Tania made an affronted sound, high-pitched and exasperated. “You will do no such thing,” she said. “You’rebeholden first to your family, and I am the head of that family. I insist you come with us. We’ll leave some people here to stay with him.”
“No.”
Tania’s voice softened somewhat as she continued. “Petur, be reasonable, please. I know how much he means to you, but Deyvid’s safety isn’t worth more than the security of our nation. You’re the best we’ve got when it comes to keeping us safe. I need you to get us back to Delomar. Think of your nieces. Think of the good of the kingdom.”
“Am I never allowed to think of my own good?” Petur asked, with very little inflection in his voice.
“Of course, you are, but—”
“Am I never allowed to put my own needs first?”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“I think it is,” Petur said. “I think youknowit is. I don’t think anything about what I feel for Deyvid is a surprise to you. This is the closest he’s ever been to … to …” Petur couldn’t even force himself to say it.
Deyvid longed to reach for him, but his arms wouldn’t obey his mind’s commands. His body was staving off the promise of pain the only way it could, by incapacitating the rest of him.
“I am your loyal subject,” Petur continued after a moment, “and I love you as your brother, but it’s been nearly ten years, Tania.Ten yearsof not hiding my feelings from you when it comes to him. Youknowwhat Deyvid means to me. You can’t possibly expect me to be sanguine about an order like this.”
“I expect you to do your duty,” she replied, “and that is to me first and foremost. We’re leaving.”
“I’ll come with you,” Petur said after a moment, and Deyvid’s heart seemed to clench, “if you give me leave to marry him.” He said the last part in a rush, like he was either too excited or too fearful to keep it inside his chest any longer.
“You have plenty of family members available to marry off in the near future, and two of the only marketable nobles of appropriate rank for me decided to align with each other after this convocation. Give me leave to marry Deyvid, and I’ll gladly take you anywhere you want to go.”
There was a long period of silence. Deyvid wished he could see what was going on between the siblings. They often spoke so heavily with their movements, with the curl of their mouths or the slant of their eyebrows, that he didn’t understand them as well when he couldn’t see them.
“I can’t,” Tania finally said.
“Butwhy?” Petur demanded in pure desperation.
“Because I have already arranged a marriage for you.”
Already arranged a marriage for him? But to whom?Deyvid tried to think, tried to focus, but it was just too hard. Everything felt too hard right now. Everything was pain and heat, and he couldn’t even reach out to his loved one and comfort him the way he knew Petur needed.
“To Prince Symon of Bekkon,” Tania said into the stentorian silence. “He’s the stepson of Queen Melisse Parador and a highly accomplished mage. It’s past time we brought a magic user into our family, and Prince Symon will fit the bill nicely.”
“He’s a child,” Petur protested.
“He’s twenty-one. That’s hardly a child.”
“I’m fourteen years older than him!”
“Then you’ll be comfortably in charge of the relationship, won’t you?”
“I don’twantthis.”
Tania’s next words were soft and cruel. “You’ve gotten far too much of what you want in the first place. It’s made you spoiled and prone to taking advantage of me. Now it’s time for you to do whatIneed you to do. Deyvid has made you forget your duties for the past ten years.” Her voice picked up speed,becoming strident. “He turned your heart away from me and my husband and children. He turned you from your own family, manipulated you into holding him first instead of us. He is a soulless abomination who never should have been allowed into my court, and the only way he’s going to stay from here on out,ifhe survives his wound, is with you safely married to another.”
The silence this time was dead. Whatever was going on between them, it was enough for Tania to decide to take her leave. Moments later, her footsteps rang across the slate floor of the inn’s room, and Deyvid stirred restlessly, fighting for control of his body. He began to shiver, teeth clacking together as the urge to reach out triggered a whole-body shudder.
He needed to get to Petur—to touch him, soothe him, and tell him that he understood that it would be all right. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t control anything; but there was Petur, gasping as he clutched Deyvid’s hand.
“Get the healer,” he shouted toward the door. “Now!”
Deyvid shook and shivered straight into unconsciousness shortly thereafter, and the only thing he was able to cling to on his way out was the pressure of Petur’s hand finding his. He drifted from sweating to freezing, from near lucid to insensate. Deyvid wasn’t sure how long the apex of his fever lasted. By the time he truly came back to himself, he felt utterly wrung out, as bad as if he’d been on the road for months with no break. His body ached fiercely, his gut the worst of all, but while the pain was pervasive, he no longer felt the dire heat of infection.
“It turns out you’re miraculous.”
