Chapter Twenty
Trill
It shouldn’t really have come as a surprise and yet somehow did when the first thing Molun did once Cormal had left for his surprise inspection was to lure Arvus and Trill to the man’s office to have sex.
“Baby, didn’t you tell Cormal that you didn’t need an office?” Arvus asked.
Molun scoffed. “Of course I don’t need an office. Why would I need an office?”
Arvus and Trill exchanged glances.
“To have sex in?” Trill suggested.
Molun grinned. “We already have our rooms for that. Why would I want another room where I’m locked up away from other people?”
Arvus made a circling gesture with his finger. “What do you call this?”
Expression turning mischievous, Molun said, “Misusing Cormal’s office, obviously.”
Arvus looked like he was trying not to laugh. Trill couldn’t help but grin at the look on Molun’s face.
It seemed like Arvus couldn’t resist it, either, because in short order, Trill was bent over the desk, and Molun pushed into him while Arvus fucked Molun.
Trill really didn’t mean to knock all those papers off the desk, but it seemed he got a little exuberant in his pleasure.
Afterwards, Molun tried to convince them that it would serve Cormal right to come back to an office left in this disarray.
Trill raised an eyebrow. “You want my uncle to find my come under his desk?”
Molun opened his mouth, closed it, and a wrinkle formed between his eyes. “Wraith take everything! Now we’re going to have to clean up.”
Clearly, Molun hadn’t thought this all the way through.
Trill cleaned under the desk, because he was the smallest and fit best, but even Molun helped organize all the papers after Arvus and Trill picked them up.
(Trill had noticed that Molun hadn’t had any difficulty taking Trill in that position over the desk, and he was delighted by how much steadier and less pained he was on his feet these days.
It was far from perfect, but it was so much better.)
Molun was still pouting by the end of the clean-up.
Arvus tugged him into his arms. “Are you saying it wasn’t fun to play with us, baby? Are you wishing you hadn’t bothered?”
Molun made a noise of outrage. “Of course it was fun! You two are the best!”
“So why are you pouting?” Arvus wanted to know.
“On principle?” Molun said, not sounding entirely certain.
Arvus scoffed, Trill snorted, and Molun grinned.
“All right. I don’t know why I was pouting. That was so much fun!”
“And now we need to get some actual work done,” Arvus pointed out.
Molun instantly pouted again, making them all laugh.
They did go their separate ways after that, though. Arvus had a shift guarding the Princess, Molun was set to review castle security with Delana and Onadal, and Trill liked to spend his spare time admiring the Warriors and Mage Warriors who trained in the quadrangle.
In the afternoon, Trill went out to a few pubs. Molun wasn’t worried anymore that Trill was having sex with other people—the thought still didn’t appeal at all, which was weird—and since Trill was still regularly healing Molun, he needed to get his energy from somewhere.
It wasn’t as fun as having sex with people, but it was definitely a worthwhile trade, getting to spend this time with Molun and Arvus, even if it meant feeding the boring way.
It was early evening when Trill, Molun, and Arvus met up again in their room before heading down to dinner.
Molun had been reading in front of the fire, and it was he who said, “You know, the longer I think about, the weirder it seems that Cormal suddenly decided to do a surprise inspection now.”
Trill started nodding immediately. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there had definitely been something going on with Cormal’s energy when he left.
Whatever he was doing, Trill was sure that it had been tied up in his feelings for Kinan, and he didn’t see how a surprise inspection would have anything to do with that.
“He needed to do one at some point,” Arvus pointed out calmly, not seeming at all worried. “It’s his first as Summus. It wouldn’t be unusual to want to put his own mark on it.”
Molun shook his head. “He just seemed… off.”
Arvus now looked faintly amused. “Paying a lot of attention to Cormal’s moods, are you?”
Molun wrinkled his nose at Arvus and turned to Trill. “You believe me, don’t you?”
Trill had only seen Molun try to get one of them to gang up on the other when it was a game for sex or for something silly. Thankfully, it seemed to amuse Arvus as much as it amused Trill.
He nodded.
“See, Trill believes me!” Molun said triumphantly, turning back to Arvus like that settled the matter.
Very reasonably, Arvus asked, “What do you think he’s doing if he’s not doing that?”
“I don’t know. But it’s too early for the winter inspections.”
