Blaine could kill Sam. He really, really, could. He's pretty sure he's never run as fast in his life as he is now, trying to beat his Highness – Kurt – back to the house with enough time to make himself look presentable.

Then again, if it weren't for Sam, Blaine wouldn't be seeing Kurt at all today. He'd still be back in that field, flying Signora Pierce's contraption and redoubling his efforts to convince Sam that he'd be perfectly happy to watch Kurt wed Blaine's stepbrother.

Perhaps he can find it within himself to be grateful.

He flies through the back doors, calling for Tina and Jan as he rushes up the stairs to retrieve the trunk of treasures left to him by his father: a sheaf of music – his father's favorite sonatas – a child-sized wooden flute, carved specially for Blaine's eighth birthday, and three of his finest doublets. Blaine had to act quickly to save these last, stealing them from his father's wardrobe before his stepmother had a chance to get her greedy hands on them. She knows about them, he's sure, knows about every stitch of clothing and every ounce of silver under their roof, but she's never said a word. He's always taken it as proof that she has some grain of kindness still stuck in her heart.

He pulls out a doublet in brocade the color of a robin's egg. It's his favorite, even if the cut is a little old-fashioned.

Tina and Jan leave him to change clothes in private, taking it upon themselves to locate a pair of boots in his size and pilfer from Hunter's stores of pomade. He isn't quite sure how they manage it, but he's fully dressed and neatened and only slightly out of breath when the clomping of hooves in the courtyard makes the prince's presence known. Blaine kisses the two ladies soundly on the cheek.

“Thank you, thank you,” he murmurs with utter sincerity, and he's at the door before his Highness even has a chance to knock.

The prince looks slightly startled at Blaine's abrupt appearance.

“Your Highness,” says Blaine brightly. “What an unexpected surprise.”

He can only imagine the expression on Tina's face at that particular understatement.

Kurt's expression has shifted to warm-eyed happiness. Blaine resists the urge to reach up and check his hair.

“Comte. What a pleasure to find you here. Alone. Do you…not attend church?”

Blaine pauses. He does not wish to cause offense.

“I find that my faith is better served elsewhere.”

A small smile curls at Kurt's lips.

“I myself am not a pious man. I was just on my way to the monastery, actually – a seeming contradiction, I know, but the Franciscans have the most beautiful organ, and I thought – I know how much you love to play. I wonder if you would join me?”

He looks so sweetly hopeful. There is really only one answer that Blaine can give.

“It would be an honor.”

Blaine watches with no small amount of wonder as Kurt dismisses his attendants and his carriage for the day and turns back to Blaine. “Today, I'm just Kurt,” he says, with a smile that Blaine feels right to his toes.

The journey is not long – at least, it does not feel long. They chat only occasionally, content to enjoy the warmth of the sun on their skin and the pleasant ease of each other's company. There is a great deal unspoken between them, but now is not the time to unearth it.

They tour the library first, an astonishingly vast room filled to the brim with the painstaking work of generations. It's enough to inspire awe, though not enough to capture Blaine's heart, not when the promise of music is tugging it away. Kurt recounts the history of the place and shares with Blaine a few of his favorite selections. He's eager and trying to hold it back, as if he fears Blaine will think him silly if he shows too much passion.

Kurt needn't have worried – Blaine finds it something to be admired. He himself is giddy as a child and so grateful he could cry the very second they step foot inside the basilica. He has never seen an instrument so grand in his life. He can practically feel his soul lifting to the rafters on the wings of its long-faded melodies.

“It's…beautiful,” he breathes. “Seeing this, I understand why people believe in heaven.”

Kurt catches his eye, curious. “What is it that touches you so?”

“I suppose…my father used to say that music gives voice to things that are beyond words.”

“He sounds like a wise man,” says Kurt ruefully.

“He was. A good man, too. He filled our home with music. I'm positive that my brother and I sang together more often than we conversed.”

“You have a brother?”

“He set sail for the Americas after our father passed. I have not heard from him since.”

Blaine can't help the hint of melancholy that colors his voice. For all that he's never been able to let go of the anger he holds for his brother, he still misses him. He can't help but wonder – what if Cooper had stayed? Would Blaine still be stuck under his stepmother's thumb, forced to watch as she runs their home into the ground?

“I'm sorry.” Kurt grasps his shoulder, tentative until Blaine shoots him a grateful smile.

“He had a beautiful voice,” he says wistfully. “Our father did, too.”

“As, I'm sure, do you.”

