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For all Damen both lauded and disdained his calculating intellect, strong emotion tended to divert Laurent’s sharp mind. On the day of their wedding, he was blinded: by the intensity of Damen’s unrestrained grin and the little dent it revealed in his left cheek; the way he grabbed Laurent’s hands the moment he was close and smothered them in his own, much larger hands; the heat that melted through the confines of Laurent’s skin, burrowed into his bones and infiltrated his chest, all to extort a besotted smile from Laurent’s lips.
The embellishment of the plain white linen chiton Akielons singularly favoured seemed more extravagant, even in the face of Laurent’s lavish accoutrements, for its novelty. Today Damen wore a red woollen himation that draped over one shoulder and wrapped around himself. A meandering pattern of interlocking, unbroken lines decorated its border and beaded tassels its hem. The elegant folds were layered with purpose to expose the gold lion’s head at Damen’s left shoulder, pinning his chiton.
If there was one Akielon feature eclipsing the Veretians’, it was the diadem: in contrast to Laurent’s thin gold circlet, a diadem of large gold leaves wreathed Damen’s dark curls in a symbol of the myrtle plant.
The marriage contract read out by the officiants styled Laurent not only as Damen’s consort but his bride. That shroud of warmth began to drain from Laurent’s pores, leaving in its wake a blistering shame that sunk down toward his insides. He could not meet Damen’s gaze any longer. The rest of the words were blurred and distant, even as some perpetually running part of his mind tried to assess this unexpected turn; his uncle’s doing, undoubtedly, but Laurent’s jumbled thoughts could not discern to what end.
It did not help that Damen was squeezing his hands, thumbs rubbing away the minute quivers in each finger that Laurent failed to quell. That he patiently waited, head canting to the side, until he caught Laurent’s eyes and beamed at him. Like Auguste’s, Laurent had no defences against Damen’s smile. And when the sealing kiss was ordained, and Damen leaned down, it was a kiss that alighted his nerves. All else faded from Laurent’s awareness if it was not Damen’s skin and smell and hands. The fleeting touch in no way undermined the years Laurent had yearned for it; it was a kiss that left his fingers trembling and toes curling inside his leather poulaines, and he was forced to turn away.
The rest of the day passed simultaneously too quickly and too slowly. Moments with Damen at his side seemed to vanish between one blink and the next, whereas the slow torture of time his uncle forced him to pay court with the nobility stretched out.
Among the congratulations he received, Prince Torveld of Patras commented, “While Vere loses its crown rose, Ios gains a ripening floret.”
If Uncle’s clamp on his elbow was an irritation, the responding leer that crept across his lips was a repugnance. Laurent’s arm was unexpectedly released, though this freedom was traded for a hand pawing through his hair. “Yes, any prince would be pleased with such a bride by his side.”
Laurent scoffed. “Vere loses nothing.” A haughty lift of his chin concealed a jerk that dislodged his uncle’s suffocating caress. “When I ascend as King of Vere, Damianos will be my consort, as I am his.”
A thin smile spread underneath Torveld’s cropped beard. Otherwise he gave no response, as though Laurent were old enough to ogle yet too young to respect.
Even after escaping his uncle’s stifling presence, nerves plagued Laurent. Respite could not be found in drink unlike his groom and the other guests, whose spirits heightened as alcohol loosened their inhibitions. Laurent had imbibed wine since a child, though he did not find enjoyment in pouring a vinegar-like substance down one’s gullet. As a mischievous child, he snuck some on occasion: his brother Auguste slapped his back good-naturedly if he coughed, and grinned in approval if Laurent maintained a neutral face.
When Laurent was around thirteen, Auguste was dispatched to Delfeur to treat with Damen about the territory — a test of Auguste’s ability to prioritise the needs of his people over personal relationships. Courtly duties had only started to become vaguely tolerable to Laurent, so long as he could practise reading and writing in Akielon as he followed the banal politics with ease. As the gravity of Delfeur preyed on Laurent’s mind, left behind in Arles, the Regent plied his young nephew with alcohol.