“There were no fall inspections given the upheaval of… everything,” Arvus pointed out. “And possibly he thought that you would lock him out of the castle if he left.”
Molun groaned. “That’s such a good idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Arvus smirked, but to their surprise, Molun wasn’t actually diverted.
“But Livala is here now. And he’s going around apologizing to everyone, plus actually engaging and talking to Trill and everyone at dinner. As painful as it is to admit, it really seems like he’s trying.”
“So why would he leave?” Arvus suggested.
“Exactly! There’s no reason why he would—” Molun cut off abruptly.
“We’re not the ones he hurt. Fire and water.
He sneaked off to confront Brannal and Perian!
Son of a wraith! We can’t actually let them kill him, can we?
Then the Queen will get upset, and then Brannal will get upset, and then the country will probably be leveled!
” He leaped up. “We have to do something!”
Arvus tried to calm him down, hands raised in a placating gesture. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Baby, we don’t know that’s what happened.”
“Of course that’s what happened!” Molun snapped. “He tried to apologize to everyone here, and I told him he didn’t hurt us, and now he’s made up these secret inspections because he’s not inspecting—he’s going to Brannal and Perian.”
“He’s apologizing to everyone?” Arvus repeated.
Molun slapped him on the chest. “And I didn’t believe him and just got pissed off. I told him that it wasn’t us that he hurt, and now they’re going to kill him. Come on, Arvus, we have to stop it!”
“But—” Arvus protested.
Molun shot him a look. “He kidnapped Perian, who almost died. He banished Perian to the estate and said he’d kill him if he ever left or did anything suspicious. Now he’s going alone to the estate. Arvus!”
Oh, wow. That really didn’t sound good. Trill had only heard the tiniest bits about this, since Molun and Arvus didn’t talk about it in their rooms, at least not with Trill around, and no one seemed to want to talk about it in front of Cormal. He could see why, if all of that had happened.
Arvus was starting to look alarmed. “All right. Let’s see if we can find Delana. She may be aware of his plan. I’ll do that, and you and Trill start packing, just in case.”
Molun started throwing things into bags haphazardly, and Trill pulled the useless things out and repacked. (The robe was beautiful, but Trill didn’t really think they needed it, six of Arvus’s shirts, and no trousers.)
Trill laid a hand on his arm. “It’s going to be all right.”
Molun was practically frantic with anxiety. “What if it’s not? I was angry. I wanted to make him feel bad because he hurt Perian so much. I don’t want him dead. I don’t want to start a war!”
“We’re not going to let that happen,” Trill assured him.
There was no way to know that, but feeding Molun’s fears wouldn’t help right now.
A tiny bit of the wildness left Molun’s eyes, but he still whirled too fast when Arvus got back to the room.
“She’s not here. Cormal went east, and she took her horse out about an hour later.”
“Maybe she went to stop him?” Trill suggested.
“We can’t be sure of that!” Molun exclaimed. “I packed. We’re good to go.”
“You better leave a note for Delana,” Trill reminded them.
If she hadn’t gone after Cormal, then she needed to know what they’d done when she got back.
Molun was Secundus, so he probably wasn’t supposed to be leaving while Cormal and Delana were gone, but at the very least, he should explain.
“Right, right.” Molun tried to move too fast and stumbled a little.
“Molun—” Arvus said.
Molun held up a rigid hand, and Arvus went silent. Molun limped into the sitting room. Both of them followed, Arvus carrying the bags.
Arvus waited until Molun had finished dashing off what didn’t look like a super explanatory note for Delana, but then he spoke again.
“Baby,” he said gently.
“Please don’t,” Molun said, and he sounded so resigned.
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Arvus told him. “You haven’t been on a horse since the accident.”
Oh, was that the problem?
“Uh, I haven’t ridden very often. Horses, I mean,” Trill pointed out.
Molun snorted suddenly, shooting Trill a look. “Thanks for that image.”
Trill beamed at him, then looked hopefully at Arvus. “We’d probably need to go slowly and stop periodically. But I think we can do it.” A sudden thought hit Trill. “I mean, I can stay here. I don’t have to go.”
“Of course you’re coming,” Molun said staunchly. “We’re not abandoning you.”
“I only—” Arvus started.
“Please let me try,” Molun requested, voice unusually serious. “I feel responsible.”
“That man is making his own choices,” Arvus argued.
“But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t influenced by others, does it?”
