"How… should we proceed?" Kurt had asked, but De Sardet had shaken her head.

"No. This is your damage. I'm just here because you invited me… I'll follow you on this one," she had smiled at him – disarmingly earnest.

He'd been apprehensive at first, worried that the change in their dynamic would alter the way he felt somehow, but they had slipped back into their former roles with ease – he as the master and she as his ward. She followed at his side, observing quietly and without judgement while he threatened and cajoled and eventually captured Hermann.

The days after their arrival in San Matteus had been full and seemingly endless. They often slept in the sitting room as they did in New Serene, but not through a desire for closeness – simply because exhaustion claimed them. Kurt had woken numerous times beneath a blanket he didn't fetch for himself, and if he woke in the night, he was sure to tuck De Sardet tightly into his cloak as he had before. The first night he'd woken before her, he had gone to fetch the heavy woollen rug she had used for him but she'd roused herself enough to pout at him, point to where his cloak had been hanging by the door and gone back to sleep. He'd smiled, and indulged her. There was something intimate in the action – an unspoken history which laying a blanket across her wouldn't have encapsulated somehow.

The atmosphere was different now, of course – they remained exhausted, but there was a tension to the space which had previously cocooned them through the darkness.

Hermann would burn at dawn.

"Leave it," De Sardet said after a particularly long spell of silence some time after midnight, impatience barely concealed in her tone. Kurt looked to his hand and found the fire poker. He flushed crimson, embarrassed at having failed to notice he'd been stirring the ashes for what must have been close to an hour. He nodded in concession, then stood, tossing another log into the embers. They sizzled slightly, a giggling of crackles and hisses mocking him.

"I can't just sit around here, waiting," he said.

"I had an invitation to the Lady Arielle's Salon… I can fish that out if you like?" her tone was teasing, but not gently so. There was an underlying hardness to her words and Kurt found himself responding with an incredulous glower.

"Not in the mood for my jokes then," she muttered, then flopped her head back, "Look, I don't like waiting any more than you do, Kurt, but what else is there? We could take a walk to the docks? Fight off whatever drunken sailors inevitably try to rob us? Then what…?"

He sighed and threw himself back down in the chair beside her.

"I just need him to be dead. Now. I've waited too long for this. The anticipation feels like… itching."

She frowned, considering him for a moment.

"What did he do to you?" her question was quiet and pure and it hung on the air like a note from struck glass, chiming.

"Same as Reiner. Only I survived," then before he fully understood what he was doing he added, "And then some."

"You don't have to tell me," she said, "I mean, I'm happy to listen but if…"

"I want to," he snapped, surprising even himself. She didn't recoil – simply kept staring at him with her even gaze.

"When you're ready," she said and he nodded, getting up to poke the fire again. At this she raised an eyebrow and he groaned.

"Let's take that walk… I don't think there'll be much of a poker left if we stay…"

He gathered their cloaks and draped hers gently around her shoulders. She flushed a little at the unexpected act of servitude, then kissed his cheek – chaste and brazen all at once.

"Sir," she smirked and gestured the door.

"Your Excellency," he said as she stepped past. They smirked at one another, the accident of their station unspoken, yet suddenly ridiculous to them.

"Look at us in our finery," De Sardet sang with a smirk, again seeming to read his mind, "You, the first royal knight in years and me, masquerading as the daughter of a princess."

"Keep your voice down," Kurt scoffed, "you'll get us caught."

He bumped his shoulder playfully into hers, and she bumped his back. He felt giddy, the waves of delight at her presence countered by the angst of the morning, so that it felt like riding an emotional storm.

The further from the house they drew, the more sombre their mood became – the reality of the late hour seeping into their thoughts. They grew closer together automatically, Kurt's hand never far from the hilt of his sword whilst De Sardet's feet were light and quick on the cobbles.

They rounded a corner and here, their visibility improved. The buildings were long and smooth, flanking a wide square which held few hiding places for brigands. The pair relaxed a little and exchanged a bashful smile.

"I… " the legate began, but floundered a little as she spoke, "Do you remember when we were in that inn, attached to the bath house? I was ill, and I'd lied about it…"

"I do."

"I remember seeing marks on your back. For years, I thought that you were like me – that you had patterned skin you couldn't explain," he thought of the lines which criss-crossed the flesh over his spine, "It wasn't until I saw a whipping when we were in the Bridge Alliance that I realised what those marks must mean. Was that…"

"That was Hermann."

They were silent for a while, their footsteps the only conversation between them, "Those scars were so pale – so faded. You must have been very young."

Kurt shrugged, not really knowing what to tell her. He felt the differences between them acutely at that moment. She remained – despite all she'd grown and all she'd seen – a decade his junior. And beyond that, she was still a green blood. He expected the realisation to hurt more, but he found that it didn't – these discrepancies in their past were simply fact.

He thought of the moment in the Coin Guard tavern when he'd realised that the past was an unreachable place – a feeling fossilised, still there for him to see but petrified in stone. That's all his history was – all hers was – a series of moments that could never be altered.

They reached the docks without issue and sat at the pier, their feet dangling above the ocean and kicking at nothing. The moon was high that night – almost full and invitingly round.

