Page 11 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Ivan trusts strength and respects brutality and wants to be admired by men he considers his equals. He is lonely — not in the obvious way, not visibly aching for company, but deeper than that. He is surrounded by subordinates who do not challenge him and has not been challenged himself in years. He wants a sparring partner. He wants someone to drink with who will look him in the eye and not flinch.

Bohdi can be that. Bohdi can be that all day long.

And when the moment comes Bohdi will use every inch of that trust to kill him.

Chapter 5

Morgan

It is the second day in the stronghold, and Morgan is already ready for the whole thing to be finished.

He slept badly. The mattress was fine but the room was unfamiliar and the sounds were wrong. Every creak of timber, every distant footfall, every gust of wind against the narrow windows had jerked him back from the edge of sleep before he could cross it. He'd lain in the dark and stared at the ceiling and listened to the stronghold breathe around him and thought about Valen. He knows the sounds of the Keep by heart, the night watch changes at intervals he can track without thinking, and Eskil's room is just down the corridor.

Here, the walls are thick and the silence between the sounds is vast, and Bohdi is quartered in a different wing entirely. Morgan lay awake in enemy territory and felt, for the first time in his life, genuinely alone.

He rises before dawn, washes his face in the basin, and stands at the narrow window, watching the courtyard lighten by degrees from black to gray.

Bohdi arrives at first light.

He knocks once and lets himself in without waiting for an answer. He is already dressed, armed with his belt knife, his red hair half braided back, and he carries a cloth bundle that turns out to contain a breakfast of pastries and fruit he smuggled from the kitchens.

"Sleep well?" Bohdi asks, dropping the bundle on the table and settling into the chair with loose-limbed ease. He has obviously been awake for hours and considers this a normal way to begin a day.

"Beautifully," Morgan says dryly. "Like a babe in its cradle."

"You look like shit."

"Thank you, Bohdi. Your observations are, as always, a comfort."

They eat, or rather Bohdi eats with appetite and Morgan picks at the pastries and tries to convince his stomach that it is interested in food, which it is not. His stomach is interested in anxiety, which it is producing in abundance, and in the low-grade nausea that accompanies the knowledge that somewhere in this stronghold is a man who wants his brother dead.

Morgan thinks about Ivan's hand on the table yesterday, inches from his own, heavy and blunt-fingered and possessive in its proximity, not touching but almost touching, occupying space that Morgan had not offered and could not reclaim without making a scene. He thinks about the nursemaid comment and the way Ivan's mouth curved when Morgan answered it, and the quality of a smile that says I like that you have teeth, because I'm going to enjoy pulling them out.

He puts the pastry down. His appetite is not coming back.

Bohdi is watching him from across the table with the alert, assessing gaze he wears when he is reading a situation and deciding how much of what he sees needs to be said aloud. Morgan knows the look. He has been on the receiving end of it for years — in council chambers, at feasts, in the corridors of the Keep when Bohdi intercepted him coming back from somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. Each time, Bohdi weighed the merits of reporting it to Eskil against the merits of handling it himself.

"Stop evaluating me," Morgan says. "I can see you doing it."

"Can't help it. You've always been a problem I've needed to be two steps ahead to solve."

"I'm going to take that as a compliment."

"You would."

Morgan almost smiles. The warmth of Bohdi's presence in the room loosens something in Morgan's chest that has been cinched tight since the gates. He is still alone in enemy territory, but the territory feels marginally less enemy with this man sitting at his table, eating his breakfast, insulting him with the casual tenderness that passes for affection between them.

He is reaching for the cheese when the second knock comes.

Morgan goes to the door and opens it.

Ivan's steward stands in the corridor. Morgan was introduced to him the previous evening — Dade, counselor and steward to the chieftain, and a big man by any measure. He is broad across the shoulders and thick through the arms, the physique of a warrior repurposed into administrative service but never softened by it. He is not Ivan's size but he is big enough to fill the doorway comfortably, and the clan markings painted across his cheekbones give his face a severity that his polite expression does not entirely counteract.

Morgan lets him in and Dade crosses the room with a bundle of clothes in his arms.

"A gift from the chieftain," Dade says, with a small bow that moves his whole body forward and makes the room feel smaller. "For the prince."

Morgan looks at the clothes as Dade lays them out on the bed.