Chapter Eleven
ERIC HAD PASSED out. He was still in Ix’s bed. He was clean but slightly damp which meant Ix must have wiped them down recently so he couldn’t have been out for too long. Embarrassingly, he had no impression of Ix getting up or of being wiped down, which meant that he had passed out well and truly.
He trailed his fingertips down Ix’s arm, down the curve of his bicep. The urge within him was to snatch his hand away; instead, Eric forced himself to linger. If he kept at it for long enough, perhaps the fear would give way to letting himself enjoy it, for once.
Ix was watching him, an inscrutable expression on his face, his hair loose and splayed across the bed. Eric wanted to bury his face into it, nuzzle it across his face, roll in it. Worse, he suspected Ix might let him.
“Why now?”
“What?” asked Eric. He’d been distracted by the hair.
“Was it the shock of the execution? A loss of your senses in grief? What changed?”
Privately, Eric was glad that Ix was equally prone to a flippant remark to hide his feelings. At least he didn’t have to muddle through it by himself. “No, it was that letter from Lydia.”
Ix didn’t move, an unnatural stillness that alerted Eric to Ix’s sudden attention. “What letter?”
“The one on your table, the other day.” How long had it been? Eric had lost all track of time by now. “Didn’t I show you what she wrote? I could have sworn I had.”
But judging by the carefully blank expression on Ix’s face, Eric really hadn’t.
Gods, his head had been all over the place recently.
He recalled it now. He’d read the letter and when he’d looked up to tell Ix, Ix had already left the table.
And then after that… well, they’d been preoccupied with Ix’s spell.
An epiphany struck Eric; a jolt as if he’d been kicked from a horse.
He sat up straight and stared down at Ix. “Were you jealous?!”
Ixthan stared back at him mulishly, a visible clench in his jaw. It was so endearing, so unexpected that Eric gasped.
“You were!” All of Eric’s awkwardness around intimacy and affection collapsed under a sudden swell of laughter as he leaned forward to cup both hands around Ix’s jaw to pepper his face with kisses.
His explanation came, blurted out between each kiss as he couldn’t decide whether to explain first or kiss first. “Ix! I’m not engaged.
I’m never going to be engaged! Lydia broke it off.
I think she’s eloping. She wished me well. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Ix was smiling now, slowly and then all at once as realization dawned, his grin broad enough that Eric could mourn the loss of his pointed teeth.
His hands slid around Eric’s waist, tugging him into a hug so tight all the air was crushed from his chest and Eric didn’t even care.
He ended up sprawled on Ix’s chest, his arms wound around Ix’s neck.
“You don’t have to–”
“Apologize, yes, yes, I know. But I do this time. I am sorry. I cannot believe I didn’t tell you.
” Eric tried to think back, to view all of it through the idea that Ix hadn’t known he was a free man.
That Ix had done all of this thinking that Eric still intended to court and wed Lydia afterwards.
The thought of it was so crushing that Eric found his eyes welling up.
“And worse, that you went this whole time thinking that I was… I don’t even know. Attached.”
“Hells, you’ll cry at anything except actual grief, won’t you?” said Ix, but his voice was fond and his hand was gentle as he brushed away the unshed tears. Forgiveness, stated in action rather than words.
Eric let himself flop over onto Ix. He might still be poor at expressing his feelings but it was a relief for Ix to understand him anyway.
He pressed his head against Ix’s chest, feeling the regular thump of his heartbeat, felt the steady inhale and exhale of his breath, and marveled that he was allowed to do that now.
And if Ix’s hand, slowly stroking down the nape of his neck and the length of his back, was any indication, Ix felt the same.
The moment had to end at some point, but Eric found himself putting it off until Ix glanced at the timepiece on the mantle. “Don’t you have affairs to see to?”
“I suppose. Will you be all right without me?” said Eric reluctantly. The words weren’t even out of his mouth before he heard how petulant and clinging he sounded.
“I will probably be better. No one else will spar with me, so I won’t get stabbed again,” said Ixthan, pretending to swoon. Back to normal between the two of them, and there was some comfort there too. “I shall lie here and languish and wait for your return.”
