Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Deyvid
Deyvid lay in the void between life and death for days.
He was somewhat aware during it—not sharply like he usually was, not with senses honed by years of focus and necessity, no.
But Deyvid was attuned to the things going on around him through the fever that ravaged his body and mind because he always listened for Petur.
He couldn’t help it. His heart reached for him even when his hands couldn’t.
And as he lay there, wretched with a dry and burning heat, the throbbing pain in his abdomen constantly on the verge of tipping over into agony, Deyvid lived through his lover’s crises of faith, confidence, and love. Not in Deyvid, but in his sister.
“We need to move on,” he heard Tania say as though from a great distance. “It’s been two days already. We can’t delay any longer. We both have duties and responsibilities waiting for us back in Riyale.”
“You and Jemal go, then,” Petur said, his voice almost wooden. “I’m staying here with Deyvid until he’s fit to move again.”
Tania made an affronted sound, high-pitched and exasperated. “You will do no such thing,” she said. “You’re beholden first to your family, and I am the head of that family. I insist you come with us. We’ll leave some people here to stay with him.”
“No.”
Tania’s voice softened somewhat as she continued.
“Petur, be reasonable, please. I know how much he means to you, but Deyvid’s safety isn’t worth more than the security of our nation.
You’re the best we’ve got when it comes to keeping us safe.
I need you to get us back to Delomar. Think of your nieces. Think of the good of the kingdom.”
“Am I never allowed to think of my own good?” Petur asked, with very little inflection in his voice.
“Of course, you are, but—”
“Am I never allowed to put my own needs first?”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“I think it is,” Petur said. “I think you know it is. I don’t think anything about what I feel for Deyvid is a surprise to you. This is the closest he’s ever been to … to …” Petur couldn’t even force himself to say it.
Deyvid longed to reach for him, but his arms wouldn’t obey his mind’s commands. His body was staving off the promise of pain the only way it could, by incapacitating the rest of him.
“I am your loyal subject,” Petur continued after a moment, “and I love you as your brother, but it’s been nearly ten years, Tania.
Ten years of not hiding my feelings from you when it comes to him.
You know what Deyvid means to me. You can’t possibly expect me to be sanguine about an order like this. ”
“I expect you to do your duty,” she replied, “and that is to me first and foremost. We’re leaving.”
“I’ll come with you,” Petur said after a moment, and Deyvid’s heart seemed to clench, “if you give me leave to marry him.” He said the last part in a rush, like he was either too excited or too fearful to keep it inside his chest any longer.
“You have plenty of family members available to marry off in the near future, and two of the only marketable nobles of appropriate rank for me decided to align with each other after this convocation. Give me leave to marry Deyvid, and I’ll gladly take you anywhere you want to go.”
There was a long period of silence. Deyvid wished he could see what was going on between the siblings. They often spoke so heavily with their movements, with the curl of their mouths or the slant of their eyebrows, that he didn’t understand them as well when he couldn’t see them.
“I can’t,” Tania finally said.
“But why?” Petur demanded in pure desperation.
“Because I have already arranged a marriage for you.”
Already arranged a marriage for him? But to whom? Deyvid tried to think, tried to focus, but it was just too hard. Everything felt too hard right now. Everything was pain and heat, and he couldn’t even reach out to his loved one and comfort him the way he knew Petur needed.
“To Prince Symon of Bekkon,” Tania said into the stentorian silence. “He’s the stepson of Queen Melisse Parador and a highly accomplished mage. It’s past time we brought a magic user into our family, and Prince Symon will fit the bill nicely.”
“He’s a child,” Petur protested.
“He’s twenty-one. That’s hardly a child.”
“I’m fourteen years older than him!”
“Then you’ll be comfortably in charge of the relationship, won’t you?”
“I don’t want this.”
Tania’s next words were soft and cruel. “You’ve gotten far too much of what you want in the first place.
It’s made you spoiled and prone to taking advantage of me.
Now it’s time for you to do what I need you to do.
Deyvid has made you forget your duties for the past ten years.
” Her voice picked up speed, becoming strident.
“He turned your heart away from me and my husband and children. He turned you from your own family, manipulated you into holding him first instead of us. He is a soulless abomination who never should have been allowed into my court, and the only way he’s going to stay from here on out, if he survives his wound, is with you safely married to another. ”
The silence this time was dead. Whatever was going on between them, it was enough for Tania to decide to take her leave.
Moments later, her footsteps rang across the slate floor of the inn’s room, and Deyvid stirred restlessly, fighting for control of his body.
He began to shiver, teeth clacking together as the urge to reach out triggered a whole-body shudder.
He needed to get to Petur—to touch him, soothe him, and tell him that he understood that it would be all right. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t control anything; but there was Petur, gasping as he clutched Deyvid’s hand.
“Get the healer,” he shouted toward the door. “Now!”
