Chapter Sixteen
Cormal
The last thing Cormal had expected, especially in the middle of everything else he’d been dealing with, was to suddenly discover that he had family he’d known nothing about. Nor had he been expecting one of those family members to manifest Fire and need him to help train her.
He’d been a novice Fire Mage at one time, obviously, and he’d watched Brannal train before he’d even manifested.
But that wasn’t the same thing at all as being responsible for the well-being and training of an entire fourteen-year-old person.
Cormal was bound and determined not to make the mistakes that his father had made.
Cormal had always felt the pressure to live up to Tramad, both when he was alive and once he’d died, but this revelation had finally come close to obliterating that shadow.
Thirty years, the man had been Summus, and everyone had always believed in his legacy.
Cormal had made sure to preserve it; it had felt like he had to.
Only now was he seeing how truly hollow that legacy was, how his father had put on a show, and Cormal had been fooled like everyone else. He’d protected his father once, but he wasn’t going to do it again. He had better priorities now.
He didn’t have quite as much time for reading now, since he was ensuring he trained Livala and spent time with her and her grandfather and Trill.
It would be too easy to fall back on old habits, to use Kinan as an excuse, but he needed to be better than that.
He also didn’t want to ignore Kinan or his plight.
Kinan had had almost seven years of being ignored, even if they hadn’t realized it.
So when Cormal read the magic books in the evening before bed, he invited Kinan to do it with him. Kinan had accepted with alacrity, making Cormal worry that he hadn’t been taking Kinan’s feelings into account.
He tried to apologize again.
The Prince scoffed. “And, what, if you’d all figured it out sooner, everyone in the castle would have talked to Renny and then she would relay what I was saying? Do you think that would have worked?”
Carefully, Cormal asked, “Didn’t it work when she did it for Perian?”
Kinan’s eyes flickered shut for a moment and then open again. “It sort of did,” he confessed quietly. “But it was still really hard. Not like we could have this conversation, could we, with my sister here?”
“It would probably be more painful for me, certainly,” Cormal admitted.
Kinan huffed a breath, almost but not quite a laugh. “It’s still not much good, is it?”
“What do you mean?” Cormal asked. “I’m trying not to be insulted.”
The Prince looked confused for a moment, and then he looked surprised. “Not you! You’re great. Me! I can’t even touch you.”
Cormal was stunned at the idea that anyone thought he was great, but more important was the uncertainty that Kinan seemed to be feeling about himself. Cormal didn’t like that at all.
“You don’t have to touch me physically, Kinan. Don’t you understand what a difference you’ve made? Who got me to the workroom when I was having a temper tantrum?” Cormal asked.
“Molun,” Kinan said, voice flat. “I couldn’t even touch you.”
“I would certainly hope not, given that I was covered in flames,” Cormal said wryly.
The look Kinan shot him wasn’t just unimpressed; Cormal could see something that he was afraid he needed to label as anguish in that gray gaze.
“Oh, Kinan,” he said, swallowing. “I’m sorry you can’t touch me. You don’t know how much I want to touch you.”
Their gazes caught and held, burning suddenly hot. Cormal let out a stuttering breath. He swallowed and made himself keep talking.
“But even when you can’t, you still mean so much to me.
I don’t know where I’d be without you, but I know I wouldn’t be here.
I’m still all tangled up, and I might never be able to fix everything, but without you, I’m not sure I’d even be trying.
You’re the only thing I could focus on when I was losing it.
Molun might have doused the flame, but you knew exactly what I needed when I couldn’t express it to anyone.
You were responsible for getting me to where I couldn’t hurt anyone. Thank you.”
Kinan’s face was still awash in pain and sadness.
“Look,” Cormal said, thinking frantically. “We can get around everything, I’m sure of it. I mean, what can’t you do? Can’t sign or seal a proclamation? Someone else can do that.”
Kinan looked unimpressed. “What, an official signer?”
“Why not?” Cormal demanded. “Royalty often has staff to assist with a variety of tasks. No, it’s not something that your mother has assistance with, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.
You won’t need to be guarded like she is.
You’re different people with different needs. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But it’s so many things! I can’t have dinner with a dignitary! I can’t go dancing!”
“You can still attend dinners even if you can’t eat.
Or you can change the type of event that you have if it makes you uncomfortable.
