“So generous.” Orin squeezed a handful of his backside.
“Exactly,” Tiiran panted, tingling all over, warm through his bones. “Which is why, sometimes, you should submit to my authority.”
Orin nuzzled the top of his head. “Bossy cat.”
“But mostly, I am content giving way to you,” Tiiran admitted on a sigh, then wriggled until he could look at Nikoly. “You’re right. I’m tired.”
“I know, bee.” Nikoly stroked the side of Tiiran’s face, his now-reddened lips curved in a smile. “We can come back another time if you enjoyed this.”
“Potatoes were good,” Tiiran decided aloud, burrowing against Orin and unconcerned with Po or Niksa seeing it. “The company was good. The music was all right.” The distant discordant tang of a lute barely disturbed him. “Loud, though,” he complained. “I’m tired, and so are you. Must I meet her tomorrow?”
“The palace will never be the same,” Orin commented, abandoning Tiiran’s backside to rub circles at his shoulder blades instead.
“Bullshit.” Tiiran hid his face again. As if Orin wasn’t someone to be feared.
“She’ll approve of you for me, I think. But more than that, I think you’ll approve of her.” Despite this, Nikoly began to chew a fingernail. “She already met Orin, although not in this context. She might have to meet him again properly.”
Nikoly abruptly stiffened, then relaxed all at once. Tiiran looked down to see Orin’s hand at Nikoly’s side and understood; it was difficult to fret when within Orin’s arms.
Tiiran smiled to himself. “If she is all that you say, she won’t be fooled by him either.”
“I….” Orin perhaps meant to argue. “I did say that meeting families was a part of this. Well done, kitten. You got me.”
Tiiran brushed his cheek over Orin’s shirt, so much better than the gambeson for moments like this one. They would have to venture into the capital more, so Orin would not dress as an outguard always. “We can stay if I can sleep.”
“You can sleep here?” Nikoly was genuinely concerned.
Tiiran wanted to pat him but also didn’t want to move. “Can sleep anywhere. Prefer our bed, though. Thought of it, while I was alone.”
A brief silence followed that. Then Orin said, “Have you been teaching him how to scheme to get his way, pup? That was very good.”
“He learns quickly,” Nikoly returned with pride, then rose to his feet in one startling motion, making Tiiran look up. “I would also like to be in our bed.” Flitting back and forth between Cael’s office and the library to take care of Tiiran would tire anyone, though Nikoly would doubtless deny being exhausted.
“Home,” Tiiran corrected, already snuggling back into Orin’s arms. He only got slightly dizzy when Orin stood up too.
“Bed is calling to me as well,” Orin agreed, and should have put Tiiran down, but didn’t. Not until they were past the smirking bard and dreamy-eyed Mattin and out of the tavern. Nikoly came up to Tiiran’s side to take his hand, and Orin supported Tiiran by keeping hold of his arm, and together they moved quietly through the cheering crowds to go home.
Epilogue
Tiiran was on his way to check the supplies for making ink when several assistants came skittering toward him with familiar flustered, flattered expressions on their faces. He directed them back to their work and muttered to himself as he accepted that the ink supplies would have to wait.
Annoying. He had scheduled time for the task. Well, Nikoly had scheduled it for him, but at Tiiran’s request. While the Great Library had many assistants these days, there were still not enough Master Keepers to keep a watchful eye on the newer ones. Messes were frequently made, usually when a newer assistant made a mistake and then tried unsuccessfully to clean it up.
The matter of the low number of Master Keepers would take years to solve according to Po, who had received the title almost against her will. Except for two aged figures, the previous Keepers had retired or not been welcomed back during the early days of the reign of the Traitor King, and one could not simply raise any assistant to the role. They had to have knowledge and experience.
At least the palace being run properly meant that some of the burden had been taken from the shoulders of the Great Library’s few Keepers of the Records. And the rising number of assistants kept the Master Keepers from spending too much time on simple tasks like cleaning or copying reports. There were so many assistants, in fact, that some saw it as a sign that the palace and the country might at last be recovering from the decades of warring. The reign of the Traitor King—as some called Arden of the Canamorra, if never to his face—had mostly been one of peace, the incident half a year ago notwithstanding.
More than an incident. But it had been squashed within hours, and Mattin had survived, and the peace had held, so Tiiran tried not to think of it. He was supposed to be beyond dreams and irrational worries. It had been years since his ownincident, and he was tired of his mind tormenting him with the odd nightmare. Unfortunately, beat-of-fours trying to take the throne for no good reason except wounded pride had set them off again, and not only for Tiiran.
So the entire palace but especially the library had every reason to be grateful for the calm that had followed Arden of the Canamorra sitting his backside on the throne. But that didn’t mean the assistants should have to deal with his presence in the library so often.
No ruler had entered the library in decades, probably in centuries. Yet Arden of the cursed Canamorra popped in at the strangest moments, and though Tiiran knew why, he didn’t have to like it.
The assistants turned into butterflies, for one thing. Probably for seeing a legend in the flesh but possibly because the king and his husband, having once been outguards, were naturally going to attract library assistants.
Tiiran put his accounting book under his arm and his pencil behind his ear into the weave of one his braids, then marched out into the main section of the library.
The sight of Nikoly seated on the stool at the front desk, working on his knitting as if the king and his entourage on the other side of the desk did not exist, calmed Tiiran only a little. He was mostly concerned with why the king would be waiting at the desk and not already in Mattin’s office with Mattin as he usually would have been.
