“I don’t see how any of that matters.”
The thief shrugged. He glanced around the room, picking at its details, but inevitably, his eyes found Fia’s reflection again. As if his previous actions — stealing the egg, flooding Syehnäki with his magic, having their group followed — hadn’t told Fia just how dangerous Eli could be, the look he now gave him all but confirmed it. Nothing along the lines of a threat, but a stare that didn’t settle for viewing the superficial but rather dug into the darkest corners of a person’s being.
It was a strange thing to be so seen when Fia had personally bolted shut all those doors and left the locks to rust for these last five years.
“It matters,” Eli said, “but only as much as you want it to matter.” He tipped his head to the side and gave Fia’s reflection a coy smile. “Rather considerate of your group to leave us all alone.”
Fia left that without comment. Instead, he poured the water into the basin, splashed his face with it, and gave his cheeks several rough rubs with his palms. When he looked into the mirror again, Eli was still staring at him. He grabbed the towel by the basin and patted his face dry, cutting off their eye contact.
“They don’t trust you, that much I’ve ascertained.” Eli walked over to the bed and plopped himself down on it. He sighed with a roll of his neck, eliciting several loud pops in the process. “But they do believe your collar so tight you won’t step a foot out of place and risk choking yourself. Which is also rather interesting.”
“It’s not,” Fia said.
Ice. Just a hint of it.
He took in a breath and looked out the window. Toivo sat on a bench below, talking with a young woman, who appeared politely amused with whatever story he was telling her. Standing behind a wooden fence badly in need of repair, five children watched the guardsman, more curious than afraid. None of them could have been older than six years. Fia drew back from the scene only to find himself pinned beneath Eli’s stare again.
“Oh, it’s very interesting, my death-defying prince.” He flashed a grin at Fia. “Though, I suppose you all never did the whole monarchy thing over there. Rule by might, wasn’t it? Is it true you bested every clan’s top fighter after your father fell in battle? Crazy to think you’d all fight amongst yourself with a war gnashing its teeth at your borders.”
“It’s how we settled things,” Fia said. He rolled his right shoulder and grimaced at the slight ache starting to infuse itself across his back. Two days of hard riding and not a proper rest in sight. He glanced at the bed. “And I settled it quick.”
“Quite true. I heard you were on the field the very next morning and gave the emperor and his army such a thrashing they contemplated a full retreat.”
Eli caught his gaze again, then smiled and tipped his head toward the open space on the bed beside him. Not once had his eyes lost their dissecting edge. Every moment under his gaze left Fia feeling more and more exposed. He shook his head. The thief’s smile took on an unspoken question.
“And yet here I am,” Fia said, the bitterness in his voice almost hot enough to melt the ice now lining his chest.
“Here you are,” Eli replied. “Still very much alive.”
“For someone standing on the brink of their own death, you seem unusually concerned about me still standing about in the living.”
“We’ve been over this, Fia. Handsome blood knight, long lost prince or something like it, very catching eyes.” He winked at that, the gesture dragging a groan from Fia, who decided to pull the desk chair out into the middle of the room and seat himself on that instead of the bed. The choice didn’t escape Eli’s attention. He looked from the bed to the chair, with Fia now planted on it, his long legs draped on either side and his arms folded over the back of it as he stared at Eli. “I don’t bite, you know. Though, apparently, you don’t either anymore, given what that ass Isak had to say. Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“The no more biting bit?”
“Does that matter?”
“It matters that you keep skirting around the question of what you can and cannot do.”
“I’m not avoiding it.”
“And yet you still haven’t answered me.”
“Because it’s pointless.”
“Yes or no?”
“What?”
“Do you still bite, Fiarac Basdlan?”
“I do what I’m told.”
“So, you do still bite.”
“Are you always this annoying?”
Eli grinned. “And yet you smile at me. Who lacks honesty now?”
