Page 163 of Turncloak

“You should be the one in command.”

“Maybe one day.”

Slipping his hipflask into his inner cloak pocket, Gaian stood with feline grace, despite the liquor, and strode the few steps to where Sebran sat. He perched on the edge of the arm, so close Sebran could smell warm skin and sweet, sharp bivkar. Then, so fast Sebran barely registered the movement, Gaian reached out and cradled Sebran’s jaw in the valley between his thumb and forefinger. The touch sent a scalpel slice of something through Sebran’s lower belly.

“I don’t think you mean that.” A few strands of long ash-blond hair had come loose from Gaian’s leather tie.

“Why not?” Sebran was painfully aware of the bobbing shard in his throat.

“Because I know you, Aduran.” Slate eyes flickered over Sebran’s face. Gaian’s skin was pale as moonlight and just as ethereal. “I know you bury your desires so deep inside yourself that they die from lack of air. I know the way you hold that ruthless body—as though your entire existence is an apology. I know you can only relax when someone else is telling you what to do, because if it goes wrong, you won’t have to blame yourself. You will never lead, because you do not have the requisite faith in yourself, in your thoughts, in your wants.”

Sebran felt each blow as a physical thing, the bruises calling up a furious sort of heat. He so rarely allowed himself to feel anger, but his friend was striking him in the soft underbelly, and the wounded child inside him balled up his fists. “Perhaps the people who can detach from their own personal desires make the best leaders.”

“Perhaps. But they’ll also spend their entire lives miserable and unfulfilled.”

Sebran swallowed, said nothing to refute this.

“You want that Pons Aelii posting so badly, even though you’d never admit it—to me, or to yourself. And you could reach out and take it. You could compel me to drop out of the race, hand it to you in a heartbeat. You want it, Sebran.”

It was true. Sebran wanted to be as far away from Atherin as possible—as far away from the Bloodmoons as possible. Because if the time ever came to take down Lyrian or Levan, the people who had raised him and loved him and then abandoned him, he wasn’t entirely sure he could follow through.

“If I get the Pons Aelii posting,” Sebran said in a low timbre, “it will be because I earned it.”

“But still you won’t admit that you want it.”

And then Gaian leaned in and kissed him.

Everything inside Sebran exploded.

At twenty-six years old, he had never felt another person’s lips on his. Had never allowed it, because he could not trust any such desire. Could not trust the force of it.

In that moment, he knew he had been right all along.

Because this…

…this was too much.

Lust towered inside him, sending all the blood from his head to between his legs. Gaian ran his palm down from Sebran’s jaw to his brawny chest, over the ridges of his stomach, to the top of his waistband. His lips were soft and cool and booze-tinged, brushing and then pulling away, not a furious clash of tongue and teeth but something far more tender.

Gaian kissed his temple, the bridge of his cheekbone, the corner of his eye, while his hand wandered over every peak and plane of Sebran’s body. It cost the soldier everything he had not to moan into it. Not to surrender, not to desire more.

“You are allowed to want, Sebran.”

Gaian’s voice was silk, satin, a flake of pure clean snow.

“No,” Sebran said, hoarse, and then spoke more truth than he had in months, years. “I’m not. Because right now, I want you. I have always wanted you.” He grabbed Gaian’s wandering hand by the narrow wrist, forcing it still. “But if anything were to happen between us, how could I ever know for certain that you’re acting of your own free will? How could I ever know for certain that the sheer force of my want had not overflowed into you? There is a reason I smother my desire until it dies. Because then, it’s only killing me.”

With a firmer hand placed against Gaian’s chest, Sebran pushed away his friend—the first person he’d ever kissed, the lover he so craved—stood to his feet, and strode away.

For the first time in a long time, he felt every single one of the raised, ragged scars around his ankles.

67

• • • •

A Few Months Ago

At a watchtower notched halfway up the Mountains of Promise, Sebran stood on an outside window ledge, gazing down on the dusky spires and domes of Carduban.