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News of the Crown Prince’s abduction broke at three in the morning.

Startled awake by the alert blaring from his phone, Nyx was still scrubbing the sleep from his eyes as he scanned the emergency message. As soon as he woke enough to comprehend said message, he shoved himself out of bed, struggled into his uniform, and spilled out the door.

This late, the streets of Insomnia were as close to “quiet” as the city ever managed, but Nyx still found himself bumping shoulders with disgruntled bystanders as he barrelled down the road. The emergency alert had been stingy on the details; all he knew was that Prince Noctis had been “taken”, was “likely injured”, and that his whereabouts were “currently unknown”. Nyx’s imagination was really having a field day filling in the details with all sorts of lovely possibilities. Bodies in dumpsters. Fingers in boxes.

Trying to distract himself from the pervasive mental images invading his brain, Nyx fumbled his comm into his ear and tapped it on.

The screeching wave of static that slammed into his eardrum almost made him lose his footing. He yanked the comm back off with a hiss, glancing over at it. It didn’t look damaged.

With a sinking feeling, Nyx pulled out his phone again. Another alert came through at that exact moment. It wasn’t just his earpiece, or even just the Glaives’ frequency: the alert informed him that all Crown-issue communication devices were currently non-functional.

Shiva’s tits. Clearly sabotage, not a mere technical failure—yet, given the timing, Nyx had a feeling some poor techie’s head was going to roll for it, regardless.

Beneath the second emergency alert, he found a text message from Luche, pointedly reminding him to report to the Citadel so he could be assigned a team, a functioning radio, and an area of the city to comb.

‘Do not, under any circumstances, run off to play hero without any backup,’ the message concluded uncharitably.

What happened next was not Nyx’s fault.

When he began making a beeline for the Citadel by warping across the rooftops, he wasn’t trying to play hero. All he was doing was reporting for duty as expeditiously as possible. As instructed. No time to waste with a missing kid and a military in chaos.

When he landed on a roof next to the mouth of a massive air duct, just in time to hear a faint cry of pain echo up from somewhere in the office building below, it was pure happenstance.

Freezing in place, Nyx glanced over at the offending vent, waiting for the noise to repeat itself. What had sounded like a human voice could easily have been a raccoon or a stray cat or something equally benign.

Instead, after a moment of silence, another noise rang up, amplified by the duct: a sharp clang followed by a shout, too faint to be coherent, but undeniably human. Yet, when he double-checked the side of the building, all the windows were pitch black, the employee parking lot empty, and the doors locked. Supposedly, this office was closed for the night.

Nyx reminded his paranoia that the chances of him stumbling upon the abducted Prince mostly through sheer dumb luck were negligible. This was… something else. And, if he was smart, he wouldn’t go sticking his nose into whatever the hell was going on in a run-down office building after hours.

But… what if someone was getting hurt?

Cursing quietly, Nyx drew out his phone. Someone needed to know what he was up to and why he wasn’t reporting for duty. He’d shoot Lib a quick text.

At the last moment, though, he hesitated, scanning Luche’s message again. Do not run off and play hero.

If Nyx admitted that he was traipsing into an abandoned building to investigate a random suspicious noise, Lib might rat him out to Drautos, who would inevitably insist that Nyx stop fucking around and get to the Citadel. It’d just be yet another excuse for the Captain to subject Nyx to a lecture.

But if Nyx… just checked out the situation, took a harmless little peek to ease his own mind, and then hauled ass to the Citadel…

None of his fellow Glaives would ever have to know.

Tucking the phone away, he jogged over to the stairwell door. The fact that it wasn’t even locked only magnified his suspicions. Nyx slipped inside and crept down the stairs, kukri drawn.

It didn’t take long to find the source of the noise: light was spilling out from beneath the door leading to the top floor. Faint, but hard to miss in the otherwise dark stairwell. When he drew near, he could hear the muffled sounds of a conversation from somewhere deeper within.

Peering through the keyhole, he couldn’t see anyone in sight of the door, so he eased it open and slipped onto the occupied floor. He passed some bathrooms and storage closets before coming upon a wide, open area full of mostly cubicles. The light source was just around the corner, casting three long shadows; three people standing just out of sight.

Three people who, judging by their shadows, each held something rifle-shaped in their arms. Nyx’s eyes narrowed, and he held his kukri at the ready as he crept closer to the corner.

“—only a small concession,” a woman was saying smugly in the distance, her words coming into focus as he drew near. Middle-aged; distinct Altissian accent—an upper-class Accordo-born lady, Nyx would say. “We can address more serious matters once we’ve established a baseline of trust.” It was too muffled to be coming from one of the three figures he was approaching; this woman was in an adjacent room.

Nyx risked a brief glance around the corner and immediately ducked back behind cover, silently cursing his luck. The shadows weren’t misleading; those three men were, in fact, toting rifles. They seemed to be guarding a private office of some kind, though he hadn’t gotten more than a glimpse inside.

“In exchange for this information,” the Altissian woman said as Nyx weighed his options, “we would be more than willing to grant you a few small comforts. You have requests, I’m sure.”

For a moment, there was no response. Then—

“Yeah, you could start by bringing me some pants,” said Prince Noctis.

Nyx yanked out his phone so vehemently that he nearly flung it into the wall. Only years of experience kept it in his hand—and kept that hand steady as he typed in his passcode.

He texted the Captain: ‘TRACE THIS CALL.’ Then he speed-dialed, put the call on speaker, and silenced his phone. No time to explain; Drautos would just have to listen to the same conversation Nyx was. He’d figure it out from there.

Helpfully, just as his screen silently informed him that Drautos had picked up, the Altissian woman said, “I’m sure that can be arranged, Your Highness.” Nyx held his phone as close to the corner as he dared, making sure Drautos was getting all of this. “Just as soon as—”

“And I want shoes,” Prince Noctis interrupted. “A jacket, too. And maybe a soda or something. Diet’s fine if that’s all they ha—”

Despite having seen it coming from a mile away, Nyx winced when the distinctive thud of a fist hitting solid flesh cut Noctis off mid-word. The Prince grunted, but didn’t cry out, which Nyx hoped meant he hadn’t been hit anywhere important.

“Know your place,” the woman said coldly, dropping all pretense of civility in an instant. “To antagonize one’s benefactors only invites retaliation. Surely even you know this basic tenet of parley, Your Highness, given all the diplomacy lessons I know you’ve received throughout your life.”

“No,” Noctis replied, his voice shaky at first, then resolving into something which could almost pass for boredom. “No, hostage negotiation is a different class.”

In the other room, there was another unmistakable impact, and Noctis hissed in a rattling breath through his teeth.

Something moved on his phone screen, and Nyx glanced down to see a text from Drautos pop up: ‘Mobilizing backup. ETA 20m - 1hr. Hold position, await further orders.’

Beneath that, a second text arrived, this one from Luche. ‘nyx what the FUCK’

“My patience wears thin, Your Highness,” the ringleader woman said tightly, snapping her fingers. Nyx listened attentively to the cacophony of shuffling footsteps which followed; estimated it as six additional hostiles. “I do not have all morning to cater to your whims.”

“Y-you think you’re in a hurry?” Prince Noctis gasped, his attempt at a lofty, unaffected tone belied by his breathlessness. “I have a Chemistry test in, like… four hours.”

Nyx was already braced for the blow that followed: a solid wham that sounded like it caught Noctis center mass. Still, he cringed at the Prince’s choked wheeze.

“I see that you still aren’t ready to take our position seriously,” the boss lady said, almost sounding genuinely sad. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You do lack so much life experience. So much… perspective. But not to worry, Your Highness. I’ve put plenty of thought into this, and I believe I’ve come up with a foolproof method of incentivizing your cooperation.”