Lies, of course. Eric fully expected him to get out of bed and be back in his study the moment Eric turned his back, but they’d learned, over the years, which of the small untruths they could tolerate from each other.
“You’d better,” muttered Eric darkly as he climbed out of bed.
He dressed himself clumsily, all too aware of Ix watching him.
It shouldn’t have felt different given how many times they’d changed in front of each other before, but he turned to see Ix’s eyes rest lazily on the curve of his ass and felt the flush spread from his cheeks straight down to his chest.
Flustered, Eric puttered around, collecting his things – finding a boot, hunting for the second one and eventually finding it right next to the first but he’d somehow completely missed it.
Ix tossed a small coin bag at his head; Eric tried not to feel too much pleasure at being treated like a kept woman and retaliated by borrowing one of Ix’s cravats.
And then he hesitated on the threshold. Eric wasn’t sure what was too much or not but given they’d more or less breached the topic of whether this thing between them involved feelings, he strode back into the room, placed a kiss on the temple of a bemused Ix and then fled.
On the carriage over, Eric had enough time to sort himself out.
He sheepishly turned his coat from inside-out to the right side and swapped his gloves from the wrong hands.
The borrowed cravat was a mistake. Not because it wasn’t nice – only the finest silk for the demon prince, soft as a whisper against his skin – but because it smelled of Ix’s winter perfume, woody and distracting.
He groaned, and pressed the entire side of his face against the carriage window in the hopes the cold glass could knock some sense into him.
By the time he arrived at Williams & Sons, Eric mostly resembled a well-put together young earl in possession of all his senses.
Thankfully, this meeting was mostly for them to apprise him of their progress, producing an updated inventory of the ransacked house and confirmation of the various fines.
The immediate concern was that Petra’s dowry fund was pitiful and Eric hated that he was thankful she wasn’t in an active courtship.
It would take some time to recover, and he would have to take a lien against the house if anyone expressed interest before next season.
Eric was just mentally congratulating himself on how well he was keeping himself together when a newcomer arrived.
“Good afternoon, thank you for coming, milord,” said Ned Williams. “This is Brother Ramsay, he is here to confirm the allocation of debts owed.”
The man who extended a hand for Eric to shake was young, with a tanned complexion even in the middle of winter and hair dark enough to suggest a parent or grandparent from somewhere further south than the Isles.
He looked vaguely familiar, though Eric would have recognized him if they’d met before.
The most unusual detail was his long winter coat with draped sleeves and a priest’s scarf draped over his shoulders.
“A priest? I’m afraid I don’t understand, why is the temple working as debt-collectors for the Crown?
” asked Eric after extending his hand. Even though he had never been an avid temple-goer outside of annual religious days, he knew that the woven scarf denoted which temple order and what rank he was.
Ramsay’s purple with white stripes meant he was a priest of middling rank from the Allegreian Temple.
Brother Ramsay and the estate manager exchanged glances, and Eric’s heart sank.
“We are not debt-collectors,” said Ramsay, in a placating tone that indicated he knew something Eric didn’t and was preparing already for his anger. “And we would not ordinarily get involved in matters of estate for the nobility.”
It took Eric but a moment. He steeled himself. “Oh gods. You mean my father was in debt. To the Allegreian Temple? Why? We have not attended temple for years and even when we were, my mother’s preference was the Ecusinne Order. Begging your pardon, Brother.”
“The Ecusinne Order is very respectable,” Ramsay reassured him. “I don’t hold all of the history, but my understanding is that the debt was… more recent.”
Eric heard the unspoken implication, and staggered heavily into a chair. “My father borrowed money from the temple to fund his rebellion?”
“We have conducted a thorough investigation of how this came to be on our side. It seems your father was old friends with one of our order who approved the request, bypassing the usual process,” said Ramsay, producing from his leather bag a number of documents and letters to show him.
They looked legitimate, and he recognized his father’s signature.
“I can only apologize,” said Eric, pinching the bridge of his nose tightly to ward off the inevitable headache. “It must have been difficult for the temple to be implicated in… that.”
“Our case has been appealed directly with the King and we do not blame you,” said Ramsay reassuringly. “The temple understands that you had no part in your father’s actions. And the priest involved has decided to retire from public duties and take a vow of seclusion in one of our smaller temples.”