to send fifty men.”

“To slaughter us in our beds?” Derek asks bitterly. “To finish the job Kate started?”

“I’d trust him before Deucalion,” Peter says mildly. He tilts his head, considering. “But only just before.”

“The wolves are at the gate now,” Derek says.

“We were the wolves once, Derek.” Peter looks down at the map again. “And we’re not defeated yet.”

***

Days later Derek hears laughter, and steps outside into the Queen’s Garden to find Stiles lying on his stomach on the grass, his pale skin glowing in the sunlight. Kira is sitting beside him, and they’re both chattering away in that strange language that makes no sense to Derek’s ear.

As he watches, Stiles reaches out and draws a dandelion out of the grass.

Stiles plucks the dandelion and holds it up. He purses his lips and blows a puff of air at the dandelion, causing the seeds to burst free and float away.

Kira laughs, and then Stiles does, and Derek feels a pang of something too full of regret to be jealousy. He doesn’t hate Stiles. He’s sorry for both of them, he supposes, that they’re trapped in this marriage for the rest of their lives, and he wonders what Stiles has done to deserve it.

That night after dinner Derek walks with Stiles back toward their rooms. Stiles hesitates when they reach his door, and offers Derek a small smile.

“Good night,” Derek says, just as he always does.

“Good night,” Stiles echoes, and then hesitates before speaking again. “I am sorry.”

“Sorry?” Derek asks, his brows drawing together.

Stiles nods, his smile gone. He reaches out and takes Derek’s hand. Curls their fingers together and then nods at them as though to emphasize their union. “I am sorry I am an insult.”

Derek stares at him, unable to speak. The blood roars in his skull.

“Goodnight, Derek,” Stiles says softly. He drops Derek’s hand and slips into his room, closing the door behind him.

CHAPTER 4

Kira is the only real brightness in Stiles’s days. To begin with he has crazy fantasies that if only he can learn to speak his husband’s language properly, then all the walls between them will crumble away like dust, but as the days turn into weeks and as Stiles begins to communicate better it becomes increasingly obvious that Derek just doesn’t like him very much. He doesn’t seem to dislike him either. He seems indifferent to Stiles, and somehow that hurts more than actual hostility would.

“You know what happened here, though?” Kira asks him in an undertone one morning as they sit in Stiles’s room and play a game of cards.

Stiles doesn’t understand the game, but Kira has been good enough to play river stones with him every other time so he’s trying to learn.

“What?” Stiles asks, squinting at his cards.

The weather outside is too terrible even for Stiles today, hence their indoor games. The clouds rolled in early in the morning, and now there is sleet. Stiles likes rain and he likes snow, but he hates the in-betweenness of sleet.

“With the Argents?” Kira asks. “With Kate Argent?”

Stiles shrugs. Laindéir is isolated, but not that isolated. When three quarters of the Hales were slaughtered in a fire set by an enemy, everyone heard of it. “Yes.”

“They say she seduced Derek,” Kira says, keeping her voice low even though the door is closed. “They say that’s how she got into the wing where the Hales slept. Because Derek had showed her a secret way.”

Stiles lets his cards spill onto the bed, and stands up and crosses to his small window. He pushes the shutters open and stares out at the eastern wing of the castle where it hugs the side of the hill like a crooked arm. There are still scorch marks on the stone. On cool, clear days the air still carries the faint scent of ashes.

“That’s where it happened?” he asks.

Kira joins him at the window. “The queen, her husband, two of their children. Peter’s wife. I think they had a daughter too. And servants and guards as well. They say it’s a miracle anyone escaped at all. That part of the castle is boarded up now. Nobody goes there.”

Stiles frowns through the shroud of sleet at the abandoned wing of the castle. “Derek loved her?”

Kira raises her eyebrows, and switches to the language of Triskelion. “He fucked her. I don’t know if he loved her.”

There is no distinction in the words in Laindéiran. No way to separate the act from the emotion. Deogràdh. Stiles had never really considered the dissonance though, until his marriage. Until he and Derek fucked, but did not love. He doesn’t know if it is a fault of the Laindéiran language that no distinction exists there, or a fault in the hearts of men that the distinction exists in reality.

He should have known it long before he married. Stiles was born the son of the ceanurra. He was always going to marry for politics. Stiles didn’t expect a love match. But he also didn’t expect indifference. Nobody has ever been indifferent to Stiles. He babbles like a spring, stumbles around like a newborn fawn who hasn’t yet found his feet, and can be as abrasive as emery. Strike him, and he sparks like flint. Stiles is impossible to ignore, but here, hemmed in by the close stone walls of the castle, he has become invisible.

Kira knocks her shoulder against his and says in Laindéiran, “Your prince is like a man who put his hand in the mouth of a dog, and won’t do it again.”

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “What?”

“It’s a saying,” Kira says with a laugh. “It’s hard to make the words fit.”

“Say it in their words,” Stiles tells her.

“Once bitten, twice shy,” she says in the language of Triskelion.

Once bitten, twice shy.

Stiles files the saying, and the sentiment, away for further consideration.

