Page 52 of The Boy Bride

“Should have gone easier on you. Sorry. Did try, but … ” He made a rueful face. “How I am.”

He was a monster, a beast, Lill reminded himself. This was all somehow an illusion. It had to be.

“I’m inexperienced,” Lill said. He needed an explanation that wouldn’t put Vanu off, and the truth seemed like it would work as well as anything.

“Yeah.”

“Very—er, completely. I’ve never … with anyone.”

“Yeah? Wanted to? With a man?”

Lill wanted desperately to lie. In any other circumstance he would not have thought twice. Here, a lie would not serve him.

“Yes.” He spoke as quietly as Vanu.

“They told you you shouldn’t, hey?”

“What?”

“Someone told⁠—”

“No, I—I heard you. I … ” He could not talk about this. He could not. Vanu would make some grotesque suggestion—They were wrong, or some such—and what could Lill say?

“It’s all right,” said Vanu, waving a hand. “Pants on. Gonna start bothering you again, have to keep looking at all that.” He grinned.

As Lill fumbled his way back into his trousers, Vanu rose from the bed and went to pick up the pieces of their discarded clothes from the carpet. He opened the chest and folded articles of clothing away tidily, then pulled out a shirt and took down another garment that hung from a peg on the wall. He tossed the shirt to Lill, who caught it awkwardly. It was blue wool, with bands of mountain-style decoration, flowers and stylized animals woven at the opening of the neck.

“Girls decided blue suits you,” Vanu said, throwing the robe that he’d taken from the peg around his own shoulders. It was made of white wool with wide sleeves decorated in red, rather faded and patched neatly along a side seam. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” said Lill automatically. He looked at the shirt in his lap. So Vanu preferred him to dress in men’s clothes. That was a relief. Was that a relief?

Vanu prowled around the room, tidying up. Barefoot, with his hair down, in what was obviously his favourite house robe, which he or one of his daughters had left in Lill’s room for him to put on after he’d finished consummating his marriage. Which he hadn’t done.

Reluctantly, because hiding his bare skin felt like admitting defeat completely, Lill pulled the blue shirt over his head. It was loose on him but not absurdly so. It couldn’t have belonged to any of the men in the village, and there certainly hadn’t been time since he arrived to weave a new garment to his size. It had come from outside the fortress, like the henna and the spices and any number of things at the wedding. Khatu had said you had to make your clothes last in here, but if you were Vanu’s bride, that didn’t seem to apply.

Clearly these people could come and go as they pleased. Why were they still living in here at all?

“This room’s yours,” said Vanu. “If you want anything for it, just say.”

He could ask for something that they clearly wouldn’t have and hear what the response would be, whether Vanu would admit to having access to the outside world. But he didn’t; he just nodded.

He’d never had a room to himself before. The idea was strange.

“My room’s on the other side of the house—but you know that.”

Vanu flashed him a wry smile. He opened a pair of shutters that Lill had thought must lead to a closet or another room. Instead, they opened onto a covered balcony that ran the length of the house. There was a large step down, and the balcony held cushions for seating and a low table with covered dishes. Vanu walked out and patted the cushions against the wall.

“Dry,” he announced. “Come sit outside.”

Lill unfolded his legs, got up from the bed, and went out onto the balcony, into the wet afternoon sunlight, to sit with his husband.

Chapter 17

A Home with Me

Vanu sprawled on the cushions on the balcony and watched Lill tuck himself into the corner near the door to his room. He was so neat, so lovely, with his long hair loose over his shoulders, the sleeves of the blue shirt rolled up on his slender forearms. But even at rest there was something in his eyes that troubled Vanu. Not fear, exactly. A kind of haunted look.

It wasn’t always there. He had an enchanting smile, and Vanu could swear he had enjoyed some of what they had done in his bedchamber. Most of it, even. Or he’d done a good job of pretending.