Archive of Our Own

There have been a number of injuries over the course of Crawford Starrick's life so far.

He fell from a rather large oak when he was eight years old and broke his arm, and spent the summer watching other children play outside while he was conjugating verbs. He broke two ribs in a schoolyard fight when he was sixteen, but took consolation in the fact the other boy looked ten times worse when they were done. He broke three fingers boxing, and until recently they ached almost every time it rained.

Of course, the Shroud cured all of that.

---

The first time he woke, he was in his own bed but had no earthly idea how he'd come to be there. His body felt barely his own, and a pair of strong hands held him down by his shoulders when he tried to move. He could smell blood, thick and cloying, enough that it almost made him gag though he was used to the scent. Dimly, as he saw the various bloodied rags and the needle in the doctor's hand, he understood that the blood was his own.

The second time he woke, the haze of morphine in his veins was so impenetrably thick that no thought could coalesce beyond the understanding that he had, against the odds, survived. The third time, he saw men in green jackets and knew that although he was at home, he was certainly not amongst friends; he was being watched over by Rooks rather than red-jacketed Blighters and he supposed the only reason that he wasn't shackled to prevent escape was that he could barely move at all.

The fourth time, there was a brute in a green jacket sitting by the door, leafing through one of Starrick's books with a frown on his face that said he had no taste for the greats of English poetry. When he heard Starrick move, he stood up from his seat so suddenly that the book tumbled to the floor; Starrick might ordinarily have ordered him to pick it up, and said a few words on respecting another man's property, but even if he'd felt well enough to summon words he wasn't sure that what had been his before the Shroud was still his then. After all, the Assassins had won, Templar control of London had crumbled, and there was a Rook standing guard in his bedroom.

The Rook in question vanished through the door and though he would have liked to have taken that opportunity to vanish himself, he found himself in absolutely no fit state to do so. He lay back and he closed his eyes and he took a breath that lit him up with throbbing pain in a variety of places, and he understood the only reason that it wasn't agony was the morphine.

When the door reopened, a man appeared, flanked by two Rooks, who was undoubtedly a doctor. It seemed likely that at least some of the implements in the room were his, even aside from the bag that he set down on the edge of the bed.

"How long?" Starrick asked, though he supposed the answer barely mattered.

"Eight days," the doctor replied. "You're lucky to be alive, Mr. Starrick."

He didn't feel as if he had experienced a great deal of luck. But he understood what was being said - he had very nearly died.

A handful of additional days passed by in short order, differentiated mostly by the doctor's visits and those of the nurse who bathed him, freshened his dressings and ensured he ate and drank at least a little, even when he'd have much rather launched it at a nearby wall. As soon as he was able to voice a clear opinion, he refused the needle and suffered the pain instead, in spite of the doctor's recommendations, and the morphine disappeared lest it "disappear". And when Starrick lay awake, wincing, he found his wounds with his fingertips; there was one in his side, above his hipbone and pelvis, and one more centrally, just beneath his ribs. He remembered receiving them, when he thought about it - he recalled the miraculous feeling of the Shroud healing every lingering trace of an injury that he'd ever had, and the twins inflicting more, and then the Shroud healing those, too. He recalled the Shroud being pulled away and frankly, their final blows hadn't felt any worse than the others. His regret in the moment had been that one set would kill him while the others had not.

Without the Shroud to heal him, even the very first steps toward recovery from his injury were long and slow. For the first week, he remained confined to his bed, his only visitors the stony-faced nurse and the taciturn doctor in a pair of pince-nez, and a Rook or two to help move him around when the bed needed to be changed or the doctor wished it for whatever arcane reason of modern medicine. No one spoke to him except about his condition, and though he had questions he'd have liked to ask, he remained silent unless spoken to. Given his own home appeared to have been overrun by his enemies, it seemed the safest and most sensible option available to him.

For the second week, he was occasionally moved to a chair by the window, per doctor's orders, and he dozed through the pain. He understood, of course, that the length of the Frye twins' hidden blades meant they were almost sure to have nicked something vital inside him, and so his pain and general weakness of constitution were to be expected, but that didn't mean he found comfort in that thought when he couldn't so much as lift a glass of water from the table.

Then, in the third week, his questions were quite neatly answered when the Frye twins came calling.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Starrick?" Evie asked, once the two of them had entered the room and left the door standing open behind them. He was sitting up in bed, with a lap tray of his partially eaten breakfast sitting in front of him, and he might have felt irritated by their presence except he found it quite difficult to feel much of anything except disdain for the entire situation.

"As well as can be expected, Miss Frye," Starrick replied.

"Well, we did stab you," Jacob said. "Frankly, I thought we'd finished you off once and for all."

Starrick let his gaze travel between the two of them, one to the other and then back again. "I'd say it was an oversight you intend to correct, but you seem to be keeping me alive."

The twins glanced at each other. Jacob shrugged. Evie sighed. He understood.

"You need my help," Starrick said. "You've killed all of my lieutenants and you've no idea how to run my businesses." The rather put out look on Evie's face told him he'd hit the nail on the head. "Tell me, though: why would I help you?"

"Well, I'd as soon kill you as look at you," Jacob replied, with an oddly pleasant smile. "But my sister believes you actually care about this city, as strange as that may seem."

"Do I?"

Evie stepped forward. She rested one hand on one of the tall posts at the foot of the bed and leaned toward him, looming somehow larger than her figure should have allowed.

"Yes, Mr. Starrick, you do," she said. "Now, we've routed the Templar Order out of London and taken on your businesses, but I'm not a businesswoman. My brother is most certainly not a businessman." She glanced at him apologetically and Jacob held his hands up in open acknowledgement of her point. "You are, for all your other faults. You understand that British industry must maintain its momentum or our society will crumble. I don't believe you want that. I believe you want to help us."

Starrick laughed. It hurt - it pulled in all the wrong places, but he couldn't help himself. These two children with their sharp knives and their insufferable self-righteousness had utterly destroyed his plans and now there they were, demanding his help to put right what they'd done. But the hell of it was, the truly hilarious part of it was, he didn't disagree. Perhaps he hadn't done all that he'd done from altruistic love of queen and country, but he did feel a sense of pride in his accomplishments and a sense of duty to the people whose hard work had made those accomplishments possible.

"Is that a no?" Jacob asked, and a flick of his wrist exposed his hidden blade.

Starrick rested his head back against the headboard. He closed his eyes.

"No, Mr. Frye," he said. "I'll be glad to help in any way I can."

And the twins left. He heard the door shut behind them as they went; he supposed there was no need for further conversation.

The following day, the meetings began in earnest. Two of their Rook lackeys pushed and pulled him into some semblance of appropriate attire with no regard at all for his injuries and downstairs, propped up at his desk where they so unceremoniously deposited him, Starrick bled through his shirt as he began to unravel the inner workings of Starrick & Co. for the Fryes' more business-minded lieutenants. Evie sat across the desk from him, flanked by two keen-eyed Rooks who asked intelligent questions. Jacob sat swinging his legs like a schoolchild on top of the grand piano, but now and then Starrick glanced in his direction and caught him watching the space in his well-pressed shirt where the blood began to show.

At the meeting's conclusion, a little over two hours later, Evie led their lieutenants out and Jacob waved the lackeys away.

"You're bleeding," he said, as he draped one of Starrick's arms around his neck and hoisted him up to his feet. Starrick felt certain that Jacob was strong enough to take him back upstairs in many more undignified ways than by assisting him to walk, and found himself in the odd position of feeling an unbidden pang of gratitude.

"You're very observant, Mr. Frye."

"You should call me Jacob, if we're going to be working together."

"Please don't call me Crawford."

Jacob chuckled and guided him back upstairs, though Starrick had to admit he took the staircase itself with rather more of his weight on Jacob Frye than on his own two feet. Looking up at it from below, climbing it seemed the sort of near-insurmountable feat discussed in the reports of great expeditions, whereas three weeks earlier he'd ascended and descended without a second thought. And then, back in his bedroom, Jacob sat him down on the edge of his bed, close enough to a bedpost by the footboard that he needn't hold himself up with the expenditure of much more energy, and set about stripping off his clothes.

It would have seemed an indignity too far, but Jacob remained uncharacteristically silent on the subject as he worked. He knelt on the rug by the bed to remove Starrick's boots. He eased his jacket from his shoulders, pulled away his neckcloth, unbuttoned his shirt. Customarily, he would have worn an undershirt, but the Fryes' thugs hadn't seen fit to fit him with one, and so the linen of his shirt clung to his pulled stitches. Carefully but confidently, Jacob peeled the fabric back and made Starrick wince.

"The doctor won't be pleased," Jacob said. He prodded the bloody edge of the wound and Starrick gripped the edge of the mattress. "Frankly, I don't think you've got that much more blood left to lose."

"It wasn't exactly my doing," Starrick replied, though whether he was referring to the initial wound or his pulled stitches was deliberately unclear.

"I'll have a word." Jacob sat back on his heels and looked up at him, hands resting on Starrick's knees. He glanced at one hand, then the other, and then back up at Starrick's face with an amused twist to his mouth that said he'd arrived at the same thought he had; usually, when a man was on his knees in front of him, it wasn't to discuss the vagaries of wound care. But Jacob didn't move away.

"I think some of the lads might have worked for you," he said instead, and he slid his hands just an inch or two higher. He gave Starrick's parted thighs a slow squeeze. "There's a chance they're taking advantage of your..." He shrugged and looked away, apparently searching for his next word either in the back of his mind or on the top of the dressing table, and smiled when he hit on the right one. "Your vulnerability, to put the boot in, as it were."

Starrick clucked his tongue. He rested one temple against the bedpost. "My vulnerability," he said. "How is your Latin, Jacob? Vulnerabilis. Vulnerare. Vulnus. Tu me vulneratis. You wounded me."

Jacob shrugged again. "Evie's the scholar, not me," he said, then he brought one hand back up to the pulled stitches. He tapped lightly. Some of the blood was drying and tacky and Jacob's fingertip stuck slightly with each tap. "This was me, though, wasn't it?"

"I don't recall."

"I think you do."

Starrick closed his eyes for a moment as he leaned there. He was tired - the doctor had explained that was due to loss of blood and was entirely to be expected, but that didn't soothe his irritation. And, more frustratingly, Jacob's assumption was correct; he did remember. Jacob's hidden blade had made that wound.

"Yes, that was you," he said, and he opened his eyes.

"Then I should do something about it."

He didn't object when Jacob fetched a cloth and a bowl and a needle and thread, and the bottle of cheap liquor that one of the Rook guards had left behind before they'd been banished from the room. He didn't object when Jacob washed his side with cold water then dabbed it with the alcohol, which frankly he suspected would just make it worse, then struck a match and warmed the needle in its flame till the match had burned down and the metal of the needle almost burned his fingertips. He didn't object when Jacob knelt again, between his thighs.

"This will hurt," Jacob said, looking up at him. "I'm sure we've some laudanum if you want to take the edge off..." But there was a smile playing at the corners of his mouth and Starrick knew that he was teasing, not concerned.

"Just get on with it," he replied.

Jacob shrugged yet again, said, "Suit yourself," and did. He was right: it did hurt. He felt the sting of the needle with every stitch with just as much immediacy as he felt the warmth of Jacob's fingers on his skin.

The new stitches he put in, once he'd removed the old ones, weren't exactly pretty. Jacob wasn't a tailor any more than he was a surgeon, but they were evenly spaced and uncharacteristically meticulous and afterwards, he cleaned the blood from Starrick's skin then washed it off his own hands.

"I'll send someone to help you change," Jacob said, as he was taking the bowl back across the room, and Starrick thought that would be the end of it - he would leave the room and see him again at their next tedious business meeting that Jacob didn't pay attention to at all. But Jacob came back around in front of him, closer than was strictly comfortable, took a swig of the cheap liquor before slipping it into his pocket. Then he raked Starrick's rather disorderly hair back from his face with his fingertips. The feel of nails against his scalp made him shiver.

"We'll give that a wash next time," he said, then he ducked down and pressed his mouth to Starrick's quickly and impulsively. He laughed when he pulled back, looking genuinely amused by his surprise, and patted Starrick's cheek. "Chin up, Starrick," he said. "You're not dead yet." Then he swept out of the room like a minor hurricane.

Once the lackeys had, as promised, helped him to change, Starrick dozed for the rest of the day in a hazy fatigue. But one thought remained with him throughout: no, he wasn't dead yet, because the Frye twins wanted him alive. It just seemed that their requirements of him varied from one twin to the other: Evie wanted information and Jacob entertainment.

He wondered what might happen when either - or both - ran out.

---

True to his word, Jacob washed his hair the following day.

It was after the second meeting, after two considerably gentler thugs had helped him to dress and taken him downstairs and he'd talked for two full hours, until he felt like words might actually be the death of him. Jacob walked him back up the stairs and sat him down at the dressing table, in front of the large tilting mirror. Starrick watched him in the mirror as he stripped him down to his bare chest then stripped himself to shirtsleeves; he took off his gauntlet and set it down on the dresser, so close by that Starrick could have reached out and taken it if only he'd had the vim. He hadn't, and Jacob evidently knew it, so the gauntlet's placement felt very much like mockery.

He washed his hair. Doing so while being careful of his injuries wasn't a simple endeavour and involved rather more soapy water trickling into rather more unfortunate places than either of them would have liked - Starrick's eyes, the corners of his mouth, his stitches, the carpet, Jacob's cuffs. Jacob rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and continued once he'd given Starrick's face a quick wipe and once he was done, once he'd towelled off Starrick's hair and whisked the cloth away with a sardonic flourish, he set his warm hands at Starrick's bare shoulders and leaned down to meet his gaze in the mirror. His damp shirt hung forward and clung to Starrick's back.