***

Stiles is always seated beside Derek at dinner, most often at the end of the main table. Breakfast with the Hales is a private affair. Dinner is not. Peter sits on Derek’s other side, and Laura and Cora on the other side of him. They only sit on one side of the table, so that they might watch and be watched by the other denizens of the castle. The curious and speculative looks they cast Stiles in the early days have gone now. No-one pays him any more mind that the servants that flit from table to table.

Stiles is almost entirely invisible.

Conversation floats above him, as nebulous as smoke.

Stiles wishes that he could drift away on it, be carried up a chimney and vanish into the sky.

He excuses himself from dinner early, and slips back to his room.

The fire in his room has burned down in his absence, and Stiles does not rebuild it. There is no maid who will do it either, Stiles knows, while he is in the room. They are afraid of him. Of his strangeness. Of whatever stories they have heard of Light-in-the-Woods.

Stiles feels a burst of anger rising inside him, hotter than any dying embers in the hearth. Is he not the son of the ceanurra? Was his mother not a keeper of the grove? Stiles is not nothing.

He rises from his bed and crosses to his dresser. He lifts his antlered headdress up to feel the weight of it.

He is not nothing.

He is not.

***

The regent is still awake when Stiles knocks on his door later that night.

“Nephew,” he says, his mouth curling in a smile that seems sharper than the shape a mouth should make.

Stiles raises his eyebrows and sorts through the words he knows for familial relationships. “Uncle,” he settles on at last.

The regent’s smile grows a little broader. “What can I do for you, Stiles?”

Stiles crosses to the table in the middle of the room and studies the map laid out there. It takes him a moment to orient himself and realize that he supposed to view the map like a bird would view the land, from above.

“Where is danger?” he asks.

Peter exchanges a look with his servant before he answers. He taps a place on the map. “The Argents, here.” And another place. “Deucalion, here. And at least six separate allies who are more than ready to pick over our bones.”

Stiles might not understand every word, but the regent’s sentiment is clear. “My father is your ally.”

Peter raises his eyebrows.

Stiles meets his gaze. “We don’t want your bones.”

“Is that so?” Peter asks, lip curling. “You’d be the first.”

Stiles takes no offence. Peter is also once bitten, twice shy. He tilts his head on an angle and looks at the map again. He points to it.

“Beacon,” Peter confirms.

“Laindéir,” Stiles corrects, his mouth quirking. “Ally.”

Peter shrugs.

Stiles considers the map again. He presses the tip of his index finger to the coastline. “Deucalion, yes?”

Peter inclines his head.

Stiles draws a line between Deucalion’s current position and Triskelion. It cuts straight through Laindéir.

“He won’t attack through there,” Peter says with a snort. “Nobody wants Beacon.”

Stiles furrows his brow and ignores the sudden ache in his chest.

He does.

He wants Laindéir.

***

The first snow falls that night. Stiles sits on his bed with his window open and his blankets wrapped around his shoulders. He closes his eyes and lets the cold nip at his pebbled skin and remind him that he’s alive. He thinks of the map on Peter’s table, where Laindéir is only a thumb’s length away.

He opens his eyes when he hears footsteps passing in the passage outside. There’s a faint glow of lamplight underneath the door. Stiles shrugs his blankets off and stands up. The floor is cold under his feet. He crosses to his door, and pulls it open no wider a fraction.

There’s a woman vanishing down the steps at the end of the passage. Stiles only gets a glimpse of her, but a glimpse is all he needs.

It’s Jennifer.

Stiles opens his door further, and turns his head to look back the way she came.

He sees Derek’s door close.

Stiles turns back into his room.

This is not a betrayal. A betrayal implies affection. And Jennifer is doe-eyed and soft, and as sweet as a blossom. It would be very easy, Stiles thinks, to love her. This is not a betrayal.

His eyes are stinging from the cold, that’s all.

Stiles crosses to the window and pulls the shutters closed.

It is just the cold.

Stiles climbs onto his bed and pulls his blankets over him. Maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll dream of home tonight.

CHAPTER 5

Derek’s change of heart begins the day that Stiles says good morning to him, and follows up with a comment on the weather. And then, a wrinkle appearing in his brow, he takes a breath and says, “I hope the snow is not too early for the farmers.”

“I don’t think it is,” Derek replies, surprised, and Stiles makes a small sound of satisfaction. Derek isn’t sure if he’s pleased that the farmers and their crops are fine, or that he effectively communicated. He suspects it’s more the latter. There’s a brightness in his gaze that wasn’t there before, and Derek likes it.

Derek seeks out Jennifer later that day.

Jennifer has been Cora’s tutor for several months now. She’s kind and patient. A pushover, Laura whispers, but Derek thinks it’s good for Cora to have someone in her life who isn’t fueled by some combination of grief and anger and bitterness, like the Hales are. A normal, decent person who is also unmotivated by politics. There are very few of them in Cora’s life. Her last tutor, Harris, was more interested in getting close to the rulers of Triskelion than he was in teaching. His attempts to insinuate himself into Peter’s circle of advisors had been pathetic. He’d barely lasted a month before being sent on his way. Jennifer is no Harris.

