failes-xtra-bits

[failes-xtra-bits]

Chapter 11/part 2

And then there were three... uh four?

‘The prince du jour,’ said Jokaste. There was a pause. Damen needed to step forward, announce his presence, and stop this. He watched Laurent arrange himself against the wall. Laurent said, ‘If you’re asking, did I fuck him, the answer is, yes.’(Asked NO ONE, as Shana would say).

‘I think we both know you weren’t the one fucking him. You were on your back with your legs in the air. He hasn’t changed that much.’ Jokaste’s voice was as refined as her poise, as if the practice of high manners was not disturbed by either Laurent’s words or her own. Jokaste said, ‘The question is how much you liked it.’ Damen found himself with his hand on the wood beside the grate, listening as intently as he could for Laurent’s reply. He shifted position, trying to get a glimpse of Laurent’s face, ‘I see. We are going to trade stories? Shall I tell you my preferred position?’ ‘I imagine it’s similar to mine.’ ‘Confined?’ said Laurent. It was her turn to pause. She used the time to peruse his features, as if sampling the quality of silk. Both she and Laurent looked utterly at ease. It was Damen whose heart was pounding. She said, ‘Are you asking what it was like?’ Damen didn’t move, didn’t breathe. He knew Jokaste, knew the danger. He felt fixed to the spot, as Jokaste continued her study of Laurent’s face. ‘Laurent of Vere. They say you’re frigid. They say you rebuff all your suitors, that no man has been good enough to prise your legs apart. I believe you thought it would be brutish and physical, and maybe a part of you even wanted it that way. But you and I both know that Damen does not make love like that. He took you slowly. He kissed you until you started to want it.’ Laurent said, ‘Don’t stop on my account.’ ‘You let him undress you. You let him put his hands on you. They say you hate Akielons, but you let one into your bed. You weren’t expecting what it felt like when he touched you. You weren’t expecting the weight of his body, how it felt to have his attention, to have him want you.’ ‘You left out the part near the end, when it was so good I let myself forget what he’d done.’ ‘Oh dear,’ said Jokaste. ‘That was the truth.’ Another pause. ‘It’s heady, isn’t it?’ said Jokaste. ‘He was born to be a king. He’s not a stand-in, or a second choice, like you are. He rules men just by breathing. When he walks into a room, he commands it. People love him. Like they loved your brother.’ ‘My dead brother,’ said Laurent helpfully. ‘Shall we now do the part where I spread for my brother’s killer? You can describe it again.’ He couldn’t see Laurent’s face as he said it,

( oh Damen... SMH)

though Laurent’s voice was easy, as was his elegant lean against the stone wall of the cell. She said, ‘Is it difficult to ride with a man who is more of a king than you are?’ ‘I wouldn’t let Kastor hear you call him a king.’ ‘Or is that what you like about it? That Damen is what you’ll never be. That he has surety, self-belief, strength of conviction. Those are things that you yearn for. When he focuses it all on you, it makes you feel like you can do anything.’ Laurent said, ‘Now we are both telling the truth.’ The quality of this pause was different. Jokaste gazed back at Laurent. ‘Meniados is not going to defect from Kastor to Damianos,’ said Jokaste. ‘Why not?’ said Laurent. ‘Because when Meniados fled Karthas, I encouraged him to head straight to Kastor, who will kill him for leaving me alone here.’ Damen felt himself turn cold. Jokaste said, ‘We now have dispensed with pleasantries. I am in possession of certain information. You will offer me clemency in exchange for what I know. There will be a series of negotiations, then, when we have decided on a mutually beneficial arrangement, I will return to Kastor in Ios. After all,’ said Jokaste, ‘that is why Damianos sent you here.’ Laurent seemed to study her in turn. When he spoke, it was without particular urgency.

‘No. He sent me to tell you that you’re not important. You’ll be held here until he’s crowned in Ios, then you will be executed for treason. He’s never going to see you again.’

Laurent’s claws are showing!

Laurent pushed himself off the wall. ‘But thank you,’ said Laurent, ‘for the information about Meniados. That was helpful.’ He had almost reached the door before she spoke. ‘You haven’t asked me about my son.’ Laurent stopped. Then turned.

Then BOOM she drops a bomb. Damens a daddy and the baby 👶 is with the Regent 🤮.

[failes-xtra-bits]

Chapter 11

And then there were three... uh four?

Damen stands in the solar gathering his thoughts as he's basically "shook" by the appearance of Jokaste. Nikandros comes to him and they talk. Damen admits that he wants Jokaste to suffer worse than he has for what she's done to him. Nik tells him he's better than that. He tells Nik to set a guard on her. One that has no taste for women so that she can't manipulate them. Nik agrees to place Pallas(😏) and Lydos on guard. Damen has control of the fort.

When the regents herald comes to Karthas he is received by Damen and Laurent sitting on twin thrones.

He did nothing to lessen the impression. He sat on the throne in armour, his thighs and arms heavy with bared muscle. He watched the Regent’s herald enter the hall. Laurent sat beside him on an identical twin throne. Damen let the Regent’s herald see them—royalty flanked by Akielon soldiers in warlike armour made for killing. He let him take in this bare stone hall of a provincial fort, bristling with the spears of soldiers, where the Akielon prince-killer sat beside the Veretian Prince on the dais, dressed in the same crude leather as his soldiers. He let him see Laurent too, let him see the picture they presented, royalty united. Laurent was the only Veretian in a hall filled with Akielons. Damen liked it. He liked having Laurent beside him, liked letting the Regent’s herald see that Laurent had Akielos alongside him—had Damianos of Akielos, now in his favoured arena of war. The Regent’s herald was accompanied by a party of six, four ceremonial guards and two Veretian dignitaries. Walking through a hall of armed Akielons had them nervous, though they approached the thrones insolently, without bending a knee, the herald coming to a halt.

Needless to say the obnoxious herald delivers his message to Damen. Am I the only one who wants to squash him like a bug?

‘We accept the Regent’s surrender at Charcy,’ said Damen. The herald flushed. ‘The King of Vere sends a message.’ ‘The King of Vere is seated beside us,’ said Damen. ‘We do not recognise his uncle’s false claim to the throne.’ The herald was forced to pretend that those words had not been spoken. He turned from Damen to Laurent. ‘No head in a bag?’ said Laurent. Laurent’s voice was mild. Relaxed on the throne, one leg extended out in front of himself, a wrist draped elegantly on the wooden arm, the shift in power was evident. He was no longer the rogue nephew, fighting alone on the border. He was a significant, newly established power, with lands and an army of his own. ‘Your uncle is a good man. The Council has called for your death, but your uncle will not hear them. He will not accept the rumours that you have turned on your own people. He wants to give you the chance to prove yourself.’

He delivers his message coolly. They try to convince Laurent to come stand trial and abandon Damen

‘And if I refuse?’ ‘If you refuse, you will be executed,’ said the herald. ‘Your death will be a public traitor’s death, your body displayed on the city gates for all to see. What is left will receive no burial. You will not be entombed with your father and brother. Your name will be struck from the family register. Vere will not remember you, and all that is yours will be cast asunder. That is the King’s promise, and my message.’    

Laurent said nothing; an uncharacteristic silence, and Damen saw the subtle signs, the tension across his shoulders, the muscle sliding in his jaw. Damen turned the full weight of his gaze on the herald. ‘Ride back to the Regent,’ said Damen, ‘and tell him this. All that is rightfully Laurent’s will return to him when he is King. His uncle’s false promises do not tempt us. We are the Kings of Akielos and Vere. We will keep our state, and come to him in Ios when we ride in at the head of armies. He faces Vere and Akielos united. And he will fall to our might.’ ‘Your Highness,’ said Estienne, his grip on the hat now anxious. ‘Please. You can’t side with this Akielon, not after everything that’s said about him, everything he’s done! The crimes he’s acccused of in Ios are worse than your own.’ ‘And what is it I am accused of?’ said Damen with utter scorn.

It was the herald who answered, in clear Akielon and a voice that carried to every corner of the hall. ‘You are a patricide. You killed your own father, King Theomedes of Akielos.’ As the hall dissolved into chaos, Akielon voices shouting in fury, onlookers leaping up from their stools, Damen looked at the herald and said in a low voice, ‘Get him out of my sight.’

Damen is furious. He can't believe that it's come to this and that his brother is capable of such treachery. He sees the Regent’s 🤮 hand in all of the scheming. He realizes with sudden clarity that this is exactly what the Regent has done to Laurent; turned everyone against him, isolated him. He realizes that Laurent is watching him.  Damen is scared that Laurent may be wanting to take his uncle up on his offer and Laurent shoots him down, but insists there's "more" to the uncles plan that they are missing.

'There’s something else,’ said Laurent. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I mean that my uncle doesn’t hold out a hand for someone to knock it aside. He sent that herald to us for a reason. There’s something else.’ Laurent’s next words were almost unwilling. ‘There’s always something else.’ There was a sound from the doorway. Damen turned to see Pallas in full uniform.

Pallas informs them that Jokaste would like to see Damen.

He knew that he was not in control of himself. He wanted to go and rip the truth out of her with his bare hands. What did you do? What did you and Kastor plan? He knew that he was vulnerable to her in this state, that her expertise, like Laurent’s, was in finding weakness and pressing down. He looked over at Laurent and said, flatly, ‘Deal with it.’ Laurent gazed at him for a long moment, as if searching for something in his expression, then he nodded wordlessly, and made his way to the cells.

Damen broods for a few minutes, swears and follows Laurent to the cells.

Damen stopped, unseen in the shadowed space behind the door grating. Seeing the two of them together made something turn over in his stomach. He heard a cool familiar voice speak. ‘He’s not coming,’ said Laurent. She looked like a queen. Her hair was twisted up and held in place by a single pearl pin, a gold crown of polished curls atop her long, balanced neck. She sat on the low reclining seat, something in her posture reminiscent of his father, King Theomedes, on his throne. The simple white sheaf of her gown, gathered at each shoulder, was covered by an embroidered silk shawl of royal vermillion, which someone had allowed her to retain. Under her arched golden brows, her eyes were the colour of woad. The extent to which she and Laurent resembled each other, in colouring, in their cool, intellectual lack of emotion, in the detachment with which they regarded one another, was both unnerving and extraordinary. She spoke in pure, accentless Veretian. ‘Damianos has sent me his bed boy. Blond, blue-eyed, and all laced up like a virgo intacta. You’re just his type.’ Laurent said, ‘You know who I am.’

[failes-xtra-bits]

Chapter 10~Bitch Fight

Fetch slave... and then there were three... uhhh... four?

This is a short but pivotal chapter, in which an old friend resurfaces.

DAMEN WAS SMILING. He lay on his back, his arm over his head, the sheet pooled over his lower body. He had been awake for perhaps an hour in the early light. The events of last night, endlessly complicated in the candlelit privacy of Laurent’s bedchamber, had resolved into a single, blissful fact this morning. Laurent missed him. He felt a flutter of illicit joy when he thought of it. He remem-bered Laurent gazing up at him. 'You keep overturning all my plans'. Laurent was going to be furious when he arrived at the morning meeting.

I swear he's like a school girl with a crush... I wonder if it's because the author is female? Whatever the reason, i wouldn't love Damen half as much if he were different. I think he's everyone's dream man.

So they pull the sand tray out and prepare for the meeting. Nikandros comments on Damens good mood🤔.Laurent shows up looking worse for wear and very wary of Damen. Nikandros watches Damen, Damen watches Laurent, Laurent studiously watches the space in front of him😏.

‘Laurent!’ said Makedon, greeting Laurent warmly(what an AMAZING transformation). ‘I am glad to take up your invitation to hunt with you in Acquitart when this campaign is over.’ He clapped Laurent on the shoulder. Laurent said,

‘My invitation.’

Damen wondered whether he had ever been clapped on the shoulder in his life. ‘I sent a messenger to my homestead this very morning to tell them to begin preparing light spears for chamois.’

‘You hunt with Veretians now?’ said Philoctus.

‘One cup of griva and you slept like the dead,’ said Makedon. He clapped Laurent’s shoulder again. ‘This one had six! Can you doubt the power of his will? The steadiness of his arm in the hunt?’

‘Not your uncle’s griva( I LOVE this),’ said a horrified voice. ‘With two such as us on the ride, there won’t be a chamois left in the mountains.’ Another shoulder clap. ‘We go now to Karthas to prove our worth in battle.’ This provoked a wave of soldierly camaraderie. Laurent did not typically engage in soldierly camaraderie, and did not know what to do(Poor Laurent, so out of his depths).

So basically, blah, blah, blah, campaign... blah, blah, blah, 'You sent word?!?!' Horrified Laurent. 'It is the way we do things in a fair fight' fatherly Makedon. Blah, blah blah... meetings over Makedon sharing headache cures.

Makedon remarked, rising, ‘You should have your slave fetch you some.’

‘Fetch me some,’ Laurent said. Damen rose. And stopped. Laurent had gone very still. Damen stood there, awkwardly. He could think of no other reason why he had stood up. He looked up and his eyes met those of Nikandros, who was staring at him. Nikandros was with a small group to one side of the table, the last of the men in the hall. He was the only one to have seen and heard. Damen just stood there. ‘This meeting is over,’ Nikandros announced to the men around him, too loudly. ‘The King is ready to ride.’

Thank God for Nikandros.

They find themselves alone..

The acidulous blue of Laurent’s gaze on him had nothing to do with the meeting. ‘Nothing happened,’ said Damen. ‘Something happened,’ said Laurent.

‘You were drunk,’ said Damen. ‘I took you back to your rooms. You asked me to attend you.’ ‘What else?’ said Laurent.

‘I did attend you,’ said Damen. ‘What else?’ said Laurent. He had thought having the upper hand over a hungover Laurent would be a rather enjoyable experience, except that Laurent was beginning to look like he was going to vomit. And not from the hangover.

‘Oh, stand down. You were too drunk to know your own name, let alone who you were with or what you were doing. Do you really think I’d take advantage of you in that condition?’ Laurent was staring at him.

‘No,’ he said awkwardly, as if, only now giving the question his full attention, he was coming to realise the answer. ‘I don’t think you would.’ His face was still white, his body in tension. Damen waited. ‘Did I,’ Laurent said. It took him a long time to push the words out. ‘Say anything.’ Laurent held himself taut, as if for flight. He lifted his eyes to meet Damen’s.

‘You said you missed me,’ said Damen. Laurent flushed, hard, the change in colour startling.

‘I see. Thank you for—’ He could see Laurent taste the edges of the statement. ‘—resisting my advances.’ In the silence, he could hear voices beyond the door that had nothing to do with the two of them, or the honesty of the moment that almost hurt, as if they stood again in Laurent’s chambers by the bed. ‘I miss you too,’ he said. ‘I’m jealous of Isander.’

‘Isander’s a slave.’

‘I was a slave.’ The moment ached. Laurent met his gaze, his eyes too clear.

‘You were never a slave, Damianos. You were born to rule, as I was.’

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH...being a slave may have liberated Damen. They both took advantage of, and got caught up in circumstances. It comes back to smack them in their faces sometimes, but Laurent always thought of him as an equal.

Before they leave Damen has a heartbreaking exchange with the little girl and woman of the town Laurent’s uncle decimated, in which he tries to ease their minds. They do not trust him and you can see the toll that war has taken on the people. We also find out that Laurent has visited and tried to ease their anxieties as well and that they were a bit more responsive to him. On the road Nik and Damen have a heart to heart.

‘You’ve been listening to slave gossip.’

‘You spent the night in the Prince of Vere’s rooms.’

‘I spent ten minutes in his rooms. If you think I fucked him in that time you underrate me.’ Nikandros didn’t move his horse out of the way.

‘He played Makedon at that village. He played him perfectly, as he played you.’

‘Nikandros—’

‘No. Listen to me Damianos. We’re riding into Akielos because the Prince of Vere has chosen to take his fight into your country. It’s Akielos that will be hurt in this conflict. And when the battles are done, and Akielos is exhausted by the fight, someone will step in to take the reins of the country. Make sure it’s you. The Prince of Vere is too good at commanding people, too good at manipulating those around him in order to get his way.’

‘I see. You’re warning me again not to bed him?’

‘No,’ said Nikandros. ‘I know you’re going to bed him. I’m saying that when he lets you, think about what he wants.’

Solid advice. Can't really argue with that.

They arrive to find the town empty of inhabitants. Like they made a hasty retreat. The soldiers searched for traps and could find none.

‘Here!’ called a voice. In the innermost part of the fort, they had found a barricaded door. He signalled his men to caution. It was the first sign of resist-ance, the first indication of danger. Two dozen soldiers gathered, and he gave the nod, approving them to proceed. They took the wooden ram, and splintered the doors open. And he saw what was waiting for him in the empty fort of Karthas. She sat on the reclining couch. Around her, she had seven women in attend-ance, two of them slaves, one an elderly maidservant, the others of good birth, part of her household. Her brows had risen at the crash as at some minor, distasteful breach of etiquette. She had never made it to the Triptolme to give birth. She must have planned the attack on the village to stop him or stall him, and when it had backfired, she had been left behind, abandoned. The birth had come on her too soon. Sometime very recently, judging by the faint sepia smudges under her eyes. It would explain, too, why she had been left behind, too weak to travel while the others fled, with only those of her women willing to stay with her. He was surprised to see that there were so many women. Maybe she had coerced them: stay, or have your throat slit. But no. She had always been able to inspire loyalty. Her blonde hair fell in a coil over her shoulder, her lashes were pressed, her neck was as elegant as a column. She was a little pale, with slight new creases on her forehead, which did nothing to harm its high, classical perfection, and seemed only to enhance her, like the finish on a vase. She was beautiful. As ever with her, it was something you noticed initially and then forcefully discarded because it was the least dangerous aspect of her. It was her mind, deliberate, calculating, that was the threat, regarding him from behind a pair of cool blue eyes.

‘Hello, Damen,’ said Jokaste. He made himself look at her. He made himself remember every part of her, the way she had smiled, the slow approach of her sandalled feet as he had hung in chains, the touch of her elegant fingers against his bruised face. Then he turned to the low-level foot soldier to his right, delegating a trivial task that was beneath him, and now meant nothing.

‘Take her away,’ he said. ‘We have the fort.’

[failes-xtra-bits]

Chapter 9~Okton Glory

In which Laurent gets very, very drunk.

The following morning Damen and Laurent are forced to sit together as if nothing happened the night before. Both dressed in their traditional garb, Laurent covered head to toe. Damen muses that he probably should have gone easier on Laurent as he didn't deserve such rough treatment for trying to help.

