"The first one failed."
A pause. Evran feels Torsten's shoulder tense beneath his cheek.
"The first one was a test," Torsten says, and his voice is flatter now, harder, edged with the irritation of being reminded of imperfection. "To see how fast the response would be, how many guards, how the Warlord reacts under pressure. Information, that's all it was."
"Expensive information," the stocky man mutters. "That man's going to talk."
"He doesn't know anything. He was hired through three intermediaries. Even if the Rendari squeeze him, he can't trace it back." Torsten takes a drink. "The next one won't fail."
Evran's heart is beating so hard he is certain Torsten can feel it through his chest. He keeps his breathing steady, slow, deep, the breathing of sleep or something close to it, and his hands are limp in his lap and his face is pressed against Torsten's shoulder, and inside his mind every word is being recorded, cataloged, filed away with meticulous precision, because what he is hearing right now may be the only thing that keeps his husband alive.
The next one won't fail. The words sit in his chest, cold and heavy and real.
There is going to be another attempt.
The men talk more, about timing, about opportunity, about how the final days of the summit might unfold given the right nudge. Evran listens, trying to catch every word, trying to map the conversation onto what he already knows. The details are vague, deliberately so, he thinks, because even among allies Torsten is careful enough to speak in generalities rather than specifics. But the shape of it is clear. Torsten has a plan, the plan involves removing Vaike, and it is going to happen before the summit ends.
After a few minutes, Torsten shifts beneath him. "Right. I should get this one back to his clan before someone comes looking."
"Good luck with that," Dane says. "He's out cold."
"He weighs next to nothing. I'll manage."
There is the scrape of the bench. Torsten's arm goes around Evran's waist, hauling him upright, and then they are standing, Torsten taking most of his weight, which is not much, and Evran doing his best impression of a person whose legs have forgotten how to work. He stumbles convincingly, catches himself on Torsten's arm, stumbles again, and Torsten adjusts his grip with practiced ease, accustomed to carrying drunk men and considering it a manageable inconvenience.
"Easy," Torsten says, and his mouth is close to Evran's ear, and there is an intimacy to the word that makes Evran's throat close. "I've got you."
They move through the ale room. Evran lets himself be half-carried, his feet dragging, his head lolling, and he is acutely aware of every point of contact between his body and Torsten's, the arm around his waist, the hand gripping his hip, the chest against his shoulder.
And then Torsten's hand shifts.
It slides down from his hip to the edge of his tunic and trousers, to the seam where fabric meets fabric and, beneath that seam, the sliver of exposed skin at his waist. Torsten's fingers rest there, not moving, just resting, touching the bare skin that he could very easily avoid and is choosing not to.
Evran resists the urge to vomit on his shoes. The touch is a violation, small and deliberate and calculated, a transgression that can be denied if confronted, explained away as an accident of proximity, and Torsten knows this, knows exactly what he is doing and what he can get away with, and the knowledge of it sits in Evran's stomach alongside the Fire Wine and burns worse.
They make it up the stairs, through the ground-floor corridor, and into the main passageway that leads toward the eastern wing. The stronghold is quiet at this hour, the torches burning low, the corridors empty save for the occasional guard at a junction. Evran counts the turns, left, right, straight, left again, and knows they are getting close.
Torsten guides him to a bench in the hallway near the Drakkari wing, set against the wall between two torches in a pool of light that makes the stone look almost golden. He eases Evran down, and Evran lets himself sag against the wall, legs stretched out, head tilted back.
Torsten crouches in front of him. His face is close, his blue eyes dark in the torchlight, the pupils blown wide, and he isalone with something he wants and calculating how far he can go.
"I probably shouldn't show up at the Warlord's door with his husband drunk and wrapped around me," Torsten says, and the smile that accompanies the words is slow and knowing.
Evran wants to argue that he was not wrapped around him, that every point of contact was Torsten's doing and not his own. But that is not who he is supposed to be right now. Right now he is the wine-flushed, half-coherent southerner who followed a handsome man to a card game and lost his footing. Right now he is harmless and pliable and exactly what Torsten wants him to be.
He smiles up at Torsten, and it takes everything he has.
"I've had a lovely evening," he says, and makes his voice soft, a little slurred.
Torsten's eyes drop to his mouth.
He reaches out, and his thumb touches Evran's cheek, tracing the line of his cheekbone, a touch that tests a boundary and watches to see if it holds. Evran makes his eyes go half-lidded, the look of someone leaning into the touch rather than enduring it. He has seen people do this. He has watched the courtiers at Lord Galen's manor play these games with each other, trading glances and touches the way others trade currency. He did not understand it then. He understands it now, in the worst possible way, understands it because he is living it, because he is performing desire for a man who wants to kill his husband, and the understanding tastes like ash and burns worse than Fire Wine.
Torsten's thumb moves from his cheekbone to his lip and brushes along the lower one, just barely.
Evran fakes a gasp.
Small, a tiny intake of breath, parted lips, a flutter of lashes. A sound that could mean surprise or desire or both, a sound thatTorsten will interpret as invitation because that is what he needs it to be.
