Page 13 of A King’s Trust (Heart-Mage Trilogy #1)

13

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN

H ours of riding an unfamiliar horse were hard on Beau and grew harder as Elias lost consciousness and collapsed against him. Beau kept El’s arms wrapped around his waist so he didn’t slide off, maintaining balance for both of them. His core muscles ached.

His thoughts were disjointed on the ride toward the cries of gulls and briny ocean air, eyes searching the horizon for the shadow of Leaurepit. Three separate nightmares had happened in that clearing in the woods, and he wasn’t sure what to make of any of them.

First, the duchess and his guards had betrayed him, but that was the easiest to understand. They’d believed him a murderer and they’d behaved accordingly.

Second, they’d been attacked by Gerard, who was certainly not a footman, but Beau had no idea what he was . Why travel with them? Why choose that moment to strike? Why did he have the same sort of dart that had killed Char, and why use it on Elias instead of Beau?

Which led him to the third nightmare: Elias had not just lied about not knowing Gerard, he’d been willing to die lying about not knowing Gerard. Whatever that not-a-footman bastard was, they both were. And that was the hardest thing to understand.

Beau held onto Elias’s arms around him, careful of the broken hand, felt the silken slide of Elias’s hair against his neck as the guard slumped semi-conscious against him, and tried to find the limits of his trust for his First. How many secrets and lies could he put up with for the best guard who ever lived? For his only friend? For his…his…for Elias?

As dawn broke, Pormort crested a rise and Beau soaked in the sight of his beautiful isles with warm relief, longing so strong in his chest he could barely breathe. They rode through the village that had grown up around the ferry, and Beau found the ferryman, bleary-eyed and yawning, to make arrangements. He closed his eyes and inhaled the salt spray as they were ferried onto Leaurepit.

The knots in Beau’s shoulders loosened as he set foot on island soil, and he felt Elias stir, groaning. The wind only whistled that particular way through the eaves of Leau’s houses and the rigging of her ships. It carried the teasing lemon-sweet scent of Mistress Danica’s winter honeysuckle, which she coaxed into flowering regardless of weather like a green witch.

Leau was just waking, so few people noticed two riders on a lone horse making their way through the winding streets to The Powdered Hops, Ma Corlia’s inn and Beau’s home for nearly eight years. He could hear Ma singing to her pastries as Po got close.

“Ma,” Beau called hoarsely. “Ma! I need Hugo and Viv!”

Mistress Corlia’s warm, round face appeared in the open kitchen window, and she gasped. “Oh! Oh ! Is that my boy? Is that my boy!” She darted past the second window and then out the common room, barreling through the inn’s front doors. “My Lamb! My boy! What’s—”

She pulled up short, delight fading as she realized he and Elias shared an unsaddled horse and Elias was very, very unwell. “Oh gods, what’s happened to Ellie? Viv! Viv !” Bellowing loudly enough for half the island to hear, she called for Leau’s healer. “Hugo, come here! Ellie’s hurt. Help me get him down.”

With the stableman’s help, Beau and Ma were able to get Elias off Pormort’s back without injuring him further. Elias tried to wake and fight when so many hands grabbed him, but the dreamroot, the paralytic, the antidote, and the sihhafleur stacked on top of his exhaustion to make him clumsy and semiconscious at best. Beau kept tight hold of his forearm to ensure he wouldn’t hit his hand.

Vivienne emerged from her workshop across the way, stomping on an untied boot. Her other leg ended not in a flesh-and-blood foot but a cleverly hinged length of wood that she always left bare, pant leg tied up to show the detailed carvings in it. The leather bag slung over her shoulder was so heavy it made her lean wildly the other way to counterbalance.

“You said it’s Ellie that’s hurt?” She nodded an acknowledgement of Beau and peered into Elias’s face where he hung in Beau’s and Hugo’s arms. “You would vanish for months and come back with broken pieces, you big lump,” she said affectionately, though El wasn’t awake enough to hear it. “Bring him inside, let’s lay him down in his and Lamb’s room.”

They carried El through the achingly familiar inn to the room he and Beau had shared for years, and the prince was surprised to find it exactly as he’d left it, untouched. “You didn’t rent it out?” Beau asked Ma as he hefted El in. “It’s been vacant all these months? You didn’t need to do that. Don’t hurt the Hops on my account.”

She gave him a stormy warning look that meant he wasn’t to offer her a single cent. “My inn and I do just fine without me turning over yours and Ellie’s room. Help me get his boots off, Lamb. No boots on my clean sheets.”

Beau fretted helplessly as Viv looked Elias over, poking and prodding until he opened his eyes with enough cognizance to say, “Hey, Viv.” Viv looked the same as she had when they’d left nearly a year ago except that she’d shaved the sides of her grey-streaked hair, leaving only the braid she always wore on top. An eccentric woman in her forties, her bedside manner left much to be desired, but she had a talent for keeping folks whole and hale.

