Page 11 of The Lionheart’s Bond (Bonds of Dusk and Dawn #1)

JUDEL

‘A re you done with your boyfriend?’ Nel asked. How long had his younger brother been leaning against that wall, just outside the door? His arrival had already been unwelcome, after another evening where his opinions had been consistently dismissed. Why had he even tried?

‘Scram,’ he grunted in answer, making his way to his room, then thought better of it, and turned on his heels, getting in his brother’s face. ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’

‘I’ve had a couple of boyfriends, so I feel I have the necessary authority to tell you that what happened in there was pretty boyfriend-y stuff. Then again, you might not be into commitment anymore.’

Nel’s small, sharp features stretched into a grin. The man loved pushing Judel’s buttons.

‘Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that what you have are relationships. I know you like fucking around, but that’s not what we all do,’ he said, turning back. Nel could be so irritating.

‘Well, a month ago you’d have said the same thing about liking men and yet, here we are.’

‘Who said I liked him?’ Judel retorted, knowing well he was wasting his time. It didn’t matter what he said, once his brother made up his mind about something, no one could make him see reason.

Nel embarked in a discourse his older brother had absolutely no intention of listening to. He couldn’t. The smell of Isidore lingered in his nose, his taste stuck to Judel's palate. His skin was so soft. His eyes were so soft. Everything about that boy was so soft it moulded to his body when Judel pulled him in. Judel would have drowned in him if he hadn’t snapped out of it on time.

‘Do you even know what to do?’

‘What?’ Judel asked, turning when he realized his brother was still following.

‘Do you know how it works? With men… It’s not like with girls. We’re not equipped with self-lubrication.’

Judel’s face lit up like dry hay set on fire. What?

‘I don’t think I need to know.’

Nel looked at him, his head tilted, squinting; the face he made when he was considering forcing an explanation onto others. Judel resigned himself and walked away, trying his best not to listen to what Nel was saying. He didn’t want to have this conversation with his brother. His baby brother.

No.

Not ever.

No, thank you.

Nel had always liked men, to the point he never showed any interest in women. Most people didn’t show a marked preference for one or the other, at least in Ilystra, though that didn’t quite apply to them, and even less so to Neisha and Nahel. The higher the status, the more you were forced to pick a partner you could have children with.

Judel considered singing out loud. Very much like he had never wanted to listen to the finer details of Neisha’s exploits with women, he didn’t want to learn about Nel’s private undertakings when it came to his intimacy with his male partners.

‘You need to make sure you prepare your lover—’ Nel went on.

If Judel had any hope of his brother giving up, it was all squashed when Nel followed him into his room and sat cross-legged on the floor to continue with his unrequested lecture.

‘Nel, brother,’ he said, about an hour later when he was still talking about tickly spots or whatever, ‘I love you, man, but you need to go to sleep.’

‘I’m okay,’ he said, shrugging.

‘But I’m not,’ Judel sighed. ‘Just go annoy Nahel or something.’

‘Ah, sorry. No, I don’t think I’ll go annoy her. I’ve grown fond of my breathing ability, and I’d like to keep it. Might go have another go at the prisoner.’

Judel lifted himself up on his elbow, returning a curious look to his brother. After days locked in their dungeons, that man had still to reveal anything. Neisha was moments away from losing his patience, but the intruder didn’t seem to be afraid. If he was the kind of man who only feared violence, he might be right to feel confident. Their parents, especially their mother, had been well known for leaning away from the more traditional means of gaining information and had raised them all in the belief that while violence was necessary at times, it shouldn’t be their first recourse, and people who they already held under their power should be made to speak through any other means before resorting to physical punishment. As one of eleven boys sharing a household, Judel could confirm that such moral had held little sway in their dynamics. Not to mention Nahel fought as much as they did. Now, Neisha’s respect for their parents’ memory bordered on the reverential, but he was becoming more frustrated by the day. His breaking point loomed close.

Deals, promises of freedom, rewards, nothing worked. The prisoner would not reveal his name, or why he had come to Ilystra. He was clearly Kaletian, but he wouldn’t even confirm that much. He liked to test the boundaries, staring, in chains, smirking at them as if he was smarter. As if he was tougher.

‘Do you think you can get anything out of him?’

Nel shrugged.

‘I’m working on it.’

Maybe mind games and tricks would be the solution. Nel’s capacity for strategy was unparalleled, but mostly, he was perceptive. Nothing escaped him. If Nel couldn’t extract information from that guy, no one could.

‘If you like him,’ Nel said, holding the door open, ‘you most definitely shouldn’t take out your bad temper on him! He looks at you like your touch could turn rock into gold; you should give him a chance. You’ve been alone long enough.’

Judel blinked in surprise. His brother’s sweet words were unexpected.

‘If you don’t, though,’ Nel continued in a cheerful tone, ‘mind if I give it a go?’

He sat up, ready to give chase. Nel would no doubt jump on the opportunity to get closer to Isidore if he was given the chance. The thought of it alone made his blood boil, and his brother was well aware of it, if the speed with which he closed the door was anything to go by. And Nel had that stupid grin on his face while doing it, too. He might be going to check on Isidore right now, that weasel.

Blowing air out of his nose, he dropped back onto his pallet.

He tried to get comfortable. His room was a stall away from being a stable, but he had picked it for its direct access outside, not for its comfort.

