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Mat uncurled from where he’d been draped over me like a blanket, getting to his feet rather unsteadily. He groaned as he did so, stretching out his neck and shoulders.
“Did I say you could move?” I asked.
“You’ve kept me in that position for the last hour.” His tone was dangerously close to an accusation.
“Because I was cold. Really, Mathias, it’s like you only think about yourself.”
He snorted and nudged my elbow with his knee as he squeezed past, edging through the narrow space between the moth-eaten cot I was lying on and the hut wall, which looked like it was one good sneeze away from collapsing. Or even a moderate, half-stifled sneeze, really. It was a dwelling unworthy of the name, only useful for the rain it mostly kept off our heads, and even then it had been hard work to convince Jiron to let us seek shelter in it for the night. He’d only ceded when he realised how remote and abandoned the place really was, at which point – and for the exact same reasons – I’d been more than willing to find a ditch somewhere for the greater comfort it could surely provide.
“I need to piss.”
“Alone?” I sniffed, feigning horror.
Mat leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I’ll just be a minute.”
I nodded frantically, hyperventilating. “Our love is strong enough to endure such separation, I’m sure of it. It has to be!” I wailed for extra drama as he slipped through the crooked door that did nothing to keep the heat inside or the weather out, although the heartache wasn’t entirely feigned. I missed his presence already, and as humiliating as being chained up had been, it had certainly fulfilled my wish to always keep him within a few feet of me.
I caught Jiron mouthing the wordloveat his feet where he sat hunched in the corner, an expression almost like a grin on his face.
I snuggled down into the cot, trying to ignore the smell of rot and the pain in my shoulder, and eyed him suspiciously. “Something to say?”
“Watching the two of you together...” he began, but it wasn’t lust that clouded his gaze. He dropped his chin. “He makes you happy. More human, my prince,” he added wryly.
As well as Jiron and I knew each other, despite the many times he’d had to pull me from the depths of my panic attacks, I’d never let my guard see the most hidden parts of me. What I’d faced at the hands of Moreno and the orders of my father, and the fear of failing my people. But Mathias could pull all that to the surface with a single smile or his hand in mine.
“I am happy,” I said. It was easy to ignore everything shitty happening in my life, starting with this horrible little hut we were confined in until morning, when my lover’s infectiously intoxicating presence drowned the rest of it out.
Jiron laughed at that. “Little Renato, content and committed. I never thought I’d see it.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” I admonished, fully aware of the hypocrisy and knowing he wouldn’t call me on it.
The man raised an eyebrow. “You don’t remember the day after your fourteenth birthday, when you asked me to beat Lord de Leon’s son’s face in because he’d made you angry?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Vaguely. What had he done?”
“Told you he loved you.”
I blew out a disgusted breath. “Oh, yes.” And then I brightened. “But you did it. You smacked around some kid for daring to express such sickening, affectionate sentiment to me.”
“Of course I did,” Jiron said. “It wasyouasking.”
“I also remember you convincing me to send Starling to him only an hour later.”
“He was fifteen, Your Highness.”
“Hmm.”
“And then there was that month you spent avoiding the kitchen girl who’d said the same thing to you. You insisted we take the long way around to the throne room in case you ran into her in the corridors, and you refused to go near the dining halls at all.”
I waved a hand. “All of this happened when I was a child.”
Jiron’s lips twitched. “What about six months ago, barely weeks before Mathias arrived, when Lady Hierro flung herself at you and declared in front of half the court that she’dpositively dieif you didn’t return her affections?”
“Well, I’d say Lady Hierro is a fucking liar, because she’s still very much alive in...wherever she is.”
“The Quarehian peninsula, where you exiled her, my prince.”
“‘Exiled’ is a little strong, Jiron,” I said. “I merely suggested that she take a journey as far fromla Cortinaas possible because I never wanted to see her again. I slept with her twice before she started talking aboutlove, for fuck’s sake.”
