He does not because he knows what Vaike will do. He knows the cold fury that lives beneath his husband's composure, the lethal stillness that precedes action. He has seen it once, only once, and it was directed at three men in Ashworth livery who rode up to the stronghold gates with a letter bearing Callum's seal and a demand for Evran's return.
What lived on Vaike's face that day was something cold and old, risen from a place beneath anger and settled into his bones and his hands and his jaw. Anger is hot and loud and spendsitself quickly, and this was not anger. This was patient. Vaike was perfectly still and perfectly composed, and the three armed men were visibly, obviously afraid of him, afraid in the way living things are afraid of something large and ancient that has gone very, very quiet.
The men had left. They had left quickly, and they had not come back.
That is what lives beneath the composure, and that is what Evran is afraid of unleashing, because it would be directed at Torsten, here, at the summit, in a hall full of Warlords and witnesses, and the consequences would be catastrophic. Vaike's fury in defense of Evran is absolute and uncontrollable and utterly without regard for politics, and if Evran tells him that Torsten put his hands on the braid, on the thing Vaike made, on the promise he wove into Evran's hair with his own fingers, then something will happen that cannot be taken back. Not anger, not shouting, not a confrontation that can be smoothed over and explained away. Something worse. Something final. And whatever fragile peace this summit exists to maintain will shatter under the weight of it.
So he does not tell him.
He breathes in, tries to calm himself, picks up his cup and takes a drink of mead that he does not taste.
"I'll be careful around him," Evran says.
"Good."
Evran nods and turns back to his plate and picks up a piece of bread and makes himself eat it.
He ignores the fact that Torsten keeps glancing in his direction for the rest of the feast, ignores it with grim determination, knowing that acknowledging the wound will only make it worse. Every glance lands on his skin and prickles there, a persistent, crawling awareness that he cannot shake no matter how firmly he fixes his attention elsewhere. Torsten is watching him,unhurried, content to let his message work its way through Evran's defenses at its own pace.
Evran eats. He drinks. He leans into Vaike's side when the noise gets to be too much, and Vaike's arm comes around him automatically, and the weight of it is a wall between him and everything else. Bran tells a story about a bear that gets progressively more ridiculous with each telling, and Leona corrects him on the details, and Naela argues with both of them about whether the bear was actually a bear or a very large dog, and the table laughs, and Evran laughs too, and the sound surprises him. The laughter is real, drawn out of him by the warmth of these people and the absurdity of Bran's story and the particular alchemy that happens when people who care about each other gather around a table and share a meal. It does not erase the cold in his chest, but it exists alongside it, and for a moment the two things coexist, the warmth and the cold, the laughter and the fear, and Evran holds both of them and does not let either one win.
The feast stretches on. The candles burn down. The musicians play something slow and sweet that makes a few couples drift to the open space near the hearth and sway together, and Evran watches them and feels Vaike's hand on his neck and thinks about dancing, thinks about being held, thinks about how easy it would be to let the warmth of this room convince him that everything is fine.
Everything is not fine.The knowledge sits heavy and certain beneath everything else, beneath the music and the laughter and the press of his husband's hand, and Evran carries it the way he has learned to carry difficult things, quietly, privately, held close and examined only in the moments when no one is looking.
But for tonight, in this hall, with his husband's arm around him and the braid warm against his temple, he can pretend.
The feast ends late. Evran walks back to their room with Vaike's hand on the small of his back, and when the door closes behind them and they are finally alone, Vaike pulls him in and holds him for a long moment, face buried in Evran's hair, and says nothing.
Evran wraps his arms around his husband's waist and breathes him in and thinks about brothers who covet what is not theirs, about the cruelty of family, about the distance between a wink across a crowded hall and whatever comes next.
Chapter 6
Evran wakes to heat.
Not the slow, ambient warmth of the morning sun through shutters or the residual glow of banked embers in the hearth. This is focused, deliberate, wet heat, concentrated between his thighs, and for a disoriented, sleep-thick moment his mind cannot reconcile the sensation with anything in his catalogue of waking experiences.
Then Vaike's mouth moves, and Evran's entire body jolts awake.
His hands fly to Vaike's hair. His fingers sink into the thick strands and grip, not pulling but holding, anchoring himself to something real because the rest of his body has left the earth. His heart is in his throat and his lungs are in his throat and every coherent thought he has ever had is in his throat, and what comes out of his mouth is not a word. It is a sound. A high, broken, helpless sound that he would be embarrassed about if he had the capacity for embarrassment, which he does not, because Vaike's tongue is doing something unreal and Evran's spine has turned to liquid.
"I—" he manages. "I — what—"
Vaike does not answer. Or rather, he answers by pressing closer, by sliding his broad hands beneath Evran's thighs and lifting them over his shoulders, and the shift in angle pulls a sob from Evran's chest that he couldn't have stopped if his life depended on it.
He is so surprised he can't find words. He was genuinely deeply asleep for the first time in two nights, and waking to this has disrupted something fundamental in the working of his brain. He can feel everything. The roughness of Vaike's beard against the tender skin of his inner thighs. The softness of his lips in contrast. The slow, thorough, unhurried way he works, as though Evran is a meal to be savored and Vaike has nowhere else to be for the rest of his natural life.
Vaike pulls back just enough to speak, his breath hot against Evran's skin. "I haven't had you in days."
Evran is gasping. His fingers are tangled in Vaike's hair and his heels are pressing into the broad planes of Vaike's back. The furs have been kicked to the foot of the bed, and the light is pouring through the window in pale gold, and he is completely undone.
"I've been — I've been next to you every night," he manages, and the words come out breathy and fractured and not at all the composed retort he was aiming for.
"Not good enough," Vaike says.
He takes Evran by the wrists.
Both hands, circling Evran's slender wrists in a grip that is firm without being forceful, and he presses them into the mattress beside Evran's hips. Pinned. Held. Evran's fingers flex against the sheets, his arms stretched taut, and the position arches his back and tilts his hips up and Vaike swallows him down again.