"There, isn't that better?" Jacob said, and he gave Starrick's shoulders a squeeze. He turned his head. His nose brushed Starrick's neck behind his ear and made him shiver involuntarily, which made both sets of stitches ache.

"Perhaps you should consider washing your own," Starrick said, tersely, and Jacob laughed. He looked at him in the mirror, eyes full of mirth, then kissed his neck.

"Point taken," he said. "I wouldn't want to show up our gracious host." Then he scooped up his belongings and left him alone in the room. The thugs returned him to his bed.

The following day, in his study for their meeting, Jacob smiled at him broadly from his now customary place atop the piano and ran his fingers through his freshly washed hair. Starrick shook his head. Evie glanced back at Jacob and then shook her head, too. It seemed they shared a similar exasperation at her brother's antics, not that he was anxious for camaraderie.

"Let me try," Starrick said, once the room was empty and Jacob hopped down from the piano. Jacob shrugged, and he let him; Starrick rose awkwardly, leaning heavily against the desk, and swayed there for a moment before he began to walk. The movement was painful, and exhausting, and stole his breath after just a few steps, but he pressed on determinedly until he slumped against the doorframe. Then Jacob arrived and though he did need his assistance with the stairs, Jacob's arm around his waist, he allowed himself to feel some small sense of accomplishment.

"Are you living here?" Starrick asked, once they were back inside his room and he was sitting on the bed with one shoulder to the bedpost.

"My room's down the landing," Jacob replied, confirming his suspicions, then he sat down next to him there on the bed. "We didn't think you'd mind, all things considered."

"I don't suppose I have a choice."

Jacob slipped one hand, the one wearing the gauntlet, onto Starrick's thigh. "You always have a choice," he said. "Do you want us to leave?" He quirked a brow. "Do you want me to?"

It might have been simpler to give that question its due consideration if Jacob Frye's hand hadn't been quite so high on his thigh. It might have been simpler if the scars on his utterly unguarded face had made him less attractive instead of more so. He didn't like Jacob. He couldn't even say that he respected him, unlike his more measured sister; he was a kind of barely adulterated chaos in the body of a petulant young man from Crawley. But, for all that, Starrick had to admit he was compelling.

Drawing a conclusion as to whether he wanted the Fryes to leave his home was difficult, and in the end unnecessary. Jacob didn't wait for a response; he turned and slipped his other hand to Starrick's neck and pressed his mouth to his. Jacob's tongue flicked across his lips and Starrick took two awkward, rather feeble handfuls of the hem of Jacob's well-fitting waistcoat, entirely against all sense of better judgement. Jacob groaned against his mouth, breathy and wanton, and he moved, quickly; he stood, or at least he almost did, and he set one knee on the mattress to the side of Starrick's thigh, the other foot still firmly on the floor and wedged against the bedpost to keep himself from falling. The bloody, soapy, sooty, beer-over-smoke smell of him was nearly overwhelming, suddenly, though he'd smelled it before, and the weight of him over his thighs was solid and firm, the way his nails grazed his neck made his hairs stand on end and Jacob kissed him again, hotly, and completely unreservedly.

He did want him to leave, Starrick thought, but he'd have preferred he have left six months ago rather than now. He wanted him to leave but found his hands at Jacob's hips, he found one moving up to tangle in his hair, he found his own lips parting and his heart racing and the kiss turned wet and hungry. Jacob seemed pleased. He had enthusiasm enough to compensate for a lack of finesse, sucking at Starrick's bottom lip, grazing it with his teeth, and had he been of sound body if not of sound mind then Starrick would have turned and pushed him down there on the bed and had him any way he could. But, as his cock inevitably began to stiffen, his head started feeling light. The room spun. He pushed Jacob back.

"I'm going to pass out," he said, already seeing double, so he closed his eyes as Jacob chuckled."

"I don't usually have that effect on men," he replied, and he cupped Starrick's jaw in his hands. He kissed him again, quickly, then he helped him to lie down.

He did finally lose consciousness a minute or two later, stretched out fully clothed on his bed. When he did, Jacob was still there to keep an eye on him, though he wasn't certain that was comforting.

---

"He's been entirely too active!" the doctor said.

"I don't think he's been active enough," Jacob replied. "All these bloody meetings, they're enough to make anyone reach for the smelling salts."

Evie glared daggers at Jacob, who blithely ignored her, so she turned her attention to the doctor. "So, what do you suggest?" she asked.

"Rest," he replied. "At least another week before regular meetings should be scheduled. Fresh air and light exercise, in moderation. And as little excitement as possible."

Jacob smiled. He noticed Starrick watching them and gave him a quick wink. "As little exercise as possible," he said. "That sounds just like us."

Starrick snorted. Evie looked amused through her annoyance, and as the doctor turned to fuss at him the two of them vacated the room.

Dr. Evesham was a straightforward type with a sharp eye and an unflappable demeanor and while Starrick couldn't say he liked him, not precisely, he wasn't disposed to dislike him, either. He'd discerned very little of the man's history, however, except the Fryes had evidently done him a good turn at some juncture; when he'd asked, "So, are you an Assassin or are they paying you out of pocket?" Evesham had replied, "It's more that I'm repaying them." Probably not an Assassin, then, though it was hard to find certainty in such scant evidence, but Starrick understood that Assassin and Templar now meant very little there in London, and less still within his house. If there had still been Templars left, at least any more than a handful, he knew they would have come for him already.

The good doctor told him to ensure he took plenty of rest if he wished his health to improve and then left him alone, and Starrick had to wonder precisely what the point in that would be. He was a Grand Master of the Templar Order without an Order to follow him, saved from death only to pass on information that his Assassin enemies required. Not that he had any intention of ending it all - on the contrary, he did intend his health to improve. He just asked himself quite seriously, as he drifted off to sleep, what he would do with his health once he had it.

When he woke, he was still alone. Some time later, a maid brought him a bowl of soup on a tray, which he attempted to eat despite having no appetite to speak of. He removed himself from bed at some point close to sunset and leaned heavily at the window to look out over the square outside; he'd considered moving his base of operations out of town on a handful of occasions but had in the end decided he preferred to remain within the city. The Fryes had been irritatingly correct when they'd said they believed he cared for London, after all. It was such a shame they hadn't been born Templars. He could have found so many uses for them both.

In the morning, no thugs arrived to help him dress, only a maid to take his dinner tray and deposit one laden with breakfast. The thought of food turned his stomach but he forced himself to eat at least a little and then poured himself a cup of tea. His hands were rather more unsteady than he would have liked, but he managed it without flooding the tray, which he had to consider that improvement. He supposed he must take pride in the small things.

There were no meetings. There were no Rook guards stationed in his room to keep an eye on him, putting their dirty hands on his books. There was no Evie Frye to quiz him on the intricacies of this shipping route or that warehouse operation, no Jacob Frye to wash his hair or tend his stitches. The doctor came again in the afternoon and asked if he'd been resting; he'd done nothing but rest, and he was restless from resting, and he asked if there had been some medical decree that no one should visit but the household staff. The doctor said no, not at all, and left the nurse to change his dressings. He went to sleep wondering if he'd already outlived his usefulness.

He was woken from a frustratingly light sleep at a little after eight o'clock that evening by two stony-faced Rooks who seemed thoroughly unimpressed with their assignment. They removed a suit from his dressing room and waited only so long for him to dress himself before helping him along in their heavy-handed way, albeit apparently tempered somewhat by the words their master had promised to have. They put him into his coat, conspicuously divested as it was of its Templar trappings, and hauled him bodily downstairs, out of the front door, and into the back of a carriage. While curious where he was being taken, he refrained from asking. He just watched the streets pass by as the horses drew them on.

Upon arrival, he understood. He'd been well aware of Robert Topping's enterprises for a number of years and was acquainted with the vast majority of sites he used on a regular basis. As he was wheeled inside, in a contraption that had more in common with a wicker basket than a vehicle, he found himself thinking it must be Thursday if the fights had moved to Westminster. And there, of course, inside the ring, was Jacob Frye.

Starrick had seen him fight before, of course. He'd fought him himself, as it happened, and had it been just him alone and not the two of them, it was entirely possible there would have been a very different outcome to the altercation. He'd never actually ventured into one of Topping's clubs to watch him fight, however, amidst the cheers and smoke, which he suspected wasn't quite what Dr. Evesham had had in mind when prescribing plenty of fresh air. But he watched, sitting remarkably comfortably in the wheeled contrivance, flanked as he was by his Rook guards. Jacob was fighting bare-chested with his knuckles wrapped, blood on the cloth already but it didn't seem to be his own, with a flush of exertion to his skin that made him very nearly radiant. He fought without any kind of conscious calculation, just a kind of brutal grace that carried him from one opponent to the next, utterly carefree. And when he noticed Starrick, mid-fight, he flashed him a smile and then broke a man's nose. Starrick found a wry smile coming to his own lips that he didn't bother hiding. He'd never fought like Jacob did, but in that moment he wished he had; it seemed incredibly freeing, if one didn't mind taking the occasional knee to the gut.

Once the fight was done and Jacob's hand had been raised high, he left the ring and made his way to Starrick as he towelled the sweat from his brow.

"I thought you might like to get out of the house," he said. He passed the towel to a Rook then worked on unbinding his hands.

"You mean you thought you might like to show off," Starrick replied, and Jacob laughed. He flexed his hands.

"That, too." Another Rook handed him his shirt and he pulled it on. A different one handed him his waistcoat, then his top coat, then he started to fasten his gauntlet into place, while Starrick watched.

"Do you know how it works?" Jacob asked.

"I understand the general principle," he replied. "I've seen it in use, after all."

Jacob smiled rakishly. "I suppose you have," he said, then he offered him his hand. "Do you want to walk back to the carriage?"

He didn't particularly want to walk anywhere, but he took Jacob's hand and let himself be hauled up despite that. A Rook passed a cane to Jacob who handed it to Starrick and as they started to walk, he had to admit that between the cane and Jacob's arm to steady him, it did make quite a difference. People offered Jacob their congratulations as they went, and their thanks in the case of ones who'd bet on him, but he didn't pause, just smiled and nodded and assisted Starrick in remaining upright until they were out the door in the cool night air. He hadn't quite realised how hot and close it had been inside until he could see his own breath on the lamplit breeze.

"So, what do you think of my technique?" Jacob asked. He smiled his wide, easy smile, which was quickly becoming familiar. He took a seat on a nearby bench and Starrick joined him.

"Are you looking for compliments or critique?"

"Oh, by all means, critique," he said.

"You let your guard down. You leave yourself open to attack."

"How do you know that's not a cunning ruse?"

"Because you're not that cunning."

"Am I not?"

"No, Mr. Frye. You're guileless."

"That doesn't sound like a compliment."

"That depends entirely on your point of view."

Jacob frowned at him, as if trying to work out what to make of that, or what to make of him.

"And what do you think of me?" he asked.

"You killed my cousin."

"In my defence, she didn't advertise the family relationship."

You take too many uncalculated risks."

"It usually works out for the best."

"You're brazen."

Jacob laughed. "Now that sounds more like a compliment," he said, and then he leaned in close by Starrick's ear. "I could kiss you right here and to hell with the scandal," he said. "Is that what you mean by brazen?"

"Whether it is or not, I doubt that's what the doctor means by light exercise."

"And I think my sister might prefer I keep the impropriety indoors instead of out." He leaned back again. He raised his eyebrows. "So, back to your house?"

They did, in fact, go back to Starrick's house; they did not, however, manage anything improper, as Jacob was called away upon arrival. He left Starrick at the foot of the staircase with a pair of Rooks to help him up, gave a somewhat exaggerated bow and a rueful smile and told him, "I'll be back. Don't have too much fun without me."

"Chances are you'll have all the fun," Starrick replied, and Jacob laughed as he jogged toward the door. And, as he began his slow ascent of the stairs, and the front door closed behind him, Starrick was forced to admit, if only to himself, that he wished Jacob hadn't been obliged to leave.

---

Jacob didn't return that night. When he had seen neither hide nor hair of him by noon the following day, Starrick dressed himself rather haphazardly in shirt and trousers, braces clipped in place to keep them up, and a pair of leather slippers Pearl had sent him for his birthday with his initials embroidered on the tongue. They were a little too ostentatious even for his taste, but he didn't like the odds that he could successfully pull his boots on without needing to curse loudly and lie down for a long while afterwards.

He went downstairs. There were Rooks milling around as Blighters and Templars had once, and they eyed him but they didn't try to stop him; he assumed that would be different if he made his way toward the front door, but his destination was his study. He could hear someone playing the piano inside, competently if without a great deal of feeling, which more than likely meant it wasn't Jacob. He turned the handle to step inside and found his sister there instead. She stopped playing and looked up at him.

"Mr. Starrick."

"Miss Frye. Forgive the intrusion."

"Not at all," she said. "It's your instrument, after all."

"Is it?"

She frowned at him. The look on her face was calculating, inquisitive, and she said, "Mr. Starrick, your private property is still very much your own. We're not thieves."

"No, you're Assassins."

"Precisely. I think you know the difference."

He inclined his head in agreement and she slid over on the long bench sitting there in front of the piano. He stepped closer, and when she gave him an expectant look he sat down next to her, at the full distance allowed by the space available. He raised his hands and played a dramatic diminished chord, stepped on the sustain pedal and let it ring until the notes faded completely.

"Do you play?" she asked. She played the same chord in lower octaves, both hands, so he did the same but higher.

"Not as well as I'd like," he replied. "I haven't had a great deal of time to practice."

"Which means you play, of course."

He inclined his head again. "Of course."