She looks surprised when Derek approaches her, and smiles shyly when he asks her to teach him what she knows of Stiles’s language.

“Well, I think that perhaps Kira Yukimura would be a better teacher,” she tells him, a blush rising in her cheeks. “I have books, but I’m sure my pronunciation is—”

“I want it to be a secret,” Derek says, feeling the heat rise in his own cheeks. “Um, a surprise.”

“Oh!” She smiles, her dark eyes shining. “Oh, then of course I’ll do what I can to help, your highness.”

“Just Derek,” he says. “Please.”

Her smile grows. So does her blush. “Derek.”

***

“If Deucalion wants us,” Peter says one night, half into his cups as he stares into the fire that Isaac has built up, “then why set up his winter quarters in Shiprock?”

Derek looks up from the book that Jennifer has loaned him. He’s never studied a language as strangely mercurial as Stiles’s. Every conjugation, every permutation of a word is prefaced with the same disclaimer: that the meaning may have shifted after the scribe wrote it down.

“Shiprock?” he asks.

Peter sips his wine and scowls at the fire as though the answer might be found there. “It puts him close to Beacon.”

Derek shuts his book and sets it down. “Beacon?”

“Something Stiles pointed out, actually,” Peter says. “Am I blind, Derek?”

“What?”

“Stare too long at a fire,” Peter says, “and you may become blind.”

“I haven’t had enough wine to deal with your metaphors, Peter,” Derek tells him with a narrow look.

Peter snorts. “I mean to say, nephew, that perhaps I’ve fixated so much on our tiny little part of the map that I’ve entirely neglected to take a step back and look at the larger picture.”

“Which is?” Derek asks.

Peter gives him the side eye. “Give me a minute, Derek. I’ve only just realized there may be one.”

This time when Isaac offers him wine, Derek accepts.

***

Derek has never liked winter. It’s still dark when he gets up, and he and Boyd head outside to the yard by the barracks to train and spar. Cold makes the blows sting even more. Unlike the rest of the garrison, Derek doesn’t have to be here. But he hasn’t missed a training session since the fire. The training ground lies in the shadow of the ruined east wing. To sleep in would be unthinkable.

Despite the season, Derek likes the company of the garrison. They’re rough and foul-mouthed to a man or, in Erica’s case, to a woman, but Derek is more at home in their sometimes rough company that he is speaking with men and women of rank and title.

“Cold, isn’t it?” Erica asks, rolling her shoulders as she gets ready to spar with Derek. Erica doesn’t look physically intimidating, but Derek’s worn the business end of her quarterstaff too many times to underestimate her.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Derek says, and his breath, hanging like smoke in front of his face, makes a liar of him.

Erica snorts, shifting her balance. The frost cracks under the soles of her boots. “Want me to warm you up with a paddling, your highness?”

Down here in the training yard, his title is only ever used to tease.

“Ladies first,” Derek says.

Erica throws back her head and laughs, and then she’s on him. Erica doesn’t have Derek’s muscle mass, but she’s fast. The crash of her quarterstaff against his sends shockwaves reverberating through his bones. Derek takes four steps back before he finds his footing again. He manages to get her on the defensive, briefly, before she sidesteps his attack, forces him to pivot on his wrong foot to follow her, and suddenly she’s in charge again.

Their sparring matches always bring an audience. Boyd is leaning against the fence, arms folded over his chest, watching. Scott, one of the newer garrison members, has joined him, as well as Liam and Brett. They’ve attracted the attention of a few of the servants from the kitchens as well, and Mason, Deaton’s scribe. Someone catcalls when Derek slips on a patch of icy ground and ends up on his ass.

Erica, laughing, reaches down a hand to help him up, and then they’re fighting again.

Derek isn’t sure when he notices their audience has fallen silent. Erica notices too, and steps back, breathing heavily as she leans on her staff. Derek looks over toward the fence.

Stiles.

He’s pale and beautiful in the cold. Derek wants to walk over to him and tug his cloak more firmly around him to ensure the chill wind can’t bite him. He’s wearing boots today, but no gloves, and Derek wants to take his hands and warm them with his breath. He looks solemn and shy and a part of Derek wants to see his smile and hear his laughter, even though he knows he is not entitled to those things. Even though he knows he shoulders the blame for their absence. He has neglected his husband, when he should at least have offered some overture of friendship.

Stiles has a friend now, though.

Kira taps Stiles on the arm and says something, and Stiles follows her gaze to the group of onlookers leaning on the fence. Scott straightens up, flushing, as they look at him. Kira smiles, and then blushes, and looks away again.

Stiles smiles too, a hint of mischief in it before it fades away again to nothing and he looks back to Derek.

Derek wonders if he imagines the moment of understanding that passes between them, too profound to need any translation at all.

Neither he nor Stiles will ever have those moments, will they? Neither he nor Stiles will ever flirt or blush or fall in love with a smiling stranger, tentative and unsure and breathless with possibilities.