Arvus sighed and leaned down to press a kiss to Molun’s lips. “You know I can never stop you from doing anything, baby.”
Molun smiled happily.
Arvus continued sternly, “But it’s really not your fault if anything happens to Cormal. Anyone could have told him he was doing a dumb thing, and he decided to sneak off alone to do it anyway.”
Molun nodded. “Well, that’s true. But we can’t simply sit aside and let him try to get himself killed, can we?”
Arvus just looked resigned. “All right. Come on.”
On the way to the stables, they stopped by to let Tinnadal know where they were going. Their beads said they were nonbinary today. They were one of the older Mage Warriors, calm and steady like Arvus. Molun clapped them on the shoulder.
“You’re in charge until Delana gets back. I’m sure everything will be fine! Talk to Onadal if you need to. You’re the best.”
Tinnadal was apparently used to Molun, because they took this in stride. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“You’re totally doing it,” Molun said with a beaming grin. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
They hadn’t explained where they were going beyond saying that something urgent had come up and they had to leave the castle. The more Trill thought about it, the more sure he was that they weren’t supposed to leave when Cormal and Delana were gone. But they were clearly leaving anyway.
Thankfully, they found a nice, docile gelding for Trill to ride.
Both Trill and Molun mounted using the mounting block, which seemed to make Molun feel a little better about its use.
Arvus made sure they were both comfortable, with Molun rolling his eyes and assuring Arvus that they hadn’t even made it out of the stable yard yet.
Trill observed, “This is not my favorite kind of riding.”
“We’ll do that later,” Molun assured him.
Trill was pretty sure he could distract them with thoughts of sex for quite a long time.
They were trying to hurry after Cormal without going so fast that Trill fell off or Molun got hurt.
Arvus made sure they had plenty of stops, and several of them legitimately involved massaging Molun’s leg, so it was easy for Trill to push more energy into him.
He was probably pushing a bit too much energy, truth be told, but he couldn’t help himself.
They’d left late enough that they didn’t actually make it very far that night. Molun was still fretting about timing.
“We can’t ride in the dark,” Arvus pointed out prosaically. “We’ll get there when we get there.”
Molun insisted that his leg didn’t feel worse than normal, and Arvus, who didn’t look altogether like he believed him, at least went the path of least resistance and kissed him and said that they were going to keep it that way by not pushing themselves too hard.
“What if I like it when you push me hard?” Molun said.
Arvus snorted, and Trill couldn’t help but grin, because that was terrible innuendo, and yet it worked for all of them.
“Are you sure you want me to push you really hard when you’ve got to ride all day tomorrow, baby?” Arvus asked.
Molun grimaced a little.
“How about I suck you hard?” Trill suggested. “And Arvus can fuck your mouth.”
Molun accepted this change of plans, and Trill and Arvus were soon happily making sure that Molun felt so good he fell into a sated sleep and wasn’t so worried about Cormal dying. Not that Trill wanted Cormal to die—far from it—but they couldn’t let Molun get hurt.
Plus, one day, his two favorite Mage Warriors would probably need to go on a ride without Trill as part of their job. If Trill wasn’t careful, Molun would think he was more well than he really was, and he’d injure himself.
Trill might be able to fix it when Molun got back, but he didn’t want him to get worse.
The next morning, they all jerked one another off, which was a lovely tangle of limbs and hands and cocks, and they had a good breakfast before getting on their way.
Molun had been all for haring off immediately, but Arvus pointed out that they wouldn’t make it very far on an empty stomach.
Trill asked for a packed lunch, just in case.
He had to admit that it wasn’t just for Molun that he was glad that Arvus called periodic halts. He’d never thought he’d be grateful for not having sex, but this whole riding all day on a horse thing was giving him pains in his ass and legs in a way he’d never experienced with sex.
“Riding you is way more fun,” he told Molun with a pout.
Molun laughed and kissed him.
That night, they tumbled into bed at a new inn—Trill scarcely even looked at it—and just slept.
Trill didn’t usually ride for hours per day, and Molun hadn’t done so since his injury.
Arvus looked like he could probably keep going for days, but he was paying strict attention to how much Molun was exerting himself.
They headed out early the next morning, Molun’s worry getting more palpable.
But he still had his priorities.
“Assuming we’re not burying a body, we can have lots of sex at Brannal and Perian’s place, right?”
Arvus snorted, and Trill nodded eagerly.