Great. They were moving from beatings to straight-up torture, then. Nyx darted an irritated glance at his phone screen. It hadn’t even been two minutes since Drautos answered his call; they probably hadn’t even traced his location yet.

Whatever came next, he was just going to have to sit here and listen.

There was a brief moment of heavy silence. Nyx kept a vigilant ear out for what was sure to come next—a punch; a slap; a cry of pain—but all he heard was soft footsteps.

Then the Prince said, “No—no, wait—just wait,” his voice abruptly thick with panic, and Nyx—

H̷̪͐̒e̸͚̬̕l̶̝̿p̴̭͝!̵̢̫̈́͘

—Nyx pressed a palm against the floor to steady himself before his body could carry him out into the open.

“Wait for what, Your Highness? I think you’ve wasted quite enough of our time.” The boss’s voice was utterly polite; utterly unbothered. “Unless you’d like to tell me the passkey?”

So that was the “small concession” they were after; Nyx grasped at that information, trying to think about that instead of H̸͍̽e̵͍͌l̵̰͗p̵̯̈!̶̤̚ ̴̞̏N̷̖̙̝̚y̶̮̗͌̏̐̀̈x̷͎͂͂̃̇͝-̸̖͈̠́̊͛-̴̭̔ instead of anything else. A passkey; they wanted a passkey. To Noctis’s phone? To his apartment? To some top-secret vault in the Citadel that Nyx didn’t even know about?

Either way, Noctis’s answer was predictable. “Fuck off.”

Immediately afterwards, he sucked in a sharp, fearful breath; his cuffs clattered.

“You may have a few seconds,” the boss said magnanimously, “to rethink your tone.”

Nyx’s fingers swiped at his phone screen almost without his input. ‘permission to cause diversion’

Instantaneously: ‘Permission denied. Await backup. Hold position.’

Nyx grit his teeth. Obviously he was well aware that barging in on an active hostage situation half-cocked wasn’t going to accomplish anything. He knew that. But—he just—

What the hell was going on in there?

He couldn’t hear any more blows, or any sign that Noctis was being harmed, other than the sounds of him struggling. Had she drawn a weapon on him? A knife, maybe, or some instrument of torture—something which would strike fear into Prince Noctis to the point where his body betrayed him, despite his best efforts to remain stoic.

Half-repressed memories came crashing back to Nyx: corpses they’d found discarded in the fields outside abandoned Niff bases, their burns and gashes and welts and wounds having long since stopped bleeding and become home to maggots.

It was all too easy to imagine the torture which had left them unrecognizable—especially now that Prince Noctis was whimpering just twenty feet away, struggling against his restraints in a silent cry for—

H̷̡̼͗̈́͊e̵̩̾l̸̪̻͌ṕ̶̨͚̦͊͠!̶͔͖̀̏—dammit, not now—I need to focus—H̸̩̞̙͑ͅe̸̹͖̓̿͊͆ͅͅľ̴̙̱͕̤p̸͖͓̗͗͐̿̔ ̵͇͎͓̎̄Ḿ̶̦͍ơ̸̱̋͗̎ț̷̳͇̆͋ͅḩ̶̯̑̈́̊͘e̸͖̐͛r̵͙̭̺̈́̓͜!̶̡̠̝̠͗

Another flicker of movement in the corner of his eye; Nyx glanced sharply down at his phone. From Luche:

‘DON’T BE STUPID, ULRIC’

Nyx’s last rational thought was that his comrades knew him a little too well.

Then the ringleader let out a disappointed little tsk, the Prince made a desperate noise that dwindled into a whine, and

Ņ̷͍̦̘̦̣̫̽̈́͝Ý̵̨͖͍̤̜̜͊̐͗͋̎̚X̵̢̧̘̺̯̻̼͛̑͋̈̀

his resolve crumbled.

Rounding the corner and leaping a cubicle in his path, Nyx warped to the nearest gunman, slit his throat, and drove his other kukri into the second guard’s neck before he could turn towards the noise. The third whirled to face him, lifting his gun; Nyx got him with another warp-strike and tossed the corpse aside.

Then he spared a moment to lock his phone and stuff it into a random pile of documents nearby—leaving the call still running, and ignoring the multiple texts which were flashing angrily across the screen—and warped into the office.

Obviously, all guns in the room were already leveled at the door; he hadn’t exactly been stealthy in his entrance. Nyx threw up a hasty shield with his off hand as he scanned the room, cataloguing the most obvious threats—seven armed hostiles, none currently firing on him; an eighth unarmed and half-hidden behind the Prince.

With no bullets headed his way, Nyx was free to zero in on Noctis.

The Prince was standing in the middle of the room, dressed in only boxers and a t-shirt. His hands were cuffed and dangling from the ceiling above, arms mottled with bruises and faintly streaked with little rivulets of pink where the cuffs had just barely broken skin. When their eyes met, Noctis’s were wide and watery.

Nyx tossed him a tiny, clandestine smirk. Don’t worry, he hoped Noctis would read in it. This is all part of the plan.

Although that reassurance probably rang a little hollow. Because, a moment after Nyx’s entrance, every gun in the room swiveled around to point squarely at the Prince.

It took effort to raise a shield and use elemancy at the same time, but Nyx focused until a menacing-looking ball of flame sparked into existence above his hand. “You shoot, I shoot.”

A brief moment of silence. The kidnappers’ eyes darted between Nyx and the doorway, clearly waiting for more men to storm in after him. Once a few seconds had elapsed and no one else came running in, their tension melted away into confusion.

Meanwhile, the unarmed figure stepped partially into view, though she kept His Highness wedged between them. Nyx surmised, based on her appearance, that this was the Altissian lady.

“Who are you,” she said through her teeth, her accent confirming his theory.

Not acknowledging her presence at all, Nyx instead turned to her minions. “Lay your weapons down now, and His Majesty may yet show you leniency,” he said, channeling Drautos’s particular brand of authoritative boom. “But if you don’t? You’ll be lucky if he grants you the death penalty.”

It may have been wishful thinking, but he thought he saw a few of them swallow uncomfortably.

“You’re in a poor position to be issuing threats,” the ringleader snapped, and Nyx’s eyes flicked back over to her. “Lay your weapons down, Glaive, lest you be held equally responsible for His Highness’s untimely demise.”

Taking her cue, the gunmen shifted ever-closer to Noctis.

“Doubtful,” Nyx bluffed, hoping that the bead of sweat currently rolling down his forehead wasn’t clearly visible. “Kill him, and you have nothing.”

His phone was muted and left behind, but he swore he could hear the Captain cussing him out anyway. All the way from the Citadel. Maybe he’d finally figured out how to psychically beam his displeasure into Nyx’s head.

Speaking of Drautos, he and the rest of the rescue team should be apprised of the situation. Nyx pretended to take a long look around, then shook his head. “I have to say, though… seven armed men to terrorize one teenage boy? Little pathetic.”

He looked again at Prince Noctis, who was still staring at him, somewhere between frightened and bewildered. Nyx met his gaze with all the intensity he could muster, trying to get a message across through eye contact alone.

Play along.

For a fleeting moment, Nyx could’ve sworn he saw something sharp in Noctis’s eyes. Then the moment slipped away and his expression became a blank mask.

“I think bringing seven guys is pretty smart, actually,” he said, voice hoarse. “Maybe you could learn from Countess Abbatia's example.”

“…Everyone’s a critic,” Nyx said weakly, the title echoing through his head on repeat. ‘Countess’ was high on the ladder, wasn’t it? He was pretty sure Drautos had drilled into the recruits to never so much as look funny at a noble of that rank.

