The frost arrived earlier this year.
Fulgur awoke one morning with a chill underneath his skin that his autumn duvet, covered in intricate embroidery that was more vain than functional, could no longer ward off. The nascent morning cast a soft, bluish hue throughout his modestly furnished bedroom. He wished for nothing more than to curl up on his side and slip back into sleep, but he knew what frost along the windowsill meant. The harvest was officially over.
Before the maids had the chance to rouse him, Fulgur began to dress himself, remembering to grab a few more layers than yesterday. He dared not dwell on the thought that he'd been in this foreign land long enough to learn the pattern of its seasons. He dreaded the long hours ahead he would have to spend in the cold fending off lethargy and the soreness of old wounds, all the while forced to stand next to the man he despised most. To distract himself, Fulgur rummaged through his jewelry box and chose a set he hadn’t worn yet. By the time he heard a polite knock on his door, all there was left to do was his hair, which he left to the maids' skillful hands. It was an skill Fulgur had never managed to harness despite Lady Akuma's careful lessons.
His conversations with the maids were sparse. They weren't forbidden from talking to him, far from it, but his tongue stumbled clumsily over the sounds of a language he spoke only in staccatos and words would escape him like birds through a thrown-open window. He could feel his face heat up in shame whenever one of the maids regarded him with disappointment in their eyes. They must find him an embarrassment, a mistress who couldn't get through a public speech without humiliating himself. They must pity his husband, wedding someone who was functionally mute for the sake of an inter-clan alliance.
Fulgur did not pity his husband. The only feeling he harbored towards the master of the Ovid house was contempt.
Once his hair had been meticulously plaited and wound into an updo he'd learned was suitable for married women and omegas in their culture, Fulgur went into the dining room for breakfast. He ignored the sour ache in his knees as he sat down and mentally steeled himself for the protest his stomach was about to mount; there wasn't a single hot item on the table. Whoever was in charge of fetching his food must have slept in again. He picked up the fork and imagined it was a pair of chopsticks instead. The cold cuts and boiled eggs became half a dozen small dishes topped with various pickled vegetables and grilled fish. He closed his eyes, and the cold milk in his mouth transformed into warm porridge.
All things considered, it was an ordinary morning. Similar to the countless others he had borne until now and the countless more to come. Fulgur swallowed down his homesickness alongside a gulp of water he pretended smelled of tea.
-
His husband had chastised him in front of the crowd of milling lords and servants. Something about his choice of jewelry, he had picked up as much from the harsh, rapidfire bombardment of words he'd been greeted with.
Fulgur's left cheek stung, exascerbated by the cold bite of the outside air. One of his maids had hurried to fix his hair so not a strand was out of place. Then she’d helped replace his earrings with a pair she had prepared beforehand. His head was too fuzzy to decipher what that meant–perhaps she had been afraid to oppose her mistress' rare display of autonomy this morning.
On their wedding day, his husband hadn't attempted to contain his disappointment when he'd finally lifted the veil and laid eyes on Fulgur for the first time. Later, Fulgur would understand that Lord Ovid had expected an exotic beauty with long black hair. Here, Fulgur's unique coloring was a dime in a dozen.
The same night, he had swallowed his humiliation like a bowl of bitter herbal medicine, held his tongue and repeated his brother's name in his heart over and over like a mantra, a spell, prayer beads rolled under his fingertips. Fulgur refused to shed any tears as the temple he had always reserved for but one person was defiled. He closed his eyes and, although his body remained confined under the weight of a man twice his age, handling him like the most lowly and common of offerings, his soul departed eastward, in the direction of home.
Vox teaching him horseback riding. The whistle of the breeze lifting his hair, the rhythmic thump of hooves against the ground, the grass a blur of green as they soared across the plains.
Vox teaching him archery. The whistle of the arrow leaving his fingertips, the thock as its metal head lodged itself inside the straw target, the music of his brother's laugh and occasional praise lighting the hearth inside his chest.
A solid wall of warmth against his back and gentle hands covering his own smaller ones. And that was what Vox had always meant to Fulgur, was it not? His harbor. His lodestar. When they were young, Fulgur had pictured his brother as the mountain range that surrounded their homeland, larger than life, an unwavering protection the gods had bestowed upon their clan. A blessing.
Then the turn had come for Fulgur to protect that blessing, and who was he to refuse. If the tenuous relationship between the Akuma and Ovid clans could be solidified on the altar of his body, was it not a cheap price to pay for peace? It mattered not that Fulgur had lost the right to succeed as head of the clan the day his first heat broke. The blood that flowed through his veins was the same that flowed through Vox, and so Vox's people were his people. He could not ride a horse to their borders or brandish a sword to take the enemy's head, but still he had a duty to preserve their people's ordinary livelihoods.
The next morning, Fulgur awoke to an empty bed. He pressed his face against his pillow, imagined it was his brother's broad chest, and pretended not to weep.