Page 65 of Tending the Ache

Morgan follows Eskil's gaze to the page, reads the entry, and does not react immediately, but Eskil can see the gears turning behind his brother's eyes, the pieces assembling at the speed of a mind built for exactly this.

Morgan looks at Indrie. Looks at Eskil. Looks at the illustration between them. His expression sharpens.

"What's going on?" he asks, and there is an edge of protectiveness in it that Eskil would find touching under any other circumstances.

Eskil stands. The motion is abrupt enough that both of them flinch, and he does not have the room in him to care about that right now, because if he stays on this floor one more second he is going to put his fist through it.

"I need you to leave the room," he tells Morgan.

Morgan stares. His gaze cuts to Indrie, a quick assessing look, checking for danger, checking whether Indrie is all right, and then back to Eskil. "What is going on?"

"That is not a request, Morgan. Leave us."

Morgan's back straightens. He is not afraid of his brother and never has been, and for a moment the stubbornness that runs through their blood rises in his face and Eskil thinks he is going to refuse. But Morgan is also the prince, and he knows the difference between the voice his brother uses and the one his king uses.

He looks at Indrie. The look says, clearly and without ambiguity, I am right outside if you need me.

Then he steps over the books and goes. The door closes behind him.

The library is silent.

Indrie has stood. Eskil does not know when, sometime during the exchange with Morgan, but he is on his feet with his back against the reading desk and his hip pressed to the edge of it and his hands gripping the wood behind him. He is braced. Not against the desk. Against what is coming.

"I understand that you are angry," Indrie says. His voice is small but steady, and the steadiness costs him. Eskil can see the effort of it in the set of his jaw and the white of his knuckles.

Eskil crosses the room. He watches Indrie track his approach, watches the dark eyes follow him with an alertness that is not quite fear but lives in the same country, and he stops close enough to touch and does not touch.

"I am not angry at you," he says.

He reaches up and cups Indrie's cheek. His hand is large enough that his fingers curve past Indrie's ear and into the hair at his temple. He is gentler than he has ever been in his life, gentler than he knew he was capable of, because the man in front of him has been carrying something for a month that Eskil put on his shoulders without knowing, and the weight of it is visible in every line of him.

Indrie does not pull away. He looks up at Eskil and the fear in his eyes is not of the man in front of him. It is of the conversation. Of the words about to be said. Of the thing that has been sitting between them since the cabin on the ship, unnamed and enormous, the shape of it bending everything they have tried to build around it.

Eskil's thumb traces the curve of his cheekbone. He feels the warmth of his skin.

"I am furious," Eskil says, his voice rough and low and scraped down to something that barely qualifies as language, "because you have never been given a choice in anything. Everything has been taken from you." His jaw tightens until the muscles in his temples ache. "And I wanted to take you out of that life. Not take more from you."

Chapter 19

Indrie

Indrie is not scared of Eskil.

The realization settles into him slowly, finding the bottom of something he has been trying not to look at for weeks. He is standing in the library with Eskil's hand on his face and fury in the king's eyes, and the fury is not for him. It has never been for him. He knows this the way he knows which herbs will heal and which will harm, not because somebody taught him but because his hands have learned the difference through years of touching.

He is scared of many things. The dark. Closed spaces. The sound of boots on stone when they move too quickly. Hands raised without warning. The silence that falls over a room just before somebody decides to hurt you, when the air itself holds its breath. He carries these fears in his body the way he carries scar tissue, woven into muscle and sinew, and he does not think they will ever fully leave him.

But he is not scared of the man in front of him.

Eskil believes he has taken something from Indrie that cannot be given back.

And that could not be further from the truth.

Indrie places his hand over Eskil's, the one cupping his cheek, and presses it there. He can feel Eskil's pulse against his palm, quick and hard, a counterpoint to the careful stillness of the rest of him. He meets Eskil's eyes and holds them, and it is the bravest thing he has ever done. Braver than boarding the ship. Braver than diving into the ocean of a new language and a new world. Braver than lighting a lamp in a dark clinic and telling himself he would not run.

"But I did choose," he says. His voice is steady.

Eskil's brow creases, a furrow cutting between his eyes. His hand does not move from Indrie's face, but his thumb stills, and Indrie can see him trying to parse the words, trying to fit them into the shape of the guilt he has been carrying. The guilt does not want to let them in.