18. Chapter 18
When Evran gets back to the bedroom, Vaike is already there.
He is standing by the fireplace.
Not sitting, not resting, not lying in the bed where the medic told him to be.
Standing, one hand braced on the mantel, the other hanging loose at his side.
The fire is lit and burning low, its orange light catching the angles of his face, the strong jaw, the dark brow, the stitched wound at his temple, and casting the rest of him in deep shadow.
He is dressed in his tunic and trousers, the injured shoulder held with a stiffness he's trying to hide, and he is looking at the fire.
He does not look up when Evran enters.
Something is wrong.
Evran feels it immediately, the air in the room, the tension in Vaike's spine, the heaviness that has settled over the space.
This is not the controlled, deliberate stillness that Vaike carries when he is thinking or when he is angry or when he is waiting for the right moment to speak.
This is the stillness of carrying something he doesn't want to carry, and the weight of it is pressing him down.
"You should be sitting," Evran says. He closes the door behind him and moves into the room, his voice light, careful. "Is your head bothering you?"
Vaike doesn't answer.
Evran stops. The lightness drains from his voice, replaced by something tighter. "Vaike?"
Nothing. The fire crackles. Vaike's hand on the mantel is steady, his knuckles pale against the dark wood.
Evran crosses the room and reaches out and touches Vaike's elbow, gently, the way you touch someone who might startle, and says, "Talk to me. What's wrong?"
Vaike finally seems to notice him. His head turns, slowly, and his dark eyes find Evran's face.
But his expression does not soften, does not ease or warm or shift into the tenderness that it always, always, does when he looks at Evran.
It stays hard, guarded, the mask of the Warlord locked firmly in place, and behind it something that makes the cold knot beneath Evran's ribs clench tight.
Worry claws up Evran's throat.
Vaike turns from the fireplace and faces Evran fully, and the firelight is behind him now, throwing his features into shadow, making him look larger and darker and more imposing than he usually does in this room, in their space, in the place where the Warlord is supposed to be put away and only the man remains.
He reaches out and takes Evran's face in his hands.
Both hands. Those strong, familiar hands, the ones that have held him through nightmares and washed blood from his skin and traced patterns on his body in the dark.
The ones that carved beads from stone and wove them into his hair.
The ones that have never, not once in six months, touched him with anything other than absolute tenderness.
They cup his jaw. They tilt his face up. They hold him, steady and firm, and Vaike's eyes search his with an intensity that is almost painful.
"I've been hearing things the last few days," Vaike says.
His voice is low, controlled, but there is a current beneath it, a tremor, barely perceptible, holding something back through sheer force of will.
It is the most uncertain Evran has ever heard him sound, and the wrongness of it, the fundamental wrongness of Vaike being uncertain about anything, makes Evran's stomach drop.
"Things that make me uneasy," Vaike continues, his thumbs pressing against Evran's cheekbones. "Things that make it difficult to sleep."
Evran's heart is beating so hard he's certain Vaike can feel it through his jaw.
His mind races, what did he hear, who told him, how much does he know, and he thinks about Torsten and the ale room and the stone gardens and the kiss at the stable and the walk through the stronghold and every single moment of the last week where he has been somewhere he shouldn't have been, doing something he shouldn't have been doing, building a web of lies and half-truths that he always knew, always knew, would eventually reach Vaike's ears.
He didn't think it would be tonight. He didn't think he'd have to face this now, hours before the plan, hours before all of it comes together or falls apart.
Vaike does not mince words. He does not hesitate or soften the blow or dress it in careful language or approach the question from an angle that allows Evran room to maneuver. He gazes into Evran's eyes, those dark and devastating eyes, and asks:
"Are you still mine?"
The words land between Evran's ribs and stay there.
He can almost not hear over the heartbeat in his ears.
It is everywhere, his ears, his throat, his wrists, the tips of his fingers.
His vision blurs at the edges and the room narrows to a single point: Vaike's face, close and intent, and the rawness behind the mask, and the question that should never, never have had to be asked.
Are you still mine.
