There were far more people at Stiles' party than he had ever expected. It wasn't just bachelors and bachelorettes attending with their chaperones or parents. This was whole families, including children. This was cousins and notable gentry, not just peerage and nobility. The McCall Manor was not large enough, so the party had been moved to a huge gathering hall in town. It was usually in use by the entire town for large celebrations – such as New Years or Christmas. Almost the entirety of the town could fit inside comfortably, so it was a much better option that the McCall Manor.
Stiles stood, frozen, just outside the party. He stared at the ceiling and took deep, calming breaths. They were all here for him. He couldn't just blend in to the wall as he pleased. He had to be witty and charming and not a complete wreck when he spoke to people. But he wasn't polished like the rest of them. He'd never been polished. He'd always been rough and rowdy and jittery and really just unacceptably impolite at parties.
But now he was a Baron.
"Damn it," he cursed, unable to control his breathing. He shut his eyes, the music and chatter of the party sounding deafening in his ears.
Someone came to stand beside him and he twitched away, but when he looked it was just Derek. Oh. That was a relief. Derek raised a quizzical eyebrow at him.
"I'm-" Stiles laughed ironically. "I'm just a little nervous. Like vibrating out of my skin nervous. Like I think I'm going to throw up nervous. Like-"
Derek interrupted him with a hand to his shoulder. "You'll be fine. It's normal to be nervous. Just remember to breathe." He brought Stiles' hand up and kissed his knuckles. "And if things begin to overwhelm you, find me in the crowd. I will be your anchor."
"Right." Stiles felt a little breathless, but for a totally new reason. He cleared his throat and nodded his head toward the doors. "Well, I suppose I can't put it off forever. Right? I mean, is it too late to run?"
Derek chuckled and offered Stiles his arm. That was answer enough. Stiles sighed but took the arm. In sync, they slipped their masks down over their eyes.
Derek's mask was black with deep blue accents, like his suit, and stars seemed to have been caught in the framework. His eyes were bright moons in a night sky. Beautiful. Stiles had been convinced to change his outfit to match his family crest and not Derek, so his mask and outfit were rich copper and brilliant gold. While Derek's mask was slim and sleek, Stiles' had three golden feather shapes made of lace bursting from the right side. It was his first major giveaway to strangers – the symbol of House Stilinski: a golden eagle. It was a symbol of strength, of protection. It made Stiles's mask drastically different than the rest of his group. That's a great, big, sarcastic 'fantastic' from Stiles.
He allowed Derek to walk him down the hall, but he slipped his arm away when they got to the doorway. He had to walk in alone. This was his first impression. Without saying a word, Derek understood and took a step back. Stiles took a deep breath. It wasn't going to get easier standing out in the hall. He just had to go for it.
"Everything will be fine," Derek murmured behind him. "We're all here to support you."
Stiles nodded jerkily. Yes. Everything would be fine.
He stepped into view of the doorway and then over the threshold. The nearby families stopped their chatter to stare at him, and their silence spread like a plague until it infected every inhabitant of the room. It was Stiles versus the room of a million eyes, and he wanted to shout at them all to mind their own business. His hands clenched. His jaw tightened. He couldn't do this. He couldn't-
"Distinguished guests!" Scott's voice boomed over the room and drew all attention away from Stiles for a brief, thankful moment. Scott stood near the center of the hall, Allison and her father a few steps behind him. "May I introduce my good friend, Baron Goodwater, Lord Stilinski. Now please, I know you're all eager to meet him again, but be kind. There are dozens of you and only one of him, and we'd like him back with all of his limbs at the end of the night."
Several people laughed at the joke, including Stiles. He felt a bit of his tension ease out. Scott was respected. People would listen to him. Hopefully.
A couple approached Stiles, bowed, and then beamed at him from behind their flamboyant orange masks. Family name… Mahealani? Maybe?
"Lord Goodwater," the man greeted. "How good to have you back. I apologize that my son could not attend this evening. He's… home sick."
Sounded like a lie. Probably didn't want to come. Stiles didn't blame him. He wished he could have skipped too.
The couple had barely finished introducing themselves – yep, Mahealani - when another family joined in, this one in white masks that made them look like foxes. This one, Stiles knew. The Yukimuras. All three bowed respectfully.
"It is good to have you back, Baron Goodwater," the husband greeted. "May I introduce my wife, Noshiko, and my daughter-"
"Kira," Stiles finished for him. He bowed his head to the daughter, who blushed adorably. She seemed sweet. "Pleasure. I'm sure."
Noshiko smiled, and it looked devilish behind her mask. "I see your time away has not been wasted, my lord." She swayed very much like her family's symbolic fox crest, ready to pounce. "Or should we count ourselves among a lucky few?"