No wonder she’d somehow gotten access to Noctis. Nyx didn’t recognize her face, but clearly this was someone powerful. Someone trusted. Someone with more than enough influence to get a saboteur into the Citadel to take down the Crown’s comms.

That also meant she had some knowledge of the inner workings of both the Crownsguard and Kingsglaive, though. Which meant she knew that any half-competent Glaive would contact backup before bursting in to rescue the Crown Prince. And, if she realized her capture was now inevitable, she was going to get a lot more desperate—and a lot more dangerous.

New plan: convince her that Nyx was not a half-competent Glaive.

“What was I supposed to do?” he asked the Prince, trying to inject a bit of petulant whine into his voice without being too heavy-handed. “The comms were being weird, and it wasn’t like I had time to run to the Citadel. Would you rather I just leave you for dead?” To seal the deal, he gestured effusively towards the ceiling with the hilt of his kukri. “It’s not my fault that they decided to host this little shindig right beneath an air duct that goes straight up to the roof.”

At that, several of the gunmen looked up in alarm, including the boss lady—Countess Abbatia. Her eyes narrowed when she saw the large vent Nyx had been gesturing toward: Noctis had been strung up right below it, his cuffed hands chained to a light fixture mere inches away. It was no wonder his cries had carried so far up.

“Frankly, you’re lucky it’s me who was up there,” he continued, laying it on even thicker. “‘Cause most people would’ve just called the cops and called it a day—”

“Enough,” Abbatia said, and the gunmen hemming in the Prince moved in closer, muzzles hovering mere centimeters from Noctis’s skin. “You. Glaive. Drop your weapons.”

With a huff, Nyx glanced at the Prince, who was watching him closely. He was under no illusions. Even assuming he could actually win a fight against half a dozen gunmen in an enclosed space, the chances of Noctis catching a stray were far too high. But backup was on its way; the Prince’s rescue was an inevitability at this point.

Nyx couldn’t make that rescue come any faster, but he could stall for time. Any moment they were dealing with him was a moment they weren’t laying a hand on Noctis.

So he remained silent for as long as he dared, pretending to consider his options at great length. His eyes slowly swept across the room, as if searching for a way out; his fingers clenched on the hilts of his kukris, as if readying them for battle; he even risked a very telegraphed half-step back, as if he was planning on just booking it out the door.

Only when the gunmen started to toss looks at their boss, whose expression was progressively souring, did Nyx let his shoulders slump in exaggerated defeat. “Alright,” he said. “Alright, I’m dropping ‘em.”

With slow, non-threatening movements, he eased out of his combat stance and let his half-hearted shield dwindle and fall to splinters. Then, begrudgingly, he set his kukris on the ground one at a time and kicked them away.

“Good.” With a gesture from Abbatia, one of her goons broke off from the pack to retrieve the relinquished weapons. The rest adjusted their aim, splitting the guns in the room between Noctis and Nyx. “Now put your hands up, and, if you value your life, don’t try any more magic tricks.”

At that, Nyx rolled his eyes—first of all, if he’d been planning on attacking, he obviously would’ve done it before disarming himself; second of all, if he valued his life, he’d be in a different profession—but, in an effort to keep her appeased, he tucked his hands behind his head.

Abbatia’s eyes roved across the room for a moment before they landed on some point to Nyx’s left. She jerked her chin in that direction. “Walk over there. Slowly.”

Nyx did as he was told. In fact, he took the “slowly” part a bit too literally, judging by the way Abbatia’s face was twitching. As he dragged his feet over to the indicated wall, he kept himself entertained by imagining how apoplectically mad Drautos must be right now.

He could hear the lecture already. So you’ll only obey orders from fucking terrorists—is that it, Ulric? If I put my sword at His Highness’s throat, then will you listen to a word I say?

Distracted by that mental image, Nyx shuffled himself right into the corner of a large wooden desk. As he glanced down at it—they’d pushed it up against the wall to make room for their little torture games, it seemed, which was a ridiculous mental image—he heard something clatter to the ground and skid across the linoleum. Two pairs of handcuffs bounced against the toe of his boot.

“Cuff yourself,” Abbatia ordered. “Feet to the desk, hands to the light.”

Grimacing at the indignity, Nyx crouched to scoop up the cuffs. “Gotta do everything myself around here,” he muttered under his breath. “It’s like you’re not even professional kidnappers.”

“Shut up,” Abbatia snapped, “or I’ll make you gag yourself, too.”

Remembering their audience, Nyx cringed to think of the Captain, who was no doubt crossing his fingers right now, praying for her to make good on the threat. Gods, and the Captain wasn’t even the only Glaive listening. Luche was there, at the very least, and he would be firmly on the side of Nyx getting gagged.

Better get a move on before she gave them any more funny ideas. Acting nervous to buy a few more seconds, Nyx fumbled his way through clumsily looping one pair of cuffs around the leg of the desk. He then feigned confusion when the cuff wouldn’t quite fit around the circumference of his boots. “Uh,” he said, dragging the syllable out. “Should I…?”

“…Take them off,” Abbatia said incredulously.

“Right. Got it.” Nyx took his sweet-ass time untying his boots, loosening the laces, and then wriggling his feet out of them—completely ignoring the easy-off zippers on the sides. He stole furtive glances at the gunmen from time to time to ensure none of them were getting too antsy. Once he was barefoot and out of excuses, he at last fastened the handcuffs around his ankles.

“Now the hands,” Abbatia said impatiently once he’d wobbled back upright. “And cease your dithering.”

“No dithering over here, ma’am,” Nyx lied, throwing up his hands in mock surrender.

But Abbatia was starting to look like she might give the order to shoot if he wasted any more time, so dragging this out any longer probably wasn’t the smartest idea. Without further ado, he grabbed the second pair of cuffs and glanced over his shoulder.

Ah. He’d been wondering how she expected him to cuff himself “to the light”, but now he saw. The office was lined with a row of evenly-spaced light fixtures on sturdy metal bases. The nearest fixture was about a foot above his head—just within arm’s length if he did a bit of a backbend.

Stretching up to reach, Nyx wrapped the second pair of handcuffs around its metal base, said a solemn farewell to what remained of his dignity, and ratcheted the cuffs tight around his wrists.

The instant he was fully restrained, Abbatia jerked her chin in his direction. “Search him.”

Two of her goons approached him slowly with guns drawn, which was a flattering amount of caution, he supposed. Nyx would’ve given them a little hell, except that Abbatia was stepping back into place at His Highness’s flank, a clear threat which needed no verbal elaboration. He set his jaw and didn’t fight as they frisked him.

They removed his keys; his useless comm; his wallet—which one of them pocketed, what the fuck—but, after a thorough pat-down, both of them withdrew, brows furrowed. “No phone,” one reported.

Shit.

“Everyone has a phone,” Abbatia snapped, and the goons quickly redoubled their efforts, shoving their hands beneath his jacket as if he might have one glued to his shirt. Nyx did his best not to let his eyes dart to the door, silently praying that Drautos was still listening. He needed something to throw them off the scent; if they found his real phone and realized that the Glaive was currently tracing their location, there was no telling what they might do.

Which, y’know, was one of the reasons Drautos had denied his request to do exactly what he was currently doing. But Drautos wouldn’t let Nyx’s plan backfire and harm the Prince solely out of spite. Right?

Someone was clearly paying attention and having the same thought process as Nyx, because, when he awkwardly reached into the Armiger, after sifting through countless weapons, he felt something suspiciously smartphone-shaped. At once, he summoned it into his hand, trying to affect an expression of resignation—as if he’d been trying to pull one over on them, but now he was giving up the ghost.