Derek wonders if there’s something in the books that Jennifer brings him that will ever teach him the right words to explain to Stiles that he knows, and he’s sorry too, but perhaps they can still be friends.

He tears his gaze from Stiles and adjusts his grip on his quarterstaff.

“Again,” he says to Erica.

She comes at him like a demon.

***

“Your mother was a very smart woman,” Peter says that night, pacing around the table with the map. “Very smart.”

Derek nods.

“Do you want a drink?” Peter asks suddenly.

Derek glances around the room for Isaac, and sees him curled in Peter’s chair by the fire.

“Let him sleep,” Peter says, his tone fond. “He hardly has a moment to himself lately.”

Derek isn’t sure where Peter found Isaac. The boy is whip-smart and loyal down to his core, but he comes from peasant stock and has no formal training in how to serve a man of Peter’s station. He’s fiercely protective of Peter in a way that would be presumptuous, if Derek hadn’t once seen the boy applying salve to the shiny scar tissue that covers Peter’s torso from the burns he received years ago in the fire. Peter wears clothing that hides the worst of his scarring, but the scars still pain him. He hides it well, but that night Derek had seen Peter biting on a wadded up cloth to muffle his cries as Isaac worked the salve into his ruined skin. Isaac’s eyes had shone with tears too. Peter is very careful of who he trusts, who he shows his weaknesses to. If Peter trusts Isaac, then Derek does too.

Peter fetches them a cup of wine each, and returns his attention to the map. “Beacon has a Nemeton.”

“What the hell is a Nemeton?”

“Some sort of tree,” Peter says, “if the translation can be believed.”

Derek raises his eyebrows at that. The language of Beacon is incredibly obscure.

“It’s magic,” Peter says. “And powerful. It protects their land.”

“Magic is bullshit,” Derek says. “It isn’t real.”

“And yet nobody has ever been able to take Beacon,” Peter says, raising his eyebrows.

“Because it’s not worth the bother. Because there’s nothing worth having.”

“Take a look at this map,” Peter tells him, “and then compare it with one from fifty years ago, or a hundred, or two hundred. Since when have kings cared if something is worth the bother? Kings conquer for the sake on conquering, and gladly sacrifice thousands of soldiers for tiny pieces of land unfit for cultivation. Kings are proud and cruel.”

“You think that Beacon has a magic tree?” Derek asks him, dubious. “And you think my mother knew about it and that’s why she made a treaty with Beacon?”

“Yes,” Peter says, and he sounds perfectly serious. “And, more than that, I think that’s why Deucalion has made his winter quarters at Shiprock. He doesn’t just want Triskelion. He’s going for Beacon too.”

CHAPTER 6

Stiles discovers the library in the middle of winter, drawn in at first by the fireplace and the thick rugs that cover the cold stone floors. He cannot read most of the books, but he picks a few with illustrations, and retires with them to the nook by the window where he can watch the snow and still feel the warmth from the fire on his back. The illustrations are beautiful. They are illuminated. Stiles sometimes lifts the books to his nose to smell the faint metallic scent of the inks and pigments. Green is copper and verdigris. Red smells like madder. Black carries the memory of oak galls and wine.

The library is a nice place to be alone. The librarian and his assistants don’t seem to mind that he is there. Either that, or they don’t know how to tell the husband of a prince to leave. Stiles isn’t sure which is it. His presence is tolerated, and that is enough.

The library fast becomes his sanctuary when he isn’t spending time with Kira, and Stiles doesn’t expect anyone to seek him out there. He’s surprised one afternoon to look up from his book and see Derek standing in front of him. He sets his book down beside him and rises to his feet.

Derek’s brows draw together, and he appears to be struggling for words. When he speaks, it’s in Laindéiran. Sort of. “Are you found well by the day?”

Stiles’s jaw drops.

A flush rises on Derek’s cheeks. His apology comes in Triskelion: “I am sorry. Forgive me. I thought that— I was mistaken.”

He turns away.

“No!” Stiles reaches out impulsively and grabs him by the arm. Derek turns back, eyes wide, and face pink underneath his beard. Stiles sucks in a deep breath and says, in halting Triskelion, “No. Your words are good, please. I was…” He grimaces.

“Surprised?” Derek prompts softly.

Yes, that seems like the right word.

“Surprised,” Stiles echoes.

Derek’s smile is small and shy, and is somehow not at all out of place on a man Stiles has previously seen trying to smash a woman with a quarterstaff while growling like the a wolf.

“I want to talk,” Stiles says. “It is hard to find the words. Kira helps me.”

Derek nods.

Stiles is still holding his arm. He uncurls his fingers reluctantly. “I am an insult—”

Derek’s eyes widen. “No.”

“Yes,” Stiles corrects him. His throat aches as he tries to remember the words to use. As he remembers the way Kira coached him through his, her eyes wide with sympathy. “Listen, please. I am an insult, but also a prince. I have pride.” His face burns, and he doesn’t feel proud right now. He feels humiliated. “If you have lovers, make them secret from me, and from the court. Please.”

Derek looks so confused that Stiles is sure he’s used the wrong words somehow. “Stiles, I don’t… I don’t have lovers.”

