Tiiran squeezed Orin’s sides because he could, feeling where there was give, and where there was muscle, and where there was give on top of muscle. He listened to Orin’s heart, if thatwasOrin’s heart and not his own thundering in his ears.
“I’ll miss you,” he said at last, needing to hear the footsteps of a passerby to remind him that he could not hold Orin like this for much longer. “Be careful.”
Orin squeezed him in return. Tiiran briefly could not breathe and didn’t want to. “You do the same so you’re here when I come back.”
Tiiran smiled and looked up to share the smile with Orin. Then his smile slipped and his lips parted, and he still did not breathe and he still did not want to.
Orin’s eyes were dark, or seemed to be with the moonlight behind him. Tiiran curled his fingers into his palms, then slipped his hands down to his sides.
Orin immediately stepped back. “That was a very good first hug.”
If he had any clue what Tiiran had been thinking of doing, he showed no sign.
“Fuck off,” Tiiran told him, but in the same easy tone that Orin had used. Maybe that was why Orin showed no fear as he reached out to pull the dislodged pin from Tiiran’s hair and tuck fallen strands behind Tiiran’s hot ears.
“I think I might keep this.” He held up the pin with a smug air, but handed it over the second Tiiran reached for it. Orin handed over the bag as well, and waited until Tiiran had it settled on his shoulder and the strap in both of his trembling hands before he added, “While I’m gone, consider the future.”
“Always giving me more things to do.” It was too breathless to be much of a complaint.
“You don’t have to do any of them.”
Tiiran didn’t. But he liked to. And Orin liked it when he did.
“I’ll do what I want,” Tiiran told him anyway. “And if what I want is to do what you tell me, then….”
He realized too late he had no idea how to finish that thought.
Orin must have, because he grinned, a knowing, mildly infuriating sort of grin, and said, “Exactly, kitten. Just so, and I wouldn’t have you any other way. Now,” he was abruptly serious again, as though Tiiran couldn’t still feel his body’s warmth all around him, “you have a lot to think about it, and many promises to keep. So you should eat and rest well.”
He paused expectantly.
Tiiran tossed his head. “I already said I would eat.”
Another grin, and somehow more warmth even though Orin hadn’t touched him again. “I think the kitchens will start cleaning up and preparing for morning now, so you should go on.”
“Yes, Orin.” Tiiran made sure to roll his eyes, although he wasn’t sure if Orin saw. He suspected Orinhadnoticed but didn’t mind. He maybe even liked it.
Tiiran watched Orin walk away, clenching his hands around the strap of the bag when Orin finally disappeared from view. With him gone, Tiiran turned back in the direction of the kitchens but didn’t otherwise move.
The moonlight revealed a vine, probably covered in roses of a red so dark it was black in the moonlight, curling over the top of the garden wall. Tiiran considered the grasping tendril, the moonlight on white stone, and the thick, ripe scent of the flowers, then slowly began to walk.
“Wouldn’t have you any other way,” he said aloud, a sentence sure to disturb his sleep if he let it.
So he didn’t. He ate in a corner of the kitchens as the workers cleaned, and took more food back to his room to nibble as he read a dry account from a dry person of dry stories they’d heard about the first ruler to claim dominion over the Earls and the library that had needed to be built to help control his realm. At some point, he stopped reading, trying to imagine what those days had been like, and if things were better or worse now. Then, his hair down, the pin loose in his fist, he fell asleep with his cheek pressed to the open pages of the book.
Chapter Four
Niksa stopped in the middle of complaint to gesture at Tiiran’s cheek.
Niksa, taller than Tiiran, of course, had freckles that Tiiran had always sort of envied, even though Niksa didn’t seem to spend any time in the sun. He was something of a sour apple, although his consistently immaculate handwriting and ability to reach shelves Tiiran couldn’t without a stool or ladder meant Tiiran was willing to overlook that.
Sour applewas what Po called him. They’d fucked once before Po had decided she liked women and men with finer tastes only, whatever that meant.
“I don’t see why we are copying as usual but Nikoly gets to wander off through the palace,” Niksa swept on with his complaint while Tiiran touched his cheek to try to see what was there, then licked his fingers and tried again since what most often ended up on an assistant’s face, and hands, and clothes, was ink. He dropped his hand when Niksa’s words sank in, then looked across the tables to Po, who seemed guilty.
“You told me he was late because he didn’t feel well.” Tiiran had been debating whether or not he ought to get some oranges and have someone run them to Nikoly if he was sick. Then Tiiran had wondered ifhewould be expected to deliver them personally, and if he should peel them and arrange them neatly as well. Then he’d wondered where Nikoly’s room even was, and if Nikoly shared it with anyone… and then Tiiran had had more work to do and it’d been easy to put off making the decision for a while.
“I lied,” Po confessed. “He’s actually out trying to take care of something for the library, but I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
