19. Chapter 19
Evran waits.
He waits until Vaike's breathing changes, until the deep, slow rhythm settles into the cadence of true sleep, the kind that will not surface at the creak of a floorboard or the shift of a body on the mattress.
He waits until Vaike's arm, heavy across his waist, goes slack with the boneless weight of unconsciousness.
He waits until the fire has burned down to embers and the room is dark and the stronghold beyond the door has gone quiet.
Then he moves.
Slowly. Incrementally. He eases out from beneath Vaike's arm one precise motion at a time, pausing between each to listen for a change in breathing, a shift in weight, any sign that the sleeping body beside him has registered the absence.
Vaike does not stir. His face is turned into the pillow, his dark hair spread around him, and the steady rise and fall of his chest continues uninterrupted.
Evran's feet find the cold stone floor. He stands, naked, and does not breathe for three full seconds.
Nothing. Vaike sleeps on.
He dresses in the dark. His hands know where everything is, the clothes he laid out earlier, folded on the chair by the window, chosen for ease of movement and ease of removal and the balance between I dressed for you and I can run in these if I need to.
Dark trousers. A loose linen shirt. Soft-soled boots that make no sound on stone.
The dagger.
Evran straps it on. The leather sits snug against his skin, the weight of the blade a constant, grounding pressure. He takes a step, then two. The dagger does not shift, does not catch, does not announce itself.
He crosses to the door. His hand is on the latch when he pauses, one last look over his shoulder at the bed, at the dark shape of his husband sleeping in the embers' faint glow. Vaike's hand is stretched across the space where Evran was, fingers curled loosely around nothing.
I'll be back. I will always come back to you.
He opens the door. The corridor beyond is dim, lit by a single torch at the far end, and the guard posted outside is at the junction, far enough that Evran can slip out without being seen if he times it right.
He waits for the guard to turn at the end of his route, then steps into the hallway and pulls the door closed behind him with a sound so soft it barely exists.
He moves.
Three doors down. Bran's room. Evran raises his hand and knocks, one rap, low and quick. The signal they agreed on. I'm going.
He does not wait for a response. He knows Bran is awake, knows the big man is sitting in the dark behind that door with his boots on and his sword within reach, listening, ready. Bran will give him ten minutes and then follow.
Evran turns and walks the other direction. Away from the Drakkari wing, away from the safety of his own people, through the corridors of the Keep toward the southern wing where the Windfar delegation sleeps.
The Keep at night is a different creature.
The corridors that were warm and busy during the day are cold and shadowed now, the torches spaced far apart and burning low, their light creating pools of orange that alternate with stretches of near-darkness.
Evran moves through them with a deliberateness that feels unhurried and inevitable, each step measured, each turn calculated, his ears attuned to the smallest sound.
His mind is clear. Clearer than it has been in days, perhaps because the decision has been made and the time for doubt has passed, perhaps because the fury that has been building since Delia told him about the horse has burned away everything extraneous and left behind only the essential.
He knows the plan. He knows the dagger on his thigh and the knock that will come in ten minutes and the man counting them three corridors behind him.
He has run through the sequence so many times in his head that it has taken on the quality of something rehearsed, muscle memory for a performance he has never given but knows by heart.
He passes one guard, then another. Neither stops him. He is a delegate, he has the right to walk the corridors, and his pace is unhurried enough to suggest a man going for air rather than a man going for a throat. He nods as he passes. They nod back.
The southern wing. The corridor narrows here, the ceiling lower, the torches fewer. The Windfar banners hang on the walls, pale blue and grey, colorless in the dim light. The doors are heavy oak, identical, spaced evenly along the left wall.
No guards posted outside. Evran notes this and files it away. Torsten dismissed his guards for the night, or never had them, and either way the hallway is empty, just Evran and the torchlight and the silence and the door at the end of the corridor that is, as promised, unlocked.
He stands in front of it.
His hand is on the latch. The metal is cold beneath his fingers. His heart is beating fast but his hands are steady, and the steadiness surprises him and does not surprise him at the same time, because he has been preparing for this moment for days.