Nope. None of that matchmaking. Shut it down. "I would hope any lord in society would at least be worth half the names of the sons and daughters in the room, even if nothing comes of knowing it." Too rude?
Noshiko's smile dropped rapidly into a frown and her eyes were intense. "I suppose I agree," she said, though she didn't sound happy about it.
"Mother, please." Kira clasped her hands behind her back. "Pardon my mother, Lord Stilinski. She's… ardent."
Stiles gave her a grin. "She's just trying to find you a husband. Unfortunately, she'll need to find someone else. I'm sure there are some eligible bachelors in the room for you."
He didn't say he wasn't a bachelor anymore, but somehow Noshiko's curious stare told him she knew his meaning anyway. Stiles and Derek had discussed it with each other and then with the McCalls, and it was decided to hold off on telling others about their engagement until after the party. One announcement at a time.
The Carters nudged their way in next, with twin sons who looked like they couldn't care less where Stiles had been even before his disappearance; then the Laheys, whose son was even more skittish than Liam and far more socially awkward; and then on and on it went. Family after family. Introductions to sons and daughters like an endless line of romantic emissaries. Damn it! He wasn't here to find love!
After what felt like hours, Stiles found his way to a chair. A few more people seemed anxious to join him, and he sighed as quietly as he could, given his extreme dislike of the situation. Derek floated into existence and took the seat beside him, and somehow it gave Stiles a bubble of defense. The families who had been eyeing him kept their distance. Was this the presence of an Earl?
Speaking of-
"Derek, are your relatives joining us? I forgot to ask." He glanced around the room for a sign of the duchess' huntress, but he could identify very few people through their masks from this distance.
"Eventually," Derek said. He leaned in toward Stiles. "My father may not be a prince or a duke, but he understood his presence would draw attention away from you. He will show up in an hour, and that should give you the break you want."
Nodding, Stiles slouched. "Thank you." Derek smiled and cleared his throat in warning. With a deep breath, Stiles straightened up. Barons did not slouch in public. Darn it.
Then, despite the bubble of Derek's influence, a man and woman approached. Despite the masks, Stiles actually recognized the man and stood quickly to bow his head. These were not nobility or even gentry. It was Doctor Deaton!
"I see you've made a full recovery," the doctor said instead of a normal greeting. He bowed low, and the woman with him did the same.
"The leg is still a bit sore, but it's nearly perfect. Thank you for your service, Doctor." Stiles glanced away from Deaton to the dark skinned, beautiful woman beside him. Her dress was less intense than other party attendees, and Stiles had the impression it was not for lack of funding, but for convenience and efficiency.
"Ah. Allow me to introduce my sister, Ms. Marin Morrell. She is an apothecary in Posey." Deaton motioned to her with a look of pride in his dark eyes.
"Only because society will not accept me as a doctor," Ms. Morrell said. There was an intensity to her that struck Stiles to his core. Her name sounded familiar, but he failed to think of why. "You seem stressed, my lord. Is everything alright?"
Stiles snorted. Oops. "Well, if I'm honest, I absolutely hate large parties. I don't trust people normally, and everyone here just wants me to marry their kids or to get the gossip of where I've been for five years. I'm tired, hungry, and a little overloaded, which is entirely to blame for why I've just admitted all of this to you. God, I am terrible at this." He cast a desperate look to Derek, who smiled but sighed in resignation.
"Do excuse us, doctors. I suppose it's time to find the guest of honor a snack." Derek rose from his chair and started to lead Stiles away by the elbow.
Ms. Morrell's hand grabbed onto his other arm with a surprising force, causing them to halt in their procession. She stared hard into his eyes and spoke quietly so that Stiles doubted even Derek or Deaton could hear beside them. "Be careful, my lord. Your instincts are not wrong. Whatever happens… keep fighting."
Eyebrows knitting, Stiles opened his mouth to question her, but she turned and strode away into the party. Doctor Deaton gave a final bow and then followed after her. That had been way too ominous. Stiles liked that even less than the matchmaking guests. Seriously, what the hell?
Derek led him toward the servants serving appetizers, and Stiles snagged a glass of wine from another passing tray. He downed half of it before Derek turned and spotted him. Slipping the glass from Stiles' grip, Derek wrinkled his nose disapprovingly. "Later. You need to eat first, or it'll go straight to your head."
"Trust me. That was the point." Stiles took the food Derek offered anyway and chewed on it with way more intensity than necessary.
Another servant approached Stiles and offered him the last of an appetizer – a small pastry with edible yellow petals for decoration. Stiles shoved it into his mouth with far less tact that a baron should have. Derek shook his head, but he didn't seem upset, despite the company around them.
