“Ryu, you can sleep in here,” Oris said, opening the door to a double bedroom. “There’s an ensuite bathroom to the left. Kentario, you can…” He stopped, seeing the look on Kentario’s face and needing no more of an explanation. “I take it you’ll be staying with Ryu, then?” There was no hint of objection in his voice, and Kentario nodded.
“As you wish. There are towels in the dresser, if you’d like a hot shower, and if you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Not to sound ungrateful about any of this,” Kentario said before Oris left, his voice almost a growl. “But if you betray us, I swear to Odin himself, I will bargain my way out of the underworld, hunt you down and kill youslowly.”
Oris was completely unfazed. “I have no intention of betraying you, now or ever. But the warning has been noted.” With a hint of a smile on his lips, almost as if he was amused by the threat, he left them alone, closing the door after himself.
Ryu turned to eye the bed, but he didn’t lie down. His clothes were wet and muddy, and aside from getting the sheets filthy, sleeping in wet clothes would only make him sick. But he also found himself entirely unable to summon the energy to undress.
“You need a shower,” Kentario said from behind him, gentle hands turning him around and helping to remove his sweater, and then his t-shirt. With a staggering lack of pride, Kentario knelt down and unlaced Ryu’s boots, tugging them off, and Ryu had to hang onto his shoulders to keep his balance. Kentario had already removed his jacket, he noticed belatedly, and the body beneath his hand was warm, where Ryu’s own body felt like a block of ice. He leaned closer, pressing not just his hands, but his forearms across Kentario’s back.
Beneath him, the larger man froze for a moment and made a noise of disquiet.
“Sorry,” Ryu apologised immediately, standing up again. “You’re warm.”
“Let’s get you in the shower,” Kentario said. He steered Ryu into the bathroom. “I’ll be right outside. Yell if you need anything.” Ryu managed a nod, then Kentario left, leaving the door just a fraction open.
Ryu summoned what strength he could, removing his pants and starting the shower, but it was more because Kentario also needed to get clean and dry than because he actually had the motivation to shower himself. Warm water did nothing to disperse the cold rock sitting in the middle of his chest. Were his parents really dead? Half the palace could be reduced to rubble by the morning, Ryu’s entire life lying in the ruins along with the gold-plated chandeliers and the portraits of kings of ages past. He bowedhis head under the spray, letting the water flow over his face. What about all the other people in the palace? The housekeepers and kitchen staff? What about the guards? How many of them had been killed? And what about…?
“Mother-fucking dog-shit!” he swore suddenly. Kentario was by the door in an instant.
“You okay?” he called, though he stopped short of actually coming into the bathroom. Rules of royal protocol had been instilled into him from an early age, and copping an eyeful of the crown prince bathing was certainly not on the list of good behaviours.
“I’m fine,” Ryu assured him quickly. “Just thinking about shit that I shouldn’t be thinking about. I’m fine,” he repeated. “I’ll be out in a sec.”
Kentario made an unconvinced noise, but retreated back into the bedroom.
Ryu leaned unsteadily against the shower wall, feeling a wave of despair at the detail that had occurred to him moments before. Danag, Kentario’s father, would have been in the meeting room with King Sou. There was no way the king would have been allowed to meet with a foreign diplomat without his bodyguard at his side, and particularly not when relations between Arctesia and Galandeen were so strained at the moment.
But Danag’s job was to protect the king with his very life, and if the king was dead…
Kentario’s father was almost certainly dead along with him.
He wondered if the thought had occurred to Kentario? Should he mention it? He was in a poor state to be comforting his closest friend, and from a purely pragmatic standpoint, it was better for Kentario to keep his mind on the job.
Or maybe Kentario already knew and would prefer to not have Ryu reminding him about it.
But what about Emica? And Saki, in the kitchens, and Helbert, his steward. What if they were all dead? Was he just a monumental coward, running away while he left everyone else to die?
“Ryu? How are you doing?”
Kentario’s deep voice had a grounding effect, bringing him back to the present. Deciding he was clean enough, Ryu turned off the water and got out of the shower, wrapping a thick, fluffy towel around his waist.
“I’m good. Your turn.”
Back in the bedroom, he focused on getting dry, unwilling to let his thoughts wander. He’d left his pants in the bathroom, hanging up on a towel rail to dry, so he simply slipped into bed naked, pulling the sheets up to his waist. But as exhausted as he was, there was no thought of falling asleep before Kentario was back by his side. The man was currently Ryu’s one and only lifeline… and he took the time to wonder how Kentario felt about that. What was it like, dedicating your entire life to someone? Did Kentario resent him? Had he had dreams of his own, like Cael’s desire to study marine science, that had been squashed in the name of honour and duty? Ryu’s own life was to be spent in service to his country, of course, but there wasn’t any one, specific person who could make his life particularly difficult. If he was at odds with one noble family, there were others who would support him. Some sectors of the public always liked to disagree with the monarchy, but other factions took a more reasonable approach, weighing up the pros and cons of each decision, rather than painting them all with the same brush.
But if he did something that Kentario seriously objected to, the man had nowhere else to go, no legal support, no other role he could fulfil and maintain his honour and dignity.
It was a shitty position to be in, and Ryu resolved to start asking some serious questions about disassembling the ancient tradition that tied the Amagarda family inextricably to his own, as soon as this current fire storm was over and things could get back to normal.
“Fucking hell…” he muttered, as he once again realised that ‘normal’ no longer existed. If his parents were actually dead, and if this wasn’t a revolution that would destabilise the entire country, then that meant…
That meant he was the new king. Goddess above, he was only seventeen. His eighteenth birthday wasn’t for another two days. How the hell was he supposed to deal with any of this?
“Try not to think about it.” Ryu leapt halfway off the bed, not having realised Kentario had returned. He was clean and dry, a towel wrapped around his waist, though his gun belt was still in his hand. He set it carefully on the floor by the bed, then gingerly pilfered a pillow to set beside it. There were four of them on the wide bed, and Ryu certainly wasn’t going to lack comfort with one fewer.
“Don’t sleep on the floor,” Ryu said, once he realised what Kentario intended. “Look, the bed’s plenty big enough for two.” He shuffled over, making the point by patting the wide empty space beside him. It was only belatedly that he remembered he was naked, and so was Kentario, and climbing naked into bed with the crown prince was also not on the list of acceptable behaviours for a noble bodyguard.