Blaine can feel his eyebrows shoot up in surprise at the flirtation Kurt's voice.

He smiles.

“I do my best.”

“Would you like to play?” asks Kurt, as though it's his to offer. He has that same look on his face, eager and earnest and hiding it beneath his dignity.

“I am no organist,” Blaine demurs.

But Kurt doesn't take no for an answer. He takes Blaine by the hand and leads him aloft, watching with bright eyes as Blaine settles tentatively into place.

It's not easy. It's been years since Blaine played his mother's modest harpsichord – he's never even touched something this complex. And yet, the moment his fingers touch the keys, it stops mattering. The sound fills the room, fills all the empty spaces in his heart. His fingers find the notes as if he was born to it.

He closes his eyes and feels the music in his very bones.

It lingers in the air and in his body, even after he's lifted his fingers reluctantly from the keys. Blaine feels…overwrought. His fingers are trembling finely, and there are tears ready to slip down his cheeks. He beams up at Kurt, because it isn't sadness at all, but unbearable joy.

Kurt is looking at him as if he cannot look away.

“Nicolas,” he says, voice rough-hewn. “That was – how do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“How do you live each day with such…passion, locked up inside you?”

“I know of no other way to live.”

Kurt looks away, then, stricken. Blaine reaches out on instinct and covers Kurt's hand with his own.

“I used to play,” says Kurt, after a moment. He says it softly, shamefully, a confession. “I sang, too. I loved it.”

“Why did you stop?”

Kurt glances up, a bitterness in his eyes that isn't for Blaine.

“I am to be king. I have duties.”

Blaine takes a firmer hold of Kurt's hand and squeezes lightly.

“Sing with me,” he says on impulse.

“What?”

“Sing with me,” he repeats, attempting to persuade with his eyes.

Kurt looks suddenly shy. The sharp uprightness of his posture, the easy tilt of his chin, all of the markings of royalty that he bears with such pride, they soften into something boyish and uncertain. Blaine smiles at him encouragingly. Kurt visibly gathers his resolve.

“What shall we sing?” he says, a spark of challenge in his eyes.

Blaine grins.

It's a simple song, a secular pastoral that Blaine's father used to tell him was his mother's favorite.

“We wooed to this song,” he'd say, ready with a laugh when Blaine wrinkled his little-boy nose.

Kurt doesn't know the song, but he learns it quickly. Soon enough, they're harmonizing, voices darting and flitting around the melody on hummingbird wings. Kurt's voice is beautiful – high and clear as a bell, rounded out with warmth at the bottom of his range. It blends effortlessly with Blaine's. They look into each other's eyes, and it's – it's magic. It's a connection unlike anything Blaine has felt, as if their hearts beat as one.

There's a moment when it's over, when their voices are still reverberating throughout the empty spaces around them, that Blaine thinks… But then Kurt blinks the daze away, and the moment is gone.

“We should be on our way,” he murmurs. “If we want to make it back before the last of the daylight.”

They ride slowly, barely an amble, and they talk. They trade stories – Blaine's heavily edited, of course – and talk of Signora Pierce's exploits, and generally pay far more attention to their conversation than they do to their path.

Which, of course, is how Blaine ends up at the top of a tall rock formation in his undershirt, scanning for landmarks. Kurt is below, ostensibly guarding their belongings.

“There it is!” calls Blaine, once he catches sight of it. “Back that way.”

“I still don't understand why you're up there and I'm stuck down here,” says Kurt sourly. “It is my castle, after all.”

Blaine laughs.

“Because you could fall and break your royal neck, and then where would we be?”

“You climb rocks, sing like a dream, rescue servants – is there anything you don't do?”

“Fly.”

He closes his eyes, spreads his arms, tips his face toward the sun. For a moment it really feels as if he could take wing. He grins down at Kurt, who's laughing at him amiably.

“Maybe you should come back down before you break your own neck!”

Blaine rolls his eyes good-naturedly and starts his descent. He's barely made it two feet before he hears an alarming smack down below him, the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh. It's followed quickly by a heavy thud – a body hitting the ground. Blaine twists around to look, heart racing with dread, but all he can see from this angle is a small group of ruffians watching and jeering at what is presumably a fight.

“Oh, not you again,” he hears Kurt mutter disdainfully, and it's such a relief to hear his voice that Blaine's knees go weak for a moment. He keeps climbing, more quickly than before, as quick as he can go without losing his footing. Kurt is outrageously outnumbered. Even still, he calls to Blaine in warning. “Stay aloft! There are games afoot.”

