"...I...I didn't know you could do that."

"It would get really annoying if people started to think that was something they could get from me - most things I can do, the average person doesn't think it's worth getting my attention to ask for, but for that I'd have a flood of bereaved citizens hurling themselves over the palace walls. But - it's not even that I'm trying to win her over - I want Lyrame to be happy. And this will make her happy."

"Yeah, it will."

He smiles.

"When?"

"Right now. I was going to take Lyrame to the east gardens and do it there. You can come along if you like."

"Please."

He opens a portal to his sitting room and steps through. The shirt he was wearing this morning flies into his hand; he puts it on.

Alemar looks around with the vague curiosity of someone who half-expected the place to be more visually evil but does not want to admit this.

It is really pretty and not discernibly evil in any way!

He knocks on Lyrame's door.

"Coming!" A flurry of footsteps, and then she throws open the door and beams at him.

He beams back. "Hi. —your brother caught me landing but I think he already knew, he didn't even flinch."

"Alemar?"

"I know a guy who knows a guy, and I had nothing more to go on for this guy than a personal name, and that needed fixed."

"I see. Well. I'm glad you're here." Sororal hugs.

Aw.

He opens a portal to the east gardens.

She all but bounds through it. Alemar follows at a slightly more dignified pace. Slightly.

"This might get a little gross, sorry about that," he says, and he stands on the slope facing out over the edge and holds out his hands in front of him.

Blood pours from his palms, arcing through the air in bright red streams that curve and swirl and twine together and loop back up without touching the ground. The spiraling pattern tightens and condenses and settles into the shape of a woman. When the shape is completely filled, the flow slows to a trickle. He closes his eyes and steps closer, taking deep breaths. The air ripples. The blood shimmers. He exhales and doesn't breathe in again, balancing the magic ever so carefully, fitting all the pieces together. Life and Death, unified, opposing forces coming together into a single seamless whole—

The floating person-shape of blood is abruptly displaced by the real and solid form of an actual living person. Some of it is absorbed and transformed, making the seed from which her body grows; the rest - kind of gets everywhere. Naked and covered in blood and standing in front of the Emperor is probably not a very comforting way to wake up; he frowns slightly and takes an extra half-second to turn most of the blood to water and grow a vine from the ground that climbs up and wraps itself around her and transmutes into a plain cotton dress.

Then he inhales and opens his eyes, and so does she.

Mirelle is very confused.

The last thing she remembers is her husband tightly clutching her hand as she falls asleep, and now she's outdoors and there is a man she does not recognize and another man and woman who look oddly familiar and--she feels healthy, what?

And then there are two pairs of arms wrapped around her, and she is briefly alarmed, but then--

"Mom," the woman breathes, and the voice is different, the voice is older, but she would recognize it anywhere, and it's immediately obvious why the two of them look familiar--

"Lyrame? Alemar? What--what's going on, where am I, why are you--where's your father--"

Lyrame just shakes her head and hugs her harder. Alemar--

Alemar looks just like his father when Endevar doesn't want to admit something to her.

"You died," the stranger says helpfully. "Nobody told me what of."

"I was sick--we couldn't afford a decent healer--what do you mean I died, I'm standing right here--"

She stops, her blood running cold. Is that why only two of her children are here, did they die too?

"I brought you back to life."

She opens her mouth.

She closes her mouth.

There is really only one explanation for this, and she can certainly imagine why Alemar wouldn't want to admit it.

He smiles wryly. "Yeah, sorry."

"Please don't hurt my children."

"I'm really not planning on it," he says. And - looking at Lyrame - "Should I leave you all alone to catch up?"

"Yes please."