“Like a real man,” had said his uncle
That night, a haze had clouded Laurent’s cognition. The world spun out of control while his limbs waded through thick honey, or else it was the reverse. Little of the night remained in his memory, save for the echoes of an incredible thirst and an ache in his finger joints from trying with all his might to grip at something, to succeed in only curling his fingers in toward his palms. He had awoken in his bed, unable to recall getting there.
He had avoided alcohol ever since.
Tonight, the air of cultivated indifference weighed heavier and heavier on him as the celebration carried on. He longed for the banquet to clear so he could retire to bed, yet he recalled it was not a solitary bed awaiting him at the evening’s close. Rather, he would be joined by his groom — and his uncle’s Council and likely Akielon royalty.
Both this looming duty and his uncle’s ploy quieted his tongue and coiled his limbs tightly together. In a lull between Akielon hymns — capable only of revering the bride’s fair beauty in contrast to the groom’s glorified valour — Damen sidled up to Laurent with a goblet of wine in his hand. Leaning down to whisper in Laurent’s ear, he offered him the drink. What Laurent desired was Damen — his steadying presence, his calming voice. The two of them absconding to some private alcove where he could allow himself to be entwined in the safety of Damen’s absurdly large arms.
Damen enjoyed a good drink, and shared plenty of stories with his friend, Nikandros, involving the barbaric concoction they called “griva.” But Damen knew his aversion to any state that compromised the autonomy of his body or mind, and respected this. Though not a request Laurent had made, Damen even limited his consumption when they were together.
He turned down the drink. Before Damen could abandon him to rejoin the festivities, Laurent strutted away from his groom and the acrid scent of rotted fruit.
The wisdom of self-imposed sobriety was questioned when Laurent was accosted by a swarm of tittering maidservants. A prince was generally spared public groping, and they might have been welcomed with bloodied noses and snapped bones had Laurent the brutish temperament of his groom. Hands splayed against Laurent’s shoulders and back, fingers picked at his sleeves. It became clear this was not some group of cloying sycophants, which explained the response of his carefully selected guard, useful as a shepherd dog distracted by a meaty bone.
No, Laurent’s evening of public humiliations was far from over: if the free flowing drink and fifteen-course meal were insufficient, guests could appease their gluttony by watching the Prince of Vere be dragged off by the young maidservants who would ready him for Prince Damianos’ pleasure.
He did not lead the procession to the wedding chambers; he was led down hallways and up winding stairs and finally, into the room. It was enclosed by three walls; where a fourth would stand was instead a metal grille through which the witnesses would spy. Laurent acknowledged this with only the periphery of his gaze.
The bed was coated in the deep red of blood: a blood red canopy shrouded the bed; a multi-layered bedspread of blood red spilled across the mattress; a small mountain of blood red pillows, fluffed and plumped, lined the headboard. Save for a white sheet, distastefully conspicuous, spread over top.
Laurent was readied for his husband. His circlet was removed. He was stripped of his ornate clothing. One by one, the layers of his royal status peeled away, leaving a chattel in their place.
When one servant attempted to rub down his skin with a sweet-smelling oil, she and her most distant relatives were threatened with a flogging. He was re-dressed in a trailing gown whose intricate embroidery only emphasised the sheerness of its lightweight fabric. Then Laurent sat on the unfamiliar bed that would host his wedding night.
Time passed, more than expected, as he awaited the arrival of his groom and the witnesses.
His mind drifted, as it was often wont to do, to Auguste.
Laurent’s wedding was always to be bittersweet. He had neared his eleventh year when he knew Damianos, Crown Prince of Akielos, was the only man he could ever marry. Romantic love was still a vague and foreign concept to him; he knew he loved Auguste, in a way that almost consumed him, and refused to believe his heart could withstand the weight of another. And then it did, most unexpectedly, for a hulking, brutish royal visiting from a foreign, barbaric land.
For years, long before they began courting, Laurent dreaded the day he would be forced to leave his brother’s side in Vere even if it meant joining Damen’s.
And then Auguste was wounded. And he did not get better.
The concept of mortality was well known to Laurent; he lost both his parents before the age of twelve and while he had no experience as a soldier, he witnessed war’s toll on Auguste. But it had not occurred to Laurent to apply to Auguste this fact of life to which none were invulnerable. Certainly, he had tended to cry when his brother went on any sort of campaign (something which incited the ire of his father and, later, his uncle). But Auguste always came back, and this became another fact of life: just as people needed air and food and water, or as things thrown into the air eventually came back down, Auguste was always safe.
