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Amelia sighed. “Do you think it’s a problem? I mean: do you think they’ll be distracted? Less careful in the field?”

“There’s no way to tell now. But the Northern tribes – the nomadic clans, you know, the ancestors of the current royals of Aeretoll – had a habit of bedding down with one another. The men, I mean. Long winters, harsh conditions, the women all dead in childbirth and the clans too busy warring with one another to intermarry. It was the Úlfheðnar, especially.”

“Úlfheðnar?” She thought of Oliver’s letter, of his cautions about Leif…and the cousin who’d turned him.

“Yes, the wolf-shirts,” Leda continued, heedless of the sudden knocking of her pulse. “My late husband was a book collector, you know, quite interested in the cultures and customs of our neighbors to the north. According to his reading, the wolf-shirts would lie down in pairs, man and man, to keep one another warm in the long winters, and to find a bit of ease, too, for the terminal condition known as manhood.” She snorted at her own joke and said, “The clan chiefs wound up encouraging the practice. They found that it made the men twice as ferocious in battle: they were protecting their bedfellows – their mates, if you will – and in guarding one another guarded the clan as a whole far more adroitly.”

“Huh.”

“Connor and Reggie’s entanglement could prove a distraction, or an asset. We won’t know until it’s playing out, I suppose.”

“Comforting.”

Leda chuckled, the scholarly tone dropping from her voice, and finally turned to give Amelia a wink. “Which one do you think gets on top?”

Amelia made a scandalized noise. “Ugh. You’re terrible. We shouldn’t speculate.”

Leda grinned.

“Connor,” they said together, and dissolved into girlish giggles.

~*~

“I think Amelia suspects something,” Reggie said that night, in the relative privacy of Connor’s tent. Liam had passed out a few minutes ago, face-planting amidst the building blocks he’d been using to construct his very own kingdom, and Connor had tucked him away behind his screen in the corner.

He walked now to the bedroll where Reggie sat, stripped to his breeches, the scars on his chest gleaming silver in the light of the brazier as he leaned down to offer a cup of wine – “Thanks” – and then settled cross-legged beside Reggie on the pallet, sipping from his own cup. He made a dismissive face. “Amelia’s always far too worried about what everyone else is doing. Being in charge has gone to her head. We behaved no differently today. There was nothing for her to suspect.”

“Hm,” Reggie hummed into his wine. He wasn’t sure he agreed.

That afternoon in the training yard, he’d been startled by an outburst of laughter from the far side of the wall, and seen Amelia and Leda doubled over with it, dabbing at their eyes and struggling to catch their breath. As he’d watched, Amelia had glanced his way, and in the fleeting instant before she turned her head, his blood had run cold, sure that she could see right through him and knew everything. Knew that he wanted Connor to take control; that he begged and begged until there were tears in his eyes, and he couldn’t catch his breath. That Connor kissed over his noose scar and called himsweetheart, anddarling, andlove, andgorgeous.

His cheeks heated thinking of it, and he adjusted the cross of his legs.

Connor noticed the fidgeting, pausing with his cup halfway to his mouth again. “Wait, you’re serious.” He turned a frowning look on him.

“Of course I’m serious. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Connor said, incredulous, “You’re actuallyworriedthat she knows.”

“Aren’tyou?”

“No. Why should I be? Everyone knows I’m, in Lady Leda’s words, ‘randy as a goat.’ Me fucking someone won’t come as a surprise to anyone here, and if it does, sod them.” He took another sip, as though the manner was done and dusted, nothing else to consider.

But Reggie’s own swallow of wine turned metallic in his mouth, and he barely got it down, scar on his throat pinching tight.Fucking someone. The phrasing left him a little sick.

Yes, he’d used that word.Fuck me, Connor. I want you to fuck me. And it had tasted thrilling; left his blood humming, a vulgar, shocking sort of intimacy they’d shared together.

But the way Connor spoke of it now…hearing that he was onlysomeone…sounded so casual, nothing special or earth-shattering about it. He supposed it hadn’t been either of those things for Connor. Reggie had come with his bleeding heart and all his nightmares dripping in his palms, bared himself and let Connor see every ugly inch. And Connor had gone along with it, because he’d fancied a fuck.

Reggie drained his cup, swallowing the wine down with difficulty, and moved to stand, needing more.

Connor caught him by the wrist, and his hand tightened when Reggie tried to twist away. When Reggie looked at his face, he found him frowning.

“Hold on,” Connor said. “What?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“Then why are your teeth gritted? Gods, Reg, you’re upset about this.”