AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Kadou couldn’t focus enough to listen to the conversations, and they were all carried out in whispers anyway. It was too dark for him to make out faces clearly from across the room. At length, he was heaved to his feet again. “He’ll take your room? And Her—Her Majesty will have mine?” an unfamiliar woman’s voice asked.
“Yes, Mama,” Evemer said.
“Thank you for your hospitality, ma’am,” Kadou wheezed, his ribs aching again. He wished Evemer would shift his grip, or at least carry him on the other side, to even out the ache. “Honored.”
She must have said something in response, but Evemer was dragging him up the stairs with Melek close behind.
Melek helped wrestle Kadou out of his shoes and kaftan, and Evemer rolled him onto a narrow bed. The two of them had a brief, whispered argument, and then Melek left. Evemer covered Kadou with a blanket. It was warm and smelled of clean linen and lavender. The pillows were hard—stuffed with rags rather than down, as Kadou’s were. The mattress was a straw tick, but comfortable enough.
“Goodnight, Highness,” Evemer said.
Was Evemer about to abandon him? All alone? Was he going to put out the candle? Kadou seized his sleeve. He was beginning to feel the shivering fear come over him. “Don’t leave me.”
“You won’t be alone.”
“Stay.”
“I’ll send Tadek—”
“You.Stay.” Tadek was already injured—if they were attacked again, he shouldn’t be in harm’s way a second time. He might not survive it. And Evemer . . . Evemerwassafety. He wriggled aside on the narrow bed, all the way against the wall, making as much room as he could. “Please,” he said, his voice small. “Please don’t go.”
Evemer unclipped the sword from his belt and sat beside him, back against the headboard and the sword laid across his knees. “Sleep, Highness. I will keep watch. There are others on watch below, and more patrolling the neighborhood. You are safe.”
Kadou squeezed his eyes closed. Tentatively, he pressed his face against Evemer’s side. A moment later, one of Evemer’s arms draped loosely over his shoulders, gathering him in a little closer.
At dawn, Evemer woke still propped up against the head-board and with a horrific crick in his neck, just as the door of his room swung open and Tadek peeked in. Oh, of all the awkward situations he didn’t want to deal with immediately upon waking up. Evemer froze, studying him, but Tadek did not seem to be particularly upset about catching his lover sleeping in a bed next to someone else. Evemer supposed it was obviously innocuous—the sword across his knees, for one thing. He relaxed again. This didn’t look like anything but exactly what it was: He was guarding his lord as he slept.
As for His Highness, he was still clinging like a limpet to Evemer’s sleeve. Tadek came into the room, shut the door behind him. He had Mama’s favorite teapot, gently steaming, and a cup, which he set on the small desk under the window.
Silently, but with eloquent inquisitiveness, he gestured at the tea, then to Evemer.
Evemer stared at him suspiciously for another moment but relented and nodded. Tadek filled the cup for him and handed it over delicately, eyeing the sword across Evemer’s knees with a raised eyebrow.
Evemer couldn’t do much about it with Kadou occupying one arm and a cup of hot tea in the other. He clenched his jaw and made a dismissive jerk with his head. Tadek nodded, took the sword—carefully, quietly, so it wouldn’t jingle and wake His Highness—and set it on the floor by the bed.
Then the presumptuous brat, moving stiffly and wincing, sat down on the floor, put one elbow on the mattress, and propped up his chin with that hand. When Evemer only gazed incredulously at him, Tadek made ago-aheadgesture, and Evemer had no choice but to sip his tea and endure.
This was unbearably awkward. Did Tadek expect him to leave? How could he leave without waking Kadou?
Tadek glanced at His Highness again, and mouthed . . . something. Some words.
What?Evemer mouthed back.
Is. He. All. Right?Tadek mouthed again, more exaggerated.
Oh. Evemer peered down at His Highness, shrugged, and nodded. He was breathing easy, and other than a few twitches and soft noises in the night that had woken Evemer with a jolt every time, Kadou slept quietly. No nightmares, no ill effects of that drug.Are you?Evemer replied.
Tadek shrugged and shifted onto his knees, pulling up one side of the fresh, unbloodied kaftan. Evemer thought he recognized it as one of his own, discarded when he was twenty or so for being too narrow in the shoulders to fit him anymore. His mother must have given it to Tadek.
Tadek ruched up the side, displaying a bulky pad of bandages, then grimaced and held up two fingers about two or three inches apart, grimacing. “Ugly,” he whispered, barely louder than a breath. “Got lucky. Any deeper and I’d be dead.” He dropped the fabric and shifted again to sit comfortably.
Evemer sobered. That would have destroyed Kadou. Even the thought of it might. “Don’t tell him,” he whispered.
“Obviously.” Tadek looked at Kadou again with a sad sort of fondness.
Evemer drank his tea. It was licorice root, tasting of the earthy scent of rain after a drought when it first hit his tongue, and blooming into a fabulous, silky sweetness in the back of his mouth. It was his favorite—Mama always kept a jar of it for him.
In a whisper, Tadek asked, “I want your opinion. Will you tell me if I’m mad?”