She gently but efficiently ran her fingers along El’s arm and hand, searching for the broken pieces. The process looked brutally painful. When she loosened the straps of his vambrace and tried to slide the splinted leather over his wrist, the guttural, half-gasped sound El made burrowed into Beau’s gut. “Why’d you keep this on, you damn fool?” Viv muttered. “Have to cut the straps.”

She grunted in annoyance, grabbed two flasks from her bag, and hefted Elias’s shoulders up until he sat reclined against her arm. She poured one into his mouth, and he choked and spluttered before swallowing. When she let him take a breath, she watched the rise and fall of his chest with focused eyes, then popped the other flask in and poured that down his throat too.

“What are you—” Beau began, but Viv cut him off.

“He eat dreamroot straight? You mix it in his salad as a prank or something?”

“No,” Beau said, “not a prank. Someone dosed us both and tried to kill us on the road.”

She gave Beau a quick once-over. “I’d tell you to lay off the stuff, but if you’re reacting this lightly to a dose that did this to him, you’re in way too deep. Quitting would kill ya.”

“He was poisoned with more than dreamroot.” Beau laid out the relevant details of what happened to Elias, leaving out explanations for things he didn’t understand, and Viv’s face grew stormier by the word. Behind him, Ma was on the edge of combusting.

All Mistress Corlia said, though, was, “Thank the Twelve you had the sense to come straight home.” She pulled Beau into a powerful hug, crushing him affectionately. He wrapped her up tightly, breathing in her warm-bread-baking-and-stew-on-the-fire scent.

“I missed you, Ma. Been too long away.” He relaxed into the soft strength of her.

“Sit down; you’re dead on your feet. You ride all night?”

Beau nodded and let her guide him to El’s cot and sit him down. Her hands stayed on him. He’d always liked Ma Corlia’s hands. Her plump forearms narrowed into delicate wrists and small, graceful hands perfectly attuned to cooking and comforting, hospitality and haggling and hauling recalcitrant boys over the coals.

“When El’s well enough to travel, we may need to catch a ship,” Beau said. He felt dazed by the horrors of the previous day, the long empty anxiety of the ride, the sudden warmth of being home. “I don’t…really know. I’m not sure what to expect. But we’re not safe.”

Ma’s round face and grey eyes were ferocious beneath her steel-grey hair. “You’re safe enough to get some rest and a few good meals in you. Won’t nobody touch you or Ellie on my island.” She kissed his hair and pulled him into another hug, hurting him with how tightly she held him. “There’ll be a ship out overmorrow or the day after if you need it, but you rest up in the meantime, Lamb, hear me? We’ll look after you, so don’t you worry your head for a tick.”

“Thank you, Ma,” Beau said. He choked up, grief and homesickness and the relief from hours and hours of fear sneaking up on him all at once.

“He’s good as I can make him tonight,” Viv said abruptly, standing with a thump of her wooden foot. “I’ll plaster his hand when he’s up and about. For now, he needs sleep.”

Ma and Viv swept out with exhortations that they rest and reassurances that they wouldn’t be bothered, and Beau wearily dropped his boots next to El’s. He tucked the blankets in around Elias, who slept fitfully in Beau’s bed, and claimed El’s cot for himself.

As soon as he closed his eyes, he heard El muttering. “High…Highness? Highness?” The guard shifted, eyes closed but hands searching. When he found nothing but sheets, El tried to sit up, half awake and visibly disoriented. “High…where are…”

Beau stood and set a hand on El’s shoulder, which calmed his First immediately. “Shh, go to sleep. I’m fine. I’m right here. Rest.”

El collapsed back on the bed like his muscles had been disconnected from the rest of him, solidly asleep.

Beau straightened the blanket over him again, sat down on the cot, made to lay down, and heard Elias start to mutter anew.

They repeated the cycle twice more before Beau said in laughing frustration, “El, for fuck’s sake, I’m fine !” He sighed. “We’ll share, if it’ll make you actually sleep.”

He climbed into his bed from the foot, crawling up the space between El and the wall so he wouldn’t have to shove his First out of the way. Fully dressed, he wasn’t particularly comfortable, but he already dreaded what El would say when he woke to find himself sharing a bed with the prince, and Beau didn’t want to add any amount of nudity to that.

He slid under the blanket, sank into the familiar softness of the mattress, and tried not to think about the way his shoulder touched El’s back or the million answers he wanted to demand from the man or the many, many times he’d imagined sharing this bed with Elias and how few of those fantasies had included actual sleep.

The guard shifted, rolled, readjusted. He turned over to face Beau, grumbling in his sleep. Planting his unbroken hand squarely in the middle of Beau’s chest, he tucked his chin against the top of Beau’s shoulder and breathed warm, ticklish breath against the prince’s neck.

Beau froze.

He’s going to kill me. When he wakes up and finds me sleeping like this with him, he’ll stab me. I need to go back to the cot. He can be restless.