She began to play, and he quickly understood; he chuckled and said, "Oh, I see," and chimed in with the higher part. She wasn't a good player any more than he was, and there were inconsistencies, mistimings, wrong notes, but the important part was that they both kept going. It wasn't a favourite of his but lessons with his brother had meant plenty of duets, and he couldn't help but feel that with a little practice, they might play well together.

"Did you learn with your brother, Miss Frye?" he asked, as they played, and she snorted rather indelicately.

"Jacob doesn't play," she said. "Well, no. The bawdy music hall numbers, he likes those."

"That does sound like him, I admit." He trailed off mid-piece, and she played slowly through the next few bars alone before stopping, too. She looked at him. He closed the lid over the piano's keyboard and leaned against it quite heavily with one elbow.

"If you're looking for Jacob, he's not here," she said.

"You don't seem concerned about him."

"Are you?"

"Should I be?"

She eyed him closely, from not very far away, as if working through the implications of the conversation like a schoolchild's long division. As he watched her, as she turned back to the piano and mimed a scale with both hands on the lid, he decided that was somewhat unfair; it was more like an accountant checking his books for irregularities, or an engineer wondering if the bridge he was proposing was going to plunge directly into the Thames.

"No," she said, at length. "He's been called away. It's likely to take a few days, but he's in no more danger than usual."

Frankly, Starrick wasn't certain if he appreciated her taking his question seriously or if it bothered him on some level that he had no wish to examine. It seemed she had assessed him and decided he wasn't indifferent to the notion of Jacob's untimely demise, and when he assessed himself he couldn't say he disagreed, if only because he found him entertaining company. He found it suddenly intolerable to be close to her, however, in his awareness that in some small way she understood he felt attachment to her infuriating brother that he could have never borne before, and he pushed himself back up from the bench again, albeit with a wince. He made his way across the room, leaning on one piece of furniture or another, until he came to a settee he couldn't recall having left there, opposite the usual one. And when he sat and leaned back against the stiff leather upholstery, Evie frowned at it and said, "Oh. Yes. Jacob moved that. He wanted to play chess."

"He plays chess?"

Evie laughed. "Not terribly well, no." She stood and wandered across the room; in a way, she reminded him of Lucy Thorne, but he wasn't entirely sure that he'd ever heard Miss Thorne laugh. Evie sat down opposite him on the edge of the second settee and leaned forward to the coffee table to start clearing away the chess pieces from the board that Starrick was certain wasn't his. He had one, in fact more than one, but this looked a little more worn around the edges, as if the set had had something of a difficult life.

"Is that yours?" he asked.

She picked up a piece, held it up and raised one eyebrow in a way that reminded him unexpectedly of her brother. "Is it that obvious?" she asked, then she smiled and set it back down. "Actually, I believe it belonged to Rexford Kaylock."

"The train," he said.

"The train," she replied. "It really was an excellent hideout."

"Was?" He gestured around the room, at all the things she'd told him were still his. "Is this your hideout now, Miss Frye?"

"Do you want us to leave?"

"Your brother asked that, too."

"What did you tell him?"

"I don't believe I answered."

"But that's an answer in itself."

Starrick spread his hands, palms up, against his thighs. "I suppose it is," he said, then he gestured at the board. "Do you play?" he asked.

She smiled. It crinkled her eyes. "Not as well as I'd like."

"Which means you play, of course."

"Of course."

"Would you care for a game?"

"Well, I do seem to find myself at a loose end."

"Would you call for tea?"

"That's an excellent idea," she said, and she went to the door to do precisely that while he leaned forward awkwardly to arrange the pieces on the board.

They played for very nearly two hours, Evie sitting forward at the edge of her settee and Starrick sitting back on his, calling his moves so she could move his pieces for him. She didn't seem to mind that he was improperly attired, though he supposed that living with her brother might have lowered her standards somewhat and frankly, he could count the women he'd known to wear trousers in the general course of their daily lives on the fingers of one hand. She also didn't seem to mind that he beat her, because she understood precisely what had happened when she retraced their moves over a fresh cup of tea. They'd talked all the while, too - a little general chit-chat to pass the time at first but she seemed happy enough to share a story or two about her brother's disastrous run-ins with chess and how they'd both learned from their father. She said he was better at cards, but the type of card games in which he usually found himself involved weren't quite as civilised as chess. Starrick chuckled and said he didn't doubt that. All of his enterprises had at least concerned legitimate businesses if not always legitimate means, but that didn't mean he was a complete stranger to a hand or two of whist for stakes.

"You'll have to play Jacob when he comes back," she told him, as she finally cleared away the board. "He usually has a deck of cards about his person."

"I'll remember that, Miss Frye," he replied. "Perhaps you'll join us for a hand?"

She looked at him then, from her safe distance across the table, with an expression on her face that said she understood precisely what he and her brother had been doing with their hands, and it wasn't écarté. Then she stood and stowed the board in one of the room's many mostly empty cupboards, and said, "Maybe I will."

He stood, too. It took a moment, and he was stiff from sitting and not particularly steady, but he did at least arrive at his feet in the end.

"Would you like a hand up the stairs, Mr. Starrick?" she asked.

"I'd say I can manage but I don't believe I'd convince either of us," he replied. "Could you call one of your...associates?"

She smiled and strode closer, with a kind of straightforward confidence that reminded him a great deal of her twin. "Oh, I think we can muddle through, just the two of us," she said, and draped his arm unceremoniously about her shoulders, slipping one of her own around his waist.

"It seems like you might have done this before, Miss Frye," he said.

"Well, you've met Jacob." They made their way steadily toward the door. "I'm sorry to say drunken brawling has been his specialty for a few years now."

They mounted the stairs, slowly and carefully. He'd found he'd been able to take a little more of his own weight each day, and for a few more yards, but he was grateful for her assistance, even if her arm felt particularly warm over his rather flimsy shirt, and a few wisps of her long hair that had escaped her elaborate style tickled at his neck. It reminded him, in a strange way, of the night at the palace, when they'd danced before they'd danced, though now she was much more at her ease. It seemed the change of clothes and change of scenery helped, though he assumed the primary difference was that he wasn't currently attempting to kill her.

"You know, Miss Frye, it wasn't personal," he said, which was true though he was faintly surprised to find himself saying so. "Miss Thorne seemed to take a personal interest in you, but for my part it was business."

She gave him a considering look, and a momentary frown, as if exactly as surprised to hear him say it as he was. Then she nodded. "I understand," she said. "That's how it was for me as well."

"Your brother, however..."

She laughed. "Oh, yes. He has an uncanny knack for getting under people's skin." She took a long breath and leaned against one of the bed's tall posts. She frowned again. "Mr. Starrick, would you have breakfast with me while Jacob's away?" she asked.

"I'd be delighted."

"Shall we say nine o'clock?"

"Let's."

She smiled, gave a terse nod, and turned for the door. "Thank you for the game," she called back over her shoulder. "I'll make sure there's plenty of tea."

And, with that, she was gone.

Starrick frowned. He rubbed his face with both hands. He looked forward to Jacob's return, and he looked forward to dining with Evie. What a strange world it was that he now inhabited.

---

They had a pleasant breakfast together the following morning, sitting in the sunshine in the morning room, making conversation. She explained a little more about their childhood in Crawley and he reciprocated on the topic of his own - it didn't seem to matter, after all, now that he'd lost very nearly everything. The Fryes were no longer his enemies. They were more like his employers, after a certain mode of thinking.

Evie excused herself after eating and left the house to tend to business, though whether that was his business or Assassin business she didn't say. He took himself into the courtyard garden when she left and sat on a bench by the wall near the fishpond and read for a while. It was strange to find himself at leisure after having worked for so long, day in and day out, and he found himself longing to do sometime, anything, ride a horse or shoot a rifle, fight, or just attend a business meeting without feeling a sense of dreary fatigue. It was wearing to feel so heavy-limbed and cumbersome when he'd always been so active. And he understood that Evie had saved his life with a moment's use of the Shroud or else he wouldn't have lived through that night at all, but it surely wouldn't have killed her to leave it on a short while longer. Of course, he might have killed her if she had, so he understood her reticence, and now who knew where the Shroud was. More likely than not, the Assassins had whisked it away to some nameless stronghold, and he wouldn't do himself the disservice of asking only to be rebuked.

When she returned several hours later, she looked harassed and slightly bloody. She paused by the front door, as he was exiting the study, and she let him move in closer, remove a clean white handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and rub a fleck of blood from her freckled cheek.

"I take it business was...active," he said, and her mouth took on a wry twist.

"You could say that, yes," she said, and she took the handkerchief when he offered it to try to clean off a little more of the blood. He stepped back, but not terribly far.

"Cook says supper should be ready in half an hour," he told her. "Will you join me?"

She winced at her slightly bloody gloves and the slightly bloody handkerchief in them. "I should wash," she said. "And change. And possibly burn everything I'm wearing."

He chuckled. "That wasn't a no, Miss Frye."

She tucked the handkerchief into her pocket. "No, Mr. Starrick, that wasn't a no," she replied, and she made her way up the staircase. He followed, though slowly enough that he arrived at the top just in time to see her disappear into a guest room.

They ate together, sitting at a small table in his study as it seemed a shame to use the dining room. When she told him about her evening over halibut, he told her what he would have done differently, and she didn't disagree in principle. Then, afterwards, when he offered her a drink, they discovered Jacob had been at his brandy already. She apologised on his behalf, but the truth of it was, he couldn't say he minded.

After that, they went out into the garden and sat on the bench side by side in the moonlight. The air was cold enough that they could see their breath and he shivered - it seemed his slow recovery had also affected his temperature. She draped her jacket around his shoulders and then turned to take his hands in hers; she rubbed them and then brought them up and blew warm air on them and as she did so, she looked up at him. She paused with his hands still in hers. In the low light, her face seemed faintly flushed. And, when he slowly moved one hand to brush a few stray hairs back from her face, her eyes widened just a fraction. Another moment and she brought his other hand up higher, and she pressed her lips to his fingertips.

"Miss Frye..." he said, not very like a warning, but it was already much too late for warnings anyway. She moved quickly, shifting to straddle his lap as he sat there on the bench though the wooden slats against her knees couldn't have been comfortable at all. And she kissed him, hot and hard and thoroughly insistent, unlike any woman that he'd kissed before. There hadn't been an abundance - he'd been far too busy climbing ladders in the business world and then within the Templar Order, and he'd never felt particularly inclined to marry, at least not after his youthful rejection by his dear departed cousin Pearl. Of course, Evie Frye was quite unlike any other woman of his immediate acquaintance and he was quite convinced that what she was looking for was not marriage.

He ran his hands over her thighs, to her hips, to the small of her back, and he held her there as she licked his lower lip. She bit him, playfully, then pressed her mouth to his again as her hands squeezed tight at his shoulders. Then she leaned back, precariously, apparently trusting him to hold her there as she pulled off her waistcoat and dropped it to the ground, pocketwatch and all. She was wearing a thin blouse underneath. A very thin blouse, as it happened, a flimsy, filmy fabric with voluminous sleeves pinched in at the wrists with fitted cuffs, or one was, where the lack of a second gauntlet left it exposed. She was only wearing that blouse - that much was evident when his gaze strayed down over her torso to find her nipples hard and clearly visible, the same rosy pink as her lips. She shuffled, shifted her weight to steady herself then brought both his hands up to her breasts; his thumbs brushed her nipples and she hissed in a breath and he felt himself begin to stiffen in his trousers in response.

She was struggling frustratedly with the fastenings of her gauntlet when someone coughed behind them. She stopped. He dropped his hands down to her thighs. And when she turned, she said, "Jacob. You're back early."

Jacob didn't speak; he just walked away and left them there. Evie stood, picked up her things, and left him there, too. His arousal faded quickly, which he supposed was just, and soon enough he gathered himself to go inside - he left her jacket in the study, then he went upstairs to bed.

As he lay there in the dark, the only thing thought that he could summon was that it had been a highly confusing couple of weeks. His assumption was that it would now become much more straightforward, and the twins would both know to leave him well enough alone.

---

Life did not become more straightforward.

Starrick woke in the morning to the sound of his bedroom door opening and then closing again in short order. Then the curtains were flung open and the room flooded with sunlight in a way he hadn't experienced since his youth at boarding school. When he opened his eyes, and they finally adjusted to the near-overwhelming glare, his squint resolved on Jacob. He was standing by the windows, a dark silhouette against the morning sun, with his arms crossed over his chest.

"So, I go away for a couple of days and you forget all about me," he said. "You know, I don't know where you stand on the subject but that seems rude to me."

Confusingly, however, he didn't sound angry. He didn't even sound particularly disappointed. He sounded amused and given how entirely contrary Jacob's character seemed at any moment, Starrick wasn't certain why he'd expected anything else.

He pulled himself up in bed, awkwardly, and leaned back with a pained huff. "Oddly, Jacob, I didn't plan this," he said. "And believe me, you're extremely difficult to forget."

Jacob tilted his head. Shading his eyes, Starrick could see just enough of his face to conclude that he was smiling.

"I think that's the first time you've called me by my name," he said. "You should say that again."

"I don't think--"

"Come on, Starrick."

"It's not--"

"Humour me."

"Jacob..."

Jacob flung his arms wide. He turned in a circle on the spot as if in the midst of some kind of rapture, then said, "Perfect. Perfect. Was that really so hard?"

Starrick closed his eyes. He rested his head back against the edge of the carved wooden headboard. "Jacob. What do you want?" he asked.

"I came to do you a favour."

"I haven't asked for a favour."

"Maybe you should try it sometime. No man is an island, you know."

Starrick sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and cracked open one eye. "So, what is this favour?"

Jacob grinned. He brandished a flannel and flapped it in the direction of the table where Starrick saw a bowl and a large jug of steaming water. "I thought you might like some help cleaning all those hard to reach areas," he said.