Such is life, he deserved to be snapped out of whatever had him in such a bitchy way. I know I'm not being fair. Sue me.

Nikandros is seated on Damen's other side and worried about the defection of Makedon...

A part of Damen acknowledged, a little guiltily, that Laurent probably hadn’t deserved to get thrown around the training arena as a result. Nikandros said, ‘He’s not coming.’

'Give him time.' Said Damen, but Nikandros was right. There was no hint of arrival. Nikandros said without looking next to him, 'Your uncle has wiped out half of our army with two hundred men.'

'And a belt,' said Laurent. Damen said.

'At least someone else has a chance to win javelin.'

He stands, thinking to himself that these are his first games as a 🤴 king, and signals for the games to begin. The games are enjoyable, everyone drinking, with the exception of Laurent, and having a good time.

The wrestling challenge is won by Pallas.

Pallas rose to the dais, victorious, his hair a little tangled with oil. The spectators hushed with expectation. It was an ancient and much-loved custom. Pallas dropped to his knees in front of Damen, almost glowing with the distinction of what his three victories allowed him to do. ‘If it please my lords and ladies,’ said Pallas, ‘I claim the honour of combat with the King.’ of course Damen accepts and wins. He returns to his seat.

'Good fight.' He says taking his place again, on the throne beside Laurent. He waved over some wine. 'What is it?'

'Nothing.' Said Laurent (guilty? lustful?), and found somewhere else to put his eyes. They were clearing the fields for the Okton.

Vannes, makes a comment, Nikandros says he's off to check the spears and would Damen accompany? We ALL know where this leads.

There was no one in the tent. Damen turned to see Nikandros advancing on him. ‘What—’ A rough, painful grip closed on his upper arm. Startled, he let it happen, never thinking for a moment of Nikandros as a threat. He allowed himself to be pushed backwards, allowed Nikandros to take hold of a fistful of fabric at his shoulder, and yank it, hard. ‘Nikandros—’ He was staring at Nikandros in confusion, with his clothing hanging from his waist, and Nikandros was staring back at him. Nikandros said, ‘Your back.’ Damen flushed. Nikandros was staring at him as if he had needed to see it up close to believe it.

Damen, who had never bothered about his scars saw the horror in Niks eyes.

‘Who did this to you?’

‘I did,’ Laurent said. Damen turned. Laurent stood in the entryway of the tent. He was arranged with elegant grace and his lazy, blue-eyed attention was all on Nikandros.

Jealousy and guilt make for a very peevish Laurent.

Laurent said, ‘I meant to kill him, but my uncle wouldn’t let me.’

Nikandros took an impotent step forward but Damen already had a restraining hand on his arm. Nikandros’s hand had gone to the hilt of his sword. His eyes were on Laurent furiously. Laurent said, ‘He sucked my cock too.’ asked literally no one... as Shana would say. 🤦🏽‍♀️

Nikandros said,

‘Exalted, I beg permission to challenge the Prince of Vere to a duel of honour for the insult that he has done to you.’

‘Denied,’ said Damen.

‘You see?’ said Laurent. ‘He has forgiven me for the small matter of the whip. I have forgiven him for the small matter of killing my brother. All praise the alliance.’

Oh Laurent. *sigh*

‘You flayed the skin from his back.’

‘Not personally. I just watched while I had my man do it.’ Laurent said it with a fronded, long-lashed gaze. Nikandros looked physically sick with the effort of repressing his anger. ‘How many lashes was it? Fifty? One hundred? He might have died!’

Laurent said, ‘Yes, that was the idea.’

‘That’s enough,’ said Damen, catching Nikandros as he stepped forward again. And then, ‘Leave us. Now. Now, Nikandros.’ Angry as he was, Nikandros wouldn’t disobey a direct order. His training was too deeply ingrained. Damen stood in front of Laurent with most of his clothing bunched in his hand. ‘Why would you do that? He’ll defect.’

‘He’s not going to defect. He is your most loyal servant.’

‘So you push him to breaking point?’

‘Should I have told him I didn’t enjoy it?’ said Laurent. ‘But I did enjoy it. I liked it most near the end, when you broke down.’

Lashing out again...

They were alone. He could count the number of times they had been alone together since the alliance. Once in the tent, when he’d learned that Laurent was alive. Once at Marlas, outside in the night. Once inside, over swords. Damen said, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to collect you,’ said Laurent.

‘Nikandros was taking too long.’

(Nosey, guilty and Jealous)

‘You didn’t have to come here. You could have sent a messenger.’ In the pause that followed, Laurent’s gaze shifted involuntarily sideways. A strange prickling passing over his skin, Damen realised that Laurent was looking at the polished mirror behind him at the reflection of his scars. Their eyes met again. Laurent wasn’t often caught out, but a single glance had betrayed him. They both knew it. Damen felt the hard ache of it. ‘Admiring your handiwork?’

‘You’re due back in the stands.’

‘I’ll join you after I’ve dressed. Unless you want to step closer. You can help stick in the pin.’

‘Do it yourself,’ said Laurent.

[failes-xtra-bits]

Chapter 8

(I left a huge chunk of the fight scene intact because I felt it was important)

Damen and Laurent follow the unknown riders to find a burned down village.

There was a grim familiarity on both Veretian and Akielon faces. Breteau had looked like this. And Tarasis. This was not the only unprotected village ruined as a salvo in this fight.

‘We stop here to bury the dead.’

Damen uses dog senses (literally) and discovers an outbuilding locked from the inside. There, was a man dying from a spear to his stomach.

‘My Liege,’ he said, and with a spear in his stomach, he was trying to push himself up on one arm to rise for his Prince.

He wasn’t looking at Damen. He was looking past him, at Laurent, who was standing in the doorway.

‘I couldn’t hold them off,’ the man said.

The man was going to die, Damen knew. He kneels in front of the girl.

‘Who did this?’ She said nothing at first. ‘I swear to you, I will find them and make them pay.’

She met his eyes… ‘Damianos,’ she said.

‘Damianos did this. He said it was his message to Kastor.’

***

There was a corpse near the tree line. A soldier’s.

The soldier had the features of an Akielon, and around his waist was a notched belt.

Damen sees red. He makes his way to Makedon.

‘I will give you the honour of trial by combat that you do not deserve,’ said Damen, ‘before I kill you for what you have done here.’

‘You would fight me?’

‘Draw,’ said Damen.

‘For what?’ Makedon gave a scornful look at his surroundings. ‘Dead Veretians?’ (you’re really not helping your case here, Makedon)

Makedon drew.

He was sorely over-matched.

The first clash sent Makedon staggering back. The second ripped his sword out of his hands.

The third came, death in steel shearing through Makedon’s neck.

‘Stop!’

Laurent’s voice cut across the fight, ringing with unmistakable command. Makedon was gone and Damen’s sword was driving towards Laurent’s exposed neck. (careful baby 😰)

If Damen had not obeyed, his whole body reacting to that ringing command, he would have severed Laurent’s head from his body. (I just noticed that this is the first instance of ‘fetch me some’, of Damen instinctively responding to Laurent’s commands, but it’s less noticeable due to the circumstances)

But the instant that he heard Laurent’s order, instinct reacted, wrenching every sinew. His sword stopped a hair’s breadth from Laurent’s neck.

‘Another inch and you rule two kingdoms,’ said Laurent.

‘Get out of my way, Laurent.’ Damen’s voice ground in his throat.

‘Look around you. This attack is cold-blooded planning, designed to discredit you with your own people. Does Makedon think like that?’

‘You would defend him?’ said Damen.

‘Anyone can notch a belt.’

Damen sheathes his sword.

Damen said, ‘He just saved your life.’

‘I should give him my thanks?’ Makedon said

‘No,’ said Laurent, in Akielon. ‘If it were left to me, you’d be dead. Your blunders play into my uncle’s hands. I saved your life because this alliance needs you, and I need this alliance to overthrow my uncle.’

…

Damen heard footsteps approaching, and let them draw up beside him. He wanted to say to Laurent, I always thought I knew what it felt like to fight your uncle. But I didn’t. Until today, it was never me he was fighting. He turned to say it.

It wasn’t Laurent. It was Nikandros.

Damen said, ‘Whoever did this wanted me to blame Makedon, and lose the support of the north.’

It was not the first time he had seen an attack designed to frame Akielons. It had happened in the palace, when assassins had gone after Laurent with Akielon knives. He remembered with clarity the provenance of the knives.

Damen looked back at the village, and from it to the thin, winding road leading south. He said, ‘Sicyon.’

***

Damen goes to release his frustrations in the indoor training arena (He does that a lot. No wonder he’s soo…)

Laurent was standing in the doorway, watching him.

‘If you’re this angry,’ said Laurent, ‘you should fight a real opponent.’

‘There’s no one—’ Damen stopped, but the unspoken words hung, dangerous with the truth. There was no one good enough to fight him. Not in this mood. In this mood, angry and unable to hold back, he would kill them.

‘There’s me,’ said Laurent.

***

Damen remembers Laurent’s fight with Govart. He remembered other things too. The tug he had felt on his gold collar from the leash in Laurent’s hand. The fall of the lash on his back. The driving fist of a guard as he was thrown down onto his knees. (You wanna work out those frustrations too, Damen?)

‘You want me to put you on your back in the dirt?’

‘You think you can?’

He had warned Laurent. That was advance notice enough. (Dayum boi)

They fight. (♪ Why when you see boys fight does it look so horrible. Yet…feel so right? ♫)

It was irritating. Laurent was a good swordsman, who was not exerting himself. Tap, tap, tap. They had by now travelled almost the full length of the training area, and were drawing alongside the post. Laurent’s breathing was undisturbed.

‘Are we just going to go up and down? I thought you’d push me at least a little,’ said Laurent.

Damen strikes harder.

‘I thought I’d let you go up and down a few times,’ said Damen, ‘before I take you.’

‘I thought you were down here because you couldn’t take me.’ (*cough* *cough*)

They fight more seriously. Damen starts to mentally compare Laurent and Auguste’s techniques.

He could feel it between them as he could feel everything between them. The deceptive sword work that was too much like the traps that Laurent laid for everyone, the lies, the prevarications, the avoidance of a straightforward fight in favour of tactics that used those hilt around him to achieve his ends; like a consignment of slaves; like a village of innocents.

He swept Laurent’s blade out of the way, slammed the hilt of his sword into Laurent’s stomach, then threw Laurent down, his body landing hard enough on the sawdust to knock the wind out of his lungs.

‘You can’t beat me in a real fight,’ said Damen.

‘Yield,’ he said.

Laurent throws sawdust in his face. (he’s getting desperate)

‘You fight with the tactics of a coward,’ said Damen.

‘I fight to win,’ said Laurent.

‘Not well enough for that,’ said Damen. (Oh no Damen)

The look in Laurent’s eyes was the only warning before Laurent swung at him with killing force.

Damen compares him to Auguste again. Laurent uses everything in the room to fight, ( 😭 he’s getting more desperate) but it is useless against Damen. Laurent’s shoulder finally gives out, and Damen pins him against the wall.

Laurent’s whole body thrashed against him then, trying to wrench from his hold, a moment of violent animal struggle that pushed their hot, sweat-dampened bodies together. Damen rode it out—shoved them both in against the wall—tightly enough to prohibit movement. He dragged Laurent away from the wall and flung him to the ground, where Laurent hit, body impacting hard on the sawdust. Laurent was going for the knife again, his fingers closing around it, too late.

‘That’s enough,’ said Damen, driving his knee hard into Laurent’s stomach, then throwing him onto his back and following him down. He had Laurent’s wrist in his grip, and he slammed it back against the sawdust, so that Laurent released the knife. His body was an arc over Laurent’s, pinning Laurent with his weight, with his hands on Laurent’s wrists, Laurent taut beneath him. He could feel the hot rise and fall of Laurent’s chest. He tightened his grip.

Finding himself with no way out from under Damen’s body, Laurent made a last, desperate sound (😭) and only then finally went still, panting, his eyes furious with bitterness and frustration.

‘Say it,’ said Damen.

‘I yield.’ It was gritted out.

‘I want you to know,’ he said, the words thick and heavy as they pushed out of him, ‘that I could have done this any time when I was a slave.’

Laurent said, ‘Get off me.’

He does.

‘You want me to say it? That I could never have beaten you?’ Laurent’s voice twisted up. ‘I could never have beaten you.’ (just, imagine how long Laurent had been waiting, preparing for this moment. Failing now, it’s Laurent’s worst nightmare)

‘No, you couldn’t have. You’re not good enough. You would have come for revenge, and I would have killed you. That’s how it would have been between us. Is that what you would have wanted?’

‘Yes,’ said Laurent. ‘He was everything I had.’ (Just stick a knife in my heart, why don’t you?)

The words hung between them.

‘I know,’ said Laurent, ‘that I was never good enough.’

Damen said, ‘Neither was your brother.’

‘You’re wrong. He was—’

‘What?’

‘Better than I am. He would have—’

Laurent cut himself off. He pressed his eyes closed, with a breath of something like laughter. ‘Stopped you.’ He said it as though he could hear the ludicrousness of it. (The hero-worship. He still has that image of the perfect, untouchable Auguste)

Damen picked up the discarded knife, and when Laurent’s eyes opened, he put it in Laurent’s hand. Braced it. Drew it to his own abdomen, so that they stood in a familiar posture. Laurent’s back was to the post. 

‘Stop me,’ said Damen.

He could see it in Laurent’s expression, as he fought an internal battle with his desire to use the knife.

He said, ‘I know what that feels like.’

‘You’re unarmed,’ said Laurent.

So are you. He didn’t say it. It didn’t make any sense. He felt the moment changing. His grip on Laurent’s wrist was changing. The knife thudded to the sawdust.

He forced himself to step back before it happened. He was staring at Laurent from two paces away, his breathing roughened, and not from exertion.

Damen said, ‘I wish—’ (*insert another Auguste lives AU* the fandom understands, Damen. We feel you)

But he couldn’t speak the past away, and Laurent wouldn’t thank him if he did. He took up his sword and left the hall.

[failes-xtra-bits]

 CHAPTER 7

             So they take off for Marlas the following morning, after a public hanging that does NOT put Makedon in good spirits. Damen and Laurent evenly matched, riding side by side. 

Damen was taller, but nothing could be done about that, Hendric, (the Veretian Herald) had said with an impenetrable expression. 

Damen couldn't tell if he was joking. He rode closer to Laurent.

'At Marlas, we’ll stay in adjacent chambers,’ said Damen. ‘It’s protocol.’

‘Of course,’ said Laurent, his eyes also on the road.

Laurent showed no sign of distress, and sat upright in the saddle, as though nothing at all had happened to his shoulder. He spoke charmingly to the generals and even made pleasant conversation in response to Nikandros, when Nikandros spoke to him.

‘I hope the injured boy was returned to you safely.’

‘Thank you, he returned with Paschal,’ said Laurent.

When they reached Delpha...

'Welcome home,’ Nikandros said.

Akielos. He drew in a breath of Akielon air. In months of captivity he had thought of this moment.

Damen glances over at Laurent, who is of course, above it all. To be fair, Delpha used to belong to Vere and the people there are more excited to see him, this must make him feel some kind of way.

Damen doesn't recognize Marlas when they arrive. It's grown lush and green with beautiful wildflowers, so drastically different from when they battled there. Also this.

Damen looked at the courtyard. The parapets were broken down and reshaped. The stonework hacked off. The stone itself carted off for use in new building, the splendid rooftops and towers levelled into an Akielon style. Now it looks bare and barren to him. Laurent does not react to the changes but thanks Nikandros for his welcome.

Inside the household is waiting for them. 2 dozen slaves lining the walls. At first Nikandros is upset because the King's preference is known, until they realize that they are for Laurent. Laurent, ever the gracious guest picks a young slave with the coloring of Damen and Nikandros(hmmm), named Isander.

‘I like that one,’ said Laurent.

The slaves were dressed in the northern style, in light gauzy silks that threaded through the link on their collar and covered very little. Laurent was indicating to the third slave to the left, a dark, bowed head.

‘An excellent choice,’ said Kolnas. ‘Isander, step forward.’

Damen realizing that Isander is pure frowns.

'The slave remains wholly untouched, kept pure for the first use of the Exalted.’

Laurent’s eyes lifted to Damen’s.

‘I never did learn how to command a bed slave,’ said Laurent. ‘Teach me.’

‘They cannot speak Veretian, Your Highness,’ Kolnas explained. ‘In the Akielon language, using the plain form of address is appropriate. To command any act of service is to honour a slave. The more personal the service, the greater the honour.’

‘Really? Come here,’ said Laurent.

Isander rose for the second time, a faint tremor in his body as he came as close as he dared before dropping to the ground again, his cheeks bright red. He looked a little dazed by the attention. Laurent extended the tip of his boot.

‘Kiss it,’ he said. His eyes were on Damen. He's such a little shit, toying with Damen. He knows what he's doing. Poor Isander.

Damen is preparing for the banquet and reflecting on how homecoming is not quite what he expected. I would even say he's feeling a bit misunderstood, alone, his world is bigger now so he doesn't quite fit. 

When the last laurel leaf (how did I never see this?) was arranged, the last piece of fabric wound into place, Damen proceeded with his squires into the hall.

Men and women reclined on couches, amid scattered low tables or on low, cushioned benches.

 Pallas, the handsome officer-champion, reclined with the easy posture that spoke to his aristocratic blood(and this! He isnt just a lowly soldier,  this feeds in to my theory on Laurent and Jealousy).

So they are now at the banquet Laurent and his immaculate manners and besotted slave to do his bidding, Damen brooding. Time comes to talk about pledging support.

Barieus stepped forward. ‘I want assurances that Vere does not hold undue influence over Akielos.’

Undue influence. ‘Speak plainly.’

‘They say the Prince of Vere is your lover.’

Silence. No one would have dared speak that way in his father’s court. 

‘Who we take to our bed is not your concern.’

‘If our King takes Vere to his bed, it is our concern,’ said Barieus.

‘Shall I tell them what really happened between us? They want to know,’ Laurent said.

Laurent began to unlace the cuff of his sleeve, drawing the ties through the eyelets, then opening the fabric to expose the fine underside of his wrist—and then the unmistakable gold of the slave cuff.

So apparently the cuff means ownership of the royal family. I don't think that Damen thought of it as ownership like his people do, just part of a shared experience and sentimentality over what brought them together. He's shrewd enough to know he's laying some kind of claim, but I bet Laurent thought the whole thing through and realized the complete meaning of the cuff or how people would see it. OWNERSHIP, deeply pledged to the royal family. 

