"Last night."
Naela whistles, low and impressed. "He's been planning that for a while, you know. Bran told me he's been carving those beads for months."
Evran's chest does the thing it keeps doing today, the warm expansion that feels too large for his ribs, and he stares at her. "Months?"
"At least." She shifts her armload of branches and gives him a look that is half amusement, half genuine warmth. "It happened so fast, did it?"
"It happened so fast I can barely reconcile it," Evran admits, and the admission carries the wonder of a man still catching up to his own happiness, still looking at the braid and the beads and the ring they represent and unable to quite believe that all of it is real and all of it is his.
Naela shakes her head, still grinning. "That's how things are with the northern clans. The mountain is harsh, and the people persevere, and they're not known for dilly-dallying when there's something they want." She pauses, tilting her head at him. "I'm surprised it's taken our Warlord this long to claim you."
The word sends a flush up Evran's neck. "It's not a claim."
Naela laughs, the sound bright and sharp in the thin mountain air. "It most certainly is a claim. Everyone at that summit is going to know exactly who you belong to." She nudges him with her elbow, nearly toppling him and the branches he is carrying. "You might have to beat off some courtiers, you know. Your husband doesn't have a braid of his own yet. There will be people who take that as an invitation."
He had not thought about that. The absence of a matching braid in Vaike's hair, the visible, public absence of it, suddenly takes on a significance he had not considered. At the stronghold, among people who know them, the absence means nothing. But at a summit full of strangers, surrounded by clan politics andthe careful parsing of every visible symbol, it could mean a great deal.
"That's my fault," he says. "I wasn't aware of the customs. I didn't know he was making plans."
Naela's expression softens, the teasing giving way to something gentler. "Hey. I'm just giving you a hard time. There's plenty of time for Vaike to have one of his own. Our customs are not so set in stone as all that." She shifts the branches to one arm and reaches out to squeeze his shoulder with the other. "The absence of a braid doesn't mean he's untaken. Anyone with eyes can see that man is yours."
Something tight in Evran's chest loosens. The worry that had been forming, the small cold seed of inadequacy that had begun to take root at Naela's words, dissolves under the sureness of her conviction. He smiles at her, and she smiles back, and they haul their firewood up the slope in the last of the light.
The fire burns high and bright in the cave mouth, throwing warmth and wavering orange light across the stone walls. Evran lies in his bedroll with the heat of the flames on one side and the solid wall of Vaike's body on the other, and thinks he has never been so tired in his life.
Every muscle aches. His thighs are beyond screaming and have entered a state of resigned silence that suggests they have lodged their formal complaints and are now simply documenting his choices for future reference. His lower back is making pointed suggestions about the difference between a horse and a garden. His hands are cold despite the fire, and he tucks them beneath the blanket and curls toward Vaike instinctively, seeking him in the dark without thinking, the way his body has learned to orient itself toward this man.
Vaike is on his side, propped on one elbow, watching him. The fire throws shadows across his face, the strong jaw and straight nose and striking eyes that in this light look almost alight. Hisfree hand reaches out and finds the braid at Evran's temple, tracing its length with his fingertips, and his expression is one Evran knows well. It is the one Vaike wears when he is looking at something that belongs to him, something he has fought for and won and intends to keep, possessive and fierce and achingly tender all at once, and it makes Evran's stomach swoop.
He huffs out a laugh. "What's gotten into you?"
Vaike's fingers curl around the braid, gentle but deliberate. "Seeing you with my braid in your hair makes me feel reckless." His voice is low, pitched beneath the crackle of the fire and the quiet murmur of the warriors talking nearby. "Like I want to lay claim to you right here on the mountain."
The flush is instantaneous. Evran feels it flood his face and throat and chest, and he swats at Vaike's arm with a hand that is not entirely steady. "I am not going to let you take me in the middle of camp."
Vaike laughs. It is a rare sound, quiet and deep, and Evran hoards every instance of it, tucks them away in some private place where he keeps the things that are only his. Vaike leans forward and presses a kiss to his hair, just above the braid, and murmurs against his scalp, "If you insist."
"I do insist."
"Then I will suffer."
"You'll survive."
"That remains to be seen."
Evran bites his lip around a grin and shifts closer, pressing his face against the hollow of Vaike's throat. The fire pops and settles, and somewhere beyond the cave mouth the wind moves through the pines, low and steady and constant.
"What will it be like?" Evran asks, after a while. "The summit."
Vaike is quiet for a moment. His hand moves from the braid to the back of Evran's neck, settling there with the familiar weight that saysI'm here, I have you.
"The last time I went, I was just a boy," he says. "Twelve years old, accompanying my father. I didn't understand half of what was said, but I watched everything. I watched my father negotiate with men who hated him and men who feared him and men who wanted what he had. I watched him listen when he wanted to argue, and argue when he wanted to fight, and fight only when there was no other choice."
His thumb traces a slow arc beneath Evran's hairline.
"It was a fundamental part of growing as a Warlord. It taught me how to accept counsel. How to broker peace." A pause. "How to see the viewpoints of other clans, even when those viewpoints are wrong."
Evran smiles against his throat. "Even when they're wrong?"
