He could feel August's chest rise and fall against his back as he breathed the slow and deep breaths of sleep. He didn't dare to move and wake him up. Instead, he closed his eyes again. He would have fallen back asleep, but he could hear the whispers of the servants in the halls around him.

"If Bella makes me roll dough again today, I'm going to kill her," someone hissed, his voice strangely clear despite the stone walls separating him from Siles.

"Oh, Toby's here. Why is Toby here? He's supposed to be in the kitchen. Oh well. Smile and nod. Move on. Goodbye. What was I doing? Find the duster, right," a new voice rambled on, just as clear as the first had been.

"Late late late late late oh god Kial is going to kill me – look at that there's guards outside the King's quarters he must be back – doesn't matter you're late get going late late late -" the new speaker's words overlapped the previous voice, her incomplete sentences rushing along at a speed Siles wouldn't have thought was possible. Her words were strangely clear, too. They didn't sound like whispers through stone walls; they sounded like whispers in his ears.

Siles' eyes shot open. He bolted upright in the bed, pulling himself out of August's arms as he scanned the room for intruders. The room was empty, light from the rising sun twisting through the curtain over the window. The voices had stopped. August mumbled something beside him. One of his hands stretched towards Siles, resting on his thigh.

All at once, the voices returned.

"Lucy must have been lying. She had to have been. She just thinks they would make a cute couple. She's hopeful. Delusional. But I could check. Could pretend I'm asking about breakfast. Yes – that'll work."

A knock at the door interrupted the whispers. August finally opened his eyes beside him, blinking groggily. "What's that?"

Siles slipped off the bed and tiptoed to the door, plucking his knife from the bedstand. He eased the door open and peered through the crack. The main room was empty. The knocking returned, coming from the main door to August's quarters. The light rapping meant it was probably a servant. Magicians usually knocked confidently, as if they were trying to break the door down.

"I think a servant is here. Do they usually go away if you don't answer?" Siles looked to August.

August propped himself up on his elbows. "Yes. We should answer, though. They might have breakfast."

"At this rate, I don't think you'll get up in time to answer the door."

"You're up. Why don't you answer the door?" August smiled at him. No, he smirked. He knew what he was asking. He knew that Siles didn't want anybody to know that he had spent the night. Siles glared at him.

"Fine." Siles grabbed his clothes from the floor and pulled them on. He ran his fingers through his hair as he approached the door, hoping to at least look somewhat orderly. Maybe the servant would believe that he had just happened to stop by that morning. Some of the servants were gullible. But most of them weren't. He opened the door.

A servant looked up at him, her arms tucked behind her back. Her eyes widened and a smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. "Would the King like breakfast in his quarters or will he have his breakfast downstairs?"

"Breakfast in his quarters," Siles mumbled. He shut the door in the servant's face before she could get the chance to bow. Damn it. He imagined the whole kingdom would know by noon.

Siles fell into one of the chairs in front of the unlit fireplace. He had looked forward to seeing that fireplace again when had been sweating out poison in the Southern Queen's dungeons. She was the one he should be worrying about, not some inevitable rumor. The messenger he had sent to the Queen was supposed to return soon with her response.

"That servant girl was lying." August stepped out of his room, pulling his shirt on over his head. Siles watched his smooth chest until it disappeared beneath the blue fabric. "She just wanted to see if you were here because of a rumor she had heard from your little friend Lucy."

The whispers. Before the knocking, the last whisperer had said something about Lucy, a couple, breakfast – the speaker had to have been the servant. Siles squinted at August suspiciously. "She said that before she started knocking. You could have stopped me from going to the door if you knew that girl was the one who was knocking."

"Relax, she'll probably get us breakfast anyways. She'll have to make the lie a truth if she doesn't want to get in trouble." August sauntered across the room and perched on the chair across from Siles. He crossed his legs on Siles' armrest and leaned back. Abruptly, his head jerked back up. "Wait. How did you know when she had thought about that?"

"I heard her talking in the hall," Siles said.

"She wasn't talking in the hall," August said.

"Yes, she was." Siles frowned.

August uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. "She wasn't talking. She was thinking."

Siles stared at him, waiting for him to grin and laugh. Any second now, he would say he was joking. He had to be joking. But the seconds passed by and August's eyes remained wide and curious. August pulled his chair closer to Siles, examining his face as if he could find answers there. "Can you tell what I'm thinking right now?"

Siles listened, but the whispers had gone mute. "No. Can you hear my thoughts?"

August shook his head. "No."

The sound of knocking interrupted them, this time much louder than the lying servant's tapping. A shout accompanied it, "Message from Queen Thalia."

Siles leapt to his feet. Mind reading could wait. He opened the door and the messenger skipped into the room, shutting the door behind her. She handed August an envelope embroidered in gold. A wax seal graced its front, a swirling "T" imprinted on its surface. Siles didn't imagine that the Queen would waste so much décor on a letter accepting August's withdrawal from the war. The news could only be bad.

August broke the seal. His face fell. "She accepts that the Northern Kingdom has withdrawn its war declaration. She doesn't care about stealth anymore. She has declared war." He threw the letter to the ground and took a deep breath. Then he nodded to the messenger. "Gather the Council."

The messenger bolted from the room. August and Siles followed her at a slower pace. Siles considered their options. The alchemist had yet to inform him of any progress on the counter-chemical. That meant if the Queen's soldiers consumed her anti-magic chemical, August's soldiers would be useless. The war was hopeless.

As they walked, August's fingers interlaced with his. Siles almost pulled his hand back, but the world had become abruptly louder.

"He's gathering the Council does that mean –"

"Are we going to war? I thought that –"

"Are they holding hands?"

Siles pulled his hand from August's and the voices stopped. He touched his hand again and they returned. The closer they got to the Council meeting room the more voices interrupted his thoughts. They were a nuisance. Siles pulled his hand back and crossed his arms.

"Are you mad at me?" August stopped a few feet from the door to the Council.

Siles shook his head. "I'm not mad, I just – I can hear people's thoughts when we're touching. I don't want to hear people's thoughts."

August's eyebrows rose. "You have magic? Since when?"

"The dungeons. I think. But it doesn't matter. Magic won't be useful in this war." None of their forces would be useful in the war.

August nodded as if he understood, but his expression remained excited. He wasn't taking the war seriously. Siles had been telling the truth when he had said he wasn't mad at August, but he was beginning to change his mind. He followed August into the meeting room with his arms still crossed. They had no chance of winning the war already, and with a useless king they had no hope at all.

The Councilmembers' faces reflected Siles' dread. With all of the recent stress, their backs curved a little too much, as if they were vultures crouching over their own future corpses. Even Amanda knew, now, that a war with the Queen was a death sentence. Shadows circled her eyes and she held her cloak tight around herself. She was beginning to look like Anna. Old and cold. Siles found some satisfaction in that. August sat at the head of the table and cleared his throat. He had something to say – shockingly. Siles hadn't realized that August had thought anything through at all.

"We need to recruit commoners," August said. He glanced back at Siles with a smile. The magicians would have to respect the peasants, now. "Magic won't win this war if the alchemist doesn't find a solution in time. We need to train commoners and magicians alike in physical combat until the day that the war begins, and then we will fight. Can I get a vote?"

August raised his right hand and Siles saw the light flash above his head. The other Councilmembers' hands quickly joined his in the air. Siles doubted he really needed to encourage their votes with magic. But it was possible that the Councilmembers truly hated the commoners too much to allow them to fight by their sides.

"Wonderful," August said. "Now let's plan a war."

~