Page 42 of Turncloak

“He might have a point.” Levan studied Harrow intently, the subtle aversion of his gaze, the shiftiness to his posture. “You’re keeping something from me.”

“I’m keeping many things from you, as I suspect you are from me.” A coy smile coaxed Harrow’s purple lips wide. “I’ll trade you, darling. A secret for a secret.”

“You first.”

A musing pause. “When I was a little boy, my parents sold me to the Queen of Bellandry. I was stolen from her by the Vallish throne while on the cusp of manhood, though I think the Bellandrian Crown believe I’d simply grown tired and departed of my own volition.”

“That must have been difficult. Being sold.”

“On the contrary, it’s given me a very high sense of self. I am worth tens of thousands of ascens, and I am also worth risking war to possess.”

The words were cavalier, but there was something sour beneath them.

“That word, possess. Doesn’t it make your skin crawl?”

Harrow took an indecently long drink of wine. “Not really. I could walk away if I wanted to, but I rather enjoy meddling in the affairs of the powerful. Royals, generals, kingpins. You’re all so delightfully messy. I am quite simply never bored. Here’s a fun little bonus secret—two for the price of one. I asked to be sold.”

“You—what?”

“I had delusions of grandeur from a very young age, and, truthfully, my own sights set on a throne. Any throne, I wasn’t fussy. I thought if I could just enter the royal arena, by whatever means necessary, a path to the crown would emerge eventually. Does it make me sound monstrous, to willingly leave behind my family for such a thing? Honestly, Levan, it was all so dreadfully prosaic in my village. I was made for more.”

A dull ringing echoed in the deep caverns of Levan’s mind.

My own sights set on a throne.

“Do you still wish for such a thing now?”

“The ambition has blunted with age—or perhaps wine. But I’ve spilled too many secrets. Your turn.”

I’m a Compeller.

Saffron Killoran is a Timeweaver.

My magic is disobeying me.

I want to raise my mother from the dead and install her on the very throne you covet.

Harrow knew, in vague terms, that the Bloodmoons had their sights on the crown—but not that the body of the lost Rezaran queen lay in a crypt of ascenite. Not that Saffron Killoran’s line might rise again and ruin everything.

“Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I pretend I’m Aymar Wevelren from The Great Adventures of the Lost Dragonborn. I imagine gliding over the moors and mountains on dragonback, all of reality far below me. Wind in my hair, cold air in my lungs. Distance, freedom.”

“Adorable, but your being an enormous nerd is hardly a secret.”

“True.” Levan surveyed the village below with a hawkish intensity. “Though you’ve never known with quite such specificity.”

There was a sort of resonant silence, a thousand unsaid things hovering between them like fireflies. Harrow rested a palm on Levan’s knee, and the touch sent a small curl of pleasure into Levan’s well.

“You fell in love with her, didn’t you?” Harrow said plainly, without his usual frills and affectations.

Levan gave a short grunt. “Fool that I am.”

“Tsk. I don’t like to share you.”

Levan cocked a brow. “And yet I share you with countless others.”

“Quite, but I don’t enjoy them like I enjoy you.”

Setting down the honeywine bottle, Harrow let his other hand drift almost idly up the inside of Levan’s thigh.