Chapter 10 #3
He is smiling, of course he is smiling, the easy, practiced smile that shows just enough teeth and crinkles the corners of his eyes and says I am charming, I am safe, you can trust me.
He settles onto the bench with languid grace, as though he has never been refused a seat at any table and does not expect to start today.
Up close, Torsten is handsome in the way that a well-forged weapon is handsome, all clean lines and purposeful design, and there is nothing in his face that would warn a person who didn't already know what he is.
"Evran," he says, and the name in his mouth makes Evran's skin want to crawl off his bones.
There is a possessive familiarity in the way he says it, as though the name belongs to him, as though speaking it gives him some claim on the person attached to it.
"I heard about last night. Are you alright? "
Evran looks up through his lashes, just slightly, a glance that is hesitant and drawn at the same time.
It is a gesture he has never made deliberately in his life, and he does not know whether it looks natural or absurd, and he has no way to tell.
He can only commit to it and hope that Torsten's ego will do the rest, will fill in whatever gaps exist in Evran's performance with the narrative Torsten wants to see.
"I'm alright," he says, and he makes his voice quiet and unsteady at the edges. "It was frightening."
"I can imagine." Torsten leans forward, his forearms on the table, closing the distance between them.
His expression is carefully concerned, practiced in a mirror, every angle of brow and tilt of mouth calibrated to project the most convincing sympathy.
"A poisoned blade. In the night. That is not something anyone should have to wake up to. "
"No," Evran agrees. "It isn't."
"And your husband? He's unharmed?"
"He's fine. He's." Evran pauses, looks at his hands, makes his voice even smaller.
The words taste wrong in his mouth before he has even finished forming them, but he forces them out anyway, shaping each one into the performance he needs it to be.
"He's strong. He handled it. But I…." He lets the words fall away, as though they are too heavy to finish, as though the admission of what comes next is more than he can bear to voice.
Torsten waits. Patient. Hungry. Evran can see it in the way Torsten holds himself, the slight forward lean, the parted lips, the gleaming attention in his eyes.
He has been given the scent of something he wants, and he is waiting with the practiced patience of a predator who has learned that prey comes closer if you don't move too quickly.
"Last night awoke something in me," Evran says, still looking at his hands.
He watches his own fingers lace together in his lap and thinks about Vaike, about the warmth of Vaike's body in the dark and the steady rhythm of his breathing and the way his arm had settled across Evran's chest in the aftermath with a weight that felt protective rather than possessive.
He holds that image in his mind and uses it as an anchor as he says the next words.
"A desire to be protected. In a way that Vaike cannot provide.
" He swallows, visibly, and makes himself look up at Torsten through his lashes as he says it.
The words taste like poison in his mouth.
Every syllable is a betrayal, a betrayal of himself and of the truth, because Vaike is the strongest, safest, most protective force Evran has ever known.
The man who stood between him and a poisoned blade without hesitation, who pulled Evran behind him in the dark and faced the danger head-on because that is simply what Vaike does, what he has always done, what he will always do.
Evran is lying, deliberately, to a man who wants to kill his husband, and the lie is that Vaike is not enough.
It makes him sick. It makes something in his chest curl inward with shame and self-loathing, and he has to remind himself why he is doing this, has to hold the purpose of it in the front of his mind to keep from choking on his own words.
But he says it.
Torsten is looking at him.
The mask of concern has not dropped. It is still there, still perfectly arranged, every line of his face projecting warmth and sympathy and understanding.
But beneath it something else is surfacing, something acquisitive, something that sees Evran as a door left unlocked and is already reaching for the handle.
Evran can see it in the slight dilation of his pupils, in the way his fingers have gone still on the table, in the predatory focus that sharpens his features and strips away the veneer of charm just enough for the thing underneath to show through.
"That's understandable," Torsten says, and his voice is gentle and solicitous, heavy with the cloying sweetness that surfaces when he smells vulnerability and begins to move toward it. "You're not a warrior. You shouldn't have to be afraid in your own bed."
