4. Chapter 4
Valdyr was drunk.
Not the useful kind. Not the kind that blurred the edges and made the world tolerable and let a man sleep without dreaming.
This was the other kind, where every sense sharpened instead of dulling, where the wine stripped off the layers of discipline and left the raw nerve sitting out in the open air.
And the raw nerve was currently fixed on a silver-haired omega at the far end of the head table who was not eating, and whose scent, through the noise and heat of two hundred bodies, reached Valdyr with the accuracy of an arrow.
Honey. Lavender. Green growing things.
And underneath it, threaded through like a crack running through glass, something thin and tight and frightened.
The ceremony had been the most wretched three hours of Valdyr's life, and he had once walked three miles to a field hospital holding his own intestines inside his body with both hands, so his standard for wretchedness was not low.
He had stood at the king's right in the armor Brell had polished, with the ceremonial sword that did not smell of horse, doing what he always did, which was look threatening enough to discourage interruption.
He had watched his mate marry his king. The bond in his chest had screamed the entire time like something being torn in half while still alive.
He had looked at Lorne exactly once. One second, before the processional began, the omega prince standing alone at the altar in ivory silk with his hair braided around his head like a crown and his scent locked down so tight it was almost neutral.
Almost. Not quite, because Valdyr's senses were tuned to this man's frequency now and he could pick the distress note out of a hurricane.
Then he had put his eyes on the far wall and nailed them there for the duration, because if he'd had to watch the king touch Lorne's face one more time he would have done something that got them both killed.
He had felt the kiss through the bond. Not the kiss itself, not the physical sense of it, but the wrongness, a dissonance ringing down the connection like a struck bell, and Lorne's scent had clenched inward and Valdyr's fangs had come down and he'd put his claws through the skin of his own palms to keep himself where he stood.
He had held. That was all he'd done for three hours. He had held.
He had served Aldric for fifteen years. He had bled for this crown seven separate times.
He had taken oaths that meant something, that bound him as surely as any bond mark, and he was not going to break them because a barefoot omega with dirt under his fingernails had walked into his life and rearranged the furniture.
But the wanting. The wanting was a live animal. It lived in his chest and it breathed and it grew and it had teeth.
"You're going to be pissed before the second course at this rate."
Brell. Seated beside him, as she was at every formal function, because Valdyr refused to sit next to anyone else and the seating arrangers had given in to the inevitable years ago.
She was nursing her own cup at a measured pace, keeping herself sober enough to carry her commanding officer to his quarters if it came to that, which, at the rate Valdyr was going, was beginning to look likely.
"I'm fine."
"You're on your fourth cup."
"I'm on my third."
"Valdyr, I poured you the first one. I've been counting."
"Then you've miscounted. Your arithmetic has always been shit."
"My arithmetic kept the supply lines running through two campaigns."
"Your arithmetic also produced a requisition order for six hundred left boots and no right ones."
"That was one time."
"The regiment marched on Vell hopping."
"The regiment marched on Vell fine, and I would remind you that the man who signed off on that order without reading it is currently sitting to my left, drinking his fourth cup of wine.
" She took an unhurried sip. "You want to tell me why you're drinking like you've got a death wish, or shall I guess? "
"Neither. I want you to mind your own business."
"Your business is my business. You don't get to fire me now."
"I could fire you."
"You could try. I'd like to watch you fill the post. The applicant pool for woman willing to be screamed at by a demon before breakfast is thin."
Valdyr drank. The wine was good. Aldric kept an excellent cellar, the one area in which Valdyr had never faulted the man. It burned going down and did nothing whatsoever to quiet the noise in his chest.
Brell was watching him. He could feel it the way he could feel an archer taking aim, that particular prickle of being measured by someone with a full map of his weak points.
"It's the ceremony," she said. Not a question. "You've been wound tighter than a crossbow since dawn. The vein in your temple hasn't stopped twitching in three hours."
"I don't have a vein in my temple."
"You do. It twitches when you're angry. I've been watching it for years. I've named it. I call it Harold."
