It was not the first time, recently, that he had woken up somewhere other than his own bed. It was, however, the first time in decades that he had woken up in someone else's bed.

Someone pounded on the outer hall door. A moment later, a chorus of little voices left no doubt as to who the culprits were.

"Crea, Crea, Creaaaa!"

Regis groaned and pulled Crea closer. "Do they do this every morning?"

"Most mornings." She yawned, pushing her hair back and smiling over her shoulder at him. "Sometimes they even wait before opening the door."

"They—?"

The hall door opened. Regis had just enough time to muse on the fact that not only was he not in his own bed, but he also wasn't wearing any clothes, before Reina and Noctis tumbled into the room.

"Crea!"

"Daddy!"

"Welcome to parenthood," Crea said wryly. "Privacy is not a luxury allowed to you, after they start walking."

They had been walking for years. Now they climbed up onto the bed and piled on top of Regis and Crea.

"Daddy, I'm a dragon," Reina said without preamble.

"There is no such thing, my dear," Regis said absently, as he set about detangling himself from the growing pile of people.

"Yeah huh!" Reina said.

He opened his mouth to inform her that no, in fact, there were no real dragons, but stopped himself.

"My mistake. You make a lovely dragon."

Crea laughed. She wiggled her way out from underneath the twins and the blankets alike and slipped out of bed. While Regis was self-consciously tugging the blankets over his chest, Crea set about picking up her discarded clothes from the night before to throw into the laundry and pulling clean ones from her wardrobe. He was momentarily distracted from his children. Not just because she wasn't wearing anything, but because she moved with an unconcerned confidence that suggested she was. She glanced over her shoulder and caught him looking at her.

"What?" She blushed faintly.

Regis shook his head, at a loss for words. He still held the blanket to his chest as Reina and Noctis bounced on the bed beside him.

She laughed, guessing what was bothering him. "They're four! 'Naked' doesn't mean anything to them. At least nothing significant. They run around without their clothes on all the time."

Nevertheless, he attached meaning to it. Crea shook her head and picked up his clothes from the floor, setting them on the bed beside him.

"If you wait one minute I'll take them off your hands so you can actually get dressed," she said, and promptly disappeared into the bathroom.

"Daddy, are you better?" Reina dropped onto her knees beside him and clasped her hands in her lap. Noctis continued to bounce.

"Am I better…?" Regis propped himself up, holding the blankets in place with one hand.

"You were sick!" Noctis said.

'Sick' didn't quite capture the spirit of what had been happening in Insomnia for the past few weeks, but he supposed it was easier to explain to a child, that way.

"Ah," Regis said, "Yes indeed; I am feeling much better."

"Daddy, you're in Crea's bed!" Noctis said.

Regis' face flushed hot. Leave it to the four year old to make blunt comments with no notion of what they meant. He could think of nothing to say to that, so he changed the subject.

"I gather that Ignis has taught you to read."

"Mm. Mhmm." Noctis dropped onto his knees beside Reina. "I read better than Ignis."

"Is that so?"

"No," Reina said. "Ignis is the best at reading."

"I read better than Reina!"

"Nuh uh!"

"Uh huh!"

Reina tackled Noctis sideways into the bed. Regis briefly debated stopping them, but thought better of it. So long as they weren't actually causing each other much damage, what was the harm in a little tousle? When Crea returned a moment later, looking as if she had taken half an hour to get ready rather than two minutes, they were still at it.

"I leave you alone with them for one minute…" She put her hands on her hips, stopping in the doorway.

"I am a neutral party, completely uninvolved in this disagreement."

"I'm sure," she said dryly. "Well, go on, then. Might as well take advantage of their distraction."

Regis gathered up his clothes and scampered while he had the chance. Crea was kind enough not to laugh at his undignified flight. He wasn't accustomed to putting on an unlaundered suit in the morning—and a wrinkled one, at that—but he contented himself with the knowledge that it was temporary. He only needed to make it down the hall to his own room to change.

That was the difficult part. There was no such thing as true privacy in Regis' life. Secrets, for him, meant that only a few hundred people shared some knowledge, rather than a few hundred thousand. As soon as he stepped out of Crea's room and into the hall, unkempt and wearing a wrinkled suit, every Crownsguard on watch in the royal wing would be privy to the information of how he had spent last night. Indeed, probably the night watch was already full aware—he had gone into Crea room last night and never emerged. Conclusions would be drawn from that.

His only consolation was that all of his guards and attendants were notoriously discreet. That was one on a long list of requirements for anyone who worked so close to the crown. The only people they would share this particular secret with would be other Crownsguards. A small comfort.

Nevertheless, Regis put on his suit and emerged from the bathroom. It had taken him longer than it had taken Crea, and by the time he emerged she had them distracted and playing hide-and-seek. He stood a moment, watching as Reina and Noctis had a silent but furious battle over who got to hide underneath the bed. Noctis won. Reina crouched behind Crea's nightstand just at the last instant.

