“You don’t think they’ll try and execute you again?”
Eli gave Rey a dry look and gestured to his throat. “It didn’t stop them when I was a teenager, Rey. Why would it stop them now?”
“Point taken.”
They passed a small village around dusk, keeping to the outskirts as families came in from the fields and smoke rose from dozens of stoves and chimneys. Autumn was coming, and a chill hung in the air as Eli dug a pit for a fire.
“I wish I’d thought to bring something to eat,” Eli said. “I’ve been spoiled staying in Duciel.”
“You’ve been fed, not spoiled,” Rey said. “There’s a difference.” He shook off his fox shape and went to change into the clothes they’d grabbed out of the back of the cart. “I’ll make sure you stay fed. No companion of mine goes hungry, thank you.”
“Is that what I am?” Eli asked. The fire was only just catching, but it glowed bright in his green eyes. “Your companion?”
“Aren’t you?” Rey tugged at his shirt and joined Eli by the fire. “You know, back when I was a man, we had a word for a knight and a king who loved each other, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. But they had marriages of their own, I do recall that. I saw one. They wore crowns of blueberry twigs and rabbit bones, and wore their hair braided together for the feast.”
“How does that work?” Eli asked.
“You’d have to grow yours out.” Rey flashed him a smile. “But the key is to move carefully. You need to trust the other person not to drag you off in another direction.”
“Maybe one of them likes being dragged,” Eli said, and gently tugged Rey’s hair.
“I like being manhandled, but being dragged by the hair is a step too far, thank you.”
“Did you have any knights when you were a man?” Eli twisted his fingers in Rey’s hair. “Since you were a king?”
“I wasn’t that kind of king.” Rey had to lean closer to prevent Eli from tugging at his roots. “My people were farmers, and so was I. I grew radishes, Eli.”
“Where was this? The place you ruled.”
Rey blinked, caught off guard by the way Eli’s eyes seemed almost softer in the firelight. “I don’t remember. Sometimes I see a stretch of farmland and I think, there it is. I could walk a few miles and find the old hall where I lived, pass the spring where the children swam in summer, sit by the river. But maybe it’s better not knowing. There’s a piece of it everywhere now.”
“Why did you give it up?” Eli pulled gently at his hair again, guiding Rey down to his knees in the grass. Rey braced his hands on either side of Eli’s hips, held in place by Eli’s hand.
“Staria needed a different kind of king.” They needed warriors—even killers like Tristan, for all that Tristan took his bloodlust too far. “I had to become something else.”
“I can understand that.” Eli was looking over Rey’s shoulder, into the dark. “Staria didn’t need me, either.”
“It needs you now.” Rey leaned down to kiss the bare skin that showed under Eli’s shirt. “So do I.”
Eli’s smile was small but fond, and he untangled his fingers from Rey’s long hair. “That’s all right, then.”
Rey unlaced Eli’s trousers as Eli lay back in the grass. It was a quiet, dark night, and the fire was low. Crickets sang in the bushes, and wind stirred the boughs of the beech trees as Rey parted Eli’s folds with his tongue and tasted the wet heat of him. Eli didn’t cry out, but his legs tensed and his heels dug into the earth, and Rey ground his cock against the soft grass as he felt every shiver that rolled through Eli’s body. Eli hissed out a sharp breath and kicked his foot, and Rey felt the vibration in the earth.
Staria had rejected Eli’s treachery and Rey’s softness, but it seemed to have quietly embraced them again as they wereremade. Rey felt no strangeness lying with his mouth between Eli’s thighs and the cool breeze on his shoulders. Duciel had been cold and fraught with old hurt, but out in the open, it felt as though Staria had welcomed them back.
“Eli.” He slid his fingers inside him, thumb pressed to the spot that made Eli’s thighs tremble and his nails dig into the grass. “Eli, I would crown you in twigs and fur like the old kings, if you asked me to.”
Eli grabbed at his shoulders, and Rey climbed over him until Eli could kiss him properly, pulling him down by the back of the neck.
“I don’t know if I ever really wanted a crown.” Eli pressed his thigh between Rey’s legs, and Rey’s breath hitched at the pressure on his cock, the heat of Eli’s hands dragging up the hem of his shirt. “But I want that one. When this is over, when we find somewhere safe, maybe we can. Maybe I want to.”
“Yes.” Rey reached down again, fingers slick, Eli’s body so hot and alive beneath him, green eyes dark. “So do I.”
When Eli came, it was with his mouth on Rey’s and a cold wind tossing the ashes of the dying fire, and Rey tasted the same old magic on his tongue that woke when he spoke a story to life. He kissed Eli back, stroked his hair as Eli panted and grasped at his shoulders, and the night closed over them gently, like a curtain falling.
Chapter
Twelve