Valdyr turned to stare at her. "You named a vein in my temple."
"Harold," she confirmed, serene. "And Harold has had a very active day."
Valdyr opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, failed to produce anything that wasn't an admission of something he had no intention of admitting, and settled for a glare that would have put a lesser woman on her knees.
Brell was not a lesser woman. Brell had been glared at by Valdyr so many times the glare had lost all potency on her, like a poison administered in rising doses until the body simply stops answering.
"Eat something," she said. "You're not going to solve this by pickling yourself."
"There's nothing to solve."
"Right. Of course. You're sitting at a wedding feast drinking like you're trying to drown something and staring at the head table with a look that could melt steel. Perfectly normal behavior."
"I'm not staring."
"You've looked at the head table fourteen times since we sat down. I've been counting that too."
"Your obsession with counting things is a personality defect."
"Your obsession with pretending you don't have feelings is a personality defect, and yet here we are."
Valdyr drank. It tasted like copper. His tongue pushed against the backs of his fangs, which had been trying to descend for three hours, and the pressure was a low steady reminder that his body wanted something his honor would not permit it to have.
Three seats down, two courtiers were working through the grain tariffs.
"...and if the northern route holds, we take the levy off entirely by spring."
"The northern route holds because of the marriage."
"Everything holds because of the marriage."
Down the table, Lorne sat beside the king with his hands in his lap.
He had not touched the food. He was smiling, that bright warm practiced smile Valdyr now understood was a shield rather than an expression, and he was answering questions with a grace that made Valdyr's chest ache, and he was not eating.
He had not eaten a single thing.
Valdyr had been watching. Not watching. Monitoring, the way a soldier monitors a perimeter.
In the forty minutes since the feast began, the prince consort of Thessmere had not picked up a fork.
His plate sat untouched. The bread beside it sat untouched.
The wine had been sipped once, barely, and set down, and his hands had gone back into his lap and stayed there, folded, still, and the tension across his shoulders was visible from the far end of the hall.
He was drowning. He was drowning in a room full of people who believed they were celebrating, and he was too polite to ask for help and too proud to show it and too kind to make a fuss about it. Valdyr could smell the distress from fifty feet away through the smoke of four hundred candles.
Nobody at the head table had noticed. The king was sitting right there and had not noticed, and something in Valdyr's chest went dark and quiet in the way that usually preceded violence.
The king leaned toward Lorne. Said something close to his ear.
Valdyr couldn't hear it, but he saw the flinch, small and real and controlled almost before it finished happening, the smile dimming for a fraction of a second and then going back up like paint over a crack.
Valdyr's hand tightened on his cup until the metal gave slightly under his fingers.
The king leaned back. The public warmth returned. The court saw a devoted husband murmuring to his new consort.
Valdyr saw a man being crushed.
"Brell."
"Hm?"
"Have a server bring the prince a mince pie."
It came out low and flat and directed at his wine rather than at her face. Brell turned to look at him, and he could feel the weight of her attention shift, assessing, recalculating, fitting the new piece into whatever picture she was assembling.
"A mince pie," she repeated.
"Did I stutter?"
"You want me to send a mince pie to the prince consort. The man you don't care about. At the wedding you have no feelings about."
"Brell."
"A mince pie."
"He's not eating. Someone should." He stopped. Regrouped. "It's a poor show. The consort sitting at the head table with a full plate in front of him. Reflects badly on the king's hospitality."
"Oh, is that what this is. Concern for the king's hospitality."
"Are you going to do it, or are you going to sit there interrogating me?"
She held his gaze a beat longer than was comfortable. Two beats. Three. Then she turned, caught the eye of a passing server, and spoke quietly.
"The pie. Yes, that one. To the consort, with the kitchen's compliments, and no names attached to it."
"Ma'am."
A moment later the pie was crossing the hall, golden and latticed and fragrant with spice.
Valdyr did not watch. He fixed his attention on his cup, on the scratched grain of the table, on the tariffs three seats down. He did not look at the head table. He did not look at Lorne.