Elias’s fingers tightened and loosened on Beau’s chest spasmodically as he slept, eyes darting rapidly under his eyelids. When Beau tried to shift out from under his grip and slip free of the bed, the guard pressed closer and sighed out a word: “Beau…”

The prince went still again.

My name. He said my name. Not Highness—Beau.

The fingers against his chest twitched, and Beau gently reached up to lay his palm atop them, pressing them down flat. Stop touching him. Don’t move , his mind scolded firmly enough to keep him from craning his neck far enough to breathe against those full lips, parted in sleep, just enough to press his own—

Abruptly, Beau became aware of the pool of emotions in the back of his head. He’d been ignoring it alongside all his own emotions since he climbed on Pormort’s back, and the sudden recognition of pomegranate curiosity tempered with the cheap-wine taste of uncertain concern flooded Beau with a shock of embarrassment. He was airing his panic to the duchess. Oh gods .

If he moved enough to pull his ring off, he’d wake Elias, or at the very least upset this delicious, terrifying equilibrium. But if he spent another second blasting Lady Penamour with how much he wanted the man next to him he’d die of humiliation.

There was a brief flash of contrition, and then Beau dropped into the cold emptiness of his own stale thoughts. The duchess had taken her ring off. And the prince was stunned by how vacant and unpleasant his head felt without the pool.

Maybe it was selfish. Maybe it was inappropriate. Maybe he should’ve followed his first instinct and gotten out of bed. But under El’s hand, straining to hear his name again, Beau slept.

He woke too warm, lying on his side. It took a moment to orient, to understand why he felt so safe. It wasn’t the dying sunlight outside the window over his bed or the comfortable chatter of an inn common room on the other side of his wall.

It was the arm wrapped around him, pulling him tight against Elias, the forehead pressed to the back of his neck, the way his guard was tangled up with him and exhaling in perfect sync with Beau.

Fuck it, I abdicate , Beau thought. Whatever it took to stay right here, no changes, no moving. No isle folk on the other side of the wall growing more impatient to see him by the minute; no traitors in the woods somewhere south of him withholding their complex, confusing, wonderful emotions; no secrets threatening this bubble of peace and comfort.

Beau tried to remind himself of the secrets and the lies, the ways he shouldn’t trust Elias, but the tip of Elias’s nose traced the nape of his neck lightly, and he exhaled too sharply and forgot everything but wanting and trusting and wanting and depending on and wanting . El shifted, sighed. His hand clutched Beau tighter, and his last two fingers curled under the edge of Beau’s shirt, sending electric sparks through him where they touched bare skin.

Don’t wake up, don’t wake up, please don’t wake up, I want to stay here forever—

“’Bout time for you to get on up, Lamb, and have something to eat,” Ma said, rapping sharply on the door. “You slept a whole day away! I made your favorites, and half-a Leau’s here to see you.”

Beau went entirely still, waiting for Elias to wake, to realize, to question. But El didn’t jerk or startle. He smoothed Beau’s shirt back down and rolled easily out of bed, stretching his neck side to side with his back to Beau. The prince watched the sliver of his face he could see as Elias examined the splint immobilizing his hand.

“Good morning—or, evening, rather,” El rumbled, voice pure gravel. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Beau sat up, swiping his waves out of his eyes. “For…”

“For failing? For lying? For—” Elias turned at last, and the terrified contrition on his face made Beau’s stomach flip uncomfortably. “—stealing your pillow, apparently?”

Beau gave him a half smile, an invitation to laugh about this. “I didn’t mind the pillow so much. You don’t drool.”

El didn’t laugh. The bruised lividity of his eye sockets had abated, but lines of worry and dread were drawn around his pretty, pretty hazel eyes. “Highness, I know you must have a lot of questions, but—”

“Oh, don’t quit calling me by my name now ,” Beau said, dropping his eyes to the blanket and picking at the quilting so he wouldn’t have to deal with the desperation on El’s face.

“What?” When Beau risked a glance up, Elias was baffled.

“Nothing.” He swallowed his disappointment. “Never mind.” Beau stood, padding around barefoot to see what clothes they’d left behind when they left for the capital. He dug up a plain white shirt he’d deemed unsuitable for the capital because his tattoos showed through and trousers of rough fabric meant for labor, not court, and quickly changed. “You’ll need to see Viv about your hand today. She needs to plaster it up.”

“Highness, you’re avoiding being angry with me.”

“I’m not avoiding it. I’m just not angry with you,” Beau said, shrugging as he buttoned.

“ Highness , I—”

“Don’t have a say in whether I’m angry with you or not.” He didn’t turn to his guard, though he knew that’s what Elias was looking for when he repeatedly interjected with ‘Highness.’ He hated the dread on El’s face.

“For fuck’s sake, Highness, I almost got you killed. You’re—”

“Alive because you broke your hand and got your ass poisoned getting me right back out of trouble again.”

“ Beau .” El grabbed him, turned him around by force, and Beau’s thoughts stuttered and jumped. “Ask your fucking questions. I can’t live with them hanging over my head, waiting to find out you’ve stopped trusting me. Just—just— say it, please.”