"I don't require help with that."

"Did I say anything about requiring?"

"That's not--"

"You'll enjoy it."

"I don't--"

"I insist."

Of course, he actually did still require a measure of help, but the indignity of being washed from head to toe by a stern-faced, terse nurse was something he found he could bear a great deal more cordially than being washed by Jacob Frye. The odds were that Jacob had some fanciful notion in his head of what it meant to wash someone recovering from injury, that it would be intimate and arousing, perhaps a touch romantic... but if he insisted then Starrick supposed he'd best get about the business of disabusing him of that notion with all haste.

So, he stood. It took a minute or two to manoeuvre to the edge of the mattress without undue discomfort and then swing his legs down from the side, then he pushed up to his feet. His plain white nightshirt hung down to his knees and he took two handfuls of it by his hips, gathered it, pulled it up, and with some not insignificant difficulty he eased it off over his head. He exposed himself there in the bright morning sunlight, all sleep-ruffled hair in desperate need of a trim and his two wounds still dressed and underneath a bandage that circled twice around his midriff to keep the gauze roughly in place. He watched Jacob's eyes travel over him, over his chest, the place where he'd restitched the wound in his side, his cock hanging soft and thick between his thighs. He didn't seem put off in any way; he just went to the table where he'd left the water, spread a towel on the floor and said, "Would you come here, please? I'd hate to ruin your lovely rug."

Starrick didn't believe for a solitary second that Jacob gave a damn about the rug. He did, however, do as he was told and made his way to the table, where Jacob gestured for him to stand on top of the towel. Jacob unfastened his gauntlet and set it aside, He removed his jacket and slung it over the back of a nearby chair, unbuttoned his waistcoat and did likewise with it, then rolled both shirt sleeves up to his elbows and set about pouring a little water out into the bowl. He had soap and a cloth and a pail for dirty water, and when he began, he began at Starrick's shoulders, a hand braced at one of them while he rubbed firmly with the soapy cloth in the other. His brow furrowed in concentration as he worked, as he swept the cloth over his collarbones, each arm in turn, sternum, ribcage, down towards his hips. And in the bright morning sun that seemed to dry him off as things progressed, Starrick understood quite rapidly that he'd been wrong; he'd expected all the intimacy of Nurse Finch, but he found it was intimate indeed. He didn't require Jacob's assistance to wash his wrists or his hands where his fingers lingered, where the faint ghost of his touch lingered long after he'd moved on. He didn't need Jacob's assistance to wash his biceps or his underarms, where Jacob tugged on the hair when he was done and made him huff in something almost like amusement. He did need help with his back, but Nurse Finch hadn't given it such attention, the cloth moving firmly from the nape of his neck down to coccyx. He heard Jacob drop to his knees then felt him apply the cloth to both cheeks of his arse, and felt him run it in between them. Then, as if punctuating some unknown point he hadn't made aloud, Jacob spread his cheeks with both hands and leaned in to give his hole a quick, impulsive lick.

"Jacob..." Starrick said, his tone dark and on the cusp of warning.

Jacob snorted. "I see how it is," he replied. "First I practically have to beg and now I can't stop you saying my name." But he stood, and he rinsed the cloth, and he tipped out the water and he poured a fresh bowl. He dipped the cloth in, he soaped it, then he stepped in close; he ran it down over Starrick's abdomen, over the dark trail of hair leading down from his navel, and he met his gaze quite deliberately as he wrapped his cloth-covered hand around his cock. His grip was firm and his expression faintly challenging, but then it dropped again and he continued washing just for a minute. He soaped both cock and balls, rinsed, then paused at the bowl as thin trickles of clean water tickled Starrick's thighs. Apparently his decision came quickly, however, and he dropped to his knees and took Starrick's cock in his hand. He licked his lips. He pressed them to the still soft tip and Starrick understood that soft would not be maintained for long.

Jacob sucked him. Even before he was hard, while he was stiffening, he sucked him. He nuzzled at the base with the thickening shaft in his hand, he eased back his foreskin and then he licked the flushed head underneath, wrapped his lips around it and sucked. Starrick took an unsteady breath as he watched him, and he reached for the back of a chair to grip there white-knuckled so he might keep his balance, and when Jacob looked up at him, cock in his mouth and cheeks blushing, Starrick used his other hand to rake his fingers through Jacob's unruly hair. He seemed to take that as encouragement and took him in deeper, watching him from his knees until he couldn't any longer. He closed his eyes, hollowed his cheeks, and he sucked back to the tip, and Starrick shivered. His breath caught. He hurt all the way through his middle where the blades had struck, he could feel a somewhat dizzy spell approaching, but by God he wasn't going to let that stop him, not when Jacob's palms skimmed his thighs all the way up to his hips and he held him there, firmly, self-assuredly, oddly reassuringly, as he bobbed his head and took him deep.

Starrick wasn't what he would have called inexperienced. He'd spent several years at boarding school and university afterwards charming his classmates into a variety of compromising positions, and the one in which Jacob Frye now found himself was not unfamiliar to him. What was different, however, was the verve with which he sucked him, the level of enthusiasm as he pulled back open-mouthed with Starrick's cock against his tongue and stroked him with one hand. The expression on his flushed face was amusement and arousal and excitement, and Starrick felt an utterly reckless pang of desire twist in his gut to match it. Jacob tongued his tip as he stroked him and Starrick felt his muscles tighten painfully. His fingers tightened in Jacob's hair what he assumed was also painfully, but he didn't complain. And when Starrick bit his own bottom lip to keep from announcing his orgasm to the entire household, when he came in Jacob's mouth, Jacob just held his hips to help keep him up and sucked him until he was utterly spent.

Jacob pulled back, quirked one brow as he rocked up to his feet, then spat rather indelicately into the pail with the waste water. Starrick laughed breathlessly, which made him splutter, and then Jacob was there with his hands bracing him at his upper arms, incredibly close. Starrick slipped his hands to Jacob's clothed hips and when he glanced down he supposed he understood his enthusiasm; his own arousal was made completely obvious by the tightness of his trousers, not just an indistinct bulge against the fabric but the length and girth drawn out in thick brushed cotton. He reached down and traced the outline of its head with one fingertip, firmly, and Jacob veritably shuddered as his hands went tight.

"Don't do that unless you mean it, Starrick," he warned, with a hard edge to his voice that he assumed a number of his victims had heard over the years.

"And if I mean it?" he replied.

Jacob raised his eyebrows like a challenge. "Then you'd best do something about it," he said.

He did something about it. Perhaps the intelligent, prudent thing would have been to disentangle himself from the overzealous young Assassin forthwith, but he knew he hadn't climbed to his former heights with prudence but with calculated risk. The issue as he saw it, as he turned and stepped up to the nearest wall, rested his back against it and waved for Jacob to follow, was that he hadn't made a calculation here.

"Turn around," he said, when Jacob joined him, leaning close with one hand against the wall as if he understood. Jacob's brows rose with a kind of intrigued surprise and he turned; Starrick tucked two fingers into the back of his belt and drew him closer, just close enough that he could unbutton Jacob's shirt while still standing behind him. Jacob soon got the hang of it, and he untucked the shirt, pulled it off and threw it to the floor, then Starrick drew him even closer. He pulled him back snugly against him as he leaned there with the wall for support, Jacob's bare back to his bare chest, and he looped his arms around his waist. It tugged at his injuries, made them burn a little, but it wasn't enough just yet to be concerning, especially not when he slipped one hand down over the front of Jacob's trousers, over the stiff outline of his clothed erection, and pressed just hard enough to make him moan out loud. He was certain he could have made him come just like that, without even trying very hard at all.

Then he unbuckled Jacob's belt. Then he unfastened Jacob's trousers. He pushed them down, though he supposed the action was rather more like peeling, past the curve of Jacob's arse to mid-thigh, loosing his cock in the sunshine. He took his time getting to that, though; he trailed the fingers of both hands down Jacob's chest, collarbones to sternum down to navel. He let his palms skim Jacob's hips, then used them to pull him back against him firmly, his own cock now soft once more but it sent a shiver through Jacob anyway. Then he dipped one hand down and cupped Jacob's balls. He gave them a firm squeeze and was rewarded with a breathy gasp. From there, his other hand had only a short distance to cover to wrap around his cock.

As he started to stroke, he had to admit that before his untimely not-quite-demise, he'd never thought of Jacob Frye like this. He'd thought of killing him, yes, in a multiplicity of different ways, but sex couldn't have been further from his mind. He'd been an annoyance, then a menace, then a very real opponent to his plans who he'd plotted to eradicate, and he wasn't entirely sure what had changed. After all, the man whose erection he was currently holding in his hand, whose bare skin was against his, whose shoulder his mouth was pressed to, was still the same man who'd killed his cousin and put paid to all his plans.

He tapped one fingertip to the moist tip of Jacob's cock and brought his hand up, licked his precome from his skin, and Jacob moaned, "Oh, fuck, did you just...oh fuck." Starrick chuckled, his nose nudging Jacob's neck, and he dipped his hand back down again.

He missed Pearl, yes. But he also blamed Pearl for her own death at least as much as he blamed Jacob. He regretted his own fall from power, yes, but he supposed he also had himself to blame. He kissed Jacob's neck, tasting soap and a hint of cheap cologne, and brought his free hand up to press at Jacob's chest, fingers splayed, to steady him. He'd never wanted him before this, no, but now that he had nothing, it was so much easier to be reckless.

He stroked him, more a movement of his hand that shifted the skin over Jacob's shaft than his hand moving over the skin, his grip tight, thumb and forefinger closing over the tip with every move. He nipped Jacob's foreskin over the head and eased it back, exposing the flushed tip underneath over and over again, and Jacob reached back, evidently no idea what he was reaching for, and found Starrick's hair with one hand and his hip with the other. He could hear Jacob's breath, so loud it was almost a hiss, and Jacob's hips moved, grinding back against him of their own accord. Jacob moved just far enough, enough of a twist to his waist and an arch to his back, that he could drag Starrick into a kiss and he was happy to oblige, the kiss hot and wet and firm and breathless as Jacob all but writhed against him.

They were still kissing when Jacob came, when his muscles spasmed and he groaned in surprise and came in hot ribbons over Starrick's hand, and indeed the bedroom floor. Starrick chuckled lowly and Jacob laughed, leaning back against him, resting his head back against Starrick's shoulder. It was difficult, Starrick thought, to dislike finding himself in such proximity to a man so thoroughly carefree as Jacob Frye.

At length, they parted. Starrick held his stitched side as he returned to the bed and sat down at the edge, and Jacob frowned at him as he was tucking himself back into his trousers.

"Should I fetch the doctor?" Jacob asked, and Starrick was struck by the image of Jacob doing precisely that - no simply sending for the doctor but fetching him himself, in person, ever the agent of his own desires. He found the notion oddly charming but replied, "There's no need. I'm quite well."

"You don't look well."

"I was stabbed not too long ago. It's not generally the kind of thing you just walk off."

Jacob clucked his tongue, likely because he couldn't disagree with that assessment even though his contrary nature would have liked to. He picked the washcloth from the bowl and dropped into a crouch, still shirtless, to mop his ejaculate from the floorboards.

"Well, at the very least I should stay and make sure you don't keel over dead," he said, with a quick glance at him across the room.

"I assure you, that's not necessary."

Jacob threw the cloth; Starrick was unsurprised by neither the fact that he hit his mark seemingly without trying to nor the resulting splash.

"What if I want to?" Jacob asked.

"What if you want to, what, spend the day with me?"

"Why not?"

"Because, frankly, you'll be bored."

"We could go out."

Starrick tutted. He smiled wryly and ran both hands up either thigh, pushing the hair the wrong way - that was sometimes how spending time with Jacob felt, he thought, like rubbing the hair the wrong way.

"Don't you think I've had enough excitement for one day?" he asked.

Jacob stood. He stretched languidly and quite hugely. "I don't think there's any such thing."

"No, I don't suppose you would."

And so they came to an impasse, then they came to a compromise; they didn't go out, but they did spend the day together.

---

He couldn't, either at the time or after the fact, have called it a bad day.

Jacob helped him to dress - shirts, trousers and shoes apparently seemed adequate to him and Jacob didn't even tuck his own back in before they went downstairs and out into the garden. It was quite warm in the sun and they ate breakfast together at the small stone picnic table, then Jacob sprawled on the grass by the pond and started reading aloud from a book he'd brought out with him. It was the latest Dickens, apparently, not that Starrick had had the time to read the others. And eventually he joined him, propriety be damned, easing himself down onto the grass beside him. Jacob shifted around to rest his feet on the edge of the pond and his head against the meat of Starrick's thigh, and Starrick knitted his fingers together over his chest and closed his eyes to listen. Apparently Jacob knew the author and had received his copy gratis. Starrick wondered if 'helping Charles Dickens' was what he'd done while away but he refrained from asking, more because he suspected Jacob would tell him without a second thought than because he believed he wouldn't. He was starting to suspect that Jacob would tell him anything, if he just asked him.

The day wore on. They went inside and Jacob lounged flat on his back on top of the piano with his legs dangling down over the side as Starrick played, then he sighed dramatically and had him make room for him to sit. It turned out, to his total lack of surprise, that Evie had been correct in her assessment: the extent of Jacob's musical talent was bawdy music hall numbers with a great deal of zeal that more than made up for fudged fingering and the odd off-key word as he sang. Starrick knew one or two - business with Roth had on occasion taken him to the Alhambra at showtime - but he refrained from joining in. A couple of Rooks did, however, arriving at the door, and he could hear a few more striking up outside. There was, apparently, something to be said for Jacob's rather haphazard brand of charismatic leadership.

