3. Chapter 3 #3
It was involuntary and invisible, a clench in the chest, a tightening of every muscle, a contraction that pulled him back from the contact while he stood perfectly still beneath it.
His scent didn't open. His skin didn't warm.
Every part of him that should have been reaching toward this alpha, softening, yielding, beginning the slow blend of scents that came before a bond, stayed shut and sealed and locked, and none of it had anything to do with willpower.
The king pulled back and smiled. The court applauded. The abbot pronounced them bonded in the eyes of the law, if not yet in the flesh, and the formalities were observed.
They processed out.
Lorne walked beside his husband down the aisle. The court rose as they passed. Faces smiled. Hands clasped. Someone threw flower petals and they came down around his shoulders, soft and white and entirely untrue.
He kept his eyes forward.
Valdyr did not look at him. He did not look at Valdyr. The bond pulled and pulled and pulled between them, silent and agonizing, and Lorne walked out of the chapel and into his marriage with the taste of the wrong alpha in his mouth.
The feast hall had been transformed. Long tables draped in white linen, candelabras blazing, platters of food built more than cooked.
Roasted birds with gilded skin, towers of fruit and cheese, breads shaped into crowns and flowers.
The hall smelled of roast meat and warm wax and hundreds of bodies packed together in celebration, and the noise came at him like a wall, conversation and laughter and the clink of glass on silver, and Lorne sat at the head table beside his husband and smiled.
He smiled at the courtiers who came with congratulations. He smiled at the visiting dignitaries who bowed over his hand.
"A great day for both kingdoms, Your Highness."
"It is. Thank you. You're very kind to say so."
"You'll find Thessmere agrees with you. Everyone does, in the end."
"I'm sure I will."
He smiled at the servants who poured his wine and set dishes in front of him. He smiled and smiled and smiled until his face ached with it, and he sat with his hands folded in his lap and did not eat.
The food was six inches from his hands and he could not make himself touch it. His stomach was a knot of shame and exhaustion and the lingering scent memory of woodsmoke and iron.
Aldric was charming. In front of the court the king was everything a king should be, attentive and gracious and warm in the practiced manner of someone who understood exactly what appearances were worth.
He touched Lorne's arm. He refilled Lorne's wine.
He turned to speak to him with a smile that could have been struck onto a coin.
But when he leaned in close, when his mouth was at Lorne's ear and his body blocked the court's view, his voice changed.
"You might try to look less like you're attending a funeral." The smile stayed exactly where it was. The warmth never reached his eyes. "You are the prince consort of Thessmere. Act like you understand the honor."
"Of course. I'm sorry. I'm a little overwhelmed. It's all so grand."
"It's a wedding. Not a beehive. Try to keep up."
He leaned back and the public warmth returned, and Lorne sat very still and felt the words settle into his skin like a splinter, small and sharp and deep enough to throb.
He should eat. He knew he should eat. He'd barely eaten yesterday and the smell of the food was making his empty stomach clench and the wine was going straight to his head, and he needed to put something in his body.
But his hands wouldn't come up out of his lap and his throat was tight and he was afraid, in a quiet irrational way, that if he reached for the wrong dish or held the fork incorrectly or committed some breach of etiquette nobody had thought to teach him, the king would lean in again and it would be worse.
So he sat. And he smiled. And he did not eat.
Somewhere down the table, far down, at the end reserved for military officers, he could feel Valdyr.
He didn't look. But the bond was a compass and it pointed, and he was aware of the general's presence the way he was aware of the sun behind cloud, invisible and undeniable, a warmth and a weight that existed whether he acknowledged it or not.
A server appeared at his elbow.
"Your Highness. With the kitchen's compliments."
A plate was set in front of him. On it, a mince pie. One golden-crusted mince pie, the pastry latticed and glistening, the filling fragrant with spice and dried fruit.
Lorne blinked at it.
"I didn't order this."
"No, Your Highness."
"Then who..."
But the server had already bowed and gone, and the pie sat there, warm and plain and entirely out of place among the elaborate dishes Lorne had not touched.
He looked down the table.
His gaze traveled past the courtiers and the visiting nobles and the officers in their formal dress, all the way to the far end where the military delegation sat.
Valdyr was there. He was looking away, profile sharp and composed, his attention fixed on the wine in his hand, very deliberately and very specifically not looking at Lorne.
But beside him a tall woman with cropped dark hair and a scar along her jaw caught Lorne's eye. She didn't smile. She didn't nod. She held his gaze for one beat, steady and unreadable, and then turned back to her plate.
Lorne looked at the mince pie.
Something in his chest came loose. Just a fraction. Just enough.
He picked it up. The pastry was warm in his hands and the crust gave under his fingers, and he took a bite and the taste filled his mouth, sweet and spiced and rich, currants and nutmeg and the buttery warmth of good pastry, and his tongue flicked out over the pad of his thumb to catch a crumb, and he smiled.
A real one. Not the bright practiced thing he'd been wearing since dawn but something small and private and entirely his own.
He did not look at Valdyr.
He didn't need to. Someone in this room had noticed that he could not eat and had fixed it — and had wanted no credit for it.
He ate the whole thing. He licked the sugar off his fingertips and folded his hands back in his lap and the smile stayed, softer now, sitting in the corners of his mouth where it had nothing to do with the feast or the court or the king beside him.
The evening wore on. Courses came and went.
The wine flowed and the conversation grew louder and looser.
Lorne ate a little more, bread, a slice of cheese, a spoonful of honeyed compote that tasted so much like home it made his eyes sting, and he answered every question put to him with grace and warmth, and not one person at that table would have guessed what was happening underneath the ivory silk.
But the pie stayed with him. The warmth of it. The plain devastating decency of it.
He pressed his thumb to the pulse point on his wrist, where his heartbeat ran quick and steady, and thought about woodsmoke and iron and a rough low voice that had looked at him kneeling in the dirt and called him beautiful.
The night ended. The king rose and the court rose with him, and Lorne rose too, and the evening's last act, the one every person in that hall had been waiting for, the one that custom and biology and law all demanded, was waiting for him in the king's chambers.
He walked toward it with his chin up and his hands folded in front of him to hide the fact that they were shaking.
He did not look back.
If he had, he would have seen Valdyr watching him go.