19. Chapter 19 #2
He lets it go on. He lets Torsten's mouth move down his throat.
He lets the hand on his stomach creep upward.
He lets himself be pressed into the furs, and he counts seconds, and he counts breaths, and when enough time has passed and the knock will come soon, he puts his hands against Torsten's chest and says:
"Wait."
Torsten lifts his head. His face is flushed, his lips wet, his eyes glazed with want. "What?"
"I forgot to bring oil."
The words come out breathless, embarrassed, perfectly pitched between I'm sorry and I wanted to be prepared. They imply intent, imply that Evran came here expecting, wanting, to go further, and the only thing stopping him is a logistical oversight.
Torsten's expression transforms. The frustration that flickered across his face is replaced by something else, a raw, undisguised need that borders on disbelief, as though he did not dare hope to lay claim to all of Evran so soon, as though the mere suggestion that Evran wants to be taken is more than he expected to get tonight.
"I, there's some in the cabinet," Torsten says, already disentangling himself, already climbing off the bed. "I saw it earlier, near the basin. Don't move."
He crosses the room in three strides, his back to the bed, and begins opening the cabinet doors, rattling through the contents, clumsy, his blood having left his brain entirely.
"It was on the second shelf, I think, or maybe the third."
Evran does not wait.
The moment Torsten's back is turned, he rolls over. The bed is wide, a guest bed built for visiting dignitaries, and the bedside table is on the right side, an arm's length from where he is lying. He reaches out, his fingers finding the iron handle of the drawer, and pulls.
The drawer slides open.
Inside: a folded cloth, a ring, a leather coin purse.
And there, sitting on top of everything, unconcealed, unprotected, as though its owner has never once considered that someone might look for it here, a small glass vial no longer than Evran's little finger, filled with liquid the color of a bruise.
Purple. The same purple that tinged the blade. The same oily iridescence. The same poison that was designed to kill his husband slowly, painfully, degree by degree, while the man who administered it watched from a distance and waited.
Evran stares at it. He thinks about how arrogant you would have to be to keep the evidence this close, to keep the vial of poison you gave to an assassin in your bedside drawer, three corridors down from the man you tried to kill, to sleep with it beside you every night as though it were a trophy, a reminder, a promise of things still to come.
But Torsten has never feared consequences.
Torsten has never had to. He has moved through the world with the perceived invincibility of answering to no one, shielded by his uncle's influence and his own self-importance.
Why would he hide the evidence? Who would dare look for it?
He shuts the drawer. He rolls back onto his back and is lying with his arms above his head, his shirt rucked up just enough to show a strip of stomach, when Torsten turns around.
Torsten has a small glass bottle in his hand. Oil. His expression as he crosses back to the bed is ravenous, his eyes moving over Evran's body with undisguised appetite, believing he is about to get everything he wants.
He is almost to the bed when there is a firm double-knock on the door.
Bran.
Evran knows it is Bran. The knock is exactly as they planned, two sharp raps, a breath apart, the rhythm they established in Bran's room last night while going over every detail of this operation.
It is Evran's escape plan. Bran will knock, ask if Torsten has seen the Warlord's husband, Torsten will stammer out an excuse, Bran will leave, and Evran will tell Torsten he has to go or risk being caught.
Simple. Clean. Over.
Torsten stops. He looks at the door.
The knock comes again, louder this time. "Torsten of Windfar?" Bran's voice, muffled by the oak. "I need to speak with you."
Torsten's jaw tightens. He looks at the door. He looks at Evran. He looks at the door again.
Then he crosses the room, slides the lock into place, and does not answer.
Evran's blood goes cold.
Torsten turns back to the bed as though whoever is on the other side is unimportant, as though the massive, armed warrior of the Drakkari clan standing in the hallway is simply a minor inconvenience, a disturbance to be waited out.
His expression has not changed. The hunger is still there, undiminished, and if anything it has sharpened, the threat of being caught adding an edge to the want rather than diminishing it.
