And then he thinks about the voice, the old voice, the one that saysyou're not enough.He thinks about how long he has been carrying it, how deep the crack runs, how easy it was for Torsten's kiss to split it open again.
But here is what the voice does not know.
The voice does not know about the ale room. It does not know that Evran sat with his face pressed against a conspirator's shoulder and listened to treason and remembered every word. It does not know about the information he passed to Bran, information that may keep Vaike alive today on the excursion to the eastern villages. It does not know that Evran has been running this operation for days, making decisions, reading people, playing a role that would terrify anyone, and he has not broken. He has bent, and he has ached, and he has sat on benches in hallways and struggled to breathe, but he has not broken.
You're not good enough for this.
Maybe not. But he is the only one here, and the only one who can do what needs to be done, and if that is not good enough then good enough does not exist and he will do it anyway.
He takes a deep breath, a real one, full and steady, filling his lungs all the way to the bottom, and lets it out slowly.
What if he stops waiting to be pursued? What if he goes to Torsten on his own terms, at his own pace, with his own exit strategy and a blade on his thigh and Bran waiting outside the door? Maybe he does not have to endure being cornered. Maybe he does not have to stand against walls and be kissed without warning and wait for Torsten to decide when and where and how.
Torsten already trusts him. The kiss at the stables was not a man testing the waters or feeling Evran out. It was a man claiming. Torsten has already decided that Evran is his, or willbe, and all he is waiting for is the opportunity to finish what he started.
Evran does not have to give him that opportunity. He just needs to give him the illusion of it, long enough to get into the room, long enough to find the vial, long enough for Bran to arrive.
He does not have to be the prey. He can be the trap.
Evran straightens up. The old voice is still there, still whispering, but it is quieter now, pushed to the margins by something louder, something fiercer. The voice of the man who listened to treason in an ale room and did not flinch. The voice of the man who Leona called strong.
He can do this. Not because it is easy, not because it does not cost him, but because the cost of not doing it is higher, is unthinkable, is Vaike's blood on stone and a throne empty and a life without the only person who has ever made him feel as though he deserved to exist.
Chapter 16
The door bursts open before Evran expects it.
Not Vaike but Delia, breathless and flushed, her hair escaping its braids, eyes wide and urgent. She is in the doorway for barely a second before she is across the room, her hands finding Evran's arms and gripping them.
"Vaike has been injured," she says.
The words hit Evran in the chest like a fist. His vision narrows and the room tilts and for one terrible, suspended moment everything inside him stops, his heart, his lungs, the blood in his veins, and then it all restarts at once, too fast, flooding him with a cold, electrical panic that makes his hands shake.
"What happened?" His voice comes out steady, which surprises him, because the rest of his body is not steady at all. "How bad?"
"He's alive. He's conscious." Delia's grip on his arms tightens, as though she can feel the tremor running through him and is trying to hold it still. "His horse threw him on the road back from the eastern villages. He was trampled, his shoulder and his head. The other Warlords pulled the horse off him."
"His horse threw him?" Evran is already moving, pulling free of Delia's hands, looking for his boots. "Vaike doesn't get thrown. He's been riding since he could walk."
"Evran." Delia catches his arm. Her voice drops and her face changes, the open worry tightening into something more controlled, more careful, about to say something she does not want said in a corridor where anyone might hear. She pulls him back from the door and leans close.
"The animal was dosed with something," she says, barely above a whisper. "Something that made it go into a rage. The stablemaster found the evidence in the horse's feed bag after the fact, traces of a compound that causes aggression and panic in large animals."
Evran goes cold. The chill starts in the center of his chest and radiates outward, flooding his limbs and his hands and the base of his skull, and for a moment the room feels very far away and very small at the same time.
"If the other Warlords had not been quick enough," Delia continues, and her voice is steady but her eyes are not, "the horse would have trampled him to death before he could get to his feet."
The world goes very quiet. Evran can hear his own heartbeat, rapid and thick, and the faint crackle of the fire in the hearth, and the distant sound of activity somewhere else in the Keep. He can hear Delia's breathing, measured and controlled, and his own, which is neither.
Bran and Leona took precautions. They posted extra warriors, flanked the riding party, kept alert for ambush or attack. They were watching for assassins, for men with blades, for the obvious threat.
They were not watching the horses.
Evran's hands curl into fists at his sides. The nails bite into his palms and the pain is sharp and grounding and he uses it toanchor himself, to keep his feet on the stone floor and his mind in the present moment and not in the place that is trying to pull him under.
"This is not a coincidence," Delia says, watching his face, reading it the way she reads everything, quickly, accurately, without mercy. "Someone is actively trying to kill the Drakkari Warlord. First the blade in the night, now the horse on the road. This is coordinated."
"I know who it is," Evran says.