It was selfish of Laurent, loathsome, but he had begged Auguste to hang on. Even as he got sicker and sicker, as his muscles wasted away and his hair lost its golden lustre. As every waking moment was agony and sleep held no reprieve. To Laurent, the only thing more intolerable than prolonging his brother’s suffering was accepting his brother’s fate: that was outside Laurent’s ability.
In Laurent’s refusal to accept the truth, it was Auguste, with a shaking hand and barely legible smears of ink, who sent a missive requesting Damen come to Vere at once. For Laurent’s sake. Such was the depth of Laurent’s delusion, Damen had been left unaware of the severity of Auguste’s illness.
By then, it had been weeks since Auguste had allowed any but Laurent, their uncle, or the physician to see him; Laurent fetched his meals and attended to as many tasks as he could to limit the number of servants needed. But when Damen arrived, they, with the addition of the Council and a select number of courtiers (gossipy ones, Laurent would later realise) were summoned to the King’s rooms. And Auguste invoked that indelible majesty and beneficence that no illness could ever tarnish and gave his final decree as King: within two years, Damen and Laurent would wed and seal their kingdoms’ alliance.
It was a few days later, when Damen had left the room to grab their meals, taking over Laurent’s self-assigned duties to give him that much more time with his brother. Laurent was curled up in Auguste’s sickbed, holding his brother’s hand as he read aloud. Despite his frailty, Auguste’s grip on Laurent’s hand was unwavering, even in sleep. So when it suddenly grew lax, Laurent just — knew. Knew, and his mind immediately refuted the possibility. He was not aware of pushing onto his knees and folding himself over Auguste’s body, clinging the too-limp hand in his while his other desperately tried to rub life back into his brother’s face; did not hear the silver tray falling from Damen’s hands when he returned to the room, did not register Damen’s arms coming around him. All he knew was something was trying to pry him away from his brother, and he lashed out with all the vicious wildness inside him.
After that was a blur; he could remember screaming until he was hoarse, crying until he couldn’t breathe. The fluttering panic when every inhale caught in his throat and exhale burned in his lungs. The sliver of bile and cold tea crawling up his esophagus as he vomited all over Damen’s chiton.
Now, his wedding was bittersweet for an entirely new reason: Auguste was not there to see his wish fulfilled, see Laurent utterly unable to hide his happiness.
Such was the nature of court entertainment in Vere, Laurent grasped the mechanics of sex; though he recalled Auguste once assured him pet performances were “not actually how it works.” At the time, Laurent had furled his nose and changed subjects. As he grew older, he was reluctant to broach the topic. Between Auguste purposefully excluding him from those events, and Laurent’s profound disinterest in willingly attending, no opportunity had presented itself.
And then — .
He reviewed what he knew in this moment: he had nothing to fear; he trusted Damen with his heart and his mind, and his body was far less precious to him than those. He had been taken to be stripped and trussed up, and Damen had not; Damen was afforded the privilege of arriving for his wedding duty at his own leisure. Laurent could last place him in the company of Nikandros, who was likely enacting a last attempt to convince him against this marriage. (That was of no concern to Laurent; Damen was a man of honour who would not abjure their union, even if it had not yet been formalised. And Laurent would soon enact the first step in his plan to have Nikandros appointed kyros of Isthima, a city-state overrun with secessionists that would keep him suitably occupied.)
His groom’s enthusiasm for this evening was in no doubt. Damen also lacked the political acumen to delay any kind of gratification for idle conversation should a courtier stop him on his way to the wedding chamber. The only logical conclusion led Laurent, once again, to his uncle.
Anxiety festered in his mind and pooled in his stomach. He allowed himself to consider what Auguste, valiant and always larger than life, would think, were he here to witness his little brother overcome by nerves. In a childish search for comfort, he pulled his knees to his chest, wrapped his arms around his legs, and let his head fall forward.
