Evran's pulse kicks, and beneath the kick something else rises, something hotter and harder than nervousness, something that has been building since Delia told him about the horse. He looks at Torsten leaning in that doorway with his arms crossed and his easy confidence and his studied casualness, and he thinks about the bruise on Vaike's shoulder, the stitches at his temple, the medic saying a few inches lower and we'd be having a very different conversation. He thinks about the assassin climbing through the window with a poisoned blade while Evran slept. Hethinks about the horse rearing and screaming and Vaike on the ground beneath its hooves.
This man did those things. This man ordered those things, arranged them, paid for them, and sat in the great hall and smiled while his instruments carried them out. This man looked at Evran's husband and decided he should die, and then he looked at Evran and decided he should be kept, and the cruelty of wanting to murder one person and possess another in the same breath is something Evran cannot think about too long without his hands beginning to shake with a fury so concentrated it feels physical.
He holds the gaze for a beat, just a beat, long enough to register the recognition, the interest, the heat that lives in Torsten's eyes when he looks at Evran, and then looks away.
"And anyway," Naela is saying, "I told him if he wants to court me properly he's going to have to beat me in the ring first, which is never going to happen, but at least it'll be entertaining to watch him try."
"That sounds perfect," Evran says. He pushes back from the table and gives Naela an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, I just remembered I need to take care of something before tonight. Will you be here later?"
Naela waves her cup. "I'll be here until they close the kitchens or the mead runs out, whichever comes first."
Evran squeezes her shoulder as he stands, a brief touch that he hopes conveys more than he can say, and walks toward the entrance.
Torsten has already disappeared from the doorway. Evran crosses the hall, his stride measured, his expression neutral, and steps out into the corridor.
Torsten is waiting outside the great hall, leaning against the wall in the pose Evran has come to recognize as his default, casual, studied, arranged for maximum effect.
"Walk with me?" Torsten asks.
They head toward the stone gardens, the walled enclosure Evran has walked through before with the twins, raised beds of mountain plants and ornamental grasses interspersed with carved stone benches and small, trickling water features that fill the space with the sound of running water. The walls are high enough to block the wind but low enough to let the light in, and in the late afternoon the space glows with golden luminosity.
The gardens are empty. The walled enclosure shelters them from view, and the sound of the water features covers their voices. Torsten stops beside a bed of low-growing mountain flowers, their blooms pale and fragile in the golden light.
"I've been thinking about you," Torsten says.
He turns to face Evran, and the mask is still in place, the easy smile, the warm eyes, but beneath it there is an urgency that was not there before, a hunger that has been building all week and is pressing against the seams of his composure.
"About the feel of you," Torsten continues, his voice dropping, the register shifting lower, his eyes moving over Evran's face with an intensity that makes Evran's skin prickle. "The taste of you."
Evran swallows and the bile that rises in his throat is laced with something incandescent and furious, because this is the man who poisoned a blade and sent it through a window toward the neck of the person Evran loves most in the world, this is the man who dosed a horse and watched from a distance while it tried to kill Vaike on an open road, and now he is standing in a garden with his voice pitched low telling Evran he has been thinking about the taste of him. The audacity of it, the sheer, breathtaking gall of wanting to kill a man and seduce his husband in the same week, makes Evran want to drive Bran's dagger into Torsten's throat and watch the surprise replace the hunger in those pale blue eyes.
He does not. He converts the fury into something useful, alchemizes it, transmutes the heat and the revulsion into something that could pass for nervousness, for the flattered, flustered response of hearing what you want to hear and not knowing what to do with it.
"I had thought to come to you last night," Evran says, and the words come out quiet, halting, as though he is confessing something shameful. "After Vaike had gone to sleep. But I wasn't certain." He pauses, drops his eyes. "I wasn't certain my presence would be welcome."
Torsten catches his arm.
The grip is immediate, reflexive, seizing what he has heard before it can be retracted. His fingers close around Evran's forearm, tight enough to feel the bones beneath the muscle, and his voice when he speaks is rough with a need that he is no longer bothering to disguise.
"Yes. Absolutely you would be welcome."
The grip is a little too tight, a little too possessive, the fingers pressing in, not bruising but bordering on it, and Evran can feel the tremor of restraint running through Torsten's hand, the effort it is costing him not to pull Evran closer, not to close the distance, not to take what he has been circling all week.
Evran looks at those fingers on his arm and thinks about the white pressure marks they will leave and thinks about Vaike's hands, which have never once left a mark on him that was not asked for. He thinks about the contrast between a man who holds you because he loves you and a man who holds you because he believes you are his to hold, and the fury settles deeper into his bones, past the nausea, past the fear, into the place where resolve lives, and it hardens there into something cold and useful.
He does not flinch. He leans into it, tips his body toward Torsten's, just slightly, just enough, and looks up at him withan expression he hopes reads as wanting rather than what it actually is, which is focused, burning calculation, the intent to dismantle the person in front of him piece by piece and make him believe he wanted it.
"I could come tonight," he says. "If you wanted me to."
Torsten does not kiss him. They are too public, the walls are high but not high enough, and the courtyard beyond is still populated with retainers and delegates going about their evening. But his gaze drops to Evran's mouth, and the look is so transparent, so utterly without subtlety, that it might as well be a kiss. He is imagining it, imagining everything that comes after it, and Evran watches him imagine it and thinks about the poisoned blade and the trampled shoulder and the stitches at Vaike's temple, and the fury burns so hot and so clean that for a moment it feels almost peaceful, the way rage becomes clarity when it has been refined enough times, when it has been fed enough injustice, when it has somewhere specific to go.
"I will leave my door unlocked tonight after the guard rotation changes," Torsten says, his voice controlled now, practical, making arrangements for something he has decided will happen. "All you need to do is let yourself in."
"I can't wait," Evran tells him, and the words are ash in his mouth, but beneath the ash there is steel, and beneath the steel there is the image of Vaike's face, the strong jaw, the dark lashes, the beads he carved from stone, and the absolute, unshakeable certainty that Evran will burn this man's plans to the ground before the night is over. "I'm counting the hours. But I have to go, or Vaike will be suspicious."
Torsten releases his arm. The grip leaves white pressure marks on Evran's skin that fade slowly.
"Tonight," Torsten says.