His hand burned against Beau’s shoulder; the pad of his thumb pressed to the muscle of Beau’s neck. He was so close and Beau’s entire mind had evacuated his skull. “I trust you. That hasn’t changed. I trust you.”

Elias’s expression broke, and something bubbled up from beneath, too intense to be witnessed. Beau shut his eyes. “But you want questions? Fine. Gerard is some sort of trained assassin, I assume. You knew him. He called you ‘Lexi.’ Should I…be calling you something besides Elias?”

“ No .” El’s voice was ferocious, too intense. “Elias is my name.”

Beau nodded without opening his eyes. “I’m guessing you trained together before you met me. You left. You became my guard, the best who ever lived. And I—” He hesitated, stomach churning, vertigo shaking him. He made a decision. “I don’t need to know any more. I’ve never made your life before we met my business, and I’m not going to start now. If you hadn’t been whatever you are, Gerard would’ve killed me. None of the other guards came close to matching him. So I’ll be grateful and I’ll trust you and that’s the end of it.”

And I’ll die someday still wishing I’d been allowed to touch you.

At least Elias could touch him. And did. Often.

Hmm . Elias did touch him…often. All the time, really. Shoulders and arms and neck and back and chest, and no one else touched him that much or in half so many places. Even Maisie kept her hands to herself more often, although that wasn’t a fair comparison because Maisie was a lover and Elias was a guard. A friend. An enigma wearing secrets like a shroud. A beautiful, beautiful man. Untouchable. Off-limits. Calling him Beau exactly like a guard didn’t.

Beau took a step back, then another, letting Elias’s hand fall off him, and opened his eyes once they were a safe distance apart. “ Can you tell me what Gerard is?”

“No,” Elias said hoarsely.

“Figured as much. Can you tell me what he meant when he said, ‘this is your warning to stay clear’ once you were paralyzed?”

“No.”

Beau puffed his cheeks up with air, then blew them out noisily. “Okay. Can you tell me why you protected Lady Penamour last night after she’d already betrayed us?” Elias looked cagey, so Beau pressed, “You kicked her flat so she wouldn’t eat a knife, El, I saw it.”

Elias nodded slowly. “Because you’re completely in love with her, and now that she knows you’re not a killer, she’s at least halfway in love with you, too. For you to be king, you need a queen; she’s it.”

Am I completely in love with her? He wasn’t good at identifying such things in himself, but it would explain why he felt this incessant need to throw himself at her walls of hostility and make her understand he wasn’t what she thought.

Right , Beau thought. “Right,” he said. Right , the joined voices of his parents and every noble and the weight of his line of royal blood said. I’m going to be king. Which means I need a queen. Not…

Beau’s eyes traced the sharp edge of Elias’s jaw and he thought of that letter he’d left with Theo. “If something happened to me,” he said abruptly, and El’s eyes sharpened, hazel going dark, “and I wasn’t able to be king for whatever reason, who do you think would claim it?”

Elias stared at him for a long time, seeing more than Beau liked. At length, he said, “Courdur. Almost certainly.”

“Courdur?” Beau scowled. “Why him ? He’s an idiot.”

“He is not an idiot. He’s an asshole,” Elias corrected. “A very rich, very well-connected asshole who controls the border the other nobles are nervous about.”

“ I control half that border as Duke of Verdmont.”

“Yes, and if ‘something happens’ to you, who will claim Verdmont? He already has soldiers nearby on your orders. And who’d fight him for it? He’s well connected with almost every other major house—including your duchess’s. The only person who truly stands in opposition to him is Macabrie, and you pissed Macabrie off by snubbing his daughter. Which is why his wife tried to have your duchess killed, by the way, since she’d stolen your attention.”

Elias delivered this with a matter-of-fact certainty with which he never commented on politics. El was a master of delivering snide comments, pestering jokes, and leading questions, and Beau realized all at once how often El knew the answer long before he did.

“You weren’t trained just to fight,” Beau said, combing El’s face with his eyes, looking for unfamiliar things.

Elias’s lips pulled tight, flat, and then he shook his head. “No.”

Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?

“Can I trust you, Elias?” he asked quietly.

“To protect you? Yes. To put you on the throne? Yes . To make your life as happy as I can possibly make it? Yes. To tell you the truth?” He gritted his teeth. “As often as I’m able. As often as it doesn’t endanger you or your throne or your happiness.”

“Okay, forget my happiness for a second,” Beau said, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “Answer honestly. Please. Courdur’s a good politician; he’s built a network of people in Granvallée and in Paibona who answer to him, who listen to him; my father’s trusted him for years; he knows the ins and outs of how to be properly noble—” Beau chewed on his lower lip for a second, then blurted out, “Would he be a better king than me?”

Elias was silent.

