Chapter 24
Bryn finds the prince on the balcony.
It is late. The palace has settled into the deep quiet of the small hours, the amber sconces dimmed, the corridors empty.
Mithri fell asleep in his bed an hour ago, curled on her side with her hand fisted in the front of his shirt the way she used to sleep when they were children and the storms came and she would crawl into his bed and hold onto him and he would lie awake and listen to the thunder and think: I will not let anything hurt you.
He extracted himself gently, finger by finger, and tucked the blanket around her and pressed his mouth to her forehead and left her sleeping.
Ithyris is not in his chambers. The bed is made.
The room is empty and it smells of cedar and smoke and the faint, lingering scent of soot that has not fully been scrubbed from the walls and Bryn follows the bond, the warm, steady pull of it, through the chamber and past the bed and through the open doors to the balcony that overlooks the kingdom.
The prince is standing at the railing.
The balcony is wide, carved from volcanic stone, and it juts out over the mountainside and the view is vast. The Sovereignty spreads below in the moonlight, the lower terraces and the market stalls and the residential wings and the training courtyard and beyond them, the slopes descending into the valley, forests and rivers and the distant shimmer of the border.
The crystal veins in the stone glow faintly, amber and gold, and the sky above is clear and full of stars and the air is cool and clean.
Ithyris stands at the railing with his hands braced on the stone and his head bowed and his shoulders bare.
He has bathed. The soot is gone, the ash, the residue of fire and violence.
His hair is damp and loose around his face and the violet scales on his shoulders catch the starlight and his body is completely still with the particular quality of stillness that Bryn has learned means the prince is thinking about something he cannot solve by acting.
He is looking at his kingdom.
Their kingdom. The thought lands in Bryn with a weight that is not heavy but solid, foundational.
He said husband in the sacred pool. He said forever.
This is what forever looks like: a kingdom on a mountainside, a people learning to see him, a throne that will one day be the prince's and a place beside it that will one day be Bryn's.
The life they are building out of a stolen dress and an accidental bond and the stubborn, infuriating refusal of two people to let go of each other.
Bryn steps onto the balcony. The stone is warm beneath his bare feet.
The prince hears him, of course. The bond announces his presence before his footsteps do, and Ithyris's shoulders shift fractionally, the tension in them loosening by one degree, the way they always loosen when Bryn enters a room.
The prince's body has been trained, over weeks, to relax in Bryn's presence.
Ithyris does not turn around.
Bryn crosses the balcony. The night air is cool against his skin and his wrists ache beneath the bandages and the bruise on his jaw throbs when the wind touches it and he doesn't care.
He cares about the line of the prince's shoulders and the bow of his head and the white-knuckled grip of his hands on the railing and the way the bond is thrumming with something that is not calm, not settled.
The prince is shaking.
Bryn sees it when he gets close. The fine, continuous tremor in his arms, his hands, the muscles of his back.
Ithyris is shaking the way he shook in the cell, the way he shook on the bed when the dam broke, and Bryn understands, standing behind him in the starlight, that the rescue is not over for the prince.
Bringing Bryn home was not the end. The fear, the specific terror of waking to cold sheets and a muted bond and the knowledge that someone took the person he cannot live without and hurt him, has not let go.
It is holding Ithyris the way the ropes held Bryn, tight and binding, and the prince is standing on this balcony looking at his kingdom and shaking because the kingdom is not what he almost lost.
Bryn puts his hand on the prince's back.
The scales are warm. Raised slightly, the involuntary stress response, and they smooth beneath his palm as he presses flat, the way they always smooth for him, the dragon recognizing the touch and standing down.
The prince's breathing changes. The rigid, controlled rhythm loosens into something rawer and his head drops lower and his hands grip the railing harder.
"Come here," Bryn says.
Ithyris turns.
His face in the starlight is wrecked. Not the careful wreckage of the cell or the controlled grief of the bed.
This is the unguarded version. The version that exists only when they are alone and the walls are down.
