The sounds of paradise echoing from behind the bedroom windows grow as the morning progresses. The rising sun fills the room with warmth — as it always does at this time of year in Loire — but it's not that warmth now that makes his eyelids slowly open. His pale lashes flutter as he unconsciously presses closer, the steady beat of the heart beneath his cheek beckoning, and Marcel chooses not to resist. Traitor — whispers a quiet, childlike voice belonging to himself, inside his head.

Marcel rarely wakes up like this — so unaccustomedly peacefully — but recently he's started more often. Perhaps because you have become the one who keeps his bed warm at night, perhaps from the realization that it will all be over soon, that this game of submission, inner struggle and earnest desire is destined to fade away.

Two months, three if necessary, that's how long he's allotted for this semblance of love. Enough to allow you to believe in his sincerity and finish what he started, get your kingdom's military help, overthrow the tyrant and forget it like a nightmare. But if Marcel allows himself to be honest once in his life, he doesn't want to lose "it". Even if "it" was only destined to exist as an item in his strategic plans — you see him, and he feels so ridiculously warm just thinking about it. It used to be easier when he could spit venom and hate you with every corner of his soul, even easier when his brother was here and you were somewhere far away, outside his little childish world.

But now, his brother is dead, his body deep underground, and the killer is lying here, tangled in the silk sheets of Marcel's bed.

"Don't get up," he says, voice slightly hoarse after a long, so welcome, peaceful sleep. Marcel snuggles a little closer and feels the whole world around you shrink into that contradictory embrace — and there are no kings and plans and monsters hiding in the shadows. "We still have time," a couple months, he repeats in his head. Other song his heart sings.