One of the goons pried it from his hands. The screen lit up, and Nyx tried not to heave a sigh of relief. It was Libertus’ phone; he instantly recognized the photo of Nyx, Libertus, and Crowe on the lock screen. Nyx’s face was clearly visible in it, so nothing gave away that the phone wasn’t his. He definitely owed Lib a drink for that one.

Unfortunately, the fact that Lib had known to pass his phone along through the King’s Armiger, usually reserved strictly for curatives and weapons, probably meant that Drautos had looped him into the call. Which meant that, if Nyx’s plan succeeded, Libertus was about to have to listen to him getting interrogated.

Which meant that Nyx was actually gonna owe him two or three drinks, minimum.

The goons carried Lib’s phone over to Abbatia, who gave it little more than a passing glance before tucking it away. To the two goons closest to the door, she said, “Clear the building again. Make sure he really was acting alone.” To the next two: “Up to the roof. Make sure we see no more interlopers.”

Once those four were out of sight (Nyx smugly noted that he’d cut the number of gunmen with line of sight on the Prince by over half), Abbatia turned slowly towards her hostages, affecting an impressive facade of serenity. “Rude interruptions aside,” she said, “we have a conversation to continue, Your Highness. Though I suppose we should first apprise our new guest of the rul—”

“Can I get his pants?” Noctis interrupted, jerking his head towards Nyx. “He doesn’t need ‘em.”

Nyx goggled. “Hey!”

Noctis just shrugged, as much as he could with his arms stretched taut above him. “You’re the one who wanted to rescue me. Best you can do right now is rescue my dignity.”

For a brief, naive moment, Nyx almost let himself feel relieved. He may not be able to convey much to Noctis without tipping Abbatia off, but they were clearly on the same page about wasting as much of her time as humanly possible. Maybe, together, they could divert Abbatia long enough for Drautos and Luche and Libertus to muster a rescue.

Maybe they could both get through this in one piece.

Then Abbatia snapped her fingers and, quicker than Nyx’s stomach could drop, one of her goons lunged forward and drove his fist into Noctis’s gut. He seized, nearly losing his footing with the force of the unexpected blow.

“Before we continue our conversation,” Abbatia began again, voice glacial, “I need to lay down the rules. Not just for the sake of our new guest, but also for His Highness, who seems to have already forgotten.”

“Dunno what you expected,” Nyx said, aiming for nonchalance and missing it by a mile. “Teenagers tend to be a little bit scatterbrained when you’re fucking beating them.”

“Watch your tone, Glaive, unless you’d like to take his place.”

That was precisely what he’d like, but Nyx bit his tongue. Maniac though she may be, Abbatia didn’t strike him as an idiot. She’d cotton on to his half-baked plan if he got overeager.

So he fell silent, fingers twitching restlessly where they dangled from the light fixture, and watched Noctis catch his breath. The henchman who’d struck him stepped back at a gesture from Abbatia, but she didn’t speak until Noctis had straightened back up to his full height, glaring at her silently.

“First,” she said, unfazed by his scowl, “let me once again reassure you that I am entirely willing to provide more comfortable accommodations—for both of our guests—” She inclined her head towards Nyx— “provided His Highness is willing to budge on a few minor points.”

“I’m not telling you shit,” Noctis cut in, and Nyx slanted him a (slightly hypocritical) warning look.

It went unseen; Abbatia stepped between them, blocking Noctis’s view, and Nyx’s skin crawled sympathetically as she tilted the Prince’s chin up with her finger. “Now, Your Highness, I believe we’ve been over this.”

“Pretty sure I said the same thing last time, so I dunno why you’re surprised now.”

“Surprised, no.” She slapped him. A casual, almost lazy swing, as if she couldn’t be bothered to put her back into it. “Disappointed would be a better word.”

Noctis took a moment to lift his head again, wincing as he did so; the muscles in his neck jumped uneasily. “Gods forbid,” was his mumbled rejoinder.

Breathing deliberately through his nose, Nyx dug his teeth into the inside of his cheek to bite back his own scathing words. Purposefully drawing Abbatia’s ire was priority number one, but poking at her temper while she was so close to Noctis was risky. Anger could be taken out on either hostage just as easily.

It would be much better to convince her that Nyx was a viable source of intel; surely she would rather risk torturing a random soldier than the Crown Prince. Noctis had too much value to her as a bargaining chip. Nyx, in the event her men got overzealous with their blows, was a corpse easily discarded.

The problem was that his bumbling “I promise I was too stupid to call for backup” persona didn’t exactly come off as a font of knowledge. He’d have to somehow drop a hint that whatever specific “passkey” she was after just so happened to be one that Nyx would know.

And, of course, to do that, he’d have to first know what passkey she wanted, which she wasn’t exactly being transparent about.

For now, he’d just have to deflect as best he could. “Weren’t you going to explain the rest of the rules to me?” he called before Abbatia could strike the Prince again. “I’m gathering that cussing isn’t allowed.”

The look Abbatia shot him was withering, but he hardly cared. “What I disallow is speaking out of turn,” she said pointedly. “You’d do well to remember that, Glaive.”

Nyx pushed his luck. “Well, I need to be told something before I can remember it.” Anything to keep her attention on him, rather than the other one currently at her mercy.

Much to his dismay, though, she turned back to Noctis without sparing him another moment of her time. “Do not test my patience. Your liege has done enough of that tonight.” Yet again, she lifted a hand almost reverently to Noctis’s face, ignoring the way his nose wrinkled at the touch. “I grow weary of it.”

“You think I care?” Noctis bit back.

Abbatia chuckled—a light, airy sound that made the hairs rise on the back of Nyx’s neck.

“No, I doubt you would. I suppose I’ll need to find another incentive if I wish to gain your ear, will I not?”

Then Abbatia’s hand flew down to Noctis’s knee, fingers digging into the pale scar tissue there.

The noise Noctis made could only be described as a gag. Too choked to be a scream; too throaty to be a gasp. Writhing like an animal in a trap, he kicked out at Abbatia with his other leg. She only wrenched at his knee all the harder.

“Hey!” Nyx snarled, unable to stop himself from lurching forward even though the cuffs snapped him short. “Stop! Leave him alone—!”

One of the remaining gunmen made an irritated noise, and then the butt of a rifle slammed into Nyx’s face, effectively shutting him up. Cuffed in a backbend the way he was, he stood no chance of keeping his balance; he hung suspended from his hands, socked feet scrabbling in a fruitless attempt to push him back upright. With those cuffed, too, he couldn’t get the leverage

“I’m so sorry, Your Highness,” Abbatia crooned in the distance. “Was that your bad leg?”

Noctis had no response. He was busy clawing for air. The wet rattle of tears on each inhale grated against Nyx’s ears. Weren’t you supposed to be protecting him, Hero? Gritting his teeth, Nyx dragged himself back upright by his cuffs, ignoring the way his joints screamed in protest. He had to fight to focus his eyes on Noctis across the dimly lit room, his vision swimming from the unexpected blow to the head.

Abbatia had released the Prince’s leg, but the damage had already been done: his knee was inflamed, scar tissue even more startlingly pale now against the backdrop of his angry red skin. Teetering helplessly on his other leg, wrists now bleeding freely where he’d hung from the cuffs for a moment, Noctis could only breathe and blink rapidly, his whole body heaving with each desperate inhale. Every time his weight shifted and his dangling foot pressed too hard against the ground, he made another wet noise deep in his throat.