Do I have the question clear?’ said Laurent, speaking in Akielon. ‘You are asking if I lay with the man who killed my own brother?’

Laurent wore the slave cuff with utter disregard. He had no owner, the aristocratic arrogance of his posture said that. Laurent had always possessed an essential quality of the untouchable. He cultivated a faultless grace on the reclining couch, his chiselled profile and marble-chip eyes those of a statue. The idea that he would let anyone fuck him was impossible.

Barieus said, ‘A man would have to be ice-cold to sleep with his brother’s killer.’

‘Then you have your answer,’ said Laurent. (I love this, because he answers the question, but it doesn't mean what they think, I'd they think differently he knows they won't press the issue.)

There was a silence, in which Laurent’s gaze held that of Barieus.

‘Yes, Exalted. They pledge to Damen.

Laurent requests The Fall of Inactos, Damen broods some more, jealous of Isander.

The wine came. As he took up the cup, he saw Jord approaching Aimeric's parents to pay his respects.

‘Thank you, soldier.’

She gave him the token attention a lady might give to any servant, and turned back to her conversation with her husband.

Before he realised it, Damen had lifted his hand and summoned Jord over. Approaching the dais, Jord made the three prostrations as ungracefully as a man wearing a new armour suit.

‘You have good instincts,’ Damen heard himself say.

It was the first time that he had spoken to Jord since the battle at Charcy. He felt how different this was to the nights they’d sat around a campfire swapping stories. He felt how different everything was. Jord gazed at him for a long moment, then indicated Laurent with his chin.

‘I’m glad you two are friends,’ said Jord.

‘It’s good that you could trust each other,’ said Jord. And then: ‘I think before you came, he didn’t really trust anyone.’

Damen said, ‘He didn’t.’

 He and Jord part ways Damen see's Laurent whisper to Isander and head out the door. He goes to follow him and realizes that he's abandoned the slave and gone for a ride. He finds Laurent at the site of his brother's death.

Clearing a last jut of stone, he saw the curve of a shoulder in the moonlight, the white of a loose shirt, his outer garments stripped, all wrists and exposed throat. Laurent was sitting on a stone outcrop. His jacket was discarded uncharacteristically. He was sitting on it. Stone slid under his heel. Laurent turned. For a moment, Laurent looked at him wide-eyed, young, and then the look in his eyes changed, as though the universe had fulfilled an ineluctable promise. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘perfect.’

Damen said, ‘I thought you might want—’

‘Want?’

'A friend,’ said Damen. He used Jord’s word. His chest felt tight. ‘If you’d prefer me to leave, I will.’

‘Why cavil?’ said Laurent. ‘Let’s fuck.’

He said it with his shirt unlaced, the wind teasing the opening there. They faced each other.

'That isn’t what I meant.’

It might not be what you meant, but it’s what you want.’ Laurent said, ‘You want to fuck me.’

Anyone else would have been drunk. Laurent was dangerously sober. I really want to know what he'd have done if Damen would have taken him up on his offer.

‘I came because I thought you might want to talk.’

‘Not particularly.’ (again, there's an undertone that I missed before, sure he's trying to put Damen off, but is he really? I think he might want comfort but is disgusted with himself and can't really ask for it).

He said, ‘About your brother.’

‘I never fucked my brother,’ said Laurent, with a strange edge to the words. ‘That is incest.’ 

They were standing in the place where his brother had died. With a disorientating sensation Damen realised they weren’t going to talk about that. They were going to talk about this.

‘You’re right,’ said Damen. ‘I’ve been thinking about it since Ravenel. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.’

‘Why?’ said Laurent. ‘Was I that good?’

'No. You fucked like a virgin,’ said Damen, ‘half the time. The rest of the time—’

‘Like I knew what to do?’

‘Like you knew what you were used to.’

He saw the words impact. Laurent swayed, like he’d been dealt a blow.

Laurent said, ‘I’m not certain I can take your particular brand of honesty just at the moment.’

Damen said, ‘I don’t prefer sophistication in bed, if you were wondering.’

'That’s right,’ said Laurent. ‘You like it simple.’

All the breath left his throat. He stood, stripped, unready for it. Will you use even that against me? he wanted to say, and didn’t. Laurent’s breathing was shallow too, holding his ground.

‘He died well,’ Damen made himself say. ‘He fought better than any man I’ve known. It was a fair fight, and he felt no pain. The end was quick.’

‘Like gutting a pig?’

Damen felt like he was reeling. He barely heard the rumbling of sound. Laurent jerked around to look into the dark, where the sound was growing louder—hoof beats, thundering closer.

‘You sent your men out to look for me too?’ said Laurent, his mouth twisting.

 ‘No,’ said Damen, and pushed Laurent hard out of sight, into the shelter of one of the huge, crumbling blocks of stone.

They hide from a troop of riders.

And then they were gone, passing them as quickly as they had arrived, disappearing across the fields towards a destination in the west. The hoof beats receded. Damen didn’t move, their chests pressed to each other, Laurent’s shallow breath against his shoulder.

He felt himself shoved back as Laurent pushed himself out to stand with his back to him, breathing hard.

Damen stood with his hand against the stone, and looked after him across the landscape of strange shapes. Laurent didn’t turn back to him, just stood holding himself still. Damen could see him once again as a pale outline in a thin shirt.

‘I know you’re not cold,’ said Damen. ‘You weren’t cold when you ordered me tied to the post. You weren’t cold when you pushed me down on your bed.’(Damen! Theres a threat! Get yo head outtake yo ass!)

 ‘We need to leave.’ Laurent spoke without looking at him. ‘We don’t know who those riders were, or how they got past our scouts.’

‘Laurent—’

‘A fair fight?’ said Laurent, turning back to him. ‘No fight’s ever fair. Someone’s always stronger.’

And then the bells from the fort began to ring, the sound of a warning, their sentries belatedly reacting to the presence of unknown riders. Laurent reached down to snag up his jacket, shrugging into it, laces hanging loose. Damen brought over their horses, unhooking his reins from the stone column. Laurent swung up wordlessly into his saddle and put his heels into his horse, both of them riding hard.

[failes-xtra-bits]

Kings Rising - Ch. 6

All quotes in regular text. My summarising / dumb comments in bold.

‘…’  = I have skipped part of a quote or a section of text.

… Damen found himself waiting, tense, for Laurent’s arrival. … He was frankly uncertain whether it was going to be a morning of invisible needling, or a series of unbelievable remarks that left everyone’s jaw on the floor.

In fact, it was impersonal and professional. Laurent was exacting, focused, and spoke entirely in Akielon… Laurent took the lead in discussion, using Akielon words like phalanx as though he had not learned them from Damen only two weeks earlier, and giving the calm overall impression of fluency. The little brow furrows as he searched for vocabulary, the ‘How do you say—?’ and ‘What is it called when—?’ were gone. 

‘It’s lucky for him he speaks our language so well,’ said Nikandros…

‘Nothing involving him has anything to do with luck,’ said Damen. 

…

 When Pallas walked past, Lazar wolf-whistled. (A little bit of Pallazar content :P)

And that was before the more specific rumours, the murmurings among the men, the sidelong speculation that had Nikandros in the warm summer evening, saying, ‘Take a slave.’ 

Damen said, ‘No.’ 

Damen keeps himself busy. He burried himself in work, and in physical exercise…

He told himself that this was what he had wanted. There was a working relationship between himself and Laurent. There was no longer—friendship—but that had never been possible. He had known it would not be some stupid fantasy of showing Laurent his country; of Laurent leaning against the marble balcony at Ios, turning to greet him in the cool air overlooking the sea, his eyes bright with the splendour of the view.

Damen sat and wrote out letters.

He remembered Jord saying, You ever wonder what it would feel like to find out you’d spread for your brother’s killer? I think it would feel like this. … To Kastor, he sent only a single message: I come. He didn’t watch that messenger depart. 

It’s not naive to trust your family. 

He had said that, once. 

* * * 

Damen goes to see Guion.

He thought of the men who had died at Charcy, and then he thought of Laurent, surrendering his weight to the table in the tent, his hand clasped to his shoulder, his face white with the last real expression he had shown. 

Damen had come here to learn what he could of the Regent’s plans, but there was only one question rising to his lips. 

‘Who hurt Laurent at Charcy? Was it you?’ 

‘He didn’t tell you?’ 

Damen had not spoken alone to Laurent since that night in the tent. ‘He doesn’t betray his friends.’ 

Guion explains what happened.

‘Did the Regent know who I was?’ 

‘If he did, having you sent to Vere was rather a miscalculation on his part, wasn’t it?’ …

‘If the Regent knew who you were,’ said Guion, ‘then he hoped that when you arrived in Vere, the Prince would recognise you, and be provoked into a blunder. Either that, or he wanted the Prince to take you into his bed. The realisation of what he’d done then would kill him. How lucky for you that didn’t happen,’ Guion said. 

He looked at Guion, sick, suddenly, of doublespeak, and double-dealing. 

‘You swore a sacred duty to hold the throne in trust for your Prince. Instead you turned on him, for power, for personal gain. What has that won you?’ 

For the first time he saw something genuine flicker in Guion’s expression. 

‘He killed my son,’ said Guion. 

‘You killed your son,’ said Damen, ‘when you threw him into the path of the Regent.’ (Damn. Burn! … But Damen does speak the truth.)

* * *

There is tension between the two camps. Makedon is being difficult and petty. He is declining extra rations saying, Akielons don’t need pampering like the Veretians, who indulge in extra food.

Before Damen could open his mouth to respond, Laurent announced that he would likewise change the provisions among his own troops, so that there would not be a disparity. In fact, everyone from soldiers to captains to kings across both troops would receive the same portion, and that portion would be determined by Makedon. Would Makedon inform them now what that portion was to be? (SASS™)

A fight breaks out between the camps. Makedon calls it friendly competition, saying, only a coward feared competition.

Laurent said that from this moment on, any Veretian who struck an Akielon would be executed. He trusted the honour of the Akielons, he said. Only a coward hit a man who wasn’t allowed to hit back.

It was like watching a boar try to take on the endless blue of the sky. Damen remembered how it felt to be coerced to Laurent’s will. Laurent had never needed to use force to make men obey him, just as he had never needed men to like him in order to get his way. Laurent got his way because when men tried to resist him, they found, sweetly outmanoeuvred, that they couldn’t… 

In fact, the way Laurent’s men talked about their Prince now was not substantially different to the way that they had talked about him before: cold, ice-cold, except now he was cold enough to have fucked his brother’s killer.

They all discuss making the pledge and gathering at Marlas.

No one was looking at Laurent. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had been. His face showed nothing…

‘I’ve been there before,’ said Laurent. (😕)

‘Then you’re familiar with the area,’ said Nikandros. ‘That makes it easier.’  (it doesn’t make it easier!!! 😭)

‘Yes,’ said Laurent. (noo 😭😭😭)

Damen goes outside alone to practise his sword work.

He couldn’t shake it off. He felt it like an unceasing pressure. The closer they came to it, the stronger it grew. 

Would they stay at Marlas, in adjoining apartments, receiving Akielon bannermen during the evening from twin thrones? 

He wanted … he didn’t know what he wanted. For Laurent to have looked at him when Nikandros had announced that they would travel to the place where, six years ago, Damen had killed his brother. 

Damen hears a sound and follows. He finds some Akielons practising throwing spears at a wooden target, with a Veretian boy tied to it.

‘And who will throw next?’ said Damen (oooh. busted.)  …   

‘Stand,’ said Damen, ‘like the men you think you are.’ (Oooooohhhh)

He was angry. The men, standing, perhaps did not recognise that. They didn’t know the slow way that he came forward, or the calm tone of his voice.

…

‘Makedon of the north,’ said Damen. ‘You were a friend to my father. You fought with him for almost twenty years. That means a great deal to me. I respect your loyalty to him, as I respect your power and need your men. But if your soldiers harm a Veretian again, you will face me at the end of a sword.’

‘Exalted,’ said Makedon, bowing his head to hide his eyes.

‘You walk a fine line with Makedon,’ Nikandros said, on his return to camp. 

‘He walks a fine line with me,’ said Damen. (Oooh. Damn. Damen 😂) 

‘He is a traditionalist, and supports you as the true King, but he will only be pushed so far.’ 

‘I’m not the one pushing.’ (Damen is not taking any shit tonight.)

Damen goes to see Paschal.

‘Your Majesty,’ said Paschal, surprised. 

‘How is he?’ He said it into the odd silence, facing Paschal in the light from the torches. 

‘Bruising, a broken rib,’ said Paschal. ‘Shock.’ 

‘No, I meant—’ (Oh Damen, you just can’t stay away from Laurent, can you? 😏)

…

He said, ‘Will he be able to ride tomorrow?’ 

‘You mean to Marlas?’ said Paschal. 

There was a pause. 

‘We all do what we have to,’ said Paschal. 

Damen said nothing. 

[failes-xtra-bits]

Chapter 5/ With this cuff, I thee...

(It's extremely long. I swear I cut some of this out but...well. Enjoy!)

THE FIRST IMPACT of the alliance having fallen on Nikandros,(poor Nik) the morning’s announcement was less personal, but more difficult, and done on a grander scale.

Damen summoned Makedon to the command pavilion, and called for his army to form up before him for an address. He sat on the audience throne, with a single oak seat empty beside him and Nikandros standing behind him. It had been Damen’s choice not to tell Makedon independently, but to gather him here for the address, as unaware of what was coming as the soldiers. It was a risk, and every aspect of it must be managed carefully. Makedon of the notched belt held the largest provincial army of the north, and though technically a bannerman under Nikandros’s command, he was a power in his own right. If he left in anger with his men, he would end Damen’s chances at a campaign.

‘His Highness, Laurent, Prince of Vere and Acquitart,’ called the herald, and Damen felt the men in the tent around him react further. Nikandros kept his outward appearance unvarying😞, even if Damen could feel the tension in him. Damen’s own heartbeat sped up, though he kept his face impersonal.

When prince met prince, there were protocols to observe. You did not greet each other alone in a diaphanous tent. Or thrown to the ground in chains in a palace viewing chamber.

The pure, insolent grace was the same, his bright head uncovered. He was not wearing armour, or any symbol of rank save for the gold circlet on his forehead, but when he swung down off his horse and tossed the reins to a servant, no pair of eyes looked anywhere else. Damen stood up. 

‘My brother of Akielos,’ said Laurent.

‘Our brother of Vere,’ said Damen.

Damen lifted his hand, offering it palm up, with fingers outstretched. Laurent lifted his own hand calmly, resting it atop Damen’s. Their fingers met.

He could feel the eyes of every Akielon in the tent on him. They proceeded slowly. Laurent’s fingers rested infinitesimally above his own. He felt the moment when the men around him realised what was going to happen. Reaching the dais, they sat, facing outward, the twin oak seats now twin thrones.

Shock; it travelled like a wave over the men and women in the tent; out, over the gathered ranks of soldiers. Everyone could see where Laurent and Damen sat: side by side.

He knew what it meant. This was the status of a compeer. It announced equality.

‘We have called you here today to witness our accord,’ said Damen, in a clear voice that carried over the noise. ‘Today we mark the alliance of our nations against those pretenders and usurpers who seek to assail our thrones.’

 Explosions of outrage, furious exclamations, there were hands on the hilts of swords. Laurent did not look particularly concerned by this, or anything.

‘In Vere, it is customary to bestow a gift on a favoured companion,’ said Laurent in Akielon. ‘Vere therefore offers this gift to Akielos, as a symbol of our alliance, now and in all the days to come.’ His fingers lifted. A Veretian servant came forward, a cushion resting like a platter on his outstretched forearms.

Damen felt the tent fade away before his eyes. He forgot the men and women watching. He forgot the need to keep his army and his generals from revolt. He only saw what lay on the cushion that the servant bore towards the dais. Coiled and personal, Laurent’s gift was a Veretian whip, made of gold.

Damen recognised it. OK right about here, he starts having flashbacks of his beating.

Outside the tent, something had started happening. Veretian attendants were placing a series of ten ornamental whipping blocks at even intervals outside the pavilion. Ten men were pulled like sacks of grain from their horses by Veretian handlers, stripped, then bound.Inside the tent, Akielon men and women were looking at one another questioningly, others craning their necks to see. In front of the gathered army, the ten captives were shoved towards the blocks, stumbling a little, their balance precarious, their hands tied behind their backs.

These are the men who attacked the Akielon village of Tarasis,’ said Laurent. ‘They are clan mercenaries, paid for by my uncle, who killed your people in an attempt to to wreck the peace between our nations.’‘

He had the attention of the tent now. The eyes of every Akielon were on him, from the soldiers to the officers—even the generals. Makedon and his soldiers, in particular, had seen the destruction at Tarasis first-hand.

‘The whip and the men are Vere’s gift to Akielos,’ said Laurent, and then he turned his melting blue eyes on Damen. ‘The first fifty lashes are my gift to you.’ (hmmm)

The atmosphere in the pavilion was thick with satisfaction and approval. His men wanted it, appreciated it, appreciated Laurent for it, the golden youth who could order men torn apart, and watch it, unflinching. A part of Damen’s mind recognised how perfectly this gift had been judged, the exquisite virtuosity of it: Laurent was delivering him a backhanded blow with one hand, and with the other, caressing his generals as a man scratches a dog under the chin.

Damen heard himself say, ‘Vere is generous.’

‘After all,’ Laurent held his gaze, ‘I remember what you like.’(He ALWAYS says this! It’s a bit creepy)

The stripped men were tied down. Damen felt his pulse speed up as he realised he was going to watch Laurent have ten men flayed alive in front of him.

‘Furthermore,’ said Laurent, his voice pitched to carry, ‘Fortaine’s bounty is yours. Its physicians will tend to your wounded. Its storehouses will feed your men. The Akielon victory at Charcy was hard-won. All that Vere gained while you fought is yours, and it is deserved. I will not profit from any hardship that befalls the rightful King of Akielos or his people.’

You will lose Straton. You will lose Makedon, Nikandros had said, but he hadn’t counted on the fact that Laurent would arrive, and begin, dangerously, to control everything.

It took a long time. Fifty lashes, Damen made himself watch it all. He didn’t look at Laurent. Laurent, he knew intimately, could level that endless blue gaze forever while watching a man flayed. He remembered in exact detail what it felt like to be whipped with Laurent’s eyes on on him.

Damen said, ‘We have a personal gift too.’

The eyes of those in the tent turned to him. Laurent’s gift had forestalled any open revolt, but there was still a rift between Akielos and Vere. Once or twice before, he had thought about this moment. In his most private thoughts, he’d imagined it happening with the two of them alone together. He hadn’t imagined it like this, the private made public, and painful. He didn’t have Laurent’s ability to hurt with what mattered most. It was his turn to cement the alliance between their nations. And there was only one way to do that.

