The stone is cold beneath his knees and he does not feel it. He kneels in front of his husband on the floor of a Vaelmoor cell and takes Bryn's face in his hands, carefully, so carefully, his thumbs avoiding the bruise on his jaw, the split in his lip, and he holds him the way he has held him in every moment that matters: gently, completely, with the full attention of every sense he possesses.
Bryn's face is in his hands. His skin is cold. His eyes are wet. And he is smiling. Bloody and bruised and bound and smiling, the real smile, the Mithri smile, the one that uses his whole face, and the smile says I told you so and you came and I never doubted you and it is the most beautiful thing Ithyris has seen in four hundred years of looking.
"You're late," Bryn says.
The sound that comes out of the prince is not a laugh. It is not a sob. It is the sound Bryn makes when the feeling is too big for a single word, and Ithyris presses his forehead against Bryn's and breathes him in, blood and sweat and fear and beneath it all the warm, clean scent of the man he loves, and they are both shaking and his hands are on Bryn's face and Bryn is here. Alive. Smiling.
"I came as fast as I could," Ithyris says. His voice is wrecked. The dragon's resonance is gone and what is left is just a man, kneeling on a cold floor, holding the face of the person who matters more than kingdoms and crowns and four hundred years of composure. "I will always come for you. There is nowhere they can take you that I will not follow. No wall thick enough. No distance far enough. You are mine and I am yours and I will tear apart every fortress in the world to get back to you."
Bryn turns his face into the prince's palm. His cracked lips press against the center of Ithyris's hand, the way he does in the mornings, the way he does when the walls are down and the armor is off and he is just Bryn, and the kiss is soft and warm against the prince's skin.
"Untie me," he says against the prince's palm, "and take me home."
Ithyris unties him. The ropes come apart in his hands. The skin beneath is raw and bleeding and he holds Bryn's wrists and presses his mouth to each one, to the raw, abraded skin, and Bryn winces and then softens and his freed hands find the prince's face and his fingers trace the soot on Ithyris's cheeks and the scales still receding from his jaw and he looks at the prince with those bright, bruised eyes and says, quietly:
"You blew up a castle for me."
"I declawed a kingdom for you. The castle is mostly intact."
"Mostly." Bryn looks at the hole in the wall behind the prince. The ragged, man-shaped breach that opens onto a corridor of scorched stone and shattered masonry. "You punched through a wall."
"The wall was in my way."
Bryn laughs. The sound is rough and cracked and painful and it is the best sound Ithyris has ever heard and he pulls Bryn against his chest and holds him and Bryn's arms come around his neck and his face presses into the prince's throat and they are both shaking and the cell is cold and the dawn is coming through the hole Ithyris made and they hold onto each other on the floor of a Vaelmoor prison and the bond between them blazes, wide open, flooded with relief and love and the specific, devastating joy of finding the thing you were afraid you'd lost.
Ithyris holds him. The way he held him the night after the pool, the night he did not sleep, the night he watched Bryn breathe and thought it was better than dreaming. He holds himand the fire in his chest banks to an ember and the scales recede and the glow fades from the stones and what is left is two men on a cold floor in a ruined fortress, holding each other in the grey light, and one of them is crying and the other is letting him.
Ithyris is the one who is crying.
Bryn holds him tighter.
Chapter 23
Ithyris carries Bryn out of the cell on his back.
Not because Bryn cannot walk. He can walk. His legs are bruised and stiff from the cold stone floor but they function, and he tells the prince this, twice, and Ithyris ignores him with the serene, immovable certainty of a man who has just punched through a wall and is not currently accepting feedback on his decision-making process. He crouches and Bryn climbs onto his back and his arms go around the prince's neck and his legs wrap around the prince's waist and Ithyris stands and carries him through the ruined corridors, stepping over rubble and scorched stone and the occasional piece of melted armament, and the warmth of the prince's body against Bryn's chest is the first real warmth he has felt in hours and he presses his face against Ithyris's neck and breathes him in and does not let go.
The fortress is a ruin. Not entirely. The prince was telling the truth about that. The residential wings are intact. The civilian structures, untouched. But the military infrastructure is gone, systematically and precisely dismantled, and the precision of it is more terrifying than total destruction would have beenbecause total destruction is rage and rage is understandable and this is not rage. This is a lesson. This is a four-hundred-year-old predator explaining, in the language of fire and stone, exactly what happens when you take something that belongs to him.
Ithyris carries him through the breach in the outer wall and into the morning. The dawn is full now, gold and pink, the sky absurdly beautiful above the scorched remains of Vaelmoor's defenses, and the courtyard is empty. The soldiers are gone. The city beyond the walls is quiet, stunned, every window shattered, and in the distance Bryn can hear the sound of people emerging from their homes, cautious and frightened, looking up at the sky for the dragon that is no longer there.
The dragon is carrying Bryn on his back in human form, his hands hooked under Bryn's thighs, his stride careful and steady, and when they reach the open ground beyond the fortress he stops and sets Bryn down gently, so gently, and looks at him with those still-glowing eyes and says: "Will you fly with me?"
The first time Bryn flew with him he was terrified. White-knuckled, rigid, every instinct screaming that humans are not meant for the sky. The first trial. The trial of trust. Hold on and don't let go.
He looks at the prince. Soot-streaked and shaking and human, mostly, the scales still patchy on his arms and chest, his eyes still carrying the remnants of the fire. This man punched through a wall for him. Flew north in the dark and declawed a kingdom and tore apart a fortress with his bare hands and the first thing he did when he found Bryn was kneel and take his face in his hands and cry.
"Yes," Bryn says.
The prince shifts. The dragon unfolds, vast and dark and violet, and Bryn should be afraid because he is standing next to two hundred feet of apex predator whose scales radiate enough heat to cook meat and whose eyes are burning with a light thatis not entirely of this world. He is not afraid. He has never been afraid of Ithyris. He has been afraid of wanting him, afraid of needing him, afraid of the vulnerability of loving someone with the power to destroy everything he is. But afraid of the prince himself, of this creature, never.
Ithyris lowers his neck. The scales there are smooth and warm, the same scales Bryn pressed his face against during the first trial, except now they are familiar. Known. His body recognizes the texture the way it recognizes the prince's hands, his mouth, the weight of his arm in the dark.
He climbs onto the dragon's neck. Settles into the natural hollow between the ridges of the spine, the place that seems made for his body specifically, and his legs press against warm scales and his arms wrap around the thick ridge in front of him and he leans forward and presses his forehead against the warm surface.
No white knuckles.
His hands are open. His fingers rest flat against the scales, relaxed, feeling the heat through his palms, the vibration of the dragon's body beneath him, the deep, rhythmic pulse of a heartbeat transmitted through bone and scale and muscle. He closes his eyes and presses his forehead to the warm surface and trusts him.
