Chapter 2 #2
He’d run, faster than any human body should’ve been able to move, his magic boosting his muscles as he tore across the compound. He’d reached the lake in time to see the hole in the ice, the black water churning, and no Fergal.
He’d gone in without hesitating. The cold had been absolute—a fist closing around his chest, crushing the air from his lungs.
He’d found Fergal by touch, a small body sinking in the darkness, and had hauled him up and out and onto solid ground with a strength fueled by the absolute terror that Fergal was dying.
He’d held Fergal against his chest, wrapping his own body around the boy’s shaking frame, calling his fire to the surface to push warmth into frozen limbs. Fergal had been blue, barely conscious, his small fingers clutching Gregor’s shirt with a grip that belied his size.
“I’ve got you,” Gregor had said, and his voice had cracked. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
It hadn’t been the first time he’d saved Fergal’s life. It had also not been the last time.
Gregor put the shoulder guard down and flexed his fingers. They were trembling. When was the last time his hands had shaken? He genuinely couldn’t remember. Maybe the night he’d—
No. He slammed that door shut with practiced efficiency, the mental equivalent of throwing a deadbolt. He wasn’t going there. Not tonight. Today’s crisis was bad enough without dragging that one into the light.
But it did reinforce the problem. He couldn’t let Fergal close while carrying this secret. The foundation of any relationship was trust, and the foundation of Gregor’s relationship with Fergal was a lie. The most important lie he’d ever told. The most necessary lie. But a lie nonetheless.
If he told him, he’d lose him. That was the calculation, clear and cold. Fergal would never look at him the same way again.
So the secret stayed. And because the secret stayed, the wall stood. And because the wall stood, Gregor had to stand on one side of it and watch Fergal press against the other and pretend he couldn’t feel the warmth of him through the stone.
A sound from outside. Footsteps on gravel.
Gregor knew the gait of every person in the compound.
These steps were quick, slightly uneven, with the forward-leaning momentum of someone who moved through life like they were perpetually late for something important.
Fergal. Gregor’s pulse did something it had no business doing, and he clenched his jaw until it stopped.
Gregor didn’t look up when the workshop door opened. He reached again for the cracked shoulder guard and the pot of leather oil, giving his hands something to do that wasn’t reaching for the man who had just walked into his sanctuary.
“You forgot your tea. I made you a new cup.”
He looked up. He hadn’t intended to, but Fergal’s voice had that quality it sometimes did—warm and certain and amused, like the world was a joke they were sharing—and Gregor’s body responded to it before his discipline could intervene.
Fergal stood in the doorway, holding Gregor’s teacup like it was Exhibit A in a case he was about to argue.
He’d changed into a worn gray hoodie that was slightly too big for him.
His hair was a disaster. He looked, Gregor thought with the resigned despair of a man who had lost a war and knew it, absolutely beautiful.
“I didn’t forget it,” Gregor said, his voice steady. “I chose to leave it.”
“You’ve never left a cup of tea behind in all the years I’ve known you.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
Fergal stepped inside. Uninvited, unapologetic, as if the workshop door was a formality rather than a boundary. He set the teacup on the workbench and looked around with open curiosity, his gaze traveling over the weapons on the walls, the tools, the scarred wood, the small stove in the corner.
“I’ve never been in here,” he said.
“There’s a reason for that.”
“Because you haven’t invited me?”
“Because it’s private.”
Fergal’s eyes found his. “And yet you didn’t lock the door.”
Gregor had no response to that, largely because Fergal was right. He hadn’t locked the door. In all the years he’d used this workshop, he’d always locked the door. Tonight, for reasons he refused to examine, he hadn’t.
Fergal didn’t press the point. He simply wandered deeper into the space, stopping to examine a sword on the wall. “This is beautiful,” he said, running a finger along the flat of a blade Gregor had restored last winter. “Where did you find it?”
“An antique market in Inverness. About a hundred and eighty years ago.”
“You must have a story for every one of these.” Fergal’s voice held genuine interest, not performance. He wasn’t trying to be charming. He just was.