Then, as afternoon gave way to evening, Evie appeared. Jacob had mentioned she'd taken to holding court in the dining room and he'd taken to avoiding her for fear she actually expected him to pay attention to her facts and figures, but she came in dressed for the outside world rather than her dining room-cum-board room.

"I'm going out," she told Jacob, whose response was to take one hand off the piano, wave, and sing, "Then I'll see you laaaaater, sister!" instead of the words of his current number.

"Problems, Miss Frye?" Starrick asked, and she looked at him as she pressed the leather of her gloves between her fingers.

"A wage dispute," she replied. "One of the foremen objects to paying the workers what they've earned. I need to have a rather frank conversation with him."

"By which you mean kill him." She wrinkled her nose, which was evidently Frye for yes, but I dislike that you've guessed it. He shuffled forward a fraction on the settee. "Miss Frye, might I suggest actually having a conversation with the man?"

"Actually, I've tried that."

He shrugged, palms up. "Then might I suggest I have a conversation with the man?"

"You, Mr. Starrick?"

"Me. I assume I still have a reputation."

"I suppose you do." She drummed the fingers of one hand against her gauntlet, thinking. "Should I bring him here?"

"Take me there."

"Now?"

"There's really no time like the present."

She nodded curtly. "I'll call for the carriage," she said, and disappeared out of the room again. Jacob glanced at him sharply, but he kept on playing. And, a little under forty minutes later, he walked into the warehouse bold as brass, side by side with Evie Frye.

"Mr. Starrick," the foreman said, with an oddly wide-eyed frown. "We was told you was dead."

"Yet here I am, in the flesh," he replied, with a grand sweep of his arms to his sides that pulled a little, but he kept himself from wincing. "My...cousins from Crawley have been directing my affairs in my absence. Let me assure you, sir, they have my full support."

"But, Mr. Starrick, she says we're to pay--"

"My full support," he said again, his voice rising just enough to get the point across. "You will take Miss Frye's word as my own. Do you understand?"

The foreman bared his teeth in apparent displeasure then said, reluctantly, "Yes."

Starrick frowned. "Yes what?"

The foreman's back straightened perceptibly. "Yes, Mr. Starrick. I understand," he said.

Starrick nodded. "Then I'll let you get back to business." He turned. He offered Evie his arm and she took it, quickly, understanding the action's dual purpose; it further solidified the unity of their positions but also lent him her physical support. He could, as it turned out, only feign perfect health for so long.

She thanked him in the carriage on their return to his home, perhaps a little bitter that her authority had had to derive from his own but grateful that it eased her way.

"I've another couple of foremen who seem...hesitant to pay their workers fairly," she said, as she helped him from the carriage. "Would you care to assist?"

"I'd be happy to," he told her.

"Tomorrow, then?"

"Tomorrow."

They went inside. There was a Rook at the piano and a pretty woman singing and Jacob was at least half drunk, sprawled on a settee. He raised his glass across the room while Starrick passed and he smiled in return in spite of himself as he started up the stairs. He was breathless when he reached the top, but not in pain, which seemed like an improvement, and he took himself to bed.

An odd day, perhaps, he thought, as he lay there listening to the raucous singalong downstairs. An odd day, all considered, but he couldn't call it misspent.

---

He had breakfast with both of the twins in the morning, which was a strange affair. Evie was distracted by letters and Jacob had a roaring hangover that was evidently not alleviated by the first four cups of tea because he poured himself a fifth then slumped against the table with a scowl. One of them had sucked his cock the previous morning and the other had apparently been ready to bare her breasts to him in his courtyard garden; it was a predicament he hadn't expected to find himself in at all.

After breakfast, he left the house with Evie. There were actually three further foremen who required their attention; the first and second of them were persuaded precisely as the previous evening but the third...Starrick sighed and turned to Evie.

"I'm afraid you'll have to kill him, Miss Frye," he said. She set her jaw and did so in short order, with her hidden blade to the throat. Impressive as it was, and impressive as she was, he couldn't help but feel a sympathetic ache beneath his stitches.

Jacob popped into the carriage as they were returning home, with a smile as he took the seat opposite him and took off his hat. His knees knocked with Starrick's in the rather close quarters and he leaned over to give one of them an oddly affectionate squeeze before turning to Evie. Clearly his hangover had run its course already, by the early afternoon.

"So, how did it go?" Jacob asked. "All well-behaved little minions of industry?" He nudged her shin with the toe of one boot and she narrowed her eyes at him, then tossed him a bloody handkerchief. Starrick realised it was the one he'd lent her, but found himself unperturbed; he had plenty more where that had come from.

"Not all that amicable, then," Jacob said. "Oh well, you can't win them all." Then he turned to Starrick and said, "Pub lunch?"

A pub lunch did not sound like the ideal start to the afternoon, but Starrick had to admit he had no immediate interest in returning home. Jacob assured him he knew the best place in the city and Evie, looking rather skeptical, told them she had work to do and hopped straight out of the carriage in the middle of the street. They were going to get themselves killed like that one day, Starrick thought, and Jacob laughed when he said so then slid over to the seat his sister had vacated. While he nuzzled Starrick's neck distractedly, he told him it was sweet he was concerned about them both.

It really wasn't the best food in London, but thankfully it also wasn't the worst. They ate together at a table by the rather dirty window and Jacob told him a rather meandering and convoluted story about growing up in Crawley, and their local pub, and a string of brawls, that eventually resolved into the tale of losing his virginity. He'd been hovering between seventeen and eighteen years old, he said, which he made sound like a lifetime ago but was actually more like four to five years. The back room of the Fox and Duck didn't exactly seem a romantic location for a liaison, and the lady's name had escaped Jacob's memory entirely.

"Don't you think this is all a little...indiscreet?" Starrick asked.

Jacob sat back and slapped the table as he laughed. "Starrick, yesterday morning I wiped my come off your bedroom floor," he said. "I think we're a little past indiscreet." Honestly, he couldn't disagree.

So, when Starrick leaned in a fraction closer, over the remains of their roast pork and Jacob's beer, met his eyes and said, "And your first time with a man?" Jacob smiled and said, "Six months ago. I was a late bloomer in that respect."

"How many?" Starrick asked.

Jacob shrugged. "Just the one," he replied, then flapped a hand at Starrick. "Two." He frowned. "You?"

"I don't have a clear count. But there's precious little else to do at boarding school, except sports and amo, amas, amat."

"I love, you love, he-she-it loves?"

Starrick felt an odd tug in his chest. He frowned. "Precisely," he said, and Jacob reached for his beer.

"It was Pearl, you know," Starrick said. Jacob raised his eyebrows inquiringly over his tankard. "My first woman. One summer in Midford. I asked her to marry me afterwards, in something of a fit of sentiment. Obviously, she declined my proposal."

Jacob studied him then, as he set his tankard back down on the table and ran one fingertip around the rim. It wasn't often that Jacob reminded him of Evie and not just the other way around but he did then, as he worked through what Starrick had just told him and asked himself why he had. Frankly, Starrick wasn't sure himself; it was an intensely private memory, and he had always been an intensely private man, guarding his desires like a dragon its gold.

"I'd say I'm sorry..." Jacob said, after a moment, and Starrick smiled wryly as he drummed his fingers lightly on the table's edge.

"We'd both know it was a lie," he said, then frowned at him sharply. "Don't ever lie to me, Jacob. I can't abide a liar."

"Don't you lie?"

"I've no reason to lie. What do I have left to protect?"

"You have Evie. You have me."

Starrick laughed, taken entirely by surprise. "Do you need protecting, Jacob?" he asked.

Jacob shrugged. "Don't we all from time to time?" he replied.

Starrick inclined his head to concede the point and while they had another drink, conversation moved on. But Starrick was left wondering if what Jacob had said was true and whether, if it came to it, he would in fact protect Jacob and Evie Frye.

They returned to the house after lunch. Jacob excused himself shortly after - he was called away on 'Rook business', which Starrick surmised would very likely involve either a large-scale brawl or a quiet knife in the back. He'd have offered assistance but he knew he'd be more hindrance than help in his current condition and as he made his way upstairs he wondered why he might want to help in the first place. Perhaps he was tired of being tired, tired of his continued inability to perform physical tasks to the level he had prior to his injuries, or simply eager to see Jacob at work.

He had supper in his room later that evening, while reading ahead in Jacob's infernal Dickens, then took a brief turn in the garden just to get some air as the doctor had prescribed before he went to bed. It had been another somewhat odd day, he thought, lying there in the dark once he'd extinguished the lamp by the bed, but the simple fact of it was that what had been normal to him was now gone. Evie Frye ran his businesses and Jacob Frye's Rooks had assimilated what was left of his own gang, and the Templars were gone from London. The Assassins had the Shroud of Eden. If he was going to survive in this strange new world, he would need to define his place in it.

It was the middle of the night when he woke to the open and close of his bedroom door and he assumed, on prior experience, that when he opened his eyes he would find Jacob there. He couldn't say he minded the idea, though there was a distinct possibility that he was a still relatively young man's first real dalliance with his own sex, and that Jacob felt the kind of youthful infatuation with him that didn't require anything as banal as common aims or interests to sustain itself. Of course, it seemed they both enjoyed the work of Charles Dickens, so who knew where the similarities would end.

When he opened his eyes, it wasn't Jacob; it was Evie. She was wearing a dressing gown he recognised as one of his own, pulled tight and tied at the waist with a big, looping bow. Her hair was still up. Her feet were bare. He frowned and pushed himself up to the headboard and said, "Miss Frye?"

"Mr. Starrick," she replied. Then she put down the lamp she was carrying and she pulled the end of the bow at her waist. The dressing gown fell open and she shrugged it from her shoulders; it fell to the floor in a shimmer of red silk and she was bare underneath, completely, not even her gauntlet as an accessory.

"Miss Frye..." he said again.

"Mr. Starrick," she replied. "Would you come here, please?"

His frown deepened. "What do--"

"Are you in the habit of keeping ladies waiting?"

He was tempted to point out that yes, as a matter of fact, he was in precisely that habit. He had been, for some years, since his meteoric rise within the Templar Order, been in the habit of keeping everyone waiting that he saw fit to. But there was something about the expression on her face, something about her bare skin in the lamplight - her bare skin, because from his place on the bed he could see she was shaved completely smooth between her thighs. He felt his heartbeat quicken. He felt his cock given an interested twitch. How he'd come to be at the mercy and disposal of two such creatures was quick beyond his comprehension, and their interest in him was something of a mystery besides that, given the difference in their ages, upbringing, experience, affiliation. And perhaps he should have declined, told her he had no further interest in bedding either of them and their relationships should remain purely professional, but he turned back the sheets and he stood up in his nightshirt and he went across the room to her. He stopped perhaps a yard or so away.

In that moment, she seemed to him exceptionally beautiful. She was a little young, perhaps, and had that self-assured air that comes with youthful confidence, but the startling fact of her was that she possessed the kind of talents to warrant that self-assurance. She had a head for business and politics and study that reminded him somewhat of his own, which only wanted experience. Her physical presence was quite something, also; she was of a height with her brother, curves where he preferred them, a suggestion of power to her frame, and that confidence remained though she was entirely naked and standing in a near-stranger's bedroom. Her nakedness didn't seem to bother her, or rather she wore it not unlike a suit of armour. She seemed to understand the power of it. He looked at her - her steady gaze, the swell of her breasts, her mons Veneris that it didn't even seem to occur to her to hide from view. She was unashamed. He found he appreciated that.

"On your knees, Mr. Starrick," she said, and when he raised his eyebrows at her, she gestured to the floor at her feet. He shook his head and smiled wryly at himself but he complied, taking his time. He looked up at her once he had, sitting back on his heels and feeling faintly ridiculous, and she stepped closer, changed her mind and went to fetch one of his dining chairs from the small table, then returned with it. She set it slightly to one side, then she raised one foot up to rest on it. The action parted her lips just a little and he understood; when she looked down at him and he looked up at her, she didn't need to tell him what to do.

He shuffled closer on his knees, and the first place that he touched her was her parted lips with the tip of his tongue. She took an audible breath and he pressed closer, tilted his head at a rather odd angle and licked her there, lightly, between her thighs. He slipped the tip of his tongue between her lips, teased her, brought it up, found her clitoris and drew a circle around its circumference. She sighed. She shifted slightly. He leaned back, feeling his face flush and his cock start to stiffen. He looked up at her.

"Can I use my hands, Miss Frye?" he asked, understanding in a rather disconcerting flash that if she said no, he wouldn't, and it wouldn't only be because he had no intent to force her. He wondered what it might be like to please her, sexually, by doing only what she asked him to or else explicitly permitted, and it made his erection harden even further. So many others had been so eager to please him. It was an intriguing reversal.

"Please do," she replied, and he took a moment to consider his next move before he slid his palms over her thighs, higher, higher, and used his thumbs to part her lips. It made it so much simpler to seal his lips around her clitoris and suck there, teasing with his tongue. It eased the way for him to press in closer, hooking one arm under her raised leg to tease her inner lips and taste her there, hot and slick. He used that arm under her to tease a fingertip at her entrance, finding her wet with his saliva and her own heady slickness, and he pushed up, pushed in, felt his finger slip inside her. She was hot there, and quite tight, and he felt moisture start to gather at the tip of his cock that soaked into his nightshirt.

"Push in and hold it there," she told him, with a strained note to her voice, and he did so; he pushed his first finger into her, knuckle-deep, and felt her clench around it. She rocked her hips a little, then she took him by the wrist and held him there with one hand as she fucked herself on it. Her other hand found his hair and she pressed him toward her. He didn't mind, he found - he lapped at her, at the place his finger entered her, her lips, her clit, the wetness of her making a shambles of his facial hair but he didn't care a jot. He just sucked on her clit till she was moaning, till her hands were almost unbearably tight at his wrist and in his hair, till she was practically riding his hand and his mouth and she told him, "Use another finger," so he did - and the second he did, she bit her lip and moaned and shuddered and her knees began to weaken. He pulled his fingers back and wrapped his arms around her thighs, supported her as he licked her through her orgasm, as she shivered and ran her fingers through his hair.

