Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
Memory is a funny thing.
If I alone remember how much something moved me,
that does not mean the world did not also shake.
The Book of Heart
TWENTY-EIGHT
Osian let him go. Watched as he slipped from the room.
The surge of selfish desire receded in the wake of the poison, each of his muscles laid to waste. He half clambered, half fell into the covers, and had to take a damnably long moment to catch his breath.
A moment too long, stirring memory: Meilyr beneath him, hair spilled like ink across the pillow. Breathing clipped, lips parted. Anticipation gathering in his eyes, as though—
Stop. Even if Meilyr had felt want, that did not change a thing. A physical response did not mean anything. Osian should have moved immediately. Would apologise again, profusely. Would give Meilyr space, and time.
‘You saved my life,’ he breathed. Thankfulness he did not deserve welled with a cold, rain-punctured memory from childhood, and he looked at the smooth band of gold on his heart-finger.
The door creaked open, and Meilyr returned with a bowl of deliciously wafting cawl. ‘Forgive me, I did not mean to take so long.’
‘Not at all. Thank you.’
How beautiful he was as he perched on the bed, patient as Osian gathered himself against the headboard.
‘You truly do not have to nurse me—’ Osian’s disloyal body chose that instant to lurch into coughing, by the end of which Meilyr’s hand rested on his arm. He retrieved it shyly. ‘After this, please sleep,’ Meilyr said.
‘I will.’
Osian made himself take up the spoon, resting the bowl on his chest as Meilyr wrung his hands the way he did when he thought no one noticed.
‘You need to rest as well.’ Osian averted his gaze, blowing on the spoon. ‘I can take the divan—’
‘No, absolutely not. Majesty.’
The belated attempt at correctness was so endearing it hurt.
He had called him Osian in the Great Hall, a world-tilting impossibility he would have clung to into death. Part of a universe of other impossibilities, stolen conversations and glances. Meilyr’s taste in the folly. That forbidden kiss, which Osian would have recalled to his tongue even in dying.
If Meilyr needed the shield of formality, so be it.
He let Osian eat, then provided him with another impossibility. ‘I could sleep by the fire?’ Meilyr suggested. ‘That way I could remain close, should you need anything.’
‘That does not sound particularly comfortable.’
‘It can be, with blankets and cushions. Celyn and I used to do it all the time in the winter…’ The fondness quavered, offering a glimpse of the vast pain Meilyr kept carefully enclosed beneath his skin. He swallowed it with heart-aching practice. ‘It will be more than fine, if you would not mind.’
‘Not at all.’ The furthest thing from it. ‘If you are certain, take anything you need from the bed as well.’ Osian let the bowl slump. Meilyr set it aside. ‘Aldreda and I used to do the same. She would tell ghost stories, and I would lie awake all night, terrified of the shadows in the corners.’
Meilyr’s smile returned, brighter. ‘That sounds familiar. Except I was the one telling ghost stories.’
‘No wonder she is so fond of you. Kindred menaces, both.’
Sparks of amusement.
Osian ruined it by coughing, a shuddering peel that left him shivering.
‘Your fever is being stubborn.’ Meilyr’s cool fingers tested the side and back of his neck.
‘Stubbornness runs… family.’
‘I had no idea.’
Gods, let him savour the ease of this.
‘You need sleep,’ Meilyr told him, no longer a suggestion.
It was the last thing Osian wanted, except for Meilyr to be further than this. His poison-addled flesh made him lightly capture Meilyr’s hand as he withdrew, and Meilyr stilled, letting him. Waiting.
Osian let go.
Meilyr retrieved the cloth that had bled onto the pillow, refreshed it and laid it with care across Osian’s forehead. ‘Sleep, My Prince.’
He changed into sleep-clothes in the parlour, gathered blankets and cushions from the divan and the oak chest at the foot of the bed, and settled by the fire to arrange them.
Osian’s exhausted heart yearned whilst watching him, the fall of his wavy hair, glistening from the bath, tumbling loose save the two small braids. The firelight brought out the sunset in it and warmed his skin to moonlight and gold.
