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‘I feel like the Vaskian tribe, in the body of one person. I suppose it is often like this?’ ‘No,’ said Damen. ‘No, it’s—’ It’s never like this.
‘I can’t,’ said Damen. ‘I can’t have this for just one night.’ ‘One night and one morning,’ said Laurent, and this time it was Damen who found himself pushed down onto the bed.
The collar came off first, and when Guerin drew it from his neck he felt the collar’s absence like a lightness, his spine unfurling, his shoulders settling. Like a lie, cracking and dropping from him.
Except that it was Kastor who had put the collar on him, and Laurent who was freeing him.
AH.
He had come to this fort a slave. He would ride out of it Damianos of Akielos.
‘He’s gone for a ride,’ said Jord. ‘It was his habit in the palace, too, when he needed to clear his head. Not the type for goodbyes.’ ‘No,’ said Damen.
yup, loves horses
Jord nodded. And then he said, ‘When the men heard you were leaving, they wanted—we wanted—to see you off.’ He said, ‘There’s time.’
Lazar stepped forward and said, ‘Captain. It was an honour to serve with you.’ It was an honour to serve with you. Those words echoed in his mind. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The honour was mine.’ And then there was a burst of activity from the lower gate, and a rider came into the courtyard: it was Laurent.
OH MY GODDDDDD
Whether his beauty would survive adolescence no one would ever know, for Nicaise would not see fifteen now.
I'm going to throw up
‘My uncle has killed his catamite,’ said Laurent. ‘As a message to us. And what is the message?’ His voice carried. ‘That his favour cannot be trusted? That even the boys in his bed see how false is his claim to the throne? Or that his hold on power is so flimsy that he fears the words of a bought child whore?
‘And if you want a personal message,’ said Laurent, ‘You can tell my uncle boykiller that he can cut the head off every child from here to the capital. It won’t make him into a king, it will simply mean he has no one left to fuck.’
I’m sorry, Jord. They were the last words anyone would have from him. He had killed himself.
‘You didn’t guess it was Kastor? You poor dumb brute. Kastor killed the King, then took the city with my uncle’s troops. And all my uncle had to do was to sit back and watch it happen.’
It was what Laurent had been holding in his right hand when Damen entered. The blue sapphires of Nicaise’s earring.
crying
Laurent’s laugh was a strange, breathless sound. ‘Didn’t you hear anything that I just said to you?’ ‘Yes,’ said Damen. ‘You tried to hurt me, and you have. I wish you would see that what you have just done to me is what your uncle is doing to you.’ He saw Laurent receive that like a man at the very ends of his endurance being given another hit. ‘Why,’ said Laurent, ‘do you—do you always—’ He stopped himself. The rise and fall of his chest was shallow. ‘I came with you to stop a war,’ said Damen. ‘I came because you were the only thing standing between Akielos and your uncle. It’s you who’ve
...more
I CAN'T THINK. FOR HIM TO ADMIT THAT????
He knelt, and scooped up the glimmer of Nicaise’s earring from the floor. It had been a delicate thing, and well made, a handful of sapphires. Rising, he set it down on the table.
‘Don’t go,’ said Laurent, quietly.
‘No. I don’t mean—forever—just—’ Laurent broke off. ‘Three days.’ Laurent said it as though producing from the depths the answer to a painstakingly weighed question. ‘I can do this alone. I know I can. It’s only that right now I can’t seem to…think, and I can’t…trust anyone else to stand up to me when I’m…like this. If you could give me three days, I—’ He forcibly cut himself off. ‘I’ll stay,’ said Damen. ‘You know I’ll stay for as long as you—’ ‘Don’t,’ said Laurent. ‘Don’t lie to me. Not you.’ ‘I’ll stay,’ said Damen. ‘Three days. After that, I ride south.’
‘You liked him.’ ‘My uncle cultivated the worst in him. He still had good instincts sometimes. When children are moulded that young, it takes time to undo. I thought…’ Softly, ‘You thought you could help him.’ He watched Laurent’s face, the flickering of some internal truth behind the careful lack of all expression. ‘He was on my side,’ said Laurent.