Beau sighed explosively, letting it drift into a laugh, and shook his head, staring fixedly at the floor. “Yeah, I guess when I say it all out loud like that, of course he would. Stupid. And I’ve galvanized the nobles against me as a common enemy, so he wouldn’t even need a civil war. It might even be less conflict than me ascending. So I should…I should name him and abdicate. Get on the ship. It’s the least damaging way, the best for the most people.”

Oh gods , Beau thought, realization making him feel ill. I don’t want to abdicate. I don’t want to see my kingdom led by Courdur, who doesn’t care about any of the people in his duchy at all unless they have a title next to their name. I want to do a better job than he would. But…I’m not capable. I just want to.

I want to be king, but only if I could be a good one. And I can’t.

Elias grabbed Beau’s jaw, tilted his face up, glared down at him. He leaned down until they were eye to eye. “You’re rushing to answer for me, and you’re getting it wrong. I was trying to figure out how to say this so you’d believe me, despite everything.”

Beau stared up at him silently, waiting for the blow to fall. El licked his lips and said, “You are the most compassionate, brilliant, hard-working, thoughtful, impulsive, easily distracted, hungry man I’ve ever met. You are magic , Highness. No one thinks like you do. You’re something different. Courdur is better than you at the performance of being a noble. You are a better man and a better leader. And you deserve the crown . You deserve it. You don’t have to earn it. It’s yours and you’ll do great things with it. Fuck Courdur. Fuck your parents and anyone else who thinks you’re not the best man for it.”

Beau floundered for a way to respond to that , to a belief in him that he couldn’t possibly merit. At length, he laughed and said in a thick voice, “Were you also trained to recognize good kings?”

“Yes,” Elias said with a shrug and a grin. “I was, actually.”

The soft slam of Ma’s fist on the door rattled it again. “Lamb, bring Ellie out here. Viv’s here to see to his hand and both of you need to eat before you keel over.”

El’s grin softened into a fond smile. To Beau, he said, “In the morning, we’ll scrape together enough of a guard to get you back to the palace in one piece. I don’t fancy protecting you alone with my hand broken. But tonight, enjoy yourself a little.” He pulled the door open, said, “Hi, Ma,” wrapped her up in a one-armed hug, and planted a kiss on her temple.

The soft, grey-haired woman beamed until her eyes disappeared in her smile lines as she squeezed El’s arm affectionately in both hands. “Ellie, love, you’ve been looking after our boy right enough, but not yourself, eh? What’d you do?”

“Don’t give him a hard time about saving my life or he might not do it next time,” Beau said, ushering Mistress Corlia out of their doorway toward the common room.

As Beau appeared, a cry rose up from the sun-beaten faces and chapped smiles of many friends. They pounced on him to hug and ruffle his hair and pluck at his clothing and kiss his cheeks, and Beau felt both a deep sense of peace and a growing, living buzz in his veins, like being gradually filled with bees in a bizarrely pleasurable way. He felt right in ways he never did in the palace. He felt fully alive. To be loved by so many people he cared about made him feel immortal and thirty feet tall and strangely powerful.

Vivienne claimed Elias, dragging him to a table in the corner where her massive bag already lay open, and Beau was snagged by a dozen other people, each with scores of questions for him and their own news to report.

“Took you long enough to find your way back, Barfly,” Malachi, a leatherworker and frequent drinking companion of Beau’s said as he wiped his hands on the handkerchief stuffed through his belt before giving Beau a fierce, back-clapping hug.

“How’ve you been, Mallet? Did Jojo take pity on you yet and drag you to the well?”

“Aye, she did,” he said, holding up his ringed left hand with a smile that glowed with pride. “And more news yet—we’ll be three in a coupla months.”

“Pregnant? Congratulations!” Beau grinned at the man. Malachi was normally less expressive than stone, so for the man to be smiling ear-to-ear that way, his joy must have been damn near irrepressible. “Where’s Jojo? I need to congratulate her—and commiserate about her marriage to the grumpiest sot the isles ever made.”

“Ah ha,” Malachi said, laughing as he grabbed Beau by the shoulders and shook him. “You got a ring on your finger, too. You and Ellie finally get hitched? Now there’s a grumpy marriage and make no mistake, though no one’s calling Ellie a sot.”

“No,” Beau said, neck going pink. “No no, I’m not—we’re not—I’m a prince, Mal. If I marry, it’ll be a queen.”

Malachi sucked his teeth but said nothing, nodding toward the next people trying to catch Beau’s attention. The blacksmith Delphine and her brother Alain came to hug him and kiss his cheeks. While Delphine went to embrace Elias, Alain held out a crooked knife with a snaggle-toothed edge to its blade.

“Can you tell me what the hell I did wrong?” Alain and Beau had both apprenticed under Delphine for a while, but Alain was hopelessly bad at blacksmithing. “Delly won’t teach me more ‘til I know what happened with this thing, and everything I guessed s’been wrong. You gotta help me, Fine-eye!”