The sympathetic click of Abbatia’s tongue made Nyx’s fingers itch for his confiscated kukris. “Your Highness,” she sighed. At the slightest movement of her hands, Noctis flinched violently, but she didn’t strike him again; only brushed his bangs out of his eyes in a mockery of genuine care. “This all could have been avoided had you not been so unwilling to compromise.”

A slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up in Nyx’s chest. “Could’ve also been avoided if some lunatic hadn’t snatched him from his bed.”

The fist to the gut which followed was expected, but it was only a toady who struck him; Abbatia remained in the Prince’s personal space. “Regardless of what you and your loyal guard may believe, I take no pleasure in harming you,” she lied. “In fact, I would be overjoyed if you gave me no further reason to do so. All you need do is tell me the passkey.”

Noctis’s hands clenched into two shaking fists. With Abbatia standing so close to him, he was just barley able to tilt his head up far enough to meet her eye.

He spat into her face. “Fuck you.”

Nyx reacted before Abbatia did, tensing in his cuffs. Dammit—not that Nyx had any right to talk, but why couldn’t the kid just play nice, even for a minute? His fingers scrabbled restlessly at the light fixture as Abbatia wiped the saliva off her chin, eerily calm.

“Pity.”

She kicked Noctis’s good leg out from under him.

Pitching helplessly sideways, Noctis sucked in a strangled gasp when the weight landed on his other foot. Immediately, he yanked at his cuffs in an attempt to lurch back over onto the correct leg, but Abbatia hooked her shoe around his ankle and swept it back out from beneath him. He was left scrambling, wrists twisting in their shackles, feet sliding across the floor—letting out a desperate, pained noise every time his bad leg was forced to bear any weight.

“Leave him alone, you freak!” Nyx snapped when Abbatia kicked at Noctis’s feet one last time, almost idly. This time, when the nearest goon gave him a perfunctory punch to the ribs, he was prepared enough not to fall; he scarcely took the time to suck in another breath before shouting, “This isn’t worth it! You have no idea what the King’s going to do to you when—” The second blow failed to quiet him, either. “—when you get caught—they’re gonna kill you—” The third hit caught him in the solar plexus, and he doubled over. He barely managed to wheeze out one last, “He’s fucking sixteen!”

A forth, fifth, and sixth punch followed in quick succession, leaving him hanging limp from the cuffs, too busy gasping to continue his tirade.

Satisfied, the thug stopped laying into him and stepped back. Nyx wasted no time in getting eyes back on His Highness, who was dangling leadenly from his own restraints, uninjured leg shaking hard where it bore the bulk of his weight. Noctis’s head hung low, chin resting on his heaving chest.

“Perhaps that will suffice to demonstrate my point?” Abbatia asked lightly, and Nyx ground his teeth together hard enough to make his jaw creak.

After another moment of strained breathing, Noctis slowly lifted his head, staring up at Abbatia through the sweaty clumps of his bangs. Nyx’s stomach twisted in anticipation of another spat insult, another crass denial, but one never came. Noctis remained silent, chest shuddering, watching his tormentor with dull eyes.

Abbatia cupped his cheek. This time, he seemed too stunned to flinch.

“Tell me the first digit of the passkey,” she said softly, “and I’ll let you sit.”

Nyx sucked in a sharp breath through his nose.

So that was her game. Targeting Noctis’s childhood injury was more than just a cruel method of torture; she was trying to get a foothold. Nebulous offers of “rewards” were much less tempting than something tangible, such as a tiny moment of respite. Breaking her demands down in increments would only make it all the more enticing.

You won’t tell me the whole passkey in exchange for your freedom? How about one digit, and you can take a small break? It’s only a single digit. I can’t even do anything with it. Surely that’s worth being able to take a breath. …Perfect. See? That wasn’t so bad. Another.

He tried to gauge the Prince’s reaction, but Noctis’s face was a blank mask. After a long, suspended moment, his eyes darted over and landed on Nyx, where it lingered as he wobbled on his feet. Even with the rest of his face carefully composed, the look in his eye was easy to parse: uncertain. Questioning. As if he was waiting for something.

Right. Nyx swallowed. Of course. He’d tried to reassure Noctis, with his little smirks and winks, that he knew what he was doing—and now the kid was looking to him for guidance.

Which meant, whatever passkey she was asking for, he was willing to divulge a digit of it. If Nyx approved.

Of course, the fact that a rescue was on its way should mean that any information yielded to these maniacs was worthless to them. They’d be behind bars before they had a chance to use it. But—there could be cameras. Listening devices. Accomplices. Hell, Abbatia could whip out her phone and liveblog the passkey, digit by digit, as she wheedled them out of him. Nyx couldn’t take the security of any information they divulged for granted.

And… did they have any reason to believe that Abbatia would even keep her word? She might just as well see a crack in Noctis’s walls as a chance to lay into him even more viciously than before.

Nyx closed his eyes. His every instinct screamed at him to tell Noctis to take the offer. The poor kid was only sixteen. And he was going to reach his breaking point soon, if he hadn’t already. Surely one single number was worth taking his weight off his feet for a moment.

But he knew better. They both knew better.

Opening his eyes again, he subtly shook his head no.

The look which crossed Noctis’s face wasn’t quite relief and wasn’t quite resignation. Either way, he abided by Nyx’s verdict with disturbingly little fuss. Eyes shifting back to Abbatia, he lifted his chin just slightly, as if to bolster his resolve, and said, “I’m not stupid. Unlike some people.”

Nyx flexed irritably against his restraints. Now if only there was a facial expression which could get across the idea of “stop fucking antagonizing her”. Even if there was, though, Nyx doubted it would do much; he knew full well how it felt to be rendered so helpless that your only remaining weapon was insults. Amid the haze of panic, those tiny moments of satisfaction were the only thing which offered any relief. The fact that it would ultimately lead to more pain was irrelevant.

But Abbatia seemed to be leaning more heavily on the possibility of a reward rather than the threat of punishment as a motivator now. Without acknowledging the insult, she ambled away from Noctis and towards the cluster of furniture shoved into the corner of the office. She hooked her hand around the back of a simple wooden chair.

“No need to answer so quickly, Your Highness. Take some time to think on it.”

Slowly, deliberately, she dragged the chair closer, its wooden legs scraping noisily against the tile. Despite the resolve he’d shown, Noctis’s eyes tracked its path across the room, bloodshot. Yearning.

The nearer it drew, the more his lip began to tremble.

“So do I get the option of a chair in exchange for a digit?” Nyx boomed, abrupt and obnoxiously loud, and both Noctis and Abbatia twisted sharply towards him. “‘Cause, so far, you’ve been pretty biased, and it feels a little unfair. The Prince isn’t the only one who knows this stuff, you know.”

This had gone on long enough. Forget worrying about being too obvious; he had to take advantage of the fact that Abbatia wasn’t within striking range of Noctis and lure her over before the beatings started up again. Then he could safely rile her up without having to worry it would be taken out on the Prince.

Whether Abbatia really bought Nyx’s not-so-subtle insinuation or not, she was at least willing to humor him. “All of my offers are quite open to you both, Glaive,” she said neutrally, her cold eyes cutting into him. “Although I doubt that you—”

“Three.”

Abbatia stopped short.

“The first digit,” Nyx clarified, just in case that hadn’t been clear. “It’s three. I’ll take that chair now, thanks.”

For a long, agonizing moment of pregnant silence, they just stared at one another. Then, slowly, Abbatia turned her back on Noctis and crossed the room towards Nyx with a few long, deliberate strides.

“You said a number at random,” she deduced.