His mouth was wet with her as he eased back, his lips, his chin...he could taste her. Her face was flushed and her breasts, and her cunt where his mouth had been, and when he kissed her there, impulsively, she gave a breathless laugh and slowly moved away. She put the dressing gown back on, over her arms and shoulders, but she didn't tie it - she just let it hang, the open strip framing her breasts, her navel, the slick mound between her thighs. And he knelt there, watching her, his hands to his thighs, cock straining at his nightshirt, as she dragged the chair around in front of him, perhaps a yard away, and sat herself down on it. She spread her thighs wide, as wide as they would go, and ran her hands over them, from the inside of her knees up to her parted lips.

"Take the shirt off, Mr. Starrick," she said, so he did, pulling it up and off and setting it aside to expose his hard, flushed cock. His heart was pounding wildly and his head felt faintly light, but when she told him, "I want to see you touch yourself," he did exactly that. He wrapped one hand around himself, and he stroked himself while he looked at her.

"Eyes here," she said, and tapped one closed eyelid; he dragged his gaze up from her slick cunt to her face, and somehow that just made his cock swell harder. She wasn't looking at his face, though. He watched her watching his hand and squeezing her spread thighs as she did so. He watched her watching him stroke himself, and in his peripheral vision he could see her touch herself, too, pushing her fingers between her thighs where his had just been, slipping over her clit where he'd put his mouth. He clenched his jaw and he squeezed his balls tight but it was too late to stop himself; he came, four long spurts, five, diminishing, over his own fingers and the floor, so hard his vision twinkled at the edges.

She stood then, and she wrapped the dressing gown around herself and tied the belt to keep it tight. He breathed hard, looked down, and pressed his palms against his thighs to keep upright rather than slumping to the floor.

"I enjoyed that very much, Mr. Starrick," she told him, sounding very pleased indeed, and all he could do was laugh breathlessly in response as she turned, picked up the lamp and left the room. She closed the door behind her.

Perhaps ten minutes later, perhaps twenty, he dragged himself up off the floor and very nearly crawled to bed in the dark, bumping into every possible item of furniture along the way as he went.

That night at the palace, he'd believed the Fryes would be the death of him. Perhaps they still would be, he thought then, just in a rather different way.

---

"Did you have fun last night?" Jacob asked the next morning, and when Starrick eyed him, he said, "It's fine. Evie and I came to an agreement."

Jacob came across the room and once he'd toed off his boots, he lay down next to him on the bed, otherwise fully clothed. Jacob turned his head to look at him, then pushed himself up onto his side and rested his head on one hand, and Starrick couldn't help but think, as he looked up at him, that it didn't seem fine at all. It seemed like courting trouble in the worst possible way. So he very purposefully did not ask what that agreement was.

He returned to helping Evie after breakfast with the two of them, while Jacob spent the day elsewhere with the Rooks. They took two meetings in the house, then two out in the city, then returned home; Jacob met them on the doorstep and asked if he'd like to go watch a fight on a barge in the Thames and it seemed like such an utterly ludicrous suggestion that he absolutely couldn't say no. They leaned at the boat's rail, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, while Jacob cheered on a Rook or two and waved off multiple invitations to fight himself. He told Starrick about his first bare-knuckle fight instead, while he winced and groaned and cheered at the match in all the right places. Starrick told him about boxing at boarding school, and how he'd once broken his knuckles on a man's jaw in a fit of more than usual pique. Jacob, it seemed, could sympathise with that entirely, and also with his current health dilemma - he told him he'd broken his wrist once and hadn't been able to fight for a month. Once they were safely off the water afterwards and in the carriage heading home, Starrick wrapped his fingers around Jacob's once-broken wrist and squeezed.

That night, Jacob fell asleep in Starrick's bed reading his book, so Starrick sighed and turned out the lamp and fell asleep beside him. They both snored like drains and kept waking each other up until it was light enough to see Jacob's sheepish smile when he looked at him. Then they had some water brought up and they washed side by side at the dressing table, while Jacob stole obvious looks that made Starrick chuckle. Jacob seemed to enjoy that, much as he enjoyed stealing a pair of Starrick's underwear and a clean shirt to put on before they went down to breakfast. For his own part, Starrick was just grateful that it was feeling much less painful when he dressed himself. That, and he found he enjoyed the idea of Jacob wearing his clothes. They were a surprisingly good fit.

He met Evie after lunch for afternoon tea and, once he'd waved the hovering maid away and they were left alone, he poured the tea. He explained the processes involved in bringing that tea to their table, and explained Starrick & Co's involvement in each of them. Then, while she still tasted like a strong cup of Assam, she straddled his lap and kissed his mouth until shipping rates and warehouse distribution seemed very dull indeed.

That night, she came to his room; she told him to undress her and he did so, slowly, piece by piece, till she was standing there naked in front of him. She brought his hands up to her breasts and he held them, felt the swell of them filling his palms, brushed his thumbs over her nipples and made her take a sharp breath. He kissed them, nipples, rosy areolae, traced them with his tongue, nipped lightly with his teeth, brushed against them with his slightly prickly jaw until her face was flushed from the attention and his cock was stiff inside his trousers. She told him to sit down, told him not to move, and he complied, so she straddled him, slipped her hand between his thighs and made him come like that, still clothed. While he doubted his staff would be pleased by his new social outlets, and while he wasn't wholly convinced they were advisable, he resolved to make the most of them while they lasted.

Jacob visited the following day and Evie the day after that, and so on and so forth until ten days had passed. Dr. Evesham removed his stitches, with a frown that asked from where the rather less skilled set had materialised, but he shrewdly didn't voice the question. And he worked - he began to realise how much of the day-to-day operations of his various concerns he'd carved from his own responsibilities and delegated to his subordinates in recent years, during his hunt for the Shroud of Eden, and returning to it seemed to be oddly fulfilling. He and Evie worked alongside each other, and she learned quickly, and he spent time considering how best to maintain growth while, for the most part, leaving politics to politicians. It was almost like his days before the Templars. He could almost have believed Precursor artefacts held no allure for him, nor power itself. Evie, it seemed, understood that allure. Once or twice, she shared her notes on old Assassin finds, and he was fascinated.

Jacob visited that night, once his stitches were out, stripped him down to his bare skin and kissed the places that they'd wounded him. Then he pulled Starrick down on top of him and they moved together, like that, pressed to one another, till they both came against each other and themselves in a faintly awful sticky-slick mess. Jacob cleaned them both up and then asked, "So, should I stay or go?" Starrick raised his brows then turned out the lamp, so that barring a naked stroll down the hall that frankly he didn't put past him, Jacob had no choice but to stay.

It wasn't always sex. Sometimes he played a game of chess with Evie. Sometimes he went to one of Topping's fights with Jacob or they played whist at the dining table with a group of Rooks. The three of them trialled new firearms together, taking turns at the target, and they found him an excellent shot. Later, in his room, Evie's hands tasted like gunpowder. In the morning, when Jacob came to borrow clothes, his hair still smelled like it.

That first week turned into two, and then a fraction more. He started taking walks before breakfast, doctor's orders to aid in the improvement of his constitution, under the careful supervision of a cadre of Rooks, or with Jacob at his side. In the evening, after supper, Evie walked with him instead. Sometimes he offered her his arm and sometimes she took it and they walked together almost like the other couples out strolling. He wondered idly if that was what they were to one another, but dismissed the idea quite quickly. He didn't want a wife, and she didn't require a husband, and he could only imagine what bloody hell Jacob would raise. While it would have been interesting to see, he was faintly surprised to find he didn't wish to upset their current status quo. He was faintly surprised he didn't wish to upset Jacob. And when he returned to the house one of those nights, and retired to bed, he lay awake wondering what precisely had become of the man he'd once been. He'd become comfortable with the situation, like a dog finds comfort in a leash, which could only be to his detriment.

Of course, what he didn't expect was a test. And if he had, at any point, he would not have expected it so soon.

---

They came in the night, while he was sleeping, over the rooftops while the Rook guards were changing then down through his bedroom window. He knew the quiet sound of Evie's bare feet on the floorboards, and he knew Jacob's bootheels on the rug, so he knew the sound that woke him wasn't them. He didn't know their faces but he knew their insignia very well indeed: the cross said they were Templars, much as he had been himself not very long ago.

"Grand Master," the first said, as he approached Starrick's bed. "Apologies for the intrusion. We had no means to signal you."

Starrick nodded curtly. Their ingress had evidently involved opening the curtains and he saw them both in the moonlight, anxious-faced and jittery.

"I didn't realise there were any of you left," he said.

"Well, there weren't many," the second replied. "Most died. Some joined the Rooks. A few went abroad. But we're not alone, sir! The Spanish Rite's sent men to help."

Starrick swung his legs from the bed. "The Spanish Rite?" he scoffed. "The Spaniards couldn't find their arse with both hands and a map."

The two Templars shared a look. "Well, they're here now," the first said. "Outside. Ready for the assault."

"The assault?"

"We're ready to storm the place and take the Fryes."

"And put you back where you belong, sir."

"And then what?"

"Sir?"

"Give London back to me. Take the Fryes. Do what with them, precisely?"

The two shared another look, like perhaps they thought this was a test, a trick question, designed to catch them out or prove their worthiness.

"Well, we planned to kill them, sir," the second said.

Starrick gave them another terse nod. "Yes, I thought you might," he replied, and when he said nothing more, the pair seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief. If it had been a test, however, little did they know they would have failed it.

One fished a watch from his pocket and told him the Spanish would be coming soon. The other rushed around finding clothes for him to change into, because apparently their trust in their Spanish Templar brothers did not extend to trusting that they wouldn't kill every living soul in the house without regard for affiliation, whether by double-crossing, power-hungry design or by general incompetence. So Starrick dressed, and as he did so he asked himself one completely fundamental question: what did he intend to do? It would have been so very, very simple to leave with these two apparently still loyal soldiers, let what madness would be wrought by the Spanish Rite run its course, and let providence decide. It would have been a simple matter to leave and take command of the assault himself, knowing the house and the general habits of its current inhabitants as he did, and perhaps that way his possessions stood a little better chance of surviving intact. To reclaim his place as Grand Master seemed desirable, even if he would then owe a debt to their brethren in Spain who would undoubtedly take every possible opportunity to remind him of that fact. With the Fryes gone, he could have the Rooks to take the place of the Blighters. With Roth gone, he might have to recruit and train new lieutenants himself, but that was not an insurmountable task. The unfortunate episode might in the end have set back his plans for three to five years, but he had time, and someone in the Assassins' British Brotherhood had to know where they'd taken the Shroud, perhaps the twins' friend George in Crawley, or at least that was a place to start.

He could have it all back, he thought, as he dressed. He could have his business interests and his properties, his faithful following and his men in parliament. He could have his own puppet prime minister and bring Templar rule to the entire world within his lifetime. He could have his home back, free from houseguests. All he had to do was leave with these two men and let them set all things to rights. It was the obvious choice.

He didn't do it. While their backs were turned, he slipped through the bedroom door and he ran as best he could with his injuries still pulling at him under his still healing skin. They followed. He had no weapon, and no breath, and as he turned the knob of Jacob's door, they both aimed and shot. One missed. One struck.

"Templars," he said. "Ambush," he said. That was all he could get out as he started to bleed. And the last thing he saw as he passed out was the look of desperate fucking fury on Jacob Frye's face. Perhaps Starrick would die, the way he'd been meant to that night on the palace grounds, but he knew Jacob wouldn't.

As it happened, he didn't die. Or perhaps he did - he's not entirely certain of what exactly transpired after he lost consciousness in Jacob's doorway. What he knows is that later, when he woke, he was lying on Jacob's bed rather than his own and he could see blood in the doorway - his own, and it looked too much for a man to survive. He'd seen men bleed out before, had caused them to do so both personally and by his order, and he knew roughly the look of the fatal volume. His had come close to that threshold the first time, and this time he was certain he'd exceeded it.

He didn't understand how he was still living, but then he saw it: the Shroud was draped around his shoulders, glowing faintly. He was stripped to the waist, presumably the better to assess his injuries, and he ran his fingers over his skin, over the places his still healing wounds should have been and down his lower back where he'd been shot. He had no injuries. None at all. When he flexed the muscles in his midriff, it didn't hurt. When he breathed in, it was deep and easy, and he felt strong, he felt stronger than he'd felt in weeks, stronger than he'd felt since the last time he'd worn that Shroud. The Fryes had saved his life again. The thoroughly ridiculous part of it was, of course, that they'd had access to the Shroud of Eden all along.

He moved. It was completely easy to pull himself up to the headboard and sit there leaning back against it for the first time in weeks and at the sound of him moving, the other people in the room all turned to look. The twins were there, and Dr. Evesham, and a collection of lollygagging Rooks who Evie spoke to quietly and ordered away. Evie's stance became wary. The doctor took two steps back toward the door. And Jacob, standing there in shirtsleeves, the front of said shirt soaked through and sticking to his skin with what wasn't his blood but very likely Starrick's, just looked at him with perfectly unguarded exultant relief.