Behind them came Nicolas, Marc, and Adrien, who’d sailed with Beau on the Siren’s Lament and decided when he did that life on the high seas was not for them. They had a fishing boat now, and stuck close to shore. “Nicky!” Beau called, ignoring the man’s at tempt to shake his hand and hugging him instead, to Nicolas’s great annoyance. The other two piled on their own hugs, laughing when Nicolas shouted about being crushed.

“Why do you look like you’ve all been in a fight this week? Skid, you’re supposed to keep them in line.”

“Yeah, well, Limerick and Horndog wanted an ass beating,” Marc said, “and we were happy to oblige. Shame you weren’t here—you on their side might’ve made it a fair fight.”

“Nah nah, can’t fight Crowregard without getting Ellie in the mix, and ain’t nobody having a fair fight then,” Adrien said, eyes on Elias. “Speaking of, what the fuck ’d you do to Ellie? Thought he was indestructible?”

Beau clicked his tongue. “Closer you get to the crown, tougher the fucks they send to kill you when you piss them off.”

All three nodded sagely. “Well, I hope Ellie put ‘em in the ground,” Marc said. “We don’t stand for nobody trying to kill our Crow but us, and we do it the old-fashioned way with liquor.” He gave Beau an exaggerated, overly loud kiss on the forehead, clutched the prince to his chest dramatically, and then said, “He’s all mine , Maiz, don’t even think about it.”

From the crowd, Maisie appeared, her bobbed curls bouncing around her face as she showed Beau the depths of her dimples and the breadth of her smile. Her wide, pale eyes sparkled as she shoved Marc aside and leaped, fully expecting Beau to catch her. “What, His High-Highness doesn’t even swing by to say hello before he hides himself away in Ma’s inn?” she called before peppering his cheeks with kisses. “I brought Ollie and Laurent to play. I knew you’d want dancing. Why didn’t we know you were coming back? And what on the gods’ green earth did you do to poor Ellie?”

“He broke his hand,” Beau said, unable to set Maisie down with her clinging to his neck.

“Shame. Won’t be able to ride those fingers this visit,” Maisie said with a mischief-sparkle lighting her freckled face.

Beau rolled his eyes. “Have you ever?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, fancy-pants,” Maisie said, sticking her tongue out, dropping to the floor, and clapping. She shouted to the room, “Clear the floor! Barfly got better looking in his absence and I’m hankering for a dance. Ollie, give us a tune!” The room cheered as people shuffled to give dancers room to press in.

Ollie, the lanky fiddler, hopped onto the corner ledge that served as a stage alongside his short, blond turkey of a flautist, Laurent, and played the opening strains of The Lady’s Secret , an outrageously raunchy song Mistress Corlia would never let him get away with. Ma’s glare could’ve scorched a line through every body between her and Ollie and still been hot enough to melt his teeth.

He let his bow drone across all four strings and melted the song into Fairies’ Fancy instead, grinning knowingly at Ma all the while. Beau led his curly-haired girl onto the floor as she glinted and glittered. Dancing with Maiz was warm and familiar and easy. She had a cadence to the way she liked to be led that was so predictable he could make her glow with delight without a moment’s thought or questioning. She wanted to be shown off for the first verse, tilting her head back to expose her pale, pretty neck and swinging her curls in eye-catching arcs.

Then, as Ollie bore down on the bow and trotted them all into the chorus, Beau pulled her in closer, letting her mold her curves to him, taking smaller steps so they didn’t have to part. Maisie smiled at him like they’d last danced this way just the evening before, not nearly a year ago. She rolled her body, pressing each part of it against him in turn, and he grinned back.

Second verse, she wanted to spin. Muscle memory took over, and Beau spun her easily before him, between his hands, around his back. When she was dazed and flushed and dizzy, she stepped up onto his boots to dance closer, like she used to do back when she was his first and he was her only. It put her at the perfect height to tuck her head under his chin, and he remembered every time she’d ever done it before.

When he finally ended the dance with a dramatic dip that made her hair pool briefly on the floor before he brought her back up. She kissed him, hot and hungry. “I missed you.”

For months, he’d been hopelessly yearning for people he couldn’t dream of touching; being kissed freely surprised him. He was out of the practice of being casually liked. Beau found himself glancing up, searching the crowd, finding Elias drinking something caramel-colored from a low glass and watching him as Viv finished with his hand.

When he glanced back at Maisie, he’d hesitated too long. Her sparkle flickered, dimmed, and her quicksilver face flashed into a frown. “Missed you too,” he said belatedly.

She took a step back, flicking a look over him that caught on his ringed left hand. “What’d you get up to at the palace, Barfly? They never let you marry Ellie, surely?”

“Why do people keep saying—”

The music began again, and Beau danced another with Maisie. “Lift me!” she cried, beaming. “Gods, these muscles—when’d you get so strong? Must’ve been working out with Ellie. No excuses for not flipping me at least once. Let’s show off a little.”

So they showed off. He had gotten stronger; she was easy to swing around, and he liked doing it for her.