‘Every man here knows that you kept us as a slave,’ said Damen. He said it loudly enough that all those gathered in the pavilion tent could hear. ‘We wear your cuff on our wrist. But today, the Prince of Vere will prove himself our equal.’

‘You asked for it, once.’

The squire drew back the cloth to reveal a gold cuff. Damen said, ‘Wear it for me.’

Laurent extended his hand. And then waited, palm outstretched, his eyes lifting to meet Damen’s.

Laurent said, ‘Put it on me.’

He could feel the devouring gazes of the Akielons in the tent, as hungry for this as they had been for the whipping. Rumours of Damen’s enslavement in Vere had spread like fire through the camp. To see the Veretian Prince wear the gold cuff of a palace bed slave in turn was shocking, intimate, a symbol of Damen’s ownership. Damen felt the hard, curved edge of the cuff when he lifted it. Laurent’s blue eyes remained cool, but under Damen’s thumb, Laurent’s pulse was rabbit fast.

‘My throne for your throne,’ Damen said. He pushed back the fabric. It was more bare skin than Laurent had ever shown in public, on display to the entire tent. ‘Help me regain my kingdom, and I’ll see you King of Vere.’ Damen fitted the cuff to Laurent’s left wrist.

‘I’m overjoyed to wear a gift that reminds me of you,’ said Laurent. The cuff locked into place. He didn’t withdraw his wrist, just left it leaned on the arm of the throne, laces open and gold cuff in full view. Damen could see Makedon watching them with an impassive face. Across from Makedon, Vannes was taking refreshments. Vannes had been the Regent’s Ambassador to the all-female court of the Vaskian Empress, who it was said ripped men apart with her leopards for public sport.

He said, ‘Are you going to tell me what won Vannes to your side?’

Laurent said, ‘It’s no secret. She is to be the first member of my Council.’

‘And Guion?’

‘I threatened his sons. He took it seriously. I had already killed one of them.

Horns were blown the length of the ranks, and refreshments were brought. All that had to happen now was for Damen to endure the rest of the welcoming ceremony, and at the end, sign their treaty.

A series of display fights were performed, marking the occasion with disciplined choreography. Laurent watched with polite attention, and underneath that, possibly real attention, as it would suit him to catalogue Akielon fighting techniques.

Damen could see Makedon watching them with an impassive face. Across from Makedon, Vannes was taking refreshments. Vannes had been the Regent’s Ambassador to the all-female court of the Vaskian Empress, who it was said ripped men apart with her leopards for public sport.

He thought of the delicate dealings with the Vaskian clans that Laurent had engineered, all along their ride south.

He said, ‘Are you going to tell me what won Vannes to your side?’

Laurent said, ‘It’s no secret. She is to be the first member of my Council.’

‘And Guion?’

‘I threatened his sons. He took it seriously. I had already killed one of them.’

Makedon was approaching the thrones.There was an air of expectancy as Makedon came forward, the men in the tent shifting to see what he would do. Makedon’s hatred of Veretians was well known. Even if Laurent had forestalled open rebellion, Makedon would not accept the leadership of a Veretian prince. Makedon bowed to Damen, then stood without showing any respect to Laurent. He looked out briefly at the Akielon choreographed fights, then his eyes travelled over Laurent, slowly and arrogantly.

‘If this is truly an alliance between equals,’ said Makedon, ‘it’s a pity we can’t see a display of Veretian fighting.’

You are seeing one right now and you don’t even know it, thought Damen. Laurent kept his attention on Makedon.

‘Or a contest,’ Makedon said. ‘Veretian against Akielon.’

‘Are you proposing to challenge Lady Vannes to a duel?’ said Laurent.

Blue eyes met brown. Laurent was relaxed on the throne, and Damen was too aware of what Makedon saw: a youth, less than half his age; a princeling who shirked battle; a courtier with lazy, indoor elegance.

‘Our King has a reputation on the field,’ said Makedon, his eyes passing over Laurent slowly. ‘Why not a demonstration fight between you both?’

‘But we are like brothers.’ Laurent smiled. Damen felt Laurent’s fingertips touch his; their fingers slid into one another. He knew from long experience when Laurent was repressing everything into a single hard kernel of distaste.

Heralds brought the document, ink on paper, written in two languages, side by side so that neither one was atop the other. It was simply worded. It did not contain endless clauses and subclauses. It was a brief declaration: Vere and Akielos, united against their usurpers, allied in friendship and common cause. He signed it. Laurent signed it. Damianos V and Laurent R, with a big loopy L.

‘To our wondrous union,’ said Laurent.

********

He was alone with Nikandros, whose eyes were on him, furious, and with all the flat knowledge of an old friend.

‘You gave him Delpha,’ said Nikandros.

‘It wasn’t—’

‘A bedding gift?’ said Nikandros.

‘You go too far.’

‘Do I? I remember Ianestra. And Ianora,’ said Nikandros. ‘And Eunides’s daughter. And Kyra the girl from the village—’

‘That’s enough. I won’t talk about this.’ He had turned his eyes away, fixing on the goblet in front of him, which, after a moment, he lifted. He took his first mouthful of wine. It was a mistake.

‘You don’t need to talk, I have seen him,’ said Nikandros.

‘I don’t care what you’ve seen. It’s not what you think.’

‘I think he is beautiful and unobtainable, when your whole life, you’ve never had a refusal,’ said Nikandros. ‘You have committed Akielos to an alliance because the Prince of Vere has blue eyes and blond hair.’ And then, in a terrible voice, ‘How many times does Akielos have to suffer because you can’t keep your—’

‘I said that’s enough, Nikandros.’

Damen was angry, he wanted to smash the glass beneath his fingers. To let the pain of the glass cut into him.

‘Do you think—for a moment that I’d . . . Nothing,’ he said, ‘is more important to me than Akielos.’

‘He is the Prince of Vere! He doesn’t care about Akielos! Are you saying you aren’t swayed by the thought of having him? Open your eyes, Damianos!’

Damen pushed himself up from the throne and moved to the wide open mouth of the pavilion. He had an unimpeded view across the fields to the Veretian camp. Laurent and his retinue had disappeared inside of it, though the elegant encampment of Veretian tents still faced him, with every silk pennant waving.

‘You want him. It’s natural. He looks like one of the statues Nereus has in his garden, and he’s a prince of your own rank. He dislikes you, but dislike can have its own appeal,’ said Nikandros. ‘So bed him. Satisfy your curiosity. Then, when you have seen that mounting one blond is much like mounting another, move on.’

The silence went on a moment too long.

He felt Nikandros’s reaction behind him. He kept his eyes on the goblet. He had no intention of putting any of it in words. I told him I was a slave, and he pretended to believe me. I kissed him on the battlements. He had his servants bring me to his bed. It was our last night together, and he gave himself to me. He knew all the while it happened that I was the man who killed his brother.

When he turned, Nikandros’s expression was awful.

‘So it really was a bedding gift.’

‘Yes I lay with him,’ said Damen. ‘It was one night. He barely relaxed the whole time. I will admit I—wanted him. But he is the Prince of Vere and I am the King of Akielos. This is a political alliance. He approaches it without emotion. So do I.’

Nikandros said, ‘Do you think it relieves my mind to hear that he is beautiful and clever and cold?’

He felt all the breath leave him. Since Nikandros had arrived, they had not talked about the summer night in Ios when Nikandros had given him a different warning.

‘It’s not the same.’

‘Laurent is not Jokaste?’

He said, ‘I am not the man who trusted her.’

‘Then you’re not Damianos.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Damianos died in Akielos when he would not heed your warnings.’

He remembered Nikandros’s words. Kastor has always believed that he deserved the throne. That you took it from him. And his own reply, He wouldn’t hurt me. We are family.

‘Then heed them now,’ said Nikandros.

‘I do. I know,’ said Damen, ‘who he is, and that it means I cannot have him.’

‘No. Listen Damianos. You trust blindly. You see the world in absolutes—if you believe someone a foe, nothing will dissuade you from arming up to fight. But when you give your affections . . . When you give a man your loyalty, your faith in him is unswerving. You would fight for him with your last breath, you would hear no word spoken against him, and you would go to the grave with his spear in your side.’

‘And are you so different?’ said Damen. ‘I know what it means that you are riding with me. I know that if I am wrong you will lose everything.’

Nikandros held his gaze, then let out a breath and passed his hand over his face, massaging it briefly. He said, ‘The Prince of Vere.’ When he looked at Damen again, it was a sidelong glance under his raised brows, and for a moment they were boys again, on the sawdust, throwing spears that fell six feet short of the men’s hide targets.

‘Can you imagine,’ said Nikandros, ‘what your father would say if he knew?’

‘Yes,’ said Damen. ‘Which girl from the village was called Kyra?’

‘They all were. Damianos. You can’t trust him.’

‘I know that.’ He finished the wine. Outside, there were hours of daylight left, and work to be done. ‘You’ve spent a morning with him and you’re warning me off. Just wait,’ said Damen, ‘until you’ve spent a full day with him.’

‘You mean that he improves with time?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Damen.

[failes-xtra-bits]

Kings Rising - Ch. 4 Summary

All quotes in regular text. My dumb comments / summarising in bold.

‘Laurent,’ he said, ‘what have you done?’

‘Does it bother you to think of him hurting your country?’

‘You know it does. Are we playing now with the fate of nations? It won’t bring your brother back.’

There was a violent silence.

‘You know, my uncle knew who you were,’ said Laurent. ‘He spent this whole time waiting for us to fuck. He wanted to tell me who you were himself, and watch it wreck me. Oh, had you guessed that? You just thought you’d fuck me anyway? Couldn’t help yourself?’

‘You ordered me to your rooms,’ said Damen, ‘and pushed me down on the bed. I said, “Don’t do this”.’

‘You said, “Kiss me”,’ said Laurent, each word enunciated clearly. ‘You said, “Laurent, I need to be inside you, you feel so good, Laurent,”’ He switched to Akielon, as Damen had at the climax, “it’s never felt like this, I can’t hold on, I’m going to -”

(Can I just say at this point I like to imagine the guards standing outside overhearing all of this like, ‘oohh… myy… goddd… 👀👀👀’ 🤣!!)

‘Stop,’ said Damen. He was breathing in quick, shallow breaths, as he might after heavy exertion. He stared at Laurent.

Laurent offers Damen troops and supplies in exchange for Delpha.

He felt the shock that made him remember that this was Laurent, and not any other young man of twenty. (I often have to remind myself he is only twenty!)

…

He said, ‘Did you plan this from the beginning?’

‘The hard part was getting Guion to let me into his fort.’ Laurent said it steadily, the private edge to his voice a little more private than usual. (Lies! Nooo don’t let the poor baby think you betrayed him. It’s all lies! You were kidnapped, goddammit!)

They argue back and forth. Move. Counter. Repeat. To paraphrase: ‘Give me one good reason.’ ‘Because I’m Laurent and I get what I want. Bitch you thought.’

Do you want to play this game against me? I will take you apart.’ 

‘You’re alone. You don’t have allies. You don’t have friends. You’ve proven true everything your uncle ever said about you. You made deals with Akielos. You even bedded an Akielon—and by now, everyone knows it. You’re clinging to independence with a single fort and the tatters of a reputation.’ 

…

‘Please,’ said Laurent, ‘insult me further. Tell me more about my tattered reputation. Tell me all the ways that bending over for you has damaged my position. As if being fucked into the mattress by the King of Akielos could be anything other than demeaning. I am dying to hear it.’ 

‘Laurent—’ 

‘Did you think,’ said Laurent, ‘that I would come here without the means to enforce my terms? I hold the only proof of Kastor’s treachery that extends beyond your word.’ 

…

Damen’s hands became fists. He felt fundamentally outmanoeuvred—even as he could see that Laurent was bargaining alone, with very little, for his political life. Laurent had to be desperate to propose fighting alongside Akielos; alongside Damianos of Akielos. 

‘Are we going to play another kind of pretend?’ Damen said. ‘That it never happened?’ 

‘If you are concerned it will go unmentioned between us, never fear. Every man in my camp knows that you served me in bed.’ 

‘And that is how it is to be between us?’ said Damen. ‘Mercenary? Cold?’ 

‘How did you think it would be?’ said Laurent. ‘You’d take me to your bed for the public consummation?’  (Ooooh. Damn. Burnt.)

It hurt. Damen said, ‘I won’t do this without Nikandros, and he won’t give up Delpha.’ 

‘He will when you give him Ios.’ 

…

‘I see you’ve thought of everything,’ said Damen, bitterly. ‘It didn’t have to be—you could have come to me, and asked for my help, I would have—’ 

‘Killed the rest of my family?’ (Ouch)

…

He thought of all Laurent had done here, every piece of impersonal leverage, to control this meeting, to ensure it played out on his terms.

‘Congratulations,’ said Damen. ‘You’ve forced my hand. You have what you want. Delpha, in exchange for your aid in the south. Nothing given freely, nothing done out of feeling, everything coerced, with bloodless planning.’ 

‘Then I have your agreement? Say it.’

‘You have my agreement.’

‘Good,’ said Laurent. He took a step back. Then, as if a pillar of control had finally collapsed, Laurent surrendered his full weight to the table behind him, his face drained of all colour. He was trembling, his hairline pricked with the sweat of injury. He said: ‘Now get out.’  (Rest poor baby 😭 you have a serious wound. You need to look after yourself. Paschal’s salves can only do so much!)

* * *

Laurent had known who he was, and had still made love to him. He wondered what mix of yearning and self delusion had allowed Laurent to do that. 

…

The ache of loss didn’t make sense, because Laurent had never been his. He had known that. The delicate thing that had grown between them had never had a right to exist. It had always had an end date, the moment that Damen reassumed his mantle. 

* * *

Damen goes to break the news to Nikandros.

He waited, not turning away from what it meant, now, to be King. If he could give Laurent up, he could do this. 

Nikandros came into the tent.  

It wasn’t pleasant, the offer or the price. Nikandros couldn’t completely hide the hurt as he searched for understanding that he didn’t find. Damen gazed back at him, unbending and unflinching. They had played together as boys, but now Nikandros faced his King. 

…

Damen remembered hoping for a homecoming where it could be between them as it was in the old days. As if friendship of that kind could survive statesmanship. 

‘He’s playing us against each other,’ said Nikandros. ‘This is calculated. He is trying to weaken you.’  

Damen said, ‘I know. It’s like him.’ 

…

Silence, while Nikandros kept his words in check. 

…

‘The men will talk,’ said Nikandros. He was pushing the words out with distaste, he did not want to say, ‘About—’ 

Damen said, ‘No.’ 

And then, as though Nikandros couldn’t help the words that came out next, ‘If you would at least take off the cuff—’ 

‘No. It stays.’ He refused to lower his eyes. (Out and proud Nik. Out & Proud! *insert xyai fanart* XD)

…

Into the painful silence, Damen said, ‘And you? Will I lose you?’ (Cryy 😭)

It was all he allowed himself. It came out in a steady enough voice, and he made himself wait, and say nothing more. 

As though the words were coming up from the depths of him, against his will, Nikandros said, ‘I want Ios.’ 

Damen let out a breath. Laurent, he realised suddenly, wasn’t playing them against one another. He was playing to Nikandros. There was a dangerous expertise in all of this; in knowing how far Nikandros’s loyalty might be stretched, and what would keep it from snapping. Laurent’s presence the room was almost tangible.

…

‘If someone kills your family you don’t rest until they are dead.’ 

The words dropped between them. He remembered Laurent’s eyes in the tent as he had procured this alliance for himself. 

Nikandros was shaking his head. ‘Or do you really think he’s forgiven you for killing his brother?’

‘No. He hates me for it.’ He said it steadily, without flinching. ‘But he hates his uncle more. He needs us. And we need him.’ 

‘You need him enough that you would strip me of my home, because he asked you to?’ 

‘Yes,’ said Damen. 

He watched Nikandros struggle with that.

‘I’m doing this for Akielos,’ said Damen. (… and for a certain blonde-haired someone 😉)

Nikandros said, ‘If you’re wrong there is no Akielos.’ 

* * *

Damen enters his tent

The privacy was like a blessing. He didn’t have to hold himself up, he could let the weight of exhaustion bear him down to rest. His body ached for it. He wanted only to prise his armour from himself and close his eyes. Alone, he didn’t have to be King. 

Damen realises he is not alone. One of Nikandros’ slaves was there for him. 

Damen is acting awkwardly. In the past he wouldn’t have found there to be an issue. He notices the cuff on her wrist.

He let out a strange, unsteady breath. He realised that his breathing had been unsteady for some time, that his flesh was unsteady. That the silence had been stretching out between them too long. 

Damen says he will not use slaves anymore. He unpins his own cloak and drapes it round the slave’s shoulders. Damen is relieved to be alone.

[failes-xtra-bits]

3 Damianos Berzerker or Hello Lover?

Prince-killer!’ screamed the Regent’s men. In the beginning, they had thrown themselves towards him, but when they saw what happened to the men who did that, they became a churning mass of hooves trying to fall back. They didn’t get far. Damen’s sword hit armour, hit flesh; he sought out centres of power and broke them, stopping formations before they began. A Veretian commander challenged him, and he allowed one ringing engagement before his sword sheared through the commander’s neck. (RUN BITCHES!!!!!) Faces were impersonal flashes, half shielded by helms. He was more aware of horses and swords, the machinery of death. He killed, and it was simply that men got out of his way, or were dead. Everything narrowed to one purpose, determination sustaining power and concentration beyond human endurance, over hours, longer than one’s opponent, because the man who made a mistake was dead.If he was aware of anything beyond the fight, it was of an absence, a lack that persisted. The flashes of brilliance, the insouciant sword work, the bright presence at his side was instead a gap, half filled(damn, only half filled Damen? That’s rough) by Nikandros’ steadier, more practical style. He had grown used to something that had been temporary, like the flash of exhilaration in a pair of blue eyes for a moment catching his own. All of that tangled together inside him, and tightened, through the killing, into a single hard knot.(Awww, he misses Laurent,also probably feels a bit betrayed/confused).

‘If the Prince of Vere shows himself, I will kill him.’ Nikandros half spat the words(Temper, temper Nik, you have no idea what you’re in store for).

‘It’s over.’ Nikandros’s voice. ‘It’s over, Damen.’

‘Over?’ The word grated out of him. All he could think was that if the Regent still lived, nothing was over. Thought was slow to return after so long living by action and reaction, the responses of the moment. He needed to come back to himself. Men were dropping weapons around him. ‘I hardly know whether the victory is ours, or theirs.’