There was a sufficient enough distance between her and Noctis now, so Nyx let his mouth twist into an infuriating smirk that always left his sparring partners more than ready to kick his teeth in. “I mean, statistically speaking, there’s at least a one-in-ten chance I’m right.”

But Abbatia was going to lose interest quickly if she wrote this whole interaction off as a joke, so Nyx chose to overplay his hand, silently begging she wouldn’t call his bluff. “I can’t give you the real first digit until you tell me what passkey you actually want. Like I said. Unfair. How am I even supposed to earn the chair?”

Abbatia stepped ominously closer, and he struggled not to react as she imposed herself into his personal space. “Do you think I went to the trouble of abducting the Crown Prince for information which could’ve been obtained from any backwater servant of his?”

“Well, I did discover your entire plot because you couldn’t be assed to find somewhere secure to stash the Crown Prince,” Nyx replied blithely, “so it wouldn’t surprise me.”

Halfway through the sentence, he subtly tensed his core and jaw, bracing for a retaliatory punch to his face or ribs. But, when Abbatia raised her hand a moment later, it was only to adjust the askew Glaive badge pinned to the front of his uniform, as casually as if she were straightening a child’s crooked tie. Nyx absolutely refused to be shaken by it.

“Don’t think I’m not aware of what you’re doing, Glaive,” she said serenely. Nyx barely restrained a damning flinch. “I can’t exactly wheedle any intel out of the Prince if I’m too busy losing my temper, now can I?”

Of course a lunatic like her would assume he only cared about intel. Wanting to protect a teenager from being ruthlessly interrogated? Nah, couldn’t be.

“Maybe I just really want that chair,” was all he said out loud.

With a considering hum, Abbatia finished settling his badge back into place against his chest and finally stepped back out of his space.

Having never lost his earlier tension, Nyx was plenty prepared when her henchmen swarmed him.

Still. Being prepared didn’t make the sudden deluge of blows less painful. The first fist caught him solidly in the jaw, and Nyx snapped his head down, protecting his face as best he could without the ability to tuck it into his body or cover it with his arms. From there, all he had to do was grit his teeth and try not to grunt too loudly as the goons enthusiastically tenderized his chest and stomach.

It wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, really. Once you’d been squeezed in the fist of an iron giant just once, it became pretty hard to even register the comparatively paltry pain of a punch to the ribs. So Nyx was kind of overqualified for this position.

Still, by the time Abbatia was satisfied, he was hanging heavily from his cuffed wrists, having long since given up on keeping his footing. Abbatia snapped her fingers and her toadies let up on their assault; Nyx gave himself barely three seconds to catch his breath. Then he heaved himself shakily back upright, looking over at Noctis to ensure nothing had become of him while Nyx was otherwise occupied.

Nothing had, which meant Nyx’s ploy to divert Abbatia’s attention could at least be considered a partial success. Still, Noctis’s eyes brimmed with concern, and he eyed the henchmen clustered around Nyx warily. As if the Prince was the one who ought to be looking out for his Glaive.

Nothing worth saying was safe to say in front of Abbatia and her henchmen, so Nyx just held his gaze for a moment and tried to look steady. Unafraid. Confident that his little diversion wouldn’t blow up in both of their faces.

He waited until some of the uncertainty in Noctis’s expression drained away before turning his attention back to Abbatia. “So, did you get something out of that, or are you just throwing a tantrum?” he asked breathlessly.

“I got a few moments of silence,” Abbatia replied glacially, and Nyx envisioned Luche saying those precise words in that precise tone with such clarity that it startled a laugh out of him.

“You sound like my boss,” he said, because ‘you sound like my annoying coworker’ didn’t have the same oomph. To be fair, Drautos would probably say something similar—just, his version would’ve been even more biting. “The more I think about it, the more I think you would get along with him. If you hand me my phone, I can hook you two up.”

Abbatia was unamused. “Do I need to make myself even clearer? Stop speaking. Or we will force your silence.”

“Would you?” Nyx tried a sheepish grin. “If I’m past a certain injury threshold, they won’t make me come in tomorrow.”

But he’d pushed a little too hard; she didn’t even seem to be really listening to him anymore. Instead, she was studying His Highness again, sharp-eyed. After a moment, a small smile tugged at her lips.

“You’ve given me an idea, Glaive.”

The words should’ve been ominous—but, instead, Nyx felt a thrill of triumph in the depths of his chest. Yes. Yes! Please, let the idea be “beat up the disposable one instead of the Prince”.

He was both right and wrong. The next words out of Abbatia’s mouth were, “Prince Noctis.” But, just as Nyx’s heart began to sink, Abbatia stepped back into Nyx’s space and wrapped her hand casually around his throat. “Tell me the passkey, or else your loyal soldier will pay the price.”

She demonstrated with a brief squeeze, cutting Nyx’s air off for a single breath just to make his chest stutter.

Well. That was… a step in the right direction, at least, Nyx thought, ignoring the goosebumps rising on his neck and shoulders around Abbatia’s touch. Now, at least, Noctis’s attitude wouldn’t get him hurt; Nyx could bear the brunt of Abbatia’s ire.

Or so he thought. But, when Nyx tried to shoot the Prince a warning ‘don’t say anything’ type of look, Noctis’s eyes were utterly stricken.

“I can’t,” he said. But his voice was quiet and uncertain, his face pale and drawn, and a subdued ‘I can’t’ was a far cry from his previous steadfast ‘Fuck off’.

Shit.

Somehow, in all the time he’d spent trying to make these lunatics torture him, the idea that they’d instead use him to torture the soft-hearted Prince—and that it would work—hadn’t crossed Nyx’s mind.

When Abbatia’s hand clenched tight around Nyx’s throat, he did everything within his power not to react. Not to give Noctis any reason to question his resolve. He managed not to make any choking noises, and he stayed still and compliant without so much as squirming, but Noctis’s eyes were locked onto him, and there was no chance he missed the way Nyx’s shoulders hiked further up the longer he went without air.

Blood began to gather in his face, turning it hot and red. His decision not to make any sound or put up any resistance became more and more difficult to uphold.

Only when Nyx’s mouth popped open against his will, his body blindly searching for a source of air, did Noctis’s will begin to slip. “Stop,” he said sharply, his voice piercing through the ringing beginning to overtake Nyx’s ears. “You’re—he’s going to—stop that.”

“One digit,” Abbatia said serenely, ignoring the way Nyx was beginning to twitch in her hold.

“I can’t,” Noct repeated desperately, and Nyx closed his eyes before they could start watering. “I can’t! This won’t change that, just—just leave him out of this!”

Whatever Abbatia’s response was, Nyx missed it. All his available focus was going towards keeping still and silent. He was underwater, he told himself. He and Lib were having a contest of who could keep his head beneath the water longer, just like they’d gotten scolded for as kids, and he couldn’t let Libertus win because there was candy on the line. So there was no reason to fight the cuffs, no reason to try to cry out, no reason to think at all about the fingers digging into his windpipe—

Nyx realized, very distantly, that he was going to pass out.

No sooner had he thought it than Abbatia let go.

He’d been under the impression that he hadn’t been trying to breathe; he’d been holding his breath so as not to make himself panic even more. Yet, before he’d even realized the pressure around his throat was gone, Nyx was gasping down frantic lungfuls of air.

Reality resolidified around him bit by bit. Starting, unfortunately, with the fact that he was still chained in place, he was still covered in bruises, and Abbatia’s hand was still on his throat. She’d only loosened her grip.

“Perhaps you’re a bit more willing to compromise now, Your Highness?” Abbatia asked, sounding almost bored.

