He clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides, the itchiness becoming overwhelming. He had to start pacing. Moving. He couldn’t continue standing still thusly.
“Brother?”
Nando’s familiar, calming voice stole him from the grips of whatever ailed him, forcing his gaze back to his brother. His reckless, careless, wonderful brother. The battlefield had left them both wounded and scarred in more ways than one, but they shouldered their burdens differently.
Maxim swallowed hard against a rising surge of bile. “I need to walk, Nando.”
It wasn’t an explanation, nor was it an acknowledgment. Rather, it was a bitter confession. A vulnerability from a man who couldn’t afford to possess one.
The desperation edging his voice must have been sufficient, for Nando nodded, striding forward until they were shoulder to shoulder. “I’ll walk with you.”
The gesture made something unfurl inside him. His throat grew tight.
“You needn’t,” Maxim managed, though there was no one else he would trust to see him in such a state.
“We are all the family each other has in this world,” Nando reminded him needlessly. “I will walk with you through the fires of Hades if necessary.”
And Maxim knew that, for all his rakish ways and endless seductions and careless ease, Nando meant those words to his marrow.
So he managed a nod, his throat tight. “If you must.”
“I must.”
They fell into a familiar stride, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, their feet moving in time. He couldn’t say why one of the most brutal memories he possessed—the march across the Tayrnes forest and through the mountain pass, when they had lost their mounts and had been forced to travel by foot—should also be the source of an act that soothed him. And yet, it was. Life was mysterious, but the affliction he suffered was more so. The royal physician had neither a name for it, nor a cure.
They traveled three lengths of the entry hall before the rising panic inside Maxim subsided enough for him to attempt speech.
“A duchess and a countess, you say?”
“One sitting on my face whilst?—”
“Fucking hell,” he interrupted. “I have no wish for details, brother. I was merely trying for polite conversation.”
“Polite, you?” Nando laughed lightly. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”
Fair enough. Neither would he have. Maxim hadn’t attempted pleasantries or the pageantry of court since assuming the throne. Gentility and gallantry—even polite conversation—had always felt hollow and foolish without Mina. She had been the sole thread binding him to civility.
And now…
Now, he would soon have a new wife, even if his mind was currently stumbling upon someone else. That, too, would pass.
He was sure of it.
“I can be polite,” he countered as they turned in tandem and resumed marching down the entry hall, their booted footsteps falling in perfect timing.
It was a balm to his ragged soul, those steady, rhythmic taps. The action was familiar and calming.
“Brother, your manners are woefully lacking.”
“I wasn’t the one with a duchess on my face earlier,” he pointed out, the darkness fogging his mind receding.
“It was the countess on my face, if you must know,” Nando drawled. “The duchess was sucking my?—”
“Silence,” he interrupted. “Kindly keep the details of your misadventures to yourself.”
“As you keep yours to yourself?” Nando’s tone, like his question, was razor-sharp.
His brother wasn’t fooled by his lack of explanation about the missing carpets. Nando might be a rakehell of the worst order, but he was also damned intelligent. Still, Maxim didn’t want to talk about what had happened. The seizing in his chest was finally beginning to abate.