‘It is ours,’ said Nikandros.

There was a different look in Nikandros’s eyes. And as Damen looked around at the ruined battlefield, he saw the men, staring at him from a distance, the look in Nikandros’ eyes echoed in their expressions. And with returning awareness, he saw as if for the first time the bodies of the men that he had killed to get to the Regent’s decoy, and beyond that, the evidence of what he had done.

OK… So you would think the Akielons would know what Damianos is capable of? Or maybe just never seen it in action? This part always confuses me a bit.

The herald reigned in front of him. Damen looked at the mare’s shiny coat, not dirt-covered, not heaving or darkened with sweat, and then at the herald’s livery, in immaculate condition, unflecked by the dust of the road. He felt it rising at the back of his throat.

‘Where is he?’

The herald’s back hit the ground. Damen had dragged him bodily from his horse into the dirt, where he lay dazed and winded, with Damen’s knee in his stomach. Damen’s hand was around his neck.The herald rolled onto his side and coughed as Damen released him. He pulled something from inside his jacket. Parchment, with two lines on it.

You have Charcy. I have Fortaine.

He stared at the words, written in familiar, unmistakable handwriting.

I’ll receive you at my fort.

By that time, Damen had received the tally of the dead: twelve hundred of us, six and a half thousand of them. He knew the men were behaving differently towards him since the battle’s end, falling back as he passed. He had seen their looks of fear and stunned awe. Most of them had not fought with him before(ahhh ok. How have I missed this?) Perhaps they hadn’t known what to expect. Now they were here; they had arrived, dirt and grime covered, wounded, some of them, pushing past exhaustion because it was what discipline demanded of them, to look out at the sight that greeted them. Rows upon rows of peaked, coloured tents were pitched on the field outside Fortaine’s walls, the sun lighting the pavilions, the banners, and the silks of a graceful encampment. It was a city of tents, and it camped a fresh, intact force of Laurent’s men, who had not fought and died through the morning.The constructed arrogance of the display was intentional. It said, exquisitely: Did you exert yourself at Charcy? I have been here examining my nails.

Nikandros reined in alongside him. ‘Uncle and nephew are alike. They send other men to do their fighting for them.’ (tuck in your claws Nik)

Damen was silent. What he felt in his chest was a hardness like anger. He looked at the elegant silken city and thought about men dying on the field at Charcy. Without even pulling off his gauntlets, he strode to the tent. He knew its high scalloped folds; he knew the starburst pennant. No one stopped him. Not even when he reached the tent and dismissed the soldier at the entrance with a single order: ‘Go.’ He didn’t bother to see if his order was obeyed. The soldier let him through: of course he did; this had all been planned. Laurent was ready for him whether he came docilely behind the herald or, as he did now, the dirt and the sweat of the battle still on him, blood dried in the places where a cursory swipe with a cloth had not reached it. He swept the tent flap back with an arm, and stepped inside.

Laurent said, ‘Hello, lover.’

It was not going to be simple. Damen forced himself to take it in. He forced himself to take it all in, and to stroll himself inside the tent, so that he stood in the elegant surroundings in full armour, crushing delicate embroidered silks under his muddied feet. He threw the Regent’s banner down onto the table. It clattered, in a mess of mud and stained silk. Then turned his eyes to Laurent. He wondered what Laurent saw when he looked at him. He knew he looked different.

‘Charcy is won.’

‘I thought it would be.’

He made himself breathe through that. ‘Your men think you’re a coward. Nikandros thinks that you deceived us. That you sent us to Charcy, and left us there to die by your uncle’s sword.’

‘And is that what you think?’ said Laurent.

‘No.’ Damen said, ‘Nikandros doesn’t know you.’

‘And you do.’

Damen looked at the arrangement of Laurent’s weight, the careful way he was holding his body. Laurent’s left hand was still casually resting against the tent pole. Deliberately, he stepped forward, and clasped Laurent’s right shoulder.

Nothing, for a moment. Damen tightened his grip, and ground in with his thumb. Harder. He watched Laurent turn ashen. Finally, Laurent said, ‘Stop.’

He let go. Laurent had wrenched back and was clutching his shoulder, where the blue of his doublet had darkened. Blood, welling up from some newly bandaged, subterranean place, and Laurent was staring at him, his eyes oddly wide.

‘You wouldn’t break an oath,’ said Damen, past the feeling in his chest. ‘Even to me.’

He had to force himself back. The tent was large enough to accommodate the movement, four paces between them. Laurent didn’t answer. He still had a hand clutched to his shoulder, his fingers sticky with blood.

Laurent said, ‘Even to you?’

He made himself look at Laurent. The truth was an awful presence in his chest. He thought of the single night they had spent together. He thought of Laurent, giving himself, dark-eyed and vulnerable, and of the Regent, who knew how to break a man. The moment was here, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He remembered the Regent’s constant suggestion: Bed my nephew. He had done that, wooed him, won him. Charcy, he saw, hadn’t mattered to the Regent. It hadn’t meant anything. The Regent’s real weapon against Laurent had always been Damen himself.

‘I’ve come to tell you who I am.’

Laurent was so keenly familiar, the shade of his hair, the strapped down clothing, the full lips that he held tense or cruelly repressed, the ruthless asceticism, the unbearable blue eyes.

‘I know who you are, Damianos,’ said Laurent.(Here we go...)

Damen heard it, as the interior of the tent seemed to change, so that all of the objects in it took on a different shape.

‘Did you think,’ said Laurent, ‘I wouldn’t recognise the man who killed my brother?’

Each word was an ice chip. Painful, sharp; a shard. Laurent’s voice was perfectly steady. Damen stepped back blindly. His thoughts swam.

‘I knew in the palace, when they dragged you in front of me,’ said Laurent. The words continued, steady, relentless. ‘I knew in the baths when I ordered you flayed. I knew—’

‘At Ravenel?’ said Damen.

Drawing breath with difficulty, he faced Laurent while the seconds passed.

‘If you knew,’ said Damen, ‘how could you—’

‘Let you f*** me?’ (Why so deliberately mean? I guess he can't acknowledge that he did it willingly not knowing how Damen feels?) His own chest hurt, so that he almost didn’t notice the signs of it in Laurent, the control, the face, pale at any time, now white.

‘I needed a victory at Charcy. You provided it. It was worth enduring,’ Laurent spoke the terrible, lucid words, ‘your fumbling attentions for that.’

It hurt so much it took the breath from his throat. ‘You’re lying.’ Damen’s heart was pounding. ‘You’re lying.’ The words were too loud. ‘You thought I was leaving. You practically threw me out.’ He said it, as the realisation blossomed inside him. ‘You knew who I was. You knew who I was the night we made love.’

He thought of Laurent surrendering, not the first time, but the second, the slower, sweeter time, the tension in him, the way he had—

‘You weren’t making love to a slave, you were making love to me.’ And he couldn’t think that through clearly but he could catch a glimmer of it, a glimmer of the edge of it. ‘I thought you wouldn’t, I thought you’d never—’ He took a step forward. ‘Laurent, six years ago, when I fought Auguste, I—’

‘Don’t you say his name.’ The words were forced out of Laurent. ‘Don’t you ever say his name, you killed my brother.’

Laurent was breathing shallowly, almost panting as he spoke, his hands rigid on the edge of the table behind him.

‘Is that what you want to hear, that I knew who you were and I still let you fuck me, my brother’s killer, who cut him down like an animal on the field?’

‘No,’ said Damen, his stomach clenching with cramp, ‘that isn’t—’

‘Shall I ask you how you did it? What he looked like when your sword went in?’

‘No,’ said Damen.

‘Or shall I tell you about the illusion of the man who gave me good counsel. Who stood by me. Who never lied to me.’

‘I never lied to you.’

The words were awful in the silence that followed them.

‘“Laurent, I am your slave”?’ said Laurent.

He felt the breath forced out from his lungs.

‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘talk about it like—’

‘Like?’

‘Like it was cold-blooded; like I controlled it. Like we didn’t both close our eyes and pretend I was a slave.’ He made himself say the exposing words. ‘I was your slave.’

‘There was no slave,’ said Laurent. ‘He never existed. I don’t know what manner of man stands before me now. All I know is that I am facing him for the first time.’

‘He is here.’ His flesh ached as if he had been prised open. ‘We are the same.’

‘Kneel then,’ said Laurent. ‘Kiss my boot.’

He looked into Laurent’s excoriating blue eyes. The impossibility of it was like a sharp pain. He couldn’t do it. He could only gaze at Laurent across the distance between them. The words hurt.

‘You’re right. I’m not a slave,’ he said. ‘I am the King.’ He said, ‘I killed your brother. And now I hold your fort.’

As he spoke, Damen drew out a knife. He felt rather than saw all of Laurent’s attention swing to it. The physical signs were small: Laurent’s lips parted, his body tensed. Laurent didn’t look at the knife. He kept his eyes on Damen, who looked right back at him.

‘So you will parley with me as with a king, and you will tell me why you called me here.’

Deliberately, Damen tossed the knife onto the floor of the tent. Laurent’s eyes didn’t follow its path. His gaze held steady.

‘Didn’t you know?’ said Laurent. ‘My uncle is in Akielos.’

[failes-xtra-bits]

Kings Rising - Ch. 2

That good canon Laurent pov content that I treasure with all my heart.

All quotes in regular text. My comments / summarising in bold.

Laurent woke. His hands were tied behind his back, he had been hit over the head, and his shoulder was dislocated.

His eyes still half closed, he works out that he is underground based on the temperature and smell of the room. He calculates what must have happened and where he must be.

He opened his eyes and met the flat-nosed stare of Govart. ‘Hello, Princess.’

Panic spiked his pulse, an involuntary reaction, his blood beating against the inside of his skin like it was trapped. Very carefully, he made himself do nothing. (Interesting. We finally get to see what goes on in Laurent’s mind when he’s trying to suppress his feelings.)

Laurent takes in his surroundings. He realises he’s in the prison cells of Fortaine.

He understood that he faced his death, before which would come a long, painful interval. A ludicrous boyish hope flared that someone would come to help him, and, carefully, he extinguished it. Since the age of thirteen, there had been no rescuer, for his brother was dead. (*intense sobbing* 😭) He wondered if it was going to be possible to salvage some dignity in this situation, and cancelled that thought as soon as it came. This was not going to be dignified. He thought that if things got very bad, it was within his capabilities to precipitate the end. Govart would not be difficult to provoke into lethal violence. At all. (I can’t believe Laurent is already thinking about what he would have to do for a quicker death 😭)

He thought that Auguste would not be afraid, being alone and vulnerable to a man who planned to kill him; it should not trouble his younger brother. (😭)

It was harder to let go of the battle, (interesting he seems to have accepted his death very quickly and is now thinking of the battle. But perhaps he accepted it a long time ago) to leave his plans at their midway point, to accept that the deadline had come and gone, and that whatever now happened on the border, he would not be a part of it. The Akielon slave would (of course) assume treachery on the part of the Veretian forces, after which he would launch some sort of noble and suicidal attack at Charcy that he would probably win, against ridiculous odds. (Yup, that’s Damen alright.)

Laurent thought about his own odds against Govart.

Fighting free of his bonds at this moment would accomplish, precisely, nothing. He told himself that: once; then again, to quell a deep, basic urge to struggle. (More Laurent suppressing his panic.)

…

‘How’s your shoulder?’ said Laurent. (Of course Laurent could not resist the chance to goad Govart *facepalm*)

The blow rocked him back. When he lifted his head, he enjoyed the look he had provoked on Govart’s face, as he had enjoyed, for the same reason—if a bit masochistically—the blow. Because he couldn’t quite keep that from his eyes, Govart hit him again. He had to strap down the impulse of hysteria, or this was going to be over very quickly. (and again)

…

Laurent speaks to Govart, trying to work out what information he has on the Regent.

‘Well, I’m an inconvenience to him,’ said Laurent. ‘You are too. It’s why he throws us together. At some point one of us will dispatch the other.’

He made himself speak without undue emotion, just a mild remark on the facts. (I wonder if this means a mix of emotions. Of course the fact that he is facing his death, but also the betrayal that his own flesh and blood wants nothing more than to have Laurent killed.)

‘The trouble is, when my uncle is the King, no leverage in the world will stop him. If you kill me, whatever it is that you have on him isn’t going to matter. It will just be you and him, and he’ll be free to disappear you into a dark cell too.’

Govart smiled, slowly.

‘He said you’d say that.’

The first misstep, and it was his own. He could feel the distracting beat of his heart. ‘What else did my uncle tell you I’d say?’

‘He said you’d try to keep me talking. He said you had a mouth like a whore. He said you’d lie, wheedle, suck up to me.’ The slow smile widened. ‘He said, “The only way to make sure my nephew doesn’t talk his way free is to cut his tongue out.”’ As he spoke, Govart pulled out a knife.

The room around Laurent greyed; his whole attention narrowed, his thoughts attenuating.

‘Except that you want to hear it,’ said Laurent, because this was only beginning, and it was a long, winding, bloody road till the end. ‘You want to hear all of it. Every last broken syllable… (If there’s one thing Laurent is good at, it’s talking, and he knows this. He may not be able to talk himself out of his situation this time, but if he can delay it in any way, he has to try.)

*   *   *

By the end of the first hour (though it felt longer), he was in quite a lot of pain, and was losing touch with how much, if at all, he was delaying or controlling what was happening.

His shirt was now unlaced to the waist and hung open, and his right sleeve was red. His hair was a tangled mess ribboned with sweat. His tongue was intact, because the knife was in his shoulder. He had accounted that a victory, when it had happened.

You had to take pleasure in small victories. (Oh my god, Laurent…) The hilt of the knife protruded at an odd angle. It was in his right shoulder, already dislocated, so that breathing was now painful. Victories. He had come this far, he had caused his uncle some small consternation, had checked him, once or twice, forced him to remake his plans. Had not made it easy.

…

It was growing harder to stick to a course of action.

Laurent reasoned Govart was supposed to kill him, and that a third person was going to come in at a prearranged time to let Govart out and take Laurent’s body.

He therefore had a single goal, like moving towards a retreating mirage: to reach that point alive.

Guion enters.

Laurent tries to provoke them by asking Govart if Guion knows about the leverage Govart has on the Regent. It works.

…

‘I said shut your mouth.’ Closing his hand around the hilt of the knife, Govart turned it. Blackness burst over him, so that he was only distantly aware of what followed…

He felt Govart let go of the knife. Lifting his own hand was the second hardest thing he had ever done, after raising his head. Govart was moving to face down Guion, blocking his path to Laurent.

Laurent closed his eyes, wrapped his unsteady left hand around the hilt, and pulled the knife out of his shoulder.

He couldn’t contain the low sound that escaped him. 

Laurent cut his bonds and stood behind his chair, the knife still in his hand.

Laurent weights up his chances against Govart.

The outcome of his brief excursion into freedom was inevitable. He knew it. Govart knew it.

Laurent made his single clumsy left-handed strike with the knife, and Govart countered it, brutally. And indeed, it was Laurent who cried out at the tearing pain beyond anything he had ever known.

As, with his ruined right arm, Laurent swung the chair. 

The heavy oak hit Govart in the ear, with the sound of a mallet striking a wooden ball. Govart staggered and went down. (Laurent is so badass. Despite having a dislocated and stabbed shoulder, he still manages to kill Govart by hitting him over the head with a chair.) Laurent half staggered, too, the weight of the swing taking him part way across the cell. 

Laurent uses all his strength to get out and lock the door behind him.

His eyes closed. He was dimly aware of Guion, tugging at the cell bars, which rattled and clanged and stayed irrefutably closed.

He did laugh then, a breathless sound, with the sweet, cool feel of the stone at his back. His head lolled.

‘—how dare you, you worthless traitor, you’re a stain on your family’s honour, you—’

“Guion,’ said Laurent, without opening his eyes. ‘You had me tied up and locked in a room with Govart. Do you think name-calling will hurt my feelings?’

‘Let me out!’ The words ricocheted off the walls.

‘I tried that,’ said Laurent, calmly.

Guion said, ‘I’ll give you anything you want.’

‘I tried that too,’ said Laurent. ‘I don’t like to think of myself as predictable. But apparently I cycle through all the usual responses. Shall I tell you what you’re going to do when I stick the knife in for the first time?’

His eyes opened. Guion took a single, gratifying step back from the bars.

‘You know, I wanted a weapon,’ said Laurent. ‘I wasn’t expecting one to walk into my cell.’

‘You’re a dead man when you walk out of here. Your Akielon allies aren’t going to help you. You left them to die like rats in a trap at Charcy. They’ll hunt you down,’ said Guion, ‘and kill you.’

‘Yes, I’m aware that I have missed my rendezvous,’ said Laurent…

He heard the dreamy sound of his own voice. (Why does this make Laurent sound even more scary xD)

‘There was a man I was supposed to meet. He’s got all these ideas about honour and fair play, and he tries to keep me from doing the wrong thing. But he’s not here right now. Unfortunately for you.’ (Boy, do I not want to be Guion right now.)

Guion took another step back. ‘There’s nothing you can do to me.’

‘Isn’t there? I wonder how my uncle is going to react when he finds out that you killed Govart and helped me to escape.’ And then, in the same dreamy voice, ‘Do you think he’ll hurt your family?’ (😭😂 There it is again. Laurent sure knows how to verbally eviscerate people.)

Guion’s hands were fists, like he still had them wrapped around bars. ‘I didn’t help you escape.’

‘Didn’t you? I don’t know how these rumours get started.’

Now that Laurent’s life is no longer in immediate danger, he is able to think again, and is returning to his usual state of mind. He puts together the r*gent’s plan and Guion’s / Govart’s involvement.

Laurent is now entirely in charge of the situation and Guion knows he’s at his mercy.

[failes-xtra-bits]

Kings Rising - Ch. 2

That good canon Laurent pov content that I treasure with all my heart.

All quotes in regular text. My comments / summarising in bold.

Laurent woke. His hands were tied behind his back, he had been hit over the head, and his shoulder was dislocated.

His eyes still half closed, he works out that he is underground based on the temperature and smell of the room. He calculates what must have happened and where he must be.

He opened his eyes and met the flat-nosed stare of Govart. ‘Hello, Princess.’

Panic spiked his pulse, an involuntary reaction, his blood beating against the inside of his skin like it was trapped. Very carefully, he made himself do nothing. (Interesting. We finally get to see what goes on in Laurent’s mind when he’s trying to suppress his feelings.)

Laurent takes in his surroundings. He realises he’s in the prison cells of Fortaine.

