Chapter 8 #2
If Vaike had not woken. If the assassin had been a fraction faster, a fraction quieter.
If that blade had found its mark, a nick, a scratch, anything, just enough to break the skin and let the poison in, Vaike would be dying right now.
Dying in this bed, in this room, at a summit that was supposed to be peaceful, with Evran asleep beside him and none the wiser until it was too late.
The thought opens up beneath him, vast and black, and for a moment Evran stands at the edge of understanding something so terrible that his mind refuses to fully engage with it, flinching away the way a hand flinches from a flame.
Something cold washes through him, flooding out from the center of his chest. The trembling is fear and something deeper than fear, something that lives in the marrow, the bone-deep understanding of how close they came to something irreversible, something that would have left Evran alone in a room full of blood and silence with the rest of his life stretching out before him empty and unbearable.
Naela is giving orders. Guards are moving. The assassin is being dragged from the room, his head lolling, barely conscious from the pressure Vaike put on his throat. The corridor outside is alive with voices and torchlight and the organized chaos of a keep being awakened in the middle of the night.
Then more people. The Rendari Warlord himself, Harath, wearing a sleeping robe hastily belted, his face tight with fury. Behind him, two of his personal guards and a man Evran recognizes as the head of the Rendari household.
Harath takes one look at the open window, the dagger on the floor, and Vaike standing in the center of the room with his husband pressed against his side, and his expression shifts from anger to something colder, something that carries the weight of shame.
"This is unconscionable," Harath says. His voice is controlled, but beneath it there is a tremor of rage directed at the breach itself, the violation of his hospitality, his home, his sacred duty as host. "In my stronghold.
Under my roof. I swear upon my life, Vaike, upon the honor of the Rendari clan, we will find who is responsible for this. "
Vaike's hand is on the back of Evran's neck, steady, grounding. When he speaks, his voice is even, calm in a way that seems impossible given what just happened.
"It's of no consequence. The threat has been dealt with. It's not unprecedented."
Harath's jaw tightens. "Not unprecedented, no.
It has happened before, but not in a long time, and never under my watch.
" He looks at the dagger on the floor, at the purple sheen along its edge, and his expression hardens further.
"That blade will be examined by my healers.
We will know what was on it before sunrise. "
"It's poison," Evran says. His voice comes out flat, strange, and both men look at him. "It's poison."
Harath's gaze moves to him, and something in the Warlord's face softens, slightly, subtly, enough that Evran can feel the shift. He nods. "We will identify it. And we will identify who sent this man into your chambers."
He speaks to Vaike about securing the wing, about posting additional guards, about moving the Drakkari delegation to more defensible rooms closer to the Rendari wing. Vaike listens, responds, and negotiates. His hand does not leave Evran's neck.
Leona arrives, fully dressed despite the hour, which does not surprise Evran in the slightest because he has a suspicion that Leona sleeps in her clothing the way some people keep a blade under their pillow.
She takes in the situation with a single sweep of her stern eyes and begins asking questions of the guards in a low, precise voice.
Bran is behind her, his bulk filling the doorway, his ruddy face uncharacteristically grim.
People come and go. Evran stands at Vaike's side and watches them move through the room, examining the window, collecting the dagger, conferring in low voices, and he is present for all of it and aware of none of it.
His mind is stuck on the purple sheen of that blade and the force with which Vaike shoved him from the bed, a force that said I will put myself between you and death before the thought even forms, because your life matters more than mine and I will never, for a single second, allow you to believe otherwise.
Finally, after what feels like hours but might be thirty minutes, the room empties.
Harath clasps Vaike's forearm and repeats his oath.
The guards are doubled, new positions established.
The window is secured, checked, and secured again.
Naela takes up a post outside their door personally, her axes at her belt and her pale eyes watchful.
The door closes.
They are alone.
Vaike turns to him, and his hands come up to Evran's face, both hands cupping his jaw, tilting his head so their eyes meet. Evran realizes he is still shaking. He can feel it in his jaw, in his fingers, in the base of his spine, and it will not stop no matter how many times he tells it to.
"Evran."
"I know. I know you're fine. I know."
"Look at me."
He is looking. He is looking at Vaike's face, the scratch on his cheekbone, the steadiness of his dark eyes, the set of his mouth, and he knows this man is unhurt, untouched, alive and whole and standing before him, and his body will not stop shaking because his body understands something his mind is trying very hard not to think about, which is that the distance between alive and dead was measured tonight in seconds and inches and the alertness that comes from sleeping with one eye open since he was old enough to know what a throne costs.
Vaike pulls him in, arms around him, tight, enclosing. One hand at the back of his head pressing Evran's face into his shoulder, the other around his waist pulling him flush, fierce and encompassing, holding something precious and refusing to let it break.
"It's over," Vaike says, quietly, into Evran's hair. "Nothing happened. I'm here. I'm fine."
Evran's hands fist in the waistband of Vaike's sleeping trousers and hold on.