When Sig said it was time to go, he went. They rode out of the village toward the sea, the midafternoon sun roasting the tops of their heads and starting to tip down enough to glare in their eyes. Only eight hours or so earlier, Aster had been in Corin’s bed. Ten hours earlier, he’d been pinned with a muscular arm across his chest, held immobile and helpless while Corin filled him for the third time since they’d retired for the night.
He hadn’t been numb then. Every breath, every heartbeat, every thrust of Corin’s cock had been vivid and sharp. Corin’s whispered praise still echoed in his ears. It almost drowned out the clop of three sets of hoofbeats, the wind in the trees, the herald’s grumbled complaints, and Sig’s admonitions to shut up and stop being such a pain in the ass.
At least Aster had a good memory. He could hold on to every word Corin had ever spoken to him, the sensation of every touch.
The journey to the coast took all of that day, with a stop that night at a roadside tavern with good ale and terrible beds, and nearly a full second day. An hour or so before sunset they reined up on top of a gentle hill overlooking a prosperous little seaside town with the glittering water like sprinkled shards of crystal beyond. The brisk scent of salt and the distant cries of gulls roused his mind from its stupor, and he dearly wished they hadn’t. Misery rushed in to fill the space left by his detached indifference. He blinked at the twinkling ocean and the rosy glare of the horizon, his head starting to throb.
Reflexively, Aster glanced up, twisting to each side to get a view of as much of the sky as he could. Empty, as it had been the whole journey. He’d made sure Sig and Jules, whose name he’d learned at last, weren’t watching him—but he’d looked as often as he thought he could get away with it.
Once, a faint outline against the sky had set his heart pounding, instantly and painfully, as if his ribs would burst. It was only a cloud, the shape of which had resembled a spread pair of wings at first glance. Every passing shadow had made his breath catch. But none of them had been Corin swooping down and…
At that point in the fantasy, Aster’s power of imagination broke down. Perhaps he simply had too much dull practicality in his nature. But he’d gone with Sig for a reason, that reason still existed, and all of Corin’s reasons for staying where Aster had left him remained in force too.
Sig nudged his horse into motion, and Aster and Jules followed him down the hill.
Before long they’d passed through the town and Aster was dismounting at the docks, stiff and exhausted and wincing as he swung his leg over. The number of times he’d been knotted open before he set off on this journey…but that ache would fade all too soon, and the pain of missing it would be much greater.
Sig had asked questions as they went along the waterfront and eventually led them to one of the larger ships in the harbor, one bound for the capital that had room to bring their mounts aboard. Aster stood staring blankly at the ripples in the water as Sig negotiated for their passage. Throwing himself in might work. He’d have to wait until they were under way, of course. Aster knew how to swim perfectly well, and that reflex would kick in and bring him right back to the dock if he jumped here. And anyway, someone would dive in after him. Out in the open sea, a rescue effort wouldn’t be likely to succeed even if someone tried.
He could cry out and stumble first, make it look like he’d slipped. Surely the king wouldn’t force his parents to pay Marellus’s absurd penalty if Aster died accidentally on his way back to make things right. Theobert had always been reasonable, his marriage-decree-related foray into idiocy notwithstanding.
A cleared throat made Aster start and whip his head around.
Jules stood a couple of feet away, shoulders hunched and cloak wrapped tightly around his thin body against the damp chill of the ocean breeze. He gazed steadily at Aster out of his pretty jade-green eyes, usually flashing with annoyance but at the moment more serious than Aster had seen them.
“That won’t solve anything,” he said. His lips flattened into a line. “You’d really rather that than be married to Sig? I mean, of course it’s a dreadful fate, the man’s an animal. He ought to come with a warning sign so that anyone with discrimination and taste can run away. But it won’t be so bad, I’m sure. Not that bad.”
Aster blinked, shook his head, and stared.
How the hell had Jules known…? And as for the rest of that, he’d contradicted himself several times, and seemed to be protesting maybe a little too much to be believed.
Damn it, Julesknew. Aster’s cheeks went red-hot against the creeping evening fog.
“I’m not—I don’t know what you mean, solve anything,” he stammered. “I was just standing here.”
Jules tugged his cloak tighter and scowled. “The hell you were,” he said flatly. “You shouldn’t do that. But you also shouldn’t marry someone you don’t care about.”
“Maybe you should be telling Sig that,” Aster snapped.
“Maybe I already did, and he didn’t listen!” Jules clamped his mouth shut and glanced around shiftily, as if he’d only just realized how loud he’d been. “Anyway, what do you think would happen to him if he showed up without you to report that he’d lost you at sea? He has some human decency. He’d tell your parents what happened, not disappear and forget about it like some men would.”
Fucking hell, Aster hadn’t even thought of that. If the king did void the penalty out of sympathy, Marellus would very possibly take out his anger on Sig. Not to mention Aster’s father would be looking for someone to blame.
Damn it all.
“You’re right,” he said, with a faint sense of relief mingled with the regret. “He’d be in so much trouble.” Giving up the one idea he’d had for escaping his dull, pointless, miserable future didn’t bother him as much as he might have thought. In fact, he couldn’t really bring himself to care one way or the other.
On the other hand, Jules had been such a pain in the ass. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” he added.
“Humph,” Jules sniffed, and turned his head away, gazing out across the water. The very last periwinkle-gray remnants of sunset washed everyone out, but Jules looked pale and unhappy on top of that.
Aster couldn’t pretend to have more than the average sensitivity to other people’s feelings, but even he couldn’t miss the fact that when he married Sig, Aster wouldn’t be the only one made miserable.
That didn’t make him feel any better.
Damn it, pain in the ass or not… “I’m sorry,” he said.
Jules’s cheeks flushed dark, and he turned back, eyes boring into Aster. “Don’t apologize for being pretty and rich,” he hissed. “It’s hypocritical and incredibly annoying.”