He understood that he faced his death, before which would come a long, painful interval. A ludicrous boyish hope flared that someone would come to help him, and, carefully, he extinguished it. Since the age of thirteen, there had been no rescuer, for his brother was dead. (*intense sobbing* 😭) He wondered if it was going to be possible to salvage some dignity in this situation, and cancelled that thought as soon as it came. This was not going to be dignified. He thought that if things got very bad, it was within his capabilities to precipitate the end. Govart would not be difficult to provoke into lethal violence. At all. (I can’t believe Laurent is already thinking about what he would have to do for a quicker death 😭)

He thought that Auguste would not be afraid, being alone and vulnerable to a man who planned to kill him; it should not trouble his younger brother. (😭)

It was harder to let go of the battle, (interesting he seems to have accepted his death very quickly and is now thinking of the battle. But perhaps he accepted it a long time ago) to leave his plans at their midway point, to accept that the deadline had come and gone, and that whatever now happened on the border, he would not be a part of it. The Akielon slave would (of course) assume treachery on the part of the Veretian forces, after which he would launch some sort of noble and suicidal attack at Charcy that he would probably win, against ridiculous odds. (Yup, that’s Damen alright.)

Laurent thought about his own odds against Govart.

Fighting free of his bonds at this moment would accomplish, precisely, nothing. He told himself that: once; then again, to quell a deep, basic urge to struggle. (More Laurent suppressing his panic.)

…

‘How’s your shoulder?’ said Laurent. (Of course Laurent could not resist the chance to goad Govart *facepalm*)

The blow rocked him back. When he lifted his head, he enjoyed the look he had provoked on Govart’s face, as he had enjoyed, for the same reason—if a bit masochistically—the blow. Because he couldn’t quite keep that from his eyes, Govart hit him again. He had to strap down the impulse of hysteria, or this was going to be over very quickly. (and again)

…

Laurent speaks to Govart, trying to work out what information he has on the Regent.

‘Well, I’m an inconvenience to him,’ said Laurent. ‘You are too. It’s why he throws us together. At some point one of us will dispatch the other.’

He made himself speak without undue emotion, just a mild remark on the facts. (I wonder if this means a mix of emotions. Of course the fact that he is facing his death, but also the betrayal that his own flesh and blood wants nothing more than to have Laurent killed.)

‘The trouble is, when my uncle is the King, no leverage in the world will stop him. If you kill me, whatever it is that you have on him isn’t going to matter. It will just be you and him, and he’ll be free to disappear you into a dark cell too.’

Govart smiled, slowly.

‘He said you’d say that.’

The first misstep, and it was his own. He could feel the distracting beat of his heart. ‘What else did my uncle tell you I’d say?’

‘He said you’d try to keep me talking. He said you had a mouth like a whore. He said you’d lie, wheedle, suck up to me.’ The slow smile widened. ‘He said, “The only way to make sure my nephew doesn’t talk his way free is to cut his tongue out.”’ As he spoke, Govart pulled out a knife.

The room around Laurent greyed; his whole attention narrowed, his thoughts attenuating.

‘Except that you want to hear it,’ said Laurent, because this was only beginning, and it was a long, winding, bloody road till the end. ‘You want to hear all of it. Every last broken syllable… (If there’s one thing Laurent is good at, it’s talking, and he knows this. He may not be able to talk himself out of his situation this time, but if he can delay it in any way, he has to try.)

*   *   *

By the end of the first hour (though it felt longer), he was in quite a lot of pain, and was losing touch with how much, if at all, he was delaying or controlling what was happening.

His shirt was now unlaced to the waist and hung open, and his right sleeve was red. His hair was a tangled mess ribboned with sweat. His tongue was intact, because the knife was in his shoulder. He had accounted that a victory, when it had happened.

You had to take pleasure in small victories. (Oh my god, Laurent…) The hilt of the knife protruded at an odd angle. It was in his right shoulder, already dislocated, so that breathing was now painful. Victories. He had come this far, he had caused his uncle some small consternation, had checked him, once or twice, forced him to remake his plans. Had not made it easy.

…

It was growing harder to stick to a course of action.

Laurent reasoned Govart was supposed to kill him, and that a third person was going to come in at a prearranged time to let Govart out and take Laurent’s body.

He therefore had a single goal, like moving towards a retreating mirage: to reach that point alive.

Guion enters.

Laurent tries to provoke them by asking Govart if Guion knows about the leverage Govart has on the Regent. It works.

…

‘I said shut your mouth.’ Closing his hand around the hilt of the knife, Govart turned it. Blackness burst over him, so that he was only distantly aware of what followed…

He felt Govart let go of the knife. Lifting his own hand was the second hardest thing he had ever done, after raising his head. Govart was moving to face down Guion, blocking his path to Laurent.

Laurent closed his eyes, wrapped his unsteady left hand around the hilt, and pulled the knife out of his shoulder.

He couldn’t contain the low sound that escaped him. 

Laurent cut his bonds and stood behind his chair, the knife still in his hand.

Laurent weights up his chances against Govart.

The outcome of his brief excursion into freedom was inevitable. He knew it. Govart knew it.

Laurent made his single clumsy left-handed strike with the knife, and Govart countered it, brutally. And indeed, it was Laurent who cried out at the tearing pain beyond anything he had ever known.

As, with his ruined right arm, Laurent swung the chair. 

The heavy oak hit Govart in the ear, with the sound of a mallet striking a wooden ball. Govart staggered and went down. (Laurent is so badass. Despite having a dislocated and stabbed shoulder, he still manages to kill Govart by hitting him over the head with a chair.) Laurent half staggered, too, the weight of the swing taking him part way across the cell. 

Laurent uses all his strength to get out and lock the door behind him.

His eyes closed. He was dimly aware of Guion, tugging at the cell bars, which rattled and clanged and stayed irrefutably closed.

He did laugh then, a breathless sound, with the sweet, cool feel of the stone at his back. His head lolled.

‘—how dare you, you worthless traitor, you’re a stain on your family’s honour, you—’

“Guion,’ said Laurent, without opening his eyes. ‘You had me tied up and locked in a room with Govart. Do you think name-calling will hurt my feelings?’

‘Let me out!’ The words ricocheted off the walls.

‘I tried that,’ said Laurent, calmly.

Guion said, ‘I’ll give you anything you want.’

‘I tried that too,’ said Laurent. ‘I don’t like to think of myself as predictable. But apparently I cycle through all the usual responses. Shall I tell you what you’re going to do when I stick the knife in for the first time?’

His eyes opened. Guion took a single, gratifying step back from the bars.

‘You know, I wanted a weapon,’ said Laurent. ‘I wasn’t expecting one to walk into my cell.’

‘You’re a dead man when you walk out of here. Your Akielon allies aren’t going to help you. You left them to die like rats in a trap at Charcy. They’ll hunt you down,’ said Guion, ‘and kill you.’

‘Yes, I’m aware that I have missed my rendezvous,’ said Laurent…

He heard the dreamy sound of his own voice. (Why does this make Laurent sound even more scary xD)

‘There was a man I was supposed to meet. He’s got all these ideas about honour and fair play, and he tries to keep me from doing the wrong thing. But he’s not here right now. Unfortunately for you.’ (Boy, do I not want to be Guion right now.)

Guion took another step back. ‘There’s nothing you can do to me.’

‘Isn’t there? I wonder how my uncle is going to react when he finds out that you killed Govart and helped me to escape.’ And then, in the same dreamy voice, ‘Do you think he’ll hurt your family?’ (😭😂 There it is again. Laurent sure knows how to verbally eviscerate people.)

Guion’s hands were fists, like he still had them wrapped around bars. ‘I didn’t help you escape.’

‘Didn’t you? I don’t know how these rumours get started.’

Now that Laurent’s life is no longer in immediate danger, he is able to think again, and is returning to his usual state of mind. He puts together the r*gent’s plan and Guion’s / Govart’s involvement.

Laurent is now entirely in charge of the situation and Guion knows he’s at his mercy.

[failes-xtra-bits]

CHAPTER 1/ Finding Damianos

CHAPTER ONE/ Finding Damianos

‘DAMIANOS.’

Damen is ALIVE! Nik is overjoyed as are the Akielon troops. Their TRUE KING is alive. The Veretians are afraid.

There were wild shouts now, the thin perimeter breaking down as the crowd swelled with the panicked urge to run. To stampede and get out of the way of the Akielon army. Or to swarm over it. Damen, used to quick battlefield decisions, said to Nikandros, ‘Take the fort.’ 

AS we discussed I have to wonder how much of this did Laurent suspect would come to pass?

* * *

Damen had ordered their two senior soldiers, Guymar and Jord, brought to him, stripped of armour and under guard.

‘No. Let them stand.’ Damen gave the order in Akielon. Instant obedience.

It was Guymar who shrugged the treatment off and regained his feet first. Jord, who had known Damen for months, was more circumspect, rising slowly. Guymar met Damen’s eyes. He spoke in Veretian, giving no sign that he had understood Akielon.

‘So it’s true. You are Damianos of Akielos.’

‘It’s true.’

Guymar purposefully spat, and for his trouble was backhanded hard across the face with a mailed fist by the Akielon soldier. Damen let it happen, aware of what would have happened if a man had spat on the ground in front of his father.

‘Are you here to put us to the sword?’(so stupid, he could have killed you at any time dummy)

‘I want you to fight with me,’ said Damen. ‘Akielos is here to stand by your side.’

Guymar let out a shaky breath. ‘Fight with you? You will use our cooperation to take the fort.’

‘I already have the fort,’ (Duh) said Damen. He said it calmly. ‘You know the manner of man we face in the Regent,’ said Damen. ‘Your men have a choice. They can remain prisoners at Ravenel, or they can ride with me to Charcy, and show the Regent we stand together.’

‘We don’t stand together,’ said Guymar. ‘You betrayed our Prince.’ And then, as though he 

almost couldn’t bear to say it, ‘You had him—’ (FOR REAL?! Is this ALL that these people can think about?!)

‘Take him out,’ said Damen, cutting it off.  

In Jord’s face was none of the mistrust or fear that had been stamped so clearly on the faces of the other Veretians, but a weary search for understanding.

Damen said, ‘I made him a promise.’(I Love him, Jord)

‘And when he learns who you are?’ said Jord. ‘When he learns that he is facing Damianos on the field?’

‘Then he and I meet each other for the first time,’ said Damen. ‘That was also a promise.’

* * *

Nikandros turned when Damen entered, and their eyes met. Before Damen could speak, Nikandros went to one knee; not spontaneously as he had done in the courtyard, but deliberately, bending his head.

‘The fort is yours,’ Nikandros said. ‘My King.’ King. 

Looking at the bowed head of his friend, Damen 

realised it for the first time. He was no longer the young prince who had roamed the palace halls with Nikandros after a day spent wrestling together on the sawdust(hmmmm). There was no Prince Damianos. The self that he had been striving to return to was gone.

‘To gain everything and lose everything in the space of a moment. That is the fate of all princes destined for the throne.’ Laurent had said that.

Damen took in Nikandros’s familiar, classically Akielon features, his dark hair and brows, his olive face and straight Akielon nose(hmmmm do you catalog a friend's features like this? Maybe if you’re an author trying to describe someone, but IDK). As children, they had run barefoot together through the palace. When he’d imagined a return to Akielos, he’d imagined greeting Nikandros, embracing him, heedless of the armour, like digging in his fingers and feeling in his fist the earth of his home(I never realized that he thought of Nikandros as home, but that’s what he’s comparing a hug from him to. Maybe Nik represents a life of possibilities and a lost youth, since being betrayed and living in Vere with Laurent?)

Instead, Nikandros knelt in an enemy fort, his sparse Akielon armour incongruous in the Veretian setting, and Damen felt the gulf of distance that separated them.

‘Rise,’ said Damen. ‘Old friend.’

‘I thought you dead,’ said Nikandros. ‘I have mourned your passing. I lit the ekthanos and made the long walk at dawn when I thought you gone.’ Nikandros spoke still partly in wonder as he rose. ‘Damianos, what happened to you?’

‘You were right about Kastor,’ Damen said.

‘I watched him crowned at the Kingsmeet,’ said Nikandros. His eyes were dark. ‘He stood on the Kingstone and said, “This twin tragedy has taught us that all things are possible.”’

It sounded like Kastor. It sounded like Jokaste.

He said to Nikandros, ‘Tell me.’

He heard it. He heard all of it. He heard of his own body, wrapped and taken in the processional through the acropolis, then interred beside his father. He heard Kastor’s claim that he had been killed by his own guard. He heard of his guard, killed in turn, like his childhood trainer Haemon, like his squires, like his slaves. Nikandros spoke of the confusion and slaughter throughout the palace, and in its wake, Kastor’s swordsmen taking control, claiming wherever they were challenged that they were containing the bloodshed, not causing it.

He remembered the sound of bells at dusk. Theomedes is dead. All hail Kastor.

Nikandros said, ‘There’s more.’

Nikandros hesitated for a moment, searching Damen’s face. Then he pulled a letter from his leather breastplate. It was battered, and by far the worse for its method of conveyance, but when Damen took it and unfolded it, he saw why Nikandros had kept it close.

To the Kyros of Delpha, Nikandros, from Laurent, Prince of Vere.

Damen felt the hairs rise over his body. The letter was old. The writing was old. Laurent must have sent the letter from Arles. Damen thought of him, alone, politically cornered, sitting at his desk to begin writing. He remembered Laurent’s limpid voice. Do you think I’d get on well with Nikandros of Delpha?

In return for aid from Nikandros, the letter said, Laurent would offer proof that Kastor had colluded with the Regent to kill King Theomedes of Akielos. It was the same information that Laurent had flung at him last night. You poor dumb brute. Kastor killed the King, then took the city with my uncle’s troops.

‘There were questions,’ said Nikandros, ‘but for every question Kastor had an answer. He was the King’s son. And you were dead. There was no one left to rally behind,’ Nikandros said. ‘Meniados of Sicyon was the first to swear his loyalty. And beyond that—’

Damen said, ‘The south belongs to Kastor.’

He knew what he faced. He had never supposed to hear that the story of his brother’s treachery was a mistake: to hear that Kastor was overjoyed by the news that he lived, and welcomed his return.

Nikandros said, ‘The north is loyal.’

‘And if I call on you to fight?’

‘Then we fight,’ said Nikandros. ‘Together.’

The straightforward ease of it left him without words. He had forgotten what home felt like. He had forgotten trust, loyalty, kinship. Friends.

Nikandros drew something from a fold in his clothing, and pressed it into Damen’s hand.

‘This is yours. I have kept it . . . A foolish token. I knew it was treason. I wanted to remember you by it.’ A crooked half-smile. ‘Your friend is a fool and courts treason for a keepsake.’ 

Damen opened his hand. Nikandros had given him the golden lion pin worn by the King. Theomedes had passed it onto Damen on his seventeenth birthday to mark him as heir. Damen remembered his father fixing it to his shoulder. Nikandros must have risked execution to find it, to take it and to carry it with him.

‘You are too quick to pledge yourself to me.’ He felt the hard, bright edges of the pin in his fist.

‘You are my King,’ said Nikandros.

He saw it reflected back at him in Nikandros’s eyes, as he had seen it in the eyes of the men. He felt it, in the different way Nikandros behaved towards him.

The pin was his now, and soon the bannermen would come and pledge to him as King, and nothing would be the way it was before. To gain everything and lose everything in the space of a moment. That is the fate of all princes destined for the throne. He clasped Nikandros’s shoulder, the wordless touch all he would allow himself.

‘You look like a wall tapestry.’ Nikandros plucked at Damen’s sleeve, amused by red velvet, fastenings of garnet, and small, exquisitely sewn rows of ruching. And then he went still.

‘Damen,’ said Nikandros, in a strange voice. Damen looked down. And saw.

His sleeve had slipped, revealing a cuff of heavy gold.

Nikandros tried to move back, as though burned or stung, but Damen clasped his arm, preventing the retreat. He could see it, splitting Nikandros’s brain, the unthinkable.

His heart pounding, he tried to stop it, to salvage it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Kastor made me a slave. Laurent freed me. He gave me command of his fort and his troops, an act of trust for an Akielon he had no reason to elevate. He doesn’t know who I am.’

‘The Prince of Vere freed you,’ said Nikandros. ‘You have been his slave?’ His voice thickened with the words. ‘You have served the Prince of Vere as a slave?’

‘You were the Prince’s slave?’ Revulsion was stamped on Makedon’s face, whitening it.

‘Yes.’

‘You—’ Makedon’s words echoed the unspoken question in Nikandros’s eyes that no man would ever say aloud to his King.

Damen’s flush changed in quality. ‘You dare ask that.’

Makedon said, thickly, ‘You are our King. This is an insult to Akielos that cannot be borne.’

‘You will bear it,’ said Damen, holding Makedon’s gaze, ‘as I have borne it. Or do you think yourself above your King?’

Slave, said the resistance in Makedon’s eyes.

‘If this becomes common knowledge, I can’t guarantee I will be able to control the actions of the men,’ said Nikandros.

‘It is common knowledge,’ said Damen. He watched the words impact on Nikandros, who could not quite swallow them.

‘What would you have us do?’ Nikandros pushed the words out.

‘Make your pledge,’ said Damen. ‘And if you are mine, gather the men to fight.’

* * *

The plan he had developed with Laurent was simple, Damen’s men were the bait. He looked for a long time at the wrist cuff before he walked out onto the dais. He didn’t try to hide it. He had discarded his wrist gauntlets. Armoured and battle-ready, he stepped out onto the dais and looked out at the army that was gathered below, the immaculate lines and shining spears, all of it waiting for him. He let them see the cuff on his wrist, as he let them see him. 

‘I am Damianos, true son of Theomedes, and I have returned to fight for you as your King.’

A deafening roar of approval; spear-butts hammering into the ground in approbation. He saw arms raised, soldiers cheering, and caught a flash of the impassive, helmed face of Makedon.

The horns sounded. The standards went up. Jord and Huet. Lazar. Scanning their faces, Damen saw who they were. These were the men of the Prince’s Guard, with whom Damen had travelled for months. Damen held up a hand, and Jord was allowed through.

‘We’ve come to ride with you,’ said Jord. There weren’t many of them, only twenty, and he saw at once that it was Jord who had convinced them, so that they were here, mounted and ready.

‘Then we ride,’ said Damen. ‘For Akielos, and for Vere.’

****

Nikandros didn’t like it. The closer they came to Charcy, the more obvious it was to the Akielon generals how bad the ground was. If you wanted to kill your worst enemy you would lure him to a place like this.