Derek turned to give the glass of wine away, and Stiles was instantly drawn into meeting four more families. All of the conversations of the night went in similar circles. It's so nice to have you back. Have you met my son/daughter/niece? No, he hadn't, but he'd already memorized their names and future titles, and he was taken, so no thank you. Or the conversations went a different route.
"Well, you're looking marvelously well adjusted for someone rumored to have lived five years in slavery," a middle aged man said after introductions. He was unfairly handsome, even with his bangs falling in front of one of his eyes in a most unusual way. Everyone else had their hair pulled back and styled. The man was Lord Emery, though he'd introduced himself by his first name of Deucalion. Stiles had to admit that somehow 'Deucalion' sounded more imposing than 'Lord Emery'.
"I was not in slavery," Stiles corrected with some annoyance. His heart beat felt too fast. Strange.
"Well the rumor mills will undoubtedly keep churning out theories until the truth is uncovered. I wouldn't be surprised to hear tomorrow that you were kept as some ancient bastard's chained up lover." Deucalion smirked at him, but then his eyes began to glower. "I may be teasing, little lord, but trust me when I say that no matter what Earl Gévaudan did to you, you cannot hate him more than I."
"I don't want to engage in a debate on the subject, but I'd be willing to bet our feelings are similar," Stiles said. He frowned, remembering the number of times the Argent family doctor had to come see him. "I was… deceived for a long time, and there was no shortage of mistreatment, but let's put an end to that rumor before the mill spits it out, shall we? No one in the Argent family used me for sexual purposes."
Although he definitely had sex in the Argent house, it also definitely wasn't with Earl- God, even thinking it made Stiles nauseated. His stomach ached, and it must have shown on his face.
"Indeed not?" Deucalion asked, a sweetly curious tone to his voice. "That is a relief to some, I'm sure. But no way you can be held in the Earl's house for five years and not have been privy to his, shall we say, radical methods? His brutality extends beyond business. I know this first hand."
His hand rose and brushed the hair from in front of his left eye. A scar ran down, straight through the middle of his eye, though it was years old and pale as the rest of him. His eye was pale too, ghostly so, and it didn't move in time with the right eye either. Deucalion took notice of a servant just as she passed in front of him and stopped her to grab a glass of wine, and it occurred to Stiles that his left eye was entirely blind.
"Gerard did that to you?" Stiles asked when the servant was gone. "How did he get away with that?"
"Getting a member of the peerage to stand in court before the other families is hard enough as it is, and the Argents never do anything in person," Deucalion said. He tossed his head slightly and his hair fell back over his eye. He left it there. "The trick is following the trail back to the source. But until one of them makes a mistake, until they do their dirty work for themselves and have proper witnesses, there's not much to be done. You must be intimately familiar with this, however. You did end up in a hospital recently, am I right? And yet the Earl walks free."
Nothing about what happened to Deucalion or Stiles was fair or just, and yet Deucalion was right. There was no stopping a member of the peerage, not while they had their titles and wealth to hide behind, and when they didn't do anything themselves, at least not where they could be seen. The world believed Earl Gévaudan had murdered one of his servants, yet nothing changed because no one had seen the Earl do it. He was under investigation, but it would be the servants vs an Earl. Hopefully Lord Argent joined the investigation against his father.
Deucalion might have continued speaking, but the dinner bell was rung and the dozens of guests began filing into the next room, where every table had been combined to seat them all.
"We'll speak again, my little lord," Deucalion promised with a grin that Stiles could not figure out. Either he was being devious or he was being familial. A smile like that could go both ways. Stiles felt a little breathless, but not from the smile.
Shuffling through the crowd, Stiles wasn't sure where Derek had been shoved too, but he'd find the broody man at the table anyhow. Honestly, Stiles was more concerned with the way he honestly thought he was about to throw up. He stumbled, his legs feeling weak, and had to apologize to the lord he'd nearly knocked over. This couldn't be the wine from earlier, could it? He'd only managed half a glass!
He stopped and put his hands on his knees to keep from falling over. His whole body felt eerily tired and his stomach was cramping so badly. He held his gut and groaned. The crowd moved around him, murmurs flittering between them like hummingbirds. But Stiles couldn't focus on the indignation he'd usually feel. He was too dizzy, and his heart beat was so fast. What- What was happening to him? This was no panic attack. Wh-Where-
"Derek," he gasped, knocking his mask off to let air get to his face. He needed a breeze. He needed to sit down. He-
A hand snatched his up, jerking him back to standing. For a brief, hopeful moment, Stiles thought it was Derek, but then he went cold. It was a woman, and they were alone in the hall. Her mask was silver and curly, the nose giving a feline impression, but it didn't hide who she was from Stiles. He'd seen her too often, in too many settings.
"K-Kate?" Why could he not get a breath?