It was some time later when Laurent took a deep breath and opened his eyes at the shutting of a door. His mind felt muggy and obscure. The possibility that he had mistakenly drunk something was immediately eliminated; his body was in his control and he had not consumed any drink, even water, at the earlier festivities. The familiar gait that signalled Damen’s hulking form, heavy but rhythmic, did not come and he raised his head at the drag of the bed’s canopy.
It was not Damen, with an absurd amount of warm brown skin left uncovered by his short chiton, looming over him.
“Uncle?”
His uncle knelt onto the bed and advanced toward him. Laurent withdrew toward the headboard. He knew the room beyond the wall of metal grating would host the witnesses tonight, but that did not include his uncle.
Uncle’s hand wound around his arm, wrenching him forward. Perhaps Uncle would berate him for ‘acting like a child on the night Damen would make him a man.’ He must not be projecting a very regal figure for the gallery, after all.
The laces of each arm were pulled free and his sleeves forced up. No censure came.
“Uncle?”
Hands, unwelcome, clawed at the throat of his nightgown. His skin crawled against the cold night air as it was exposed. His focus was consumed by his uncle’s searing touch as unnamed dread slithered over him.
Despite lacking the breadth and height of Damen’s form, his uncle was able to seize Laurent’s hips and force him over onto his hands and knees.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
The dread enveloped his body in a smothering hold, sinking into his skin and solidifying into panic. Ankles, calves, knees and thighs were divorced from the shelter of his gown. His worst imaginations could not foresee the distress that accompanied this kind of disrobing. A hand settled on his thigh for the first time. It threatened to draw a noise from his throat.
Hot breath crawled through the curtain of his hair and curled into his ear as his uncle draped over him. “You never spurn an opportunity to flaunt your clever little mind. Tell me, how familiar are you…” Uncle’s mild tone was a warning. “With droit du seigneur?”
It was abhorrent, the mere suggestion almost unthinkable. Yet Uncle was here. Damen was not. He knew what that meant, if this archaic law had been reenacted -- and he had nothing but a desperate wish it had not been.
Laurent had liberated himself years ago from the hollow hope that came with wishing, but he wanted to wish now. Wish that if he stayed still and feigned compliance, his uncle would quickly finish his game. With his own gambit so close to fruition yet unconsummated, Laurent could not afford to misstep.
He would not expend his energy on the futility of wishing. No one was coming. He understood: the most logical course of action was to endure.
“Did you think you could leave…” Uncle’s words were accompanied by the final lifting of Laurent’s gown, its hem sliding against his buttocks and hips and waist and then discarded at his ribs. “Without saying goodbye, sweet nephew?”
A small pop followed by a glug of thick liquid.
“Does the process of succession confuse you?” Laurent asked with carefully measured steadiness. “Sticking your cock inside a future king does not make you one.”
A finger forced inside him. It may as well have been clean of oil, for the terrifying burn that spread from Laurent’s entrance. The finger withdrew only to force inside again, further this time, alighting twin agonies that tore at Laurent’s skin and punctured deep into his muscles. His self-control was deplorable as his lips trembled and parted in their failure to contain his first cry.
A sharp pain in his scalp registered before the fist in his hair, and his face was shoved into the soft mass of pillows. He was expertly arranged with arms pinned under his chest, entrapped by his own body. There was no point in quelling his cries, had he the ability; he could barely breathe, and the white-hot panic of suffocation combated with the searing demand of his uncle’s fingers, two now or possibly three.
“Stop,” he moaned into a mouthful of satin. “Uncle, stop.”
His wails were as shameful as they were ineffectual.
He struggled against his uncle’s hold and the fingers in his hair twisted and pulled. His head wrenched to the side but this chance for a lungful of air was obstructed as fingers invaded his open mouth. Sticky and thick, they prodded at his molars and dug into his squirming tongue, so many in number that his jaw ached to disjoin and his lips stretched until his skin threatened to hear. They stifled his cries and left behind a musky taste. Laurent’s face was forced back against the pillows, the material wet with cooled drool and tears.
Again, Uncle wrenched his head back. Against every screaming instinct, Laurent did not open his mouth for a breath. He bit into his bottom lip with the effort to keep his mouth shut. If he could wrest this one thing from his uncle’s depravity, he would gleefully tear his teeth right through the flesh of his lip.
Blunt nails scraped against his front teeth, but did not breach.
