Chapter 17 #3
Evran swallows and the bile that rises in his throat is laced with something incandescent and furious, because this is the man who poisoned a blade and sent it through a window toward the neck of the person Evran loves most in the world, this is the man who dosed a horse and watched from a distance while it tried to kill Vaike on an open road, and now he is standing in a garden with his voice pitched low telling Evran he has been thinking about the taste of him.
The audacity of it, the sheer, breathtaking gall of wanting to kill a man and seduce his husband in the same week, makes Evran want to drive Bran's dagger into Torsten's throat and watch the surprise replace the hunger in those pale blue eyes.
He does not. He converts the fury into something useful, alchemizes it, transmutes the heat and the revulsion into something that could pass for nervousness, for the flattered, flustered response of hearing what you want to hear and not knowing what to do with it.
"I had thought to come to you last night," Evran says, and the words come out quiet, halting, as though he is confessing something shameful. "After Vaike had gone to sleep. But I wasn't certain." He pauses, drops his eyes. "I wasn't certain my presence would be welcome."
Torsten catches his arm.
The grip is immediate, reflexive, seizing what he has heard before it can be retracted. His fingers close around Evran's forearm, tight enough to feel the bones beneath the muscle, and his voice when he speaks is rough with a need that he is no longer bothering to disguise.
"Yes. Absolutely you would be welcome."
The grip is a little too tight, a little too possessive, the fingers pressing in, not bruising but bordering on it, and Evran can feel the tremor of restraint running through Torsten's hand, the effort it is costing him not to pull Evran closer, not to close the distance, not to take what he has been circling all week.
Evran looks at those fingers on his arm and thinks about the white pressure marks they will leave and thinks about Vaike's hands, which have never once left a mark on him that was not asked for.
He thinks about the contrast between a man who holds you because he loves you and a man who holds you because he believes you are his to hold, and the fury settles deeper into his bones, past the nausea, past the fear, into the place where resolve lives, and it hardens there into something cold and useful.
He does not flinch. He leans into it, tips his body toward Torsten's, just slightly, just enough, and looks up at him with an expression he hopes reads as wanting rather than what it actually is, which is focused, burning calculation, the intent to dismantle the person in front of him piece by piece and make him believe he wanted it.
"I could come tonight," he says. "If you wanted me to."
Torsten does not kiss him. They are too public, the walls are high but not high enough, and the courtyard beyond is still populated with retainers and delegates going about their evening.
But his gaze drops to Evran's mouth, and the look is so transparent, so utterly without subtlety, that it might as well be a kiss.
He is imagining it, imagining everything that comes after it, and Evran watches him imagine it and thinks about the poisoned blade and the trampled shoulder and the stitches at Vaike's temple, and the fury burns so hot and so clean that for a moment it feels almost peaceful, the way rage becomes clarity when it has been refined enough times, when it has been fed enough injustice, when it has somewhere specific to go.
"I will leave my door unlocked tonight after the guard rotation changes," Torsten says, his voice controlled now, practical, making arrangements for something he has decided will happen. "All you need to do is let yourself in."
"I can't wait," Evran tells him, and the words are ash in his mouth, but beneath the ash there is steel, and beneath the steel there is the image of Vaike's face, the strong jaw, the dark lashes, the beads he carved from stone, and the absolute, unshakeable certainty that Evran will burn this man's plans to the ground before the night is over.
"I'm counting the hours. But I have to go, or Vaike will be suspicious. "
Torsten releases his arm. The grip leaves white pressure marks on Evran's skin that fade slowly.
"Tonight," Torsten says.
"Tonight."
Evran turns and walks out of the stone gardens. His stride is calm, his posture relaxed, his face pleasant and composed and revealing nothing of the storm that lives behind it.
His heart is pounding so hard he can feel it in his teeth.
He makes it through the courtyard, through the corridor, around the corner, and then he stops and presses his back against the wall and closes his eyes and breathes.
The fury is still there, bright and clean and cold.
It does not feel the way he expected fury to feel, does not feel wild or uncontrolled or dangerous.
It feels precise. It feels useful. It feels like the thing that is going to carry him through tonight and out the other side with the evidence in his hands and his husband's life secured.
He opens his eyes. He pushes off the wall. He walks to Bran's room and knocks.
There are plans to finalize.