Evran realizes he has drastically underestimated someone who has never answered to anyone.
The plan accounted for Torsten being cautious, careful, calculating, unwilling to risk exposure.
It did not account for this: for a man so utterly convinced of his own invincibility that a locked door is protection enough against the world.
Someone who hears a warrior at his door and thinks they'll go away rather than I should be afraid.
Torsten gets back on the bed. He leans down, the bottle of oil still in one hand, and moves to kiss Evran again.
Evran presses his hands against Torsten's shoulders. "Maybe we should wait. That might have been someone looking for me."
"They're gone already." Torsten's voice is dismissive, the impatience in it barely veiled. His hand finds Evran's waist again, his thumb pressing into the hollow of his hip. "No one knows you're here."
"But what if they come back? What if they check the other wings?"
Torsten exhales through his nose, a short, irritated sound, and pulls back just far enough to look at Evran's face. His expression is that of an interrupted meal, deciding whether to be tolerant about it. The tolerance is thin and getting thinner.
"They won't come back," he says, and his voice is slower now, deliberate, condescending, explaining something simple to someone he considers slow.
"The door is locked. There are no guards in this corridor.
No one saw you come in. We have all night.
" His hand slides from Evran's hip to his ribcage, pressing, pulling. "Stop worrying and let me have you."
The casualness of it, let me have you, spoken with the same inflection you might use to say let me have the salt, makes Evran's fury flare so hot it nearly reaches his face. He controls it, barely, and shakes his head.
"No, I really think I should go. If someone is looking for me and I'm not in my room, they'll start searching the other wings and it won't take long before they come here."
Torsten's hand stills on his ribcage. His eyes narrow, and for the first time the easy confidence wavers, replaced by something harder, something that calculates.
"You came all this way," Torsten says, and his voice has shifted again, lower, warmer, the seductive register returning with practiced ease, deployed a thousand times before.
"You waited until your husband was asleep.
You walked through the corridors in the dark to find me.
You didn't do all that just to leave." His thumb traces a slow circle against Evran's ribs.
"You wanted this. I could see it in the garden today.
I could see it at the stables. You want me, and you're afraid to admit it, and that's alright, but don't pretend you came here for conversation. "
"That's not what this is about. Someone was at the door."
"Someone was at the door and left. Because they don't matter.
" Torsten leans closer, his breath against Evran's mouth.
"Stay. Let me show you what it feels like to be with a man who actually wants you, instead of a Warlord who keeps you around because you're convenient and easy to control.
Because that's all you are to him, you know.
A pretty face. A warm body. Something to put on his arm at the summit so the other clans think he's finally settled down.
He doesn't love you, Evran. He collected you.
The way men collect swords or horses or anything else they think makes them look powerful. "
The words are delivered with the smooth precision of a blade, designed to find the gap between the armor, but they don't hit.
The implication that Vaike's love is not love but acquisition, that Evran is not a partner but a possession, that the hand on the back of his neck is not tenderness but a leash, that the braid in his hair is not devotion but a brand.
It is a vicious, calculated reframing of everything Evran holds sacred, and the cruelty of it is that Torsten says it with warmth, with gentleness, with the softness of believing he is doing you a favor by telling you the truth.
But Evran knows better.
"No," Evran says, and the word comes out firm.
Firmer than he intended. The softness is gone from his voice, the shy, breathy quality he has been maintaining all week stripped away by the cold realization that his exit plan has failed and he is in a locked room with a man who tried to kill his husband and who will not let him leave. "I need to go. Now."
Torsten does not move.
He is still above Evran, still close, still touching, and the hunger in his face has not diminished but it has changed, curdling into something darker, something with teeth.
The mask is slipping. Evran can see the edges of it coming loose, the charming smile flattening, the warm eyes going cool, the performance degrading in real time as the man beneath it realizes that the thing he wants is trying to walk away.
"You're making a mistake," Torsten says, and the warmth is gone from his voice now, replaced by something flat and cold.
"Let me up."