“Wait,” Geva cut in, her voice too loud, too strained, her hand firmly stroking against Rathgarr’s rigid back. “Please. He’s just — he just needs a moment, all right?”
Kesst blinked, his forehead furrowing, his eyes angling suspiciously back toward Rathgarr again. While Geva kept blatantly stroking, rubbing from Rathgarr’s shoulder down to his arse, while her other hand gripped to its usual place against his arm.
“I know he wants to talk,” she told Kesst, almost pleading. “He wants to tell you anything you’d like to know. Don’t you, love?”
She’d nudged herself harder into Rathgarr’s side as she spoke, her hands squeezing even tighter against him. And she nearly shuddered with relief when he glanced down toward her, his rigid body spasming, and then perhaps slightly relaxing, beneath her touch.
“You want to be honest with Kesst,” she repeated, holding his eyes. “About what you did, all these years.”
Rathgarr jerked a hard nod, his gaze snapping back to Kesst’s, and she could feel him fighting for breath, for words. For a way through this.
“I… survived,” he finally replied, his voice not his own. “I oft moved, from place to place, so I could not be known, or found.”
He paused there, gulping for more breath, and Geva kept stroking, waiting. “I learnt all the places where orcs live and hide in secret,” he continued, a little faster. “I stayed for a long spell with the southern Bautul clans, and also in the north, with the bands of orcs who run deep beneath the humans’ capital. I lived also with a long line of human women, and I traded pleasure for food and shelter and coin, until they tired of me, or I of their demands.”
Oh. Geva’s hand stroking him had abruptly faltered, her eyes gone blank on his grim, drawn face. Rathgarr had… truly done that? Traded coin for pleasure, and submitted himself to their demands? Just like… just like…
“But amidst all this, I sought to stay in the shadows,” his wooden voice continued. “To leave when any got too close. I learnt to lie and wheedle and steal, to smile amidst my rage, to say only empty words and vows. I spent much of my coin on wine and ale, until I forgot who and where I was. I became… a ghost.”
A ghost. And gods, Geva could almost see it, the bleak, blank, endless misery of it swarming to life behind her eyes. Rathgarr alone, hiding, inebriated, leaving, lying, lost. Trading his big, beautiful body for food and coin and shelter. Surviving. A ghost. Forsixteen years.
And standing before them, with a silently watching Tengil still in his arms, Kesst was looking just as unsettled as Geva felt. His grey skin pale, his swallow bobbing in his throat.
“Well, that sounds delightful,” he said, with a forced-feeling lightness. “I must say, it seems unfathomable to me thatyouwould choose to live like that, for so many years, without even making anattemptto return to your kin, or your home? Or to send a message, or a letter? Maybe a cryptic clue or two?!”
Rathgarr’s body was again stiffening under Geva’s touch, and she belatedly resumed her stroking, felt him slightly softening, struggling to draw in air. “I could not,” he choked out. “I could not risk this. It was only this — this dream of you, safe, happy, at home, that made my days bearable. And even when” — his body shuddered against Geva’s touch — “I began to wonder this, to question this, to dream of ways to see you again — I could not face the risk of it. Not only that I might harm you, and destroy all I had fought so hard to keep, but that I might find I was — wrong. That I had done all this, to me, and to you, for so long… for naught.”
His voice was badly wavering now, his eyes blinking hard, holding, pleading, to Kesst’s drawn face. “And now, this is truth,” he whispered. “It is all my worst fears come alive, at my own foolish, craven hand. I failed you, little brother. And I shall now never rest until I do all that can be done to mend this. To avenge this. To take back what isours.”
Kesst’s face was looking even paler than before, his eyes squeezing shut — and then he shook his head, a sharp laugh escaping from his mouth. “Gods, Rath, I don’t want your vengeance,” he snapped, his voice cracking. “Any more than I want your coin or your gold or your jewels, whether through you, or Grim! If you really want to make amends to me, you’ll —”
He broke off there, wincing, still shaking his head. And Rathgarr lurched a step forward, reaching for him, but then pulling away again, just in time.
“What, little brother,” he pleaded. “Only say what you wish, and I shall do it.”
But Kesst grimaced again, his eyes dropping to Tengil’s watching, wide-eyed face, and darting away again. “Nothing,” he hissed. “Forget it. It’s fine. I just —”
He clamped his mouth shut, furiously flapping his hand, and then spun away, and stalked back up the corridor. Leaving Geva and Rathgarr staring after him, Geva’s hand still clutched to Rathgarr’s stiff back, while his throat convulsed again, and again, and again.
“What did he mean by this,” he whispered, sounding more lost, more forlorn, than Geva had ever heard him. “What did he wish for?”
Geva’s throat was convulsing too, and she leaned a little closer, both arms circling around his waist on their own. “You’ll find out, love,” she said, as steadily as she could. “One step at a time, remember? And you two are speaking again, and you told him the truth, and he accepted it. That’s incredible. A huge step forward.”
Rathgarr didn’t reply, but at least he was breathing again, his stiff shoulders sagging lower with every heavy exhale. “Ach,” he said. “I… thank you, poppet.”
Geva’s heart skipped a beat, a low, whispering warmth curling in her belly — but she waved it away, as casually as she could. And then twitched a hopeful little smile up toward him, clasping his hand in hers.
“Back to the party, then?” she said lightly. “You owe me a dance or two, I think.”
Rathgarr huffed an exasperated-sounding groan, but there was no real malice in it, and once they reached the party again, he willingly followed Geva up toward the drums. They were thudding slower and deeper than before, and glancing around the much-dimmer room, Geva realized that all the orclings — including Tengil, and Kesst along with him — had now vanished, and that the party had taken a far more… intimate turn. There were orcs grinding together on the benches, several of them blatantly bared, and Geva could just make out Grimarr, pinning Jule purposefully to the wall across the room, his face buried in her neck.
Rathgarr was glancing around the room too, his eyes catching — and narrowing — on where a big, unfamiliar orc was yanking a smiling, flush-faced Abjorn by his wrist toward the door, while Sigarr frowned from the bench opposite. But then Sigarr shoved up to follow, his gaze briefly meeting Rathgarr’s as he strode out after them — and Geva could feel Rathgarr relaxing again, his eyes angling down toward hers, one brow arching up in a silent, meaningful question.
Geva’s face felt hot, suddenly, and she dropped her gaze to his chest, felt the steady warmth of the low, thudding drumbeat. Let it coil around her, and then sinking deeper into it, following where it led. Into the rhythmic, easy sway of her hips, the flow of her turning feet, the lightness of her arms, rising over her head.
She could feel the touch of Rathgarr’s eyes as she spun, circling into the beat — and once she’d turned to face him again, she met his watching eyes, felt her mouth curve into a soft, teasing smile. And then felt the warmth shudder all through her, even deeper than the thudding beat, as his hand slipped to her hip, his fingers spreading wide against it, following it as she moved.
And that meant he was moving too, spinning along with her, his other hand finding her waist, clenching close and proprietary against it. But in contrast to her fluid, easy movements, his were harder, more forceful, his hair swaying out sharp behind him, his booted foot stomping along with the beat.