Trust me, was the last thing Laurent had said. He envisaged the plan as they had constructed it in Ravenel, the Regent overcommitting, and Laurent sweeping in.

‘Hold,’ was his order. Distantly, the sound of horns. ‘Hold,’ Damen said again, as his horse fidgeted, fractious, beneath him. 

Instead he saw the western flank begin to move, too soon, under the shouted order of Makedon. ‘Call them back into line,’ Damen said, putting his heels hard into his horse. He reined in around Makedon, a small, tight circle. Makedon looked back at him, dismissive as a general of a child.

‘We are moving to the west.’

‘My orders are to hold,’ said Damen. ‘We let the Regent commit first, to draw him out of position.’

‘If we do that, and your Veretian doesn’t arrive, we’ll all be killed.’

‘He’ll be here,’ said Damen.

From the north, the sound of horns.

The Regent was too close, too early, with no word yet from their scouts. Something was wrong.

Action exploded to his left, movement bursting from the trees. The Regent’s men were on them, and Laurent wasn’t within a hundred miles of the battle. Laurent had never planned to come.

That was what the scout was screaming, right before an arrow took him in the back.

‘This is your Veretian Prince exposed for what he is,’ said Makedon.

He’ll be here, Damen had said, and he believed that, even as the first wave hit and the men around him began to die.

It wasn’t until the second wave hit them from the north-west that he realised they were totally alone.

Damen found himself alongside Jord. ‘If you want to live, ride east.’

White-faced, Jord took one look at his expression and said, ‘He’s not coming.’

‘We’re outnumbered,’ said Damen, ‘but if you run, you might still make it out.’

‘If we’re outnumbered, what are you going to do?’

Damen drove his horse onward, ready to take up his own place on the front line.

He said, ‘Fight.’

[failes-xtra-bits]

Prince’s Gambit - Ch.21 (pt 2)

@failes-xtra-bits

All quotes in normal text. My summarising and comments in bold.

He imagined himself nineteen again, knowing then what he knew now, and he wondered if he would have let that long-ago battle fall to the Veretians—let Auguste live. If he would have ignored his father’s call to arms altogether, and instead found his way to the Veretian tents and sought out Auguste to find some common ground. Laurent would have been thirteen but in Damen’s mind’s eye he would have found him a little older, sixteen or seventeen, old enough that Damen’s nineteen-year-old self could have begun, with all the exuberance of youth, to court him.

He could do none of that. But if there was something that Laurent wanted, he could give it to him. He could deal the Regent a blow from which he wouldn’t recover.

If the Regent wanted Damianos of Akielos standing alongside his nephew, he would get him. And if he couldn’t give Laurent the truth, he could use everything else he had to give Laurent a definitive victory in the south.

He was going to make these three days count.

… 

There had been a silence, until Laurent had said, ‘You were right. I haven’t been thinking about it like this.’

‘Like what?’ said Damen.

‘Like war,’ said Laurent.

Now they faced one another on the dais and words rose to Damen’s lips, personal words.

But what he said was, ‘Are you sure you want to leave your enemy in charge of your fort?’

‘Yes,’ said Laurent.

They gazed at one another. It was a public goodbye, in full view of the men. Laurent extended his hand. He did it not, as a prince might, for Damen to kneel and kiss, but as a friend. There was acknowledgement in the gesture, and as Damen took his hand, in front of the men, Laurent held his gaze.

Laurent said, ‘Take care of my fort, Commander.’

In public, there was nothing he could say. He felt his grip tighten slightly. He thought of stepping forward, of taking Laurent’s head in his hands. And then he thought of what he was, and all he now knew. And he forced himself to release his grip.

Laurent was nodding to his attendant, mounting his horse. Damen said, ‘A lot depends on timing. We have a rendezvous in two days. I—Don’t be late.’ ‘Trust me,’ said Laurent with a single bright glance, straightening his horse out with the tug of a rein in the moment before the order was called, and he and his men moved out.

… 

Damen looks out and sees riders in red. Not the Regent’s colours, but Akielons.

This was the army of Nikandros, the Kyros of Delpha, and his Commander, Makedon.

… 

He was looking at Laurent’s signet ring.

He felt the hair rise all over his body. The last time he had seen this ring, he’d been at an inn at Nesson, and Laurent had given it over to a messenger. Give him this, and tell him that I will wait for him at Ravenel, he’d said.

… 

He remembered the night Laurent had addressed him in Akielon for the first time, remembered long nights speaking in Akielon, Laurent shoring up his vocabulary, improving his fluency, and his choice of subject matter—border geography, treaties, troop movements… 

(Just a little more insight into Laurent’s mind and how much he thinks ahead and plans.)

The truth was marching towards him. His past was coming to Ravenel, a steady, unstoppable approach. Damen and Damianos. And Jord was right. There had only ever been one of him… 

The Akielon march into the fort was the flow of a single red stream, except that whereas water swirled and swelled, it was straight and unyielding. Their arms and legs were crudely bare, as if war was an act of flesh impacting on flesh. Their weapons were unadorned, as if they had brought only the essentials required for killing. Rows and rows of them, laid out with mathematical precision. The discipline of feet marching in unison was a display of power, and violence, and strength.

Damen stood on the dais and watched the full sweep of it. Had they always been like this? So stripped of everything but the utilitarian? So hungry for war? (Interesting how Damen’s time in Vere has changed him. He used to think everything was so black and white, good and evil. When he finally sees his home people, he sees them in a new light. He realises that perhaps Vere isn’t all bad and that Akielos certainly aren’t without their flaws. Vere may have pets but Akielos still has slaves. Akielos likes to fight their battles head on, and Vere’s way of scheming and plotting is just a different way of fighting.

Nikandros dismounts his horse. Damen approaches him.

‘The last time we spoke, the apricots were in season,’ said Damen, in Akielon. ‘We walked in the night garden, and you took my arm and gave me counsel, and I did not listen.’

And Nikandros of Delpha stared back at him, and in a shocked voice, speaking the words half to himself, said, ‘It’s not possible.’ (Imagine Nik in complete shock, thinking and accepting his friend was dead and seeing him after all that 😭😭😭)

‘Old friend, you have come to a place where nothing is as any of us thought.’

Nikandros didn’t speak again. He just stared in silence, white as one who had been struck a blow. Then, as though one leg gave out, and then the other, he dropped slowly to his knees, an Akielon commander kneeling on the rough trampled stones of a Veretian fort.

He said, ‘Damianos.’

Damen hears his name being repeating amongst the men and one by one they begin to all kneel.

‘He lives. The King’s son lives. Damianos.’

[failes-xtra-bits]

Prince’s Gambit - Ch.21 (pt 1)

@failes-xtra-bits

All quotes in normal text. My summarising and comments in bold.

Damen and Laurent’s argument is so loaded that I wanted to include as much of it as possible (I’ve pretty much just copied out their entire argument). I haven’t really added any of my own comments this time. I thought I’d wait until our discussion.

‘Saddle the horses. We ride for Charcy.’ He had knocked Damen’s hand off his shoulder when Damen had tried to stop him.

Damen had attempted to follow, and had been prevented.

Damen stops anyone from entering Laurent’s room.

Later, Damen goes to speak to Laurent to convince him not to ride to Charcy.

Laurent is holding Nicaise’s earing in his hand 😭

(Commence the brutal arguing!)

“Come to say goodbye?’ said Laurent.

There was a pause, in which Laurent turned. Damen looked at him.

‘I’m sorry. I know what Nicaise meant to you.’

‘He was my uncle’s whore,’ said Laurent.

‘He was more than that. You thought of him as—’

‘A brother?’ said Laurent. ‘But I do not have terribly good luck with those… 

‘Since you don’t have a Captain left to advise you, I’m here to tell you that you can’t go to Charcy.’

‘I have a Captain. I’ve appointed Enguerran. Is that everything? I have reinforcements arriving tomorrow and I am taking my men to Charcy.’ Laurent was moving to the table, the dismissal in his voice clear.

‘Then you’ll kill them like you killed Nicaise,’ said Damen. ‘By dragging them into this endless, childish bid of yours for your uncle’s attention that you call a fight.’

‘Get out,’ said Laurent. He had gone white.

‘Is the truth hard to hear?’

‘I said get out.’

‘Or do you claim you’re marching to Charcy for some other reason?’

‘I am fighting for my throne.’

‘Is that what you think? You’ve fooled the men into believing it. You haven’t fooled me. Because this thing between you and your uncle isn’t a fight, is it.’

‘I can assure you,’ said Laurent, his right hand clenched unconsciously into a fist, ‘it’s a fight.’

‘In a fight, you try to beat your opponent. You don’t scurry to do what he wants. This is about more than Charcy. You’ve never made a single move of your own against your uncle. You let him set the field. You let him make the rules. You play his games like you want to show him you can. Like you’re trying to impress him. Is that it?’

Damen moved in further.

‘You need to beat him at his own game? You want him to see you do it? At the expense of your position and the lives of your men? Are you that desperate for his attention?’

He let his eyes rake up and down Laurent’s form.

‘Well, you have it. Congratulations. You must have loved it that he was obsessed enough with you that he killed his own boy to get at you. You win.’

“You don’t know anything,’ Laurent said then, in a cold, terrible voice. ‘You don’t know anything about me. Or my uncle. You’re so blind. You can’t see what’s—right in front of you.’ Laurent’s sudden laugh was low and mocking. ‘You want me? You’re my slave?’

He felt himself flush. ‘That’s not going to work.’

‘You’re nothing,’ said Laurent, ‘but a crawling disappointment who let a King’s bastard throw him in chains because he couldn’t keep his mistress happy in bed.’

‘That’s not,’ he said, ‘going to work.’

‘You want to hear the truth about my uncle? I’ll tell you,’ said Laurent, a new light in his eyes. ‘I’ll tell you what you couldn’t stop. What you were too blind to see. You were in chains while Kastor was cutting down your royal family. Kastor and my uncle.’

Laurent taunts Damen with the truth of Kastor and the Regent being in league.

‘You didn’t guess it was Kastor? You poor dumb brute. Kastor killed the King, then took the city with my uncle’s troops. And all my uncle had to do was to sit back and watch it happen.’

“Did you know about this?’

‘Know?’ said Laurent. ‘Everyone knows. I was glad. I just wish I could have seen it happen. I wish I could have seen Damianos when Kastor’s hire-swords came for him. I would have laughed in his face. His father got exactly what he deserved, to die like the animal he was, and there was nothing any of them could do to stop it happening. Then again,’ said Laurent, ‘maybe if Theomedes had kept his cock in his wife instead of sticking it in his mistress—’

That was the last thing he said, because Damen hit him. (daaaamn) He drove his fist into Laurent’s jaw with all the force of his weight behind it. Knuckles impacted on flesh and bone and Laurent’s head snapped sideways even as he hit the table behind him hard, sending its contents scattering. (:O)

… 

Laurent pushed himself up and gave Damen a look glittering with triumph, even as he dragged the back of his right hand across his mouth, where his lips were smeared with blood.

And then Damen saw what else lay among the overturned platters that littered the floor. It was bright against the tiles, like a scattering of stars. It was what Laurent had been holding in his right hand when Damen entered. The blue sapphires of Nicaise’s earring. (cryyyy 😭) 

… 

‘Now get out,’ Laurent said.

Damen pressed his eyes closed briefly. He felt raw with thoughts of his father. Laurent’s words “pushed at the inside of his eyelids.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t go to Charcy. I need to convince you of that.’

Laurent’s laugh was a strange, breathless sound. ‘Didn’t you hear anything that I just said to you?’

‘Yes,’ said Damen. ‘You tried to hurt me, and you have. I wish you would see that what you have just done to me is what your uncle is doing to you.’

He saw Laurent receive that like a man at the very ends of his endurance being given another hit. ‘Why,’ said Laurent, ‘do you—do you always—’ He stopped himself. The rise and fall of his chest was shallow.

‘I came with you to stop a war,’ said Damen. ‘I came because you were the only thing standing between Akielos and your uncle. It’s you who’ve lost sight of that. You need to fight your uncle on your own terms, not on his.’

‘I can’t.’ It was a raw admission. ‘I can’t think.’ The words were torn out of him. Wide-eyed in the silence, Laurent said them again in a different voice, his blue eyes dark with the exposure of the “truth. ‘I can’t think.’

‘I know,’ said Damen.

He said it softly. There was more than one admission in Laurent’s words. He knew that too.

He knelt, and scooped up the glimmer of Nicaise’s earring from the floor

… 

‘Don’t go,’ said Laurent, quietly.

‘I’m just clearing my head. I already told my escort I wouldn’t need them until morning,’ said Damen.

And there was another awful silence, as Damen realised what Laurent was asking him.

‘No. I don’t mean—forever—just—’ Laurent broke off. ‘Three days.’ Laurent said it as though producing from the depths the answer to a painstakingly weighed question. ‘I can do this alone. I know I can. It’s only that right now I can’t seem to … think, and I can’t … trust anyone else to stand up to me when I’m … like this. If you could give me three days, I—’ He forcibly cut himself off.

‘I’ll stay,’ said Damen. ‘You know I’ll stay for as long as you—’

‘Don’t,’ said Laurent. ‘Don’t lie to me. Not you.’

‘I’ll stay,’ said Damen. ‘Three days. After that, I ride south.’

… 

‘You’re right. I killed Nicaise when I left it half done. I should have either stayed away from him, or broken his faith in my uncle. I didn’t plan it out, I left it to chance. I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t thinking about him like that. I just … I just liked him.’ (😭) Underneath the cold, analytical words, there was also something bewildered.

It was awful. ‘I should never have—said that. Nicaise made a choice. He spoke up for you because you were his friend, and that is not something you should regret.’

‘He spoke up for me because he didn’t think my uncle would hurt him. None of them do. They think he loves them. It has the outward semblance of love. At first. But it isn’t love. It’s … fetish. It doesn’t outlast adolescence. The boys themselves are disposable.’ Laurent’s voice didn’t change. ‘He knew that much, deep down. He always was smarter than the others. He knew that when he got too old, he would be replaced.’

‘Like Aimeric,’ said Damen.

Into the long silence that stretched out between them, Laurent said: ‘Like Aimeric.’

Damen recalled Nicaise’s blistering verbal attacks. He looked at Laurent’s clear profile and tried to understand the strange affinity between man and boy.

‘You liked him.’

“My uncle cultivated the worst in him. He still had good instincts sometimes. When children are moulded that young, it takes time to undo. I thought …’

Softly, ‘You thought you could help him.’

He watched Laurent’s face, the flickering of some internal truth behind the careful lack of all expression.

‘He was on my side,’ said Laurent. ‘But in the end, the only person on his side was him.’

Damen knew better than to reach out, or to try to touch him… The silence stretched out.

Laurent slides back Damen’s sleeve as he notices the gold cuff.

‘Sentiment?’ said Laurent.

‘Something like that.’

Their eyes met and he could feel each beat of his heart. A few seconds of silence, a space that lengthened, until Laurent spoke.

‘You should give me the other.’

Damen flushed slowly, heat spreading from his chest over his skin, his heartbeats intrusive. He tried to answer in a normal voice.

‘I can’t imagine you’d wear it.’

‘To keep. I wouldn’t wear it,’ said Laurent, ‘though I don’t believe your imagination is having any difficulty with the idea.’… 

Laurent had mostly returned to himself, his posture more casual, his weight leaned back on his arms, watching Damen as he sometimes did. But he was a new version of himself, stripped back, youthful, a little quieter, and Damen realised he was seeing Laurent with his defences lowered—one or two of them, anyway. … 

‘I should not have told you in the manner I did about Kastor.’ The words were quiet… . 

He heard himself ask it.

‘Did you mean what you said? That you were glad.’

‘Yes,’ said Laurent. ‘They killed my family.’

… 

Laurent says he’s not going to rush off to Charcy.

‘I know that together we can find a way to use Charcy to my advantage. Together we can do what we cannot do apart… 

It was you who never quite fit … You’ve always been outside of his schemes. For everything that my uncle and Kastor planned,’ said Laurent, as Damen felt himself grow cold, ‘they had no idea what they did when they gifted me with you.

[failes-xtra-bits]

19.5 Blissed Out

Short chapter, i left the sex in because it’s not explicit and some of it is relevant

Damen was happy it was radiating from him the weight of his body heavy and replete. He was aware of Laurent slipping out of the bed. His sense of drowsy closeness lingered. When he heard Laurent moving across the room, Damen shifted, naked, to enjoy an interval of watching, but Laurent had disappeared through the archway and into one of the rooms that flowed out of this one. he was content to wait his bare limbs on the sheets heavy, a gold slave cuffs and collar his only adornments. He felt the warm, wonderful, impossible fact of his situation. Bed Slave. He closed his eyes and felt again that first long, slow push into Laurent’s body, heard the first of the small sounds that Laurent made. 

When he looked back up, Laurent had reappeared in the room's archway. 

‘ I brought you a towel, but I see you have improvised.’ said Laurent, pausing at the table to pour a cup of water, placing it on the low bench by the bed. 

‘Come back to bed,’ said Damen

‘I,’ said Laurent, and stopped. Damen had caught his hand, entwined long fingers into his own. Laurent looked along their arms. Damen was surprised at how it felt: new, each heartbeat his first, and Laurent reshaped before him. Laurent had restored both his shirt and a flickering version of his usual standoffishness, but he had not laced himself back into his clothes, had not reappeared in his high necked jacket and shiny boots, as he might have done(That’s the 2nd time he’s expressed being nervous about being left naked and alone, he feels vulnerable as well) . He was here, hesitating on the edge of uncertainty. Damen pulled on Laurent’s hand. Laurent half resisted the tug, and ended with one knee on the silk and a hand braced awkwardly by Damon's shoulders. Damen gazed up at him, the gold of his hair, the fall of his shirt away from his body. Laurent’s limbs were slightly stiff, more so when he shifted to get his balance, awkward, like he didn't know what to do. 

‘You take liberties.’ 

‘Come back to bed, Your Highness.’ that earned him a long cool look at close range. He felt bliss-drunk on his own daring. He glanced sideways at the towel.

“Did you really bring that for me?’

 After a moment. ‘I-thought to towel you down.’  

The sweetness of it was startling. Damen realized with a little pulse of his heart that Laurent meant it. He was used to the ministrations of slaves, but it was an Indulgence beyond any dream of decadence to have Laurent do this. His mouth quirked at the impossibility of it.

‘What?’ 

‘So this is what you're like in bed,’ said Damen 

‘Like?’ said Laurent stiffening( it’s driving him crazy to be so out of his depth, he takes great pains to appear knowledgeable to others).

