It had been a poisoned blade. A blow meant for you. His hands carved with defensive wounds. Your attackers laid dead in your bedroom, but his blood had already been tainted. He was lost before morning. 

Inconsolable didn’t begin to describe it. The wailing. The starving. It went beyond grief. It was a howling plea up towards indifferent stars. It was an unanswered swan call. A dark cave that makes no echo. 

The craft had always been a dark stain rubbed out from the parchment of your lineage. A faint afterimage was all that remained, but it was obvious to those who cared to look. Simon was able to tell right away— that there was a little arcane seed deep in the folds of your organs, waiting to act as a conduit for the unseen. Encouraged you to follow the trail it bled into the earth. 

The winter bought you precious time. It brought merciful, nearly timeless cold in which to keep him while you gathered reagents. By spring, you’d only wished you had more to show for your efforts— a handful of frogs, a couple of rabbits, a deer, and a horse were risen by your hand. Of course, they were not precisely as they had been in life, but results were results. You didn’t have time to perform endless tests— nor did you have the subjects. 

Eagle feathers. Fly amanita. Belladonna. Tears in a phial. The first crocus of the season. The heart of a wolf (that was a tough one to get— you had the scars to show for it). 

And a healthy smattering of virgin blood for good measure. 

Honestly, the hardest part was hauling his massive frame out of the ground and onto the ritual circle. Your new horse and some clever rope tying helped with that with surprising effectiveness. 

Your eyes were tired. Your knuckles had dried and split from so long working out in the cold, late into the night. Your frame suffered from how little you saw to yourself. But this small sacrifice in vitality was one you would make a thousand times over. 

Because Sir Riley opened his eyes. A long, hollow groan followed as he overcame rigor mortis, sitting upright. You waited for just a moment before you could contain yourself no longer— scrambling to his side and throwing your arms around him, sobbing with relief. 

The voice that comes from him does not come up from his diaphragm. His chest does not expand and contract with his breath. But you know it to be him, all the same. 

“Princess… You’re safe,” he murmurs gratefully, despite the fact that he would never have allowed himself to die if there had been any doubt. 

“Sir Riley… S-Simon…” you mutter, breath hitching with your hiccuping sobs. He overcomes the stiffness to bring a hand to your back, stroking gently. Over your shoulder he sees the bandages you used to wrap his palms. They smell like rose water and balsam. They shake as the feeling comes back into them, his feeling his pulse travel consciously along the vessels to make them contract– to cup your shoulders and push you further into him.

It was a scarce few times that Simon had seen corpses risen in his life. They had always been shambling, creaking, sloughing things with groaning spirits– souls unwilling, but flesh forced to serve. They were frail as anything, not built to last, but didn’t have the mortal constraints of pain or fear keeping them from continuing on until not a shred of sinew remained to propel them. They were cut down easily, but their sheer numbers and determination were nothing to scoff at.

He had always been pale, but he had never been so blue. He had always felt drawn to you, honorbound, perhaps even lovelorn and fixated– but he had never felt this cold, rushing grip from within. Like a chain around his heart was threaded between your fingers.

As you cried against his chest, he could make but one conclusion.

You were his necromancer.

And yet, he did not feel weak. His will did not thrash against the binding pins that knit his consciousness back into his once-abandoned skin. His cartilage didn’t slip from splintering joints. 

No, Sir Riley felt sturdier than ever. And his eyes that had stared clear across the river styx could see your vitality glow in front of him– more unyielding and vibrant than ever.

Yes, the cold had preserved him. Even more than that, you were a savant.

Most of all, he wanted to return to you. Obols dropped in his palm before he clawed through the soil with spectral fingers, hearing your voice so infuriatingly clearly. As if you waited for him behind nothing more than a gossamer veil. 

“P-Please. Don’t ever leave me again,” you begged quietly. His sternum rattles as he wills the words to come from him.

“Not even death can take me from you now.”