The magic workshop turned out to be by far the most interesting thing in this dreadful place. A large room of dark grey stone, it held shelves full of strange liquids and dried roots surrounding a rectangular altar in the centre. It looked to have been cut from one single block of obsidian or onyx — she had no idea how to tell the difference — and was mounted on legs of twisting white steel.

Tiny square windows lined the top of the wall on the north side, overlooking what she knew was the cliff that bordered the castle. These let in small shafts of light that cut through the dusty air, so bright that they made almost everything else seem pitch black by comparison. They made Autumn want to sneeze. Or perhaps that was due to the many unrecognizable smells suffusing the air.

Autumn inspected the room with the same attention as she’d used upstairs, although she didn’t dare touch anything. She squinted at the labels on bottles and tilted her head sideways to read the titles on a series of grimoires that filled an entire shelf.

“What sort of magic does he do in this room, do you know?”

“Constructs.”

She turned around in surprise. Knight had entered quietly behind her and had stopped at the altar, which he now considered with a strangely meditative look on his face. He reached out a hand and brushed his fingers against the stone.

“Here is where he makes us,” he continued. “It’s the first room in the castle that any of us remember.”

Autumn swallowed. She looked around herself once more, taking in the workshop with new eyes. It was… Functional. Clean. Quiet. What it was not was cozy, or welcoming in any way. She moved towards Knight and brought a hand up, intending to press it reassuringly to his back. Then at the last minute she remembered his wound and stopped herself just shy of touching him. They stayed like this a long time: him pressing his palms to the altar that had seen his creation, her with her hand hovering in the air, incapable of summoning the courage needed to bridge the gap.

She stepped away.

Eventually, Knight raised his head and his eyes seem to catch on something in the back of the room. He blinked. Autumn followed his gaze. At first, she couldn’t quite see what had captured his attention so. Then, as the construct approached the wall directly facing the windows, she finally noticed that the stones there had strange patterns etched into them. He crossed a beam of light, casting his shadow over the wall, and she was amazed to realize that the little shapes were in fact pictograms. Most of them were faded, but some glowed brilliantly white, as if they had been painted with the light of small stars.

Knight observed his discovery in solemn silence. Autumn didn’t need to ask him what the pictures were. It became clear as soon as she walked close enough to see for herself. She stopped at his elbow and examined the little animals sigils, feeling strangely moved. Two deers were glowing, under a column of many, many more who were not. A goat, two hares, a goose, a raccoon, some birds, and a handful of other critters.

Heart in her throat, Autumn scanned the wall. So many animals were carved there, and so few of them glowing… she wondered if the images went all the way back to the creation of the castle, if it was an accurate count. Lord, she hoped not. The sigils were smaller than a thumbprint, and the walls were covered with them.

Up near the ceiling, a single solitary pinprick of light caught her eye.

“What’s that?”

Knight glanced up. “Cook. She’s the oldest one of us.”

Autumn craned her neck, but the image was too high up for her to be able to see what sort of animal it represented. It was very near the door; only perhaps a dozen other preceded it.

“I want to talk to her.”

“No.”

She stared at him. He looked apologetic. “Cook said that she never meets princesses unless they’ve been here at least a month. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she sighed. “I understand.”

If she’d been here as long as this construct seemed to have been, then Autumn probably wouldn’t want to get her hopes up every few decades either. She glanced at the sigils again. Her eyes ran over the columns of neatly aligned woodland animals.

“What was it like, being a deer?”

“I don’t know.”

Autumn turned to him, alarmed. “You don’t remember?”

Only a few weeks ago, he’d told her that his memory of his life before being made a construct was fading. Was it all already gone? Was this all that he had left?

Knight seemed to read her mind, for he put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and shook his head. “I’m sorry, I misspoke. Please don’t be alarmed, I didn’t forget anything. I simply meant that I don’t know what it was like to be a deer because I was never one. Not— not in the way that you think.”

She frowned. “But you said...”

“That I remember being one, yes. It’s complicated.”

Knight looked around the workshop, then went to the stone table and heaved himself up to sit on it. He tilted his head towards the empty spot next to him. Autumn would have never had the nerve to take a seat on the spooky magic altar on her own, but since Knight had done it first, she figured that there was no harm. Given as it was taller than waist-high, she had to hop in order to climb on top of it. It was entirely unladylike and thrilling, especially the part where Knight watched her do it with undisguised fondness warming the handsome planes of his face.

