Zelli reached for a blanket to cover himself. “Yes,” he countered. “I think I should. Grandmother already despairs of my lack of discretion. If I am to be any good in any sort of alliance, I should try to be more like someone from the old houses who knows what duty means. And I should not be thoughtless and say something to land me and someone else in trouble. Or vex you when you are only trying to do what you have sworn to do.”
“No,” Tahlen said again, harder. His tone almost immediately gentled. “You still don’t understand.”
Zelli scoffed while agreeing. “There are many things I don’t understand, such as...”
“I don’t want you to be like me,” Tahlen cut him off harshly. He took a moment before he spoke again. “I’d save you from that, no matter the cost.No.” He didn’t let Zelli interrupt. “You don’t always understand, but you try to. Because you care. Obviously, palpably, about everyone and everything. You can’t be discreet for that reason, but what a gift that will be to… to whoever you choose to love. They will be publicly adored by you in a way few ever are or could even dream of.”
Zelli was barely aware of moving to the edge of the bed. He gathered a blanket around him without taking his gaze from Tahlen, half of the blanket dragging behind him as he crossed the room. He stopped in front of Tahlen, close enough that he had to raise his head to keep eye contact.
Tahlen looked resolute and grim but allowed Zelli to stare without comment. He had put Zelli’s small braid in his hair again. He hadn’t tucked it away as Zelli had.
Zelli felt shaky and dry-mouthed, like he’d had too much drink the night before.
“Is that whatyouwant?” he asked at last.
Tahlen went from grim, to pained, to resolute once again. “I don’t expect anything.”
“You asked to court me knowing I would be sent away to be courted by another.” Zelli rubbed his chest with the hand holding up the blanket. “I wouldn’t have been able to publicly adore you. I would have had to try not to.”
Tahlen swept a glance up to Zelli’s ears or maybe his horns, then met his eyes again. “I expected nothing.”
Zelli shook his head. “But youasked.”
Tahlen turned his head to grimace.
“You don’t have to explain.” Zelli said with some shame. “It’s not your fault I don’t understand.”
Tahlen put his shoulders back. “I don’t expect to hold onto anything, now, or in the future. You were going to leave, and still are. If I wanted to know you, even a little, Ihadto ask.”
Zelli stared at him, lips parted in amazement.
Tahlen would have had to share Zelli’s attention to some extent, and leave this place and Esrin, at least for a time, yet he’d asked. And that when he had clearly thought Zelli didn’t want him that much, except perhaps in his bed.
He would have, in his words, dealt with, Zelli’s future intended, even after he had thought himself refused. Possibly to help the alliance and keep the people under Tialttyrin rule protected, but mostly to keepZelliprotected. His desires and his feelings, like his body and his life, to be ignored or used or thrown away.
He didn’t even seem sorry.
Zelli felt himself frowning but didn’t try to banish it. Tahlen could have spoken of this before. Zelli had even asked him. In front of this very fireplace, Zelli had asked Tahlen about what he wanted. Wishes Tahlen had not voiced, because even wishes could be taken away.Hadbeen taken away, in the life of Tahlen Vallithi.
Zelli dropped his hand from his chest, leaving the blanket to fall where it would. “This is your home. You told the other guards it was and that you wore our symbols with pride. But you would have left it to make sure I was safe.”
“And happy,” Tahlen added stiffly.
“And happy.” Zelli glared at him for the interruption, for that word, when it was Tahlen’s happiness on his mind. “For my occasional attention? For the chance I might call you Tahly again someday?” He still didn’t understand. “Because you liked that I was eager for you? Because I was kind to you and you admired me?”
Tahlen narrowed his eyes at the far wall. His hands were clenched. He finally turned his head to face Zelli again and said, as though he had to force himself to speak, “Because I love you, Zelli.”
Tahlen kept talking over the sound of Zelli’s strangled gasp. “I’m always confused around you, yet never seem to mind. And I feel different under your attention, which used to bother me, but now it… I told you how it makes me feel. I will give myself for that and have no problems doing so. I’ll do it, gladly, and not even you can persuade me not to no matter how much you gaze up at me.”
Zelli hadn’t earned the life or the love of Tahlen of the Vallithi. Not one soul in the valley had done that, but certainly not Zelli. Tahlen would be miserable for him and fight for him and die for him, yet tell Zelli he expected nothing? That he could not hold Zelli, not for long, but he could please him and protect himfor a while?
Zelli pulled in a breath and held it for a beat before letting it out. He was strangely warm for someone without any clothes on. He wasn’t quite sure what his heart was doing, filling the space between his ribs and pushing out every breath he tried to draw in and every scrap of sorrow that had plagued him for months now. Hisfeelings, he realized, too many of them.
“Are you all right?” Tahlen inquired, manners normal, his beautiful face stone once more although Zelli’s black eyes could not be telling him anything.
“You said you admired me.” Zelli didn’t make it a question.
A shadow flickered across Tahlen’s face. “I do.”