Deyvid shook and shivered straight into unconsciousness shortly thereafter, and the only thing he was able to cling to on his way out was the pressure of Petur’s hand finding his.
He drifted from sweating to freezing, from near lucid to insensate.
Deyvid wasn’t sure how long the apex of his fever lasted.
By the time he truly came back to himself, he felt utterly wrung out, as bad as if he’d been on the road for months with no break.
His body ached fiercely, his gut the worst of all, but while the pain was pervasive, he no longer felt the dire heat of infection.
“It turns out you’re miraculous.”
Deyvid instinctively turned to look at Petur, who sat beside the head of his bed.
“Don’t try to speak yet,” his lover advised. “Drink a little. Just a little,” he added as he held the cup close to Deyvid’s mouth. “The healer is fairly sure your organs weren’t seriously punctured, but we don’t need to test that by dumping a lot of liquid in there.”
Deyvid swallowed two blissful sips of the most delicious water he’d ever tasted before clearing his throat and saying, “How long?”
“Five days,” Petur replied briskly. “Downright lazy of you if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask,” Deyvid said. This wasn’t the nicest time to make fun of him. He glanced down at where his wound rested beneath blankets and bandages. “How bad was it?”
“Bad enough,” Petur said with a scowl. “Any deeper into your core, and you’d have died of it.
As it was, the healer thinks your intestines were nicked but not badly enough to let them leak into your gut.
You’ll have to be careful about eating for a while, though.
Only meals that are easy to digest, so you don’t strain yourself. ”
Deyvid gave himself a moment to take all that in. He’d been in bed for five days, treated by healers, tended to by Petur, and had nearly died. How much of what he thought he remembered had just been a dream—or a nightmare?
“Was Tania here at some point?” he asked slowly. “I thought, maybe …”
Petur nodded. “She came by several times. Most of the escort we brought to the convocation are leading her back to Delomar as we speak. You and I will leave with a small reserve once you’re capable of sitting for more than five minutes in a saddle.”
Deyvid nodded. “Tomorrow, then,” he said.
Petur sighed. “Don’t joke about this. You almost died for the life of a woman who—” He cut himself off.
“Darling,” Deyvid whispered. “What happened?” He raised an arm that seemed as heavy as an oak branch toward Petur and was relieved when he clasped it firmly. “Is it the marriage?”
“You heard that?”
“To Symon Parador, yes?”
Petur stared at their joined hands. “He’s the one, apparently, and there’s no getting out of it this time. I tried. I tried, but—”
“I’m not angry,” Deyvid interjected.
Petur turned his scowl on Deyvid. “You should be,” he snapped. “I’ve been yours for a decade, and now she’s taking me away from you. What, that doesn’t bother you? Does it make you happy instead, perhaps?”
“Petur,” Deyvid said with a sigh. He was too tired for this to be an argument. “You know I’m not happy, but an engagement was inevitable.”
“It didn’t have to be,” Petur said, his voice soft and a little broken. “She didn’t have to do this, but she did. And now we’ve got to live with it.”
“I’m sorry,” Deyvid offered, and Petur shrugged.
“I suppose it could be worse. He’s got some skills, at least.”
“He is rumored to be an exceptional mage,” Deyvid agreed, racking his brain for whatever else he knew of Prince Symon.
“He’s married into the Parador family through his father, but he has far more magical ability in his little finger than the queen’s son has in his entire body.
I’m surprised they’re willing to give him up.
He’s quite the asset to their royal family. ”
“That’s down to the heir, no doubt,” Petur said. “Darius has always seemed to me to be the jealous type. It’s probably for the best that his stepbrother is being married out.”
That phrasing was a good sign. Maybe it meant that Petur was going to be reasonable about this arrangement after all. “Have you met Simon?” Deyvid asked. “Do you like him?”
“I’ve never met him, and I refuse to like him.”
Well, so much for reasonable.
“The wedding’s not for a while yet,” he went on.
“I was able to get that much of a compromise out of Tania. You’re going to handle his escort to Delomar, which means you’ve got to heal up first.” Petur squeezed Deyvid’s hand lightly.
“That’s the only way I’m doing this, is if you heal.
The fate of nations rides on you getting over this little incident, darling. I hope that’s motivational.”
Deyvid chuckled, then groaned as the little incident sent a bolt of pure, hot agony through his abdomen. “Fuck.”
Petur leaned over and looked him in the eyes. “I know it’s going to be hard,” he said tenderly. “But I’ll be with you all the way. You’ll come back from this stronger than ever. I swear it.”
“Well, if you swear it,” Deyvid joked, “then it must be true.”
“Precisely,” Petur said. “Now rest up while I go find where that damn healer has wandered off to.” He pressed a kiss to Deyvid’s mouth, hideous breath and all, then got to his feet and left the room at a brisk pace.
Deyvid stared at the closed door and resolved to heal as fast and as well as he could. The sooner he was able to get a handle on who Symon Parador was, the better.