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“I need you to stop speaking about yourself this way, Sebastian. There are many who would see you destroyed. You do not need to destroy yourself. I will never turn on you. You do not need to convince me that I will.”
“You will, though. Because of the perversions.”
“The perversions?”
“The proclivities. What my mother used to call them. If you knew, you would probably cut me down yourself.”
Sebastian was being vague quite deliberately. In so-called polite society, one could say such things and make such references and still maintain a level of imagined secrecy. The very powerful really did enjoy their open secrets. There were so many things that could be alluded to, if not outright said. And though everybody knew precisely what they meant, officially these things were still technically unknown.
Lucan sighed inwardly. He could not allow the prince to go on thinking this way. He had to reassure him that he was accepted and cared for in his entirety, not only for the parts of him that were socially acceptable.
Lucan took Sebastian by the chin and lifted the prince’s face so that he was able to look down into Sebastian’s eyes.
“I would never, under any circumstances, do you harm,” he said. “I vow this not because I think you are a perfect creature. I vow this because there is no part of my body that could ever suffer to hurt you.”
Sebastian looked down and away. He thought these were pretty words of obligation, not true vows. It was not enough to tell him that he would be protected. He had always been protected. Too protected, really. Lucan had to tell him more than that. He had to tell him the truth.
“Sebastian,” he said, noting the way Seb’s big blue eyes flicked back to him. “I know what it is in your heart. I know that you are a lover of men.”
Lucan had imagined that he would see relief on Sebastian’s face. He thought the prince would be grateful to be seen and understood and accepted. Lucan was swiftly disabused of those imaginings.
“I am not!” Sebastian pulled away roughly, his eyes filling with immediate tears. “How dare you say such an awful, horrid thing! I should… I should have you whipped for such insolence! If there was anybody left…”
Lucan was a knight, but not the kind of knight who had come to his station through being highborn and well-connected. Perhaps that was the reason he had not been made aware of the coup. He was, in many respects, an outsider. He was not a native of the Kingdom of Force. He had not been raised to understand all the finer political nuances of courtly behavior. As such, he was not well equipped to handle a prince who had never known anything besides the petty cruelties of snide comments and hushed yet cutting words.
So he resorted once more to the only tactic he knew. He was honest.
“It doesn’t matter to me if you are gay, Sebastian. I am a lover of men myself.”
“What!” Sebastian looked at him in shock, as if hearing those words was almost impossible to process. “You! A lover of men!? But you are strong!”
Sebastian truly had no idea that his own father, widely regarded as the strongest man in the kingdom, had likewise loved men. That little open secret had been kept from the prince on pain of literal death. Sebastian had been led to believe he was the only man in the castle, nay, the entirety of the kingdom, perhaps all the kingdoms, who had ever looked at another man with lust. He thought he was an anomaly, a freak. He thought he was unforgivably twisted and wrong. No matter how beautiful he was on the outside, he imagined he harbored a sickeningly ugly soul.
The shelter could not wait, but it would have to for a short while. This had been going on for years, and Lucan could not allow it to go on one minute longer.
“Listen to me,” Lucan said, taking hold of Sebastian by his shoulders. He did not want the prince to miss a word of what he was about to say. Not a single syllable could be missed. If Sebastian ignored or misheard everything Lucan said from now until the end of time, it would be alright as long as he heard this.
“There is nothing wrong with loving who you love. There is nothing wrong with being attracted to other men. You were made this way, born into this body, and this mine. You could no more choose your feelings for men than you could have chosen your height. It is part of you, and it is as beautiful as any other part of you.”
Sebastian burst into tears all over again. This time they were not a little trickle of sadness. It was a torrent of relief and pain and so many other emotions besides. Lucan drew the prince into a tight embrace and held him close.