His eyes are dark and wet and hollow with the specific exhaustion of a man who has spent twenty hours running on fury and fear and is now, in the quiet, facing the cost.
Bryn kisses him.
He fists both hands in the front of the prince's shirt and drags his mouth down and kisses him the way he kissed him in the antechamber, with everything, with the furious, shaking, absolute totality of a man who almost lost this and did not and is now holding onto it with the kind of force that bruises.
The kiss is not gentle. It is angry and desperate and it tastes of tears and the residue of fear and the fierce, primal insistence of a body that was separated from its other half and is demanding proof of reunion.
Ithyris makes a sound against his mouth.
A sound that is not a word and not a groan and not a sob but something that exists in the space where all three meet, a sound of breaking open, and his hands find Bryn's body and pull him in until there is no air between them, chest against chest and hips against hips and his arms around Bryn so tight that breathing is irrelevant because Bryn has the prince and the prince has him and the breathing can wait.
Bryn pulls him down.
Not inside. Not to the bed. Down. Here. On the balcony, on the warm stone, under the open sky. Ithyris follows without resistance, sinking to his knees as Bryn sinks to his, and they are face to face on the balcony floor with the stars above them and the kingdom below.
Bryn pulls the prince's shirt over his head.
His hands find the scales on Ithyris's chest, the hard planes of his stomach, the V of violet that disappears beneath his waistband, and he traces it with his fingers and the muscle beneath tightens and the prince's breath catches.
Ithyris's hands are on Bryn's shirt, careful of the bruises, pulling the fabric up and over his head with a tenderness that breaks against the urgency of the kiss.
Skin to skin. The cool air and the warm stone and the heat of the prince's body and the night sky above them, vast and open, and Bryn pushes Ithyris back and the prince goes, down onto the stone, and Bryn is over him, straddling his hips, his hands on the prince's chest. The position is new.
He has not been on top. He has been against walls and beneath the prince and on his knees and Ithyris has held him and lifted him and carried him and Bryn has let him because the trust was the gift.
But tonight the gift is different. Tonight Bryn is the one who takes.
"Bryn." The prince's hands are on his thighs, gripping, and his eyes are dark and wet and blazing. "Your injuries. You should be..."
"I should be exactly where I am." He leans down and presses his mouth to the prince's throat. Ithyris's pulse hammers against his lips. "I should be here. With you. On this balcony. Under this sky. I should be showing my husband that I am alive and I am his and I am not broken."
The prince's hands tighten on his thighs.
His breath shudders out and the bond between them is blazing, wide open, and what flows through it is not just want.
It is need. The desperate, post-crisis need to confirm with bodies what the mind already knows: that they are here, that they survived, that the almost-losing did not become the losing.
Bryn works the prince's laces. His hands are steady. The bandages on his wrists are white in the starlight and Ithyris's eyes fix on them and his jaw clenches and Bryn takes the prince's face in his hands and turns it back to him.
"Look at me," he says. "Not at the bandages. At me."
The prince looks at him. His eyes are bottomless.
Bryn frees him from his trousers. Ithyris is hard, has been since the kiss, and Bryn wraps his hand around him and strokes once and the prince's hips lift off the stone and his head falls back and the sound he makes is raw and open and grateful.
Bryn strokes him slowly, watching his face, the way the starlight plays across his features and the way the scales shimmer on his throat and the way his mouth parts and his hands grip Bryn's thighs with a strength that will leave marks.
Bryn wants the marks. He wants every mark the prince leaves on him because the prince's marks are not violence. They are worship.
He strips his own trousers. The stone is warm beneath his knees and the air is cool on his skin and he is naked on the balcony of the Drekian palace under the open sky and he has never felt less exposed.
He rises up on his knees. The prince understands.
Ithyris's hand finds him, fingers pressing, the quiet click of retracted claws, and Bryn is sore from the cell and the cold and the hours of tension and the prince's touch is gentle, working him open with a patience that is at odds with the desperation in his eyes.
"I'm ready," Bryn tells him. "I need you."
Ithyris positions himself. Bryn lowers onto him.