Rain
He slept the way the dead slept, or the way he imagined the dead must sleep, motionless against the damp stone with the blanket pulled up to his chin, his chest rising so shallow and so slow that a passing glance might have mistaken the stillness for something final rather than merely tired. The gutter ran on beside him the same as always, indifferent to whether he woke from this particular sleep or didn't, and somewhere above the sewer grate the city carried on with its ordinary noise, entirely unaware that anything beneath its streets was resting so close to a stillness it might never climb back out of.
---
Upstairs, in a room considerably warmer than any gutter, Ilsa lay with her head against Dorian's chest, listening to the slow, unhurried rhythm of his heartbeat under her ear.
"You're thinking too loud again," she murmured, not opening her eyes.
"I didn't say anything."
"You don't have to. I can feel you thinking. It's very distracting." She tilted her head up to look at him properly, and even in the low lamplight his face gave him away entirely, some private worry still sitting behind his eyes despite the hour.
"I keep thinking about the meeting next week," he admitted. "And Reiner's business partner. And the succession mess. And the guard we can't seem to stop talking about, apparently." He said the last part with a small, tired laugh, and she poked him lightly in the ribs for it.
"I'm allowed to be curious about one guard."
"You're allowed. I'm just fascinated that out of everything happening in this family right now, that's the thread you've decided to pull."
"Some threads pull themselves," she said, settling back against him. "I don't choose which ones matter. I just notice when one feels like it might."
He was quiet a moment, his hand finding hers under the blanket without either of them really deciding it should, fingers lacing together out of habit more than intention. "Do you ever think about him? The missing one." He didn't need to specify further. There was only ever one missing one worth capitalising in his family's conversations.
"All the time," she said softly. "Especially lately, for some reason. I don't know why."
"Maybe it's the season. Grandfather always gets quieter this time of year." He turned his head, pressing a slow kiss to the top of hers. "Whatever happens with him — whoever he turns out to be, if we ever find him at all — I hope he knows, eventually, that he was looked for. That it wasn't nothing, all this searching."
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"He will," she said, with a certainty that had no real evidence behind it and didn't need any. "Somehow. I believe that."
"You believe a lot of things without evidence." He said it fondly, not as a criticism.
"Someone in this family has to." She smiled against his chest, and for a while neither of them said anything else at all, content simply to lie there together in the quiet, the rest of the world's noise — politics, business, missing children, guards who never spoke — set gently aside for the small, private hour that belonged only to the two of them.
---
Elsewhere in the estate, in a smaller sitting room warmed by an actual fire rather than the enormous chandeliers of the hall below, the old man sat wrapped in robes the deep red of banked coals, a steaming cup held loosely between both hands.
"More tea, my lord?" The maid who asked it wore round spectacles that caught the firelight at their edges, her hair a long, flowing orange that seemed almost to glow against the room's warm colours, and her expression carried the particular gentleness of someone who had been asking this exact question, in this exact tone, for longer than most of the staff currently employed in the house.
"Not yet, Wren. Let me finish this cup first. You always refill it before I've had the chance to properly enjoy it." He said it without real complaint, taking a slow sip, savouring the warmth of it more than the taste. "Sit a moment, if you like. My grandson and his wife have retired for the evening, and this old man doesn't much fancy talking to the fire alone tonight."
Wren hesitated only briefly before settling into the chair across from him, hands folded properly in her lap despite the informality of the invitation. "You seem lighter tonight, my lord. If I may say so."
"Do I." He considered that, turning the cup slowly in his hands. "Perhaps I am. There's something almost peaceful about an ordinary evening, once you've lived through enough of the other kind." His eyes drifted toward the fire, some old warmth settling into his weathered face. "Tell me something ordinary, Wren. Anything at all. I find I've had quite enough of extraordinary things for one week."
"The kitchen ran out of the good cinnamon this morning," she offered, a small smile tugging at her mouth. "Cook nearly wept over it."
The old man laughed, low and genuine, the sound rich with something that had nothing to do with politics or missing children or any of the heavier things that usually occupied a room like this one. "Perfect," he said. "Absolutely perfect. Tell me more."