There was a victory in it, however small. Even the savage, stabbing thrusts in punishment, as if his uncle’s fingers were a spear and Laurent a boar, could not rob him of that.
When the assailing fingers were removed, the pain did not abate. But the grip on his hair released, and he could push himself up.
“Uncle, please, stop,” he begged. His arms violently shuddered to hold his own weight, and he willed strength into them. As if years of swordplay were a practice in futility, a hand on his back and a modest push were enough to overpower him. His back bowed against an elbow that now dug into his spine, forcing his hips into a lewd cant toward his uncle’s touch, as if soliciting his own defilement.
Even with knees locked together and inner thighs quivering to keep from parting, he couldn’t shield himself. He couldn’t suppress his cry when Uncle’s cock thrust inside him.
“No!”
His skin was tearing apart, and he cried out with abandon, thrashing against Uncle’s bucking hips. An arm escaped but he did not manage a blow before it was seized in a grip that pierced through flesh and muscle, bruising down to the bone. Uncle’s other hand held up Laurent’s hip, moulding him into a pleasing position. The hold on his hair had been replaced by the heaviness of shame weighing him down, and he did not bother to lift his head. Instead he turned his face toward the right, away from the witnesses. Pleading and begging was forgotten. It was impossible to say whether it was the cries he had succumbed to, or the pounding of his uncle’s hips, that wracked his frame.
It devolved into a frenzied pace and all he could hear was the slap of Uncle’s flesh against his, drowning out Uncle’s grunts and his own gasping breaths. He thought he could not possibly endure any more; his uncle’s thrusts were frantic with an ever-growing hunger, and it threatened to snap him into two.
He had not felt such visceral fear, since —
“Auguste.”
It was forced from his lips. A desperate invocation. Familiar to Laurent even after so many years without his rescuer.
“Think of your brother if it helps,” said Uncle. “Beg for it to be his cock inside you.”
Taint oozed in, scraping apart Laurent’s flesh and hollowing out his bowels. The one thing Uncle could not touch. He could break Laurent’s body, claim it; redress him as a bride; bring ruination to his marriage before it even began. Auguste was something Uncle could not have, yet Laurent had offered up his brother’s sacred memory like he had offered up his body.
It did not stand out to Laurent when his uncle finished; he was thrusting and then he was not and then he retreated from Laurent’s body. Not far, of course. His presence saturated the air.
“You should thank me,” he said. “My dear child, I was gentle. That animal will take you like a bitch in heat.”
The crude words paired with a honeyed tone and a petting of Laurent’s hair. Laurent flinched before he could stop himself.
Uncle’s hands were callus-free, so pampered-soft that his clawing ministrations did not impede the silky glide of his fingers through Laurent’s hair. Starkly dissimilar from the hands of Laurent’s brother, coarsened by years of sword fighting yet wielding impossible delicateness to comb through Laurent’s tresses or carefully weave a plait. The most Damen had done was brush a wayward strand behind Laurent’s ear or give a lock a teasing tug. It was dissimilar from his hands, too.
He did not imagine the touch of his brother or even his groom in place of his uncle. But he could strain his mind to remember the precise weight of Auguste’s hand as it rested on his crown; the smooth draw of the ribbon he tied to hold a carefully gathered section of Laurent’s hair. It occupied his mind even as guilt burned away what remained of him, for he had tarnished his brother. He could not extricate Auguste’s immaculacy from Laurent’s taint .
“What would your precious groom think of you, were he to find out he’s second in your affections to a rotting corpse?”
Laurent stared, unseeing, at the silk pillows below. The words floated over him. The hand ghosting over his hair was intangible.
“Put on a pleasant show for me, sweet nephew,” his uncle said. And when he departed for Damen to take his place, Laurent knew the game was far from over.
The mattress dipped. A voice murmured his name and hands sought his skin. His body curled away from it.
It was Damen.
Damen, who pulled down Laurent’s gown to hide his shame. Who said, “we’re done here” and “ I’m not going to touch you.”
There was a ploy, Laurent knew, and the pieces of it floated before him. But the consummation did not begin; Damen refused, and the longer he cavilled over fucking Laurent, the more the pieces of the puzzle morphed, disjointed and out of reach.
