Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
Mo was still screaming at them to let her go, let her go, let her go, but the men holding Juniper down released him.
It was only then that Juniper realized the men were Bill and Phteven, but even Bill didn’t look too smug, and Phteven couldn’t meet his eyes.
“What are you doing?” Juniper demanded.
Mo’s brown eyes snapped to him, confusion on his beautiful face.
“We had a deal.” Prince Edward turned that ice-blue gaze of his on Juniper. “I so appreciated you seeking me out.”
“Juniper?” Mo’s voice was fractured. He had stopped struggling for a moment, frozen where four guards still had their hands on him.
“This wasn’t our deal,” Juniper snapped, stepping forward. “I was going to—”
“I thought it was interesting,” the prince cut him off, waving his hand in dismissal, “that you believed there would be more dragons in the northern mountains. If there are, that’s news to the royal family. News which I will bring back to the capital city, along with the bodies of slain dragons.”
“Juniper.”
Sometimes, you realize you are in love with your best friend when you are sitting by the hearth fire embroidering a sheep onto a sweater for said best friend, while he snores gently in his rocker beside you, those great big hands of his still holding his mending needles.
Or when you’re harvesting wheat and he’s singing that tune his grandmam taught him about plum pies and dead kings and love, and the sun makes his brown skin look like it’s glowing.
Or even when you are griping about rising tallow prices and the importance of good moisturization and he tells you, Junebug, eat some bread, and that means Fussing isn’t good for your skin, either, take a breath, but he says it with eyes as soft as the blanket he wove for you and he’s also the only person in the world who can tell you something like that and be heard.
Or maybe, maybe, maybe Juniper should have realized it that cold winter night when he kissed his best friend’s beautiful mouth in a way no bro ever could.
But no, Juniper hadn’t realized it, not truly, not the extent of it, until Morn Elmthorn was being pinned to the ground, staring up at him with betrayal and loss and hurt and anger written all over his face.
“I didn’t—” Juniper tried. “I wanted—”
And then the rest of his words were drowned with Mo’s roar of fury and pain as he managed to get a knee under himself and push his way upward, through the throng of men who were holding him down, to his feet.
He was a blur of motion, and Juniper tried to run for him—
And then they were on him, shoving him to the ground again, someone’s boot making contact with Mo’s ribs with a sickening thud. Bill had hold of Juniper again, his knife trained on Juniper’s throat.
The rest came in bits and pieces—Mo shouting, and Bear whimpering from inside that horrible muzzle, and men with swords all around them.
They took Bear away first, the prince leaving with her, but a dozen men stayed behind, still holding Mo pinned on the ground. They let Juniper up after he stopped struggling (and okay, sure, they were a little uncomfortable with how much he had been crying).
When the mercenaries—or maybe kingsmen; some of them definitely looked like soldiers, not just a group of fools who signed up in a tavern—had finally left, with a warning not to follow unless they wanted to be brutally stopped, Juniper ran across the clearing to Mo, who was staggering to his feet.
Blood was dripping down Mo’s jaw, a narrow cut across his cheekbone. He rubbed at it, his eyes a little unfocused.
“Junebug?”
The clearing between them had never been so wide.
“I can explain,” Juniper said.
Mo stepped forward, and then suppressed a gasp, pressing his hand to his side as if in pain.
Juniper surged forward, but Mo held up his other hand, palm out, and Juniper’s footsteps halted of their own accord.
“Did you do it?” Mo asked. His tone was quiet, but it was colder than the winter Juniper had spent alone. When Juniper opened his mouth and shut it again without answering, Mo repeated himself. “Did you do it, Juniper?”
“Yes,” Juniper said. “But that wasn’t the deal. I didn’t know he followed me back here. I was going to talk to you. I was trying to talk to you, because I was trying to protect you, Mo; I was trying to protect—”
Mo’s hand, again, raised to stop the torrent of Juniper’s words. “I’m going after her.”
“What can we really do?” Juniper blurted. He had never hated himself quite this much. Not even when he had called Mo Daddy in front of Farmer Abernathy and then wanted the ground to swallow him. No, this was immeasurably worse. “Mo? He’s a prince. He has over a dozen men with him now. We should—”
Mo whirled on him, his brown eyes flashing dangerously. “You cannot be serious,” he said. He was staring at Juniper as if he had never really seen him before. “You cannot possibly be that selfish.”
The words cut Juniper through, so sharply he could not catch his breath for a long moment. Of course he was that selfish. More selfish than Mo knew, even.
“Mo—” he said. “Of course I don’t want Bear to be hurt. I don’t want any of this. But—”
“You,” Mo said icily, “are the reason we are here. You did this, Juniper. You made a deal with that prince and you are the reason he took her. And Bear is just a little kid, and she is scared and in danger and alone, and you of all people should understand how she feels.”
Juniper flinched as if he had been struck, the words hanging in the clearing between them like a dark rain cloud. “Morn,” he said softly. “I do. I do understand. We just…” He let out his breath slowly. “We just need a plan.”
“I’ve got it,” Mo said. He wasn’t looking at Juniper, one of his hands curled into a fist, the other pressed against his ribs where the kingsmen had kicked him. “You don’t have to come. I wouldn’t expect you to.”
He turned away from Juniper, his shoulders tense.
“You’re going,” Juniper snapped. “You think I would abandon you? I love you, you fool!”
The words ripped out of him, coupled with the immediate invasion of the one memory he tried his hardest to forget:
Mo, pack on his shoulders, leaving after their kiss. Mo, gone for so long Juniper thought the winter would last forever.
And there it was, all out in the open at last, in this gods-cursed clearing where Juniper had lost everything.
Mo whirled on him. “You love me?” he snapped. “You love me, Juniper? And this is when you tell me?”
It was worse timing than the badger or the tavern brawl or shouting about pee in front of the prince that first morning they’d met him. It was worse timing than any other foolish thing Juniper had ever done.
But he loved Morn Elmthorn, and he was a fool.
Mo wasn’t done. He crossed the space between them with one long stride, ignoring his injured rib, and wrapped his hand in a fistful of Juniper’s wool shirt, hauling him forward. Juniper let out a dignified squeak.
“You never forgave me,” Mo said. His eyes were flashing, more fire than Juniper had ever seen from his friend. “You never forgave me for being twenty winters old and not knowing what I wanted. You shut me out until now, when you betrayed me and got Bear captured. What do you want from me, Juniper?”
He spat Juniper’s name with all the rage and disgust Juniper had always feared he would once he saw Juniper wholly.
And what could Juniper say to any of this? That he loved Mo, that he hadn’t meant for any of this to happen, that he was a fool who just wanted to go home?
“I wanted you safe,” Juniper whispered.
Mo released him and stepped back, his chest heaving. “You wanted to drag me home to our cottage no matter the cost,” he said. “You wanted a winter full of warm cider and soft blankets and me at your side and you were willing to give up an innocent kid to do it.”
“Mo, that’s not—”
Mo stalked into the cottage, where their belongings were strewn around, food and bedrolls trampled from the fray. As he shoved his things into his pack without bothering to fold them, he looked up at Juniper, who stood frozen in the doorway.
“I loved you, too, Juniper,” Mo said, those brown eyes burning into Juniper’s. “I’ve loved you for half my life.”