No. Despite knowing they would be red and watery, Nyx peeled his eyes open, blinked rapidly a few times, and pulled himself sharply back upright by his wrists. Noctis was already looking at him, and Nyx met him head-on, doing everything he possibly could to compose himself. He needed Noctis to look at him and understand what he was trying to say at once.

I’m fine. I can handle it.

Let me do this.

Something in Noctis’s face abruptly went hard and unyielding. He broke Nyx’s gaze.

“You think I give a shit what you do to some random Glaive?” Noctis’s eyes were fixed solidly on the ground, his voice flat, his every muscle tense. “He’s not even Lucian. Go nuts.”

Those words would’ve been music to Nyx’s ears, if only they were genuine. Their Prince was a pretty shit liar, though, and his clumsy attempts to spare Nyx only made his heart ache. The Crown Prince shouldn’t—no; a scared, hurting kid shouldn’t try to draw the torture back onto himself. It shouldn’t even have crossed his mind.

If Nyx had done his damn job and protected him in the first place, it would never have had to cross his mind.

But a bark of laughter from Abbatia cut off Nyx’s thoughts quite definitively—and, when her hand slipped away from his throat, his aching chest went tight with sudden panic.

“Well, there you have it,” she said, sounding almost gleeful. “If my goal was to make His Highness show his true colors, then I’d call this a rousing success. Though, if I plan to get any actual information, then we ought to go back to the basics, oughtn’t we?”

“You—” Nyx’s voice dwindled to a harsh, phlegmy cough; he swallowed thickly and got the rest out in a rush: “You can’t be serious. He’s lying.” His voice was low and urgent, all wit abandoned in favor of stopping Noctis’s plan before it could go any further. Though he was well aware by now that they wouldn’t budge an inch, he found himself straining at his bound wrists again. “You fell for that? He’s just trying to make you—”

“Oh, loyal Glaive,” Abbatia cut in, her voice a pitying coo. Her fingers unexpectedly brushed his face, and he jerked back, barely quashing the urge to snap his teeth. “Your unwavering faith in His Highness is truly heartwarming. But I’m afraid that, in this case, it’s blinded you to your own expandability.”

He was well fucking aware of his expandability—it was Noctis who didn’t—

But Abbatia’s fingers left his cheek without even bothering to press on the bruise forming there, and she began to drift back towards the center of the room, towards the Prince, and Nyx’s brain was too oxygen-deprived to do anything productive with the absolute flood of adrenaline which coursed through it.

“Don’t you dare,” he said inanely, as if anyone here had any reason to heed him. His eyes darted to the door, silent and shadowed. Where the hell was his backup?! “The Crown will make you regret every mark you put on him—” The closer to Noctis Abbatia’s unhurried footsteps carried her, the faster Nyx’s heart began to pound— “Just hurt me, you stupid bitch, it was working—!”

Abbatia grabbed Noctis’s kneecap and twisted so hard his foot left the ground entirely.

Noct howled.

“Get your hands off of him!” Nyx shouted, railing against the cuffs with his whole body. “He’s a kid! He’s a kid, goddammit! He’s just a—!”

One of the gunmen wrapped a hand firmly around his throat, and his words dwindled to wheezes.

The energy and composure which had gotten him through the previous strangulation was all gone, now, and the sudden lack of oxygen sent a second wave of panic crashing through him. Thoughtlessly, Nyx tried to shout out in protest, only succeeding in making a garbled noise that made Noctis jerk.

“No—” he gasped through tears, head snapping around towards Nyx—

Fuck—Abbatia knew what she was doing, after all—

Then Abbatia’s shoe slammed into his leg, and Noctis screamed, and Nyx wanted to scream, could no longer remember why he shouldn’t—but he couldn’t without air, and the hand around his throat only tightened, and he couldn’t move—

“The passkey.” Cold as ice in his ears.

“Stop,” Noctis sobbed, and Nyx felt something pop in his wrist with how frantically he was pulling at his cuffs. It was no use—Abbatia kicked at Noctis’s feet again, and he cried out in pain, and there wasn’t a damn thing Nyx could do but keep struggling fruitlessly, his mouth open around a silent snarl—he’s a kid leave him alone he’s sixteen HE’S A FUCKING KID STOP STOP STOP DRAUTOS WHERE ARE YOU

“I’ll do it!” Noctis wailed somewhere beneath the ringing in Nyx’s ears, coughing the words up as much as he spoke them. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it, please, please—!”

Light flashed. Glass shattered.

The hands fell away from Nyx’s throat with a chorus of startled cries, and his frantic pull of air drowned out all noise for a moment, but he didn’t need noise. There was a blessedly, blessedly familiar flash of blue from either side, and he knew that blue. The tiny windows high on the walls all exploded inwards; knives lodged in the carpet; boots slammed down right after them—

Crowe hurled a bolt of Thundaga from each hand the same instant she materialized out of her warp. The two gunmen nearest her screamed, seized, and went down, their cries drowned out by her furious roar of, “Get on the fucking ground!”

Nyx himself would’ve dropped from the fury in her tone alone, if given the chance. As it was, the two remaining gunmen had Axis and Sonitus’s weapons buried in their chests before they could decide whether to comply or resist, and then there was only one remaining threat: Abbatia whirled towards the Prince, lunging for her one bargaining chip, hand outstretched towards Noctis, hanging helpless within arm’s reach—

Arm’s reach wasn’t close enough. Cor the Immortal’s hand clamped around her neck.

He’d appeared so suddenly, and moved so fast, that even Nyx jumped; Abbatia stood no chance of escaping. One second, she was about to grab the Prince; the next, she was on the ground, gasping for breath, as the Immortal twisted her hands pitilessly behind her back.

“Nyx!”

Jolting, Nyx swung his head dizzily back towards the door just in time to see Libertus shoulder Sonitus aside and barrel towards him.

It was only then that the reality of the situation—of their rescue—hit Nyx. He’d watched the gunmen fall and Abbatia be apprehended in a haze of breathless adrenaline, comprehending little of it. All his thoughts were occupied, playing the same song on repeat; stop stop stop STOP he’s a kid he’s just a KID—

But now, with Crownsguard and Kingsglaive alike pouring into the room from both sides, all hostiles either restrained or dead on the ground, and Libertus hurtling towards him like a diving zu, something finally clicked.

It—was over?

It was over.

Relief coursed through his veins like a paralytic. When Lib’s arms came up to brace him, it was all he could do to sag into them, coughing out a croak of, “Took your sweet-ass time.”

“Zip it,” Libertus snapped, but he bore the lion’s share of Nyx’s weight without complaint. “You’re the asshole who couldn’t wait thirty goddamn minutes!”

“It’s been more than thirty minutes!” It couldn’t have possibly only been—

Libertus’s boot slamming into the desk beside him made Nyx flinch. With a bombastic curse, Lib held Nyx a little steadier, adjusted his stance, and kicked the leg of the desk again. It splintered; with one more kick, it yielded, and the cuffs around Nyx’s ankles were suddenly no longer tethered to a heavy piece of furniture.

Putting the pieces together, Nyx slid his feet awkwardly back towards him, finally freeing himself from the awkward backbend he’d been trapped in. With that, and a bit of a boost from Libertus hoisting him halfway into his arms, Nyx finally had enough height to slip his cuffed hands over the lip of the light fixture. His arms flopped down onto his stomach like two bags of wet cement.

Without the cuffs’ support, he began to list to the side without really realizing it; Libertus hissed something under his breath and braced himself to take the rest of Nyx’s weight all at once. All Nyx could think to do in response was weakly jingle his cuffed wrists. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a key.”

Libertus snorted. “I look like I’ve got a key? You can either wait for a lockpick to get here, or wait for Axis to stop hogging the bolt-cutters.”