There was a peace to it – uneasy, but accepted.

"Did you get whipped often?" De Sardet asked, so quietly he wasn't sure he'd heard her speak.

"Hermann humiliated us whenever he could," Kurt took a deep breath, tentative now, but determined not to carry the fossils of his past alone, "Occasionally, he came to visit at night… It wasn't about… He just wanted us to feel ashamed."

De Sardet's face froze at that. But there was little of the patronising pity he'd expected. He did see a hot rage beneath the horror, but that spark of love was still there, and – if anything – burned brighter.

They both opened their mouths to talk at once, but she thought better of it. For once, he didn't offer to wait for her. It had taken him too long to get to this point.

"It's not something I like to think about. The bastard's about to go up in smoke. Let my memories die with him," Kurt said.

Across the water, the sky was streaked red – a slash of blood for the coming dawn. De Sardet followed Kurt's gaze and jutted out her chin.

"Shall we take our places for the show?" she asked. He nodded.

"Aye. I want a front row seat. I want him to know I put him there."

She grinned, lopsided and proud, but humourless, "As you wish, sir. Let's go."

They had stood in the square, almost alone in the dawn. The Inquisition was far from stupid – they knew to burn the famous Major when few people would see him. Kurt and De Sardet had positioned themselves within the veil of the acrid smoke, refusing the move from their position until the fire had burned the corpse of Kurt's tormentor to nothing.

As the wind cleared the last of the heady smoulder from the square, Kurt caught sight of their shadows on the cobbles – equal in height and shape, hands clasped tight together, they looked like the start of a chain of paper dolls.

More people were milling around the square now and Kurt's first instinct was to snap his hand back to his side, but he stopped himself. Standing there in the literal ashes of all that had hurt him, he found that the usual feelings of inadequacy had faded with the night. Kurt realised with an almost physical start that he had never cared about her rank in society – if he had, he'd have behaved like all the others, fawning around her as though she were some sort of hot-house flower to be cossetted on account of the accident of her birth. The discrepancy between their stations had simply been a mask for the shame he felt at what Hermann had done to him.

And now Hermann was gone, and he was holding onto the woman he loved, and who loved him back.

He looked across at her, her face grey with ash. Dark tracks traced the contours of her cheeks where the smoke had robbed her of tears. He reached across and gently tilted her face towards his.

Her eyes were brighter than anything he'd ever seen then – sparkling amidst the matt grey of the dust fused to her cheeks.

"Your Excellency," he said, "Let's go home."

They turned from the embers of the great blaze and habitually, De Sardet went to draw her hand from his, but he gripped her fingers tight, bringing her dusty hand to his mouth and kissing each of her knuckles in turn as he led the way back to the residence.

"Kurt? You seem… determined…" she was grinning at him, tentatively.

"Do you still want me?"

"What?"

"After I stitched you up, you said you wanted me. I said I wasn't ready. Do you… still want me?"

"You idiot. Do you have to ask?"

He chuckled at that, low and lusty.

"No, I don't suppose I do."

Neither spoke as they made their way through the streets of the waking town. If anyone who saw them thought ill of them for their filthy faces, no one said anything. Kurt suspected it was the purpose in the way they walked – stride matching stride across the cobbles and back to the little house. Their pace did not invite interruption.

One of the servants attended them as they entered the building. Kurt was keen to brush the young figure away but De Sardet's mind was clearer,

"Please, bring your largest basin of hot water up to my chambers, and some rosehip oil."

"Seed or fruit, m'lady?" the servant asked.

De Sardet flashed her wolfish grin and said through smiling lips, "Seed, please."

Kurt caught the breathiness in the word and felt his heart beat faster. He began to tug at his cloak, his boots, frustratedly. In a strange reverse of the argument they'd had weeks earlier, his haste seemed to slow the legate to an exacting, measured crawl – each of her movements calculated to be as slow and restrained as possible.

He glared at her and she tilted her head to one side, mock innocence lighting her features with mischief – a coquettish gesture and one he was surprised made the impression it did.

The servant reappeared as De Sardet lay her cloak and heavy doublet carefully on the back of the chair. She nodded in thanks as the bowl was carried upstairs, followed by the oil. When the sitting room was empty of staff, she made her way up to the first floor, one painfully slow step at a time.

Kurt remembered watching her, back in New Serene as she ascended after her bath. His mind sketched in the lines of her skin, and memory traced the way the beads of water dripped down the insides of her taught, muscular thighs.

He remembered the strength of those thighs as they'd sparred after the battle.

He remembered holding her waist in the moonlight.

And then they reached the bedroom, and De Sardet closed the door.

She padded across the floorboards and drew the shutters so only a small slit remained open, allowing the daylight to enter. Then she smiled at him over her shoulder, eyes low and lips teased into a coy smile.

She said nothing, but crossed back to where he stood at the door. Slowly, deliberately, she reached up to his face and traced a finger over his scars, down his jaw, and along his collar bone. Kurt stopped breathing, his eyes locked with hers.

