Page 92 of Tending the Ache

Chapter 28

Indrie

Indrie is asleep in the king's bed, draped over Eskil's bare chest with his ear pressed against the heartbeat he has come to think of as his own personal metronome, when the door opens without fanfare and Bohdi walks in.

Dusty from the road. Still in travel leathers. Axe on his back. Already talking mid-sentence about something Indrie does not catch, as though the briefing began in the corridor and the door was merely an inconvenience in the middle of it.

"—which is why I rode straight through, because if I am right about this then we do not have the—"

Indrie sits up on instinct. The blanket slides off his bare shoulder, exposing the mark Eskil left on his collarbone last night, and his dark hair is a tangled catastrophe around his face, and he is wearing nothing except the king's sheets and an expression of absolute mortification.

Bohdi's gaze lands on him.

His footsteps falter. His mouth, which was open and producing words at considerable speed, snaps shut. His eyes move from Indrie to the bed to the state of undress to the implications, and the journey takes approximately one and a half seconds, during which his expression cycles through surprise, comprehension, and a delight so vast it threatens the structural integrity of his face.

He turns on his heel and walks back out. The door closes quietly behind him.

Indrie stares at the shut door. Heat floods his face, his neck, his chest, his ears, a full-body blush so comprehensive it probably has its own weather system, and he clutches the blanket to his chest and tries to remember how breathing works.

Eskil's hand settles on his waist. Warm. Unhurried. He is not remotely concerned about what just happened. He pulls Indrie back down against his chest with a low contented hum and presses a kiss to his temple as though the last ten seconds did not occur.

"Bohdi is back," Indrie says. His voice comes out approximately two octaves higher than its natural register. "It seemed urgent."

"Everything is urgent with Bohdi." Eskil's lips move against his hair. "He has no concept of patience."

"He just saw me. In your bed. Without—"

"Indrie."

"And he is going to– People will—"

Eskil chuckles. "I think we've established that people already know, sweetheart."

Indrie buries his face in Eskil's chest and contemplates the merits of never emerging. The warmth of Eskil's skin against his burning cheek is not helping. The fingers tracing idle circles on his bare back are aggressively not helping. The fact that Eskil is clearly amused, and Indrie can feel the silent laughter in the rise and fall of his chest, is the opposite of helping.

He lets himself be held. Presses his face into the hollow of Eskil's throat and breathes and waits for the mortification to subside from lethal to merely catastrophic.

Then he says, muffled against Eskil's skin, "Will you have to leave again?"

The circles on his back slow. They do not stop, but they slow.

"Eventually," Eskil says. "But not soon."

Indrie nods against his chest.

After several moments there is a proper knock. Three deliberate raps, evenly spaced. He has learned.

Eskil rolls his eyes toward the ceiling. "Come in, Bohdi."

The door opens. Bohdi enters for the second time, marginally cleaner, having wiped the worst of the road dust from his face, though his leathers are still travel-stained and his red hair is a matted ruin. He moves into the room with elaborate theatrical unconcern. His gaze sweeps the bed, catalogues Indrie's continued presence in it, and then fixes on a point six inches to the left of both of them, where he studies the stonework with enormous interest.

"I'm back," Bohdi says, like they haven't noticed. "From the border. With news you are not going to like."

"That sounds about right," Eskil says.

He eases upright against the pillows, wincing at the pull of his stitches, and reaches for the shirt draped over the bedpost. Indrie watches the motion, the controlled grimace, the favoring of his right side, and he catalogues the stiffness and the pallor and adds it to the running assessment he maintains without effort and cannot switch off.

Eskil pulls the shirt on and swings his legs over the side of the bed, and Indrie starts to rise, reaching for his own clothes, and then stops. His trousers are on the floor near the foot of the bed. His shirt is somewhere behind the headboard. His smallclothes are–actually, he does not actually know where his smallclothes are. Getting dressed is going to require crossing the room naked in front of Bohdi, which is a thing Indrie would rather do approximately never.