Fingers sank into the pristine white of the sheet below him. Thoughts oozed from his mind, intangible against his shaking grip.
And then there was — nothing.
“I can’t — think,” he said, as Damen refused to touch him. “Fuck me,” he said, because it was the most logical conclusion. The only conclusion.
Laurent had not moved; he remained positioned on his elbows and knees, ready to be taken, and Damen’s resolve crumbled. Yet still he asked, “Can you turn over?”
Laurent shook his head, adamant. “Like this, Damianos!”
It was the only way he could bear. Damen would mount him, and he would not see Damen nor would Damen see him. A simple continuation of what his uncle started, and perhaps with time, the two events would blur together. Whether the nebulous, fused memory would be of his uncle or his groom, or whom he would prefer, Laurent could not say.
It was a small mercy, one Damen would not give him. “Laurent, I can’t.”
When he acquiesced, it was not in some notion of fairness nor in recompense for forcing Damen’s hand. Every humiliating shift of his body as he lowered himself down was sheer rationality, an act necessary to circumvent Damen’s accursed stubbornness lest Damen change his mind.
He twisted as much as he could toward his right side, presenting his body to Damen but keeping his head turned away.
“Look at me.”
Laurent refused. Damen pressed forward, winding an arm around his waist, caging them together. Every stroke of Damen’s hand up and down his spine dragged the gown through the sweat coating his skin.
Damen seemed content to prolong the torment. Laurent was not. “Damianos, take me already,” he snapped
The gentle sincerity of Damen’s voice was unbearable. It grated against his every nerve. “You have to look at me.”
With that, his last vestige of hope for tonight, that at least he would not have to look upon Damen’s face as he was taken, fled.
Such childish displays of emotion behind him, he wiped tears from his face before he turned around. It was not cowardice that kept his gaze focused downward, but whatever reprieve he sought in this was unfounded: his eyes were drawn to the angry red impressions imparted by his uncle. Physical reminders that could not be contained inside him; Uncle was still here, wrapped around his forearm.
Damen’s eyes were on him, unwavering in their assessment. It made Laurent’s skin crawl. He closed his eyes and when Damen tried to touch him, he recoiled. But even the mound of pillows could not hide him and next a mouth pressed against his forehead. “Laurent?”
“I said just —”
Laurent’s snarl was interrupted with an aggravating soothe. “I know,” Damen said, as if he did not refuse to act upon it.
This time, Laurent did not withdraw. Hot breath beat against his face, sticky with cooled sweat, and it produced a shiver untamable no matter how he willed his limbs into stillness. Eventually, he gripped the front of Damen’s chiton. The himation was nowhere to be found, a vague relief. He did not want to see its bright red counted amongst the crimson bedding.
When Damen finally succumbed, Laurent forced himself onto his back. A well of pain that was lodged between his hips burst at the movement, spilling down his legs and across his spine.
He tore his gown from Damen’s hesitant grip. He pulled it up and up, over his knees. His thighs were unveiled. His elbows locked, unpermitted. He could not continue.
His hands were grabbed and Damen told him to just leave it there.
This position, on his back, meant Laurent had to invite Damen between his legs. His face contorted into a grimace as he fought against his own muscles, rigidly clenched, to part his legs willingly. A few inches were managed. A knee settled between his thighs and Laurent’s own knees jerked in response. They were unable to close. Panic flared in his chest.
The intruding knee pushed at his inner thigh. “Can you move a little more?” Damen coaxed.
Giving into Damen’s directive felt easier than moving of his volition, and he spread his legs.
Even still, Damen did not delve into his body. He loomed over Laurent’s prone form with an elbow that dug into the pillows beside Laurent’s ear. He patted Laurent’s hair, whispered that he loved him, dragged his mouth against Laurent’s cheek.
Damen asked for a kiss, and the responding tremble of Laurent’s mouth reminded himself of the wound, that small victory, under his bottom lip. His absolution was so near but Damen needed more enticing before he could debase himself with the draw of Laurent’s body. Tipping his chin, he gave himself up to Damen’s searching mouth. It was nothing like the chaste kiss at the wedding dais; Damen’s lips covered his and it was wet from his saliva and the lingering damp of Laurent’s skin. His tongue thrust forward, thick and even wetter, pushing against the aching torn flesh below Laurent’s mouth.
