He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. He closes it. Opens it again. The silence stretches, and Vaike waits inside it, patient as always, knowing that some truths take time to surface, never rushing Evran to feel or speak or decide faster than he is able.
"You—" Evran's voice catches. He swallows around it. "You seriously mean that? You would go with me?"
Vaike raises an eyebrow. The expression is so quintessentially him, as though Evran has said something mildly absurd and Vaike is choosing not to comment on the absurdity, that it almost makes Evran laugh despite the tightness in his chest.
"And you think I would let you go there alone?" Vaike says.
The question is not really a question. It is a statement wearing a question's clothes, the way Vaike's invitations are not really invitations and his suggestions are not really suggestions. It is a fact of the universe, as immutable as the tide: Evran will not go to the place that hurt him without the man who would burn that place to the ground if it tried to hurt him again.
Something in Evran's chest cracks. He has spent so long thinking of the south as a place he escaped from that he has never allowed himself to think of it as a place he could return to. Not as a victim. Not as a refugee. As a man with a husband at his side and a braid in his hair and the full authority of the Drakkari behind him.
His siblings are there. His brother and his sister, living whatever lives they have built in the years since Evran was taken from them, and he does not know if those lives are good or terrible or somewhere in between, and the not-knowing is its own kind of wound. He could find out. He could see them. He could stand in front of them and let them see what he has become,not what was made of him by his father's cruelty, but what he made of himself after. What Vaike helped him make. The garden and the loom and the table surrounded by people who love him and the braid woven into his hair by hands that have never asked for anything but the privilege of holding him.
He could go home. With Vaike.
Evran kisses him.
It is not lazy this time. It is not soft or slow or unhurried. It is desperate and grateful, pressed into Vaike with the force of something Evran did not dare to want, and the force of itpresses Vaike back into the mattress. Evran's hands cup his jaw, fingers sliding into the rough warmth of his beard, and he kisses him deeply and thoroughly and with everything he has, pouring gratitude and disbelief and the terrified, exhilarating hope of it into the press of his mouth.
Vaike makes a low sound against his lips and his arms come around Evran's waist and pull him closer, and for a long moment the room is just the sound of their breathing and the fire popping in the hearth.
When Evran pulls back, his eyes are bright and his lashes are damp and his smile trembles at the edges.
"After the summit," Evran says. "Can we talk about it more? After?"
"After," Vaike agrees. His thumb traces the line of Evran's jaw, catching a tear that Evran didn't realize had fallen. "There is no rush. They will still be there when you are ready."
Evran nods. He presses his forehead to Vaike's and breathes, in and out, and the crack in his chest lets the light in, and it hurts and it heals and it is the same thing.
Chapter 7
There is a knock on the door, gentle but firm, and Leona's voice is on the other side. "Warlord, council assembles in an hour."
Vaike groans, very quietly, into the back of Evran's neck. Evran bites his lip to keep from laughing and calls out, "We're getting up."
"Breakfast in the hall before that," Leona reminds him, and her footsteps retreat down the corridor.
After a breakfast of soft cheese and honeyed oats, which Vaike eats with voracity and Evran eats with considerably more appreciation for the Rendari chef's labors, the delegation splits. Vaike heads to the council chamber with Bran and Leona and the senior members of the Drakkari retinue. Evran is not required to attend, and Vaike tells him so with a look that meansenjoy yourself but stay out of trouble.
Evran smiles innocently. Vaike gives him a second look that meansI know what that smile means and I don't trust it.Then he kisses Evran's temple, right beside the braid, and goes.
Evran watches him disappear around the corner and stands in the corridor for a moment, at loose ends. The morning stretches before him, unstructured and unfamiliar, and he is deciding between finding the twins and finding the greenhouses when a voice calls his name from the opposite direction.
"Evran! Just the person I was looking for."
He turns. A woman is approaching from the far end of the corridor, moving with the unhurried authority born of being mistress of the house you are walking through. She is tall, nearly as tall as Evran, with deep brown skin and black hair pulled back from her face in an arrangement of braids that is both practical and elegant. Her features are strong and handsome, her jaw firm, her dark eyes quick and warm, and she wears the Rendari green in a simple gown belted at the waist. There is a baby on her hip, a round-cheeked infant gnawing on a wooden toy with the focused determination of a child assigned an important task.
"Delia," the woman says, extending her free hand. "Harath's wife. Mother of the twins who have apparently adopted you."
Evran takes her hand and smiles. "They've been very welcoming."
"You're too generous, Evran. I know they can be insufferable. Tria has talked about nothing else since you arrived, and Arin has been in the greenhouse since dawn, which means he's preparing something to show you." She shifts the baby to her other hip with practiced ease. "I thought I'd steal you before they could."
There is something immediately likeable about Delia. She has the directness that comes from managing a stronghold and a Warlord and twin sixteen-year-olds simultaneously, and emerging from the experience with her sense of humor sharpened to a fine edge. Evran falls into step beside her, and she leads him through the corridors of the Keep to a sunlit room on the upper floor that overlooks the inner garden.
The room is already occupied. Three women are seated on cushioned benches around a low table set with tea and pastries and a bowl of early strawberries, and they look up when Delia enters. Evran is acutely, suddenly aware that he is the only man in the room, and the awareness brings with it a self-consciousness that is not entirely unpleasant, the sense of being out of his depth in a way that is social rather than threatening. It is not so unlike the weaver's terrace with Aether.
"Ladies," Delia says, settling into a chair and propping the baby against her shoulder, "this is Evran. He's with the Drakkari delegation. He's married to the Warlord."