Starrick understood the others' caution; Jacob had left both his gauntlet and his pistol sitting there on the mattress within Starrick's reach and he knew, if he chose to use them, that the Shroud around his neck meant that in all likelihood they wouldn't survive. Jacob and the doctor were both completely unarmed, Evie seemed to have nothing but her gauntlet on her person, and the twins knew he had excellent aim. He couldn't say he blamed Evie or Evesham for their wariness, not even given that he'd just made the near-incomprehensible choice to save their lives instead of retrieving his own, because in all likelihood they didn't know that was what had happened. But when he moved again, toward the edge of the bed, the first thing he did was pull the Shroud from around his shoulders and set it down on Jacob's mattress. The second thing he did was spread one hand in the air and hover his palm above the pistol half a foot from touching, with a rather pointed look at Evie, who rolled her eyes at him and visibly relaxed. The third was stand up, stride across the room, and meet Jacob in a kiss.

Evie chuckled and said, "I think that's our cue to leave, doctor," and she did precisely that, taking the Shroud away with her. Starrick paid little attention to that, however; he was much too busily engaged in pressing Jacob's person up against the bedroom wall, in that room he'd barely seen the inside of in years because frankly, the only reason he could conjure to go into it was to see its current occupant. He paid no attention to the bloody shirt sticking to his chest except to note vaguely that it was one of his own and then seize it by the neck and tear it, buttons scattering over the floor. He felt strong, strong enough that when Jacob laughed delightedly and shrugged the shirt's remains from his shoulders, shoving him up hard against the wall posed no problems at all. He bit at Jacob's neck, sucked, bruised him, tasting his own blood on Jacob's skin, and Jacob breathed hard, stiffening against him, nails raking at his back.

"Are you usually like this?" Jacob asked, breathless and amused and hopelessly turned on, as he hooked one ankle over the back of one of Starrick's calves, grabbed his arse with both hands and pulled him closer. "Because if you are, I could definitely get used to it."

"No, not especially," Starrick replied, against Jacob's throat. "Perhaps you bring it out in me." Then he shoved one hand down the front of Jacob's trousers and wrapped his fingers around his cock. Jacob groaned and his eyes fluttered closed and his head dropped back against the wall, and Starrick considered just bringing him off like that, right then and there, then wiping him off and starting again. He didn't, though. He felt strong enough that just throwing Jacob over his shoulder and carrying him to bed was possible, so he did it, and Jacob laughed in surprise when he dropped him bodily onto the mattress.

"I'll clearly have to save your life more often if this is the reward I get," Jacob said, watching as Starrick paused at the side of the bed to undress himself. He was already hard and once he was naked, Jacob smiled and bit his lip without a hint of coyness and he let his gaze linger, then seemed to figure out that his continued active participation was required; he pulled off his boots as he lay there and tossed them carelessly to the bedroom floor, then lifted his hips and more or less undulated out of his trousers. It was thoroughly lacking grace but extremely effective and his hard cock jutted up flushed and huge and leaking against his abdomen. From the way he clenched his hands, it was taking all of his tiny scrap of self-restraint not to touch himself, and for a moment Starrick thought he'd like to see that, how Jacob liked to do it, speed and pressure and the look on his face. But he wasn't feeling patient, not even a little.

"Turn around, Jacob," Starrick told him, as he was standing there hard with his hands at his hips, and Jacob said, "Oh?" Then his eyes widened. He said, "Oh!" and almost scrambled to turn over and pull up onto his hands and knees.

"On your forearms," he told him. "Spread your knees." And, as he watched, Jacob complied. The position put an arch into his back and thrust his arse into the air, leaving him hanging hard between his thighs and utterly exposed, but he did it willingly, without any hesitation. That fact made a small bead of moisture stand out at the tip of Starrick's cock and he joined him on the bed, moved up behind him, skimmed the back of his thighs and the curve of his arse with both palms, then eased his cheeks apart to expose his hole. He rubbed that bead of moisture from the tip of his cock against Jacob's hole, felt him clench, heard him chuckle in a kind of anxious, self-deprecating arousal. It struck him straight in the chest, and in the gut, made his cock wetter at the tip, and he was almost overwhelmed by the urge to push straight into him, one deep thrust right to the hilt, and have him then and there. Almost. Perhaps Jacob had no self-control, almost endearingly so, but Starrick did.

There had never been any question of them doing this before, perhaps due to the doctor's exhortation to avoid excitement or perhaps due simply to the sorry state of him that would have strained and pulled and hurt and required entirely too frequent rest breaks. He had no doubt that Jacob wanted it, however; he'd sat back against his headboard with Jacob straddling his lap, once or twice, and seen the way his face flushed and his lips parted as his fingertips strayed over his arse, between his cheeks, against his hole. He'd contemplated easing a digit inside him, fucking him with it or perhaps with two or three, but he'd never quite found the appropriate time. Now, though, he rubbed Jacob's rim with the pad of one thumb, and he asked him, his voice thick with desire, "Do you have any oil?"

Jacob laughed breathlessly. "There..." He gestured vaguely at the cabinet by the bed, and Starrick followed the line to a small glass jar. "It's for my chapped lips, but..."

"I think what you're trying to say is petroleum jelly," Starrick said, and he leaned past him to pick it up. "Am I distracting you, Jacob? My apologies." He didn't sound particularly apologetic, however, and Jacob's only response was to swear at him half-heartedly while Starrick unscrewed the cap.

"So, have you done this before?" Starrick asked him, as he rubbed a rather generous amount of the slick substance over Jacob's hole.

Jacob shook his head tightly. "No, I did it," he replied. "I...you know. Did it."

Starrick teased his hole with the tip of one finger. "You mean you performed the act of penetration," he said, and punctuated that thought by pressing just the tip of his finger inside him. Jacob groaned and pulled tight.

"Is that what this is?" he asked. "An act of penetration? Are you going to penetrate me, Starrick?"

"Yes, that's very much my intention." He pushed his finger deeper and Jacob groaned again, sudden and breathy. "Does that please you, Jacob?" he asked, as he stroked himself with his other hand. He was almost painfully hard, and it made his breath catch. "Does the thought of having my cock in you excite you?"

"More than talking about it, yes," Jacob replied, but the way his arse pulled tight as they spoke said he found talking about it rather pleasurable, too. "Would you do me a favour?"

"Perhaps. What is it?"

"Would you shut up and put it in?"

Starrick laughed. "Yes, I can do that," he said. "It might be somewhat...uncomfortable."

"I'm a big boy, Starrick. I've been stabbed, I've been shot, I can take being fucked in the arse."

"Then by all means."

Starrick pulled back his hand, took more jelly from the jar and slicked himself with it, thickly, base to tip. He stroked himself slowly, once, twice, holding Jacob's cheeks apart with his free hand, pressing his tip against his hole. He could have come like that, he thought, against him instead of in him, let his come rush over his hole and down his perineum, onto the bedsheets. But he pressed forward instead, canted his hips and held himself in place and pushed, slowly and firmly, until he felt Jacob's apparently virgin hold begin to give. He had to admit it was a thrill to be his first, though that sort of thing had never seemed to matter very much to him before, but the idea of being desired that way by a man like Jacob Frye, so devil-may-care, so strong, so self-assured, it was tantalising in its entirety.

He pushed forward. He pushed in. Jacob groaned, low and hot, and Starrick felt him open up, stretching to admit the thick girth of his cock. Jacob seemed to have experience enough to know that Starrick wasn't small, and his knees seemed to threaten to buckle as Starrick pushed inside him, deeper, deeper, watching all the while as Jacob's slick hole stretched to take him in. Starrick was now more than equal to the task of steadying him, however, and he slipped his hands forward to the front of Jacob's hips to hold him there.

Once he was in, he gave him a moment and he gave himself a moment. Jacob was tight around him, and hot as a blast furnace, and frankly it had been at least three years since he'd even thought of taking a man to bed. He ran the blunt nails of one hand lightly down the line of Jacob's spine and made him shiver, the movement of which made his cock throb. Then he spread him open with both palms and rocked his hips.

After the first few thrusts, Jacob reached up and braced himself against the headboard, and the next thrust pushed Starrick's cock in so much harder, deeper, skin slapping skin, that they both groaned with it. Starrick did it again, and again, until whatever pain Jacob's might conceivably have felt at being entered seemed a rather distant memory. Starrick held him by the waist, and he pulled one knee up, out to the side of Jacob's hip, foot flat to the bed for leverage. He fucked him harder, faster, feeling the oddly pleasurable ache of it in his back, in his thighs, in his balls, as Jacob started pushing back to meet him. A frisson of desire ran through him, hot and raw, as if he wanted nothing in the world so much as to possess this man completely, or else be possessed by him. He thought of fighting him and fucking him, wrapping his fists like Jacob did for Topping's fight clubs and punching till they were both breathless and bloody, to hell with appearances...the strong temptation existed to do just that.

He kept going, his breath ragged and his muscles ever more taut, on the edge of cramp, thrilled by the fact he didn't have to hold back at all. Jacob didn't see the mind that the pace was fast and hard, seemed to like it, the breathlessness and heat and exertion and sweat standing out on his skin. Starrick's hair was out of place, and he raked it back, took a handful of it and groaned out loud, control be damned, as his orgasm tore through him just like Jacob's fucking hidden blade. His hips bucked tight against Jacob's arse, he shoved in deep and he pulsed with it, emptying himself inside him in a sudden, heady rush.

Perhaps Jacob thought they were done at that point, now Starrick had finished, but they were absolutely not. Starrick eased Jacob up off his forearms and back against his chest with his cock still pushed up deep inside him and he held him there, one arm across his chest and one hand around his cock. He stroked him, firmly, and Jacob gasped and bucked his hips, seeming entirely unsure if what he wanted most was the hand at his cock or the cock in his arse. It was charming, Starrick thought, as Jacob squeezed tight around him, very likely without even meaning to. It was very easy to feel fond of Jacob's hedonism after so many years of private self-control. And Jacob gasped, and he came, suddenly, as if taken by surprise by it; he strained forward and his arse clenched tight around him, then he huffed out a breath and leaned back hard at Starrick's chest. He didn't seem to mind their continued proximity or the fact that Starrick's cock was slowly softening inside him.

"I'd say Evie will wonder what's keeping us but I expect she knows," Jacob said, as he rubbed idly at Starrick's thighs. He turned a little, just far enough to peer at him from far too close by with his right eye. "She probably has plans for you, too." Then, slowly, the two of them began to pull apart; once they managed it, they stretched out side by side.

"Are you jealous?" Starrick asked him, unsure from where the question had risen when they'd spent weeks avoiding any and all discussion of the situation, or why his curiosity felt so piqued now. But Jacob laughed breathlessly as he shifted to pull up the blanket. He flung it haphazardly over both of them, with a waft of air over Starrick's overheated skin that made him shiver.

"She's my sister," Jacob said. "Of course I'm jealous." And he raised his eyebrows at him as he turned up onto his side. He ran one hand over Starrick's abdomen, to the side where he'd once stitched his skin but that now didn't even have a scar, and rubbed there. "But then again, she's my twin sister, and we share everything. We always have."

Starrick nodded faintly, like he understood, but his own relationship with his brother had never been sharing. As Jacob smiled faintly and smoothed down Starrick's unruly moustache, he supposed their closeness must have been a product of the fact that they were twins.

He closed his eyes. And perhaps he was distantly aware that he should have returned to his room, but Jacob didn't seem to mind that he'd remained. It had been a hell of a night, after all.

But as he allowed himself to drift, he couldn't help but wonder if there might come a time when he would have to choose between them, or if the truth was they would always choose each other.

---

In the morning, he woke to the sound of voices at Jacob's bedroom door. They were relatively quiet, but he was also a relatively light sleeper. Unsurprisingly, the voices' owners were Jacob and Evie, and when they realised they'd woken him, Evie said a quick, "Apologies for disturbing you, Mr. Starrick," and Jacob nudged her in the ribs and said, "Good, let's get some breakfast." That seemed to him rather like the difference between them in a nutshell.

Once they'd eaten, Jacob excused himself - he evidently had things to do and people to see and he kissed Starrick on the mouth and laughed as he headed for the door. Starrick turned to Evie.

"I apologise, Miss Frye," he said. "I--"

She smiled wryly. "I know my brother, Mr. Starrick," she replied. "There's no need to apologise for him. At least not to me." She finished her cup of tea then set both it and her napkin on the table as she looked at him. "I did wonder, though," she said, and leaned forward a fraction on the table's edge. "Will you have supper with me tonight?"

"Of course, Miss Frye," he said. "I'd be delighted." And she smiled and nodded as if she found this perfectly to her liking, and she stood up from the table.

"Shall we?" she said.

He stood. "The wheels of industry wait for no one," he replied. "Not even us." Which she took as a yes, as intended, and they left the house together.

They spent a tedious morning in Whitehall, discussing business legislation with an undersecretary for this or that. Intimidation might have worked more readily as a tactic but it struck him that over the past few years he had too often jumped straight to it, and he did still have it in him to be a charming, insightful and persuasive man, even if the emotion of it had never filled him.

"You should have been a politician, Mr. Starrick," she told him, stretching, as they left for the carriage.

"I believe you're teasing me, Miss Frye," he replied. She smiled and she didn't deny it. When he said they made a formidable team, she didn't deny that, either.

Jacob had returned when they arrived at the house and when Evie excused herself, he and Jacob took to the garden. He'd brought two fencing foils and it turned out that part of his Assassin training in his youth had been that; following the rules, Starrick beat him soundly, but then Jacob grinned and threw him a cane sword. The next fight was much more even, ranging around the garden like something from a music hall act more than a fencing piste. Starrick had to admit the physical exertion of it made a pleasant change. It was something he'd missed, as he'd always been such a physical man before.

In the late afternoon, Dr. Evesham examined him and gave a final declaration of his fitness and good health, though Starrick was by then unsurprisingly aware of it. He took a tedious meeting with one of his old railway contacts, greasing the wheels a little with small talk, and then he went upstairs to dress for supper. Supper, however, didn't come just yet.