They could eat on their own and then you could get together afterwards.
You could chat and look at art or listen to music.
We could design a whole new dance that doesn’t involve touching. ”
Kinan looked at him with a mixture of hope and despair.
“That’s it,” Cormal said resolutely. “Come on. Up.”
It wasn’t exactly easy to do without music, but Cormal started to hum, insisting that they move to the rhythm, and after a couple of minutes, they actually managed something that was a cross between formal dancing and the sort people did in the pub, just without the touching. They could still stand very close.
“And look on the bright side,” Cormal pointed out with a smile. “No need to worry that your partner will step on your toes.”
Kinan laughed, but then his expression fell again. “But there’s some things you can’t do without touch. There’s no replacement for them.”
“I’m sure we can—” Cormal started.
And then Kinan met Cormal’s gaze again, eyes dark and hot, and Cormal realized belatedly what he was talking about. Oh. Oh. A prickle of awareness swept through him, and then his body began to run hot, hot, hot.
This was a terrible idea, and he honestly couldn’t even tell if he was hovering on the brink of doing it more because he wanted it so much or because he wanted for Kinan to not look so crushed.
“It’s not the same, but you don’t always have to touch.” Cormal frowned suddenly. “Wait, you can touch yourself, right?”
Kinan scoffed, his eyes dropping away from Cormal’s as he went to sit down again.
“You can’t imagine what it was like, realizing that no one could see me or hear me except for my six-year-old sister, and I couldn’t move far away from her.
You have no idea how careful I was and then how desperate I was, mostly ignoring everything, occasionally stealing a moment here or there—but how often are you in the mood to do anything when you’re trying not to wake your sister and she’s in bed a lot because she’s so sick she might die? ”
Cormal sat down in the other armchair by the fire, managing with an effort not to look as horrified as he felt. Or maybe not, because Kinan let out another sick-sounding laugh.
“It was almost seven years of trying not to think about it. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want it, didn’t mean I didn’t sometimes—”
But he cut himself off.
And Cormal, faced with all that desire and all that pain, wanted to make it better.
And just plain wanted.
“Sometimes what?” Cormal asked, voice low and raw. “Sometimes you might… slip your hand under your shirt and run your fingers over your nipples?”
Kinan’s eyes snapped to his, hunger flashing in them at the same time as surprise washed across his face.
“Wh-what?” he asked.
Cormal, nearly trembling with desire, seeing that same desire echoed in the taut body across from him, the one that he couldn’t touch, didn’t back down.
“Slide your hand under your shirt and brush across a nipple. Just a light tease. Are your fingers a little bit cool? Does it feel good when they touch your skin? I bet you could tease your nipple into a hard nub pretty quickly.”
Kinan’s jaw hung open for an infinitely long moment, and then it snapped closed with an audible clack.
He swallowed hard… and then unbuttoned his vest and tugged his shirt out from his trousers.
He slid his hand under his shirt, making it ride up a bit so that Cormal caught a tantalizing glimpse of skin.
Kinan moaned, his gaze never leaving Cormal’s, and Cormal’s lips tipped up.
He could already feel himself getting hard, and a glance down Kinan’s body showed that he was in the same state.
Cormal hadn’t really thought about it before, getting aroused when you couldn’t touch anyone else. Thank goodness Kinan could touch himself.
“Pinch your nipple,” Cormal told him, voice still lower than normal.
Kinan did as he was told, whimpering as he did so, the sound going straight to Cormal’s cock.
Kinan’s eyes were avid on Cormal’s face. “What next?”
This was a man who’d been trapped alone since he was sixteen, who’d just confessed that he hadn’t even been able to explore much on his own because he’d been tied to his younger sister. But he clearly wanted, and he seemed to trust Cormal to deliver.
Cormal swallowed heavily. He’d never wanted anything so much.
“Can you get rid of the shirt?” he asked.
He’d never thought about that, either. Where would the clothes go if he took them off? Would he be shirtless for the rest of his life—no, no, just until they figured this out!
Kinan’s eyes closed, an expression of concentration on his face, and a moment later, he just…
wasn’t wearing his coat, vest, or shirt anymore.
Between one blink and the next, it was all just gone, and Cormal would definitely have concentrated more on that were it not for the fact that Kinan was no longer wearing his coat, vest, or shirt.