Deogràdh, Stiles thinks. There is no proper translation for it, and he has made the wrong choice of words.

“Ones that you fuck,” he corrects himself.

“That I what?” Derek flinches back.

A librarian’s assistant peers around a cabinet at them, and then hurries away.

“Stiles.” Derek lowers his voice. “I don’t… there is nobody I do that with.”

“Jennifer,” Stiles whispers. “I see at night, leaving your room.”

“No!” Derek shakes his head, wide-eyed, and gestures at the shelves beside them. “Books. She brings me books.”

A strange sort of hope wells up inside Stiles. “Books?”

“So that I can learn—badly—how to speak with you.”

It takes Stiles a moment to parse the words, and a moment longer to get the self-deprecating joke. Understanding leaves him somehow lighter. “No lovers?”

“No,” Derek says. “I—I wouldn’t.”

Sudden silence lies between them, laden with questions unasked and unaskable. And Stiles, who his father says can talk underwater with a mouth full of river stones, hates that it is so difficult to communicate with this man, his husband. Derek looks wary.

“Me also,” Stiles tells him. “I wouldn’t. I…” Words fail him and he switches to Laindéiran. “You are beautiful, and you are strong, and I want to know if you can make my blood sing. In my dreams you can, and I want to try. I want to have someone to share deogràdh, and fate has given you to me, and I want to know your mind more than anything, Derek. I want us to be friends, like the raven and the wolf, to work together even though we come from different worlds.”

Derek’s eyes widen as he speaks, and he shakes his head helplessly. “Stiles…”

“You don’t understand a word I am saying,” Stiles tells him with a rueful smile. “But I think you will understand this.”

He reaches out and holds Derek’s face in his hands. His beard is soft under Stiles’s palms. His eyes are very wide and his lips—Stiles leans in—his lips are warm. Stiles’s heart beats as fast as a rabbit’s in a snare, and he pulls back slowly, releasing Derek’s face, half-afraid of what he might see revealed in Derek’s expression.

He sees something close to wonder.

Deogràdh.

Derek takes Stiles’s hands in his own and lifts them, one by one, to his mouth. He presses his lips to Stiles’s knuckles, and Stiles feels his mouth spread wide in a smile. Hope bubbles up into cautious happiness.

Deogràdh.

Yes. He and Derek can find love, can’t they?

It doesn’t matter how things started between them, only how they will end, and it is not politics that decides that. It is Derek and Stiles.

Yes.

***

They make time. Stiles goes to watch Derek train in the mornings, and leans on the fence with the other spectators. They are a little stilted around him at first, but that wears off in a few days.

“What’s a whoreson?” Stiles asks Kira loudly when Liam lets the insult out in response to Mason’s jostling.

Derek glances over at them, an eyebrow cocked.

Liam looks ready to fall on his sword, never mind that it’s a wooden training sword. “Oh, your highness! Both your highnesses! I didn’t mean—”

Stiles bursts out laughing.

“He learned that one in his first week,” Kira tells Liam with a bright smile.

They treat him less like a strange creature after that.

They spend time in the library in the afternoons, watching the flurries of snow hit the windows. Sometimes Kira is with them, to translate. Sometimes Scott is too, because he is in love with Kira. He doesn’t admit it though. He makes excuses about reading books from the library. Sometimes he even collects a few volumes, but Stiles hasn’t seen him open one yet.

Derek watches the snow with a pensive expression.

“You think the sun will bring war,” Stiles says, and then corrects himself before Kira can. “The summer.”

“Yes,” Derek says.

“Do you fight?” Stiles asks.

“I will.”

Stiles nods and chews the end of his stylus. He’s been using a wax tablet to write on, like a child just learning his letters. “Then I will fight too.”

Derek raises his eyebrows in surprise before he quickly schools his expression.

“What?” Stiles switches to Laindéiran as his pride feels the blow and his anger rises in response. “You think I can’t fight? That I can’t hunt? You think I am some fragile flower to be ripped apart by a gentle breeze? I am the son of the ceanurra. My mother was a keeper of the grove! I am the spark that begets the flame! I killed the stag whose antlers I wore when I was six years old!”

This is who I am, Derek. Not some quiet little thing. This. This is who you kissed.

Derek might not understand the words, but there’s no mistaking Stiles’s tone. Derek shows him his palms, placating, and looks helplessly to Kira.

“Don’t turn your face to her,” Stiles scowls. “Look me in the eye when you insult me, if you’re man enough to do it!”

Kira clamps her mouth shut.

Scott makes himself scarce.

Derek looks back to Stiles. “I’m sorry. I’ve just never seen you use a weapon.”

It’s Stiles’s turn to look to Kira.

“Urlis,” she supplies.

Stiles draws a deep breath and tries to marshal his thoughts. He leans close to Derek, and shows his teeth in a sharp smile. He says, in Triskelion, “I need no weapon to kill.”

Then, gathering his cloak around himself, he stalks away, passing a startled Jennifer by one of the shelves.

“Stiles!” Derek calls after him.