Without breaking his gaze, her nimble fingers worked the buttons on his shirt and his breeches. With deft hands, she striped him bare and looked him over in silence, her eyes still on his. He knew he was covered in ash in all the places his clothes hadn't protected – his hands and face were caked in the dust of his past, but dust it was now. And she was here to rub him clean.

For all the elegance and command in her movements, she was humble – giving. She pulled the basin of warm water to them and knelt at his feet, her perfect face tremblingly close to his crotch.

Still silent, still slow, she plunged a scrap of silk below the surface of the water and wrung it out, the beads of liquid pearling in the air as they dripped into the pool below. Then she rose onto her knees and wrapped the cloth around the smallest finger on his right hand, moving the fabric up and down his digit until the skin was pink and blushed. Then she cleaned each of the others in turn – a tender, languid act of love.

And when she was finished, she stood and brushed the ash from his cheeks and kissed it from his lashes. Then he reciprocated, stripping her of her crisp new chemise and the repaired, blood-stained stays. The wound on her shoulder remained angry, red, but it was part of their story and he loved it in that moment, kissing the row of stitches with which he'd marked her skin – her flesh changed at his hand, but lovingly so. Restoratively so.

She had been his student, just as he had been Hermann's – this was true, fossilised and unchanging like all his other memories. But the marks Kurt had left on his prodigy had been to heal, not destroy, and there lay the difference. There lay Kurt's power over his past. He had chosen love, and in doing so, he had ensured that love had chosen him.

She stood naked before him now, nipples proud and skin covered in a layer of goose-flesh. It was his turn to kneel, a display of gratitude, servitude, oath. He washed her hands in the water greyed by his past and somehow, she still came out clean.

When he had finished, they stood opposite one another, staring in something close to wonder. Then Kurt laughed at how ludicrous it all was – that this had taken them so long. He had always been hers and hers alone. And then she laughed too, rushing forward at him and knocking him back against the bed, kissing at the smiling creases by his eyes and biting at his grinning lips. He moved against her to pull the curtains of the bed around them, sheathing them in the artificial velvet darkness of their stolen morning.

She pulled the sheets up to the peaks of their shoulders and they laughed again at how cold the linen was, having not been laid in all night. She squirmed against him, trying to leech his warmth and he felt the thrill of the way her back arched against his stomach. Her hips began to swing a rhythm against his cock as she pulled his arms around her, one hand between her thighs and the other under her to cup her breast.

She moaned in pleasure, closing her eyes. He felt the vibrations of the sound through her ribs and his. He shifted his weight and tugged at the stiff bead of her nipple, marvelling at the way her body bucked with delight at his command.

The rest was instinct, fingers slipping into dark, swollen crevices and legs braced against bedposts. Movements honed in sparring, used to that inevitable end; a splitting of flesh. He worked the proud drop of her clit with his thumb until his other fingers felt her stiffen and pulse around his hand. And he drank in the surrender of it – his as well as hers. The world outside fell away and in that deep and private space, only they remained – drenched in their pleasure.

She recovered her wits and straddled him, the air around them warm and sweet now, insulated as they were by the bed's curtains. He gasped as she consumed him - a contradiction of wet fire. Then she rose up, sitting back on her feet and working those strong, tireless thighs. He watched the arch of back, so fluid and perfect in the half light, and grabbed at her hips to better guide her rhythm. She kept her eyes on his the whole while – the most intimate, piercing thing about it all – and in the darkness of her pupils he found his satisfaction.

Desperate, sudden, he pushed her from him and let the fluid of his cock drip over his hand. They shared a heady grin; she nodded in thanks. Whatever future they had, it didn't need the complications a potential bastard in her belly could bring.

She fetched the now cool water, a gasp of air entering that private chamber within the bed's curtains. He cleaned himself, and she tossed the contents of the bowl out of the window and into the gutter. When she returned to the bed, she was carrying the little bottle of oil the servant had left.

Kurt raised an eyebrow.

"What's that for?"

"It's a gift," she said, unusually bashful – particularly given the circumstances, "Lay on your front."

He obeyed and felt the sharp cold of a liquid dripping onto his back. With a sound that was almost a purr, she climbed across him again, her thighs strong and heavy on his buttocks.

Gently, she ran her palms over his skin, sliding the oil into the tapestry of scars he wore. Her movements were easy, confident, but there was an almost ritual quality to the way her fingers danced across his shoulders – a reverence of his body which made his heart sing.

"When I came home bruised," she said into the darkness, "Martha recommended rosehip seed oil against scarring. She said that if it was applied regularly, it could help lessen the appearance of even the oldest scars. She used to apply it to the women she treated as a midwife – on the stretchmarks."

Another sharp drop of cold between his shoulder blades as the legate applied more of the tincture to massage in.

"If… if you'll let me… I could rub some in every morning. If you like? I know it won't ever remove the marks of what he did to you, but perhaps in time -"

"-they'll fade."

He lifted his hips and her with them, then turned to face her, pulling her down on top of him and wrapping himself around her. They pitched onto their sides and he held her, breathing in her hair and the scent of her and how perfectly imperfect she was.

"I'll let you, Greenblood. I'll let you."