Ollie and Laurent poured their souls into rollicking music. Maisie radiated joy. Beau smiled and tried to keep up with her enthusiasm as the room clapped along to the beat.

When the music crashed to its conclusion, she shot him an impish grin and kissed him again, tracing her tongue along the inside of his lip. “You been practicing on noblewomen or did I forget how good you are at that?”

“There’s a notable lack of interest in this kind of thing among noblewomen,” Beau said dryly. “You’d better leave my ego alone or I won’t be able to carry it for another dance.”

“Ollie’s spinning up a stomp, anyway,” she said, tapping his hands so he’d release her to find a seat at the tables. “Have fun!”

“Oh, I think I’ll sit this one out.” Typically, he liked the stomps, when most of the men and a few women like Viv and Delphine lined up to dance together while the rest of the crowd watched and whistled and picked their next partner. But tonight, it felt like too many stares, especially when people kept eyeing his ring and asking where El was tonight.

Elias caught him as he tried to escape. His hand on Beau’s chest walked him backward, and Marc and Adrien looped their own arms around his shoulders and neck, drawing him out to dance as they whooped and hollered. The music started low and droning as the crowd found the beat. The stomping began, rattling the rafters as bootheels slammed the floorboards in rhythm.

The core dance was simple—standing in a line, the dancers rocked to the beat, every fourth step a quicker shuffle turning them slowly in place. Some kept it simple, others made it fancier, but as the music got faster, someone would step in front of the line and show off until they were challenged and replaced with someone else. Elias slid in next to Beau, but with the row of men too long to fit shoulder-to-shoulder, he stood a little behind the prince.

He leaned over Beau’s shoulder and set his hand on the prince’s hip to mutter, “How many times have you been asked if we got married in the capital? I’ve fielded at least ten irritated questions about why we didn’t have a well-and-bell ceremony and whether I lost my ring when I broke my hand.”

“Don’t they understand,” Beau said stiffly, hyperaware of each fingerprint on his hip as he danced, “that you’re my employee? That that would be—” Nicolas elbowed Beau back a step on one of his shuffling turns, and Beau stepped on Elias’s foot, half-stumbling into him. El’s hand slid around to press him back against a very sturdy chest, and held him so their feet were staggered and wouldn’t tangle.

“Inappropriate?” Elias prompted, a hint of laughter in his voice, when Beau didn’t finish his sentence. El hadn’t shaved for days as they traveled, and the stubble scraped roughly against the side of Beau’s neck as he leaned in close to speak quietly.

Between the rasp against his neck and the warm, flat hand against his stomach, Beau didn’t process the word at all. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He’d danced with Elias before without losing his mind. But waking up in the same bed had damaged some load-bearing part of his wall of self-control, and the closeness as the music pulsed and the stomping beat picked up drove him mad.

“Let me go, El. I have to sit this one out.”

Elias’s hand tightened on his shirt, and the guard chuckled. The sound was ticklish against Beau’s neck. Maddening. “Why? There are no duchesses to impress, and everyone here has seen you dance with me.”

Someone leapt out to dance a feature, a fisherman Beau didn’t know well. Elias continued, “Are you enjoying the dance?”

“Yes, of course I am,” Beau said. Adrien stepped out of line to challenge the first dancer and the stomping grew louder, the crowd calling encouragement. “But it’s…I’m…”

He couldn’t stand Elias’s hand sliding across his stomach another second without igniting. Beau turned, facing the guard instead. “I’m trying to be good, El. You’re my only friend and you are my employee , and this—if I’m completely honest, this—this is more than I can…”

Elias grinned and tugged one of the laces of Beau’s shirt. Oh, facing him was so much worse. “I had fun giving you these,” he said, running a knuckle lightly along the loop of one of Beau’s tattoos. “Maybe we should do more.”

Think of something else. Talk about something else. Oh my gods, he has to stop touching me or I’m going to tackle him to the floor right here.

“Did you sleep with Maiz?” Beau blurted.

El blinked as though surprised, then squinted and scrunched his mouth to one side. “I don’t know if ‘slept with her’ is the best description. A couple weeks before we left for the capital, she came by wanting you, but you were with Jean. She settled for what I could do for her quietly without Ma finding out I was profaning her common room.” A smile flitted over his face at the memory, but then he tilted his head curiously. “Why, was she off-limits? She was with that captain by then—I thought you’d mostly given up on each other.”

“No, she wasn’t off-limits. You do whatever you want,” Beau said. “I just didn’t…I didn’t know you…” For fuck’s sake, this isn’t taking me any further away from how close Elias is and all the unkingly things I want to do to him.

Elias leaned in close again, too close, his breath on Beau’s ear when he said, “I am begging you, Highness, to get a fucking clue. Ask. Ask me. Please.”

“You…like women and men, like me?” Beau guessed, heart pounding hard enough to burst through the thin skin of his neck.

