And yet Corin’s tone was so low, so…unnaturally calm, in fact. No one spoke that evenly without trying. Oh, God. Aster was in so much trouble.
“I was going to say that knights—don’t house their guests in an unheated room with not enough blankets. Or receive them as rudely as I did, without offering refreshment or any welcome at all. I had no intention of commenting on the way you fainted, in fact.” He leaned forward, and then a little more, until Aster could feel the heat of him anew.
Aster’s hard swallow clicked loudly enough to make him jump. He practically vibrated with the need to hide, to skitter away and scurry under the bed, to scream and run. Because now Corin knew Aster had come here not by chance, or for some prank, or on Belinda’s behalf.
He’d run away from a marriage and defied his parents and Marellus—and by extension, the king, who had to give his seal of approval literally and figuratively to any marriage within the high nobility. He’d made himself one step above an outlaw.
Which meant he could only have one reason for being here.
Aster had meant to reveal the truth later. Much later, or perhaps even not at all. And now, in a fit of stupid, loose-tongued weakness, he’d given himself away.
Corin seemed to grow larger, to fill all Aster’s senses, to charge the air the way a thunderstorm would. The storm brewing within the bedroom terrified him far more than the storm raging outside the tower.
“And I’d thought that you’d come here either by chance, or to escape some social faux pas,” Corin said as if reading his mind, this time with such a deadly lack of inflection that Aster’s spine quivered, and he couldn’t do anything but gaze up into Corin’s face, eyes wide, frozen. “But unless my ears are broken, I think you’ve just told me that you’re here to escape from—your own intended husband? Duke Marellus. Because he doesn’t like you.”
Corin’s neutral tone gave nothing away. Did he sympathize? Pity him for being so undesirable? Wish him a thousand miles away?
That last one, almost certainly.
Aster could only nod, his neck stiff and the movement jerky. His voice had run away, even if the rest of him hadn’t been able to muster the strength.
Corin’s lips pressed together tightly, his jaw set.
“Then you’re not here for my hospitality, Lord Aster. You’re here looking for my protection. Mine. After everything that’s—you have the fucking nerve!” Aster cringed back, lungs aching with the effort of holding his breath, as Corin glared at him with a furious flush along his cheekbones and his pupils seeming to glow more brightly.
That clenching in his belly intensified until he thought he might throw up. Or throw himself at Corin’s feet and beg. Or—his limbs trembled with urges he couldn’t begin to interpret.
At last Corin said, low and rough, “You can stay as long as the bad weather holds. I’m not a monster,” and he spat the word as if it tasted foul. Aster flinched. Belinda had called him that. Screamed it, in fact, in front of an audience of dozens, as Corin stood over her bleeding lover with his sword in hand. “I won’t throw you out to die of exposure. But that’s all. As soon as it’s safe, you’ll go.”
With that, Corin released Aster from his gaze, rolled off the bed, and strode for the door.
Aster all but collapsed, sucking in air and shaking.
Corin turned his head just before he disappeared into the stairwell to add, “And don’t think you’re going to avoid telling me exactly what happened and how you decided to come here, because that begs for a fucking explanation.” Aster winced. “Meet me in the hall, ten minutes. Water in the basin there, garderobe at the foot of the stairs.”
He vanished, the sound of his heavy footsteps echoing and then fading away.
Aster dropped his face into his trembling hands.
Well. That could’ve gone better.
Aster wouldn’t beexpectingmuch, but the meal Corin hastily laid out on a rough board at the end of the hearth still looked unfit for a man accustomed to dining only a few seats down from the king’s high table at court. And of course Corin couldn’t possibly explain that the effort he’d expended to acquire the dark bread, hard cheese, jar of pickled beets, and wooden bowl of withered end-of-winter apples far outweighed any trouble gone to by anyone who’d hosted Aster in the past. Mentioning his late-night flight down the mountain to the village in white-out conditions, buffeted by high winds, would be fishing for compliments and gratitude.
Or worse, he’d look like he gave a fuck, which of course he didn’t. Far from it.
He wished now that he’d simply given Aster the chunk of half-raw pork and told him to fucking eat it or not, depending on whether he preferred parasites or starvation.
How the hell had Aster dared to come looking for his protection from Duke Marellus, from Aster’s noble parents, from the no-doubt angry king? The same king who’d been forced to release Corin from his oath of service after pressure from the father of that worthless satin-clad dandy he’d left crying in the dirt with a scar down the side of his pretty-boy face.
Corincouldprotect Aster, of course. Any dragon could, both through sheer unassailable force and through the treaties dragon-kind had made with human monarchs, including King Theobert.
But it made his already awkward position infinitely more so.
And besides, he didn’t fucking want to protect Belinda’s thrice-damned little brother.
Even if his reason for running away echoed Corin’s too closely for comfort. Damn it, Aster was clearly distressed. Distraught, even. And very, very young.
In the abstract, perhaps, he deserved better than Corin’s snarling hostility or an interrogation about his reasons for leaving his home. He could forgive himself for that, though.