Osian ached for him in a way as constant and familiar as his own breath, his own heartbeat.
Unconsciousness tugged at him, his eyes losing their battle to stay open.
Selfishly, he allowed himself to look until nothingness took him.
Vicious, thorn-edged coughing tore Osian awake, his insides a rattled
thicket of dry brambles.
Hands touched his shoulder, his arm. ‘Here, drink this.’
Meilyr.
Osian drank, the tart liquid balmed by a wave of honey. ‘What… is this?’
‘Golden henbane, dandelion, elderberry, rosehip, cleavers and honey. The golden henbane is particularly important over the next days, though it may feel as though you are being mildly poisoned all over again.’ A light flush, as though Meilyr was embarrassed he had spoken so much.
‘It will hopefully help your throat, though.’
‘It already has.’ Osian cleared it, quietly. ‘When did you make this?’
A sheepish lift to Meilyr’s mouth in the near dark. ‘I had some trouble sleeping. It was not the fireplace—’
‘You should take the bed—’
‘Don’t.’ Meilyr’s hands firmed on his arm and chest. ‘Please, it was not that. There is simply a lot in my head.’
It must truly have been a great deal, for him to admit it. Osian could sympathise. He slumped to the cushions, taking another drink of the bittersweet concoction. ‘I am sorry you have not slept.’
‘Says the man who was just poisoned. I will manage.’
Osian should let it be, but there was a new tension in Meilyr, something edged with long-wrung-out concern and fretting. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Meilyr went for his usual dismissal, but paused and changed his mind. ‘My Prince, do you have any idea who might have poisoned you?’
‘You do not believe a vengeful spirit tampered with my goblet?’
‘I believe if this was spirits or sorcery, you would be dead.’
A needless bur of guilt caught in Meilyr’s brow. Osian wanted to pluck it away and smooth the surface left behind with his thumb. ‘As do I,’ was all he said.
Meilyr hesitated, still holding back.
Osian made not so much a leap as a measured step. ‘Wystan cornered you earlier. I should have asked about it sooner.’
‘He… wanted to talk.’
‘May I ask after the subject matter?’ He could not keep the steel from his voice.
Meilyr hedged, that pause when he feared he would step over a line that did not exist.
Osian spoke it into being. ‘You are concerned he is the one who had me poisoned. It is a possibility I am very aware of.’
Shock slipped into concern. ‘Forgive me, I did not wish…’
‘To speak ill of a prince of Khaim, my brother. There is nothing to forgive. It is likely we are not alone in coming to such conclusions, and please know there is never anything you can say that will be… improper.’ His throat almost failed him at the last, but the drink was truly helping.
‘At my door,’ Meilyr said, ‘he told me…’
Fear. Hesitance. Osian wanted to reach for him so sharply he had to clench his fists.
The words spilled as though from a wound. ‘He knows about Celyn. He knows what happened when you came across us in the street, and said I should remember he could ruin all of us if he wanted. I should have told you at once, but—’ His eyes welled. ‘I am so sorry, Majes—’
His anguish froze as Osian cupped his cheek, his autumn-forest eyes widening.
His skin was slightly cool, hair soft where the tips of Osian’s fingers brushed it.
Everything in Osian wanted to lean in and kiss him, swallow whole the agony that brimmed beneath his skin, until it could never reach him again.
Instead, Osian remembered himself sharply, and withdrew his hand.
Meilyr caught his wrist.
Another impossibility gathered in his expression, bared in his gaze and his parted lips. Neither of them dared to breathe.
Meilyr let go. ‘I am sorry.’
‘No, I should not have…’ It was Osian’s mistake; he had to push on.
‘Please, do not harbour any guilt over what happened with Wystan. He placed you in an intolerable position and manipulated you into silence. The only question is why, if he was about to make a move through which your conversation would only condemn him.’
‘Unless he meant for fear to hold my tongue,’ Meilyr said. ‘Unless he means for me to direct the blame away from him, using Celyn as leverage.’
‘I will not let that happen. With whatever strength I possess, I will not allow him to harm your brother.’