It was with a shock that he felt the touch of Laurent’s fingers against the back of his wrist. He thought it a gesture of comfort, a caress, and then he realised that Laurent was shifting the fabric of his sleeve, sliding it back slightly to reveal the gold underneath, until the wrist-cuff he had asked the blacksmith to leave on was exposed between them. ‘Sentiment?’ said Laurent. ‘Something like that.’
screaming
‘You should give me the other.’ Damen flushed slowly, heat spreading from his chest over his skin, his heartbeats intrusive. He tried to answer in a normal voice. ‘I can’t imagine you’d wear it.’ ‘To keep. I wouldn’t wear it,’ said Laurent, ‘though I don’t believe your imagination is having any difficulty with the idea.’ Damen let out a soft, unsteady breath of laughter, because he was right.
HAHA
But he was a new version of himself, stripped back, youthful, a little quieter, and Damen realised he was seeing Laurent with his defences lowered—one or two of them, anyway.
Together we can do what we cannot do apart.’
LAURANTTTTTT
For everything that my uncle and Kastor planned,’ said Laurent, as Damen felt himself grow cold, ‘they had no idea what they did when they gifted me with you.’
He imagined himself nineteen again, knowing then what he knew now, and he wondered if he would have let that long-ago battle fall to the Veretians—let Auguste live. If he would have ignored his father’s call to arms altogether, and instead found his way to the Veretian tents and sought out Auguste to find some common ground. Laurent would have been thirteen but in Damen’s mind’s eye he would have found him a little older, sixteen or seventeen, old enough that Damen’s nineteen-year-old self could have begun, with all the exuberance of youth, to court him.
If the Regent wanted Damianos of Akielos standing alongside his nephew, he would get him. And if he couldn’t give Laurent the truth, he could use everything else he had to give Laurent a definitive victory in the south. He was going to make these three days count.
This was the army of Nikandros, the Kyros of Delpha, and his Commander, Makedon.
GASP
Laurent had been in league with Akielos all along. It was a strange kind of madness to realise that this, in fact, was true.
an Akielon commander kneeling on the rough trampled stones of a Veretian fort.
He said, ‘Damianos.’ Before Damen could tell him to rise, he heard it again, echoed in another voice, and then another. It was passing over the gathered men in the courtyard, his name in tones of shock and of awe. The steward beside Nikandros was kneeling. And then four of the men in the front ranks. And then more, dozens of men, rank after rank of soldiers. And as Damen looked out, the army was dropping to its knees, until the courtyard was a sea of bowed heads, and silence replaced the murmur of voices, the words spoken over and over again.
Chills are you kidding me
‘He lives. The King’s son lives. Damianos.’
Laurent had put his own white shirt back on, though nothing else. He must have scooped it up off the floor; Damen had a lovely half memory of tugging it from Laurent’s wrists where it had tangled. The shirt reached the top of his thighs. The fine white fabric suited him. There was something splendid about seeing him like this, loosely laced, only part dressed. Damen propped his head on one hand, and watched him approach.
You are so smitten omg
Damen felt bliss-drunk on his own daring. He glanced sideways at the towel. ‘Did you really bring that for me?’ After a moment, ‘I—thought to towel you down.’ The sweetness of it was startling. He realised with a little pulse of his heart that Laurent meant it.
‘I lack,’ said Laurent, ‘the easy mannerisms that are usually shared with,’ you could see him pushing the words out, ‘a lover.’ ‘You lack the easy mannerisms that are usually shared with anyone,’ said Damen.
There was an odd sense of inexperience in Laurent, as though the role was as new to him as it was to Damen. As though all of this was new to him, which made no sense.
YOU IDIOT. READ BETWEEN THE LINES, YOU BRUTE.
He was tangled up now. Dark-eyed, as though touch was to him an extreme act.
Laurent’s fingers dropped to his scar. His gaze caught there first. Touch followed, drawn with strange fascination, almost reverence. Damen felt the shock of it as Laurent’s fingers travelled its length, the thin white line where a sword had run through his shoulder.
Laurent said, ‘I didn’t think anyone was good enough to get past your guard.’ ‘One person,’ said Damen. Laurent wet his lips, his fingertips tracing up and back, slowly, over the ghost of a long-ago fight. There was a strange doubling, brother for brother, Laurent close as Auguste had been, and Damen even less defended, Laurent’s fingers on the place where he had been run through.
‘Overconfidence?’ said Laurent. ‘It’s not—to a purpose.’ ‘I seem to recall otherwise.’ Damen was halfway to being pushed down onto his back, with Laurent kneeling in his lap. ‘All that self-restraint,’ said Laurent.
but the slower Damen kissed him as they moved together, the more it seemed to take Laurent apart.
Damen was smiling helplessly. ‘That was adequate.’ ‘You’ve been waiting to say that.’ The words were only a little blurred.