And it was worse. It was so much worse than the loaded questions and the deliberate touches during the lesson because Gregor could defend against an offensive. He had strategies for that, counterattacks, ways to deflect and redirect.
He had no strategy for Fergal simply being in his space, warm and real and interested in the things Gregor cared about.
He had no defense against the way Fergal’s face softened when he looked at the old swords, or the way his fingers traced the dragon on the cross guard of the blade Gregor had been sharpening, or the way he asked questions and actually listened to the answers.
“Some of them,” Gregor said, and his voice sounded strange to his own ears. Softer. Less guarded. He cleared his throat and reached for the shoulder guard again, resuming the oiling with more concentration than the task required. “Not all of them are interesting.”
“I doubt that. It’s like stepping back in time, coming here.”
Fergal settled onto the stool across from the workbench, which was the only other seat in the workshop, rarely used because no one else ever came in here.
He sat the way he always did, with one foot on the rung and the other leg extended, his body occupying space with the ease of someone who’d never been taught to make himself smaller.
They talked. About the swords—Gregor found himself explaining the provenance of three different blades, noting with clinical detachment that he was saying more words in ten minutes than he typically spoke in a day.
About the compound—Fergal mentioned the north fence needed repair, and Gregor nodded because he’d already reported it to Ruben, the head of the royal guards.
About the weather—there was a storm coming in from the northwest, and they needed to check the generators.
Small things. Safe things. The conversational equivalent of the no-man’s-land between two trenches, where neither side advanced but neither retreated. And yet Fergal was, with what appeared to be minimal effort, the most compelling person Gregor had ever shared a room with.
“My mother would’ve liked this place,” Fergal said during a pause in the conversation. He was looking at the stove, at the way the light from its grate cast orange patterns on the floor. “She liked small spaces. She said they were easier to fill with warmth.”
Gregor’s hands stilled on the leather. Fergal rarely talked about his mother. Gregor would never forget the funeral and Fergal’s face, white and stunned, trying to process a loss that was too big for a twelve-year-old to hold. “She was right. Your mother was a wise woman.”
“Did you know her well?”
“As well as anyone outside the royal family could. She was kind to me when others weren’t.”
Fergal looked at him. “Because you were from the Murphy clan?”
“People have long memories when it comes to where you’re from. Your mother chose not to hold my origins against me. That was…not universal.”
“People are idiots.”
Gregor’s mouth curved despite himself. “Some of them.”
Fergal smiled back, a real, unguarded smile.
And that was another thing Gregor couldn’t defend against. The flirtation and the loaded questions and the calculated touches, he could steel himself against. He could force himself not to react.
But this genuine warmth and connection? Impossible to keep out.
Gregor set down the leather. He didn’t mean to, but his hands stopped moving on their own, as if his body had decided that the pretense of working while this man lay himself bare was an insult to them both. “Your mother would’ve been extraordinarily proud of the man you’ve become.”
Fergal’s eyes widened slightly. “You think so?”
“I know so.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The workshop was quiet except for the pop of the wood stove and the distant sound of wind against the building.
They were close enough that Gregor could see the firelight reflected in Fergal’s eyes, could count the places where his beard grew slightly thicker along his jaw, could smell the coffee on his breath and the cold night air that still clung to his sweater.
“Gregor…” Fergal’s voice was barely above a whisper, his name spoken with a tenderness that slipped past every wall and ward and defense Gregor had ever built.
Gregor stood. The chair scraped against the floor, breaking the spell with the efficiency of a blade. He busied himself with banking the stove, adjusting the damper, checking the flue—tasks that took thirty seconds but he stretched to fill the silence.
“It’s late,” he said, not looking at Fergal. “And the storm will hit by morning. You should get some sleep.”
He heard Fergal exhale—the sound of a man recalibrating, not retreating.
The stool scraped as Fergal stood. Gregor listened to him cross the workshop, his footsteps unhurried. At the door, they stopped. “I’m not going anywhere, Gregor.”
The words hung in the cold air like breath made visible, and then Fergal was gone, and Gregor wasn’t sure if his parting words had been a promise…or a threat.