"Not unless you climb down the walls. Or someone climbs up, I suppose, but they don't generally do that."

Giggle.

"Okay. Just making sure."

He grins at her.

Oh dear, she is now being confronted with the fact that the Emperor is actually really cute. How about - not right now. Later, yes, but now, no.

"So um," she says, searching for something she might conceivably care about besides his pretty smile, "there's a place to take a bath here, right? And changes of clothes?"

(Yes, great idea, let's distract from Sekar's pretty smile with being naked in his palace, good job.)

"Yeah - baths are the other way down the hall, and there's clothes in your room."

Smile.

"Thanks. Then I think that's probably me set, I can almost certainly amuse myself for twelve hours. I have seen at least one book, I'm good."

He laughs. "All right. See you later."

And he takes off his shirt and steps up onto the railing of her balcony and grows wings and flies away.

"- Bye," she manages, after a pause that is entirely Sekar's fault. Or, to be more specific, the result of the removal of his shirt. It's - it's distracting, okay. She hadn't been expecting it.

Oh, she's going to have this problem a lot, isn't she. Flight is obviously one of the major ways to get to and from this section of the palace. Wings do not make nice with shirts. Ergo, he's going to be taking his shirt off a lot. Shit. Because her confusing feelings for Sekar aren't tangled enough, he has to also regularly remove his shirt and be really hot. Like a jerk. Ugh.

Well, she has ten to twelve hours to sort out her feelings. That's something. She could use the time to herself, anyway.

He flies.

Down to skim the waves in the shadow of the city, up to the top of the sky where the air is too thin to breathe, over the high white clouds and through the cold spray of the sea. It isn't magically necessary or anything; he just thinks best in the air.

It's easy to map the shape of the person missing from Esvetielle's life, and easier still because he met the man, even if only once. After a little less than ten hours of flying, he lands on the plant-table balcony and goes inside to look for her, letting his soft grey owl's wings blow away on the breeze but not yet bothering to put on a shirt.

Esvetielle's curled up on a couch, reading a book. She looks much improved by ten hours of solitude, and not just in mood and general health. That deep violet gown is definitely not the simplest thing that was available in her wardrobe, because sometimes she makes stupid decisions. It was too pretty to resist putting on, and then once it was on it seemed a shame not to live up to it. It's not like she was hurting for free time. She got bored, it was something to do. This is absolutely not the result of vague sexual frustration brought about by a shirtless Emperor. What would ever give anyone that idea. She is not affected by such mortal things.

"Hi," says the shirtless Emperor. "So: the park?"

She glances up from her book and smiles brightly.

(Also: damn it. Shirtless Emperor.)

"Yes!" she says, marking her place in the book and hopping to her feet. "It should be reasonably deserted at this hour, right?"

"Reasonably, yeah."

A flower grows from the floor and deposits a shirt in his hand; as he puts on the shirt, the flower crumbles away like it was never there.

"If you want someplace definitely deserted you might have to think of somewhere else."

"I don't expect Zeothe to appreciate being brought back to life in front of an audience - how long does the resurrection itself take? Could we check the park for anyone first?"

(Also, that asshole. He's doing this on purpose! He could have put on a shirt before coming to see her. But no! He waited until after! Aaaaugh.)

"A few minutes, but it's kind of eye-catching."

"... How much do you not want people finding out about your ability to resurrect the dead? I assume at least a little, else I expect I would have heard of someone trying to ask you to bring someone back."

"It'll be kind of annoying if I end up with hundreds of bereaved citizens flinging themselves over the palace walls to beg me for their lost loved ones."

Snort.

"Well. Ah - all of the possible places we could bring him back are either public in some way or unfamiliar to him." She considers. "... Here, then, he'd be annoyed with me if I asked you to sacrifice foresight just for his brief comfort."

"Okay. This'll get a bit messy, sorry about that."

He stands well back from the couch and closes his eyes. Blood flows from his hands, twisting and twining through the air, twin streams joining to form and fill the shape of a person. It condenses and pulls inward until the shape clearly matches Zeothe, defined in rather more detail than his sister might like, made entirely of bright swirling flowing blood—

—and the Emperor breathes out, and doesn't breathe in again for a long moment, standing perfectly still with two thin trickling streams of blood still connecting him to the person-shape's hands—

—and the shape ripples, and is abruptly displaced outward by Zeothe himself, solid and real and standing perfectly still and not breathing. Blood splatters over just about everything in the room. After barely a blink, the blood turns to water and evaporates, and a vine grows from the floor and wraps around Zeothe's motionless form and transmutes itself into a shirt and trousers, and the Emperor finally opens his eyes and inhales, and so does Esvetielle's brother.

Zeothe's death was not a nice one. He'd cooperated once clearing his own name was off the table, since that gave the best chance to minimize the backlash towards the rest of his family, but killing a self-dedicated Death mage is not something done casually.

He inhales in a hiss of anticipation of further pain, twitching involuntarily and clamping down on the urge to lash out with magic. Just let it happen, don't make it worse, just -

"Zeothe," murmurs Esvetielle. She doesn't move to embrace him just yet, he probably doesn't want anyone touching him right now.

Her brother makes a sound in his throat at the bewildering discomfort of sudden wholeness after having been decapitated, then cracks open his eyes to look at her.

"Hey," she continues, voice soft and gentle. Now she takes a tentative step forward. "It's me, you're fine, you're safe."

"Eselle-? What?"

"You died." He will not appreciate minced words right now, he needs concrete facts even if the words hurt to say. "You've just been resurrected."