“Whoreson,” Stiles mutters, and continues on his way.

***

Stiles doesn’t go to dinner. He sits in his room instead, his wedding robe spread out on his bed, his fingers tracing the runes his father stitched into the fabric. When he hears the knock at his door he rolls his eyes. It had better be his husband, and he’d better come bearing an apology. And also food. He clambers down from the bed and crosses to the door to open.

“Jennifer?” he asks, surprised.

She smiles at him. “I brought you barley cakes.”

Stiles’s stomach growls, and he steps back to let her inside.

She sets the plate of barley cakes down on his dresser, and then crosses to his bed. Her gaze falls on his robes.

“Will-o’-the-wisp,” she says, tilting her head. “Mischief.”

Stiles feels unease stirring. How can she—

Jennifer could barely string together a sentence in Laindéiran. There’s no way she should be able to read those runes.

“Spark,” she says. “Light in the woods.”

The blood roars in Stiles’s skull.

Jennifer inhales sharply as she reads the next rune.

It suddenly feels as though all the air has been sucked out of the room. Stiles grasps desperately for his connection to the earth, but he is surrounded by cold stone.

Jennifer spins around to face him.

Her eyes are white, and her mouth is curved into a sick parody of a smile. “Nemeton!”

A rush of dark wind fills the room, and Stiles is choking on it. He stumbles to his knees, coughing. Everything tastes like blood.

CHAPTER 7

Stiles doesn’t turn up for dinner.

Derek eats in silence, ignoring his sisters’ curious looks. He’s almost thankful for their usual audience of noblemen and courtiers. Even Cora at her most indiscreet knows better than to make jokes about Stiles’s absence in company. She’ll find a way to torment Derek in private, he’s sure. He’s almost looking forward to it. Neither of his sisters have teased him about Stiles much. In the beginning, it would have been too hurtful. Lately though, now that they’ve caught Derek and Stiles smiling at one another—Cora once saw them holding hands in the library too—the gentle mocking has begun. His sisters are happy to jab at his discomfort, now they’re certain it’s not an open wound.

Stiles earlier burst of anger rankles, but the further Derek contemplates it, the more he realizes he is to blame. He knows so little about Stiles and his people. It’s a gap he’s trying to bridge by learning Stiles’s strange language, but in the meantime he shouldn’t assume that just because he’s never seen Stiles lift a sword that he is unable to fight. He remembers that old song again:

Light down, light down, you are come to the place where you will die.

Stiles is from Beacon. There are old stories of entire battalions walking into the forest and vanishing forever. Old stories, yes, but not forgotten. There are dark things in the woods in Beacon.

Derek jabs at his food half-heartedly, and wonders if Stiles is one of them.

Should he be scared of Stiles?

He remembers how Stiles smiled so broadly the day they first kissed in the library. He remembers his flushed pink cheeks, his wide amber eyes, and his curved mouth that drew Derek in again.

Stiles is a contradiction. He in unknowable still, while language separates them, but there are moments they share that make Derek warm with a quiet sort of pleasure. He likes that they can make each other smile.

They can make each other angry as hell too, apparently.

Derek sighs.

Stiles is a contradiction and Derek owes him an apology.

He pushes his plate away and leaves the hall.

***

There’s a smell like burning in the passageway.

A smell like death.

Derek remembers the smoke. He remembers the sound of screaming. He remembers Peter, lit from behind by flames, his hair burned away, his charred nightclothes stuck to his melted skin, his daughter limp in his arms.

He remembers everything, and he freezes. And then he hears it.

At first he thinks Stiles is calling for him: Derek! Derek!

He rushes toward his room, toward his door. The door is ajar, and the acrid stench of smoke is stronger here. Derek pushes the door open.

Stiles is on his knees on the floor with a woman standing over him, vines of black smoke wrapped around his throat. He’s clawing at them uselessly, his fingers slipping straight through.

He chokes out the word again: “Darach!”

The woman turns, and it’s Jennifer. And it’s also not. It’s some creature that belongs in nightmares. Black veins cross her pale skin like the twisted roots of some ancient tree. Her eyes are white, like a blind man’s. Her dark hair floats around her in thick tendrils, like she is underwater.

She opens her mouth, and Derek feels a rush of dizziness, as though she is somehow devouring him.

He acts without thinking.

He seizes Stiles’s antlered headdress off the dresser and runs at her. He slams her into the wall, impaling her with the antlers. Her white eyes stare at him, and crimson blood bubbles out of her mouth.

Derek steps back, and she slumps to the floor.

“Stiles!” Derek drops to his knees beside him. “Stiles!”

Stiles sucks in a choking breath. His lips, almost blue, slowly regain their color.

“Darach,” he says, gasping. He shakes his head as though to clear it, and Derek sees a trail of blood leaking from his ear. Stiles wipes the back of his hand against his nose, and leaves a streak of blood against his skin. He spits on the floor. Bright red.

“You need a healer,” he says.

He’s not sure if Stiles understands the words or not, but what was it Jennifer called him that time? Intractable.

“No,” Stiles says. He tries to climb to his feet, and stumbles.