Both twins were in his room. Both twins were naked. Evie was sitting at the table, reading one of the weekly serials Jacob apparently subscribed to and was having delivered to the house, and Jacob was leaning on the back of her chair, reading over her shoulder. Both heads turned as they heard him enter. Evie smiled pleasantly. Jacob grinned from ear to ear. Starrick frowned.

"Am I interrupting?" he asked.

"We were waiting for you, Mr. Starrick," Evie said.

"I'm not sure I was expecting company," he replied, and she closed the magazine as Jacob pulled himself up straight.

"Well, you seemed concerned," Jacob said.

"Concerned?"

"About jealousy. Between me and Evie."

Starrick shifted his stance. He set his hands at his waist. "I don't understand," he said, and he watched as Evie stood up, too. The two of them side by side, looked completely unperturbed by their state of total undress, and he looked at them both, the same height, the same dark hair, but otherwise so different, and not only in sex. Jacob's skin had evidently seen more sun than hers, and more damage - he wore his familiar scars like a badge of honour, rather like the tattoo on his chest, whereas Evie's skin was very nearly unblemished. Jacob stood casually with a smile playing at his lips and Evie stood straight, not quite formally but not very far away. And when Jacob leaned close, cupped his hand to his mouth and whispered something to her, she smiled and shook her head and told him, "Why not." Apparently a plan had formed.

It was Jacob who approached. "We feel underdressed," he explained, as he unbuttoned Starrick's jacket and stepped around behind him to pull it from his shoulders. "Or like you're overdressed. Or like a mix of both, but that doesn't really matter because we're definitely not putting any clothes on for at least the next half hour."

Evie raised her brows. "I didn't realise you were that sort, Jacob," she said. She leaned back against the table and crossed her arms as she watched them both, underneath her breasts. "Off like a shot, are we? That's awkward."

"Oh, sod off," Jacob replied, but his tone had no bite and Starrick realised they were teasing. And Jacob came around and began unbuttoning his waistcoat. "Some of us don't think patience is always such a virtue," he said, and gave Starrick a wink, then moved again to help the waistcoat off. "I'm surprised you've ever managed to have sex, Evie. It seems a bit spontaneous for you."

She shrugged her shoulders. "And I'm surprised you haven't succumbed to some exciting new venereal disease," she replied, pleasantly. "These shocks come to us all."

Jacob snorted. He leaned up against Starrick's back, rested his chin against his shoulder, and started to unbutton his shirt from where he was behind him.

"I'm starting to understand why you're single," he told her. "With a wit like that, who'd have you?"

She snorted. "I have a name or two in mind," she said, with a quick flick of her gaze toward Starrick. "You never know, Jacob. You might be surprised by how well acquainted you are."

Once the buttons were undone, Jacob apparently remembered his braces and his necktie. Once those were whipped from his neck and pulled down from his shoulders, the shirt was removed and joined his jacket and waistcoat on the dresser, then Jacob began to work on his boots and his trousers, undeterred. He made surprisingly short work of it, while Evie watched and Starrick watched Evie, attempting to unravel the threat of what the two of them had planned. But then he found himself naked, and Jacob took a step back, and Evie took a step forward.

"I'd like you to lie down on the bed, Mr. Starrick," she said.

Somewhere to his side, Jacob mimed the words Mr. Starrick? at her and she rolled her eyes at him, but Starrick still did as he was asked; he went to his bed, which was still neatly made, and he lay down on top of the blanket.

"Jacob, I think our friend might need a hand," she said next, and Jacob looked at him, comically recoiled at the sight of Starrick's soft cock, and went to sit down next to him. He leaned in to press a quick, open-mouthed kiss just underneath the head and Evie said, "I said hand, Jacob," and he raised both hands and shook them at her before he finally put one on him. He trailed one forefinger from Starrick's balls up to the tip and then stroked him lightly with the back of his fingers, which Starrick had to admit made his cock take an interest. It was strange, though, feeling Jacob bring him to attention while Evie watched him do it. It was strange, her standing there across the room, giving directions, but not a kind of strange that he objected to. His cock stiffened up obligingly.

"Lubricant, Jacob," she said next, and she threw Jacob's glass jar of petroleum jelly across the room - evidently they'd come prepared. He caught it easily and set about meticulously slicking Starrick's cock. He assumed what would follow was an order for Jacob to straddle him, and mount him, and push his cock inside him, and part of Starrick - frankly, he knew which part - was intrigued by that idea, of Jacob fucking himself on the length of him while she watched. He'd always know sodomy was contrary to the laws of the land, and the notion of not merely doing it but being watched made his balls feel tight and his tip begin to moisten. However, that wasn't quite what happened next.

"Thank you, Jacob," she said, and Jacob gave her an exaggerated scraping bow as he backed away from the bed. He hopped up onto the French dresser, which was not an inconsiderable feat as it stood chest-high to him, and he leaned back against the wall. Instead of him, Evie advanced toward the bed.

"I want you to put your hands above your head and keep them there until I tell you otherwise," she said, so he raised his hands and circled one wrist with his opposite fingers. "Good. Now, keep still."

She joined him on the bed. She straddled his thighs, one knee planted firmly either side of him, and slowly trailed one fingertip up the underside of his slick, hard cock. It twitched at her touch, stiffening just a little more, and she smiled to herself as she shuffled up higher. He felt his length drag against her cunt; she was wet already, and open, and it would have been such a simple matter for her to take him in her hand, to guide him, and push him up inside her where thus far only his fingers had been permitted entry. But although she did wrap her hand around him, she moved again, a little higher. She pushed his cock back. His stomach went tight as he realised what she was doing; she pressed his tip to her anus instead of her cunt, and slowly settled back.

He understood, of course. He'd know a woman or two in his time who had preferred a cock in her arse to one in her cunt to avoid the small matter of pregnancy. In her chosen line of work, that made a great deal of sense, but that did nothing to banish his surprise. She took him with an air of determination to her, and a furrow of concentration between her brows, until he was inside her to the very hilt with her arse tight as a vice around him. Her cunt would have been wetter, he thought, looser, his length and thickness so much easier to accommodate, but she'd very much made her choice.

"Your hand, please," she said, and held out one of hers, so he gave one to her. "Two fingers. Fold the others to your palm." He did. Then she guided that hand down, between her thighs, to her lips, and he could feel how wet she was as her cheeks blushed. She pushed his fingers in, up to the knuckles, then told him, "Stay just like that." He did, and she began to move.

She fucked herself on him as he lay there, cock in her arse and fingers inside her. She arched her back and rode him, squeezed tight at her own thighs, her breasts, slid her fingers up into her hair and closed her eyes and rode him, in pulses of her thighs and rolls of her hips. He looked up at her and then he looked at Jacob, whose cock was huge and stiff and flushed and very likely aching. He'd have liked to have sucked him, he realised, taken his cock in his mouth while Evie rode him, but Jacob stayed precisely where he was, hands tucked in underneath his thighs, not even touching his erection.

She picked up her pace above him. She slipped one hand down between her thighs and she rubbed herself, two fingers flat over her clit, and she gasped a breath as she took him deep. She stopped moving, except for her fingers and the small, involuntary motions of her hips, and the way both arse and cunt pulled tight, over and over, making him clench his fists above his head. She rubbed faster, breathing through her bared teeth, harder, until she clenched tight and gasped in a breath and her hips bucked down hard against him. She ground down against him through her orgasm, squeezing one breast with her free hand so tightly that both breast and knuckles turned white. And all the while, he was hard in her, pulse racing, until she took a deep breath and made a rather elegant dismount. She went back to the chair by the table and settled herself down.

"Jacob," she said, and he hopped back down from the dresser, his cock bobbing in front of him as he landed. He made his way to the bed and he assumed the same position that his sister had only just vacated, straddling Starrick's hips. He spread his hands over Starrick's chest, his face already flushed, as Starrick's cock pressed to his perineum.

"Mr. Starrick, please don't come until I tell you to," Evie said, and he nodded, still looking up at Jacob who was looking down at him. Then Jacob moved, took Starrick's cock in one hand and pressed the tip to his hole. He settled back. Their gazes were still locked as he took him up inside him.

"Sod what she wants, I want your hands on me," Jacob said, and he pulled Starrick's hands up to his waist. He seemed to change his mind then, as he settled down lower, as he took him deeper, and he brought one of Starrick's hands up, up to his mouth, and he licked his fingers, sucked them, the ones that had until very recently been pushed up inside Evie. Jacob pulled them back with a pop then winked at her melodramatically and she laughed and he arched his back to take Starrick deeper still.

Jacob rode him next. He brought Starrick's hands back to his waist and he rose a little and he sanke back down, slowly, making his breathing hard. When Starrick moved one hand, Jacob caught it before it could reach his cock and told him, "Not there. I want to...look, I think I can do it just with...you know." And he gave Starrick's cock a completely intentional squeeze with his arse. Apparently, Starrick couldn't find words to respond to that. It made his cock ache to think of Jacob making himself come just from the feel of it inside him.

That was exactly what Jacob did. He rode him, slowly, gripping his own thighs, until his hole was almost fluttering around him. He rode him, neither of them touching his erection as he ground down on Starrick's cock. It didn't seem to bother him that that cock had just been in his sister, or that she was watching them, thighs spread wide, toes pressing the floor, as she brought herself closer to a second orgasm. Jacob rode him until his movements took on an erratic twist, till his hips jerked, till he groaned out loud and Starrick watched him come, his cock untouched, in thick spurts over his abdomen. It was so fucking obscene that it almost finished Starrick, too; he looked at Evie as he fought for control and she nodded, and then it did finish him. He clenched his jaw and thrust up and came inside him, emptied himself into him utterly, with his hands still tight at his waist.

Jacob sat there afterwards, catching his breath with Starrick still inside him. Then Evie came close again, to the side of the bed, as they both watched her. She leaned in, one knee on the bed, and beckoned Jacob closer; when the two of them kissed there in front of him, it didn't seem particularly fraternal. It made Jacob's hole pull tighter. It made Starrick's cock give an interested if surprised twitch.

"He likes that," Jacob told her. "I can feel it. Really. His cock just did something."

Evie patted his cheek then ran her hand down, and back, and lower still; Starrick felt it when she pressed one finger into Jacob's arse beside his cock, stretching his hole wider. If anything, that time Starrick's cock twitched harder.

"I think he likes that, too," she said, then pulled away and wiped her hand off on the blanket. "Maybe next time, he'd like to watch us."

Jacob shrugged. "I've heard worse ideas," he replied.

"Jacob, you've definitely had worse ideas."

Then, as Jacob climbed back off him, Evie slipped on a borrowed dressing gown and made her way toward the door.

"You're not staying, Miss Frye?" Starrick asked. "We had an appointment for supper."

"I'm meeting George," she replied, as she tied the belt around her waist. "You know, I think he still can't believe we didn't kill you."

"I think he still can't believe we left Crawley, started a gang and took control of London," Jacob added. Then he stretched out at Starrick's side. "I'm staying," he told him. "I wouldn't go meet George if you paid me in rubies."

"And that's why I'm the brains and you're the brawn," Evie said. "I'd definitely take the rubies."

She left. And, true to his word, Jacob didn't; when the door closed, he leaned over and mouthed the corner of Starrick's lips until he couldn't help but smile.

He was impossible to ignore, and it appeared he didn't want to.

---

Last year, almost fourteen months ago now, Crawford Starrick woke in bed feeling very much like he'd been stabbed. The chief cause of that feeling was the fact that he had, indeed, been stabbed, by two individuals who shared a last name and still do; when he asked if she'd like to be Mrs. Starrick, she laughed and said no, and he has to admit it didn't sting even half as much as his first rejection. Perhaps because her brother was sucking his cock at the time.

"I'd marry you," Jacob said, as he pulled away and leaned there with his forearms resting on Starrick's knees and his chin resting on top of them. He had a very familiar twinkle in his eyes that told Starrick almost as clearly as words could that he was being teased. "But I doubt I'd look good in a wedding dress. And there's a vicar in Crawley who'd say I shouldn't be allowed in a church ever again."

Starrick didn't ask what precisely Jacob had done to raise a vicar's ire. He didn't say anything about Jacob's friend Frederick Abberline who did, in fact, probably have a dress that would fit that he could lend him. He leaned down instead, tilted Jacob's chin and kissed his mouth. He's found that usually knocks his conversation off track, easily distracted as he is, and that evening was no exception.

Tonight, he's out with Evie. These days, no one finds it at all amiss that Evie Frye and Crawford Starrick are seen out together in company, because frankly it occurs so often; she's the sort of woman who doesn't leave the room when the after-dinner conversation turns to business, and he likes to hear her speak. And it's a pretty garden party, good food and excellent wine, but they both know that he's not staying. He has another appointment.

He adjusts the gauntlet at his wrist - he supposes one day it might feel almost natural, but for now it's still a novelty - then takes his leave. Jacob is waiting on a rooftop nearby, crouching at the edge as if he has no fear of falling. As Starrick shoots a line and has it hoist him up to join him, he understands it's just the same for him: he doesn't fear the fall, he fears never having climbed.

And over the months, Templars have tried to kill him more than once for his betrayal of their Order, and the other Assassins he's met will never accept that he's changed sides; he supposes he can't blame either side, because the gauntlet at his wrist does not an Assassin make. He's simply Assassin-adjacent.

Jacob takes his hand and helps him up, and then he pulls him close. "Ready?" he asks, and the quirk of his brows is a challenge that he won't decline.

"Lead the way," he replies. And when Jacob turns and runs, he follows. When Jacob jumps, Starrick doesn't hesitate; he takes his leap of faith.

London is in the palms of the Frye twins, and he understands that so is he.

And though he's died two deaths in two years, he's never felt so alive.