Once she was situated, she nodded to him and he smiled before looking down at his hands.

“What you need to understand about constructs is that we are not animals turned into something else. There is no individual deer whose soul and consciousness became me — in fact, despite having consciousness, I do not actually have a soul of my own.”

At this, he flicked a glance at her, seemingly nervous about her reaction. He must have been disappointed, as she didn’t have much of one — mainly because she didn’t know what response one was supposed to have at this news. Souls were the sort of things that she had always vaguely assumed were made up. But Knight seemed to believe that they were real, and that his lack of one was significant. In that light, she certainly wasn’t going to tell him that she had also lived most of her life thinking that she didn’t have one, because they probably didn’t exist. She couldn’t understand how profoundly important this thing was that he was missing — and she felt a great sadness about it. She dearly wished that she were able to comfort him. At least she had enough presence of mind to not let on that she didn’t get it, even though she knew that her lack of reaction was still entirely inadequate for the solemn weight of the moment they were having.

At a loss, she placed a hand on his knee and squeezed. Knight glanced down and hesitantly covered it with his own.

“The heart of a deer was one of many ingredients used to make me,” he continued. “And arguably the most important one. Magic remembers. I remember. In a way, it’s like...”

He trailed off, searching for the right words. His thumb rubbed over the back of her hand once, twice, and then he seemed to catch himself and stopped.

“I remember being a deer in the same way that, if you cut a bit of a plant off and put it in soil, the cutting will remember being the mother plant even though it’s not, not really.” He turned his head, and their eyes met. “If you could cut the heart out of a deer without killing it, the deer could live alongside me; it didn’t become me. But I did come from it, and so I have a... a sense-memory that lingers in me.”

“I see.” She turned her hand palm-up under his and tangled their fingers together. “Thank you for telling me.”

He squeezed her hand. “Thank you for asking. Your concern does you credit.”

Then he stood up, once more pulling away from their touch as if burned. “But we have lingered here too long. It will be dinner soon. Let me escort you back to your chambers, my lady.”

Autumn looked down at her feet, which were hovering several inches off the floor, then back up at her handsome construct. She held out her arms to him. She knew with deep certainty as she did it that it was wrong, and that it would only cause trouble for the both of them later, but she had never been one for caution; besides, despite the flash of guilt that appeared on his own face, Knight did not hesitate to comply with her silent request. In one swift move, he seized her by the waist and lifted her off her perch. Her feet were placed delicately back on the floor, and once more Knight lingered. His hands were warm on her sides, and hers had found their way to grasp at his pauldrons. She wished to slide them up to his neck — but that would be one step too far even among steps too far. Instead, she pressed them down his shoulders until the soft leather gave way to the padded fabric of his gambeson. The firm curves of his biceps were noticeable even under the thick sleeves. Autumn swallowed.

Knight’s fingers flexed, digging not unpleasantly into her waist. She gasped. His eyes widened, and Autumn saw in his expression that he had gripped so as to prevent his own hands from sliding down to her hips.

Her breathing sped up. His lips parted. She leaned in, but then he said: “Please. I— I do not have a soul.”

Autumn froze, inches away from his mouth, heart hammering in her throat.

“It is the domain of souled things to…”

She waited, but he fell silent, as if he did not know the word that he was looking for and was imploring her to guess it.

But she could not guess. She could not think, not while he still held her, not while she burned.

“To what?”

“Nothing.”

It was as if someone has snuffed out the light that had animated his face. His expression went blank and Knight dropped his arms and stepped away forcefully once more. Autumn closed her eyes and cursed internally. How many times was this now — three? Four? How many times would he have to reject her before she got the hint and stopped making a fool of herself? How many times would she lose control and impulsively proposition the poor man before… well, before he accepted, which would be great but also bad, or another scenario happened, not a single one of which could possibly be good!

“I’m sorry,” she sighed.

“I will walk you to dinner,” he said, almost speaking over her, as if he didn’t want to hear her apologies. “And later, I will bring you to His rooms, and hope that you discover your purpose there.”

She winced but nodded. There was only one purpose that she could imagine for herself in the king’s rooms, and it was not one on which she wished to linger right now. She tried her best to put it out of her mind as she followed Knight back up the secret stairwell and into the gloomy throne room.