As if that would ever happen. It's sweet that Kurt wants to protect him – foolhardy, but sweet – but Blaine's father was an expert swordsman, and music wasn't the only thing he taught his sons. If only Blaine had a weapon of his own…

He can hear the clash of swords below him, now, and the grunts of effort as they lunge and parry and twist away from each other. He can't see what's happening, and he can't shut off his all-too-vivid imagination. It's maddening.

Suddenly, a new voice calls up to him. He slows his descent, glances down. It's one of the men with the jeering grins, lifting Blaine's father's doublet into the air by the tip of his sword.

“I thank you for your kind donation, sir,” says the man with a mocking bow.

Blaine's blood boils.

“You will return my property to me,” he snaps, with every ounce of force that he possesses.

The man laughs and turns back to watch the action.

For once, Blaine is happy to be underestimated. He maneuvers himself into position, bides his time, and – there. He launches himself off the rock and knocks the man over, sword sent clattering to the ground. Blaine scrambles up, both faster and scrappier than his opponent, and manages to get the sword in his hand.

It's at this point that the others seem to realize what's happening, because Blaine has taken barely a step before he's being restrained by two burly men, a knife held to his throat. He can feel the cold metal of the blade, just close enough to his flesh to draw blood should he dare to struggle. He drops the sword.

Kurt stops, too, drops his own sword and holds his hands up in surrender. He had the upper hand, had the other man backed up against the rock. Now his eyes are wide with the kind of fear Blaine knows you should never let your enemy see.

“Let him go!” he says imperiously. His voice doesn't quiver, but Blaine can tell it takes a toll. “Your quarrel is with me.”

The man, the one who Blaine knocked to the ground, eyes him for a moment. He nods at his comrades.

“Release him,” he says.

They do, roughly.

Blaine takes a moment to catch his breath, take stock of the situation. Now that the fighting has been put on pause, he can see it clear as day – these men aren't cruel. They're desperate. They're taking pains to hide it beneath their bravado, but Blaine knows how to read the signs.

“Friends,” he starts, and the skepticism is clear on all of their faces. Several of them are seconds away from guffawing. Kurt is looking at him as if he's gone mad. Blaine lifts his chin just a little higher and continues, undeterred. “I understand that, due to circumstances beyond your control, you're forced to make do with what you can take off of strangers you encounter in the woods. I know you don't truly mean us harm. If we work together, I'm sure we can find a satisfactory solution to all of our problems without resorting to violence.”

The man – their leader, Blaine presumes – shakes his head in bemusement.

“You're free to go, lad. I'd get started if I were you, lest we run out of patience.”

Okay, then. It seems a change in tactic would be advisable.

“In that case, I insist you return my property to me at once,” he says, thinking fast. There is a chorus of scornful laughter, but their leader seems more amused at his audacity. “And since you deprive me of my guide, I demand a horse as well.”

The man glances wryly up at the rock formation. “Not much of a guide, is he?”

Blaine doesn't take the bait. He holds his head high. The man grins, and relents.

“Alright, then. You can have anything you can carry,” he says, eyeing Blaine's slight build. He doesn't know that Blaine has been doing the work of a field laborer since the age of nine.

“Do I have your word on that?”

“On my honor as a gypsy. Whatever you can carry.”

Blaine doesn't tarry. He walks straight over to Kurt and lifts him easily onto his back. He drops the best bow he can manage to the gypsy leader and heads straight to the path that leads to the castle. There is laughter all around them, many of the gypsies doubling over in mirth.

“Wait! Please, come back!” calls their leader through his own chortling. “Come back, I'll give you a horse!”

They do better than that. They invite Blaine and Kurt to take supper with them, too, clearly so delighted with Blaine's antics that they've forgiven whatever grudge they held against Kurt.

“They stole a painting, one of Signora Pierce's,” Kurt explains, under his breath. “I managed to recover it.”

He puffs his chest up a little, obviously proud of the accomplishment. It's adorable.

It isn't long before they reach the gypsies' campsite. They gather around the fire to eat their meal and drink cheap ale from mugs of dubious cleanliness. The gypsies treat them like brethren, teaching them songs so bawdy they're left blushing even to hear the words, much less sing along. They tell stories so outlandish that Blaine is almost positive they're made-up. And still, Blaine is sure he's never laughed so much in all of his life.