‘Attentive,’said Damen, charmed by the idea. ‘Elusive.’ He gazed up at Laurent. ‘I should be attending you,’ he said.

‘I... took care of it, said Laurent, after a pause. There was a slight flush when he spoke, though his voice, as always, was steady. It took a moment for Damen to understand that laurent spoke of practical concerns. Laurent’s fingers had tightened around the towel (poor Lo-Lo). There was a self consciousness in him now, as though he had become aware of the strangeness of what he was doing. a Prince serving a slave. Damen looked again at the cup of water, which Laurent had brought-----(sweet baby) for him, he realized. Laurent’s flush deepened. Damen shifted to regard him better. He saw the angle of Laurent’s jaw, the tension in his shoulders.

 ‘Going to banish me to sleep at the foot of your bed? I wish you wouldn't, it’s quite far away.’ 

After a moment, ‘Is that how it's done in Akielos? I can nudge you with my heel(😆) if I require you again before dawn.’

‘Require?’ said Damen

‘Is that the word?’

‘We're not in Akielos. Why don’t you show me how it’s done in Vere.’

‘We don’t keep slaves in Vere.’

 I beg to differ,’ said Damen.

 Laurent had at least one layer of armour peeled away and was exposed, a young man stripped down to a shirt. The white shirt trailed laces, soft and open, a counterpoint to the tension in Laurent’s body. Damen deliberately did nothing at all except gaze back at him.  had indeed taken care of matters, and had removed any evidence of their activities from his appearance. He did not look like someone who just been f****d.  Laurent’s post-coital Instincts were remarkably self-denying(we know why...😠). 

‘I lack,’ said Laurent ‘the easy mannerisms that are usually shared  with,’ you could see him pushing the words out,’a lover.’ 

‘You Lack the easy mannerisms that are usually shared with anyone,’ said Damen.

A handspan separated them. Damen’s knee almost touched Laurent’s knee where Laurent’s knee crooked on the sheets. He saw Laurent close his eyes briefly as though to steady himself.

 ‘You’re not... the way I thought either.’

The admission was quiet. There was no sound in the room, just the shifting glow of the candle flame. 

‘You thought of it?’

‘You kissed me,’ said Laurent. ‘On the battlements. I thought of it.’(Oh and I’m sure it was long before the Kiss… IJS)

Damen couldn't help the furl of pleasure in his stomach. ‘That was barely a kiss.’

‘It went on for some time.’

‘And you thought of it.’

‘Are you angling for an earful of talk?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and the warm smile was helpless too.

Laurent was silent, as he fought an internal battle. Damen felt the quality of his stillness, the moment when he pushed himself to speak.

‘You were different,’ said Laurent.

It was all he said. The words seemed to come from a deep place in Laurent, eked out from some core of truthfulness.

‘Shall I put out the lights, Your Highness?’

‘Leave them burning.’

He felt the careful aspect of Laurent’s motionlessness, the way that even his breathing was careful.

‘You can call me by my given name,’ said Laurent. ‘If you like.’

‘Laurent,’ he said.

He wanted to say it while sliding his fingers into Laurent’s hair, tilting his head for the first brush

of lips. The vulnerability of kissing had caused tension to ribbon through Laurent’s body, a sweet, hot tangle. As now. Damen sat up alongside him.It had its effect, the shallowing of breath, though Damen made no move to touch him. He was larger, and took up more space on the bed.

‘I’m not afraid of sex,’ said Laurent.

‘Then you can do as you like.’

And that was the crux of the matter, it was suddenly clear from the look in Laurent’s eyes. It was Damen’s turn to hold himself still. Laurent(awww, he wanted to touch but wasn't sure how to proceed) was looking at him as he had since he had returned to the bed, dark-eyed and on the cusp.

Laurent said, ‘Don’t touch me.’

He was expecting . . . he wasn’t certain what he was expecting. The first hesitant brush of Laurent’s fingers against his skin was a shock. There was an odd sense of inexperience in Laurent, as though the role was as new to him as it was to Damen. As though all of this was new to him, which made no sense (Shhhh Shana).

The touch on his bicep was tentative, exploratory, as though it was something new to be marked out, the span of it, the shape of the curved muscle. Laurent’s gaze was travelling over his body, and he looked in the same way that he touched, as if Damen was new territory, unexplored, that he couldn’t quite believe was under his command(He can't! He’s wanted to explore you for awhile, honey).

When he felt Laurent touch his hair, he bowed his head and gave himself up to it, as a workhorse might bow for the yoke. He felt Laurent shape his palm to the curve of his neck, felt Laurent’s fingers sliding through the weight of his hair as though experiencing the feel for the first time (So cute, he really is just in Awe of Damen).

Perhaps it was the first time. He hadn’t taken Damen’s head like that, splaying his fingers over its shape, when Damen had used his mouth. He’d kept his hands fisted in the sheets. Damen flushed at the idea of Laurent cupping his head as he gave him pleasure. Laurent was not that uninhibited. He hadn’t given himself over to sensation, he’d caught it up in an internal tangle. He was tangled up now. Dark-eyed, as though touch was to him an extreme act.The rise and fall of Damen’s chest felt careful. A single breath might disturb Laurent, or so it felt.Laurent’s lips were parted slightly, his fingers sliding down the planes of Damen’s chest. It felt different to the proprietary pushiness he had exercised when he’d pressed Damen down onto his back,and taken him in hand.Damen’s  blood  thrummed  with  his  over-awareness  of  Laurent.  The  heat  of  Laurent’s  body  in proximity was unanticipated, like the soft tickling shift of Laurent’s white shirt, specifics lacking from imagination.Laurent’s fingers dropped to his scar.His gaze caught there first. Touch followed, drawn with strange fascination, almost reverence. Damen felt the shock of it as Laurent’s fingers travelled its length, the thin white line where a sword had run through his shoulder. Laurent’s eyes were very dark in the candlelight. A first spill of tension, Laurent’s fingers on his skin as his heart beat like a bruise in his chest.

Laurent said, ‘I didn’t think anyone was good enough to get past your guard.’

‘One person,’ said Damen.

Laurent wet his lips, his fingertips tracing up and back, slowly, over the ghost of a long-ago fight.There was a strange doubling, brother for brother, Laurent close as Auguste had been, and Damen even less defended, Laurent’s fingers on the place where he had been run through.The past was there with them suddenly, too close, except that the sword thrust had come clean and fast, and Laurent was dark eyed and slow, fingers sliding over scar tissue.Then Laurent’s gaze lifted—not to his own, but to the collar. His fingers lifted to touch the yellow metal, his thumb pressing into the nick(so many conflicting emotions for Laurent).

‘I haven’t forgotten my promise. That I’d take off the collar.’

‘In the morning, you said.’

‘In the morning. You can think of it as baring your neck to the knife.’

Their eyes met. Damen’s heartbeats were behaving oddly(it’s love,dummy, own it).

‘I’m still wearing it now.’

‘I know that.’

Damen found himself caught in that look, held in it. Laurent had let him inside. That thought was impossible, even though he felt inside now, as though he had passed inside some crucial boundary(You have no idea, Damen). He felt Laurent’s knee slide alongside his own. He felt Laurent shift in towards him, and his heart was pounding in his chest as, in the next moment, Laurent kissed him. He half expected an assertion of dominance, but Laurent kissed with a chaste touch of lips, soft and uncertain, as though he was exploring the simplest sensations. Damen fought to stay passive(Good Boy), his hands curling in the sheets, and simply let Laurent take his mouth. Laurent shifted over him, Damen felt the slide of Laurent’s thigh, Laurent’s knee in the bedding. The fabric of Laurent’s white shirt brushed his erection. Laurent’s breathing was shallow, as though he was out on a high ledge. Laurent’s fingers brushed his abdomen, as if curious about the feel, and all the breath left Damen’s body as Laurent’s curiosity took him in a certain direction.

Damen leaned in slowly, and, when Laurent didn’t draw back, he pressed a single soft kiss to the column of Laurent’s neck. And then another(These are the tender acts that are the last straw for Laurent, this is sooo not what he expected from Damen).

 That—feels good,’ said Laurent.

Their chests brushed. He could hear Laurent’s breath in his ear. His own arousal, pressed between their bodies, felt only the subtlest shifts as Laurent pressed unconsciously against him. Damen’s other hand came up to rest on Laurent’s other hip, to feel the movement without guiding it. Laurent had forgotten himself enough to start moving against him. There was not even anything practiced about it, just a closed-eyed seeking after pleasure. It was a shock to realise in the slight tremors, the flickering of breath, that Laurent was close, and how close he was, that he could come from being kissed, and this slow, back and forth. Damen felt the slow slide of it, sparks of pleasure, like sparks struck from flint.

Damen could never have reached his own peak like this, but the slower Damen kissed him as they moved together, the more it seemed to take Laurent apart. Maybe Laurent had always been this sensitive to tenderness(starved for tenderness!). Laurent’s eyes were half closed. The first small sound escaped him. His cheeks were flushed and his lips parted, his head turned slightly to one side, a small tumult in the normally cool, calm expression.

He saw it on Laurent’s face as his body began to tremble and surrender up its defenses.Yes, thought Damen, and it was happening, Laurent was giving of himself. He felt the jerk against him, Laurent’s eyes opening almost in surprise(probably the first time ever, with him in charge of his own body), as his internal resistances dissolved into release. They were tangled together, Damen on his back in the sheets, where Laurent, in the last driving moments, had pushed him.

Damen was smiling helplessly. ‘That was adequate.’

‘You’ve been waiting to say that.’ The words were only a little blurred.

‘Let me.’ Rolling him over and toweling him down, softly. Out of delight that he could, he leaned in and pressed a single kiss to Laurent’s shoulder(Laurent’s in love). He felt uncertainty flicker faintly in Laurent again, though  not  strongly  enough  to  surface.  It  settled,  and  Laurent  didn’t  pull  away.  Damen  lay  in  a contented sprawl beside him, the toweling done.

‘You can,’ said Laurent, after a moment, meaning something else entirely.

‘You’re half asleep.’(AND considerate)

‘Not quite.’

‘We have all night,’ said Damen, though it was not long, now. ‘We have until morning.’He felt the lean shape of Laurent beside him on the bed. The light was dim with guttering candles.Order me to stay, he wanted to say, and couldn’t.

He was twenty years old, and the prince of a rival country, and even if their nations had been friends, it would have been impossible.

‘Until morning,’ said Laurent.

After a moment he felt Laurent’s fingers lift and come to rest on his arm, curling there slightly(He wants him close😭).

[failes-xtra-bits]

Chapter 20/ Here’s your hat Damen, what’s your hurry? Laurent is gifted a burlap sack.

 just a little longer, he thought, and it might have been a mundane wish to drowse in bed, except for the ache in his chest. He felt the passing of time like a growing pressure. He was aware of each moment because it was one fewer that he had left. 

Sleeping beside Damen, there was a newly physical aspect revealed in Laurent: the taut waist, the upper body musculature of a swordsman, the exposed angle of his Adams Apple. Laurent looked like what he was: a young man. When laced into his clothing, Laurent’s dangerous grace lent him an almost androgynous quality. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that it was rare to associate Laurent with a physical body at all: you were always dealing with a mind. Even when fighting in battle, driving his horse to some impossible feat the body was under the control of the mind. 

Stirring drowsily, Laurent shifted a fraction closer and made a soft, unthinking sound of pleasure that Damen was going to remember for the rest of his life. And then Laurent was blinking sleepily and Damen was watching Laurent grow aware of his surroundings and come awake in his arms. He wasn't sure how it would be, but when Laurent saw who was beside him, he smiled, the expression a little shy but completely genuine. Damen who hadn't been expecting it, felt the single painful beat of his heart. He'd never thought Lauren could look like that at any one. 

‘It's morning,’ said Laurent, ‘we slept?’

‘We slept,’ said Damen. They were gazing at one another. He held himself still as Laurent reached out and touched the plane of his chest. Despite the rising sun they were kissing, slow, fantastic kisses, the wonderful drift of hands. Their legs tangled together. He ignored the feeling inside him and closed his eyes. 

‘Your inclination appears to be much as it was last night.’

‘You talk the same in bed,’and the words came out sounding like he felt: helplessly charmed.

‘ Can you think of a better way of putting it?’

 I want to you.’ said Damen 

‘You've had me, twice. I can still feel the.. sensation of it.’ Laurent shifted, just so. Damen buried his face in Laurent’s neck and groaned, and there was laughter too, and something akin to happiness that hurt as it pushed at the inside of his chest. 

‘Stop it. You will not be able to walk,’ said Damen, 

‘I’d welcome the chance to walk,’ said Laurent ‘ I have to ride a horse.’

Is it…? I tried to.. I wouldn't---’ 

‘I like the way it feels,’ said Laurent ‘I liked the way it felt. You're a generous, giving, lover and I feel---’Laurent broke off and gave a shaky laugh at his own words, I feel like the Vaskian tribe in the body of one person. I suppose it is often like this?’

‘ No, it’s never like this.' said Damen. The idea that Laurent might find this with someone else hurt him. 

‘Does that betray my inexperience? You know my reputation.Once every ten years.’

‘ I can't,’ said Damen, ‘I can’t have this for just one night.’ 

‘One night and one morning,’ said Laurent, and this time it was Damen who found himself pushed down onto the bed. 

He dozed,after, drifting in the early sunlight, and woke to an empty bed. 

Ok so we know Damen woke up to the servants (♬To the left, to the left

Everything you own on your arms and yo neck♬)

‘Where’s Laurent?’he asked a servant, who told him in no uncertain terms he needed to get up and get ready to go...(♬And keep askin’ ‘bout me,that's fine...But could you walk and talk at the same time, and-- the servants will draw you a bath, so go on and soak, let them saddle your nag.♬) So needless to say Laurent went off on his own because he couldn't, didn’t know how to say goodbye. Damen get’s the collar and the one cuff off(because he wanted to keep one) as promised. As he is, he’s thinking about the man he’s become and how it would not have been, if he hadn’t been sent to Vere. How he would have never known the good man that Laurent is and things would have stayed status quo. 

His  escort arrived it was six men and one of them already mounted was Jord who looked him right in the eye and said

 ‘You kept your word’ his horse was being led forward; not only a riding horse, but a pack horse, a sword, clothing, supplies.

 Is there something you want? Laurent had asked him once. He wondered what ornate Veretian Parting Gift might Lurk in those packs( He’s one of those that SAYS he wants nothing for valentine’s day…) and knew instinctively that there was none. He had maintained from the beginning that he had wanted only his freedom and that was exactly what he had been given. 

‘I always meant to leave.’ he said. He swung up into the saddle. He felt Jord draw up beside him.

‘ He's gone for a ride,’ said Jord. ‘It was his habit in the palace too, when he needed to clear his head. He’s not the type for goodbyes.’

 ‘No,’ said Damen. He made to ride out, but Jord put a hand on his reins.

‘Wait,’ said Jord.’ I wanted to say--- thank you. For standing up for Aimeric.’

‘I didn't do it for Aimeric,’ said Damen. Jord nodded. 

And then he said, ‘When the men heard you were leaving, they wanted---we wanted--- to see you off.’ He said,’There's time.’ 

Laurent comes racing back into the courtyard, angry at being forced to return before Damen is gone, clearly there is an issue and it’s obvious that Laurent isn’t quite sure what to expect, when in, rides a retinue sent by The Regent. The Emissary/Herald faced Laurent. 

Laurent was a single rider casually-dressed but then he had never needed anything other than his hair to do identifying.

 ‘The King of Vere sends a message’ said the Herald, his voice trained to carry, could be heard the full length of the courtyard by each of the gathered men and women. He spoke. ‘The Pretender Prince is in traitorous conspiracy with Akielos, wherefore he has given over Veretian villages to slaughter, and has killed Veretian border Lords. He is therefore summarily expelled from the succession, and charged with the crime of treason against his own people. Any authority he has hitherto claimed over the lands of Vere or the protectorate of Aquitart is now void. The reward for his delivery to justice is generous,and will be administered as swiftly as the punishment against any man who shelters him, so says the King.’ There was silence in the courtyard. No one spoke.

‘But there is no King,’ said Laurent, ’in Vere.’ his voice carried too. ‘The king my father is dead.’ he said, ‘Speak the name of the man who profanes his title.’

‘The King, your uncle.’

‘My uncle insults his family. He uses a title that belonged to my father--- that should have passed to my brother, and that runs now in my blood. Do you think I will let this insult stand?’ The herald spoke again, by rote.

 ‘The King is a man of honor; he offers you one chance for honest battle. If your brother's blood is truly in your veins, you will meet him on the field at Charcy three days hence. There you may try to prevail with your Patran troops against good Veresian men.’ 

‘Fight him I will, but not at the time and place of his choosing.’

‘Is that your final answer?’

‘It is.’ 

‘In that case, there is a personal message from uncle to nephew.’ 

(poor Nicaise) 

‘My uncle has killed his catamite,’ said Laurent, ‘As a message to us and what is the message?’His voice carried ‘That his favor cannot be trusted? That even the boys in his bed see how false is his claim to the throne? Or that his hold on power is so flimsy that he fears the words of a child whore? Let him come to Charcy with his hithertos and his wherefores and there he will find me, and with all the might of my kingdom I will scourge him from the field. And if you want a personal message,’ said Laurent. ‘You can tell my uncle, boykiller, that he can cut the head off every child from here the capital. It won't make him into a King. It will simply mean he has no one left to f***.’ Laurent wheeled his horse and Damen was there facing him. 

‘You’ve outstayed your welcome.’ Said Laurent(♬to the left, to the left♬)

‘Don’t do this. If you ride to meet your uncle unprepared you will lose everything you fought for.’

‘But I won't be unprepared, pretty little Aimeric is going to give up everything he knows and when I’ve wrung every last word out of him maybe I'll send what’s left to my Uncle.’

Damen opened his mouth to speak, but Laurent cut him off 

‘I told you to get him out of here.’

 After telling Jord he don’t care who knows he’s Damianos, because the love of his life needs him. Damen runs after Laurent. He finds him in Aimeric’s rooms.

He was dressed like a courtier; he had bathed, his hair looked clean. Laurent stood two steps from him, all the lines of his body rigid. A Shard of glass from the broken window lying by his outflung hand blood had soaked into his sleeve and pooled out over the table and tiled floor, but it was old. He had been like this for hours. A fourth son, waiting for someone to notice. When he wasn't trying to please, he was baiting authority as though negative attention could substitute for the approval that he sought--- that he had been given once by Laurent’s uncle.

 ‘I'm sorry Jord.’ 

They were the last words anyone would have from him, he had killed himself.