His hands under his head, he stared at the ceiling, reliving the moment with Isidore, the feeling of his tongue in Judel’s mouth almost present. His mind worked by itself, depicting things that hadn’t happened, imagining what it would be like to do the things Nel had explained with Isidore. Whether his eyes would open wide and his lips part with pleasure.

He shook his head. Daydreaming was a waste of time. Isidore deserved better. He’d get tired soon, anyway. And scared. A lover that was an animal all day. What good was that? The separation would be unavoidable, just like it had been with her. Everybody had their heart broken at one point or another, but he couldn’t bear the thought of going through that all over again, not when the previous wound was still painfully open. The same disgust he had seen on Fabina’s eyes might appear on Isidore’s too and he would not be able to stand it.

Turning on his side, he pulled the blanket tighter around him and forced his eyes closed. Another day, only a handful of hours of consciousness. Another night, only a few hours of sleep. Such was his life now.

When his eyes perceived the world in human terms again, he found himself far by the city walls. The familiar thicket loomed to the west. He hadn’t come this way for quite some time now, not since he had spied Fabina with that other man.

Today, his steps inexorably led him there. Maybe the beast still controlled him, but he didn’t want to think too much about it. The air was humid and still under the shadows of the trees, heavy with the freshness of grass and the earthy scent of decaying debris. There was a mark, on one of the tree trunks. An etching they had made when they were little, when they promised they’d marry each other when they grew up. Trunk after trunk, he tried to find it, the sunlight turning a warmer red as it started its descent.

It was the smell that alerted him first. Jasmin and rose. Just up ahead. That hadn’t changed. She just smelled as good as ever. The voices sounded joyful, swollen with excitement, with possibility.

‘So it’s here you came with the prince, then,’ a male voice said. This was not the same man she had brought las time.

‘As promised. It’s a bit odd you wanted to see it,’ she said.

She looked as beautiful as he remembered. Her long chocolate brown hair fell in curls over her back, her dress cinching her fine waist under her blue cloak. The man, he had never seen before, but a low growl emerged from the bottom of his throat when the man set his hand on the hollow of her back.

‘I’m weird like that, but that’s why you like me.’

‘Maybe,’ she giggled, turning to him and wrapping her arms around his neck as they kissed.

‘Well, I’m glad you dumped him. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

She looked up into his eyes and raised an eyebrow.

‘Oh really? Aren’t you a naughty, naughty girl. You would have cheated on brave, strong Prince Judel?’

She shrugged, dancing out of his arms.

‘Is it really cheating if you don’t love the man?’

‘Please, don’t pretend. Judel and Fabina, the fairytale romance everybody loved to envy.’

‘We pretended well…’

Judel bit down on the urge to roar.

‘He must be a great actor, because nobody who saw him would have ever imagined he was faking it.’ The man grinned, sitting down on the grass now, his back against a tree trunk. Judel had once leaned against it too.

‘Maybe I pretended more than he did,’ she giggled.

‘Was your friendship fake too? Everybody knows you were inseparable as children.’

‘That was real, but I got fed up with him as we grew up. He was such a brute. I didn’t know what to talk about with him, but my parents insisted I would be a princess, and I could even be queen one day, so I stuck to him. But once, you know… Even my parents agreed there was no point. It was a relief, really. I couldn’t bear his touch anymore.’

There it was, the disgust in her eyes. Her words hurt more than he would have imagined, and he couldn’t believe them. How could they be real? She had grinned so brightly when they kissed the first time. And when they lay together, her cheeks turned red, and her lips spread, round, as her body writhed in pleasure under him.

But looking back through the lens of her words, he realised the breakup wasn’t the first time he saw that distorted grimace. In other occasions too, times he told himself it was strange, but the look was gone so fast he thought maybe he had imagined it. Times she shrunk away from him, times she pulled her hand out of his fingers.

As for talking… Maybe she didn’t speak much. He might have done a lot of the talking, and she might have listened, her eyes turned to the horizon.

He sighed. Had he really been that blind? It had been only too easy to remain ignorant to the signs that seemed so obvious now.

Knowing she had never loved him, if it was even true, should make him feel better, in a twisted, torturous way. It wasn’t the lion that disgusted her, she was disgusted by him, the human. He should feel relieved, then, that the curse had saved him from a marriage with a woman who had just admitted to only want him for his title and riches.

So why did he feel even more heartbroken?

He had loved her. He boasted to his brothers that he was going to marry his best friend. Except that even that had been fake. He had become too brutish for her. Too stupid.

The growl at the back of his throat came unbidden and he saw them freeze, their eyes darting between the trees.

‘Do you think he’s here?’ the man said. ‘There haven’t been reports of mountain lions here for a while now.’

Her eyes searched the growing shadows, though looking in the wrong direction. The animal urge burnt in him to pounce and give them the scare of their lives.

It was a low growl, heavy, the sound spreading through the air like an omen.

She ran to the man, and he grabbed her hand, pulling her with him. He kept growling, following them, purposefully stepping on a branch just so they could hear it. He growled louder, forcing them to run. Out of the thicket, they rushed through the fields.

Shielded from view by bushes and shadows, he could have laughed. Even if his heart still hurt. Even if he’d still spend many nights looking back, considering where he went wrong. But that would be later. Right now, the corner of his heart inhabited by the regret for that lost happiness felt lighter than it had in a long time.