El tipped his head back, closing his eyes as he danced for a minute, a faint smile on his lips. “Yes, Highness. I like women.” He paused. “And men like you.”

Beau’s face heated. “No, I didn’t mean men like me , I meant—”

“I know what you meant,” El said. “And I know what I said. You don’t have to marry me; just turn around and dance with me.”

Beau’s mind scrambled. He had to escape before he did something insane. In the center, Nicolas jumped in to challenge Adrien, both of them goofy and cackling as each tried to move in ways they weren’t flexible enough to move. Beau could do it, though.

As Adrien raised his hands, defeated, and returned to the line, the prince slipped out and squared up with Nicolas. Nicky grinned, reached forward to poke Beau in the chest, and Beau flowed out of the way so he never touched him, rolling his body back in a wave. The inn went wild when he took a step toward Nicky and did the same thing in reverse, making the sailor retreat. The spectators called for Nicky’s signature move, dropping low to the floor and kicking his legs out in a way only someone with iron knees and impeccable balance could pull off.

Nicolas put his hands up and summoned more shouts from the gathered ladies before he obliged, sinking into a deep squat and swinging his legs out to the beat. It wasn’t graceful, but it was skillful, and Beau couldn’t match it.

Instead, he said, “Oh, are we flaunting what our knees can do?” He dropped backwards like he was falling until his knees were folded completely and his back was horizontal, then hauled himself smoothly back to standing without touching the ground. Even Nicolas whistled in approval as Beau danced a grinning circle around him. Do not think of Elias. Do not wonder if he’s watching. Do not think of him at all. With an exaggerated bow, Nicolas conceded.

As Nicky returned to the line, clapping and spinning, an arm came over Beau’s shoulder and a hand closed around his throat. It could only be Elias; El would’ve never let anyone else that close to the prince with even an implied threat. But that could not be Elias’s voice in his ear saying, “What else can you do on your knees?” because Elias didn’t talk to him like that.

Or he never had before.

The hand on his throat led, pulling Beau back, rounding the back of his neck to spin him, yanking him closer until he found himself eye-to-eye and chest-to-chest with El. Every cell in his body was melting as the temperature of the entire room ticked up.

Elias’s thumb pressed under his jaw, lifting his chin. “I know I’m not as good of a dancer as you are,” El said, “but you’re supposed to surrender anyway so someone else can challenge.”

“I surrender,” Beau said, or tried to. It didn’t make noise. Elias read it on his lips.

Something dark and wild lit up in Elias’s eyes. A desperate face, an edge of hunger that scared Beau. It was the face of someone who wanted something so bad he’d kill for it—or die for it. El swallowed and shook it away immediately, but it was so jarring Beau stopped dancing.

They were out in front of everyone, the feature. People cheered, jeered, made lewd jokes, called for someone else to chal lenge them both. But Beau was frozen. “Kiss him or I’m gonna!” Maisie called from where she sat back, elbows leaned against a table. Other women picked up the cry. “Kiss him already! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

Elias smirked. “That’s less of a ‘clue’ and more of a brightly lit directional sign.”

I want him I want him I want him I want him , Beau’s brain chanted, but beneath the mind-deafening mantra, he tried to form coherent thoughts. What changes if I kiss him?

He could feel two choices looming before him. If he kissed Elias, if he answered the chanting with the enthusiasm this situation warranted, he wouldn’t be king. He’d get on the ship. He’d abdicate. He’d let Granvallée be ruled by the victor of whatever came after and he’d escape to somewhere else and be some one else, someone who got to love El.

Or he could do what he was supposed to do. He could be completely in love with Penamour; she’d wanted to like him even before she knew he wasn’t a killer, and it wouldn’t be that hard, he knew, to make himself forgive her. He could marry a queen. He could be the king Elias believed he was going to be. And El would be his guard, as he always had been.

That could be enough. It could be.

It should be. A wife he loved and respected, a loyal guard, a crown , for fuck’s sake.

But Penamour was in the woods, or maybe headed back to the capital to destroy more of his plans, or maybe crossing into Estforet to forget about him entirely as she focused on the more interesting problem of a magical artifact. And Elias was right here, a foot away.

Six inches away.

Two.

Elias was breathing against his mouth.

Elias’s lips were so, so soft.

The inn filled with cheering, and Beau hovered a foot off the ground, he flew, he left the atmosphere entirely. Elias’s hand on his waist was so strong and his mouth moved against Beau’s like they’d been made to kiss each other. Then cheers died off in a wave from the front door in. The music tapered to a stop with a last screech from Ollie’s strings.

Beau blinked his eyes open, took a step back, turned to look at what everyone else saw.

Amidst the simple, sturdy clothes, roughened hands, windblown hair of sailors and fishermen and crafters and housewives, a green silk gown, and the flash of gold jewelry, and the glowing softness of clean fawn skin: Lady Penamour was in his inn. Face completely unreadable, she stepped past the first row of tables, glanced around the still room, and then turned to Beau.

“I think we should talk, Your Highness.”