There was no helping it. Fia dropped his forehead to his folded arms and laughed. Nothing loud. Not nearly enough to draw any attention to their room, but Eli could hear it. And Fia hated it, the way it made his chest ache more than the muscles in his back, the way its heat was never enough to sweep the cold from his chest even though it tried. Fuck, did it try. He kept his head there, his gaze fixed on the chair under him, his thighs cast in his body’s shadow.
Right now, the last thing he could safely do was look Eli in the face.
“I want to hate you. It would make all of the easier,” Fia said, the laughter still hiding in his voice.
“Now, there’s something honest,” Eli said softly. Silence settled over them like an old blanket, threadbare but well-loved. Fia heard Eli shift on the bed. “When was the last time you met anyone like us?”
A winter storm brewed inside of him. Fia could feel its winds cutting across his lungs. He could still breathe, though each breath was its own quiet agony. For a long moment, he said nothing. All he could do was stare into the darkness created by his own body, even as his gaze yearned for the sunlight filtering in from the window, painting the floor around him gold.
“You don’t want to ask that question,” Fia finally said.
More silence. Heavier this time, but not oppressive.
“Is this a matter of me not asking or of you not telling?” Eli questioned.
“Both, maybe.”
Eli shifted again, the bed creaking under his weight. “I’m still asking.”
“You are a fool,” Fia said.
“And you are too honest.”
“Am I?”
“You’ve already told me the answer.”
Fia laughed again, the sound like glass shattering over a stone floor. No mirth, just breaking.
Outside, children shrieked. Toivo’s voice boomed, his words lost to the insulated distance, but the growling sounds, deep and guttural, still made themselves known and earned him more of the children’s delight. They laughed, too, and the ache in Fia’s chest cracked.
“You have a contract with the empire.”
Question and statement both. Fia nodded his head.
“I do.”
“What are its terms?”
Silence. He wanted to speak. He had always wanted to speak about those terms, but the words caught themselves on ice-drenched barbwire and froze so deep inside of him that all he could do was feel their death over and over again. He swallowed.
“Huh,” Eli hummed out. More movement. Fia could just barely see the outline of his shadow on the floor now. Not like a typical person’s, a vague mimicry of their physical form, but amorphous, constantly shifting like the tide. Close, then far, moth-eaten with sunlight, then whole again. “But this contract exists?”
“It was signed.”
That was as much as Fia could bring himself to say on the matter. A simple fact and one anybody could understand.
“Well, one does not sign air,” Eli mused, as much to himself as for Fia to hear. His shadow continued to dance across the floor, bits of it delicately fluttering about as pieces of it pulled apart and came together again like a kaleidoscope of butterflies. Fia lifted his head to get a better view of the display. “Ah, there you are, Fia…”
He shifted his gaze over to the thief. Still sitting on the bed, he looked about as comfortable as one could be with their arms bound behind their back. Having experienced something similar himself, Fia knew it to be about as pleasant as sleeping on a bed of splintered wood and broken dreams. Despite all that, though, his eyes kept their cutting edge, bright as a newly minted coin, and his mouth made the softest of smiles.
Fia's chest ached.
Less guarded than he had been on the road and sitting there now in the morning light, Fia could see Eli was definitely young. Not teenage young, but young enough to deserve more than this.
Even if he had taken a dragon’s egg from the empire.
Honestly, Fia couldn’t even fault him that, though he could never say as much.
Eli tipped his head to the side, and with it, several locks of golden brown tumbled across his face. Fia hadn’t noticed it before, but part of his hair had been pulled back into a short half-ponytail, keeping the longer strands from shielding his sight, and now those strands were falling loose from its ribbon. He looked a right mess.
“Finally have something to say about it?”
Winter stole into his heart. Even so, it beat, and it beat, and it kept on beating, and Fia swore that blood might burn hotter than flame, but still, death would come for him all the same. He lowered his head and smiled.
“I wish I had never caught you,” Fia said.
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