Blaine leaned forward to rest his forehead against Honovi’s shoulder, sucking in a sharp breath. He held it for the longest time before finally letting it out on a slow sigh.
“I was Westergard once,” Blaine said in a voice barely louder than a whisper, as if he couldn’t bear to part with the words.
Honovi closed his eyes and pocketed the ring before wrapping both arms around his husband. He could hear it in Blaine’s voice—the regret for leaving, for being called to a road Honovi wasn’t sure he could follow. Because Mainspring had offered Blaine something Honovi never could—recognition of a past lost.
Honovi was vaguely familiar with the Westergard bloodline only because it had always shadowed the Rourkes. He knew it had been eradicated during the Inferno, or so history and their own spies said. But Westergard was simply another name forduty, and Honovi understood the lengths one would go to uphold such a thing. Being smuggled away by a star god wouldn’t be enough to keep him from protecting the clans if it were he who’d lost a homeland.
And it wasn’t as if Blaine was risking himself alone. The Clockwork Brigade had a plan. Spies were useful that way, and the cogs that were all the people who made up the Ashionen rebellion had spun their way past the Eastern Spine to Glencoe. Politics was ever tangled, and not even borders could keep it out.
Mainspring promised forged papers and a meticulously built background for a bright Ashionen engineer who had traveled far to attend the Aeronautical Institute, E’ridia’s premier university. A man who had assimilated into the culture deep enough that no one would question the accent he’d carry back to Amari. An offer of employment lecturing about engine development waited for him at Amari’s Aether School of Engineering, despite Blaine having never taught a class in his life.
But he knew engines, and Honovi wondered how Mainspring had come to discover that fact, or if she just assumed every E’ridian would know how to fly and have a love for the mechanics of it all.
Honovi turned his head to press a kiss to his husband’s temple, lips ghosting over soft skin. “I wish you would have told me this. I would have kept your secret.”
Blaine nodded jerkily before lifting his head, lips finding Honovi’s for a kiss that almost hurt before he pulled away. “It wasn’t mine to tell.”
“You’re Clan Storm now, no matter what anyone says. I want you to remember that.” Honovi ran his hand over Blaine’s head, fingers catching at the start of the braid at the nape of his neck. He pressed their foreheads together and swallowed tightly. “What do you need?”
“Mainspring said we leave tonight with her cogs. There’s an Ashionen airship set to depart for Foxborough before the sun sets. She said we’ll take a train from that city to Amari after we land. I can get in contact with you through the embassy there once we arrive and I get settled wherever Mainspring puts me.”
“All right.”
Blaine chewed on his bottom lip. “And I need you to cut my hair.”
Honovi jerked, a full-body shudder that wrenched him back a step. Blaine refused to let him go, finger still hooked tightly through his belt loop.
“No,” Honovi ground out.
“I will always be E’ridian, but I can’t look it where I’m going. Please, Honovi. Do this for me.”
Blaine’s entreaty felt like a betrayal, even as he understood the safety passing as Ashionen would provide him. That still didn’t make it easy to hear Blaine asking for Honovi to strip him of his culture.
In the end, he could not say no. In the end, Honovi refused to let anyone else carve his husband into a stranger. He reached up and touched his fingers to Blaine’s jaw, staring into familiar hazel eyes. Hidden in their depths was an old grief Honovi couldn’t ignore. “Is this what you truly want?”
“It’s not about what I want. It’s about what is needed from me. I’d hoped the star gods would not call me back.” Blaine swallowed thickly, blinking rapidly. “But I can no more walk away from this than you can from beingjarl.”
“Did you expect a summons like this?”
“Not like this.”
“But you expectedsomething. And you never told me.”
Blaine wrapped his fingers around Honovi’s wrist. “Did you forget who brought me to E’ridia?”
Honovi flexed his fingers, mouth twisting into a grimace. He’d not seen the Dusk Star since that long-ago night, and some days, Honovi thought he’d dreamed her. But the reality of her visit had grown up beside Honovi for the last fifteen years, held safe behind the Eastern Spine and chasing the wind into distant lands on airships.
Perhaps that was her intention all along.
They all knew of the Inferno, knew of the coup that had gutted Ashion’s royal bloodline. E’ridia had recalled all their ambassadors for the years following the political upheaval. Only when things had settled, when the Ashion parliament defiantly continued, albeit monarchless and fighting a losing battle against the Daijal court, did theComhairle nan Cinnidheansend their airships back to that country.
Honovi had cut his teeth on trade talks beside ambassadors there and with the Houses of Solaria amidst their Senate and Imperial court. He wondered what placement he could find in the west, on the upper part of the continent, because he did not want Blaine to go alone. But his father’s words still rang in his ears, and duty was like an airship anchor, heavy and unyielding to the winds.
Honovi twisted his hand so he could tangle their fingers together. “I don’t know Ashionen style.”
Blaine lifted his hand to brush two fingers over the space where his collarbone would be beneath his shirt. “Mainspring said to crop it short, but up to here is fine.”
It wasn’t, but it would need to be.