She smiled deviously. "I'm so glad the news of your death was unsubstantiated." Her grip on his hand was painful, but he couldn't find the strength to pull away. "I mean, after years of trying to get the leverage from you to gain access to your family funds, I'd hoped to finally gain your lands and title upon your demise. But those horrid lawyers wouldn't give it up. Now they certainly won't – not with the rumors about my family these days." Her smile vanished, replaced with a terrifying fury. "It's all your fault. I'm sure it was you who told everyone. My reputation – all of our reputations! – They're ruined now. All of my prospects are forfeit thanks to you!"
Stiles hadn't told anyone anything. The rumors were probably just servants talking about what they'd witnessed over the years. But Kate would never care even if he tried to explain it. She'd never listened to him. Besides, he had far more important concerns. Stiles' legs felt like they were made of marshmallows. He couldn't support himself, but Kate did not release him. She followed him to the ground, a sadistic look in her eyes. She was a panther, poised to play with her food.
"Wh-What did you do to me?"
"I fed you," she said, dangerously soft. "A concentration of the yellow wolf's bane flower." The pastry with the petals? Stiles gasped, tried to call for help and found himself too weak. "It gave Earl Beacon a scare before, and he only ingested half the dosage you did. But that's alright. He was only my test subject. The real target has always been you. True, I can no longer claim your lands, but if I am to be sentenced to prison or, worse, exiled from proper society, then I will at least ensure my revenge on you is sweet."
She was as mad as her father.
The chatter of voices in the next room carried on, ignorant of the two remaining people in the hall. There seemed to be some confusion, probably people wondering why Stiles was dawdling somewhere instead of joining them so they could eat.
Kate paid the noise no mind. She simply held Stiles' hand and watched as he began to twitch in pain on the floor. Stiles held his stomach, which felt like it was burning with cramps, and whined. He had no strength, like it was being siphoned out of him and into the floor. Another snap of pain and he cried out, a pathetic, weak sound. No. No, he couldn't die here! He'd just- He was a lord again. He had friends. He had a new family. He-
He was getting married.
"Der-"
"Oh, shut up, Stiles," Kate said with a sneer. "For once, close that pretty mouth of yours, and let me enjoy the moment. Poisoning your father was no fun either, because I had to pay someone else to do it for me – the house fire too. But at least this time- This time, I get to see the trash burn."
He couldn't- Everything was fuzzy. Everything was pain. Was someone shouting? Was everyone shouting? It all sounded so far away. The pain was there with him, tearing into him and laughing as he cringed. The weakness was with him, keeping him sedate and pathetic. The nausea rolled around him, in him, but for some reason he couldn't throw up.
Everything was black.
He was going to die.
After everything that he'd been through, he was finally dying.
'Keep fighting.'
Ms. Morrell? Was she speaking to him or was it his memory?
Everything hurt. Everything was tired. Everything was hot.
'Not today. Please, not now.'
Derek? Was that Derek? Where was he? Stiles wanted to see Derek just one more time. Please. Please!
Something cold splashed on his hot cheeks, dribbled over his chin. He was vaguely aware of something being poured into his mouth, and then his body seized up with the need to expel whatever it was. He wretched, coughed, wretched again. Hands on his face. Liquid hit him again, went in his mouth again. He wretched more and let out a sob afterward. His throat was on fire!
No more! He wanted to scream. No more of whatever they were doing to him. It hurt!
'Fight it!' Morrell's voice. Not a memory. 'Come on, Stiles. Keep fighting.'
He gasped, gagged on the air, wretched again against his will.
'Drink this, Stiles.'
A different liquid hit his mouth, ran down his throat. He fought the urge to spew it back out. His gut burned. His throat burned. Why wasn't he dead yet? Why was he still suffering?! Why couldn't it just end?!
"Stiles." Clear as a bell. Quiet as the night. "Fight it. If not for you, then fight for me." Quieter still. "I can't lose you. Not again."
I love you. Stiles felt the words in his soul. Had he told Derek? He'd written them in a letter, but the letter never arrived. He'd dreamt them and thought them and wished them. He'd heard Derek say them in grief. No. He'd never told Derek the truth. He'd never said those words out loud.
He didn't want to die. He just wanted the pain to stop. He wanted all of the pain to stop – the beatings, the broken bones, the hunger pains, the Den, the fear, the panic attacks, the god damn poisonings – he wanted it all to go away!
But it wouldn't. He couldn't get those people out of his head. They'd scarred him for life, in more ways than one, and he hated them for it. But through them he'd met Derek. He wanted to live with those scars, because living was the only way to be with Derek. Maybe it wasn't much to live for, but it was all Stiles had in his final moments.
That and his desire to see half of the Argent house burn.
Too bad he was dying.
Damn.