He takes a deep breath.
He opens the door and steps inside.
The room is warm.
A fire in the fireplace, not roaring but steady, well-tended, casting the space in that same reddish-orange glow that Evran remembers from the ale room.
The walls are draped in Windfar tapestries, the furniture dark and heavy.
A table near the window, set with a pitcher of wine and two cups.
A washbasin in the corner. A large bed against the far wall, the covers turned down.
Torsten is at the table.
He is seated with his back to the window, a cup of wine in his hand, his legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankle.
He is dressed simply, a loose shirt unlaced at the throat and dark trousers, and his blond hair is slightly damp, as though he has bathed recently, and in the firelight it looks darker, more gold than wheat.
His eyes find Evran in the doorway, and they darken. Not with surprise but with hunger, deep and predatory, waiting rewarded.
"You came," Torsten says.
Evran closes the door behind him. The click of the latch is very loud in the quiet room. He steps forward, one step, then two, and makes himself hesitate. Makes his movement tentative, uncertain, wanting to be here but not sure he should be.
"I almost didn't," Evran says, and his voice is soft, nervous. "I waited until he was asleep. I almost lost my nerve three times."
Torsten sets his wine down and stands. He crosses the room with measured confidence, knowing exactly how this night is going to go, having planned it the way he plans everything, with precision and presumption and a complete lack of concern for anyone's desires but his own.
He reaches Evran and puts his hands on his jaw and kisses him before Evran can say anything else.
The mouth is wrong. Everything about it is wrong, the pressure, the taste, the angle, the person behind it, and Evran's body knows it and rejects it and he has to override every instinct he has to stay where he is and not recoil.
But the revulsion is manageable tonight, contained by the cold clarity of purpose that has replaced the panic he felt at the stable wall.
He is not the same man who froze with his back against the wood and his lips sealed shut.
He is the man who decided to be the trap, and the trap does not flinch.
He kisses Torsten back.
It is not good, his lips moving mechanically, his jaw tight, his hands at his sides, but Torsten does not seem to require much enthusiasm to be encouraged.
The kiss deepens, Torsten's tongue pressing past Evran's lips, and the taste of wine fills Evran's mouth and he swallows around the nausea and keeps his mind on the only thing that matters.
The bedside table. The drawer. The vial.
He holds it in his mind. He knows where he is going. He knows what he needs.
Torsten pulls him further into the room, his hands moving from Evran's jaw to his waist, gripping, pulling their bodies together.
Evran's skin crawls, his stomach turns, the taste is wrong and the smell is wrong and the hands are wrong, too narrow and too grasping, and the wrongness of it registers in his body with the same rejection it always does.
But tonight he holds it at a distance, observes it rather than drowning in it, because tonight he is not enduring this for its own sake.
He is enduring it for seven more minutes, and then it will be over, and the man whose hands are on his body will be in chains before morning.
The thought is steadying. He holds it close.
Torsten guides him toward the bed, his hands on Evran's waist, his hips, the small of his back, and each touch is a violation, small, incremental, building.
Evran lets himself be moved. He lets Torsten lead him across the room and lets the bed come closer and reminds himself of the dagger on his thigh and the plan in his head and Bran's knock that will come in seven minutes, maybe six.
The backs of his legs hit the mattress. Torsten pushes, not hard but insistent, and Evran goes down.
He lands on the furs and quilts and Torsten follows him, crowding over him, and the weight of another body pressing him into the bed sends a spike of revulsion through him so sharp it nearly breaks the surface.
But he clamps down on it, shoves it into a box in the back of his mind and locks it there, and focuses on the plan, the drawer, the minutes remaining.
Torsten is kissing his neck, his mouth hot and wet against the skin below Evran's ear, and his hand is sliding beneath the hem of Evran's shirt, fingers pressing against his stomach.
Evran's muscles contract involuntarily, flinching away from the touch, and he disguises it as a gasp, as though the sensation is pleasure rather than disgust.