Bolt-cutters sounded nice. Nyx glanced blearily around the room until he caught sight of Axis. He, Pelna, and a Crownsguard Nyx didn’t recognize were all clustered around the Prince; Pelna and the Crownsguard were intently checking him over for injuries while Axis closed the aforementioned bolt-cutters around the chain holding Noctis aloft, taking care not to jostle him too much as he tried to force the bolt-cutters’ handles shut.

And, between them, their tormentor was on the ground, her wrists being twisted into a new pair of cuffs by Cor the Immortal.

“Countess Dolce Abbatia,” the Marshal boomed thunderously, sending a chill down Nyx’s spine from the sheer fury beneath that thin veneer of calm, “you stand accused of high treason against the Crown.” He wrestled her up from her stomach to her knees, though he kept her head pressed down, forcing her to bow low in Noctis’s direction. “Crown Prince Noctis, what is your judgment?”

As if he’d been waiting for the perfect moment, Axis finally got the bolt-cutters through the chain, severing it with a sharp snap.

Until that moment, Noctis had been stubbornly keeping his feet, but, the instant he was freed, he dropped bonelessly into Pelna’s waiting arms. The impact wrenched a gasp from him, and Pelna let out a soft, sympathetic hiss, slowly lowering into a crouch and easing Noctis down with him.

Once he was safely on the ground, slumped back into Pelna’s arms, Noctis’s eyes flickered wearily open. The Marshal forced Abbatia into an even deeper bow, her forehead nearly touching the floor.

“No judgment,” he muttered, exhaustion weighing on his every syllable. “I’m—biased or something. Have Dad decide.”

The Marshal bowed, said “As His Highness commands,” and hauled Abbatia to her feet without another word. When Nyx caught a glimpse of her face, she looked almost too shell-shocked to even grasp how close she’d just come to dying. Nyx was fairly certain that “death without a trial” was one of the many punishments which could be handed down by the Crown for this level of treason, and he was one-hundred percent certain that one word from Noctis was all it would have taken for the Immortal to free Abbatia’s head from her shoulders.

Good thing Noctis wasn’t vindictive. The poor kid didn’t need to see any more corpses today. He was already pale and trembling where he lay half-collapsed, mostly unresponsive to Pelna’s gentle questions about his pain, even as they grew more urgent. His eyes were… distant.

Nyx’s chest twinged.

With a few barked orders, Cor passed Abbatia along into a small swarm of Crownsguards, and they escorted her none-too-gently from the room, Crowe trailing behind with murder in her eyes. Nyx waited until she was gone—and her accomplices left living had all been cuffed as well—before shrugging off Libertus’s hands and staggering forward.

“What are you doing,” Lib hissed, easily overtaking Nyx’s painfully slow ankles-still-shackled shuffle and trying to block his path. When Nyx just brushed past him, he growled—but he must’ve realized where Nyx was headed, because he wrapped an arm around Nyx’s waist and helped him hobble the rest of the way towards Prince Noctis.

The Guards encircling him let them through with barely a passing glance. For a brief, terrifying moment, Cor the Immortal’s eyes snapped over to them, and Nyx’s fight-or-flight instinct kicked sluggishly into gear, but, after a second’s consideration, Cor disregarded them and knelt at the Prince’s side, instead. “Your Highness, answer the questions. Where are you hurt?”

Nyx took this as a tacit endorsement and closed the last few feet with a bit more confidence. Finally, with Libertus’s reluctant help, he dropped heavily to the ground beside the quiet Prince, leaving barely enough space between them for the still-hovering Pelna.

“His knee took a lot of abuse,” Nyx supplied when even Cor’s prodding couldn’t get an answer from Noctis. At the sound of his voice, the Prince’s eyes flicked over to him, but he didn’t otherwise react. “He took a couple hard hits to the stomach, too, but not any to the ribs. Not that I saw.”

That, finally, elicited a noise from Noctis—a small, affirmative mumble.

“Let me see your leg,” the Marshal said immediately, leaning forward on his knees; a Crownsguard medic scrambled out of his way. Already, Noctis’s injured leg was sprawled limply on the ground beside him, and he didn’t so much as twitch when Cor gently coaxed it out in front, frowning deeply at the swollen mess Abbatia had made of his scarred knee.

In tandem, Libertus manhandled Nyx’s legs out in front of him, too, so that Axis could get at his cuffed feet with the bolt cutters. Nyx spared Lib an exasperated look and Axis a grateful nod, then turned back to Pelna, who had given up on the catatonic Prince and was now looking Nyx over. “I’m fine, Pel. Just a couple bruises.”

“Bullshit,” Libertus said sharply, in unison with Pelna’s exasperated, “Nyx, please,” and Axis’s disbelieving snort.

Before they could interrogate him any further, the Marshal interrupted with a sharp, “Khara,” and Pelna snapped to attention hard enough to give him whiplash. “In your opinion, can we safely move them downstairs without stretchers?”

When Pelna’s eyes flicked appraisingly back over to the two injured parties, Nyx met him with a pleading, hopeful look.

“Yes, but we’ll be needing both ambulances,” was his judgment.

Well, that was probably the best he could hope for, given the circumstances.

Nyx meekly allowed Pelna to test his ribs—bruised, not broken—and Axis to cut the cuffs around his wrists as well. Then the Marshal caught Nyx’s eye and gestured first towards the doorway, then towards the dazed Prince between them.

With a huff, Nyx leaned a little closer, nudging his shoulder against Noctis’s and earning himself a startled blink. He waited until Noctis’s eyes had blearily meandered towards him to say, “You ready to get the hell outta here, Highness?”

At that, Noctis’s eyes slipped shut. “Gods, yes.”

Yeah, Nyx felt pretty similarly.

Without a word exchanged between them, the Marshal slipped smoothly behind Noctis, eased an arm beneath his thighs, and hefted him carefully into his arms. Contrary to Nyx’s immediate worry, Noctis seemed to relax in the Marshal’s hold rather than tensing up further. Maybe he was just that desperate to get all his weight off that poor leg of his.

Or maybe, Nyx thought as he watched the Prince’s head drift down until it was nestled in the crook of Cor’s neck, there was some kind of personal relationship there that he simply wasn’t privy to.

Averting his eyes politely, Nyx gratefully accepted Libertus and Axis’s help in rising back to his own feet. It was harder the second time, somehow. After a crowd of Crownsguards ousted Pelna from his position at the Prince’s side, he hurried back over to them to take Axis’s spot—but Crowe got there first. “Back off, Khara. I’ve got dibs.”

“There’s no dibs,” Pelna muttered, but he let her slip underneath Nyx’s arm without a fight, and Nyx certainly wasn’t going to complain about having both Lib and Crowe on either side of him. They half-carried him out the door without further fanfare.

As they crossed the threshold, Nyx had the wherewithal to make grabby hands in the direction of his hidden phone until Pelna kindly fetched it for him. Impulsively, Nyx unmuted it, took it off speaker, and held it up to his ear. “All clear over here, sir.”

A pause. Then Drautos’s voice came, low and dangerous: “Once you’re cleared by medical personnel, report to my office immediately. You have until then to come up with an explanation for tonight. Understood?”

“Loud and clear, sir.”

“Good.” It might’ve just been wishful thinking, but Nyx liked to think there was a hint of relief beneath Drautos’s anger. Even though the next words out of his mouth were bone dry. “Don’t die in the meantime, Ulric.”

Nyx huffed, flicking his eyes up to the Marshal’s retreating back. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

With that, he ended the call, pocketed the phone, and let his friends lead him towards freedom.