It was violating, unexpectedly so, and Laurent could not stop a flinch. The licking ceased but the kisses did not. Large hands grasped his face on either side, and he felt consumed.
When Damen’s body sank down against his, it revealed his growing hardness. Laurent tensed. Damen murmured some reassurance, but he did not relish the onslaught of lips and tongue that rerouted to his exposed throat. He tried to force his body into pliancy.
Inadequately, for Damen sighed his displeasure into Laurent’s neck. Yet it was enough: he pushed forward.
The slick squelch of a hand coating itself in oil filled Laurent’s ears. It expanded in the air, empty of even a shuffle of clothes or too-heavy breath from the witnesses. Uncle, it was just like Uncle with , his pampered, gluttonous hand.
A hand settled on Laurent’s thigh, already parted for its invasion, and he reacted like he had not before. Gripped the forearm. Curls his fingers into the flesh, muscled and wider than his hand could span. Eyes still closed, he said, “Talk to me.”
The words spoken to him were delivered in a familiar baritone with an unfamiliar halt to its tenderness, and intimately close. The words were Akielon. He did not parse out their meaning; it was Damen.
It was Damen, opening him. He felt the thrusting of Damen’s hand not only through the fingers inside him, but through the jerking motion of the arm he still clutched. If he blurred his perception, it was almost as if he himself controlled it.
Even when Damen replaced his fingers, the push of his hips was unhurried. That slow drag, back and forth inside him, was agony. In complete opposition to his uncle’s savage carnality but as Damen’s voice petered out, it left nothing but that familiar slap of skin, and Laurent’s throat spasmed.
It was clear, from the shaking of his own muscles, that he was still grasping Damen’s arm. But his fingers were numb. “Talk.”
Damen grabbed Laurent’s other arm and held it between them. “Remember this?” he asked.
Laurent did not have to look to know what he meant. An arc of Damen’s blade had sliced through Laurent’s sleeve and skin alike, when he was fourteen and Damen humoured him with practice duels. It cut long but shallow, insignificant even as it permanently marred the underside of Laurent’s forearm.
He could recall the frantic way Damen had clawed at his clothes, tearing away layers of Veretian cloth as if thin as paper. Dark eyes wide with horror at the thought of having harmed him. He wondered, were he to open his eyes, if it would be horror or lust that darkened Damen’s gaze now.
“I cannot bear the thought of ever hurting you again, Laurent.” Tone broken and beseeching, Damen said, “This pains me.”
Shame burned inside him, a pang somehow more vivid than the agony at his entrance, and Laurent forced himself to through it. He, too, could not bear to hurt Damen and he buried his face into Damen’s neck, gasped against Damen’s skin, throat tight with sounds he would not make again. Damen clung to him and Laurent allowed himself to cling back. As if he was welcoming Damen into his core, as if a long-awaited invitation was finally given, Damen rocked into him with a little more fervour now, nearly approaching enthusiasm, and finally released inside him.
Each member of the Council, King Theomedes and the bastard son, affirmed they had witnessed the Crown Prince of Akielos spill his seed inside the Crown Prince of Vere. As one might shield a child who stumbled into a pet performance, Damen tried to drown it out with a hand over one of Laurent’s ears and words whispered into the other. Uncle’s voice bled through.
Damen pulled out and away from him as quickly as possible, creating a chasm between them. Their marriage was consummated, Damen was his husband, but that did not mean Damen wished for any further intimacy between them.
Abandonment by those least expected was not unfamiliar to Laurent. A pale echo of the agony of Auguste’s death, Laurent’s chest seized in a panic, edges of hysteria bubbling up in his throat. Gripped with fear, he said, “Don’t leave me alone.”
Damen said, “I’ll never leave you. I could never leave you.”
Laurent did not doubt the veracity of Damen’s words but the longevity of his sentiment. Damen was guided, first and foremost, by his peculiar sense of honour; but Laurent was under no illusion that a marriage, an alliance between nations, could be sustained through honour and pretty words alone.
The canopy above them was a blurred sea of red as Laurent stared up at it.
Damen began to speak. He recounted the first time they met, and the words rustled through Laurent’s hair.