Derek stands, and helps him up. All his attention is on Stiles, and not on Jennifer. He only realizes his mistake when Stiles pushes him aside roughly.

Jennifer is rising to her feet as well, as though she is a puppet pulled on strings. She doesn’t brace herself to stand, she just suddenly is, all her weight dragged up the wall behind her by some unseen force.

“Darach,” Stiles says, his face twisting. He pushes out his hand, as though holding back some invisible force tide. He begins to mutter, the words strange and almost guttural and unlike any Derek has heard him use before. His eyes glow gold.

Jennifer begins to shudder and jerk like a landed fish.

Derek’s heart seizes.

Jennifer opens her mouth and screams.

There is a loud, sharp cracking sound as Stiles’s magic breaks her neck.

This time when she slumps to the floor she stays there.

***

The bleeding won’t stop. The blood beads on Stiles’s pale skin like perspiration and soaks through his clothes. It gathers in his hairline and slides in slick droplets down his face. He blinks, and it appears like tears.

“Help me!” Derek yells as he carries Stiles down the passageway, heading for the dining hall, for people, for aid. “Help me!”

His shouts bring them running; servants and courtiers and guards and his family, all of them open-mouthed at the spectacle of Stiles sweating blood and crying in Derek’s arms.

***

“Tave amuigh,” Stiles keeps repeating, or something like it. “Tave amuigh.”

The bleeding hasn’t stopped.

The sheets of Derek’s bed are soaked with blood.

Kira pushes through the crowd of people surrounding the bed—the healer and his assistants, Deaton the priest, the Hales, Boyd and Isaac—and gasps in horror when she sees him.

Stiles’s eyes widen. “Tave amuigh!”

“Outside,” Kira says, her voice cracking. “He needs to go outside.”

Derek lifts him. Stiles’s eyes roll back in his head, and for a frightening moment Derek thinks he’s gone, but then his bloody fingers make a fist in Derek’s shirt, and hold tightly.

Boyd makes a path.

The castle is in uproar. Derek is at the centre of the maelstrom. Shouts and cries reach him as he follows Boyd through the passages, down the stairs, with Stiles in his arms and Kira at his side. Torchlight throws up twisting shadows on the walls.

Boyd pushes open the door to the Queen’s Garden, and a wall of cold air hits Derek as he hurries down the shallow steps into the snow.

“Put him down,” Kira says. “Put him down.”

It is against every instinct in Derek’s body to set a dying man in the snow, but he obeys.

Stiles mumbles something, and Kira reaches for the laces of his shirt.

Derek reaches out and grips her wrist tightly.

“He wants his clothes off,” she tells him, wide-eyed.

Derek uncurls his fingers from her wrist and reaches for Stiles’s belt. He hears the crunch of snow beside him, and glances over to see that Boyd is kneeling at Stiles’s feet, tugging his boots off.

What the hell are we doing?

It feels like preparing a corpse.

Blood leaches into the snow underneath Stiles like ink into blotting paper. His eyes are unfocussed, his gaze glassy. He might be staring at the stars. He might be starting at the world beyond the veil.

Derek glances over his shoulder.

Peter and his sisters are close. Scott and Isaac are keeping everyone else back.

Derek and Kira and Boyd peel the blood-soaked clothes from Stiles’s body, leaving him naked and bloody in the snow. For a long moment nothing happens, and then—

A rasping wet sound as Stiles drags in a breath. His chest fills with it. He blinks.

He sits, holding up his hand to forestall their help. He shivers, freezing water and blood slipping in rivulets down his back. For a moment he breathes, then squeezes his eyes shut and murmurs something under his breath. And then he’s rising to his feet like a shaky fawn, shuffling through the snow toward the nearest tree.

The tree is as bare naked as Stiles, its branches weighed down with snow.

Stiles approaches it, and grasps its thin trunk. He leans into it, and rests his forehead against it. His shoulders rise and fall as he breathes heavily.

And then he laughs.

Laughs.

And Derek watches in astonishment as rapidly-growing buds appear on the branches of the tree, and explode into bursts of brilliant green leaves.

CHAPTER 8

“All this time,” Peter says thoughtfully, “it not only turns out nemetons are real, it turns out they’re people. Not trees, but people.”

Stiles waits for Kira to translate before he answers. “We are all living things. My mother was a keeper of the grove. She listened to the trees. Perhaps that is why the light in the woods chose me.”

Peter holds Stiles’s gaze for a long while, and then leans forward and pats him on the shoulder. “Heal well, nephew.”

Stiles dips his chin in a nod as Peter rises and leaves, because nobody yet will believe him that he is healed. That the power the darach tore from him, and the remnants of that power that he used to snap her neck, was renewed by the earth, by the tree, by the sharp air and the snow against his naked skin. It’s true that he’s a little tired still, but only because a darach’s power is so toxic, so completely different to his own that the shadow of it has left him nauseated and wrung out. He’s been confined to Derek’s bed for an entire day already. He would have complained, but people keep bringing him soup. And also, Derek is dozing in the chair in the corner, and he looks so soft like this, all his hard edges smoothed away by sleep, that Stiles wants to drink his fill of the sight.