Meilyr wrung his hands. ‘Thank you.’
‘I do not wish for you to be afraid,’ Osian confessed. As though he alone had the power to prevent that.
Meilyr was quiet, considering. ‘What are you going to do about Prince Wystan?’
‘Likely only drink from his goblet in the future.’ Osian swallowed sharpness and went on. ‘As I said, we are likely not the only ones to come to such conclusions. I will move in the ways that are necessary, when I can get out of bed without stumbling.’
Meilyr bit his lip. ‘He also said he and Lord Gelens went… into town. Is there a chance…?’
‘That Gelens is involved? Likely more than Wystan himself.’
‘But why…’ A shaky exhale.
‘Why would they do such a thing?’
‘Yes. No. I’m sorry, it is such a foolish thing to ask.’
‘Far from it.’ Osian swallowed. ‘Wystan never had the… easiest upbringing. His mother was ambitious, named queen in a political marriage with Raak whilst the king still grieved my mother. Despite being my father’s third child, she raised Wystan as though he were destined for the throne, and not subtly.
It made things between the three of us… difficult.
Wystan was raised separately, aided by the difference in age and his mother’s insistence we were lesser. ’
Still, he remembered the small, quiet boy who had hidden at the edge of the palace training grounds, watching Osian and Aldreda when he should have been at his books.
Osian could picture the glimmer of awe and surprise in that boy on the third day, when Osian had ignored Aldreda’s half-hearted protest and called him over.
Wystan had not returned the next day. It was only years later that Osian had found out the queen had ordered his knuckles struck bloody for consorting with his lesser bastard siblings.
For days, Wystan had avoided their gazes and even simple greetings with winces and silence. Yet it still had not stopped him, months later, from bursting into tears and running to Osian’s side when the eldest prince had returned home with an arrow-wound in the gut.
‘Things became worse after his mother passed. He was brought under the wing of her family and allies, who had established comfortable positions at court. Lord Gelens was one of them.’
Meilyr tensed, as he did every time Gelens was mentioned. It was incredibly difficult not to touch him again.
‘Wystan grew more distant,’ Osian continued, ‘and I know Gelens and others used him as a figurehead for their own gains. I have never felt true malice, or even hatred, from him. It is as though they emptied him of all he could have been and filled him with their lies, their beliefs. Sometimes, I think he believes they are his own wishes, but most of the time…’ Most of the time, Wystan simply felt achingly hollow.
Filling himself with drink and sex and sharp-tongued rhetoric, just as his mother had done.
‘So, there is a chance Lord Gelens oversaw this…’ There was sympathy in Meilyr’s face, in his voice.
‘Almost certainly.’
The weight of it sat between them. ‘The king’s adviser,’ Meilyr said. ‘Your father’s adviser…’
Osian allowed himself to touch Meilyr’s hand. ‘They did not succeed, thanks to you. And everything I know, Aldreda knows as well. If they are responsible, it will be put right.’
A little sadly, Meilyr said, ‘I am glad you and Her Majesty can be close, at least.’
Gods, the compassion in him.
‘She can be staunch, to say the least. But I am lucky to have her. To have grown beside her.’ He hesitated before saying it. ‘I am glad you have Celyn. It sounds as though things have always been… difficult.’
Meilyr’s gaze lost focus, the way it always did when immense pain brushed the surface of his mind. ‘I am, too. I do not know what I would do without him.’ Honest and unguarded, to the man who had locked Celyn up.
‘I am sorry,’ Osian said, the words unable to speak of the seas beneath. ‘I cannot imagine how difficult—’
‘No, I was not thinking of that. It’s done, and… It is done.’
I should never have done it, Osian wanted to say. I wanted to save you – both of you, but you especially. I should have found another way. I should have pardoned you both and spirited you away in the night, away from all this. I am so, immeasurably sorry, and I know that will never be enough.
Instead, he said, ‘You should rest.’
‘As should you.’ More gentle and forgiving than Osian deserved. ‘I am sorry for keeping you awake.’
‘Not at all.’