As a man who saw only cowardice in double-speak, a discomfiting honesty guided Damen’s every word and action. It was second nature for Laurent to pull apart layers of speech for hidden meanings; a nature carefully learned and refined and, for Damen alone, painstakingly unlearned. He did not dissect the layers of Damen’s words now, but they were kept at a distance just as Damen kept himself in their marriage bed.
And then an arm snaked under Laurent’s back, as promising as it was anchoring.
His mouth trembled as Damen murmured about being ‘instantly weakened under your spell,’ a tremble he could not fully conceal from his own voice as he said, “You hated me.”
“I never hated you,” assured Damen, but he felt a flush of insistence.
“Wherever you and Auguste went, I followed,” he confessed. “You ignored my every attempt to tug on your chiton and talk to you.” If there was any bitterness in his tone, it was only because Damen refused to admit this simple truth. It was inarguable; Laurent could not compare to Auguste’s charisma and irresistable draw, nor had he ever possessed a desire to.
It was true, as Damen went on to claim, that he eventually resorted to insulting Damen’s ‘bedsheet dress’ and ‘naked feet,’ but — “It was the only way you paid me any mind.”
“My Veretian was terrible,” Damen said; not untrue, yet it had been far better than Laurent’s Akielon. At that time, he could not even form his mouth around the name ‘Damianos’ without softening it overly much. When Damen had finally noticed, he offered Laurent the use of his small name, an intimacy he had already granted Auguste. Laurent could recall flushing, eyes wide as he stammered some nonsense reply and then fled altogether.
“You only wanted to discuss poetry and philosophy!” Damen’s complaints continued. “I couldn’t keep up with you, sweetheart. I never could.” The soft reassurance was sealed against Laurent’s cheek with a soothing caress. Once more that night Laurent surrendered his body to Damen, this time curling his front toward Damen’s side and allowing his head to settle on the man’s chest. Damen hugged him so tightly it left him winded. That felt more promising, somehow, than any spoken assurance.
Then Damen’s hands fisted in Laurent’s gown, and Laurent balked. “I am going to kill your uncle,” he growled.
Laurent chided him for being an imbecile. Then, “We’ll do it together.” His own words left him shaky, the fingers of uncertainty still grasping at his ribcage and hesitantly, searchingly, he added, “We’re married now.”
Damen kissed the top of his head, scant centimetres from the sharpest sting of his scalp. “You’re right, husband dearest.” A new endearment, the first time either had used it, and Laurent relished its splendour rolling off Damen’s tongue. “In all things, we are together now.”
Words inadequate, Laurent nodded. His neck ached and he buried his face into Damen’s chest until he could move his head no more. There, he smothered his stuttered breaths.
Damen’s heart thrummed against his ear, slow but harder than Laurent’s own, and he surrendered to the lull of its beat.
“We’ll leave tomorrow,” Damen promised.
Laurent wished he could agree. Fragments of his uncle’s scheme coalesced in his mind, and he knew how it would look — the Crown Prince forsaking festivities gruellingly prepared across many months in his honour. The declaration it would make to defect to Akielos so eagerly. The ease with which his uncle would twist and distort it. Insisting that surely his beloved nephew loved their people, whilst offhandedly furthering a campaign on Laurent’s inexperience. “I must admit it is true that he has long since neglected his duties,” Uncle would sigh. “Even a prince, I suppose, can be so blinded by youthful passion as to prefer a foreign country to his own. I can only hope it does not affect his loyalties…”
No, Laurent would ready himself for the next play on his uncle’s board. Outmanoeuvre what he foresaw, and stoically bear whatever humiliations he could not. This he kept from Damen, whose voice had grown heavy and hands slack with fatigue.
Quietly, Laurent asked, “You’ll stay, husband?”
“Hmm?” Damen squeezed him briefly and nuzzled his nose against Laurent’s crown. Laurent dared only refer to this night — to sleeping alongside each other — yet Damen’s response felt like eternity: “Of course. Always.”
Lips curving into a nascent smile, Laurent let his lips press, shyly, over Damen’s heart. Wrapped in the security of Damen’s embrace, he thought if he wished for eternity, perhaps it would be granted.