"No," Evran whispers. "I shouldn't."
The words feel dirty. They feel like a concession, an invitation, and the worst part is that they are meant to be.
They are designed to crack the door open just a little wider, to give Torsten the signal he is looking for, the confirmation that Evran is dissatisfied and afraid and available.
The performance requires it. The plan requires it.
And Evran hates every second of it with a ferocity that surprises even him.
Torsten holds his gaze, and the moment stretches, taut and weighted.
Evran can see the calculation happening behind Torsten's eyes, the rapid assessment of how far he can push this, how much Evran is giving him, how quickly he can move.
It is the same look Evran has seen in the eyes of men his father dealt with, the merchants and politicians and petty lords who calculated the value of every interaction and never engaged in anything without first determining what they stood to gain.
It cannot really be this easy. Torsten, who is clever enough to orchestrate an assassination attempt and bold enough to attempt it during the Gathering, should be harder to bait than this.
But then Evran considers that cleverness and vanity often live in the same house, and that a man who believes himself irresistible will always find confirmation of that belief, will always interpret interest as natural and inevitable rather than suspicious.
Torsten does not think he is being played because it has never occurred to him that someone might want to play him.
He is the player, always, in every interaction, and the possibility that the roles have been reversed is simply not a thought his mind is willing to entertain.
Evran picks up his wine and takes a small sip, letting the silence sit.
Torsten watches him drink, watches his throat move as he swallows, watches his lips on the rim of the cup, and Evran pretends not to notice.
The weight of that attention is crawling and intimate and wrong, and Evran sets the cup down with steady hands that cost him everything to keep from shaking.
When Evran finishes eating he begins to rise from the table, and Torsten is on his feet at once, so quickly that it almost seems involuntary, the reflex of someone not ready to let his quarry walk away.
"Let me walk you," he says. "Where are you headed?"
"The square. I'm meeting the twins, the Warlord's children."
"I know them. Charming kids." Torsten steps around the table and falls into step beside Evran with the ease of an invited companion, though he has not been invited.
His stride adjusts to match Evran's without apparent thought, a small, calculated intimacy that says I am already attuned to you, I am already moving in your rhythm. "I'll take you there."
They walk. Through the great hall, through the arched passage to the inner courtyard, out into the afternoon sunlight.
The air outside is crisp and bright, carrying the scent of stone and growing things and the faint mineral tang of the mountain wind, and Evran breathes it in and lets it clean the taste of deception from his mouth, if only for a moment.
Torsten talks as they go, about Windfar, about the summit, about nothing of consequence, and Evran lets him talk, making interested sounds at the right moments, nodding, tilting his head as though fascinated.
The performance is exhausting in its monotony.
Torsten loves the sound of his own voice, treats conversation as a stage and his companions as an audience, and Evran has had years of practice in being an attentive audience for powerful men who expect nothing less.
"Windfar is nothing special," Torsten says, with the false modesty that only thinly veils the opposite conviction. "Cold, mostly. Flat. The Drakkari mountains are much more beautiful, I've always thought so, even as a boy."
"You've been to the Drakkari mountains?" Evran asks, keeping his voice light.
"Once, years ago. Briefly." Something flickers across Torsten's face, something sharp and hungry that he smothers quickly, and Evran files it away.
Resentment, perhaps, or longing. The look of someone staring at what he believes should already be his.
"The Drakkari could thrive, given the right leadership.
The land is good and the people are hardworking.
It only needs someone who sees its potential. "
The words are careful and measured but the implication beneath them is anything but.
Evran hears what Torsten is actually saying, which is that the Drakkari need him, that Vaike is insufficient, that the right leadership means Torsten's leadership, and the presumption of it is staggering even by the standards of the men Evran grew up around.
"What would you change?" Evran asks. "If you were in charge."