Page 32 of The King’s Man #5

Casimiria speaks again, quietly, and her words have the king stumbling back into his throne. “He is also half this woman. Half this woman that you once loved.”

My hand is on Quin’s wrist, squeezing it so hard I’m leaving nail marks. Still, I can’t loosen my grip. Can’t let go.

King Yngvarr finally speaks. “He has one night to leave.”

An hour later, at the king’s command, I’m escorted by Prins Lief’s men—led by an impatient Prins Lief himself—to my Ragn abode. I’m to pack my things and return immediately to the castle.

My aunt greets us at the gates, hauling me into a fierce herb-scented hug as she murmurs to Prins Lief over my shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Prins Lief tells his men not to enter, to guard from the main gate, and shuts it on them. He comes over, murmuring under his tongue, “He’s not safe yet. He’s under my father’s eye.”

I temporarily push away those anxieties and shuffle out of the hug, leaving them a moment to talk, to.

.. be. I sink onto my bed with a long sigh and hold my clasp in my hands.

The setting sun leaks stripes through the shuttered balcony doors, the light falling like the bars of a cage.

Like it knows I’m the one now imprisoned.

The clasp glitters between my fingers. But at least. .. “You’re free.”

I blow on the silver and polish it with fresh garments, garments I change into after a good, long soak.

I’m tying up the small bag of my belongings—my grandfather’s books, my journal of scriptions, the box holding my soldad—when tumbling colour has me startling to my feet.

My balcony doors fling open and Quin breezes in on a graceful wind.

His meridians have been unlocked. He’s met with his mother.

My stomach knots as he lands quietly. His gaze locks on mine with a dark, shivery intensity that promises confrontation. “Come.”

“I have to go back—”

In a hair-prickling breeze, he crosses the room, hauls me to his hip with an arm belted around my back, and kicks off the ground with his good leg.

We move so fast, I drop my belongings, but Quin reacts swiftly and a surging gust lifts my bag within reach.

As we pass over the courtyard, I glimpse Prins Lief cradling my aunt close.

They break apart as they look up and Prins Lief shouts a furious, “Seriously!”

Before I can beg him to save me from the stomach-dropping fear of Quin’s impending wrath, Quin calls, “One hour. Collect him from the temple.”

We touch ground in the grove close to the meditation cottage, now eerily barren without the lines of stormblades.

From somewhere nearby comes the crackling of an outdoor fire and the delicious scent of roasted meat, but I’m not to think of such trivial things.

The way Quin has deposited me, the way he’s whipped up that old broom cane, the way he thunks it on the ground as he paces.

.. the confrontation is about to begin.

Deserved. Still, I back up slowly in shivery anticipation, as if that extra distance might lessen the blow —

The trunk of a walnut tree halts me with a push of resistance at my back, bark snagging my hair. My bag does fall this time.

Quin stops pacing and faces me. His lips are curled in thought, brow slightly pinched.

He cocks his head and ponders. Steps closer, and ponders some more.

Closer and closer. Sets his cane against the trunk and comes closer still.

My breath catches, and his gaze strokes over my face.

It’s almost too much, but I can’t look away.

Between us, the air thickens and warms, and something delicate throbs through me.

He closes a hand around my sleeve and loosely pins my wrist to the tree above my head.

His other hand slides around my hips, jostling me an inch closer as his head bows over mine, our noses grazing.

He slides his along the side of mine, ghosts it over my jawbone, his soft breath colliding with my shuddering one.

His eyes shut briefly as his nose drags to my throat.

His sigh runs down my neck, and his next inhale sucks at the very edge of my ear.

He squeezes my wrist gently, his thumb stirring ticklishly as he whispers, “How long will you keep wearing my braids?”

Nothing about this moment I expected—this, I’m most unprepared for. My knees tremble and his hand at my hip closes around me tightly, holding me up along with the softest magicked wind.

I swallow thickly, still shaking, and Quin’s nose travels over my temple and sweeps down my cheek until he’s pulling back a half inch to look at me. His gaze is so soft, so intense, so intimate it’s hard to breathe.

I briefly close my eyes, and he moves my arm between us, draws back the sleeve and reveals the braids curled around my wrists. His fingers trace over each one. “Did this cost you a lot?”

I shake my head.

“I don’t believe you,” he murmurs.

“I didn’t spend any money.”

A smile ghosts at his lips. “Who said anything about money?”

“I . . . I did it for your dignity.”

“You don’t hesitate to spank me or call me pitiful before kings, why care about a moment of lost dignity?”

“It’s different if anyone else does it!”

“Now we’re getting closer.” His finger trails over the braids and fastenings again. “Why are you wearing them?”

My stomach hops with a kind of vulnerable panic. “So no one else touches them.”

He laughs lightly and presses me closer against him, my hand and his locked between our chests as his mouth hits my ear again. “Keep going.”

“If you know why I wear them, why don’t you tell me?”

His nose bumps against mine and he presses our foreheads together, staring deeply into my eyes.

I close my eyes and the form of Nicostratus is there, the barrier between us. Some things... shouldn’t be said. And yet... Something is unfurling in my chest, a great wave of light that is bursting to be let free, that tries to force its way out with every beat of my heart.

His gaze flashes, like he feels it, and his breath skitters over the bow of my lips, the warmth of his own hovering close.