"...ten! Now, where could they be?" Crea turned away from the corner, where she had been standing, and caught his gaze. She shot him a grin, ignored the giggling nightstand, and walked to the wardrobe instead. "Are they… in here?"

She threw open the wardrobe doors and made a show of rummaging around. Both the bed and the nightstand giggled.

"Not here!" Crea turned back around and stood, humming with indecision for a moment, before she lunged toward the nightstand and dragged Reina out. "Ah ha!"

Reina squealed in delight. "You got me!"

"I got you! Now, where is Noctis…?"

Reina pointed underneath the bed and Regis couldn't help but laugh. Crea dropped to her knees and peered underneath. "Betrayed by your own sister!"

"No fair! Reina cheated!"

"Siblings do that," Crea informed him gravely. "You'll just have to get her back. But first, it's time to get dressed. You can't go down to breakfast in your pajamas. Go on! Don't forget to comb your hair, Noct!"

She turned to Regis as the twins marched back out of the room and smiled, half-amused, half-sympathetic. "What on Eos would you do without Avun?"

Regis caught sight of himself in the mirror on the wall and grimaced. "Look rather like a vagrant all of the time, I suspect."

She took pity on him and dragged him back into the bathroom to run a comb through his hair until it lay flat. She tugged at his suit and straightened his tie until his attire hung a little more orderly on his frame—though she couldn't do much about the wrinkles.

"That's the best I can do, I'm afraid," she said.

"Thank you."

"Will you have breakfast with them, today?" Crea asked.

"I should like to—and you as well, if you will come."

"Of course I will!"

She smoothed her hands up his lapels and across his shoulders, then rose up on her toes to kiss him. He lowered his head and kissed her back. Her lips were just as soft and warm as they had been the night before. Soon, he would have to give serious thought to what this meant for either of them. For now, it only meant that his heart was fuller than it had been in a long time, and that the nagging guilt that had plagued him for even longer than he realized was finally fading.

"Come on," she said. "You'll have to face the world, eventually. I think being seen coming out of my room in the morning is unavoidable."

He couldn't deny that. So he went, trying not to let his thoughts linger on what his Crownsguards must have been thinking when he stepped out into the hall with Crea beside him. They split paths, Crea turning toward Noct and Reina's room and Regis toward his own. Avun was standing outside his door. He bowed low when Regis approached. If he thought anything at all about Regis' whereabout the night before, he made no comment.

Nor, indeed, did anyone else. The morning passed without incident, and, for the first time in months, he was allowed the luxury of taking the morning meal with his children.

Days passed. For a time, there was peace—or as much peace as could be expected in a world where national relationships were strained, at best. Regis obstinately refused to give up on morning runs with Cor—though they had become nothing more than a jog around the gardens. No one said a word about his choice to do so and, at the very least, he told himself he was the one who set his own pace.

The snows returned, for a time, as predicted. Though he had little time to spend enjoying the weather or—more accurately—enjoying his childrens' enjoyment of the weather, he knew from Crea that they spent most afternoons out and playing in the snow with Ignis. When he did have the opportunity to spend a few hours with them, he experienced that wonderful wholeness that he had been denying himself for so long. To walk through the garden, arm-in-arm with Crea, watching as Reina and Noctis kicked up snow, was everything he wanted. No more barriers stood between them. No more pretenses. For a time, they simply existed together. Joyous and complete.

Nights he spent in Crea's company, more often than not. She waited up for him to return from council or whatever business occupied his evenings, and he arrived in her rooms to find a hot cup of tea waiting for him. He never did guess how she knew when to begin brewing it. It took a few weeks before he had cut through enough of the guilt to take her back to his own rooms, but only a few days after that before Reina and Noctis started coming to knock on his door in the mornings. Even that was a comfortable change.

And so the last of winter passed by, almost faster than Regis was willing to let it go. Those days were some of the best days of his life, following Aulea's death and he always looked back on them fondly.

But peace is ever destined not to last.

At the start of the spring, there came news from Galahd that was fated to break that brief interlude of contented bliss. The imperials had withdrawn the bulk of their forces back to Accordo. If they were to have any chance at rescuing any small part of Galahd from the Empire's clutches, this was the time to do it. At the same time, they still had little chance of holding Galahd against the empire, when and if Niflheim returned. The revolution in Accordo would not last forever. Could he really justify dedicating their army to holding one village, when the rest of Lucis could be threatened again at any moment?

"They need not have the entire army," Aldebrand said from the council gallery. "They only need enough troops to supplement their own and overthrow what remains of the imperial presence."

"And when the imperials return?" Felice asked. "What then?"

