Vaike laughs, low and rumbling, and it vibrates through Evran's back, and Evran thinks, not for the first time, but somehow newly, this morning, with Vaike's come still warminside him and Vaike's arm still heavy across his chest, that he did not know, before this. That he did not know a body could feel like this. That he did not know he could be held this way, fucked this way, known this way, and come out on the other side of it more himself instead of less.
He thinks of his father's house, briefly. He thinks of the cold rooms and the colder judgment. He thinks of Lord Galen, whom he will not think about, whom he refuses to think about, and yet whose ghost still sometimes lives in the hinge of his own jaw.
None of that is here. None of that has ever been here.
Here there is only Vaike, warm and tangled around him in a bed that belongs to them both, murmuring something half-asleep into his hair.
He is late.
He is extraordinarily late, in fact, and Eira does not even need to say anything when he finally climbs the garden terrace, breathless, with his hair still damp from the basin and his tunic hastily laced and bite marks he cannot quite scrub off his throat, because the look she gives him is a book unto itself.
"Sunny patches," she says, sweetly.
"Eira."
"All morning, I think. I'll take the east side. You can have the south."
"Eira, have mercy."
"Oh," she says, widening her eyes with false innocence, "was there somewhere you were supposed to be, Evran? At a certain hour?"
He sighs, and kneels beside her in the dirt, and accepts his punishment.
The sun is warm on the back of his neck. The soil is cool beneath his hands. Down the slope, small green shoots are coming up along the lower terrace in neat rows, and farther down, past the outer walls, the clearing below the stronghold is asoft pale green where the mountain grass is starting to wake up for the season. He can hear a hawk somewhere, high and far.
Eira hums under her breath, pleased with herself. Evran remembers when she was more timid, more quick to keep to herself, and thinks about how far they've come that she can be playful with him like this. He feels a strange, quiet astonishment at his own life.
Six months.
Six months ago he arrived at these gates on the back of a horse that belonged to his father, wearing clothes that were owned by his father, sent by a father who had delegated him as property to be given away to curry favor. He had expected to die here or to suffer if death was not swift enough. He had expected cruelty, at the very least; had braced for it, had rehearsed the endurance of it on the long ride north. He had not expected Bran and Leona's kindness and understanding of his situation. He had not expected Eira's friendship and her humming and her slow quiet patience with his clumsy hands. He had not expected Kellin's bark of laughter the first time Evran managed to parry a strike instead of wearing it. He had not expected Aether to weasel her way into his life and push him unceremoniously towards the greatest man he's ever known.
He had not, even in his wildest dreams, expected to find love and be loved in return.
"You're smiling at a turnip," Eira says, without looking up.
"It is a very fine turnip," he replies pleasantly, and watches the knowing smile cross her lips.
Midday finds him on the training ground with Kellin, stripped to a light tunic and sweating through it within a quarter hour. Kellin is a patient teacher who wants more out of his students than perhaps even they do, and he's been working with Evran long enough to know what he's capable of. He's also beenworking with him long enough to know what he's not, and Kellin never asks more of him than he can give.
He circles Evran with a low-shouldered ease that comes from a lifetime of working with a blade, to the point that improvement is something he has to actually work at. He's been a warrior longer than Evran has even been able to read, but he doesn't put any pressure on him to be more than he can be. Every correction he calls out is in a no-nonsense, clipped tone that had been hard to stomach in the beginning and now just rolls off his back.
He has learned to hear the shape beneath the words: drop your elbow, guard your line, again, again, yes, like that, good.
"Again," Kellin says, and Evran resets.
The wooden practice sword is lighter than a real one but heavier than it was a season ago, because Kellin has been sneakily switching them out for weightier models every few weeks and pretending he has not. Evran breathes out on the strike. His feet settle. He throws the combination Kellin drilled him on yesterday, parry-parry-cut, and Kellin's blade meets his with a clean ringing crack and then slides off at the last turn, and Evran's follow-through goes where it is supposed to go instead of where gravity would take it.
"Better," Kellin allows. "Better than last time anyway."
"Oh wow, don't compliment me, Kellin," Evran says in good spirits. "I might think I'm doing something right."
Kellin grins at him. "I would never imply as much."
Evran laughs, winded, and wipes his brow with his forearm. He is never going to win a tournament. He knows this. He is never going to be the kind of swordsman who makes bards write songs. But he can hold a guard now. He can throw a combination. He can keep his feet under him when a bigger man comes at him, and last week he surprised Kellin with a low feint that Kellin had not seen coming, and his teacher had laughed,and clapped him on the shoulder so hard Evran felt it in his teeth.
Progress. Quiet, unglamorous progress.
It fills him up in a way he does not quite know what to do with.
