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“Have you heard the latest,” Aikolas asked him one day when they were strolling through the city together. “They say that the queen was forced to offer her hand to a monster to save the city?”

Simon laughed at that. “So I’m a monster now?”

“In the eyes of some, all foreigners are,” Aikolas answered, making Simon laugh all the harder.

He’d been expecting to be told how his scars made him unacceptable to royalty, but the truth was, he could be the prettiest guy in the world, but since he wasn’t Ionian, some of the locals would still turn their noses up at him past a certain point. Not all of them were like that, but the residents could be very clannish.

They weren’t rude about it, mostly. They were happy to sell him things or buy his medicines when he’d been a doctor and herbalist. Some of the poorer families would have even let him marry their daughters on the account of his success before all this happened, but even if he’d been proclaimed a hero in public, he doubted the nobility of the city would have ever come to see him as one of their own. In truth, he’d probably never entirely understand the customs of Ionar as a foreigner.

That was fine; Simon could stay here for a dozen more lifetimes, and he doubted he’d ever think of it as home either. Right now his only true home was the road, and the only reason he stayed here was because of what a delightful woman Elthena was, with or without clothes.

He often sat in on her court sessions now, not in any official capacity, of course. He just watched as she handed out justice and took petitions from clients, aristocrats, and sometimes the governors of other cities. It was deadly dull most days, but sometimes it could get interesting. Once, after she’d turned down the request of a powerful trader prince for more favorable tariffs and a monopoly related to certain imported goods, he’d been forced to stop an assassination attempt.

In the moment, it had been terrifying, but he reacted on instinct and sprang into action even before he was quite sure what was happening. Honestly, in the aftermath, he had to admit to himself that it was the most fun he’d had all year.

One moment, he’d been naked in bed with the Queen, and the next, he’d been fighting off two armed men who crept in through the window. They both wore black armor that marked them as some kind of professional assassins in his eyes, and they both wielded long curved knives.

He fought the first one off with a particularly heavy candle stick while Elthena screamed for help. He mostly parried that strike, turning it from a death blow into something more glancing before he brained the bastard.

However, the second one was too far away and moving too quickly for him to repeat that performance. So, instead, he took the man’s head off with a whispered word of force, sending him tumbling to the floor before the assassin could reach his target.

He had a knife now, and it was dark. He planned to tell her he’d done it with the first assassin\'s weapon. After all, in the chaos of the moment, everything happened at once. No one could say who did what exactly. By the time the guards arrived, it was already over.

Simon was bleeding, and apparently, based on the slow numbing sensation spreading across his chest. So, while the Queen ordered the guards to wake the palace and put everyone on alert, he took care of that with a word of lesser cure.

Slow down there, Simon, he joked to himself. Two spells in two minutes. You aren’t as young as you used to be.

He cured the poison, but he didn’t bother to heal the wound. That would have been too obvious. Instead, he waited for the palace physician to arrive in his nightgown and stitch Simon up one more time.

“You just can’t take care of yourself, can you,” the man muttered good-naturedly as he closed the long, shallow wound one stitch at a time.

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“He took care of me, and that’s all that mattered,” the Queen answered peevishly. She was worried as she summoned her ministers and issued orders, but Simon could tell that she was worried about him more than the assassination attempt.

“Of course, this means war,” she told her chancellor as they discussed the events and asked her what she was going to do about this.

Elthena was many things, but indecisive was not one of them. Still, the talk of war made Simon cringe. The last thing he wanted to do was see more violence come to this place. Still, it wasn’t his place to contradict her, at least not while there were people around. That discussion could wait until they were by themselves.

Unfortunately, alone was a long time coming that day. Even though the attack had occurred just after midnight, it was only when they finally stopped the maelstrom of activity long enough for breakfast a few hours after sunrise that she dismissed everyone. By then, the harbor had been locked down, people had been arrested, and all manner of other preparations had taken place.

“First you save the city, and then you save me,” she said unexpectedly between bites of her eggs. “Tell me, Simon, how exactly did you do that? I know you\'re a fine warrior, but wasn\'t the second one a bit too far away, even for you?”

He was supposed to tell her about the knife. He wanted to tell her. That would have been the smart thing to do. He couldn\'t bring himself to lie to this woman, though. He wasn’t sure if he loved her, but he certainly respected her too much for that. So, instead, he said, “Magic. It was the only way.”

She nodded and said, “My Vizer tells me that no magic occurred on the palace grounds tonight, but I thought as much. There was too much distance for anything else, and the only sword you had on you, well…” She chuckled at that, taking the news a lot better than he thought she would.

Simon smiled back, not sure what to say about that exactly, so she continued. “Why do you think he cannot see the spells you cast?”

It seemed strange to him that Elthena was more concerned about that than his admission that he’d done such an awful thing by her society\'s standards, but he ignored that for the moment and answered her honestly. “I doubt very much that he has such an ability. I haven’t come across a lot of mages in my time, but the ones I have—”

“Oh, Simon, stop,” she said, “I appreciate the honesty, but you make it sound like you’ve done battle with dozens of warlocks, and you’re not that much older than me.”

“I’m not in this life,” he agreed. Once he started with honesty, all the rest started to leak out of him.

“I’ve lived many lives and fought many battles,” he answered, “but only a few of them were warlocks. They’re pretty rare.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she said after a moment of silence.

“I am,” he agreed.

Telling anyone everything he’d been through was a bad idea, but Simon had lived dozens of lives now without really telling anything. It was all bottled up inside him now and at this point. He had to tell someone. So, it might as well be her.

They spent hours on the balcony that morning as he let it all pour out of him. He didn’t tell her everything, but only because it would complicate things even more. He didn’t tell her about the time loop or the fact that her city had been buried beneath lava more times than he could count. He didn’t tell her about the basilisk or the fact that it had turned him to stone for decades.

But he did tell her about all the endless killing and about how when he died, the gods brought him back to keep doing it. He told her about his time as a zombie, along with the wars and revolutions and everything else he participated in. When it was all over, the most surprising thing of all happened. She hugged him.

When he’d even hinted at this stuff with Freya, she’d been cold and distant for days while she processed it, but the Queen of Ionar was a much more confident woman, and she simply accepted it and him for who he was. Simon was reasonably certain she would have done the same thing if he hadn’t just saved her life, but it certainly helped.

“So, were you sent here to save the city, then?” she asked. “Did you know about the assassination? Is that why you stuck around?”

“I knew about the volcano,” Simon answered with a shake of his head. “Everything else… well, even if I was in better shape, I would have stuck around for you anyway.”

Emotions overwhelmed Elthena then, and she teared up even as she kissed him. It was only after they’d finished that discussion, that they finally got to questions of war and all the rest. Simon argued she should find a more peaceful solution and that many would die if they took this route, but she wouldn’t relent.

“My hands are tied here,” she sighed. “If Alfonsic wants a fight, then I shall give them one. They are nothing but a tiny island, and I can’t see why they think they could best our Triremes at sea, but—”

“But don’t you see, that’s exactly what they want, or at least someone does,” Simon answered. “This was provoked for this outcome.”

“Maybe,” she agreed doubtfully. “But there isn’t much I can do.”

They didn’t talk about the subject anymore after that. Instead, the Queen called for a war council and left Simon to rest. Some part of him couldn’t shake the feeling that all of this was a very bad idea. “There’s more at work here than I’m seeing,” he told himself as he finally cast heal lesser wounds on his gash. He didn’t think he was in any danger if he didn’t; of course, they just hadn’t invented painkillers in Ionia yet, and the way that the freshly stitched wound throbbed painfully, he couldn’t think straight.