“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Arvus told him. “You haven’t been on a horse since the accident.”
Oh, wasthatthe problem?
“Uh, I haven’t ridden very often.Horses, I mean,” Trill pointed out.
Molun snorted suddenly, shooting Trill a look. “Thanks for that image.”
Trill beamed at him, then looked hopefully at Arvus. “We’d probably need to go slowly and stop periodically. But I think we can do it.” A sudden thought hit Trill. “I mean, I can stay here. I don’t have to go.”
“Of course you’re coming,” Molun said staunchly. “We’re not abandoning you.”
“I only—” Arvus started.
“Please let me try,” Molun requested, voice unusually serious. “I feel responsible.”
“That man is making his own choices,” Arvus argued.
“But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t influenced by others, does it?”
Arvus sighed and leaned down to press a kiss to Molun’s lips. “You know I can never stop you from doing anything, baby.”
Molun smiled happily.
Arvus continued sternly, “But it’s really not your fault if anything happens to Cormal. Anyone could have told him he was doing a dumb thing, and he decided to sneak off alone to do it anyway.”
Molun nodded. “Well, that’s true. But we can’t simply sit aside and let him try to get himself killed, can we?”
Arvus just looked resigned. “All right. Come on.”
On the way to the stables, they stopped by to let Tinnadal know where they were going. Their beads said they werenonbinary today. They were one of the older Mage Warriors, calm and steady like Arvus. Molun clapped them on the shoulder.
“You’re in charge until Delana gets back. I’m sure everything will be fine! Talk to Onadal if you need to. You’re the best.”
Tinnadal was apparently used to Molun, because they took this in stride. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“You’re totally doing it,” Molun said with a beaming grin. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
They hadn’t explained where they were going beyond saying that something urgent had come up and they had to leave the castle. The more Trill thought about it, the more sure he was that they weren’t supposed to leave when Cormal and Delana were gone. But they were clearly leaving anyway.
Thankfully, they found a nice, docile gelding for Trill to ride. Both Trill and Molun mounted using the mounting block, which seemed to make Molun feel a little better about its use. Arvus made sure they were both comfortable, with Molun rolling his eyes and assuring Arvus that they hadn’t even made it out of the stable yard yet.
Trill observed, “This is not my favorite kind of riding.”
“We’ll dothatlater,” Molun assured him.
Trill was pretty sure he could distract them with thoughts of sex for quite a long time.
They were trying to hurry after Cormal without going so fast that Trill fell off or Molun got hurt. Arvus made sure they had plenty of stops, and several of them legitimately involved massaging Molun’s leg, so it was easy for Trill to push more energy into him. He was probably pushing a bittoomuch energy, truth be told, but he couldn’t help himself.
They’d left late enough that they didn’t actually make it very far that night. Molun was still fretting about timing.
“We can’t ride in the dark,” Arvus pointed out prosaically. “We’ll get there when we get there.”
Molun insisted that his leg didn’t feel worse than normal, and Arvus, who didn’t look altogether like he believed him, at least went the path of least resistance and kissed him and said that they were going to keep it that way by not pushing themselves too hard.
“What if I like it when you push me hard?” Molun said.
Arvus snorted, and Trill couldn’t help but grin, because that was terrible innuendo, and yet it worked for all of them.