He and Kurt slowly break away from the group as the night wears on. It happens naturally, the two of them absorbing themselves in each other. Soon enough, they're cocooned together in borrowed blankets and completely unaware of the men still talking and laughing all around them. Kurt is loose and warm with ale, his smile unselfconscious as they laugh themselves hoarse over a silly childhood hand game. He turns out to be very competitive once his inbred chivalry has been stripped away.

“You cheated! You must have. You've clearly cultivated the power to read my mind.”

“Rules are rules, your Highness. It's your turn. You'd better make it good.”

He winks for effect, and Kurt grins at him. He thinks for a moment, then bites his lip, the smile starting to bleed out of his eyes. “Truth time?” Blaine nods encouragingly, leaning closer in a semi-conscious show of compassion. Kurt draws in a deep breath. “I have no desire to be king. I never have.”

Blaine blinks. He wasn't expecting that.

“Oh, but…think of all the wonderful things you could do – for your country, for the world.”

“Yes, but to be so defined by your position – to be stuck in a life you feel no passion for, to never be seen as who you are, but what you are. You have no idea how insufferable that is.”

“You might be surprised.” It slips out, bitter and unbidden.

“Really?”

Blaine flounders, horrified that he let himself forget even for a moment the secret he's been keeping.

“A – a gypsy, for example, is rarely painted as anything but a swindling scoundrel, but that is not who they are. They are limited by their status just as much as you are by your title. And yet, they still seem to find room for passion in their lives.” He glances at the lot of them, smiling wryly. They've broken into song again.

Kurt narrows his eyes.

“They, at least, are free.”

“And you were born to privilege. With that comes specific obligations.” There is a moment, then, when Kurt's expression is unreadable. Not blank, not exactly, but suddenly closed off. Blaine considers what he just said. He ducks his head – it was terribly impertinent. “I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm afraid my mouth has run away with me again.”

Kurt smiles, the emotion suddenly clear in his eyes. “Don't be,” he says softly. “It is your mouth that has me hypnotized.”

Blaine's heart races. Kurt is so close, and so lovely, and so very brave. It isn't easy for him to open his heart, and still, he's doing it for Blaine. Blaine leans closer, and so does Kurt, and then they're kissing. It's soft, at first, and sweet, and then Blaine is grasping Kurt's face and Kurt is sliding his hand through Blaine's hair, and they're pulling each other close as can be. It's a relief to allow their bodies to take what their hearts have been yearning for.

Suddenly, Blaine is jolted to attention by a raucous round of cheers. He and Kurt break apart, and they laugh, flushing, to see the gypsies clapping, stomping, and yelling their approval. They thread their hands together and don't let go.

It's nearly dawn by the time they return to the manor. Blaine is supposed to be awake and starting his day's chores in less than an hour. He has Kurt stop before they reach the gates. “I don't want to wake anyone,” he says, and it's perfectly true. He just doesn't explain why.

He unclasps his hands from around Kurt's narrow waist to allow him to dismount, already missing the feel of Kurt's body pressed tight against his. Kurt offers a hand to help him down. Blaine takes it with a fond smile. He hops down, lets himself be pulled to Kurt, so close he has to tip his chin slightly up to maintain eye contact. They kiss again, lush and slow. Kurt's gaze is heavy when he pulls back, his cheeks bright with color. Blaine himself feels a tad light-headed.

“You saved my life, you know,” murmurs Kurt. “Back there in the woods.”

Blaine smiles.

“It was my pleasure, your Highness.”

“Kurt.”

“Kurt,” echoes Blaine. His voice sounds dreamy, even to his own ears. Kurt grins, and kisses him again.

“Good night,” he says.

“Good night.”

They stand there for one last moment, drinking in the sight of each other, before Blaine turns to go.

“Nicolas!” calls Kurt, and Blaine's heart positively drops. What he would give to hear his name on Kurt's lips… He turns back to Kurt, smile fixed firmly to his face.

“Yes?”

Kurt looks strangely nervous.

“Do you know the ruins at Amboise?”

“I do.”

“I often go there to be alone. Would you meet me there tomorrow?”

Kurt looks so earnest, Blaine couldn't dream of denying him.

“I shall try.”

“Then I shall wait all day.”

Blaine's smile blooms all over his face – he can't help it. It doesn't matter that this is impossible, that the only way for this to end is with two broken hearts, because Blaine is in love. There's no denying it, no denying Kurt. This is the happiest he's felt since he was eight years old, and his world changed forever. He isn't ready to let it go.