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“She’s my family,” he mumbled.
“She sold you as a child to finish a war you had nothing to do with,” I snarled, barely able to keep my rage in check. Oh, if it wouldn’t undo everything we were trying to achieve with bringing peace to the continent, I’d march in there and rip the woman’s fucking head off for how she’d dared to treat her son: all those years ago, and just now. “She’s not family.”
I pulled back to look him in the eye, hating how it took him a few seconds to work up the nerve to meet it. “I am. Your friends are. Valeri, Mila, even Viento, the little shit.”
Mat cracked a reluctant smile. “I hope he’s not letting any of the pricks back in Máros ride him.”
“You and I both know he isn’t. And you can’t let a horse beat you in wilfulness, can you? So.Fuck. Her.”
Velichkov drew close to us and wrapped a broad arm across his little brother’s shoulders.
“Hands to yourself, Aratorre,” he said wearily, rolling his eyes, and I blinked innocently up at him. How he’d felt my arm creep around his back with the thick layers of furs he was wearing, I didn’t know, but I hadn’t done it to cop a feel. I’d done it to more securely squish Mathias between us, making sure he was kept warm and loved, and the small, happy smile on my boy’s face said maybe it was working. Mat kissed our cheeks, one after the other, rising up on his toes to reach his brother.
“You’re right. I have you both.”
We stood there in silence for a long moment, our backs blocking out the wind and forming a quiet, private space between our bowed heads.
And then I made a comment about how, if that was Mathias proposing to have a threesome with the surly northern heir in our huddle, I would have to regrettably, unfortunately,immediatelyaccept.
Velichkov snarled curses at me and we descended into mindless bickering, but all I could see was Mat closing his eyes, that content little smile only growing wider.
*
Chapter Thirty-One
The next morning, after checking Dima was being cared for, I found myself pulling up short at the sight of a familiar Temarian waiting for me outside Doc’s surgery and accompanied by his own Mazekhstani escort.
“Parvan,” I said, surprised. The last I’d seen of the royal guard was him bleeding out on the tournament grounds after taking a blade to the gut for me. While I’d ordered him healed and Mila had later confirmed his survival when I’d asked, Valeri had made it clear that the man was no longer welcome in his retinue and hadn’t brought him with us to Máros. “I thought my mother had already returned home?”
“Her Majesty left just before dawn,” Parvan confirmed and sank into a deep bow. “Although I have resigned from her service.”
“Oh. That’s…good for you,” I said awkwardly, trying to inch past him to get to the stairs.
“My prince.”
He lowered himself further until one of his knees rested on the hard floor, and I faltered. The man may have saved my life, but he’d also made no secret of how he considered my sexual preferences to be contrary to God’s wishes. In fact, I was fairly sure one of the last things he’d said to me was that he still believed I deserved to be flogged for it, and there certainly hadn’t been any damnbowing.
“I should not have judged you, Your Highness,” Parvan muttered into his beard, his eyes cast down in respect.
I cleared my throat. “Whatever this is, I can’t do it with you on the floor. Please get up.”
He rose smoothly, his hand sliding automatically to his hip where a sword would have been, had he still been on active service and not alone in a foreign castle. His fingers flexed, searching for a hilt that wasn’t there, before he forced his hand down to his side.
“My niece,” Parvan began, an adoring smile stretched across his lined face. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him wear an expression that wasn’t professional neutrality, other than the disgust he’d sent my way after I’d outed myself. “Fifteen years old, never shuts up, and certainly knows her own mind, much to her parents’ displeasure. She asked me rather excitedly when the army returned to Delzerce whether I’d had the privilege of guarding Prince Nathanael.”
I shifted my weight between my feet.
“I…I’m afraid I said something about you that she did not like,” he continued, glancing down as if ashamed, “and then she told me...she told me I should have been proud to stand at your side when you did what you did. That you were brave.That she’d never dared speak of it before, but she feels things for menandwomen, and those who identify as both or neither.”
Parvan dropped back down to the floor, and I growled in exasperation because that was easier than processing what he’d just said.
“I cannot apologise enough for my behaviour,” he said frantically to my boots. “I’ve always trusted God to see me through, but if He would ask me to condemn my niece… That girl is an angel, not a single evil bone in her Blessed body, and if that is her truth, then…maybe yours is also something I should have listened to.”
I let him speak, sensing he needed this confession. And maybe I needed a moment too, because to hear that what I’d done had inspired someone else’s courage was…hard to comprehend, but also so fucking amazing.
“It’s taken me a while, but it made me realise the world is bigger than I’d thought,” murmured Parvan, “and that I have been terribly short-sighted. I won’t ask for your forgiveness, Your Highness, but I will try to earn it.”
“You stopped Andonov from killing me,” I pointed out. “I think that’s enough to-”