Stiles watches him silently for a moment, then turns his head to look at Kira. “Are they afraid of me?”

Kira thinks for a while before she answers. “People are often afraid of what they don’t understand.”

That’s a yes, then.

“Stiles, you’ve lived here for over two months now,” Kira says. “You could have killed them all at any time.”

“My magic is not for killing.” He wrinkles his nose as he reconsiders. “It may be for killing darachs.”

“She was Deucalion’s spy,” Kira says. “Nobody cares you killed her.”

Deucalion.

Stiles knows he is the darkness that his father saw coming to Laindéir. He is the reason Stiles was sent to Triskleion. To possess the nemeton is to possess the key to Laindéir. His father trusted the Hales with that key, even if the Hales didn’t realize what it was they holding all this time. If Jennifer had succeeded in killing him…

Worse, if she had somehow used her powers to harness his…

Stiles closes his eyes, his heart thumping fast.

She had come close. Too close. Stiles had perhaps become so used to being invisible in Triskelion that he’d forgotten to keep his guard up. And he certainly hadn’t expected to find a darach inside the stone walls of the castle. Just as Stiles draws his power from nature, so too do darachs. Except darachs prefer the darker side of nature: death and rot and blood.

Stiles thinks of his father, and tears sting his eyes.

“You are the nemeton, my little will-o-the-wisp. You are the light in the woods. You must always shine bright and clear.”

He opens his eyes and looks at his hands.

They’re clean, but Stiles wonders if he will always see them in his mind’s eye covered with blood.

“Are they afraid of me?”

How could they not be?

***

Stiles wakes in the middle of the night. The fire has burned almost all the way down, and it’s warmer under the blankets then outside them. He clambers out of bed and crosses to the chair. He takes Derek’s hand and tugs him back to the bed, both of them still half-asleep.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispers, and Derek murmurs something sleep-addled in response.

Stiles rests his head on Derek’s chest and drifts away to the thump-thump-thump of his heart.

***

Stiles wakes up with a gasp, tight fingers of panic pressing into his ribs.

“What?” Derek asks, his voice low with concern. “What is it?”

“Robe,” Stiles says. “Antlers.”

Derek slips out of bed, and leaves the room. He’s back minutes later, carrying the antlers, with the robe slung over his shoulder.

“Oh,” Stiles says, his breath leaving him as he takes the antlers. The flowers have long wilted, and now the veil is missing too. All that remains are the bone antlers on the base of the headdress. Even in the faint light from the dying fire Stiles can see that they are still stained with Jennifer’s blood.

“Where is…” He cannot find the word.

“The veil?” Derek asks, and Stiles nods. “Being cleaned.”

The fabric is delicate, and Stiles doesn’t know if it will survive the process. He nods again, and runs his fingers along the bone of the antlers. He remembers the stag he killed. He was six years old and barely reached its shoulder. He drew it to him with the song his mother taught him. He sang it gently to its death. He was the youngest of the children to hunt that year, but the first to make the sacrifice to the Old Ones.

The antlers had been set aside to make his wedding headdress when he came of age. To show the one he married that he was a hunter. That his magic was strong and good. That he could use it to both provide and protect.

He sets the antlers down on the floor beside the bed and reaches for his robe.

“My names,” he says, his fingers tracing the embroidery.

Derek sits down beside him, and listens as Stiles recites them all. In Laindéir first, and then in Triskelion.

Mischief.

Will-o’-the-wisp.

Spark.

Sparrow.

Airling.

Light in the Woods.

Nemeton.

When he finishes, Derek is silent. His forehead is creased with confusion. “No Stiles?” he asks.

“Stiles is new,” Stiles tells him. “Stiles is for here. For you.”

Derek’s eyes grow wide, and Stiles’s heart races like the pattering of rain against a roof of leaves.

Derek leans over and kisses him, and, somewhere outside, another tree bursts into bloom.

***

“A nemeton is our essence,” Stiles says days later in halting Triskelion. Kira helped him with the words he has to say, and he has scratched them phonetically into the wax tablet he uses.

He is in Peter’s private quarters—the room with map—with Peter and Derek, and Laura and Cora. Isaac is the only servant trusted to be here with them.

“Sometimes it is a tree, or a rock, or an animal,” Stiles tells them. “And sometimes it is me.”

He sees from their faces that they don’t really understand.

“I protect Laindéir,” Stiles says. “I am the light in the woods. And now I will protect Triskelion too. This is the oath I make. I will let no-one harm you again.”

***

Spring comes, and Stiles stands with Derek and the soldiers from Triskelion.

His power has grown. It’s not just Laindéir he protects.

A howling storm turns Deucalion’s army back, beating them towards a forest of trees that lie on the border between Triskelion and Laindéir. Stiles closes his eyes and summons his spark, and listens to the earth and the trees and the wind and the water.

Deucalion and his men never leave the forest.

Stiles takes Derek by the hand and leads him home again.

#srb #sterekreversebang #sterek #fan fic

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