"You are merely speculating, Master Felice. We have no notion of how long Niflheim will be busy with Accordo, or if, when they return, they will maintain any interest in taking our shores."

"It is too optimistic to hope that they will lose interest in us merely because of an uprising in Accordo," Hamon said. "Niflheim has been at our borders for generations. It seems safe to assume they will return, once they have dealt with Accordo."

"You speak as if Accordo is doomed to fail," Felice said. "Is it not possible that they will throw off the imperial yoke?"

"Possible," Hamon agreed, "But unlikely. It is high time we recognized that. This Camelia Claustra has no interest in seeing her people killed in the name of independence. She has already made it clear that what she wants is a government under Accordo's hand. All Niflheim has to do is offer them that much freedom, and she will cease hostilities."

Across the gallery, councillors exchanged uneasy glances.

"Well, then we will need to leave enough troops supplementing Galahd's own to bolster their defenses in the event of another attack," Aldebrand said.

"Whatever troops Galahd had a few months ago are likely dead," Clarus said. "I can see no reason why the imperials would suffer an able-bodied militia to survive. No, Master Alebrand. There can be no reliance on Galahd's own troops for this. If we seek to liberate and protect the village, it will have to be done entirely with Lucis' own army."

And Lucis' army was stretched thin as it was.

"What is the alternative?" Felice asked. "Leave Galahd to Niflheim?"

Eyes turned toward Regis. Likely they already knew the answer, but wished to hear it spoken in some voice besides their own. It would not have been the first settlement to fall permanently to imperial control. It wouldn't be the last, either.

"We might make an evacuation effort," Clarus suggested. "As is stands, we could break through Niflheim's current forces in Galahd and free as many people as possible."

"And bring them where?" Aldebrand asked. "Insomnia has no space for refugees."

"Insomnia is the only safe space to bring them," Felice objected.

"There is available land, still, in the Outlands," Clarus said. "While it may not be as safe as Insomnia, it is certainly safer than Galahd."

"And if the imperials come farther inland and take those lands, as well?" Felice asked. "How many times will we ask these people to flee for their lives?"

"As many as necessary," Aldebrand snapped. "There is no assurance of safety for anyone, in war."

Terrible as it may have been to speak casually of uprooting so many lives, bringing the Galahdians onto the mainland would simplify matters. Had there been space within the Wall, he would have welcomed them all inside. As it was, Insomnia was already full to bursting and they could not afford to offer sanctuary to so many people—least of all when most of them had little to offer in return. A fisherman had no skill set to contribute to Insomnia's welfare; brutal as it seemed to bar a person access for their choice in livelihood, that was the way of things. If Regis had possessed the strength, he would have held the Wall over all of Lucis. But his father had already discovered the folly of that.

"Let the army be assembled," Regis said. "We will push back what remains of the imperial forces and evacuate as much of Galahd as possible before they return with reinforcements. Master Felice, space must be found for the refugees within the Outlands. Organize temporary housing and rations until more permanent relocation is possible. Master Aldebrand, see to it that the necessary funds are allocated."

Everything was carried out in rapid order. Or as rapidly as might be expected, when the bureaucracy was involved. Within a few weeks everything was arranged—from food and shelter for the refugees to the deployment of the army. Only one thing remained to be done. It was not something that Clarus was going to approve of.

"I will accompany the troops to Galahd, myself," Regis informed him, the evening before the army was due to depart, in the relative privacy of his study.

"That is unwise, Your Majesty."

"I am not a child, Clarus. Nor am I a decrepit old man, as of yet. These people are about to be told that I have made the decision to abandon their homes. How, pray tell, do you suppose that looks, to them?" Regis asked. "As if I had dismissed them entirely as having no note, perhaps? They have no notion of the hours spent in debate, nor of the costs weighed against benefits—and they have no care for those, either. What they see is their king turning his back on Galahd. I mean to impart the message that I have done no such thing. Outlanders they may be, but they are still Lucian. They are still my people. And Gods damn it, I will let no man forget that.'

Clarus met his gaze and held it for several long moments. Finally, he lowered his eyes.

"I owe you an apology, Regis…" he said. "You are right in saying I have acted unfairly toward you as of late. You are a stubborn man, and so I have foolishly made assumptions about the motivations behind some of your decisions. I have no excuse for myself. The only explanation I will offer is this: as much as you hate to be weakened by the Wall and the ring, know that I hate bearing witness just the same, and when I swear my Shield to protect you, it is not merely some sense of duty that drives me, but love. Wherever this road may lead you, I will be there, protecting you from whatever earthly foe you face. Even yourself."

There were so many words to say and none of them would have been sufficient. So all he said was: "Apology accepted."

Clarus clasped his shoulder and gave him a tight smile. "Then come. We should both be abed, if we are to leave with the dawn tomorrow."

Regis didn't bother asking him to stay behind. The King's Shield would go where the king went.