Mil gave them each a nod before following his husband to their chosen spot, where it would not be much warmer than outside and they would not see many stars. But they sat close, and Arden fell against Mil almost immediately. Whatever they murmured to each other made Mil laugh, then slip an arm beneath Arden’s traveling cloak to wrap around his back.
Zelli realized he was staring at the wily Arden, now just a weary man curled up with his husband, and Mil the brute, cradling Arden ever so carefully, and tore his gaze away. But it went back almost immediately. His heart pounded and his fingers hurt with how tightly he gripped Tahlen’s hand, so he winced and pulled his free.
His lower lip was swollen, as if he’d bitten it too often during their odd conversation.
There was no reason for his heart to act this way. No reason for his face to be warm except the fire. He tugged his hand to his mouth to chew his fingernails and jolted when Tahlen’s arm was suddenly before his eyes.
Tahlen’s forearm, specifically, still covered in its leather vambrace.
Zelli looked to Tahlen himself, shifting on his stone seat when Tahlen kept his arm where it was.
“You’ll do less damage here,” Tahlen suggested, keeping his voice low. “The leather can take it more than your hands.”
“It…” Zelli flushed even hotter, miserable, itchy, aching for a tender embrace under the stars that he would never know. “I shouldn’t need to do it,” he confessed sadly. “I don’t know why I do.”
“Do you want me to take it off first?” Tahlen asked as though this had only now occurred to him and he had offered expecting Zelli to gnaw on his arm like a teething puppy.
A wolf pup, Zelli thought, with slightly less misery than before. Perhaps that was how Tahlen saw him.
Shyly, Zelli pulled Tahlen’s arm closer, thrilling a little at the heat from Tahlen’s body and the smell of the leather, then hiding his face behind it after giving in to the first urge to bite down.
Tahlen turned more toward him, not exactly shielding Zelli from sight, but letting Zelli twist away from the fire as much as he could. Tahlen touched Zelli’s cheek with his other hand, exhaling roughly at how hot Zelli must feel. His eyes were warm again, although not as open as they’d been moments before. He was watchful now, yet still offering the leather brace for Zelli to turn his head and sink his sharpest teeth into.
Zelli did, only just keeping himself from growling.
Tahlen made a small sound, pleased or shocked, Zelli couldn’t tell. But he opened his hand so that his fingertips grazed Zelli’s cheek as Zelli bit down again.
The leather was quite satisfyingly resistant and the brush of Tahlen’s fingertips kept Zelli’s chest from aching. His scrawny growl faded to nothing.
But his face stung and his cheeks and Tahlen’s leather were wet with spit. As time went on and he made more faint marks from his teeth and had to stop to swallow, he thought that Tahlen would say something, or ask about his inhumanity as Arden and Mil had. But though Tahlen turned his head to keep an eye on the two outguards, he was silent.
When Zelli finally let go, too content to need to bite any longer and suddenly so very tired, Tahlen relocated easily to the spot behind the stones, with the wall at his back and the fire still near, and sat cross-legged, with his sword near his free hand, and indicated Zelli should lie beside him.
Nine
Zelli woke to Tahlen’s faint stirrings and a whispered conversation somewhere close. He opened his eyes to a lightened but still clouded sky, and raised his head from Tahlen’s thigh, only to be distracted by the fact that hisheadhad been on Tahlen’sthigh.
Tahlen’s eyes were open. Though he was resting against the wall behind them, Zelli suspected Tahlen had stayed awake through the night.
He was unsurprised to see the outguards gone and the fire very low. He turned back to Tahlen, sleepy, with the chill nipping at the edge of his awareness, and irritable for reasons that had nothing to do with either of those things.
But there was no point in chastising Tahlen now for choosing not to sleep. Zelli simply raised himself up and said, “There’s some time until dawn and we’re not in a terrible hurry. Get some sleep now and I’ll wake you if I need to.”
Tahlen had stubble on his jaw and a slight glaze to his tired eyes, but he studied Zelli, then sighed and moved, putting more of his weight against the wall. He shut his eyes, apparently thinking he would sleep like that.
“Honestly,” Zelli grumbled as he got to his feet. “Lie down and do it properly or I’ll tell Esrin.”
Tahlen’s eyes flicked open, then narrowed. But exhaustion meant he didn’t protest, he just stared oddly at Zelli while lying down on his side and pulling his cloak over his legs. “Only for an hour,” he grumbled, then was silent except for his breathing.
Zelli stared at Tahlen’s sleep-softened, unshaven face for far too long before he forcibly turned around to stare down the rest of the world. Tahlen trusted Zelli for this small duty and Zelli would see to it with everything he had.
Of course, poking around a waystation with nothing to do gave Zelli perhaps too much time to think. And recalling how he’d used Tahlen’s vambrace, in front of Tahlen no less, made him pace for a while and think of how he was going to explain chewing on his grandmother’s favorite guard to her. Even if she did believe Zelli ought to take Tahlen as a lover, that was surely crossing a line.
Tahlen was so patient with him, was sogoodabout it. It was only going to make Zelli’sfeelings, as Grandmother called them, worse.
He washed his face in the nearby stream as he moped and then took care of the horses. He ate a little and walked around the waystation at least nine times rather than risk waking Tahlen with any stolen touches, and waited until a while after dawn—when any longer would possibly irritate Tahlen more than please him—and put out the fire before calling for Tahlen to wake up.
“They knew who you were,” was the first thing Tahlen said to him after rising to his feet.
