11
ALARIC
The silence after Hal’s rough command settled over the tent, even as relief warmed his chest. Alaric exhaled as he turned to see the battered knight staring at him.
Alaric’s hands were still wrapped around Perrin’s wrists, the squire’s pulse hammering against his thumbs, but he couldn’t contain the squire once he realised his knight was awake.
“Ser Hal!”
Perrin pulled away and crossed to the cot in two quick strides. His hands found Hal’s shoulders, and with a sureness that spoke of practice, he helped his knight sit up.
“Easy,” the squire murmured. “Don’t try to sit up too fast. Your ribs?—”
“I know about my fucking ribs.” But Hal let Perrin help him anyway, curling forward in a way that spoke of pain, a body instinctively trying to protect its injured core. His hand pressed against his left side, fingers splayed over where the breaks would be. Alaric watched theway Hal’s chest expanded and contracted in shallow movements, each inhale cautious. He grimaced.
Hal’s eyes were open. Heavy-lidded and thin as slits, but open. Between his laboured breathing, he fixed them both with a look that settled somewhere between fury and exhaustion. “How long have I been out?”
“Four hours,” Perrin said. “You shouldn’t be talking?—”
“Damn it, Perrin, my ribs are broken, not my tongue.” Hal’s gaze moved from Perrin to Alaric, who had unconsciously stepped into a half-retreat. “And you. You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve showing up here.”
Perrin wedged himself behind Hal, bracing the knight’s back against his own chest. One arm wrapped carefully around Hal’s torso—above the injury, so he was supporting without constricting. His other hand reached for the waterskin on the small table beside the cot. Instantly, Alaric felt like the outsider.Wasthe outsider, he conceded; he was intruding utterly. Whatever existed between these two men—loyalty, or love, or that middle ground in devotion that refused neat categorisation—it had roots he could not see and could not compete with. Not that he’d intended to compete with Perrin for Hal’s attention. It was only that a petty rivalry could never,wouldnever, surpass something like love.
Suddenly, Alaric felt ridiculous. For all of it. For coming here, to the tent, and to the tournament at all.
“Here,” Perrin said, bringing the waterskin to Hal’s lips. The knight drank in small sips, and Alaric watched his throat work with the effort. Even something as simple as swallowing seemed to hurt. When Hal pushed the water away, he managed to lift his head enough to fix Alaric with a glare.
Those green eyes had lost none of their fire,despite the pain etched around them. “Still here?” Hal’s voice came out rough as gravel, each word an effort. “Thought you’d have better places to be. Championship celebrations and all that.”
“I came to see how you were.” The words sounded inadequate even to Alaric’s own ears. What had he expected? That Hal would welcome him? That showing concern now would somehow erase what he’d done the night before, the cruelty of his dismissal, the calculated manipulation?
“Well, you’ve seen.” Hal’s jaw clenched, though whether from pain or anger, Alaric couldn’t tell. Probably both. “I’m alive. Ribs will heal. Now, kindly fuck off.”
But Alaric didn’t move to leave. His feet seemed rooted to the floor, his eyes drawn to tracking the way Perrin’s hand rested on Hal’s shoulder, thumb moving in small circles against the fabric of his shirt.
Damn it. He’d wanted this, hadn’t he? He’d engineered his coupling with the Upstart to test himself, to prove he could win without his name. And he had. Only, somewhere in the execution, he’d crossed lines he hadn’t meant to cross. Had let desire override sense when he’d invited Hal to his tent. Had panicked when Perrin appeared, embarrassment and fear of exposure making him cruel.
The memory stirred in him: Hal sprawled and wanting—wanting Alaric without name or title. It had been a gift, though one Alaric hadn’t realised he was aching for until it was laid in his hands: proof that he was desirable beyond the fact of his breeding. Proof that a man could want him without some other game at play. Then Perrin’s narrow frame had cut the light at the tent’s mouth, and panic had seized him.
Why had Alaric done what he had? He’d spent the remainder of the night scolding himself, unsure where thatviscous persona had been dredged from. But he thought, in a way, it came from fear.
Perrin’s devotion to Hal was absolute; any entanglement with the knight would always include the squire, a truth Alaric had at first wilfully ignored. Worse, Perrin had already come perilously close to guessing who Alaric was. Even wrong, Perrin’s natural curiosity unnerved Alaric, who needed to remain anonymous lest he face his father’s wrath.
But that hadn’t been why Alaric had chosen to hurt Hal as he had. When Perrin had looked at his knight—hurt, shocked—guilt had struck Alaric harder than fear. Who was Alaric to step between such devotion, to muddy love with his appetite? Who was he to take, as he always had, and expect desire without consequence?
Perrin’s interruption had laid the ugly core of him bare. He had cast Hal from the tent to save face, yes—but also, he told himself, to spare what was real between the knight and his squire.
And perhaps to flee the terror of how much it had mattered to be wanted simply as himself.
But he hadn’t needed to twist the knife quite so thoroughly. That had been fear talking, and panic, and a bit of his father leaking through. His own panic at being caught wanting—not wanting the physical pleasure, which was a thing he could access at any time, but the connection beneath. The way Hal had looked at him with his own desire, like Alaric was worth fighting and fucking and hating with equal intensity, had kindled his heart.
No one at court ever looked at him that way. They saw his name before his face, his title before his worth. Every lover he’d bedded had been paid, or if they were a member of court, had measured what use his favour might be overwhat ruin his anger could bring. But Hal had seen only a man: a worthy opponent, yes, but underneath it all, ahuman, present, and real.
And Alaric had flung that gift back at him.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said.”
The words came soft and brittle. What could one expect from a nobleman, without much cause to ever apologise? He floundered, feeling their gazes on him, and eventually cleared his throat. “Last night. What I said about strategy, and—” He stopped as Hal’s expression shuttered further. Better to speak plainly, he decided. “I was lying. I’m sorry.”