The fact that Vaike is asking means someone told him something.
Someone told him that his husband has been seen with Torsten, in the ale room, in the courtyard, at the sparring clearing.
Someone told him that Evran sat beside another man and smiled at another man and let another man walk him through the streets and touch his arm.
Someone told him just enough to plant a seed of doubt in the one place where doubt should never exist.
And Vaike, this man who trusts completely, who has never hedged his devotion or held back his love, who gave Evran everything without condition or reserve, is standing here with his hands on Evran's face and his heart cracked open and his voice barely steady, asking the one question he should never have to ask.
Are you still mine.
Evran wills himself to calm. He reaches up and wraps his hands around Vaike's wrists, both of them, his fingers circling the broad bones, holding on the way you hold on to something you cannot afford to lose. His grip is tight. Desperate, maybe. He doesn't care.
"Do you trust me, husband?"
The word, husband, is deliberate. A reminder. A declaration. This is what we are. This is what you made us. Do not doubt it now.
Vaike's eyes search his face. His jaw is clenched, the muscle working, and his hands are steady on Evran's jaw but the rest of him is not.
There is a tremor running through him, fine and deep, living in his bones rather than his muscles, afraid of the answer and asking the question anyway because he cannot bear not knowing.
"With my life," Vaike says.
The words are immediate. Absolute. Without hesitation.
They come out of him the way a reflex does, the way breathing does, the involuntary response of a body that knows what it knows and cannot be taught otherwise.
With my life. Three words, spoken with total certainty, not just I trust you to be faithful but I trust you with my existence, my heart, my vulnerability, the soft places I show no one else.
Evran's throat closes. His eyes burn. He holds Vaike's wrists and feels the pulse hammering beneath his fingers, fast, faster than it should be, the heartbeat of someone terrified, and he thinks about what he's about to do tonight.
About walking into Torsten's room. About letting that man touch him, kiss him, believe that he's won.
About the lies he's told and the lies he's about to tell and the one truth he can offer right now, the only one that matters.
"Then trust me when I say you are my heart, my world, and I would do anything to keep you."
His voice does not break. He will not let it break.
He says the words clearly, steadily, looking directly into Vaike's eyes, and he means every one of them with the totality of his being.
They are not an explanation, not a denial, not a reassurance shaped to fit the question.
They are the truth, the whole, unvarnished, absolute truth, even if the shape of that truth includes things Evran cannot explain yet, things he will explain tomorrow, when it's over, when the proof is in hand and Torsten is exposed and the danger has passed.
For now, this is all he can give.
Vaike searches his eyes.
It is a long search, thorough, stripping away surface and pretense, reading what lives beneath, the intentions, the fears, the fundamental orientation of a person's heart.
Vaike has always been able to read him, from the very beginning, from the first day Evran arrived at the Drakkari stronghold in chains and Vaike looked at him and saw something that no one else had ever seen.
Whatever Vaike finds there, whatever thread of truth runs through the ambiguity of Evran's words, whatever he reads in the steadiness of Evran's gaze and the grip of Evran's hands on his wrists and the desperate, raw quality of loving completely and fighting with everything he has to protect that love, is enough.
Vaike kisses him.
It is not gentle. It is not the slow, savoring kiss of their mornings or the sweet, abbreviated press of a public goodbye.
It is fierce, born of having been afraid and choosing to believe instead, pouring fear and trust and raw, unguarded need into the press of his mouth against Evran's.
His hands leave Evran's jaw and move to his hair, threading through the strands, pulling him closer, and the kiss deepens and Evran opens for him and gives him everything.
I believe you, the kiss says.
I believe you, Evran hears.
And: Don't make me regret it.
The kissing doesn't stop. It builds, the urgency of it, the need, the hunger of fear transmuted into desire, of I might lose you into I need to have you, now, right now, to remind myself that you're mine.
Vaike's hands move from Evran's hair to his waist, pulling their bodies flush, and the heat of him is overwhelming, the broad, hard chest, the corded arms, the sheer mass of him pressed against Evran's smaller frame.