I sway on this precipice; I want to fall and I can’t .

We’re tangled in these shivery seconds, him waiting for me to decide, and I... screw my eyes closed and curse myself as I push him away. He takes his cane—and my bag—and leads me through the grove.

I follow him with my head bowed, my steps heavy. This could’ve been our one stolen moment. I kick at a pebble in the grass.

“But shouldn’t you be angry at me?” I ask. “Your mother...”

“I’m not,” he says simply and we turn past trees to a firepit, where someone’s spit-roasting a chicken. Quin dismisses the man, tossing him a Skeldar brooch.

“What’s this?” I say when we’re alone. Quin gestures for me to sit on the bench dragged beside it.

“Roast chicken. I believe it’s the reward you wished, for freeing me.”

It’s so absurd, it startles me into a laugh. I throw myself onto the bench. “You wouldn’t believe how over fish I am.”

He sits beside me, my bag between us, unravelling to expose my belongings.

My box has tipped over and my soldad is spilling from it.

I reach for it, but Quin brushes my hand away and picks it up himself.

He stares at it and I wonder if he’s recalling the last time he saw it, as I left him watching me from the shadows in the woods, brandishing it to let him know I knew the truth.

It’s always been Quin.

I look away, fighting a sad lump in my throat as I grip the bench. When I glance back again, it’s to Quin and his glowing fingers as he carves a fifth stamp.

“But I’m not a—”

“You won the Medicus Contest. Any winning team would have been awarded this stamp.” He sets it in my hands.

I stare at it through blurring eyes as Quin quietly rips off a chicken leg for me.

I tuck the soldad carefully into my belongings and take the chicken, biting into it ravenously.

I laugh and tell him if this king thing doesn’t work out, he has options.

He threatens to clock me with his own chicken leg.

We’re easy and carefree and humoured. But it’s acting.

Masking. Masking the sadness lurking beneath at our imminent parting, masking the intense longing to whisper things usually said in the dark, masking the burning urge to sink into his arms and stay there.

When we’ve finished our meal and cleaned our hands in the nearby brook, we return to the flickering flames of the fire.

The sun has almost completely set and the light is so mesmerising it’s brought out the fireflies.

Dozens and dozens twinkle around us but though I’m not looking at him, his presence feels sharper.

“Cael. Give me your wrists.”

I instinctively hold them closer to myself, and Quin gently pulls them to him. It wasn’t a request. He pushes his fingers against one of the braids, grimaces, and starts to undo the fastenings.

“Stop it,” I say.

“They’re biting into your skin.” He continues until both my forearms are bare. He plucks the bejewelled fastenings free and tosses his hair unceremoniously into the fire.

I start with a gasp and lunge to save them—

Quin snatches my hand and pulls it back from the flames. He massages the deep red indents running up my arms. “They were hurting you.”

“They’re our memories!”

Quin pulls at something under his cloak and settles a pouch into my palm. A pebbly weight shifts over my skin and I glance sharply at him; he stares at the pouch as he presses my fingers closed around it.

“A dromveske?” I croak.

“In return.”

I roll my fingers around the runes filling it. There are a lot. I look at him again.

“I made this for you while you were gone,” he says. “They’re safe.”

“You’re giving me your memories?”

“Of us.”

My chest heaves and my throat pinches at his emphasis, his promise. A hot tear threatens to break through my mask. I quickly attach the pouch to my belt. With feigned levity, I toss out, “Well, this certainly beats the fight I thought you brought me here for.”

“I contemplated being upset.”

I drop my smile and nod. “I am sorry about your mother—”

“Not about her. About you risking your life for mine.”

I open my mouth and shut it again. Then open, and frown. “Wait, you’re not upset I gifted your mother to the Skeldar king?”

“Cael!” he says in utter exhaustion, and sighs. Gently, he places the bag buffering us behind the bench, and pats for me to slide closer.

I shakily shift half an inch; Quin slides the rest of the distance and bops my nose with his finger. His voice is rumbly and as warm as the fire before us. “I’m not upset for two reasons. I know that for now she’s safe, with her first love.”

I nod quietly and stare over the flames and the fireflies. “And the other reason?” I murmur.

A braid drifts over my shoulder as he leans in. “I trust you wouldn’t have made the decision easily.”

I turn my face to his, and slowly shake my head. He’s wrong. “It was easy. I always knew who I’d choose.”

“Then you were thinking of the bigger picture.”

I stare into his eyes. My voice breaks, but my gaze does not. “No, I wasn’t.”

His breath suspends and I keep staring at him as flames crackle and fireflies dance in the dark. My heart races, and his stare on mine... I glance away into the dark, hoping the night’s cold whispers will wash over my heated cheeks.

Fireflies dart frantically at the sound of approaching footsteps. I’m hopeful for the reprieve they’ll bring.

I’m devastated.

Our time is up.

It’s time for Quin to return to Lumin. Our stolen moment, ending so soon. I barely grasped it.

With a sinking stomach, I stand. Quin clasps me and gently tugs me onto his lap.

“Cael...” Breathless, I let him steer my face towards his.

His hair falls like a curtain either side of us as he cups my face, his thumb brushing over an escaped tear.

He leans in to whisper against my mouth, lips combing mine. “I’ll remember this.”